The IGIS has reported:

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Cheryl Gwyn, released the public report of her inquiry into the Government Communications Security Bureau’s (GCSB) processes for determining its foreign intelligence activity today. This inquiry was initiated as a result of issues raised by the public about claims of GCSB assistance to the New Zealand Government’s campaign to advance the Hon Tim Groser as a candidate for Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

“The inquiry has found that the GCSB did not act unlawfully or improperly in providing assistance to the New Zealand government campaign”, Ms Gwyn said. “I have reached that finding for two reasons.

First, the New Zealand government had made a foreign policy decision to support Mr Groser as a candidate. The decision reflected a considered assessment that Mr Groser would, if selected, advance the effective functioning of the WTO (an international, multilateral organisation) and so have a significant impact on New Zealand’s economic well-being.

Second, under the terms of the Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003 which applied at the time, the GCSB had a statutory responsibility to provide foreign intelligence assistance in support of New Zealand’s foreign policy objectives. In line with the government’s decision and the foreign policy basis for that decision, the GCSB acted lawfully and appropriately in providing its assistance to the campaign.”

The full report is very detailed, and usefully suggests ways in which future decision making can be done, but it very clearly finds that the GCSB acted appropriately.

And the IGIS has not been shy in the past in pointing out areas where she feels the SIS and GCSB are not acting appropriately.

Henry Cooke writes:

Over half of major political donations come from wealthy individuals able to splash out $15,000 or more, new research shows.

Fully 52 percent of the money from donations over $1500 in 2011-2016 came in chunks of $15,000 or more. Donations under $1500 aren’t declared, but aren’t thought to make up a significant percentage of party funding given the small population of New Zealand.

This is not correct in the case of National.

National has around 30,000 to 40,000 paid up members. If the average member donation is $50 (I think it is in fact higher than that) then small donations bring in over $1.5 million a year in income.

Journalist and academic Max Rashbrooke put together the numbers for a report on open government being released on Tuesday. He thinks that the donations clearly buy some kind of influence.

“If parties are reliant on very wealthy people for half of their donations, then they aren’t going to ignore them are they? I think it must lead to influence for at least a certain class of people,” Rashbrooke said.

Rashbrooke falls into the trap of thinking of donors as a class, rather than a collection of individuals and businesses. Donors have very varied interests – most just want a Government that delivers a good strong economy.

Someone who donates say $15,000 to National is donating around 0.5% of their campaign funding. The good thing with having lots of big donors, is that none of them become particularly influential.

“We are very sceptical of politics and politicians usually. It would be very strange if we were all of a sudden naive and assume these people are just giving money as a public service or because they really like the party.”

They like the policies. They think the policies are good for the country and good for them. In my experience money follows policies, not the other way around.

While the general public often think about donations in terms of trade unions and industry lobby groups, Rashbrooke said the vast majority of funding comes from individual donors.

Unions are large and active donors on the left. Very very few business and industry groups donate to political parties. Individual businesses may not their industry groups.

National is overwhelmingly the largest recipient of donations, raising $11.7m over the six years between 2011 and 2016, almost three times Labour’s $3.9m. But just 22 percent of their funds come from donations of over $15,000.

Yep, and that is 22% of the donations over $1,500. I’d say National probably had another $10 million from small donors in that time, so donors over $15,000 probably contribute just 10% of the party’s income.

Large donations are not necessary for success and certainly do not guarantee it.

The Internet Party and the Conservatives both raised more than the Greens and Labour over the period, but neither have MPs in Parliament.

And New Zealand First – who raised the least by far over the period, just $319,000 – are polling on level with the Greens and are widely seen as “kingmakers” in the next Parliament.

Money helps. You’d rather have more of it than less of it. But as the article says it doesn’t have as big an influence as people think. People have to be receptive to the message for advertisements to work – no matter how often they play.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said his party delivered more with less.

