Stuff reports:

Incoming British Prime Minister Theresa May says she’s “honoured and humbled” to lead the Conservative Party and the country, after her leadership rival Andrea Leadsom abruptly dropped out of the race overnight.

Prime Minister David Cameron announced he’ll resign on Wednesday, with May to take the reins immediately.

Leadsom’s departure from the leadership contest meant May was immediately elected Conservative Party leader on Monday (local time).

That’s some welcome stability. Means they don’t spend another two months in limbo.

Leadsom, 53, never served in cabinet and was barely known to the British public until she emerged as a prominent voice in the successful Leave campaign.

She had been strongly criticised over a newspaper interview in which she appeared to suggest that being a mother meant she had more of a stake in the country’s future than May, who has no children. Some Conservatives said they were disgusted by the remarks, for which Leadsom later apologised, while others said they showed naivety and a lack of judgment.

Her comments backfired massively. One mistake in an interview and it can all be over.

It will be interesting to see if May does a Cabinet reshuffle once she is PM.

“Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.”

– Albert Einstein

The quote of the week is brought to you by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. To support the Union’s campaign for lower taxes and less government waste, click here.

Stuff reports:

The Greater Wellington Regional Council is working towards one card for all bus travel across the region.

The council is working with Snapper Services to create an integrated ticketing system for the region, which is expected to be rolled out early in 2018.

At present, the Snapper card system is used only by NZ Bus, which runs Go Wellington, the Valley Flyer and Airport Flyer buses.

About time. Very frustrating that Snapper can only be used on some routes.

This is Part 2 of my family tree, covering the Milnes, my mother’s mother’s father’s family.

My great-great-great-grandfather was Alexander Milne, born in 1782 in Cairnie, Aberdeenshire in Scotland. He married Isabel Craigan and they had four children – William, Jane, Alexander and James.

Alexander was a farmer and had a 26 acre farm.

William Scott Milne, my great-great grandfather was born in 1824 and was one of the early settlers to NZ. He sailed on the Lady Nugent departing 22 October 1840 and arrived 21 October 1841 in Wellington. He settled in Taita and married in 1847 a Grace Yule who arrived also in 1841 on the Bengal Merchant.  They had eight children, the youngest being John Scott Milne, my great grand-father. All eight children and 39 grandchildren attended their 60th wedding anniversary in 1908.

William took up a crown grant for land in 1865 and farmed in partnership with Alexander Yule in the Hutt. He took an active part in local affairs, was a member of the Wellington Provincial Council and chairman of the Epuni Licensing Committee. He helped establish Knox Presbyterian Church. He did military service and received the NZ War Medal.

William died in 1913 aged 88. He was a farmer and a carpenter.

My great-grandfather John Scott Milne was born in 1870 in Lower Hutt. In 1893 he married Hannah Auton and they had seven children, the youngest being my grandmother Kathleen Milne. Like his father, he was a farmer in Taita.

He lived until the age of 98 dying in Paraparaumu Beach in 1969. He is the only great-grandparent who was alive when I was born – but I don’t recall him as he died when I was two.

News.com.au has some of the best parliamentary sledges from Australia. My favourites include:

PAUL KEATING

• Asked by opposition leader John Hewson why he wouldn’t call an early election: “Mate, because I want to do you slowly. And in the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go.”

• On John Hewson: “He’s like a shiver waiting for a spine to run up.”

• Also on Hewson: “Debating with him is like being flogged by a warm lettuce.”

• Also on Peacock: “A painted, perfumed gigolo.”

JOE HOCKEY

• To two journalists attempting to ‘doorstop’ him: “God you guys, look how young you are, are you eighteen? Get a look at his face, look at this, look at this. I was about to ask [for] your ID. What’s going on? What’s going on? I don’t know what you guys are up to. Maybe I’m getting old … I mean I’m taking you seriously.”

