Stuff reports:

The phone book’s days may be numbered, with deliveries set to plummet as Kiwis embrace the digital age.

A new extension to White Pages’ “opt-in” service would likely see hundreds of thousands fewer phone books delivered around New Zealand.

Communications Minister Amy Adams announced the Government had agreed to extend the trial parent company Yellow had been conducting in Auckland for the past two years.

The scheme’s third year would see an estimated 23,000 phone books delivered to Auckland households that wanted them – a fraction of the 478,853 delivered in 2012. 

The opt-in service had been approved on an ongoing basis with Yellow given the flexibility to apply it nationally as appropriate, Adams said. 

S only around 1 in 20 actually want a phone book. That sounds about right. Sensible to extend nationwide.

The reduction in phone books delivered in Auckland would save 281 million pieces of paper. 

Excellent.

Stuff reports:

A furious faction on the Conservative Party board is moving to block Colin Craig’s return to the leadership after he ignored an ultimatum to inform them of sexual harassment allegations.

Craig resigned as leader at a press conference on Friday and said he would “facilitate a review” of the leadership.

It has now emerged he is at the centre of allegations of sexual harassment, manifested in love poems and texts reported on right-wing blog WhaleOil

No one can say Whale only targets politicians on the left!

Some board members are understood to be furious that Craig left room during his press conference for a possible return as leader. They are also angry Craig postponed a board meeting, where they expected his leadership to be put to the vote, after many of them flew to Auckland for it.

A board member, who did not want to be named, said the board was “outraged”.

“Colin arbitrarily postponed our board meeting, which he doesn’t have the right to do. [The press conference] is the first we heard of that.

The board members leaking to the media won’t be helping things. Voters hate disunity, and even if they force Colin Craig out, they will find the way it is being done will scare voters off.

The best coup is quick and quiet. Not done through the media.

It is difficult to see how Craig can continue as leader, if the sexual harassment allegations are correct.  They would not be fatal for all politicians, but for a party leader than campaigns on family values, they are more difficult.

The Herald reports:

Urban Auckland has won a court case challenging the lawfulness of the resource consents for two wharf extensions at Ports of Auckland.

Justice Geoffrey Venning has issued a decision today saying the consents issued on a non-notified business are set aside.

The judge said the decision to proceed without notification was flawed for two reasons.

He said the multiple consents should have been bundled “which would have required notification, as the most restrictive activity was a discretionary activity”.

Alternatively, the judge said, a “special circumstances” clause existed which required notification in this case.

“The Commissioners fell into error in determining that because the extension was a controlled activity and an expected development no special circumstances existed so that it was unnecessary to notify in any event,” Justice Venning said.

This means that the consent for any extensions has to go through a public notification process. I’m confident in predicting the chances of getting the consents are now very close to zero.

Stuff reports:

He’s the mayor of London – but he has a mouth like a sailor.

Boris Johnson told a cabbie who was heckling him to “f– off and die” in a late-night tirade caught on camera.

The mayor, wearing a distinctive yellow cycling helmet, stopped his bike to give as good as he got with the cabbie. 

“You’re one of them mate, that’s what you are, one of them,” the cabbie tells the mayor.

“Why don’t you f— off and die, why don’t you f— off and die – and not in that order,” the Johnson shoots back.

As the cabbie drives off he yells, “Yeah bollocks, I hope you die – screaming!”

Classic Boris. This is why people love him.

The row may have been sparked because the passing driver felt Johnson wasn’t doing enough to protect city’s famous black cab industry from competition from Uber, the Sun reported.

The job of politicians should be to promote competition, not to try and protect industries from it.

Stuff reports:

Liquidators are running multiple investigations into the financial management of Relationships Aotearoa, while the Government has voiced concerns the group inflated its client numbers.

But Social Development Minister Anne Tolley said she did not want to speculate over whether that was the reason the organisation was reluctant to hand over its files. 

She appeared before Parliament’s social services committee, along with ministry chiefs, on Wednesday to answer questions over the performance of her ministry and its contracts. 

“I’ve certainly got some worries about some of the discrepancies we’re seeing; in the numbers of clients and staff, with what was said publicly and what is actually coming through [from the liquidators].”

 Relationships Aotearoa had claimed it served about 30,000 clients in a full year, and had about 7000 on its books at any one time. In later reports, that figure was lowered to about 4000.

“It doesn’t look anything like that,” Tolley said.

It is understood liquidators believe the number to be closer to 700.

If this is confirmed, this will be very interesting. Labour were cheerleaders for RA, and saying that the Government should just give them more and more money.

