Bill lodged to remove six month prognosis criteria for euthanasia

Todd Stephenson released:

ACT MP Todd Stephenson has lodged a member’s bill in Parliament’s ballot to extend eligibility for End of Life Choice services.

The End of Life Choice (Extended Eligibility) Amendment Bill removes the requirement for a terminally ill person to demonstrate a six-month prognosis, while retaining all other safeguards. …

This means the criteria would then be:

  • is aged 18 years or over
  • is in an advanced state of irreversible decline in physical capability
  • experiences unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved in a manner that the person considers tolerable
  • is competent to make an informed decision about assisted dying.

I’m in favour.

Spectator success

The Spectator reports:

The price we’ve been sold for, £100 million, speaks to that belief in our potential. We were valued at £20 million when we separated from the Daily Telegraph in 2005. Since then, the magazine market has fallen by about two-thirds but our subscriptions have more than doubled. This five times valuation increase is, to put it mildly, rare in our industry. The auction attracted 22 potential bidders, including some of the greatest and most respected names in British and European publishing. Not bad for a publication with barely three dozen journalists. 

This deal is vindication of The Spectator’s unusual business model. In this trade, there is always pressure to go for the digital ‘quick wins’ (clickbait articles, advertorials, etc.) but we rejected this as a false economy – so commercial that it’s uncommercial. It would take us downmarket, deform our character and, ergo, reduce the company’s value. So we went the other way, using our success to double down on the magazine’s finest traditions in the belief that quality of writing matters above all. We did a lot that went against the conventional digital wisdom. We put together a different business model and a unique way of working, based on close collaboration between all departments and journalists equally comfortable with print, digital and broadcast.  

When other publications were shedding sub-editors, we poached the best ones we could find. When newspapers shrank their books sections, we proudly kept Sam Leith’s at ten-plus pages and gave him a podcast. We created a research team who apply perhaps the most robust pre-publication scrutiny on Fleet Street (mindful that it matters more than ever that readers can trust the facts they read). When other weeklies started cutting costs by not printing over Easter and the summer, we put more effort than ever into the issues released in those holiday periods. 

I am a huge fan of the Spectator and they have shown how quality can be profitable. Their daily podcast, Coffee House Shot, is also a must listen.

Pierson on Wellington cycleways

Lukje Pierson writes:

A few weeks back, Wellington City Council published a story summarising what thousands of us think of its priorities for the next decade. Buried on page 40, you’ll find what Wellingtonians really think of the council’s controversial new cycleways. It turns out just 30% of us are happy, while 60% want to see the work reduced, or stopped altogether.

In other words, twice as many Wellingtonians oppose council’s cycling network as support it.

This is not hugely surprising.

Wellington’s cycleway shambles has become a regular topic all over town, but I’ve never met anyone opposed to cycleways in principle – we’re an environmentally and socially conscious city, and most agree cycling should be a choice in our transport mix.

So why are we all so outraged?

For a start, we’re doing them atrociously. Our streets have become littered with a mishmash of painted strips, cones and poles, stapled bits of plastic, incoherent road markings and routes that weave in and out of parked cars and through groups of pedestrians at bus stops.

Then there’s the impact on parking. Aside from the obvious inconvenience, removing parking from the central city alone has cost council $8m annually in lost revenue – directly contributing to record rates rises.

The best cycleways should be removed from roads, not created by abolishing car parks or taking away lanes.

This, to me, goes to the heart of the problem with Wellington’s diabolical cycleways. Council is quite literally bulldozing ahead with $111m more of this work, ignoring the pleas of our emergency services, struggling small business owners, vulnerable healthcare workers and two thirds of Wellingtonians just trying to get by, in favour of cycling extremism.

This story isn’t over, but we can all see how it ends. Far from being environmentally and socially conscious, council will double down on a privileged few, while making the city less liveable for everybody else – and force the rest of us to pay for it, at a time we can least afford to.

It is a wealth transfer from the many to the few!

