Stuff reports:

The Green Party will “reluctantly” vote for the Waka Jumping Bill to become law.

So-called “waka jumping” legislation allows party leaders to expel MPs of Parliament if they have serious and public disagreements with the wider party.

Labour promised to support the waka jumping legislation in its coalition agreement with NZ First, but the legislation is not covered in its agreement with the Green Party.

Yep. The Greens are not contractually obliged to vote for this bill. They are choosing to do so because they value keeping Winston happy more than they value their own principles.

However, a clause in the agreement seemingly holds the Greens to supporting any legislation not specifically flagged in the coalition talks, meaning the Greens MPs feel they have to vote for for the waka jumping bill. 

No it doesn’t. That would suggest they have to vote for all legislation at all readings regardless of how repugnant it is. They are not obliged to vote for it, only to act in good faith. Good faith doesn’t mean changing our laws to allow party leaders and their caucuses to expel MPs from Parliament.

“We are doing this because the confidence and supply agreement holds us to it,” Davidson said

No it does not. It is a lie.

What if the bill said that party leaders can expel at whim any MP in their party, without even needing caucus support. Is Davidson saying they would be bound to support that also?

“We continue to oppose the idea that a party caucus should have the power to expel MPs from Parliament.

“After lengthy discussion and Party consultation, we reluctantly agreed to support the coalition to enact the bill.

So the party that preaches human rights to everyone else, will vote for a bill that breaches our Bill of Rights Act.

Former Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons, who was part of the negotiating team, said earlier this year the agreement did not in fact force the Greens into supporting the bill.

Jeanette is right.

Claire Trevett reports:

Jones presumably sees himself as Bond in this scenario for the fund has had the unfortunate side-effect of further inflating Jones’ ego.

Those who believed it had already reached its maximum loading were sorely mistaken.

He is already known to refer to himself as the Three Billion Dollar Man and Billion Tree Man.

When he returned from the West Coast he went into Parliament to deliver a Homeric ode about the travels and great deeds of Jones.

He told his fellow MPs he had returned “something of a hero.”

“I am a lion in the regions, I am a lion in the House,” he told Goldsmith.

He went even further a bit later: “In Hokitika, Westport, Greymouth, busts are being created of my good self.”

That’s a giant sized ego.

Karl du Fresne at Stuff writes:

Hate speech. It’s a phrase you hear increasingly often.

I’ve used it myself as a label of journalistic convenience, but I’m not comfortable with it and never have been.

My first concern is that much of what is emotively described as hate speech isn’t hateful at all. Too often it simply means opinions and ideas that some people find distasteful or offensive. But merely being offended is no justification for stifling expressions of opinion in a liberal, open democracy that depends on the contest of ideas.

More worryingly, accusations of “hate speech” can be used to intimidate people into silence and put discussion of certain issues and ideas off-limits. In fact, I believe that’s the over-arching aim.

That is indeed the intent. It is used to shut down debate. If you want to debate whether or not separate Maori seats are a good idea, you get hit with the hate speech label. Against same sex marriage, and that’s also hate speech.

The mounting clamour for tougher laws against so-called hate speech is an outgrowth of identity politics, in which minority groups are encouraged to see themselves as oppressed or disadvantaged because of their colour, ethnicity, gender, religious belief or sexual orientation.

This has generated a demand for protection from comments that might be seen as critical or belittling – hence the frequency with which we hear people being accused of xenophobia, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and misogyny.

No-one likes to have these labels pinned on them, so people keep their heads down. Accusing someone of hate speech has the same effect. It’s a quick way to shut down debate.

He missed transphobia.

Other code words commonly used in an attempt to de-legitimise valid opinions include “far-Right” and “alt-Right”. These labels are likely to be attached to anyone whose opinions are to the Right of the political Centre. You can even be labelled far-Right for making statements that most people would regard as utterly unremarkable – for example, saying there are only two genders, as the Canadian commentator Lauren Southern did.

How often do you hear a speaker labelled as far-left? Does one of our many Marxist academics ever get labelled as far-left? Why not?

But the most illiberal pronouncement I have read on the supposed dangers of free speech came from a university vice-chancellor who clearly thought that ordinary New Zealanders can’t be trusted to form their own sensible conclusions about contentious issues.

