Apologies for late post

I’m no Winston fan but really who cares what he said to Susan Devoy in 1987.

I tend to agree with Peter Williams that this should never have been reported:

 During Dame Susan’s session, conducted by veteran sports journalist Phil Gifford, she made some comments about the deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters.

Now they were not especially complimentary comments, but neither were they malicious. It was a fun night, with lots of awards and lots of laughs.

It was a privilege for us media types to have Dame Susan – who I regard as a very distinguished New Zealander – among us. It was even more pleasurable to be sitting beside her, with Phil Gifford one chair over.

So when I heard that a former editor of the New Zealand Herald had sent out a tweet quoting Dame Susan talking about Winston Peters, without any context at all, and that Dame Susan had to leave the function to attend to the follow up calls from hungry media inquiries, I was – to say the least – quite angry.

This was a pleasant, harmless and – I thought – relatively innocent night out.  What was said there was, I would have thought, off the record. Chatham House rules and all that.

The Washington Post reports:

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and court records and people familiar with the contacts indicated he was acting in consultation with senior Trump transition officials, including President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, in his dealings with the diplomat. 

So those indicted so far are Trump’s Campaign Chair, Deputy Campaign Chair and his National Security Adviser.

Who thinks it will stop there?

Duncan Garner writes:

Green MP and human rights lawyer Golriz Ghahraman and her party learned a tough lesson this week about truth, honesty and spin. 

Be upfront. Tell the truth. Don’t massage and carefully manipulate your image and public reputation when it ain’t entirely true. 

Yep that is the key issue. Honesty.

But when it counted, international war crimes prosecutor, putting dictators behind bars, sounded way better than a defender of murder, rape and pillage in a vile genocide. 

Yep. And even in the one case where she was on the prosecution team, she has massively over-hyped her role. She wrote how she put heads of state on trial as if she was the main prosecutor. In reality she appears to have been pretty junior (an assistant prosecutor, which is below the prosecutors, deputy prosecutors senior assistant prosecutors). She was a small cog in a big team.

Her CV she sent around the Green Party read: ”My work as a lawyer for the UN and in NZ have focused on enforcing human rights and holding governments to account. I have lived and worked in Africa, The Hague and Cambodia.”

No mention that in Africa and The Hague, she defended evil men when she wasn’t taking weird holiday snaps with them. Who takes photos with war criminals?  Poor judgment.

Had she been upfront from the start it would be no big deal. Defence lawyers are crucial. To get dragged into an argument about defence lawyers here is a waste of time. It’s a total diversion. This is not about defence lawyers. This is about battling the truth. 

Yep those defending her by saying we need defence lawyers are throwing red herrings at us.

No wonder her leader James Shaw said sorry this week for getting it wrong twice. Shaw, like the rest of us, assumed she was doing god’s work. You can’t blame him.

When he got it wrong, why didn’t Ghahraman fix it? Why didn’t she put The Guardian right three weeks ago when it made the same mistake? Why would she? 

Truth is Ghahraman looks embarrassed to be defending those responsible for genocide. She looks embarrassed to have been on the side of defending some of the most evil war criminals this world has seen. 

She wanted her role minimised because Rwanda was ugly. Up to 1 million Tutsi slaughtered. Raped, murdered and pillaged. Almost 1 million dead in just 100 days as the world sat hopelessly by. Want to see what powerless and useless looks like: Google the UN and Rwandan genocide. 

With all the ferrets and weasels trying to trip you up in Wellington it pays to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 

But, no, she should not resign as an MP. 

I agree she should not resign. I have never said she should. On a harsh political level, she does more damage to the Greens remaining as an MP. Whenever she talks about human rights in future people will recall the photo of her beaming away next to her client convicting of citing genocide.

Sadly she has shown a serious lack of contrition. She should have said sorry rather than been so offended by the expose. 

One emailer told me this week I was attacking her because she’s a “woman with lovely brown Persian skin”.

What? 

Telling the truth is colour blind. 

Yeah I have had the same. Various nutters have alleged I targeted her because she is a woman, because she is a refugee, because she is Persian etc etc. They live in a world where they think those attributes give you immunity.

