Hey @IainLG. Here are, side-by-side: a) Unemployment rate 2006-2016. b) Net permanent & long-term migration. They do not correlate. pic.twitter.com/fOj7FZDj4c
— Keith Ng (@keith_ng) February 1, 2017
Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway blames immigration for the small increase in unemployment. Keith Ng schools him in this.
Amazing how Labour MPs claim to be so disgusted with Trump’s policies, yet they more and more resort to Trump like blaming of immigrants.
Donald Trump has announced Neil Gorsuch as his nominee for the Supreme Court. He is almost certain to be confirmed.
Gorsuch looks to be a very solid choice – like Scalia an originalist who thinks the role of judges is to interpret the law, not to make it.
Good background on him at Vox.
He is only 49 years old so could well do 30 to 35 years on the Supreme Court.
His appointment will not change the balance of the court but if another vacancy occurs, then the balance on the court could change significantly.
Stuff reports:
One of the world’s greatest sevens players has spoken of his sadness over the apparent demise of the Wellington tournament.
Two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist and six-time World Sevens series champion Eric Rush said the Wellington event used to be the highlight of the international sevens calendar. …
“It was the best tournament on the circuit back then. Now, it’s probably one of the worst in terms of crowd numbers.
In the days when tickets sold out in seven minutes, the number of people wanting to attend was probably close to 100,000.
Rush, a 29-Test All Black, and New Zealand Sevens representative for 17 years, last attended the Wellington tournament two years ago. “She was empty, mate. It was sad, really sad.
“I think the [NRL Auckland] Nines killed a lot of it, plus the prices were less than $100 the first year, then it got up to $200 which would’ve put a few people off. Food prices and the fun police killed it too.”
That combination sounds right – prices too high, the fun police and competition.
He said other cities on the circuit had flourished, while crowd numbers in New Zealand had plummeted.
“It’s a real hard one because every other tournament sells out now, except for ours
This is the key statement. What happened to the Wellington Sevens was not inevitable. It was not just that people got bored. The local authorities and management killed it off.
The election date is Saturday 23 September 2017.
Bill English has said:
The Government’s intention is that the House will rise on Thursday, 17 August and Parliament will be dissolved on 22 August.
Writ day will follow on 23 August, and nominations will close at noon on 29 August. The last day for the return of the writ will be 12 October.
He has also said:
Mr English said his preference is to continue working with current partners – ACT, United Future and the Māori Party.
“Together our parties have provided a stable and successful government at a time of great uncertainty in many parts of the world,” says Mr English.
Mr English ruled out working with the Labour-Greens grouping.
“They are an increasingly far left, inward looking grouping, with no new ideas who don’t back New Zealanders to succeed.
“New Zealand First is an unlikely partner, however I am prepared to have discussions with them post-election depending on the makeup of Parliament,” says Mr English.
So no real change there.
I find it ironic that the parties of the left who are howling the loudest against Donald Trump, are the ones keenest to have NZ First in Government – the party whose policies are closest to Trump.
My view is that if NZ First holds the balance of power, National should go into opposition and let the chaos of a Labour-Green-NZ First Government stumble along for a year or two, and then mount a strong bid to get back into Government.
Stuff reports:
Ultrafast broadband is coming to more than another 200,000 homes, but doubts are already being expressed that the expansion of the network isn’t quite ambitious enough.
Another 423,000 people will be able get ultrafast broadband (UFB) by the end of 2024 as a result of a long-awaited decision to expand the network.
Prime Minister Bill English said UFB would be extended to more than 151 additional towns, on top of the 33 cities that are already getting the service.
Maps of the towns that will now get fibre are here: North Island South Island
The expansion will mean UFB will be available to “up to 85 per cent” of the population, up from the 75 per cent coverage that is planned to be delivered by 2020.
Good to see. Fibre should be seen as core infrastructure along with roads, water, sewerage etc.
Stuff reports:
New Zealanders who hold dual nationality with a country on US President Donald Trump’s blacklist are not restricted to travel to the US if they hold a New Zealand passport and a US visa.
The US Embassy in Wellington has confirmed the exemption, which was yesterday declared to apply to Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, also applies to New Zealand.
I think it also applies to more countries than just these.
