Stuff reports:

Media companies Fairfax New Zealand and NZME are appealing the Commerce Commission’s decision this month to block their proposed merger.

The companies announced the decision on Friday morning saying the commission had made errors with facts and law.

Fairfax NZ acting managing director Andrew Boyle said the commission’s ruling was a “breach of natural justice and procedural fairness”. 

He said the appeal process would “take some time”.

Procedural fairness? It was the media companies that kept coming back with more and more submissions delaying things. The Commerce Commission bent over backwards to be procedurally fair to them. I wonder if the media companies kept making all these extra demands, just so they could try and appeal when they lost?

At this rate the media companies will be spending more on lawyers than they do on sub-editing.

Their appeal includes a statement that the Commerce Commission did not give enough weight to the competition the two media companies face from blogs and sites such as Scoop. Good luck with that argument.

• NZ beat Sweden
• Sweden lost to NZ
• France lost to Japan and beat UK
• UK lost to France
• Japan beat France

Overall results:

• US won 4 lost 1
• NZ won 4 lost 1
• Sweden won 2 lost 3
• France won 2 lost 3
• Japan won 2 lost 3
• UK won 1 lost 4

Points

1. US 5
2. NZ 4
3. UK 3
4. Sweden 2
5. France 2
6. Japan 2

Yesterday The Spinoff published an article on the battle over Auckland Council’s budget. At the centre of the story was an allegation (actually they reported it as a fact) that the Taxpayers’ union had been sending white feathers to Councillors who might vote for Goff’s budget, accusing them of cowardice.

This get a few on Twitter into their normal lynch mob mentality, including Russell Brown who added (now deleted) that we had been nailing the white feathers to the doors of Councillors homes.

Most people would agree such acts are pretty despicable.

The story had a large picture of me (and two others) on it, and I started to get calls asking why had I done or authorised such a awful thing.

Of course I hadn’t, and neither had the NZTU or ARA. The Spinoff has now said:

An earlier version of this story attributed the distribution of white feathers to The Taxpayers’ Union, a charge the organisation has since vigourously denied. The Spinoff has since been told that the feathers were in fact distributed anonymously, and accepts that The Taxpayers’ Union had no role in the distribution of the feathers. The story has now been updated to reflect this. The Spinoff apologises to the Taxpayers’ Union, Jordan Williams, David Farrar and Jo Holmes for the error.

I appreciate the apology and I should say I have generally been a fan of The Spinoff’s writings, and especially Simon Wilson’s. But I am angry over what they did. They published a story that was highly damaging to me and others, without even checking. If they had checked in advance of publication we would have all told them we know nothing about this, and they would have presumably checked back with their sources (who may have misled them) and determined the truth.

I presume as well as not checking with us (which is a gross breach of Press Council principles) they never asked for any proof of the allegations. Instead they ran a story based on anonymous sources, did no verification and gave no opportunity for comment in advance of publication. That’s pretty shoddy.

To add to the irony we have someone (Russell Brown) who has spent over a decade producing shows about media ethics who jumped on the bandwagon and implied we hadn’t just e-mailed white feathers to Councillors but had stalked them at home and nailed them to front doors. And again no verification before publishing – he just threw it out there on Twitter to enrage the lynch mob.

It is true the ARA has been vocal in reminding Councillors who pledged to vote for no more than a 2% rates increase that if they break their pledge, voters will be reminded of it. Most people regard holding elected officials to their words to be a good thing.

My suspicion is that this story was planted by a staff member or Councillor of Auckland Council to try and smear us. The timing is no coincidence, that it is the week of key votes on the bed tax which is on the verge of not getting the numbers. There is no journalist protection of sources when they have lied to you, so I hope The Spinoff reveals who told them NZTU were behind the white feathers.

The Spinoff notes:

The Spinoff Auckland is sponsored by Heart of the City, the business association dedicated to the growth of downtown Auckland as a vibrant centre for entertainment, retail, hospitality and business.

Heart of the City is of course an organisation almost fully funded by the Auckland Council. I’d like to think commercial motivations were not part of this story, but you wonder why else did The Spinoff so flagrantly breach Press Council standards and run a defamatory story without even seeking comment from the people named in it. Because the sad thing is that despite their retraction, the damage is already done.