Jo Moir writes:

For a Government vowing to be the most transparent and open the country has ever seen, it really did get stuck in the mud this week. 

That 38-page secret coalition document that’s stored in a not-so-secret safe in Winston Peters’ office has caused all sorts of headaches, for the prime minister in particular, who has been visibly frustrated about the position she’s been put in.

On Monday, it was revealed the prime minister’s office was refusing to release the document that NZ First leader and deputy prime minister Peters had previously described as “a document of precision on various areas of policy commitment and development”.

The longer they resist releasing it, the worse it is for them.

So why has the Government spent the whole week battling headlines on this and undergoing forensic-style questioning in the House over who did and didn’t have access to the document, and other trivial matters like its font size?

Because Ardern resorted to a political operative approach rather than the one she’s better known for, honesty.

Over time, former prime minister John Key nailed the art of just saying he got it wrong, throwing his hands in the air, shrugging his shoulders and moving on.

The public appetite for that approach far exceeds the spin-doctoring one that was used this week by the Government.

Yep.

The excuses used by Leader of the House Chris Hipkins and Ardern for why they ended up giving unnecessary select committee concessions to National because they didn’t know their numbers in the House were simply farcical.

Their insistence it was better to give National concessions and avoid a vote for Speaker Trevor Mallard to ensure he was elected unanimously was utter nonsense.

The Government would have saved themselves weeks of headlines if they’d just admitted they weren’t 100 per cent sure of their numbers, asked for a vote and come out the other end with their Speaker and their integrity intact.

They blatantly lied.

The TLDR version of the David Fisher story on the GCSB’s Project Speargun is that the PM said he canned it in March 2013 but it wasn’t formally discontinued until September 2013.

This is being hyped up as something significant, when it is not.

A senior staff member in the PMs Office told GCSB the PM didn’t want the project to be put up to Cabinet for funding as it was too broad. It took a while for the project to be officially terminated and the funding formally discontinued. Anyone who knows Government knows this is pretty common.

It was stopped in March 2013 and formally terminated in September 2013, both long before the farcical “Moment of Truth” from Kim Dotcom.

Rich Lowry from National Review writes:

The president of the United States wakes up some mornings seemingly determined to convince as many people as possible that he’s unsuited to high office.

Fortunately for him, he has a Twitter account allowing him to act on this impulse immediately and without any filter.

Yep. So many terrible tweets. But maybe it is a deliberate strategy to distract people? Because every time he does it it then dominates headlines for days.

He followed up with a tweet calling for the firing of “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough on the basis of a noxious conspiracy theory. (A woman with a heart condition died in Scarborough’s district office when he was a congressman. Ever since, a kooky fringe has accused him of murder.)

It’s difficult to exaggerate how mind-blowing these tweets are.

If a friend on Facebook shared the fake Muslim video, you’d hesitate to credit any of his opinions going forward, let alone bestow on him the biggest megaphone on Planet Earth.

Yep.

Yet Trump’s presidency operates on a largely separate track than his Twitter feed and his other off-script interjections and pronouncements. His domestic policy is so conventional that it could have been cooked up by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell—and, in fact, it was. He’s pursued a largely status quo foreign policy, except more cautious than Barack Obama’s and, especially, George W. Bush’s. …

The defining feature of Neil Gorsuch and Trump’s other judicial nominees is a firm commitment to interpreting the Constitution and the laws as written. Trump has rolled back Obama administrative actions on immigration (DACA), the environment (the Clean Power Plan) and health care (the so-called CSR payments) that at best pushed the envelope of executive authority and at worst were frankly unconstitutional. Just this week, Trump won a court fight confirming that, no matter what his critics might hope, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is indeed an executive agency whose director is to be appointed by the president in the event of a vacancy.

It is difficult to see how Ted Cruz would have governed any differently on any of these issues.  …

On the legislative front, even as Trump outdoes himself with outlandish tweets, he is getting closer to his first major victory, in pursuit of a stereotypical Republican policy goal. If there is a safe assumption to make about any GOP president, it is that he will seek deficit-financed tax cuts. Trump is reliably conforming to the pattern.

