The farce over dual citizenship grows larger. How can so many Australian MPs not have checked their eligibility in advance. The latest is Jacqui Lambie. So MPs toppled to date include:

1. Scott Ludlam, co-deputy Greens leader
2. Larissa Waters, co-deputy Greens leader
3. Malcolm Roberts, One Nation Senator
4. Barnaby Joyce, Deputy PM and Nationals leader
5. Fiona Nash, National Senator
6. Stephen Parry, President of the Senate
7. John Alexander, Liberal MP
8. Jacqui Lambie, Independent Senator

The Herald reported:

The Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) no longer applies to investor screening.

Anyone who takes up contracts with the government would have to sue under domestic procedures instead of ISDS and a third aspect has been agreed around financial services.

Those provisions have been suspended, so while they will remain in the deal, a separate side treaty notes that they would not apply unless all nations agreed to re-include them.

As well as the reciprocal agreement with Australia to scrap ISDS provisions Ms Ardern said New Zealand was also continuing to seek side letters with a handful of other countries, but won’t detail who they are until an agreement has been ratified.

That implies it was an initiative from this Government to do an agreement with Australia to scrap ISDS provisions. But Richard Harman at Politik reports:

That is confirmed in a little-noticed section in the TPP National Interest Analysis produced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in January last year which said: “Consistent with ANZCERTA and the Australia-ASEAN-New Zealand FTA, TPP’s ISDS provisions would not apply between New Zealand and Australia. “

Notice of this was posted as an “associated document” to the TPP on the MFAT website in late 2015.

But speaking in Sydney on November 5, after her meeting with Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern appeared to suggest that the pair had exchanged letters agreeing not to invoke ISDS procedures against each other.

“We discussed a signed letter on the ISDS clauses which we see as being mutually beneficial,” she said.

“That acknowledges our positions on ISDS – at least between each other.”

The exchange of letters (if it was new) was not necessary; MFAT had already established that the ISDS clauses did not apply to Australian investment in New Zealand.

So Labour tried to spin that the agreement with Australia was something they achieved, when in fact it was National that had negotiated it in the original TPP.

The Courier-Mail reports:

PEOPLE smugglers are moving to cash-in on a left-leaning New Zealand as it can be revealed

Operation Sovereign Borders has turned back four boats trying to get across the ditch.

In shock new details, it can be revealed crime syndicates have tried to bypass Australia’s tough immigration measures and attempted to send four boats, carrying 164 asylum seekers, to NZ.

It comes as there are genuine fears within intelligence communities that the direction of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who has kept her predecessor’s offer to resettle 150 refugees but has been highly-critical of Australia’s policy may be used by people smugglers to encourage desperate people to risk their lives at sea.

Maybe Jacinda should just announce that any asylum seeker that can sail to New Zealand is welcome here.

It is not know when the boats were intercepted or what country they started from but it is believed they told OSB they were headed to NZ. They were turned or towed back to near Indonesian waters.

So if Jacinda continues to attack Australia, maybe Turnbull will direct his Navy to not turn back any boats so long as they head to New Zealand, not Australia.

“New Zealand is seen as we know from our own intelligence, New Zealand is seen as effectively part of Australia by the people smugglers,’’ Mr Turnbull told ABC Radio.

“Do you know, we have intercepted and turned back boats which were heading to New Zealand?

“I mean the people smugglers, the only reason New Zealand does not have thousands of people arriving in an unauthorised way on their shores is because of our border protection policies.

“New Zealand is a prime beneficiary from our strong border protection policies.”

And that may change.

This story was obviously planted by the Australian Government. So you now have the Australian Government so pissed off at the new New Zealand Government, they are hitting back. Great diplomacy from us.

Stuff reports:

The Government intends to block moves from National that would amend its paid parental leave extension so both parents of a newborn could take leave together. 

Such a change could be detrimental to the baby, says Labour; If both parents were off at the same time, that would be a shortened total time spent on leave with that child, said Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway. 

But National spokeswoman for workplace relations and safety Amy Adams said her amendment was about flexibility and letting families choose what was right for them. 