This pompous academic thought we needed guidance to keep us on the right path. And where from? Why, from universities. We can infer from this that universities see themselves as having taken over the role once filled by churches. God help us all.

It was a terrible column by the Vice-Chancellor.

Stuff reports:

The Chief Ombudsman has found Auckland Council’s delay in releasing a requested report was partly unlawful, and unreasonable.

In a 22-page finding released on Wednesday, Peter Boshier asked the council to apologise for its handling over five months of a request by RNZ for a report looking at the future of the imported vehicle trade in the city’s port.

So who was responsible for this flouting of the law?

The findings include that while the Mayor Phil Goff was not involved, his Principal Advisor took part in discussion over the report’s release.

And I am sure he never ever talks to his Principal Advisor.

Boshier said the deficiencies found during the investigation were worrying, given it was now 30 years since the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, governing local bodies’ handling of information requests, came into force.

“Auckland Council is the largest council in the country. It should set the standard for the other 77 local authorities in New Zealand.”

It should.

Stuff reports:

When the International Monetary Fund predicted earlier this year that hyperinflation in Venezuela could top 13,000 per cent, it seemed as if the South American country’s economic outlook could not get any worse.

It just did.

With the situation in the country deteriorating faster than expected, the IMF has unveiled a new and far more severe prognosis, saying that Venezuela’s hyperinflation is poised to shoot for the stars by year’s end, reaching an annualised rate of 1 million per cent.

This is taking the former Green Party policy of quantitative easing to new levels of success! Everyone in Venezuela is now a millionaire!

Venezuela’s inflation is soaring as the economy has been broken by extreme corruption, failed socialist policies and a collapsing oil industry where a lack of spare parts and expertise has seen output fall to levels not seen since the 1950s.

The word “failed” is unnecessary. There’s never been a country where they have worked long-term.

The country may be running out of options, however. The inflation rate is so bad that Venezuelans are abandoning their nation in droves. An estimated 2 million will exit this year, bringing to 3.8 million the total who have left since 2016. 

Migration and socialism often go together.

A week ago, dishwasher soap cost 3,800,000 bolivares; today, it’s 4,900,000. A kilogram of chicken cost 3,300,000 last week; today it’s, 4,200,000.

The chicken seems better value.

Yaimy Flores, a 30-year-old Caracas housewife whose husband, a janitor, earns the minimum wage of 5,196,000 bolivares a month

The highest minimum wage in the world!

For a country that was once South America’s richest per capita, “it means a brutal cycle of impoverishment,” said Asdrúbal Oliveros, director of Ecoanalitica. “For a majority of Venezuelans that depend on their jobs and don’t have dollar savings or receive help from their family members abroad, an inflation like this one, that reaches more than 1 million, condemns them to poverty in a drastic way.”

What makes Venezuela so interesting is it was a relatively wealthy country. Most socialist countries start off poor and remain poor. Venezuela is a stunning example of how you can go from the richest country in a continent to the poorest – all due to government policy.

They have the largest oil reserves in the world. They should be a first world country, but instead the Government’s socialist policies have plunged the population into poverty and starvation.

Stuff reports:

National’s medicinal cannabis bill would allow anyone with a doctor-issued ID card to purchase medicinal cannabis, but not smoke it.

It goes further than the Government bill in setting up a regulatory regime but is more harsh on the method of consumption that most people envision – smoking.

It would make medicinal cannabis products a pharmacist-only medicine which could be quasi-prescribed by doctors, who would authorise a photo ID medicinal cannabis card that would then allow patients to buy cannabis products from pharmacists. This means doctors would not need to prescribe the cannabis over and over again.

This would contrast with the Government bill, which provides a legal defence for cannabis possession and consumption for those with terminal conditions, but does not provide a legal path to selling or obtaining it.

The Government bill was crap. It merely provided a defence for possession, but still forced people to break the law to get hold of cannabis if terminally ill. It was a typical Ardern Government Bill – nice sentiment and no substance.

National’s bill looks far better, and that’s not just my view. Here’s Russell Brown:

The medicinal cannabis bill filed today in the name of National’s Whangarei MP Shane Reti is vastly better-conceived than the government bill it seeks to supplant. But it’s not perfect, writes Russell Brown. 

