World media report on our latest GDP stats – but RBNZ chairman’s reappointment was too trivial even for the govt’s website

Buzz from the Beehive

 We didn’t learn about it from the government’s official website (which contained no fresh news since we reported yesterday when we checked its contents an hour ago).

But we were tipped off that Finance Minister Nicola Willis had announced the reappointment of Professor Neil Quigley as Chair of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Board for a further term of two years, until 30 June 2026.

When unelected officials dominate the local democratic process

• Bryce Edwards writes – 

Dysfunction and dissatisfaction appear to pervade many local government councils at the moment. Increasingly, the blame for this is accumulating around the role of the bureaucracy – the unelected officials and consultants, who stand accused of overstepping their mark and becoming the real decision-makers in local democracy.

In numerous councils around the country, elected councillors complain that the council officials, and often their council’s chief executive, have usurped the power to make decisions or at least come to dominate the elected councillors in their decision-making. This is a fundamental problem for the principles of democracy, in which the bureaucracy is supposed to serve those with the elected mandate.

Sheltered workshops and wage top-ups

• Eric Crampton writes – 

It’s hard to tell what the actual state of play is, but pretty easy to tell what it should be.

People with severe disabilities will often have great difficulty obtaining employment. In cases of intellectual disability, the point of employment is far less about what gets produced and far more about social connection and a feeling of worth for those engaged in activities. 

If you apply the minimum wage rigidly in those cases, people will instead be unemployed unless philanthropists are willing to fund sheltered workshops or equivalent roles.

Are Maori not New Zealanders?

• Ele Ludemann writes –

A disturbing example of separatism was on display at Parliament on Wednesday:

. . . “They’re not New Zealanders. They are Māori children. And you just don’t get that,” Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi told Children’s Minister Karen Chhour, during a heated hearing at the social services and community select committee earlier in the day.

Shane Jones and Tama Potaka invite Maori troughers to slurp into a $20m swill and Jones tells us his focus is on … guess what?

Buzz from the Beehive

Three of the latest posts on the government’s official website result from the Prime Minister’s trip to Japan, aided and abetted by Air New Zealand stepping in to provide transport for him and his entourage after their Defence Force aircraft got them no further than Papua New Guinea.

In one statement he enthused about finishing a successful three-day visit to Japan, where (he insists) he strengthened political relationships and boosted business links.

Have Swarbrick’s Greens actually had zero environmental impact, and simply just thrown thousands into poverty?

• Rob MacCulloch writes –

What has been the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions in NZ these past six years? The CO2 expelled in hot air from the Greens and their travels to and from Wellington, and around the world?

Has the Green Party contributed next to nothing in terms of reducing NZ’s contribution to global emissions, yet added significantly to poverty and poor local environmental outcomes (like sewerage going into our harbors) by wasting resources on irrelevant projects, with small pay-offs to NZ?

Here’s some evidence – it comes in the form of this pie-chart of our emissions profile:

95 days and counting

• David Farrar writes – 

 A month ago I blogged:

There is no way the investigation will have taken nine weeks. The Uffindell investigation took only five weeks to complete, and that was dealing with events from 20 years ago where witnesses had to be tracked down.

Almost certainly the Green leadership have the report, and have had it for some time. They don’t need to release the report, but they do need to tell us whether it substantiated the claims against Tana, and what the outcome will be.

We can’t afford cancer drugs – but can afford this?

• Jordan Williams writes –

While cancer patients wait for the Government to “find the money” to fund desperately needed modern drugs, the very money meant for health research and saving lives is being flushed down the toilet.

At our weekly staff meeting this morning, the research team took me through the latest batch of grant funding decisions by the Health Research Council.

My heart sank.

More money flows through the infrastructure pipeline – and Public Works Act changes aim to hasten the flow

Buzz from the Beehive

Infrastructure is big deal in the Beehive news agenda today.

The government is making it easier to build infrastructure by modernising the Public Works Act.

And it is braying about the billions of dollars being pumped  through something called the National Infrastructure Pipeline, which provides a national “view” of current or planned infrastructure projects, from roads, to water infrastructure, to schools

To cap things off for infrastructure buffs, the NZ Transport Agency has signed interim alliance agreements with two design and construction teams who will develop and ultimately build the new Ōtaki to north of Levin Road of National Significance.

Inconvenient truths for eco-zealots

• Ele Ludemann writes –

Radical environmentalists have had far too loud a voice, and put far too much effort into attempting to put the environmental cart in front of the research, science and technological horses with no regard for the economic and social costs.

At last someone is reminding them of some inconvenient truths:

For environmentalists to have the moral high ground, they need to confront several inconvenient truths and listen to people they disagree with, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton says.