Stuff reports:

Major political parties have found a way around electoral campaign rules by calling hundreds of public meetings across the country.

Like Easter eggs in supermarkets straight after Boxing Day, people have been confronted with a barrage of party political billboards months before the official, regulated election period began midnight, on Thursday.

Gone now, the typically large, party authorised billboards sported sitting MPs and wannabe electorate candidate’s faces and extolled constituents to attend meetings discussing electorate issues.

Yet weeks past the advertised meeting date, the signs lingered in places like public parks often right up until the start of, or even past Thursday’s election advertising oversight period.

The Labour Party’s Auckland Central candidate Helen White removed her Western Park, Ponsonby meeting sign by mid-Friday – the advertised meeting was held June 14.

I’ve noticed this a lot in seats Labour are desperate to win such as Hutt South and Auckland Central. They organise public meetings purely as a pretext for being able to put up lots of billboards early. And then they leave the billboards up.

The Electoral Commission is getting a legal opinion on whether White’s sign constituted advertising.

Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck …

“I’m a new candidate, meeting billboards are the only way people are going to get to know me,” White said.

Really? Ever heard of door knocking?

The latest Roy Morgan poll is out, and as usual is showing some big movements. I’ve blogged the results at Curia.

Today

• Race 5 – NZ win by 124 seconds
• Race 6 – US win by 11 seconds

Overall

• NZ won 5 lost 1
• US won 1 lost 5

Points

• NZ 4
• US 1

You need 7 points to win so at least two more days of racing.

USA Today reports:

People from all over the country are calling for a University of Delaware adjunct professor to be fired after she wrote on Facebook that Otto Warmbier “got exactly what he deserved” after being taken into custody by North Korea, falling into a coma and dying.

On her personal Facebook page, Kathy Dettwyler, an anthropology professor, wrote Tuesday that Warmbier was “typical of a mindset of a lot of the young, white, rich, clueless males who come into my classes.”

“These are the same kids who cry about their grades because they didn’t think they’d really have to read and study the material to get a good grade. … His parents ultimately are to blame for his growing up thinking he could get away with whatever he wanted. Maybe in the US, where young, white, rich, clueless white males routinely get away with raping women. Not so much in North Korea. And of course, it’s Ottos’ parents who will pay the price for the rest of their lives.”

What a vile person this professor is.

She seems to be celebrating his death because he is a young, white rich male.

His only crime, if it was that, was taking a poster as a souvenir. She seems to equate this with rape.

And to think this vile person is a professor who is entrusted with teaching people.

A guest post by Liam Hehir:

I have been lucky enough to attend the National Party conference in Wellington as media. As a writer who has allowed to attend as an observer, it is fascinating to be able to watch what goes on.

One of the things you won’t see much of this in the news is the members. Going by what you see on television, the members are there to clap and laugh at the right times. They are the studio audience providing the soundtrack for the performers onstage.

In reality, political party members are the unsung heroes of New Zealand’s democracy. Many of them do an enormous amount of work for no other reason that, in their perception, they are doing it for the good of the country. Sure, a few of them are ambitious politicians in training, but they don’t tend to stick around.

Most volunteers spend a lot of time doing things that are not fun. They stuff envelopes and deliver pamphlets, sell raffle tickets and ask for donations, knock on doors and erect hoardings. They attend meeting after interminable meeting.

There is no real personal reward for this. Do a good job and the chances are you will be shoulder-tapped for more unpaid responsibility. In fact, membership can be costly as you are forever pestered for donations and required to travel at your own expense.

And not all MPs treat party members well. Some almost seem to regard them as low-level employees. The risk here tends to be greater where the MP does not have a history of time with the party.

This matters, because organised members are crucial force multipliers for election campaigns. They man the infrastructure that truly gives bigger parties the edge over smaller ones. I would bet that a party’s pool of unpaid labour is a bigger predictor of success than its campaigning spending is.

And, most importantly, volunteers are the people with whom unaligned voters are most likely to have contact. They are a vital bridge the Wellington hive and the rest of the country. They give their party some ability to circumvent the media filter.

At the local level, they are just indispensable.

