TVNZ reports:

The new Minister for Maori Development, Nanaia Mahuta, said Mr Finlayson absolutely understood the complexities of New Zealand history.

“And how he applied that knowledge to his portfolio, and his way of managing a number of challenging issues, was exceptional.” 

Tuhoe negotiator Tamati Kruger said Mr Finlayson “has an ability to connect emotionally as well as intellectually with what’s going on and he has a very fair assessment of how things can proceed towards a settlement”.  

“Easily we call him our friend.”

For his part, Mr Finlayson, said the role has been an education for him.

“I call it the education of a public man because I’ve learned so much about my country, about it’s history and about some of the challenges it faces,” he said. 

“I consider that I’ve been the most fortunate person in the entire government because I’ve always got what I wanted.” 

The Herald reports:

At least 27 people are dead after a man in full combat gear walked into a Texas church and began shooting during a Sunday morning service.

There are reports of a “multiple casualties” – including a 2-year-old child – after a shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, a small community south east of San Antonio.

A local official says 27 people were killed and 24 more were wounded.

This is just so profoundly sad. I just don’t know how some human beings can have so little empathy.

The Herald reports:

New Housing Minister Phil Twyford wants to scrap Auckland’s regulated urban boundary to let the city spread.

Yes, yes, yes. The single most important thing the Government could do.

“On the question of the Metropolitan Urban Limit, we are going to build affordable houses, we are going to tax speculators, we are going to do all those things.

“But if we want a lasting solution to this problem, we have to make reforms that will allow the market to deliver better outcomes on its own, and the two really big things that we have to fix are the broken system of financing infrastructure that stops the city from growing, and the highly restrictive planning rules like the urban growth boundary.

“But you can’t fix the urban growth boundary without fixing the financing issue.”

Twyford said he was working “as a matter of priority” on developing infrastructure bonds to finance new roads, water and sewerage. He has said previously that the bonds could be issued by a central Government agency and repaid over 50 years by targeted rates on properties in new developments served by the infrastructure.

The infrastructure bonds also seem a very good idea.

Gareth Morgan has donated a further $430,000 to TOP.

This is $2.13 million donated which resulted in 63,261 votes. That’s around $35 a vote!

This updates the list of major donors to:

1. Gareth Morgan to TOP $2,130,000
2. Inner Mongolia Rider Horse Industry (NZ) Ltd to National $150,000
3. E Tu Union to Labour $120,000
4. Hon Robert Smellie to Labour $115,000
5. Alpha Laboratories to National $112,000
6. Dame Jenny Gibbs to ACT $106,200
7. Alan Gibbs to ACT $100,000
8. Bruce Plested to Maori Party $100,000
9. NZ Dairy Workers Union to Labour $100,000
10. Susan Cullen to Maori Party $82,512
11. Tom Pan to Labour $65,000
12. Karl Maughan to Labour $60,000
13. Lianna Hagaman to National $57,616
14. Heartland Bank to National $57,400
15. Barry Colman to National $56,000
16. HWM (NZ) Holdings to National 55,000
17. Philip Hong to National $51,720
18. Phillip Mills to Labour $50,000
19. De Yi Shi to National $50,000
20. Carrus Ltd to National $50,000
21. Rorohara Farms Ltd (Bruce Plested) to Maori Party $50,000
22. Lane Capital Group to National $50,000
23. Go Bloodstock New Zealand Limited to National $50,000
24. Go Bloodstock New Zealand Limited to Labour $50,000
25. Christopher Reeve to ACT $45,000
26. Tuku Morgan to Maori Party $43,000
27. Maritime Union to Labour $40,500
28. Stanley Palner to Labour $39,100
29. Murray Chandler to ACT $35,000
30. MF Management Ltd to National $32,000
31. Tamati Cairns to Maori Party $30,000

So by party:

1. TOP $2,130,000
2. National $771,736
3. Labour $639,600
4. Maori Party $305,512
5. ACT $286,200

The Herald reports:

Police Minister Stuart Nash is now rejecting his earlier idea of actively recruiting police from overseas, following concerns from Cabinet colleague Nanaia Mahuta about whether foreign police would interact well with Maori.

Nash denies he is backing down, having yesterday floated the idea as part of a drive to hire 1800 new police officers in the next three years – a commitment made in the coalition agreement between Labour and New Zealand First.