I’m all for tax cuts but they need to be matched by spending cuts. They should not be financed by borrowing, but by surpluses.

Barry Soper writes:

Ardern said all the things she wanted to achieve could be achieved by simply being a minister which she’d be happy with. Well two months later she was Prime Minister but with the old political maestro calling the shots.

And if she for some reason can’t go on calling them herself then the coalition deal sees him stepping up to the plate – Prime Minister Winston Peters, unlikely but possible, which many have said he could have achieved in his own right if he’d remained on the National Party team.

This isn’t in the public version, so presumably Barry (who is close to NZ First and has many sources there) is referring to what is in the secret version.

No wonder Labour are desperate not to release it. It shows how desperate they are to retain power.

Linked to this is Politik noted:

In another sign that the Government is beginning to have to deal with reality was the absence yesterday of Labour’s Deputy Leader, Kelvin Davis while the Prime Minister herself was out of Wellington. (As has been the case with Prime Ministers on Thursdays for some years now). Davis has been a weak performer in Question Time, and Opposition MPs interpreted his absence as a sign that the Government wanted him out of the firing line and not deputising for Ardern at Question Time. Instead, that role was given to the House’s veteran Question Time master, the deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters.

So Davis is no longer allowed to be Acting PM!

The Herald reports:

New Zealand business confidence dropped sharply in November with uncertainty around changing government policy, a softer housing market, and difficulty getting credit seen as likely causes. The kiwi fell about a quarter of a US cent.

A net 39 per cent of businesses were pessimistic about the year ahead, the lowest level since early 2009, and a decline of 29 points from the previous month, according to the ANZ Business Outlook.

This is a huge drop. In August it was +18% and now it is -39%. I can’t recall such a dramatic fall since the GFC. But this is not due to external shocks but because the policies of the new Government are so bad.

If business confidence remains low, it means investment will drop off, and there will be fewer jobs. You may see unemployment rise.

So the new Government has a real challenge ahead to stop this happening.

A brand is a powerful thing in politics. It is a sentence that sums you up. Politicians work very hard on their brand. It’s like the TLDR version of your CV. Some examples are:

• John Key – raised by a solo mum in a state house, made a fortune overseas
• David Shearer – worked for UN in war zones
• Jacinda Ardern – raised as a small town girl in Morrinsville
• Rodney Hide – perk buster

Golriz Ghahraman’s brand was the refugee who put heads of states in three continents on trial for war crimes. It was a powerful attractive brand. I believed the brand, as did almost everyone. It is a much much more sexy brand than career defence lawyer.

It’s not that one job is good and the other is evil. That is what her defenders want the argument to be. It is about misrepresentation – deliberate fudging of her career so that she would benefit from the more glamorous brand.

Now it was no accident that the brand was someone who put heads of states on trial for war crimes. It was a story that almost everyone who followed politics believed.

Now I’m going to detail here how often Ghahraman had wrong or misleading details published, and how she never ever did anything to correct them.

First you need to understand candidates and MPs read the stories written about them. They do so religiously. Most have Google Alerts on their names. It is implausible in the extreme that she never read any of the stories on her that were inaccurate. In one case she didn;t even correct the interviewer.

Now some MPs take issues of accuracy very importantly when it comes to their background. As an example I know one MP who once had a profile of them appear in the Herald and there was a very minor mistake in it – the profile said the MP had a double degree but in fact they had one paper to go on their second degree. Not exactly a major thing but still inaccurate. The mistake was entirely the newspaper’s who had just assumed. But despite that, this MP e-mailed the reporter and pointed out the inaccuracy.  That is what conscientious MPs do.

Now let’s look at all the times that the wrong information has been published, and nothing at all was said.

