The Washington Post reports:

The Trump administration is expected to pull back from the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday in protest of what it perceives as an entrenched bias against Israel and a willingness to allow notorious human rights abusers as members.

More a documented fact than a perception.

Since 2006, the Human Rights Council has passed more than 70 resolutions critical of Israel, 10 times as often as it has criticized Iran. On one day alone in March, the council passed five resolutions condemning Israel.

Israel certainly doesn’t have a perfect human rights record. But it scores better on most human rights indexes than at least 75% of the countries in the world. The HRC is obsessed with Israel.

The council’s current membership includes 14 countries that are ranked as “not free” by Freedom House: Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, China, Cuba, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, Qatar, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

All great champions of human rights that of course should sit in judgement on others.

UN Human Rights Council Condemnations, 2006-2016:

?? Israel – 68
?? China – 0
?? Iraq – 0
?? Pakistan – 0
?? Russia – 0
?? Somalia – 0
?? Turkey – 0
?? Venezuela – 0 https://t.co/IfzjCK81b4

— Phil Quin (@philquin) June 21, 2018

This tweet sums it up nicely. In the last ten years Israel has been condemned 68 times and China, Russia and Venezuela not once.

The Herald reports:

Racing Minister Winston Peters has hit out at “shiny bums” for interfering in the country lifestyle by trying to ban BYO booze at racecourses and says “too many old males” are holding back development at some courses.

Speaking at a select committee about the Budget measures for racing, Peters criticised police attempts to impose bans on BYO alcohol at the races.

Speaking about the importance of racing in the regions, he said more people went to the races at Dargaville than Avondale.

“Until the police were giving the directive to start stopping them taking any grog along and interfering with their country lifestyle. And you will recall the head of the Kumara races said he wanted these shiny bums to keep out of his part of the country.

What he means is that’s part of their culture. You go there and you’ll see 8000 to 9000 at Kumara. Why are bureaucrats in Wellington interfering with their lifestyle?”

I couldn’t agree more with Winston. Why can’t you have a BYO day on the grass at the races?

It followed an interpretation of liquor laws by police that many large events were breaching liquor laws by allowing BYO alcohol.

Winston should get a NZ First MP to put up a members’ bill to change the law to allow this. I am sure National would support it.

It was somewhat apt that when the news of Jacinda’s and Clarke’s baby broke, I was at the final session of a Parents’ Centre antenatal course (as a course co-ordinator, not a parent to be).

The excitement of all the parents to be about the news reflects the reality that it is a huge deal for many people that a Prime Minister has given birth.

There is of course nothing unusual at all about a woman giving birth, but for many it is quite monumental to see that being pregnant and giving birth is not incompatible with the highest office in the land. It is motivational and aspirational.

On a personal level, it is great for Jacinda that she has managed to become a mother. You shouldn’t have to choose between your career and being a parent, even though of course the reality often is that you do.

It was no secret that one reason she didn’t aspire to the Labour leadership was she wanted to start a family. As I have found out parenthood does change your life. Looking after a child becomes not just the most important thing in your life, but gives you a new sense of purpose. It is the most challenging and selfish thing you do, but also the most fulfilling. Her and Clarke will be experiencing all that, and I’m sure it will be transformative for them.

Jacinda plans to go back to work in six weeks. If it takes longer than that, no parent will judge her or be surprised. It is worth adding a note of caution that other parents shouldn’t feel pressured to do the same and juggle a time consuming and high pressure job with a six week old baby.

Jacinda is fortunate that she has the support of not just her partner who will be primary caregiver, but also her parents. On top of that she has a staff of 25, VIP Transport, the DPS etc who will all be supporting her in her role as PM and mother, so she can do both. Her baby and partner/support persons will be transported around NZ with her.  That is at it should be, but not every mother will have that support. So other parents shouldn’t feel pressured that they are lacking something if they are not back at work so soon.

So anyway once again congratulations to Jacinda and Clarke and welcome to the club.

Matthew Hooton sums up well what the Government tried (but failed to do). They tried to have an exemption to their ban on overseas house buyers law for just one company. A company owned by a mate of David Parker, and whose interests were lobbied for by Jacinda Ardern’s former Acting Chief of Staff.

This should be, as Matthew says, a major news story. I hope National pursues this further as the conflicts of interest in this are huge, as well as the hypocrisy.