“I’ll talk to the Minister of Immigration and say, ‘Look, if we do a recruitment programme overseas, and we get sworn officers coming in from a number of countries, can we look to fast-track visas for these men and women?'” he told Radio NZ’s Morning Report yesterday.

The comments were not welcomed by the Police Association, which said that overseas recruitment was a “short-term” solution.

 Maori community leaders also raised concerns about how overseas officers would interact with Maori, prompting Maori Development Minister Nanaia Mahuta to seek assurances from Nash.

 

Today Nash told the Herald there would be no such recruitment programme, saying New Zealanders were the “absolute preference”, especially under-represented groups such as Maori, Pasifika, Asians and women.

So Labour says we must have fewer immigrants. Then the Police Minister says he wants to import hundreds of people to be police officers, and then he gets slapped down by the Maori Development Minister.

I’ve got no problem with ask importing police officers if we can’t recruit and train enough people locally. But Labour are the ones who campaigned on how we have too many immigrants.

Rob Hosking writes:

National leader Bill English unveiled his shadow cabinet yesterday, promising a tough time for the Labour-led government.

It is another new wrinkle the MMP system has thrown up: a parliament that is essentially going to be deadlocked.

There are already cries from government supporters that Mr English’s comments are mean and nasty, and his suggestion National is not there to make things smooth for the government is somehow dirty pool.

Yes one precious petal on Twitter is outraged that Bill English has said the Opposition isn’t there to make things easy for the Government. He has said this shows English isn’t a decent human beings or similar hysterics. He’s also been condemning me for my evil evil blog post where I propose National try to win votes off other political parties and push them under the threshold.

It is one manifestation of the Jacinda effect – and there certainly is such an effect – that the new prime minister’s supporters see any criticism or opposition as being an exhibition of nastiness rather than, you know, legitimate debate in a democracy.`

Yeah it is interesting some of them have such a sense of entitlement they thimk you opposition is in itself nasty and somehow dirty politics. Well they are going to have a lot of crying to do over the next few years as personally I’m ready and raring to go.

I will of course praise the Government when they do things I agree with. On some issues I will actively help and campaign for them – on issues such as abortion for example. But there will be many many ares where I will oppose them and do everything I can to stop some of their worse policies.

Radio NZ reports:

Green MP Golriz Gharhraman escaped Iran as a child in 1990 and resettled in New Zealand with her family.

Other refugees were not so lucky, like the 2000 detained in prison camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru for seeking asylum in Australia.

Ms Gharhaman says New Zealand can no longer ignore the crisis unfolding on PNG’s Manus Island.

   “It is such a humanitarian emergency. Manus Island is going to be looked at in history as one of the worst and grossest of human rights violations. The conditions aside, it’s indefinite detention which is defined as torture in international law. So for us to be silent over four years is complicity.”

Well Jacinda Ardern is now the Prime Minister. I’ve yet to hear her condemn the Australian Government for Manus Island, so I can only assume Ms Gharhaman is saying the Labour/NZ First Government is complicit in the gross human rights violations she claims are happening there.

Or is she saying only that the National Government had to condemn Australia, but this new Government (with three Green Party Ministers) doesn’t have to condemn them?

Stuff reports:

New government policies are predicted to put the brakes on an already slowing property market.

But data shows that, historically, it has been Labour governments that have overseen New Zealand’s biggest house price rises.

Data from CoreLogic shows house prices grew 49 per cent from 1990 to 1999, under National-led governments.

Then, from 1999 to 2008, prices rose 113 per cent under the last Labour-led government.

Through the most recent government’s term, there was 69 per cent growth in house prices nationwide.

Useful data to remember.

Very pleased to see Matt Nippert apply some scrutiny to this aspect of the agreement between Labour and Winston. He writes:

New Zealand First’s plans to reopen trade negotiations with Russia have sparked the new Government’s first international crisis.

The unheralded policy this week drew an unusually forthright and undiplomatic rebuke from European Union ambassador Bernard Savage.

At a briefing on Tuesday in Wellington, Savage said any moves made towards thawing relations with Russia would be viewed in a “very negative” light.

The policy, written into the Labour-New Zealand First coalition agreement at the urging of the smaller party, risks harming relations with one of our largest trading partners in order to enhance those with one of our smallest.