In chronological order:

1. Nov 16 – Green newsletter. Says “worked as a lawyer for the UN, putting on trial politicians and military leaders accused of committing human rights atrocities.” (no mention of defence work, implies prosecution only)
2. Unknown date. Lush. “She went on to work as a lawyer for the United Nations in Tribunals for Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Cambodia, trying those accused of committing human rights atrocities.” (trying those clearly implies prosecuting)
3. Jan 17 – Herald story on her just announced candidacy says “She worked as a prosecutor at United Nations tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, where heads of state were on trial for mass atrocities. After getting her masters degree in International Human Rights Law at Oxford University she also worked on the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia.” (totally false and never corrected)
4. Jan 17 – Stuff story says “After graduating and working as a prosecutor for the United Nations in Cambodia and in tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia Ghahraman returned to New Zealand in 2012” (very clear impression she prosecuted in all three)
5. Jan 17 – Wikipedia says “She worked as a United Nations prosecutor, who worked on tribunals in Rwanda, Cambodia, and at The Hague” (wrong and only corrected after election in September)
6. Feb 17 – Impolitikal article written by Ghahraman “Eventually, that nine-year-old refugee girl ended up prosecuting heads of state for the United Nations.” (no mention of defence work, use of heads of state implies prosecutions in multiple countries. There was one head of state tried in Cambodia but not clear if she even worked in that case). UPDATE: Appears she did.
7. April 17 – her confidential CV to Green members doing list ranking said “my work as a lawyer for the UN and in NZ have focused on enforcing human rights and holding governments to account. I have lived and worked in Africa, The Hague and Cambodia.” (misleading, as most people will read that as having prosecuted the governments in Africa and The Hague, not defended them)
8. May 17 – James Shaw to NZIAA “Golriz is now a human rights lawyer who
   worked as a prosecutor at the United Nations tribunals for Rwanda and the
   former Yugoslavia. She also worked on the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia. (totally wrong)
9. 31 May 2017 – Radio NZ “has worked at the United Nations’ various ad-hoc tribunals “putting world leaders on trial for misusing their powers“. (she put no world leaders on trial. She defended some, and helped prosecute some Khmer Rouge officials)
10. 1 July – James Shaw in a second published speech said “Golriz Ghahraman … who puts war criminals on trial at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.” (totally wrong – she was defence team at the Hague)
11. Mid 2017 – The Villainesse – question to Golriz was “You already have a very impressive resume – an Oxford grad, human rights lawyer and prosecuting for the United Nations including working on the tribunals for Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and Cambodia. Was getting into politics just the next step?” (Ghahraman never corrects the question to point out she was not a prosecutor for two of those. Also in an Orwellian move The Villainesse has edited the story to remove reference to prosecuting)
12. 24 August 17 – Stuff “Ghahraman, a human rights expert and constitutional lawyer, has appeared as a lawyer at genocide and mass human rights violation trials in Tanzania, Yugoslavia and Cambodia … If elected, Ghahraman hopes to continue holding leaders accountable” (probably the least significant of her fudges – but still clearly leaves impression she was only a prosecutor)
13. Sep/Oct – Radio NZ has a story with a photo of her at the Rwanda Tribunal which they label as “Golzriz prosecuting at the Rwanda Tribunal“
14. Oct 17 – Guardian said “representing the UN in tribunals prosecuting some of the world’s worst war criminals, including perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.” (total opposite of the truth)
15. Nov 17 – maiden speech said : “I saw that at the Rwanda Tribunal, at The Hague and when I prosecuted the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Holding politicians and armies to account for breaching their powers. Giving voice to women, and minorities who are most viciously targeted by abusers.” (misleading as implies she was holding the politicians and armies in Rwanda to account, rather than defending them)

Now maybe the mistake happening once or twice could be a genuine mistake. But only the most demented people could look at this and not conclude there was a deliberate effort to leave the impression she was a prosecutor, not defender in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.

She even let her own party leader twice make false speeches about her background and never ever went to him and said “Hey that isn’t correct”. Instead James is left to take the blame, as is some anonymous staffer for the Greens website (MPs always approve their party’s online CVs in my experience).

Not once before the election was anything published in a significant forum that informed people she was not a prosecutor in all three cases. Only after the election did this information appear.

