Jo Moir writes:

Picture a world not too dissimilar to this one where Winston Peters is the prime minister.

In about seven weeks’ time, providing the prime minister’s baby arrives on its due date and Jacinda Ardern is able to work right up to it as she plans, then that will be the beginning of a new era.

But how different will it really be?

The reality is Peters won’t wield all that much power in the role – Ardern will be busy but not unreachable and has already signalled she will be in regular contact with Peters during that time.

Moir is right that Peters won’t actually be in charge. He will just be the monkey and Grant Robertson the organ grinder.

Peters’ job will simply be to do a weekly press conference and chair Cabinet (and all major decisions will be made before Cabinet).

Regardless of the title of Acting PM, Peters is leader of a party that got just 7% of the vote. He will not get to make any decisions. If any actual decisions are needed, they will be made by the Labour Party leadership.

Now Ardern will be contactable, but even if she isn’t Grant Robertson will be the de facto Acting Labour Party Leader. All major decisions will be referred to him. In theory it should be Kelvin Davis, but we all know that won’t happen.

So Grant will actually be the one running the country while Jacinda is looking after the sprog. Winston will merely get to do the weekly press conference.

Nick Leggett writes:

The headlines sound terrifying: “Deadly cost of that extra drink: 10 glasses of wine a week can cut two years off your life” or “How much booze can you drink before it starts killing you? Not much”.

Like many I saw that a few weeks ago.

So should all of us reasonable drinkers just stop drinking altogether?

Well, we could of course – we all have that choice already – but what the headlines and the words behind them fail to tell us is that those who don’t drink alcohol actually die earlier than those who drink it moderately. Some might find this hard to believe, but it’s true.

Yep moderate drinking is good for you.

But while the headlines claimed drinkers who consume fewer than 10 drinks a week had a better life expectancy than those who have more than 10, what they didn’t tell you is that the research also found that people who never drink alcohol had a shorter life expectancy than those who drank up to 25 drinks per week.

So someone having 20 standard drinks a week is still less likely to die early than a non drinker.

While the prohibitionists are trying to stamp out the word “moderation,” all major studies still point to our Ministry of Health guidelines as being sensible.

Those guidelines say 15 drinks per week for men, 10 for women and that we shouldn’t binge drink (more than five in a session), but that drinking water and eating when you drink is positive.

Sounds very sensible.

Meghan Murphy writes:

I grew up working class, and proud. My father was a Marxist who was active in the labour movement, campaigned for Canada’s left-wing New Democratic Party, and educated me about the harms of capitalism. Throughout my teen years and young adulthood, I never questioned which side I was on. To this day, I remain steadfast in my belief that everyone deserves access to affordable housing, free health care, and advanced education. I believe that poverty is unacceptable and that wealth is unethical. I believe racism and sexism are embedded within our society. I’m pink, through and through.

But politics aren’t just about words and ideas. They’re also about ethics and action—both personal and political. And though I remain a leftist in my principles, I can no longer stand in solidarity with former fellow travellers whose ethics are dictated by social convenience, who prioritize retweets over free inquiry, democracy, and debate, and who respond to disagreement with calls for censorship (or worse).

So what is it that caused Murphy to feel so estranged from others on the left?

In my experience, it isn’t the threats, insults, smears and verbal abuse you get from random trolls online that is most upsetting. Rather, it’s the betrayal from those who you thought were on your side: colleagues, friends, community members, political allies. If Men’s-Rights Activists tell me I’m a “man-hating,” “anti-sex,” “cunt”—that’s just another day at the office. But what may surprise some readers is that the bulk of the abuse I receive online—lurid demands that I should be variously guillotined, curb stomped, drowned, or bludgeoned—comes from those who claim to be leftists.

By way of background: I am sometimes smeared as a “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” (or “TERF”) because, as a feminist, I believe that gender is imposed on people through socialization, rather than innate factors; that trans-identified males have different life experiences than those of females; and that people who were born male, and have spent most of their lives as men, should not automatically be admitted to every space that is otherwise reserved for women. 