 

According to 2016 figures the European Union is our third-largest trading partner with a total of $20 billion in imports and exports each year, while two-way trade with Russia currently amounts to only $417 million.

Savage’s told those attending that reactivating the stalled Russia deal – suspended since 2014 – would complicate New Zealand’s efforts later this year to secure a free trade deal with the EU.

Russia is basically an international pariah due to its invasions of the Crimea and Ukraine. Yet Labour have signed up to a coalition deal that says they will pursue a free trade deal with them (and Belarus).

This would go down like cold sick with the EU, as the Ambassador has pointed out in unusually blunt terms. The potential gains from an EU deal are huge compared to Russia.

It shows how desperate Labour were to get Winston to put them into Government that they agreed to this. They must be (as I am) very suspicious of why Peters is pushing this. You are naive if you think it is because Peters has suddenly because a supporter of free trade. He has opposed almost every recent free trade deal. So why does he want one with Russia so badly?

Rosenberg said the CTU had their own misgivings about such a deal. “Part of our concerns with Khazakstan, Belarus and Russia is they have absolutely appalling labour standards,” he said.

Yet Labour agreed to this!

The Weekend Herald understands Peters met with Valery Tereshchenko, the Russian Federation ambassador to New Zealand, several times in the year prior to October’s general election. …

Brownlee said he was unwilling to speculate on the nature of Peters’ meetings, but noted his own recent six-month stint as minister of foreign affairs saw him have less contact with Tereshchenko than the then-MP for Northland.

“I don’t believe I’ve met the Russian ambassador at all,” he said.

It is fairly common to meet Ambassadors occasionally. But to meet on such a regular basis suggests that a real meeting of minds.

This of course is what Labour will say is about having a principled independent foreign policy!

TVNZ reports:

Health Minister David Clark has formally requested an investigation be made into alleged unjustified spending by the former chief executive of the Waikato District Health Board.

On 5 October, the Waikato DHB announced the resignation of their chief executive Dr Nigel Murray with immediate effect.

This resignation occurred part-way through an independent inquiry into alleged financial breaches during his tenure, which was never completed.

“I have written to Commissioner Peter Hughes today to request this action because such issues or allegations, especially relating to senior leaders in the public sector, risk damaging confidence in the public sector,” Dr Clark says.

“It is critical that transparency in and accountability for these processes and outcomes is maintained.”

Mr Clark’s letter to the State Services Commissioner has asked the commission to investigate the “unjustified expenditure by Dr Murray of DHB funds”, and any similar conduct by any other person within the DHB during the course of the independent inquiry.

This is a good and smart move. We should have an independent inquiry into what happened.

I’ve been pretty critical of the DHB Chair over this but to be fair to him this timeline shows he flew to Wellington to meet the SSC the day after staff alerted him to the issue. That’s not to say there are not still issues to answer – and the inquiry will help identify those.

NZ Doctor reports:

Children will wear small portable cameras on their clothes as part of a new University of Auckland study that will investigate how the marketing of healthy products and lifestyles affects children’s everyday lives.

Dr Darren Powell of the University’s Faculty of Education and Social Work has received a $300,000 Marsden Fund ‘Fast Start’ grant to research how children understand and experience ‘healthy’ marketing practices.

Sounds very similar to the stuff we have just seen which concluded that as children go to supermarkets with parents and alcohol is displayed at supermarkets, then supermarkets must be banned from selling alcohol!

“Indeed one of the main reasons I wanted to do this research is a concern that some of the marketing messages that children receive about how to be healthy, especially those relating to bodies, may actually be rather unhealthy for children,” Dr Powell says.

So this isn’t research to discover something. It is research to generate shock headlines that children see advertisements, and hence they must be banned.

When Dr Powell was told he had been awarded a Marsden Grant, his first thought was of the moment he conceived the project, a few years ago when he was watching a children’s TV programme with his son, Harvey.

“An advertisement appeared for a certain fast restaurant, promoting wraps, sliced apples, and bottled water, rather than burgers,” says Dr Powell.

“And I immediately thought: this still isn’t right. And how will this shape Harvey’s knowledge of not just health and food, but of what he called ‘the place with the yellow ‘M’?”

