The Herald reports:

A group of West Aucklanders have launched an online petition to challenge the alcohol monopoly that prevents local residents buying wine or beer at supermarkets.

West Auckland Licensing Trust Action Group (WALTAG) spokesman Nick Smale said the Portage and Waitakere Licensing Trusts had held a monopoly over hotels, taverns and bottle stores in West Auckland since the 1970s. Residents were missing out due to the lack of competition in the area.

“The trusts have not kept up with the changing tastes of West Aucklanders and are not equipped to meet the needs of a modern and increasingly cosmopolitan city.

“There’s a distinct lack of local options for entertainment all over West Auckland. Many of us want to support local businesses, including bars but we don’t have the venues – or many choices. People end up traveling into the city or elsewhere to spend their money.”

Smale said it had been 15 years since residents last voted, and he believed a referendum was needed ahead of the next local body elections.

“We need 15 per cent of voters in the Portage and Waitakere Licensing Trusts areas to sign the petition – that’s about 28,000 people. If we can achieve this it will force a referendum and allow West Aucklanders to have their say.”

Monopoly licensing trusts are a failed experiment that almost all of NZ has ditched.

Stuff reports:

Attractive people are paid something like 12 per cent more than unattractive people. They’re also more likely to get a job in the first place.

It’s weird that we don’t talk about this more. The disparity between “hot” and “not” is just as glaring as the gender pay gap, and just as unfair. No-one chooses their genes: some people are blessed with a heavenly visage, others receive a fair old whack of the ugly stick.

True, where are the campaigns to close the hotness pay gap?

Also the gender pay gap can go both ways. An economist pointed out to me that in certain professions such as adult entertainment, women are paid vastly more than men.

A study of Canadian election candidates found the attractive ones received more than two and a half times as many votes. Fortune 500 chief executives tower over the rest of the populace, with an average height of 6’2″. And so on.

So do we also have a height pay gap? Do taller people get paid more?

Barry Soper writes:

It’s a bit like putting the produce-laden cart before the lumbering Clydesdale as the Government tries to bring the public on board with free trade deals and what they’re calling a ‘Trade for All’ agenda. …

This soft sell to the public was Jacinda Ardern’s first big announcement after putting her feet under the Beehive’s Cabinet table yesterday.

And just like all Government announcements without substance they’re setting up a board to advise on how to woo the great unwashed when it comes to trade. And as usual they’ve appointed the chair with the boardroom chairs to be filled later, or as the blurb said “in due course”.

This is almost the Government being a parody of itself.

Business confidence is rock bottom and the Government says that they will have a major announcement on trade, as a way to get business confidence higher.

So one may have expected some significant policy or initiative. Instead it was another effing working group.

John Roughan writes:

It is legislative laziness that ignores practical flaws in the policy behind it.

It was a weakness of the previous Labour Government and it has now appeared in this one, on the subject of legalising cannabis for medicinal use.

All parties in Parliament appear to have been persuaded this would be a good thing to do. Doubt that the drug has any unique pain-killing properties have been put aside. Labour and the Greens – especially the Greens – want to be seen as liberal on drugs.

Labour mainly wants to be seen as compassionate to the terminally ill. Who doesn’t? But good government requires more than good intentions. The hard part is working out the practicalities of putting good intentions into effect. That is the bit Labour governments are inclined to duck – or delegate, which amounts to the same thing.

The new Government put a bill before Parliament that would have allowed terminally ill people to possess and use a drug that would remain illegal for anybody else. Quite how the drug would be cultivated, manufactured and supplied only to the terminally ill were details that did not unduly concern Labour MPs on the select committee that would have let the bill proceed if Labour and the Greens had a majority.

The Government bill is very flawed. It forces terminally ill people to use the black market to get pain relief. It actually incentivises law breaking!