JEFF KENNETT

• In a phone conversation with federal shadow minister Andrew Peacock, recounting a conversation with John Howard: “I said, ‘I couldn’t give a f***. I have no sympathies any more. You’re all a pack of s**** and tomorrow I’m going berserk.’ Well he went off his brain and in the end I said to him, I said, ‘Howard. You’re a c***. You haven’t got my support, you never will have and I’m not going to rubbish you or the party tomorrow but I feel a lot better having told you you’re a c***.”

BELINDA NEAL

• The former Labor MP to pregnant Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella: “Your child will turn into a demon, you have such evil thoughts.”

MALCOLM TURNBULL

• In an email reply to an angry constituent: “Gosh, Pam, you are in a bad mood this morning. Now, you are correct that the budget did not target childless, 58-year-old lesbian poets and science teachers; but you are better off nonetheless.”

Stuff reports:

What better way to restore myself to peak physical condition than to hit the gym hard while devouring an entire pizza every day? With a whopping 1600 calories and a decent chunk of protein, the Domino’s $5 range represented absurdly good value for money.

To top it all off, I could bug people out by getting jacked while gorging myself on the most sinful food imaginable. I took a blood test and some other baseline measurements, and thumbed open the Domino’s app.

So how did it go?

Around 200 days later:

It took two weeks to muster up the courage to check my bloodwork. Praise the pizza gods! My cholesterol was not only in the healthy range, but had actually fallen. So had my triglycerides and LDL (bad cholesterol) levels. HDL, the good cholesterol, had slipped slightly. I’d hoped things would stay about the same, but three out of four measures had miraculously improved.

How did this happen:

Context is everything. The calories in a large pizza would cover about 80 per cent of the average person’s energy needs. For me, due to my exercise regime, it was more like 40 per cent. The bulk of my calories came not from pizza, but from green protein smoothies, chicken, rice and vegetables, bananas, and oatmeal. I dragged myself to the gym four times a week, and did some sort of cardio most days.

The lesson here is there is no such thing as food which is inherently unhealthy. If you also exercise a lot, and eat other foods, you can get eat a pizza a day.

When public health activists insists certain foods must be banned, taxed, stopped from advertising, they think the food is the problem, rather than the choices the person makes.

A pie a day is a bad idea. A pie on a cold winter’s day at school is a great idea.

The monthly polling newsletter is out. The summary is:

Curia’s Polling Newsletter – Issue 98, June 2016

There were two political voting polls in June 2016 – a Roy Morgan and a One News Colmar Brunton.

The average of the public polls has National 17% ahead of Labour in June, up 1% from May. The current seat projection is centre-right 58 seats, centre-left 51 which would see NZ First hold the balance of power.

We show the current New Zealand poll averages for party vote, country direction and preferred PM compared to three months ago, a year ago, three years ago and nine years ago. This allows easy comparisons between terms and Governments.

In the United States the real winner from the election campaign is Barack Obama. His favourability and approval ratings have been rising all year as Americans seem to think he isn’t as bad as the two people vying to succeed him.

 Clinton’s chances of winning have risen from 69% to 76% in the prediction markets as she has an average 6% lead in the polls. The electoral college projection remains constant with Clinton ahead by 126 electors.

In June in the UK they voted to leave the EU. Scotland may leave the UK. David Cameron is going, Nigel Farage has gone and Jeremy Corbyn is trying not to leave. A turbulent month in the UK where once again the polls were mainly wrong.

In Australia the polls were very accurate in the election in terms of the two party preferred vote. Almost all showed a very narrow margin to the Coalition.

In Canada Justin Trudeau’s popularity continues to rise.

We also carry details of polls on housing plus the normal business and consumer confidence polls.

This newsletter is normally only available by e-mail.  If you would like to receive future issues, please go to http://curia.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e9168e04adbaaaf75e062779e&id=8507431512 to subscribe yourself.

Correspondence and feedback is also welcome to the same address.

Lucky Culture blogs:

IN the Labor-held electorate of Sydney there are seven journalists to every plumber. In the Liberal-held seat of McMillan in Victoria there are 17 plumbers to every journalist, which is why the good people of Paddington will probably have to wait until Thursday week to get a tap fixed, but the denizens of Pakenham may not.