How dare she.

In May 2015, Maggie’s Toronto—a lobby group that supports the legalization of prostitution—launched a petition against me, with the intended audience being my bosses at rabble.ca. The petition claimed (falsely) that I had published “material that dehumanizes and disrespects women with different experiences and perspectives…in particular Black women, women in the sex industry, and trans women.” I also was accused of “racism, whorephobia and transmisogyny.”

Whorephobia! I love these new words.

A review performed by rabble editors and board members concluded that the claims of racism and transphobia were false, and that the allegations were rooted principally in the petitioners’ disagreement with my views about the sex industry. In other words, this was a political argument that my detractors had transformed into a personal campaign against my livelihood as an editor and writer.

All too common. We see this in NZ. If you (for example) disagree that the Maori seats are a good way to enhance Maori representation, you get called a racist.

As my own experience shows, it has become common to simply smear and misrepresent a fellow leftist’s position, even to accuse her of “hate speech,” based on differences arising from matters of policy or ideology. All of this is defended under the guise of creating a ‘safe space’ to protect the marginalized from hurtful perspectives. But who decides who is and who is not ‘marginalized,’ or which perspectives are worth listening to, and which must be dismissed out of hand as hateful? As in all movements, those with the most power tend to identify contrary opinions as dangerous heresies that must be silenced. This pattern has played out countless times, in countless places, throughout history. In its most general form, it’s called ‘political persecution.’

Yep.

Unlike a younger version of myself, I no longer believe that the positions taken by leftist parties and groups should be taken as automatically correct—nor that positions argued by centrists (or even conservatives) should be immediately rejected, without due consideration. Experience has taught me to value independent thought more than blind allegiance.

To put it bluntly, the Left has become cowardly—though you wouldn’t know it from the heroic postures and hashtags that activists adopt on social media.

The fear of dissent has made many progressives utterly incapable of self-critique or critical thought.

A very good article.

The Herald reports:

The outgoing Counties Manukau DHB acting chairman has publicly weighed in on what Government ministers were told about the state of buildings at Middlemore Hospital, and has contradicted claims made by Health Minister David Clark.

So that’s now the Chair, the CEO and a board member at odds with Clark.

Clark says he was not told at the meeting about issues with buildings other than the Scott Building.

Leaked documents showed Johnson said she “specifically told” Clark during the meeting there were similar problems in multiple buildings.

Clark dismissed that by saying Rabindran had already apologised for not mentioning the extent of the problems.

Rabindran said today he had been upset when he heard the minister explain the apology in the media later.

“I was not apologising for that, I was apologising if he thought we had breached the no surprises policy.”

The spin is coming unravelled.

Stuff reports:

A Green Party staffer says Kennedy Graham’s presence at a National Party event proves the former Green MP was never a good fit for the party.

Graham and fellow MP David Clendon resigned from the party’s list at the 2017 election over the rest of the Greens caucus’ continued support for Metiria Turei, who was under fire over her admission of benefit fraud. 

Graham, a former diplomat and academic, sought to rejoin the party list after Turei eventually resigned, but was rebuffed by the party’s executive.

Jack McDonald, a former candidate, campaigner for co-leader Marama Davidson, and current Parliamentary staffer, wrote a post on an internal Green Party Facebook group saying Graham’s planned attendance at a BlueGreens conference on Saturday proved excluding him from the list was the right decision.

“Kennedy Graham is speaking at the BlueGreens forum in Canterbury this weekend. … No wonder he sabotaged us and Metiria [Turei] when it mattered most,” McDonald wrote.

A nasty attack on Graham, from a taxpayer funded staffer (and MP in waiting).

Kennedy Graham has not joined National, He is not supporting National. He is merely speaking as part of a panel on climate change. You’d think McDonald would be pleased that National is taking the issue seriously by having someone as respected as Kennedy Graham talk to them on it. Graham of course chaired the cross-party group on it.

