Stuff reports:

MPI said in a statement, it had evidence of “serious staff misconduct” from two former staffers who had left the department a couple of years ago. 

The ministry revealed it had requested the commissioner to include it in the investigation, after an apparent Official Information lead to a discovery of emails between former members of its staff and Thompson & Clark. 

“The Ministry for Primary Industries has uncovered evidence of potential serious staff misconduct relating to events that occurred some years ago. This involved several employees who no longer work for MPI,” acting director-general Bryan Wilson said. 

“The conduct was of a sufficiently serious nature that MPI has referred it to the State Services Commission for consideration.”

Wilson said the department was “extremely disappointed” to learn that past employees had potentially breached the Code of Conduct, “our trust, and by proxy the trust that was given to them by the New Zealanders that we serve”.

This sounds pretty serious. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the inquiry.

Stuff reports:

All four former first ladies have joined the current one, Melania Trump, in an unusual united political front expressing horror at children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.

It’s a terrible situation. Kids just get shipped off to a distant relative and then left there with next to no follow up. Parents aren’t even able to easily find out where their kids are.

“I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart,”  Bush said on Twitter as she shared her column.

Laura Bush almost never speaks out on public issues.

There’s huge pressure on both the President and Congress to find a solution.

Rodney Hide writes:

The first is Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter tweeting in reply to TradeMe founder Sam Morgan. He had tweeted the momentous news that he was now following just 10 fellow tweeters. The minister replied, “You appear to only be following men. Any comment on why?”

Amazing. The Minister for Women berated Sam Morgan for now following any women on Twitter. Are we now to have quotas for who we follow on Twitter?

Morgan responded by unfollowing absolutely everyone so now he has perfect gender diversity – he follows no men and no women.

Stuff reports:

The nurses union has “strongly rejected” a district health board pay and conditions offer and is seeking urgent mediation to stave off nationwide strikes.

But the Government says it is “preparing for the worst” because there is no more money to offer. 

Of course there is more money to offer. The Government has a $3.5 billion surplus and is spending $2.8 billion on giving future lawyers and accountants free fees rather than nurses the pay rise they are asking for.

This doesn’t mean I think the Government should agree to the union demands, but that all these things are conscious decisions of the Government. Unlike the previous Government they didn’t inherit a decade of forecast deficits. They have strong surpluses.

Remember that this Government in the 2018 Budget had a smaller increase for Vote Health than National did in the 2017 Budget.

Maybe they could not give Ruapehu Alpine Lifts $10 million corporate welfare for a new chairlift, and instead add that to the nurses’ offer?

The Herald reports:

The behaviour of a mother who secretly brought her daughter to New Zealand without the father’s knowledge was “reprehensible” and an “egregious” breach of their custody battle, according to a High Court judge.

But in the best interests and welfare of the child, Justice Paul Davison ruled the daughter – who now considers herself a Kiwi – will not be sent back to live with her father in their homeland.

So the mother kidnaps the daughter away from her father (who has sole custody) and gets away with it. This just incentivises others to do the same.

The father told the Herald on Sunday he will move to New Zealand next year.

“All I want is to be part of my daughter’s life. A child needs both parents.”

The father is at a loss to explain why his former partner went to great lengths to cut him out of his daughter’s life.

The courts in their home country awarded sole custody to him after the mother repeatedly refused to let him see their daughter.

“The ingrained resentment the mother holds against the father, now significantly impairs the mother’s ability to raise her daughter … with her actions, the mother wilfully and significantly disregards the interests of her daughter,” the European court judgment said.

So why not grant custody to the father, so long as he moves to NZ?

Rewarding parents for kidnapping a child and poisoning them against the other parent is a bad idea.

The Herald reports:

Waiariki MP Tamati Coffey says his views on overseas companies bottling New Zealand water have not changed after being called out on a social media post he made two years ago.

Attention to the post has come in the wake of the coalition Government’s decision to allow Creswell NZ Limited, wholly owned by Chinese bottled water supplier Nongfu Spring Co, to purchase a Bay of Plenty spring and export more than one billion litres of drinking water each year.

As well as seeking approval from the Government to buy the land, Creswell NZ also applied for resource consent from the Whakatane District Council and the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, for expansion of the existing Otakiri Springs water bottling plant on the site.