“New Zealand First has the most professional presentation and efficient delivery of party policies, which belies the fact we don’t have a substantial amount of donations.”

Of course in the past New Zealand First has received substantial donations – they just didn’t disclose them until the donations were outed!

Like many, I have been puzzled about what has been going on in Clutha-Southland over the last couple of years. So over time I’ve chatted to quite a few locals down there to try and piece together what has happened. As it has flared up again, I thought it would be useful to share how I see things.

Note I have had no conversations at all with any of the participants in this, such as the current or former MP, or their staff. I do know them all of course.

Here’s my take:

1. Todd ruffled more feathers than was necessary when he became the candidate and new MP.  Some of the criticism was unfair (some were unhappy that he chose to live in Queenstown instead of Gore, that he has a social life) and some was justified. His relationship skills were not at the level they needed to be, and he needed to learn to take people with him. The feedback I have had is that he has taken this on board and most of the criticism is historical.
2. For reasons unknown he and his senior electorate staffer fell out quite badly. In hindsight he probably should have brought in new staff who were personally loyal to him but it made sense at the time to keep on people with such experience in the electorate. A fallout between an MP and a staffer is not uncommon, and in fact all parliamentary contracts have clauses that say you agree to resign if your MP loses confidence in you. I don’t know who is most to blame for the fallout – probably some blame on both sides.
3. The staffer started publicly and privately criticising Todd (as mentioned in this Newsroom article), and as I understand it actively working against him. This is simply unacceptable. If you think an MP is no good, then you resign and campaign against him but you don’t bad mouth your employer when you are a parliamentary staffer. Doing so is basically grounds for termination for misconduct.
4. Todd presumably heard that one of his own staff was using his own office resources and time to bad mouth him, and/or spread rumours about him. It seems (I have no first hand knowledge) he may have left a dictaphone running in the office to gather proof of this. It goes without saying he should not have done this and doing so (if he did) was a serious error of judgement.
5. Since then a small group within the local party have been campaigning against Todd. They tried to get elected to the electorate committee and challenge him for the nomination. They failed massively, with Todd receiving the overwhelming support of the members.
6. The reason the members are supporting Todd isn’t because they approve of everything he has done. They do not, and many members will freely give advice as to how he could do better in certain areas. But they are supporting Todd because they are disgusted with the behaviour of those trying to bring him down, regardless of the damage it does to the party.
7. Basically if you want to roll an MP in National, you don’t do it through a public campaign of media vilification, You just quietly arrange a good challenger, do the numbers and challenge. Trying to force an MP out as a piece of personal utu does not make you a lot of friends. Most members down there are furious at the former staffer and electorate chair for how they are behaving.

So absolutely Todd has made some mistakes, including allegedly deciding to record a staffer bad mouthing him so he could dismiss her. But he was in an intolerable position of having a subversive campaign against him being run from his own office.

Almost every member down there knows exactly what has gone on. It is not as if his critics haven’t told every person they can. Yet they failed to beat him in democratic elections and selection, so instead they are continuing their campaign through the media. It is rather sad.

Liam Hehir writes:

Faced with rejection at the polls, pundits like to find fault with the electorate.

Prominent Left-winger Martyn Bradbury, for example, likes to call New Zealanders “sleepy hobbits”. The idea is that we are too fond of simple pleasures to engage with revolution and ideology. 

He intends this as criticism, of course. The problem is that I’ve never really understood why we should take offence at the suggestion. 

Things aren’t perfect in this country and, actually, they never will be. Imperfection is part of the human condition. Societies reflect the imperfections of the individuals and families which inhabit them. I don’t mean to say that we should be blind to the injustices around us. 

Nor should we be complacent about the threats to what we have. Nevertheless, is it really such a bad thing to desire a pleasant life? 

I think some activists do not understand that most families are focused on what really matters – have they got a job, a decent income, good schools, a good healthcare system, good friends and a pleasant life. They are not obsessed by what someone said on Twitter.