Brown goes on to analyse the bill in detail.

He concludes:

Nonetheless, the party that governed for years on the promise of never, ever changing the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 has, in Opposition, proposed easily the most consequential amendment to the act in its overlong history. It’s significant that the MP with his name on it, Shane Reti, is a doctor. It’s also significant that Reti had made time to talk to advocates.

But could this have been done differently? Could at least some of the ideas here have been added into the government bill? Apparently not. The Labour members of the committee – after hearing all those submissions – wanted to recommend that no changes be made. But National members had effectively cast their lot by that point and, frustrated by the lack of regulatory detail in the government bill, begun working on their own.

Today the Health Committee announced that its members “have been unable to reach agreement and therefore cannot recommend that the bill proceed” – which was understandably received as saying that the bill would not proceed. But committee chair Louisa Wall has confirmed that it will indeed go back to Parliament.

So perhaps it is possible that some of the elements of Reti’s bill could be incorporated in a Supplementary Order Paper. Labour could and should explore that option, swallow its pride and talk to Shane Reti.

Labour’s bill is a silly lightweight bill. They should either abandon it or see if it can be amended at committee of the whole stage to take on the substance of Reti’s bill.

Even if Labour won’t do this, National and Greens might be able to. But there is a risk that the changes needed to Labour’s bill would be too great to do as amendments, in which case we need to get Reti’s bill drawn from the ballot.

NewstalkZB reports:

Former Maori Party Leader Dame Tariana Turia has voiced concern a target to make New Zealand smoke-free was set in the first place.

This comes after Acting Prime Minister, Winston Peters described the Smoke-free 2025 target as an unachievable PR exercise.

Dame Tariana Turia told Larry Williams she wants to get rid of cigarettes all together.

“I think if we’re being really honest, I didn’t want a target. I wanted cigarettes to be taken off the shelves, and for us to stop selling a substance that kills 5,000 people a year.”

So Dame Tariana wanted a ban. Prohibition worked so well for alcohol in the 1930s didn’t it. Imagine the black market a ban would create.

But we don’t have to imagine it. Bhutan effectively banned the sale of tobacco in 2004. The smoking rate in Bhutan has gone from 1% to 25%.

Bhutan even sends people to prison for possessing tobacco, yet the black market is everywhere.

One News reports:

The Defence Minister, Ron Mark, made the statement in Parliament before Question Time this afternoon.

Sir Toby Curtis has reported:

Education Minister has “foot on our throats,” say partnership school leaders

Minister of Education Chris Hipkins has forcibly silenced partnership school leaders from speaking out against the shutting down of their schools, according to Sir Toby Curtis who is leading a Treaty of Waitangi claim against the Crown over its failure to consult on the closures.

Despite achieving outstanding results for students, all eleven partnership schools have received termination notices from the Minister and are being shut down by the government on 31 December.

Sir Toby says that in the past few days he has personally undertaken “more consultation with the affected schools than Minister Hipkins has done during his entire term in Parliament”.

“What I discovered shocked me. School leaders have been given clear signals from government that they are to keep quiet now or risk being cut out of consideration for starting an alternative state-controlled school for their students next year,” he says.

And perhaps no coincidence we learn:

Decisions will be made as soon as possible about the two remaining sponsors’ applications to establish three designated character schools, when more information is available. The schools are Rise UP Academy in Auckland, Middle School West Auckland and South Auckland Middle School.

“I expect to make final decisions on the two state integrated and three designated character schools in September, but have asked the Ministry to try and ensure this happens earlier if possible. This is still enough time for the new schools to open in 2019.

It’s appalling to delay the decision on those schools until September. Students need to know if they will have a school to attend next year.

But I suspect it is worse than that. The Villa schools sponsor has been very critical of the Government’s decision to close down the charter school model. I suspect the Government has delayed the decision so they can minimise protests when they close them down by declining their applications. So their pupils will be thrown back into the mainstream schools that failed them, because the Government doesn’t like criticism.

2018 Israel archaeological excavation at biblical Gath (home of Goliath)

by John Stringer, Tell es-Safi, west of Jerusalem.

