Stuff reports:

A Government select committee will look into Wellington’s troubled new bus network, which the Green Party has called an “omnishambles”.

The transport and Infrastructure committee will open a briefing in the next couple of weeks, requesting “key players” to explain what is going wrong.

The Greens, who called for the briefing, said it was important the committee understood what the problems were and what was being done to fix them.

“Frankly, it’s an omnishambles, and it’s no surprise there’s been a huge public outcry,” a spokesman said.

Yes it is an omnishambles. So let’s look at who is on Wellington Regional Council with political affiliations?

1. Penny Gaylor – sought Labour nomination for Kapiti
2. Ken Laban, Labour affiliated, brother of former Labour MP
3. Paul Swain, former Labour MP
4. Sue Kedgley, former Green MP
5. Chris Laidlaw, former Labour MP
6. Daran Ponter, Labour candidate

That’s six out of 13.

Tracy Watkins writes:

The criticism of Ardern’s government has started to look like a pile-on as it reels from one blow to the next – the war with business, one minister gone, a second minister under a huge cloud, the Abby Hartley controversy, and an emboldened NZ First looking like it’s running rings around Labour and Ardern.

Even the entirely predictable admonishment of a back bench MP,  Greg O’Connor, for publicly criticising her handling of the Clare Curran affair turned into a bizarre headline about Ardern bullying her MPs.

All Governments have bad patches and that is what Labour has been consoling itself with as the relentless pressure on its ministers and Ardern shows no sign of abating.

But whether it’s a sign of the modern media and the plethora of commentary and opinion these days, or whether it’s a sign that things really are that shambolic at Labour HQ, the pressure being heaped on Ardern to make things right seems to be immense.

What is interesting is none of these mismanaged issues are particularly hard ones. Imagine a real crisis such as the GFC or the Canterbury earthquakes.

But something has changed since then and there is a growing perception that Peters is at the very least reining Labour in, or at worst, ruling the roost.

Ardern needs to push back before that perception becomes entrenched.  

How? She can’t sack Winston but he can sack her.

Newshub reports:

The head of Greenpeace says oil companies are as big an enemy today of the environmental group as the French government was when it sunk the Rainbow Warrior.

Russell Norman fears oil companies are capable of going just as far. …

Mr Norman says the oil and gas exploration companies are today’s enemies, and could go just as far.

“When you look at the history of the campaign against nuclear testing in the Pacific and the steps the French government was willing to go to stop Greenpeace and others winning that battle, it gives you a sense of what the oil companies are capable of as well,” he says.

That is a disgusting smear.

Norman is saying oil companies are capable of murder, of planting bombs on boats.

Is there no depth Greenpeace won’t stoop to?

The Prime Minister’s partner Clarke Gayford rushes to her defence after she cancels her interview on @NewshubNationNZ for the 3rd time this year. Says the interviews weren’t in her diary when we were told by her office they were. I’m terribly confused by this govt atm. https://t.co/s3OIQaT1xk

— Tova O’Brien (@TovaOBrien) September 15, 2018

Tim Watkin (formerly producer of The Nation, not with Radio NZ) tweeted that it was good of Simon Bridges to front on The Nation after Jacinda Ardern wouldn’t.

Clarke Gayford responded saying:

Tim this is incorrect. The interviews were never in her dairy it was a genuine misscomunication. She’s doing a stand up tomorrow she did media yesterday. To infer she’s avoiding anyone is wrong.

Newshub Political Editor Tova O’Brien responded pointing out:

Says the interviews weren’t in her diary when we were told by her office they were.

This is of course very unhelpful for the Government.

You have the PMs partner saying one thing, and the PMs office saying another. So whom do media believe?

I can understand Clarke wanting to defend his partner. Its a natural instinct. But she is the Prime Minister of NZ. She has shown herself to be a very good communicator. She also has a staff of 30 including several press secretaries. What makes anyone think she can’t defend herself?

Family members of politicians are generally off limits for very good reasons. But if you enter the political game yourself, then you become fair game.

As for the wider issue, some people seem to conflate the difference between a Prime Minister (or Minister) not agreeing to do an interview, and agreeing to do one and then cancelling at the last minute.

No Prime Minister ever agrees to every interview request. It is absolutely normal for a PM to not agree to go on shows such as The Nation and Q+A as often as they are asked.

What is much more unusual is agreeing to go on, and cancelling at the last minute. And it seems Ardern has done this not once, but three times this year to the weekend political TV shows.

This implies there is some sort of systemic problem. Either incompetent scheduling (staff over commit the PM to events) or the PM often changes her mind about the desirability of going on.