The two-year-old post is a video of Coffey talking on his public Facebook page about the selling of New Zealand water for profit by overseas companies and the pittance they pay to do so. In the video, Coffey says it is an issue that “cuts to the heart of New Zealanders”.

“What I’m thinking is, we become quite decisive and we take action, because we need to send a message to the Government that it’s not good enough and that New Zealanders really care about it,” Coffey said in the 2016 video.

Now, as a member of Government that has made the decision to allow more water to be sold offshore, questions are being asked of the MP.

Since the Government approved the sale earlier this week, close to 20 new comments have been made on the video.

One comment, posted on Thursday said “Now that you are the government what action do you take? Grant application for the Chinese company to purchase and expand the water bottling plant you speak of here.”

It’s so easy in opposition to spout platitudes. Much harder in Government.

The Herald reports:

Labour’s Kelvin Davis and National’s Simon Bridges have described the US practice of separating children from their families at the border as “cruel” and “inhumane”, but Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters refrained from criticising it saying it was a matter for the US itself to decide.

If National was in Government and the Acting PM and Foreign Minister was refusing to criticise what is happening in the US, the Greens and Labour would be condemning the Government for not standing up for children.

But have you heard a single Green MP criticise the Government for not speaking up? Would any of them dare to criticise Winston for refusing to comment? Of course not. They’re gutless.

Laura Walters at Stuff reports:

Do as I say, not as I do. Entering Government almost inevitably makes a hypocrite out of a morally assured opposition, and the coalition’s new prison is a prime example.

It sure is.

In order to get something across the line to help alleviate the pressure on the system, before planned criminal justice reforms take effect, he had to do two major things he was strongly opposed to while on the other side of the fence: double bunking, and entering into a public-private partnership (PPP).

And they had the choice of not doing either. This was not forced on them.

The new prison will also be financed, designed, built and maintained through a PPP.

Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Party have consistently said they will not enter into PPPs when it comes to schools, hospitals, or corrections, but are open to PPPs for transport and infrastructure.

See that corrections there.

The minister’s office says the PPP allows Corrections to use private sector expertise, “so that new ideas and innovations can be applied to this project, while delivering value for money”.

But it’s hard to buy the spin when those who are now the decision-makers were publicly opposed to the concept until the day of the announcement.

During Question Time on Thursday, Associate Finance Minister David Clark said: “there is clear evidence around the Government’s prior experimentation with PPPs that they did not work. There are a number of perverse outcomes, and this Government has steered clear thus far of any such foolishness.”

The translation of this is “Their PPPs are bad, but our PPPs are good”.

Have just done the latest monthly polling newsletter.

As you can see National’s support remarkably consistent.

The executive summary of the newsletter is:

Curia’s Polling Newsletter – Issue 116, March to May 2018

There were three political voting polls in April and May – a Newshub Reid Research and two One News Colmar Bruntons.

In May National led Labour by 2% and were 1% ahead in April.

 The seat projection for May was centre-right 59 seats, centre-left 61.

We show the current New Zealand poll averages for party vote, country direction and preferred PM compared to three months ago, a year ago, three years ago and nine years ago. This allows easy comparisons between terms and Governments.

National’s party vote in May was 1% below a year ago and 5% lower than three years ago.

Labour’s party vote was 14% higher than a year ago and three years ago.

In the United States, Trump’s approval rating is a net 7% higher than a year ago

In the UK, The Conservatives have started to draw away from Labour in the polls and are currently projected to fall just short of a majority government.

In Australia, Turnbull has shown a big improvement in the polls in the last two months going from a -29% net approval rating to -11%.

In Canada, Trudeau is in real trouble having gone from a +7% approval rating three months ago to a -21% today.

We also carry details of polls on Winston Peters, M Bovis, petrol tax, superannuation and The Commonwealth as well as business and consumer confidence.

This newsletter is normally only available by e-mail.  If you would like to receive future issues, please go to http://curia.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e9168e04adbaaaf75e062779e&id=8507431512 to subscribe yourself.

The Herald reports:

Health Minister David Clark apologised to the former chairman of Counties Manukau District Health Board for the position he’d been left in over Middlemore Hospital’s building problems, correspondence from the ex-chairman claims.