Cleaning and ‘Reading’ Pottery

After a full days excavation (5am – 1pm) we gather up the pottery buckets and nurse them home on the bus.  Each bucket has two tags attached that record vital data about where and in which layer the finds came from. The buckets are filled with water and left to soak overnight.

The following day a soaked bucket is taken and paired with a bucket of clean water, and each sherd is carefully rinsed and cleaned with a small nail brush.  One has to be careful with this, as valuable painting can be scrubbed off, so thumbs are often used to extract stubborn clay.  Amazing wonders emerge and the washed pieces are carefully laid in a tray to dry.

The second bucket tag is carefully attached to the tray at the beginning, and when the bucket is finished, the second tag is removed and laid in the tray as well, weighed down by the largest artefact.  These are then laid out to dry as shown for a further 24 hours and the buckets removed for reuse next day.

24 hours later, the chief archaeologists take each dried tray and ‘read’ it with its square supervisor.  I tag along to learn as much I can about ‘reading’. There are many many trays to read through and document and it takes hours.

What we are looking for in each tray, are: lips, rims, handles, decoration, unusual forms. The chief archaeologists grade each selected piece which is documented on a detailed chart by the respective square supersaver:  “three Iron Age 1;” “one late Bronze-Age;” “four Iron Age 2;” “6 Ottoman,”etc.  These items are totalled and bagged with the two bucket/tray tags for later photography.  Much of the tray is then discarded if the pottery sherds have little to contribute. For example, late Ottoman or Hellensitic pieces from the fill are of little value, and are added to our pottery graveyard, re-interred later back in to the Gath site.

The team have a specialist reconstructor who is an expert at reconstruction, where we can find enough pieces of a vessel to rebuild it in whole or largely in part. This is done in the off-excavation season outside June-July.  It takes about ten months to process all the data of a 4-week excavation season. So, it’s not about discovering as much as you can, but processing material in an ordered and disciplined way.

Below: My colleague in Area M Olga Primakov from Russia and Tel Aviv, with a particularly nice indicative Philistine bi-chrome bowl rim after cleaning. Note the red and black patterning.  This is classic Philistine art.

As we settle into late-Week 2, we are directed by Dr Chadwick to remove the west side balk as well, and work this down to our current floor level (below). This will eventually join 82C East and 82 D and 82C West together as one long rectangle of exposed data.

Here too as with the east balk we discover a clear termination of a clay brick wall in the back (right of the blue bucket).  In the image (below, left, above the two floor stones) you can see the clear vertical demarcation of the grey fill (left) and the brown clay brick (right). I remove this carefully with a trowel using a plum bob to get a correct vertical line. This is then carefully photographed.  At the bottom are large foundation stones from something else that carry through under the balk behind us where Caleb and Justin are doing some heavy pick work.

Note how we’ve sandbagged the very bottom of the extracted west side balk.  This is to protect this layer. You can also see clearly the stairway emerging as we’ve lowered the floor (centre, between the two big stones).  I discover a series of stones and pebbles in this floor in the middle of 82D this side of the stair, and Jeff examines this and concludes this is the Iron Age ground level of the gate; a compacted clay path, so we stop. Around the edge we discover some protruding rocks that delineate the curving edge around this stairway path.

After two weeks, we have determined the following – the goal of the 2018 season.  That immediately opposite the ‘E’ foundational structure is a snaking pathway that is flat with intervening triple steps.  It leads uphill and turns south into the lower city towards the Tell in line with the human trail up onto the Tell (probably the same trail used for thousands of years following the easiest contours of the terrain).  Heavy work in the square behind us uphill, by Caleb and Justin, has determined finally there is no mirrored ‘E’ structure opposite, as theorised. Rather, the intact Canaanite domestic buildings (likely two stories high) formed the south side of the ‘gate.’  This recalls the biblical story of Rahab at Jericho who had a house in the wall by the gate.  She was less likely a prostitute, more a Bed & Breakfast custodian (see Joshua 2).

