Greg could be talking about most of the Labour front bench. How’s this for a career politician CV:

1. Young Labour
2. staffer to Phil Goff
3. staffer to Helen Clark
4. staffer to Tony Blair
5. Labour Party candidate
6. Labour Party MP

Sounds like a career politician to me! So was that who Greg O’Connor was talking about?

The Herald reports:

Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson is warning that Labour’s water taxes could force existing full-and-final Treaty of Waitangi settlements to be opened for renegotiation with iwi.

He said the policy overturned accepted policy of successive Labour and National Governments of the past 25 years that no one owned the water.

Governments applying a tax on water was an assertion of Crown ownership “and then that gives rise to the counter assertion that Maori own water”.

“They are dicing with death, quite frankly,” he told the Herald.

 “It opens a complete Pandora’s Box. I’d like to know [if] it is Labour Party policy that, after all the work we’ve done, both political parties over 25 years, are they proposing to re-open treaty settlements so that this matter can be looked at?

“That totally goes against the fundamental principle that has been bought into by 99 per cent of the New Zealand population,” he said.

If you tax something you are asserting ownership of it, and so Labour’s policy will inevitably lead to court action over who owns water.

Finlayson, who is also the Attorney General, said the Government recognised in settlement a very strong personal connection that people have with various rivers.

“Our Whanganui River settlement is a ground-breaking piece of legislation.

“But there is a great step from saying people have an interest, an historical, a cultural interest in water to saying they potentially own it. That is where, in principle, I could never go.”

Using the Waikato River as an example, he asked: “Is it the proposition that Tuwharetoa own from [Lake Taupo] down to beyond Huka Falls and then Te Arawa owns the water thereafter and then Ngati Raukawa and then you get further down the river and it’s Waikato Tainui? Of its very nature, you can’t own water.”

Jacinda’s water tax is a very bad policy. Make sure you tell everyone about it.

Part Two from David Garrett:

Part one of this series covered the blazing end of my political career, and my resignation as an MP in September 2010. I am reliably informed that in the TVNZ section of the Press Gallery, Guyon Espiner  made a dartboard out of a picture of my face, and gleefully celebrated the taking of  my scalp. Six months later, the MP in  the bulls-eye was Darren Hughes – but the extent and nature of media coverage of him was somewhat different.

I should make clear that most of what follows is either public information, or information from reliable sources. Where I venture into conjecture,  or where I don’t know something for a fact, I will make that quite clear.

On  the night of 1  March 2011 Darren Hughes and others were out on the drink in Wellington after a debate at Victoria university. I am informed that he was at the centre  of a group of young Labour activists drinking with him and other  university students. While it later became clear that Hughes is homosexual, it is important to record that this was not widely known at the time. Parliament is a hot bed of gossip, most especially about MP’s personal peccadilloes and problems – it quickly becomes known who is a heavy drinker; who smokes dope or takes other drugs; and who plays musical beds.

No-one in ACT knew Hughes was gay, and I never recall any Nat mentioning it. I actually liked Hughes – it was hard not to – he was and I am sure still is  extremely witty and articulate, and  he was definitely not one of the  “nasty bastards” – like little Plughead – who are mercifully few in parliament. I have no way of knowing how widely known it was among the Labour members – or more particularly Labour Youth – that Hughes preferred young men to comely young women.

At some point on the night of 1  March 2011, Hughes took an  18 year old  youth – later spun both by media and Labour as “a grown man” – back to the flat in Haitaitai, Wellington, which Hughes shared with Annette King MP. Both Hughes and the object of his sexual interest were apparently drunk – the young man  reported to be far more drunk than Hughes.

No-one on our side of the fence knows exactly  what transpired at the flat, but what is clear is that in the early hours of the following morning, the young man was found running naked down the streets of Haitaitai. He was picked up by the police, and the following day a complaint of a sexual nature was made against Hughes. At that point, the Labour spin machine – and to a lesser extent the left leaning media – went into overdrive.

Firstly, the 18 year old youth became “a grown man” who had gone willingly with Hughes, who was well  known to be homosexual. In other words, “two consenting adults went off to have sex, so what?” The age framing was a  significant part of the spin. In my case, a boy aged two and a half at the time of my offence became “a dead baby”, and he has always remained so in the media. My shameful offence was the same whether the dead person was two days or two years old, but doesn’t “a dead baby” sound so much worse? For Hughes though, I don’t recall the words “youth” or “teenager” ever being used – he was always “ a man”, or at worst, “a young man.”

The police began investigating the complaint,  which by their statements indicated that the allegation was one of either unlawful sexual connection, or sexual violation of some kind. This was certainly no low level indecent assault – what Graeme Edgeler has referred to in the 3S context as “a drunken grope”.

Phil Goff, Labour’s then leader, immediately went on the offensive, accusing ”the Beehive” of leaking the details of the incident.  I know of no evidence that that was how the matter became public knowledge, but I am certainly aware that the Prime Minister’s office knows a great deal more than they are lawfully entitled to – including information of a highly confidential nature that the police provide to the inhabitant for the time being of the ninth floor, regardless of their party.

Hughes first went on leave from parliament – nothing remarkable about that,  I  did the same thing; that’s what MP’s do when a shit storm is erupting about them.