Lees-Galloway doesn’t know what he is talking about. This is about paid leave, not total parental leave.

As someone who has just started a family, National’s proposal would be a Godsend for many families. We’re lucky as I work from home, but you have no idea how tough it is for (mainly) mothers to be looking after a new born by themselves after their partners return to work after a couple of weeks.

If both parents could take say 13 weeks paid leave each, rather than just one for 26 weeks, that would be hugely desirable for many families.

Others might choose not to. It is called flexibility.

Labour is saying that parents may make bad decisions and choose too short a time period away from work. What condescending crap.

Lees-Galloway said: “Our concern with that is the likelihood it would reduce the amount of time that baby has to bond with their primary caregiver. 

First of all most babies have two caregivers – we call them parents. It is important to bond with both of them. Secondly it just changes the paid leave, not the ability to still take up to 12 months total leave.

Adams said she could see no real reason why Labour would be opposed to giving new families greater flexibility. 

“It seems to me they’re embarrassed that they rushed this bill and there was no need to do it. This has been their policy for a long time and they still haven’t properly turned their mind to some of the important issues, like how paid parental leave works and how it can be made more flexible. 

“I think they are aware they have been caught out by not having the select committee process, dispensing with it, when actually there was plenty of time; the bill doesn’t take effect until July 1, next year.” 

Labour was being “dogmatic” in refusing to bend to a National Party amendment.

It’s just arrogance. They are just saying no because National proposed it.

Stacey Kirk notes:

Parenting 101 from your friendly Labour Government. 

New parents may relish the idea of both parents being home together, able to bond as a family in those first few weeks of a newborn’s life.

But the Government advises “no”, that’s not necessarily in the interests of your baby.

That’s why it intends to vote down a National Party amendment to the Government’s paid parental leave extension, that would let both parents take their paid leave together. 

Labour knows better than you how to raise your baby. You can’t be trusted to decide whether or not to take 26 weeks for one parent or say eight weeks for both parents and then a further 10 weeks for one.

The latest public polls. Note only one poll in October which was done after the election but before the coalition decision.

The monthly newsletter summary is:

Curia’s Polling Newsletter – Issue 113, September and October 2017

There were six political voting polls in September – a Roy Morgan, two Newshub Reid Research and three One News Colmar Bruntons.  Since the election there was one Roy Morgan poll in October.

The average of the public polls in September had National just 3% ahead of Labour, a smaller gap than the actual 7.5% gap in the election. In October, the Roy Morgan poll had National 15% ahead of Labour but this was done before the Government was formed.

 The seat projection for September was centre-right 54 seats, centre-left 57 which correctly forecast NZ First holding the balance of power. In October, it is CR 58 and CL 52.

We show the current New Zealand poll averages for party vote, country direction and preferred PM compared to three months ago, a year ago, three years ago and nine years ago. This allows easy comparisons between terms and Governments.

National’s party vote in October was 2% below a year ago and 2% higher than three years ago.

 Labour’s party vote was 4% higher than a year ago and 8% higher than three years ago.

In the United States Trump’s net approval rating has worsened to -18%.

In the UK, Theresa May’s net approval slumps further to -24% as rumours of a leadership challenge abound.

In Australia, Turnbull has also had a very bad month with his net approval falling to -28%.

In Canada, the Liberals are currently projected to win 179 out of 338 seats.

We also carry details of polls on medical cannabis as well as business and consumer confidence.

This newsletter is normally only available by e-mail.  If you would like to receive future issues, please go to http://curia.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e9168e04adbaaaf75e062779e&id=8507431512 to subscribe yourself.

Liam Hehir writes:

Ever seen an ordinary young person in a T-shirt bearing the visage of Benito Mussolini? Ever dined at a restaurant bedecked with Third Reich propaganda? Ever listened to a new recording of the Horst Wessel song by a popular contemporary folk singer?

It would be unthinkable for the National Party leader to quote Alfred Rosenberg, ideological architect of National Socialism. No prime minister would ever declare a sympathetic treatment of Reinhard Heydrich to be his or her favourite movie. No credible political figure would argue that the problem with fascism is that it has never been tried properly.