Not surprisingly, many of the submissions to the select committee wanted legalisation extended to people not terminally ill but in chronic pain or with severe or debilitating illness such as cancer, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis. Labour’s response was that those patients “should continue to be able to access quality medicinal cannabis products on prescription.” Which begs the question, why would the terminally ill need access to a lower grade of cannabis products than they could get on prescription?

Many of the submissions also wanted the medicinal legalisation extended to growers, suppliers, friends and whanau, caregivers or nominated people since the terminally ill might not be able to obtain the drug for themselves. Labour could only answer lamely that the legal position of suppliers was “outside the scope of this bill.”

Likewise, allowing the terminally ill to grow their own cannabis was “outside the scope of this bill.”

So what was its purpose, other than to give Labour’s voters the impression the Government was doing something on this subject while, in fact, the difficult details it was ducking would very likely prove insurmountable.

This is not the first time. Ardern’s previous members’ bill were much the same. They achieved nothing except to say we care.

Jared Savage reports:

New Zealand First deputy Fletcher Tabuteau and Deputy Police Commissioner Wally Haumaha are whanau, come from the same Rotorua marae.

 

New family links between New Zealand First and controversial deputy police commissioner appointment Wally Haumaha have emerged, as one of the party’s senior ministers looks to restart the inquiry into the process which led to his promotion.

Fletcher Tabuteau, the deputy leader of New Zealand First, comes from Waiteti Marae in Ngongotaha near Rotorua, of which Haumaha is the chairman.

They are both Ngāti Ngāraranui and Tabuteau referred to Haumaha as a member of his whānau in his maiden speech to Parliament in 2014.

Tabuteau’s uncle Tommy Gear – a close friend of Winston Peters – is a trustee of the Ngāti Ngāraranui Hapu Trust along with Haumaha.

Gear and Haumaha are senior leaders on the Waiteti Marae, where a special function was held in June last year to celebrate Haumaha’s promotion to assistant police commissioner.

New Zealand First leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters was one of the speakers at the function, along with Police Commissioner Mike Bush.

This may explain why Peters gave the inquiry to a NZ First Minister. It could have gone to the SSC Minister (Hipkins) or Justice Minister (Little) or Attorney-General (Parker) or even the PM (as she made the appointment).

The Minister hand picked by Peters, in turn hand picked someone who had significant conflicts of interest – she was on Police recruitment panels, and had worked with Bush and Haumaha on Police Maori strategy.

What is very interesting is that Peters spoke at the function to celebrate Haumaha being made an Assistant Police Commissioner in June 2017. Peters was not Deputy PM then. So for him to be invited to speak would suggest a deep personal connection with Haumaha.

Ardern really needs to show some leadership and take the inquiry off the NZ First Ministers before it becomes even more of a Mickey Mouse show.

Stuff reports:

National wants to make National Health Targets a legal requirement with a new bill, but governments would be allowed to decide what targets to set.

It uses almost exactly the same wording as the Government’s own child poverty legislation, which contains the same requirement.

It comes after Stuff revealed the Ministry of Health had quietly stopped publishing data from six National Health Targets, under a directive from Health Minister David Clark. 

Labour doesn’t want accountability. Health targets allow patients and taxpayers to see if the health system is delivering more services and better outcomes for the extra funding.

“Tremendous gains were achieved when they were set and performance against them was published,” said Woodhouse. 

“Research indicates that 700 lives per year have been saved by the target to shorten stays in emergency departments. 

“Childhood immunisation rates have risen from 67 per cent to 92 per cent, cancer treatment waiting times are now at world-best standards and people no longer have to travel to Australia for basic treatment – as as the case under the previous Labour Government,” he said. 

The health targets were very successful. Cancer treatment waiting times used to be a disgrace.

The Herald reports:

Patrick Stewart has announced he is finally returning to the Star Trek franchise for the first time in more than 20 years.

The star took to Twitter to make the announcement, confirming he will return as his original Star Trek: The Next Generation character Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

“It is an unexpected but delightful surprise to find myself excited and invigorated to be returning to Jean-Luc Picard and to explore new dimensions within him,” the actor tweeted.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Stewart’s Picard will return for a new CBS show which is reportedly set to tell the story of “the next chapter of Picard’s life”.