Dual nationals of Yemen, Libya, and Somalia and a Visa Waiver Program country – such as New Zealand – may to travel under the waiver programme unless they have travelled to any of the seven countries on or after March 2011.
Any travel to those seven countries in the past five years, would mean those New Zealand citizens would also have to apply for a US visa.
I visited Iran around eight years ago. Will I end up needing a visa also at some stage!
UPDATE: The restrictions quoted above are in fact not new, but been in place since 2015. The ban on citizens from the seven countries is new, but the visa need for those who have visited them is an Obama policy.
The latest migration data is out and once again net migration from Australia is positive. After it hit parity I’ve been expecting it to start to reverse. But it has now been positive for more than a year and this may be the new normal – that more people leave Australia to come to NZ than vice-versa.
Such a situation is very rare. Migration between developed countries tends to be from smaller ones to larger ones.
Stuff reports:
President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall faces many obstacles. One of the tallest: building it without undocumented workers.
A labour shortage has left few hands to build houses and factories in the region, where wages have already been rising and projects delayed.
Now, the president’s plan for “immediate construction of a border wall” will force the government to find legal builders for a project that could employ thousands if not tens of thousands. About half of construction workers in Texas are undocumented, and nationwide 14 percent lack authorisation for employment in the US, according to the Workers Defense Project, an Austin group that advocates for undocumented labourers.
“If he is going to build a wall with legal workers in Texas, he is going to have a very hard time,” said Stan Marek, chief executive officer of Marek Brothers, a Houston commercial builder. “There is a real shortage of legal labour.”
I have a solution – automatic green card for any builder who spends at least a year working on the wall!
Stuff reports:
It’s now two-and-a-half minutes to “midnight”, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which warned Thursday (Friday NZ time) that the end of humanity may be nigh.
The group behind the famed Doomsday Clock announced at a news conference that it was adjusting the countdown to the End of it All by moving the hands 30 seconds closer to midnight – the closest the clock has been to Doomsday since 1953, after the United States tested its first thermonuclear device, followed months later by the Soviet Union’s hydrogen bomb test.
In announcing that the Doomsday Clock was moving 30 seconds closer to the end of humanity, the group noted that in 2016, “the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity’s most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change.”
From the 1950s to 1980s the Doomsday Clock was a useful and respected institution. The world did live in fear of global annihilation by way of nuclear war between the super powers.
The fall of the USSR saw this threat recede massively. So at some stage those behind it seemed desperate to remain relevant so they added on climate change as a criteria.
So now we have the ridiculous situation where they claim humanity is closer to global annihiliation today than anytime since 1953.
Their doomsaying gets worse every year so I imagine in a few years they will announce we are 0.001 second off midnight!
Jonathan Schanzer writes at Politico:
The Palestinian internecine conflict is a bipartisan blind spot. The last two presidential administrations labored to achieve a two-state solution without giving serious thought to solving the current three-state scenario. Indeed, Israel is currently sandwiched between two separate Palestinian statelets: a Palestinian Authority-run West Bank and a Hamas-run Gaza Strip. The West Bank government is open to making a deal with Israel in theory, but refuses in practice thus far. The government ruling Gaza seeks nothing less than Israel’s destruction based on both religious and nationalist grounds.
Fairly hard to negotiate peace with a state that wants your total destruction.
Rather than address the geopolitical split that renders any Palestinian leader incapable of signing a peace agreement with Israel, the Obama administration insisted that settlements are the primary obstacle to peace. While there may come a time and place to address that issue, the focus on settlements was putting the cart before the horse. Any diplomatic effort to end the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis to include the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel must first solve the Palestinian internecine conflict. From there, a bilateral negotiation can ensue between two leaders—one Palestinian and one Israeli—that legitimately represent their people.
The settlements are an obstacle to peace and make it harder. But they are definitely not the primary or even secondary obstacle. The major obstacle is there is no one capable and/or willing to negotiate on behalf of Palestine.
Admittedly, it will be no small task to negotiate peace between the Palestinians. The two sides harbor an ideological hatred for one another that is equal to if not greater than what we often see between Palestinians and Israelis.
If you disbelieve that, then consider the conflicts between Sunni and Shia Islam.
