A reader writes in:

I just thought I would put you in the loop re political expenditure from Auckand Council if this is of interest to you.

I raised with Auckland Council a complaint regarding  a political (anti -National party) and profane campaign of which Auckland Council were named as the client Link.   Advertisement of this project was viaTed X,  Ecomatters,  radio podcasts,  an environmental partners Newsletter, and Auckland Library  Instagram .

Auckland Council and its environmental partner Ecomatters were named on an ad agency website, as the clients , for  a  real life game campaign named ‘The Problem’, aimed at activating  youth  that contained offensive r18 and political messaging.  The ad agency  creative for ‘The Problem’, included word play posters with messages  that included  John Key is a joke, John Key is the problem, people who cut  down trees are c*nts,   consume consume consume die.   The live page has been taken down now after the complaint, but archive.org.nz shows the page and anti national party graphics as at June 28 2017 prior to the election.

Auckland Council’s explanation for the material was that Auckland Council Libraries “provided funding towards a TEDx related event 1 December 2017, which included gaming activities organised by ‘The Problem’.  The graphics and videos contained on the Facebook site for ‘The Problem’ referred to by the complainant were filmed in Auckland Library during a series of activities at this same TEDx event.”  

 

The other aspect of the campaign was a real life game app rated r18.   Auckland Council’s environment partner, Ecomatters   sent out an invitation for people to download their app  ‘The Problem’ and participate in real life games to win the location of a secret party for 100 people on 21 December.    To access the game you needed to enter personal details including a photo of your face and have it verified.

The campaign was supported by a series  of Instagram pages.  Problem 361 which occurs numerous times on their insta and facebook pages, is a defamatory  anti-national party video.  Instagram page  Video   which involved professional comedians and called the National party bullshit, working for rich people , defaced billboards, etc .   The Problem 361 Instagram page was followed by #AkldLibraries  and had 1398 followers.

Problem 515 is an anti colonisation page which has strong revolutionary imagery and messages that include “white rage”, “end the colonial project”, “ the problem is trust” and “colonisation”. #’ s include # neoliberalism #domination #Akd City library

And a video of the participants running through the streets of Auckland with paper bags on their heads, presumably to the secret event #CentralCityLibrary   Link

Auckland Council’s review stated  “Agent-C were sub- contracted by Ecomatters Trust who received funding directly from Auckland Council’s Environmental Services Department. This funding was used in part by Agent-C to create ‘The Problem’ organisation.”   ‘The Problem’ organisation did provide a platform for messages that were of a political and extreme nature and included the use of profane language.”

Council’s review actions included removing Auckland Council’s  name and the offensive videos from facebook and the ad agencies site and workshopping with staff about procurement.

The Problem Ltd organisation was set up in October 2017 registered to Ecomatters  address an Auckland Council leased building. Ownership of the Problem Ltd is 20% Ecomatters charity and the design agency 80%.   The Problem app rated r18 is still available for download on your app store.

Auckand Council said they were “not part of the creation or design of the Problem”. This contradicts the fact that they funded the project via their environment department, the  ad agencies statement about who their client was and the fact it was filmed on their premises and they are tagged on all the content. And it would be implausible and irresponsible for  Auckland Council to fund and  commission a campaign and have no part in its creation or design.  “Auckland Council Environmental Services discontinued their support for ‘TheProblem’ Organisation late 2017 and prior to this complaint, because it had failed to connect with the intended audience.”  . The event according to the Problems videos and radio podcasts was always intended to run from Dec 1 to Dec 21 the date of the party. So it was due to finish on Dec 21 anyways.

While I don’t have a problem with Council sometimes spending money on unique or edgy events, this spending wasn’t transparent and the propaganda aspect of it is disturbing. Asking youth to hand over private details and photos to an unknown source on an r18 app is also inappropriate.  The secret nature of the events and the content also didn’t allow political or parental oversight as to the content and activities happening on the street.

What is the Real Problem?