Hughes then effectively disappeared from the public eye for more than three weeks. Readers of part one of this series will recall that TV vans were camped outside my house even AFTER I had resigned; the former Journal of Record sent reporters to Australia to interview someone I had been to school with, and advertised on its front page for “those who know something about David Garrett” to come forward. But what about Darren Hughes’ doings, between the 3^rd of March 2011, and when he resigned on 25 March?

It later transpired that Hughes had gone to ground at Paul Henry’s beach house in Hawkes Bay. Since Henry was what would loosely be described as a journalist, it would surely have been common knowledge among his colleagues that that is where Hughes was? It would certainly not have been at all difficult to find out – New Zealand is a very small place, and Paul Henry was then a leading media figure.

But no TV vans outside Henry’s hideaway; no door stopping Hughes, just media reports  from Labour sources which suggested that the “grown man” must have known exactly what Hughes had in mind when he went back with him  to the flat in Haitatai.

From that point until the police announced Hughes would not face charges, the media virtually shut down the story. It was yesterday’s news. Perhaps not surprising when it became known that Hughes had acted at MC at Guyon Espiner’s wedding – the same Guyon Espiner who had gleefully led the hounds after me, and placed my image over the dartboard in the TVNZ office.

Now, one can have anyone one likes as MC at their wedding, and I’m sure Hughes did a fantastic job – as I have said he is witty, clever, and highly articulate. I’m sure it was a wonderful occasion. But while an MC is not quite the best man, one does not chose just “some joker you know” to fill that role; you choose as MC a person who is a close,  if not one’s closest friend, and someone you have spent considerable time with.

DPF: Just to add some context here, Guyon’s wife used to work for Darren Hughes. So it wasn’t Darren being MC as he was best mates with Guyon, but rather that he was a very close friend and former boss of Emma.

So was Mr Espiner an impartial commentator on the Hughes affair? I suggest that he cannot have been. Was it proper that he led the charge against me, a person at the opposite end of the political spectrum to his good mate? You decide.

Eventually the police investigation into Hughes was concluded, with the announcement that he would face no charges over the incident some months before. Hughes immediately  foolishly burst into print claiming he was the victim of a false complaint. The police then took the highly unusual step of making a second public statement, making it clear that there was no question of a false complaint having been made, it was simply that “the evidence did not meet the evidential threshold required to bring charges”, in other words, in police speak, “we are sure an offence occurred, but we don’t think we can prove it”. Readers may argue about my paraphrasing, but it is certainly most unusual for the police to specify that there was no question of a false complaint.

So, what happened on the night of1/2 March 2011 at Darren Hughes’ flat in Wellington? Did the young man in question know he was going home with someone sexually interested in him? What did Hughes actually do  which resulted in a young man  running down the road naked and in a distressed state some hours later? Who knows? Well, some people know, but I am not one of them.

What is clear is that the jackals of the media gave Hughes a very easy ride over the whole business. Hughes left the country for a sinecure in London arranged by his mates in the Labour party. To the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t featured in political commentary since – until he was well down the list of “disgraced politicians” featured in the article last week to which I referred at the beginning of this piece.

Was the media coverage of Hughes commensurate with  whatever had occurred late at night at his flat? While he never faced charges, it is abundantly clear that SOMETHING of a serious sexual nature happened there – the lengthy police investigation, and their comments thereon, are clear evidence of that.

Next and last, Metiria Turei…or “Metiria” as she is known to New Zealand’s political journalists.

A lot has happened since July, but for this is how things stood at the end of July with Labour’s low polling leading to the demise of Andrew Little, and then in early August the Greens’ poll drop leading to the demise of Metiria Turei. Never let it be said polls don’t have a real impact!

The Curia newsletter summary for July is:

Curia’s Polling Newsletter – Issue 111, July 2017

There were four political voting polls in July – a Roy Morgan a Newshub Reid Research and two One New Colmar Bruntons.  The July polling led to the demise of Labour Leader Andrew Little.

The average of the public polls saw National 19% ahead of Labour in July, down 2% from June.

 The seat projection for July was centre-right 60 seats, centre-left 46 which would see the Maori Party hold the balance of power.

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 is around the same as a year ago but down from three years ago.

Labour’s party vote in July was below a year ago, and three years ago,

In the United States Trump’s net approval rating has fallen 5% to -18%.

In the UK, the country direction is massively pessimistic with a net 24% decline over two months.

In Australia, both Turnbull and Shorten have -20% approval ratings.

In Canada, the Liberals increase slightly to an 8% lead over the Conservatives.

We also carry details of polls on Todd Barclay, Metiria Turei, euthanasia, tourist tax, immigration, America’s Cup, plastic bag levy, and 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.

 

Stuff reports:

The Green Party has rejected Kennedy Graham’s request to be put back on the party’s list following Metiria Turei’s resignation.

Graham and fellow MP David Clendon earlier this week resigned at short notice from the party’s 14-member caucus over the former Greens co-leader’s benefit fraud admission. The men had threatened to quit if the co-leader didn’t resign. 

But their colleagues rallied around Turei, voting on Tuesday to block the pair from future caucus and strategy meetings and to remove them from the party list ahead of the election. 

On Wednesday, Turei did step down, saying the “unbearable” scrutiny of her family was too much. 

The scrutiny she made a deliberate decision to expose them to. And the scrutiny being that she implied the father’s side of the family never supported her, and she resigned when they contacted media with the truth.