And with this particular instance, we still don’t know what is the truth of the situation. Was she double booked? Was it an error and not in her diary as Gayford says? Did she just not have time to prepare so decided not to do it? Or did she not want to do in depth interviews about the CTO fiasco and the Whaitiri investigation?

It’s not a big deal by itself. But it’s sloppy to accept and cancel. And its sloppier to have your partner and your office saying different things to media about why.

Stuff reports:

Currently, the Education Ministry gives schools the option to teach the New Zealand Wars.

Hodgson said schools may avoid teaching the New Zealand Wars due to trepidation.

“Maybe it’s because people are uncomfortable with our history, but it is what it is,” she said.

“I would welcome the teaching of the New Zealand Wars being made compulsory, but I don’t believe that goes far enough. I think te reo Māori needs to be part and parcel of what we do.”

Education Minister Chris Hipkins​ wants schools to teach New Zealand history and said some schools could do more to educate students about the New Zealand Wars.

However, he doesn’t favour making the wars a compulsory part of the curriculum.

Good.

The last things we want is politicians deciding what parts of history should be taught in school, and what shouldn’t be taught.

I think WWII and the Holocaust is massively important and should be taught more. But no way do I want a Government to dictate that the Holocaust must be taught in school.

History teachers should decide what to teach, not politicians.

I blogged yesterday:

Either Labour Ministers are failing to consult NZ First, or they are consulting them and NZ First is reneging at the last minute.

A source close to NZ First has out to me that I missed out an option. That Labour is consulting NZ First but not listening to them and ignoring their concerns.

The source explains:

NZ First tells Labour no, Labour keep pressing ahead.

They get told no repeatedly, they get angry, they still get told no then Labour are surprised when their policies are not supported publicly.

Labour are making stupid demands of NZ First as in they give them a bloody big file of documents on a policy and tell NZ First they have to have an answer in 24 hours so NZ First MPs tell them that they cant agree to anything without it going through caucus

This could be be correct. So it might not be NZ First upsetting things, more Labour not understanding that consultation means more than informing someone 24 hours in advance.

The Herald reports:

A sugar tax would generate millions in revenue and save lives, the Prime Minister has been told.

The briefing from the Ministry of Health’s chief science advisor Dr John Potter was given at Jacinda Ardern’s request.

Its release to the Herald will intensify debate on the measure. An opponent has labelled the advice “poorly documented” and seemingly misleading.

Potter’s briefing was unequivocal – each of 19 bullet points in the document helped make the case for a tax on sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs).

Dr Potter is the Chief Science Advisor of the Ministry of Health. You would assume this means they cover all known literature – even that which doesn’t align with their personal opinion. Science is not meant to be about opinion.

But Eric Crampton points out:

Imagine that you were the Chief Science Adviser for a Ministry.

You need to produce a short briefing note to the new government for some issue in your Ministry’s remit.

Your Ministry had, just a couple weeks earlier, released a comprehensive report on the topic that your Ministry had commissioned from a top economics consultancy. Your Ministry had had the report since August, but had only just released it.

What the hell must be going through your head if your briefing note to the Prime Minister via the office of the government’s Chief Science Adviser presents the opposite conclusion to the commissioned study and doesn’t even mention that the commissioned study exists?!

This is appalling. They just ignored their own comprehensive report because presumably it didn’t align with their personal opinion. This undermines the whole value of having Chief Science Advisers.

Crampton summarises:

if you’ve got a report your Ministry commissioned and you disagree with it, better practice would be to note its existence and why you disagree with it rather than pretend it doesn’t exist. Yeesh.

If I was the Prime Minister I’d be very upset that a Ministry was misleading me by omitting a key report.

Richard Harman reports:

Groundbreaking New Zealand research shows that methane production from livestock could be dramatically reduced with a new so-called pasture super-grass.

Such is the potential of the grass it could be the magic bullet the farming industry is looking for to prevent them having to cut cattle numbers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But because the strain has been developed using genetic modification, it cannot even be tested in New Zealand. 

Yesterday, the outgoing Prime Minister’s Chief Scientist, Sir Peter Gluckman, suggested it was time for a public debate on the use of GMOs because of the potential of the grass to combat greenhouse gas emissions.

However judging by their reactions yesterday, politicians are reluctant to have such a debate take place.

Climate Change Minister, James Shaw, despite a specific request from POLITIK for comment and his staff having undertaken to provide it, returned with a broad general statement on the whole report which did not mention GMOs.

Well this is interesting. Jacinda and The Greens say climate change is the most important issue of our lifetime. So surely if they mean that, they would be doing everything possible to test this super-grass out in NZ.