If you are more interested in making a difference than personal glory, joining and being active in a party is something you should consider. You’ll certainly have a bigger impact doing that than by winning arguments on the Internet.

In such matters, National supporters should take encouragement from the conference so far. So far, ministers and party officials have kept much of the focus on the members. There have been expressions of gratitude and morale building for the campaign to come.

Chances are this won’t come through in the media coverage, which tends to focus on the theatrical side of things. It’s a useful reminder that there’s an awful lot that goes on in elections that you just won’t see on the six o’clock news.

Stephen Davies writes:

We commonly read or hear reports to the effect that “If trend X continues, the result will be disaster.” The subject can be almost anything, but the pattern of these stories is identical. These reports take a current trend and extrapolate it into the future as the basis for their gloomy prognostications. The conclusion is, to quote a character from a famous British sitcom, “We’re doomed, I tell you. We’re doomed!” Unless, that is, we mend our ways according to the author’s prescription. This almost invariably involves restrictions on personal liberty.

These prophets of doom rely on one thing—that their audience will not check the record of such predictions. In fact, the history of prophecy is one of failure and oversight. Many predictions (usually of doom) have not come to pass, while other things have happened that nobody foresaw.

For a couple of decades were were told we had reached peak oil. Then fracking occured and suddenly we’re right for another 100+ years.

The fundamental problem with most predictions of this kind, and particularly the gloomy ones, is that they make a critical, false assumption: that things will go on as they are. This assumption in turn comes from overlooking one of the basic insights of economics: that people respond to incentives. In a system of free exchange, people receive all kinds of signals that lead them to solve problems. The prophets of doom come to their despondent conclusions because in their world, nobody has any kind of creativity or independence of thought—except for themselves of course.

Forecasting five years out is hard enough, let alone 100 years. Imagine it is WWI and you are predicting what are the problems the world will face in 2017? You’d be wrong on pretty much everything.

A classic example of this is a problem that was getting steadily worse about a hundred years ago, so much so that it drove most observers to despair. This was the great horse-manure crisis.

Nineteenth-century cities depended on thousands of horses for their daily functioning. All transport, whether of goods or people, was drawn by horses. London in 1900 had 11,000 cabs, all horse-powered. There were also several thousand buses, each of which required 12 horses per day, a total of more than 50,000 horses. In addition, there were countless carts, drays, and wains, all working constantly to deliver the goods needed by the rapidly growing population of what was then the largest city in the world. Similar figures could be produced for any great city of the time.*

The problem of course was that all these horses produced huge amounts of manure. A horse will on average produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day. Consequently, the streets of nineteenth-century cities were covered by horse manure. This in turn attracted huge numbers of flies, and the dried and ground-up manure was blown everywhere. In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day, which all had to be swept up and disposed of. (See Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999]).

In 1898 the first international urban-planning conference convened in New York. It was abandoned after three days, instead of the scheduled ten, because none of the delegates could see any solution to the growing crisis posed by urban horses and their output.

The problem did indeed seem intractable. The larger and richer that cities became, the more horses they needed to function. The more horses, the more manure. Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure. Moreover, all these horses had to be stabled, which used up ever-larger areas of increasingly valuable land. And as the number of horses grew, ever-more land had to be devoted to producing hay to feed them (rather than producing food for people), and this had to be brought into cities and distributed—by horse-drawn vehicles. It seemed that urban civilization was doomed.

And the car wasn’t invented to solve the manure crisis. That just happened to be a beneficial side effect. Somethings the solutions are accidental.

The great crisis vanished when millions of horses were replaced by motor vehicles. This was possible because of the ingenuity of inventors and entrepreneurs such as Gottlieb Daimler and Henry Ford, and a system that gave them the freedom to put their ideas into practice. Even more important, however, was the existence of the price mechanism. The problems described earlier meant that the price of horse-drawn transport rose steadily as the cost of feeding and housing horses increased. This created strong incentives for people to find alternatives.

Price signals are very important.