This is fairly exciting. Jean-Luc Picard was my favourite Star Trek captain.

My order of ranking the Captains is:

1. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, TNG
2. Captain Gabriel Lorca, Discovery
3. Captain James T Kirk, TOS
4. Captain Benjamin Sisko, DS9
5. Captain John Archer, Enterprise
6. Captain Kathryn Janeway, Voyager

Feel free to disagree in comments!

A good article on Newsroom about the impact of the new policy (they say they are consulting on it but they announced it in the Speech from the Throne) by the Government to ban all mining on conservation land.

The current law prohibits mining on what is called Section 4 land. This is around 40% of the DOC estate – the most precious, scenic etc such as National Parks.

The DOC estate is around 30% of NZ land, so currently 12% of all land in NZ can’t be mined. The Government has unilaterally (again not Labour policy before the election) now said 100% of the DOC estate will be closed for mining. Now much of the DOC estate is land with little conservation value – they call it stewardship land.

This unilateral change is a big thing for communities like the West Coast. Newsroom reports:

Kokshoorn, a fierce defender of any opportunity for his struggling district, says the proposed ban is ideologically driven and “doesn’t stack up.” The Resource Management Act is an effective safeguard and if those minerals – or other resources – can be responsibly developed on low-value parts of the DoC estate then that should be allowed, he says.

Yep this is why we have the RMA. It allows an Environment Court Judge to decide on a case by case basis if a particular mining proposal on a specific piece of land should proceed.

The footprint of the existing mining activities on the DoC estate is tiny – about 3,000 hectares.

That’s 30 square kms only, out of 90,000 square kms. That’s 0.033%.

At the end of May, there were 112 operations approved for access to the DoC estate nationwide – 12 for coal, 90 for gold and 10 for quarrying, including limestone.

So only 10% are coal mines. So this isn’t about climate change.

Former Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright looked at the issues around mining in the DoC estate three times.

She considered the DoC estate too large for the Crown not to get a return on it and argued in 2010 that lower value areas should be open for mining, or land swaps, if a net conservation benefit resulted.

Very sensible.

If a mining company wants to mine say 5 hectares of low value conservation land, let them do so if in exchange they arrange for say 25 hectares of higher value land to be donated to the conservation estate. A win win.

The new Government declined a request to mine a 12-hectare sliver of Doc stewardship land as part of a development at Te Kuha, inland from Westport, approved last year by independent planning commissioners. The bulk of the project is in the adjoining Buller District Council-managed water catchment.

Sage and Woods said the economic benefits from the project were insufficient to offset the irreversible damage to the unique and nationally significant conservation values in that part of the DoC estate.

The venture has gone to court to challenge the ruling. Mining the four million tonnes of high-value coking coal would have employed about 50 people for 16 years and delivered an estimated $130 million of value through coal sales, royalties and blending gains for other coal miners in the area.

As well as rehabilitating the 109-hectare mine site, including direct transfer of at least 15 hectares of vegetation and the creation of 50 square-metres of lakes, the venture had also offered to fund a 25-year management programme over 5000 hectares in the nearby Orikaka Forest and a heritage reserve at the Charming Creek mine site.

5,000 hectares for 109 hectares and the Government said no!

Matthew Hooton writes:

The Green Party’s support for Andrew Little’s Orwellian Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill reveals its complete lack of power in the Government’s coalition. …

Little says the bill is about maintaining the integrity of MMP by stopping MPs elected for one party becoming independent or supporting another.

But often when MPs go rogue, it is the rebel MP keeping faith with voters, and the party leader breaking their promises to you and me.

Had such a law been in place historically, David Lange could have used it to get rid of Jim Anderton for opposing Rogernomics, and Anderton could have expelled Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons when they indicated the Greens were leaving his Alliance in 1997.