It is likely the Philistines found that they did not need a second gatehouse bastion and simply used the Canaanite housing on one side, and erected their defensive ‘E’ bulwark on the more vulnerable north side.  There is also a rounded tower next to it (below left, extending off the ‘E’).  Here’s a summary drawing of what we have uncovered in the first two weeks. And some images of D2 after it has been cleaned and cleared in Week 3. Immediately below, after Alice’s balk has been reduced, the stairway becomes very clear. David, Goliath, Achish and Saladin would all have walked this pathway.  I discovered and excavated the large rock to the right (pic 2 below), inside the east-side balk, that frames the right hand side of the stairway.

As we excavated the west-side balk, again many finds.  But like in the east balk, we discover this fab. brick clay wall. Balk Photographed in the right light, you can clearly make out the clay bricks in the back wall of 82D above the west balk. We were able to carefully extract some of these after 3500 years from the surrounding debris. It is valuable architectural data.

By Thursday of Week 2 our work in 82D is largely done and I move over to Area M elsewhere on the Tell.  This is a new site.  At ground level and is only pegged out and the surface broken this season.  Within 5cm we start making archaeological discoveries and it becomes clear, Aren maker’s strategy dig this season in the lower city not up high on the Tell has struck pay dirt.  We’ve uncovered the 830BC Hazael of Aram destruction layer indicated by anomalies on the 2017 remote sensing survey and drone work.

And below is Dr Seth Rodriquez (right) and some of his team of Coloradans, and displaying several of the sedimentary floor layers inside their square, where successive centuries of people have lived and died.

Within minutes of excavating with my colleague Olga Primakova, we have uncovered several vessels just below the surface, exactly where they fell in 830 BC and have remained undisturbed ever since.  This later becomes as good as archaeology gets.  82D is now done, and next post I’ll do a quick survey of my brief work in Area M and show you some of the incredible finds.

Next Post: Wonders from Area M.

A guest post by Jordan Williams from The Free Speech Coalition:

Earlier in the month, a group of New Zealanders from across the political spectrum, concerned about the direction of free speech rights, decided to raise money to judicially review Auckland Council and Phil Goff over their decision to restrict Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux from using Council owned venues. I was one of them.

The grassroot support from across the country shows Kiwis care about free speech – even if they don’t like the views of these speakers.

People from all walks of life and political views donated to ensure free speech both in Auckland and as a matter of precedent going into the future. We received emails from some donors apologising that they could only give a very small sum – say $2 – because they were on sickness benefits or were struggling to make ends meet.

The largest donation was $5,000. 75 percent of the $89,000 raised was from donations less than $300.

It was insulting for Stuff’s Glenn McConnell to assert that our donors just didn’t need the money. Many of our donors cut back last week to ensure the point of principle, of human rights, could be made in court.

That brings us to the principle at stake. Why is free speech so important that people made a personal financial sacrifice to ensure it was protected?

The right of free speech primarily governs the relationship between the citizen and the state.

The Government has the power to tax you, and if you refuse to pay, imprison you. If you own property in Auckland, you are forced to pay rates for common property and services provided by the Council.

As a ratepayer, if you are forced to pay for the provision of public spaces and buildings, should the Mayor be able to restrict their use for political reasons? That’s the principle at stake.

Critics of the Free Speech Coalition have laughed at this principle and argued that we should have used the money to pay for a private venue.

This is a pathetic argument. 

Firstly, from a practical perspective, there are very few suitable private venues available at short notice in Auckland – the Council owns most large spaces.

But more importantly, paying for a private venue would do nothing to protect the principle of free speech.

Yes, Southern and Molyneux, would be able to speak on August 3, but the ability of a Mayor to restrict the use of public venues to speakers they find politically dangerous would go unchallenged. I suspect many of those defending Mr Goff would not be if it were Judith Collins in the Mayoral chair, banning, say, a radical anti-Israel group.

Almost all the organisers of the Free Speech Coalition disagree with the views of Southern and Molyneux. The principle at stake is far more important.

While Phil Goff initially claimed his position was motivated by opposition to hate speech, the Council is now backtracking on his behalf. The Council argues, in a similar fashion to colleges in the United States when they have restricted certain speakers, that protests would cause ‘health and safety’ issues.

That’s a dangerous position to hold. It would effectively allow the Mayor to ban speakers whenever there are potential protests. It gives a ‘heckler’s veto’.