For some years now Labour have lied and lied and said that National has cut health spending by $1.7 billion. The media run this as a statement of fact often, despite it having no basis in truth.

The most generous interpretation you can make is that Labour is saying that they have calculated the level of funding they think Vote Health needs, and that it is $1.7 billion more. But that is very different to saying it is a cut.

If you are on a $60,000 a year salary and ask for $70,000 but only get $64,000 then you can’t say your salary has been cut by $6,000.

Now let’s look at what at what Vote Health has done between 2008 and Budget 2017.

• Nominal Vote Health – increased by $4.85 billion a year from $11.92 billion to $16.77 billion – a 40.7% increase
• Real Vote Health – increased by $3.00 billion a year from $13.77 billion to $16.77 billion – a 21.8% increase
• Real Vote Health per capita – increased by $341 a year from $3,233 to $3,574 – a 10.5% increase

You can claim it is not enough. You can claim more is needed. You can claim growing elderly population needs more funding. But you cannot claim it has been cut. That is a lie.

As it happens a fixation on spending, rather than outcomes is at the heart of what is wrong with Labour.  Here’s three examples:

1. Say you spend an extra $2 billion a year on Vote Health. You can use it to increase the number of doctors and nurses by 30% or you can use it to give all existing doctors and nurses a 30% pay rise. The former would see a huge increase in patients being treated and the latter would see some really happy medical staff (which has benefits). But the difference in outcomes in huge.
2. Say you save $50 million on cleaning contracts through a nationwide contract. You spend $25 million on extra operations. By focusing just on spending this looks bad, as spending has decreased by $25 million even though outputs have increased
3. Pharmac gets a great deal in drug negotiations and gets more cancer drugs for a lower price. There is no increase in spending, but a significant increase in drug availability for patients

We’ve seen some highly beneficial outcomes for relatively small amounts of money. Independent research has found the maximum six hour waiting time target for 95% of ED patients has saved several thousand lives. Yes there was some money dedicated to this (which is sensible – tie money to outcomes) but the outcomes were phenomenal compared to the monetary investment. It was mainly better systems that contributed.

So remember everytime Labour lie and say health funding has been cut, it has not – it has increased 41% nominally, 22% real and 11% real per capita.

The Herald reports:

The Manchester suicide bomber used taxpayer-funded student loans and benefits to bankroll the terror plot, police believe. …

Abedi’s finances are a major “theme” of the police inquiry amid growing alarm over the ease with which jihadists are able to manipulate Britain’s welfare and student loans system to secure financing.

One former detective said jihadists were enrolling on university courses to collect the student loans “often with no intention of turning up”.

Abedi was given at least 7000 ($12,700) from the taxpayer-funded Student Loans Company after starting a business administration degree at Salford University in October 2015. It is thought he received a further 7000 in the 2016 academic year even though he had already dropped out of the course.

Abedi, 22, never held down a job, according to neighbours and friends, but was able to travel regularly between the UK and Libya.

Yet some argue radicalism happens because they are poor. Here he was raking in money from the taxpayer.

Prof Anthony Glees, director of Buckingham University’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said: “The British system makes funds readily available to jihadist students without checks on them. There needs to be an inquiry.”

The Government has previously admitted it has no idea how many terrorists could be using benefits and student loans to finance activities.

Would be useful to determine.

The better Chris Bishop does as a local MP, the more Trevor Mallard tries stuff like this, showing how desperately scared they are that they are going to lose Hutt South to him.

Could you imagine the outrage if a National MP smeared a Green MP, and implied the reason they took the train was because they were drunk.

This is not just any MP, but the MP whom Labour says should be the Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Is this a standard of behaviour compatible with being an presiding officer of Parliament?

Trevor Mallard has now deleted his reply, but that doesn’t change the fact he did it.

I don’t know why he ever thought it was a good idea. It really just shows how desperately scared they are of Bishop winning.

Audrey Young writes:

It is a Budget that makes life better for many low and middle-income Kiwis and it makes life worse for the Opposition.