I am also not saying we haven’t had periods that were, relative to today, fractious and violence. The New Zealand Wars, the Waihi miners’ strike and the 1981 Springbok Tour are all examples of troubled times in our history. It would be naive to think we won’t go through such times again.

But we are not living in those times now. In the most recent Roy Morgan survey, 60.5 per cent of respondents said they think the country is on the right track. Just 27 per cent said we are on the wrong track. Sentiment has remained at around those levels since 2008.

Roy Morgan’s most recent numbers for Australia have 40.5 per cent approval and 38.5 per cent disapproval. According to the Real Clear Politics average, the numbers for Americans are 34.8 per cent and 58.6 per cent respectively. I can’t find recent figures for Britain but I am willing to guess they’re not very pretty. 

The UK is around 40% approval and 60% disapproval. So net approval in the UK is -20%, in the US -24% and in NZ it is +33%. Some on the left don’t understand this.

And if it seems strange, try to think about some of the things which we aren’t going through.

The country is not paralysed by political gridlock. It is not constantly swapping governments. We are not always on the brink of a constitutional breakdown. We are not stalked by the terrorism of radical extremists. We do not kill each other over our religious differences. We don’t have people committing mass murders because that’s what they think God wants them to do.

I think the biggest factor is we have effective Government. The fact we have no upper chamber, no states and a Government that has to have the confidence of Parliament means things actually get done. You may not agree with them all, but in no way is Government broken like in some countries.

We are not a flawless people by any means. But this is still a country where fatal road accidents remain shocking enough to lead the news bulletins. We do know how lucky we are. Can you really blame us if, having looked at the outside world, we prefer the quietude of the Shire?

By coincidence I’ve just visited Hobbiton. A great tourist attraction that now employs around 250 people.

A release from The Jewish Council:

Don’t close the door on kids’ singing by censoring Jewish history

The Wellington Regional Jewish Council has asked Artsplash Co-ordinator Mary Prichard to (in her words) “keep life simple” by reinstating three songs from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat into its programme for the September festival, using the correct words.

An apology for changing one word without permission has been made to the librettist, Sir Tim Rice, and he has accepted the apology, so there is no reason why the performance of the song with the correct words shouldn’t go ahead, Zwartz said.

“As we see it, the ‘trouble’ Mary Prichard refers to is an attempt to censor without explanation an event in Jewish history that took place about three-and-a-half thousand years ago.

“It is wrong to indicate to primary school children that something in the Jewish Torah – also included in the Christian Old Testament, and the Koran – needs to be altered, or avoided altogether,” Zwartz stated.

“It also undermines a strong move in New Zealand society for better understanding of every religion, as shown by the National Statement on Religious Diversity and the work of the Human Rights Commission.

“Far better to teach the children, and their parents, that each religion’s historical background is something to be treated respectfully, not censored or banned.

“In the case of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, it is obviously something that inspired Sir Tim Rice and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber to create uplifting and enjoyable words and music.

Its universal acceptability is shown by the more than 20,000 performances of the work worldwide. 

“As a Wellingtonian, I don’t want our city to be branded as a place that refused to perform this popular adaptation of Jewish history,” David Zwartz said.

The Regional Jewish Council has offered to meet Mary Prichard and others from Artsplash to discuss and explain its opposition to censoring Jewish history.

The WCC should not fund a festival that censors history like that. The correct response to being told by Tim Rice not to change his lyrics, is to include the songs as written by Tim Rice, rather than remove them all together.

UPDATE: Artsplash has said:

“As Artsplash Co-ordinator I must take full responsibility for this unfortunate and regrettable error. 

You have my complete assurance that this was an unintentional and innocent error on the part of one of my team, and I apologise for it.  The person concerned, and myself for that matter, are religious people and would never consider intentionally doing anything racist or anti any religion.    

I have run Artsplash for 30 years and have always included children of all sorts of backgrounds including Jewish.  There has never before been an incident of this sort, and I don’t expect there will be again.

