Steve Kilgallon at Stuff reports:

It’s been nearly four weeks since the story broke about a baby being abandoned outside a Northland pub while its mother played the pokies – but no-one can say who the baby was.

No official agency has conducted a formal investigation into the baby’s welfare, and the pokie machine trust involved said there’s no evidence to say the baby ever existed.

Glen Dick, the landlord of Rawene’s Masonic Hotel, had told media got rid of his pokies after discovering the baby on the footpath outside his pub while the mother was inside his pokie room.

I recall that story. It got a lot of publicity.

But Pub Charity chief executive Martin Cheer said a report commissioned from a specialist CCTV analytics company showed those events never happened.

Fascinating.

Cheer has forwarded a report from Pinnacle Security Consultants, analysing a month’s work of CCTV footage from the pub in Rawene, in the Far North, to the Department of Internal Affairs asking them to investigate further. The DIA have declined.

He added that the Pinnacle report studied every interaction between Dick and any female customer who appeared to be under the age of 50 on four cameras which between them cover the main bar and the poker machine room.

The report stated there was no vision of an incident involving a baby, but also that there was no footage of Dick going into the pokie room and cashing out a female client in the way he had described in a series of interviews across various media.

Cheer said Dick’s original story changed to say he left the baby outside – beyond the range of the cameras – but that the poker machine cameras showed the rest of his story was untrue.

So if the story is invented, why? Was there some other reason he wanted to remove the pokie machines?

Absolutely up to a pub owner whether or not they have pokies. But why invent a story justifying their removal?

Stuff reports:

Labour’s Andrew Kirton who came under fire in the wake of the Labour Party youth camp allegations is understood to be leaving his job as general secretary to join Air New Zealand.

This is a blow to Labour, as Kirton was one of their more competent General Secretaries. He absolutely mishandled the youth camp issue, but overall has been a good performer for Labour.

It is a bit unusual to leave such a role when the party is finally in Government.

The Air NZ role is a good one for him though, as previously he was head of public affairs for Heathrow Airport.

The Herald reports:

Labour MP Stuart Nash pulled the pin on his own fundraiser at the Northern Club today, saying it would be inappropriate to attend because of the involvement of right-wing lobbyist Matthew Hooton.

Hooton is an old friend of Nash’s and had been involved in organising the fundraiser of about 20 of Nash’s friends since 2014.

Fascinating that Matthew has been doing fundraisers for Labour for the last four years.

Nash said his decision to pull out was because Hooton had criticised Labour and his fellow Labour Minister David Parker in recent days over the ban on foreign buyers in New Zealand – criticism Parker has said was unwarranted.

“In light of Matthew’s attacks on the Government, in particular David Parker, I’ve decided it is no longer appropriate to attend the fundraiser with Matthew so I have pulled out.”

Matthew has criticised Ministers and MPs from all parties for many years.

Hooton said the fundraiser went ahead without Nash. “It was a very successful fundraiser for the Napier Labour Party with one empty seat – although that did not make too much difference.”

A very unusual situation.

I blogged on Thursday about how Labour tried to pass a law which would exempt just one company from their law to ban foreign house buyers.

Now regardless of motivation, this is an extraordinary thing to do. You don’t pass laws that say it is a crime to assault someone except for Fred Jones or that you need to pay GST except if your company is Fred Jones Ltd.

This is why the Speaker properly ruled the amendment out or order. But who made the decision to try and favour just one company, and why?

Well what is interesting is the company involved, didn’t ask to be exempted from the law. They (Te Arai) appears to have acted very properly with their formal submission. Nowhere do they say “Hey we want a special law that looks after us, and no one else”. Their submission recommended stuff such as exempting rural land of less than five hectares.

So this raises the fascinating question of who decided to give this company a special exemption. The Office of the Clerk told the select committee what they were seeking to do was improper, but the Government MPs had been told the Government wanted this exemption, so they stuck it in.

Now who in Government decided this. Well the Herald reports:

Parker said the Government wouldn’t try to put the exemption back into the bill via another route, but he confirmed it was his own office that put the exemption in.

