Stuff reports:

A Wellsford superannuitant says he will refuse to pay Rodney’s targeted transport rate, saying he has “lost faith” in local government.

On May 24 the recommendation to introduce a targeted transport rate in Rodney of $150, or $2.90 per week, was passed and put in the hands of the Governing Body who approved it on May 29.

James McNabb, 89, says he will refuse to pay the rate and urges other ratepayers to do the same thing despite it appearing in their rates notices on July 1.

“I have no faith that any work will get done. Mr Goff promised on his election to maintain rates at 2.5 per cent, add on all target rates such as this and I would suggest the increase is well 8-10 per cent or more.”

McNabb said he has lost faith in the council and asks how do it expects low income or fixed income citizens to find the finances to meet the demands.

Mr McNabb is quite correct that the effective rates increase is well over 2.5%. A targeted rate is still a rate. Goff has broken his promise big time.

Sadly he does have to pay the rates. What he can do though is make sure next time only Councillors who will keep rates to an affordable level are elected.

Audrey Young writes:

At no point during the election campaign last year did Labour or its coalition partner campaign to get rid of national health targets.

So the decision Health Minister David Clark to drop national health targets came like a bolt.

Like the oil and gas ban. I see a pattern!

They have never been particularly controversial, not like national standards.

There has been no raging debate about any harm they do.

In fact for the past six years Labour and Jacinda Ardern in particular have insisted there is value in having specific targets in the area of child poverty in order to measure progress.

Ardern won that argument. There has been wide buy-in to that argument, which makes Clark’s decision when it comes to public health the more bizarre.

I think New Zealanders want to know that they can get speedy cancer treatment, they will wait no more than six hours at an emergency department etc.

National health targets are means by which to hold a government accountable to voters and set priorities in a sector which received more than $17 billion in the May Budget.

This is the key thing – the targets make the Government accountable. Merely judging a Government on inputs (how much it spends) is silly. You want to judge them on outcomes, or at least outputs. Having all cancer patients start treatment within four weeks is an outcome that you can judge on. Merely saying we will spend $20 million more on cancer treatment without an associated outcome or at least output avoids accountability.

This is a massive re-distribution of public funds to the aspiring middle class. Uni students are overwhelmingly from professional and managerial backgrounds, and end up in those self-same jobs. Those who need the help are from less advantaged backgrounds.

— Peter Byard Davis (@PeterByardDavis) June 28, 2018

A very astute analysis by Peter Davis on how Labour is spending billions of dollars and it is not redistributing from the rich to the poor, but is a massive subsidy to the aspiring middle class (who will earn on average $1.6 million more over a lifetime).

Everytime Labour claims they don’t have enough money for something, one should remind them of the billions they are wasting here.

I filed OIAs with DMPC and the PMO about the powers of the Acting PM, and any related documents around the letter outling these.

DPMC basically did a blanket refusal on the grounds of free and frank advice.

The PMO withheld some info, but has released some correspondence which is interesting.

One amusing part is when a staffer e-mails Mike Jaspers saying the PM thinks the letter should start with “Dear Deputy Prime Minister” and Jaspers responds “It feels like a Dear Winston moment really”.

If I had the time, I’d appeal the refusals and redactions to the Ombudsman. Hard to say that there isn’t legitimate string public interest in this.

Readers may note an advertisement on the right sidebar calling for broadband volunteers. This isn’t an advertisement to sell anything, but an advertisement from the Commerce Commission seeking 3,000 volunteers to take part in broadband monitoring.

Many readers will know there is a huge difference between advertised connection speeds and actual download and upload speeds.

Well the Commerce Commission has this nifty “whitebox” that you can install at home, and it will perform automated tests on your home Internet performance at different times of the day.

This will allow the Commission to publish actual hard data on what sort of speeds users get from different ISPs at different times of the day.

So not only do you help all NZ consumers understand which ISPs are delivering the best speeds, but you also get access to your own data, so you can see what speeds you are actually getting.

The Whitebox is simple to install (basically just plug into your router) and doesn’t record any personal info or browsing history.

Data and reports from the programme will be available from
October 2018 at www.measuringbroadbandnewzealand.com

So you can read more about the project at www.comcom.govt.nz/broadbandvolunteer and register as a user at either link.

I’m signing up. I like the idea of being able to see my own data speeds at peak and off peak times. And I’ll be really interested to see the comparison between different ISPs and even different plans at the same ISP. A great way to help other Kiwis make informed choices on broadband.

