Newshub reports:

The Government’s dole for apprenticeships scheme could start rolling out this year, with proper implementation in 2019.

Newshub can reveal details of the scheme after an embarrassing Government blunder.

The Government blacks out sections it wants to keep under wraps in documents it releases. A simple cut and paste into a Word document revealed to Newshub the figures it wanted to keep restricted in a Cabinet paper released on Wednesday.

This isn’t the first time they have done this.

Labour policy from the election estimated the cost of the policy to be $13.2 million per year. The Cabinet paper shows it is likely to be about four times that – anywhere between $51m and $63m a year.

This is why we should have independent costings of party’s policies. You can’t trust them to do it themselves as they almost always under-estimate the cost.

Chris Bishop released:

Police Minister Stuart Nash has today admitted he abolished two important Police targets focused on keeping New Zealanders safe, without taking the decision to Cabinet, National’s Police spokesperson Chris Bishop says.

“Mr Nash confirmed in Parliament today that he unilaterally abolished the targets of 98 per cent of burglaries being attended within 48 hours and 95 per cent of New Zealanders to live within 25km of a 24/7 police station by June 2022.

“This continues a worrying trend of Ministers making decisions on the fly and not bothering to take important issues to Cabinet – like Health Minister David Clark on the abolition of national health targets or Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on her oil and gas exploration ban.

Another Minister who wishes to be judged by how much he spends, not actually by what he achieves.

I wouldn’t object if they replaced National’s targets with some of their own. But as far as I can tell their only target in law and order is to catch and release.

“Mr Nash’s abolition of police targets is at odds with comments by Police Commissioner Mike Bush who, in relation to the nine Police performance targets set by the previous Government, said ‘they’re the right targets for the Police. They are the things we should be aiming at … they’re the things that we, as an executive, think are the right performance outcomes for the New Zealand Police on behalf of the public we serve’.

Having clear targets is good for public agencies. It gives them a direction to aim for, and gives the public a measure of how they are doing.

A (now former) IRD staffer sent me a document detailing how bad things are now at IRD. The term omnishambles was used. The summary is below:

• Major issues with validation processes

I worked in a call centre capacity and  this was a very sore point.  Part of the process at one point asks customers for their star sign. This is absolutely  100%  true. I had flagged this over and over and over with team leaders management etc.  I put this on the internal blog  a number of times and nothing being done. This was still in place when I left and probably still happening now.  Asking customers  for star signs is wrong on so many levels and should not be a validation question at all

This is not the only issue with validation  process and it is set up poorly with loopholes and  is extremely awkward and painful for staff who are asking the questions and customers who just want to get on with getting their issue sorted.

• Lack of Coherence and accountability to get things done

-Huge wait times to get back to customers on simple written  queries or follow ups that need to happen.

-Customers unable to email documents through

-Chain of command process to ensure something gets done is extremely haphazard

-Good ideas from customer service agents not getting actioned or changed or listened to no formal process to move a good idea or change forward.

-Multiple different answers on complex issues that come up from senior technical advising staff

-Lack of first call resolution approach and being  which would avoid customer having to call again

-Removal of choice in how we correspond to customers in terms of what we will send out to them physically. IE  E ALERT notifications means we can’t send out post even if customer requests it.

• Systems and IT (this may have changed)

New role out START  stage one :

                -Not simple

-Huge volume of bugs

-not user friendly for frontline on the phone staff more designed for off the phone teams

-WORKAROUNDS being used in brand new system

-Lack of training and communication of using START some people know other’s don’t

-AHT has increased not decreased

-Address and details screen not easy to use and missing equivalent features other software would have Address look up etc

-Note system is very poor and frustration point for customers who have had a lengthy conversation previously and record is not there.

• Working for Families

The current administration process  of this is really, really , really  bad huge amounts of errors and stuff ups   the whole area causes great stress on many staff. A lot of money is being lost to inefficiency and system flaws  here,

I would recommend talking to  front line Working for Families frontline staff  who will all say the same thing.

