Newsroom reports:

A new pharmacy code of ethics will clear the way for pharmacies to sell homeopathic products.

The Pharmacy Council’s previous code required that credible evidence of efficacy exist for any products sold at pharmacies, however, this rule was often ignored by pharmacists.

So rather than enforce the rule, they are just getting rid of it!

The new code, which comes into effect March 12, does not require credible evidence for what it refers to as complementary and alternative medicines, but does require pharmacy staff tell customers if a product lacks scientific evidence of efficacy.

As if they will! “Pardon me sir/madam, but before you pay for that did you know that there is no proof it works at all – but we are happy to sell it to you.”

The Code of Ethics 2018 update came after consumer advocacy group, the Society for Science Based Healthcare (SSBHC), complained when they discovered homeopathic products were being sold in pharmacies in an apparent breach of the industry’s own code of ethics.

The Society’s chairperson, Mark Hanna, said a parent contacted him after realising they had been sold “crap” by the pharmacy and had thrown the homeopathic product in the bin.

So the response to a complaint that a pharmacy breached the code of ethics was to change the code of ethics!

The New Zealand Medical Association’s (NZMA) chairperson, Dr Kate Baddock, made a submission to the Pharmacy Council against pharmacies selling complementary and alternative medicines during the code’s review process.

She said the Pharmacy Council has created a document the NZMA is disappointed with.

“The real issue here is you can have what is a regulated medicine, say for example omeprazole [a medicine for heartburn] sitting on the shelf next to shark oil. What happens is the presence of the omeprazole gives legitimacy to the shark oil.

“As long as you have pharmacists stocking products like that side by side you’re going to have an unsuspecting public believing them to be equally important, equally effective, equally efficacious and equally having scientific basis for them being used.”

Yep.

It has been some months since I have guest posted here at Kiwiblog. I have chosen to wade into one of the most contentious topics of US domestic policy, that of suitable gun laws especially as America debates appropriate responses to the latest mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

I begin this segment with an observation as a kiwi now living in the US. It is very common for us kiwis to view much of what goes on in the US through our own cultural lens. This is particularly true of America’s gun laws and gun culture. Almost all New Zealanders of all political persuasions find America’s obsessions with guns to be at best, odd and disconcerting and at worse, pathological and dangerous. It is very easy to moralise from afar that such horrible incidents of violence are because of America’s unhealthy attachment to its 2nd Amendment right to bear arms and the seemingly pervasive influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA), the largest gun owners association in the US. Most kiwis simplistically maintain that if only America conducted itself like NZ (or other Anglophile countries where handguns are outlawed, and rifle ownership is more strictly controlled) that such mass murders wouldn’t happen, or at least not with the same frequency. I would ask that you read this post with an open mind and with the view that NZ’s gun laws will never be enacted in the US for reasons that will become apparent and that the issue is much more complex and nuanced than the simplistic and emotion-laden slogans indulged in by any who oppose the US gun ownership model and by the mainstream media in the US who heavily support stricter gun control measures. This post attempts to pierce through the rhetoric and partisan bias and tries to propose practical solutions that stand a chance of passage into law and likely implementation by law enforcement that can and should make a difference in reducing the carnage.

STATISTICS

First off let’s examine the statistics to put mass shootings into context. Mass shootings, whilst they commandeer headlines, are actually very rare, especially when you look at the totality of gun related deaths in a country as large as the US where there are as many guns as there are people (325 million). Mass shootings in terms of numbers of victims have not been increasing in the US and indeed, the level of total gun related homicides in the US has dropped to 15,000 in 2016 (latest full year when statistics are available from the FBI) from a peak of almost 25,000 in 1991. There are several US states where the homicide rate per 100,000 is not much higher than other Western Countries such as the UK, France, Australia and NZ as the national statistics are skewered by a minority of quite violent states. You also have to realise that as shocking as murder is, it is a relatively rare crime compared to other forms of violent crime. As a comparison, the overall US homicide rate per 100,000 in 2016 was 5.4. The non-homicide violent crime rate across the US in 2016 was 380 per 100,000 so violent crimes like rape, robbery and aggravated assault are 70 times more frequent than murder. This non-homicide violent crime rate compares to:
UK: 257

New Zealand: 348

Canada: 260

A little known fact is that 29 US States have a similar or lower non-homicide violent crime rate than NZ.

Secondly, the media focus on the use of semi-automatic weapons but the truth is that over 80% of weapons used in gun related homicides in the US are committed with handguns. The percentage of people killed in 2016 by semi-automatic weapons was only 1.2%, those by rifles 2.5% and shotguns 1.7%. All figures are from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) website.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM RECENT MASS SHOOTINGS

Many of the mass killings in recent years could have been avoided by complying with existing laws, law enforcement doing their job properly or with minor law changes that don’t infringe on 2nd Amendment rights.

1. San Bernardino, California, 2 December 2015.
Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik (his wife) killed 16 (including themselves). The San Bernardino shooters identified themselves as violent jihadis several times on Facebook and yet their immigration visas were still granted. This is because the Obama Administration officials at the Department of Homeland Security specifically instructed those tasked with screening migrant visa applications to not even look at, or take any cognoscence of, postings on social media. This policy left analysts willfully blind to evidence that could have kept this couple from entering the country.

2. Pulse Night Club, Orlando, Florida, 12 June 2016
Omar Mateen killed 49 patrons of a well-known Orlando gay nightclub. Omar was interviewed in 2013 and 2014 by the FBI for expressing sympathy for suicide bombers and was placed temporarily on the terrorist watch list and then taken off due to no crime currently under investigation. Current law allows people on that list to still acquire firearms.

3. Blacksburg, Virginia, 16 April 2007
Seung-Hui Cho killed 33 fellow students at Virginia Tech University. Cho showed a disturbing pattern of stalking, self-harm and violent poetry. He was treated for mental health issues, but this information was never entered into any system than could be tracked so when he underwent a background check to purchase a gun, he was legally able to obtain a firearm.