The Herald reports:

A whopping $140,000 has been spent on a new display screen for the reception of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s central Wellington building.

The hefty price tag follows controversy over revelations this month that the ministry spent $70,000 of taxpayer money on a stone sign for the building entrance.

MBIE spent $140,747 on the display monitor – a cost Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce was “slacked off” about, Radio New Zealand reported.

Taxpayers would not be happy about the spend, he told the broadcaster.

“No, I don’t think they’ll be happy about this one, in the same way they weren’t happy about the sign, and, frankly, I’m not happy either, but I would like to verify the information before I make any further comment on it.”

Staggering – $140,000 for a large monitor. How can anyone think that was a good idea?

The Herald reports:

New Zealand’s strict rules on genetic modification are putting the country at a competitive disadvantage, the head of Treasury says.

In a speech at Fieldays in Hamilton last week, Treasury chief executive Gabriel Makhlouf said the current regulatory system denied New Zealanders the choice over whether they wanted new technologies – both genetically modified and non-genetically modified.

“Meanwhile, our international competitors do have this option,” he said.

Mr Makhlouf cited the example of high-yielding eucalyptus trees which have been approved for cultivation in Brazil. Using this variety, Brazilian growers could get a 15 per cent increase in wood for the same area, processors could get a 20 per cent reduction in the cost of wood production, and 12 per cent more carbon emissions were stored per hectare.

He said high-yielding wood was at the core of New Zealand’s pulp and paper industry.

“However our current regime for regulating new organisms is highly restrictive in practice, which means we do not have the flexibility to choose whether this is something we would want in New Zealand.

Mr Makhlouf said the regime also denied New Zealanders the choice to adopt new plants and species that offered huge advantages, such as drought-resistant rye grass.

Good to see Treasury pushing this issue for debate. I believe the science is very clear that there are huge benefits from genetic modification and minimal risks. We should be embracing the technology more.

Stuff reports:

Conservative Party board members are reportedly planning to roll leader Colin Craig, with at least three asking Sensible Sentencing Trust (SST) chief executive Garth McVicar to take the job in the past week, it’s understood. 

It’s been speculated Craig will be walking into a coup when the board meets tomorrow, with members growing increasingly annoyed at the reputation Craig was imprinting on the party.

It is definitely on. I’ve had that confirmed from Conservative sources.

He also said he would not have done an interview in a sauna, similar to the one Craig recently appeared in on TV3’s Newsworthy. 

“I didn’t see that, [board members] sent me a link to see what was going on, but it’s not something I would do. I’ll just leave it at that.” 

I actually thought the sauna interview was a positive. It showed Craig could take the mickey, and it makes it hard for opponents of the Conservatives to portray him as homophobic when he is showering with David Farrier after a sauna 🙂

So it would be a pity if some light hearted television is the reason for this. I think issues around Rachel McGregor’s resignation are a factor.

Waikato businessman Laurence Day said he would continue to donate to the party as long as it stood for binding referendums.

“I don’t really know what’s going down at the board meeting. I’m still a great believer in the cause of the party, which is binding referendums.

“As far as I’m concerned the party is bigger than any person.” 

“I’d still support the party, because I support the cause.” He said he would “consider his options” over whether he would try to make up for some of the funding the party would lose if Craig left.

Day gave $1.35 million to them last year. In the past it was unthinkable they could have a leader other than Craig, as he funded them entirely. But now they have other funding sources.

Stuff reports:

A 21-year-old white man suspected of killing nine people at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina was arrested on Thursday after an attack that the United States is investigating as a hate crime. …

Roof sat with churchgoers inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for about an hour on Wednesday before opening fire, Mullen said. The victims, six females and three males, included Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was the church’s pastor and a Democratic member of the state Senate.

“He just said, ‘I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country,” Johnson said.

What a terrible crime and slaughter of innocents. Whether the killer is mad or bad (or both) will be determined in due course.

Any attack on innocents is terrible, but there is something particularly chilling about it happening in a church.

The Herald Sun reports:

More than 170,000 of Australia’s poorest pensioners will have their pension increased by $30 a fortnight in the wake of the decision.

So Labor was against giving poor pensioners more and rich pensioners less!

The government will cut the eligibility threshold for the part pension from $1.15 million in assets, on top of the family home, to $823,000.

More than 90,000 part pensioners, with assets more than $823,000 on top of the family home, would lose the part pension while 236,000 would have it reduced.

The pension rises have been achieved by the current taper rate of $1.50 per $1000 reverting back to $3, which had been in force for 15 years until the Howard government changed it in 2007.