The Herald has obtained text messages and an email which reveal former acting district health board chairman Rabin Rabindran’s increasing concern over public comments from Clark about what he was told about the state of the buildings at Middlemore and how the announcement of Rabindran’s departure from the board was handled.

Clark has previously said he was not told of the extent of problems at Middlemore Hospital when he visited on March 13 but Rabindran said he had been told verbally, and in documents handed to him at the time.

National MP Jami-Lee Ross says the correspondence shows Clark ignored Rabindran’s pleas to set the record straight. …

“I said that I have a good reputation but all this in the media is affecting that reputation. He [Clark] kept apologising. I wish I could have recorded what he said.

“Polite and apologetic as he was, I have difficulty with him saying one thing in public and then calling me with the messages he gave me privately.

So we we have a DHB Chair saying the Minister was prepared to apologise privately, but not prepared to correct his public statements.

What a relentlessly positive Government we have.

Newshub reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says if her Government is voted out after a single term, it’ll be because they failed to bring New Zealanders around to their way of thinking.

That an interesting thing to say. Not that it will be because they had awful political management or that they mismanaged but it will be because the public haven’t been persuaded.

A two-hour strike, which would shut down a factory, will have the same effect on MBIE productivity as the Dom Post accidentally publishing two daily quizzes on the same day pic.twitter.com/xg0GPFOf9z

— Ben Thomas (@BenThomasNZ) June 17, 2018

This is brilliantly funny, especially if you know MBIE 🙂

The Dom Post editorial looks at recent Ministerial happenings:

It appears Clark has been caught attempting to silence health officials over sewage and mould running down the walls at Middlemore Hospital.

Hinting he’ll give them a job if they stop talking to the media.

Shane Jones is a walking, talking combustion engine. 

Yep.

Others have been joining him at the bonfire: Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran was lucky to survive her naive meeting with former RNZ head of content Carol Hirschfeld and the clumsy handling of the fallout; Kelvin Davis has frankly made a pig’s ear of communicating the Government’s highly sensitive moves towards cutting the prison population; and Phil Twyford has demonstrated that a man wanting to build 100,000 homes must first have a good grasp of the numbers.

Clark and Twyford were thought to be potentially the best performing Ministers if Labour became Government. They haven’t been.

Some of this has been simply amateurish.

Such things are often a sign of a government that has outlived its mandate and begun to implode around the core of its own perceived importance. In its tiredness it can trip over the most obvious hurdles.

This Government is barely nine months old. It needs to find its feet, and quickly.

It feels like a tired third term Government, not a fresh new Government.

An article in the NZ Herald on the abortion debate.

I find the focus on whether laws around abortion are in the Crimes Act or not not are a red herring and will actually make no difference to women who need an abortion. It’s silly virtue signalling.

You are always going to have some regulation and hence offences around abortion, and it really matters little which Act they are in. What matters is the actual substance of the law.

In my view there are three key aspects of abortion law:

1. Eligibility or criteria
2. Time
3. Process

Taking each in turn:

Eligibility

We have a mismatch between the written law and the current practice. The written law says you can only have an abortion if the pregnancy poses serious danger to life, physical health, or mental health.

But for several decades we have effectively had abortion on demand (well for 98% of those seeking an abortion). The mental health criteria has been interpreted in a very liberal way, so that (off memory) 98% of those seeking an abortion are approved for one. It is not clear if the 2% who are initially declined reapply and get approved, or if they carry their baby to term.

Anyway we effectively have abortion on demand. We should change the law to reflect the reality. I don’t want to have a law where women are forced to carry a baby they don’t want to, or have to pretend they will suffer mental health damage by having a baby.

Up until the time threshold, the only criteria should be the decision of the pregnant woman that she doesn’t wish to continue with the pregnancy. There should be no need to have to declare you will be psychologically damaged if you continue.

Time

My views on abortion are subject to time. I (and most people) would not support aborting a 38 week old foetus.

The challenge with abortion is you have two sets of rights. The rights of the pregnant mother and the rights of the unborn child. They are both legitimate rights and neither are absolute.

At the beginning of the pregnancy the rights of the mother come first (in my opinion). But as the pregnancy goes on, the rights of the unborn child come first.