Some interesting findings in the 2017 Lowy Institute poll:

• A net -1% are satisfied with how things are going in Australia
• A net -60% are satisfied with how things are going in the world
• A net +63% think globalisation is good for Australia
• A net +44% think free trade is good for the Australian economy
• Asked to pick the country which is Australia’s best friend
  • NZ 53% (+21%)
  • US 17% (-18%)
  • UK 17% (nc)
  • China 8% (-1%)
• Most critical threats:
  • Terrorism 69%
  • North Korea 65%
  • Climate change 57%
  • Cyberattacks 55%
  • Global economic downturn 53%
  • Donald Trump 53%

The Campaign for Change announced on 17 June:

“The Campaign for Change will channel the energy and passion of New Zealander’s who want to see a change of Government this election.” says Director Matt McCarten.

This non-partisan campaign is being created in order to get people engaged and involved. The disconnect between a million citizens and political participation is a threat to our democracy.

We now know this was a lie. McCarten set up Campaign for Change as a taxpayer funded staffer for Little. It was run by two Labour Party paid staff and two Labour Party officials. They recruited unpaid foreign workers for it under the guise of Labour Party fellowships. We also know that some of these foreign workers were being assigned to campaign for specific Labour candidates.

So why was this Labour Party campaign pretending to be independent of Labour?

Presumably as a way to get around the electoral laws that restrict how much you can spend on a campaign.

If Campaign for Change phones 100,000 people to persuade them to vote Labour, then that is invisible advertising. It is not like a billboard or pamphlet which you can see has an authorization statement.

Mike Hosking writes:

Under party rules, three months before an election the caucus can roll the leader without going through the drama they have to the rest of the time.

Namely giving votes to party members and unions.

We have seen this before of course, the famed “Mike Moore” solution in 1990 that almost worked, and in so many respects it’s a shame it didn’t, because he remains one of my favourite politicians of all time, and given the chance I have no doubt he would have been a brilliant Prime Minister.

Andrew Little in many respects doesn’t deserve to get rolled, he by and large has got the factionalism under control, he is the best of the crop, and I include the much-hyped Jacinda Ardern who will undoubtedly one day lead them, but if you’re looking for a game changer 90 days out, she, let me tell you, is no Mike Moore.

Not in stature, gravitas, experience or kudos.

Besides I am sure she is way too smart to want to catch that particular hospital pass, when she will get three clear years heading towards 2020 if things go pear shaped this time round.

Sp Hosking thinks Little will stay leader this side of the election, but Ardern will take over after the election.

Stuff reports:

A father who became upset at his 5-year-old son’s behaviour during prayer time made the boy get a hammer and kneel on a sheet so he could be executed.

The offending by Hastings man Kiimatangiroa​ Junior Samuel, 41, was described by Judge Max Courtney as “the cruellest set of facts I have ever come across”.

Before making his weeping son kneel and close his eyes, Samuel told his other children, aged 7, 9 and 10, to fetch sheets as he didn’t want blood to get on the floor.

This man should not have children. What sort of sick fuck would do that?

The incident, which ended with Samuel laughing at his terrified son, occurred in his Hastings house on February 26, after he and his children had returned from prayers at the Hastings mosque.

Samuel told police he had become upset because his son had been running around the mosque during his prayer time.

He said he had no intention of carrying out the threat and had only threatened to execute his son to get him to be more honest.

Yes threatening to execute your children is an excellent way to get them to be more honest.

The judge said he agreed with the probation officer’s report that said Samuel had attempted to minimise the offending. 

He was also concerned at Samuel’s insinuation that physical discipline was part of his culture.

“It’s quite clear that in New Zealand, whatever anyone’s culture is, it is totally inappropriate and it is clearly illegal… Quite frankly I do not believe any culture would condone the type of behaviour you have committed against your children,” the judge said.

The judge noted Samuel had several previous convictions including two for assault and two for breaches of protection orders. …

Samuel was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison.

Good.

This is pretty disgusting. Labour are now implying that our high level of youth suicides is due to immigration. How much more desperate can they get?

Not even NZ First would go that far.

Stuff reports:

An American student who flew to New Zealand at her own expense to work for a scheme associated with the Labour Party says things did not seem right from the get-go – but she says the party is not at fault.

I can’t believe the media are reporting this as credible. This was not a scheme associated with Labour. It was a Labour scheme.

