There are three seeking Labour’s nomination, and five (after pre-selection) seeking National’s nomination. They are:

Labour

• Shanan Halbert, 2017 candidate, head of relationships at Te Wanaga o Aotearoa, former parliamentary funded staffer
• Richard Hills, Auckland Councillor, popular with people on both left and right
• Paul McGreal

Halbert and Hills have similar demographic backgrounds.

National

• Dan Bidois, economist, works for Foodstuffs, has worked for OECD. Has an MPP from Harvard
• Danielle Grant, Chair Kaipatiki Local Board, marketing consultant
• Darren Ward
• Lisa Whyte, Chair Upper Harbour Local Board, accountant
• Simon Watts

Stuff reports:

Pool builders and designers have slammed a government ruling banning the use of automatic pool covers instead of fences.

As they should. The aim of the regulation is to stop kids getting into polls without supervision. A pool cover can do that just as well as a fence.

Last month, the ministry said it did not view pool covers as a safe option compared to the “risk associated with a compliant pool fence”, which had automatically closing gates or door alarms.

Kids can open a gate a lot easier than they can remove a pool cover.

Bonham said the Building Act did not explicitly rule-out using automatic pool covers instead of fences.

“There is no mention in the [Building] Act that the pool has to be fenced, it says a barrier can be used, an auto pool cover is a barrier.

This should be tested in court.

“I think each property has to be looked at and the council makes up its [own] mind that a cover is suitable and [whether] there is no adverse effects for children,” Bonham said. 

Yep case by case basis.

In terms of evidence it seems no kid has drowned at a pool with an automated cover but several have drowned at fenced pools.

Radio NZ reports:

The Press Council has not upheld a complaint against a column by Sir Bob Jones calling for a ‘Māori Gratitude Day’, despite calling it “mean, malicious and infantile”.

Sir Bob wrote the column for NBR, calling for a Māori gratitude day instead of Waitangi Day, and saying Māori should bring pākehā breakfast in bed and weed their gardens out of gratitude for existing.

He claimed he was trying to be satirical and did not believe people would take his comments literally.

Good to see free speech not dead in NZ.

The Council noted that Sir Bob had a history of writing provocative columns, including calling for racial stereotyping, a call to ban all women drivers and the high number of obese people he had observed from his office window.

Bob Jones has been writing wonderfully offensive columns and books since the 1970s. I recommend his Bob Jones Letters in 1982 and 80s Letters in 1990 as great reads.

Stuff reports:

The fate of an expressway designed to save lives at a notorious roading black spot remains in limbo after the Government released its roading policy, despite the significant planning already completed.

It has left a council unable to properly plan for the future of its biggest town and the local MP describing the situation as “soul destroying”.

This is what happens when you have a Government that hates cars and roads.

Ōtaki MP Nathan Guy said the Levin expressway was “on the scrap heap” under the policy statement.

The expressway would help move traffic up the North Island, and link to Transmission Gully, the Kāpiti Expressway and Peka Peka to Ōtaki road project.

“It makes logical sense for the bulldozers to carry on, otherwise Levin will be the worst choke point in the lower North Island.”

The Levin expressway met the Government’s objective of road safety, which is highlighted in the policy statement, Guy said.

“This section [of road] should be a priority because it has claimed 11 lives in the last five years and seriously injured 43 motorists.”

That’s a real black spot.

Horowhenua mayor Michael Feyen said the community was over the uncertainty.

“People’s lives and their plans are affected – our residents deserve certainty about the proposed route and also when it will occur.”

The council was about to start working on a Levin town centre strategy, which the expressway was a key part of, Feyen said.

Various other council projects had been delayed during the past few years due to the lack of a solid plan.

“This project has been on again, off again, for nearly a decade,” Feyen said.

The expressway would ease congestion and make life safer for motorists, he said.

There were constant crashes and floods on State Highway 1 south of Levin, forcing the road to be closed often.

But rejoice people living in Levin. There may be some light rail in Auckland!

UPDATE: The Government has now changed tune and said it will still happen. However I’d take that with a grain of salt considering how hard Labour and Green MPs fought against other roading projects in the area. Believe it once construction actually starts.