An extraordinary reprimand of Phil Twyford by Speaker Mallard in Parliament:

Replies to some written questions to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development have been drawn to my attention. In particular, I have considered the answers to written questions Nos 12234, 12225, 11652, 11710, and 11715. The answers are an abuse of the written question process. In my view, they show a contempt for the accountability which a Minister has to this House. The Minister knows that they would be completely unacceptable as answers to oral questions, and the same rules apply.

Ministers are required to endeavour to give informative replies to questions—Speaker’s ruling 177/5. While the Speaker is not responsible for the quality of answers, I do expect Ministers to make a serious attempt to provide an informative answer. These questions do not come close to meeting that standard.

As a result of these answers that I have seen, I rule that: (1) the Minister will provide substantive amended answers to the questions concerned by midday on Tuesday, 3 July; (2) since the Opposition has been denied an opportunity to use written questions to scrutinise the Government in a timely manner, they will receive an additional 20 supplementary oral questions, to be used by the end of next week.

I have also written to the Minister indicating a form of reply he is using to avoid giving substantive answers is unacceptable, and that he has until next Thursday to provide corrected answers.

As No Right Turn reminds us, this is a Government that promised to be the most transparent ever. Yet just a few months in, Twyford is demonstrating such arrogance it is shocking. Written questions are there so MPs can get factual information. Electorate MPs are also being frustrated at being unable to find out about transport projects in their seats.

Here’s an example of a Twyford question:

28 year old bartender Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pulled off a huge upset beating House Democratic Caucus Chair Joseph Crawley for the Democratic nomination for NY14. This is a very safe district so she will become the youngest member of Congress and youngest ever woman elected.

Crawley was in line to be the next Speaker if the Democrats won, so she has taken out a big beast. She campaigned effectively against his ties to corporate donors etc.

But the trouble for the Democrats is that she is hard hard left. One of her policies is to basically abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service. So that is saying open borders to the whole world. It will get her elected in NY14, but not help the Dems elsewhere. Her other policies are:

• Guaranteed jobs
• Medicare for all
• Free tertiary fees

They’ll double the US deficit by themselves.

David Seymour has listed this outfit on Trade Me:

Since I failed to make the final of Dancing with the Stars, the fundraising team at Kidsline have told me I have to raise more money.

This is where you could benefit by acquiring your very own authentic twerk suit. The suit not only brings back Richard Simmons’ 1980s in glorious fluoro colour, it allows the flexibility of movement that a true twerk requires. Sequins, strategically paced on the waistband, ensure your twerking action, far from unnoticed, will be accentuated to perfection.

This twerk suit is truly powerful. It saw off the nation’s adorable mother Suzy Cato. New Zealand’s biggest and most serious newspaper, the Herald, ran a picture of it for seven days in a row. You are potentially purchasing the most powerful power suit in Aotearoa.

Kidsline is a great cause. I hope it goes for a great price.

Stuff reports:

A sharply divided Supreme Court on Tuesday (Wednesday NZ Time) upheld US President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries, rejecting a challenge that it discriminated against Muslims or exceeded his authority. A dissenting justice said the outcome was a historic mistake.

The 5-4 decision is a big victory for Trump on an issue that is central to his presidency, and the court’s first substantive ruling on a Trump administration policy. The president quickly tweeted his reaction: “Wow!”

Politically it is a useful victory for Trump, but it actually achieves little. It is also a reminder of the awful incompetence involved in the earlier bans. The first version of the bans were done by a WH staffer with no involvement by agencies. They were insanely broad and took effect immediately which meant people already on a plane were suddenly told they could not disembark etc.

One can be very much in favour of more secure borders for the US, but not in favour of what is basically a symbolic ban. Banning all travel from a handful of countries does little. This affects just 1% of travelers.

A sensible policy would target immigration rather than travel. Banning all travelers from Iran is silly. The main impact is that no global body can now host a conference in the US.

This is an appalling post from the Associate Transport Minister. It’s a time for compassion, not politics. And it’s not even a particularly dangerous piece of road. https://t.co/ToETYFKaIB

— Tony Stuart (@TonyStuart55) June 27, 2018

While motivated by good intentions, I agree the tweet by the Associate Transport Minister was insensitive. Assuming the crash was a result of an unsafe road is very unwise. In fact locals have said the road has been realigned and is a gentle sweeping bend.