• Lack of anonymous tip off line staff

I have had so many calls where someone wants to report evasion/fraud  etc  but has dropped off  while on hold  waiting over 5 min or longer hold time to get to a colleague in that area. I know for a fact there are not many people on these queues

This is not good enough as someone who wants to do the right thing often gets jittery on hold and will hang up while waiting.

Tip off and investigations needs a  significantly better approach and would reap huge rewards for tax payers by tackling the black economy.

I can’t believe IRD asks people their starsign to validate them. It both fails as a secure measure (one in twelve chance of random guessing to get it right) but also many people won’t know their star sign.

The stuff on making it hard for people to report fraud is concerning. There should be a dedicated line with full resourcing.

The Herald reports:

A man accused of indecent assaults at a Labour Party summer youth camp pleaded not guilty when he appeared in court this morning.

The 20-year-old was arrested last month and appeared for the first time in the Auckland District Court this morning.

He faces six counts of indecent assault against four complainants and pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.

The accused was granted interim name suppression and bailed to appear in court again later this year.

The issue of the man’s name suppression will also be contested later this month.

The accused may have a decent case for name supression, at least under the verdict. If he is found not guilty, then naming him could be unjust. If he is found guilty, then I would expect him to be named.

The Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal by Dotcom et al against their extradition. This is no surprise.

The District Court found the extradition request was valid. The High Court found the same, as has now the Court of Appeal. No doubt Dotcom will appeal to the Supreme Court but he will need leave (as he also needed for the Court of Appeal).

A summary of the issues is below:

Issue: is double criminality required in extradition between New Zealand and the United States?
Held: yes.  Legislative history, English and Canadian authority and principles of extradition law all suggest that the conduct with which a person is charged must be criminal under both United States and New Zealand law before they can be extradited.   Cullinane v United States of America [2003] 2 NZLR 1 (CA) is overruled.

Issue: was the High Court Judge correct in his findings on the extradition pathways available to the United States?
Held: yes, though for somewhat different reasons.  Section 131 of the Copyright Act 1994 could be relied on by the United States and did criminalise copyright infringement.  Accordingly, all of the pathways relied on by the United States were open.

Issue: was there sufficient evidence to make out a prima facie case of the conduct alleged against the appellants?
Held: yes.  The evidence clearly establishes a prima facie case.  The record of case relied on by the United States is admissible and sufficient; an extradition hearing is not a trial on the merits.

Issue: should leave be granted on the additional questions of law?
Held: no.  The misconduct the appellants allege against the United States, rejected by the High Court, does not warrant a further appeal.  The evidence the appellants sought to call, that the United States allegedly prevented, is an issue for trial. 

Issue: was judicial review correctly refused by the High Court?
Held: yes.  The judicial review almost entirely overlapped with the appeal, and arguably judicial review should not have been available to the appellants.  In any event it was correctly refused.

It is worth noting that this is not about whether Dotcom is guilty or not of the US charges. It is about whether there is enough substance to them, that he should face trial. When he is eventually extradited, he may win at trial. I’m not a Dotcom fan, but US copyright interests do sometimes get over zealous. Having said that, there is a difference between non commercial file sharing, and making millions by encouraging people to file share infringing content.

Unless Dotcom gets leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, a decision will soon have to be made by Justice Minister Andrew Little. The Court of Appeal said:

We direct that the District Court should now proceed without further
delay to complete its duties under s 26 of the Extradition Act in accordance with the determination.

Without further delay is direct.

Newshub reports:

Labour MP Tamati Coffey says Parliament should consider introducing a Minister responsible for rainbow issues.

It’s not up to Parliament. It is up to the Prime Minister. She can create new portfolios whenever she wants.

The SSC has released the 2017 version of Kiwis Count, which measures satisfaction with public services.

This survey started in 2007, so we can see how trust and satisfaction has changed over National’s term in Government (there was no 2008 survey).

• Trust of public service based on personal experiences up from 67% to 79%
• Trust of public service based on overall brand up from 29% to 47%
• Net trust (trust less distrust) of public service based on personal experiences up from +55% to +72%
• Net trust of public service based on overall brand up from +7% to 36%

So when Labour and unions go on about the public service, worth recalling that trust in it went up significantly under National.

