Stuff reports:

Hawaiki Cable is pointing to another milestone as preparations continue for its $500 million internet cable to the United States.

The company held a “ground-breaking” ceremony at Mangawhai Heads, north of Auckland, on Wednesday morning, where the construction of its New Zealand landing station is due to be completed by the middle of next year.

The event, attended by about 100 guests including Prime Minister John Key, is a show of confidence that New Zealand’s second trans-Pacific internet cable is proceeding to plan.

Within a couple of years we will have two cables to the US and also the new Tasman cable to Australia. Good times.

Rob Salmond announces:

This is my last PA post for a while, as I’ve recently taken on a staff role as Deputy Chief of Staff in Andrew Little’s office. Doing that job requires radio near-silence, which I’ll be attempting as best as my personal weaknesses will allow.

Rob specialises in data and politics. I suspect this means Labour will be focusing much more on voter targeting and turnout. However as we saw with the US election all the data in the world won’t get the wrong candidate elected.

Stuff reports:

A man obsessed with Nazis and white supremacism will spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of British lawmaker Jo Cox in a frenzied street attack which stunned Britain a week before the European Union referendum.

Thomas Mair, 53, shot Cox three times and repeatedly stabbed the 41-year-old mother of two young children in her northern English electoral district.

During the attack on June 16, he shouted “Britain first” and “Keep Britain independent” his trial heard, and when arrested he told officers he was a political activist.

All murders are bad but the murder of an MP is especially chilling as it is an attack on democracy as well as an individual.

He asked to make a statement only after the jury unanimously returned a guilty verdict but judge Alan Wilkie turned down his request.

“You are no patriot,” Wilkie told him. “By your actions you have betrayed the quintessence of our country: its adherence to parliamentary democracy.”

He added: “It is clear … that your inspiration is not love of country or your fellow citizens, it is an admiration for Nazism and similar anti-democratic white supremacist creeds.”

A particularly loathsome individual.

The Herald reports:

The abolition of secret briefings has been labelled a victory for democracy by re-elected Tauranga city councillor Rick Curach.

He has succeeded in formalising the new direction of the council to replace closed briefings with open workshops.

Today’s meeting focused mainly on the council’s revamped committee structure and its standing orders. It included a section that dealt with workshops – meetings where councillors were briefed on issues without reaching agreement.

Cr Curach’s move to formalise the holding of all workshops in the open, except where good reasons existed to exclude the public, was unanimously endorsed by the newly elected council. It was also agreed that all workshops, including closed sessions, must be publicly notified along with their topics on the council website.

Another long-serving councillor, Catherine Stewart, praised the leadership of new mayor Greg Brownless for backing the move to open workshops – reverting to a system that existed before the 2013 election.

The Bay of Plenty Times revealed this year that nearly 200 confidential briefings were held by the former council over two and a-half years. This was more than twice as many as the Bay of Plenty Regional Council and four times more than Hamilton City Council.

200 secret briefings!

Good to see Tauranga go down this path. Off memory the new Hamilton Mayor has pledged to do the same. Other Councils should follow suit.

Shalom Kiwi blogs:

Sheikh Dr Mohammad Anwar Sahib has been widely condemned for his antisemitic and misogynistic comments. He has now been permanently stood down from his role as secretary of the Federation of Islamic Associations of NZ’s religious advisory board and is under investigation by the Human Rights Commission.

However, a number of questions remain. Why was this preacher able to spread his hate speech for so long? Why did it take so long for FIANZ to confirm his role and take decisive action? Why is Sahib still in charge of the At-Taqwa Mosque?

It is good FIANZ have sacked him from his role with them, but definitely a concern he remains in charge of a mosque.

When the offending video reached the media, the following leaders and groups in New Zealand spoke out:

• Dame Susan Devoy, NZ Race Relations Commissioner
• Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, National Party; Minister for Ethnic Communities
• David Seymour, ACT Party Leader
• Winston Peters, NZ First Party Leader
• The New Zealand Jewish Council
• Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand
• Ahmadiyya Muslim Community NZ
• International Muslim Association of New Zealand
• Wellington Abrahamic Council

Notably absent were statements of condemnation of Sahib’s antisemitic and misogynistic comments from the Labour Party and the Greens.

Why nothing from Labour and Greens? They are normally the first ones to condemn hate speech, but total silence from them on this incident.

While the video incident seems to have reached a just conclusion, it remains somewhat of a mystery to the average New Zealander just who this man is and what he represents. Is his influence over people good for our society and how many similar preachers are there in New Zealand?