The design of the $6 billion package to lift incomes over four years makes it difficult for the Opposition to complain.

Under the package 50,000 fewer children would be in low-income households (as measured by the OECD) at April next year – a 30 per cent reduction in that particular measure of child poverty.

I’m not a huge fan of that measure of child poverty, but the left use it constantly to claim that we have dire child poverty. So they should be cheering from the rafters a Budget that reduces the number of children in households below the poverty line by 50,000.

Certainly Opposition claims that it is a tax cut for the wealthy in disguise is not sustainable.

That is unless they think someone on the average wage is wealthy.

I think Labour regard anyone earning over $14,000 a year as wealthy according to their arguments.

Steven Joyce, Bill English and Andrew Little will get the same tax cut as someone on the average wage.

Someone on the average wage of $58,900 will get the same tax cut as someone earning twice the average wage or three times the average wage – $20 a week – as will anyone earning over $52,000.

Yep.  And some low income households will be getting an extra $150 a week. Yet Labour votes against!

Stuff reports:

It may have been unintended, but the Government had effectively passed over a large portion of middle New Zealand, Little said.

“National’s Single Child Tax will see a family with one child lose as much as $830 a year in Working For Families payments.

Which is a desperate lie.

Families earning between $44,000 and $59,000 were those affected. Under the Government’s package, which was unveiled in Finance Minster Steven Joyce’s maiden budget last week, a single-earner family on $55,000 a year would be $20.38 a week better off. 

But a single-earner family on the same income, with one child under 16, would only get an extra $14.18 a week.

So actually they are around $750 a year better off. Claiming they are worse off is like claiming that if you win $800 in Lotto and someone wins $1,000 in Lotto you are $800 worse off.

“Whenever you’re putting these packages together, there’s always a complexity about it. But I’d be surprised if they understood there’s 20,000 odd single-child families that will now be worse off – but that’s the reality. “

A lie. They are not. They are $15 a week better off as a minimum and if they get accommodation supplement may be up to $115 a week better off.

Joyce said those families still saw an overall gain, and Labour was failing to see the bigger picture. 

“The abatement changes mean they don’t get as much from the Working for Families part of the package, but they gain more from other parts of the package, in particular the tax changes. They may also in some cases gain from the Accommodation Supplement Changes.

“It’s important to note that these people are already receiving Working for Families so currently get more than couples with no children who don’t get anything from Working for Families. They continue to get more until the Working For Families is fully abated,” he said. 

“One of the aims of the Family Incomes package is to focus Working for Families on lower income families and that middle income families are less dependent on Working for Families and keep more of what they earn through the tax system. This is an example of that occurring.”

Pretty desperate stuff from Labour but they do it because they don’t get called out on it. They have claimed for years that health funding has been cut when in fact it has increased in nominal, real and real per capita terms.

• NZ beat UK and Japan
• Sweden lost to France and beat US
• France beat Sweden
• US beat UK and Japan and lost to Sweden
• UK lost to US and NZ
• Japan lost to NZ and US

Overall results:

• US won 4 lost 1
• NZ won 3 lost 1
• Sweden won 2 lost 2
• France won 1 lost 2
• UK won 1 lost 3
• Japan won 1 lost 3

Points

1. US 5
2. NZ 3
3. UK 3
4. Sweden 2
5. France 1
6. Japan 1

The Herald reports:

Trustees had been considering a Government offer to restore the cathedral, which involved most of the $104m cost being funded by the Anglican Church’s $42m insurance payout, a $10m government grant and $15m loan, and $15m from the Great Christchurch Buildings Trust.

Today, Peters said the Government’s offer was not nearly enough.

“There’s some economic debate, but the tax take from the Christchurch rebuild sits between $7 billion and $11 billion. A bonanza from your catastrophe. Don’t you think you should get some of it back?

“Here’s one project that just needs a tiny ounce of that quake gold.

This is a new level of stupid for Peters. He thinks an earthquake is an economic bonanza. Yes there is a boost from reconstruction but that is far smaller than the costs of the damage, the opportunity cost and the taxpayer contribution.

If Peters was right that an earthquake leads to an economic bonanza for the Government, then what we need is more of them clearly. An earthquake every year and we’ll all be rich.

