Stuff reports:

Residents on the east-side of the river may find themselves giving but not receiving following a proposed 16.5 per cent rates hike from the Hamilton City Council.

Million-dollar developments look set to benefit while property owners and renters will pay the price.

Families can’t afford a 16.5% rates rise. Councils should aim for rates increases around the level of general inflation. Otherwise a higher and higher proportion of their take home pay goes on rates.

Presented in the mayor’s budget was $860 million allocated to open up the southern Peacocke development to developers, $220m for transportation and $80m for community and city investment.

Current ratepayers should not be paying for a huge new development. Any costs around that development should be targeted on those who buy properties there.

I’ve had a couple of people e-mail me on this interesting point. In the maiden speech of Golriz Ghahraman, she said:

This was just the backdrop to a bloody war we fought against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I remember the bombs, the sirens, running to the basement. Waiting. Mostly I remember the kids, my age, who stopped speaking because of shell shock.

Sounds awful. The Iran Iraq war lasted eight years and killed several hundred thousand people. It was a terrible conflict.

But Stuff reported:

Ghahraman was nine when her family fled their home town of Mashhad in the post Iran-Iraq War.

So where is Mashhad? Is it near the border with Iraq, where the bombing and missiles occurred?

Actually it appears to be as far away from Iraq as one can get. It is almost by the border with Turkmenistan. Around 1,600 kms away.

Now it is quite possible Ghahraman lived somewhere else other than Mashhad. Maybe they moved towns to get away from the war. Maybe the Stuff article has it wrong. But it would be useful to clarify this apparent inconsistency.

This Radio NZ profile says she was born in Mashhad. So either she is saying that Mashhad was bombed by Iraq from 1,600 kms away in the 1980s, or she was born in Mashhad, moved somewhere else (closer to the war zone!) for a while, and then moved back to Mashhad. Again it is hard to reconcile all this.

And no I’m not picking on Ghahraman. This is not personal. I actually welcomed her candidacy in January. As I said a couple of readers have e-mailed me about this issue after my blog yesterday on her work in Rwanda (which I only blogged on because of the revelation in the interview).

Of interest is that in the quoted Herald story on her candidacy in January it explicitly says she worked as a prosecutor in Rwanda. The Stuff story did the same. This was a high profile story announcing her candidacy. Did she ever contact Isaac Davidson who wrote it to say he had got it wrong and she was on the defence teams in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, not a prosecutor. Has she ever sought to correct media reports that have got it wrong?

I’ve now located close to half a dozen media stories that all explicitly state or imply she worked as a prosecutor in Rwanda. None of these were ever corrected, not was the Greens website. And they certainly didn’t mention that she posed for selfies with her clients such as Simon Bikindi who was sentenced to 15 years prison for inciting genocide including a speech encouraging the Hutu nation to exterminate all Tutsis. It’s one thing to defend someone in a justice system, but another to pose for a smiling photo with them.

Bryce Edwards writes:

Calling all journalists, academics, public servants, political activists, and members of the public who believe in the need for government to be more open with its information. We need to form a coalition to fix the Official Information Act (OIA).

It’s time for everyone who believes in reforming the OIA processes to join together and campaign to make that actually happen. Such a coalition could guide the new government in making the necessary changes so that New Zealand is once again a world leader in open government, the way we were in 1982 when the extraordinary act was introduced.

The OIA itself may still be fit for purpose, but the wider official information system desperately needs review, especially in the way that the act is adhered to by government. At the moment, it often functions more as the Closed Government Act.

Now is the perfect time to act. Whenever a new government is formed, it’s normally enthusiastic and idealistic about fixing problems in the system. And when it comes to problems with the OIA, the parties coming in from opposition are highly sensitive to its faults because they’ve been on the receiving end of governments keeping an overly-tight grip on information.

The parties making up the new coalition government have protested strongly against abuses of the OIA that occurred under National. So, hopefully they’ll want to prioritise some sort of review aimed at fixing the problems.

