It seems very clear that the truth is not being told over the funding of Labour’s intern scheme. Newsroom has more details:

Newly released documents have shed light on a troubled intern scheme linked to the Labour Party, with the party’s secretary telling electoral officials the scheme’s organiser “had not been forthcoming” in disclosing how it was funded. …

In response to a letter from the Electoral Commission, Labour Party general secretary Andrew Kirton asked for a meeting to discuss the “unusual and complex situation”, accompanied by Kensington Swan lawyer Hayden Wilson.

When you turn up with a lawyer, you know there are real issues!

The Electoral Commission’s notes of the July 5 meeting record Kirton as saying McCarten’s vision “appears to have been to create an independent entity supported by unions etc”.

The scheme was run by Labour Party staff and used the Labour Party name and logo. It was about as independent as the media in Belarus.

Kirton estimated McCarten had spent $104,000 on the intern scheme, with the funding believed to come from “a private funder who he has not disclosed.”

“Andrew believes that Mr McCarten would not have funded any of the costs himself. Andre [sic] and Hayden indicated that Mr McCarten has not been forthcoming…

So the General Secretary of the Labour Party is saying he does not believe Matt McCarten when McCarten says he paid for it all himself. This is staggering, especially as McCarten is the former Chief of Staff to two leaders.

“Andrew and Hayden’s view is that the costs incurred were by Matt. They have stepped in to honour the bills, but at law they have no obligation because Matt was responsible [and] had unilaterally entered into these agreements and had no authority to incur costs on behalf of the party.”

Two Labour Party staffers were working on the scheme. Advertisements appeared overseas promoting it all with the Labour name and logo.

The Electoral Commission then wrote to McCarten on July 10, asking him to provide information on who provided the funding for the campaign and the extent of Labour’s involvement.

After he did not respond to a July 17 deadline, the commission wrote to him again on July 19 saying it was considering whether to refer the issue to the police “given the amount of money involved and the seriousness of [the] allegation”.

Only the Police have the power to investigate fully. They can access bank accounts and determine who actually paid for what.

He told the Electoral Commission the campaign had been set up by “a few mates of mine” after Labour decided not to run an official internship programme, and he had agreed to personally cover or raise the costs for the scheme.

A few mates? Who? The four people involved with it were two Labour Party staffers, a member of their National Council and McCarten. Were there others?

In a follow-up letter on August 1, McCarten said Farrar and media had made “a series of assumptions that then lead to inaccurate conclusions”, and the scale of the project was far smaller than had been suggested.

There were no assumptions. It was all based on the actual documents McCarten drew up saying what it would cost.

He had spent $65,094 on the scheme “paid directly out of my personal bank accounts”, including nearly $37,000 on accommodation and food as well as over $10,000 on rental cars and vans.

I’m sorry but I am as skeptical as Andrew Kirton on this. Who happens to have a spare $65,000 sitting in their bank account to fund such a scheme. I know how much parliamentary staff are paid, and this is highly implausible.

McCarten said he was not working for Labour when he set the campaign up, and believed the interns would not have seen themselves as being part of the party’s national campaign.

This is also wrong. He started work on this back in March when he was employed by the Leader’s Office. And the interns absolutely saw themselves as part of Labour’s campaign – they cited Labour on their fundraising pages.

However, McCarten did not meet an August 17 deadline to hand over the information, with a follow-up email from the Electoral Commission on October 3 – nearly two months later – asking him to provide a timeframe for a response.

An Electoral Commission spokeswoman confirmed McCarten had still not provided it with the final donation figures, but there were no “legal obligations” yet.

“The next step is for candidates to file their return of election expenses and donations, and these are due on 23 January. The reason the Commission asked Mr McCarten to come back to us was to make sure the final figures were communicated to us and the candidates for their returns.”

It is not just the figures needed, but who the contributors were. The Electoral Commission needs to satisfy itself that McCarten did indeed fund this all himself, and no-one else contributed.

Asked why he had said he secured a private funder for the scheme, McCarten replied:

“Because I just felt like it really, to be honest – it was really kind of tongue-in-cheek between myself and [the reporter]…I meant it more as a joke, but of course there’s no jokes in these matters.”

This is why this must be investigated by someone who can get to the bottom of it. McCarten has made contradictory statements on who funded this. It would be naive to not try to establish the facts.

Stuff reports:

While the biggest news of the day is the indictments Robert Mueller has handed down against former President Donald Trump aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, he also released a plea bargain with a heretofore minor figure in the Russia scandal by the name of George Papadopoulos. And that could actually be the day’s biggest news.