Action has been taken over the weekend to ensure that the original song words are all reinstated, with immediate effect.

I look forward to a very successful Artsplash event again this year for the  10,000 primary school children taking part”.

That’s an excellent outcome. Am pleased it has occurred.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand can handle up to 5000 refugees a year, says the Green Party, which has announced a policy to double the quota twice over.

They would then set the goal of doubling that to 4000 within six years. A new visa category would also allow for up to 100 climate change refugees, primarily from the Pacific, to be allowed to migrate to New Zealand. 

There is no such thing as a climate change refugee. There will be one day, but not for some decades as current sea level growth is 3 mm a year.

It was expected to cost an additional $66m in 2018, rising to $350m once the quota had reached 4000 places. 

So the Greens want to spend $350 million a year to take in more refugees while at the exact same time they are arguing we need to take in fewer migrants who actually have jobs to go to.

It’s one thing to argue we should have more migrants and more refugees. But the Greens are arguing for more refugees and fewer migrants. .

The NYT reports:

Helmut Kohl, a towering postwar figure who reunified Germany after 45 years of Cold War antagonism, propelled a deeply held vision of Europe’s integration and earned plaudits from Moscow and Washington for his deft handling of the fall of the Berlin Wall, died on Friday at his home in Ludwigshafen, Germany, the Rhine port city where he was born. He was 87.

“We mourn,” his party, the Christian Democratic Union, said on Twitter in announcing his death.

With his diplomacy, resolve and readiness to commit huge sums to ending his country’s division, Mr. Kohl was remembered by many as a giant of epochal times that remade Europe’s political architecture, dismantled the minefields and watchtowers of the Iron Curtain and replaced the eyeball-to-eyeball armed confrontation between East and West with an enduring, if often challenged, coexistence between former sworn foes.

Merging a communist and capitalist country together into one country was a massive task, and one that could go wrong in so many ways.

Kohl handled it remarkably well, especially with the fears from some of what a reunited Germany would look like.

The fact Germany is now seen as one of strongest countries in the world in terms of its economy, and not a threat to anyone, is partly a credit to Helmut Kohl.

Another terrible attack in London with an attacker plowing a van into a crowd.

The attack was outside the Muslim Welfare House, and many of those hit were Muslim, it seems.

One attacker appears to have been captured, which is good. There may have been two others.

Not yet known what the motivations were. One report has that an attacker said “‘I’m going to kill all Muslims” which would make it a misguided “revenge” attack which is exactly what the other terrorists want – religious war.

It could be that it was an Islamist who was upset with the local Finsbury Park Mosque for trying to purge the mosque of extremists. Until the captured attacker talks, we won’t know.

I wish there was a simple solution as to how to stop people plowing vans into pedestrians.  You can restrict guns, search for knives, have inspections on planes etc to minimise the chances of other forms of attacks. But so long as you don’t care about being caught or killed, then any idiot can hire a van and drive it into a crowd.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Bill English was joined by Transport Minister Simon Bridges and Finance Minister Steven Joyce to cut the ribbon on the $1.4 billion tunnel project, saying it was part of massive pipeline of investment to support a strong economy and population growth.

English said the Waterview tunnel project was 60 years in the making and a big day for New Zealand.

“There are a lot more projects in the pipeline and this gives us real confidence that we have got the infrastructure capacity to do the investment that is needed to support growth in New Zealand.”

Bridges said the twin tunnels, which completes the 48km western ring route, marked a pivotal milestone not just for Auckland but New Zealand’s highway network.

This is going to make a huge difference to Auckland, especially for transport from the airport.

Labour of course fought against this.

The May 2017 polls newsletter is out. The summary is:

Curia’s Polling Newsletter – Issue 109, May 2017

There were two political voting polls in May – a Roy Morgan and a One News Colmar Brunton.