In 2001, the Centre for Islamic Pluralism published an article that described Sheik Dr Anwar Sahib as a high-ranking Islamic cleric trained in and funded by Saudi Arabia. A Fiji Indian, he spent 15 years being trained as a cleric by the Saudis and was described as an ultra-conservative fundamentalist. The Wahhabi sect to which Sheik Dr Anwar Sahib belongs is described as adhering to the most extreme form of Islamic fundamentalism. The author of Intellectuals and Assassins, Stephen Schwartz, said of Wahhabism that “it is violent, it is intolerant and it is fanatical beyond belief.”

Sheik Dr Anwar Sahib came to New Zealand on a Saudi-funded scholarship and was exposed as having ties to Osama bin Ladin. The then president of FIANZ, Dr Anwar Ghani, dismissed the concerns, saying he knew of no terrorist fundraising or terrorism-linked activity among local Muslims.

In 2011, FIANZ president, Anwar Ghani, once again dismissed concerns when he met with officials of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS). The SIS was concerned about reports that at-Taqwa mosque youth were talking about preparing for jihad in New Zealand. Sheikh Dr Sahib continued during this time to be a senior member of FIANZ.

In 2013, there was a report that Sheikh Dr Sahib had been involved in an Islamic conference where other invited speakers also gave antisemitic, misogynistic, and homophobic sermons. And, more recently, in January 2016, the WhaleOil blog revealed that one of the congregants of at-Taqwa mosque, where Sheikh Dr Sahib preaches, has potentially been radicalised and is a known Islamic State supporter. One is left wondering whether radicalisation of Muslim youth is happening in New Zealand mosques.

This is the very real concern. Most mosques promote a moderate version of Islam, but it takes just one to promote radicialism and fundamentalism and we then end up with the problems that Australia has.

As Sheikh Dr Sahib is a New Zealand citizen, it is unlikely that he will be forced to leave the country. Therefore, like another radical Auckland imam, Sheikh Abu Abdullah, Anwar Sahib will likely continue to preach fringe views in New Zealand, particularly as he is still the leader of his mosque, has access to congregants, and can still broadcast sermons (which he considers to be acceptable) on the Internet.

While most Kiwi Muslims are clearly peaceful, law-abiding citizens, and many Islamic organisations quickly distanced themselves from the sermons, Kiwi members of civic society who cherish peace are right to be concerned about any rise of Islamic fundamentalism that might threaten the New Zealand way of life.

What I find most concerning is that he was saying these things for so long, and that initially FIANZ backed him up and defended him.

The Guardian reports:

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s political career has been effectively ended, after he was dealt a humiliating defeat on Sunday by his former prime minister François Fillon in the first round of the race to choose the rightwing Republican party’s candidate for the presidency next spring.

Fillon, a socially conservative, free-market reformer who admires Margaret Thatcher and voted against same-sex marriage, came close to winning the nomination straight out, with around 43% of the poll.

A free market reformer may become President of France? Be still my beating heart.

The divisive former president Sarkozy suffered a humiliating defeat, knocked out of the race after he ran a hard-right campaign on French national identity, targeting Muslims and minorities. His poor score after a campaign in which he suggested banning Muslim headscarves from universities and was forced to protest his innocence faced with several legal investigations into corrupt campaign financing, showed he had become just as much a hate figure on the right as on the left.

Fillon and Juppé now have one week to do battle over who could better unite French voters against the far-right in a country struggling with mass unemployment, economic sluggishness and the threat of terrorism.

Donald Trump’s US win has thrown the spotlight on France as the next place for a possible shake-up of the political system. Polls have consistently shown that the Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, will make it to the French presidential final round runoff next May, but that it would be difficult for her to win.

Except the Independent reports:

Front National leader Marine Le Pen has taken a sizeable lead over Nicolas Sarkozy in a new French presidential election poll.

The far-right leader had 29 per cent of the vote when pitted against Les Républicains’ former president, who was eight points behind, and held a 15-point lead over the Parti de Gauche’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the poll released by Ipsos.

So if Sarkozy is out, what do the polls show:

• Juppe would beat Le Pen by 36% or so
• Fillon would beat Le Pen by 30% or so

So President Fillon is pretty likely.