Labor wanted to keep millionaire retirees on the part pension rather than direct savings to the poor.

The party of the working class!

Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday said Labor had gone from being the “workers party” to the “welfare party”.

What a great line.

The Herald reports:

A judge would require “a very good reason” to allow a Christchurch woman to exhume the body of her partner who died four years ago so that she can have him cremated, a legal expert said today.

The family of a Christchurch father-of-three Jamie Robert Pooley, 27, who died on May 14, 2011, is fighting a legal battle to block his partner, Cheyenne Biddle from disturbing his grave.

The former under-18 New Zealand rugby league player and Aranui High School student was buried at Memorial Park Cemetery in Christchurch.

Friends and family, including his three sons, often visit his gravesite to pay their respects.

But now Ms Biddle wants to exhume his body for cremation.

This is weird. In the absence of directions in a will, the partner should decide between burial and cremation. But you decide that at the time. Changing your mind four years later is not a good thing.

The Herald reports:

The New Zealand Navy seized about $235 million of high-grade heroin – then let the smugglers free and hosed the drugs into the ocean.

Hey if we sold it back to the smugglers, then that would almost get us from deficit to surplus. We could call it the Australia solution!

Not wanting to hold on to almost 260kg of heroin, sailors kept small quantities for testing and dumped the rest into the ocean, using a fire hose that ran through a modified green wheelie bin.

A journalist was complaining not even the Greens were complaining about the impact this could have on the fish. I suggested the Greens would be in favour of fish able to get high on drugs 🙂

The Herald reports:

With less than a fortnight to go before federal Parliament’s long winter break, Bill Shorten has two problems: his apparent inability to win over voters and an impending appearance before a royal commission into trade union corruption.

The Opposition Leader, whose approval rating has dived to an all-time low, according to an opinion poll yesterday, insists he has nothing to fear from the Coalition-ordered inquiry. On the contrary, he said, after being called to give evidence, he welcomed “the opportunity to talk about my 21-year record of standing up for workers”.

The Government is gleeful about the prospect of Shorten becoming entangled in murky revelations including that the powerful Australian Workers Union (AWU) negotiated a deal that deprived low-paid cleaners of A$2 million ($2.2 million) a year in weekend and holiday pay. Shorten, who is expected to testify in August or September, headed the AWU’s Victorian branch from 1998 to 2006, and was national secretary from 2001 to 2007.

The Labor leader has denounced the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption as an “abuse of taxpayers’ money to serve a political agenda”. However, like Julia Gillard, a former industrial lawyer who has faced repeated attempts to draw her into a scandal involving an AWU slush fund, Shorten may find it difficult to shake off his past.

The Royal Commission is the smartest thing the Coalition has done. The level of union corruption in Australia is huge, and they quite literally control large sections of the Labor Party.

Apologies for the lateness….Kokila

The Herald reports:

Meanwhile, King Tuheitia’s office has refused to answer questions about the $110,000 he was paid in directors fees.

A person at the Kingitanga office told the Herald: “No one is going to talk to you sweetheart. There is no comment.”

Te Kohanga Reo Trust Board spokesman Derek Fox said the fee was legitimate, but had been written up wrong – it should have been labelled an honorarium.

King Tuheitia was the patron of the trust and because of that the trust wanted to pay him an honorarium – he hadn’t asked for it.

I’ve never before heard of a patron getting paid $110,000.

if they have so much money to spare, wouldn’t it be better to spend it on say Kohanga?

The Herald reports:

Greece was on the brink of economic meltdown as Germany looked poised to push the country out of the eurozone.

With Greece about to default on a 1.5 billion ($2.4 billion) debt repayment, senior German politicians warned “enough is enough”. The Greek debt negotiations collapsed after just 45 minutes, amid fears Athens is now heading towards financial catastrophe.

Despite condemnation from European leaders following the breakup of the talks, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, said: “We will patiently wait until creditors turn to realism.” He claimed the talks collapsed because European creditors wanted to slash Greek pensions and workers’ wages.

Greece can set their pensions and wages at whatever level they want. But they need to pay for them out of their own revenue, not out of money borrowed from others. It’s that simple.

Stuff reports:

An almost 10 per cent rates hike and $550,000 of funding for the Capital Connection commuter train has been written into Greater Wellington Regional Council’s long-term budget.

Councillors voted on Tuesday to approve the final wording of its 2015-25 long-term plan, which includes an annual rates increase of 9.8 per cent – or about $38 for the average home – for the 2015-16 financial year.