Another assassination attempt on Trump

CNN reports:

A person has been detained in connection to the incident at Trump International Golf Club on Sunday, according to a law enforcement source.

Secret Service fired at the suspect, according to multiple sources.

A long gun has been recovered, according to the source.

Officials believe an armed individual intended to target former President Donald Trump at his golf club, according to sources briefed on the matter.

It’s nice to live in a country where (IIRC) no one has ever tried to shoot a politician. Trying to take people’s choices away through violence is the opposite of democracy.

O’Connor on euthanasia concerns

Simon O’Connor writes:

In a month or so, we will see over one thousand New Zealanders having ended their lives by euthanasia.   This is based on the Ministry of Health’s latest reports on euthanasia/assisted suicide state that since the law came into effect (November 2021) till June this year, 867 people have died already.

My opposition to euthanasia is well known but I think many people will still find this number very high for a ‘service’ that has been running for just under three years. 

During the same time period around 100,000 NZers have died, so euthanasia is contributing to around 1% of that. Rates in other countries where it is legal range from 0.4% to 4% so 1% seems pretty ordinary.

When we take the latest quarterly report (end of June) and look back over the previous twelve months, there is a reported total of 347 deaths by euthanasia/assisted suicide.  However, when you read the annual report from the Register that covers the same time period, she says there were 344 deaths.

The same discrepancies exist when you compare the number of applications for assisted suicide/euthanasia.  The quarterly reports say 847, while the annual report say 834.

While there is probably a benign explanation for this, I agree it is bad for the numbers to vary on something as important as this.

The reports also note that only one in every one hundred people are being referred for a psychological assessment when requesting euthanasia or assisted dying.  This is extraordinarily low, indicating that doctors are either missing the signs or ignoring them.

Every day we see headlines about significant and widespread mental health issues in New Zealand and yet we are somehow to believe that only 1% of all those seeking euthanasia have psychological issues worthy of further consideration. 

This doesn’t surprise me as the criteria for euthanasia is so tight – you must be in unbearable pain and expected to die within six months. If the criteria was less strict, I would expect far more psychological assessments.

Up until very recently, the three person body known as the  End of Life Review Committee, has never been fully constituted.  This committee is meant to comprise of a medical professional (doctor), a health professional (e.g. a nurse), and an ethicist. Since euthanasia became legal the review committee has struggled to have either an ethicist or a doctor on the panel.

I was unaware of this. It is good the panel is now complete.

The sad irony is that the government fully funds euthanasia but refuses to fully – or even better – fund palliative care.  Euthanasia ends life prematurely.  Palliative care gives life to the very end.   I know which one I would preference funding for.

It would be nice to fund both but I don’t think it is quite a trade off. The cost of an assisted death to the taxpayer is $1,087.20 so a total cost of say $500,000 a year compared to the cost of palliative care of $186 million a year. You could even argue that euthanasia reduces the cost of palliative care.

Hilarious

Stuff reports:

Australian break dancer Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn has been ranked No.1 according to the official World Dance Sport Federation (WDSF) world rankings for professional breakers for September.

Raygun returned to Australia on Monday to the unexpected ranking, despite her last place finish in Paris.

Hilarious. In other news Gerry Brownlee has been ranked the number 1 sprinter in the world, Peter Dinklage has been ranked the No 1 high jumper in the world and John Bobbitt the No 1 pole vaulter.

Top economists on what was wrong with the economic response to Covid-19

An interesting article at the Herald where ten top economists are asked to critique the Covid-19 economic response. Some common themes were:

  • People hate inflation
  • Monetary policy eventually works
  • quantitative easing and long-term committed lending operations were especially bad
  • Temporary fiscal expansion was appropriate but not long-term fiscal expansion
  • New Zealand policymakers got it wrong with both the Government and RBNZ sharing in some of the blame
  • the quality of fiscal decisions is more important than the quantity
  • excessive provision of free money ends up causing inflation
  • Actions by both the Reserve Bank and Finance Minister over the pandemic were ultimately failures
  • Covid became an excuse to do anything as opposed to targeted Covid relief, AKA a slush fund

Interesting data

This tweet with data from the UK has gone viral. It does raise some interesting questions.