Introduction
As things stand right now, according to CNN, Hillary Clinton has won 1,598,268 million more nationwide popular votes than Donald Trump. With just over 2.5 million more votes to count in California alone, it is likely that Clinton’s lead will grow to over 2 million votes. This is the fourth Presidential election where the winner has polled fewer popular votes than the loser. The 2016 election looks like giving Clinton a 1.5% margin (right now it is 1.2% or 47.9% Clinton versus 46.7% Trump). The 1876 Presidential Election saw the loser (Samuel Tilden) win a whopping 3% more of the popular vote than the winner Rutherford Hayes. Benjamin Harrison’s popular vote losing margin over his defeated rival Grover Cleveland in the 1888 Presidential Election was a more modest 0.8%. Finally, the margin that Al Gore won over 43th President George W Bush in the 2000 election was only 0.5%.

History of the Electoral College
As most people know, the President of the US is not elected by the direct popular vote of the people but by what is called the Electoral College. To understand the Electoral College and why it was devised in the US Constitution, one must understand the whole process of the formation of the United States as a single nation and its unique Constitutional structure. As it says in its name, the country is the UNITED STATES or a federation of what were formally independent states or colonies of Great Britain. Each colony (as was the case with New Zealand’s provinces in the mid-19^th century) had evolved different laws, customs and legislatures. Representatives to these legislatures were elected differently. The differing attitudes to slavery was a thorny issue right from the inception of the new nation. Preserving state’s rights and state autonomy was paramount. It is why the Constitution, unlike any other governing document, enumerates specifically only those few matters that the new Federal Government was responsible for (defense of the nation, customs duties and interstate commerce rules etc.) leaving all other powers BY DEFAULT to the preserve of the States. The 10^th Amendment has no equivalent in other countries that became federations of former states or colonies like Canada, Australia or Germany.

Intrinsic in the states retaining such autonomy was their absolute control over electoral matters. Other than the Federal election procedures specified in the Constitution, all electoral matters are decided at the state level such that the vast differences in state electoral law could easily fill a voluminous encyclopedia. For this reason, the US Federal Constitution has a Senate that has equal power to the other legislative arm of government, the House of Representatives with two Senators per state regardless of size versus the population based formula for apportioning the number of House seats per state. Please note that the number of House seats was capped at 435 in 1911 and so after each 10 yearly US census, there is a realignment of House seats with states with a shrinking percentage of the overall population losing seats to the high growth states in the Sun Belt.

Inherent in the entire US project and echoed by many of the Founding Fathers who drafted and signed the Constitution, (brief historical aside – my mother is American and we are related to Josiah Bartlett the 4^th signer of the Declaration of Independence) did so with a mind to protect the rights and power of smaller states. There was already a power imbalance between the larger of the 13 original colonies (such as New York and Pennsylvania) versus the smaller states (such as Delaware, Rhode Island and Connecticut). The power of the larger states’ House delegations to pass Federal legislation favouring their states was checked by the equal sharing of power in the Senate. This desire to check the power and dominance of larger states was taken one step further with the Electoral College.

How the EC works
A Presidential Election has taken place every four years since 1788 on the [EDIT: first Tuesday after the first Monday] in November (although the very first election took place over a 3 week period). Each state is awarded Electoral College votes based on the total size of its Congressional delegation comprising the number of its Representatives from the House and its two Senators. The number of Electoral votes varies from the largest being 55 from California (53 Congressmen + 2 Senators) to the seven smallest states (Vermont, Delaware, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, North and South Dakota) with 3 comprising their sole Congressman and 2 Senators. The House of Representatives has 435 Members and the Senate has 100 Senators making 535 plus the 3 electoral votes allocated to the District of Columbia making a total of 538 electoral votes. Apart from Nebraska and Maine (who award their 3 and 2 House electoral votes respectively according the winner of the popular vote in each Congressional District in the state with the overall winner taking the 2 Senate votes), the Presidential candidate that wins a simple plurality of votes in each state becomes the winner of ALL that state’s electoral college votes. The winning candidate does not have to win 50% + 1 so the presence in many states of third party candidates such as from the Libertarian and Green Parties means almost every winner of the popular vote at the state level does not win a majority of votes, merely a plurality. After the Presidential election on November, the election of President is not formalised until a:

Two step certification process
1 – The electors from each state meet on the first Wednesday after the second Monday in December (this election it is December 14^th) to formally cast their ballots for President. These meetings are held only at the state level and usually in each State’s Capitol building. Presidential electors are normally senior party officials and local office holders such as county or city party chair people. Each party that has managed to get their candidate on a state ballot (a difficult feat and one that most minor parties do not achieve saving resources to list their candidate only on the more populous states’ ballots) must also furnish a list of electors. In fact, in years past when you voted for President, whatever party you were registered with, the poll workers would give you a list of the names of your party’s electors in your state along with your ballot paper. Nowadays, that information is readily accessed at each state’s election office websites.