Yet on the centenary of The October Revolution – the coup d’etat that saw the creation of the Soviet Union – communism retains a grasp on the imaginations of Western progressives.

I went out to dinner in Wellington recently. The restaurant, not chosen by me, shared its name with a Soviet propaganda outfit. On the counter stood a giant bust of Vladimir Lenin. The same Lenin who, to give just one example, approved of the summary execution of more than 50,000 prisoners of war and civilians in the Crimea in 1920. The same Lenin who said “we need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved”.

Wellington has Pravda, Fidel’s and Havana. All very good eating places. But Hehir is right that no one would name a restaurant after a fascist leader.

You also know you’re in Wellington when the cafe and bookshop patrons are wearing Che Guevera T-shirts. Fifty years after his death, the Butcher of la Cabana remains a romantic icon of radical chic.

Most of them probably don their garments in ignorance of his role in the enslavement, torture and murder of class enemies. One can only hope that they have no idea that this was a man who said “a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate”.

He both proclaimed that violence was necessary for socialism, and put it into practice. He also said that newspapers must be eliminated as a free press is a barrier to socialism.

Now, most would grant that the Nazis were worse than the Soviets. The British historian Robert Conquest, a fierce critic of the USSR and Stalin’s Western dupes, certainly thought so. When asked if Nazism was worse than communism, the great chronicler of Soviet mass murder said it was. Asked to explain himself, Conquest said he “could only answer honestly with ‘I feel so'”.

I agree. There is a unique perversity about the Nazis. Their position as the signal evil of the 20th century is uncontestable. “Not as bad as the Nazis” is a pretty weak defence, mind you. Ted Bundy, an American serial killer, may have murdered more than 100 people. The Zodiac Killer, on the other hand, claimed to have killed less than 40. You still wouldn’t hire him to babysit your kids.

Great analogy. Slightly less evil doesn’t do it.

And communists have killed an awful number of people. The Black Book of Communism, published in 1997, is a scholarly work aimed at determining the extent of communism’s crimes. Looking at things like man-made famines, extrajudicial killings and full-blown genocides, the authors arrived at a total of 94 million fatalities. This number included, among others, 65 million deaths in the People’s Republic of China, 20 million in the Soviet Union and 2 million apiece for Cambodia and North Korea.

94 million dead due to a failed ideology.

Hamish Rutherford writes:

What is the difference between the TPP and the CPTPP? The biggest change may be the meaningless rebrand.

Suddenly it is not just the TPP, it is the “comprehensive and progressive” TPP.

Labour has been stridently explaining that crucial gains have been made which freed it to sign the deal.

But for all the thousands of pages of documents generated in the creation of trade deals, both the changes and the issues yet to be resolved could be summed up in just two pages.

You do have to laugh at how adding the word progressive to it, means hey the left can now feel good about it.

The CPTPP is both better and worse than the TPP.

It is worse in the sense that we don’t have the US in it, and the gains to our exporters are reduced as we will face the same barriers and tariffs into the US as we currently have.

But it is also better as the absence of the US has meant some of the clauses they wanted (and no one else wanted) have been dropped. I’m very pleased to see much of the intellectual property chapter suspended as some of the provisions there were a net negative for NZ such as extending the term of copyright.

Having said that our negotiators did a great job resisting the worst of the US demands in the intellectual property area. Their initial wishlist would have been very harmful to us.

The reality is that in a negotiation all parties must agree to some stuff they don’t want in order to get other stuff they do want. So with the US not there, we get reduced benefits but also reduced detriments.

None of the changes are due to a change of Government in NZ. They are due to the US not being part of it anymore.

Does the deal still include investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions, which so upset the nation that senior Labour MPs took to the street in protest? Yes it does. There are fewer of them, but they remain.

Trade Minister David Parker has talked bravely that the scope of the provisions have been narrowed, so foreign corporations which invested here would be unable to sue New Zealand in a foreign court “most of the time”.

He is right, but if you believed that the TPP posed a credible threat to New Zealand’s sovereignty, chances are you will still think so.

The risk posed was always abstract, something Parker will be well aware. While the ISDS provisions have existed in trade agreements for decades, they are almost never used.