The real Problem, in my opinion, is covert propaganda aimed at politicising youth funded by  an increasingly arrogant local government who believes its position is not to deliver services but to push its beliefs on the public.  The Problem is that Libraries should be a place to access a wide range of information not a place of bias and propaganda. The Problem is that Auckland Council is asking households for an additional $65 per household to support the environment while misspending our environmental funding on political real life games.   The Problem is that libraries cut staff and hours because of supposed budget constraints while spending money on profane creative for Ted-x conferences..  The Problem is that there is no paper trail or transparency of this spending in the agendas or the minutes or the awarded contracts.   The Problem is that this wasn’t questioned or stopped by any elected members or by any council staff or managers.

Been sent a copy of a practice newsletter a counsellor sent his clients. Will be of wider interest:

I have recently had a chance to catch up with the news regarding the sexual assault allegations perpetrated against 4 young people at the NZ Labour Party Youth Camp at Waihi, and I find myself feeling simply appalled by the role of the Counsellors in this saga.

In my professional practice opinion, fortified by three tertiary qualifications in the field, former roles as a senior Counselling lecturer, and with over 17,000 hours of practice, the decision by the so-called “experts” to not tell parents (or the police) about what happened to their children at the camp flies in the face of common sense, ethical decency, and the Crimes Act.

 This decision is also at odds with the evidence of what constitutes best practice.

There are a number of logical inconsistencies within the narrative of those who were charged with providing a safe environment for these young people – so many in fact as to risk eroding parental and caregiver confidence in the ability of the “experts” to actually make reasonable and rational decisions regarding people in crisis under their care.

This story is one of many to have emerged over time, under the mis-represented umbrella of “client confidentiality”.

Confidentiality (in any profession) is not absolute.

For Counsellors in this story to claim that confidentiality is absolute, is to incur an inconsistency with their own ethical Codes of Practice.

I know this, because I have had cause to review the Codes of Ethics for the six main Professional Associations that operate within the social service delivery space, a review that also included the Privacy Act 1993.

Every single one of the aforementioned documents accepts breach of confidentiality without client consent in four instances of disclosure: risk to self, risk to others, risk from others, and disclosure of illegal intent or action.

These breaches have particular significance for clients under the age of 17, which all of the alleged camp victims were.

Part of the informed consent process for clients in Counselling is for the Counsellor to advise clients at the beginning of the first session that some exceptions to confidentiality exist, prior to any disclosure being made.

Failure of the Counsellor to conduct an adequate informed consent process can result in the Counsellor adopting a level of responsibility for the client and families welfare that they have no right to claim in the absence of parental involvement and awareness (as has happened in this case).

Offering an illegitimate blanket of confidentiality also risks further alienating a young client from the enduring available support structures available within the family unit.

There is also a logical inconsistency in the reasons given by the experts not to tell the parents about what occurred in the camp, and it goes like this.

The experts in this saga claim that the alleged victims of the sexual assault were traumatised by the actions against them, yet it is these same traumatised minds that the experts choose to trust in terms of the victims (who are most likely fearful, confused, and in shock themselves) being able to make a reasonable decision about who to tell or not tell about what happened, because of the risk of re-traumatisation?!

This isn’t (as the experts claim) best practice – it’s rather professional abdication of a legitimate responsibility for the Counsellor to skillfully navigate the child towards their family so that the family can manage the issue at hand, with assistance from the Counsellor, if required.

The oft-repeated acclaimed rights of children and young people thus become misguided ideological nonsense when contrasted against the sanctity of the parent-child relationship which informs the right of parents to decide what is best for their children.

There is now a plethora of longitudinal population research studies that reveal that the higher order brain centres (e.g. the pre-frontal cortex, responsible for integrating sensory information and reasoning) don’t fully develop until the early-mid twenties.

To therefore assume (as the experts in this case have) that young people in crisis are capable of making a rational decision about what is best for them in the absence of parental or caregiver guidance is a classic example of present day ideology attempting to supersede historical and empirically revealed common sense.

Perhaps the lesson for the Counselling profession is this: when working with clients, and particularly younger clients, those who claim to be “helping” need to be very cautious of claiming a responsibility for a young person’s welfare or situation that is not theirs to claim.

A life may well eventually depend on the application of such professional discernment.

Spark announced:

Today Spark announced New Zealand’s first live 5G mobile test site in Wellington, with Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Hon Clare Curran becoming the first member of the public to run a 5G speed test achieving speeds of over 9 Gigabits per second.