Firstly it is important to note that the vast vast majority of all three groups are not incarcerated sex offenders.

99.9997% of UK women are not incarcerated sex offenders, 99.96% of UK men are not incarcerated sex offenders and 99.8% of transwomen are not.

The data should not be treated as precise as the population of transwomen in the UK is not known precisely. But what you can conclude is that men are far far more likely than women to be in prison for sexual offending, and transwomen are as likely or more likely as men to be in prison for sexual offending.

Sentencing discrepancies could explain some of this – but not enough to close the huge gap between men and women. And it is of course no surprise to anyone that more men commit sexual offences.

The imprisonment rate for transwomen is arguably more surprising. Now again we’re only talking 2 in 1,000 so it is only the relative rate which is high, not the absolute rate. One possible explanation is that the data only reflects people’s current gender identity, and not their gender identity when sentenced. Could a number of inmates have changed their gender identity after conviction, so that they are moved to a different prison? What proportion of the 92 offenders are in a women’s prison, and did they start their sentence in one?

RIP John Bishop

Incredibly sad news. I can’t even recall when or how I first met John, but it must be well over two decades ago. John was one of the most astute people I knew. He was a reporter for Radio NZ in the 1970s and Chief parliamentary reporter for TVNZ in the 1980s. When Jordan and I set up the Taxpayers’ Union in 2013, John agreed to become the inaugural chair, and was a constant source of wisdom, great advice and humour.

John will be missed by so many, but especially Rosemary, Eleanor and Chris. My thoughts are with them at this incredibly sad time.

John was a very kind person. Just four days ago he e-mailed me to see how I was going after my resignation from RANZ. He was also one of those I turned to for advice when I was deciding what to do. I will miss him very much.

Every buzzword possible

You just have to read this blurb about the Frantz Fanon Dissertation Award.

The Frantz Fanon Dissertation Award is named in honor of Frantz Fanon and his significant and enduring scholarship informing decolonial, postcolonial, and anti-colonial studies. His work is well known for his analysis of colonialism, particularly its intersections with the psycho-existential, affective, the body, liberation struggles, and collective resistance.

So that’s eight, just in the first paragraph.

The Decolonial, Postcolonial, and Anti-colonial Studies in Education SIG seeks to advance situated thought and praxis that interrogate colonialism, neo-colonialism, capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and imperialism as an entangled structure of domination and exploitation. The SIG also engages the challenges and possibilities of ongoing struggles for liberation and decolonization, global justice, and solidarity in education and beyond. Following Fanon and other committed scholars of modernity/coloniality, SIG members have also explored questions of domination, power, resistance, systemic racism, injustice, knowledge and power, political economy, and the role of curriculum and pedagogy in reproducing or contesting coloniality. This award thus encourages relational and entangled modes of analyzing and interpreting the logics of capital, colonialism, nationalism, cultural/racial supremacy, patriarchy, hetero-normativity, ableism, international development, and the politics of knowledge production.

I’ve lost count now!

The “Grammar Way”

I take no pleasure in having a crack at the way an individual school does things but have reached a tipping point on Auckland Grammar.

As the article, linked below states, AGS is the 49th ranked academic school in NZ but prances as if everyone else are pretenders. Their sports teams underperform as the largest boys school (Westlake sometimes has more students) and, although their websites claim they are the best “boys” academic school (excuse making by definition) they are even 5th on that ladder.

All of that is important but what is more important is that I know of case after case where young men are pretty much destroyed by “the Grammar Way.”

When Principal Tim O’Connor decided to have a crack at a Christchurch school serving an entirely different community … enough was enough.

It has had huge readership and I have received many supportive responses.