Working out when the order of rights swaps over is not easy. I tend to think it is around the time the foetus or baby could be born if delivered.

The current law says you can have an abortion on wide grounds up to 20 weeks. I’m not sure that is the ideal time threshold but it seems reasonable. It gives most women enough time to realise they are pregnant, make a decision, and go through the process.

Medical research has shown that the chances of survival are basically 0% under 22 weeks. At 22 weeks they rise up to 10%, at 23 weeks are up to 35% and at 24 weeks up to 70%.

So around the 20 to 22 weeks mark seems reasonable. Incidentally 94% of abortions are done in the first 13 weeks.

After that mark, an abortion should only be permitted in extreme circumstances such as severe health risk to the pregnant woman.

Process

The law currently requires two certifying consultants to approve an abortion. If you change the eligibility, then you shouldn’t need a process like that.

It will be interesting to see what the Law Commission recommends, but I would have thought something simple such as a medical practitioner certifies the pregnancy is under 20 weeks, and the woman signs the application form. Then you have the procedure done.

It is worth noting that the number of abortions has been falling for the last 13 years. This is a good thing, and I don’t think changing the law will increase the number of abortions. It will just make it easier for women who decide they want one. It’s a tough enough decision to make, without having to go through an un-necessary convoluted process.

Ideally if a woman doesn’t want to be a mother, she won’t get pregnant. Contraception is far preferable to abortion, and the drop in abortions for the last 13 years reflects this I believe.

I respect that some people disagree with me.  They think that life begins at conception and that the rights of a one week old embryo trump the rights of the pregnant woman. I disagree with that view as do the majority of people in New Zealand (and Ireland).

I’m no fan of President Trump. In fact I would call myself a Never Trumper. I think he has proven his unsuitability for the job many times over.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t recognise that some of his achievements are good, It doesn’t mean I think overall he has been successful. Far from it. But let’s look at North Korea in context.

A few months ago there was a very real possibility of armed conflict. North Korea has a long history of threatening behaviour and language and people were very worried about military action. The chance of conflict might not have been high, say 5%, but it would have been devastating with hundreds of thousands wounded in the first day.

The talks with Kim have led to a massive de-escalation. There is no realistic chance of armed conflict in the short and possible even medium term. This is a very good thing and worth celebrating.

The second piece of context is that North Korea gained nuclear weapons thanks to the failure of all previous US Presidents. All the different policies of “strategic patience” were miserable failures as North Korea developed a nuclear inter-continental capability under them.

Now it is quite correct that the agreement with Kim is very general, and in fact much the same as what North Korea has agreed to in the past. It may well not lead to them getting rid of their nuclear weapons. It is the beginning of a process, definitely not an end.

When dealing with rogue states, you always need a mixture of carrot and stick. Trump’s strategy seems to have been to talk up the stick big time, and then swap to the carrots. He gave Kim what he wanted – a big summit, US and NK flags together, respectability etc. Now maybe he gave away too much, but he has given NK an incentive that if they behave and co-operate there will be more of this. All the previous approaches of with-holding this stuff has failed, so I’m prepared to give this approach a go.

The print media have been almost universally critical of Trump, while if it had been Obama doing this they’d be nominating him for another Nobel Peace Prize.

They say that Trump didn’t lecture Kim on human rights and have that in the agreement. Well the Iran agreement didn’t have much on human rights also.

The reality is that you often have to deal with countries that do horrible things to their own citizens, or others. They are not going to turn into nice OECD members overnight or even in decades. But what counts is whether an agreement with them heads them in the right direction. It is the direction that counts. Perfect is the enemy of good.

This is why I supported the Obama agreement with Iran. Not perfect, but definitely gave incentives to Iran to move in the right direction and engage in the global economy more. So does the Trump agreement with NK. It is hypocrisy of Trump to oppose Iran but do a NK agreement, but hey that is Trump.  It doesn’t mean the NK agreement isn’t a significant step in the right direction.

As I said I am no Trump fan. But I’ve been almost appalled by how carping the media coverage has been. It is no wonder that Trump sees the media as the enemy, when they behave like it. And no I don’t think they are the enemy. But I do think on this one they have their coverage wrong.