Upper Hutt representative Paul Swain was the only councillor who voted against the final wording of the budget, because he felt the rates increase was too much.

It is too much. Inflation is 0.1%. Rates should be increased by no more than say 2%. A 10% rates rise is just a Council with no fiscal discipline.

Fraudster Rachel Dolezal has claimed she is not a fraud, but she is transracial – a black woman born into a white body, just as a transgender person is someone born in the body of the wrong gender.

Syretta McFadden in the Guardian is not impressed:

After days of speculation, Rachel Dolezal appeared on the Today show and declared herself transracial – and blamed other people’s misunderstanding of the term on why she came to be identified as black. “I was actually identified when I was doing human rights work in north Idaho as first transracial”, she said – in a construction that conveniently negated her agency in that decision – and explained that she never corrected subsequent media reports that she was biracial or black.

“I identify as black”, she said during the interview, though she admits to having identified as white at other points – including when she sued Howard University for racial discrimination because she was white. (She lost.)

But transracial does not mean what some white Americans like Dolezal apparently wish it to mean. The term originates from adoptive and academic circles to describe the very lived experience of children raised in homes that are phenotypically and culturally different from their birth – people like my colleague Rebecca Carroll, who is black. She was raised in a white household and her white birth mother attempted to define her as “culturally white, and cosmetically black”.

The fact Dolezal once sued Harvard for discriminating against her as a white woman, speaks volumes about how genuine she is.

Dolezal’s messy theft and fiction of a black American identity uses the currency of a subculture of privilege that is rooted in white supremacy too. If anything, to believe that one can transfer one’s identity in this way is a privilege – maybe even the highest manifestation of white privilege. The ability to accept marginalization, to take on the identity of blackness without living the burdens of it and always knowing you could, on a whim, escape it, is not a transition to blackness; to use it to further your career or social aspirations is not to become black.

It is interesting to think about what it would mean if people could legally change their race, just as they can legally change their gender (which I support). Could you join an Iwi? Could you enrol on the Maori roll? Could you use a preferential entry scheme for university? Dolezal may set off a revolution!

A good report by the Productivity Commission on freeing up land for housing.

It’s 331 pages long, so here’s a summary of some of the recommendations:

• Large land price differentials between different types of zones, such as those observed in Auckland, should be a trigger for local authorities to review the adequacy of their land supplies and zoning decisions.
• High-growth local authorities should express their land supply targets in terms of zoned and serviced land and report publicly on their performance.
• The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, in conjunction with relevant local authorities, should inventory public land holdings in all high-growth cities to identify sites that could be used for housing.
• The Government should introduce amendments to the RMA to clarify the role and importance of housing and urban environments.
• In reviewing their District Plans, local authorities should move more residential land-use activities into “permitted” or “restricted discretionary” status.
• Councils should identify areas where there is existing infrastructure capacity and ensure that planning rules do not prevent intensification from occurring in these areas.
• Councils should pursue opportunities to make more efficient use of existing infrastructure assets including through greater use of user charges where this can reduce demands on infrastructure.
• Government should adopt the Local Government Infrastructure Advisory Group’s recommendation to amend the Land Transport Management Act to allow pricing on existing roads where there is a business case that enables effective network optimisation.
• The Treasury, in consultation with the Department of Internal Affairs, should investigate removing the rating exemption on land owned by the core Crown, including on land used for health and education purposes.
• There is a place for a UDA to lead and coordinate residential development at scale in both greenfield and brownfield settings, working in partnership with private sector developers. Legislation would be required to establish and give powers (such as compulsory acquisition) to one or more UDCs in New Zealand.

The Productivity Commission are neutral experts whose task is to come up with solutions to issues that reduce our productivity. I hope the Government takes up most of their recommendations. The compulsory acquisition power for UDCs I don’t support, but the other stuff I do

UPDATE: Labour is supportive, which is good:

The Government should adopt the Productivity Commission’s recommendation to create an urban development authority to drive large-scale renewal projects in our biggest cities, Labour’s Housing spokesperson Phil Twyford says.

Stats NZ reports:

The number of abortions performed in New Zealand decreased in 2014, Statistics New Zealand said today. A total of 13,137 induced abortions were performed, which was 936 fewer than in 2013.

The general abortion rate (abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years) decreased from 15.6 per 1,000 women in 2013 to 14.4 in 2014. This rate is the lowest it has been in over 20 years (in 1993 it was 14.3 per 1,000). The lower abortion rate indicates that the decrease in the number of abortions was due to fewer women having abortions, rather than to changes in the size or age structure of the population.  

