The Herald reports:

A submitter known only as “Amy” has schooled the Commerce Commission on a regulatory change that could, she says, cause her parents grief.

The commission said earlier this week that it is assessing whether to deregulate mobile termination access service (MTAS) rates – or the wholesale charges mobile phone companies charge for terminating calls or texts from other fixed or mobile networks (which may or may not be passed on to customers).

Shortly after 2degrees launched, it complained that Telecom and Vodafone had cheaper rates for calling people on their own networks, making it harder for the newcomer to attract customers.

The market watchdog waved its big stick, helping to create a more level playing field – and an environment where most of us are on plans with unlimited texts and local calls.

Every five years, the regulator reassesses whether it needs to stick its nose into MTAS. The rates aren’t directly regulated, but the option is in the commission’s toolbox.

I know a bit about this area as we did some research for 2 Degrees many many years ago on this.

Back then the free calling only to other mobile phones on the same network had a huge impact on purchase behaviour. Entire schools would basically be with either Telecom or Vodafone, so they could text their friends without limits.

But today is very different. Not only is the market diverse enough that it would be self-defeated for providers to attempt this today, but there are so many alternative ways to message – iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Signal etc etc.

It was very necessary regulation once upon a time, but the market has evolved so it is no longer needed.

President Trump has announced massive tariffs on most countries, including a 10% tariff on all NZ exports to the US.

The table he released claims that NZ imposes an average 20% tariff on US goods. This is just fantasy. The actual level of average tariffs is around 2%.

What the Trump Administration appears to have done is include any GST or VAT in a country as a tariff. This is of course moronic as a GST or VAT applies to all goods and services, not just imported ones. It doesn’t advantage local suppliers at all.

The reality is that Trump just loves tariffs. He sees them as a great way to raise money. It’s the biggest tax increase in US history.

Because he has imposed tariffs on so many countries, I suspect US prices will increase more than if he had done them on just a few countries. There will be less pressure for exporters to absorb more of the cost.

The direct cost on NZ exports looks to be around $900 million a year. However how much of that is paid for by NZ exporters and how much by US consumers remains to be seen.

The other impact likely to be seen by NZers is KiwiSaver account balances tumbling as global sharemarkets fall. We may also see weaker economic growth and a slight uptick in unemployment, plus more cuts in interest rates.

Edelman reports on their annual trust survey in institutions. The net trust for each institution (60+ is trust, under 50 is is distrust) is:

1. Business 54
2. NGOs 53
3. Government 45
4. Media 35

What is especially interesting to me is how these differ from the global average. The differences are:

1. NGOs – 5 lower in NZ
2. Govt – 7 lower in NZ
3. Business – 8 lower in NZ
4. Media – 17 lower in NZ

That media rating (35 vs 52 globally) should be a wakeup call about why media companies are failing. The solution isn’t taxing Internet companies to fund them. It is to restore trust.

Radio NZ reports:

The article, released on Friday and written by Otago University Professor Nick Wilson, researcher Dr John Horrocks and George Thomson, discusses the growing international concern around impaired leaders, especially in a world of heightened geopolitical instability.

Horrocks noted former United States president Joe Biden during his election campaign debate against opponent Donald Trump last year when Biden shocked viewers with poor skills and slurring words.

The article referred to previous research that concluded: “Who ends up in office plays a critical role in determining when and why countries go to war”.

It examined the four New Zealand cases and called for further research into other impaired former prime ministers, and a discussion around possible safeguarding against such situations including requiring independent medical assessments.

This is all rather silly, and misses a key point of difference between a US President and a NZ Prime Minister.

A US President is elected for a fixed term, and can’t be removed from office except via impeachment or the 25th Amendment – both almost impossible to do.

A NZ Prime Minister only retains office so long as they have the confidence of the House, or more pragmatically the confidence of their own caucus. If a PM is not up to the job, their caucus can remove them.

An other key differences is access. A US President can be shielded in a way a NZ PM can’t be. Every week they have to chair cabinet, chair caucus, attend two to three hours of question time in the House, do a press conference and several media standups.

The four case studies highlighted leaders with diminished capacity leading to reckless decision-making.