2 –  The results are then endorsed and copies are sent to the sitting Vice President (in his capacity as President of the Senate); the Secretary of State of each state; the Archivist of the United States; and the judge of the Federal District Court of the district in which the electors met. The state by state vote must then be formally counted and certified by a special joint session of Congress which always meets on January 6. The votes are opened by the Vice President as President of the Senate in alphabetical order of the states and they are counted by four tellers (two appointment by each House of Congress). The candidate that has 270 or more Electoral College votes is deemed the formal winner of the election by the Vice President. In the case of the 2016 election, if Trump’s lead of 13,000 votes in Michigan holds up under the current recount, the total Electoral College votes will be Trump 306 and Clinton 232.

Amendment procedure
To outsiders it seems an arcane system and to supporters of Clinton it seems unfair. After the narrow Bush 43 win in 2000, calls to abolish the Electoral College grew and the size of Clinton’s popular vote margin is so large that calls are and will continue to be loud. The reality is that, notwithstanding some insistent media commentary and pressure group support, the only way to change the system would be via a Constitutional amendment. To pass a Constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and elect the President by the popular vote would require both Houses of Congress to pass the amendment by a 2/3^rds majority. Given that the Republicans control both Houses of Congress, the likelihood of an amendment getting passed by this Congress is next to nil. Even if Congress did pass the amendment, it must be then ratified by a 2/3^rds majority of 75% of both of the legislatures in all the States. Given that the Republicans have majority control of 68 out of 98 partisan state legislatures (Nebraska has only one chamber that is constitutionally mandated as nonpartisan), that’s an even taller order than passing the amendment in Congress.

New Zealand comparison
What would happen if America did switch to a popular vote Presidential election system? The best way to describe what would happen is to look at what happened to election campaigning in New Zealand when we switched from First Past the Post (FPP) to MMP. In the days of FPP, the government of the day was decided by a relatively small number of votes in a handful of marginal seats. These were usually middle class suburban city electorates like Mt Eden in Auckland, Upper Hutt in Wellington and Lyttelton in Christchurch and provincial cities like Invercargill, Nelson and Rotorua. Campaigning efforts were concentrated heavily in the marginal seats and little to no election activity at the grassroots level was done in the Labour strongholds in the older working class urban suburbs or in National’s safe seats in rural NZ or the wealthier parts of the larger cities. If you were a Labour voter in Pahiatua or a National voter in Petone your vote was never going to change the government. However in 1978 and in 1981, partly due to the large third party vote for Social Credit, the Muldoon-led National Government was re-elected both times with fewer total nationwide votes than the opposition Labour Party by winning more electorates. This is because Labour ran up massive majorities in its urban strongholds and National won a raft of marginal seats across the country with very slender majorities.

MMP suddenly made all votes across New Zealand equal in power when the nationwide party vote became the decider of the government. This meant that campaign resources in the MMP era are targeted at the vote rich cities. The campaign schedules of the major party leaders are now more heavily weighted to Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, the Hawke’s Bay, Tauranga and Dunedin. Under FPP, the marginal provincial towns were always on the party leaders’ itineraries.

How US elections are fought
US Presidential elections are fought just like the FPP elections used to be fought in NZ. The so-called battleground or swing states are their equivalent of our old marginal seats and they receive a disproportionate amount of media advertising, on-the-ground GOTV canvassing efforts and large party leader rallies. Presidential elections for decades now have been decided in states like Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Indiana and Virginia. In reliably Republican states like Texas and Nebraska, the Democrat national campaigns commit few if any resources to the Presidential campaign. Likewise, the GOP spend almost nothing in California or Maryland because of the lopsided Democrat vote. In this election, Clinton managed to rack up huge wins in states like California, New York and Illinois that the Democrats were always going to win whereas Trump won most key battlegrounds states and the three unexpected Rust Belt reliably (until now) Democrat states (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and nearly Minnesota) and all (except Ohio) were won by relatively narrow margins. The Republican vote was, like National’s vote in the 1978 and 1981 elections, spread wider and thinner and in the states where it counted.