That’s because while Manafort and Gates sure look like they’re going to jail, as of yet they aren’t cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. Papadopoulos is, which means that he likely has information that will lead Mueller closer to the heart of the case.

The Manafort indictment is no surprise. He has been dodgy for a long time and is a well known lobbyist for Russian interests. In fact one wag suggested he was in line to be Chief of Staff to Winston Peters considering Winston’s strange insistence that we pursue an FTA with Russia and Belarus.

Papadopoulos has agreed to plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians. Specifically, he falsely claimed that they had occurred before he joined the campaign in March 2016. He had communication with a professor who had contacts in the Russian government; this professor told him that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails”. The professor introduced him to a female Russian national who was supposedly Vladimir Putin’s niece (it turned out she wasn’t), and to someone who supposedly had connections in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Based on those conversations, Papadopoulos pressed the campaign to set up meetings with the Russians, a suggestion that never came to fruition.

So Russia was offering the e-mails. The question is whether anyone on the Trump campaign responded to them.

So what does this have to do with the larger case? I spoke this morning with Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan law school who is a former US Attorney and has worked extensively in criminal and national security cases. I asked: If Papadopoulos was just some low-level nobody tossing around ideas that were rejected by the campaign’s higher-ups, why would Mueller offer him a plea deal that is contingent on his cooperation? Doesn’t that suggest that he has information that can be used to build a case against someone more important than him?

“I think it’s a fair conclusion to think that he has information that is valuable in the prosecution of others,” McQuade says. “You would only offer that cooperation if you’ve sat down with him and learned that he has information that is of value.”

Going to get interesting. Sacking the FBI Director will turn out to be the stupidest thing Trump ever did, as this led to the Independent Counsel.

The Herald reports:

Political science lecturer and commentator Jon Johansson is the new chief of staff for New Zealand First.

Johansson is a key appointment following New Zealand First’s decision to sign a coalition agreement with Labour.

He replaces David Broome, who previously worked for Federated Farmers.

Winston Peters announced Johansson’s appointment as the party’s chief of staff at Parliament today.

 Johansson is a senior lecturer in comparative politics at the School of History, Philosophy, Political Science & International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington. His specialties include New Zealand and American politics, and political leadership.

It is rare for a political scientist/academic to take up a staff role in politics. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

Newshub reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will head to Australia this weekend to meet with Malcolm Turnbull.

The Prime Minister said she will not be meeting with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

Asked whether she expected the dual citizenship controversy to be raised, and whether she would apologise on behalf of Labour’s Chris Hipkins, she said: “We were not responsible for that and therefore there is nothing to apologise for.”

Ms Bishop previously threatened that she would find it “very difficult to build trust with Labour” if the party formed a Government, after Mr Hipkins asked questions in the New Zealand Parliament about dual citizenship. 

She’s not responsible for what Chris Hipkins did?

One of the big trans-tasman issues is Australia’s decision to triple tertiary fees for NZers studying there. Normally the key Minister to negotiate with Australia on this issue would be our Tertiary Education Minister, Chris Hipkins.

But Hipkins is toxic to the Australian Government, so somehow NZ will have to negotiate this issue without having our Minister involved in the negotiations.

Stuff reports:

Former National Party MP Todd Barclay will not be prosecuted by police after he once again refused to speak to them.

Police reopened an investigation into allegations Barclay, the former MP for Clutha-Southland, illegally recorded a staff-member after it emerged in June that former prime minister Bill English had been a key witness in the case.

Barclay was accused of secretly recording the conversations of his staffer Glenys Dickson. It is illegal to record a conversation you are not a part of in New Zealand.

Police have now closed the case as they have insufficient evidence. No warrants were executed and Barclay again refused to be interviewed. 

This is no surprise at all.

Stuff reports:

Companies will get a slice of their research and development spending back under the new Government. 

Science, Research and Innovation Minister Megan Woods confirmed the Labour, NZ First and Green Government would be reintroducing research and development tax credits. …

One week before the election, the former Science and Innovation Minister Paul Goldsmith said tax credits were not in National’s plans because they were difficult to budget for.

“The problem with tax rebates is that it does complicate the whole tax system and it is very difficult to find out exactly what it is costing you.”

Goldsmith said accountants could easily write-off business spending as R&D when it was not, meaning companies would get away with paying less tax.

“Accountants are usually pretty innovative themselves … What you see is a reduction in the company tax over time and that grows and grows.”