The average of the public polls sees National 17% ahead of Labour in May, up 4% from April.

The current seat projection is centre-right 58 seats, centre-left 50 which would see NZ First 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.

In the United States Trump saw a marked decline in his approval ratings in May, especially in the area of healthcare.

In the UK as we now know, the polls got it wrong again. However, they did pick up the massive shift in support in May which saw Labour go up 10% in the polls, Theresa May’s net approval rating fall 16% and Jeremy Corbyn’s climb an astonishing 50%!

In Australia, Labor retains a comfortable lead over the Coalition.

In Canada, the Liberals and Trudeau have rebounded after a few bad months.

We also carry details of polls on tax cuts, housing, mental health and property prices 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.

 

Today

• Race Three – NZ won by 49 seconds
• Race 4 – NZ won by 72 seconds

Wins

• NZ 4
• US 0

Points

• NZ 3
• US 0

NZ needs 4 more points to win the America’s Cup and US needs 7 more points.

Very exciting to win all four races so far, but we have learnt the hard way that it is not over until it is over.

Stuff reports:

Britain has appointed a former New Zealand trade negotiator, Crawford Falconer, as its chief adviser on trade talks, just days before exit talks with the European Union are due to begin.

Falconer brings 25 years of experience in trade and public service, and will advise international trade minister Liam Fox, Britain’s newly formed department for international trade said on Friday (Saturday NZT).

He will be tasked with developing and negotiating free trade agreements and market access deals with non-EU countries and shaping trade deals on specific sectors or products.

Falconer is very well respected. A good decision for the UK and a useful outcome for New Zealand as we hope to be an early country to negotiate an FTA with the UK.

Stacey Kirk writes:

The Health Minister hasn’t called for the head of his top official, but perhaps he should. 

What’s incredible is that Director General of Health Chai Chuah didn’t offer it on a plate, the minute he had to tell Jonathan Coleman the individual DHB funding allocations the Government crowed about on Budget day were wrong. 

Every. Single. One of them. 

The Ministry of Health managed to botch up the amount of money DHBs would be getting to the tune of $38 million, and that’s incompetence, pure and simple. There were 14 DHBs that were overpaid that will have to give up some of their funds, while six were short-changed. 

I agree heads should roll for this.

Individuals can make mistakes, but a huge Ministry with over 1,000 staff should have systems and checks to pick up errors, and especially an error in something as crucial as Budget documentation.

Ike Brannon writes at Cato:

Andrew and I reviewed the economic studies pertinent to this question and the evidence suggests that a lower corporate tax rate boosts employment and wages.

Put briefly, there are two different strands in the literature pertinent to this question: One strand studies the question via different corporate tax rates at the state level while the other looks at corporate tax rate differences across countries.

We believe that the state corporate tax rate differences are most relevant for understanding how a corporate tax rate reduction at the federal level may impact labor markets, because the economic environment is—of course—the same as it would be for federal rate changes.

Comparing between states is better than between countries because different countries can have many other confounding variables.

The research is by no means unanimous of course, but the most relevant studies by our account (most notably by William Harden and William Hart) find that a one percentage point increase in the corporate tax rate would increase unemployment by .2%-.5%. A 10-20% reduction in the rate—the range that the Trump Administration has proposed— would translate to a 2%-10% boost in long-run employment.

So which parties in New Zealand will campaign to cut the corporate tax rate and boost jobs and wages?

The impact on income is of a similar magnitude: The studies we find most compelling (by Alexander Ljungqvist and Michael Smolyansky, as well as Harden and Hart) suggest that a one percentage point reduction in the corporate income tax would boost income by .3% to .6%; for the 10-20% rate reduction on the table, that translates to a long-term boost in income of 3%-12%.

Cutting the NZ corporate tax rate from 28% to 20% would only cost a bit over $2 billion a year.