Two more examples in the last 24 hours of how the Government is failing to get even the most basic details of House management right.

We saw this last year also when they were so disorganised they had to filibuster their own legislation to slow it down. But they are now nine months into Government and still struggling with the most basic stuff.

A lot of Government work is complex, challenging and difficult. And it rings warning bells when the Government is failing at handling the stuff which is simple and straight forward.

The first example is reported by Stuff:

“Human error” caused the Green Party to leave an oral question empty today, as two new resignations hit their back office.

Question number eight – one of the few Questions every week reserved for the Green Party – was not received by the 10.30am deadline on Wednesday.

Co-leader Marama Davidson said this was the result of “human error” in their Parliamentary office, acknowledging some “teething issues” as the party transferred into Government.

They’ve been in Government almost nine months. And regardless of that in Parliament for 18 years. As a former staffer let me tell you that on house sittings days there is a total focus on oral questions. You always have an early morning meeting to decide what to ask, and then research staff write it up and file it. How you can have a dozen or more staff and not get a question in on time is beyond me. Especially when it is your sole question. It is harder when you have say half a dozen as you have to get them all done and all signed off by different MPs.

But the bigger issue is the sudden announcement by the Government that the House was to go into urgency last night.

There was absolutely no advance notice of this by the Government. MPs at 9.30 pm at night were planning on the House resuming at 2 pm today, and suddenly they learn at 9.35 pm that the House will be in urgency and resuming at 9.00 am.

The issue isn’t so much using urgency for a couple of tax bills, but the fact there was no notice or even hint of it. Normally the Government will either inform other parties through the Business Committee or through the Business Statement.

So not only was there no notice of urgency being required, but you have a Government so incompetent that only last night did they realise they may not get their tax bill passed by 1 July (when it was due to come into force). The Leader of the House should have been over this weeks ago, and should have been able to advise at least last week of the need for urgency.

Actually a competent Government would have placed these bills higher up the order paper, so they don’t even get close to the 1 July date. The Government decides the order.

Now again this is basic House Management 101. It isn’t rocket science. If the Government isn’t even up to being able to schedule bills properly, well it speaks for itself.

Now to make things even worse, the Government attempted to shut down debate on the bill. Yes, they really did. Here’s what happened. Jami-Lee Ross moved:

That it be an instruction to the Committee of the whole House on the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill that all members wishing to speak that have already spoken in Part 2 have the ability to have a full four calls reset to zero so each member is able to restart their speaking number.

Now this motion isn’t as significant as you might think because actually it doesn’t extend the time available for debate. It allows an individual member to seek more calls, but it is the presiding officer who decides when to accept a closure motion. If the Government was smart it wouldn’t have even bothered opposing it as it really makes little difference to how long the committee stage debate would go on for.

But instead Chris Hipkins moved an amendment:

That the motion be amended to delete all the words after “That” and replace them with “That it be an instruction to the committee that the remaining questions on the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill be put without further debate.

Yep the Leader of the House is trying to use the Government majority to remove the right of the Committee of the House to scrutinise and debate individual clauses and parts. That is almost unprecedented and outrageous. Basically and act of desperation as he has left things so late, he resorts to trying to stop the House scrutinise the legislation.

This is an attempted abuse of urgency far worse than probably any Government since Muldoon has done. And recall how Labour used to complain about just normal use of urgency. They are now trying to have a new form of urgency – one without debate.

This morning Hipkins withdrew his amendment as even the stupidest Minister must realise how awful this attempt to stop the Committee of the House scrutinising a bill looks. But it doesn’t change the fact he did try. Basically he lashed out under pressure and scored a huge own goal.

The Government has also been lashed somewhat by the Speaker who noted:

While I’m on my feet saying how things should work, in Speakers’ Rulings there’s a very good Speaker’s ruling from one of the previous Assistant Speakers in the last Parliament on how Parliament should work during the committee stages. What that says is, effectively, if reasonable questions are asked, the Minister should answer them. That will not lengthen the debate; that will shorten the debate. My view is that if Ministers had done that, this debate would have finished on Tuesday, and we wouldn’t be here in this situation now.

So again a stuff up by the Government.

The mismanagement by the Government has of course antognised the Opposition, who will now extend the committee stage out as long as possible.

It could all have been avoided with better scheduling by the Government, and if they had given an indication of urgency in advance.