Effect of EC abolition
It is very easy to say that Clinton would be President if the national popular vote was the determiner. But if the Constitution was amended and the Electoral College was abolished, an entirely different campaign would’ve been waged. Both candidates would’ve concentrated their efforts in America’s 15 largest urban areas (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, Miami, Detroit, Atlanta, the I – 4 corridor of Tampa/Orlando and Phoenix). Of these 15 metro areas, under the current system, only 6 of these cities were visited by Trump and Clinton while they were campaigning. The largest 10 states (CA, TX, FL, NY, IL, PA, OH, GA, NC and MI) would dominate the rest of the country and these states would get a disproportionate amount of candidate campaign visits and media advertising. 3 of the 4 largest states vote heavily Democrat and many Republicans in those states stay home as they feel their votes are futile. How much larger would the GOP turnout have been had Trump campaigned heavily in each of those big Democrat states? In other words, we have no idea what the election result would be if campaigns suddenly became only a national popular vote race.

Conclusion
The American political system seems chaotic and arcane to many outsiders. The sheer bewildering array of differing electoral laws alone is mind boggling. The vast sums of money spent beggar belief. The bruising aggression of the candidates’ rhetoric and the vicious negative media advertising is far beyond what occurs in other first world democracies. The constitutionally mandated division of power often leads to gridlocked government and the deep politicisation of the bureaucracy is foreign to our Westminster system sensibilities. The feisty and ideologically combative war waged by opposing left and right media is not seen in any other nation except for the robust press in the UK. The filtering layer of the Electoral College was designed as part of a suite of constitutional bulwarks to enshrine the power of the states over the Federal Government and the independence of the states is as woven into the political and cultural DNA of America as any other of their institutions such as the 4^th of July, baseball and Thanksgiving! Changing it would require a revolution the likes of which has not been seen since the Emancipation Proclamation and the 14^th Amendment to end slavery in the 1860’s. Frankly, very few people in America are exercised about the electoral system enough to see such a revolution notwithstanding the large popular vote lead Hillary Clinton has amassed.

The Herald reports on how the Economist has a predictive model that forecasts the results and margins of victory for all major international and most domestic matches.

So once upon a time South Africa was favourites to beat the All Blacks, but today no team is judged to have a greater than 20% chance.

The Herald reports:

General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who for years oversaw US war efforts in the Middle East and was yesterday touted by Donald Trump as a possible defence secretary, did not come by his nickname lightly.

Mattis, who is 66, commanded a marine battalion during the First Gulf War and a marine division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2010, the tough-talking native of Washington state was named to head the US Central Command. That gave him authority over troops in Iraq, where he helped develop a counterinsurgency approach before overseeing the US withdrawal, and Afghanistan, where he implemented a troop surge. It also gave him responsibility for an area including Syria, Yemen and Iran.

Previously, he led the US Joint Forces Command and a Nato command charged with preparing the alliance’s forces to meet future challenges.

he earned the nickname “Mad Dog” with his battle-hardened swagger and the sort of blunt language marines are famous for.

He has been quoted as saying: “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”

Some of his other quotes include:

• “You cannot allow any of your people to avoid the brutal facts. If they start living in a dream world, it’s going to be bad.”

• “If in order to kill the enemy you have to kill an innocent, don’t take the shot. Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.”

• “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you f— with me, I’ll kill you all.”

• “The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some a–holes in the world that just need to be shot. There are hunters and there are victims. By your discipline, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.”

• “We’ve backed off in good faith to try and give you a chance to straighten this problem out. But I am going to beg with you for a minute. I’m going to plead with you, do not cross us. Because if you do, the survivors will write about what we do here for 10,000 years.”

• “I don’t lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.”

• “A country that armed Stalin to defeat Hitler can certainly work alongside enemies of Al Qaeda to defeat Al Qaeda.”

• “Marines don’t know how to spell the word defeat.”

• “The most important 6 inches on the battlefield is between your ears.”

• “PowerPoint makes us stupid.”

• “Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.”

• “You are part of the world’s most feared and trusted force. Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.”

Also a good read is the letter he wrote to his troops in 2003.

A scholar of warfare, he is said to have a personal library of more than 7000 volumes. And as a lifelong bachelor, he has another nickname: the “Warrior Monk”.

Sounds like an exciting choice for Defence Secretary, if he gets it.

I blogged yesterday on Shaykh Dr Mohammad Anwar Sahib who has been preaching thet Jews are the enemies of Muslims and that no woman should step out of her house without the permission of her husband.

I was expecting FIANZ to remove the Shaykh from the senior positions he holds with them. Sadly it seems they not only won’t do that, but won’t even censure him.

Their release is here. It is notable for what it doesn’t say. They say FIANZ is against hate speech, they say hate speech is against Islam, they say they condemn all hate speech, they complain about the media, they talk about injustice in the Middle East, they talk about racism from far right groups, they say they respect the right of others to not be Muslim and they say they will continue to promote moderate Islam.