To suggest his taking part of a panel on climate change at the BlueGreens forum means he is a traitor to the Greens, and was sabotaging them as he is a closet Tory is petty and stupid.

I used to organise Young Nats conferences. Guess who was one of our guest speakers. Sue Bradford! Does McDonald think she is a traitor also?

Also guess which other Green MPs have attended Blue Greens forums in the past? None other than his hero Metiria Turei, and Kevin Hague. So are they also traitors?

“In the context of Kennedy still apparently having many supporters in the Party who were upset he wasn’t allowed back on the list, we need to make sure there isn’t the ability for this to happen in the future and prevent the election of Green MPs whose politics are incompatible with fundamental Green kaupapa.”

As far as I am aware the only issue on which Graham disagreed with his caucus colleagues was on the issue of benefit fraud. He thought fraud was wrong and should not be justified. Is McDonald saying a belief fraud is wrong is incompatible with Green kaupapa?

Graham declined to respond to the comments in detail, other than to point out that he was no longer a member of any political party, and that Green MPs had attended BlueGreen events in the past.

I thought the Greens had a charter saying you debate issues, not attack people. Doesn’t seem to be something their next MP believes in.

Audrey Young reports:

The worst thing a Government can do to the Opposition is to ignore it, and consign it to irrelevancy, but not so this week.

From the moment the latest Colmar Brunton political poll was published on 1 News on Monday, Labour was on the case of Simon Bridges, the new National Party leader.

Bridges polled only 10 per cent as preferred Prime Minister to the incumbent, Jacinda Ardern on 37 per cent.

But Labour has been behaving as though he was a clear and present danger.

Emissaries from the Beehive were dispatched to the Press Gallery to reinforce the point that not only that the gap between Ardern and Bridges 27 points, but that former leader Bill English had done way better against Ardern at the start of this year.

Not only that, they had further ammo targeting Bridges, who took over from English almost eight weeks ago: Bridges’ debut rating of 10 per cent compared poorly to John Key’s first rating as National Party leader at 27 per cent in 2006, and Jacinda Ardern’s first rating as Labour leader in at 26 per cent in 2017.

Labour’s home-grown leadership losers were not spared from the campaign to reinforce the apparently hopeless case of Simon Bridges – he had done even worse on debut than David Cunliffe, David Shearer and Andrew Little – historic data helpfully produced by Labour showed.

So the 9th floor sent spin doctors around the gallery to try and convince the journalists that a poll showing them slipping 5% was bad news for Simon Bridges.

If Bridges is doing so badly as preferred Prime Minister why is Labour treating him as a threat in such a concerted effort?

I’m damn sure John Key was never so insecure that he sent his staff around the gallery to try and spin the poll results as bad for the opposition leader.

Despite the Labour coalition and its parties holding a majority in the poll, there was much for National to be pleased about and a lot for Labour to be concerned about – namely the party vote.

National’s party vote support has remained virtually unmoved since the election despite the loss of a highly respected leader in Bill English, a five-way leadership contest, and in the first term of a very popular new Prime Minister.

Until the series of mishaps and controversies in the Government over the past five weeks, National had been expecting to take a hit in the polls, perhaps to the high 30s.

But brand National is stronger than they thought and the Jacinda effect has not been as strong – her own rating having fallen four points.

In fact her rating of 37% after six months in the job is the same as Key after eight years!

Historic comparisons are not necessarily valid either when it comes to comparing leader popularity to party popularity. The variables include personality, the number of prominent leaders, the time in the electoral cycle and how long the leader has been in place.

Former National Prime Minister Jim Bolger, example, won the 1993 election even though he was less popular than Labour’s Mike Moore.

Former Labour leader Helen Clark was on 2 per cent popularity in May 1995, well after gaining the Labour leadership in November 1993, although she gained popularity before becoming Prime Minister in 1999, but only to the low 20s.

Clark eventually made it to the 50s as preferred Prime Minister in early 2002, when the Alliance was falling apart, as did her successor as Prime Minister, John Key.