If Trump is looking for a bold step to take in his first one hundred days, he should appoint a Special Envoy to Solve the Palestinian Conflict. In doing so, his message would be clear: The United States is committed to diplomacy between Palestinians and Israelis, which hinges on a solution to the longstanding Palestinian internal dispute.
You need peace in Palestine before they can negotiate peace with Israel.
Martin van Beynen reports:
Revelations that Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) staff tried to do commercial property deals for their own company will be investigated by the Prime Minister’s Department and the State Services Commission.
A Stuff investigation revealed on Saturday that three Cera staff employed to facilitate investment in the Christchurch rebuild tried to arrange property deals through their own company for a finder’s fee (in one case $300,000).
Greater Christchurch Regeneration Minister Gerry Brownlee has told Stuff the Department for Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) and the State Services Commission (SSC) would investigate the private arrangements.
Good. While there may not have been any wrong-doing, the information to date does suggest at the very least there were conflicts of interest that were not managed.
State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes said the issues were, on face value, a matter of concern.
“In general, having a private business in the same area as a public servant’s official responsibilities would be highly problematic and is most likely to be unacceptable.
“It would be completely unacceptable for any public servant to use their position to advance private business interests,” he said.
Gallup looks at the average approval rating of US Presidents post WWII. They are:
So Obama on average was more unpopular than Bush 41 and Nixon!
To be fair to him, his ratings were more consistent. He was in the 40s for almost his entire presidency. Bush 41 and Nixon had periods of very high approvals and periods of very low approvals.
Rob Hosking writes:
Green party co-leader Metiria Turei talked about the women who had inspired her. It wasn’t a bad bit of personal history and colour. The Greens are in favour of feminism, she proclaimed.
But yeah, we kind of knew that.
The main event, the speech from Labour leader Andrew Little, also spoke of a personal journey, in his case a battle back from prostate cancer, coupled with his hopes for his own kids about owning their own home and turning that into a critique of the current government.
But policy? There was none.
In both cases, the Labour and the Green parties declared themselves in favour of nice things, and firmly against not-nice things.
Very bold indeed.
There is going to be, globally, an anti-Trump backlash, a reaction against everything the 45th president of the United States embodies. By the time the New Zealand general election comes around – probably in September, but we could know the date by the end of this week – that sentiment will be running extremely strong.
This could prove tricky, though: Labour and the Greens might be staunchly feminist, but in terms of their other prognostications on immigration and anti-foreigner sentiment and on protecting New Zealand businesses, they are closer to Trump than National is.
I’m glad Hosking made this point. Who like Trump is anti TPP? Labour and Greens and NZ First.
Who like Trump is calling for less immigration? Labour and NZ First
Who like Trump attacks foreign investment? Labour, Greens and NZ First
Who blamed Auckland house prices on people with Chinese sounding surnames? Labour
Stuff reports:
A French-Canadian man under arrest after a shooting at a Quebec City mosque on Sunday evening killed six people and wounded eight, police said on Monday.
He was identified as Alexandre Bissonnette, and was understood to be a student at nearby Université Laval.
A terrible act of terrorism. Thoughts are with Canada.
The ODT reports:
The food industry in Australia and New Zealand has managed to hold off near-universal calls from public health experts for government to crack down on junk food and sugar through its influential lobbying tactics, says the co-author of an Australian study.
The study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, interviewed “high-level people, including former politicians and civil servants with first-hand experience of these corporate activities,” said University of Auckland’s Boyd Swinburn, in a media release.
“The main tactics used by the industry identified in the study included framing the solutions to obesity in terms of personal responsibility, using private dinners and other opportunities for lobbying politicians, cherry-picking and promoting the evidence to suit their case, promotion of deregulation and self-regulatory approaches, funding professional nutrition organisations, sponsoring children’s sport and nutrition education materials, and personal criticism of public health advocates,” Swinburn writes.
This is hilarious. A public health activist publishes a study which is basically a whine that Governments won’t do what the activists demand, and they blame everything for this apart from the fact that there is zero evidence that a sugar tax will reduce reduce obesity.
A tax on sodas in NZ that reduced consumption by 10% (which is highly unlikely) and resulted in no substitution (even more unlikely) would reduce the average calorie intake by 3 calories.
This is equivalent to walking for an extra 45 seconds a day. So they want a costly and pocket hitting tax that will rake in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and have the same impact (at best) of 45 seconds of walking.