Clare Curran is the minister with responsibility for “Open Government”, as part of her role as Associate Minister for State Services. She has already committed her government to doing much better than the last government in terms of releasing information. But in a recent interview with the Otago Daily Times’ Eileen Goodwin, Curran wasn’t very clear about whether any reform of the OIA would be forthcoming.

I’ve volunteered to join and help this group, and hope others will also. I’ve been supporting OIA reform for most of the last decade and even attended a Labour Party forum on open government and shared ideas on policies they could adopt. I hope Curran and Labour can walk the walk, bot just talk the talk.

The ideas I have promoted for open government are:

1. Have all OIA releases made publicly available on a central website (oia.govt.nz) seven days after the information has been sent to the submitter. This will allow others with interest to see the information
2. Change the law so some material is released pro-actively, not reactively. I’d mandate that all agendas and papers for Cabinet Committees (and Cabinets) be automatically released no later than six months after they are considered. The normal exceptions for redactions would apply.
3. Make financial information held by The Parliamentary Service covered by the OIA. I think having e-mails between MPs and staff covered would be stifling on political activity, but if taxpayer money is being spent, we should be able to find out on what.
4. Introduce what they call in the US Armchair Auditors Acts, that require all central and local government payments over a de minimis level to be published online in a searchable database. This would have prevented the outrageous level of expenses claimed by the Waikato DHB CEO. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
5. Require government agencies to publish datasets they have in machine readable formats on an opt out, not opt in, basis. At present each agency decides what datasets they will publish and the amount made accessible varies greatly. I’d require every government agency to make their data openly available within five years unless they get an exemption (an opt out) from Cabinet for legitimate reasons such as privacy or security.

As I said I’m keen to join this group and work with everyone from Nicky Hagar to the CTU to push for change.

If you’re interested, please get in touch. Contact me: [email protected]

I’d encourage others with a genuine interest in this area to contact Bryce also.

The latest newspaper circulation figures are out and they range from bad to appalling.

Fairfax has the biggest problems. Their two Sunday papers lost 21% and 15% circulation last year. The two major dailies lost 10% each.

Graeme Edgeler writes:

So, what questions have National MPs been asking? …

“8560 (2017). Hon Mark Mitchell to the Defence (Minister – Ron Mark) (16 Nov 2017): What meetings, if any, has the Minister attended between 26 October 2017 and 15 November 2017, including subject, attendees, and agenda items?”

It’s the type of thing any beat reporter probably does once a month via the OIA: ask the Minister of Health, or Education, or Defence who they have met with in the last month (or in this case, the first 3 weeks or so since being a Minister), or what reports they’ve received in the last month, and then 20 working days later once you received the reply, put in further requests about reports or meetings of particular interest. It is an entirely reasonable question for the opposition defence spokesperson to ask

So a simple request for a list of meetings and topics. But the Government refused to answer:

Hon Ron Mark (Defence (Minister – Ron Mark)) replied: I meet regularly, formally and informally, with officials and various stakeholders. A range of issues are discussed. If the Member would like to be more specific I will endeavour to answer the question.

So National then asked about a smaller time period – just four days. Got the same response. And note the Ministerial replies explicitly say to be more specific, so this is why they then asked about each individual day.

But even then, Ministers have refused to answer:

8393 (2017). Chris Bishop to the Police (Minister – Stuart Nash) (16 Nov 2017): Did the Minister have any meetings in his capacity as Minister of Police on October 27, if so, what people and organisations did he meet with on that day, where were the meetings held and what were the main items of business?

Hon Stuart Nash (Police (Minister – Stuart Nash)) replied: I meet regularly, formally and informally, with officials and various stakeholders. A range of issues are discussed. If the Member would like to be more specific I will endeavour to answer the question.

So having refused to answer about their meetings over a month, a week or even a day, now Bishop has been forced to ask about specific hours within a day.

11778 (2017). Chris Bishop to the Minister of Police (22 Nov 2017): Did the Minister have any meetings in his capacity as Minister of Police on October 27 between 8 and 9am, if so, what people and organisations did he meet with at that time; where were the meetings held and what were the main items of business?

