election 2023

bryce

Hipkins might just be hoping that a change of faces will be enough to assuage voters: “This is a series of tweaks aimed at suggesting a change in approach, rather than a massive pivot to new policies. New faces do make a difference, but this is not a broad shift or likely to completely reverse unloved reforms such as Three Waters and the centralisation of the DHBs.” And Hickey points out that “the Health and Three Waters reforms already legislated and mostly completed.”

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How much the change of Health minister will help Labour out in this beleaguered portfolio is up for debate. According to BusinessDesk editor Pattrick Smellie,

“Verrall inherits a literal hospital pass with Andrew Little’s semi-completed public hospital reforms”, and he reminds us that the new minister of this major sector

“is still a first-term MP who wilted at fiery covid-era press conferences”.

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At this stage, it looks likely that Three Waters will be shorn of its contentions co-governance structures, and Mahuta was clearly unable to countenance this sort of alteration.
Instead, Wairarapa MP Kieran McAnulty will be tasked with using his stronger rural reputation to make a new version of the reform palatable to the public.

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Peeni Henare was also relieved of his big job, and instead given ACC and Tourism.

Although Hipkins rejected the notion that Henare was being demoted, the minister also dropped a long way down the rankings. According to Thomas Manch, it all shows that “Hipkins lacked confidence in his handling of the big-ticket portfolio that is defence.” And today, Stuff political editor Luke Malpass says Henare’s demotion was the right thing to do as he seemed “to be MIA in the portfolio for much of his time in charge.”

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new auckland minister - Wood has a huge job ahead of him: “he is effectively being tasked with trying to calm down the biggest city, where resentment over the long winter lockdown in 2021 still simmers, flooding will dent confidence and where, as transport minister, he has yet to turn a single sod of earth on the long-promised light rail project.”

eveningreport.nz/2023/02/03/bryce-edwards-political-roundup-hipkins-bread-and-butter-reshuffle/

A chip of the old block!


Chipcinda!

Gingecinda

The latest from Thomas Cranmer.

Paul Hunt needs to go, Foon as well.  They seem like the types that would benefit from working out in the real world for a few years rather than munching crayons in a windowless rooms.

Amongst the plethora of policy items unceremoniously dumped by Prime Minister Hipkins yesterday, was the proposed hate speech law. Although this particular legislative proposal was short-lived, the wider debate about hate speech had been on-going in the country for several years.

Out of all the policies abandoned yesterday, this was possibly the one most closely associated with Jacinda Ardern. The former Prime Minister dedicated a substantial amount of her political capital towards advocating for restrictions on speech, or as she would describe it, “curating content”.

Indeed Ardern used her two biggest moments on the global stage in 2022 to address the issue. In her Harvard Commencement Speech titled ‘Democracy, disinformation and kindness’, Ardern commented:

Now I will admit to some trepidation entering a discussion on how we strengthen our democracies when this issue is so easily and wrongly distorted into being opposed to free speech. But that fear is overshadowed by a greater fear of what will happen to our democracies, if we don’t act to firm up their foundations.

Then in her address to the UN General Assembly the former Prime Minister stated:

The face of war has changed. And with that, the weapons used. The tools used to challenge the statehood of others are hidden and more complex.

Traditional combat, espionage and the threat of nuclear weapons are now accompanied by cyber-attacks, prolific disinformation and manipulation of whole communities and societies.

As leaders, we have never treated the weapons of old in the same way as those that have emerged. And that's understandable.

After all, a bullet takes a life. A bomb takes out a whole village. A lie online or from a podium does not.

But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms? To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then?

This is no longer a hypothetical. The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old.

Shortly after that speech, the newly appointed Minister of Justice, Kiri Allan, announced that she would be bringing new hate speech legislation to the House before the next election.

In her first appearance on TVNZ's Q+A after taking over the justice portfolio in June, Allan stated, “I will be making announcements on hate speech by the end of this year”.