About 10 per cent of Australia’s 20,000 journalists live in central Sydney or its eastern and inner-western suburbs in the seats represented by Labor’s Tanya Plibersek and the Liberals’ Malcolm Turnbull. One in five journalists lives in just five seats: Sydney, Wentworth, Melbourne Ports, Melbourne and Grayndler. Three are held by Labor, one by the Coalition and one by the Greens. The divide, however, is not political but cultural.

Very interesting. It shows how journalists in Australia are not spread through the country but are mainly in a few wealthy urban areas in Sydney and Melbourne.

Richard Thomson of Air NZ writes at Stuff:

Air New Zealand celebrated a milestone last week when we landed a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner at Wellington Airport.

Having the Dreamliner on the tarmac at Wellington prompted enquiries about whether we were trying to make a subtle point about the proposed Wellington Airport runway extension.

Our position on the runway extension isn’t that subtle, it is very clear. The problem with flying long haul from Wellington isn’t the length of the runway.

The problem is the size of the local travel market, there are simply not enough travellers from the Wellington region or even the lower North Island to sustain regular direct services to any of our long haul destinations; certainly not enough to justify the tremendous investment in infrastructure and the millions of dollars of on-going cost required to support them.

That is why – regardless of the length of the runway – we won’t operate long haul services out of Wellington. The numbers just don’t stack up relative to the costs involved in addressing the perceived problem.

Wellington has better air links to the world than it has ever had. It is close to two large, competitive aviation hubs and from September will have a new way to Singapore through Canberra on our alliance partner Singapore Airlines.

Air New Zealand is committed to supporting that service, but there is a good reason it’s travelling via Canberra – Singapore Airlines knows the passenger flows out of Wellington can’t sustain a direct service.

A longer runway may bring new airlines to Wellington such as South China. It is possible they will do direct flights to Asia from Wellington. But the evidence suggests it is less than likely. Christchurch has around the same population, and a very long runway, and very few direct flights overseas beyond Australia.  They do get flights to Singapore and Guangzhou but not North America.

Despite the reticence expressed by ourselves and all other airlines, Wellington Airport is pushing ahead with its runway extension project.

The reason for this is simple. Even if no new services are attracted, and even if it is paid for from the public purse, the airport will be able to recover the cost of the runway extension through landing fees from existing users and airlines.

The airport will make money under any circumstance, while existing airlines and travellers will be forced to pay.

It’s not for us to tell Wellingtonians how their rates should be spent. But, it is important to understand these dynamics to properly understand why the airport company is so keen, and airlines are so cautious, on the runway extension.

I’m in favour of the runway extension, but believe it should be funded by the airport company primarily – not by ratepayers and taxpayers.

The election is sort of over. Bill Shorten has conceded. The Coalition has 74 seats and projected to get two of the last five. Maybe more than two.

The Senate won’t be known for a few weeks, but is going to be ugly.

This will be a testing time for Malcolm Turnbull. He he was majority Government in his own right. However he has significant discontent on his right and a revitalised Labor which can scent victory in three years.

If he can produce a policy programme that gains widespread support, he may survive. But policies that are agreeable to the Liberal caucus and to the Senate will be hard to find.

Stuff reports:

Little said KiwiBuild would be paid for with a $2 billion “capital injection”, which would be paid back at the end of the programme as houses were sold.

Little said the Government was out of touch, particularly when it came to housing, and was alone in refusing to believe there was a housing crisis.

“They might have given up, but I won’t. Not now, not ever,” he said.

Associate Finance Minister Steven Joyce described Labour’s policies as “underwhelming”, with many of them echoing work the Government was already doing.

“They have talked a very big game politically about this, that it was going to be a massive change, when in actual fact it’s not – it’s more or less an endorsement of what the Government’s already doing with a few tweaks.”

Joyce said the Government was already backing the urban development approach through projects like the Hobsonville Land Company, while the $2b of funding for the KiwiBuild programme would need to be recycled 25 times in 10 years if it was to build 100,000 houses.