That’s more than nine times faster than the maximum speeds available to consumers with residential fixed line fibre today, and 90 times faster than today’s most prevalent UFB 100 mbps service.

5G is the fifth generation of wireless technology and can be up to 100 times faster than 4G.* It uses new bands of radio spectrum with super-fast response times, allowing a full-length movie to download in just a few seconds.

5G does looks very promising indeed. It is a bit misleading to compare one person using the entire capacity of a 5G site to a residential fibre connection. If 1,000 people are using the 5G site it won’t be doing 9 Gb/s.

But it is a great technology and having mobile speeds that high will be great. Not that many years ago even 1 Mb/s was considered a very fast mobile speed.

I understand Jonathan Coleman’s resignation is effective Sunday 15 April 2018.

That means the writ must be issued within three weeks, so as early as Monday 16 April 2018 or as late as Monday 7 May 2018.

This means the writ with final election results must be returned by Tuesday 26 June 2018.

You generally allow 17 days for special votes and recounts so that means the latest date for the by-election would be Saturday 9 June 2018.

The earliest possible date would be Saturday 19 May 2018.

So possible dates are 19 May, 26 May, 2 June or 9 June.

19 May would be two days after the Budget. Labour might try and capitalise on the Budget for some good news, but it might also interfere with the final couple of days of the by-election.

2 June is Queens Birthday Weekend and heaps of people away then.

9 June is the All Blacks vs France at Eden Park, which could be an issue.

So my best guess is the Prime Minister goes for Saturday 26 May 2018.

Adam Mamo writes at The Spinoff on what it is like being a stay at home dad.

I’m not a stay at home dad, but I am a work at home dad. This means I get to spends heaps of time with the toddler, which is great. Makes getting through the work challenging sometimes though – especially as Ben will come over to me and forcibly shut the laptop when he wants my attention.

Anyway Mamo’s article is an interesting read and obviously his experiences. But I’ll just share a different experience in one regard. He said:

You’ll never be alone but you’ll feel alone. It’s difficult to avoid feeling isolated. Your world shrink-wraps around you and it becomes clear you’re a minority. The search for like-minded dads to chill with during the week can be arduous. ’Parent’s Groups’ are mostly just mummy groups that claim to be inclusive but don’t need your type in their ranks.

Why not? A functioning mums’ group is complex and requires certain roles to be filled. There’s the ex-middle management mum, who complains about always organising but refuses help, the struggling-to-cope mum with the naughty kid, and of course, the anti-vax mum that’s a constant topic of private online chats outside the group. What a mums’ group doesn’t need is some dad contaminating this delicate ecosystem.

Our parents group is quite the opposite. I’m made to feel just as much a part of it, as my partner is. In fact I even organise a lot of the catchups. We often have a couple of blokes attend the weekly coffee catchups mid-week and the monthly weekend catchups regularly have lots of blokes there.

Occasionally the girls will organise a night out just for them, just as the guys do the occasional pub session for us. But 95% of the activities are for both of us, and it’s a really supportive group. We all share horror stories of our struggles, but also share the pride as our screaming balls of rage turn into little humans.

Sure occasionally you feel slightly awkward when you’re the only guy there and the conversation is about milk flying across the room from breasts, but that is self-imposed, not feeling unwelcome. In fact it is fascinating how open everyone is about various stuff, from feeding issues to how often you’ve been crapped on by the love of your life.

So if there are potential Dads out there considering being a stay at home or work at home Dad, don’t think you will be isolated and not feel part of your parents group. Obviously that is the case for some, but definitely not all.

I regard our weekly catchups as a highlight of the week, and a major sanity check.

Nikki Mandow has an excellent article on why the Government’s law to ban foreign buyers is a montrosity, even if you agree with the intent of it.

She quotes some submissions:

– Overseas capital is vital, particularly if you want to build at scale. We need foreign funds and large investors to put money into big developments. We simply don’t have enough equity at home.

– Forcing overseas investors to on-sell properties within a year (as the bill does) would be a critical impediment to attracting foreign capital. Put yourself into the position of someone asked to put funds into a big apartment development. What if the property market slumps within the year? Instead of being able to hold onto their investment in the hope of a recovery, the foreigner will have to sell at a loss. That’s too much of a risk, and foreign investment will go elsewhere.

