Kate Hawkesby writes:

Boom, just like that, the debate over freedom of speech versus hate speech has reignited over a column penned by the notoriously controversial Sir Bob Jones.

And when I say “notoriously controversial” – I’m hoping he doesn’t sue me for saying that. Freedom of speech and all.

Anyway, the upshot is, we have a petition, a petition to strip him of his knighthood. It’s been signed by 40,000 odd people, or as Sir Bob would call them, “losers”.

His knighthood was awarded to him for services to business management and community in 1989.

Thirty years ago.

 

And now “tens of thousands of people” want that taken off him.

Well, it’s just not going to happen.

Of course it won’t be.

And nor should it.

The speech police think satire they dislike is grounds for removing honours.

Petitions are a good way of venting your spleen or exercising your outrage all the way into a signature, but they don’t affect any real change.

They didn’t save Campbell Live and they didn’t get Mike Hosking axed from hosting the election, and they won’t take Bob Jones’ knighthood off him.

I bet you its the same group of people signing all three of those petitions!

The most effective way to regulate speech is to hold the platforms who peddle it accountable. Stripping a man of a 30-year-old title awarded for business, just because you didn’t like his “satire”, doesn’t actually change anything.

It’s just petty. Don’t like him, take his award off him. It’s our knee-jerk tall poppy reaction to all things. Get offended, smack down the hand of whoever offended you.

It is petty indeed.

Stuff reports:

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce’s political career is hanging in the balance, with Nationals MPs conceding that one more revelation about his personal life could force him to step down as deputy prime minister and party leader.

And some MPs in the junior Coalition partner are already discussing who could replace Joyce as leader of the National Party if he stepped aside; NSW MP Michael McCormack, Victorian Darren Chester and Queensland senator Matt Canavan are the names most commonly bandied about.

Generally MPs personal lives are left alone, but the exception is when you have an angry spouse who is speaking publicly.

Campaigning on the sanctity of marriage while cheating on your wife with your press secretary is a very dumb idea. And then having a baby with your press secretary is of course going to be highly upsetting to the wife, let alone the existing children.

Stuff has a story on Hutt South MP Chris Bishop which quoted 100% anonymous sources saying a parent or parents were upset that he had been communicating with teenagers on social media.

The headline and story are designed to make you think the worst, and buried deep down you find the statement “None of the parents were concerned that Bishop’s intentions were anything other than misguided.”

Chris has done a post on Facebook setting out the full context. Basically his crime is to be engaged on social media. In fact his Snapchat account went to Story only mode after a few weeks because he heard third hand someone was stirring about this.

It is interesting that this is all about events of many months ago. And it hits the media now. You wonder about the political motivation of those involved and are either of the two parents members of a political party? If so, this is information that is relevant and should have been published.

Disappointed Fairfax has run a story like this, with anonymous sources.

This is on today (Sunday). The Government has announced that basically all charter schools will close. It’s one thing not to create any more charter schools, but they are abandoning the over 1,000 kids who have chosen to go to a charter school, and are thriving there.

These kids were often failing in other schools. The charter schools they are going to were helping prepare them for a future of work, not welfare.

Labour MPs practised double speak. Maori electorate MPs assured their electorates their schools would not close. Time to hold them to account.

The Herald on Sunday editorial notes:

Charter schools do not seem to be a problem. We have not heard or read complaints from parents whose children attend them, or from those who inspect them, teach in them or have anything to do with them. They were not an issue in an election campaign. So why has Education Minister Chris Hipkins moved so quickly to abolish them?

He calls them “ideological” but his stated reason sounds more ideological. “The Government’s strong view is that there is no place for them in the New Zealand education system,” he said.

Why? They do not interfere with state schools, they get public money that would have to be spent to educate the pupils anyway. They provide the national curriculum but do in slightly different ways that, they say, help some children who were not succeeding in conventional schools.

The problem for Labour is they are not unionised. They are putting making unions happy ahead of struggling families and pupils.

Also worth quoting what Willie Jackson said a while ago:

And as far as Maori are concerned, Labour’s Education spokesman Chris Hipkins’ Private Members Bill to scrap partnership schools rates an E.

True, there has been the odd failing and in some cases questionable purchases. But when you look at the success this alternative style education model has had for Maori, then it gets an A every day.