“That was my office’s decision.

His office’s decision???

I’ve worked in a (prime) ministerial office. I have never known an office to have decision making authority.

So when Parker says it was a decision of his office, what does he mean? Did the receptionist decide? Was it the press secretary? Or did they have a staff meeting and vote to give a legislative waiver to this one company?

Or is this weasel words by Parker to distance himself? Surely he was the sole decision maker who decided to tell the select committee to ignore the official advise and try to legislate an exemption for this one company.

“We saw this and it was described in the papers as an iwi development. I’ve never met them, there was some sympathy for the position, within Government, that they were in so we proposed that exemption that’s been ruled out of order so we’re not pursuing it.”

Who is the “we”. Is this his office? Is this other Ministers? And if the decision maker wasn’t solely Parker, did he disclose his previous relationship with developer John Darby?

CNN reports:

An image that appears in this week’s Time magazine cover became a rallying cry for an end to the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents after they are apprehended at the US border.

The cover features an image of a crying toddler taken by Getty photographer John Moore superimposed next to President Trump, who is towering over the child. The text next to the illustration reads, “Welcome to America.”

But as details about the little girl emerged this week, critics claim the cover is misleading because she is not one of the thousands of children who have been separated from their parents at the border. …

Time issued a correction on one of its articles in which Moore’s photo appeared. “The original version of this story misstated what happened to the girl in the photo after she taken from the scene. The girl was not carried away screaming by U.S. Border Patrol agents; her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together,” the correction reads. 

This is a huge blunder by Time, made worse by their refusal to apologise.

The girl was screaming because her mum put her down for two minutes while she was searched by US border patrol. It wasn’t a girl screaming because her parents were being taken away. She was just upset because she was standing next to her mum for a couple of minutes. I sometimes get that reaction at supermarkets when I have to put the sprog down when I pay.

The US policy of separating parents and children is or was inhumane and deserved all the criticism and scrutiny. But for Time Magazine to use as its cover photo an image which is misleading at best and fake news at worse is wrong.

Stuff reports:

ACT leader David Seymour’s latest policy-on-the-fly comments turned into what closely resembled a scene from How the Grinch Stole Christmas,when he voiced his preference for axing almost all public holidays.

On Wednesday, the MP was asked to share his thoughts on whether Matariki should become a public holiday.

Earlier this month, Wellington Mayor Justin Lester said he supported Queen’s Birthday being ditched in favour of a national Matariki holiday.

Seymour said he wasn’t keen on including another public holiday in New Zealand’s calendar.

“If people want to use some of their annual leave for Matariki, they can.”

In fact, he wasn’t really a fan of public holidays at all.

What came next was eerily similar to the part of the Jim Carrey film where the Grinch ransacks the houses of Whoville: “Clearance Sale! Everything must go”.

Reporters listed public holidays, as Seymour listed the reasons why they should not be part of New Zealand’s set calendar.

People should be able to decide when they wanted to go on holiday, Seymour said. 

“I’m not into the Government telling people how to use their annual leave. What is this? A fascist state?”

One reporter asked whether New Zealand scrap all public holidays. “I’m open to it,” Seymour replied.

Actually Seymour has a point.

He is not proposing (as I understand it) cancelling all public holidays without “compensation”, more that people should choose for themselves what days they take off.

All employees currently get at least four weeks annual leave and 11 public holidays, so that is 31 days of paid leave.

Rather than have the state dictate you mustn’t work on Queen’s Birthday or Labour Day, people could choose for themselves when they take their holidays.

Imagine how great it would be if you could take six whole weeks off in January and February (when the weather is great) rather than be forced to take days off in April, June and October when the weather is lousy.

Why do we force Buddhists and Muslims to take off Easter and Christmas?

Why are Republicans forced to take a day off for the Queen’s official birthday.

I suspect most families would still choose to take off the current public holidays, but it should be their choice.

Katherine Rich writes:

In February 2018, a University of Waikato study published in Public Health Nutrition about sugary drinks from Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand was shopped to the media no doubt with great excitement about its shocking findings. New Zealand drinks were possibly “the most unhealthy in the world”.