This is what Ministers have said National should do. They refuse the more general requests and say be more specific.

So far, Bishop’s hour-by-hour requests only cover the first two days the Minister of Police was in office, although the essentially rejected day-by-day requests covered several weeks. The Minister should consider himself lucky. Far from being aghast that National MPs have asked “a whopping 6254 written questions”, I am instead surprised by their forbearance. They are being denied information they ought to have. By rights, they should have asked more.

Again rare to have such an arrogance in a Government within a month of being sworn in.

Ministers have only themselves to blame that National MPs have had to ask questions about what they’ve been doing each week, each day and each hour. It’s because they haven’t told them (and us) already.

Information about who a Minister has met, or what reports they have received are matters of public interest. While the explicit content  of some meetings, or some briefings  may be properly withheld, the existence of the meetings themselves will not, just like the existence of arrests and shootings in Baltimore.

Clare Curran has recently been appointed Minister for Open Government. She should take the opportunity to propose to Cabinet the automatic release of ministerial schedules.

Curran campaigned vigorously for OIA reform in opposition. She now has a chance to walk the walk rather than talk the talk.

While there is no limit on the number of written questions that the opposition can ask, the opposition should not ask 6254 written questions in a month. But the reason this is so is that they shouldn’t have to.

The asking of a large number of very specific questions is an entirely proportional response to the refusal of Ministers to seriously answer reasonable questions. Hopefully this reprisal again has its intended effect, and Ministers should realise that they were wrong to have refused to seriously answer the more general questions National MPs had asked.

You wonder if they are hiding something?

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has declined to release a key coalition document despite Winston Peters saying it would be made public.

Labour and NZ First have released a brief coalition document, but in October Peters spoke of the existence of a 38-page document underlying the list of policy wins, and setting out how the Government would work.

“We put a lot of thought into it. On day one of the negotiations, that was the first subject we raised ‘how are we going to handle a successful, cohesive arrangement’?

“It’s a document of precision on various areas of policy commitment and development,” Peters said, saying it would be released in the coming months, but exactly when would be up to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

 The document has not been released, and Ardern’s office has declined an Official Information Act (OIA) request by Newsroom, saying the Prime Minister does not hold such official information.

 

The office referred to Section 2 of the Act, saying official information is only that held by a Minister of the Crown in his official capacity.

So because it is an agreement between Labour and NZ First, it is not an official Government document so Ardern won’t release it. But it is binding on Labour and NZ First Ministers so the secret codicil to the coalition agreement is very important and significant.

Has any Government every been so secretive and arrogant after just one month in office?

Paul Little reports at the Herald an interview with Green MP Golriz Ghahraman:

In 2008 I’d been working in New Zealand as a junior barrister for two and a half years. The next logical step would have been to go out on my own, but I got accepted to do a masters degree at Oxford. While I was waiting to fly to England, I met a defence lawyer working for the Rwanda Tribunal. He said: “You should come over, we need a lawyer at the coalface.” I’d gone into law in the first place to do human rights law.

I spent about three months as an intern then went to The Hague on a consultancy at the Yugoslavia Tribunal, then was offered a job as a lawyer for the Rwanda Tribunal.

So she was recruited by a defence lawyer at the Rwanda Tribunal? So did she prosecute the genociders or defend them?

And even with the UN, defence lawyers didn’t have as many resources as the other side. To me it’s important to have that fair process. No matter how guilty someone looks, guilt needs to be established. But the defence team didn’t get paper for the photocopiers — it was like even the UN didn’t really believe in it.

From back here, having worked in court, I know the defence gets about half the resources of the prosecution. That’s really frightening — there’s definitely demographics involved.

So she wasn’t prosecuting the war criminals in Rwanda, but defending them. And complains the UN didn’t give them enough resources to defend them better! The total cost of the trials was in fact around $1 billion!