4. Newtown, Connecticut, 16 December 2011
Adam Lanza stole his mother’s guns and killed 28 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The FBI interviewed a person who regularly communicated with Lanza online. Over the course of nine pages in the FBI’s exhaustive post-event report, this interview unearthed Lanza’s obsession with mass murder and the 1999 Columbine High School mass shooting. He displayed serious mental disorders and a neighbour had complained to police that he had threatened to kill his mother. Another unidentified woman said she was in contact with Lanza for more than two years on a gaming website dedicated to the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. She told investigators that Lanza kept a “spreadsheet, meticulously documenting the details of hundreds of spree killings and mass murders”. Nothing was ever done about these disturbing reports.

5. Sutherland Springs, Texas, 5 November 2017
Devin Patrick Kelley kills 26 at a First Baptist Church. Kelly served in the US Air Force from 2010 to 2014 when he received a bad conduct discharge for beating his wife and step son and was court martialed. The Airforce failed to pass on this crucial information to the FBI database as they were required to, and he passed a background check and acquired a gun. His domestic assault conviction alone should have also been sufficient to prevent him from obtaining a firearm. Significantly, Kelley’s shooting spree was abruptly halted when a local resident engaged him with rifle fire and he fled the scene and was found dead in his car down the road.

6. Parkland, Florida, 14 February 2018
Nicholas Cruz kills 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It would be fair to categorise the Parkland shooting as the most imminently avoidable of all these horrific incidents. The fiasco of how Nicholas Cruz was left alone to acquire guns and carry out his oft and publicly expressed fantasies of mass murder begins some years earlier with the Broward County School District that administers MSD High School. The Obama Administration used a number of measured via the Federal Department of Education to reduce what it saw was discrimination against minorities because of the disproportionate numbers of black and Hispanic high school students who were being suspended or charged with crimes. One method was to incentivise school districts to stop being the instruments of seeming discriminatory discipline policies by promising additional Federal funding to schools who had a lower incidence of reported crime. In the case of Broward County Schools, a decision was made at the senior level to work with the BC Sheriff’s Office, primarily through the Deputies who had been assigned to the individual high schools to enhance security and enforce school rules and the law, to relax the enforcement of more serious offenses committed by unruly students. This meant that the most serious of crimes committed by students either on or off campus (so-called felonies), such as aggravated assault, sexual assault, shootings and serious drug dealing, were deliberately ignored. Indeed, the now infamous ex-Deputy Scot Peterson, who stood cowering behind a concrete pillar outside the school building where Cruz was murdering kids, was in fact the very person who drove this policy at MSD High. Much has been made of the 39 times (estimates vary between 29 and 44) that BCSO Deputies were called to the Cruz home over incidents related to his violence, threats, intimidations, beatings, use of knives on campus and other worrying incidents. The reason why nothing ever came of all Cruz’s prior incidents that should’ve seen him arrested and charged with felonies even as a minor and thus be entered into the Federal Crimes register which in turn would mean he’d fail a background check when he went to obtain the weapons he used to carry out his mass shooting fantasy, was because it was a DELIBERATE POLICY to ignore such criminal behaviour to keep the additional funds flowing. The negligence by the BCSO’s was compounded by the FBI failing to act on not one but two detailed credible tips from people close to Cruz who described in detail what he planned to do.

IMPEDIMENTS TO HONEST DEBATE

There is a lot of dishonesty, dissembling, manipulation, distraction and at times hyperbolic hysteria engaged in by supporters of gun control each time a mass shooting event takes place. Let me give an example of each tactic.

1. Dishonesty
There has been dishonest use of statistics. The billionaire former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg has lavishly funded various anti-gun crusades including an information clearing house and lobby group called Everytown for Gun Policy. In the days following the Parkland, FL shooting, Everytown heavily pushed what was later proven to be a bogus statistic deliberately designed to exaggerate the extent of school shootings. They said that the Parkland shooting was the 18th school shooting in 2018 alone making it look like such shootings were an epidemic. What Everytown failed to point out was that they counted as a shooting a variety of incidents that were anything but an actual shooting: one was an accidental discharge of a weapon on a street out the front of a school, another was a shooting incident that occurred in the car park of an abandoned and disused school whilst another was a suicide, all these incidents were reported as a school shooting. You’re on thin ice when even the liberal pro-gun control Washington Post pings you for distorting the stats.

2. Dissembling
Democrats in particular have been past masters at dissembling on the subject of gun control always bleating for stricter gun control and yet when the time comes to implement actual legislation to give effect to their angry and hyperbolic rhetoric, they usually run and hide. Obama faced mass shootings in his first two years in office. He and Congressional Democrats talked big on gun control in the 2008 election and yet when they had a huge House majority, a filibuster proof Senate and a pro-gun control President in the White House, they never used this unprecedented power to pass anything of substance.

Why is that do you ask? The answer is simple. Whilst anti-gun people point to generic polls that state that good majorities of America voters favour gun control, when substantive and precise measures are polled, support dries up. Democrats know that strict gun control of the type they REALLY want is not popular in the swing districts and States they need to win (or hold) to control Congress and so they back off and implement meaningless measures such as trying to outlaw magazine clips of a certain size or ban so-called assault weapons.

3. Distraction
Chasing after so-called assault rifles is a classic distraction. AR 15’s are merely semi-automatic rifles that have meaningless cheap attachments to make them resemble army style weapons. These are cosmetic accoutrements that do nothing for functionality. President Clinton even instituted a Federal ban on assault rifles from 1994 and it remained on the statute books for 10 years before its eventual repeal because, during that time, weapons related homicides actually went up slightly. In other words, the ban was meaningless and didn’t work. It was meaningless because so few weapon related homicides are carried out by so-called assault rifles. The vast majority of gun deaths are carried out by handguns. There are more people killed in America each year by pipes and hammers, assaults with bare fists or from knives than by assault rifles! I used the term distraction because the measures loudly proclaimed are halfhearted measures that will never work because the long-term agenda of the anti-gun left is to repeal the 2nd Amendment. They want all guns to be banned and confiscated but they know that Americans will never vote for such extreme measures, so they hope to implement it by stealth, eating away at the 2nd Amendment and hope that eventually they can stack the Supreme Court with liberal judges who will effectively rule away the right to bear arms by upholding litigation brought by anti-gun groups.