Stacey Kirk at Stuff writes:

Consensus government in action, or a bloody awful mess? 

It’s difficult to characterise the past week as anything but the latter and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern may be worried about whether she’ll have a Government to come back to when she returns from maternity leave.

A bloody awful mess. Not a bad summary.

I will be regularly reading the new Point of Order blog.

The three authors are all veterans journalists (Ian Templeton, Bob Edlin and Brian Lockstone) who used to write for the excellent Trans-Tasman. Its demise was very sad, but the up side for the public is their writings will now be available to all.

Several good posts already up. One very interesting post is on the Chinese owned water bottling company given permission by Eugenie Sage to buy land to expand.

The Greens have claimed that the Overseas Investment Act doesn’t allow them to to take account of the environment or the Treaty of Waitangi. I have already blogged how they are wrong on the environment. In fact, there are half a dozen environmental criteria.

But Point of Order point out that the local Iwi is actually all in favour of the bottling plant. So the Greens saying it should be stopped because of the Treaty goes right against the actual views of the local mana whenua.

They quote a Radio NZ report:

The Murupapa community is hoping an iwi-supported proposal to build the country’s biggest water bottling plant could revitalise the once-thriving regional town.

Ngāti Manawa has agreed to lease land for two plants that would export 18 million litres of water per day from an aquifer near the Bay of Plenty town.

Some in the community believe this a chance for the community to reverse its economic misfortune of the past.

Murupapa felt the sting of major privatisation in the mid 1980s when its thriving forestry economy collapsed overnight, leaving the town in an economic tailspin it has been unable to recover from.

Now the town has an unemployment rate of 27 percent, more than four times the national average.

Iwi leaders hope that could drastically change if the town becomes home to the country’s largest water bottling plant.

They believe the project – estimated to create around 1500 jobs – is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure a decent future for their members.

So this is what the Greens are decrying. A proposal with massive support from mana whenua that could create 1,500 jobs for a twon with a 27% unemployment rate.

UPDATE: Point of Order has conflated two different bottling projects. Sage signed off on Otakiri, not Murapara. Still a useful point made that these projects can and often do have local support.

Duncan Bridgeman at NBR writes:

Audrey Young writes:

It was perhaps perversely fitting then that he failed to alert Ardern in advance of filing legal proceedings on Monday to sue the Government, senior public servants and former ministers.

It’s unforgivable. But Ardern will forgive him because she forgives him everything. The absence of any explanation or contrition from Peters makes her look inconsequential.

He has all the power.

Patrick Gower writes:

Kelvin Davis is a “wounded man walking” who better watch out, says Newshub national correspondent Patrick Gower.

The Corrections Minister on Wednesday announced plans for a new prison, but appeared to be unaware how many of its inmates would be double-bunked.

Corrections boss Ray Smith interjected after Mr Davis froze, confirming Newshub’s suggestion it would be around half.

“I get nervous before interviews,” was Mr Davis’ explanation, when asked about it on The AM Show.

Mr Gower, who was Newshub’s political editor for several years, told The AM Show he’d never seen anything like it.

“Only in New Zealand would a deputy leader of a governing party come on after a major policy announcement in his or her portfolio and say, ‘You know me – I get nervous and I forget things.’ I’ve never seen that before.”

You might expect that from a new backbencher or even a very junior Minister. But Davis is the most senior Labour Minister after the PM.

Let’s look at the list of recent Deputy Leaders of the major governing party, and see if we can imagine any other being nervous before interviews:

• 2017 – Paula Bennett
• 2009 – 2016 Bill English
• 2000 – 2008 Michael Cullen
• 1998 – 1999 Wyatt Creech
• 1991 – 1996 Don McKinnon
• 1989 – 1990 Helen Clark
• 1985 – 1988 Geoffrey Palmer
• 1984 Jim McLay

Quite the contrast.

He said Mr Davis is “battling and he’s lost his confidence”.

“Kelvin is not a dead man walking, but he’s a wounded man walking. The media are after him, the Opposition are after him, probably people in his own party want the deputy leader job at the very least – they won’t want the Corrections job.”

Surely Labour should put Kelvin out of his misery and make Grant Robertson the official deputy leader. It is obvious he is the deputy in all but name anyway.