I truly believe in the partnership school model.  I believe in it so much we have one at Nga Whare Waatea. The  kura comes under the Manukau Urban Maori Authority of which I am chief executive.

Our staff tell us they have seen the change in our tamariki, especially those who have been failed by mainstream schooling. They have not failed the system, but the system has failed them.

That’s why I have to put these questions to Hipkins: Why would you want to carry on funding a model which continues to marginalise those tamariki – admittedly mostly Maori – who don’t fit in? Why would you not want an alternative that can support and help our children fulfil their own dreams and aspirations?

A very good question from Willie Jackson.

Labour’sactions show how much they really care about helping families in need.

The Herald reports:

After sensationally walking out of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, Anthony Mundine has unleashed a vile rant about homosexuality.

The controversial boxer lasted less than two weeks in the South African jungle, before calling it quits during Thursday night’s episode.

Speaking to News Corp’s Jonathon Moran after his sudden exit, Mundine appeared to endorse the death penalty for gay people. Using Islam and Aboriginal culture as an example, the practising Muslim claimed it would work to “deter” people from homosexuality.

“If we were to live in a society, just like in Aboriginal culture, that homosexuality is forbidden and you do it and the consequences are capital punishment or death, you think you are going to do it? Or think twice about doing it?”

Killing people for being gay will not stop them being gay. It is not a choice. It will just stop them from being able to be open about who they are.

The Herald reports:

John Perry Barlow, an internet activist and lyricist for the Grateful Dead, has died.

The digital-rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said Barlow died early Wednesday in his sleep at home in San Francisco. He was 70.

The cause of death was not immediately known. Barlow had been battling a variety of debilitating illnesses since 2015, according to supporters who organized a benefit concert for him in October 2016.

Barlow co-founded the EFF in 1990 to champion free expression and privacy online. In a 1996 manifesto, the “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” he argued that the U.S. and other governments shouldn’t impose their sovereignty on the “global social space we are building.”

His declaration of independence has inspired millions, including myself. Some of my favourite parts:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

The future hasn’t been as optimistic as Barlow would have had it, but the Internet remains hugely empowering as a source of information governments can’t control.

The Herald asked Ministers to name one thing they commit to doing. Some of the answers were waffle (Winston said he is committed to straight talk, which is of course the opposite of what he does). But some useful answers:

• Jacinda Ardern: Reducing child poverty and improving access (and New Zealanders’ love) of our arts, culture and heritage.
• Kelvin Davis: Reducing prison population by 30 per cent over the next 15 years.
• Phil Twyford: All I can to get more New Zealanders into warm, dry homes and get Auckland moving.
• Andrew Little: I will work relentlessly to ensure New Zealand has a justice system that reduces offending and keeps all New Zealanders safe.
• Carmel Sepuloni: Making the welfare system fairer and more accessible and helping people to realise their potential.
• Stuart Nash: Work towards recruiting 1800 extra police over three years as per the Coalition Agreement.
• Clare Curran: Putting non-commercial public media news and New Zealand-made content at the centre of our media.
• Ron Mark: Achieve the best possible cross-party consensus on Defence matters, to give security and confidence to the men and women who serve our country.

In a year or so let’s judge how they have gone.

Stuff reports:

Genter joined Green backbencher Marama Davidson in the race to become co-leader of the party, following Metiria Turei’s resignation last year after an admission of benefit fraud and subsequent political firestorm.

Davidson was widely considered to be the favourite – as unsuccessful candidate Kevin Hague was during the last race in 2015.

Genter is the candidate who is most likely able to appeal to people who don’t currently vote Green.

Genter said the party could grow its vote – at six per cent in the last Newshub/Reid Research poll – by presenting a unified caucus, effecting real change within Government, and maintaining a strong difference from Labour in the 2020 election.

Those votes would come from everywhere, but the first priority should be winning back the four per cent of voters lost between 2014 and 2017.

I’m not sure they are the best target. I think they were Labour voters who gave up on Labour due to hopeless leaders. Now Labour has Jacinda, I can’t see them leaving.

The best target may be centrist voters who want more done on the environment.

The BBC reports:

France has joined the US and Israel in criticising Poland’s new Holocaust law, describing the text as “ill advised”.

“You should not rewrite history, it’s never a very good idea,” Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.