And they think the reason the Government hasn’t jumped at this stupidity is because of lobbying. It is because they are moronic.
Hamish Rutherford has an excellent article looking at the likely contenders to be the next Reserve Bank Governor. In summary they are:
That’s a very strong field to be choosing from and well balanced between three internal candidate and three external candidates. Of course we don’t know who else is interested so it might be someone from overseas.
The Herald reports:
Speaking on the pa, Little he said he took the relationship between Labour and Ratana seriously. Rather than simply turn up for the headline event, his MPs had been meeting with the church regularly over the last 12 months.
He wooed the church’s 30,000 followers by pledging to financially support its centennial celebrations in 2018 if Labour was in Government. Ratana was “an important figure in the history of Maoridom” and were “entitled to some support”, he said.
This is about as close to vote buying as you can get.
Ratana has an alliance with Labour, where it tells members to vote Labour. In exchange Labour pledges it will fund their birthday celebrations.
Imagine if (for example) National pledged to use taxpayer money to fund centennial celebrations for the Mormon Church in NZ, and the Mormon Church told all its members to vote National.
Liam Hehir writes:
Obama ran for the presidency campaigning against American involvement in “wars of choice” like Iraq. He was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in anticipation of the more peaceful times his presidency would bring. And yet the record shows that he involved America in the Syrian and Libyan conflicts, both of which have become geopolitical and humanitarian nightmare.
On assuming the presidency, one of Obama’s first actions was to order the closure of the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At the time, this was intended as a powerful symbolic rebuke to the Bush years. Eight years later, the prison remains open and very much operational – a fact that is itself deeply symbolic.
Or consider the manner in which Obama drastically escalated the use of unmanned drone strikes. Here’s an incredible statistic – in the past eight years, more people not in declared war zones were summarily executed by drone than were killed by the three and a half centuries of the Spanish Inquisition.
No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition!
The Spanish Inquisition saw 3,000 people killed over 350 years.
In 2008, at the height of his messianic fervour, Obama decreed that, “generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
Following the inauguration of Trump, all references to climate change have been removed from the White House website. One of the first actions of the new president was the signing of an executive order aimed at frustrating the Obamacare healthcare law pending its full repeal. For those who supported the substance of Obama’s agenda, this will be the bitterest legacy of all.
When he was inaugurated, serious people were talking about a coming 40 years of dominance for the Democratic Party. Instead, the party has lost the Senate, the House of Representatives, 12 governorships, nearly 1000 state legislative seats and, of course, the presidency.
By the way, none of this points to any character defect on the part of the now former president. What it does do, however, is point to three incontrovertible truths about politics.
First, that idealism in opposition must yield to realism in office. Secondly, that there are no permanent victories. Thirdly, that in an imperfect world, we won’t be saved by politicians.
Obama did about as well as I expected for someone who became President with just a couple of years experience in the Senate (when he started campaigning) and no executive experience. That is one of the reasons in 2008 I thought Clinton would be a better nominee than Obama. Of course John McCain was my preferred choice – and I think he would have been a great President.
The NZ Initiative has a very useful report looking at the positive impact of migrants on New Zealand. Some highlights:
The last data point seems surprising at first, but this is because with migrants we get the benefits of them working and paying tax in New Zealand, but we generally haven’t had to pay for the costs of educating the. So their net contribution to Government finances is significant.
The full report is 57 pages and well worth a read. It dispels some of the myths that certain politicians have pushed.
Another interesting point is that migrants are only half as likely as non-migrants to commit a crime.
Martin van Beynen reports:
Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority’s (Cera) staff employed to bring investment to Christchurch set up their own company through which investors would pay them a fee on private property deals, a Stuff investigation has found.
The senior public servants were employed by the Cera investment facilitation team, but at the same time had their own company which offered investors property proposals in the hope of earning a large finder’s fee.
The private dealings have emerged in relation to the sale of the damaged Youth Hostel Association (YHA) building at 273 Manchester St in late 2014.