That contribution would rule out asking Christchurch and the rest of New Zealand to fill the donation buckets.”

More economic literacy. He seems to think Government expenditure doesn’t come from NZ taxpayers. Peters is in fact demanding people in the provinces up and down New Zealand fund his election bribe to Christchurch.

The Herald reports:

When Seth Rich’s Gmail account received an alert this week from Mega.com, attempting to start a new account on a website created by the New Zealand-based internet businessman and convicted hacker Kim Dotcom, his family knew that something was off. …

According to experts and Rich’s family, the emailed invitation from [email protected] appeared to be an attempt to gain access to Rich’s email. Joel Rich, who maintains his late son’s Gmail account, did not click the link. Meanwhile, Dotcom was promising on Twitter to prove that the younger Rich had been in contact with WikiLeaks – and Fox News host Sean Hannity was telling his 2.37 million Twitter followers to be ready for a revelation.

Looks like an attempt to manufacture evidence.

The latest revelation – that a hacker from New Zealand may have been trying as recently as this week to hack into Rich’s email – offered fresh evidence that the conspiracy theory is false. Dotcom, it seemed, may have been willing to create a fake archive of emails from Rich to “prove” his role in the DNC hack.

Well there is history when it comes to fake e-mails.

Results from Day 1 of the Louis Vuitton Cup:

• NZ beats France by 2 minutes 33 seconds and loses to USA by six seconds
• USA beats France and NZ
• Sweden beats Japan and loses to Great Britain
• Japan beats Great Britain and loses to Sweden
• Great Britain beats Sweden and loses to Japan
• France loses to USA and NZ

Looks like the team which writes the rules is in the best position!

Stuff reports:

Wellington needs to grow up if it wants to solve its housing crisis, a report says.

At the heart of the problem is the lack of supply, and one way to solve it is raising height limits in the suburbs to match those in the city centre.

The advice comes from a recent Housing Forum, at which 70 stakeholders from the housing sector, community organisations and politicians came up with solutions to problems identified by the Mayor’s Housing Task Force. …

Wellington engineer and developer Maurice Clark said the only way was up. “We have got to build up. There is so little land, we can’t spread out.”

Actually there is a lot of land available in Wellington.

One of the “benefits” of having a six month old child is you spend a lot of time driving around your city trying to get him to sleep. I’ve driven almost every long road there is in Wellington and what has struck me is how much land is still available for housing in areas such as South Karori, Brooklyn, Johnsonville, Newlands etc.

I’m not against building up also, where appropriate. But it is simply wrong to say there is no land available.

The Government has published the latest greenhouse gas inventory. Labour and Greens and their proxy groups go on about the need to reduce emissions, and if you listened to them you would think they shrunk under a Labour Government and skyrocketed under National.

So what does the official data show.

• 1999 – 73,049 kt
• 2008 – 80,205 kt – an increase of 7,156 kt or 9.8% over 1999
• 2015 – 80,155 kt – a decrease of 50 kt or -0.1% over 2008

So emissions increased 10% under Labour and have slightly decreased under National. Do you think Greenpeace (led by a former Green MP) or Forest and Bird (ditto) would ever highlight this?

Note this is just gross emissions, which is those produced by activities such as energy, manufacturing, transport and agriculture. Net emissions include the impact of tree planting and deforestation and swings about more wildly as in any particular year there can be a big change in planting or felling activity.

A guest post by Grant F, Board Member of the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners:

The Arms Act 1983 controls the ownership of firearms and some types of airguns in New Zealand. It is a world leading piece of legislation as it focuses on the firearms user as opposed to the firearm itself. Essentially, to legally possess a firearm a person must be “fit and proper”, have appropriate security, and have attended a training course. Firearms that are considered requiring extra control are stored to higher levels of security and are registered, and may have an additional requirement such as a pistol owner must be a member of a bona fide pistol club. This system has worked very well for many years and must be considered a success. Despite the very high firearms ownership rate in New Zealand the rate of misuse of firearms is low. Sporting rifles and shotguns do not need to be registered as this is demonstrably costly and ineffective- with Canada having abandoned their long gun registry due to unprecedented cost blow outs which ate into the Police budget.