But what didn’t they say? They didn’t even mention Sahib by name. They didn’t say whether or not his comments are acceptable. They did not say whether such comments are compatible with his senior leadership positions.

This is bullshit spin from FIANZ. I’m quite appalled by their reaction, and I’ve in fact been one of their defenders. I’ve often said we’re very fortunate that in NZ the peak Islamic body has been so moderate and constructive. I have referred top the fact that the previous head was an accountant at the post office as opposed to the fiery clerics who head up similar bodies in Australia.

But their response here makes me think they have changed. And this is a very bad change. Their response is a total cop out.

Sahib himself has also responded and says his comments were taken out of context.  He seems to think that because he did not actively incite acts of violence against Jews, it is okay to refer ti them as the enemies of Muslims.

But bravo to one group who has condemned his comments. The Islamic Women’s Council have said:

The Administration Council of the Islamic Women’s Council would like to respond to the video containing clips of speeches posted online by Dr Mohammad Anwar Sahib.

Firstly, regarding the comments directed towards Jewish people, these are totally inappropriate and we unequivocally condemn any divisive comments of a similar nature. While we may disagree with aspects of Jewish theology, and may have political disagreements, we see the Jewish people as closely connected to us through the Abrahamic tradition. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) had good relationships with his Jewish neighbours & encouraged Muslims to do the same. We are permitted to eat their kosher food, and we offer them our respect. We regularly extend our hand in friendship to the Jewish community in New Zealand, and will continue to do so.

So unlike FIANZ they acknowledge the comments, say they are totally inappropriate and condemn them.

IWCNZ is particularly sensitive to the views represented by the comments towards women. The approach shown is a religious misinterpretation, in our opinion, and we are disappointed that certain religious leaders may encourage this damaging rhetoric.

So well done to IWCNZ for their response but a total fail to FIANZ for their response. Again I have been very supportive of FIANZ in the past, but they have totally misjudged this issue and it would be a shame for the peak Islamic body in NZ to end up as discredited as some of their overseas counterparts.

UPDATE: Pleased to report that FIANZ have now taken action. Stuff reports:

An Auckland Imam who was criticised for hate speech against Jews has been permanently stood down from the Federation of Islamic Associations of NZ.

Dr Mohammad Anwar Sahib was the Secretary for the Ulama Board, the Federation’s religious advisory board.

His employment was terminated on Wednesday morning, effective immediately. 

That is a good start.

The GTI measures the impact of terrorism on each country. The 10 most impacted are no surprise:

1. Iraq
2. Afghanistan
3. Nigeria
4. Pakistan
5. Syria
6. Yemen
7. Somalia
8. India
9. Egypt
10. Libya

I’ve been to India and Egypt. Almost been to Iraq and Afghanistan.

What of OECD countries. Which of them are most impacted:

• France 29th
• Israel 33rd
• UK 34th
• US 36th
• Germany 41st
• Sweden 46th
• Ireland 55th
• Australia 59th
• Canada 66th
• NZ 112th

Makes you feel good to be here.

There were over 30,000 deaths from terrorism last year.

In OECD countries only there were:

• 731 attacks, up 25%
• 21 out of 34 countries attacked
• 11 countries had fatalities

Stuff reports:

About 700 lives have been spared in emergency departments across the country thanks to a push to get patients admitted quickly, new research says.

In 2009, the Government introduced a national target to shorten the length of stay in ED in an effort to help reduce overcrowding, improve health outcomes for patients, and improve acute hospital services.

Auckland City Hospital emergency medicine director Dr Peter Jones, who co-led a $1.1 million investigation into the outcome of the mandatory six-hour national target, said it was associated with a “substantial” 50 per cent reduction in the number of emergency department deaths.

The target had also seen the average length of time patients were spending in ED reduce by over an hour. For those patients who required admission to hospital, the length of their ED stay had reduced by about three hours.

ED waiting times were a disgrace previously, and as this research shows people died because of them. Thanks to great leadership at the clinical level and up, 93% of ED patients are admitted, discharged or transferred within six hours.

Labour get obsessed with inputs such as whether the funding increases have been as much as some formula claims they should be. But National has focused the health sector on actual outcomes such as quicker ED times, faster cancer treatment times, more immunisations etc.

Radio NZ reports:

Families furious with Solid Energy’s decision to proceed with plans to permanently seal the Pike River Mine are looking at legal action.

Saturday was the sixth anniversary of the tragedy at the West Coast mine, in which 29 men died.

Solid Energy bought the mine assets four years ago. It began work today to permanently seal the mine, saying it had to meet its deadline, set by WorkSafe, to seal the mine by the end of the month.

