Stuff reports:

The Government have had to cave to the Opposition’s demands on its first day in the House after it failed to have the numbers to comfortably elect its new Speaker, Trevor Mallard.

That is a new level of incompetence – not to have made sure you have enough MPs around to elect the Speaker.

National and Labour have been clashing for days over the Government’s plans to cut opposition MPs out of select committees.

Leader of the House Chris Hipkins had proposed the number of committee seats be reduced to 96, meaning 11 National MPs would miss out.

So a good outcome from Labour’s stuff up. All backbench National MPs now get the chance to serve on a select committee.

But what a stuff up from Labour. To have five Government MPs away from Parliament on the day the Speaker is elected.

The shambles began when Labour MP Ruth Dyson rose to nominate Mallard for the Speaker role.

Bridges immediately raised a point of order asking for clarification about whether absent MPs, who hadn’t been sworn in on Tuesday morning, had a vote on the Speaker role.

As the House took a break to work out the order, Bridges taunted the government with shouts of “where’s Winston when you need him?”

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Trade Minister David Parker have both already left for APEC in Vietnam and several other government MPs including, Labour’s Poto Williams and Priyanca Radhakrishnan and the Greens’ Gareth Hughes, were also absent.

That meant National could “assume the majority”, leader Bill English said.

During the commotion in the House it became apparent National’s nomination for deputy speaker, Anne Tolley, could end up as Speaker.

I commented a few days ago that Hipkins had a huge workload as Education Minister, Tertiary Education Minister, State Services, Ministerial Services and Leader of the House. To almost end up with an Opposition MP as Speaker is a bad way to start a Government.

Lorrie Goldstein writes in the Toronto Sun:

Halfway through his electoral mandate, won on the night of Oct. 19, 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces a sudden and unexpected drop in the polls, along with a growing list of broken promises from that election.

Today, let’s look at some of the major ones: …

rudeau committed in the 2015 election to a “modest” deficit in his first year in office (2016-17) of $9.9 billion. Today, it’s $17.8 billion, 80% higher.

Trudeau committed in 2015 to a balanced budget with a $1 billion surplus in the fourth and final year of his electoral mandate in 2019-20. His 2017 budget now projects a $23.4 billion deficit in 2019-20, and, should he win the 2019 election, deficits of $21.7 billion in 2020-21 and $18.8 billion in 2021-22, with no end to deficits in sight.

Will NZ Labour follow the path of their sister party in Canada? Promising surpluses but delivering deficits.

Stuff reports:

Paid parental leave provisions will be progressively increased to 26 weeks by July 2020.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the announcement on Monday as part of the new government’s 100-day plan.

“Cabinet today decided to increase the duration of parental leave entitlements to 22 weeks from 1 July 2018, extending further to 26 weeks from 1 July 2020,” she said. …

The current entitlement is up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave, one of the lowest allowances in the OECD. Legislation to allow the increase will be introduced to Parliament under urgency on Wednesday. …

The bill is largely the same one drawn up by former MP Sue Moroney, which gained a parliamentary majority but was blocked by former Finance Minister Bill English at the last hurdle using his financial veto in 2016.

It had been “well-canvassed and supported by all parties” other than National and ACT back then, and would not be required to be put through a select committee process for a third time. 

So Labour is going to use urgency to bypass the select committee process. There is no need to do that with a start date of 1 July, so one can only presume they don’t want scrutiny of the decision.

Business New Zealand chief executive Kirk Hope said the policy was positive and would be welcomed by parents but acknowledged it would be difficult for some firms.

One of the challenges smaller business would face was in managing staff.

“It’s challenging for smaller businesses to manage when people decide not to return [to work] and they’re only going to know that at the end of the paid parental leave period,” he said.

Hope said international research suggested the longer the paid parental leave period, the fewer mothers returned to the workforce.

A select committee process would allow that international research to be scrutinised.

National Review reports:

King’s College in London is paying people £12 per hour to police speaking events on campus and take “immediate action” if they hear anything that might offend the audience.

The marshals also put up posters and hand out leaflets reminding all attendees that “this is a Safe Space.” Examples of speech that might violate the policy “could include derogatory comments about someone’s age, disability, marital or maternity or paternity status, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identity, trans status, socio-economic status, or ideology or culture,” according to an article in the Telegraph.

I like how the list gets longer or longer. Once it was gender or race. Not we have paternity status, ideology, socio-economic status and culture also!

And safe space marshalls. George Orwell couldn’t come up with such stuff.

Newshub reported:

On Monday Mr Twyford, the new Housing Minister, warned if “land bankers holding out a massive new development that’s going to deliver thousands of new homes” won’t hand land over, the Government could seize it.

He says the law does not need to be changed to allow the agency to have that power – it already exists under the Public Works Act.

They can try, but if Labour wants to start seizing land off its owners they’re going to have a rough time.

The Public Works Act is generally used for major projects such as a road (or dam). You can’t have a partial road or dam, so you need a mechanism for getting a contiguous area of land for it. That is the Public Works Act.

Now merely wanting to build some houses in a particular area would be hard to justify under the Public Works Act. You’d have to make a strong case that a particular piece of land is essential.

The Environment Court can over-ride the Minister with disputed land under the Public Works Act. They have to be convinced that the objectives of the Minister can’t be met some other way.

So I doubt Labour will get far trying to confiscate land for housing.