Key points:

  • “Of equal concern is the ethnicity outcomes for progressing out of Auckland Grammar. For all ethnicities leaving the school, 62% go to degree-level study. The top school is Baradene on 86% and St Peter’s heads Grammar again with 71%. Dig deeper, though, and only 21% of Pasifika and 18% of Māori students leave Auckland Grammar to go to degree-level study. For St Peter’s it is 56% and 55% respectively.”
  • “An Auckland Grammar parent commented to me this week, “It’s surprising that O’Connor would criticise another school for trying to positively address mental and physical health concerns of students when Auckland Grammar has had to deal with a number of serious incidents of bullying and fighting at the school this year that have seriously affected some of his students.”
  • “It is a school that I have too frequently seen have a destructive influence on students — including some close to me — and most certainly not a place that, as O’Connor claims, teaches students to “cope with their feelings”.
  • O’Connor states that “students need to be taught to toughen up”.
  • “I know from having worked with many students with anxiety, and even full-blown school aversion, that ‘The Grammar Way’ is anachronistic.”

    Would value the opinion of kiwibloggers as the most common response of anyone favouring O’Connor’s views are the old “didn’t do me any harm” .

Alwyn Poole
alwyn.poole@gmail.com
Innovative Education Consultants Ltd
Education 710+ Ltd

Rodney Hide on free speech

Rodney Hide writes:

In the interests of justice, fairness, equity, kindness, etc., oppressors must be silenced. It is a time for victims to speak. That means the poor white truck driver must shut up. The Māori, female professor speaks. She Is the oppressed; he her oppressor. The individual circumstances don’t matter. Group identity determines everything. 

The oppressed get to speak their truth. This is important. Their truth is personal to them. It is true to them. It cannot be contested. To debate is to perpetuate oppression. 

We then have hate speech. Hate speech is what old white men say. Hate speech threatens the oppressed’s Health and Safety, and Safety always trumps freedom and so speech must be controlled either by the law or more efficiently by strict social norms. A career can be over in two minutes simply by stating what was an obvious truth just five years ago. 

There is also misinformation and disinformation. Those with the wrong ideas threaten Health and Safety. Wrong information is a contagion causing people to make wrong decisions or to think wrong and hurtful thoughts. Once again, speech must be controlled, especially in public forums. Indeed, public forums must be rigorously policed. 

This Left is awash with paradox and hypocrisy. The intellectual leaders are old white men. The cult leaders are white and privileged. But none of that matters. The anointed only need to announce an untruth for it to be acclaimed. 

The Left’s detachment from reality has made astonishing inroads to control political discourse, legacy media, social media (bar X), universities and schools, the bureaucracy and the courts. 

The takeover has been swift and total. The key has been the ruthless squashing of dissent.  Dissenters are publicly denounced and destroyed with their heads displayed on spikes. That could be you is the threat.  To speak out is to lose your job, your career, your business, your social standing. 

There are modern day Red Guards sprinkled through key institutions ready to pounce and denounce. That leaves the members of all our key institutions either brainwashed themselves or scared. 

Cancel culture is very real, and people are very scared.

The University of Austin

The University of Austin has just admitted its first intake of students. It is a new private university dedicated to free speech and free inquiry.

Here is the speech from the college president:

Good morning. It is a sincere pleasure and profound honor to welcome you to the inaugural Convocation of the University of Austin.

We often hear of occasions referred to as historic. Usually this is a sort of feeling or sense that a particular moment or event is elevated or heightened, that something noteworthy or novel is occurring—a new this, a first that. This to me seems a rather tepid use of the term historic.

What is truly historic is that which sends the trajectory of history, and lives lived within the stream of history, shooting in a direction other than that toward which they were tending. History is not a story unfolding; it is an epic being written. And its authors are those bold enough to exercise their agency in the pursuit of higher things.

As I look across this room, I do not see students or faculty or staff or loved ones. I see a room filled with the courageous, the bold, with pioneers, with heroes. I see a room filled with those who have said, emphatically, we will not accept passively what we have been handed, the givens are not good enough, we will create anew. We have come together, all of us, as founders.