Doing well in Preferred PM helps, but it is not a pre-requisite for winning. The party vote is what matters.

But Labour must be worried that if National’s support has held up without Bridges having done so, then he really does present a real threat if he succeeds in establishing himself more positively.

If they were not worried, they wouldn’t have tried to spin it as bad for him.

The Washington Post reports:

If Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. is the Golden State Killer, as police allege, then he spent his 30s in a nearly nonstop frenzy of sadistic violence — breaking into a house every few weeks in the late 1970s, raping dozens of women, and escalating to serial killings before the crime spree suddenly ended in 1986.

And if DeAngelo is the killer — police say his DNA proves that he is — then he fit these 45 suspected rapes and 12 suspected murders into an astonishing double life. He was a Vietnam War veteran before the spree, a police officer during the spree, and then a husband, father and grandfather who lived quietly among the same communities that the Golden State Killer had terrorized.

Assuming they got the right person (and DNA is rarely wrong) this is an incredible achievement.

It seems how they did it was check the DNA at crime scenes with an genealogy company that has tens of thousands of DNA samples. He was not registered with the site, but a relative of his was. Once they got the DNA match to the relative, they then had a short list of a dozen suspects or so.

This may catch other criminals in future. They may never ever give a DNA sample themselves, but if even a fourth cousin does, that may be enough of a match to send the Police in the right direction.

Of course you would generally expect the genealogy company not to share your DNA, but some sites allow people to post their DNA publicly, and it seems this was one of those sites.

So we should be very thankful to the distant cousin whose interest in genealogy has led to this arrest.

CNN reports:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Un, signed the “Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula,” while standing in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that has divided the two countries for more than six decades.

A reader writes in:

As a fellow WCC watcher I thought I would flag the following for your attention. It seems WCC is going cap in hand to the government looking for an extra $25m for the Movie Museum. This stems from rising costs related to the project’s facade. As I am sure you will recall this was the most expensive of the three facade options, which Justin Lester and other councillors endorsed at the time. As a ratepayer I find it incredibly frustrating that WCC continues to spend up large on vanity projects ($90m on the Town Hall refurbishment) and gold plating others (Movie Museum) on ratepayers’ dime.

Their largesse means free parking in the city on weekends is under threat (highly regressive), and increases in rates will continue to outpace inflation by a widening margin.* What makes this irresponsible spending even more galling is that happens while spending on critical infrastructure is neglected. For example, Wellington has one main water pipe connecting it to water infrastructure further north. This pipe crosses a major fault, and should it be severed in an earthquake the city and surrounding suburbs will be cut off. WCC has known about this for decades, but has consistently neglected necessary but invisible investments in favour of ribbon cutting projects. Shame on our elected officials.

I can only agree. Fewer votes in water infrastructure but I’d much rather have that invested in, than $90 million on a second concert chamber.

Politik reports:

A former National MP and NZ First “bagman”  has proposed a plan to get New Zealand ready to profit from any opening up of North Korea that may occur after the talks between President Trump and Kim Il Sung.

Ross Meurant has put a proposal to Foreign Minister Winston Peters to finance a Kapa Haka group to go to North Korea. as a forerunner to building up exports of New Zealand food to the country. …

And it may be that he is the inspiration behind Winston Peters’ recent proposal for a Free Trade Agreement with North Korea —  – an idea that even one of the Labour MPs closest to Peters,  Trade Minister David Parker dismissed as a joke.

But there have been more to Peters’ comments than Parker realised.

Peters and Meurant were once close political allies, and Meurant acted as NZ First’s “bagman” collecting donations for the party from 1999 to 2204.

People have often speculated as to why Peters was so insistent that NZ pursue a FTA with Russia. He has opposed pretty much every other FTA ever and has long campaigned as a protectionist.

It would seem a reasonable assumption that the moves towards trade with both Russia and North Korea come as a result of Ross Meurant’s influence. Meurant is, as stated, the former fundraiser for Winston First.