The Government agency, AgResearch is engaged in research on genetically modified pasture grasses and believes it may have made a significant breakthrough.

However, because of New Zealand’s Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act it must conduct all of the field trials for its research in the United States where it says the regulatory environment is easier.

Madness.

When the PM demoted Clare Curran from Cabinet, she made the curious statement that @dgh was still a candidate for the Govt CTO job. She was lying. Handley had already been offered, and accepted, the job. #nzpol pic.twitter.com/BZjLeDK3Qw

— Hamish Price (@hamishpricenz) September 14, 2018

So on the 24th of August Jacinda Ardern said:

“He is a qualified and capable candidate who has made it through to the final stages of the appointment process based on his talent, experience.

Now what would 99.9% of people reading that conclude. That he was shortlisted.

And the Herald reported:

The SCC will report back before the appointment is made.

Handley remains a candidate for the CTO position. An appointment is expected to be made shortly.

So explicitly says no appointment has been made.

But Derek Handley said on 14 September:

One month ago I was offered and accepted the position as the first Chief Technology Officer for New Zealand.

A month ago is before 24 August.

So the Prime Minister again didn’t tell the truth. Getting to be a habit.

Why did they lie? Was she hoping he would quietly agree to pretend that he has never been appointed?

Were they trying to cover up the fact that he got appointed after a secret meeting with the Minister that her staff and officials knew nothing of.

Also of interest is that Handley says he only gained residency for New Zealand after the change of Government. Presumably just a coincidence but I imagine an OIA is on its way.

And again of interest is that Ardern and Handley are reportedly friends. Metro noted:

The dinner turned out to be a fancy affair in the private dining room at Euro. It was the second of Handley’s salon dinners, where he gets a range of people together to debate a topic. The guests included lawyer Mai Chen, a sales rep from a big alcohol company, broadcasters Clarke Gayford and Brooke Howard-Smith, someone from New Plymouth-based International Volunteer HQ, young law graduates and MP Jacinda Ardern, who made a presentation on Labour policy after the entrée was served. 

Now being friends with the PM isn’t a disqualification. But again why did she imply he hadn’t yet been appointed when he had already accepted the job offer?

The Timaru Herald editorial:

Taranaki protest organiser Kevin Moratti claimed that, “if 1080 inadvertently got in our water catchment off the mountain – by inadvertently I mean a bucket being dropped or something – New Plymouth would be without water for three months. This is the toxicity of this stuff.”

Quite aside from the problem of an entire pest-control strategy being predicated on the possibility of a preventable mistake, the clear evidence that 1080 is that toxic is lacking. Warnings without clear evidence amount to not much more than scaremongering. …

Discussing the alleged toxicity of 1080, the report said more than 2500 samples over 20 years had been taken from drinking water supplies, streams and lakes after aerial drops. “In all this time, 1080 residues have never been detected in drinking water supplies, and only found in vanishingly small and harmless levels in 3 per cent of the remaining samples.”

As more than one 1080 defender has said since the weekend, the concentrations of its toxic ingredient, monofluoroacetate, are significantly higher in tea than the maximum concentration allowed under New Zealand’s drinking water standards.

Many many things are toxic at a high concentration but perfectly safe at the levels we encounter them. To drink a fatal dose, you would need to consumer 60,000 litres of water in one sitting.

And the alternative to 1080, trapping, is massively expensive.It costs 20 times more than 1080 drops. Doing trapping instead of 1080 in all our national parks would costs over $2 billion a year.

Peter Williams writes:

A champion athlete is always appreciated more if she or he is a champion person too.

That’s why we always loved Richie McCaw. Dame Valerie, Mahe Drysdale and Kane Williamson are all really, really good people as well as being among the best at their game.

Around the world we admire Roger Federer, Steph Curry and Mikaela Shiffrin.

But sport has always been infested with high achieving bad behavers. Serena Williams has often shown a tendency to join that group. On Sunday she went to top of the class.

Her tantrum was calculated, cynical and selfish.

She is the most amazing athlete of her generation. But she is more a John McEnroe in terms of behaviour than a Roger Federer.

Remember her solitary appearance in Auckland? Losing in the second round at the start of last year and then blaming the wind in what was one of the most ungracious media appearances you’re ever likely to see or read about.

Yes, she is the greatest woman tennis player of all time. Yes, she is still – after 20 years – the greatest attraction in the sport.

But with that status comes a responsibility.

A responsibility to be at least a half gracious human being.

Fair call.

And referees are sick of being blamed as Stuff reports:

The threat of tennis umpires refusing to officiate Serena Williams’ matches has been raised as the fallout to the ugly US Open final continues.