It seems the only information out there which accurately portrayed her was the very bottom of her Linked In profile. But how many people proactively check out a linked in profile of a candidate and compare that to the numerous media stories that ran with the inaccurate profile.

What has made it worse, in my opinion, is the total lack of contrition. She’s damaged her own leader, she’s damaged the Greens, and she’s still blaming everyone but herself. She even defends the smiling selfie taken with the convicted genocide inciter.

The Dom Post editorial:

Another extremely bad signal about openness has been sent by the Minister of Open Government, Clare Curran. She says she doesn’t see a need for an overhaul of the Official Information Act. However, she says she would dust off the 2012 Law Commission review of the Act, a report  which was ignored by the previous National-led government.  

Curran’s ignorance in this area almost defies belief. She has spent nine years in opposition and apparently doesn’t know that the Law Commission recommended a complete rewriting of the Act, and for very good reasons.

And No Right Turn is also unhappy:

Ignore that its Hipkins answering on her behalf, and focus on that OIA request. It specifies the information it is seeking and the timeframe it is being sought over. It is immediately clear to any reader what information is being sought. To refuse it as lacking “due particularity” is utterly baseless and unlawful, and I expect the Ombudsman will tell her that in due course. That would be bad from any government Minister, but Curran is the Minister of Open Government. And it is clear from her reported response to this request that “open government” is not something she believes in or practices. Instead, she is undermining it in her own office, right from day one.

Seeing this, and her previous behaviour, I have no confidence in this Minister to actually open up government or produce anything useful in her portfolio. And if this is how their Minister is going to act, the government might as well remove the portfolio entirely, because its clearly a complete waste of our time.

I think Ministers are finding it far easier to be sanctimonious in opposition than actually walk the walk in Government.

Stuff reports:

A decision to stop parents being able to send their children to school before their fifth birthday was announced by the Education Minister before it had been through the Cabinet process.

Under the previous government, cohort entry was introduced which allowed schools to adopt an optional policy of letting pupils start school up to eight weeks before their fifth birthday.

Labour opposed starting school at 4-years-old and last week Education Minister Chris Hipkins revealed to Stuff that schools who wanted to adopt the policy at the start of next year could continue to do so, but legislation would be passed next year limiting cohort entry to children over 5-years-old.

This policy change will mean some parents won’t be able to have their kids start school at age six.

If a school does cohort entry (which many schools will do, as it can be easier for kids and teachers to have a cohort of kids start together, rather than say a new one every few days), then you may do a cohort every three months or so.

Now if you can’t enrol your kid until they are five, then it means you may have to wait until the kid is say five years three months for the next cohort, rather than go in at say four years 11 months and two weeks.

So Labour’s change will mean less flexibility for parents and some kids being blocked from entering their local school until they are well past their fifth birthday.

Legislative changes usually go through Cabinet, or at least a Cabinet committee, before an announcement so advice can be sought from ministry officials.

Through written parliamentary questions Kaye found Ardern received no reports or briefings on the issue before Hipkins announced the policy change.

That meant there “could not have been a Cabinet paper on the law change which is startling given it affects thousands of children”, she said.

“It looks like Mr Hipkins unilaterally made the decision to change the law without going through the proper Cabinet process.”

So the policy was announced on the hoof, with an advice or analysis on impact for families.

Mike Yardley writes:

 “We got wrong. Badly wrong. And despite the warnings and legal challenges we rode roughshod over District Plan rulings and ploughed on with a defective Local Alcohol Policy (LAP) that became a cot case, clocking up over $1.3 million dollars in costs to the council, with nothing to show for it.

“Hubris trumped common-sense and we unreservedly apologise to residents and ratepayers for this shambles, which we pledge to avoid repeating again.” 

This is the statement that the Christchurch City Council should in all good conscience be issuing to the public, as they seek to the turn the page on the multi-million dollar train-wreck that their junked LAP represents.

Yes they should apologise for ignoring the law and thinking the legislation allowed them to ignore having an evidence basis for their policies.

On Thursday, in a public-excluded session, city councillors voted to abort their provisional Local Alcohol Policy and start afresh. Council staff will now prepare options for a brand-new draft LAP, with an expectation that it becomes operational within 18 months. But as is the case in so many council matters, the tail will wag the dog as regulatory policy is crafted.