The PM has announced the key dates:

• Sun 15 April – Coleman resign
• Mon 7 May – Writ Day
• Tue 15 May – Nominations close
• Sat 9 June – By-Election Day
• Tue 26 June – Writ returned

9 June is basically the last possible date it could be. So expect a long campaign.

A useful tweet by journalist Patrick Smellie:

Is pedantic to question the narrative about under-investment at Middlemore when today’s DHB stats show the capital budget is significantly underspent? I.e., under-funding can’t be the issue if money for capital upgrades is going unspent.

— Pattrick Smellie (@pjsmellie) April 9, 2018

Labour are desperately trying to use the mould issue to divert attention from all the stuff they are mismanaging. In reality the issue is pretty simple.

The DHB never raised the issue of the mould with the Government. It never asked for money to deal with it. In fact it is not even clear if the DHB knew there was a significant issue until recently.

The reality as Smellie points out is that they have actually been underspending their capital budget. So this was not a case of an underfunded DHB.

Now the nature of Government is you always get unexpected expenses. This is why Governments normally allow $1.5 billion a year or so of operational allowances to cater for unexpected expenses. The problem Labour has is that they have pre-allocated almost all of their future operational allowances – this is the point Steven Joyce was trying to make.

The mould issue at Middlemore is not a hugely expensive one. An estimate I’ve seen is it might cost $25 million to fix. The Government spends over $70 billion a year.

The previous Government had huge unexpected expenses. $20 billion or so on the Christchurch earthquakes. Hundreds of millions on Kaikoura. Pike River. The Rena cost $50 million etc. To have Labour cry shock and horror because one DHB has an unanticipated expense just shows how unused to governing they are.

A smart column by Emma Espiner:

Old white men have been responsible for many of the opportunities I’ve been fortunate to have. Most of my jobs have come courtesy of mid-vintage and well-cellared white men. They’ve been generous with their support, encouragement and importantly their willingness to push me forward into leadership positions.   

I have felt uneasy about our Minister for Women, Julie Anne Genter’s, comments that “old white men” should make way for others since she uttered them. Nobody in my circle of friends is going to cry in sympathy for the old white men, but I do think of some of the mentors I’ve known and how they might feel hearing something like that.  …

I don’t have a problem with the sentiment of her speech – that the leadership of our country is skewed towards a specific group which no longer reflects (it never did) our diverse population. My problem is this: it’s now acceptable to publicly disparage someone if they have a specific trifecta of age, gender and ethnicity.  

This is key. Most people are supportive of greater diversity and the benefits that flow from that. But you have a sub-set of New Zealanders who use old white men as a term of abuse and sneering.

I believe we undermine the opportunity to bring everyone on the journey towards a more equitable society when we negatively single out anyone based on their skin colour or gender. If we believe that correcting harmful inequities lies in asserting an inherent malice and/or obsolescence in all people with a specific combination of age, gender and ethnicity then we have already lost the fight. 

Well said.

Here’s the thing though. I’m telling my Māori daughter that nobody should ever judge her for her gender or the colour of her skin. How do I then turn around, and in the same breath, encourage her to look at her father who’s not far off being an old white guy, and tell her that she can judge him and everyone else like him for exactly those things. 

Guyon isn’t old – he’s younger than me!

Stuff reports:

The number of newborn babies being taken away from their mothers into government care is leaping, new figures show.

Over the last three years, 574 babies ended up in Government care within the first month of their life, according to figures released under the Official Information Act. …

The number has climbed over the last three years, with 225 in 2017 – 38 more than 2016 and 63 more than 2015.

So a modest increase.

Forty five of these were taken from their mum the day they were born.

Those 45 would be from mums who have such a horrendous history of abuse and neglect that they know they will not be allowed to keep any further children. However for some reasons they keep getting pregnant.

Child protection agency Oranga Tamariki said some of the babies would have been taken for planned adoption rather than protection reasons and taking any child away was a last resort.

Yep. There will have been multiple incidences of abuse in the past.

Paora Moyle, a social worker of 20 years, now working on a PhD around state care, said more children are being uplifted from their family than ever before.

The practice was doing more harm than good for the babies, Moyle said.