Jim Bolger could have dispatched Winston Peters, and Helen Clark any Māori MP who opposed her foreshore and seabed law.

There would be no Green Party MPs if this bill had been law in 1999.

Every prominent constitutionalist in New Zealand has attacked Little’s legislation as undemocratic.

Former Green MPs have been among the most vociferous.

The party’s doyen, Fitzsimons, says the bill “breaches the Bill of Rights, denies freedom of speech and association, is contrary to international and NZ precedent, … is opposed by an impressive array of senior legal, constitutional and political experts [and] is unnecessary to address any real problem”.

The reality is this bill is actually opposed by 120 of the 121 MPs in Parliament.

• All 56 National MPs oppose it
• None of the 46 Labour MPs really support it. They never campaigned on it. They know it is crap. You could see at select committee them nodding along to the criticisms made by submitters. They are supporting it because it was the price of Winston’s support
• ACT’s MP is against it
• The eight Green MPs have said they are against it, but are scared of Winston so are voting for it so they keep their baubles of office
• And in reality eight of the nine NZ First MPs are against it. They are the ones most terrified of it, because almost beyond doubt it will be used against one or more of them.

So we have a law that would be voted down 1-120 in a free vote, but because Winston is incapable of managing a caucus successfully, he is forcing everyone else into giving him the power to expel MPs he falls out with.

I really think some media don’t understand MMP. As Judy Kirk always said, it’s the party vote that counts.

The latest One News Colmar Brunton poll has National at 45%, Labour 42%, Greens 6% and NZ First 5%.

It is frankly incredible that National is at 45% after nine months in opposition, and having lost John Key, Bill English and Steven Joyce. The poll means that they have not lost any of their voters, despite going into opposition and the change of leadership.

Compare this to Labour in July 2009 – they were at 31% and National at 56%.

Now of course on this poll there would still be a centre-left majority. But you don’t have elections nine months after the last one. You have them three years later and Governments often lose support as they go.

If National can knock out one of the two support partners for Labour, it’s basically anyone’s game. If they can knock both out they win. If they both get back in, then Labour stays Government.

Instead of focusing on the party vote, some in the media are saying it is a bad poll for National because Simon Bridges is only 10% Preferred PM. Well’s that stupid. Preferred PM has some importance, but nowhere near as important as Party Vote.

Would you rather be at 45% PV and 10% PPM or 35% PV and 36% PPM?

Well the last scenario is what Helen Clark had the week before she lost the election.

I know media need to justify polls with a big headline but in reality this poll shows no real change, despite the huge media over the PM’s baby. No movements beyond the margin of error.

What is useful though is that it counters the various left insiders who claimed they had internal polling showing National had dropped below Labour in the party vote. This is I presume the same internal polling that claimed they were only 2% behind in Northcote and only 1% behind National the day before the 2017 election.

People should always treat any story quoting internal polling with suspicion, and yes that includes people who make claims about National’s internal polling.

As I have said before my expectation was that National in opposition would drop to around 35% and have to work itself up from there. To be at 45% is excellent. It means they have to climb around 3% instead of 13%.

Shane Le Brun of Medical Cannabis Awareness NZ writes:

Shane Reti’s Bill is both inspired and deficient in equal measure, and yet it is the most comprehensive piece of legislation we have seen on the issue.  …

At the “front end” the execution is almost flawless, the prescribing regime and dispensing system is a step beyond what was thought possible for a National party to support, as card access is more liberal than the prescribed product route. Dr Reti and those who worked with him can be commended for getting that across the line in the National Caucus.

The prescribing is a master-stroke, and from the outset he has properly engaged with prescribers and the Pharmacy Guild. It shows a level of leadership on this issue far in advance of the Health Minister, who appears to have been asleep at the wheel in comparison.

Reti has done what the Government seems incapable of doing – consultation and writing a decent bill. The quality of Labour’s bills in opposition was piss poor and in Government not much better.