4. Manipulation
One of the more egregious tactics used is one that was on full display after the Parkland, FL shooting and that is of using children as tools of manipulation. There is no denying the grief and anguish that the students felt but it became quickly apparent that the mainstream media were really only interested in talking to the eloquent and telegenic student victims who were heavy supporters of gun control. 18-year-old Senior David Hogg has been given wall to wall coverage on CNN and MSNBC because he is a strong supporter of gun control and was prepared to use inflammatory rhetoric against Republican politicians such as Marco Rubio and the NRA. When CNN ran its famous town hall broadcast days after the shooting, the audience was clearly stacked with anti-gun parents and almost all those who spoke were strongly in favour of gun control especially the negligent Broward County Sheriff Israel who spent the night deflecting attention away from the fact that his deputies cowered outside the school and refuse to engage with the shooter AND that his department had attended dozens of call outs for troublesome incidents involving Nicholas Cruz and done nothing about it. Within days, students like Hogg had a website up, were able to book many media outlets, were prepped and primed for media interviews with talking points and that seemingly spontaneous marches were able to be organized on the Statehouse in Tallahassee, FL, local schools and eventually in DC; stuff that no high school senior can rustle up even if politically savvy. It turns out the spontaneous looking movement got plenty of funding and assistance from known liberal organizing groups such as Move On.org, Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety as well as generous donations from Planned Parenthood and various unions. There is a term for this and it’s called astroturf and it is a time honoured tactic of the left. Students like 17-year-old Junior Kyle Kashuv who supports gun rights never got anywhere near the same media coverage even though he suffered the same as Hogg and his anti-gun fellow students.

5. Hysteria.
Some of the things that are said about those who support 2nd Amendment rights are just outright over-the-top hysteria. In an attempt to capture public emotion and outrage on the issue of a mass shooting in a school, proponents of stricter gun laws portray the NRA as having blood on their hands, of any public person who supports the 2nd Amendment as being complicit in the killing of children and ipso facto, Americans who own guns for their own protection are knuckle dragging red necks akin to the Ku Klux Klan of the 30’s and who need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern enlightened world. Many such people are quick to label the 2nd Amendment as an anachronistic carryover from the colonial frontier era of 18th century America when it was written. Others try to limit the right to bear arms to a standing militia conflating the two operative clauses of the Amendment. Such inflamed rhetoric is having the opposite effect – it hardens the resolve of gun owners to protect their patch and never vote for anyone who would force them to give up their guns and every time Congress moves to even consider legislation to infringe rights or if a high profile perspon like Nancy Polosi or President Obama (when he was in office) begins to talk about gun control, the sales of guns and ammunition goes through the roof. It was said that Barak Obama was the greatest salesman of weapons in recent US history. After the NRA was so thoroughly attacked during the CNN Townhall broadcast, it added tens of thousands of new members within days. Such extremist positions make it much more difficult for legislators and indeed even the President, to find common ground from both sides of the debate to formulate realistic policies that might actually work. The emotive polemic and invective is utterly counterproductive.

WHY A GUN BAN AND CONFISCATION WILL NEVER WORK IN THE US

First off in order to ban guns in the US, you’d need to repeal the 2nd Amendment. That is a monumental task because it requires both Houses of Congress to pass the repeal by a 2/3rds majority OR by a Constitutional Convention of the States also passed by 2/3rds of the States. If the repeal passes one of those hurdles, then the repeal must then be ratified by 75% of the States’ Legislatures. Right now, the partisan split of State Legislatures is 32 Republican/14 Democrat with 4 split. It is almost given that a Republican dominated legislature would not support a repeal of the 2nd Amendment. In order for Democrats (more likely to favour repeal) to reach the required 75% threshold, they would need to turn both lower and upper chambers in 23 States currently controlled by Republicans. This would take a swing to the Democrats not seen since when Roosevelt was swept to power in 1932.

But let’s assume that by some miracle the 2nd Amendment is repealed. It must be noted that it is only an Amendment to the FEDERAL Constitution. Many States have similar rights to bear arms enshrined in their STATE Constitutions and the loss of the Federal amendment does not automatically repeal nor even infringe upon the State equivalents. Repealing the right to bear arms in more conservative states like Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Utah will be next to impossible and those State rights to bear arms cannot be infringed upon even by a Federal 2nd Amendment repeal.

Then there is what to do with the 325 million existing weapons, assuming that the Federal amendment is repealed and then Congress passes gun confiscation legislation. How successful would a confiscation be? Fortunately, we can look at how similar such confiscations have fared internationally. Australia’s ban on semi-automatic weapons was implemented in 1996 after the horror of the Port Arthur, Tasmania massacre. This confiscation applied to only 20% of Australia’s total gun arsenal as normal rifles were exempt. In reality, whilst an estimated 700,000 semi-automatic weapons were compulsorily purchased by the Australian government, that only represented about 40% of the banned weapons thought to be in circulation. It proved to be almost impossible for State and Federal police in Australia to force total compliance with the new law. From a statistical point of view, gun related homicides in Australia were already steadily declining before the ban and the change in the law had a negligible effect on this trend in the homicide rate. Proponents say it stopped mass killings in Australia but mass killings, even in the US, comprise a tiny percentage of total gun related deaths. Examination of the current total Australian gun inventory shows that new weapon purchases made in the 20 years since the ban now exceed those of the confiscated weapons albeit with compliant weapons.

The international average successful gun confiscation rate in 72 countries studied in the 2007 International Small Arms Survey was a paltry 33%. In the US, that means even if the left were to prevail and abolish the 2nd Amendment, widespread mostly impossible to combat civil disobedience would still see well over 200 million guns remain in the hands of people. Stricter gun laws enacted in New York and Connecticut after the Sandy Hook shooting again saw compliance rates of below 30% with law enforcement not prepared to use force to remove existing weapons that became subject to the ban. Indeed, many commentators from the left and right agree that there would be a far more aggressive resistance to any attempt by law enforcement to enforce an Australian style confiscation. Those opposed to gun ownership to the extent that they’d support repeal of the 2nd Amendment (and all State equivalents) and then confiscation are advocating for something that is realistically an impossibility. Are they really wanting to promote measures that, if taken to the conclusion some control proponents desire, would lead to an effective civil war? I know gun owners in my community who would resist attempts to remove their guns by force and such intransigent sentiment is more widespread than you think. It would be far more productive to look at measures that might actually work.