Now I had no idea before reading this article that her work in Rwanda was defending the war criminals, not prosecuting them. I doubt anyone else knew either. Let’s look at what her Green Party CV says:

Her studies at Oxford, and work as a lawyer for the United Nations and in New Zealand, have focused on enforcing human rights and holding governments to account. Golriz has lived and worked in Africa, The Hague and Cambodia putting on trial world leaders for abusing their power, and restoring communities after war and human rights atrocities, particularly empowering women engaged in peace and justice initiatives.

Now 99% of people who read that would think she was working at prosecuting the abusers, not defending them.

Look at this Guardian article from a few weeks ago:

It was in this South Pacific melting pot, says Ghahraman, that she acquired the confidence to study human rights law at Oxford University, and, later, to stand up in court representing the UN in tribunals prosecuting some of the world’s worst war criminals, including perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.

Now again 99% of people reading this would assume she was prosecuting in Rwanda. But she was actually defending the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.

Former Labour staffer Phil Quin has actually worked in Rwanda with the survivors of the genocide there. He is highly unimpressed:

Everyone deserves a defense, but please don’t preen as a human rights advocates when you dedicated a year to keeping these killers from justice. And defense underfunded?? Don’t make me laugh. ICTR spent 500m defending these guys.

— Phil Quin (@philquin) November 26, 2017

There is nothing wrong with being a defence lawyer – even for war criminals. As Quin, says everyone is entitled to a defence. A great mate of mine is a defence lawyer. But the issue here is the way the Greens have selectively published material that makes it looks like she was prosecuting, not defending.

She did later go on to prosecute in Cambodia, and again there is nothing wrong with having started as a defence lawyer so you could gain experience to become a prosecutor.  But this is not the story that we were told.

Also she was not assigned as a lawyer to defend the Rwanda war criminals. She was a volunteer as Quin again highlights:

Critical point. She did so not as part of an official legal team, but as a VOLUNTEER. Of all the ways to save the world, she chose to send killers back to the villages where their victims’ families are trying to rebuild their lives.

— Phil Quin (@philquin) November 26, 2017

Quin also highlights one of the persons she defended was Joseph Nziorera.

Hook, line and sinker. She’s a straightforward genocide denier. Goodbye, hope you enjoyed your few weeks in Parliament. I’m sure some Assad henchmen could do with your help. . #Rwanda pic.twitter.com/LhNgume3xo

— Phil Quin (@philquin) November 26, 2017

Nzirorera was considered one of the main initiators of the Rwandan genocide.

Now again a legal system needs prosecutors and defenders. The issue for me isn’t that she worked as a defence lawyer for war criminals, but that all the promotional material to date has given the impression she was prosecuting in Rwanda, not defending. Sure if you look all the way down the Linked In profile, you see the details. So it isn’t that she personally has made a false statement about her work. It is that the narrative built around her has been incomplete and misleading. The Guardian article is a great example of that – makes you think she was a prosecutor in Rwanda. The Greens website states her work in Africa was putting on trial world leaders – highly misleading.

Her own maiden speech glosses over her work in Rwanda:

It was living in Africa working on genocide trials where I then learned how prejudice turns to atrocity. Politicians scapegoating groups, as a group, for any social ills, dehumanising language in the media, used for political gain-
Every time I see that I think: That’s how is how it starts.

I saw that at the Rwanda Tribunal, at The Hague and when I prosecuted the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Very clever. It doesn’t state she prosecuted in Rwanda but you clearly gain that impression as she lumps it in with prosecuting in Cambodia.

Now imagine this isn’t a Green MP. Imagine this is a National MP who had defended war criminals and genociders in Rwanda. Do you think Labour and Green MPs would say “Well someone has to do it, and it was good work experience, so that’s fine”. Or would they be condemning them at every turn?

Stacey Kirk at Stuff writes:

They [Labour] and the Greens made much of their desire to “bring transparency back to Government” on the campaign trail.

Labour is also yet to release what’s known as the “Briefings to Incoming Ministers” – or BIMs.