It is call a Labour campaign fellowship. It was run by two Labour Party staff members and applications for it went to the Labour staff.

The scheme, whose failure caused party leader Andrew Little to apologise on Thursday, was accused of using the students as “slave labour”.

Emily Dunne, 21, was one of 85 interns from across the world expecting lectures from Helen Clark and real world campaign experience.

The political science student from Virginia said the campaign had almost nothing to do with the Labour Party, and instead she blamed the organisers.

The organisers were the Labour Party. Look at who were named in the bFM interview:

I am probably the one who knows the most about the situation for certain reasons and I would just say that it is not the Labour Party’s fault. It is Matt McCarten, Paul Chalmers, Simon Mitchell, Caitlin Johnson, Kieran O’Halloran. They kind of organised on their own, lied to the Labour Party, went off and said they were bringing over 15 Americans to work on campaigns, and really tried to bring over 115 at peak capacity

I’m sorry but this is crap. Newshub has reported that documents show they were budgeted for 100 students. It was never intended to be just 15.

And the five people named are all Labour Party.

• Matt McCarten organised the scheme out of the Labour Leader’s Office, being paid by the taxpayer to do so
• Caitlin Johnson and Kieran O’Halloran are paid staff for the Labour Party, It’s ridiculous to think they were doing this independently and without approval of the party.
• Paul Chalmers is on the Council of the Labour Party and is a regional chair
• Simon Mitchell is a longtime Labour activist and off memory the guy who burnt the painting at the centre of Paintergate to protect Helen Clark

To argue this scheme was independent of Labour when it was called a Labour fellowship, and run by staff from the Leader’s Office and Labour field offices, plus a member of Labour’s National Council is beyond credibility.

And here is the final proof:

This is one of the Labour fellows talking about how they will be working for Labour’s Auckland Central candidate Helen White.

This was not some independent effort. The Campaign for Change is a front organisation for Labour, run by Labour Party staff and office holders.

Stuff reports:

A Canadian sniper has reportedly killed an Islamic State fighter in Iraq with a bullet fired more than 3 kilometres away.

It’s a shot that has stunned the military world, and, if confirmed, would shatter the current world record for a kill shot in military combat by almost a kilometre.

A member of Canada’s Joint Task Force 2 shot the “insurgent” from a distance of 3450 metres during an operation in the past month, The Globe and Mail reports.

The shot was fired from a McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle from a high-rise building in the area and required the sniper to take into account not only wind and distance, but also the curvature of the Earth.

It took just less than 10 seconds to hit its target.

The shot, verified by video, disrupted an IS attack on Iraqi security forces and was considered appropriate given the situation, multiple sources told The Globe and Mail.

The world record was previously held by British sniper Craig Harrison. He shot a Taliban gunner with a 338 Lapua Magnum rifle from 2475 metres away in 2009.

A military insider told The Globe and Mail: “This is an incredible feat. It is a world record that might never be equalled.”

That is an incredible shot that may indeed never be equalled.

Just imagine that you can see in all directions for say three kilometres, and you can still be taken out!

There are many aspects to this story about the unpaid Labour interns, ranging from hypocrisy to electoral spending to taxpayer funding. I’ll focus on all of these over time.

But the key one for now, is whether Labour has taken part in a massive case of immigration fraud.

If the “fellows” are here on a visitor visa, then the rules from Immigration NZ are very clear:

On a visitor visa you can do volunteer work while in New Zealand, provided you receive no gain or reward.

And what is gain or reward?

Gain or reward is any payment or benefit that can be valued in terms of money.

Examples include:

• accommodation, such as board or lodging

• goods, such as food or clothing

• services, such as transport

• training.

We know these “fellows” are being given free accommodation in exchange for their work, so they are in breach of their visitor visa conditions, if they have visitor visas.

It is possible they have other visas, such as work visas. But it is hard to imagine they could qualify for work visas, and the hypocrisy would be great – Labour bringing in unpaid fellows on work visas, while campaigning against such work visas.

So it looks like either Labour has arranged 85 work visas for its unpaid fellows while campaigning to reduce the number of work visas for unskilled jobs or Labour has been complicit in a huge case of immigration fraud.