Councillors will be hoping like hell that council staff will take stock of the fundamental flaws in their previous still-born LAP and not set the stage for another multi-million dollar legal stoush. Council policy officers cost the ratepayer a fortune by thumbing their nose at regulatory decisions emerging from the Independent Hearings Panel into the Christchurch Replacement District Plan.

Frankly, the individuals responsible should have been sacked. But if the next Local Alcohol Policy process is to avoid becoming an action-replay of the previous profligate debacle, pandering to zealotry should be avoided at all costs.

It is ominous that Canterbury’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr Alistair Humphrey, has already waded in, telling The Press that “the original LAP was good,” hoping the new one will be similar.

This is the guy who compares food companies to cocaine cartels. If he thinks the original LAP was great, that tells you everything about it.

James Shaw in a speech to the NZ Institute of International Affairs in May said:

Members of this audience may be interested to know that one of those
candidates, Golriz Ghahraman, is, at number ten on the list, almost certain to
become the first Member of Parliament who started her life in New Zealand as
a refugee.

Having fled Iran in 1990 as a child, Golriz is now a human rights lawyer who
worked as a prosecutor at the United Nations tribunals for Rwanda and the
former Yugoslavia. She also worked on the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia.

So either Shaw was misled or lied to by Ghahraman or Shaw himself lied.

This is no longer an issue just for Ghanraman. It is now an issue for the entire Greens and Shaw. Did she mislead them or did they mislead us?

She claims she never saw her web page that the Greens published. I doubt this having worked in Parliament. Time for them to come clean.

Newshub reports:

Books like Into the River won’t get banned anymore

Parliament has passed a law change that will help avoid a repetition of the banning of Ted Dawe’s award-winning novel Into the River.

When an interim restriction order was issued in 2015 an anomaly in the law meant there were only two options – leave it unrestricted or ban it entirely until the board of review met.

The book was banned for six weeks until the interim order was reviewed and the restriction was lifted.

National MP Chris Bishop drafted the bill and it passed its earlier stages before the election.

“In the case of Into the River it would have meant the book could have reverted to its R14 status rather than banning it outright,” he said after his bill had been passed unanimously.

“It is clear that Into the River should not have been banned – this small but useful change will help ensure such a situation doesn’t happen again.”

A small but useful law change from Chris Bishop. Good to see Parliament unanimously support it.

Sam Sachdeva writes:

A month seems early for a new government to dash hopes of a fresh start – yet Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s team seems determined to break the speed record when it comes to disregard for public transparency.

The justifications the new Government has offered for keeping a coalition document behind closed doors, as first reported by Newsroom, appear flimsy at best and cynical at worst.

What is even more galling is the non-secret part of the coalition agreement explicitly commits them to being more transparent! Shows how serious they are.

Ardern insisted the slender, publicly released coalition agreement between Labour and New Zealand First covered everything to which the two parties had formally committed.

The document Peters referred to, she said, were merely “notes” made during the course of discussions, yet to be finalised.

“Where we’ve committed ourselves to a piece of work and a policy piece of work, we’ve released that. Where there’s more work to be done, that will be released at the time when we’ve reached a conclusion.”

That is not a reason to withhold under the OIA. Just because something is not finalised doesn’t mean it can be refused.

The 33 pages of future work is a massively important document. It will tell us what the future areas of work for the Government will be. I can’t think of a document likely to have a bigger impact than this one.

Labour and New Zealand First sold their “official” agreement to the public as the sum total of the concessions that had been made to form coalition government.

As it turns out, ministers and their officials may be beavering away on dozens more policies as a result of horse trading, without any transparency over what they are or how much they may cost.

Ardern tried to argue it was right to keep that information from the public: “There are other areas that we may explore together that may be found to be unworkable, that may be found to just be fiscally irresponsible, that may never be progressed.”

But simply because a policy the Government is actively considering may turn out to be “fiscally irresponsible” is not a reason to keep it out of the public’s eye.