It would have been better to just express condolences rather than repeat a stupid slogan and jump to assumptions about the cause of the crash.

Stuff reports:

Accountants are complaining they are facing big problems logging on to Inland Revenue’s MyIR tax system, with one saying the department appeared to be in a state of crisis. 

John Cuthbertson, New Zealand tax leader at Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, said it was aware from a number of sources of widespread problems.

“The issue came up at our national tax liaison meeting last week. We have had accountants call in to us and have logged the issue with Inland Revenue and followed up again today, but haven’t yet had a response.” 

“There have been issues with either slowness or getting on, online. It varies between being very slow to pages breaking up when you go online to look at things.”

Cuthbertson said the problem was serious “in the sense that it is causing delay”.

“I’m not sure it is locking people out completely.”

Wellington accountant Matthew Underwood, who runs his own chartered accountancy firm Matthew Underwood Ltd, said clients were struggling to file GST returns and he believed the integrity of the whole tax system was under threat. 

“We can’t log in; it is telling us that our password and usernames aren’t right. Though occasionally it will let us log in using the same credentials.

“Sometimes when you do get in, all my staff will see is a massive logo. It is totally random. Our clients are having the same problems.” 

I’ve had these problems also. Very slow. Times out. Displays a blank screen. Most annoying of all is when you fill in a page on your tax return, submit it, and it forgets it and you have to start again. It has taken me weeks to do a very simple PTS confirmation and company tax return. I eventually managed.

Accountants tell me the problems started in April after an “upgrade”. It is certainly true that prior to this, the IRD system was pretty great. For quite a few years I have found it user friendly and easy. But a massive degradation in performance this year.

The Public Services Association union described Inland Revenue’s technology projects as “a mess” earlier this week, and said that was having a major impact on staff.

National secretary Erin Polaczuk said Inland Revenue’s systems were not equipped to process the best start tax credit payments, due to start next week, that should give lower income families an extra $60 a week for each child. 

That meant the payments would have to be processed manually, drastically increasing their workload,” he said.

Doing it manually is ridiculous. This is how the problems with Novopay spread.

Simon Wilson takes time off from defending Phil Goff to defend the Government. He reports:

And in a startling revelation, the ministers claim that the wealthier a household is, the more it is likely to pay for petrol. They say the wealthiest 10 per cent of households will pay $7.71 per week more for petrol. Those with the lowest incomes will pay $3.64 a week more.

This is a complete reversal of the most common complaint about fuel taxes, which is that they are “regressive”. That means, the critics say, they affect poor people more than wealthy people.

The data is not a reversal of the complaint about the fuel tax. In fact it proves the complaint.  Let’s look at the definition of regressive:

(of a tax) taking a proportionally greater amount from those on lower incomes.

The argument isn’t that lower income households spend more on petrol than higher income households. The argument is that a greater percentage of their income goes on petrol.

For almost every commodity and service (except tobacco) a higher income household consumes more of it, than lower income households.

In the first year, the average increase for Aucklanders, who will pay both taxes, is $3.80 per week. Decile 1 Aucklanders will pay on average $2.40, for decile 5 the average will be $3.75 and for decile 10 it will be $5.08.

Now let’s look at the average incomes for each decile

• Decile 1 – under $23,900
• Decile 5 – $64,400 to $80,199
• Decile 10 – over $188,900

So the extra fuel tax as a percentage of income is:

• Decile 1: 0.52%
• Decile 5: 0.27%
• Decile 10: 0.14%

So the article proves the exact opposite of what it claims – that the increase in fuel tax is regressive as it hits lower income households more.

Sad to see the Herald regurgitate Government spin without any critical analysis.

Also some good analysis from Econmissive on Twitter where he points out the data released by the Government includes households that don’t even have a car and what matters is how much households with cars pay.

The Dom Post editorial:

Health Minister David Clark is scrapping National Health Targets that publicly address district health boards’ success or failure in achieving, among other things, reasonable treatment times, numbers getting surgery, waiting times in emergency departments, and immunisations. 

Incredibly, the National Patient Flow project, which monitors the number of people turned away from surgery, and which Labour supported while in opposition, also appears to have been sidelined.

Basically anything which allows you to measure how well the Government is doing, has been scrapped. Even the measures they demanded in opposition!

In making these changes, he has criticised the “perverse incentives” created by the previous monitoring regime. Also, Labour has intimated that the DHBs and the previous National government padded the statistics with easier procedures, that they gamed the system. Trouble is, there’s no evidence. Just a “vibe”, it seems.