It was a big story covered by most media here and the news that New Zealand drinks were higher in sugar than other countries went global. The paper announced that “NZ had the highest percentage of beverages with sugar added to them (52%), whilst the UK had the lowest (9%, p<0.001). Sugar tax campaigners latched onto the low UK figure and used it to amplify their calls for sugar taxes and regulation making inflammatory comments about the food industry like, “Don’t trust them. Just regulate them”.

At the New Zealand Food & Grocery Council we couldn’t understand the big gap between countries. Major volume ranges were similar and major producers in each country had been on a reformulation journey for many years (in some cases decades). It didn’t make sense based on our global knowledge of the food industry.

What stood out the most when so many brands are global and the same in terms of sugar content, was the extremely low 9% of beverages with sugar added attributed to the United Kingdom.

The extremely low UK figure was used by pro-sugar tax campaigners in New Zealand to claim that the UK sugar tax on beverages had already been a resounding success even before it had come into force, and to pressure the New Zealand government to implement a similar tax regime here.

A lot about the paper and its findings didn’t add up. So we fact-checked the paper and found our instincts were correct.

Indeed, the maths did not add up. The most glaring error was so simple a high school student would be embarrassed.

Rather than the level in the UK being 9% it was 39%. Somehow the ‘3’ in 39 had been left off and not one of the seven highly educated authors had caught the error. So much for peer review.

None of the authors caught on, let alone the peer reviewers.

So you had all these shock horror stories based on a total fallacy.

When we dug deeper we found other flaws in the paper that were equally concerning and went a long way to explain the remaining gap between countries. Mistakes were made about all sorts of things: UK sugar tax rates, the way Australia and New Zealand define fruit juices and drinks, Ministry of Health nutrition guidelines, product labels, water differences. The authors also appeared not to recognise the difference between pack sizes and serving sizes. Some of the paper’s references did not support bold claims made in the paper or were merely published opinions, not research.

Yet again this paper got through peer review and was published.

Politik reports:

The Government’s much vaunted overseas house buying ban legislation has emerged from a Select Committee with a whole heap of exemptions and loopholes.

Ironically the Committee originally proposed an exemption which has now been ruled out by the Speaker  for a company associated with a Queenstown businessman who has been behind some of the biggest and most expensive real estate developments aimed at overseas investors.

So the Government tried to legislate an exemption for one businessman. This is of course what they campaigned on.

Singapore has been entirely exempted from the legislation for reasons that the Minister in charge of the Bill, David Parker is unable (or unwilling) to elaborate on.

They Government claimed they were confident Singapore would agree to change their FTA with NZ. They were wrong.

But perhaps the most surprising thing about the Bill is that it now contains powers for the Government to exempt whole classes of proposed sales from the legislation.

So, for example, a Government could exempt all urban houses.

And it also contains a power for the Minister to exempt any “transaction, person, interest, right or assets from the requirement for consent or from the definition of overseas person or associate or associated land. “

So what we’re going to see is crony capitalism, where the Minister will decide who will and will not be exempt.

But one Queenstown developer told POLITIK that the likely consequence of this would be that it would provide a field day for lawyers seeking exemptions for their clients.

The law is a nonsense. Official stats have shown the impact on house prices of foreign buyers is minimal.

What had the potential to be even more controversial was a proposed clause which has now been ruled out on procedural grounds by the Speaker which would have given an exemption to a development involving an American billionaire, Queenstown developer and a northern hapu and iwi for an upmarket beachfront subdivision north of Auckland being marketed overseas.

Ironically the 106 sites beachfront subdivision at Te Arai which was the subject of the exemption was strongly criticised last year by the-then local MP, Winston Peters.

“Why do Kiwis, going about their lives as best they can, have to fight every step of the way to preserve what is their right against a billionaire developer from another country and a complicit government? “Peters said.

The Minister in Charge of the Bill, David Parker has a fringe association with one of the developers, John Darby. Both were involved with the late rich-lister and Otago businessman, Howard Patterson.