– Many residential property developers get the capital they need for bank funding by pre-selling homes to overseas buyers. This can’t happen under the OIAB as it stands. As Jamie Hutchens, a partner with New Zealand’s biggest apartment developer Conrad Properties told the select committee: “Once this bill was proposed, our sales stopped.” Without the option to pre-sell, many housing developments just won’t happen, submitters say.

– In any case, big housing developments often take years to complete – the one at Auckland’s Long Bay is well over 10 years old and still not finished.

– Relying on the Overseas Investment Office to issue exemptions won’t work. OIO processes add 6-18 months of delays to a project, developers say, plus significant expense and uncertainty. Just another reason for overseas investors to put their money elsewhere, submitters said.

– New Zealand is seriously short of rental housing. Not just for families, but everyone from students in Wellington to construction workers in Queenstown. And, as Porter says, New Zealand needs scale – rental housing, not rental houses. But the rental market, by its very nature, isn’t a build-and-flick-within-12-months activity. The bill as it stands locks foreigners out from the large-scale rental housing developments we need.

– The bill will stymie a nascent interest in New Zealand affordable housing from overseas social investment funds, says property expert Leonie Freeman. She says these social funds can be huge – several hundred million dollars is normal. Moreover, they are often prepared to accept smaller returns. This makes them perfect for social housing development, including rent-to-buy schemes, where someone doesn’t have money for a deposit, but gradually builds up equity in their home, Freeman says. “But [under the OIAB’s sell-in-12-months rule], they couldn’t invest in our shared equity schemes, because the fund would have to own the houses for at least 10 years.”

Most flawed bills can be fixed by the select committee, but this will need serious surgery.

Eaqub says the bill was drawn up in a hurry – and it shows. “If the world was perfect, we wouldn’t have such imperfect bills coming to select committee. But that’s the purpose of select committees, and I think they will use that process.”

And if they don’t? New Zealanders looking to buy or rent a house will be the losers in the end, he says.

So Eaqub says the bill will hurt both home buyers and renters.

Radio NZ reported:

Auckland Council senior executives stalled the release of a major report, for political convenience in a possible breach of official information law. …

The study on the impact of moving the imported car trade away from Auckland was withheld from RNZ by the council for five months, and released only after intervention by the Ombudsman’s office.

Email exchanges released by the council to RNZ include a discussion on how the report could be withheld to allow the council to better “manage” its release.

Another executive observed that it “might not be useful” having the report in the public domain during last year’s general election campaign.

Almost all of the exchanges over how to handle RNZ’s five-month long effort to get the report, include senior staff in the office of mayor Phil Goff.

So Goff’s office got a report that should have been released within 20 days, delayed for five months.

A good article in National Review:

At the start of January this year a new law came into effect in Germany. The “NetzDG” law allows an un-named and unknown collection of government agencies and tech companies to police the Internet and remove content deemed to be “hateful” or otherwise deemed to constitute “hate speech.” Around the world politicians from other nations are looking at these laws with envy.

Of course, the whole notion of “hate speech” should warrant far more suspicion and push-back than it has done recently. Incitement to violence is already illegal in most  countries. As are credible threats to kill someone. But “hate speech” brings a high bar down several pegs. And the problem with it is not only that it attempts to read purpose and imagined consequences into words, but that it inevitably comes framed to give ideological protection to whoever wields power at a particular point in time.

Yep hate speech bans invariably are ideologically motivated.

For instance, in the U.K. you can now find yourself locked out of a social-media account for publishing facts about the endless, ongoing revelations of child-sexual abuse at the hands of gangs of men the British press euphemistically refer to as “Asians.”

Needless to say, this makes things infinitely more complex than they need to be. There has already been plenty of covering-up of these crimes (as shown this weekend when news emerged of yet another English city — Telford — where another 1,000 young girls turn out to have been raped in recent years. In most circumstances we believe that light is the best disinfectant. But not in these cases.

These Asians are never Korean or Chinese or Japanese.

While Mayor Khan was lecturing his audience in Austin he had failed to identify a problem far closer to his home. In particular the fact that during his time as mayor knife-crime and acid attacks in the capital have rocketed. Sixteen people have been stabbed to death in London already this year. Almost all of this is gang-related, and much of it is immigrant-gang-related. Where the trend for throwing acid in people’s faces has come from, who would dare to guess?