How about satisfaction with public services ranging from schools to passports.

Well in 2012 (1st year asked) the overall service quality score was 68 and in 2017 it was 76.

So again when Labour say that National underfunded public services, the reality is that the public says overall public services got better. Which is one of the reasons National got re-elected.

I blogged in May on how MidCentral fought all the way to the High Court against an alcohol licence for Dannevirke New World. Their objection was on the angle of the shelves in the alcohol aisle.

Now only did they object to the local District Licensing Committee who dismissed their objection as nonsense. They appealed the decision to the Alcohol Regulatory and Licensing Authority and then having lost there appealed again to the High Court. Utter madness.

Now after I blogged on the story, Carrick Graham filed an OIA with MidCentral Health asking for a copy of any briefings, reports or communications to the DHB Board, the DHB CEO or the DHB Leadership Team on the costs of the objection and appeals.

The OIA response is here: OIA – Carrick Graham Dannevirke Licensing.

It transpires:

1. There was no communication of any kind to the DHB Board around the costs of this legal action.
2. There was no communication of any kind to the DHB CEO around the costs of this legal action
3. There was no communication of any kind to the Executive Leadership Team around the costs of this legal action

It is staggering that not didn’t the Medical Officer of Health seek approval or costs from any of the above, he didn’t even bother informing them that he was going to spend what is probably hundreds of thousands of dollars taking a supermarket to court over the angle of its shelves.

The Medical Officer of Health for that DHB has a $6.5 million budget and it seems can spend it on whatever they want. Think how many more people could have had elective surgery if they hadn’t wasted it on litigation over the angle of supermarket shelves.

Axios reports:

Axios has obtained a leaked draft of a Trump administration bill — ordered by the president himself — that would declare America’s abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organization rules. 

The draft legislation is stunning. The bill essentially provides Trump a license to raise U.S. tariffs at will, without congressional consent and international rules be damned.

The bill, titled the “United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act,” would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country:

1. The “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) principle that countries can’t set different tariff rates for different countries outside of free trade agreements;
2. “Bound tariff rates” — the tariff ceilings that each WTO country has already agreed to in previous negotiations.

“It would be the equivalent of walking away from the WTO and our commitments there without us actually notifying our withdrawal,” said a source familiar with the bill.

The FART Act would be well named.

A rules based approach to trade has been one of the greatest global successes of the post WWII economy. Trump pulling out of the WTO would be hugely damaging.

Luckily there is no real chance Congress would pass such an Act. However Trump may ignore Congress and just use more fake national security grounds to impose tariffs at will.

It i no surprise that the tariffs are backfiring. Harley Davidson has already said they will have to move manufacturing from the US to overseas because of the retaliatory tariffs from the EU.

Trump’s tariffs may cause more US companies to become unprofitable. That is because he is imposing tariffs more on raw materials than consumer goods. The reason for that is hoping US consumers don’t notice an increase in stuff they buy.

But by imposing it on raw materials, it increases costs for US manufacturers. And hence, makes it more likely they will move manufacturing to a country where there is no tariff.

Stuff reports:

From the start of next year, the limit will be extended to 10 years for medical students and those studying dentistry, optometry or veterinary science.

“Students in long undergraduate programmes are affected by the limits on borrowing disproportionately compared with students in other programmes,” Hipkins said.

The New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA) national president Jonathan Gee said allowing future doctors, vets and dentists to finish their studies was “a no-brainer”.

The change was likely to result in greater equity for students wanting to enter certain health professions, Gee said.

“We have heard stories of students from disadvantaged backgrounds taking a little longer to realise their dreams of entering programmes like medicine. They shouldn’t be denied their dreams simply due to an arbitrary cap..”

I’m actually supportive of this change.

You do need a cap because of a small number of lifetime students who spend decades at university. But it did have an impact on genuine students who say had done a BSc and then a medical degree. Allowing them to continue to access student loans is fair. Of course it would be fairer if the loans were not interest free.

The Herald editorial:

Health Minister David Clark said the targets – for things such as waiting times for emergency attention, elective surgery and cancer treatment – had “perverse outcomes”, meaning poorer health overall.