The Government says it wants less corporate tax avoidance but this policy will see far more companies avoid tax. As Paul Goldsmith said, a lot of expenditure can be classified as research and development once you learn you effectively get given money by the Government if you do so.

I missed this announcement on 18 October:

On 18 October 2017, the Electoral Commission referred Television New Zealand to Police in response to complaints about the rebroadcasting of the Te Karere programme on Election Day.  In the Electoral Commission’s view, the programme contained statements likely to influence any elector as to the party or candidate for whom the elector should or should not vote and rebroadcasting the programme on 23 September 2017 before 7pm breached section 197(1)(g)(i) of the Electoral Act 1993.

This is potentially quite serious.

Radio NZ reports:

Ms Ardern also said the government would try to find a solution on foreign home buyers before she left for the APEC meetings next week.

She said if the government was able to find the right mechanism, it could legislate against purchases of existing properties by non-residents before the TPP trade deal is ratified.

Ms Ardern told Morning Report that would remove one of the government’s main stumbling blocks to signing the TPP, and that would then allow the government to focus on dispute settlement provisions in the trade deal.

The TPP allows countries to impose stamp duty on foreign buyers of property. A 100% stamp duty on foreign purchases would be an effective ban. So Labour already have a mechanism to achieve their policy goal.

Radio NZ reports:

New Zealand First campaigned in 2014 on holding a referendum to repeal the law, saying it was passed in 2007 despite overwhelming public opposition.

Ms Martin told Checkpoint with John Campbell that the law had had a chilling effect on parents, including herself.

She said she used to smack her children sometimes if they simply refused to listen.

“A smack on the hand, a smack on the leg, I absolutely did yes.

“Normally it was when one of my children would decide they weren’t going to listen to me, they weren’t going to follow my instructions, and so it was a stand-off between myself and a child and I’d got to the stage where I’d explained myself for a number of minutes and now we were in a situation where I was saying ‘you need to do as you are told’.

“And if the answer was still ‘no’ then it was a smack on your leg and go to your room and then we’ll talk about it later once you figure out that I’m the parent and you are the child.”

The Minister for Children presumably speaks on behalf of the Government on children issues, so this is going to cause some huge tensions with Labour and Greens.

Stuff reports:

An Iranian diplomat has been accused of fuelling radicalism with a fiery, anti-Israel speech at an Auckland mosque.

Jewish community leaders want Hormoz Ghahremani, first secretary of the Iranian Embassy, to be expelled after he appeared alongside speakers who denied the Holocaust and called for the “surgical removal” of Israel.

In his speech, Ghahremani said Israel was trying to “deceive the world” by pretending to be an advocate of peace when in fact it was fuelling terrorism and extremism in the Middle East to divert attention from the Palestine issue.

Muslim nations needed to unite against “the anti-human regime of Israel and discern their common enemy with profound insight”, he said.

At the same event a visiting Iranian cleric, Hojatoleslam Shafie, said Israel “hides behind a fake phenomenon” of the Holocaust and that it was a conspiracy to infiltrate Islamic countries.

Anyone who shares a platform with a Holocaust denier gives them legitimacy and implicit endorsement.

He said Quds Day was established “to deal a powerful punch to the mouth of the cancerous tumour known as evil Israel,” and cited Imam Khomeini as saying that “if every Muslim were to spit in the face of Israel, Israel would drown”.

The annihilation of the “Zionist regime” had begun, he said, and Israel would not last for another 25 years.

Community elder Sayed Taghi Derhami, a Mt Albert accountant, told attendees at the event that Israel was a “cancerous gland” that had to be “surgically removed”.

Such hate in an accountant.

Ghahremani told Stuff he agreed the speech could be seen as inflammatory, but it had to be taken in the context of the event at which it was given. He spoke at a gathering to mark the annual Quds Day, initiated by Iran in the 1970s to support Palestinians and oppose Zionism. 

Contacted at the Iranian Embassy in Wellington, Ghahremani said his speech was supposed to be private and he was upset it had been put on the internet. “It was something private, a small gathering. I was there to reflect the position of the Iranian Government.

“We do not recognise the Israeli Government, that’s not a secret. But we are not against their existence.”

Asked if such inflammatory speeches could fuel radicalism in the Muslim community, Ghahremani said: “If it’s spoken in public places yeah, you’re right. But it was a small, private gathering that happens once a year. This year they make a mistake to shoot a film, to put it on YouTube.”

Actually it is worse in private. At least in public we know it is happening and can counter it.

