Heather du Plessis-Allan: Child poverty figures shows PM is not helping those she promised to

It’s convenient that the Prime Minister is out of the country today, because it’s probably too embarrassing to front up on those child poverty figures released this morning.

They have barely moved during her Government’s term.

Remember all the promises? Remember when Jacinda Ardern said "My goal is to eradicate child poverty in New Zealand"? Remember when she promised to lift 100,000 children out of poverty by 2020

Well, it’s 2020, that is so far from happening… it’s just gutting.

GWPF Newsletter: Teenage 'Anti-Greta' To Confront Climate Activists At Conference In America

Naomi Seibt: ‘I Don’t Want You To Panic. I Want You To Think’

In this newsletter:

1) Teenage 'Anti-Greta' To Confront Climate Activists At Conference In America
The Daily Telegraph, 24 February 2020
 
2) Naomi Seibt: ‘I Don’t Want You To Panic. I Want You To Think’
The Heartland Institute, February 2020

Stephen Franks: Why practical Police will not use a gun register

I’m often asked why licensed firearms owners like me are so worried about the government’s phase 2 gun law changes, even if we supported the original announcement to ban semi-automatics.

The registry is just one part of abandoning our world-envied mutual trust basis of cooperation between police and citizen. Police HQ want the register despite having starved and mis-managed the arms registry we’ve had for 30 years for pistols and MSSAs. They let it become notoriously unreliable despite having all the powers they needed to ensure it functioned pretty much as the registry they now want to make universal.

But I don’t blame them for that dereliction. The existing registry was just not useful enough to justify much expense. Registry uselessness was most dramatically shown in Canada’s abandonment of their registry after spending more than C$1bn on it.

Melanie Phillips: “I need to check your thinking” said the English police officer

At long last, an English court has struck a blow against the cultural tyranny of thought-crime and in support of freedom of speech, reason and sanity.

In the High Court, Mr Justice Julian Knowles ruled that the police had been disproportionate in the action they took against Harry Miller, a former police officer and a shareholder in a plant and machinery company in Lincolnshire, when they recorded as a “non crime hate incident” a series of disobliging comments he had tweeted about transgender issues.

It’s worth reading the judgment in full here, not just for the judge’s full-throated defence of freedom of expression, nor his often sardonic turns of phrase, but to understand the jaw-dropping and terrifying state of authoritarian imbecility to which our once-robust culture has descended.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 23.02.20

Wednesday February 26, 2020

News:
Hunger striker - 'I don’t think they wanted a dead Māori in their jail'
An inmate's 25-day hunger strike ended unexpectedly in his release from prison after he tried to become "a martyr".

Francis Shaw stopped eating at Rimutaka Prison in Upper Hutt in January and last Tuesday declared he would also cease taking liquids.

NZCPR Weekly: Election Year – a quick glimpse ahead

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we look ahead to the election and touch on some of the key issues that could affect the outcome, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Dr Edward Hudson outlines why New Zealand has a housing affordability crisis, and our poll asks whether you think New Zealand First will be back in Parliament after the election.

*To read the newsletter click HERE.
*To register for the NZCPR Weekly mailing list, click HERE.  

GWPF Newsletter - Boris Beware: Tory MPs Threaten To Rebel If Fuel Duty Is Raised In The Budget

Boris Johnson Risks Betraying The Very Voters Who Trusted The Conservatives

In this newsletter:

1) Boris Beware: Tory MPs Threaten To Rebel If Fuel Duty Is Raised In The Budget, Warning It Would Hurt Northern Voters
Daily Mail, 21 February 2020

2) Meddling in Domestic Heating is Foolish: Increasing Fuel Duty is a Blunder
Global Warming Policy Forum, 21 February 2020

Karl du Fresne: Not before time, an English judge upholds the right to free speech

Until a few days ago, I hadn’t heard of Mr Justice Julian Knowles. Neither, I daresay, had many other people. But we owe Mr Justice Julian Knowles a debt of gratitude for driving a long-overdue stake into the ground in defence of free speech.

Knowles, a judge of England’s High Court, presided over a case in which a man named Harry Miller challenged the legality of police action taken against him over comments he had made on Twitter relating to trans-gender women.

Miller opposes planned law changes that would make it easier for people to legally change their gender. Along with many British feminists, he’s concerned that this would allow traditionally female spaces – for example, women’s changing rooms, women’s gyms and women’s refuges – to be invaded by people who are biologically male but identify as female.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 16.02.20

Saturday February 22, 2020

News:
Pou ‘creates a sense of place’
A new pou was unveiled and blessed yesterday at the Motu Bridge.

Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and Te Aitanga a Mahaki yesterday celebrated the unveiling of Hinetapuarau, a seven-metre-tall steel pou installed at the State Highway 2/Te Wera Road intersection just north of Matawai.

GWPF Newsletter: Will A Green Boris Face Macron’s Fate?

10 Downing Street Pushes To Hike Fuel Duty ‘So That Boris Will Look Good For UN Climate Conference’

In this newsletter:

1) Dominic Cummings Pushes To Hike Fuel Duty ‘So That Boris Will Look Good For UN Climate Conference’
The Sun, 20 February 2020
 
2) Read My Lips: Boris Explicitly Told Voters He Had No Intention Of Raiding Fuel Duty
Guido Fawkes, 20 February 2020

Eric Crampton: Where do we go from here?

The government this week extended the COVID-19 (coronavirus) travel ban barring foreign nationals from arriving in New Zealand from mainland China and suggesting self-quarantine for Kiwis returning.