Who needs evidence. They banned an entire industry without evidence or analysis. Again there is a pattern.

Which makes it at least ironic, and certainly hypocritical, when this Government decides it will ditch publicly verified evidence of the health boards’ progress in delivering essential services.

Labour don’t want us to know what the waiting times in EDs will be under their Government. They don’t want us to know if cancer patients are starting treatment within four weeks.

This Government has set aside an extra $31.5 million for elective surgery; Clark insists that will mean more operations and that the performance of the Ministry of Health in delivering those will be monitored.

But we just won’t have the regular, public updates to help verify that.

What we do have is the minister’s assurances that more operations will be done, at lower cost, with more beneficial outcomes.

He appears to be asking us to simply trust him.

Based on his interactions with Middlemore, trusting him would be rather unwise.

As widely expected Justice Anthony Kennedy has announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. He has been the swing vote for the last couple of decades and this decision allows Trump the ability to give a reliable 5-4 majority for the next 20 years or so.

The ages of the existing eight Justices are:

1. Neil Gorsuch 50
2. Elena Kagan 58
3. John Roberts 63
4. Sonia Sotomayor 64
5. Samuel Alito 68
6. Clarence Thomas 70
7. Stephen Breyer 79
8. Ruth Bader Ginsburg 85

Justices often keep going to age 85 or so, so a conservative justice could see that 5 – 4 majority for at least 15 years. Also it is not impossible there will be other vacancies in Trump’s term/s.

Going to be fascinating to see who Trump nominates. Hopefully someone of the calibre of Gorsuch. This nomination will be opposed at all cost by the Democrats but by their own earlier use of the nuclear option, there are no more judicial filibusters so they have made themselves impotent.

Claire Trevett looks at Winston’s week so far. Not impressive:

1. Missed his slot on the AM show for the second week in a row
2. Confused over the winter payments for superannuitants being opt out
3. Accidentally pledged that in future people on the living wage will be able to afford to buy a house

And tried to plead poverty:

It remains unclear whether Peters will or will not opt out – despite his $335,000 salary, his superannuation payments, and the taxpayer footing the power bills for his ministerial house in Wellington Peters insisted the cost of power (and possibly his legal bills) was so high he had to think twice before turning on a heater.

Yep Winston is going to claim his winter power payment because his salary is so low he thinks twice before turning on a heater.

The heater did go on at Question Time when Peters was asked by National leader Simon Bridges about the ever-increasing number of strikes either underway or being threatened by different worker groups.

After some to-ing and fro-ing, there was another game of “Grant Says” again in which Grant Robertson provides handy hints on how Peters might answer a question.

Confronted with questions from National’s Simon Bridges, Robertson was seen saying “bus” to Peters and Peters stood and reprised his bus analogy from the day before.

That analogy likened workers to passengers turning up at the bus stop for the bus of pay increases under the Labour-led Government because they knew the bus would turn up. By comparison, none had bothered to do so under National because they knew the bus was not coming.

Bridges had already worked out an effective analogy-queller: “How will the bus turn up at the bus stop when all the drivers are on strike?”

Having been outwitted, all Peters could respond with was that Bridges had come to “a duel of wits” unarmed.

The Peters of 2018 is not the Peters of old. How embarrassing to have to have Grant Robertson whisper answers to you.

Wesley Yang writes in the NYT:

At the time that she was deposed, Ms. Pedrick did not know that the Harvard admissions office consistently gave Asian-American applicants low personality ratings — the lowest assigned collectively to any racial group. She did not know that Harvard’s own Office of Institutional Research had found that if the university selected its students on academic criteria alone, the Asian share of the Harvard student body would leap from 19 percent to 43 percent. She did not know that though Asians were consistently the highest academically performing group among Harvard applicants, they earned admission at a rate lower than any other racial group between 2000 and 2019.

This is quite extraordinary. Asians would make up 43% of Harvard if admittance was done just on academic criteria. But instead Harvard positively discriminates against Asians so there aren’t too many of them.

Earlier this month, we learned that a review of more than 160,000 individual student files contained in six years of Harvard’s admissions data found that Asians outperformed all other racial groups on every measure of academic achievement: grades, SAT scores and the most AP exams passed. They had more extracurricular activities than their white counterparts. They were rated by interviewers who had met them as virtually on par with their white counterparts in their personal qualities. Yet Harvard admissions officers, many of whom had never met these applicants, scored them collectively as the worst of all groups in the one area — personality — that was subjective enough to be readily manipulable to serve Harvard’s institutional interests.