The four prime ministers were Sir Joseph Ward, who died at 74 just six weeks after leaving office in May 1930, Michael Joseph Savage, who died in office on 27 March 1940 at age 68, Norman Kirk who was 51 when he died in office in August 1974 and Sir Robert Muldoon, who was on various medications and whose drinking contributed to the demise of his leadership in 1984.

You can be dying, but that doesn’t mean you have diminished capacity for decision making. Let’s look at these in turn.

Ward definitely should not have continued on as PM. He had multiple heart attacks, refused to resign, and Forbes was the effective PM. But this was the 1930s, without the media and public scrutiny we have today.

Savage had cancer and died in office. However I haven’t seen any information to suggest we was unable to make decisions. In fact he engineered the expulsion of John A Lee just before he died. I don’t see the case for Savage being forced out earlier.

Kirk is a bit more nuanced. He was physically very unwell, but was he mentally unable to govern? Well he did have fairly significant paranoia about his colleagues trying to undermine him, or roll him – but I’m not sure this was related to his physical health. And he may have been right!

Muldoon shouldn’t even be in the list at all. He was definitely a heavy drinker, but he was clearly in command of his faculties and the government. He was renowned for attention to detail.

So the only clear case for early removal was Ward, and that was a century ago. There is no problem that needs solving.

Shayne Currie reports:

The founder of The Spinoff, Duncan Greive, says he has been put on notice of a potential defamation claim from news publisher Stuff after a stand-off – stemming from an exclusive report last December – escalated into a pointed email last weekend.

Greive revealed in December that Stuff had officially and legally split into two companies – Stuff Digital and Stuff Masthead Publishing – and analysed the potential outcomes and opportunities of what Stuff’s chief financial officer Dale Bridle himself described internally as a “conscious uncoupling”.

At the time, Stuff downplayed the significance of the move, and took issue with Greive’s analysis and reportage, claiming the article was wrong in places and wanting it removed from The Spinoff website until the so-called errors were fixed.

Basically Grieve said that this split may indicate that part of Stuff could be up for sale. Stuff said this was wrong.

As Media Insider revealed this week, Stuff is also understood to have been in talks with Trade Me about a full or part acquisition of Stuff Digital. It is unclear when those discussions started.

So Grieve was threatened with defamation – for being right!

Sky News reports:

The University of Sussex has been fined a record £585,000 by the higher education regulator for failing to uphold freedom of speech.

Hopefully that will change the incentives somewhat.

Prof Roseneil, the vice chancellor at the university, said the OfS findings mean “it makes it almost impossible for universities to have any policies that will control how people speak or relate to each other on campuses”.

What is hilarious, is she sees this as an awful thing.

And the only thing that universities will effectively be able to do is regulate unlawful speech.”

Oh no, only unlawful speech will be banned! What a disaster.

Stuff reports:

The finance minister has slammed Labour regulation spokesperson Duncan Webb for opposing the fast-tracking of consenting for a new supermarket in his Christchurch electorate.

Webb, who served as minister of commerce and consumer affairs from February to November 2023, posted videos to social media and hosted a drop in session at a local bar for constituents to come and share their concerns about the proposed supermarket.

Labour say they want more supermarket competition, and then their former commerce Minister fights against a new one in his electorate.

NewstalkZB reports:

Tauranga City Council has copped some backlash after accepting a five-year contract for coffee machines and coffee at a total cost of $470,000.

So easy to spend other people’s money!

Richard Harman at Politik has this summary of data from the ASA

So the advertising spend has increased a healthy 30% in five years. But the proportion spent on digital advertising has gone from 6% to 60%. With this change, radio has held up very well as an advertising medium, but TV, newspapers and magazines have plummeted.

The solution here is not a government law change. It is a shift in business models.

Auckland Council Commissioners turned down consent for an 11 storey building on K-road – a decision labelled by Chris Bishop as “insane”.

Hayden Donnell covers it well:

The Da Vincis of denial weren’t done. They said the new building would compromise the heritage of the local area. When confronted with the reality of the site currently being an empty lot whose immediate neighbours are a carpark and a Mobil station, the council’s urban design expert Chris Butler argued the “real world” context of the development extends down Karangahape Road and through the southern end of Ponsonby Road. Why only that far? Surely the real world setting of this building is all of New Zealand itself, which broke off from the supercontinent Pangaea, which in turn was formed out of the dust flung across the galaxy by the Big Bang, and if you think about it that way, nothing should ever be built anywhere ever. 