The continued ban feels like the right decision for a highly contagious disease with mortality rates that appear to be around twenty times higher than the seasonal flu. But feels are a poor basis for policy.

The disease has some very worrying features.

Bob Edlin: How the management of monetary policy and other RBNZ activities are being steeped in Maori mythology

Acculturation – the cultural modification of an individual, group, or people by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture or a merging of cultures – is increasingly evident in this country’s public agencies.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has not escaped the process.  In July 2018, soon after Adrian Orr became the governor, the Otago Daily Times reported the new  head of the country’s august central bank was planning to shift the mindset of the institution towards better embracing the rich cultural diversity of the country.

Since he had taken up the post (the ODT reported)

… phrases like tikanga Maori and te reo have begun to feature prominently on its priority list.

Viv Forbes: The Looming Collision between Electric Vehicles and Green Energy

Two green-dream fantasies are heading for a massive and costly collision.

Firstly they dream of generating all grid power from wind/solar propped up by battery storage (such as lots of giant Tesla batteries and pumped hydro).

Secondly they dream of replacing all petrol/diesel/gas cars, trucks and buses with electric vehicles, powered by more batteries.

But wind farms do well if they can average about 35% of their rated capacity with low predictability, while solar panels average just 25% of their capacity, produced intermittently. To generate zero emissions energy for Australia, we would need hills covered with turbines, flats covered with solar panels, the countryside spider-webbed with access roads and transmission lines, and much more hydro.

GWPF Newsletter: Europe’s Anti-Science Plague Descends On Africa

The Radical Greens’ Role In Africa’s Locusts Crisis

In this newsletter:

1) Europe’s Anti-Science Plague Descends On Africa
James Njoroge, European Scientist, 17 February 2020
 
2) The Radical Greens’ Role In Africa’s Locusts Crisis
Richard Tren and Jasson Urbach, CapX, 28 February 2020

Karl du Fresne: The new ruling class

Politics in the 21^st century is often characterised as a contest between the elites and the populists.

The elites – often referred to as the metropolitan or inner-city elites – are Leftist idealists who prefer to describe themselves as “progressive”. Leading global figureheads include the two HCs, Hillary Clinton and Helen Clark.

You could almost call the elites the new ruling class, since they have power and influence far beyond their numbers. They predominate in the universities, the media, the arts, schools, the churches, the public service and the not-for-profit sector – that vast and perpetually busy plethora of organisations, mostly taxpayer-subsidised, that lobby for politically correct causes.

Marco Navarro-Genie: Want to Help Harry and Meghan? Leave Them Be.

Personal autonomy and the exercise of individual conscience are cornerstones of western civilization. We expect mature individuals to accept that personal autonomy includes embracing the consequences of independent decisions. We have entrenched these values in the canon, from Magna Carta (1215) to Canada’s Constitution Act (1982). 

So, when Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, announced they no longer wish to have official royal duties, our generous inclination is to support their desire for greater autonomy. 

Plenty of ink is being dedicated to the Sussexes, but little has focused on an important consequence of their decision: they have renounced their public duty. 

Mike Hosking: The political money fight is on

Do you feel $4000 worse off?

If Simon Bridges' numbers are to be believed, that's his claim, on average after all the new taxes, fees, and compliance under the Labour/New Zealand First/Green Government we are about $4000 a year worse off.

Median rent is up over $2500 a year. That will come as no surprise if you've looked for a place to rent as our family has. Queues are long, competition is intense, choice is small, and the quality at times is frightening.

Petrol taxes $200 a year, tax cuts you never got $1000 a year, and so it goes.

NZCPR Weekly: Judicial Activism

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we look into the disastrous impact the former Chief Justice’s judicial activism has had on the country as the first of 200 tribal claims to the coast reach High Court hearings this year; our NZCPR Guest Commentator British journalist Melanie Phillips outlines the positive change that is occurring in the UK now that they have a conservative Judge as their Chief Justice, and our poll asks whether you support introducing Maori tikanga into the law.

*To read the newsletter click HERE.
*To register for the NZCPR Weekly mailing list, click HERE.  

Matt Ridley: Britain needs to rediscover failure if it wants to prosper

What was Brexit for? After finally taking Britain out of the European Union, the Prime Minister can now start to give us his answer — and the opportunity in front of him is pretty clear. He could speed up, perhaps double, the rate of economic growth by unleashing innovation. After leaving the slow steaming European convoy, Britain must not chug along but go full speed ahead. That means rediscovering trial and error, serendipity and swiftness — the mechanisms by which the market finds out what the consumer wants next.

The stifling of innovation by vested interests in the corridors of Brussels has held Britain back for too long — but it is not the only reason for our sluggish innovation capacity. We can also blame creaky infrastructure, neglect of the north, a glacial-speed planning system, the temptations of a speculative property market, low research and development spending, and a chronic inability to turn good ideas into big businesses.

Bryce Edwards: Political Roundup - Is Government policy for sale in New Zealand?

Does money buy policy in New Zealand politics and government? Based on the ongoing political finance scandal involving New Zealand First, which comes hot on the heels of the Serious Fraud Office charging four people in relation to donations to the National Party, New Zealanders have every reason to doubt the integrity of the electoral process. It’s no wonder there are growing calls for reform of a broken political finance system.

The ongoing leaks about the donations received by NZ First, and what look like attempts to at least circumvent political finance laws, saw the Electoral Commission refer the matter to the Police, who have now passed the scandal onto the Serious Fraud Office for investigation. At question is the role of the NZ First Foundation, which Winston Peters argues is separate from the party, but which appears to have been used to collect the donations in a highly questionable way.