I’ve graphed the data below:

As you can see the number and rate grew steadily until 2003. It was then fairly constant until 2007, and has been steadily dropping since.

This is a good thing.

It would be interesting to know what changed so that the number of abortions started to drop from 2007. Better education?  Better contraception? Less unprotected sex? Fewer women choosing an abortion? A combination of the above?

The Herald reports:

Police officers are being told not to ticket unlicensed Maori drivers caught behind the wheel.

The Counties Manukau Police guidelines are detailed in a policy, leaked to TVNZ last night.

It states police should refer Maori drivers for training if they are pulled over without a licence or in breach of their conditions instead of fines.

Superintendent John Tims told NewstalkZB this morning the document should have been worded better.

Everyone was entitled to the compliance, not just Maori drivers, he said.

“[The document] is probably not worded as well as it can be.

“There’s two parts to this: the compliance is for everyone, including Maori, and it is about making sure there’s less deaths on the road, less crashes,” Mr Tims said.

Maori drivers were “considered” when they were pulled over by police, he said, but were included in the policy simply as part of the Turning the Tide national policy.

PassRite Driving Academy founder Fred Bardon said it was a great way of getting people licensed to drive – but only if it applied it all drivers.

Maori should not be the only targeted group “…because there are other offenders that are doing the same thing and we need to be across the board so that everybody gets the same opportunity”, he told NewstalkZB.

A policy of referral for training rather than prosecution is fine, so long as it applies to all.

The Police say the document was simply not worded well.

It would be interesting to seek stats, if they exist, on how many drivers of each ethnicity have been referred for training for unlicensed driving, rather than prosecuted.

UPDATE: A reader sends in this satire:

HOT OFF THE PRESS FROM POLICE HQ

Counties-Manukau Police have today announced an extension to their successful policy of not enforcing the law for ethnicities that are over-represented in crime statistics.

“Our exclusion from enforcing the drivers license law with respect to Maori has been a roaring success.  We now don’t ticket any Maori, or person claiming to be Maori.  This has made a massive positive impact on our recorded statistics.

“The fact that prevalence of Maori driving without a license has skyrocketed as a result of this policy, should not be seen as a negative outcome.  This is about “Turning the tide”.

“We have decided to extend the policy to the crime of aggravated robbery, an offence for which Maori are even more over-represented than drivers’ license offences.

“Now, when we receive a report or complaint of an aggravated robbery, we will ask the caller or complainant “Does one or more offenders appear to be Maori?”  If the answer is yes, we will not attend the incident or follow up the complaint, unless the Maori offender/s do not return the money they have stolen within two months.

“We expect this new policy to be an incredible success, with the number of arrests of Maori on suspicion of committing aggravated robbery expected to plummet.

“While we expect aggravated robberies by Maori and others pretending to be Maori, to skyrocket, we ask the public to consider the benefits of “Turning the Tide”.”

ENDS

Please direct any media enquiries to our policy advisor, Hone Harawira.

Jonathan Coleman has announced:

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman has today written to Southern DHB dismissing all members of the Board and replacing it with a Commissioner.

“The financial problems at Southern DHB are longstanding. I do not have confidence that the current governance arrangements are suitable for delivering on the changes required in Southern DHB,” says Dr Coleman.

This is no surprise.

“Southern is forecasting a final deficit of $27 million for the current financial year. That figure has effectively doubled in the last six months.

“The DHB has also forecast that its deficit position will further increase in 2015/16 to between $30 million and $42 million – this accounts for over half the combined deficit of all 20 DHBs. This situation of fluctuating forecasts and progressively worsening deficits cannot continue.

The other 19 DHBs are largely managing to provide their services within the population funding they get. Southern DHB has just been having expenditure blowouts, and you can’t claim it is due to a radically different population profile.

“All DHBs are funded according to the same population-based funding formula. This formula includes adjustments to recognise rural populations, age and other demographic issues.

“In a tight fiscal environment, all DHBs need to use available funding effectively. No other DHB has failed to control its finances in the way that Southern has.”

Kathy Grant has been appointed Commissioner and takes up the role on 18 June 2015. After discussions with Mrs Grant, she has indicated that she intends to appoint Graham Crombie and Richard Thomson as deputies. A third deputy with a strong clinical background will be appointed by the end of the month.

I actually think all DHBs should be appointed by the Government. The Government decides the funding and should be held responsible for how a DHB performs. Having part-elected boards allows the DHBs to be the fall guys. When the board is appointed solely by the Minister, then the buck can only stop with the Minister.

Hopefully the new Commissioner and her deputies can turn things around.