In a statement on Saturday morning, the party said it had declined Graham’s request to return as a list candidate for next month’s election. 

“After careful consideration of the facts and Kennedy’s submission, the Executive concluded that he had breached the Party’s Candidate Code of Conduct in a serious manner, and therefore decided to exclude Mr Graham from the Party’s pool,” the statement said. 

He’s being punished for being honest enough to say thet Metiria’s leadership was no longer tenable. The rest of the caucus (bar Clendon) had their ideological blinkers on and couldn’t accept the reality.

Stuff reports:

The National Party has pledged one in three cars in the Government’s fleet will be electric by 2021.

The announcement was made by Prime Minister Bill English in front of a charging station outside the The Dowse Museum in Lower Hutt on Saturday. 

Currently the Government has a fleet of about 15,500 cars, and Transport Minister Simon Bridges said the transition will help achieve the “ambitious target of having 64,000 electric vehicles in New Zealand by 2021”.

“Electric vehicles purchased in the Government fleet will flow through to the second hand market, which is essential to increasing uptake and incentivising more charging stations,” said Bridges. 

The change in fuel costs mean the shift should come without any significant cost to the Government, he said.

I like policies that don’t cost taxpayers. And having the Government commit to basically 5,000 electric vehicles over four years will lead to more charging stations which is key.

Our next vehicle probably won’t be electric (will probably be a second hand one that has room for strollers, portable costs etc) but the one after that probably will be.  Or even better by then we’ll be using car sharing.

“On average an electric vehicle is the equivalent to buying petrol at 30 cents a litre, compared to petrol which is about $2.”

The Prime Minister shared with the crowd that had gathered his “light bulb moment” when he first got into an electric car on a visit to Australia. 

“One thing that struck me is how quiet they are, but also how powerful they are,” English said.

I had an BMW i3 for a few days and incredibly quiet.

Rodney Hide writes:

Farmers are right to be worried about Labour’s plan to tax water.

The power to tax is the power to destroy and such a tax has the potential to tip a farm from profitability to bust.

Every farmer’s financial circumstance is different and even a modest tax could prove devastating for farmers just starting out, carrying big debt and not having factored in the prospect.

It’s of further concern that Labour leader Jacinda Ardern announced her water tax not at a farmer’s conference but at an Environmental Defence Society Conference.

She promised her Government would take the money from farmers to clean up the nation’s waterways. She no doubt figures there are more townies wanting clean waterways than farmers having to foot the bill. The vote/loss calculation will be in her favour.

Of even more concern is a complete lack of any detail of how much the tax will be, how it will be applied, and what Labour is expecting to raise.

It’s hard to imagine a party heading into election promising, say, to tax cars without declaring what the tax will be or how much is expected to be taken.

Rodney also makes the point that even if they start the tax small, it will inevitably increase over time. Labour generally only increases taxes, and rarely if ever cuts them.

The water tax will put up the price of most fruit and vegetables plus milk, infant formula and much much more.

A guest post by David Garrett:

With Todd Barclay as a possible contender, I think it would be fair to say that the three   MP’s who left parliament under the greatest  cloud of infamy  in recent times were me, Darren Hughes, and Metiria Turei.  Left wing commenters, including some members of the  media to their shame, are now lamenting how “Metiria” – it’s always first names for people you like – was hounded out of parliament  by  vindictive and biased journalists. An examination of the  cases this three part series  covers shows that to be complete nonsense

Ms Turei has just reconfirmed the old adage that a week is a long time in politics – an MP on Monday, determined to stick it out, gone by Friday when John Campbell’s questions about what she really received by way of financial support in the 90’s while on a benefit proved too hard to answer.

My tumultuous week began on Monday 6 September 2010 with a visit to Arohata Womens’ Prison, the second visit I had made there. The previous week I had – I thought – successfully dealt with questions about my so called assault conviction in Tonga – the result of a Kangaroo Court conducted entirely in Tongan, and presided over by an untrained “Judge” who had clearly been bribed. It was only later I realized  that was just the entrée, the main course was to come in the form of Guyon Espiner waiting for me outside the Law and Order Select Committee room on  the Wednesday.

Espiner asked me about my discharge without conviction for forgery – in the form of an application for a false passport  made  27 years earlier. The day I had always known would come finally had. It was clear from his questions that Espiner knew all about the case – including the suppression orders made, both of my name and the dead child’s. I am sure he also knew that those orders made it impossible for me to comment in any detail. One cannot simply breach suppression orders, even when they are made for your benefit. To do so risks being found in contempt of court.

As I walked back to Bowen House I was largely in a daze, knowing what was to come – or at least I thought I did; the reality was much worse. My first step was to take advice from an eminent QC on what I could and couldn’t say about the matter. His advice was clear and unequivocal – I could only speak in the House under the protection of absolute privilege. To speak about any aspect of the case outside the House ran the real risk of exposing  me to further serious legal consequences.

Knowing as I always had that this fateful day would come, I had prepared a draft statement  which had sat in my bottom drawer since the election in 2008. I now amended that statement, and duly made a personal statement to the House detailing what I had done back in 1984 and why, and expressing my deep regret for  the pain I had indirectly caused the boy’s family when the police insisted on telling them, in 2005, of an offence which had occurred 27 years earlier.