The Times reports discontent among the umpiring fraternity over the treatment of Carlos Ramos during and after the final where he issued superstar Williams a game penalty for her behaviour during her straight-sets loss to Japan’s Naomi Osaka.

Who wants to referee a game where you get pilloried on social media if you enforce the rules.

Subsequently, umpires were considering what action they could take with one suggestion being a refusal to officiate Williams matches until she apologises for vilifying Ramos and calling him a “liar” and a “thief”.

The umpires are wondering in a sport where prizemoney is massive, if the $740 standard daily fee for handling a match is worth the pressure, especially the high stakes involved in the final as last Sunday showed.

Hell that’s low.

Guyon Espiner writes:

Momentum, clarity and cohesion are essential check-in items for a happy travelling government but right now they are three items of lost luggage for the Labour-led government.

Sometimes a Government won’t have all three of these at the same time. But it is rare for a Government to have none of them!

Media exploring the distance between the coalition partners on these issues are sometimes met with a loud riposte: They’re different parties! It’s MMP, stupid!

They have a point. But it’s a point Labour and NZ First must absorb themselves. Either Labour ministers are carelessly promoting plans which don’t have full government support or NZ First is reminding Labour where the real power lies.

If you don’t have the numbers on the House, then make sure you speak to other parties before opening your mouth.

Ms Ardern’s flight out to the forum will be largely empty, with her and maybe a smattering of staff rattling around in that plane. It might be a good time to figure out what’s gone missing in the past few weeks.

Someone needs to find the lost luggage and the flight plan. The government needs to regain momentum, clarity and cohesion. It needs to look like it knows where it’s going and assure people that the moving parts are travelling in the same direction.

Good advice.

Red Nicholson writes at The Spinoff:

Yesterday, Labour ministers Carmel Sepuloni and Iain Lees-Galloway were invited by the Spinal Trustto spend the day in wheelchairs, in order to highlight the challenges a wheelchair user might face getting around parliament. A well-intentioned PR stunt that no politician, particularly given the fortnight Labour has had, could easily turn down. After all, how could anyone resist the temptation to make a gag about “sitting by his statements”, eh minister? That said, as a veteran wheelchair user myself, I reckon there is only one context in which it is OK to “have a go” in a wheelchair, and it is this:

• You are a curious nine-year-old.

There is also one context where it might be considered a particularly bad look to be playing wheelchair dress-ups:

• You are the minister for disability issues, seeking to understand the needs of disabled people.

I think the intentions were very good, but Nicholson has a point that it wasn’t well thought through.

Carmel Sepuloni, as minister for disability issues, should know better than this. Dressing up as a disabled person for an afternoon is no less disrespectful than if a Pākeha minister for Māori affairs thought it might be helpful to paint their skin brown for a day to better understand the needs of Māori. Or if a male minister for women’s issues wore a dress for an afternoon in order to appreciate the barriers facing women. The only difference here is that wheelchairs seem to have developed into some sort of whimsical lark for able-bodied people, as a “fun way to get around“, making this particular dress-up act somehow seem less offensive. It’s not.

Fair points.

The purpose of the stunt was, according to the Spinal Trust’s twitter account, to help the minister better understand the needs of disabled people. The minister herself said that sitting in the chair helped her to “gain some insight” into how accessible parliament is. But the minister shouldn’t have to play dress-ups to appreciate either of these things. In fact, there are already wheelchair users working in parliament, so if accessibility was of such concern, the minister could surely have respected these individuals’ lived experience enough to sit down and listen to their perspectives, instead of playing pretend for the day.

It’s a bit like when people sleep rough for a day to help the homeless.

Stuff reports:

Dumped chief technology officer candidate Derek Handley has been paid out more than $100,000 in compensation by the Government, Digital Services Minister Megan Woods has confirmed.

Woods said the Government had agreed to pay Handley compensation totalling $107,500 after deciding to put the recruitment process for the country’s first national chief technology officer on hold and “rethinking the role”. 

Woods issued the statement after Handley said the Government had reneged on a commitment to give him the job and paid him three months’ salary, and costs, as compensation.

I feel sorry for Handley. He wanted to do the job as he is passionate about NZ. It isn’t his fault the Minister didn’t define the job well, and botched everything around it.

Handley said he was “offered and accepted” the job – which had been billed as offering a salary of up to $400,000 – a month ago.

“Earlier this week I was deeply disappointed to learn that the Government will no longer follow through with their commitment and will not be making that appointment at this time.” 

So taxpayers are out $108,000 plus the costs of two recruitment rounds, which will be significant.