They are the documents prepared by the experts and officials, delivered to ministers in their first week to give them a crash course on the portfolio they’ve just been handed – in some cases rendering them responsible overnight for the spending of public funds totalling billions. 

All of them have been requested under the Official Information Act by reporters across New Zealand. All of them have been denied by the Government on the grounds they’re about to be released publicly anyway. 

The trouble with that is the law actually applies to occasions where the document in question is yet to be printed or the minister hasn’t had a chance to read it first.

These were read by the ministers more than a month ago, and its understood to decision on when to release the BIMs – state sector wide – is to come from the Prime Minister’s Office.

In 2014 the BIMs were published in early November. We’re almost in December now.

Newshub reports:

National’s being accused of spamming Parliament, its MPs lodging more than 6000 parliamentary questions in the last month.

Nearly 6300 questions have been submitted, with the majority asking what events or meetings a minister had attended on a particular date.

Now I actually agree that National’s questions seem silly, and are over the top. You do want to use written questions to gather useful information, but I can’t see what value these questions are. Also one could gather much the same info with an OIA request covering the entire month, rather than a question per day.

In contrast, Newsroom says only 964 were submitted by the Labour-led Opposition in the month following the 2014 election.

Labour Leader of the House Chris Hipkins says the Opposition’s got its priorities wrong.

“What we’ve seen from the National Party in the last few weeks is the parliamentary equivalent of spam mail, and as a result I don’t think they’re going to get much useful information out of it,” he told Newshub.

Mr Hipkins says while Labour pushed the boundaries when it was in Opposition, National’s behaviour is unprecedented.

Not at all. Labour in fact has asked more questions in a month. In July 2010 when 8,791 questions were asked.

Over 7,000 of those questions came from a single Labour MP – Chippie’s mentor – Trevor Mallard.

Maybe Chippie could complain to the Speaker if he thinks National are asking too many questions!

UPDATE: National MP Brett Hudson comments:

The volume of questions is purely being driven by Ministers and their offices refusing to answer more generalised questions, such as something along the lines of ‘Who has the Minister met with with since being sworn in?’

A very reasonable question. It not only helps to identify who might be influencing government, it also helps to target further information requests.

Ministers’ offices have been responding along the lines of ‘The minister meets with many people on many topics. We can respond to more specific questions.’

No wonder they then face the same question repeated in separate questions for each individual day.

This is very helpful to know and explains why National is asking such specific questions. Basically Labour are refusing to reveal who they have been meeting with, forcing National to ask specifically about every day. So the media ran Chippie’s spin without realising Labour self-inflicted this on themselves.

I doubt few would say it is not legitimate to reveal who a Minister has met. The Greens used to campaign on demanding such information.

The HoS editorial:

Like experts in many things, doctors specialising in the study of “public health” are prone to tunnel vision. In their determination to counter the damage done by smoking, drinking, sugar, fast foods or anything else harmful to many, they are inclined to ignore all other considerations.

That is what happened when two of the country’s district health boards declined offers of a Ronald McDonald House for their hospitals.

It turns out these decisions were not made by the boards of the Counties Manukau and Southern DHBs but by executives who deferred to their public health physicians. Today we reveal the board of Counties Manukau has stepped in to “review” its executive team’s decision.

Not before time. The spurning of offers from Ronald McDonald House Charities has been widely criticised among the public, who constantly hear that DHBs are strapped for cash. 

Only ideologues reject a valuable offer because it also serves a commercial purpose.

The zealots have lost the plot on this one. Almost every issue or decisions has positive and negative attributes. But in the case of Ronald McDonald Houses it isn’t within a hundred miles of being finely balanced.

The so called negative attributes are that people may think better of McDonalds. You could even imagine that because of this, they sell marginally more burgers than would otherwise be the case. And maybe if those buying burgers were otherwise going to buy lentils, there is a tiny impact on obesity.

So the negative case is wafer thin and based on assumptions with no evidence.