So Ross Meurant seems to be a short of Shadow Foreign Minister for NZ, with more influence over policy that MFAT.

Matthew Hooton also writes:

Tough UN sanctions backed by the threat of imprisonment under New Zealand law mean only a handful of New Zealand businesspeople currently have any links with North Korea.

One of the few is Ross Meurant, who was Peters’ part-time agriculture, forestry, fishing and racing adviser from 1999 to 2004, when he resigned after it was revealed he was also working for Simunovich Fisheries and Barine Developments who were involved in the scampi inquiry. …

If something ever does come from Peters’ work to help normalise North Korea’s relationship with the rest of the world, Meurant will be well-placed to help other New Zealand businesspeople make their first approaches to the hermit kingdom.

Peters’ musings about an FTA with North Korea are therefore more explicable than Bennett suggested.

I’m not sure of the current relationship between Ross Meurant and Winston, but it certainly does look like most of Winston’s musings on foreign policy and trade are in line with Meurant’s and very beneficial to him.

Politik reports:

Energy Minister Megan Woods yesterday confirmed that the country may run out of gas in seven years.

Yay, the country will be saved. The world will be better. Oh wait. No it won’t be. We’ll just have to import coal instead.

The change In timeframe is important because it cuts the amount of time that oil explorers with existing permits have to get any new wells up and running if there is to be no gap in supply.

Here’s the problem. If a company has an exploration permit and finds gas or oil, they then need to get a mining permit. And does anyone think this ideological Government would ever grant one? So in reality current exploration permits are useless.

And it puts immense pressure on electricity generators to build new renewable generation plants from wind or geothermal.

If they can’t meet the seven-year deadline then it is likely that they will either have to import gas or use coal to run stations when demand peaks.

It’s hard to find policies that are bad for both the economy and the environment but Labour has managed it.

Jo Moir at Stuff gives out six month scorecards to the Ministers. Her ratings are:

• 10/10
• 9/10: Andrew Little
• 8/10: Jacinda Ardern, Shane Jones, David Parker
• 7/10: Winston Peters, Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins, James Shaw, Julie-Anne Genter
• 6/10: Megan Woods, Iain Lees-Galloway, Damien O’Connor, Stuart Nash
• 5/10: Phil Twyford, David Clark, Ron Mark, Tracey Martin
• 4/10
• 3/10: Nanaia Mahuta, Jenny Salesa, Carmel Sepuloni
• 2/10: Kelvin Davis
• 1/10: Clare Curran

The PSA has said:

PSA National Secretaries Erin Polaczuk and Glenn Barclay have expressed deep concerns about comments by Regional Development Minister Shane Jones, calling for politicians to have more control over public servants.

“Mr Jones’ view of the public service is outdated, out of touch and – frankly – out of order,” Mr Barclay and Ms Polaczuk say.

“The measures he suggests would undermine public servants’ constitutional role.

“They need to be free, frank and fearless – not controlled, cowed and cronyistic.”

I agree with the PSA. If is disturbing that a senior Minister who is spending billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money wants to have a public service controlled by his cronies.

Auckland University has a three year role for a witch hunter.

The School of Population Health, based at the University of Auckland’s Tamaki Campus, is seeking to employ a Research Fellow as part of a project team investigating ways in which unhealthy commodity industries (alcohol, tobacco, gambling and food) influence public policy.

So a job whose purpose it is to demonise companies for wanting a say in how they are regulated. And all taxpayer funded as an academic research exercise.

I love how food is included as an unhealthy commodity!

Anyway a three year job to write a paper whose conclusions are easy to predict now.

Market Urbanism reports:

Between 2010 and 2016, when overall national housing permits ticked up each year following the recession, most major metros have issued housing permit numbers in the high 4- or low 5-figures annually. But three metros have stood far above the rest.