I’m not sure which scenario is more damaging, but I’d say the fraud scenario is worse than the hypocrisy scenario.

Stuff reports:

The man behind a proposal designed to deter people from cattle rustling says he hopes the final law goes further to include other rural crimes.

Rangitikei MP Ian McKelvie had his member’s bill proposing the law change pulled from the Parliamentary ballot recently.

The Sentencing (Livestock Rustling) Amendment Bill proposes making stock theft an aggravating feature when thieves are sentenced in court.

McKelvie said stock rustling was a big issue for farmers, especially those in remote areas of the country.

So how big an issue is this?

Federated Farmers rural security spokesman Rick Powdrell said rustling cost farmers more than $120 million a year.

“The successful passing of this bill would show the victims of livestock rustling that the justice system is prepared to take these crimes seriously,” he said.

“It’s frightening when you are faced with someone in a remote rural area who is most likely armed.”

Federated Farmers wanted to see rustlers have the potential to lose the vehicles and equipment used in the crime, just like what happens in fisheries, he said.

Figures from a survey Federated Farmers did of more than 1000 farmers showed 26 per cent had had stock stolen in the past five years, but almost 60 per cent of stock thefts had not been reported to police.

That’s a lot bigger than I realised.

Politik reports:

A Labour Party scheme to recruit  85 overseas students to campaign for the party during this year’s election has hit trouble.

Yep the party complaining there are two many overseas students in NZ has brought 85 of them over to campaign for them.

The students rebelled over their accommodation and their disappointment with what was supposed to be a high powered learning programme but which appears to be not much more than political campaign drudge work.

In other words Labour conned them into being free labour. No living wage for them. Not even a minimum wage.

POLITIK has seen emails which show that the students have now held two meetings with party officials to complain about their accommodation on an Auckland marae and the work they were being asked to do.

Last night Labour’s General Secretary Andrew Kirton confirmed that there had been issues with the scheme which had arisen over the past week.

He said the scheme had been originated by Andrew Little’s former Chief of Staff, Matt McCarten, who now runs Labour’s campaign office in Auckland.

They openly call it their campaign office, despite it being funded and paid for by The Parliamentary Service.

The heart of the row appears to be the living conditions under which the interns have been accommodated at Awataha Marae in Northcote.

POLITIK has been sent photographs showing:

• Cramped dormitory alcoves

• A broken and unusable shower

• Bathroom cupboard doors hanging off their hinges

• Unfinished construction work with material piled beside mattresses

So Labour has turned into a landlord putting people up in crowded and unsanitary conditions at the same time they demand all other landlords meet a WOF standard and camoaign against over-crowded accomodation.

The students met Labour party officials on Saturday to protest about their accommodation and were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Trying to silence them.

The emails continued: “They were told that they are broken down into teams- they will be either phone soliciting ( they’ve bought 30-ish Alcatel phones, and they sit in a room and call, from this marae, very disorganised, many of these people have been called already ) , door knocking in regions in Auckland, or approaching universities and “unions” to recruit votes and more volunteers. They have one day of ‘training’ tomorrow. There is nothing else planned for these guys as far as I am aware.”

So this marae has turned into a Labour Party calling centre.

“Fellows will be instructed in the fundamentals of a successful campaign – from knocking on doors to recruiting volunteers to use the party’s campaign software – but will progress quickly and ultimately may build and train their own teams and lead campaign activity across Auckland.

The campaign Fellows serve an important leadership role and will report directly to the field organisers.

“They will be tasked primarily with projects surrounding the recruitment and retention of volunteers and direct voter contact activity. “

The programme is billed as an education opportunity for the interns which will give “the fellows a glance into what a career in politics would be like, as well as offering the fellows special access to senior MPs and important decision makers in the party.”

Short lectures are promised from some top Labour Party names:

• Andrew Little
• Jacinda Ardern
• Helen Clark
• “Current ambassadors to NZ.”
• “Senior party stakeholders and staff, including the President and Chief of Staff “
• Teleconferences with senior staff from US Democratic Party and UK Labour Party

However, Kirton said there were now problems organising these talks because the volunteers were no longer in one place.

The party might use webinars for the talks, he said.