Not a hard one to guess.

The Press editorial:

 At last count, 26 countries have expelled Russian diplomats and intelligence agents in a remarkable response to the nerve agent attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal​ and his daughter Yulia. 

The leaders of the UK, the USA, Germany and France made a rare joint statement that stressed there is no plausible alternative to Russia being responsible for the attack on British soil. They described a wider pattern of “irresponsible behaviour”. Russia’s denials have not been taken seriously. 

But so far, New Zealand has not joined the other 26 countries in solidarity, although all four of our Five Eyes partners – the UK, the US, Canada and Australia – have led or followed in the mass expulsion of agents and diplomats. The Security Intelligence Service (SIS) has instead assured Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern that there are no undeclared Russian intelligence officers operating in New Zealand. 

We don’t actually know what the SIS said. We just know what the PM has said, which may not be the same thing. The SIS could well have identified Russian staff who do intelligence work, but the Government may have decided they don’t meet the level of being an intelligence officer.

In other words, no Russian diplomats are gathering intelligence, or spying, at the level of those expelled by our friends and allies. 

This sounds naive to some, especially given our central role in the Five Eyes network. As security expert Paul Buchanan has noted in the Guardian, the UK Government directly asked New Zealand to join the action, which is largely symbolic. Some genuine spies will be caught by the expulsions but many will be diplomats who can be reassigned in future. Assessing the pros and cons, Buchanan sees New Zealand missing out on being “a good diplomatic partner that supports international norms”. 

Yep. Missing in action.

It is more likely that the Ardern Government’s motivations are submerged in murkier politics as far as the wider public is concerned. The public is more likely to share the UK’s worries about the Vladimir Putin regime and to recognise the symbolic value of expulsion. 

Some may even see more cynical thinking behind our neutral stance. Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has been keen to reopen negotiations with Russia for the Free Trade Agreement that was scuppered after the Ukrainian crisis in 2014. Even this month, Peters seemed unwilling to condemn Russia after news emerged of the Skripal poisoning. He also doubted Russian involvement in the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 and US election meddling. 

Rather than idealism, then, it is possible that a different kind of pragmatism drives New Zealand’s reluctance to join allies in acting against Russia this time.

It is definitely pragmatism, probably donor driven. There has to be a reason why a party that has voted against almost every other free trade agreement, is so insistent on wanting one for Russia.

Jacinda Ardern announced:

“I have sought advice from the Cabinet Office about the proper governance arrangements during my parental leave.

The Cabinet Office has advised that a Minister is normally only appointed Acting Prime Minister when the Prime Minister is out of the country. There is no precedent to have both a Prime Minister and Acting Prime Minister in the country at the same time.

To avoid any confusion, Cabinet has decided that during my parental leave the Rt Hon Winston Peters will be sworn in as the 41st Prime Minister of New Zealand.”

Winston finally gets to be Prime Minister – his life long desire. Cynically you have to wonder if this was an unofficial part of the coalition deal – Labour could give him the one thing National couldn’t – a place in the history books as Prime Minister.

The latest ASH survey of Year 10 students shows what a huge improvement there has been from 2008 to 2017 with youth smoking rates.

• The proportion who have never smoked has gone from 60.7% to 82%
• The proportion of regular smokers gone from 11.9% to 4.9%
• The proportion of daily smokers gone from 6.8% to 2.1%

So regular smoking has dropped by 58% and daily smoking by 69%.

This is very important as if you don;t start smoking as a teenager, you are far less likely to take it up later.

Still a lot of variation by gender and ethnicity in terms of daily youth smokers:

• Pakeha 0.9%
• Pacific boys 3.2%
• Pacific girls 3.9%
• Maori boys 4.3%
• Maori girls 6.3%

From Hansard:

Hon Paula Bennett: When he said yesterday in his statement as Deputy Prime Minister, “Mr Mitchell may have misunderstood her underlying point.”, what was the underlying point Mr Mitchell misunderstood?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Because this is a very finely tuned matter, I’m going to do what I did with Dr Smith last week and seek an assurance that that statement was made by the Deputy Prime Minister and, in the body of the statement, uses that appellation for the Minister.

Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I expected your question on that. I have a copy of it that’s clearly under the Deputy Prime Minister, and clearly has it written as his statement. I’m happy to—

So the Speaker says you can only ask him questions on it if the statement was made by him as Deputy Prime Minister. Fair enough, that is the rules. And the statement was made on Deputy PM letterhead not NZ First leader letterhead.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Having listened to the reply and looked at the statement, I accept the member’s word, and it is very clear that it is headed “Deputy Prime Minister”. It is, however, clear to me that there is nothing in the statement that is the responsibility of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In all fairness, the statement that has been put out is clearly “Deputy Prime Minister”. It doesn’t even say “Leader of New Zealand First” on it. I double-checked that. So he has made those comments as the Deputy Prime Minister and, as such, he has responsibility for them as the Deputy Prime Minister and should be answering accordingly.

Mr SPEAKER: I think you have to go quite a lot further than mislabelling a statement—[Interruption] minus three supplementaries—in order to bring something into ministerial responsibility.

And then the Speaker decides that the statement must be a mistake, and hence they can’t question Winston on it. So now you can’t question Ministers on something they put out as an official statement, if the Speaker decides they mislabeled it.

No surprise National objected to this ruling, and then he took six supplementary questions off them for querying his ruling.

No Right Turn on the Marcroft affair:

Marcroft has been told to apologise, so that’s pretty much an admisison of guilt. At the same time, a mere apology is not enough for such a disturbing allegation. Marcroft has done something completely unacceptable: attempting to leverage government spending to use it as a weapon to bully and bribe an opponent. That sort of behaviour has absolutely no place in our politics, and neither do people who do it. She simply has to go.

Only after she has told us which Minister she was acting on behalf of.

And NRT on the Curran affair:

Back in February, Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran embarrassed herself in Question Time trying to pretend that she hadn’t been trying to hide a meeting with RNZ’s head of news, Carol Hirschfeld. First, the meeting never happened. Then it was “informal”. RNZ executives obediently trotted out the same line in front of a select committee, saying that the two had just bumped into one another at a cafe and had a few words over breakfast – entirely natural, nothing suspicious. But it turns out that that was a lie, and it has now cost Hirschfeld her job. …

Which is fair enough – causing your bosses to mislead Parliament is definitely a firing offence. But pretty obviously, Hirschfeld isn’t the only one who should be losing her job over this. From the start, we’ve had nothing but lies from Curran. Under Helen Clark, deliberately misleading the public was a sacking offence. Will Jacinda Ardern hold her Ministers to the same standard?

Doesn’t look like it. Much easier to do a selfie with Ed Sheeran.

Kate Hawkesby writes:

I see Women’s Minister Julie Anne Genter appears to be continuing her crusade of dragging women back into the dark ages under the guise of feminism.

Feminism is about choice, the right to have one, the right to be equal. It is not about trampling men to death in the process. 

Or telling them to resign from roles they have because they’re men.

In a speech to these students, she told them that “old white men” need to “move on” from company boards in order to help close the gender pay gap. So in a nutshell, a racist, ageist and sexist statement, but don’t let that get in the way of what she regards as a profoundly feminist message.

So old brown men are fine I presume!

Genter told them the gender pay gap had stalled in the last decade.

Which is wrong. It has dropped from 12.5% in 2008 to 9% today – the 5th lowest in the world.

Where to start? We’ll start with Mike Hosking:

Then we come to Marcroft, a woman Winston Peters would have us believe of her own volition simply got out of bed, rang Mark Mitchell, called a meeting, invented a minister she was representing, and then proceeded in said meeting to heavy him over the regional fund, as overseen by the aforementioned Jones.

Panicking, she texts Mitchell telling him to forget everything. That of course was her biggest mistake because in doing so she created a paper trail she can’t hide from.

Peters issues a statement that says no minister was involved, so Jenny just did it all by herself.

Ask your 10 best friends if any of them believe that and come back to me if you find more than two.

Yet the Prime Minister insists nothing to see here.

The government that has more headlines around mess than policy is not a government that lasts long.

And once the rot sets in, it’s nigh on impossible to shake — ask Malcolm Turnbull or Theresa May.

For a Government that started out with such a sparkling honeymoon, it has managed to put it so far in the distance you could almost call it the good old days. But we’re only five months in, and if the wheels aren’t coming off, they are loose, and it isn’t even winter yet.