PRACTICAL MEASURES THAT COULD BE PASSED INTO LAW TO REDUCE MASS SHOOTING

1. Banning bump stocks. These are attachments to semi-automatic guns that cause a jerk effect that forces the gun user to hit the trigger with much greater frequency thus more closely mimicking the effect of a fully automatic weapon such as a machine gun. It is not commonly known that fully automatic weapons are banned from general sale in the US and require a special and difficult to obtain license for anyone outside the military or law enforcement agencies. Bump stocks are what made the Las Vegas shooting so lethal as it improved the kill rate of Stephen Paddock the Las Vegas shooter. This law change is low hanging fruit.

2. Mandatory reporting of all felony violence offences of a certain severity to the Federal Crime database so that people like Devon Kelly are denied permission to obtain a firearm during the background checking process.

3. Prevent anyone currently on the terrorist watchlist from obtaining a firearm by mandatory reporting to the FBI Crimes Database accessed during the background check procedure. Had Omar Mateen of the Pulse nightclub shooting been properly kept on this list and such a law was on the books, it is more likely he would’ve been kept from acquiring a weapon.

4. Beefing up resources and training of those who staff the FBI’s tip line so that legitimate tip offs of possible mass killers are actually actioned and not ignored. The FBI basically admitted that they received two detailed and credible warnings of Nicholas Cruz’s state of mind and intentions from people close to him and those tips were never actioned.

5. Mandatory reporting of certain categories of mental health issues where patients disclose violent fantasies, mass killing ideations and other such dangerous intentions. This will be controversial and so careful analysis and the advice of the very best mental health professionals with experience in forensic psychiatry and the mindset of homicidally violent offenders would need to be carefully followed. People with these issues should just not be allowed to obtain firearms. This type of reporting may have prevented Nicholas Cruz from obtaining a weapon legally.

6. Rescission of a previously granted background clearance AND temporary weapon confiscation for those deemed to be high risk for impulsive killing. Again, these powers will need to be very carefully enumerated and implemented with sufficient checks and balances to avoid law enforcement abuse and to preserve 2nd Amendment rights. A law like this may have enabled law enforcement to remove firearms owned by Nicholas Cruz and even possibly Adam Lanza although he used guns legally owned by his mother.

7. Allowing teachers and school/college administrators who have passed all valid Federal and State background checks and possess a valid concealed carry permit to lawfully carry on campus. This proposal does NOT mean School Districts/Colleges mandate concealed carry nor are they liable for any costs associated the certification of the faculty gun owner who has or may obtain a valid State concealed carry permit. The mainstream media don’t report the mass shootings at schools that have been averted by teachers or other staff who had a concealed weapon and who could shoot at/have shot at, or threaten to shoot at, a potential killer. Also, potential mass killers know that schools are usually gun free zones but if they knew that schools allowed staff to carry concealed weapons, they may choose not to enter that school.

8. End Federal programmes that encourage schools and school districts by way of higher funding for lower crime statistics by not charging and prosecuting students for violent crimes. What happened at the Broward County School District is just unconscionable.

9. This last one could never be legislated for due to the 1st Amendment right to free speech but if media outlets would voluntarily adhere to a code where the name and face of a mass shooter is not broadcast, this removes the imperative of a desire for fame that a number of mass murderers have admitted to being part of their motivation.

Proponents of gun control are asking US citizens to surrender their weapons and trust the very government agencies who have shown time and time again to not act on threats and to not respond quickly or thoroughly enough to protect the populace. Legal and lawful owners of guns reason that they rate themselves more capable of protecting the life, limb and property of themselves and their family rather than waiting for a 911 response that may be too late or to act as a responsible citizen and report worrying and suspicious behaviour only to be ignored and a killer allowed to go on a rampage. Criminals don’t obey gun laws and will always obtain weapons. This is true even in countries with strict gun control laws and a dramatic illustration of how this plays out in the US you only have to look at cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit and Washington DC, all cities that have enacted some of the strictest gun control laws in the US where it is difficult to obtain even a handgun and yet all four cities have horrendously high gun related violence and homicides because criminals can obtain guns and it is more difficult for law abiding citizens to obtain weapons. Either that or they propose meaningless cosmetic law changes that will do nothing to reduce the ability of the wrong people to obtain weapons.

This issue has become so fraught that rational debate has become difficult. A certain core of conservatives has become intransigent and won’t countenance any reasonable law change. Some on the right support the measures I have proposed but many would balk at the right of law enforcement to confiscate the weapons of a person convicted of a violent felony or crossing over a mental health threshold where they have become a danger to themselves and others. Many liberals on the other hand find gun rights and the 2nd Amendment to be an anathema and in reality, think the only way to reduce gun violence is to ban all guns and even confiscate existing weapons. Each extreme is not acceptable or practical. Hopefully, in the midst of all the anger and emotion, it may be possible to debate and pass laws and enact procedures that would have avoided most of the recent mass shootings.

John Armstrong writes:

Forget about modelling for any more Vogue-style fashion shoots. Forget about being willing fodder for the cameras of Australian-produced current affairs shows which are anything but.

Forget about being forever labelled as New Zealand’s “rock-star prime minister”. …

New Zealand’s Prime Minister can once more concentrate exclusively on looking and behaving like one.

1. Jenny Salesa, a near invisible Cabinet Minister spending $30,000 on travel in just three months
2. The Labour camp sexual assault allegations
3. Winston’s continuing defence of Russia
4. Ron Mark using RNZAF helicopters as taxis
5. PM handing out millions in aid around the Pacific while ignoring Nelson apple growers struck by flash floods

He concludes:

The Prime Minister need look no further than her Canadian counterpart for worrying evidence of how quickly things can change.

It is not so long ago that Justin Trudeau was enjoying sky-high approval ratings.

They have plummeted in recent months. He was deemed untouchable. No longer, however.

McGredy Winder’s monthly newsletter reports:

Alarmingly Sub Par

Far from being a well-oiled machine, Auckland Council seems to be spluttering and misfiring at an operational level. In a special Town Hall summer investigation, we dig into the operations of Auckland Council and discover that there is quite a lot to be concerned about.