How terrible, McDonalds advertised wraps and sliced apples. The evil bastards. They must be stopped.

Dr Powell’s current research focuses on the childhood obesity ‘epidemic’ and the ways in which corporations (especially those of the food and drink industry) and charities are now re-inventing themselves as ‘part of the solution’. This includes an investigation of how schools, teachers and children are drawn into the global war on obesity, and how corporations are using concerns about children’s lifestyles to promote themselves as healthy, philanthropic and educational.

The usual old industry is all evil and must be demonised and can never be seen to have a positive contribution.

I can tell you the results of this research without spending $300,000. It will reflect the pre-existing views of the author 100%.

I’m all for good public health research if it was to actually discover something you have an open mind on. For example what has been the actual impact of different local alcohol policies on alcohol consumption and harm in each area? That’s research I’d like to see.

Stuff reports:

Inappropriate conduct by two Wellington city councillors at a public meeting has forced the city’s mayor to issue an apology.

Wellington city councillors Sarah Free and Chris Calvi-Freeman stirred up a war of words over transport issues when they attended a Greater Wellington Regional Council meeting this week.

Free, the city council’s public transport, cycling and walking portfolio leader, demanded that regional ratepayers stump up their share of any maintenance or repair costs for the capital’s roads when new, heavier double-decker commuter buses start operating next year. …

Calvi-Freeman, who holds the transport strategy and operations portfolio, could be heard saying “b…….” through a muffled cough at some comments made by a regional councillor.

Not exactly happy campers are they.

Stuff reports:

The Censor’s Office was about to run out of money within three years. Chief Censor David Shanks said the Crown had not increased its funding over the last 20 years and in that time, with the rise of the internet, material that kept the independent Crown entity buoyant such as pornography, had all but disappeared.

The office was forced to make four redundancies. It also meant that the five staff remaining would take on more work.

While the office’s finances are now out of the red today, the future of its role after 2020 looks murky, Shanks said. …

“​In the nineties we had large volumes of adult DVDs coming through, huge volumes and there was quite a steady market in that industry and we were charging our standard fee for classifying these titles and that kept the office quite buoyant and built up reserves.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed by adult DVDs haven’t been a thing for sometime.”

Our classification and censorship system is cumbersome and silly. We have different rules for print, films, TV shows etc etc.

Any future system should have two underlying principles:

1. We do not need to classify anything if it has already been classified in say the US, UK, Australia or Canada. Their ratings should automatically apply here.
2. We should have a small body across all media that can deal with complaints about an imported classification or consider non classified material.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand has been named one of the world’s most gender-equal countries – but the new Minister for Women says progress has stalled and the Government needs to take a greater lead.

The World Economic Forum releases its Global Gender Gap Report 2017 today, which uses an index to rank 144 countries on where women are more likely to be able to participate fully in political and economic life and enjoy the most equal access to education and healthcare.

New Zealand was estimated to have closed 79 per cent of its overall gender gap – placing it 9th in the world, just ahead of the Philippines, and behind Ireland in 8th. …

New Zealand is the most gender-equal country in the East Asia Pacific region, and since the reports started in 2006 has closed its gap by four percentage points.

So 9th best in the world. It will be interesting to see where we are in three years.

News.com.au reports:

WHITE men need not apply.

Stuff reports:

Statistics New Zealand has defended its methodology and warned it may not implement any findings of a Government-ordered review into unemployment measures.

The Labour-NZ First coalition agreement promised to conduct a review of the official measures of unemployment “to ensure they accurately reflect the workforce of the 21st Century”.

This should ring huge warning bells. This is politicians saying they don’t like the official measure, and they want to invent one which better suits them.

Luckily Stats NZ is independent and won’t be bound by the review, but it at a minimum is an attempt to pressure them. Labour risks underminign the neutrality of Stats NZ with their review.

Although there has been no comment on the nature of the review, it appears to stem from Winston Peters’ often repeated criticism that someone working one hour a week could be considered employed.

While Peters’ claim is correct, the quarterly Household Labour Force Survey delves much deeper into the job market than his statements would suggest, including measures of the extent to which people want to work more hours than they currently do.

The definition used is used by every OECD country. It allows for comparisons between countries. And as quoted above the HLFS also provides data on how many people are employed part-time (say 5 hours a week) and want to work for longer. All the data is there.