Moyle, who used to work for Oranga Tamariki – then known as Child Youth and Family – said caregivers aren’t always screened and social workers are over-worked and under-resourced.

That is not a reason to leave children with parents who will neglect and abuse them. That is a reason to do better screening and more resourcing.

More than half of these newborns are uplifted from young Māori mothers, Moyle said.

“You’ve got institutional racism rife.

Or more mothers who abuse their kids are Maori. Blaming every disparity in racism is tiring.

A large proportion of eventual prisoners come from a state care background, she said.

“There are more children harmed going into state care than there are being saved.

State care is a terrible option. It is the second worst option. Yes it has terrible outcomes. But leaving kids with parents who are incapable or unwilling of raising kids safely is the worst option.

Stuff reports:

Intermediate school students admitted they lied that their teacher indecently assaulted girls so he would be fired after yelling at them in class, a court heard.

The admission came when two students gave evidence in court after police charged the teacher.

Despite the admissions that they made the story up, the teacher has lost his job and feels a 40 year career is in ruins. 

Why has he lost his job? Surely its the students that should be leaving the school, not the teacher?

A boy who initially claimed he witnessed the indecencies admitted there had been a plan to make up stories about the teacher to get him fired after he had told them off during class for misbehaving and being disrespectful.

“I joined in because my friends were there and I wanted to support them and because I didn’t really want to put up with any of that other stuff,” he said. 

The two other girls continued to claim they had been indecently assaulted and the crown said there was no evidence of collusion between the students.

The jury at the six day trial in the Auckland District Court in March took less than an hour to find the teacher not guilty on all charges.

So it actually went to trial and a verdict. He had to spend a week in court.

The teacher admits that on March 23, 2017 he lost his temper in class after students began painting their hands and arms black. 

He swore at the students, and there was a tense standoff in the classroom.

That, Corlett says, is when the students devised a plan to get the teacher fired. Within days they had made their complaint to a fellow teacher and police began investigating. The teacher was charged in July.

Outside of court Corlett said it was clear the accusations were false.

“It was obvious from the video interview that were conducted by the police of two of the complainants and two so-called ‘eye-witnesses’ that their stories were hopelessly vague, inconsistent and implausible.

“They were irreconcilable with each other,” Corlett said.

“Hundreds of hours of police resources and six days of jury time were wasted getting to what were inevitable not-guilty verdicts – all of which could have been avoided had the police approached the allegations with a healthy scepticism instead of swallowing whole what were obviously false accounts, Corlett said. 

The job of Police is to consider the evidence, not just accept allegations as truth. If the witnesses had inconsistent and implausible accounts, then the job of Police is to take that into account.

The Dom Post reports:

The chances of Wellington getting a billion-dollar light rail system are looking good, mayor Justin Lester believes.

He reckons there is a “strong likelihood” of the long-talked-about project happening, after the Government’s latest transport policy announcement prioritised rapid rail above state highway upgrades.

If the Government does implement this Labour-Green wet dream, it will be the biggest white elephant of recent times.

The Regional Council costed this not long ago. The benefit to cost ratio was 0.05. Not 0.5 but 0.05. A BCR of 1 means a project is worth funding. A BCR of 0.5 means the costs will be twice as large as the benefits. A BCR of 0.05 means the costs will be 20 times as large as the benefits.

For every $1 million spent on Wellington light rail, the benefits will be just $50,000. It’s madness, but one in which left politicians want to throw our money at.

Light rail in some areas does stack up economically, such as parts of Auckland. But in Wellington it does not – not even close.

A good article by Mingyue Sheng and Basil Sharp:

Congestion pricing, not fuel tax, holds the best promise of easing Auckland’s traffic woes and future-proofing road funding.

Transport should be user pays. A fuel tax is a proxy for user pays, but congestion charging allows a far more accurate charging regime.

Central Government collects revenue from a countrywide fuel tax that contributes to the national road networks. Ratepayers contribute to the development and maintenance of local roads. Those travelling by public transport pay a fraction of the total cost of that service – ratepayers contribute too, even if they don’t use public transport.

This means that, ironically, transport infrastructure is one of the few government services where there is an extremely weak connection between user pays and service. Many Auckland residents pay the fuel tax and don’t use the national network.