The “back end”, however, needs more work and consultation with industry. Some of the requirements would provide significant barriers to both of the main companies vying for this nascent industry.

Helius is located in an industrial site well inside the five kilometre distance prohibited between residential areas and cannabis facilities. This is not an issue in other jurisdictions if sufficient checks are in place.

The five km proposed rule may be too restrictive.

What is most disheartening for patients, however, is that in trying to obtain consensus the party has dropped any form of compassionate clause in the short term to provide patients with protection from the police, which is sorely needed.

National is pretty firm on they don’t want this to be a back door to de facto legalisation. However there is a referendum coming up on that issue, so we may get some good change through the referendum.

Stuff reports:

Apple has become the world’s first publicly traded company to be valued at US$1 trillion (NZ$1.48 trillion).

One trillion dollars is a lot of money!

That is a million million dollars

It is five times the GDP of New Zealand.

It is 5% of the entire GDP of the United States – in one company.

It is around half the GDP of Africa.

It is around US$140 for every person living.

15 years ago an Apple share was $1.50. Back in 1997 they were almost bankrupt. Today it is $207.

If you purchase $10,000 of Apple shares 15 years ago, they would be worth $1.38 million today.

A remarkable success story.

Alwyn Poole writes in:

Here are the three key things with class:

– marginal changes yield very little gain – ie. 29 to 27 make almost no difference. But 30 to 15 at Years 7 – 10 is mammoth and life altering.

– if teachers do not differentiate their teaching/learning but just think lower class sizes means less work – yep – very little effect. But if they use the extra time to get to know their kids, focus attention and change practices – once again – it is life altering.

– all of the effect sizes that Hattie has above c lass size are actually facilitated by a significant class size change and high quality dedicated teachers taking advantage of it.

All good points.

NZ on Air looks at how people consume media. Below are the changes from 2014 to 2018:

• Linear TV from 95% to 82%
• Streaming Video on Demand from 12% to 62%

A year ago I had Sky TV. Now I have Netflix and Lightbox.

Individual channels etc daily reach are:

• TV1 from 48% to 43%
• TV2 from 27% to 20%
• TV3 from 35% to 25%
• NZ Netflix from 0% to 27%

They also find that daily reach with those aged under 40 is 49% for linear TV and 52% for SVOD.

This demonstrates to me why the Government should sell TVNZ as soon as possible. In a few years more people will be watching TV on Netflix than on TV1 or TV2.

Stuff reports:

Scenes of protest and defiance gave way to tears and disappointment on Parliament’s forecourt, as iwi groups clashed at the signing of the Hauraki treaty settlement. 

The Government has chosen to go ahead with the signing of the Pare Hauraki collective redress deed, despite deep division between a number of iwi which make up the group.  …

Labour MP for Waiariki Tamati Coffey stood with protesters on Thursday, and conceded he was in a difficult position. 

“I promised I’d walk alongside Tauranga Moana. I will continue to and I did that today. 

So Coffey marched with the protesters against the Treaty settlement his own Government has agreed to.

Will he vote against it also?

Stuff reports:

Public health money wasted on a High Court challenge against a supermarket’s shelving arrangement for alcohol should have been spent helping ill patients, critics say.

Fourteen health boards throughout the country collectively paid nearly $90,000 in legal fees to try to stop Dannevirke New World changing the angle of shelves inside its already licensed alcohol area. They lost the case. 

Their case was preposterous. It got dismissed by the District Licensing Authority. The ALRA found it without any merit, as did the High Court.

This was zealotry gone mad. Their argument was that having the shelves with alcohol on them at an angle, would mean people walking past an alcohol aisle would see more of the product than if they were perpendicular.

MidCentral District Health Board medical officer of health Rob Weir started the process because he was concerned shoppers outside the alcohol area were more exposed to products in the alcohol section after two large shelves were turned on a diagonal angle and two smaller plinths added. The case was important as a test to help define the limits of new alcohol laws, he told Stuff.