The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA issued 273,853 housing permits over this 7-year period; New York-Newark-Jersey City issued 283,814; and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land topped every metro with 316,639 permits. Combined, the 3 metros accounted for 13.5% of the nation’s approved housing units.

There are 382 MSAs in the US, so to have 14% of permits in just those three is something.

To see how, let’s look at the nation’s 11 largest metro areas, which include the 6 listed above, plus Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, Boston and San Francisco. These metros vary somewhat, but are cut from the same cloth–they would all fit sociologist Saskia Sassen’s “Global City” description, given they are massive agglomerations for business and wealth. And except for Chicago and Philadelphia–which both still have their other foot in the post-industrial decline model–all of them are growing rapidly by population, increasing by at least 200,000 people from early 2010 to mid-2015, and in many cases by 2 or 3 times that. It stands to reason, then, that this massive jobs and population growth would lead to a dogfight for housing in each of these metros, as large numbers of wealthy and non-wealthy people compete for the limited supply.

But this is the case only in some metros, not others.

Houston and Dallas are the most notable examples of where such scarcity has not occurred–in fact, it’s almost been the opposite. Between 2010 and 2015, these two metros had the most net population growth, at 736,531 and 676,582, respectively. They are also perennially among the leaders in corporate and business relocation, job growth, and wage growth. But they have the 2nd and 3rd cheapest median home prices of the 11 metros, at $176,000 and $202,000, respectively

So they have strong population growth and the cheapest house prices. So the solution is not to blame house prices on people with Chinese sounding surnames.

These statistics are glaring, and show that the urban housing affordability crisis, and its solution, is far simpler than many pundits suspect. In their ongoing quest to satisfy their anti-growth biases, they’ve settled on demand-side responses (read: government subsidies) that ignore or worsen the fundamental problem of under-supply; while they continue to blame various third party boogeymen, including developers, landlords, Airbnb hosts, techies, hipsters, Asian families buying second homes, and migrants in general.

But, again, the Census data sheds light on the actual nature of the issue: some metros in America are building a LOT of housing. Other metros may think they are, but actually are not. And housing prices within given metros are either stabilizing or skyrocketing based on this decision. While it’s not clear just how many units metros like San Francisco need to reach market equilibrium, it’s obviously more than 10,000 per year, given that the population is growing by 60,000 people annually. Meanwhile, only 3 of these major destination metros are issuing truly significant permit numbers, and only two of them–Dallas and Houston–are doing so without tacking on a bunch of added regulatory costs. Not coincidentally, they’re also America’s two leading affordability success stories, growing by the largest raw population numbers, yet maintaining some of the cheapest housing.

And Dallas and Houston have planning laws that make it easy to build.

One of the reasons the US is in such dire straits is it doesn’t have a neutral public service like we do in NZ. All the top officials are political appointments.

Well Shane Jones wants us to go down the same path. Stuff reports:

Cabinet Minister Shane Jones, says he would like to “soften that line” between governance and the bureaucracy, including allowing ministers to appoint top officials.

Because he wants officials who will not give free and frank advice. He just wants sycophants.

In an interview on the provincial growth fund Jones, the Regional Development Minister railed against a bureaucratic system he characterised as a “treacle-riddled”, slowing down process around funding economic projects, without evidence of improved efficiency.

This is risible as if he had listened to his officials he wouldn’t have ended up handing out so much dud money.

Jones said his comments were not Government policy and were “not consistent with the State Services Act” but were ones he would like to campaign on in the future.

So if this current Government is returned, one of the trade offs might be a neutral public service. Will the PSA speak up?

Newsroom has graded the Government in a number of areas. Rather generous in my opinion, but some I agree with. Their grades are:

• A: First 100 days
• B+: Education, Health
• B: Economy, Budget, Trade, Environment, Poverty, Regional Development
• B-: Transport, Housing, Workplace Relations
• C+: Political Management
• C: Foreign Affairs
• D: Immigration
• F: Open Government and Transparency

The Government spin continues to unravel. Stuff reports:

Mark Darrow is a professional director, chartered accountant and Justice of the Peace who sits on numerous boards, including the New Zealand Transport Agency, and who lived in the Counties Manukau area for nearly 30 years.