If you reckon you can buy the land, build and sell 100,000 homes for $2 billion in just a decade you have magical powers – probably like the Wizard of Oz.

The Dom Post reports:

Prime Minister John Key visited Wainuiomata  recently to open an office for  National List  MP  Chris Bishop. 

The Hutt South electorate has never been held by National, nor were the electorates of Pencarrow or Petone that preceded it before MMP.

But the seat could turn blue after the next election, Key told the crowd assembled for the opening.  

He  said Bishop was a “hugely talented” young MP who ran a strong campaign against incumbent MP Trevor Mallard at the last election.

“Chris is the face of the future,” Key said. 

Wainuiomata was famous for three things, Key said.  Its “sensational” rugby league team, its “really, really good” golf course, and for being where Tony Abbott’s in-laws came from.

He joked that Bishop could accidentally end up becoming Australia’s next Prime Minister if he took another trip across the Tasman with “the way things are going”.

Bishop said National hadn’t committed enough to Wainuiomata in the past but that was changing.

“This is a great part of the Hutt Valley and it has a big future. I personally feel we don’t do enough to sell the benefits of Wainuiomata.”

He acknowledged the need for a mall upgrade and a local retirement village were challenges the area was facing.

Lower Hutt mayor and Wainuiomata local Ray Wallace said it was the first time he had ever known National to have an office in his hometown.

Bishop had been great to work with as an MP.

“I’ve got to say before the election, a lot of us said ‘Chris Bishop, who is this guy?’ But two years in and my nickname for him is ‘the everywhere man’,”  Wallace said.

High praise from the local Mayor.

I am not sure I can recall a more active local MP than Chris Bishop. Every week his newsletter is full of the numerous activities he is doing around the electorate ranging from lobbying the Council on parking, to setting up youth awards, promoting businesses, supporting community groups etc.

Stuff reports:

Federated Farmers has said farmers should have the right to choose whether to use genetically modified organisms, but others says New Zealand is missing the opportunity to market the country’s products as GM-free.

At its recent annual conference, the Feds voted unanimously that the Environmental Protection Authority should manage and make all decisions relating to GMOs.

Yes, let a scientific body decide, not stupid Councillors who pander to lobby groups.

However, Hawke’s Bay farmer Simon Beamish said exporters should “grab the advantage” of being GM-free.

A group of growers and farmers, campaigning under the Pure Hawke’s Bay banner, have persuaded the Hastings District Council to ban GM crops and animals under its district plan for 10 years.

But Federated Farmers is appealing against the policy, as the case heads to the Environment Court later this year.

Auckland, Whangarei and Northland councils are considering following Hastings’ lead and becoming GM-free.

If an individual farmer wants to be GM free, that should be their decision. But these statists want to force their decision on all farmers in a district and remove choice from everyone.

A curious story in Stuff:

Thirty years ago if you got HIV it was a case of “you’re dead”, says Winston Peters.

If MPs had known in the 80s there would be such an advance in medicine for treating HIV Peters reckons they would never have voted against a bill to legalise gay sex.

On July 9,1986, the NZ First leader was one of 44 MPs who voted against the Homosexual Law Reform bill, which passed with 49 votes in favour and legalised consensual sex between men aged 16 and older.

Yep Winston voted for consensual sex between adults to remain a crime.

As for whether Peters would have voted differently if he knew then what he knows now – he says he doesn’t deal in hypotheticals.

Other MPs have said they regret how they voted.  John Banks voted for same sex marriage despite having campaigned against homosexual law reform. Peters has an inability to ever say he was wrong on something.

Looking back on that night Peters says “the mass majority who were against the change were facing the crisis of Aids, which at the time had no solution or answer to it and looked like a massive problem was coming and the change in law would facilitate that”.

The criminalisation of sodomy of course occurred long long before HIV was known about.

But Labour deputy leader Annette King who supported the bill, which came up one year after she first joined Parliament, says she never heard the medical argument.