But the $90,000 cost of the challenge has only just been revealed after an Official Information Act request. 

It was a massive waste of scarce health dollars. The link between the angle of shelves and harm caused by alcohol abuse is so tenuous that it would be like going to court to ban Easter because Easter eggs cause obesity.

Details supplied by MidCentral DHB show the initial hearing of its appeal to the Alcohol Regulatory and Licensing Authority cost $17,924, then the High Court appeal cost $69,552.

They should be ashamed.

MidCentral DHB covered both costs, but public health units representing 13 other health boards reimbursed MidCentral $57,961 of the High Court costs.

They’re like a cartel of zealots!

Phil Quin writes:

In the event that the Supreme Court upholds the lower court ruling on Kim Dotcom’s extradition, the scalding hot potato lands in the lap of New Zealand’s political leaders. In weighing next steps on this matter, I would urge them to take into account the state of the Trump administration in general, and the conduct of the Department of Justice in particular.

However distasteful one may find Dotcom as a  person (very, in my case), this ought to have no bearing on the broader question: should the Government actively co-operate with the Trump administration by handing over legal residents to face untested charges in what looks more and more like a vendetta, and less than ever a genuine effort to tackle piracy or protect intellectual property?

According to Dotcom, the prosecution has nothing to do with Trump. In fact Dotcom is a huge Trump fan. Dotcom says it was Obama and Biden behind it.

Calling the charges untested is a red herring. All charges are untested. That is why extradition is sought – so they can be tested in court.

In the Megaupload case, its strategy is transparently to bully its way to a plea deal with defendants dragged from home and family, and deprived of a proper defence.  There’s no interest in a fair go; only total victory.

These are Trump values, not ours. New Zealand must not play along.

Trump just happens to be the current President. The charges and extradition request occurred under the previous President. Dotcom is again a huge fan of Trump, so arguing he should not be extradited because Trump is now President seems counter-intuitive to me.

The Ministry of Justice’s latest figures show that the number of First Strikers has just reached 10,000, or 10,031 to be exact.

Only 302 of those 10,031 were unwilling or unable to control themselves from re-offending and went on to become Second Strikers.

And just four of those 302 second strikers have gone on to become Third Strikers.

This appears to me to be working very well in discouraging reoffending. Yet Labour wants to repeal the law.

The strikes by year are:

• 2010 – 160, 0, 0
• 2011 – 912, 1, 0
• 2012 – 1,310, 12, 0
• 2013 –  1,335, 16, 0
• 2014 – 1,277, 32, 0
• 2015 –  1,297, 53, 0
• 2016 – 1,446, 57, 1
• 2017 – 1,538, 85, 1
• 2018 – 747, 57, 2

A scary case from Canada about how out of control the anti speech fascists are. A reader writes in:

At Wilford Laurier University,In Ontario, a Teachers Aide, Lindsay Shepherd, who identified as a left leaning liberal, conducted a class regarding the evolution and use of Pronouns, and in doing so, played a short clip from a program that had recently been broadcast on Canadian State Television featuring Dr. Jordan Peterson and Nicholas Matte.

What occurred afterwards at the hands of university officials is nothing short of chilling.

Shepherd was hauled before a tribunal of 3 professors where she was subjected to what can only be described as a hostile interrogation for daring to use a clip featuring Peterson, who was compared by one of the tribunal members to Hitler.

Shepherd was informed that this was instigated as a result of a complaint by one of her students.
No such complaint was made.

Shepherd has the foresight to record the meeting, and when it was released, the university was made to apologise to Shepherd, and admit that it had treated her appallingly.

If only it had ended there.

What happened afterwards is even worse, and is now the subject of a lawsuit from Shepherd, filed against Wilfred  Laurier University.