Ours is a revolutionary institution—revolutionary in the proper sense. False revolutions propose only the tearing down of the established order; they are an exercise in nihilism. Yet the word revolution—in its original sense, revolvere—means to revolve, to turn back to a point of origin, with the purpose of renewing an original spirit or ideal. 

To what are we returning? Not to some pallid vision of what universities looked like a decade or two or three ago, before their current malaise. Not to some nostalgic notion of ivy-covered quads and fusty dons. Our return is even more radical, radical in the sense of radix, roots, in that we are returning to the very roots of the Western intellectual tradition, to the very roots of the civilization that brought forward these extraordinary institutions called universities.

We are returning to a time when living the life of the mind was itself a bold adventure, when the world was afire with contending and clashing ideas, when everything under the sun was scrutinized, and measured, and queried, which gave birth to a civilization that was restless, and curious, and risk-taking, a Promethean civilization that sought the light of truth, even when that light was searing or sometimes even blinding.

Higher education is often referred to blandly as the “academy” or “academia.” This occludes how extraordinary the original Academy actually was. In 387 BC, Plato, very much like we are doing today, founded a school, which took its name from the place where it met, an olive grove on the fringes of Athens called the Akademia. Here, the great philosopher gathered students who were passionate about pursuing the fundamental human questions: What is justice? How do we acquire knowledge? What is the source of beauty?

There were other schools in Greece that coalesced around such figures as EmpedoclesEpicurusThalesDemocritus, and many others, all of whom believed that the world could be understood through sustained rational inquiry, and each of whom offered particular answers to the mysteries of the cosmos.

What distinguished Plato’s Academy, however, was doctrinal pluralism and a variety of intellectual approaches. There were no easy answers. Every discussion branched outward with ever-greater complexity. The Academy did not commit to a particular school of philosophy, but was a place where knowledge was comprehensively debated, analyzed, and advanced; it was, in the words of Shakespeare, the “quick forge and working house of thought.” 

The range of topics was vast, the curiosity of the students ardent, their appetite for ideas voracious. From just a selection of the works of one of Plato’s students, Aristotle, we can come to understand how wide-ranging were the intellectual concerns of the age: On the HeavensMeteorologyOn the SoulOn MemoryOn SleepHistory of AnimalsMovement of AnimalsOn ColorsThe Situations and Names of the WindsMetaphysicsEthicsPoliticsEconomicsRhetoricPoetics. Plato and his students were not narrow specialists, not pedants, not ideologues; they were rather propelled to dispute, to discover, everything there was to know, and to test the boundaries of knowing itself.

The animating spirit of the Academy was Plato’s great teacher, Socrates. Socrates was famous, perhaps infamous, for engaging the citizens of Athens in frank conversations about philosophical topics. He was restless, persistent, infuriating. He cornered his fellow Athenians and pressed them to answer his questions: Is virtue taught or does it come to us by nature? What is the purpose of love? Is the soul immortal? 

As each would offer a response, Socrates would push harder, “Is this truly the best answer?” His persistence did not make him popular, and he was ultimately put to death after trial by his fellow Athenian citizens. Yet his mode of inquiry, the Elenchus or Socratic Method, is the fountainhead of the entire Western intellectual tradition.

“Is this truly the best answer?” This turn of mind, this unalloyed commitment to truth-seeking, which takes both humanity’s passion for understanding along with the realization that, as individuals, our capacity to apprehend what is true is limited, this is the very reason we create these collective enterprises known as universities; it is why this university is dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth. 

Sacred institutions rest upon the revelation of settled truths, truths from the mouths of prophets and from the pages of hallowed texts. For human institutions engaged in human matters, however, given that, as Kant opined, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made,” our confidence in received opinion ought to be tempered. Our work is to stir up settled ideas, not as puerile exercises in contrarianism, but to see if, once they settle back into place, they have the same shape as before. 