The odds of the provision being used against New Zealand are genuinely remote.

The ISDS changes are minor. We have never ever had a case against us through ISDS because were not the sort of country that confiscates property on a whim etc.

But if the minor changes allow Labour to do a u-turn and declare they now support TPP, that’s good for New Zealand.

The Greens remain opposed. It will be interesting to see if NZ First also do a u-turn like Labour has.  But National has promised to vote for it, so passage is guaranteed.

As the focus goes on the remaining asylum seekers on Manus Island, it is worth remembering why Australia has such an uncompromsing policy on not allowing people who arrive by boat to be settled in Australia.

This shows the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat every year since 2002. During the Labor Government the numbers increased exponentially. In 2013 there were over 20,000 arrivals by boat. If the policy had not changed that number was likely to keep growing. There could well have been a further 100,000 by now.

Instead there has been, well zero. Yes, zero. Why? Because incentives matter. People smugglers won’t convince desperate people to pay them lots of money and try to sail to Australia if they know that arriving by boat means they will never get to settle in Australia.

And this is the more compelling graph. The former “kind” policy saw hundreds drown at sea. I’m not sure there is any good way to die, but I am sure that a very bad way to die is in the middle of the ocean in a storm in an over-crowded boat. And many of those drowned were kids.

So the “kind” policy saw over 1,200 asylum seekers drown horribly at sea. The “nasty” policy has seen that number reduce to zero. Not ten, Not five but zero. And it has been zero for four years in a row.

So one can of course have lots of sympathy for the poor people on Manus Island. They wanted to live in Australia and instead they are now living in Papua New Guinea.

But decisions have consequences. If one allowed the few hundred remaining to live in Australia, then it is absolutely certain that the people smugglers would be back in business and the sailings and drownings would increase again. It is not a coincidence these numbers have reduced to zero. It is a direct consequence of Australia’s policy.

News.com.au reports:

A New Zealand preacher who said gay people should be shot in the head and that Kiwi PM Jacinda Ardern belonged in the kitchen has packed up shop — and moved to Australia.

Pastor Logan Robertson has announced via Facebook that he and his family had moved to Brisbane and had “planted” a new church in the city.

Our loss is Australia’s gain!

News.com.au reports:

UBER will launch ride-sharing flights in Los Angeles by 2020 that are expected to cost less than a typical Uber X ride, the company announced on Wednesday. 

Product design officer Jeff Holden told Lisbon’s Web Summit the company had already designed a prototype for an emissions-free helicopter-style ride to transport people via the skies.

The custom design includes many small motors rather than a large rotor like a helicopter and is quieter, while allowing for “emissions free electric flight”.

“This is the beginning of the end of individual car ownership,” Mr Holden said. “Except for a hobby, you won’t own your own car.”

“Just as skyscrapers were the solution to commercial and residential density in cities, we believe that moving local transportation to the sky is going to open up incredible mobility bandwidth in cities.”

Mr Holden said the company planned to “offer an Uber Air flight for the cost of an Uber X trip on the ground” as soon as it was launched.

“The gnarliest of commute, an hour and a half on the ground could become a handful of minutes in the air. That’s exciting,” he said.

This may not happen by 2020 but is showing us what the future is likely to be. It will be automated transport that picks you up from your home and delivers you to your destination.

The politicians about to sink billions of dollars into train tracks that can only go from Point A to Point B might want to think about the potential for it to be white elephants on a huge scale.

Matthew Syed writes:

A recent BBC investigation found that more than a third of amateur sportsmen and women said that they knew someone who had taken performance-enhancing drugs, and 8 per cent confessed to taking steroids. In 2016, UK Anti-Doping released information about three cases of amateur cyclists who had broken the rules, including a 46-year-old who was handed two bans in the same year and a 17-year-old who had taken EPO.

Newshub reports:

Conservationists trying to protect endangered species of dolphins aren’t happy with a government decision to pause a rollout of electronic monitoring on many commercial fishing vessels.