I would have thought that the lesson of Pike River is that safety should be paramount.

In a strongly worded statement released earlier today, Solid Energy hit out at “inaccurate and misleading statements in the media”, saying they were feeding “false hope”.

“It is disingenuous and, frankly, deeply disappointing for commentators who lack the full information base on which this decision was made – and who bear no legal responsibility for the outcomes of the re-entry project – to once again raise hopes regarding re-entry,” the statement said.

The company said its decision was based on an exhaustive investigation into the feasibility of safe re-entry and was backed by the independent expertise of Emeritus Professor Jim Galvin – a professor of mining engineering at the University of New South Wales and an internationally recognised expert in underground coal mining risk management.

I understand why the families want to cling to hope that the mine can be entered, but hope is not a good enough basis to risk further lives.

The decision to seal the mine was announced in 2014, and nothing has changed since then.

But Solid Energy said there had been no material improvements in the conditions in the drift since the decision was made to seal the mine in November 2014.

“The reality is that for the entire time since Solid Energy took over Pike Rive Mine in 2012, the drift has been full of nearly pure methane. There is no report that shows that gas levels have reduced.

“There are no recent tests that show the seal is unnecessary. In fact, our continuous monitoring shows that methane remains at around 98 percent and is continually being released into the mine and the drift,” it said.

If the mine is 98% methane, it is basically a huge poisonous bomb.

The directors said, while they had deep sympathy for the families of the 29 men, responsibility for any re-entry rested with its directors and the risk of endangering more lives was not one they wanted to take.

“The fact remains that the legal responsibility for the safely of any re-entry remains with the directors of Solid Energy. Solid Energy did not own the mine at the time of the explosions.

“While we have deep sympathy for the position of the families, the directors’ decision is entirely motivated by our responsibility for the safety of the site and nay person entering the mine. The risk of endangering more lives is not a risk we believe should be taken.”

The loss of family members was terrible for Pike families. I sympathize with their loss. But sympathy is not a good enough reason to risk further life.

Ron Mark stated:

The government needs to instruct police to request non-locals malingering in Kaikoura to continue their travels before they start over-staying their welcome, says New Zealand Deputy Leader Ron Mark.

So NZ First is calling for the Police to evict foreigners from Kaikoura. They really have jumped the shark.

“During a visit by New Zealand First to Kaikoura this morning, we were advised there is some frustration with non-locals and non-emergency helpers who have decided to prolong their stay in the town and are accepting the tremendous generosity of locals.

“Some of these people have been spending their nights drinking and partying.

Oh my God. Young backpackers from overseas who survived a 7.8 earthquake have had some drinks. I’d be doing the same in their situation.

And NZ First think this somehow the Police should be involved.

It is interesting that Labour and Greens have generally been constructive over the response to the earthquake but NZ First has put out a series of ever shriller press releases which just make them look ridiculous.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister John Key has announced talks will begin on upgrading the free trade deal with China.

The announcement came after Trade Minister Todd McClay met Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng on the sidelines of the Apec summit in Peru.

Key said it had been eight years since the FTA with China came into force, and it had an enviable record. It showcased to the world the importance of trade liberalisation.

The first round of negotiation would start in the first half of 2017.

Since the FTA was signed, trade had quadrupled to reach $9.2 billion.

Labour’s greatest foreign policy achievement and one opposed by Greens and NZ First. And sadly today’s Labour Party would probably oppose it also.

Christopher Niesche writes in the Herald:

In the last quarter of a century while New Zealand has suffered three recessions, Australia has enjoyed an uninterrupted and unprecedented run of economic growth.

But in Australia, we have little to be smug about.

Our prosperity – some of it hard-earned and some of it accidental – is now holding us back.

In the past few years, New Zealand has been able to push through economic reforms that will place it in good stead for the future, things like reversing the budget deficit, raising the GST and freeing up the labour market.

Arguably there was an appetite among voters for reform in the wake of the 2008 recession, which demonstrated that changes were needed.

In Australia, meanwhile, we have our ever-expanding McMansions, with a big screen TV in every room and a jet ski in the garage. Why would we need economic reform?

The answer, of course, is that the accidental part of our prosperity – the mining boom – is well and truly past us and so too are the good times.

There are a range of reforms the government needs to act on – raising the GST; reining in government spending to fix the deficit; increasing the national rate of savings; and pursuing free trade. 