The term education derives from the Latin educare, and means “to lead out of.” To lead us out of what? Out of ignorance. A liberal education is one that presumes that human beings have freedom and agency, and that in liberating us from ignorance we will learn how to use our freedom well. Its purpose is not simply knowledge, but wisdom.

The great cautionary tale in the West is that of Doctor Faustus, who sold his soul to master every area of knowledge—law, medicine, theology, philosophy—but who, with all the power in the world at his fingertips, could think of nothing better to do than to satisfy his most trivial desires, and he surrendered his life at the allotted time in despair. His tale is tragic. Knowledge without wisdom is enslaving. Faustus had limitless knowledge in every domain. But he failed to come to know himself, and in the end was struck down by his own pride.

This is the great insight of the Western tradition, that all knowledge begins with self-knowledge. “Know thyself”—Γνῶθι σαυτόν—proclaimed the Oracle at Delphi. We must brush away the veils, dispel the shadows, unshackle ourselves from the chains of ignorance, beginning within and working ever outward.

Francis Bacon, the great Renaissance statesman and father of the scientific method, understood the manifold ways that humans compound our ignorance. He identified four “idols,” or false images, that distorted our understanding of the world. Looking at each in turn, we can come to understand the mission of a liberal education and perhaps come to understand some of the pathologies that afflict our own culture and society.

The Idols of the Tribe represent our tendency to leap to conclusions that accord with our desires, to ignore evidence that countermands our prejudices. To remedy this, we should seek objectivity, to see the world as it really is.

The Idols of the Cave reflect our limited, often warped, perspectives; what we know of the world is circumscribed by our narrow experience and often arbitrary circumstance. To remedy this, we should seek to be intellectually expansive, to search for sources of authority outside ourselves or those we have inherited.

The Idols of the Marketplace are those that arise from confusion in human communication, largely out of the imprecise nature of words and symbols and our failure to agree on common meaning. To remedy this, we should lead with empathy and grace, seeking to master the art of dialogue.

Finally, the Idols of the Theater are those errors that arise from the totalizing theories and abstract formulations that we construct to explain the human experience. To remedy this, we should embrace intellectual humility, rightly sizing the scope of human ambition, and be wary of those who claim to have found all the answers. 

Universities, like Plato’s Academy, are the places that we have dedicated to these very ends: Seeing the world clearly, seeking to be intellectually expansive, learning from one another through conversation, asking fundamental questions. The word university comes from the Latin universitas, or a community convened toward a common end. As we pursue this common end, a quest for clarity that is often elusive, we must remember that each of us has only a fragmentary understanding of the world, that each of us, at best, adds a small piece to the great mosaic of learning. 

Intellectual humility is not fashionable. Nor is the passionate pursuit of truth. We live in a schizophrenic age. On the one hand, this is the Age of I, an age of solipsism, of narcissism; we are so ensorcelled by the idea that the self is primary and inviolable that we have collapsed into nihilism. On the other hand, this is the Age of Ideology, a time when a regnant and totalizing system of thought, grounded in the fundamental error that all human relations are exclusively relations of power, is ascendant; we find ourselves stranded in a stark landscape, where the bellum omnium contra omnes, the war of all against all, rages, only to be mitigated, we are told, by the imposition of a technocratic, censorious, and absolute Leviathan. Our institutions, including our institutions of higher learning, have been overwhelmed by both the relativism of the Age of I and the absolutism of the Age of Ideology. They are shaken, unsteady, adrift.

So let us begin again. Let us be revolutionaries, radicals, returning to the headwaters of our tradition, reviving the spirit of curiosity, of courage, following the great chain of conversation across the ages, where orthodoxy and heterodoxy contend, carried out in books, in works of art, in the progression of the sciences. Our university, like Plato’s Academy, is a sort of sacred grove, a place set apart, from which we can observe the vicissitudes of our times, but not become enslaved to them. Let us ask, again and again, “Is this the best answer?”