On Friday Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash said he had instructed Ministry for Primary Industries officials to look at options for slowing down the implementation of the Integrated Electronic Monitoring and Reporting System on commercial fishing vessels. …

On Sunday Christine Rose, chairwoman of Maui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders NZ, said the decision was a huge setback for conservation.

“Electronic observer coverage is essential to properly manage by-catch. Evidence from electronic monitoring trials showed horrific, unreported fish dumping and the death of Hector’s dolphins,” she said.

Research showed up to three times as many fish and non-target species are caught and dumped than are landed and recorded in catch records, she said.

The Government must get on top of the issues of by-catch, waste, under-reporting and non-compliance.

“The National Government was no friend of conservation, but the new Labour Government has shown itself in this move, to be no friend of science, or conservation either”, Mrs Rose said.

Does the Green Party have anything to say on this? Or are they too busy cashing in their new Ministerial salaries.

So far it is 2-0 for the fishing industry over marine conservation.

CNN reports:

Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler, a Republican, dismissed the charges brought forth in a Washington Post article about Moore Thursday, telling The Washington Examiner that the relationship would be akin to that of Joseph and Mary.

“Take the Bible: Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance,” Zeigler said. “Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist. Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.”

Heather du Plessis-Allan writes:

Labour struck a deal giving in to National because it had ballsed up the vote to get Trevor Mallard into the Speaker’s job.

That was a pretty big embarrassment on the very first day of Parliament. It was maybe predictable and probably forgivable given the massive group of MPs Labour’s whips are trying to corral. But what wasn’t forgivable was then telling us the whole thing went swimmingly and, actually, the deal was struck just to be decent.

 Really?

 

Anyone who has gone through the torture of buying a house, negotiating a pay increase or grudgingly telling the dairy owner he can keep the change knows you never give up more than you have to.

It’s not a surprise Labour tried to paint the schoolboy error in a better light. The alternative is looking unprepared for the basics of government. But what is surprising is that instead of opting for a plausible half truth, they threw themselves headfirst into a story no one would believe. That’s either amateur or arrogant.

Normally Governments get really arrogant in their third term. Labour seems to have managed it in three days.

When announcing paid parental leave would extend from 18 to 22 weeks, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made a point of rubbing in how stingy we Kiwis are. When it comes to maternity leave, she told us we have “one of the lowest in the OECD where the average is 48 weeks”.

Wait, what? Forty eight weeks is nearly three times what ours was! How did we get to be such mum-haters?

We’re not. The OECD average is really 17.7 weeks, which means we’re doing okay internationally. Labour had to jump through several statistical hoops and lump all sorts of lesser forms of maternal care into one basket to concoct that unfair comparison.

There is no way at all the average is 48 weeks. So another lie.

The trouble for this lot is that two weeks into a three-year term is very early to have us questioning their honesty.

Not a great start for them. More to come I am sure.

Stuff reports:

The Greens have announced to their party membership a contest to elect a new female co-leader to replace Metiria Turei will be held in the new year. 

It’s understood potential candidates are already considering their options, and a Facebook page espousing party number two on the list, Marama Davidson, for leader has already cropped up. 

Speculation has been rife, since the shock resignation of Metiria Turei, over her likely replacement. Close proximity to the election meant any moves to jostle into contention had been placed on the backburner. 

But among the most likely candidates was Davidson, as well as Ministers and party veterans Julie Anne Genter and Eugenie Sage. Parliamentary Under-secretary and senior MP Jan Logie was also a likely contender. 

All four potential candidates are strong in different areas. Davidson is big on social justice issues like Turei was. Genter is an expert on transport and climate change issues. Sage has a very deep background in conservation and Logie has done much work in the area of domestic violence.

So the vote may be partly about the person, but also partly about what area members see as important for the Greens to brand themselves on.

Davidson has been an MP since 2015. She is 43 years old with six children and was ranked No 2 on the Greens List in 2017.

Genter has been an MP since 2011. She is 37 years old and was ranked No 3 on the Greens List in 2017.

Eugenie Sage has been an MP since 2011. She is 60 years old and was ranked No 4 on the Greens List in 2017.

Jan Logie has been an MP since 2011. She is 48 years old and was ranked No 6 on the Greens List in 2017.