So, we’re not simply going to court to fight for the rights of these two Canadians. We’re fighting to set a precedent that your right to free speech isn’t chipped away, no matter what your views are. That means defending speakers you might find personally repulsive. But that’s what standing up for freedom of speech means – otherwise it’s not free speech at all.

Jordan Williams is a public lawyer and member of the Free Speech Coalition. www.freespeechcoalition.nz

The Herald reports on polling Curia did for the NZ Drug Foundation. They show support has increased significantly for cannabis law reform.

Support is overwhelming for not criminalising medical use, and is also very strong for personal use. There isn’t support though for selling.

The Herald reports further:

Not surprisingly 100 per cent of Green Party voters support the use of cannabis for pain relief (88 per cent last year), 91 per cent of Labour supporters (up from 78 per cent), 86 per cent of New Zealand First supporters (up from 77 per cent) and 80 per cent of National (up from 78 per cent).

80% of National voters support legalisation or decriminalisation of cannabis for pain relief. So the only issue should be how to do it, not whether to do it.

Another profile of a hard up family in the Herald. As usual I supply estimates of actual income as I think this provides context. In no way am I suggesting the family profiled is not in need.

• Wages $21,580 (not the $415 per week for a 30 hour job appears to be well under the minimum wage)
• Tax $2,696
• Net Wages $18,784
• Sole Parent Support $8,008
• WFF $10,608
• Accom Supplement $12,688
• Winter Energy Payment $700
• Net Income $50,788

So again tough to bring up two kids on under $1,000 a week. But useful to note taxpayers contribute $32,000 a year on top of the $19,000 of wages.

Stuff reports:

Tens of thousands of Aucklanders could be voting in different wards next year if proposed changes to council ward boundaries are confirmed.

The first shake-up of Auckland Council boundaries mostly affect the central city Waitemata and Gulf ward, and the big southern Manukau ward which would be split in two. …

There has been criticism of retaining a mix of one-councillor wards, and larger two-councillor wards, with Puketapapa Local Board member David Holm calling it “short-sighted”.

“Population estimates (for local board areas) show growth over the next 10 years varying from 46 per cent in Upper Harbour to 5 per cent or less in Kaipatiki, Waitakere Ranges and Manurewa,” he said.

“Further major boundary changes for wards are inevitable if equitable representation is to be restored.”

Holm favoured moving to 20 single-councillor wards, arguing costs in the double-sized wards were too high.

I think all wards should be single councillor wards – both in Auckland and elsewhere. This will have the following advantages:

1. Smaller wards, more closely linked to the community
2. Just one Cr per ward means one clear representative (just as only one Electorate MP per electorate)
3. Much easier for voters to select one person from say a list of five, than say three from a list of 15
4. Candidates more likely to be known personally by voters in smaller wards

Matt Nippert reports:

The office of the Maori King has been raided by Serious Fraud Office investigators probing claims of financial mismanagement.

The raid this morning at the King’s offices at the Endowed College Buildings in Ngāruawāhia follows a referral from the Charities Service who have spent the past year looking into claims of misspending at Ururangi Trust.

This is a huge development. If the SFO find evidence of wrong-doing, who will be the ones that get charged?

Shane writes in Newsroom about a friend:

My mate is one of thousands caught in the middle of this jarring policy shift.

He’s always been a good worker but he never really settled down until he started a family.

When the first kid came along, he went out and got a qualification through the previous Labour government’s modern apprenticeships programme. That led to a job with a small business in Taranaki that helps locals connect to our own, famously abundant, natural gas.

Some of his coworkers have been there for decades, working on projects like Maui, which began supplying gas to New Zealand in the 1970s – and is still going today.

The small company they work for is re-writing its plans, and there probably won’t be jobs for them all any more.

The Government has told them their industry has no future.

Imagine the stress they face today. Keeping up with mortgage payments. Buying groceries. Keeping the car on the road. Today they do all that from their own earnings – no need for government top-ups.

Back in April, when the Government banned exploration for any further supplies of natural gas from offshore New Zealand, ministers assured my mate and his coworkers that no jobs would be lost.

Just a few months later, the businesses involved are saying hardly anyone is planning for a new plant or equipment any more.

Almost no one in Government has worked in the private sector and they really don’t understand how their decisions influence business.

So now he’s looking for a job in Auckland. He’s worried about the higher cost of getting a house there – and it’s hard to see why everyone is being pushed to live in Auckland when there aren’t enough houses.

He’ll have to live a long way out, and drive into town, paying more for petrol – lots more. This is what gets me the most. He’s sacrificing quality of life for his family so we can relocate regional workers to an already congested Auckland? For a climate change policy that only reduces emissions for environmentalists with a Twitter account.

Ironically, he’s expecting that – on top of higher costs for his petrol and housing – he’ll be paying more for home heating too. So will you, because the most important feature of using gas from New Zealand is that it’s cheaper for consumers – and the businesses we work for and buy from – than the imported alternatives.

NZ First campaigned on being a provincial champion yet they signed up to a policy to drive people from the provinces to Auckland.

New Zealand has brilliant regions. We should be showcasing them as vital economic destinations. But we can’t all write screenplays from the shores of Lake Taupo or impress tourists with our latte art. We need to produce well-paying industrial jobs that offer Kiwis a chance to get ahead and provide for their families. We need to use our own resources instead of paying more in everyday costs, sending our young families away to Auckland, or overseas, to make a dollar.

My mate is a worker, he gets paid well and is a good whānau person, he does not want a hand-out, he just wants to do the mahi he loves and give his kids a better life than the one he had. Surely that’s not too much to ask 

It shouldn’t be.

The Herald reports:

Tobacco prices are leading to murders and assaults in dairies, Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters says.

A KPMG report commissioned by Imperial Tobacco NZ found that the Government lost up to $182 million in excise from the 9 per cent of tobacco that had been obtained illegally in 2017.

Imperial Tobacco said eight years of “aggressive” excise increases contributed to illicit tobacco consumption.

If you tax something too high, a black market will flourish.

Peters said “of course” there was a link between excise tax and illicit tobacco use, but he went even further, linking it to attacks on shop workers.

“It’s leading to people being murdered and assaulted in our dairies.”

It is beyond doubt it has led to numerous assaults.

So as Peters is in Government as Deputy PM, why is he voting for further tax increases when in his own words they will lead to more assaults and murders.

2018 Israel archaeological excavation at biblical Gath (home of Goliath)

by John Stringer, Tell es-Safi, west of Jerusalem.

A Grind Stone from the Time of King David

While lowering the floor level of 82D John and I discover in situ this black obsidian grind stone (below) dated to the time of King David.  It is awesome to uncover an object that was onsite when King David was in this city, which you can read about in the Bible in 1 Samuel 21 (it is the city where he feigned madness).

“That day David fled from Saul and went to Achish king of Gath…But the servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one they sing about in their dances: “‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands’?”…David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath…So he pretended to be insane in their presence; and while he was in their hands he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard. Achish said to his servants, “Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me?”

Aren says jokingly, “Find me David’s spittle and I’ll issue extra watermelon!”

In addition I uncover two human-worked square stones, the size of Ebla tablets.  One appears to be a knife sharpening stone with ridges, the other some sort of cribbage game perhaps, with carefully drilled holes to hold sticks. All are bagged as ‘special items’ for Jeff and Aren to examine more closely later in the lab.

Shade is vital and you can see from the images below how we erect it, with large PVC grey pipes. It is dropped each night during pack down. You simply cannot work without shade.

Below is an image of one of the cubby holes in the ‘E’ of the extant gate structure (the area immediately behind the table).  We have broken up the soil with the pick and are now squaring off with a tourea before processing the soil.

Archaeological Animals

Israel has lots of interesting animals and insects.  As the shade cloth is dropped at night it captures dew which drips under and this attracts toads who crawl into and become trapped inside our squares.  We catch them and release them into the dry wadi each morning. There are also large lizards, praying mantis, large wolf spiders, and a curious array of beetles, that Lucy (in the white tee, above) and I take special interest in.  On day 1 as we were doing the Tell tour an eagle came soaring over us.  Of course we find a lot of bones, principally of kitchen debris (sheep, goats, bovids, donkeys, but also mice and rats). We even find one human tooth and I almost uncover a skull.’  An Ottoman soldier skeleton was buried across our square and was removed earlier when the layers were higher.  He appears to have been buried inside the ‘Nixon Watergate’ area (which of course had been filled in, millennia earlier by the Philistines, so was just ground to the Saladin warriors and Crusaders).