“I’m not saying it wasn’t Winston’s reason as I can’t recall his comments at the time but I don’t believe that was what drove people to oppose it.”

She said the crux of the issue for MPs on the other side of it was “straight out opposition to homosexuality”.

Yep.

The Guardian reports:

Labour has been plunged into its “greatest crisis for generations” as a leadership bid was launched against Jeremy Corbyn and its biggest union donor waged war on the party’s deputy leader.

With the Labour party closer to splitting than at any point since the formation of the SDP in 1981, Eagle said she would explain her “vision for the country and the difference a strong Labour party can make” on Monday and would be touring TV studios on Sunday.

If Corbyn survives, Labour may well split as MPs form their own party. If he doesn’t survive, his activists may turn on Labour.

It is understood that Labour’s national executive committee will convene a special meeting on Tuesday to rule on whether Corbyn, who has very limited support in parliament, needs to have the support of 51 MPs to get on the ballot paper alongside Eagle and any other contenders. The Labour party has taken legal advice, which indicates that he will need to find the nominees, in line with the precedent set in 1988 when Neil Kinnock was challenged by Tony Benn.

Not sure he would get them. He only got enough last time as a sympathy gesture to have a token mad hard left winger. But if they do rule he needs them, it could well go to court.

David Seymour writes in the SST:

Much of the country is focused on child abuse, poverty, and putting kids’ needs first. The political left tell us the Government should just spend a few dollars more, as they have told us for decades.

Yet the current Government taxes and spends $80 billion every year.  This surpasses the wildest dreams of the welfare state’s architects.  When Michael Joseph Savage departed office, government spent, in today’s money, only about $2700 per person per year. Now it’s $17,000 per person (or $85,000 per family of five).

And most of it goes on welfare, subsidised education and subsidised healthcare.

Only 10 per cent of working-age people are on a benefit, yet 20 per cent of children are born into families receiving benefits.  In the six months to March 2015, 6000 babies were added to existing benefits.  That’s enough to raise the hackles of those paying tax while preparing to have their own family, but worse is the outcomes for the kids involved.

Benefits seem to make people have kids early, a key risk factor for maltreatment.  As of 2015, in the general population 22 per cent of births were to mothers 24 or younger, but 44 per cent of beneficiary caregivers (mostly mothers but sometimes fathers) with a child born that year were 24 or younger.

The ultimate result has been calamity for New Zealand kids.  University of Auckland researchers have found that, of under-fives who faced maltreatment, 83 per cent were on benefits before age two.

Out of fairness to the taxpayer and the children, we need a new deal.  It’s simply not good enough that the Government taxes some people, who are often waiting, saving, and sacrificing for parenthood, so that it can pay others to have kids earlier.  It’s absolutely unacceptable when we know this policy is enlarging child poverty and abuse.  We need to put children first.

If you’re 18 or younger, you can’t get an all-cash benefit from the Government.  Instead it pays rent, power, and basic necessities before giving the remaining entitlement in cash.  A compassionate government should attack child poverty by extending Income management to any parent who has additional children while on a benefit.

The message would be simple.  If you want to have children while receiving a benefit that’s fine, but the Government will give entitlements in a form that puts the needs of the children first.

That’s a good idea.

I think most people support a generous welfare state for people with children who have something unexpected happen – you lose a job, your partner dies or leaves you, they’re abusive etc. But if you are already on welfare, and choose to have more children, then that is unfair.

NBR reports:

As it celebrates its centenary, former Labour cabinet minister and ACT leader Richard Prebble believes the Labour Party is in such disarray that a National victory at the polls in 2017 is looking increasingly certain. …

First, there’s the fact “John Key is the best Labour prime minister the country has ever seen. We thought Helen Clark straddled the centre of the spectrum but he’s gone and taken it to a whole new level. Fundamentally he’s squeezed Labour out to the left and they don’t know how to respond.”

Then there’s Andrew Little, the product of allowing a “party membership that’s way to the left of Labour voters” to select the party’s leader, something he notes is also bedevilling Britain’s Labour Party.