Emails and company documents show three Cera staff working for the investment team – Murray Cleverley, who was manager of the Greater Christchurch Investment Strategy, and two investment facilitators, Gerard Gallagher and Simon Nikoloff – were involved in the transaction at the same time as being employed by Cera.Cleverley is a property investor and the chairman of the Canterbury and South Canterbury District Health Boards. Nikoloff and Gallagher work for Cera’s successor Otakaro Ltd, which is tasked with delivering the Government-led anchor projects and managing Crown assets, including surplus land in the central city and the residential red zones.The Cera staffers say they were entitled to do private deals and a company they set up to do so was formed “with the full knowledge of our employers”.
I think this stinks, and should be investigated. I am not saying any laws were broken, but public servants should not be running a company on the side in an area in which they are employed.
Stuff has learned that Gallagher and Nikoloff approached the Youth Hostel Association in what it perceived was their capacity as Cera staff, around the same time as the company was formed.
The two Cera staffers then began promoting the building, and other properties, through their private business, to Sydney mining services tycoon Kevin Maloney and his representative Ewen McKenzie, a former Australian rugby team player and coach.
If YHA thought they were then in their public capacity, and they used to to gain business for their private interests, that is wrong.
Let’s put aside for a second the actual policy behind the Trump Administration’s ban on citizens of certain countries entering the United States.
Personally I think treating all citizens of a country as the same is bad policy. Tens of thousands of Iranians visit the US, and even study there. They are the best hope of their country one day throwing off their theocratic despots. I’d want more of them, not less.
But even if you disagree with me and think the policy is a sound one, the incompetent way it has been implemented should ring warning bells for the chaos and likely incompetence of the Trump administration.
Major law changes like this should be notified well in advance in draft form, allow a period for feedback and clarity to be gained, and then finalised and published. Lawyers should be involved to make sure it is legal and clear. And it should have an implementation date that gives authorities time enough to prepare.
The chaos that has ensured would not have happened if any semblance of normal Government process occurred. Instead it looks like the directive was drawn up by White House staff, and Department of Homeland Security lawyers kept out of the loop.
This has resulted in the following:
So even if you think the policy is a good thing, you should be alarmed at the incompetence involved in formulating and executing it. Now several Judges have suspended parts of it, as authorities struggle to even understand it. It’s a mess.
And try to think about the human lives this has impacted. Imagine you have lived in the United States for 30 years. Your family lives there. You were born in Iran but left Iran because you disagreed with the leadership of Iran. You are not even religious. You are travelling for work, and suddenly find you may not be able to return home to your husband/wife and kids. All because of where you were born.
Or this example of an Iraqi who has risked his life working with the US in Iraq.
15Stuff reports:
Former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig has served notice of his intent to appeal a judge’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit he took against a blogger for publishing a poem he wrote to his former secretary. …
“There is no evidence before me of any sort that there is any value in this work or that either of the defendants has derived any income at all from it, from publishing it. It is obvious to me that the plaintiff would fail at substantive trial in establishing that in fact either of the defendants had monetarily profited from their publications of the work.”
She agreed with the argument that Craig had sought to “inappropriately import other grievances that he has against Mr Williams” and said the proceeding had “an element of impropriety”.
“This court does have the inherent power to prevent misuse of its procedure. It would be manifestly unfair to the first defendant or would otherwise bring the administration of justice into disrepute among right thinking people to permit this proceeding to continue, given that I am quite sure that the real argument that the plaintiff has is in respect of breach of confidence and his concern to protect his reputation…
“I consider… that this is a proceeding which involves a deception on the court. I do not consider the process of the court has been fairly or honestly used. It is being employed for an ulterior and improper purpose which I have already named. It is manifestly groundless and without foundation.
“This is a vexatious proceeding. It has been brought for collateral purpose,” she said.
The court’s decision was damning of Craig and said his case was essentially without merit. I can’t imagine an appeal will get anywhere. However the strategy might not be to win, but to just force others to keep spending money on legal fees.
On Monday Craig filed notices of appeal with the High Court at Auckland, saying Judge Sharp had failed to give the appropriate weight to the fact he was was representing himself, that she had incorrectly concluded the proceeding was an abuse of process, that she had incorrectly concluded that his claim would fail at a substantive hearing, and that copyright did not apply to the poem.
Wait a moment. Craig is a multi-millionaire, and the plaintiff in this case. He is not the respondents being forced into court against his will. And he is clearly able to pay to have legal representation. So why should the Court give him leniency for having failed to follow court procedures, when it is all his own choice.