Having made my statement, I  returned to Bowen House  via the “underground route” shown to all MP’s upon their election. I managed to reach my office unmolested, but shortly thereafter a throng of journos gathered in the lobby. I was fully aware of their presence, and decided that I needed to make some sort of statement to the media over and above what I had said in the House. I chose Jane Patterson of Radio New Zealand, who had always given me a very fair shake in the past to be the one journo I spoke to.

By this time I had realized the jackals in the media were already after my family – fortunately my neighbours had warned my wife that they had been trying to find which house down our quiet rural road was mine. So I had already got my wife and children out of Dodge; they were safe at a friend’s remote  place on Banks Peninsula. After I had made my statement to Ms Patterson, I managed to get out of Bowen House through the basement, and took a taxi to the airport, intending to join my family.  By this time, unknown to me,  the hounds were in full flight.

At Wellington airport the odious Patrick Gower came into the Koru Club looking for an interview. Although I did not realize it at the time, I was by then in the first stages of a nervous breakdown. I had no idea – clearly the brain wasn’t working properly – that down by the departure gate the jackals would be waiting en masse.

When I went to board my flight I was surrounded by journos, all yelling questions and poking microphones up my nose. I said what I could: that I had made a personal statement to the House; that I had legal advice that I must not make any further comment, but that I had risked doing  so  in an interview with Radio NZ, which by then had been broadcast. I said my personal statement and the interview to RNZ was all I intended to say.  It was as if I was speaking Swahili.

Gower positioned himself in the metal detector one must pass through to get to the gate lounge, poking his microphone up nose and yelling questions. I have no doubt that he hoped I would drop my bag and then drop him – he was prepared to risk a broken jaw to get a better story, all filmed for endless replaying.  I managed to get on my flight and flew to Christchurch, now well aware that a similar throng would be waiting for me there. They were. I had already said all I dared say on the matter, and managed to leave the airport without being followed.

Later that day, as I recall,  I resigned from the ACT caucus. It was clear to me by then that my position as an MP elected on the ACT list  was no longer tenable. I realized that I would also have to resign as an MP, but my wife was deeply distressed that doing that would leave our family – my children were then aged five and nine – without an income. The Law Society had already begun an enquiry into my conduct, a process which would not end until 18 months later.

We were informed that the media had figured out where we were on Banks Peninsula, so we decamped to another location in the South Island where I tried to work out what to do. We were told by neighbours that by that time, both TV 1 and TV 3 had reporters camped outside our house, so returning there was not an option.

By the next week, I had resigned as an MP, having realized that I had no choice. The last straw was my son’s plaintive voice from the back of the car as we drove to yet another hideout: “Daddy, will the media get us tonight?”  I resigned as an MP later that day, thinking “well, that will get them off my back”. Some chance.

For weeks after my resignation the media continued to dig for dirt on me. They approached the former headmaster of my high school, by then in retirement. God knows what they thought he would have to say of any relevance: perhaps that I had expressed in interest in actually being an assassin, as depicted in “The Day of the Jackal”, the novel which outlined the method I had used to obtain a false  passport? One journo flew to Sydney to interview a guy I went to school with. I hadn’t seen or spoken to  him since the day we left school in 1974.

The New Zealand Herald, that now woefully tarnished former Journal of Record, ran exhortations on its front page inviting those who had some dirt on me to contact them. The best they got was a mad woman I had met on a dating site almost ten years earlier. After meeting for a coffee at a McCafe, I had lured her back to my flat to watch the 1942 classic  “Casablanca”. Shameful.

Six months after my downfall, on 2 March 2011, Labour MP  Darren Hughes took a drunk young man back to his flat in  Wellington. What happened subsequently at the flat led to Hughes resigning from parliament  a couple of weeks later. The events surrounding that resignation, and Hughes’ interaction with the media, are Part Two of this series. 

Audrey Young writes:

The Greens may have had their worst week in politics since Rod Donald died, but it could get even worse.

It is conceivable they might not even make it back to Parliament after September 23 if they fall below 5 per cent.

The next round of public polls could be very interesting.

It is possible the party will recover some support now that Turei has resigned, but it may also suffer more because of the shows of disunity and ugly public attacks on the two MPs who stood accused of bringing the party into disrepute for resigning on principle (they had been asked by co-leader James Shaw to keep their principles on hold until after the election).

Those who have elevated Turei to martyrdom claim that Turei was forced to resign because of her actions 20 years ago which is patently untrue, or even more simplistically, that she was forced to resign for telling the truth. The mob didn’t get her.

She need never have resigned at all if she had managed her confession properly. She could have explained it without turning any person who cheats the system today into a hero.

But everything has been mismanaged including her own resignation. She has resigned as co-leader and will leave politics but is still going to be a Green candidate in Te Tai Tonga.

One of the problems the Greens have is they have no one that doesn’t share their fervant belief that welfare should be a lifetime entitlement with no obligations. So no one spoke up to say “hey if you confess you lied about your income, people will ask what your circumstances are”.

The party other than Labour that may gain from the Greens’ misfortune is Gareth Morgan’s Opportunities Party.

He is polling close to where the Conservative Party was polling before the last election – around 2 or 3 per cent – and which eventually landed on 3.97 per cent at the election.

Anything but Conservative, Morgan’s 2 or 3 per cent will give him appearance rights and exposure in television debates and the potential to build on the momentum he has largely generated himself.