The Statement of Claim is attached below.

https://www.scribd.com/document/381838890/Lindsay-Shepherd-s-3-6-million-lawsuit-against-Wilfrid-Laurier-University-and-individual-defendants

 Yes her crime was showing a video of a TV debate. A debate showing both sides of an issue. From the statement of claim:

At this session, all three lambasted Shepherd, viciously attacking her personally,
falsely alleging that there had been a complaint or complaints about her tutorial and
insisting that, in playing the TV Ontario clip, she had been threatening to her
students. Rambukkana ludicrously claimed that her showing this TV Ontario clip
breached the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and federal Bill Cl6, (which does not
even govern provincially regulated Universities), created an unsafe learning
environment and was illegal. Shepherd was accused of targeting “Trans Folks” even
though Shepherd had chosen no side, had, up until that point, disagreed with what
she understood to be Peterson’s perspective and presented the arguments and the
debate neutrally.

Yep she presented a debate neutrally, but this offended the PC police.

The three refused to advise Shepherd what the Complaint was or who complained,
claiming that even the number of complaints was confidential. As was subsequently
ascertained, there had been no Complaint at all.

Basically these three fascists were so appalled that she exposed students to a view they disliked, they invented a complaint.

It was only when public and alumni outrage inexorably grew that Maclatchy was
ultimately forced to admit that’\rhat happened to Ms. Shepherd in the meeting was
shameful and that the material she showed was entirely appropriate.” This was only
after an Investigator found that there had never been any Complaint, formal or
informal, and that Rambukkana, Pimlott’s and Joel’s statements to the contrary were
false and deceitful.

Wonder if they still have their jobs?

Worth reading the full statement of claim if you have time. It is quite sickening.

The Herald reports:

A Murupara-based long-time educator has hit out at the Education Minister’s decisions to close partnership schools in favour of special character schools.

Pem Bird, who won the 2018 Matariki Award for contribution to education, said, in his opinion, Chris Hipkins’ actions were “profoundly disrespectful”.

“It’s condemning these children to return to a system where Māori and Pasifika underachievement is chronic, intractable and systemic.”

Bird said partnership schools were making a positive difference for Māori and Pasifika students.

Governments normally only close down failing schools – those that are unsafe or have almost no-one wanting to go to them. This Government is closing down schools that are wildly succeeding with disadvantaged kids, and have huge waiting lists.

“In mainstream schools where 95 per cent of Māori are concentrated, they are routinely failed. According to figures issued by this Coalition Government, on an average school day around half of all Māori and Pasifika secondary school pupils are truant.

Surely that isn’t true!

The data I’ve seen is slightly different but still appalling:

Only 55 percent of Maori students were regularly showing up and 57 percent of Pacific students.

This is the state system that Labour wants to force the kids back into.

NewstalkZB reports:

Parliament Speaker Trevor Mallard is threatening to expel Press Gallery journalists if they take unauthorised photos of the Prime Minister or Clarke Gayford on their return next week.

Newstalk ZB Political editor Barry Soper says Mallard is promising that if his rules are breached, he will withdraw the offending journalist’s accreditation and penalise their employer.

Mallard says he wants to make Parliament more family friendly. He has posed in the Speaker’s chair holding an MP’s baby.

As an example, if the first couple happens to walk behind an interview being videoed with baby Neve, he expects that part of the interview to be deleted.

This seems like overkill.

Absolutely photos of Neve should not be published without the consent of her parents.

The PM has been careful to not publish photos of Neve’s face. We’re much the same with Benjamin. Since he was born, I think I’ve only once published a photo that shows his face.

So quite appropriate for the Speaker to say that you don’t publish anything showing Neve’s face.

But to do a dictate that media must delete accidental footage is over the top.

If media are doing an interview of someone on the bridge, and the PM with Neve walks through the backgound, the Speaker is saying the interview must be deleted.

One of the purposes of having a parliamentary press gallery is so they can interview politicians.

Surely all that is needed is that if they use the footage they either crop it or blur it to protect’s Neve’s privacy. But to say it must be deleted or you get expelled from the gallery is overkill to put it mildly.