Stuff reports:

The disparity in pay between New Zealand’s top men and women rugby players is on the new Government’s agenda.

Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson was asked on Three’s The Nation on Saturday if the national women’s team the Black Ferns should paid the same as the men’s team the All Blacks.

“I will be looking forward to a conversation with NZ Rugby about how they will achieve the Government’s goal of pay equity,” Robertson said.

So Grant thinks it is his job to talk to the rugby union about how much they pay their players!

Of course the Black Ferns get paid less than the All Blacks. And the NZ Mens Netball team get paid less than the Silver Ferns.

I happen to think the Black Ferns should get better pay from the NZRFU. But I sure as hell don’t think it has anything to do with the Government.

Good to see the Minister of Finance though focused on the big issues facing NZ.

Stuff reports:

A Kuwaiti ambassador who fled serious assault charges in New Zealand returned for 10 days to tie up loose ends and hold a farewell party.

Police were powerless to act due to diplomatic immunity – a form of legal protection that ensures diplomats are given safe passage and can’t be prosecuted under a host country’s laws.

Absolutely we must respect diplomatic immunity. But after he had left NZ, we should not have allowed to return.

Razouqi’s return “to conclude his affairs” in New Zealand – requested on March 16, 2016 – was on the condition it was for no more than 10 days.

This should not have been granted in my opinion.

I rarely criticise other polling companies, due to professional courtesy. NZ is generally well served by the various research companies and we saw Reid Research and Colmar Brunton get some very accurate pre-election polls.

Some other companies were less accurate, and that is also fine. All companies have polls that are less accurate than others. Curia has. Sometimes your poll is a bit dated. Sometimes you’re at one end of the margin of error. So long as one is constantly self-assessing your results and methodology, there is no shame that some polls are less close to an actual result than others.

But what annoys me is when a company tries to spin an inaccurate result as accurate. That just insults the intelligence.

So I can’t let past this release from Roy Morgan, which I quote from:

The final Roy Morgan New Zealand Poll of the campaign titled: ‘NZ Election on a knife edge but Labour favoured’ predicted a tight result with Labour favoured to form Government over the incumbent National-led coalition.

That poll predicted Labour/Greens would get 48.5% and National 40%. In fact National beat Labour/Greens by 2% rather than trailed by 8.5%.

Roy Morgan predicted a potential coalition of Labour/Greens/Maori Party would hold 62 seats in Parliament compared to 58 seats for the National-led Opposition. As it turned out the Maori Party failed to hold their two seats in Parliament which instead went to Labour and the combination of Labour/Greens/NZ First will govern with a majority of 63 seats compared to the National-Act NZ opposition which holds 57 seats.

This makes it sound like they were just slightly out. Actually the difference were large. Their poll and the results were:

• National 50 seats, got 56
• Labour 49 seats, got 46
• Greens 11 seats, got 8
• NZ First 7 seats, got 9

As I said there is nothing wrong with not getting the result right. They were disadvantaged by finishing their poll on 10 September, 13 days before the election. What I object to is the press release which selectively quotes their poll to make it look more accurate than it was.

NBR reported:

Meanwhile, Mr Peters revealed there is a 38-page addendum to the coalition agreements that have already been publicly released. It will be released later, he said.

The document was a briefing to government ministers, laying out specific rules and processes over how they should address issues like accountability and media strategy while working as a cohesive government.

I’m amazed that the media haven’t reported on the existence of this secret addendum and demanded it be immediately published.

The Herald reports:

Lee Harvey Oswald met a senior KGB agent months before the assassination of John F Kennedy, documents from the newly-released trove have revealed.

Oswald met agent Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov in Mexico City’s Soviet embassy two months before the president was shot and killed in Dallas on November 22, 1963, the Daily Mail reported.

Kostikov was a senior agent in the 13th Department which was responsible for assassinations.

That’s a mighty big coincidence.

Oral questions are proportional to the number of non-executive MPs a party has. These numbers are:

• National 56
• Labour 24
• NZ First 4
• Greens 4
• ACT 1

In a three week session there are 108 questions. So the average questions per sessions of nine days will be:

• National 68 which is seven or eight a day
• Labour 29 which is three most days and sometimes four
• NZ First 5 so one every second day approx
• Greens 5 so one every second day approx
• ACT 1 so one every three weeks

So the average day will see eight questions from National, three from Labour and one from NZ First or Greens.

Stuff reports:

The new Labour Government has promised to get the ball rolling on repealing the controversial ‘Hobbit law’ in its first 100 days in office.