Given that National’s vote is largely unchanged, Morgan appears to be taking votes from the left.

Yep Greens are losing support to both Labour and TOP. The socialists are going to Labour and the environmentalists to TOP.

We know Labout want to tax water and give much of the tax to Iwi. So basically they are saying New Zealanders have to pay Iwi for products that use water. This is a major policy shift, and even worse Labour won’t say how much the tax will be. Do you want a Government that tells you they will tax water, but not by how much?

Even worse it will be discriminatory. Commerical water users in cities will not pay, but those in rural areas will generally pay. Most major breweries will end up not paying the tax, while most craft breweries will pay it. So their policy hurts the small businesses while large businesses like Coke are not affected.

It will put up put up food prices for many items, as well as make our exporters less competitive. Their overseas competitors will not face this, so NZ exporters will be at a disadvaantage.

It will also hurt families with babies. Milk powder uses a lot of water. So both milk and milk powder will go up.

If you want to have a price on water, the way to do it is a market with tradable rights. But Labour’s water tax is a hasty nasty policy that unfairly punishes provincial and rural New Zealand.

As time allows I’m going to cover a few of the valedictory speeches. Second up is Murray McCully:

It was in this grim climate in October 1991 that I received an early morning call from the Prime Minister’s senior private secretary, who advised that the Prime Minister wanted to see me. Convinced that this was to be yet another of the disciplinary discussions that were then a regular feature of my parliamentary timetable, I not very politely declined. Eventually the senior private secretary convinced me that it would be very much in my interest to get my useless carcass up to the Prime Minister’s office right now. So Jim Bolger informed me bluntly that he was making me the Minister of Customs but that would not make me very busy, and that he decided that, despite our political predicament, he was going to win the next election, that I was going to help them, and that we would discuss it on a later occasion. We never did discuss it later, but I did find myself fairly quickly immersed in the political management machinery of the place, a role I came to play for many years.

I can’t recall a time Murray wasn’t involved in the political management!

In 2008 the decision was made by John Key, looking towards the election later that year, that I was to move seriously into the area of foreign policy. Members will recall that the right honourable, now knighted, former Prime Minister had a wonderful capacity for lofty Shakespearean prose. In early 2008, addressing me in such terms, he said: “My little friend, there is one portfolio where those guys can hand me my ass, and that’s foreign policy. I want you to make sure they don’t.” Ha, ha! Never before or since has the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs been so graciously bestowed. Ha, ha!

That sounds very much like what John Key would say.

New Zealand’s campaign for election to the UN Security Council in 2014 was unlike any other diplomatic challenge. You see, foreign ministries from all nations have this wonderful capacity to record every meeting as a diplomatic success. The problem with the UN Security Council election is that one day the numbers go up on a board in New York, and the numbers do not lie.

The fact that three quarters of the countries in the world voted for New Zealand on the first ballot, leaving heavy weights Spain and Turkey to fight out the subsequent ballot, says something that is both totally objective and massively positive about our standing in world affairs. I am extremely proud of the way that New Zealand conducted itself during our 2-year term on the United Nations Security Council. We were diligent, fair minded, consistent, and prepared to call out poor conduct wherever we saw it, even from our friends.

A win on the first ballot was an exceptional result.

There is one outstanding Rugby World Cup manner that I do want to touch on briefly. In the lead up to the event, I had occasion to host a dinner for all of the members of the International Rugby Board. Because they were official guests of the New Zealand Government, the Department of Internal Affairs was supposed to have arranged for payment of the account, but, for some reason best known to itself, had not. So to avoid any embarrassment at the end of the evening, the bill was quietly charged to my office credit card. Even though we were reimbursed the next day, the subsequent release of my credit card receipts containing five bottles of Ata Rangi pinot noir at $185 a bottle attracted an unhealthy and, it would be fair to say, universally negative interest from the nation’s media. To make matters significantly worse, for weeks afterwards, every time I attended a public occasion addressed by the then Prime Minister, he would draw attention to my presence and to my expensive taste in pinot noir.

It is a sad comment on the state of investigative journalism in this country that not one media outlet asked such blindingly obvious questions as: does the Minister for the Rugby World Cup drink pinot noir? Did the Prime Minister attend this dinner? Does the Prime Minister drink pinot noir? Now, I can no longer recall the answers to any of these questions, but I do recall clearly that I lamented the very poor state of our investigative media at the time.

Heh, that is hilarious.

First, some personal advice: always keep an open mind about people. When some financial whiz kid who gets elected in your neighbouring electorate irritates the management and you are asked to take him out behind the woodshed for a chat, always leave room for the possibility he might end up being your boss for 8 years. Ha, ha! And when some overconfident young woman marches into your electorate office, interviews you, and then instructs you to hire her on the spot, before you tell her to get lost, always leave room for the possibility that she might end up being your Deputy Prime Minister. 

I first met Paula when she worked for Murray. He’s always had great staff.

Those who have worked with me will know that I am not a great fan of multilateral institutions, but we must persevere with bodies like the United Nations, not because they are good but because they will get a great deal worse if countries like New Zealand do not play their part. Good international rules and effective international institutions are important for countries like ours. The alternative is to live in a world where the big guys always win and the little guys always lose.

A good point.