Those using the local network see little connection between the rates they pay and the quality of the particular roads they drive. Transparency is lacking and there is a serious misalignment between who pays for the roads and who uses them.

Yep.

Now if the extra money from the regional fuel tax was used to fund light rail to Westgate and to the airport, then commuters on those routes would benefit from the switch to public transport, but the cost would be shouldered by everyone who buys fuel in Auckland.

This would hurt lower-income households more because fuel taxes are regressive – fuel accounts for a bigger portion of lower-income households’ pay compared with better-off households.

A fuel tax is regressive. It will take money from all motorists and provide benefits to just a few people.

In the long run, modelling predicts higher petrol prices will encourage the use of more fuel-efficient cars and a switch to hybrid/electric vehicles, rather than a wholesale shift to public transport. This means inevitably revenues from fuel taxes will decline. How will infrastructure be funded then?

Congestion pricing offers at least part of the solution to both congestion and this looming funding gap. The technology now exists to charge users per kilometre travelled, time of travel and location, and to vary charges across the day and week to flatten out traffic peaks.

Not only would this be more persuasive in changing behaviour, it would allow for better alignment of infrastructure assets with use.

Raising fuel tax will not solve Auckland’s congestion. Transport policy needs to step into the digital age.

I agree absolutely. You should pay based on not just how long you travel for, buy which roads you travel on and if you travel at peak or off peak times.

Driven reports:

Tesla has increased production of its Model 3 mass-market car in the first quarter but still fell far short of the numbers it promised last year.

The company says it made just under 9,800 Model 3s from January through March. That’s four times what it made in the fourth quarter. But it’s still only a fraction of the 20,000 per month that CEO Elon Musk promised when Tesla first started making the car.

So they are making around 3,000 a month instead of 20,000. I bet you that means their costs are way above budget. At some stage there will be a reckoning.

Mike Hosking writes:

I wonder if the backlash to the Government’s tax announcement on fuel has something to do with conviction.

I wonder if the backlash, as much as anything, is about people perhaps subliminally feeling that this is all a bit of a con.

Here’s your problem, as has been quite rightly pointed out. Firstly, fuel tax is a new tax – and the Government trying to argue it isn’t is a lie.

Have other governments adjusted the excise? Yes. But that doesn’t make it a reason to do it yourself – especially when you explicitly bent over backwards during the election campaign arguing that there would be no new taxes.

You had a tax working group, and whatever they came up with and got adopted would be taken to the poll of 2020, so we could all vote on it.

That was fair and clear, and made political sense. It’s like arguing income tax is already in place, and because you’re taking the top rate to 39, that’s just an adjustment not a new tax. No one would believe it or accept it.

Would people have voted Labour if they knew they would put up the price of petrol by 25 cents a litre?

Secondly, and here’s the really important bit when it comes to credibility, this fuel tax is paying for buses and trains and trams. Now, the fact this Government is pro-public transport is not a surprise to anyone, and they’re allowed to be.

But if you are, be honest with it, and be bold with it. In other words, don’t slap drivers of cars with taxes and say it’s for roads when it isn’t. Don’t dress it up as something it’s not.

This is what is annoying motorists. They will be paying 25 cents a litre for for petrol, but the Government will slash spending on roads. It’s not user pays. It’s whack it all to the motorists because the Greens hate cars.

The danger is, if excise is suddenly for anything you want, why not regional air routes? Why not electric car subsidies? Why not any pet transport project you can dream up?

A tagged tax has to be a tagged tax, otherwise it’s a rort.

Motorists will be paying 25 cents a litre more and in return the Government will spend $5 billion less on roads. Not a great deal.

Stuff reports:

Green backbencher Marama Davidson is the new co-leader of the party.

She replaces Metiria Turei as female co-leader alongside male co-leader James Shaw.

Davidson won a resounding victory against the only other competitor Julie Anne Genter, with 110 votes to 34.

Congratulations to Marama and commiserations to Julie Anne. A huge margin of victory.

Matthew Hooton wrote in Metro that Davidson was the better choice as the Greens have ruled out ever working with National. This means their best hunting ground is to the left of Labour.

The challenge is that Labour is looking so left itself on many issues, that it will be hard to make the case to vote for Davidson and Shaw rather than Ardern. Ardern is arguably more purist on climate change than they are.