Polish president Andrzej Duda signed the law on Tuesday. It outlaws accusing Poland of complicity in Nazi crimes committed under occupation.

Any law that makes it a criminal offence to debate history is a very bad law. The fact the law makes it a crime to debate the extent of Polish involvement in the Holocaust makes it a truly horrible law.

Sue Bradford writes:

During the second reading of the Electoral Integrity Bill (2001), then Green Party Co-Leader Rod Donald asked why the Labour-Alliance government was depending on Winston Peters to ‘”impose the most draconian, obnoxious, anti-democratic, insulting piece of legislation ever inflicted on this parliament”.

The 2001 bill did become law, but had a sunset clause which meant it ran out in 2005, when parliament got to debate it again. With a new balance of parties in parliament it failed this time round, after the Green Party stood firm in opposing legislation which proposed, in Rod’s words, to “stifle democracy”.

So the Greens opposed it twice in the past. Rod Donald called it draconian and anti-democratic.

Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald were Alliance MPs when they were first elected in 1996, but left the Alliance as part of the Greens’ formal withdrawal from that party. As sitting MPs they led the Greens into the 1999 election, using parliamentary resources to establish for the first time an independent Green presence in parliament.

And this law would have prevented that. Jim Anderton could have had them expelled from Parliament.

The Greens really need to get a grip on what being part of a government coalition requires. There is a basic rule of negotiation: don’t give stuff away if you don’t need to.

In sacrificing principle on electoral law they’re gaining no advantage at all. They’re also running a high risk of being seen as nothing but a Labour/NZ First doormat for the next three years.

Exactly. They are not required to vote for this. By doing so they are indeed doormats.

In sharp contrast NZ First voted wholesale against Chloe Swarbrick’s medicinal cannabis bill this week. Winston and friends don’t give a damn about keeping their partners happy. The Greens just cave.

Smart leadership from the Greens would have at least got NZ First to return the favour for first reading.

If the Green Party leadership continues to reject their own proud history and hard-won integrity, they may lose a number of their more thoughtful members and supporters. With their support sitting at just above the 5% cutoff point, this is a risk they can ill afford.

Whether they vote for it at second reading will be a real test for them.

Hamish Rutherford writes:

Out of nowhere, Finance Minister Grant Robertson has made a significant U-turn, reversing what seemed to be a core Labour position.

After years of criticising National for a significant growth in Crown debt to more than $60 billion over the last decade, Robertson now seems to think the state of public debt is the best thing about the New Zealand economy.

As sharemarket turmoil in the United States spread around the world, Robertson said in an interview that he had real confidence in New Zealand’s economic fundamentals.

“Essentially the low level of public debt is a really important part of it.”

This from a man who said that under National debt had “skyrocketed”. Barely two months ago he told Parliament he “will not be lectured” by his predecessor Steven Joyce about debt levels.

Robertson’s attacking National for increased debt has always been hypocritical, let alone inconsistent. Debt increased because National inherited a structural deficit due to the recession and GFC which meant tax revenue could not meet the spending levels Labour had put in place.

So if you are to think that Robertson was sincere in criticising the increase in debt, then by implication he is saying National should have slashed spending. But of course Robertson actually attacked National for not spending enough.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand has been hailed as the fourth safest country in the world for women, according to the February 2018 Global Wealth Migration Review.

Australia came in as the safest country in the world for women, with Malta and Iceland also ranking in the top three.

The least safe countries in the world for a woman in 2017 include Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and Syria.

Another report which reminds us that NZ is one of the best places in the world to live.

Many will recall the Yes Minister episode about a hospital with no patients. Well read this story in Stuff on Tuturumuri School.

• annual operating costs $250,000
• part-time caretaker
• release teacher
• part-time office administrator

The only problem is there are no pupils!

New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) vice-president Rikki Sheterline said the situation in Tuturumuri was not unusual. “I’ve known of cases before where schools have gone down to no students then gone back up again.”

Rural schools were in decline generally, with a couple closing annually.

Sheterline, who spent 37 years in rural schools, said the union’s  position was that all schools should have two full-time employees, to deal with the workload and ensure the safety of children.

So NZEI says that even a school with no students should have at least two full-time employees!

The average hourly wage for women rose 4.1% in the last year compared to 2.4% for men. This closed the pay gap from 86.8% at end of 2016 to 88.2% at end of 2017 – an all time high.