During the 2016 Mayoral election, one of candidate Goff’s favourite refrains was how he was going to do “More with Less”. It was a good line, it had hit the mark for, then Finance Minister, Bill English in previous contests, it was a message that Aucklanders were hungry to hear, so there was no good reason why it wouldn’t do the job again.

Now that he’s running the show, Goff’s slogan pretty much translates into running an efficient and effective council. If we were going to produce a dashboard for the Mayor on how well he is doing with this, there would be in amber in the efficiency section, effectiveness measures would include some alarming red.

They have dug out some data:

To explain, over the summer months we have scoured through Finance and Performance (F&P agendas in order to dig out some time series KPI data for the Council. Effectively, we’ve pulled together some of the Council’s own performance metrics and presented them so that they are accessible and all in one place. These figures judge the Council on the basis that they themselves ask to be judged…
and it paints a fairly dim picture.

Before we come to the numbers and actual performance, the fact that this information needs to be dug out and isn’t readily and very obviously available is an indictment in itself. Any half decent Board of any half decent company would expect performance data like this to be front and centre in each month’s reporting. If it wasn’t, they would ask serious questions and insist that it was.

So a governance failure. And the data is concerning. Here is the change from 2015 to 2017:

• Building consent applications processed within 20 days from 98% to 80%
• Non-notified resource consents processed within 20 days from 95% to 77%
• Notified resource consents processed within 70 days from 62% to 45%

So a huge drop in all three areas of consents. The target for them all is 100%.

Their summary:

• Inspections and grading of food premises are materially below target and have deteriorated during the current financial year.
• Inspections of alcohol premises are down on previous years and on operational targets.
• Building consents processed within 20-working days are well below target and markedly
  below performance in previous years.
• Resource consents processed within 20-days are down more than 20% on the 2016
  performance.
• Whilst progress with notified resource consents is often not within the control of the council alone, those processed within 70-days are up on the appalling result of 2016/17 but remain at around three quarters of the target.
• Registered dog levels are below target and trending worse.
• Noise complaint responses are getting worse and are now 35% below target

And why the change:

Let’s look a little more closely at building and resource consents, where of course there is a statutory obligation to process building consents and non-notified resource consents within 20 working days.

Council used to perform strongly in these areas, at or above 95% within 20 days. Then an improvement process called “Consenting Made Easy” was introduced. From everything we hear, it has had the polar opposite effect from the objective contained in its name – making things more difficult.

The majority of consents should be able to be applied for and granted electronically. You need to code in the district plan and then a website or app should be able to deal with the vast majority of consents.

Newsroom reports:

It’s hard to believe Newsroom is just one year old. We’ve broken some of the biggest and most important stories in that time. Most recently the Russell McVeagh sex scandal which has tipped the law industry on its head. …

We set out to fill a gap in our media landscape for news on subjects we described as the Things that Matter. We believe, with your support, we have gone a considerable way towards achieving that goal. There is much yet to do, many stories still to be told and subjects needing more attention and interpretive journalism.

They definitely have filled a gap and have produced a lot of great investigative journalism. Long may it continue.

Some of their major stories are:

• Millions of caged eggs sold as free range in New Zealand
• Inside Gloriavale: The official story
• Todd Barclay investigation The politician, the police and the payout
• Winston Peters’s superannuation overpayment Co-habiting Peters billed $18,000
• Newsroom Investigation: National MP trained by Chinese spies

The Herald reports:

Defence Minister Ron Mark has justified his use of Air Force flights to and from Wairarapa, where he lives, as simply doing what the Defence Force suggested.

“On several occasions I have declined NZDF’s offer of transport,” he said.

He rejected claims by National that he was using the Air Force as a personal taxi service, labelling the claims as “scurrilous” and an attack on the Defence Force itself.

He said he was “acutely aware of perception” when taking NZDF flights.

 

Mark has had four one-way flights either to or from Masterton, near Carterton where he lives.

Former Defence Minister Mark Mitchell says he knows that all the flights were to or from official duties but it was still inappropriate for the minister to have accepted the flights to an airfield near his home – where the Air Force does usually go.

Mitchell said he himself lived three minutes away from the airfield at Dairy Flat near Auckland, which was not that far from the Air Force base at Whenuapai

“In terms of convenience, they could have popped over from Whenuapai, picked me up at Dairy Flat and taken me to wherever we were going.

“I wouldn’t in a million years even consider asking them to do that – and had they had offered I would have declined it because it is just wholly inappropriate to have helicopters and planes flying around to make your life a bit more convenient.

“They are burning hours, they are burning fuel, it is just not right and it sticks in my craw. In my view there is no excuse.”

Mitchell said his National predecessors Gerry Brownlee and Jonathan Coleman had not accepted such flights either.

This is the key point. No other recent Defence Minister has had the RNZAF basically pick them up from home or the closest airport to home.

Yes Defence Ministers will sometimes travel on RNZAF transport to get to official duties, but previous Defence Ministers have always travelled by car to the closest RNZAF base and then flown from there.

The next time was a helicopter flight on December 9 from Masterton to Waiouru Camp where he was the reviewing officer at the graduation parade.

He was flown back to Masterton on the same afternoon on the same helicopter.

Mark Mitchell said it was only a three-hour trip each way by car.

“The Air Force is not a taxi service for its minister,” he said.

“Why did he not save the taxpayer the cost and NZDF the time and use a much cheaper Crown car instead?

“It’s happening so regularly, locals are asking questions about it.”

You don’t need a helicopter to get to Waiouru from Masterton.

Sometimes RNZAF transport is the only viable transport for the PM or Defence Minister. PMs often have four or five events a day to attend and you can’t do them all with land transport or scheduled flights.

But using a helicopter just to save a drive to Waiouru looks like entitlementitis.

The Herald reports:

An eyewitness at the Young Labour party during the Waihi summer camp says it was a “recipe for disaster”, describing it as an unsupervised party where people were throwing up in toilets and in the bushes from excessive boozing.

I joked on Twitter that this reminded me of some great Young Nationals parties.

I wasn’t entirely joking. Every political party’s youth wing (except NZ First where the youth wing is those under 70) has had events or parties where people drink too much.

