Union explains support for pilot sacked over Covid-19 vaccine
The New Zealand Airline Pilots Association (NZALPA) supported Philip Tighe-Umbers in his court case against Jetconnect, which supplies crew to Qantas.
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NZ Herald
8 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Covid inquiry: Time to cut Dame Jacinda Ardern a break – Fran O'Sullivan
Sowing dissension when this country could more usefully focus on setting an ambition that might persuade more talented New Zealanders to build their futures here instead of heading for the departure lounge. Fact: Ardern has agreed to give evidence to phase two of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Government's response to Covid-19. If she cares deeply for her reputation – and I am sure she does, given the global acclaim that has come her way after her memoir A Different Kind of Power – she will agree to do that in public during the commission's hearings. Ardern doesn't have to come back to New Zealand for that. If the commission calls her – and it should – it can take evidence via Zoom as is now commonplace in transnational court hearings. Subjecting the former Prime Minister to running a gauntlet of personal and potentially physical abuse by insisting she gives evidence in New Zealand will just set off another wave of paranoid behaviour. It won't help in getting to the facts and motivations which coloured prime ministerial decision-making in the Covid years in the dispassionate manner that is needed. The economic trade-offs where the money printers went overtime and dollars were flung at business – critics lament that now. The country has a debt bubble to digest. But it is notable that some critics come from companies that took the Government's financial handouts but did not remit them back when their fortunes improved. The shareholders were winners. The taxpayers were 'tail-end Charlie' here. Go figure. Commission chair Grant Illingworth, KC, has said the inquiry will take public evidence from those affected by 'social division and isolation, health and education, and business activity'. This is important so New Zealand can learn the hard lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic and craft strategies for when the next pandemic arrives, as it certainly will. It will also provide a bloodletting for those who were most cruelly affected by the former Labour Government's Covid policies. Hearing from the 'victims' is long overdue. And there are personal stories aplenty, as most can attest. The commission also wants to hear from key decision-makers (and experts) about major decisions and their consequences so lessons can be learned. But the inquiry would be incomplete without hearing from Ardern, former Finance Minister Grant Robertson, former health supremo Sir Ashley Bloomfield and others within the tight Beehive circle that ran the country during the Covid years. It is undeniable that Ardern's performances at the 1pm 'podium of truth', where she and Bloomfield updated daily on the latest Covid situation, were required viewing. Her most impressive attribute was her mastery of that press conference. Her coining of the 'team of five million' (drawn from the late Sir Peter Blake's slogans to build public support for his America's Cup campaigns) to unite New Zealanders in 'fighting the virus' was also masterful. And it worked – at least in the initial phases of the pandemic response. People stayed home. The hospitals were not overrun. Lives were saved – although it is noticeable that the current world Covid death rate statistics show that many other countries did better than New Zealand in the long run. But Ardern's Covid honeymoon was quick to sour. Just one year after she pulled off a historic victory by catapulting Labour to an outright win in the October 2020 election, Ardern's reign hit stumbling blocks. Her Government's tardiness in getting sufficient New Zealanders vaccinated before the mid-August 2021 Delta outbreak helped pave the way for a punishing Auckland lockdown. This was Ardern's toughest year as Prime Minister. Cap that with the politically naive decision not to speak with protesters on Parliament's front lawn – instead of at least speaking with their leaders as commonsense former PM Jim Bolger advocated – and it is not surprising that the tide went out on her prime ministership. It was obvious to anyone coming down from Auckland to Wellington during this period that our political leaders were in a bubble of their own. I went to political journalist Tova O'Brien's farewell from the press gallery on the day we were finally allowed to travel domestically again. It was a different world. No paranoia about drunk citizens hassling or mugging people and acting thuggishly, which had become all too commonplace in the Auckland CBD, where I had spent the past four months. It was all bonhomie and drinks aplenty. The atmosphere also brought into sharp focus the lack of reality that coloured those 1pm press conferences to those watching from Auckland. Bizarre traffic light systems, for instance. The Prime Minister's empathetic response to the March 2019 Christchurch massacre, where 51 Muslims were murdered at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques, had earlier propelled her to international superstardom. The world's tallest building – Dubai's Burj Khalifa – had been lit up with a giant image of Ardern embracing a woman at a Kilbirnie mosque. Her leadership was tested not just by the terrorist attack, but by the Whakaari/White Island disaster and the pandemic. It's ironic that few thank her now for throwing so much money at the crisis. That's the pain of having to pay all that debt back. But there is room to examine all of this dispassionately – not try to (figuratively) hang her again as the more deranged attempted when they wheeled out their noose on Parliament's grounds.
Otago Daily Times
12 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Spell has been cast: $150,000 grant for startup
"I feel like I am doing the thing I was put on Earth to do." Dunedin man Rupert Denton is referring to his startup Spellcaster, a literacy platform targeting children and teens who have become disengaged from mainstream schooling. Mr Denton, who moved from Melbourne to Dunedin with his family at the beginning of 2022, has drawn on his own experiences as a secondary school teacher to create the resource. Spellcaster recently received a $150,000 grant, in the startup category, from the New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence (Code) as part of its 10th round of game development funding in the city. It previously received a $40,000 grant in the KickStart category. Since July last year, Spellcaster has been in a pilot phase but it was now being launched commercially to help students and teachers. Mr Denton was previously teaching in Victoria, initially in rural areas and then at The Pavilion School in inner Melbourne, a specialist school for students who had been disengaged or excluded from mainstream education. