The Herald reports:

Open warfare has broken out after National criticised Speaker Trevor Mallard’s handling of Parliament and criticised him for telling the media a National MP had described PM Jacinda Ardern as a “stupid little girl” – a comment it says has never been proven.

National’s shadow Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee has written to the Speaker, saying National’s confidence in him was “significantly shaken”.

Brownlee questioned whether the Speaker had told media a National MP had called Ardern a “stupid little girl” in Parliament earlier this month, a comment that did not appear to be heard by anybody else and could not be heard on Parliament TV.

Mallard has now confirmed to the Herald he did tell a journalist he had heard that comment. “I was asked by a journalist what the comment was. I answered.”

On May 9 when the “stupid little girl” comment was said to be made in Parliament, Mallard had called for a National MP to apologise for a “very sexist remark” but nobody owned up and Mallard would not repeat the comment when Brownlee asked what it was.

It was inadvisable of the Speaker to tell a journalist what he thought was said. It ended up as a major story that went global, effectively smearing multiple National MPs. It is no surprise that National MPs are upset.

The Speaker would have been far better to have referred the journalist to an audio recording. As it happens no such comment can be heard on the audio recordings.

Brownlee said if Mallard had passed on such information it was unacceptable.

No National MPs had heard the comment in question and all denied saying it. “If the source is the Speaker that is unacceptable. The Speaker cannot go briefing the media against the Opposition.”

The Speaker may not have intended to cause such an incident, but by talking to the journalist he is responsible for a story that went viral.

It came on the same day National’s deputy leader Paula Bennett walked out of Parliament after the Speaker docked five questions from National because he took offence at a comment made by Brownlee while Bennett was asking questions of the PM.

Bennett later said she had done so out of frustration at Mallard’s system of docking questions when he was displeased with an MP because it was arbitrary and unpredictable and made it hard for the Opposition to do its job.

In his letter, Brownlee said National was concerned about Mallard’s running of Parliament.

“Your arbitrary taking of questions from the Opposition and the disruption to proceedings are seriously limiting our ability to do our job of holding the Government to account.”

Brownlee told media that system effectively meant the Speaker was determining the level of accountability the Government faced. “That’s not acceptable.”

I thought the innovation of adding and deducting questions for disorderly conduct was a good idea in principle. But in practice it is not working, and it is causing major upsets. A political party should be able to know how many questions it has to ask the Government. I think the Speaker needs to look at more traditional ways of dealing with disorderly conduct.

Stuff reports:

Supporters of a proposed euthanasia law say it should go further by allowing binding end of life directives from patients to doctors.

Directives made by people earlier in their lives would allow patients to make choices about whether or not they would want to die if left incapable of making that informed decision later in life.

As written the bill would only allow those who doctors could be certain were understanding the gravity of their decision would be allowed to make it, meaning patients with dementia were unlikely to be able to access it.

An end of life directive would give choice to people who get inflicted with dementia. It allows them, before they lose their mental faculties, to say that if I ever end up in a state where I have no ability to recognise anyone, remember anything, enjoy anything, that I wish to have my life ended. It recognises quality of life can be more important than quantity.

End of Life Choice Society campaigner and former Labour MP Maryan Street said end-of-life directives would make the bill much stronger.

“When people are of sound mind and they anticipate their death, which may be from any number of things, they may decide that a diagnosis of dementia, or advanced symptoms of dementia, are things that they do not wish to tolerate,” Street said.

The key thing is people should have the choice.

Questioned strongly by National MP Maggie Barry on how these symptoms would be recognised, fellow submitter and doctor Jack Havill said there were strong points that could be set and recognised.

“There are good strong endpoints of dementia. One is that you cannot recognise your family or friends. One is that you cannot swallow your food. One is that you cannot go to the toilet by yourself,” Havill said.

No recognition and no ability to feed or clean yourself.

The Seymour bill is quite conservative in that it doesn’t allow end of life directives. I personally would prefer it is amended to do so.

The Dom Post reports:

A 19th Century quote inviting people to a prestigious Wellington dinner has sparked calls of misogyny and a complaint to the Law Society.

That quote  – “the best party has women with a past and young men with a future” –  from 19th century French writer Honoré de Balzac was used by Gregory Thwaite in an invitation to an annual  dinner for the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs at the Wellington Club. …

Former lawyer Olivia Wensley, who has been vocal about sexual harassment in the law industry, was on Monday complaining to the Law Society, which she said needed to investigate.

I’m sorry but this is starting to look like the Spanish Inquisition.

A complaint to the Law Society because of a quote used in an invitation!!!!

Thwaite wasn’t even acting in his capacity as a lawyer. It was an officer of NZIIA. A complaint to them would be justified (and they are not happy with the invite), but to bring the Law Society into it is just idiotic.

If he happened to be a surgeon, would Wensley complain to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons?

I’m not defending the quote. But to suggest this should be a something investigated by the Law Society is massive over-reach.

The ODT reports:

The Proctor and University of Otago Campus Watch staff have removed and destroyed hundreds of copies of the latest edition of Critic Te Arohi, the magazine’s staff have learned.

The cover of this week’s publication – the “Menstruation Issue” – depicted a cartoon of a naked person menstruating.

A University of Otago spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday night the magazines were taken by Proctor Dave Scott after complaints were received from Dunedin Hospital and the Dunedin Public Library.

The Campus Watch team on duty on Monday night removed the rest of the magazines from stands around the university, she said.

“This was an assumption – rightly or wrongly – that this action needed to be taken, as the university was also a public place where non-students regularly pass through.”

It was a wrong assumption. The Critics are not the property of Otago University, so the actions of the Proctor and Campus Watch was effectively theft.

Campus Watch staff who spoke to Critic editor Joel McManus today about the missing magazines were initially unaware fellow staff had removed them.

Mr McManus said on Tuesday night he considered the removal to be censorship – something he believed went against everything a university should stand for.

“We stand by the content of the magazine, and believe it touched on a number of very important issues about period poverty and trans issues, as well as breaking taboos about a bodily function that half the population experience.”

The University has been very heavy handed and should apologise to OUSA and Critic.

UPDATE: The Critic Editor has penned a piece on what happened at The Spinoff. Well worth a read. A few salient points:

1. The Proctor never ever informed Critic of what he has done. They thought it was being stolen by a religious group or lone wolf. They never even considered it was the University itself.
2. The Vice-Chancellor, Harlene Hayne, had ironically actually e-mailed the Editor to say “this week’s issue of the Critic is particularly good”.  So the action wasn’t approved by the VC.
3. The digital version of the issue has now been read 9,000 times online thanks to The Streisand Effect

Stuff reports:

Auckland mayor Phil Goff’s decision to refuse councillors a full copy of a downtown stadium report has landed him in hot water with the Ombudsman. 

Goff was criticised earlier in the week for his handling of a $1 million pre-feasibility report from PwC which looked into the pros and cons of building a new stadium at Auckland’s waterfront.

Several councillors said the report could only be viewed in his office under supervision, leading several concerned councillors to hit out at the mayor.

One of those was Albert-Eden-Roskill ward councillor Cathy Casey, who confirmed the Ombudsman’s office had acknowledged a complaint she made about the mayor’s handling of the report and said it would investigate. 

“At the end of this term I will have had 24 years as a councillor. In that time I have never been treated with such disrespect as this,” Casey said.

Emperor Goff seems to think Councillors don’t have any right to Council information. Bad enough he spends a million dollars on this report without them even knowing about it, but now he won’t even give them a copy.

However Goff’s office said claims the report could only be viewed under supervision were simply “not true”.

A spokesman for Goff said councillors could see the full, un-redacted report anytime they liked – and several had come through without any issues. 

The only thing they dispute is whether a staff member is there in the office with you. They are not disputing that they can only read it in his office.

Councillor Efeso Collins said he was concerned by the lack of trust displayed by the mayor’s handling of the document. 

“It is not a high trust environment where we have to go up to the mayor’s office to view this report under the eye of his staff,” he said.

“I suspect he fears information could be leaked, but that is his issue. We are the elected members of Auckland. If he does not trust us with the findings, who will he trust?”

Denise Lee has a member’s bill which would help remedy this situation. It would enhance the right of Councillors to receive Council information.

The Herald reports:

People wanting to buy one of the Government’s affordably priced homes will not be income-tested.

That means high-income earners will not be blocked from purchasing one of the 100,000 planned houses to be built over 10 years, which will be priced at up to $650,000.

Housing Minister Phil Twyford said the criteria for prospective buyers in the KiwiBuild scheme were still being developed.

It is already known that the houses will be limited to first home-buyers and permanent residents.

But it is understood that income caps will not be used for the scheme.

That’s great news that this Government is going to help millionaires buy an affordable home.

Also great that wealthy migrants will qualify for an affordable home.

Labour cares about poor New Zealanders, not votes. That is why they are allowing wealthy New Zealanders to use the scheme.

Income-testing has been used for other Government housing initiatives – including the HomeStart grant for first home buyers – to ensure that demand is limited to only those who need them most.

The HomeStart grants are limited to sole buyers earning less than $85,000 or two or more buyers earning less than $130,000.

In the case of KiwiBuild, the Government feels affordable housing should not be restricted only to those on low or modest incomes.

Not enough voters there. So one Government did housing initiatives targeted at those most in need. This Government does housing initiatives targeted at those they most need to vote for them.

A reader has passed on some interesting information from what appears to be a student association insider concerning their national body, NZUSA.

The claims are:

• An NZUSA staffer departed after sending a dick pic to a staffer/contractor (ironically the staffer/contractor was there to work on a sexual violence/consent campaign). This was covered up, like the law firms are accused of doing.
• NZUSA recently asked their main member associations to half pay next years fees (2019), as their account had been frozen or rather their overdraft was not being extended by BNZ, and they had no money.
• NZUSA are in the process of selling their share in the building on Lambton Quay to cover their debts
• They had a contract with ACC – (https://nzfvc.org.nz/news/acc-partners-nzusa-sexual-violence-prevention-tertiary-education) and employed staff for it, but all of those staff resigned and that contract is not happening now, or is greatly reduced
• None of the executive of the associations that are members are aware of the extent of what has gone on and why NZUSA has no money

The challenge for NZUSA is that it has to demonstrate to its member associations they they provide value for money.

UPDATE: A further source has come forward and said that the staffer concerned didn’t send dick pics to just one of the sexual violence team staffers, but many of them! And the entire sexual violence team resigned em masse late last year.

Will the student associations that marched in the streets against Russell McVeagh, now march against NZUSA?

The Herald reports:

The GP of a Kāpiti councillor standing trial for indecent assault has been asked to measure the length of the accused’s penis with a wooden ruler.

In open court? 🙂

Earlier in proceedings, the complainant rejected what she felt pressing into her could have been a wallet, phone or insulin kit, rather than male genitalia.

She said what she felt was about four or five inches.

Under cross examination defence lawyer Mike Antunovic asked Cammack to measure the length of Scott’s penis in a separate room. That measurement is suppressed.

He also asked another witness to measure Scott’s wallet which was about four and a half inches long.

This seems a novel defence strategy. Basically it appears to be “That wasn’t my penis, that was a wallet” pressed against you.

Now the complainant has said it was around four to five inches long which is the size of the wallet. But for this defence strategy to work, you need the penis to be not that size. So are they hoping the penis is much larger than five inches or much smaller than four inches?

Also doesn’t the umm circumstances count? I imagine it is highly unlikely your penis will be aroused when being measured by a GP in a secluded court room. But it may have been at the morning tea.

There will be a lot for the jury to ponder!

Stuff reports:

The Government pulled plans to put major restrictions on deep sea trawling after the fishing industry threatened legal action.

Officials and scientists from New Zealand and Australia had been working on the joint proposal since 2012 and it was finally due to go in front of an inter-governmental body in Peru in late January. 

It was designed to protect the stocks of orange roughy in the high seas and prevent the destruction of delicate seabed life like coral and sponges.

But just weeks before the meeting, the High Seas Fisheries lobby group – which includes Talleys and Sealord – wrote to the Government threatening legal action. 

Deepwater Group, a second lobby group which included Sanford, also demanded an urgent meeting. Their lawyer Bruce Scott followed up with a personal phone-call to Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters’ office.

Within weeks, the proposal – to be voted on by the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation – was abruptly withdrawn from the agenda. The move raised eyebrows among diplomats from other countries because the joint NZ-Australia proposal was already two years late.

NZ First donors will again be very pleased with the return on their investment.

Whenever an issues comes up which involves a choice between the environment and donors to NZ First, the Government goes for placating the donors to NZ First.

If this was happening in a National-led Government, the Greens would be calling it corruption and condemning the Government as environmental vandals.

Instead though not a peep, as the Greens also need Winston happy to retain their baubles.

The Herald reports:

Racing legend Sir Patrick Hogan’s bid to get votes for NZ First is under scrutiny by electoral officials because of an advertisement in a racing newspaper.

In September Hogan and wife Lady Justine Hogan took out a full-page advertisement in The Informant urging the racing industry to support NZ First because of its racing policies.

The Electoral Commission said it had not received any complaints about the ad but was looking into it.

Under electoral rules, anyone who publishes an advertisement encouraging others to vote for a political party must get written authorisation from that party and the party must include the cost of it in its election expenses return.

NZ First’s return did not list anything in the section requiring “third party” advertising to be disclosed.

A spokesman for NZ First said its return was accurate. “The New Zealand First Secretary did not authorise any third party advertisements.”

Electoral law specialist Andrew Geddis said if Hogan took out the advertisement without getting approval it amounted to an “illegal practice” under the Electoral Act, which was a fine of up to $10,000 if there was a conviction.

It seems pretty clear cut. Hogan clearly authorised the advertisement and NZ First has said they did not authorise the advertisement. So Sir Patrick would appear to be in breach of the Electoral Act.

I’m surprised that no one ever told him you can’t just run full page advertisements saying Vote for X, unless X has agreed to it.

Megan McArdle writes at Bloomberg:

The University of Washington released its second study, this one covering the increase from $11 an hour to $13. And this study found huge effects: For every 1 percent increase in their hourly wage, low-wage workers saw a 3 percent reduction in the number of hours worked. As a result, they lost about $125 in earnings a month, clawing back the entire gain from the earlier hike and more.

The earlier increase from $9.47 to $11 did not see a drop in wages. This larger increase did. This is to be expected.

Take a NZ context. An increase from say $17 to $17.50 will see little impact. But an increase to say $25 would see a huge impact.

The key element appears to be the level of the minimum wage compared to the median wage. And in NZ this is already one of the highest in the world. So the increase this year of 75c will probably see little impact but the $3.50 increase over the next three years will I suspect have a significant impact.

The Business Insider reports:

Journalists’ brains apparently show a lower level of executive functioning, which means a below average ability to regulate their emotions, suppress biases, solve complex problems, switch between tasks, and show creative and flexible thinking.

This is according to a new study led by neuroscientist and leadership coach Dr Tara Swart, who selected 40 journalists from newspaper, magazine, broadcast, and online platforms to analyse.

The research was conducted over seven months, where the participants took part in simple tests relating to their lifestyle, health, and behaviour.

An interesting study. Someone should apply for funding to replicate it in NZ!

Each subject completed a blood test, wore a heart-rate monitor for three days, kept a food and drink diary for a week, and completed a brain profile questionnaire.

The results showed that journalists’ brains were operating at a lower level than the average population, particularly due to dehydration and their tendency to self-medicate with alcohol, caffeine, and high-sugar foods.

Would be interesting to also do a study of parliamentary staffers!

Radio NZ reports:

The release of the $935,000 consultants’ report on a downtown stadium on Friday was the third time RNZ had to resort to the Ombudsman’s Office to extract public information.

The information was eventually found to have been wrongly withheld by Auckland Council.

The Council knows it is illegally withholding information. They just make people appeal to the Ombudsman as a delaying tactic.

All three directly involve the mayor Phil Goff.

The Goffice is responsible for the refusal to release.

The council argued initially that the report was only a draft, and therefore not required to be released under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA).

Wrong, said Ombudsman Leo Donnelly in an opinion he sent to Auckland Council and released to RNZ.

“There is no basis for a blanket withholding of drafts under LGOIMA until they are completed and finalised,” he wrote.

“To have a standard approach of withholding draft reports until they have been fully signed off, leaves the process open to exploitation by agencies who want to hold off release of information until it is most convenient.”

A smart Ombudsman. You can indefinitely delay info being released if you are allowed to do so on the basis it is draft.

Andrew Geddis tweets:

(Thread – and attention @ElectoralCommNZ). This @NZStuff story is interesting. It recounts how NZ First has changed the tax rules for the racing industry following their election time support, including advertising by Patrick Hogan (see below).https://t.co/Hcb9kDgQeE pic.twitter.com/uF5sBYfNyf

— Andrew Geddis (@acgeddis) May 19, 2018

Andrew has done a series of tweets on this. Together they read:

It recounts how NZ First has changed the tax rules for the racing industry following their election time support, including advertising by Patrick Hogan

That’s OK so far as it goes. Politics is a partly transactional business, be it Northland bridges or free tertiary study. However, the Electoral Act requires that before publishing an ad expressly calling for a vote for a political party, you must get its written permission.

If you get that permission, any spending on that ad becomes a part of the Party’s overall election expenses, and must be declared by the Party post-election. But in the case of Hogan’s ad, NZ First has made no such post-election declaration.

So, 3 possibilities … (1) The description of the ad is wrong – unfortunately, I can’t find an image of it on line to verify that it does in fact “encourage racing participants to party vote NZ First” (and so requires party authorisation).

(2) Patrick Hogan published the advertisement as described without getting the necessary authorisation in writing, thereby committing an illegal practice at the last election. This is an offence with a potential $10,000 fine.

(3) If Hogan was given the requisite authorisation by NZ First, then the party has filed a false declaration because it has failed to include the expense in its post-election declaration. That may be a corrupt or illegal practice, depending on how the failure occurred.

It goes without saying that the Electoral Commission must investigate this. NZ First has a history of filing incorrect election returns.

The advertisements backing NZ First are a de facto donation to the party, so it shows that the Budget was about rewarding their donors/supporters.

Jacinda Ardern said NZ First Ministers can’t be Minister of Fisheries due to their donations from the fishing industry. Yet she makes Winston Minister of Racing despite figures in the racing industry running advertisments campaigning for NZ First.

How can Ardern justify one situation, and not the other?

The ABC reports:

Disgraced Darling Range MP Barry Urban has resigned from the WA Parliament after a powerful committee recommended he be expelled for repeatedly lying about his past.

The Legislative Assembly’s Procedure and Privileges Committee made the rare recommendation in a report examining the truth of statements Mr Urban made in the Parliament.

The report found Mr Urban lied to the public and Parliament for years about his police service and his education history.

Among his background details rubbished by the committee was Mr Urban’s claim he served as a war crimes investigator in the Balkans.

Seems a real Walter Mitty type. Not only lied on his CV, but repeated them in Parliament.

His false claims include:

• He had a degree from the University of Leeds;
• He had a Certificate of Higher Education in Policing from the University of Portsmouth;
• He had completed nine out of 10 modules of a Diploma of Local Government;
• He was seconded from West Midlands Police in 1998 and served with the United Nations mission in the Balkans, where he provided security for a team investigating war crimes;
• He was posted a service medal by UK authorities;
• He subsequently lost such medal;
• He was entitled to wear such a medal; and
• He was under a genuine but mistaken belief that he was entitled to wear a replica police overseas service medal.

He wasn’t technically expelled as he resigned before they could.

Stuff reports:

Palmerston North people have spoken and more than two-thirds who voted were in opposition to creating separate Māori wards.

Results from a binding poll came in on Saturday night, with 14,567 voting against wards for the city council and 6530 voting for. 

The percentage was 68.87 against and 30.88 per cent for.

I’m pleased. I don’t think separate wards are a good way to increase Maori representation. I think they are divisive, even if well intentioned.

In Manawatū District, voters came out more than three-to-one in opposition to creating separate Māori wards.

Results came in on Tuesday, with 7062 voting against, and 2038 in favour.

Some 43 per cent of electors cast a vote, with 18 votes counted as blank and one “informal”.

That’s 75% against.

And Sunlive reports:

Voter turnout in the Western Bay was around 40 per cent of eligible electors.

•   •  21.5 per cent of electors who voted were for Māori wards
•   •  78.2 per cent of electors who voted were against Māori wards

And further:

In the Whakatane District a total of 5856 electors, 56.39 per cent, have voted against Maori wards, with 4504, 43.37 percent, in favour.

Whakatane is almost a majority Maori area (43%). If Maori wards can’t get passed there, they are unlikely to anywhere.

This is of course why some in Government wants to change the law to take the decision away from ratepayers and voters. They think the people make the wrong decision, so they must be stripped of the power to decide if they want race based seats or not.

The Herald reports:

An Auckland Councillor has lambasted plans for a new national stadium, calling it a “mayoral vanity project”.

A pre-feasibility study conducted by consulting firm PwC estimated it would cost between $1.1 billion and $1.5b to build a rectangular rugby stadium in downtown Auckland.

Wow that is almost as good value as a monorail!

But John Watson, a councillor for the Albany ward, told NZME the city didn’t need a new stadium, couldn’t afford one and would rarely be able to fill it.

“The stadium debate was had and it was had back in 2009 and now we seem to see these consistent attempts to resurrect these grandiose plans at a time when Auckland’s got other priorities and when, ironically enough, our existing stadiums have had huge investments of capital to put into them in the interim,” he said.

Politicians like to build monuments to themselves.

Russell Brown writes:

During last year’s election campaign, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern pledged an additional $38 million – annually, it appeared – for a public broadcasting sector whose budget had been frozen for nine years of a National-led government. It was welcome news and in keeping with past Labour rhetoric. It came packaged with a new, multimedia vision for Radio New Zealand.

And it is now a broken promise.

Curran fairly basked in the appreciation of the audience as she reiterated the promise that there would be $38 million in new funding, to be shared between RNZ and NZ On Air. But, she said, beaming as if it was a feature not a bug, she couldn’t tell us what the split would be.

The kind explanation would be that, per the policy, funding was to be distributed by a new Public Media Funding Commission, whose shape and composition was yet unknown. But the minister’s inability to say how much the two country’s two major public broadcasting organisations would receive has meant that those two organisations have been unable to properly plan their year ahead.

This is a salient point. If you don’t know how much funding you will have, then it is very difficult to plan.

As delivered today, the Budget contains only $15 million in new funding for public broadcasting services – and it’s still not clear where the money will go. 

So actually Radio NZ for now has the exact same budget as under National!

Now, hold on. The advisory group is going to determine where the new funding will go? Wasn’t the advisory group established to advise on the goals and composition of the Public Media Funding Commission, which was going to allocate the funding?

One problem here is that the advisory group quite evidently isn’t constituted to allocate funding itself. 

Sounds like the advisory group is now going to do the job of the entity the group is meant to be setting up.

As Jacinda Ardern herself said back in September when she announced the policy, RNZ “has been chronically under-funded since 2007.”

I fully expected this Budget to be a relatively conservative one, and that Grant Robertson would use it to demonstrate his capacity for restraint and responsibility. So maybe we write off the missing $23 million to that. But offering RNZ nothing in rescue funding until an advisory group has decided something, some time in the next year, is not competent, prudent, fair or in keeping with Labour’s rhetoric.

That’s a pretty harsh critique of the Government – incompetent, unfair and imprudent.

The broadcasting element of this government’s first Budget really is a shambles.

What I would be doing is selling off TVNZ (while you can) and putting the money from that sale towards funding public broadcasting.

Newsroom reports:

In a scene that could have been from a film, police in Wellington last night removed a beeping black box from a packed cinema. 

The box was chained to a seat in the Roxy Theatre by anti-Israel group, Peace Action Wellington to disrupt the screening of Ben-Gurion, Epilogue, a documentary on the former Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. 

Josh Cameron sums up how reprehensible this is:

You put a fake bomb in a crowded theatre filled mainly with elderly Jewish people and you wonder why you are being condemned? https://t.co/yEwALKUbML

— Josh Cameron (@JoshCameron00) May 16, 2018

Off memory Peace Action Wellington is run by one of the nutjobs who used to run around the Ureweras with guns, practicing armed revolution. At least it was a fake bomb this time!