Perverse outcomes? Independent research concludes thousands of lives were saved due to the ED six hour waiting time target. How is achieving 95% immunization rates a perverse oucome? Do cancer patients think getting treatment within four weeks is a perverse outcome?

The next day the minister retreated somewhat, saying the performance data would still be collected but it would no longer be published. That is a cop-out. Targets have to be published to have their desired effect. They impose a discipline on ministers and their departments to produce results, but only if the Government has to answer to the public if the targets are not reached.

I predict the Government will eventually back down. Apart from anything else am sure media will OIA the information, so it will get released eventually anyway.

A great deal of taxpayers’ money is poured into the public health system every year, $17 billion this year. It is very hard for governments, let alone the public, to know whether it is being used for as many operations and other services as it could possibly provide. Targets provide a check on whether we are getting as much value for that money as the Government had reasonably expected.

It’s called accountability.

Dr Powell’s Association of Salaried Medical Specialists probably want the only measure of their services to be the amount of money put into them. Politicians are much the same. It is easier for them to trumpet an increase in funding than to produce desired results. 

Very astute. The interests of the union and of politicians is not the public interest.

Stuff reports:

The Ombudsman is calling on the country’s top law officer, the Attorney-General, to launch enforcement proceedings against the Christchurch City Council over its continued refusal to release the cost of a touch wall in its new library.

Despite the instructions of the Ombudsman more than a month ago, the council is still to make the cost public.

Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier​ said he was disappointed the council had failed to release the cost within the timeframe required under the law.

“My role as a watchdog for Parliament is to make sure official information law is not undermined by agencies ignoring their public duty when it arises. I take any breach of public duty extremely seriously. I do not have enforcement powers myself so I am referring the case to the Solicitor-General.”

He said he has written asking that the Attorney-General, David Parker, consider issuing enforcement proceedings against the council. …

Ombudsman Leo Donnelly told the council on May 31 it should make public the cost of the digital and touch walls at the new library Tūranga, after it declined the Taxpayers’ Union’s request for the information. The council had up to 21 working days after the date of the recommendation to consider whether to do so or not.

The Christchurch City Council is flouting the law, having ignored the ruling by the Ombudsman. The Attorney-General needs to uphold the authority of the Ombudsman and start action against the Council, despite it being led by his former Labour Party colleague.

Dalziel has not spoken to media about the touch wall cost, but a council spokeswoman earlier said the decision sat with the staff project team and was within the library budget.

A lot of people at the Council could be in trouble over this. The LGOIMA states that the public duty imposed on the local authority to comply with the Ombudsman is imposed not just on the local authority, but also:

• every member, officer, and employee of that local authority to whom that recommendation is applicable
• every body within that local authority to whom that recommendation is applicable
• every statutory officer to whom that recommendation is applicable

Christchurch residents should be asking their Councillors why they are allowing their Council to flout the law and ignore the Ombudsman.

Ratepayers who paid for the “digital and touch walls” deserve to know how much they cost. The Ombudsman has said they have a right to know. What is the Council hiding by refusing to comply?

The Herald reports:

Marking the end of his nine-year stint as chief science adviser, Sir Peter said the science had shown genetic modification was safe.

“The science is as settled as it will be,” Sir Peter told TVNZ’s Q + A today.

“That is, it’s safe, that there are no significant ecological or health concerns associated with the use of advanced genetic technologies.”

If we should listen to the science (and we should) on climate change and meth testing in houses, we should also listen to it on GE. But I can guarantee the Government won’t. Despite 25 years of GE and no adverse impact, they will say we need to take the precautionary principle and do nothing.

Sir Peter listed some of the areas where genetic modification could be used.

“We’re facing issues of biosecurity. We’re facing issues of predators and the desire to be predator-free. 

“We’re facing the fact that our farming system needs to change because of the environmental impact of the greenhouse gas emissions, the water quality issues, et cetera. 

“We are, fundamentally, a biologically-based economy. Now, the science is pretty secure, and science can never be absolute… 

“But the uncertainty here is minimal to nil, very, very low. I think it’s a conversation we need to have.”