The pay gap (or average women pay rate divided by male pay rate) was:

• 1990: 82.0%
• 1999: 85.5%

So has been steadily improving over time.

Also worth noting the average FTE salary is now $62,200 – just $8,000 below the top tax rate.

Stats NZ reports:

The unemployment rate for Māori fell to 9.0 percent, compared with 11.9 percent a year ago. This is the lowest Māori unemployment rate since the December 2008 quarter. …

That is not the only good news in there.

• 93,000 net new jobs created in 2017
• 71,000 new FT jobs and 22,000 PT
• 17,000 fewer unemployed
• Labour force participation rate up from 70.6% to 71.0%
• Unenmployment rate down from 5.3% to 4.5%
• Maori unemployment rate down from 11.9% to 9.0%
• Northland unemployment rate down from 7.3% to 5.6%
• Manufacturing jobs up 11,000
• Overall employment rate of 77.9% third highest in OECD and unemployment rate is 12th lowest

Again it will be very interesting to see what happens in 2018 with employment and unemployment. Takes more than cooking a breakfast.

The Herald reports:

Former MP Dame Annette King is tipped to be appointed the next High Commissioner to Australia by the end of the year.

King left Parliament at the last election and was made a Dame in the New Year’s Honours.

It is understood King is now in line to be appointed as High Commissioner for Australia in the middle of the year and will take up the post when the current High Commissioner Chris Seed leaves after August.

This is no surprise. King has been rumoured to be in line for the Australia post for some years.

In the past, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has railed against “plum” postings for former MPs, saying it was doing experienced senior diplomats out of a post and if he was Foreign Minister again he would recall those he did not believe were suited to the job.

He is yet to recall any of those former politicians serving as diplomats, who include Tim Groser in Washington and Maurice Williamson as a consul general in Los Angeles.

While former politicians have often been sent to London and Washington DC, career diplomats are more common for Australia which is our closest international partner.

What Winston says and does is of course rarely the same.

Anyway I have no problems with Annette King being appointed – I think she would do a good job.

Peters and King have a respectful relationship and the posting was understood to be an unwritten understanding of the coalition relationship.

What a transparent Government we have. It seems we have:

1. The public coalition agreement
2. The 43 pages of additional policies which are secret until they are agreed and announced
3. The unwritten understandings

Mike Hosking writes:

People selected for anything but actual talent and the ability to propel the party forward. Having said that, given I am not a Green, and given this advice will fall on deaf ears, let us turn to the reality of the situation.

If they insist on a co-leader, of the three there is a clear winner: Julie Anne Genter.

Genter, like James Shaw is likeable. I have called her my favourite Green. She didn’t like it for fear that my support tainted her prospects within the cloistered world of the tree hugger and snail lover.

Genter’s bid is probably now doomed, after an endorsement by Mike Hosking!

But unlike them, I judge people on what they bring to the party, whether I am politically aligned to them or not. She is a genuinely likeable, bright, articulate operator of enough appeal beyond her green mandate to potentially be effective.

Genter has the ability to grow the vote for the Greens. The other two are more about appealing to the existing base.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand shares are tipped to be hit today after global sharemarkets were slammed in what’s been described as a “bloodbath”.

Hundreds of billions of dollars were wiped from the value of shares around the world yesterday. Australia’s stock market fell 3.2 per cent after Wall Street’s 4.6 per cent fall — where gains for the year have been erased in what was the steepest tumble in nearly seven years.

In Asia markets were also hammered with the Nikkei in Japan falling 4.73 per cent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index last night finishing down 5.11 per cent, pointing to another turbulent session on Wall Street. In early trading, Britain’s FTSE 100 dropped 2.05 per cent.

The global plunge — which will hit KiwiSaver balances — has been blamed on an overdue correction to booming sharemarkets over the past year, in particular, and the prospect of rising interest rates in the United States, which could slow economic growth by making it more expensive for people and businesses to borrow.

It’s probably is just a correction, but it could turn into a crash. Worth recalling the timing of global economic events.

• 1973 – oil crisis
• 1987 – sharemarket crash – 14 years later
• 1998 – Asian crisis – 11 years later
• 2008 – GFC – 10 years later

We’re now 10 years past the GFC. The chances of an adverse global economic event in the next three years is non-trivial.