He leaves the board with a “heavy heart” and says he has had absolutely no explanation for why he’s been removed.

The story begins in December 2016 when four ministerial appointments were made under the then-National government. They were Darrow, Rabin Rabindran, Lester Levy and George Ngatai.

Levy has already left, Ngatai is staying on, but for Rabindran and Darrow their time on the board has ended without warning – simply a letter from Health Minister David Clark saying they’re being removed.

Earlier this month Rabindran, who is the acting chair, and Darrow received a letter from Clark saying their position on the board was being reconsidered and they had until April 12 to make a case for why they should keep their jobs.

Rabindran, fed up with how things had been handled, chose to respond by saying he didn’t want to continue on the board regardless of Clark’s final decision.

Darrow, however, responded several times through until late on April 11 with documents outlining how the Board had dealt with various issues over the last year.

But by 7.39am on April 13 Darrow had a response from Clark – his time was up and his last day on the board would be May 2.

Twelve days later however, and Clark is still telling media that the process around Rabindran and Darrow’s future is still underway despite them already having their termination letters.

So is this just an excuse to appoint some new Directors? The shareholder can of course sack directors at any time, but to do so without giving any reason for doing so is very suspicious.

Darrow said he has given Clark three chances to meet with him but had been declined or not given the courtesy of an answer on every occasion.

To this day he’s never met Clark, never spoken to him or received any correspondence from him other than a final notice letter and then his removal letter, he said.

Not exactly good faith.

“He never rang me, never raised any issues and he won’t meet with me. In the letters he’s never even said what, if any, his concerns are – no one, not him, his office or anyone in the Ministry of Health, has ever outlined to me any issue at all with my or the Board’s performance.”

Which suggests an existing agenda.

Suggestions sewage was running down the walls are “a complete beat up” and while there was a leak, it was in 2013/14 and was fixed, Darrow said.

There is one type of PVC pipe in one building that remains a risk but the “contract for repair has been signed and work is imminent”.

So for weeks the Government said this was symbolic of the public health system, which in fact it is only symbolic of their spin.

Earlier this month Stuff revealed the DHB acting chief executive Gloria Johnson was at odds with Clark over what he was told about the state of Middlemore Hospital’s problems when he visited on March 13.

She says Clark was specifically told there were “similar problems in multiple buildings”, which Clark denies. He says there was “no mention of any other urgent works” other than the Scott Building.

Clark and his adviser were both given dossiers of information that day that included the full remediation plan and costings but Clark says only the Scott Building was drawn to his attention.

Another Minister who doesn’t read his papers it seems.

Darrow wasn’t there the day of the visit but says he’s received emails and has spoken to other people who were there who say Johnson’s account of what happened was “accurate and consistent”.

He says Clark’s office contacted DHB asking for another copy of the information that was provided at that visit on the same day Stuff asked questions about it.

So did the Minister just throw it away?

Newshub reports:

The decision to ban future oil and gas exploration was made without a cost benefit analysis to back it up, Newshub can reveal.

This is pretty damning. They didn’t have any advice from officials on the costs and benefits of their decision. They just make a decision to kill off an entire industry based on their own ideologies.

The Energy Minister has also admitted no formal consultation with the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ) took place.

Yep this kind caring listening Government didn’t even consult with the industry before deciding to wipe them out.

There’s also been no estimates on whether global greenhouse gas emissions will fall as a result of the decision.

So in summary we have no economic impact analysis, no environmental impact analysis and no consultation. Disgusting.

Advice or estimates on increases or decreases to gas prices are also missing from the background work on the policy.

“No specific estimate has been provided to me on the price impact on gas of the decision to grant no further offshore oil and gas exploration permits. Officials have advised that gas prices have risen in the past when the supply of gas has been constrained,” Dr Woods said.

And no advice on the cost of heating homes going up.