Environment Minister David Parker said there were no plans to change the existing regime, which took a precautionary approach.

So predictable. You can justify doing nothing with the precautionary approach. The impact of motor cars is unknown so lets stick with horse and carriage.

Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage, a Green MP, has forbidden the use of genetic modification or gene-editing as part of the goal to wipe out predators by 2050.

Why? I thought they cared about conservation?

Sir Toby Curtis writes:

My preference as a Māori would be to discuss the Government’s unilateral decision to close partnership schools Kura Hourua, kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face) with them.

However, the Government denied us that opportunity.

It is my fervent hope that through this medium, the Minister of Education might be appraised of the concerns I raise on behalf of many Māori.

More and more people in the education sector are turning to the media, as the Minister refuses to meet with them.

In a few days’ time a colleague and I will meet the Education Select Committee in support of our submission opposing the closure of these schools and the kura hourua model. But even before the Committee has heard submissions, the minister has terminated the contracts of 10 of the schools.

To compound the injustice, the Government has silenced the schools by holding over them the prospect of joining another state school status.

The arrogance of this is breathtaking. These are schools where hundreds of Māori students are experiencing educational success, some for the first time in their lives.

The large majority of the kura are being run by Māori for Māori, some by Pasifika for Pasifika. All have close relations with their whanau and families who send their children there. Sometimes that’s the first time a family has had the chance to make a considered choice about their child’s education, and it’s the beginning of becoming empowered.

But empowerment means choice, and choice is a bad thing. Parents need to learn that they should just go to the state school the Government tells them to.

In my role on the authorisation board for the schools, I’ve visited every one of them. I’ve talked to the whanau, the teachers and the children. I’ve seen what they are achieving and studied the evidence of their performance.

The schools report on their educational achievement and the students’ attendance and engagement at school. Most are performing well above national averages and some are far above the rest of the country, in particular in results for Māori students. Attendance is high.

But the Government ignored all this. They refused to visit the schools or study their results or talk to any of the people involved in them. Does the minister think we can’t be trusted to take responsibility for building our own capability to do things for ourselves?

Normally Governments only close down schools that are failing or have too few students to be viable. Even them the process normally takes years. This is the first time a Government has closed down schools that are wildly successful.

The state school system has largely failed Māori and is now failing Pasifika. A majority of Māori are leaving school without qualifications. On an average school day around half of all Māori and Pasifika secondary school pupils are truant. The truancy rate in my home town of Rotorua is one of the worst.

My plea to the minister is to stop this injustice. My plea to all New Zealanders is to speak up against it. Hold our politicians across all parties, Māori and Pakeha, to account for it. And stop the cold-hearted removal of a model that is giving 1300 young New Zealanders, and hopefully many more to come, a better chance at life.

But by closing charter schools, everyone will be equal again!

Barry Soper writes:

It was a tired looking Jacinda Ardern with her “human hot water bottle” draped across her lap telling us on a Facebook video how she designed the $60-a-week baby bonus some years ago on the floor of a friend’s home in Hastings.

The most important years of a child’s life are the early years, the nursing Prime Minister told us from her lounge, and it’s a time in New Zealand when children were facing the most persistent poverty.

So that’s the rationale behind it. Trouble is it’s paid to everyone when they have a baby, regardless or how much dosh they’ve got.

Yep, even the PM on $500,000 a year would have got it if her daughter was born a couple of weeks later.

There’s an old story about giving a man a fish but not teaching him how to fish.

And that’s the trouble with welfare, some get so used to it, that’s the only life they know of and indeed are interested in knowing.

This Government is certainly handing out plenty fish but if the recipients can’t be bothered learning how bait a hook, or to cast a line there’s no need, or compulsion, for them to learn how to.

Which is what universal welfare combined with no sanctions will mean.

It’s long been said welfare for the sake of it, without the proper checks and balances, and without any expectation from those receiving it to get off it, simply entrenches the poverty cycle.

But this Government wants welfare dependency. The more people they can get onto welfare, the more people who will vote for a party that promises to maintain it.