Let’s not pretend Young Labour is unique in this.

Even though I am of course past my Young Nationals days, they are often kind enough to invite me to join with them when they go out on the town at party conferences etc. Lots of fun up until the part when someone drunk texts photos to the PM! 🙂

And there was a giant walk-in fridge where anyone, including people as young as 15, could just walk in and grab any booze they wanted.

Here though is a difference, where I think Young Labour have been unwise. If you have under 18s, you do need to be cautious. According to reports around a quarter of the camp were under 18. In that case an open bar is not a great idea. At YN events it was rare for any under 18s to be present – at most one or two.

Again though no party is perfect. At one election night party in the early 90s the YNs were there as “chalkies” to write up the results on the whiteboards as they came in. This was pre-Internet times 🙂

One under age YN consumed quite a bit of wine (I think it was her first time she had ever drunk alcohol) and I had to deliver her home basically passed out to her parents. Obviously very apologetic as I was the senior YN there and should have kept a closer eye. Went back the next day to check on her, and she was okay apart from her first ever hangover. Was a real lesson for me.

However this was over 25 years ago and the 2012 Alcohol Act has made it explicit that it is now an offence (it didn’t use to be) to supply alcohol to anyone under 18 without explicit parental consent. In light of that Young Labour were unwise to have an open bar with so many under 18s there.

“On the Saturday night, even before dinner, people were playing goon bag roulette with the clothes line, hanging a bag of cask wine and sitting underneath it and spinning the clothes line,” the man said.

That’s a new game to me. Sounds interesting 🙂

“On the Sunday morning after the incidents occurred, people were vomiting in toilets and in the bushes and were not able to attend morning speeches because they were so intoxicated from the night before.”

Not attending morning speeches due to intoxication from the night before is highly normal for youth members at party conferences and events. Hell, fairly normal for some non youth members also!

He said partying was the unofficial purpose of the weekend, where about 60 people attended, including about 20 people under 18 and as young as 15.

“It’s been spun as a conference gone bad, but it was really a weekend-long piss up, with no supervision of young people.

“They chose that venue because it has a full-size walk-in chiller. A mountain of alcohol is absolutely correct. People could just go in and grab as much booze as they wanted. People were drinking within hours of arriving.”

Of course the social aspects are a big attraction. Labour has somewhat over-reacted by banning all Young Labour events indefinitely. But with so many under 18s there, absolutely it shouldn’t have been an open bar type event.

So yes there are lessons to be learnt from this event. But one shouldn’t put all the blame on Young Labour. They are not the ones getting paid salaries to run the party, who sat in this information for three weeks and did nothing. They reported what happened to the senior party, as they should have. It is not their fault the party HQ basically did nothing until the story was about to break.

Politik report:

Australian PM, Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, last night issued a statement supporting British PM Theresa May over Britain’s accusations that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Salisbury a week ago.

The statement said: “UK Prime Minister May has made a compelling case on the responsibility of the Russian State for this attack in an unlawful use of force by Russia against the United Kingdom and her people.  She described the Russian response as demonstrating the Russian Government’s complete disdain for the gravity of these events, responding with sarcasm, contempt and defiance.

“Australia stands with the UK in solidarity and supports, in the strongest terms, We support her Government’s commitment to ensuring a full investigation and efforts to bring those responsible to justice.  The Australian Government also supports the UK Government’s right to take retaliatory measures, including its decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats and to call for an emergency session of the UN Security Council.

“Australia is considering its responses in support of the United Kingdom, in close consultation with the UK Government and other partners.”

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters has issued a statement refusing to accuse Russia of any involvement in the poisoning beyond manufacturing the poison. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said nothing.

Our traditional allies are aghast at our stance on Russia. A useful tweet puts it in context:

2014: Russia invades & annexes Crimea. The National-led Govt suspends FTA talks with Russia.

2018: Russia helps shoot down MH17, is donkey deep in Eastern Ukraine, backs Assad’s murderous regime, uses chemical weapons in the UK. Winston Peters wants to reopen FTA talks.#nzpol

— Gwynn Compton (@gwynncompton) March 14, 2018

It is time for this Government to have some integrity and condemn the Russian use of chemical weapons in the United Kingdom and rule out progressing the FTA with Russia.

Where are the principled Greens on this? Aren’t they against chemical weapons? WIll they call out Russia on this or are they also too scared of Winston?

Abbey Wakefield at Metro News reports:

The Labour Party has been hit with new allegations of sexual harassment, this time involving Young Labour volunteers in Christchurch.

Arwen Birch writes:

A ban on car advertising may seem far-fetched, but if you compare the automotive and the tobacco industries in Australia, the similarities may be closer than you think.

Smoking and car use have comparable health costs, yet while we have the strictest tobacco promotion laws in the world, we allow car companies to promote themselves unbridled.

Smoking accounts for around 15,000 deaths and an estimated cost to the Australian economy of $31.5 billion each year.

Car accidents alone cost the economy an only slightly smaller $29.7 billion, but this does not include the significant health costs of air pollution and inactivity resulting from car use.

The banning brigade never stop do they.

Yes there are costs to the economy of car accidents. But there is also a huge huge boost to the economy by having motor vehicles. It allows people to actually get to work, to buy groceries, to take their kids to school, to visit families and friends.

Anyone who ignores the benefits and only focuses on the costs should be ignored.

It’s like claiming we should ban the advertising of fruit as some people get injured picking fruit.

The Herald reports:

Hamilton Mayor Andrew King is proposing a name change for the city council to Kirikiriroa City Council.

His suggestion is in the mayor’s monthly report which will go to the council on Thursday.

“I have had a number of discussions with local iwi representatives, including King Tuheitia, about Hamilton being more culturally‐aware of our partnership with Maori,” King said.

“I believe a significant step in this process would be renaming [the ] council to Kirikiriroa City Council.”

 The move prompted councillor Angela O’Leary to post an item about it on her personal Facebook page on Monday morning.

 

The reaction from her followers was overwhelmingly negative, with some labelling it a waste of money.

Moves like this, combined with proposed huge rates increases, look to me like a good way to become a one term Mayor.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand has condemned a nerve agent attack in Britain and is urging an international investigation after the United Kingdom pointed the finger at Russia.