Chris Hipkins is in theory very capable. But it has been apparent for some time he is not coping with his workload of Education, Tertiary Education, State Services, Ministerial Services and Leader of the House.

The PM really needs to do a reshuffle and find someone competent (a tough ask admittedly) to take one or more portfolios off him so stuff ups like this don’t keep occurring.

Stuff reports:

MPI said in a statement, it had evidence of “serious staff misconduct” from two former staffers who had left the department a couple of years ago. 

The ministry revealed it had requested the commissioner to include it in the investigation, after an apparent Official Information lead to a discovery of emails between former members of its staff and Thompson & Clark. 

“The Ministry for Primary Industries has uncovered evidence of potential serious staff misconduct relating to events that occurred some years ago. This involved several employees who no longer work for MPI,” acting director-general Bryan Wilson said. 

“The conduct was of a sufficiently serious nature that MPI has referred it to the State Services Commission for consideration.”

Wilson said the department was “extremely disappointed” to learn that past employees had potentially breached the Code of Conduct, “our trust, and by proxy the trust that was given to them by the New Zealanders that we serve”.

This sounds pretty serious. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the inquiry.

Stuff reports:

All four former first ladies have joined the current one, Melania Trump, in an unusual united political front expressing horror at children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.

It’s a terrible situation. Kids just get shipped off to a distant relative and then left there with next to no follow up. Parents aren’t even able to easily find out where their kids are.

“I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart,”  Bush said on Twitter as she shared her column.

Laura Bush almost never speaks out on public issues.

There’s huge pressure on both the President and Congress to find a solution.

Rodney Hide writes:

The first is Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter tweeting in reply to TradeMe founder Sam Morgan. He had tweeted the momentous news that he was now following just 10 fellow tweeters. The minister replied, “You appear to only be following men. Any comment on why?”

Amazing. The Minister for Women berated Sam Morgan for now following any women on Twitter. Are we now to have quotas for who we follow on Twitter?

Morgan responded by unfollowing absolutely everyone so now he has perfect gender diversity – he follows no men and no women.

Stuff reports:

The nurses union has “strongly rejected” a district health board pay and conditions offer and is seeking urgent mediation to stave off nationwide strikes.

But the Government says it is “preparing for the worst” because there is no more money to offer. 

Of course there is more money to offer. The Government has a $3.5 billion surplus and is spending $2.8 billion on giving future lawyers and accountants free fees rather than nurses the pay rise they are asking for.

This doesn’t mean I think the Government should agree to the union demands, but that all these things are conscious decisions of the Government. Unlike the previous Government they didn’t inherit a decade of forecast deficits. They have strong surpluses.

Remember that this Government in the 2018 Budget had a smaller increase for Vote Health than National did in the 2017 Budget.

Maybe they could not give Ruapehu Alpine Lifts $10 million corporate welfare for a new chairlift, and instead add that to the nurses’ offer?

The Herald reports:

The behaviour of a mother who secretly brought her daughter to New Zealand without the father’s knowledge was “reprehensible” and an “egregious” breach of their custody battle, according to a High Court judge.

But in the best interests and welfare of the child, Justice Paul Davison ruled the daughter – who now considers herself a Kiwi – will not be sent back to live with her father in their homeland.

So the mother kidnaps the daughter away from her father (who has sole custody) and gets away with it. This just incentivises others to do the same.

The father told the Herald on Sunday he will move to New Zealand next year.

“All I want is to be part of my daughter’s life. A child needs both parents.”

The father is at a loss to explain why his former partner went to great lengths to cut him out of his daughter’s life.

The courts in their home country awarded sole custody to him after the mother repeatedly refused to let him see their daughter.

“The ingrained resentment the mother holds against the father, now significantly impairs the mother’s ability to raise her daughter … with her actions, the mother wilfully and significantly disregards the interests of her daughter,” the European court judgment said.

So why not grant custody to the father, so long as he moves to NZ?

Rewarding parents for kidnapping a child and poisoning them against the other parent is a bad idea.

The Herald reports:

Waiariki MP Tamati Coffey says his views on overseas companies bottling New Zealand water have not changed after being called out on a social media post he made two years ago.

Attention to the post has come in the wake of the coalition Government’s decision to allow Creswell NZ Limited, wholly owned by Chinese bottled water supplier Nongfu Spring Co, to purchase a Bay of Plenty spring and export more than one billion litres of drinking water each year.