A very amusing valedictory from Maurice Williamson:

I have been given a very stern warning from Foreign Affairs that I am now a diplomat and that I have got to not do any of the things that can cause trouble. When I told that to Sir John Key a few hours ago, he said: “Well, given you never listened to my advice like that for 10 years, why the bloody hell would you listen to them?”. But I am going to try to be diplomatic. I am going to try to make sure that instead of calling somebody a wanker, I will call them an owner-operator, because that is the diplomatic way to go these days.

Not often you see wanker in Hansard 🙂

I have had the same electorate secretary for the entire 30 years, Carla. Carla is up the back of the gallery—Carla Mikkelson; just amazing. I tell you what—30 years. I mean, you get less for murder, Carla. There have been times when I have arrived at the office and she has just stared at me and gone “Oh my God! What have you done now.” Another amazing secretary here in Parliament is Bridie Cooper, up there in the gallery. She was Bridie Wilkinson for most of her life, and got married a couple of years ago. Bridie has just been the—I have worked for her for 30 years. To have one secretary in Wellington and one secretary in Auckland for 30 years means I cannot be as big a bastard as I have been accused in the media from time to time.

That is astonshing loyalty from Carla and Bridie. Both exceptionally good people also.

 I set up Pharmac in 1993, trying to implement a really good way of buying drugs without the drug companies being able to game this. I think Pharmac is one of our greatest inventions. I hope it never ever gets taken away.

I didn’t know it was Maurice who established it.

But I had a couple of failures along the way. We tried—really, I am going to make sure—Simon Upton’s view, and I went with it, was that we could charge people for the hotel part of their hospital stay. When they go to hospital they are not at home, so they are not eating meals and they are not in their bed and they are not using electricity. So we could at least just bill them for that bit of it. I tell you, that was about as successful as Lord Mountbatten’s Irish holiday.

Ouch.

In this House in 1999 I got up and I actually tabled the Mahon report about the Erebus crash. I was at Air New Zealand. I was deeply involved in what went on. Justice Mahon got it right. It was so wrong to blame just the pilot. All of the systems failed that pilot, and to blame him alone was wrong. I was so proud to table that report, because it had never been tabled. Sir Robert had refused to have it tabled. It was tabled in this House and it is a formal view of what happened at Erebus. It was a systemic failure, not one error.

Yep.

SmartGate—Customs. I know there are some Customs—the previous comptroller, the current comptroller, and others—in the audience today. Martyn Dunne was a stunning Comptroller of Customs and Carolyn Tremain as his replacement is also. You are not allowed to have favourites, but Customs was by far my favourite. We have implemented technology, which means we process people in about 18 seconds flat, through the border, and it was what I think was really worthwhile.

I love SmartGate. Has made a huge difference.

Probably my—what I think—greatest success in getting something done, but was hated beyond your wildest belief, was bringing in the photo driver’s licence. I thank very much Harry Duynhoven, who I think was here earlier—he might have gone off for drinks now. But he and about eight other Labour members crossed the floor to give me the numbers on it, because we had some of ours who were not prepared to vote.

I tell you Leighton Smith waged war against me, daily. This was evil, this was Big Brother, this was the identity card start-up and you would never—my wife, Raewyn, used to say to me “Why don’t you just give it up? I can’t get in the car without hearing them tearing you to shreds.” Well, we did it. It had the biggest drop in our road toll ever and I have never heard it raised again. That is what you have to do around this place. If it is right, you do it, you stand your ground, and, at the end of it, if it was right it will be proved to be right, and I am really pleased.

I’d forgotten about this until the speech, but it was a huge huge issue. Massive resistance to both it being photo ID and no longer lifetime. Almost brought down the Government, but today is a total non issue.

OK, few regrets—yes, there are a few regrets, and I am going to do only one, or two, or five, or whatever. The one I think is the biggest regret ever is I never, ever was able to persuade my ministerial colleagues that we really should get rid of commercial television. I seriously, seriously do not know why the Government owns a commercial televisions station. Oh, I know—it is so it can promote New Zealand culture and identity. So I had a look at the programme schedule: Masterchef Australia followed by Mrs Brown’s Boys, Emmerdale Farm this afternoon, Coronation Street tonight, Instant Gardener, which I do not know, but it is a British programme of some sort, followed by Four in a Bed—you will be able to tell me more about that, Murray. 

LOL. Great call.

You can tell me about it later. And there is The Chase and The Tipping Point—both British. How the hell is that promoting New Zealand culture, for goodness’ sake! And its value when I tried—I pleaded with Jim Bolger about it—its value back then was about four times what it is now and it is now four times what it will be, because nobody, nobody, is going to watch free-to-air ordinary TV in the future. 

He is 100% right. We should have sold TVNZ eight years ago. In a few years it will be worth around the same as Solid Energy.

I went to John Key in 2006 after having worked very, very closely with Ron Woodrow. I mentioned Ron before—where he was a bastion I would go and hide in it—but the guy was so forward thinking in technology he rolled out CityLink, which was the big fibre optic loop in the CBD here in Wellington. He did it himself with his own money and then sold it, so he was always on about how fibre was the future. I remember talking to John and he said “Oh, you know, the budgets are tight and I don’t think you’d get it through.” So I went to some of the policy meetings and I don’t think Bill was pretty keen on it either.