From these humble beginnings, if we embrace the simplicity of our purpose and the clarity of our mission, becoming ourselves pioneers, founders, mavericks, and heroes, bringing into to the world not only this institution but also the remarkable things that we will each build, create, fashion, and forge, we will indeed look back at this moment, at this occasion, as truly historic. 

So let us begin. Convocatum est!

I hope they succeed, and that they eventually set up one in New Zealand!

There have been so many people, willing to donate to the university, the inaugural class will get to do their entire four year degrees for free!

Tana says Greens didn’t trust her

Stuff reports:

Darleen Tana was unlawfully thrown out of the Green Party, who unfairly blamed her for her husband’s actions, her lawyer argued in the High Court on Thursday.

Lawyer Sharyn Green said Tana felt “gutted, she felt betrayed” by the Greens, and said the party “should have taken her at her word” that she wasn’t involved in allegations of migrant exploitation at her husband’s e-bike business.

Why? She lied to them. Her word was contradicted by the evidence.

Tana felt insulted not to be invited to former leader James Shaw’s leaving function, and to find she had been removed from the Green website while suspended

I agree removing her from the website while suspended was not a smart move.

It would be interesting to find out who is funding this judicial review? Is it by any chance another political party?

Outrage – targeting on need

Stuff reports:

Māori and Pacific young people in Hawke’s Bay are no longer eligible for free GP and nurse visits based on ethnicity, after the health minister intervened.

The move has been labelled “devastating for the community” by one MP.

Over the weekend, Stuff reported on a recent change to funding for free GP and registered nurse visits in Hawke’s Bay for rangatahi aged 14-24.

Instead of being available for all young people in the region, new criteria were introduced from September 1, making Māori and Pacific, those living in high deprivation, those who hold a Community Services Card, or those with specific long-term health conditions eligible.

But this has again changed, with the Māori and Pacific criteria now dropped from the list, after Health Minister Dr Shane Reti spoke with health officials about the policy on Monday.

So a 23 year old who lives in a high deprivation area or who has a low income or who has chronic health problems will get free GP visits but a 23 year old Maori who lives in a wealthy neighbourhood, who earns a high income and who is is in good health will not get a free GP visit.

It staggers me that so many people are against this!

Vance on Labour’s CGT obsession

Andrea Vance writes:

The polls might show support for the broad idea of taxing excess profits and capital gains, but when you dig into detail on asset classes, like shares and property, that diminishes.

It’s an aspiration paradox: people vote for the wealth they want rather than the lifestyle they have.

Or put simply: voters resent new taxes. Presented with a choice only a year ago, the electorate plumped for tax cuts.

This is correct. A CGT always falls down on the details as people realise it will affect their lifestyle block, their bach, their shares etc.

In theory a comprehensive CGT (no exemptions) which was offset by significant income tax cuts would be economically desirable. But politically a comprehensive CGT will never fly, and one with exemptions just leads to rorting.

And so, Labour has been sucked back into the capital gains tax doom loop. It’s an issue it has failed to resolve over four successive elections.

Next time around, whatever form it takes, the policy will be even harder to sell.

First, Hipkins will have to find the political courage that deserted him last year — and the two leaders before him.

He will have to explain why he changed his mind, without stating the bald, cynical truth that a new tax was undesirable.

Labour will also have to dissolve the prevailing narrative that in government the party wasted and mismanaged vast amounts of public money.

Exactly. They increased spending by $1 billion a week and made almost indicator go in the wrong direction as so much of it was wasted.