“What we know is that the CTO role in its current form has significant overlaps with the Research, Science and Innovation portfolio and the Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media portfolio, as well as other roles like the government chief digital officer.”

Yet Cabinet signed it off.

It is worth recalling that the Prime Minister still maintains that she wouldn’t have sacked Curran, if she hadn’t resigned. God knows what you actually have to do to get sacked.

Graham Adams writes in The Listener:

There is a rooster that regularly announces its presence from beyond my back fence. When it started crowing one morning last week, I immediately thought of Helen Clark. I had just read that she had told Stuff journalists “heads would have rolled” if the Labour Party’s youth camp sex assaults had occurred on her watch because, under her leadership, “people didn’t keep their jobs”. 

She added that she wasn’t sure if she would have released the internal report but made it clear: “I would have handled it differently from the start.”

The inescapable implication of her comments was that Jacinda Ardern is either too weak, too nice, too inexperienced or too indecisive — or maybe a combination of all these failings — to be an effective PM faced with this sort of problem. And, of course, very unlike her tough and decisive Labour predecessor.

Not helpful as he points out:

As a journalist colleague emailed after reading the Stuff report: “I bet Ardern just loves having Clark back in New Zealand.”

While I’m all in favour of Helen keeping up the commentary. She’s in the media several times a week, at times. Probably in there more often than 80% of the Cabinet.

Clark continues to assert her toughness, time after time. When she faced off against Sir Ray Avery over his proposed charity concert at Eden Park in July, she boasted: “He’s probably picked the wrong person to try to bully in directly attacking me.”

And Clark’s high opinion of her own toughness extends now to claiming that she was too strong a personality for the UN to accept as Secretary-General. Stuff reported her saying her run at the top job was “stymied” because “four of five of the great powers didn’t want a strong personality type.” 

It was a view she repeated to the NZ Herald’s Simon Wilson. Describing the run-up to the UN race, and the need to stand up to Russia, the United States and China, she said: “The tragedy is that the world is looking for leadership. We had some conversations as to whether I should present as not a strong leader. Pretend that I was an ineffectual person who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. But that wasn’t me.” 

We are obviously meant to accept that Clark was the outstanding candidate to lead the UN but the international organisation was far too scared of her strong, outspoken personality to actually select her.

I don’t think Clark lost because she was too strong. I think she lost due to geopolitics.

In fact, rightly or wrongly, many of us who aren’t devotees of the Cult of Helen remember just how often she was frightened by a goose hissing at her in New Zealand. We remember her timid reforms to the Employment Contracts Act that saw the union movement further weakened under her watch; her backing away from the Closing the Gaps programme to lift Māori; and her blocking Māori from taking their case over the foreshore and seabed to the Māori Land Court. When thousands of protesters marched on Parliament, she would not leave her office to address the crowd, instead labelling them “haters and wreckers”.

Perhaps more than anything else, we remember her unwillingness to follow Jim Anderton’s lead when he was suspended from the Labour caucus for voting against selling the BNZ in 1989. Her famous line that she “hadn’t come this far to go down in a hail of bullets with Jim Anderton” was for many a vivid reminder of the narrow limits of her courage.

Pragmatism over principle.

Jacinda Ardern is much tougher than she looks — and her prime ministership is possibly going to be braver and more transformational than Clark’s ever was.

Jacinda has shown toughness. Her best moment came as she executed Metiria Turei and effectively forced her from the Green co-leadership. That took real steel.

The Herald reports:

Justice Minister Andrew Little is standing by the $1.5 million cost of last month’s criminal justice summit despite a budget blowout which has been criticised by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

The final cost of the summit which brought together 600-700 people in Porirua to discuss the justice system and its future direction was more than double the $700,000 Little originally estimated it would cost.

Ardern was asked about the budget blowout by reporters today.

“My expectation is that when we set a budget, we stick to it,” she said.

They spent $1.5 million on a talkfest that achieved nothing?

And no way should a conference end up double the budget. I’ve organised a dozen or so conferences.

But Little defended the cost.

“I’m totally satisfied with the cost of the summit. It was a two-day summit. It was several hundred people. It takes a lot to put that together and to run it in a way that makes sure all the voices are heard.”

Told that Ardern had criticised the budget over-run, Little said: “I stand by what the justice summit has achieved. It’s done some good things.

So the PM and Justice Minister can’t even agree. Not that this in itself is a big issue, but it just shows that there is no co-ordinating happening. If they can’t even run their own Ministry well, how can they run the rest of the country?