So they mark Asian students down on personality grounds to stop so many of them attending Harvard. Imagine the outcry if they did this to other minorities.

“Asian-American applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time only in the top academic index decile. By contrast, white applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time in the top six deciles,” wrote Mr. Arcidiacono. “Hispanics receive such personal scores more than 20% of the time in the top seven deciles, and African Americans receive such scores more than 20% of the time in the top eight deciles.”

Even if the very worst stereotypes about Asians were true on average, it beggars belief that one could arrive at divergences as dramatic as the ones Mr. Arcidiacono documents by means of unbiased evaluation.

Absolutely.

Mr. Arcidiacono found that an otherwise identical applicant bearing an Asian-American male identity with a 25 percent chance of admission would have a 32 percent chance of admission if he were white, a 77 percent chance of admission if he were Hispanic, and a 95 percent chance of admission if he were black. 

Now even if you believe in positive discrimination in favour of ethnic minorities against white privileged students, how do you justify Asian minority students being treated even worse than white students?

Harvard has been here before. “To prevent a dangerous increase in the proportion of Jews, I know at present only one way, which is at the same time straightforward and effective,” wrote A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s president in the 1920s, “and that is a selection by a personal estimate of character on the part of the Admission authorities, based upon the probable value to the candidate, to the College and to the community of his admissions.”

Those who want to discriminate usually find a way to do so. Lowell managed to reduce the Jewish population of Harvard from 28% to 10%.

Harvard’s lawyers will soon tell the highest court in the land that Casey Pedrick’s Asian students are less respected because they are less likable, less courageous, and less kind than all other applicants. The university has decided that this is necessary for the greater good. The reality is that it is a carefully considered act of slander.

Harvard are in a bind. They can’t admit they try to reduce the number of Asian students, which forces them to then argue that Asian applicants have much worse personalities.

Hamish Rutherford reports:

The problem is, business confidence can be self-fulfilling, as can pessimism. While the new Government has focused on more positive signals from each business about their own expected activity, it knows eventually, if confidence falls far enough, investment and hiring will decline.

Businesses won’t invest in new facilities and take on more staff if they are not confident in the future.

For Robertson, the shoe is now firmly on the other foot compared with barely nine months ago, when he was undermining National’s track record on the economy.

In August and September 2017, Robertson was telling New Zealanders that the economy was in a “productivity recession”, where economic output was growing more slowly than the population was increasing. Kiwis, in effect, were working harder to produce less.

As it would turn out, a few weeks after Labour formed the new Government, Statistics New Zealand announced a major revision to its economic growth figures, which showed that in 2015 and 2016 the economy grew much faster than it had previously thought.

Last Thursday new figures showed that, in the first three months of the year, the economy grew, but at a slightly slower clip than the population.

So actually the economy was growing faster than the population under National, and is no longer doing so.

Initially, Robertson said the slowing was because of a transition from an economy based on speculation in housing to one based on more productive things. By Sunday he was saying the period was too early for the new Government realistically to be held responsible for it.

Robertson has a point with his second defence. I always think that changes in economic indicators in the first year of a Government are more a shared accountability than solely the province of the new Government.

His first defence though is a meaningless soundbite. What is this more productive economy he claims NZ is transitioning to? If it was more productive, then economic growth would be increasing, not decreasing.

On Tuesday he played down the degree to which the abrupt decision to end offering offshore oil permits has dented investment confidence, saying it was hardly ever raised with him.

If that really was the case, that seems likely to be a sign that business has not yet become comfortable being candid with the finance minister.

I’m amazed at this statement. I talk a lot to various business leaders and the way the Government acted to ban future exploration without consultation is almost all they can talk about. It has sent a major shock through the business community. Not so much the decision, but the fact it was done with no analysis or consultation.

Previously he has said he has not been given feedback that the decision to give free fees for a year of tertiary education was poorly targeted.

Grant really needs to get out more. He must be in a very insular bubble if this is the case. Even most of my leftie mates think the free tertiary fees policy is badly targeted.

Stuff reports:

When New Zealander Troy Skinner showed up at a 14-year-old girl’s US house, he allegedly claimed he was a hitchhiker who needed help. …

“His arrival here was totally unexpected by anyone.

“He had been told in the past that the daughter no longer wished to communicate with him.”