As well as seeking approval from the Government to buy the land, Creswell NZ also applied for resource consent from the Whakatane District Council and the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, for expansion of the existing Otakiri Springs water bottling plant on the site.

The two-year-old post is a video of Coffey talking on his public Facebook page about the selling of New Zealand water for profit by overseas companies and the pittance they pay to do so. In the video, Coffey says it is an issue that “cuts to the heart of New Zealanders”.

“What I’m thinking is, we become quite decisive and we take action, because we need to send a message to the Government that it’s not good enough and that New Zealanders really care about it,” Coffey said in the 2016 video.

Now, as a member of Government that has made the decision to allow more water to be sold offshore, questions are being asked of the MP.

Since the Government approved the sale earlier this week, close to 20 new comments have been made on the video.

One comment, posted on Thursday said “Now that you are the government what action do you take? Grant application for the Chinese company to purchase and expand the water bottling plant you speak of here.”

It’s so easy in opposition to spout platitudes. Much harder in Government.

The Herald reports:

Labour’s Kelvin Davis and National’s Simon Bridges have described the US practice of separating children from their families at the border as “cruel” and “inhumane”, but Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters refrained from criticising it saying it was a matter for the US itself to decide.

If National was in Government and the Acting PM and Foreign Minister was refusing to criticise what is happening in the US, the Greens and Labour would be condemning the Government for not standing up for children.

But have you heard a single Green MP criticise the Government for not speaking up? Would any of them dare to criticise Winston for refusing to comment? Of course not. They’re gutless.

Laura Walters at Stuff reports:

Do as I say, not as I do. Entering Government almost inevitably makes a hypocrite out of a morally assured opposition, and the coalition’s new prison is a prime example.

It sure is.

In order to get something across the line to help alleviate the pressure on the system, before planned criminal justice reforms take effect, he had to do two major things he was strongly opposed to while on the other side of the fence: double bunking, and entering into a public-private partnership (PPP).

And they had the choice of not doing either. This was not forced on them.

The new prison will also be financed, designed, built and maintained through a PPP.

Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Party have consistently said they will not enter into PPPs when it comes to schools, hospitals, or corrections, but are open to PPPs for transport and infrastructure.

See that corrections there.

The minister’s office says the PPP allows Corrections to use private sector expertise, “so that new ideas and innovations can be applied to this project, while delivering value for money”.

But it’s hard to buy the spin when those who are now the decision-makers were publicly opposed to the concept until the day of the announcement.

During Question Time on Thursday, Associate Finance Minister David Clark said: “there is clear evidence around the Government’s prior experimentation with PPPs that they did not work. There are a number of perverse outcomes, and this Government has steered clear thus far of any such foolishness.”

The translation of this is “Their PPPs are bad, but our PPPs are good”.

Have just done the latest monthly polling newsletter.

As you can see National’s support remarkably consistent.

The executive summary of the newsletter is:

Curia’s Polling Newsletter – Issue 116, March to May 2018

There were three political voting polls in April and May – a Newshub Reid Research and two One News Colmar Bruntons.

In May National led Labour by 2% and were 1% ahead in April.

 The seat projection for May was centre-right 59 seats, centre-left 61.

We show the current New Zealand poll averages for party vote, country direction and preferred PM compared to three months ago, a year ago, three years ago and nine years ago. This allows easy comparisons between terms and Governments.

National’s party vote in May was 1% below a year ago and 5% lower than three years ago.

Labour’s party vote was 14% higher than a year ago and three years ago.

In the United States, Trump’s approval rating is a net 7% higher than a year ago

In the UK, The Conservatives have started to draw away from Labour in the polls and are currently projected to fall just short of a majority government.

In Australia, Turnbull has shown a big improvement in the polls in the last two months going from a -29% net approval rating to -11%.

In Canada, Trudeau is in real trouble having gone from a +7% approval rating three months ago to a -21% today.

We also carry details of polls on Winston Peters, M Bovis, petrol tax, superannuation and The Commonwealth as well as business and consumer confidence.

This newsletter is normally only available by e-mail.  If you would like to receive future issues, please go to http://curia.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e9168e04adbaaaf75e062779e&id=8507431512 to subscribe yourself.

The Herald reports:

Health Minister David Clark apologised to the former chairman of Counties Manukau District Health Board for the position he’d been left in over Middlemore Hospital’s building problems, correspondence from the ex-chairman claims.