Business confidence in Australia remains subdued and migration to NZ remains strong despite predictions it had peaked.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key has joked that the TPP could be renamed the ‘Trump Pacific Partnership” to try to get the President-elect on board as he argued at Apec that the leaders should not give up on the deal.

Speaking in a panel discussion at the CEOs Summit at Apec in Lima, Key also revealed that New Zealand officials had done new modelling of the economic benefits to New Zealand if it went ahead without the US.

He said that showed it would deliver two thirds of the expected $2.7 billion annual benefit of the full TPP if the US dropped out but the remaining 11 countries implemented the current agreement.

That was because it would still deliver a trade agreement with four of the remaining TPP countries which New Zealand did not already have an agreement with –  Mexico, Japan, Canada, Peru.

Definitely worth it from our point of view. The issue may be that Japan and Canada won’t want to stay in without gaining better access to the US market.

The other possibility is see if you can get China to join TPP.

Shalom Kiwi blogs:

A shocking video has surfaced containing excerpts of a number of Auckland sermons and lectures given by Shaykh Dr Mohammad Anwar Sahib between April 2014 and November 2016 in which he repeatedly uses appalling anti-Semitic slanders and libels and denigrates women. In one sermon, he calmly calls Jews “the enemy of Muslims” and claims that:

• Jews are using everybody because their protocol is to rule the entire world”
• No woman can dare step out of her house without the permission of her husband” 
• Read history and you will understand that the Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring, infidels… the scum of the human race whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs… These are the Jews, an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption…”

You can see extracts of his speeches in this clip below:

This is shocking stuff. The Islamic community in New Zealand has generally been very moderate and well integrated. We have avoided most of the problems that Europe and Australia has. But there are real questions to be answered about how such hate speech was allowed to be preached in Auckland and by a senior cleric.

Susan Devoy has said:

The Human Rights Commission says an Auckland man’s speeches condemning Jewish people are appalling and have no place in New Zealand.

“We live in one of the most ethnically diverse nations on earth as well as one of the most peaceful: this is because we are a tolerant nation,” said Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Devoy.

“This kind of intolerance is not welcome here in any form: Prejudice against Jewish people has no place in New Zealand.” …

“We urge Kiwis to recognise that these are the views of a single person and are not held by every single Muslim New Zealander, however questions need to be answered,” said Dame Susan.

“We’ve been in touch with the leaders of the NZ Jewish Council as well as the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ), both of whom are deeply concerned about the speeches. We have asked for an urgent response from FIANZ.”

FIANZ does need to respond. This is not some lone radical but senior cleric who preaches in mosques to others.

Stuff reports:

Ethnic Communities Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga called Sahib’s speech “offensive and insulting” and said his comments “are way out of step with New Zealand’s egalitarian values”.

“I have spoken to FIANZ President Hazim Arafeh and he assures me Dr Sahib’s views do not represent the beliefs of that organisation or most Muslim New Zealanders,” he said.

Most, no. But why was he allowed to preach for so long and why did no one report his hate speech? In fact they proudly displayed it on You Tube.

“It disgusts me that anti-Semitic views are being recorded and posted online. It harms New Zealanders reputation as a tolerant and welcoming people. It also concerns me that New Zealanders could be influenced by this,” Lotu-Iiga said.

It would be good to have this condemned by all political parties.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key took on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg about the company’s tax reputation internationally – and Zuckerberg did not click “like”.

Key met Zuckerberg while at a summit of about 1500 CEOs as part of the Apec Summit.

“I was reasonably blunt. I said I thought that Facebook did have an issue in terms of the perception of its tax policy and I thought he needed to change that.”

Asked how Zuckerberg responded, Key said “I think he was a bit surprised.”

“But I don’t think I’m doing him any favours not telling him that because if you think about what’s happening with Facebook, everywhere you go when there’s a discussion about multinationals not paying their tax, people say ‘Facebook’.”

Key even linked it to the election of Donald Trump, telling Zuckerberg one of the things that drove Trump’s election was a feeling the world was not fair.

He said Facebook’s own users could revolt and turn on it if it was not addressed.

In my experience few companies will not arrange their affairs to minimise their tax.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister John Key has been given the green light to return to Waitangi in February with full speaking rights.

At a meeting at Waitangi on Saturday, the organising committee and Ngapuhi elders voted unanimously to invite Key back to Te Tii Marae with no conditions on what he can and can’t speak about.

Chair of the organising committee and NZ First MP, Pita Paraone, said even he was “surprised by the ease in which it went through”.

As it should be. I’m glad the PM refused to attend last year without speaking rights. It would have been a farce as the idea behind the day is to have conversations.