He said the food for the summit’s attendees included a “decadent gluten-free chocolate brownie, pork, apricot and thyme pastries, four different kinds of croissants, luxury pies and chicken and cranberry casserole”.

Shouldn’t the summit have been catered for by a prison? 🙂

David Seymour announced:

David Seymour, ACT Leader and MP for Epsom, is on the hunt for the next Youth MP for Epsom who will represent the electorate at Youth Parliament 2019.

Unlike other MPs, Mr Seymour is leaving the selection of Epsom’s Youth MP up to the students of Epsom.

“Out of 120 Youth MPs, Epsom’s Youth MP will be the only one actually elected by their peers,” says Mr Seymour.

“We’re having an election where students holding a valid Student ID from an Epsom high school will be able to turn out and vote by secret ballot for the candidate they want to represent them in Youth Parliament.”

“Voting will take place after all candidates debate the issue ‘My aspiration for the Epsom electorate and residents,’ and three follow-up questions selected at random.”

“Candidates will have to campaign at their schools and on social media to appeal to fellow students and turn out the vote.”

“The highest vote on the day wins.”

Students who put their names forward as candidates must be a current student at an Epsom high school, nominated by two other students from Epsom, aged between 16 and 18 years, and have filled out this nomination form by 30 September 2018.

The election will be held 1:30pm Sunday 14 October at the Auckland Normal Intermediate Hall, Poronui St, Mt Eden.

This is a cool idea. Rather than have the MP unilaterally decide who should be the Youth MP, give them a sense of what it is really like and have them campaign for it, and have a vote.

Will be very interested to see how it goes.

Newshub reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has cancelled her planned appearances on both Newshub Nation and TVNZ’s Q+A this weekend, saying there was an issue with her diary.

Ms Ardern’s chief press secretary told Newshub Nation on Wednesday the Prime Minister would not be appearing on the show because he got the date of the interview wrong.

“There’s been bit of a diary issue in my team. There’s no question I remain very much available for any issue of the day,” Ms Ardern said on Thursday.

“This was a simple diary issue.”

How unfortunate that this simple diary issue made her unavailable for both TV shows, at the conclusion of a week of terrible news for her Government.

Terrible bad luck.

But wait, I have a solution.

It’s this thing called a pre-record. I’m sure both The Nation and Q+A would be very happy to do a pre-record with her. In fact I’d even guess they would be willing to send their interviewer to where-ever the PM is, so it would only take half an hour out of her day.

It’s the third time the Prime Minister has pulled out of a scheduled interview with Newshub Nation in the past year. The other interviews were planned for August and February.

Wow her office must be really bad at this scheduling stuff.

by John Stringer.

“Eastgate” report, the public meetings in Christchurch.

More than 300 people attended the “Eastgate” public meeting in New Brighton on Tuesday and less on Wednesday at Redcliffs, in Christchurch.  There were two councillors present, several community board members from across the city, the media, mayor Lianne Dalziel and city CEO Dr Karleen Edwards as well as half a dozen community residents groups.

At New Brighton it was standing room only.

Sir Tipene O’Regan was present by way of a letter of support which was read out, saying the elected representatives under Code of Conduct disciplinary action by Council had “Properly stood up to Council bureaucracy…as they should…(against) imperious sultans who seem to have misused their authority…”

There were several speakers who were all to the point.

Cr David East…

outlined the main issues as he saw them and explained why he’d gone public. He said the “alleged tampering had heavily impacted local residents…denying residents their legal rights …and the economic loss (to them) could run in to the millions.”

He said they’d had many meetings over many many months with Council but go nowhere. ”A policy of deny, defer, delay!” He’d therefore raised his concerns with the Office of the Prime Minister and the Local Govt Minister and asked for an enquiry; an independent investigation to establish the “reliability of the process and of the actions of the officials involved with …Decision 53.”

Cr David East and Sir John Hansen (IHP) had several correspondences regarding the “onerous” conditions of the District Plan and its effect on locals.

Hansen outlined the steps taken to arrive at Decision 53. There had been a minute to Council from the IHP to draw up new maps and effectively be the IHP’s drafting body, despite CCC being opposed to the changes and/or that function. However it was done. The IHP still concluded the Plan was “onerous” and issued 53 granting relief by way of an RDA.

The RDA rule was in the Plan but the policy was omitted. Other changes and corrections were dealt with by Council as the “drafting body” for IHP but at no time was the omitted policy addressed.

Cr East likened that to a Law Clerk changing a Judge’s decision when drafting it up, because they did not personally like the Judge’s decision.

East said there had been a clear undermining of due process during the review of the Plan. There was also a clear statement from staff of their complicity, which came to attention through the community board.