Every time I went it was just struggle, struggle trying to take fibre to the premises. It was unheard of; even the Australians were only going to go fibre to the cabinet. It was just the old Russian water drip – Chinese torture. I tried to get some people from the private sector involved. One who I thought would be involved just said it was a nonsense, that it would not happen, and “You’re dreaming.”—and now he actually is a board member of Crown Fibre Holdings, so that is quite interesting. But in the end I think John Key—and I think he might admit it—and Bill English, finally, just gave in to get me to shut up. We finally put together the ultra-fast broadband package to roll out fibre, and I think it is the greatest enabler, the greatest economic enabler, that this country will have.

The fibre to the home progranmme has been a huige sucess and I am so so glad we did not do what Labour wanted (and was done in Australia) and only did fibre to the cabinet.

When TV3 drops Campbell Live but brings on some Scout programme about Rachel Glucina and the gossip columnist and I feel I lost the plot here. Something has gone wrong. Vaughan Jones, the top New Zealand mathematician, who has got a Fields Medal gets no mention even though he is the top man in the world, but we now know about Kim Kardashian almost nightly and her $50 million arse—I think his name is Kanye.

Heh.

So that is it for me. I want to finish with a lovely quote from Edmund Burke, the British politician who said: “Your representative owes you not his industry only but his judgment and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” So I have always held the North Star. I have always held the North Star, which is something to guide you by, which is for navigation: what is right, what is wrong, what matters, what does not, and putting that test on things. For me, it is about freedom of the individual, it is about rewarding individual effort, it is about that libertarian view of “As long as you are of age of consent, and you are not causing damage to any other person, then I believe you’ve got a right to do it.” So I voted on the liberal side of everything. God knows, back in the 80s the attacks we came under for allowing the shops to open on a weekend. Jim Knox said: “It’s the most evil thing and it’ll be the end of families, and if you open the shops on a Saturday, you know it won’t be long before they’re open on a Sunday as well.” And he was dead right. He was a visionary, that Jim Knox.

I recall the unions fighting tooth and nail against Saturday shopping. Yep it once was illegal to open at weekends or in the evenings except one designated evening a week.

Newshub reports:

Newshub has identified a key reason for Jacinda Ardern’s surge in the polls – it’s women.

Labour jumped to 33 percent support in the latest Newshub-Reid Research poll and almost two-thirds of that vote (63 percent) comes from women.

On the other hand, National’s support comes mostly from men. Less than half of those who said they’d vote for National were women.

Actually National’s was close to balanced being 54% male and 46% female.

But his is the share from each gender. What does it mean for their support levels? A bit of reverse engineering (assuming the poll was 50/50 male and female gets you this.

• Female voters were Labour 42%, National 41%
• Male voters were Labour 24%, National 48%

So female voters are split dead even between National and Labour while male voters favour National 2:1.

Radio NZ reports:

Some of the biggest multinational bottlers operating in New Zealand, including Coca-Cola, would effectively be exempt from Labour’s proposed water charges.

The Labour Party plans to introduce royalties for commercial water use if it becomes the government – including for farm irrigation schemes.

But any companies who get their water through a city or district council water system would be exempt.

Some of world’s biggest bottlers have factories in New Zealand, but this means they would not have to pay any extra for it under Labour’s policy.

So Labour’s loopy tax would exempt Coca-Cola but hit all rural NZ massively hard. You’d be paying more for vegetables and wine under Labour’s water tax.

Water New Zealand chief executive John Pfahlert said Labour’s policy must be applied consistently across the bottling market, including those who took from urban supplies, if it was put in place.

“I can’t see any good reason why the government would want to except an organisation like Coca-Cola, for example, from having to pay a royalty for water if that’s the way the government wanted to go.

“We’ve made observations in the past about whether that’s a sensible move.”

Mr Pfahlert said Labour had not thought through its policy.

The policy appears to have the same rigour behind it as the leader’s previous private members’ bills.

Waimate mayor Craig Rowley comes from a rural area that could be hit hard by the charges because of irrigation schemes in the region.

Mr Rowley said the policy would put too much burden on rural New Zealand.

“I think it would be grossly unfair if they are singling out the biggest users in the largest urban areas that wouldn’t have to pay, just purely and simply because they’re on a town water supply.”

Basically it is a tax on rural and provincial NZ.

Stuff reports:

A bill that would legalise euthanasia under strict controls, has been given a legal stamp of approval that if passed, it would not infringe on basic human rights to life. 

It’s been welcomed by the bill’s holder, ACT leader David Seymour, who said it debunked the “myths” put forward by critics that the bill was poorly drafted.

The report is a standard assessment by Attorney-General Chris Finlayson, which test all proposed legislation against the Bill of Rights Act. 

Useful clarity in the report.

Finlayson found the bill was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights’ section pertaining to age – in a purely legal sense, the age restriction of 18 on Seymour’s bill was discriminatory under the Act. 

But it was fully consistent with the rights not to be deprived of life, freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. 

I don’t think anyone is arguing for eligibility to be under 18.

“The report says that the eligibility criteria are narrow enough, and the safeguards strict enough, that the bill will not cause wrongful deaths, and that assisted dying will be available only to the group the bill intends – incurably or terminally ill, and in unbearable suffering.”

Finlayson’s report only related to legal questions of Seymour’s bill. It did not assess it against any moral, ethical, religious or clinical views. 

Seymour said that on the question of the right not to be deprived of life, his bill was consistent with the principles of fundamental justice.