So a billionaire developer was to be exempted.

But that was opposed by Parliament’s Clerk on procedural grounds in that a public act cannot apply to “a select group of people”.

Nevertheless, the Government used its majority on the Select Committee to disregard that advice and maintain the exemption in the Bill when it was returned to Parliament.

Speaker Trevor Mallard, however, stopped it there and removed the exemption from the Bill.

Thank goodness for this. But let’s remember the Government tried to legislate these exemptions.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand Post won’t be allowed to reduce the number of outlets that provide postal services from the current total of 880, Communications Minister Clare Curran has signalled.

However, that would not necessarily rule out NZ Post closing more of its dedicated post shops – which have often doubled as Kiwibank branches – in favour of outsourcing its retail operations to agents such as bookshops, dairies and petrol stations.

So in fact the Government has agreed that NZ Post doesn’t have to keep any dedicated post shops open.

Personally I’m all in favour of that. If post shops are uneconomic, then they should close. But Labour supporters might be less keen on mass closures.

NZ Post general manager of channels Janet Selwood couldn’t forecast whether NZ Post would still operate any post shops of its own in five years.

“I couldn’t say in a five-year timeframe whether that is likely to be the case. All I can say is that the agency model – the hosted model – works well for us,” she said.

I suspect only the busiest ones will remain in five years. There’s 95 today so maybe 20 then?

She told a select committee she had written to fellow ministers in her capacity as Dunedin South’s MP to express concern about Kiwibank closures in the city impacting NZ Post.

So as an MP she complains about the closures yet as a Minister she will sign a document allowing them. Hilarious.

Idiot/Savant blogs:

Faced with the opposition filibustering two time-sensitive bills, the government moved urgency, then attempted to amend the instruction to the committee to prevent any debate on what was being voted on. The urgency isn’t problematic …  but the motion to forbid debate was an affront to our democracy. While it was withdrawn this morning – saner heads having prevailed – the fact that it was moved at all is obscene.

Oppositions exist to oppose. This will be inconvenient to the government, and that’s the point. The way governments respond under this pressure illustrates their character. And Labour has exposed itself as authoritarian and intolerant of dissent (who’d have thunk it) – not values I want to see in a government. Chris Hipkins’ childish tantrum actively undermined our democracy and the stature of our Parliament. And someone who does that is not fit to be Leader of the House.

If a National Leader of the House had done what Hipkins tried to do, there would probably be an open letter from 20 public law academics decrying the totalitarian Government.

Mike Hosking writes:

Looks like we are heading for a winter of discontent.

Nurses, IRD, MBIE, Burger King, Events Cinema, teachers, principals – have I missed anyone yet?

Thousands upon thousands are currently spending their hard earned time and energy working out whether they want to take some form of industrial action. It has been many a year since we have seen this sort of pending disruption in our workforce.

In 2016 there were three strikes involving 430 people, those are latest numbers, and if you go back over the past bunch of years it varies year to year – but the indisputable statistic that smacks you between the eyes is the simple truth that we got on with life and turned up to work.

Yep we were almost strike free for many years.

Not that there aren’t a few who probably deserve a better deal. But here’s your cold hard truth: Unions don’t get it for you.

I have never once seen an offer of 2 per cent rejected by a union, a strike to follow, and the employer brought to their knees and a new offer of 9 per cent. It doesn’t happen.

That would be an interesting area to study. When there has been a strike has there been a settlement significantly more generous than what was on offer before the strike?

Stuff reports:

Parents are concerned after 10 NZ charter schools received contract termination letters.

Middle School West Auckland (MSWA) and nine other charter schools received contract termination letters on June 7 – even before finding out if their applications to remain open as a special character school for next year was approved.

Ministry of Education said it would have a decision by July 31 but that’s meant Trinity and more than 1000 students enrolled in charter schools were left in limbo about their future.

What a kind caring Government. They do the termination letters before making a decision on whether to accept them as special character schools. So students and their families have to go through months of worry.

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.