They really have conned the poor students. They thought they were attending some high powered campaign school, when in reality they are just unpaid labour for Labour. They are getting none of the talks or discussions they were promised – just at best an ability to watch some videos on You Tube!

And the website explains that “although we are unable to compensate our fellows financially, the campaign fellowship will stand out on your CV and both organisers are happy to serve as a reference upon successful completion of the fellowship.”

It is very sad that Labour is so short of volunteers in New Zealand they have had to con 85 foreigners to come here and work for them for free.

Barry Soper writes:

But the volatility of that mine, and what occurred at the time, understandably tends to be forgotten. The first methane gas explosion occurred on November the 19th, there was a second explosion five days later, another one two days after that and the final one two days later.

And when that second explosion occurred, they were set to go in. Many more lives could have been lost.

The latest footage to emerge from deep within the mine shows a wooden crate and hoses and a pair of spectacles which obviously shows that that part of the mine wasn’t engulfed in flames. That’s all it shows.

No one actually knows what went on in that mine and what sort of conflagration took place.

One thing was clear though, it was unsafe then and the debate has raged ever since whether it’s still unsafe. For anyone to go in under new health and safety laws that virtually require a risk analysis for sharpening a pencil, someone has to take responsibility.

Little and Peters aren’t willing to take the responsibility. They want to force others to take it.

No Government in its right mind would deliberately prevent the bodies from being recovered if they thought there wasn’t a risk.

This is the key. No one in Government benefits from not having the mine entered. Peters and Little know this. They know it is risky.

Labour’s Andrew Little says the new footage provides a compelling reason for the mine to be re-entered. Little’s committed to a safe re-entry, with the operative word being safe which would in reality, put a Government led by him in the same place as the current Beehive incumbents.

Weasel words. If it was safe, it would have happened years ago.

Unmanned re-entry into the mine is planned at the moment. The families want their advisors involved in the process and want to see the footage sent back by the drones and robots.

That seems more reasonable than drawing conclusions from the latest six year old footage.

Yep.

The annual abortion stats have been published. Some interesting stats:

• The number of abortions has dropped for the 13th year in a row – down from a high of 18,511 in 2003 to 12,823 in 2016 – a drop of around one third.
• The abortion rate per 1,000 women of fertility age has dropped from 20.8 in 2003 to 13.5 in 2016.
• This is the lowest rate since 1989
• The proportion of pregnancies that end in an abortion has dropped from 24.7% in 2003 to 17.7% in 2016
• The number of abortions for people aged under 20 has dropped from 4,277 in 2007 to 1,478 in 2016. That is a huge drop.
• 57% of abortions occur before week 10 of the pregnancy and 94% in the first trimester
• By ethnicity the decline in the number of abortions since 2007 is Pasifika 40%, Maori 33%, European 31% and Asian 13%.

The Herald reports:

National MP Todd Barclay has announced he will not stand as the candidate for Clutha-Southland in the 2017 election – but will stay in Parliament until then.

“I got into politics because I was inspired by the people I worked for: Bill English, Gerry Brownlee and Hekia Parata. I wanted the opportunity to make my contribution too,” Barclay said.

“I don’t want the issues that are important to Clutha-Southland and all of New Zealand to be distracted by an employment dispute.

“This has been a hard decision to make, but it is in the best interests of our government and the National Party, and I wish the Prime Minister and our team all the best for the General Election.”

Barclay’s executive assistant and staff were in tears shortly after the statement was sent.

Barclay said he wanted to pay tribute to his friends and colleagues in the party and caucus, particularly Invercargill MP Sarah Dowie.

Barclay said being elected Clutha-Southland MP was the proudest moment of his life, and it was a privilege to serve the people in the electorate.

A brutal end for a new MP. Very loyal of him to give up a very very safe seat in order to stop this issue festering for National.

After the second round of voting in the French legislative elections, the seats are:

• Macron and allies 350
• Parliamentary right 136
• Parliamentary left 45

Macron’s party has 53% of the seats, increasing to 61% with his allied party. Incredible result for a new party.

The formerly dominant Socialist Party got just 6% of the vote and 5% of the seats. In 2012 they got 41% of the vote and 49% of the seats.