Blame the clients, not the lawyer

Robert Macculloch writes:

For all the volumes of articles written by rightist commentators about how folks like former PM Jacinda Ardern were trying to shut down personal freedoms and liberties by lockdowns and tightening laws on hate speech – and how NZ’s Universities had been taken over by groups that were inhibiting the freedom of speech of academics – where has one of the most direct full frontal attacks on free speech ever ended up coming from? From Auckland’s Big Law Firms and the Big Businesses that use those law firms to protect their interests. It has been recently reported that Chapman Tripp wrote a letter to the University of Auckland requesting they take down an article by my (just retired) colleague Emeritus Prof. Tim Hazeldine – threatening a defamation lawsuit for calling out the Supermarket Duopoly in a way it didn’t like. The article was called, “Foodstuffs Wants to Merge its Co-ops, but Consumers Need the Opposite”. BusinessDesk reports, “Foodstuffs North Island has made legal moves to silence an academic critical of its proposed merger”. I’ve already discussed – and been warned by Members of Parliament that Big Interests will come after the likes of this blog when they don’t like being exposed. But its ended up happening not to me, but to the (by contrast) gentle, mild mannered Tim Hazeldine, who wouldn’t hurt a fly. He writes opinions about subjects he knows lots about and earnestly believes to be true.

So shame on Kiwi Blog; shame on the Free Speech Union; shame on NZ Initiative, shame on you all, for critiquing Universities for being hot beds of left-wing activism trying to close down academics free speech – but not calling out Big Business for using its Big Resources and Big Money to weaponize Big Law Firms (that happily take the fee-income) to threaten one of NZ’s leading academic economists for writing what he devoutly believes to be true.

Well it is hard to call out something that you are unaware of. I don’t have a subscription to Business Desk.

Secondly the law firms aren’t the problem. They act on behalf of clients.

As to the substance, yes I agree that Foodstuffs are acting ridiculously by pressuring organisations to remove an academic article critical of them. They should write an article in response, not try to silence critics.

I’m pleased The Post has ignored the legal threat and the article is still up. I encourage people to read and share it, so the intimidation backfires. It is interesting that the University appears to have succumbed to pressure to remove it, but not the media outlet.

$1.35 million for private toilets for bus drivers

The Taxpayers’ Union released:

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union can report through an Official Information Act that Metlink has paid $1,300,245 dollars (inc. GST) for a project to install seven toilets in Wellington, exclusively for the use of bus drivers. The locations of the toilets include Houghton Bay, Darlington Road, Wilton, Mairangi, Lyall Bay, Highbury and Karori.

Taxpayers’ Union Communications Officer, Alex Emes, said:

“This latest waste story is another example of government failing to deliver on the basics. Spending a penny is one thing, but spending 130 million pennies for just seven toilets takes the biscuit. 

“At an average cost of over $185,000 per toilet, it makes you wonder – are the seats made of gold? While looking after bus drivers is important, that money could have surely gone further if spent better.

That is a lot of money. Waimate DC managed to build six toilets for under $500,000. Other toilets look to be around $20,000 each. Dunedin is doing them for $100,000 each. And these are all for public toilets used by maybe hundreds of people a day – not a private toilet used by maybe 1 or 2 people a day.

Cabinet Favourability Ratings

Over the last year Curia has polled favourability ratings for every National Cabinet Minister, through our monthly poll. On my Patreon (paywalled) I show the favourability, unfavourability and net favourability for all 14 National Cabinet Ministers.

Over the next few months we will also poll on Labour’s Shadow Cabinet, and then Ministers from other government parties.

History repeats but hysteria increases

Did you know that in 2006 the entire Labour Party caucus voted at first reading for a bill that would delete all references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi in legislation. They did this as part of a coalition agreement. Sound familiar?

Yet in 2006 you didn’t have the usual suspects declaring it as genocide and such a threat to New Zealand that it is repugnant to even allow the public a say on the issue. You didn’t have editorials demanding the bill not even be debated.

Here’s some of the MPs who voted for the bill in 2006:

  • Helen Clark
  • Phil Goff
  • David Cunliffe
  • Steve Maharey
  • Annette King
  • Chris Carter
  • Marian Hobbs
  • Damien O’Connor
  • Parekura Horomia
  • Nanaia Mahuta
  • Michael Cullen
  • Margaret Wilson
  • Maryan Street
  • David Parker
  • Sue Moroney
  • Darien Fenton

How many of these people are today condemning the current Government for doing exactly what they did in 2006?