So Hosking says from honeymoon to wheels off.

Then Matthew Hooton:

It’s early days, but Jacinda Ardern risks being the first one-term Prime Minister since Walter Nash. …

Still, the speed with which stuff-ups, miscommunications and genuine scandals are now piling up against Jacinda Ardern’s Government is unprecedented.

In just two weeks, there have been at least eight, all either woefully mishandled by Ardern or reflecting the inherent instability of the first Government reliant on both NZ First and the Greens.

Hooton lists the eight issues:

1. Labour camp sexual abuse allegations
2. Dithering after the Salisbury attack
3. Mixed messages on oil exploration
4. Jones calling for Air NZ Board to be sacked
5. Twyford’s announcement of a housing development with a population density of Mumbai
6. Marcroft threatening Mark Mitchell of behalf of an unknown Minister
7. The Clare Curran and Carol Hirschfeld affair
8. Getting involved in the nurses’ pay dispute

Then Barry Soper:

Curran’s boss Jacinda Ardern’s backing her minister, essentially saying everyone makes mistakes but acknowledging she should have been more transparent.

A bit of an irony for the associate Minister for Open Government!

Ardern used the ministerial behaviour bible to reinforce her support for her sheepish minister, the Cabinet Manual, that sets out the line that must be toed when interacting with the bureaucracy.

There’s one clause in the manual that could make the Prime Minister’s claim that the rules weren’t breached highly debatable.

It says “if an employee wishes to communicate privately with a Minister about a matter concerning the agency by which he or she is employed, the Minister should ensure that the employee has first raised the matter with the agency’s chief executive.”

The fact that the minister sought the meeting – without first informing the RNZ boss – just makes matters worse.

So the PM is ignoring the Cabinet Manual.

Also Kate Hawkesby:

Here’s the trick to being a minister in trouble – pray for another minister to take the heat off you.

Luckily for Labour, this hasn’t been a problem in recent weeks.

Yep it is one after another.

But what we’ve seen instead is a government with its training wheels on, skating through the first few months at high speed, riding roughshod over any rule in its path, wobbling right past us in a blaze of glory… only to land in a heap of wheels and bolts on the front page of every newspaper.

The PM, who by now is probably desperate to vanish and have her baby, must be hoping that in her absence, things get tidied up a bit.

Yes having Winston as PM will make everything so much better.

From the left Gordon Campbell comments:

For Jacinda Ardern the more pressing question is whether Curran should keep her job. Having seen her broadcasting minister improperly initiate a tactical encounter with RNZ staff who might further a policy mix that RNZ leadership appears to resist – can Ardern continue to allow Curran to remain at her post? In other contexts, ministers cite ad nauseam their inability to intervene in operational matters, and their abiding respect for those who call the shots at the helm of the public service. On this occasion, Curran knew full well RNZ’s chain of command. Yet there is every appearance that she was initiating communications with sympathetic staff who might be in a position to influence the decisions being made by the RNZ leadership.

If so, that kind of thing is surely a sackable offence. 

It’s a breach of the Cabinet Manual, but the PM says its fine, and Curran says she is able to meet whomever she wants.

And finally Hamish Rutherford:

But Curran, the enigmatic MP for Dunedin South, has made herself a type of cocktail party joke that she will probably never shake, for reasons which have little to do with RNZ, but her other title.

The Minister of Open Government.

When your very job title is the punchline of the joke, you are doomed.

Yep, the Government being committed to Open Government has become a punchline. It’s like having Barnaby Joyce as Minister for family values.

If Jacinda Ardern is determined not to sack her, she cannot possibly escape the fact that a plank of her Government – to be more transparent than National – is utterly comic while Curran is its figurehead.

Of course there are also all the other actions they have done, to be less transparent.

National finds itself in a strange position. Not unlike in club cricket, when a batsman is scoring so slowly that the captain or bowler instructs team-mates not to appeal under any circumstances, because the next batsman is probably better.

Simon Bridges told Stuff on Wednesday that he did not want to be the type of leader constantly calling for resignations. That lofty claim will only be put to the test in the future. National do not want Curran going anywhere.

Too right.