Terrible terrible behaviour from those behind WCC’s Artsplash:

Wellington City Council has been forced to apologise to multi-award winning lyricist Sir Tim Rice, after the word “Israel” was removed from his work being used for a children’s festival.

Lyrics from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat were being used as part of Wellington’s annual children’s festival, Artsplash.

But the song sheets soon sparked controversy, after the line “Children of Israel” was changed to “Children of Kindness”.

This is not a minor change. This is about the biblical Joseph from the Book of Genesis, and some anti-semite decided to remove reference to Israel from it.

Questions were raised on Twitter by Kate Dowling, who asked why it was done.

That tweet prompted a response from Rice himself, who warned he hadn’t given permission for any changes.

A great first day of racing with Emirates Team New Zealand beating Oracle twice.

They won the first race by 30 seconds and the second by 88 seconds.

While the light winds helped New Zealand, it was great to see them also win the starts and see Oracle make some unforced errors – so it wasn’t just a matter of having the right wind.

Team NZ also made some errors, so in no way would I assume tomorrow will get the same results as today. But a huge psychological boost as up until today we had not beaten Oracle in the earlier rounds.

NZ now leads 1 – 0 (we started at -1). So we need to win six more races to win and Oracle need to win seven races to win.

The Herald reports:

Labour and the Green Party will get a boost to their respective election campaign war chests from a major union.

E Tu (previously the EPMU and the Service and Food Workers unions) has announced it will donate $120,000 to Labour and $30,000 to the Greens, roughly the same amounts given ahead of the 2014 election.

The E Tu union is very powerful within Labour. It now represents over half the affiliate vote and has a decisive say on issues such as the leadership.

If the unions did not get a vote in the last leadership election, Grant Robertson would have beaten Andrew Little by 56% to 44%.

The Herald reports:

A breakdance pioneer, actor and artist will go up against Nikki Kaye in Auckland Central in September’s election.

Gareth Morgan’s Opportunities Party (TOP) has announced Mika as its Auckland Central candidate.

Mika’s artistic career has covered stage, film, television, fashion and music, including appearing in the Oscar-winning film The Piano, Shortland Street, and Mika Haka Kids. He has performed for Prince Charles and at 10 Edinburgh Festivals.

A high profile candidate for TOP. Will there be more?

I’d quite like there to be a credible Internet Party fighting for laws to protect the Internet etc.

I thought it would be hard for the Internet Party to do worse than last time, but I think they have managed it.

The Herald reports:

Kim Dotcom’s political venture, the Internet Party, has a new leader. But she may not be in New Zealand for the election – given she is living in self-imposed exile in Moscow.

Activist and citizen journalist Suzie Dawson has been seeking temporary asylum in Russia since late last year.

I blogged on Ms Dawson in January. Some extracts:

• I remember us getting followed around by Auckland Transport vehicles
• there were days in 2014 where I honestly did not expect to see the light of day in that week. 
• So, at the end of 2014 after there had been several overt attempts on my life, which I document in the documentary
• Because privatised spying and privatised policing is huge, this is what we face now, is for-profit companies that make money from targeting us.
• Then I covered off the specific assassination attempts that I experienced in the lead up to the Moment of Truth event.
• I had the interior ceiling of my house painted and then little holes would appear in my ceiling, just randomly – it’s so sad – I used to go and stick chewing gum in them or pick-up-sticks – honest to God – because one day my ceiling has no holes in it then the next day there’s these little holes in it and I’m like ‘what the hell is going on?’
• We were standing in the way of absolutely everything that they were trying to do to our country and I was the conduit to the international media and to breaking the information out of New Zealand and getting it into the global sphere. And I think that that is one of the many reasons that they came down on me particularly hard.
• If you look at the science of 9/11, it’s obvious that there is a lot of questions to be asked there, just purely from a scientific perspective.

I really really hope she is included in the minor party leaders’ debate assuming she can video-conference in from her room in Moscow where she is hiding from the GCSB assassins.

Enter your captions below. As always funny not nasty.