Incoming Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway told Radio New Zealand that restoring worker’s rights was a priority.

“We’re looking to restore a lot of workers rights that have been diminished over the last nine years and that is a priority for us. It’s something that we want to have the legislation at least introduced within the first 100 days of government,” he said.

A huge win for the Australian union that tried to blackmail Peter Jackson with a global boycott.

The Hobbit law, the commonly referred name for the Employment Relations (Film Production Work) Amendment Bill, was passed through government in 2010 – at the time The Hobbit was being made.

It meant that workers in the film industry were put on a independent film contracts, rather than employee contracts.

The nature of film productions is such that having employees doesn’t work well. Your schedule changes constantly. You may need someone for a couple of days and then not again for a few weeks.

This law change will drive productions out of New Zealand, and destroy jobs.

The Herald reports:

Unions are firmly opposed to Shane Jones’ proposal to introduce a work-for-the-dole scheme for the unemployed, while bosses would support such an initiative in principle.

The newly-appointed Minister for Regional Economic Development said today he had been encouraged to look into the idea as part of the $1 billion extra funding to go to regional New Zealand.

Jones will lose this fight if the unions are against it, as Labour does what they say.

The Herald reports:

Catalonia is headed for a dramatic confrontation with Spain after the insurgent region’s parliament voted to declare independence and the government in Madrid gained the power to oust its separatist leadership.

The resolution approved by lawmakers in Barcelona said the establishment of Europe’s newest sovereign country had been set in motion. The portion of the text submitted to a vote included measures to ask all nations and institutions to recognize the Catalan Republic.

Meanwhile in Madrid, the Spanish Senate approved measures giving Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy the power to seize control of the Catalan administration via Article 155 of the 1978 constitution. The legislation already has come into force.

It is unclear if the majority of people in Catalonia do want independence. The recent vote was boycotted with a very low turnout.

Not sure how this one will end. Ideally there should be a proper vote on independence agreed to between both Spain and the regional government (as in Scotland). Unilateral action is unlikely to end well.

Zach Castles writes:

The incoming government makes no secret of its regard for capitalism as a “blatant” failure. This is despite nearly one billion people over the last 20 years having been lifted out of poverty because of it. Moreover, the very “neoliberalism” the incoming prime minister criticises, and yet refuses to define, has helped many Kiwis out of a life of welfare dependence and into the dignity of a job.

No one is saying capitalism is perfect. Especially Bill English. His entire social investment approach, one I had the privilege of working on government, anticipates this by accepting that governments must invest more money early on to reduce the cost of crime, health inequalities and intergenerational welfare dependence.

But to engage with Jacinda Ardern’s attempt at class warfare rather than to call it out is to New Zealand’s detriment.

Capitalism is what allows us to fund the welfare state, and health and education.

In a world of Brexit and Trump, and a media-branded upsurge against perceived “neoliberalism”, the question is no longer whether National is capable of reform, but how far it is prepared to redefine a centre ground that is rapidly shifting in the direction of Jeremy Corbyn, the far-left leader of the UK Labour Party. The fact that National and New Zealand First are not in government shows that this process is already underway. A fundamental schism between the socialist left’s unholy union with authoritarian populism on one side, and the liberal right on the other, is opening up.

Populism and socialism is always a bad measure.

Far from being in a “very, very dark place” as Paddy Gower was quick to assert, National has just been handed a golden opportunity. In fact, the biggest impact Bill English can make now on the National Party, more than at any other time in his political career, will be in these initial weeks and months.

As the party regroups and refocuses its efforts, National has never had a better opportunity to make capitalism cool again by re-making the case that it is the best tool we have to transform lives in a dangerous and uncertain world. Indeed, transforming lives through the investment approach is the essence of the Key-English legacy, and it is National’s task to defend that legacy and advance its cause vigorously in the next three years.

I agree.

Stuff reports:

Health authorities in Wellington have door-knocked residents and local businesses in the suburb of Newtown as the owner of a local spice store applies for a new liquor licence.

It comes months after police admitted “poorly worded” communication after they were accused of attempting to drum up opposition to another liquor licence application.

On Wednesday, a Regional Public Health (RPH) regulatory officer visited homes and businesses near Silk Route Spices on Riddiford St, informing them about a liquor licence application under the company name of Liquor Hub Limited.

It’s one think for DHB staff to put in a submission reflecting their views. It is quite another for taxpayer funded staff to be door knocking around the neighbourhood trying to whip up opposition.