Mark Reason writes at Stuff:

The All Whites and Football Ferns are pushing a collective agreement in the name of ‘equality.’ But true equality is a luxury that New Zealand Football cannot afford. So sorry all you mums and dads out there, but there is no way that New Zealand’s age group teams will soon be flying business to their tournaments courtesy of the governing body.

The idea of equality in sport is as absurdly false as the notion that Jacinda Ardern’s extended parental leave is aimed equally at men and women.  …

People ask if you support equality, implying that if you do not, then you must be a sexist or a racist or a bigot or a whatever. They want to shut down the discussion. And that makes equality one of the most dishonest words in the English language.

Equality of opportunity is a very good thing. Equality of outcome is terrible. That is lowest common denominator. That is communism where everyone gets paid the same salary – labourers and brain surgeons. Equality of outcome means the hardest working get paid the same as the laziest.

There are two reasons (apart from historic prejudice) why NZF pays business class for the All Whites. The first reason is that the All Whites generate revenue. A World Cup place would mean financial security for New Zealand Football. The second is that the top Premiership players, the ones who stimulate fan interest, are not going to come over from England in the back of the bus. Their clubs simply would not release them.

All Whites business class seats are a necessity that come with a potential return on the investment that the Football Ferns cannot match. So when I hear Sarah Gregorius and Chris Wood pushing for “equality”, I think that their hearts are in the right place, but not their brains. Do Gregorius and Wood want to cut a junior programme because the Ferns are flying business?

It does all come back to return on investment.

Female models earn way more than men and male footballers earn way more than women because that is the marketplace. There are more women’s clothes shops on the high street than men’s, fuelled by women’s spending habits. There are more professional men’s sports matches than women’s, fuelled by men’s spending habits.

Do we ever hear complaints that male models are underpaid?

The market relies on our discrimination and we discriminate according to quality on a level playing field, not one defined by gender. So Brooks Koepka, the winner of the men’s US Open at golf this year earned $US2.16 million. Sung Hyun Park won $US900,000 for winning the women’s US Open. And Kenny Perry won $US720,000 for winning the seniors US Open.

Here in New Zealand, Brooke Henderson’s prize money for winning the NZ Women’s Open was $US195,000, whereas Michael Hendry earned $US125,000 for winning the New Zealand Men’s Open. The likes of Hendry, Brad Kennedy and Ben Campbell are not the same draw as Henderson and Lydia Ko. Old man Perry is judged to be a third of the value as the athletic Koepka.

That is interesting. The prize money in NZ was higher for women’s golf than men’s golf. That is unequal. Should the women’s money be reduced to the same as the men? No – because there is more interest in NZ in women’s golf.

Same goes for netball. The Silver Ferns get paid up to around $50,000 a year. The NZ mens netball team I suspect get paid nothing. That is because far more people will pay to watch women’s netball than men’s netball.

Greenpeace has written a letter to the Speaker asking him to ban “corporate lobbyists” from having parliamentary swipe cards because shock horror a lobbyist for Anadarko has one.

This is Greenpeace saying that swipe cards should only be given to organisations they politically agree with. They wish to politicise what is actually a simple administrative issue.

Thousands of people have a swipe card to access Parliament. All the staff of course. Hundreds of government officials. Family members of MPs. Media. Volunteers and interns. Youth members of political parties. Former MPs. And around 100 other people (including me).

All a swipe card means is that you don’t have to go through the security scanner and rather than wait five minutes at reception for someone to okay you in (which means you get given a temporary swipe card), you can go straight to the lift and to your destination.

They are not an all access card. Each political party decides who can access their areas. My swipe card only gets me into National areas. It won’t get me into say Labour and Greens.

People who see swipe cards as some sort of elite thing are wrong, and their solution of making them harder is the opposite of what we should do. The last thing you want is to make Parliament more inaccessible to people. I recall the days when there was no security scanners, and the lifts did not need swipe cards.

Anyone who has legitimate business at Parliament more than say a couple of times a year, should have a swipe card. The purpose of the security checks are to keep out people with bad intentions, not to make it hard for people to visit MPs.