Until recently, the relationship between firearms groups and the Police has been harmonious. In the past few years, however, this relationship has begun to fray quite badly (as was shown by a North Island Gun Club halting the Police from using their range) and a number of legal challenges through the Court system. Firearms owners are reporting to COLFO ( The Council of Licensed Firearms Owners) an increasing number of worrying issues with the Police administration of the Arms Act.

Just this week firearms users spotted a serious problem with the Arms Code 2017. The Arms Code is the primary safety handbook for safe firearms usage.  The online version contained a number of errors and when this was pointed out to Police it was swiftly taken down. Police advised in a statement that this was only an IT error and regretted. It was then pointed out that a printed hard copy with the same errors was also available at Police stations and then the thousands that have been printed were withdrawn. The cost to the taxpayer of withdrawing this is unknown but must run into the thousands of dollars.

DPF: These errors were not an accident. They were the Police asserting the law as being what they thought it should be, rather than what it was. There are parallels to their activism on alcohol issues where they are trying to impose their view of what the law should be on license holders.

Firearms licences are renewed every ten years. COLFO is aware that people have applied for a renewal of a licence and this process can take up to 9 months. This means that a person is no longer licenced and cannot legally possess firearms that they could the day before. Dealers are reporting serious business flow on effects for the failure of police to action requests for import permits for stock for their businesses. When security is inspected license holders are reporting unlawful requests by Arms Officers regarding justifications for firearms and ammunition lawfully held, which are not in the Act or regulations.

Unfortunately, these are not one offs. COLFO is aware of:

• Inconsistent interpretation of the Arms Act across districts and individuals,
• Police publically stating that they were using licence photographs for purposes which they were not taken for (this was stopped after a threatened reference to the privacy commissioner);
• Poor investment, accountability and transparency on administration of Arms Act, record keeping, funding, actual manning versus paper manning of positions;
• No regular oversight or audit of performance;
• Long list of underfunding that has now resulted in issues for operation, however the blame has been placed on the door of compliant firearm owners;
• Low priority on administration of Arms Act due to operational conflicts;
• Political positioning within Police to use marginal services as a lever for careers;
• Disingenuous engagement with the community;
• Sloth in renewing arms licences (up to 9 months reportedly);
• Revisions to storage requirements for all categories of licence holders; and
• Changes in Arms Code without legal backing of Act or Regulations.

The position has now been reached that the many shooters do not believe the Police can administer the Arms Act, and that this is now rapidly becoming a political issue for many shooters. Many law abiding shooters feel that they are “low hanging fruit” and are being made accountable for the actions of the criminals who won’t bother with a  firearms licence anyway. New Zealand First has positioned itself as being very pro-lawful firearms users and it remains to see what this will mean in terms of votes. If social media is anything to go by, they may well have just snagged many tens of thousands on this one issue.

The job of the Police is to enforce the laws passed by Parliament, not to enforce their view of what the law should be.

Stuff reports:

A Republican politician has won a special election for a US House seat in the state of Montana, even after being charged with assaulting a reporter the day before polls opened, in a race seen as a referendum on US President Donald Trump.

“Great win in Montana,” Trump told reporters in Italy, where he’s attending a Group of Seven summit, after tech millionaire Greg Gianforte won the statewide contest for Montana’s only House seat over Democrat Rob Quist, a political novice and musician.

Gianforte had 50.4 per cent of the vote to Quist’s 43.9 per cent, according to the Associated Press, with 98 per cent of precincts reporting. The seat had been held by Ryan Zinke, whom Trump appointed as interior secretary.

Once upon a time assaulting someone would see you disqualified from office. No longer I guess.

Gianforte seems to be a loony tune as well as a thug. He opposes raising the age of retirement on the basis that Noah was 600 years old when he built the ark. Yes, seriously.

He also believes there were dinosuars as recently as 4,300 years ago and what wiped them out was the flood that Noah built the ark for.