Not only does Mr Prebble think Mr Little is a “very unattractive leader,” he also views his strategy of forming a “coalition, alliance, whatever you want to call it, with the Greens” is  “sheer lunacy.”

“He’s basically giving permission for people to vote Green, a strategy Helen Clark was adamantly opposed to and that Shorten in Australia is opposed to.”

It’s one, he says, that could result in the Greens could potentially usurp Labour as the primary progressive party in New Zealand.

The Greens do at least have a clear brand.

He believes the party is “looking out for talent, any sign of it, and they’re making sure they don’t select it.”

Instead, he says, “They’ve used the list system to basically provide jobs for second-rate trade union organisers.

To be fair their candidate selections for 2017 are looking better than in 2014.

Some very neat work by the Herald data team which has compared election results to the demographics of each meshblock and calculated which areas are most likely to vote for or not for a party.

This is based on the characteristics of a meshblock (often 200 or so houses) so is not the same as individual data, but is likely to be pretty accurate.

Here’s some interesting factors for each party:

Labour – more likely

• Pasifika
• No kids
• Maori
• No qualifications
• Smokers
• Doctorates

Labour – less likely

• Europeans
• Self-employed
• FT employed
• PT employed
• State house tenants (counter intuitive, but this is voting in areas with high numbers of tenants – not necessairly the tenants themselves)
• Couples
• Home owners
• FT students

National – more likely

• Europeans
• FT employed
• Asians
• Born in NZ
• State house tenants

National – less likely

• Pacifika
• Maori
• No kids
• Smokers
• No qualifications

Greens – more likely

• Self-employed
• No religion
• No kids
• Maori
• European
• Bachelors Degree
• Student Allowance

Greens – less likely

• Born in NZ
• FT employed
• Asian
• Over 65s
• Have children

NZ First – more likely

• Maori
• Europeans
• No qualifications
• Couples
• Smokers

NZ First – less likely

• Bachelors degree
• Self-employed
• Over 65s (again this is people in areas with lots of over 65s, not necessarily the over 65s)
• FT employed

The Herald reports:

Tamara Crowchief may have yelled “I hate white people” as she carried out a violent assault on a white person, but that doesn’t mean her attack was racially motivated, a Canadian judge has ruled.

The attack occurred outside a pub in Calgary, Canada, on Nov. 1, according to the Calgary Herald. Crowchief’s victim, identified as Lydia White, lost a tooth in the assault, the paper reported.

Prosecutor Karuna Ramakrishnan had tried to put Crowchief behind bars for 12 to 15 months by arguing that the indigenous woman’s “unprovoked” actions represented a hate crime, the paper reported. But Judge Harry Van Harten of the provincial court strongly disagreed.

“The offender said, ‘I hate white people’ and threw a punch,” Van Harten told those gathered in the court during his ruling. “There is no evidence either way about what the offender meant or whether .

. . she holds or promotes an ideology which would explain why this assault was aimed at this victim. I am not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that this offense was, even in part, motivated by racial bias.”

I don’t actually believe in having hate crimes as a separate criminal category. But if you do have them, they should apply equally.

If someone said “I hate black people” and punched a black person, you would conclude they were motivated by racial bias. If someone said “I hate homosexuals” and punched a gay man, you would conclude they were motiviated by dislike of homosexuality.

But some people seem to go out of their way to ignore someone’s plain spoken words.

The Orlando shooter told Police multiple times he was killing all these people due to his religious beliefs and support for Islamic State. However you then get people saying “Oh no, ignore what he said, it is because ….”

I believe in these situations, you apply Occam’s razor.

USA Today report:

In the latest move to deny citizenship to those who balk at Swiss culture, authorities rejected the naturalization application of two Muslim girls who refused to take school swimming lessons because boys were present.

The girls, ages 12 and 14, who live in the northern city of Basel, had applied for Swiss citizenship several months ago, but their request was denied, Swiss media reported Tuesday.