The Goochland County sheriff said Skinner bought a knife and duct tape from Walmart after arriving in the US. 

This could have been very nasty for the 14 year old. I think he had pepper spray also. Potentially he was going to kill or rape her.

The girl’s mother saw a man trying to enter her home, warned him several times she had a gun, then fired after he broke the glass on the second door he tried to open. 

Skinner was struck in the neck and remains hospitalised, authorities say.

I bet you the mother is a fan of the 2nd amendment. If she wasn’t armed, who knows what the outcome would have been.

That isn’t an argument against sensible gun laws. But it is hard for us in NZ to realise how much comfort many Americans have in being able to possess and use guns for self defence.

Stuff reports:

Public reporting of District Health Boards’ (DHB) performance of procedures including elective surgeries, cancer treatment times and Emergency Department wait times, has been axed. 

This is such an awful decision. We have a Government that seems determined to not actually have any measurable outcomes in health and education. They want to spend more to do less.

These DHB targets have led to massive improvements for patients. More operations done, cancer patients treated quicker, more children immunised etc. And they have also saved lives as the Herald reported:

Thousands of lives are believed to have been saved by a six-hour wait time target for hospital emergency departments, which researchers say has helped halve the number of ED patient deaths.

People should be really angry that Labour are doing this. I wouldn’t mind if they had different targets to National. But they are having none.

So a target which saw a 57% reduction in ED deaths and 28% reduction in ED crowding is gone.

And while there has been no announcement, the National Patient Flow project – which measured the number of patients being turned away from the operating table – has not released any updated figures since September last year. That project was launched following intense political pressure from Labour, over surgical unmet need. 

This one is so hypocritical. National set up a project to measure unmet surgical demand after Labour complained just publishing completed procedures did not give a full picture. And what does Labour do – scrap the very project they demanded Labour do.

So under Labour we won’t know how many surgical procedures are being done, and how many people are waiting for one.

The Government allocated an extra $31.5 million for elective surgeries, but one of the National Health Targets – to increase the volume of elective surgery by an average of 4000 discharges per year – was no longer being publicly measured. 

So just trust them.

The health targets worked. From 2008 to 2014 we saw:

• Those getting cancer treatment within four weeks going from 65% to 100%
• A 33% increase in elective surgery
• Those treated within six hours in ED went from 70% to 94%
• Immunisation rates for two year olds from 76% to 93%

Why do we have a Government that rather than embraces accountability by pledging actual outcomes, is doing everything they can to avoid it?

Stuff reports:

Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters says houses should be affordable even to those on a living wage.

Peters said on Tuesday that “a long-term target” of getting median house prices to drop to five times the annual living wage was desirable and “should be achievable before too long”. …

Currently Living Wage Aotearoa puts the living wage at $20.55 an hour – or $42,744 a year while working a 40-hour week.

A house at five times that annual income would be $213,720. New Zealand’s current median house price is $562,000 nationally, or 13 times the living wage annual income.

So Winston says “before too long” the median house price will be $214,000 or lower. This isn’t just another planet, but another solar system.

Can we have a Government that actually is serious about things, not just a sad joke.

Stuff reports:

Auckland mayor Phil Goff’s assertion that he swiftly “removed” a staff member for leaking information, doesn’t match the former employee’s version.

The ex-employee told Stuff they had not leaked, not been accused of leaking, and left amicably in Goff’s second week to take up another job as previously arranged.

Goff claimed that he “removed a staff member within days of being made mayor” during an interview with Stuff on Thursday.

This is weird. Goff is saying he removed or pushed out this staffer, but the staffer says he knows nothing about it, was never accused of anything, and was leaving anyway.

The worker’s contract in the office of the outgoing mayor Len Brown ended with Goff’s inauguration.

The employee said there was an agreement to stay on for 10 days without additional pay, to help with the transition, before taking up a new role outside the council.

They said the question of how a mayoral letter, listing his choice of councillors to chair committees came to be leaked, had never been mentioned.

Goff last week said: “I needed to talk to my councillors before it was in the public arena and a staff member managed to leak that, and that was the end of their prospects of continuing in employment in my office.”

On Monday, the mayor, through a spokesperson, said he stood by his statement that he “removed a staff member”, but declined to comment further.

Many people will know who this staffer is. It seems rather unfair to accuse him in the media of having been a leaker, when it seems like there was never any accusation put to him or her. It is even potentially defamatory.