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has released a report investigating complaints about the work done by the GCSB in the Pacific.

It is a fascinating report because we learn quite a lot more about how the GCSB operates.

The key findings are:

1. GCSB did undertake signals intelligence-gathering in relation to New Zealand’s interests in the South Pacific, including the collection of satellite communications. There were statutory authorisations in place enabling it to do so and the Bureau had policies and procedures in place to govern its foreign intelligence activities.
2. No evidence that GCSB acted outside the relevant authorisations and statutory prohibitions to any significant extent
3. No evidence that any complainants’ private communications were deliberately targeted
4. If NZers private communications were collected by the GCSB, using collection methods that inherently involved collecting some non-targeted communications, there is no evidence that GCSB retained any such data relating to any complainant
5. It is unlikely any communications from the complainants were shared with Five Eyes partners, given the targeted nature of intelligence sharing and access arrangements, and the safeguards against unauthorised access to the communications of New Zealanders.

So let’s take these in turn, because each is significant.

1. GCSB does monitor communications in the Pacific. This is no surprise and they would be negligent if they didn’t. The Pacific is an area of significant geopolitical interest and to ignore it would be bad. the only areas that GCSB does not have a potential interest is the US, UK, Australia and Canada due to our Five Eyes agreement.
2. The work in the Pacific was authorised and found to be legal.
3. There was no targeting of New Zealanders. The GCSB doesn’t do this.
4. The nature of some collection methods means the GCSB may sometimes intercept communications of New Zealanders. It is basically impossible not to. You can’t tell a cellphone tower to perform citizenship checks on the phones connected to it! But if information from New Zealanders is intercepted, it is deleted, not retained
5. Any information shared with Five Eyes partners is subject to authorisation agreements. They can’t just grab whatever they want

This advances our understanding greatly of what GCSB does, and is a useful counter to allegations that have been made by various people.

The Inspector-General has full access to all GCSB staff, systems and documents. She has shown herself to be extremely thorough and vigorous in her accountability role. If she says everything thing was kosher, we can be reassured.

If you have time, read the full report.

Stacey Kirk writes at Stuff:

Can you smell that? 

That sour odour that comes with being spun something that is in no way for the public good, but for the good of the Government’s bare arse alone. 

It’s wafting from the direction of Health Minister David Clark and his decision to stop the public reporting of National Health Targets, which aim to keep District Health Boards in line on a number of key measures. 

Kirk makes a good point that the only person who benefits from scrapping the publishing of the health targets data is the Minister of Health.

They weren’t perfect – but there is hard evidence and medical research to show the ED target alone saved thousands of lives since its implementation. That is only a good thing. 

New Zealand’s rates of childhood immunisations have reached nearly 95 per cent for babies aged eight months and two years – the magical “herd immunity” number, up from just over 80 per cent in 2010. Again, only a good thing.

The cancer target had improved wait times for cancer treatment, though patients were undoubtedly still falling through the cracks. We knew this, because we knew what standard was expected.

And that’s where the Government’s decision takes away power from patients. People who had not received their first cancer treatment within a month knew that was not acceptable, and they knew when to start demanding answers of their clinicians.

It was a public commitment from the Government that cancer patients should never have to wait more than a month, ED patients no more than six hours etc.

David Clark’s entire decision appears to be resting on a single claim of “perverse incentives”, for which he uses a single uncited news story published last year, that claimed avastin eye injections for macular degeneration, and skin lesion removals, were being used to bump up surgical stats at the expense of more complex, and typically more urgent, elective surgeries like hip and knee replacements. 

One uncited story with no proof.

So refine the target. Fix that issue – direct those procedures be performed at primary and secondary level – if that is indeed the issue he has.

Yep, easy to do.

These targets did not always paint a glowing picture of DHBs and where there was an issue, the Government had to answer to it. 

That’s where the targets become a stick with which to beat the Government over the head with, and Clark has taken the stick away.

They allowed the public to hold the Government accountable.

Newshub reports:

The New Zealand First website is finally active after being down since November last year. 