The election of Davidson is interesting from a Maori perspective. Four of the five parliamentary parties now have a Maori leader. Only Labour do not.

Three of the five parties also have a Maori deputy leader.

In fact of the nine MPs who have leadership roles in parties, only two are not Maori – James Shaw and Jacinda Ardern.

Davidson should be effective for the Greens as she is not a Minister. It means 100% of her energies will go into flying the Green brand, not reading cabinet papers and meeting officials.

However her views of what will attract more voters to the Greens may be an issue. Gaza is not an issue for most New Zealanders.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand has one of the least generous pensions relative to the working wage, according to research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Retirees in the Netherlands receive more than 100 per cent of their country’s average working wage but Kiwi superannuitants get just 43 per cent – ranking it 6th worst equal with Australia.

But this is not comparing apples with apples.

We are almost unique in the world in having a superannuation scheme that is universal with no means testing or asset testing, and where employees do not contribute to the scheme (no compulsory contributions).

There is no other state scheme as generous in my view.

But increasing the retirement age was still on the agenda for many: half of the OECD countries planned to do so in the future, including some that had linked it to rising life expectancy.

Under New Zealand’s Labour-led Government the age of eligibility for New Zealand Superannuation is set to stay at 65.

Countries lifting the age to over 65 are:

• 67 – Australia, Iceland, Israel, Norway, US
• 68 – Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Slovak, UK
• 71 – Italy, Netherlands
• 74 – Denmark

It is madness that we are not lifting the age also.

The Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill passed its third reading on Tuesday.

It is good to see the stigma of a criminal record being removed for something that should have never been illegal – having sex with another consensual adult.

Many good contributions to the debate from MPs on all sides. Worth reading the Hansard linked above.

But one contribution from Louisa Wall I will take a small issue with:

I’m incredibly proud to come from a country and a Parliament that, after 151 years of colonisation—lest we forget; these laws came from our coloniser. This is part of our colonial history, and it’s incredibly interesting, when you go to these IPU forums and you have the African countries and you have the Asian countries and they all talk about this being abnormal behaviour, but the reality is the condemnation of this behaviour came from England, and I believe that England, as a colonising power, still has a lot of work to do to help us move from a world that is filled with hate to a world that’s filled with love. 

There is an element of truth to this, that the English moral code was influential in colonised countries.

But it is simplistic to say that attitudes in Africa and Asia are all due to English colonisation. I think you’ll find countries with Spanish and French colonisation have similiar attitudes.

And more to the point, the major correlation with criminalising homosexual behaviour is whether or not Islam is the major religion of the country.  The 10 countries that execute people for consensual homosexual activity are all Islamic.

Also prejudice against homosexuality goes back to Roman times, so blaming it all on England is rather over the top.

Tracy Watkins writes:

It’s a sign of how much pressure this Government is under that instead of quietly rolling out bad news as everyone headed off on their Easter break it waited till the holiday was over for maximum impact.

The proposed 9-12c a litre rise in fuel tax – a double whammy for Auckland to 20c a litre – will go down like a cup of the proverbial in parts of New Zealand where the Government’s draft 10-year transport plan proposes a big shift in funding away from roads to public transport.

It isn’t just Auckland that will have a regional fuel tax. Their law allows other areas to do one also. So motorists all over NZ could be facing an extra 25 cents a litre.

Less popular may be a separate proposal for a 70kmh speed limit on some rural roads, though it is not part of the Government’s clutch of announcements and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has mostly poured cold water on it.

But that could easily be lost in translation, and the Government could wear the backlash from provincial and rural New Zealand.

That’s probably not what Labour had in mind for its rolling maul of initiatives between now and the May Budget to wrest back the political initiative.

But at this stage it would take any headline that shows it’s getting on with the job, over the distractions of recent weeks.

Ardern headed into this week desperately needing to regain her footing after a string of disasters involving Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran, NZ First MPs running amok, and the party’s abysmal handling of Labour youth camp allegations.

So announcing a tax hike is not as bad as another scandal!