The girls, whose names were not disclosed, said their religion prevents them from participating in compulsory swimming lessons with males in the pool at the same time. Their naturalization application was rejected because the sisters did not comply with the school curriculum, Basel authorities said.

“Whoever doesn’t fulfill these conditions violates the law and therefore cannot be naturalized,” Stefan Wehrle, president of the naturalization committee, told TV station SRF on Tuesday.

The case shows how those who don’t follow Swiss rules and customs won’t become citizens, even if they have lived in the country for a long time, are fluent in one of the national languages — German, French or Italian — and are gainfully employed.

More countries should do this. If people are unwilling to integrate (not assimilate) then why have them? If you don’t want to have your country with gender segregation, then why let people in who do believe in gender segregation?

Another recent case sparked widespread outrage in Switzerland when two Muslim brothers refused to shake hands with their female teacher, also citing religious restrictions. Shaking hands with a teacher is a common practice in Swiss schools.

After that incident was widely publicized, authorities suspended the naturalization request from the boys’ father, an imam at the Basel mosque.

There are many many countries one can live in where there is gender segregation.  You think your beliefs means it is wrong to shake hands with a woman – fine – go live somewhere where that is the norm, rather than try and change another country’s culture.

In Switzerland, unlike in the United States and many other countries, integration into society is more important for naturalization than knowledge of national history or politics. Candidates for citizenship must prove that they are well assimilated in their communities and respect local customs and traditions.

What a good idea.

In Switzerland, local town or village councils make initial decisions on naturalization applications. If they decide a candidate is not an upstanding member of the community, the application will be denied and not forwarded to canton (state) and federal authorities for further processing.

That’s what happened in 2014 to Irving Dunn, an American who has lived in Switzerland for nearly 40 years. He was denied Swiss citizenship because he could not name any of his Swiss friends or neighboring villages, authorities said.

“The applicant’s answers have shown that his motive for naturalization is not about integration but about the personal advantages it offers,” the naturalization commission ruled.

I like the idea of delegating the decision to local communities.

Stuff reports:

Parliament has rejected a petition calling for it to be made compulsory that parents be informed if their teenager was to have an abortion. 

Parliament’s Justice and Electoral select committee has released its report into the petition of Hillary Kieft and six others, that it passes legislation to prevent under 16-year-olds having abortions without notifying the parents.

It disagreed with Kieft, but recommended rules and guidelines should be strengthened to ensure under-16s were given the best possible information around post-procedure care, and encouraged to tell their parents themselves. 

I think generally parents should know if their child has had an abortion, just as they would for any other medical procedure. However there are cases where it would be unsafe to tell the parents, so the challenge is how to deal with those situations. Do you legislate that parents must be informed, and require a kid to get a judge’s permission not to? Or is that too daunting?

In the vast majority of cases, parents should be told (and are I believe). It is hard for them to be parents if they can’t support their kid through what will be an emotionally turbulent decision (for many, not all).

Kieft’s daughter was 15 when she was taken for an abortion in Hawera in 2010 that was arranged by her school.

Afterwards, she was dropped home to her parents where they were told she had been to a counselling appointment.

A year later their daughter attempted suicide and it was only then that she confided she had been taken to a Family Planning clinic for an abortion and had not received any follow-up counselling or medical treatment.

The Taranaki mother appeared in front of the select committee in August last year, to speak to MPs about her petition. 

She told them that as a result of the abortion her daughter is now infertile, and took medication every day to deal with depression.

“She was denied the support of her family and we were robbed of the ability to properly support and help our child. We also lost a grandchild.”

But while the committee was sympathetic to Kieft’s situation, it found in some cases, a young person could be put at risk of harm if their parents were informed.

“The evidence presented by the relevant organisations overwhelmingly demonstrated that, although it is best practice for a young person to tell her parents that she is pregnant, this should not be mandatory.

“Young people should be encouraged and supported to tell their family, but in some situations this would put them at risk of harm, the Justice and Electoral Committee has ruled.”

So again it is who decides in each case if it is warranted. A judge or the young person concerned?