“This differs from the previous bill on assisted dying, in 2003. That bill was found to be inconsistent with the right not to be deprived of life. It didn’t have all of the same safeguards that my bill contains.”

That’s an important difference.

Stuff reports:

Predictably, a lynch mob has formed now that TVNZ has announced broadcaster Mike Hosking will be the moderator of its election debates. Note that I called him a broadcaster rather than a journalist. It is a distinction he makes himself.

Petitions have been launched demanding TVNZ replace him in the role because he is not politically neutral or, as New Zealand First’s Winston Peters says, he is “wholly unsuitable” and his appointment as moderator is “outrageous”.

You may recall similar complaints, but from the political right, at the last election about TV3 having John Campbell front their debates. Campbell, like Hosking, has strongly defined ideological opinions, even if the pair are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

A difference is I’m not aware of anyone on the right ever launching a petition to not have someone removed as a debate moderator.

Having run several such leaders debates in the distant past I can verify that being moderator is a lot like being a traffic officer on points duty, indicating who should talk and who should hold their piece until the other is finished.

That was a role John Campbell performed admirably, despite his political opinions, in the 2014 debates. At the end of the show John Key, who was no bosom buddy of John Campbell, had no complaints about his handling of the programme, although he bitterly moaned to me that then Labour leader David Cunliffe “wouldn’t shut up” and he “couldn’t get a word in edgewise”. Such are political debates.

I have no doubt Mike Hosking, who has chaired such debates before will handle his programme just as competently. Every day he handles dozens of interviews, often involving more than one guest at a time, on his radio programme. He is used to it and the role of moderator is less interviewer and more presenter and host.

Both the Greens and Labour have no objection to Hosking or, at least, they are not voicing it.

Arden is showing her smarts by not complaining. Off memory I think Cunliffe or Labour did complain last time. Just makes you look sore.

Similarly the New Zealand First leader’s forlorn cries to be allowed into the National – Labour debate are likely to fall on deaf ears. The polls show that National and Labour will be the strongest parties by far and whoever wins will lead a coalition government. The 60 minute debate between the leaders of the two parties will be instrumental in allowing New Zealanders the chance to decide which one will do the better job of that.

It’s a debate between the two people who could be Prime Minister. Winston may have had a claim for entry when Little was leader, as there was a chance he could be Prime Minister if say he got 16% and Labour 21%. But now it is either Ardern or English.

There is a 90 minute debate programme where the several leaders of the minor parties can put their case as to why they would be a coalition partner and what their policy price may be but the decisive debates will be between the big two, National and Labour.

The debate with all the minor party leaders is more entertainment than a useful debate. It is possible this debate could include NZ First, Greens, ACT, United Future, Maori, Mana, TOP and maybe Conservatives.

The Taxpayers’ Union has relaunched its popular election costing “Bribe-O-Meter” which independently costs policies of all the major political parties as they are announced.  This week TOP has been added, but no surprise that NZ First still ‘lead the race’.

Budget 2017 was used as the baseline, so where a party promises to cut spending, it goes into negative (such as ACT), and where a party says they’ll cut one policy to fund another, the Bribe-O-Meter shows the net amount.

Breakdowns of the costs are available by clicking the area on the graph, with separate pages listing the costs of each party’s manifesto over on the Taxpayers’ Union Bribe-O-Meter site.

The Herald reports:

You can now understand why Helen Clark never embraced the Greens, how she would never entertain including them in a Government led by her.

They’re not only Green in name, they’ve shown themselves as political greenhorns.

Clark was smart. She knew the risks. Unlike Labour today who have an MOU with the Greens and say they are their preferred coalition partner which means a vote for Labour is a vote for having Greens in Government.

When Metiria Turei decided to fess up to benefit fraud just short of a month ago, to draw attention to poverty and how difficult it is to make ends meet on a benefit, she drew more attention to herself.

 

Unapologetic for breaking the law and giving her blessing to others who she says have no choice isn’t the sort of behaviour we expect from our lawmakers.

If she’s to be believed, it was on a taxi ride in Wellington that she reflected and decided to call it quits, saying the scrutiny of her family became all too much. What did she expect, of course her family, and her living circumstances when she was ripping off the benefit system, were going to come under scrutiny? For her to expect anything else is naive.

Soper was pretty much the first journalist to ask Turei questions about her circumstances and he basically got hissed at by the Green staffers. They were outraged that he would dare to ask questions of Turei around the father and the father’s family. Their view is that welfare is an entitlement and that’s it.

It was the nastiness of the Green staffers to Soper that got the backs of most of the gallery up, because they rightfully saw that if an MP does make assertions that they were forced to steal because of their circumstances, those assertions can’t be made unchallengable.

Now this fractured party is limping into the election with one leader, James Shaw, and with a party that makes the six leadership changes in the Labour Party since National came to power, look unified by comparison. It’s now on life support and Labour will surely now have to consider whether that memorandum of understanding it has with them could in fact end up being their death warrant.

Vote Labour and get Greens is not an attractive proposition.

No Right Turn is rather upset that Metiria Turei has resigned. His response:

I said that if the right wants a C19th “democracy” which excludes poor people, they need to be reminded of the C19th solution: pitchforks and guillotines. I stand by that. Fuck them all, burn it all to the fucking ground.

I think he’d be a great Green MP.