What is the positive case? Families with kids during of cancer get to have free accommodation and support in a location next to the hospital where their kids are being treated. Scores of parents have stated that they have found the service made a massive massive difference to them when they were having their kids battle cancer.

So again this is not even close to finely balanced. It is a no brainer. For two lots of DHB executives to have declined an RMH, just tells us about how ideology has overtaken patient welfare.

The Herald reports:

The chairman in charge of authorising Dr Nigel Murray’s expenses has admitted Waikato District Health Board failed to undertake proper checks on his spending.

On the day a board member released a damning Audit NZ review of the management of expenses claimed by Murray – who spent $218,000 of taxpayers money in three years – board chairman Bob Simcock said the situation was “at heart quite simple”.

“Unknown to the board or me, Nigel Murray charged expenses to the DHB which were neither authorised nor justified,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the organisation paid those expenses without checking if they had been authorised.

I don’t quite understand how this happened. An organisation should have a clear policy about who can approve the CEO’s expenses – almost invariably the Chair.

The accounts staff should be aware of these policies, and automatically refer all expense claims to the Chair. They should not be able to be instructed not to do so, as you can’t be instructed to ignore a policy.

The Weekend Herald last week revealed Murray was out of the office for half of his last year in the job, on domestic and overseas trips.

Climo said he could not understand how Simcock was unaware of Murray’s absenteeism.

“I don’t know how the chief executive could be away that long and the chairman not be aware of that just through the ordinary course of communication between chair and chief executive.”

Again any travel of the CEO would normally be subject to the approval of the Chair unless it is for a regular meeting where you have a policy to attend.

Stuff reports:

There’s been a big hole where the Opposition leader is meant to be this week. Bill English has gone AWOL.

Parliament was in recess this week so it’s perfectly normal to only see the Government ministers about the precinct but this is the time for the Opposition to shine. So where exactly is their leader?

Umm its recess week. That usually means meeting people around the country. He was also doing interviews with a business newspaper and radio interviews. The gallery often think they are the only ones who count, but that’s simply no longer the case.

Some have taken to Opposition like a duck to water with the likes of Nikki Kaye and Judith Collins barking at everything passing by them.

Steven Joyce has been strolling around Parliament buildings doing a terrible job of hiding the fact he’s quite enjoying going up against Finance Minister Grant Robertson.

But where’s Bill?

This is silly stuff.

Good Opposition Leaders don’t bark at every issue. That is what Goff, Cunliffe and Little did and look where it got them. That is what you have spokespersons for.

The Opposition Leader is about formulating a coherent narrative as an alternative to what the Government is doing. That is not the same as providing a quote every day to the gallery.

The worst thing Bill English could do is be perpetually negative and attacking every day. It’s not his brand and doesn’t work – especially with a new Government.

Russell Brown writes:

The 2015 publication of what has become known as the the “Chinese-sounding-names” story on Auckland home ownership was, says Harkanwal Singh, “a really pivotal moment for me, working in a New Zealand newsroom. Because that’s when I realised that things don’t have to be true to be published.”

Singh was working as the New Zealand Herald’s first dedicated data journalist and was at the meeting where Labour Party MP Phil Twyford and party researcher Rob Salmond brought in their data – which they said showed a hitherto unsuspected level of Chinese foreign ownership in Auckland housing.

“They said ‘we’re not being racist’ as they handed over the data set,” he told Jogai Bhatt and I at last Sunday’s Orcon IRL.

Singh’s questions over the data delayed publication by a week. During that week he contacted Auckland University’s Thomas Lumley and Edward Abraham of Dragonfly Data Science (“the best statisticians in the country”).

“And I went back to my editors and I said, look, you should publish it, but you should say that Labour is saying this – and the statisticians are saying that it’s not true.”

His suggestion was not taken up by his editors.

So the Herald’s data specialist, after consulting with two of the best data experts in NZ, told the Herald they should publish that the data isn’t true. The Herald effectively ignored this.

Labour’s data basically assumed anyone with a Chinese sounding surname was a foreigner. So they got their shock headline of 40% of sales may be to foreigners. In fact official (not perfect) sales data suggests the actual level is around 3%.