Great stuff, and further:

Faced with the prospect of people building apartments near a train station and other amenities in Sylvia Park, its planning team searched the recesses of their collective brains and came up to the ingenious conclusion that tall buildings would ruin motorway drivers’ spiritual connection to the vision of a small hill. Nice try developers, but it’ll take more than an overwhelming weight of evidence to force this team to consent to housing.

The RMA replacement needs to be very permissive, so even the most dedicated nae sayer has to say yes.

On Friday night in Takapuna, I had the opportunity to sit and have a, nearly four-hour, conversation with Sir Bob Geldof. He also sang a few tunes for me. I didn’t have much to say back – except much clapping, a little singing along, and standing to applaud for a long time when the conversation was over.

The lights went on and I suddenly remembered there were hundreds of others there too. Such was the quality of his story telling, the drama of his presentation and the skills of his music and voice that I had been in that wonderful zone of being focused to the exclusion of all else.

Born in 1951 Geldof, as he rightly recounts, is a phenomenon. As a viewer I was all the better able to engage as I knew something of the man and what he has gone about. The Boomtown Rats are way more than I Don’t Like Mondays and I have listened to them for many years. At 18, in 1985, I was madly in love with music and LIVE AID was a huge cultural moment. The purpose of it and the power of one man was also something of an awakening of compassion in me to do my best in life for those I could help … and to be prepared to challenge those who keep others downtrodden. I have read his 1986 biography Is that it? I vaguely followed the appalling mess of his marriage destruction and subsequent deaths of his former wife and Michael Hutchence (and in 2014, his 25 year old daughter Peaches). His global re-emergence in 2005 for LIVE 8 and the subsequent influence with world leaders (the then G7 plus one) to improve policy for African nations and get crippling debt cancelled. By then I had an economics degree and had been teaching the subject for 20 years so can claim a reasonable understanding of what was going on. Plus, I loved the music of LIVE 8 and much as I had LIVE AID and the concerts in 8 countries on that day are still a go-to for great entertainment.

But, of course, there was so much more to learn and take in and to try and bring great detail here would be to minimize the incredible performance. Geldof strode the stage recounting key stories, people and passages in his life. He seldom looked directly as us – but when he did it was for impact, and he achieved it. He juxtaposed humour, meaning and tragedy as so few could. His songs were poignant and powerful and yet he finished with the wonderful humour of The Great Song of Indifference with its twisted optimism in the face of all that he has struggled with and overcome.

In one sense it is terrible to be so brief but here is my take after two days reflection.

• A boy growing up in significant poverty in a small country who lost his mother, suddenly, at 6 years old and had a distant, desperate and disillusioned father who Geldof loathed until his late teens … can change the world for great good.

• A man who understands that the powerful have no more human value than the tiniest starving child (for example Margeret Thatcher vs Birhan Woldu). A man who understands how to truly and with great effect – speak the truth to power, unrelentingly, and who can gather people to himself and his cause … can effect great change.

• A man does not need to be anywhere near personally perfect to do great good.

New Zealanders are, by and large, timid people. We have also become accustomed to living in a nation that has, what Tom Scott called in Drawn Out; “a tall lichen syndrome” where people who do speak out, protest and demand better for others risk being called a “river of filth” or worse.

Geldof reminded me, and I would think many others there, that to live at all is a wonderful privilege and that to live with great purpose is the best way to acknowledge that. Near the end of Schindler’s List Itzhak Stern quotes the Talmud to Oskar Schindler, saying: “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.” It is a thought worth waking up to each day.

Thanks Sir Bob – for the conversation and everything you have done so far! It is still far from “It”.

Alwyn Poole
alwyn.poole@gmail.com
alwynpoole.substack.com

Interesting data by Universities NZ, looking at average income by qualification and field of study.

So what is the average salary gain for a qualification, from the previous level:

• Certificate $7k
• Diploma $6k
• Bachelor $10k
• Honours $16k
• Masters $3k
• PhD $43k

And what are the average earnings for a Bachelors degree:

1. Medicine $175k
2. Law $143k
3. Dentistry $114k
4. Economics $108k
5. Engineering $107k
6. Business $105k
7. IT $100k
8. Veteninary $100k
9. Architecture $99k
10. Politics $94k
11. Agriculture $92k
12. Science $88k
13. Justice $87k
14. Pharmacy $86k
15. Nursing $83k
16. Other Health $82k
17. Humanities $81k
18. Communications $80k
19. Sports $75k
20. Education $74k
21. Tourism $73k
22. Creative $73k
23. Hospitality $62k
24. Alternative Health $54k

Sad that education professionals are paid so poorly at $74k average salary. I think the best teachers should be earning at least $120k.