The worst of all worlds would be to do what Greenpeace wants which is to allow all the groups they approve of (such as the CTU and PSA) to have swipe cards but not groups they disagree with (such as Business NZ). Decisions on swipe cards should be as simple as does that people have a regular need to meet MPs.

Jo Moir at Stuff writes:

The new Government will be sighing with relief they survived their first week of Parliament, but some basic mistakes mean they’ll hardly be popping the champagne. …

What should have been a straight-forward, nothing-to-see-here formality – the election of Trevor Mallard as Speaker of the House – turned into a comedy of errors and a series of unbelievable photos in the House that ran front and centre across every media outlet in the country.

The only thing missing for those in the press gallery watching the shambles unfold was popcorn.

It had become apparent that something was brewing. Shadow Leader of the House Simon Bridges was looking shady, he was doing far too much consulting with his colleague Gerry Brownlee and chief whip Jami-Lee Ross.

And then it came. Labour’s Ruth Dyson stood to nominate Mallard and Bridges jumped to his feet for a point of order to question whether those MPs who weren’t in the House and hadn’t been sworn in earlier that day were able to cast a vote for Speaker.

Mallard looked like he wanted to be sick, Leader of the House Chris Hipkins looked like he was about to blow a gasket, and Ardern stared Bridges down with a look that could kill.

Within seconds Bridges had declared to Hipkins they had “assumed the majority” and threatened a vote as Hipkins scrambled to work out his own numbers.

Hipkins knew he needed to fix it and he had to fix it fast in order to save Mallard, who was growing paler by the second.

The whole palava actually had nothing to do with Mallard as Speaker – National leader English was already on record saying he had no issue with him getting the job.

It was about numbers on select committees and Bridges being furious with Hipkins for not even taking his calls about Labour’s plans to reduce the size of committees.

So arrogant to refuse to even discuss the issue with the Shadow Leader of the House.

Both Hipkins and Ardern maintain they knew they had the numbers to win the vote, but would Hipkins really have gone into such panic mode if he was so sure?

The defence that Labour did a deal to avoid a vote on Mallard’s election as Speaker simply doesn’t wash.

Ardern and Hipkins argued they wanted Mallard elected unopposed and a vote jeopardised that. 

It’s just nuts to think the chaos that played out was better than having a vote. Chaos caused national headlines, a vote would have been a brief at worst.

And Hipkins himself moved Mallard against Carter in 2013. A very unconvincing lie.

Hipkins has had a rough first week as the Opposition put him under pressure for threatening charter schools with closure in this column last week, before he’d even spoken to the school sponsors.

Again such arrogance. The pupils and families are having to find out from the media, rather than having the Minister talk directly to schools.

Stuff reports:

TOP leader Gareth Morgan has sent an “upsetting” email to one of the party’s candidates, telling her to resign.

Morgan signed off with an insult, telling TOP tax spokesperson and 2017 election candidate Jenny Condie she was “a pain in the arse”.

His exact words were “Please just resign from the party – you’re a pain in the arse”.

Candidates are volunteers. I can’t see too many people volunteering to be candidates in 2020 if that is how they get treated.

I don’t think Gareth has really understood the difference between a political party (TOP) and a policy thinktank (Morgan Foundation). In the latter you have just paid staff and they do what you tell them to do. In a political party, you need volunteers. Even if you are the major funder, you need more than just money.

Labour and NZ First coalition deal includes an agreement to impose a royalty on exports of bottled water.

Jacinda Ardern said in the campaign it would be between 10 and 20 cents a tonne.

So how much money will this tax raise?

An MBIE report found we had $7.1 million of exports in 2015. The average price per litre was 64 cents so that represents 11 million litres.

Now 11 million litres is 11,000 tonnes. So at the rate Ardern announces it would bring in revenue to taxpayers of between $1,100 and $2,200 per annum!!

Yep they really are that stupid.

Incidentally we extract 10 trillion litres a year of water. So the amount of extracted water that is exported is 0.0001% of that. Or of every million litres of water extracted 1.1 litres is exported.

This is such a serious problem that we need a new tax for it!