“The story ran with the headline ‘We have Chinese buyers’ and and all I did was add some bullet points which said ‘this data is wrong’. But they were published on the fifth page, inside, in a little box, so no one really saw them.

So Labour got the front page and the truth got a small box on page five.

“It was hugely problematic and as a immigrant and as a person of colour, I saw a huge problem with it. But no one else in the newsroom saw any problem with it. And when I approached senior journalists I was told ‘it’s a great story’.

“I think it’s still not been addressed and no one’s really addressed how they went about doing it. And it’s a huge issue of data literacy if you’re just going to publish analysis done by political parties for their own goals.”

Nicky Hager should do a book about the collusion between the Herald and Labour!

Stuff reports:

Parliament will open with a new prayer on Tuesday after the Speaker of the House listened to criticism about him removing mentions of the Queen and Jesus Christ.

While the Queen is back in the new version to be read ahead of Question Time next week, references to Jesus Christ are still on the chopping block.

The National Party had demanded the Speaker reinstate the old parliamentary prayer and properly consult with MPs before removing mentions of the Queen and Jesus Christ for good.

While I agree with the substance of the changes Mallard made, I also agree with the criticism over the process. He should have consulted on proposed changes and then made a decision. Instead he made a unilateral decision to change the prayer and then consulted on it.

It’s good to see he has heeded the criticism.

The old and new versions are:

THE CURRENT PRAYER:

Almighty God,

Humbly acknowledging our need for Thy guidance in all things, and laying aside all private and personal interests, we beseech Thee to grant that we may conduct the affairs of this House and of our country to the glory of Thy holy name, the maintenance of true religion and justice, the honour of the Queen, and the public welfare, peace, and tranquillity of New Zealand, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

PROPOSED VERSION:

Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on New Zealand.

Laying aside all personal interests, we pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom and humility, for the public welfare and peace of New Zealand.

Amen.

I muchprefer the proposed version.

Grant Robertson announced:

Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Revenue Minister Stuart Nash today announced the Terms of Reference for the Tax Working Group and that the Group will be chaired by Sir Michael Cullen.

The Tax Working Group that National established in 2009 had no politicians on it – just experts. Sir Michael is very experienced in this area but he is basically Grant’s mentor and the Tax Working Group in no way can be seen as independent.

“Final recommendations to Ministers are expected by February 2019. As promised before the election, any significant changes legislated for from the Group’s final report will not come into force until the 2021 tax year.

This indicates they will seek to pass them into law in 2020, but just not come into effect until 2021.

The key test for me is whether this will be an exercise to increase the level of taxation in NZ (which I oppose) or will be revenue neutral (any new taxes are compensated by reductions in existing taxes).

I’m all for a Capital Gains Tax so long as company and income tax is reduced to compensate.

The Select Committees have now elected their Chairs. This is pro-forma as in fact they were agreed to at the Business Committee. The Chairs are:

• Economic Development, Science and Innovation: Chair: Jonathan Young (N)
• Education and Workforce: Chair: Sarah Dowie (N)
• Environment: Chair: Deborah Russell (L)
• Finance and Expenditure: Chair: Michael Wood (L)
• Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade: Chair: Simon O’Connor (N)
• Governance and Administration: Chair: Brett Hudson (N)
• Health: Chair: Louisa Wall (L)
• Justice: Chair: Raymond Huo (L)
• Maori Affairs: Chair: Rino Tirikatene (L)
• Primary Production: Chair: David Bennett (N)
• Regulations Review: Chair: Jacqui Dean (N)
• Social Services and Community: Chair: Jan Logie (G)
• Transport and Infrastructure: Chair: Darroch Ball (NZF)

What is unusual, possibly unprecedented, is that two select committees are chaired by members of the Executive – Parliamentary Under-Secretaries Michael Wood and Jan Logie.