Radio NZ reports:

Western Bay of Plenty District Council is the latest council to leave national advocacy body Local Government New Zealand.

There were claims LGNZ had become “extremely political”, had swung “far left” and lacked professionalism.

As I understand it, the following Councils have left LGNZ:

• Auckland (1,798,300)
• Christchurch (415,100
• West Coast Region
• Grey (14,800)
• Kaipara (27,900
• Westland (9,430)
• Western BOP (62,000)

That’s 44% of NZ’s population no longer covered by LGNZ.

The Chief Ombudsman has done proactive investigations of seven agencies in regard to how they deal with OIA requests. This isn’t just about data, but also culture. The key findings for each are:

• Treasury was a demonstrably high performer in OIA timeliness performance
• Transpower New Zealand Limited (Transpower) has a culture and practice of responding quickly to official information requests.
• While I did not find evidence of Pharmac misusing the OIA, I did identify a number of concerning issues, which are detailed in this report.
•  I see no evidence of Kāinga Ora misusing the OIA … some opportunities for Kāinga Ora to improve its OIA practices.
• My review of Health NZ’s OIA practices, along with these findings, leave me with concerns about Health NZ’s OIA practices and whether they facilitate consistent adherence with OIA timeliness obligations.
• DPMC is a relatively high performer when it comes to timeliness statistics
• DIA … there were examples of extensions sought for reasons other than those stipulated in the OIA

So Treasury, Transpower, DPMC all come out pretty good. Pharmac, Kainga Ora and DIA are okay while Health NZ is pretty concerning.

Radio NZ reports:

An Otago student has set up a petition to have disgraced Dunedin artist John Middleditch’s sculpture removed from public display at the University of Otago.

The large bronze sculpture created in 1969 sits outside within the Dunedin campus and is currently the subject of a panel enquiry about whether to remove it.

In February RNZ revealed Middleditch was convicted of indecently assaulting young girls and a teenage girl in December 1976.

The convictions came to light after a Dunedin woman complained to Health NZ in January, asking that a 1980s water sculpture of Middleditch’s in Dunedin Hospital be removed. …

Now, a Change.org petition to remove both sculptures has attracted 245 signatures.

The petition, created by Bee Brown on 12 March, calls on fellow Otago University and polytechnic students, families, friends and residents to support the removal of the sculpture entitled Eleven Bronze Rods supporting Albatross Wingspan, as well as the water sculpture.

I have sympathy for his victim/s. However I think we need to be careful about not seeing an artwork as an endorsement of an artist. You can enjoy  Der Ring des Nibelungen but also think Wagner was a pretty awful racist.

His offending should be a factor in whether to promote his artworks. But to say that one must remove a sculpture that has been in public for over 50 years would be an over-reaction.

Erick Erickson writes:

The press and left call the right “culture warriors,” but we were not the ones who put pornographic material in elementary schools. We were not the ones who demanded kids in colleges attend seminars to learn about their inner racism. We were not the ones who demanded boys get into girls sports.

The left and press call us “culture warriors” solely because we said no and fought back against them.

We do have a culture war, but it is one where the left are the aggressors.

We would have accepted neutral institutions. But you foisted DEI on us all. The New York Times declared the country is systemically racist and rewrote the founding history of the nation, which some of you then pushed into public schools for re-education. You used your cultural, institutional, and media clout to chase advertisers and revenue away from right-leaning institutions and voices. You attacked productive industries with media outlets subsidized by progressive environmental groups. You captured the government-funded national radio network and turned it into soft-spoken progressive hacks. You took over academic institutions and started discriminating against Asian kids. You took over public schools and decided learning the colors of the Pride Flag was more important than learning math. When COVID happened, you people shut down schools, kept those schools shut down, and when the inevitable collapse of learning occurred, you lied about keeping schools shut down and tried, with willing accomplices in the left-controlled press, to shift the blame. In Illinois, progressive educators dragged girls into bathrooms and forced them to change in front of boys. You even got the Voice of America to explain white privilege while refusing to call Hamas “terrorists.”