The Herald has obtained text messages and an email which reveal former acting district health board chairman Rabin Rabindran’s increasing concern over public comments from Clark about what he was told about the state of the buildings at Middlemore and how the announcement of Rabindran’s departure from the board was handled.

Clark has previously said he was not told of the extent of problems at Middlemore Hospital when he visited on March 13 but Rabindran said he had been told verbally, and in documents handed to him at the time.

National MP Jami-Lee Ross says the correspondence shows Clark ignored Rabindran’s pleas to set the record straight. …

“I said that I have a good reputation but all this in the media is affecting that reputation. He [Clark] kept apologising. I wish I could have recorded what he said.

“Polite and apologetic as he was, I have difficulty with him saying one thing in public and then calling me with the messages he gave me privately.

So we we have a DHB Chair saying the Minister was prepared to apologise privately, but not prepared to correct his public statements.

What a relentlessly positive Government we have.

Newshub reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says if her Government is voted out after a single term, it’ll be because they failed to bring New Zealanders around to their way of thinking.

That an interesting thing to say. Not that it will be because they had awful political management or that they mismanaged but it will be because the public haven’t been persuaded.

A two-hour strike, which would shut down a factory, will have the same effect on MBIE productivity as the Dom Post accidentally publishing two daily quizzes on the same day pic.twitter.com/xg0GPFOf9z

— Ben Thomas (@BenThomasNZ) June 17, 2018

This is brilliantly funny, especially if you know MBIE 🙂

The Dom Post editorial looks at recent Ministerial happenings:

It appears Clark has been caught attempting to silence health officials over sewage and mould running down the walls at Middlemore Hospital.

Hinting he’ll give them a job if they stop talking to the media.

Shane Jones is a walking, talking combustion engine. 

Yep.

Others have been joining him at the bonfire: Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran was lucky to survive her naive meeting with former RNZ head of content Carol Hirschfeld and the clumsy handling of the fallout; Kelvin Davis has frankly made a pig’s ear of communicating the Government’s highly sensitive moves towards cutting the prison population; and Phil Twyford has demonstrated that a man wanting to build 100,000 homes must first have a good grasp of the numbers.

Clark and Twyford were thought to be potentially the best performing Ministers if Labour became Government. They haven’t been.

Some of this has been simply amateurish.

Such things are often a sign of a government that has outlived its mandate and begun to implode around the core of its own perceived importance. In its tiredness it can trip over the most obvious hurdles.

This Government is barely nine months old. It needs to find its feet, and quickly.

It feels like a tired third term Government, not a fresh new Government.

An article in the NZ Herald on the abortion debate.

I find the focus on whether laws around abortion are in the Crimes Act or not not are a red herring and will actually make no difference to women who need an abortion. It’s silly virtue signalling.

You are always going to have some regulation and hence offences around abortion, and it really matters little which Act they are in. What matters is the actual substance of the law.

In my view there are three key aspects of abortion law:

1. Eligibility or criteria
2. Time
3. Process

Taking each in turn:

Eligibility

We have a mismatch between the written law and the current practice. The written law says you can only have an abortion if the pregnancy poses serious danger to life, physical health, or mental health.

But for several decades we have effectively had abortion on demand (well for 98% of those seeking an abortion). The mental health criteria has been interpreted in a very liberal way, so that (off memory) 98% of those seeking an abortion are approved for one. It is not clear if the 2% who are initially declined reapply and get approved, or if they carry their baby to term.

Anyway we effectively have abortion on demand. We should change the law to reflect the reality. I don’t want to have a law where women are forced to carry a baby they don’t want to, or have to pretend they will suffer mental health damage by having a baby.

Up until the time threshold, the only criteria should be the decision of the pregnant woman that she doesn’t wish to continue with the pregnancy. There should be no need to have to declare you will be psychologically damaged if you continue.

Time

My views on abortion are subject to time. I (and most people) would not support aborting a 38 week old foetus.

The challenge with abortion is you have two sets of rights. The rights of the pregnant mother and the rights of the unborn child. They are both legitimate rights and neither are absolute.

At the beginning of the pregnancy the rights of the mother come first (in my opinion). But as the pregnancy goes on, the rights of the unborn child come first.

Working out when the order of rights swaps over is not easy. I tend to think it is around the time the foetus or baby could be born if delivered.