The Herald reports:

The government’s proposed labour law reforms re-establish a kind of “compulsory unionism”, and many provisions of the Employment Relations Reform Bill conflict with its objective of promoting “a high performing, high wage economy,” says peak business lobby group Business New Zealand.

This is at the heart of what Labour wants. They want to force all workers in an industry to pay dues to a union, and then the union will help fund Labour’s re-election campaign in return.

Already publishing their submissions are Business NZ and Horticulture New Zealand, the latter representing some 5,000 small to medium-scale seasonal employers. Both are warning about an increased likelihood of industrial action, in conflict with another the bill’s aims: “to build productive workplace relationships founded on good faith”.

We’ve already seen a significant increase in strikes and stoppages.

An interesting profile of Chris Liddell in Stuff. Like many top flyers, he comes from a very modest background. Some key details:

• After all debts were settled, Laurence Liddell (his father) left his family with $5.
• Mum worked at a cafe where she was able to bring home any unsold food to help feed five children.
• In recent years, he and his brother John have donated $1 million to Mt Albert Grammar. And Liddell has contributed $450,000 to send Auckland University students to do postgraduate studies at Oxford – providing young “all-rounders” the scholarship he missed out on.
• “I try to never forget that in my good years, I have earned in one year more than my father earned in his lifetime. Perhaps because of that I value experiences much more than possessions. I’d like to eventually give away all the money that I have earned during my lifetime.”
• Liddell had expressed increasing alarm at the depth of intergenerational social problems in New Zealand, according to Hinton. Many people of their generation had, naively, grown up thinking such social deprivation happened elsewhere. “He and I would have a problem with a lot of theory on the Left that throwing money at something is the solution.”

150 years ago if you were born into a poor family, you would probably spend your life poor. Today we have numerous examples of people born into poor families and doing incredibly well – John Key and Chris Liddell being great examples.

Stuff reports:

Labour MP Paul Eagle has apologised for an incident that saw a Wellingtonian call him an “entitled douchebag.”

A Reddit user named “Cuthbertus” posted about the incident on the New Zealand subreddit on Friday afternoon, saying Eagle rung into their work and swore at them when he couldn’t get his way.

The full Reddit thread is quite interesting. It seems a number of people have uncomplimentary stories.

Eagle says the whole thing was a misunderstanding, and that he was swearing at people blocking his way into his office – not someone on the phone.

Of course. Happens all the time.

In a self-described rant this user said Eagle was “the most entitled, rude and disrespectful man I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with.”

“It says a lot about a person’s character how they treat those with less power than them and Mr Eagle thinks it’s acceptable to swear at and berate those he does not deem to be of his level.”

In the comments of the post the user clarified that the Rongotai MP “phoned into my work and threw his toys out the cot because he couldn’t get his way.”

It really doesn’t sound like something that was a mistaken conversation.

Eagle said he was talking to a panel-beater on Friday afternoon about getting his car fixed and having a polite but robust discussion about whether or not a separate piece of damage could be fixed at the same time.

This is intriguing. A panel beater will of course fix anything you want them to. But what they can’t and won’t do is fix damage from two different accidents, and bill them all together to an insurance company. Now maybe it wasn’t about that, but why would you be having a robust discussion about it?

Once Eagle was in the office he said he realised he had been hung up on and was confused. Later his insurance company rung to suggest he try a different panel beater.

Which sounds like the panel beater told the insurance company they wouldn’t take him as a client.

The headline:

Immigration using data tool to deport migrants likely to ‘harm’ NZ video

But in fact it is not about migrants. Migrants are people with a right to live and work in NZ. It is about overstayers, or people with no legal right to be in New Zealand.

So headline fails. First sentence is:

Immigration New Zealand is using the data it holds on previously deported migrants to determine who should be kicked out of the country.

Also a fail. No migrants are being kicked out. Overstayers are being kicked out. If you come here for a two week holiday and are still here six months later you are not a migrant. You’re an overstayer.

If an immigrant fitted the same demographic of a previous immigrant who benefited from such services or carried out illegal activity here, they could be deported before they did the same.

No no no. Totally misleading. Immigrants are not subject to deportation because of their profile.

If you are an overstayer then you are subject to deportation because you have no legal right to be living here. And this tool is about prioritising which overstayers get deported. That is very different to the impression this article gives.