Below “Say ‘allo to mah lil fren!”

The Herald reports:

A respected Māori leader will look into how a senior police officer was promoted without the Police Minister being told of controversial comments he made during a notorious investigation into police rape allegations.

Dr Pauline Kingi was this afternoon announced as the chair of the government inquiry into the appointment of Wally Haumaha as the deputy commissioner of police in June.

She has a Master of Laws degree from Harvard, is a past chancellor of AUT, a long track record in community and public service, and was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 1999.

The inquiry will “examine, identify and report on the adequacy of the process” which led to Haumaha’s appointment, the Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters said at a press conference this afternoon.

Dr Kingi is well respected. But she has a current role advising Police on recruitment, which makes her a less than ideal choice to head an inquiry into the recruitment of the Deputy Commissioner.

Her biography states:

She is a member of the Auckland District Advisory Taumata; her role is to assist the Auckland District Commander of Police on sensitive issues involving the Māori Community and Policing. She has assisted the Auckland District Police with the selection of the Superintendent Operations for Auckland. She is currently assisting with Intelligence Training for Policing Operation, and the selection of the new Area Commander for the Counties Manukau Region.

So Kingi is actively involved in selection of senior police officers, and she is handpicked by NZ First Ministers to review the selection of a former NZ First candidate as Deputy Police Commissioner.

This is not to suggest Kingi won’t do a thorough job. But her role in already working for the Police on recruitment issues means she may not be seen as truly independent. We don’t even know if she is paid by the Police for her work for them.

Wouldn’t it have been better for the Government to appoint an independent QC?

The Herald reports:

Police Commissioner Mike Bush was warned by his right-hand man about Wally Haumaha’s history with the disgraced officers at the centre of rape allegations which rocked the police force, according to Herald sources. …

Sources have told the Herald that Clement – who graduated from Police College with Bush – warned the Commissioner about Haumaha and the potential risk to the reputation of police if he was promoted.

This is an important revelation as, if correct, it means the Commissioner knew. This is at odds with what the Police Minister said:

Nash said he and Bush was unaware of the specific statements quoted.

“I don’t think you could reasonably expect the Commissioner to know the comments Wally had made with regard to Operation Austin,” said Nash.

Unless he was told.

The acting Prime Minister Winston Peters announced an inquiry to look at whether all relevant information was given to, or gathered by, the SSC, and if it was, whether all relevant information was provided to ministers.

The inquiry needs to be wider and include what information was known within the Police.

Three weeks later, the terms of reference and the chair to conduct the inquiry are yet to be announced.

This is not that complex a matter. The TOR and inquiry member/s should have been sorted within a week.

Newsroom reports:

Peter Ellis, the former childcare worker who claims he was wrongfully convicted of child sex abuse, has a new advocate – National leader Simon Bridges. …

Speaking at a community event in Auckland on Friday morning, Bridges was asked about his views on Ellis’ case and the broader issue of wrongful convictions.

“I say this as Simon Bridges, lawyer, not as Simon Bridges, politician: when I look at all of the convictions you see in New Zealand, people have all of these views…there’s only one that I would say fundamentally was a miscue, and that’s the Peter Ellis one.”

Bridges told Newsroom after the event he believed Ellis had been subject to a miscarriage of justice.

“My view is if you look at it out of all the other ones, people have their different views but you look at the evidence [for other wrongful conviction claims], there’s definitely a prosecution case there.

“The difference with the Peter Ellis one was there were things that went awry in the prosecution and the investigation, and there was something of a witch hunt about that one.”

In all the other controversial cases there was definitely a crime. There are doubts (for some) over who did it, but no doubt someone was killed. But in the Ellis case there is a very real possibility that there was no crime.

Despite his views on Ellis, Bridges was lukewarm about Justice Minister Andrew Little’s work on a Criminal Cases Review Commission to look at apparent miscarriages of justice, telling the crowd there were “many safety valves in the system”.

I find the existing system inadequate. It works for some, like Pora, but a dedicated Review Commission has worked well in other countries and states. If done well, I support Labour’s work on this.