British diplomats took the extraordinary step on Tuesday of briefing New Zealand media on the Salisbury spy attack after its prime minister Theresa May issued an ultimatum to Moscow over the poisoning.

The briefing looks to be part of a world wide effort by Britain to stir up condemnation of Moscow over the attack against a back drop of what May labelled a “a well-established pattern of Russian state aggression”.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the New Zealand Government had grave concerns. “How this military grade nerve agent was transported from Russia and released abroad is the key issue here, and warrants urgent international investigation,” Peters said.

Winston has been saying there is no proof of Russian interfere in the US elections, despite a mountain of proof. It is patently obvious that the Russian state must have authorised the nerve agent attack on their former spies. Who else has both capability and motive?

Russian aggression cited by the British government includes the illegal annexation of Crimea, violating European air space and a “sustained campaign of cyber espionage and disruption” including “meddling in elections and jacking the Danish ministry of defence and the Bundestag,” among others.

Britain’s deputy high commissioner in Wellington, Helen Smith, echoed those comments on Tuesday and said the reason for briefing New Zealand media was because the Salisbury poisoning was “not just a domestic incident”.

“This is part of a pattern of Russian aggression internationally and needs an international response and we’re keen to get our message out and work with partners overseas in terms of understanding potential Russian culpability for this act.”

Yet our foreign minister won’t hear a word of criticism against Russia and is forcing the NZ Government to pursue a free trade deal with them, despite the vehement opposition of almost every other Western country around.

The briefing to New Zealand media comes after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was forced to defend Peters over his pro-Russia stance in relation to a free trade deal, and his recent statements suggesting there was no evidence the Russian government was involved in either the missile strike on flight MH17, or meddling in the US election.

She may be the PM but she knows the moment she contradicts Winston she is out of a job.

Stuff reports:

Despite having been the law for almost a quarter of a century, thousands of cyclists are thumbing their nose at wearing a helmet.

Figures provided under the Official Information Act show 29,399 fines have been issued to cyclists for failing to wear their helmet over the past four years.

But the annual number of fines had plummeted steadily over those years, from 11,310 to 4413.

On Saturday, a group of riders will be riding through Wellington in a day of protest against blanket helmet laws.

There is considerable research that not having cycle helmets compulsory increases health outcomes. The health benefits from the many more people who cycle is significantly greater than the increased damage to those who have an accident without a helmet.

Not having helmets compulsory doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still wear one when appropriate. You’re mad if you cycle around Wellington without one, but if you are in say the Wairarapa it is quite reasonable to judge on a quiet rural road you don’t need one.

The Herald reports:

He was given two years to live at the age of 21. For the next 55 years he defied the odds –
and astounded the world with his theories on the cosmos.

The world’s greatest scientist – and one of its finest minds – Professor Stephen Hawking, died peacefully at the age of 76 earlier today (NZT) at his home in Cambridge, north of London.

In a statement, the physicist’s children, Lucy, Robert and Tim said: “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today.

“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years.

“His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world.

“He once said, ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him forever.”

He is almost unarguably the most well known scientist of his generation.

In 1962, when Stephen Hawking turned 21, he was diagnosed with a degenerative motor neuron disease similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Doctors said it would probably kill him within two years.

Soon afterwards, he went to Cambridge to start a PhD in cosmology. The next two years were the most difficult of his life as he struggled to find a suitable doctorate subject while the crippling disease took hold.

But, as Hawking’s body shut down, his mind began to expand new theories about black holes that would change our understanding of the cosmos.

When the disease was diagnosed, doctors gave him 14 months to live.

He was confined to a wheelchair by the time he was 30, and in 1986, aged 44, his voice was removed to save his life after an attack of pneumonia.

A stunning example of how much an individual can achieve despite such crippling disability.

Stuff reports:

A concerted effort to find fruit pickers in Hawke’s Bay saw just 14 people express an interest and has resulted in the declaration of a regional labour shortage.

The Ministry of Social Development made the declaration on Monday.

The declaration would run from March 12 until April 6.

The peak harvest season is expected to be short, running for about 21 days, with a forecast 14 million cartons of apples being packed, a jump of 1.3 million cartons compared to last year.

According to the Sep 2017 HLFS there are 9,600 unemployed people in Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne. Yet only 14 people have applied for these 350 jobs.

WINZ data says there are 2,991 people in HB receiving the jobseeker benefit. How can this be? They don’t seem to be seeking a job.

A guest post by Joe Ascroft:

The Prime Minister’s tax working group is tasked to make a series of proposals to the Government prior to the 2020 election.

We are now beginning to see what those changes may look like. Sir Michael Cullen, the group’s Chair, is already making the case for a variety of new taxes, including a wealth tax. A capital gains tax, taxes to combat obesity, land taxes, environmental taxes, and others will also be considered.

Every proposal needs to be examined according to an important, and often forgotten, fact: New Zealand is a poor country.

Adjusted for spending power, our income per head is similar to the struggling economies of Spain and Italy. Meanwhile, our Australian neighbours earn similarly to Germany, the economic powerhouse of Europe.

Languishing as a backwater economy hurts us. It means we have lower wages, families find it more difficult to meet their financial needs, and the government is less able to provide decent social services. Our struggle to keep up with funding of drugs which are available in Australia is but one example.

So, when the working group considers new taxes, it should primarily consider whether they will either make us more prosperous, or slow our economic growth.

So, what happens if we tax assets, such as with a wealth tax or capital gains tax?

It would essentially be a tax on savings and investment. And when your potential investments face high taxes, it is more appealing to simply fritter away your wages, than invest earnings in, say, the stock market.

This is damaging, because investment is the most important factor in determining sustainable economic growth and wage increases, whether that investment is in new or existing businesses. Greater investment makes workers more productive, and improved productivity levels lift incomes over time.

Further, imposing additional taxes on investment would effectively ‘double-tax’ families. Any money put aside for investment has already been taxed when it was earned as income, so a tax on the investment taxes the same pool of money over and over again.

And starting a business, or growing your existing business, is far less attractive when those investments are squeezed even more by the IRD. That’s especially true when consumption remains relatively untaxed: why risk money for a measly return, when you could instead just go out for dinner for a reliable pleasure hit?