Ramsay said Statistics NZ had no more information about the review apart from what was in the coalition agreement.

“Nothing at this point. No content at all.”

Asked if she was concerned the report could damage the organisations credibility, Ramsay said: “We do hold the independence of the Government Statistician very, very much at heart.”

Any review would be “open and transparent”, and Statistics New Zealand may not make any changes, she said.

“We do the review. We don’t necessarily have to implement anything that’s there. That’s the process we would work through.”

This is the Government Statistician asserting her independence, as she should.

Dr Eric Crampton, chief economist at the New Zealand Initiative, said the review was “a bit nonsense” because the concerns expressed by Peters about the unemployment rate were already covered elsewhere in the survey.

“They’ve already got a measure of underemployment in there, which counts people who are working less than full time who would like to be working more hours,” Crampton said.

“They’re already tracking this. If it’s something you care about, you should be tracking the underemployment measure.”

Crampton said it was important that the Government Statistician not be seen to be making changes at the request of her political masters.

“They shouldn’t be under any pressure to redefine measures with a change of government.”

Absolutely.

This article by the former interim Chair of the DNC on how the Clinton campaign controlled it is astonishing. Read the full article. Some extracts:

I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.

Now this might be understandable if Clinton was the candidate, but look at the dates:

When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996 or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party already is under the control of the president. When you have an open contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I was manager of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.

So Clinton had the DNC under her control from August 2015.

I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none. Then I found this agreement.

The interim Chair is using the word corruption. This is huge.

The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.

How can you allow one candidate to control the staffing and strategy a year before the nomination is decided?

I told Bernie I had found Hillary’s Joint Fundraising Agreement. I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted this control of the party long before she became its nominee. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the interim chair position, but here we were with only weeks before the election.

Cancer and corruption!

This revelation is going to have consequences.

The Herald reports:

Jacinda Ardern says she doesn’t support a new proposal by Ports of Auckland that would extend Bledisloe Wharf into the Waitemata Harbour.

Speaking after her first meeting as Prime Minister with Auckland Mayor Phil Goff, Ardern was asked about the port company’s draft 30-year masterplan for the 77ha of land it owns on the city’s doorstep.

“What I’m happy to say is that I have always opposed port expansion at its current site,” she said.

That was in reference to plans for a 13m piled concrete extension at the end of Bledisloe Wharf, which the company says is essential for a new berth and the success of the other wharf projects.

On this issue I agree with the PM.

NewstalkZB reports:

National wants the Iranian diplomat who delivered a “hate speech” against Jews at an Auckland mosque expelled from New Zealand.

Reports that Hormoz Ghahremani made the fiery anti-Israeli speech alongside Holocaust-deniers surfaced late last month.

Jewish community leaders and Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Devoy reacted strongly, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it had “conveyed its concerns” to the Iranian Embassy.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee says the diplomat made what was effectively a hate speech, and racial disharmony offences under the Human Rights Act are quite clear.

“It raises questions as to why Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters hasn’t already required the withdrawal of the diplomat’s credentials and his removal from the country,” he said on Friday.

“Diplomats have a privileged position in most societies, allowing them to best represent the relationship between the country they’re from and the country they’re posted to.

“Inciting racial tension by making anti-Semitic statements is the antithesis of that important role, regardless of the context or setting in which the comments were made.”

The diplomat’s only defence seems to be he didn’t realise his speech would be put on the Internet. It was meant to be secret hate speech, nit public hate speech.

Diplomats are meant to be, well, diplomatic. Making fiery speeches alongside holocaust deniers calling for the destruction of another country is incompatible with that role. And it has real world consequences in terms of radicalisation towards jihad.

CNN reports:

 Air New Zealand gets regular kudos for innovating everything from in-flight services to safety videos, its funky films featuring Hobbits and other famous Kiwis.

And now, for the fifth consecutive year, the carrier has come out on top in the annual Airline Excellence Awards, created by Australia-based aviation safety and product rating agency AirlineRatings.

Celebrating the best in the aviation industry — from budget operators to culinary champions — the awards named Air New Zealand as Airline of the Year for 2018.

“Air New Zealand came out number one — or equal first — in all of our audit criteria, which is an exceptional performance,” the AirlineRatings judging panel said.