So now you’ll watch the rest of us wipe out those institutions. You could have had neutrality. Instead, you called us culture warriors all while waging war to capture and use neutral institutions against everyone else. You could have chosen to embrace diversity of thought. Now, you can embrace the rubble.

There are lessons for NZ here. As almost every institution has signed up to a leftist agenda of Treaty supremacy and equity over equality, those institutions will lose their previous neutrality.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority has found Stuff in breach of multiple broadcasting standards for a hatchet job on ASH – Action on Smoking and Health.

Basically what it all goes back to is that ASH is more supportive of reduced harm products (vaping, heated tobacco) on the basis of evidence that these are far less harmful, and do see people substitute them for smoking.

Other anti-smoking groups are basically keen on just prohibition (never mind it never works), and they hate the fact that ASH has a different view. Rather than accept different groups can look at the evidence and come to different conclusions, they are basically suggesting (preposterously) that ASH is in league with or funded by tobacco companies. And they convinced Stuff to do a hatchet job on ASH.

Basically the so called link was that the ASH Director traveled to Australia, and the guy who facilitated his travel works for a group (the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association) which seven years ago got $20,000 from an e-cigarette company. So we’re not talking third or fourth hand connections.

The BSA found Stuff:

• ASH’s position and response to these issues was not, in our view, adequately or fairly presented in the broadcast.
• We also found the programme overall was misleading, and the broadcaster did not make reasonable efforts to ensure it did not mislead.
• In our view, the cumulative effect of the points identified in the complaint was to create an overall misleading impression of ASH, its conduct, including the Australia trip, and its position on vaping generally by omitting an adequate presentation of Youdan’s comments in response. 
• We therefore find the item was materially misleading by omission and had potential to cause harm
• This item demonstrated a continuation of the narrative about ASH that was set up by the 26 July broadcast: favouring facts and perspectives that supported that narrative while omitting a fair presentation of ASH’s defence. It had the potential to cause further damage to the integrity and reputation of ASH, its board, and Youdan, and to undermine public trust in ASH as an organisation working in public health.
• The statement chosen for the broadcast did not reflect ASH’s position adequately and had the effect of suggesting ASH was ‘unconcerned’ about youth vaping. It materially misrepresented ASH’s position on youth vaping as outlined in the statement provided to the reporter. Excluding a fair presentation of ASH’s response to the issues and including one sentence that made ASH look ‘worse’, would have significantly altered viewers’ understanding of the story.
• We consider the likely harm caused by the broadcast was significant enough to warrant our intervention and we uphold the complaint under the accuracy standard.
• The overall effect of the broadcast was that viewers were unable to reach an informed opinion and would have been left with an unfairly negative impression of ASH.

This is a very damning decision. It has been either ignored by most media, or placed in a very non-prominent place. The seriousness is shown by the BSA sanctions:

• broadcast a statement that summarises the upheld aspects of the Authority’s decision in relation to the 26 and 30 July 2024 ThreeNews broadcasts
• liaise with Stuff to publish a statement online, on the 26 July 2024 story on stuff.co.nz and embedded video of the 30 July 2024 story on The Press and The Post online
• pay to the complainant costs in the amount of $1,710.62
• pay to the Crown costs in the amount of $3,000 within one month of the date of this decision. 

It is very rare to have a finding for costs to the Crown. The BSA notes:

Given our clear view these two ThreeNews broadcasts fell short of the standards the public expects of New Zealand broadcasters, with a serious impact on the reputations of ASH and Youdan, we consider the conduct and seriousness of the breaches justify an award of costs to the Crown in this instance. A punitive response is required to hold the broadcaster to account, deter future non-compliance, confirm our expectations around an appropriate level of editorial oversight, and ensure fairness to programme participants. …

As we have discussed in our findings above, these stories appeared intentionally slanted against ASH and the broadcaster persisted with that narrative despite having information to the contrary, causing serious damage to the reputation of a charitable entity and its director.

Nice to see the hatchet job facing consequences.

At a human level, of course no one wants to risks their lives by publishing a cartoon. It is very understandable.

But as a media organisation, it is saying that terrorism works, and we will censor legal material, to avoid violence. This is of course the exact desired response from the terrorists.