It is not uncommon for members of the Executive not in Cabinet to serve on select committees, but I’ve never known one to chair a select committee, let alone the powerful Finance and Expenditure Select Committee.

When the Chair is a member of the Executive, how can you have confidence the Committee will properly scrutinise the Executive?

The Federalist reports Tom Coburn:

However, they are probably less inclined to concede that the constant growth of the welfare state produces inversely diminishing returns. “In 1966 when the massive means-tested entitlements to address the poor began, the overall poverty rate in the United States was 14.7 percent,” Coburn notes. “In 2013, and more than $15 trillion later, the poverty rate was measured at 14.5 percent. That could be a statistical error, rather than even this miniscule 0.2 percent decline.”

$15 trillion for 0.2% decline!

Stuff reports:

A blogger previously jailed in Australia over a racial attack has tried to enter New Zealand and wound up in custody.

Brendon O’Connell, 46, is an outspoken critic of Israel and what he describes as “Zionist power.”

Now the Australian man is in New Zealand, where it’s understood he fled for political asylum but ended up under arrest. 

Immigration NZ confirmed that O’Connell had been detained at the border. …

“This individual had his entry permission to New Zealand revoked on character grounds and is now in custody,” a spokesperson said.

It’s not yet clear where he’s being held. The Corrections Department has declined to comment.

O’Connell is a proponent of conspiracy theories related to a Jewish elite. In a recent video on his website, he blamed this month’s Las Vegas shooting on an “Israeli kill squad.”

Why detain him? Why not just deport him immediately?

Anyway if you want to be amused, read what his mates are saying:

Australian man Brendon O’Connell who blew the lid off Operation Talpiot and exposed the Jewish State’s “kill switches” in most major Western infrastructure, has been held in a NZ jail since October 11th.

Apparently nobody has heard from him since.

When did the NZ authorities start detaining so called ‘refugees’ (in fact just Australians) at the border and holding them without trial or even giving them the chance to issue a statement or speak to anyone, for up to 20 days?

Well – ever since our Government was taken over by Zionist Jewish terrorists and associated infiltrators of course. Something we have certainly well covered. Just think meth trafficking, record child abuse, housing crisis and on and on – there are no rules anymore under the New Jew World Order of global corporate government.

It is a boot stamping on a human face for eternity – welcome to the future.

The Jews will have their agents right throughout the prison system here in NZ, so let’s hope they are not torturing the poor man. Or something worse, like trying to replace him.

The Jewish torture squad! They have such vivid imaginations.

Stuff reports:

A northern Rodney breakaway council could make an operating surplus of up to $5 million in its first year of operation, a new feasibility report shows.

The report ‘disproves’ the Morrison Low report, commissioned by the Local Government Commission to inform its decision on options for local government reorganisation in Auckland.

But the commission says its too far along in the process to consider the report.

Morrison Low’s report claimed the proposed northern Rodney council would operate at a first year loss of $13.5m deficit, leading to a 48 per cent rates rise.

The Northern Action Group (NAG), which is proposing the breakaway from Auckland Council, commissioned their own report by APR Consultants in response to the commission’s report, which it believed wrongly used figures from Auckland Council.

I suspect that Auckland Council figures will of course be hostile to a part of the region breaking away.

The NAG report is online here.

The APR study was based on three councils of similar size and make-up – the Tasman, Marlborough and Gisborne district councils.

It used internationally recognised methods to benchmark the councils’ operating income and expenses on a per capita and per ratings basis.

This produced 12 different financial performances for the proposed Northern Rodney Unitary Council (NRUC), NAG chairman Bill Townson said.

Depending on the model, year one operating figures ranged between a $5m surplus to a $5.5m deficit, with a surplus occurring more times than not.

“The average of all 12 outcomes shows that a stand-alone unitary council could achieve a healthy operational surplus and disproves the Morrison Low report’s contention that the proposed NRUC would not be a reasonably practical option,” Townson said. 

NAG has submitted the report to the Local Government Commission asking it to now considers the breakaway proposal as a viable option.

It will be interesting to see what decision is made.