The current law says you can have an abortion on wide grounds up to 20 weeks. I’m not sure that is the ideal time threshold but it seems reasonable. It gives most women enough time to realise they are pregnant, make a decision, and go through the process.

Medical research has shown that the chances of survival are basically 0% under 22 weeks. At 22 weeks they rise up to 10%, at 23 weeks are up to 35% and at 24 weeks up to 70%.

So around the 20 to 22 weeks mark seems reasonable. Incidentally 94% of abortions are done in the first 13 weeks.

After that mark, an abortion should only be permitted in extreme circumstances such as severe health risk to the pregnant woman.

Process

The law currently requires two certifying consultants to approve an abortion. If you change the eligibility, then you shouldn’t need a process like that.

It will be interesting to see what the Law Commission recommends, but I would have thought something simple such as a medical practitioner certifies the pregnancy is under 20 weeks, and the woman signs the application form. Then you have the procedure done.

It is worth noting that the number of abortions has been falling for the last 13 years. This is a good thing, and I don’t think changing the law will increase the number of abortions. It will just make it easier for women who decide they want one. It’s a tough enough decision to make, without having to go through an un-necessary convoluted process.

Ideally if a woman doesn’t want to be a mother, she won’t get pregnant. Contraception is far preferable to abortion, and the drop in abortions for the last 13 years reflects this I believe.

I respect that some people disagree with me.  They think that life begins at conception and that the rights of a one week old embryo trump the rights of the pregnant woman. I disagree with that view as do the majority of people in New Zealand (and Ireland).

I’m no fan of President Trump. In fact I would call myself a Never Trumper. I think he has proven his unsuitability for the job many times over.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t recognise that some of his achievements are good, It doesn’t mean I think overall he has been successful. Far from it. But let’s look at North Korea in context.

A few months ago there was a very real possibility of armed conflict. North Korea has a long history of threatening behaviour and language and people were very worried about military action. The chance of conflict might not have been high, say 5%, but it would have been devastating with hundreds of thousands wounded in the first day.

The talks with Kim have led to a massive de-escalation. There is no realistic chance of armed conflict in the short and possible even medium term. This is a very good thing and worth celebrating.

The second piece of context is that North Korea gained nuclear weapons thanks to the failure of all previous US Presidents. All the different policies of “strategic patience” were miserable failures as North Korea developed a nuclear inter-continental capability under them.

Now it is quite correct that the agreement with Kim is very general, and in fact much the same as what North Korea has agreed to in the past. It may well not lead to them getting rid of their nuclear weapons. It is the beginning of a process, definitely not an end.

When dealing with rogue states, you always need a mixture of carrot and stick. Trump’s strategy seems to have been to talk up the stick big time, and then swap to the carrots. He gave Kim what he wanted – a big summit, US and NK flags together, respectability etc. Now maybe he gave away too much, but he has given NK an incentive that if they behave and co-operate there will be more of this. All the previous approaches of with-holding this stuff has failed, so I’m prepared to give this approach a go.

The print media have been almost universally critical of Trump, while if it had been Obama doing this they’d be nominating him for another Nobel Peace Prize.

They say that Trump didn’t lecture Kim on human rights and have that in the agreement. Well the Iran agreement didn’t have much on human rights also.

The reality is that you often have to deal with countries that do horrible things to their own citizens, or others. They are not going to turn into nice OECD members overnight or even in decades. But what counts is whether an agreement with them heads them in the right direction. It is the direction that counts. Perfect is the enemy of good.

This is why I supported the Obama agreement with Iran. Not perfect, but definitely gave incentives to Iran to move in the right direction and engage in the global economy more. So does the Trump agreement with NK. It is hypocrisy of Trump to oppose Iran but do a NK agreement, but hey that is Trump.  It doesn’t mean the NK agreement isn’t a significant step in the right direction.

As I said I am no Trump fan. But I’ve been almost appalled by how carping the media coverage has been. It is no wonder that Trump sees the media as the enemy, when they behave like it. And no I don’t think they are the enemy. But I do think on this one they have their coverage wrong.

Stacey Kirk at Stuff writes:

Consensus government in action, or a bloody awful mess? 

It’s difficult to characterise the past week as anything but the latter and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern may be worried about whether she’ll have a Government to come back to when she returns from maternity leave.

A bloody awful mess. Not a bad summary.