Steve Kilgallon writes:

Newstalk ZB quite frequently calls on the services of a British woman called Katie Hopkins to opine on overseas news stories. She’s presented as an ‘outspoken commentator’. In the aftermath of the Ariana Grande bombing in Manchester, Hopkins thought it wise to send a vile tweet (since deleted) saying that “we need a final solution”.

Let us be clear: Hopkins’ consistent record of vileness (more of this anon) means it is quite clear that she intended this to mean a widespread murder of Muslims. In the unlikely event that Hopkins didn’t know the currency that term carries, then she doesn’t have the general knowledge worthy to act as a commentator (she wouldn’t have the general knowledge worthy to go on The Chase). But as a reminder, it refers to the genocide of six million Jewish people in World War Two.

Hopkins is, I reckon, clearly a vile woman who says vile things, but this tweet seemed as disgusting as you could possibly get, particularly contrasted with the nobility of most Mancunians in the face of the terror attack.

Anyone who talks about needing a final solution, should not be on air.  Implictly advocating genocide is so far over the line it is not funny.

UPDATE: She has been fired from some of her UK roles.

The Herald reports:

The Budget’s $6.5 billion a year tax and families package has passed into law with support from all parties but Labour.

Labour should be ashamed of themselves. They voted against a package that will give up to $165 a week more to some of the poorest families.

The fact that Greens and NZ First voted for the package is significant. This is the first time the Greens have voted for the key component of a National Budget.

The bill was passed under Urgency and provides for tax cuts of up to $20 a week for workers earning more than $14,000 a year and increases in Family Tax Credits and the Accommodation Supplement.

Those are scheduled to kick in from April next year. The tax cuts package is worth about $2 billion a year while the Working for Families and Accommodation Supplement increases will cost $300 million to $400m a year.

The Green Party and Labour took different positions on the bill – the Green Party co-leader James Shaw said it was a line call. While the party did not support the tax cuts, the changes to Working for Families and Accommodation Supplement would benefit about 50,000 children in severe hardship and the party could not ignore that.

However, Labour leader Andrew Little said Labour would not support it because the tax changes were poorly directed and gave too much to higher income earners rather than those on very low incomes.

Oh nonsense. Low income earners have their tax burden proportionally reduce by far more – 17% for someone on $20,000 vs 4% for someone on $100,000. Of course a higher income earner gets a bigger gross reduction – that is because they pay far far more tax.

Look at Labour’s 2008 tax cuts package. It gave someone on $20,000 an $1,130 tax cut and someone on $100,000 would have got $2,870. Yes Labour’s 2008 tax cuts package would have given a three times larger tax cut to someone on $100,000 than National’s 2017 package does. It is ridiculous to argue the tax cuts are not targeted at lower income workers enough.

Give the Greens credit for putting principles ahead of politics and voting for a package that will boost the incomes of 50,000 families to above the OECD poverty line. Labour just wallow in mindless opposition.

Stuff reports:

Businesses in central Wellington want to mark a perimeter around ATMs to keep “intimidating and forceful” beggars out.

The idea is just one suggestion as inner-city residents and businesses push for banks to become involved in finding a way to protect customers from beggars.

Money machines had become a beacon of activity, particularly for opportunist and forceful beggars, said First Retail Group managing director Chris Wilkinson, who heads a Wellington business group called Our CBD.

A begging exclusion zone around ATMs is a good idea. I think 400 metres should suffice.

The Electoral Commission has announced its allocation of funding to parties for broadcasting advertisements. This time around there is just an allocation of money, and no time allotments for opening and closing broadcasts.

Of course we should have no allocation and parties should fund their own advertising. But such a change will only be made if all parties agreed to it (as significant electoral changes should have cross-party support) so unlikely to occur.

I’m interested in what proportion of the pool each party got, as compared to last time. If a party has dipped in the polls, they tend to get less.

• National 31.0% down from 32.4% last time
• Labour 25.0% down from 28.0%
• Greens 12.0% down from 12.2%
• NZ First 9.5%, up from 6.1%
• Maori Party 3.0%, down from 3.1%
• ACT 2.3% (nc)
• United Future 2.3% (nc)
• Conservatives 1.3%, down from 1.8%

Most parties get allocated pretty close to what they are polling. National is the significant exception.