Supporters of capital gains and ‘wealth’ taxes often say it’s important that the rich pay their fair share, but direct income earned from investments is already taxed, and we already have a capital gains tax on property speculators in the form of the ‘bright-line’ test.

In fact, everyone will pay from economy-stunting investment taxes. Incomes will be lower, families will continue to struggle to make ends meet, and we will continue to languish compared to Australia.

If the Tax Working Group places new constraints on investment and growth, it will damn future generations to a poorer quality of life. We must be more ambitious.

Joe Ascroft is an economist with the NZ Taxpayers’ Union.

It is interesting to compare the alleged assaults at Russell McVeagh with the alleged assaults at the Labour Summer Camp. It shows how deficient Labour’s handling of this has been.

This is not to suggest Russell McVeagh handled their situation well either. It is obvious they did not. But considering Andrew Little has been threatening the Law Society over the Russell McVeagh situation, it shows the hypocrisy involved.

Russell McVeagh have faced calls for boycotts, law schools have suspended relations with them etc. Will the same be done with Labour? Will universities refuse to allow Young Labour stalls on campus until Labour can demonstrate they provide a safe environment?

Note I am not suggesting universities should do that. I’m highlighting the difference between how Russell McVeagh and Labour are treated.

Will any Labour Minister be credibly able to talk on this issue now, when it seems to so clearly be a case do do what we say, not what we do.

The Herald reports:

US President Donald Trump has ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and plans to nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him as the nation’s top diplomat, orchestrating a major change to his national security team amid delicate outreach such as possible talks with North Korea, White House officials said today (NZT).

Trump last Friday asked Tillerson to step aside, and the embattled diplomat cut short a trip to Africa on Monday to return to Washington.

Tension between Trump and Tillerson has simmered for many months, but the president and his top diplomat reached a breaking point over the past week, officials said.

The reason for the latest rift was unclear, but Trump and Tillerson have often appeared at odds over policies such as the nuclear deal with Iran and the tone of US diplomacy. A spokesman for Tillerson said the secretary of state “had every intention of staying” in his job and was “unaware of the reason” for his firing.

 

Tillerson cut short his trip to Africa on Monday to return to Washington. “I felt like, look, I just need to get back,” he told reporters aboard his plane home. The White House, however, had told him the previous Friday he would be dismissed, according to two administration officials. The news was not conveyed in person by Trump.

At the White House yesterday, Trump said the move had been considered for “a long time.”

“We disagreed on things … the Iran deal,” Trump told reporters. “So we were not thinking the same. With Mike Pompeo, we have a similar thought process.”

Being Trump’s Secretary of State must be the second worst job in the administration after being his communications director. They are looking for their fifth comms director in just over a year.

The West Wing is so toxic that half the jobs are unfilled – no one wants to work there.

On the issue of Trump though, it was a shocking judgement by the Deputy Head of Mission in the US to tweet that Democrats need to get their shit together or we will all die.

Beresford is a respected diplomat but her actions are serious. She may be unable to continue in her post if she is seen as agitating against the Government she is there to work with.

Almost everything Labour initially said on the sexual assault allegations has proven to be false. Let’s start here:

Andrew Kirton, the Labour Party’s general secretary, said he stood by the way the party had handled the situation, which he said was done with a “victim-led” focus on the back of advice from a Wellington sexual violence charity.

False. They only talked to the charity many weeks later when the story was on the verge of breaking. They did not take any external advice in deciding to basically do nothing and say nothing. This is later confirmed here.

He said he wasn’t aware of any of the victims taking their complaint to the police, although both he and Labour Party president Nigel Haworth had offered their support to the victims if they chose to do so.

They have now backed away from this and said they never explicitly told the victims they could go to the Police.

Newsroom reported:

Ardern defended her party officials’ decision not to report the assaults to the Police. 

“Yeah well look – when our general sec was made aware of the allegations …. they were offered the next day what support they needed, would they like to go to the Police and at that time they didn’t wish to, they were asked again later on, they didn’t wish to again. It took too long but support was also offered through Wellington services through ‘Help’.”

The Prime Minister’s account seems to be at odds with information obtained by Newsroom which suggest that some of the victims were not offered the opportunity to go to the police. 

So all just spin.

Parents of the victims hadn’t been told about the incident because “we wanted to deal with the young people in the first instance,” Kirton said.

By deal with, he means do almost nothing at all until one victim is so upset they contact a senior Labour Party Minister.

“We have also offered further, professional support to those involved.

The offer was made almost a month later the day before the story broke.

Basically Labour’s response was to do nothing and say nothing and hope it goes away quietly.

There are now stories of a new alleged assault at a separate Labour Party event. This may or may not be related to this tweet:

Now it is important to stress that any sexual assault is the responsibility of the person who does it, not the organiser of an event. There would be few groups who have never had an issue with inappropriate or even illegal behaviour with young people, especially with alcohol involved. The issue is how the organisation responds to it.

How do the front benches of National and Labour compare demographically.

National

• Electorate MPs – 90% Electorate MPs and 10% List MPs
• Gender – 40% female
• Ethnicity – 40% Maori
• Age – 80% in 30s or 40s
• Area – 60% Auckland, 20% Provincial, 20% Rural
• Island – 90% North Island
• Entered Parliament – 30% before 2008, 40% in 2008 and 30% in 2011

Labour

• Electorate MPs – 80% Electorate MPs and 20% List MPs
• Gender – 30% female
• Ethnicity – 10% Maori and 10% Pasifika
• Age – 60% in 30s or 40s
• Area – 40% Auckland, 30% Wellington, 10% Christchurch, 10% Provincial, 10% Rural
• Island – National 80% North Island
• Entered Parliament – 10% before 2008, 60% in 2008 and 30% in 2011

So comparing on each:

• Electorate Status – both party frontbenches are overwhelmingly electorate MPs
• Gender – National has a higher proportion of female frontbenchers
• Ethnicity – National has a far higher proportion of Maori frontbenchers
• Age – National has a younger front bench
• Area – Labour is more evenly spread while National is Auckland heavy
• Island – Labour has more South Island front benchers
• Entered Parliament – National has more front benchers who entered before 2008