East and his colleagues primary objective was to reinstate the missing clause.

Kim Money Chairman of Coastal-Burwood Community Board…

said they all wanted “Resolution and Restitution…that it was an issue that had brought huge trauma to many families.”

“We’ve brought this out into the public arena because it is unjust.”

Tim Sintes, Deputy Chair C&B Community Board…

“We’ve gone to Council…It’s so wrong” (people not getting their consents after paying the Council thousands of dollars applying). “Please fix it!Stop making our job (as Community Board members) so hard!”

He expressed his frustration that residents came to them expecting help, but they felt stonewalled and hindered at Council process level.

There was huge applause from the 300 strong crowd at New Brighton when he asked, “have we done the right thing?” (going public, for which they are now under disciplinary proceedings).

“The Rules are impossible to get round. It’s criminal!”

Darrell Latham, Linwood-Central-Heathcote Community Board…

wanted to send a clear message to City Hall that they had a “tiger by the trail.”  He called the issue “Red zoning by stealth” via the Residential Overlay; that it had caused “considerable strain and stress” on all of them (East, Money, Sintes, Latham). “This issue is a couple of years old. It is finally being heard.”

He outlined that residents had wished to remain anonymous to not prejudice their negotiations with Council as applicants, so they were relying on their elected representatives to be their public voice.

Latham criticised Minister Woods for praising the heart of the city was being restored with advancement on the Cathedral rebuild, but said, “Time for the Minister to return the heart back in to the coastal suburbs using s.71.”

He said their collective second priority was that this must never happen again.  “We don’t want to be Weapons of Destruction but a force for good.”

Warwick Schaffer NZ Coastal Residents Forum and local residents group…

explained the details of the Clause, the Rule and Policy, put up a map of the (red zone) Residential Overlay and explained the consents restrictions on locals was due to the Coastal Hazards Policy (CHP). Essentially that is the risk of future flooding due to climate change. There was no present risk, and none of it related to the earthquakes, so he felt eastern suburbs were being unduly prejudiced in the Plan. They had submitted that future building in the east should not be restricted.

The IHP of three High Court judges agreed.

The Council favoured a ban on all future building inside the Residential Overlay because of this risk of climate change flooding. As the drafting body of IHP the IHP holds that Council was obliged to follow IHP’s instructions.

Mr Schaffer put up a slide that showed the initial submissions which contained the policy, and then the final submission by Council which omitted it altogether and reworded a clause at variance with the policy. Schaffer said the policy was “not just deleted but was rewritten.” If true, that goes beyond some sort of simple clerical typo or error but deliberate “tampering” as alleged by Cr East.

The outcome was “a void” and “no provision for development” in the east.

The critical point is that residents having paid $25k or so for consents, Planners when reviewing their applications would see a void.

“More digging in to this is required. We need to fix it now before we go into who did what. S. 71 is a good option.”

Unfortunately under law, the District Plan is now locked and Council cannot change it off its own bat.  The mayor made much of this point, blaming the “previous government” three times on this point. The process is they have to go to the Minister and seek change under a s.71 (the same as applied to variations over the moving of Redcliffs School also in the area).

The eastern members said the issue was “in the staff” and they needed elected members (Councillors, local MPs, community board members) to step in and help them.

Three Affected Members of the Public…

A valuable insight was three speeches from affected locals.

1. A member of the Pier and Foreshore Society said they were all “Undie Supported by Council” and had hung 300 undies on the Brighton pier.

He said his family could not extend. They’d bought in 2016, got geo reports, engineers’ reports, architects’ reports and there were absolutely no red flags.  None from Council either. They had to vary their plans under direction from Council at more expense, but then found they were declined consent in contradiction to all their earlier advice.  Cost: $8000 out of pocket.

People had left the area because they could not expand, say to address a growing family, so left the area.

2. An almost Retired Mum…

cannot insure their eastern house in the Red Zone so she and her husband bought a Red Zone house and section next door for $90k as security in case their home burned down. 

When buying there were no issues up to August 2017 via lawyers’ due diligence, no issues with the bank processes of analysis of risk who loaned them money to buy, no issues with a Master Builder. Council imposed certain foundational stipulations which upped their application costs and they lodged a consent application Feb 2018. 

They were advised under s.37 they needed a further Resource Consent. Numerous further Geo Tech reports were added but they are advised under the current regime they are unlikely to be granted a building consent under the Plan. Cost out of pocket” $27,749.80c almost 1/3 the value of their property (for nothing).

“Almost Retired Mum” said the issue was supposedly about the future risk of rising oceans not whether you can build or not, locally.  ‘We have a consent but cannot build and are still being charged rates against money we’ve borrowed to buy and build.’