Yep. You just make clear these are areas of work under consideration, not committed to.

NewstalkZB reports:

Sky TV and Vocus are at odds over efforts to block pirating websites with both sides firing broadsides at each other.

Vocus Group, which runs the Orcon, Slingshot and Flip brands, is incensed by what it calls Sky’s attempt to censor the internet by demanding broadband providers block access to a range of websites.

It has labelled Sky’s demand gross censorship and a breach of net neutrality.

Sky, via its lawyers, requested that the company pick and choose the websites Kiwis can access via Spark, Vocus, Vodafone and 2Degrees networks.

I’m appalled Sky are doing this. We do not want ISPs blocking access to websites that companies disapprove of.

It is very thin end of the wedge. Block a few websites and within a year companies will be queuing up to add more to the list.

A Sky TV spokeswoman says when it comes to piracy, New Zealand is lagging behind in legal protection for content creators and legitimate content businesses, with 42 countries around the world already having similar laws in place.

We do have laws to protect content creators. And yes some sites do make torrents available. But blocking such sites achieves nothing as they merely move URLs and it creates a really bad precedent.

Also many of these sites have content that is non-infringing as well as infringing. You will be locking people accessing legitimate content.

Vocus disagree, and say that blocking a few websites will do nothing to stop piracy.

“Sky’s call that sites be blacklisted on their say-so is dinosaur behaviour, something you would expect in North Korea, not in New Zealand,” says Vocus consumer general manager Taryn Hamilton.

The request is in direct opposition to the idea that the internet is a free and open resource which should be accessed without censorship, he said.

The Pirate Bay, a entertainment downloading website, is only at 23 per cent of its 2013 peak and Netflix has fast become the largest content provider in the country, according to Mr Hamilton.

I’m about to cancel my Sky subscription. Not because of piracy, but because I now have Apple TV and Netflix and Lightbox.

Sky has been a hugely successful company that used to be the innovative company offering a superior product to its rivals. Their digital PVR was great and I loved being able to series record stuff. Do you remember the old days of having to manually program VCRs?

But their business model is now the outdated one. Netflix and Lightbox and even TVNZ on demand are the future. People want to be able to access pretty much any show past or present at any time. Sky should be turning itself into a NZ Netflix with a killer app and website, not trying to block websites.

Stuff reports:

Mothers being forced to sign consent forms to formula feed their babies in hospital is outrageous, an academic says.

University of Auckland professor Maureen Molloy said the formula consent forms were a “complete abrogation” of their rights.

“I absolutely do not agree that mothers should have to sign consent forms to formula feed,” the women’s studies expert said.

I agree.

Consent forms are what you sign to give consent for medical staff to operate on you etc. To require one for mothers to access infant formula is just a form of bullying.

The days after birth are hard enough for mothers without DHBs making them feel they are doing something wrong if they need to supplement their milk with infant formula. They already have immense guilt and societal pressure on them if they can’t produce enough milk, and the DHB adding to the pressure doesn’t help.

Of course breast milk is best. And almost every family knows that and aspires to that. But there are many reasons why sometimes you will need formula also and DHBs with their consent forms seem to cross the line from education to guilt.

The Herald reports:

Horowhenua District councillors have passed a vote of no confidence in their mayor Michael Feyen.

Deputy mayor Wayne Bishop initiated the move against first the term mayor at an extraordinary meeting of the council this morning.

The vote was carried seven votes for and one against, with two councillors absent, and followed a report in which Bishop said Feyen’s leadership was “divisive, unprofessional and frankly dishonorable”.

The report accused Feyen of making decisions within the mayoral office rather than around the council table, and using the media to advance agendas and “vendettas”.

 “As elected members we have no confidence in mayor Feyen to lead us, the Horowhenua District Council to represent us, or our community,” the report said.

 

Bishop said the mayor had since his election “either failed to understand his role and that of his office or has chosen to ignore and disrespect the trust, confidence and powers bestowed on the position of mayor and the mayor’s office”.

“The mayor has failed to understand or chosen to ignore the importance of governance versus management and, instead, continually undermined the management of the Horowhenua District Council and in particular our chief executive.”