“I guarantee that I'll be introducing a law that I intend to have concluded and put into law by the next election.”

Within a month of that statement, Allan announced that the government had decided to ditch the majority of its hate speech reforms. Of six proposed changes to the law, only one would proceed – adding the category of “religion” to groups currently protected under the Human Rights Act.

I wrote an article in November about the unsatisfactory nature of the government’s proposal which can be found here.

Yesterday, Hipkins waved goodbye to the final remaining element of the reforms by punting it to the Law Commission for further consideration. However, as was pointed out by the Free Speech Union, it’s difficult to see what further insight could be obtained by such a move.

Twitter avatar for @nzfreespeech
🗣 Free Speech Union ✊
@nzfreespeech
So after a @nzhumanrights, and the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the March 15 Attack, and the MoJustice consultation, what exactly could the Law Commission possibly find that the other 3 have missed?
@chrishipkins needs to admit it, hate speech laws are a bad idea.
6:11 AM ∙ Feb 8, 2023
38Likes8Retweets


More unusual and concerning were the reactions of the Human Rights Commissioner and Race Relations Commissioner.

Paul Hunt stated yesterday that, “This is a failure of the Government to act on a key recommendation of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack on Christchurch masjidain on 15 March 2019”.

The Race Relations Commissioner, Meng Foon, echoed those remarks by stating, “I think it is a very sad day that such a straightforward amendment to legislation has been dropped in this way”. He went on to comment that recommendation 40 of the Royal Commission Report said that the government should amend harmful speech laws to include religion as a protected group.

However, recommendation 40 doesn’t in fact recommend amending section 131 of the Human Rights Act as Allan and the government were proposing to do, or as Hunt and Foon suggested. Recommendation 40 states:

Repeal section 131 of the Human Rights Act 1993 and insert a provision in the Crimes Act 1961 for an offence of inciting racial or religious disharmony, based on an intent to stir up, maintain or normalise hatred, through threatening, abusive or insulting communication with protected characteristics that include religious affiliation.

The Report goes on to provide further explanation for its recommendation by stating:

Section 131 of the Human Rights Act 1993, which criminalises certain types of hate speech, is not fit for purpose. The section as written unacceptably impinges on the right of freedom of expression. The words “excite hostility against or bring into contempt” set a low liability threshold. Accordingly it has invited rewriting by the courts, but in a way that has resulted in considerable uncertainty. More generally it does not provide a credible foundation for prosecution.

We propose a reframed offence that more accurately targets behaviour warranting criminal prosecution and that encompasses hate speech directed at religious affiliation.

This offence should be included in the Crimes Act, rather than the Human Rights Act, to reflect the seriousness of the offence and increase the resulting penalty. It should be reframed to focus on stirring up or provoking hatred against a group of persons defined by protected characteristics, which should include religious affiliation.

Why then are Hunt and Foon mischaracterising the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry? And why did the government embark on this ill-conceived frolic? The only conclusion that can be drawn is that this, like some much of the government’s reform package, was driven by ideology and politics with a total disregard for the recommendations made by experts and the concerns of the public.

its entirely possible, hiding behind the current cyclone damage (WUFLU Mk II) and National not getting the traction they should be against the totally inept Labour government

This is nothing about childcare.
This is all about snookering Labour.

Childcare is such an emotive thing, and damn near impossible to argue against, esp for anyone on the left. What Luxon is doing is highlighting Labour's wasteful spending in a way that can be visualised and appreciated by people that don't read opinion pieces.
It is all about the optics. Luxon has financial discipline, Labour are spending like drunken sailors.

This is Luxon's jump to the left. Everyone expects National to spend big on roads, or other un-sexy infrastructure. People struggling with the cost of living aren't going to get excited about a new motorway coming in 10 years time. So National does a Crazy Ivan, and out lefts the left, but uses Nationals 'Fiscal Responsibility' to do it.
Gold.