NewstalkZB reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is on the hunt for a new chief press secretary as incumbent Mike Jaspers moves into a different role in her office.

Very very unusual for someone to leave the role of the PM’s Chief Press Secretary just six months after they took office. Not unusual once they have been there for a few years, but after six months suggests there was a problem.

The first sign of the move was when Jaspers’ role was advertised this morning.

Also a sign of bad management. The gallery shouldn’t find out about such a change in a major role they deal with via reading the classifieds. You should front foot it.

Ardern currently has four press secretaries, down from five after Sarah Austen-Smith left last week to travel overseas after a few months in the role.

Also very unusual. I think she only returned to Parliament to take up the role in November.

The Herald reports:

A Rotorua man has admitted telling a woman he had been forced to drink poison and would die unless she performed certain sexual acts on him within 48 hours. …

The police summary of facts states the man went to the woman’s home, “red faced and bent over holding his ribs” and told her he had been beaten up and forced to drink a vial of toxin.

He told her he would die unless he didn’t sweat it out within 48 hours. She suggested he go for a run but he said that wouldn’t work as he had to sweat it out in a “particular way”.

A good suggestion the run.

He told her there was no antidote as the person who beat him up was flying overseas.

Shortly after, she began getting emails from an unknown email address appearing to verify his story.

The emails instructed her to perform sexual acts on the man four times and have sexual intercourse three times within the 48-hour period, to exhaust the toxin from his system.

The summary said the woman only consented because she believed the man’s life was in danger.

Someone actually was stupid enough to believe the I will die unless you sleep with me line?

The woman began to suspect it was the man sending the emails as they included spelling mistakes, referred to him by a nickname he only ever called himself and because he was the only person to benefit.

Began to suspect!! Seriously a new level of gullibility.

Nothing excuses of course the scumbag guy involved who sounds a very nasty sort and deserves to go to jail. And she is a victim. But nevertheless this seems to be about as sophisicated as a Nigerian scam, and you need to apply some reasoning in such situations.

A very good article by Tony Wall at Stuff looking at the issue of transgender competitors in elite sports.

One extract:

Like many sporting federations around the world, Cycling NZ has adopted guidelines issued by the International Olympic Committee in 2015 , requiring transgender female athletes to prove their testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L (nanomoles per litre) for at least 12 months prior to first competition.

The average testosterone level for young men is 24.2 nmol/L  and for women around 0.6 nmol/L.

The trouble is the differences between the biological sexes is more than just testosterone. There seems little doubt that athletes who were born male can beat those born female, even if their testosterone is below a certain level.

One can have sympathy for transgender athletes. They work and train hard to get to the top tier, and banning them from competing because they are transgender is harsh on them. And no, I don’t think anyone would go through hormone and/or surgery just so they can better comparative sporting results. The two examples in NZ, seem very genuine – as are the others I am sure.

But you also have to have sympathy for the female athletes who are biologically female. They can train just as hard and be the best in the world, but then have someone who is not biologically a female beat them, and feel that nothing they can do will allow them to win.

In trying to balance the competing rights, I don’t think the current IOC rule is working.

In my mind, it comes down to what does the most harm. I think the risk is that many top sportswomen will be driven out of competitions where they think they have no chance of winning.

Newshub reports:

Former Green Party leadership candidate Vernon Tava has been tipped to stand for National in the Northcote seat.

National has opened nominations for candidates to contest the by-election after the seat was vacated by Jonathan Coleman.

The nominee is set to be announced on April 15, but The AM Show host Duncan Garner thinks he knows who the frontrunner is.

“I think Vernon Tava is an impressive guy,” he said on Thursday.

“He has put forward his name, he is nominated, for the by-election. He wants to win the seat. He is going to replace Jonathan Coleman. He’s going to be the guy that stands for National – I think – in Northcote. No one else has put their name forward.”

Mr Tava stood as the Green Party candidate in Northcote in the 2011 General Election. But he later left the party, saying it had become too socialist and moved away from its environmental focus.

Tava is their former Auckland co-convenor and candidate for co-leader.

He discovered that environmentalists are not welcome in the Greens unless they are also socialists. Ironic, as socialism has been responsible for some of the worst environmental disasters around.

Anyway, the Greens’ loss will be National’s gain if the rumours are correct.