In 1999 the Labour Government won 39% of the vote. The next poll had them at 50%. So they got an 11% bump from winning.

It lasted a year. By October 2000 they were back to 40%.

In 2008 National won 45% of the vote. The next poll had them at 56%. SO also an 11% bump from winning.

So both recent changes of Government has seen an 11% bump for the winning party. This is because people like to give a new Government a fair go.

If this Government follows form, then the next public polls should show Labour at 48%. What will be interesting is where any increase comes from.

The other thing that will be interesting is how long the bump lasts for. In 2000 it lasted a year. But National’s bump lasted their entire first term – they never dropped below 49% in the One News Colmar Brunton poll. Will Labour’s bump last for a year, less than a year, or more than a year?

The Herald reports:

The Labour-led Government wants to put the brakes on the burgeoning prison muster so it can axe plans for a new 1500-bed prison – expected to cost close to $1 billion.

The increase in remand prisoners has put pressure on the prison population in recent years and Corrections is now looming as a political battleground, with Opposition leader Bill English warning that it will test the Government.

The number of prisoners has risen since new laws in 2013 that made it tougher to grant bail, roughly doubling the number of remand prisoners to about 3000 today.

The prison muster yesterday was 10,457, well above justice sector forecasts and expected to keep rising.

Last year the previous Government unveiled plans to add 1800 prison beds at a cost of $1 billion, with more double bunking in Ngawha Prison, a new 245-bed block in Mt Eden Prison, and the new 1500-bed prison.

Justice Minister Andrew Little said it was his “strong preference” not to build a new prison, which he called a symbol of the “abject failure of our criminal justice system”.

No one wants more prisons, but if more people need to be in prisons you need places for them.

The good ways to reduce the prison population are:

• Fewer people commit serious crimes
• The re-offending rate drops for existing criminals
• Fewer breaches of parole
• Fewer breaches of bail

The bad ways to reduce the prison population are:

• Giving shorter sentences to serious violent and sexual offenders
• Ignoring breaches of bail and parole conditions
• Allowing serious offenders out more often to commit more crimes and victimise more people

It will be great if Labour reduces the prison population through the first set of measures. My fear is it will be the second set.

Davis said some innovative thinking could be used to rehabilitate women prisoners, whose needs and motives are different to men.

“Men normally do things because we’re a bit stupid. Women normally commit crime to protect others, their families, their children.”

Well that is a gross stereotype. Clayton Weatherston wasn’t thick. He was a sociopath. And Joanne Harrison wasn’t protecting anyone when she stole from the Ministry of Transport. She was just greedy.

Sad to see the Corrections Minister making excuses for criminals.

The Herald reports:

National has accused the new Government of an unprecedented and alarming erosion of democratic rights after disagreement over committees which play a crucial role in passing laws.

Labour has hit back – saying its plan to have 96 select committee places comes after National leader Bill English warned of his party’s size and the effect it will have on how Parliament operates.

National MP and shadow leader of the house Simon Bridges said it was normal for places on select committees to be roughly equivalent to the size of Parliament, or around 120 MPs.

Useful to have some history here. Since 1996 the number of select committee places has been 120. Last year the Standing Orders Committee recommended reducing this number as ” some members have too many
committee commitments”. They decided not to set a number on standing orders and said:

We do not favour specifying the number of seats in the Standing Orders. The Business Committee should retain the ability to determine the size of each committee. We propose instead that the Business Committee adopt a target of 96 seats across the 12 subject select
committees.

This change was made when there were three significant opposition parties. It suited them also as they had MPs on more than one select committee. The reason the number wasn’t fixed in standing orders was to give flexibility if circumstances change.

But what we now have is one opposition party with 56 MPs. And if only 96 spots are available, National gets only 45 spots. That means 11 MPs have no select committee membership.

This is wrong. Serving on a select committee is a vital part of being an MP. It is both a learning experience, but also a responsibility to contribute.

National has said they would be happy with 108 seats on select committees as that would give them 51 spots. The whips, Leader, Deputy Leader and Deputy Speaker don’t normally serve so every backbench MP would be on a select committee.

Labour could agree to this. But because they have appointed such a bloated executive with 31 Ministers and Under-Secretaries they are refusing to compromise as many of their backbench MPs would be on two select committees.

To me it is clear what is the greater harm. Sure it is annoying to be on two select committees, but it is harmful to refuse to allow enough places for an Opposition MP who wants to be on a select committee to serve.

Under Gerry Brownlee and Simon Bridges the Business Committee was flexible and co-operative which has led to a great improvement in the running of Parliament. Chris Hipkins is starting his tenure as Leader of the House with inflexibility which bodes very badly for how Parliament will operate.

All they have to do is agree to 108 places which means four more spots on select committees for Labour MPs, one more for NZ First and one more for Greens.

Stuff reports:

The law that earned the former police minister the nickname “Crusher” resulted in just three cars being confiscated and crushed.

Which may be because it has provided a penalty that boy racers want to avoid.

According to figures released by Collins’ office, there were 15 crashes where “racing” was a factor in 2015, compared to 70 crashes in 2001.

Racing-related crashes peaked in 2007, when there were 116 accidents, that number declined following the introduction of the crushing law, according to Collins’ figures.

If the number of racing related crashes has fallen from 116 to 15 that is great.

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.