The website became unavailable on November 14, 2017 after someone moved a folder, causing elements to disappear from pages. Since then, the new website has been “coming soon”. 

It takes a special level of incompetence to have a website down for seven months. Just as well they’re not doing anything important like being in Government.

Stuff reports:

Broadcaster John Campbell has resigned from Radio New Zealand to take up a role with TVNZ.

He will leave the state broadcaster to start a new role at 1 News in September.

TVNZ head of news John Gillespie confirmed the move in a statement, saying Campbell would be working as a reporter across many of the network’s shows.

Smart move by TVNZ, and a big loss for Radio NZ. Hard to imagine who they will replace him with for Checkpoint.

Stuff interviews a corrections officer about life working in a prison:

Jails across the country are short hundreds of frontline staff, despite burgeoning prisoner numbers – and several staff have contacted Stuff claiming they’re being put in harm’s way. Corrections denies the prison system is short-staffed.

“The current prison situation with the muster crisis can’t go on,” said a female Corrections officer who contacted Stuff. “It’s a pressure cooker right now. It’s going to get to a point where it will blow. 

Yet the Government won’t act. Their response is to just catch and release.

She said a 600-bed prison at Waikeria announced by the Government for completion by 2022, would not put a dent in the country’s prison muster.

“I see the types of people we house. I handle the rapists. The murderers. The paedophiles. I handle other people’s nightmares.

“Where else are we meant to house these people? Those that oppose prisons, well, where are we supposed to put these offenders? The guys that try to spit on you when you walk past; the guys that openly tell you they will re-offend once they are out.”

They’re just misunderstood I am sure.

The impending closure of Waikeria’s high-security unit would mean the new 600-bed prison would simply be replacing beds, she said. The prison system would only be about 100 beds better off.

“The original [National Government-proposed] 1500-bed unit is what is required,” she said. “It’s not a political thing. It’s not a game. It’s a major safety concern.

To me it is simple. You have enough prison beds to house all the prisoners.

Amanda Larsson from Greenpeace wrote in Stuff:

electricity prices are set based on the cost of the most expensive form of electricity. That’s generally the coal and gas-fired electricity provided by companies like Genesis and Contact Energy. Clean energy like wind, solar, and hydro have no fuel costs, so once built they are much cheaper to run.

This is such an economically illiterate argument it is hard to know where to start. It is basically saying if you ignore the cost of capital, then these energy types are cheapest.

It’s like saying that it is cheaper to have a $50 million robot make coffees than a barista as the barista is paid $25 an hour and the robot is not.

Sensible people look at the total cost of electricity generation which includes cost of capital, the discount rate, operating costs, fuel costs and maintenance. A key part of this is how long a plant can produce electricity for.

Here’s some costs from various countries.

France:

• Hydro 20 euros/MWh
• Nuclear 50
• Gas 61
• Wind 69
• Solar 293

US:

• Geothermal 48
• Hydro 84
• Nuclear 95
• Coal 95
• Gas 142
• Wind 197
• Solar 240

Each country is different. The key thing is that ignoring the cost of capital, as Greenpeace does, is nuts.

The Energy News Editor points out some other issues:

In the last week of January – the height of summer – coal and gas-fired plants were delivering about 30 per cent of our power.

They didn’t cause those high prices – that’s the cost of having plants that can run at short notice but sometimes don’t run for months at a time.  It’s the necessary insurance policy – in our already 80 per cent-plus renewable power system – for when the lakes are low or the wind isn’t blowing.

Renewables are great. In NZ we are blessed with good water and wind. But when you have no wind and no rain, you still need power. That is why backup supplies are always desirable.

As Transpower notes in its Te Mauri Hiko – Energy Futures report, the cost of renewables should continue falling, and they should be the cheapest long-term option for electrifying more of the economy.

But Transpower is also clear that the biggest challenge will be covering the potential winter and dry-year shortfall that will result from greater reliance on wind, hydro and solar. The potential deficit could triple by 2050, the national grid operator says.

I’m personally keen on more hydro, But everytime there is a proposal to dam a river somewhere to create a hydro power station, you can be sure Greenpeace and other groups end up opposing it.