It seems clear the Council has a crisis, with the CEO and the Mayor unable to work together, and the vast majority of Council also lacking confidence in the Mayor.

The NZ local council website states: “mayors, like councillors, are elected by their district for a three-year term. Mayors cannot be removed from office by the council”.

On Monday afternoon, Local Government New Zealand spokesperson confirmed this:

“A vote of no confidence carries no statutory weight and therefore no legal consequences for the person involved.”

I agree Councils should not be able to remove elected Mayors. But maybe there should be an ability to petition for a recall election. Say 20% of eligible voters can trigger a public vote to sack a Mayor?

Phil Quin writes a very strong article in Stuff laying out the case against Golriz Ghahraman. Quin has actually worked in Rwanda for three years.

At the bottom of the article you can read Ghahraman’s response to the Quin article, and decide for yourself whether you think the case for or against her is stronger.

There is also a separate article on Stuff with the headline “Golriz Ghahraman explains smiling photo with convicted genocide perpetrator” and again people can make up their own mind how convinced they are. One thing of note in the article:

Green Party leader James Shaw has also stood up for her, saying the accusations were “a political hit-job”

This is the defence you run when you don’t have a defence. Quin is a left wing activist who has worked for Labour. Anyone who knows him knows he is passionate about what happened in Rwanda. He has many friends in Rwanda. To dismiss what he says as a political hit-job is unworthy.

Other defenders of Ghahraman keep trying to muddy the waters by saying that the system needs defence counsels and all she was doing is acting as a lawyer should.

Here’s the correct analogy.

There’s nothing wrong with being defence counsel for a despicable person such as say Clayton Weatherston. Two very fine lawyers were his defence counsels and they were just doing their jobs. They even got hugged by Sophie Elliott’s mother after the verdict.

But what if one of those lawyers stood for Parliament and their official website described them as “acquired the confidence to study criminal law at Oxford University, and, later, to stand up in court representing the Crown in courts prosecuting some of the New Zealand’s worst killers, including Clayton Weatherston.”

And what if multiple articles had appeared stating she had prosecuted Clayton Weatherston, when in fact she had defended him, and she never sought to correct them. And what if her Wikipedia page repeated the lie she had defended Clayton Weatherston and it was only corrected after the election.

And finally what if she had posted to Facebook photos of her smiling and posing for a selfie with Clayton Weatherston.

Then of course there would be outrage and condemnation. Not for being a defence lawyer. But for everything else.

UPDATE: Also worth reading this piece by Barry Soper:

In her interview with the Herald that stirred up the hornets’ nest she said she met a defence lawyer working for the Rwandan Tribunal and he invited her over saying they needed a lawyer at the coalface. She volunteered as an intern and now conveniently can’t remember whether she was assigned to one side or the other!

In the latest batch of fudge delivered she was asked whether she’d ever posed with a war criminal, she stammered before saying, no, but admitting to a defence photo with her team in court, saying everybody did. She said it’d be bizarre to say you’d go off as an intern and refuse to sit with you team in a photo.

Well a series of photos have been sent to me, one showing her posing alone with a former pop singer called Simon Bikindi who was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to 15 years in jail for incitement to commit genocide. He was found guilty after exhorting, over a public address system, his fellow Hutus to exterminate all the Tutsis whom he referred to as snakes.

Confronted with the photo she now says her commitment’s innocent until proven guilty but she can understand how the photo could be seen by some as jarring. But being involved in the process, she insisted, she wasn’t going to go down the rabbit hole and treat him as a lesser human being and he deserved a fair trial.

Other photos showed her on a United Nations private jet, another sitting with a UN investigator and a prosecution intern at a cafe, extolling the virtues of the Guinness brewed in Rwanda.

Trying to get her to discuss the photos wasn’t easy. She initially agreed, before the lead Greens wagon occupied by a spin doctor intervened insisting on the information being flicked though to her first. When the offer was declined she simply said, okay, we’ll just leave it then.

But a few hours later they had a change of heart, at least that’s a step in the right direction.