“I want Council to have an open, honest and transparent communication process” (when people are buying property to build or vary). 

3. Father of Young Family…

Said his issues were identical, his costs were: $26,000 out of pocket.

There were robust questions from the floor and mayor Dalziel addressed several of these, as did the CEO over the Code of Conduct issues, which grated with many of the public present.  There is to be an informal meeting this Thursday to see if the parties can address that issue alone, in isolation and find a positive way forward.

There was a mixed response to some of the mayor’s answers and several speakers, including elected members, got up and contradicted statements she had made (particularly regarding her timing awareness of the issue).

Questions…

A representative of the South Brighton Residents Assc said the public needed protection, by the Council, against $10,000 insurance raises alongside no ability to build or vary.

A drafter of a motion put to the meeting in support of the eastern elected members said s.15 of the Local Govt. Act unbound elected members from onerous Codes of Conduct and gagging orders, in that they had an elected role to contradict Council if that was in the interests of their residents.

The Mayor

The mayor has to be given credit for attending, as does the CEO, and at first never intended to speak, just to listen, but was specifically asked to by the public to respond.

She gave an undertaking to immediately fix the problem as best Council could, she supported an enquiry to find out how all this happened, she spoke of a Thursday meeting in Council this week to address the issue, and suggested an Order in Council might be the best way forward, to “correct” the Plan rather than amend it;  A s.71 would take longer. Ms Dalziel said she’d undertaken significant personal research on this, and spoken to the Minister of Local Government.

The CEO did not answer questions about the Code of Conduct proceedings retreating behind process when asked about details by the public.

~ JS

Stuff reports:

A Scottish Granny’s laugh has sent sales of a Kiwi book through the roof.

Video of Scottish grandmother Janice Clark laughing uncontrollably while trying to read Kiwi kids book The Wonky Donkey to her grandson has the world scrabbling to get a copy. 

Kiwi author Craig Smith says sales of his ode to a three legged donkey had “gone through the roof” since the video of hit the internet – so much so both Amazons UK and US ran out of copies. 

“After nearly 10 years, we are doing another 40,000 print run…. It looks likely to be on best-selling lists again. I don’t know how common it is for that to happen.”

Smith said he took care of international orders from his home.

“Usually I do a few of my different books as packages and it would be 4 or 5 a week. In the past five days I’ve had 2000 orders.

That is very cool.

Speaking to UK newspaper The Guardian on Monday, Smith called Clark’s video “gold”.

“Watching Janice read and laugh was just delightful,” Smith said. “Like many, her infectious laugh had me laughing too.”

The clip shows Clark with her grandson on her lap reading from the book, which uses increasingly silly adjectives to tell the tale of the three legged donkey.

By the time Clark is describing the “honky-tonky, winky, wonky donkey” she is crying with laughter.

I know the book pretty much off by heart as it is one of Benjamin’s favourites.

As each description gets longer the final one is:

He only had three legs, one eye and he liked to listen to country music and he was quite tall and slim and he smelt really bad and that morning he got up early and he hadn’t had any coffee and he was always getting up to mischief but he was quite good looking

He was a spunky hanky panky cranky stinky dinky lanky honky tonky winky wonky donkey

A really really cool and clever kid’s book.

National MP Nuk Korako writes:

The Māori seats were established to provide a means for Māori to be represented in Parliament until we could sit equally with Pākehā and be elected into Parliament as of right and as of merit.

And we are.

Look around the House today. Every political party is led by Māori – seven of the nine party leaders and deputies are Māori. We have more than 20 Māori in Parliament across the five parties.

Not just slightly more than 20. Maori TV said there are 29 MPs out of 120 of Maori descent. Might be 30 since the Northcote byelection.

This is actually a huge over-representation compared to their share of the adult population. That’s 25% compared to 12.3% so double.

And 78% of those in leadership roles are of Maori descent.Would any other indigenous minority in the world be able to boast such a figure?

Already most of us Māori in the House today are here not through the Māori seats, but through general electorate seats and because our parties back us to be here as of merit.

And our representation in the House today did not require the entrenchment of the Māori seats.

And our continuing representation in the House will not require the entrenchment of the Māori seats.

If the seven Maori seats were abolished then there would still be more Maori MPs in Parliament than their share of the adult population.

Unlike NZ First MPs who campaigned vociferously against the seats but have now changed their mind, we remain committed to our belief that seats are based on merit and Māori, like MPs from other backgrounds, are there on merit.

Winston’s bottom line was emptier than Chloe of Wainuiomata.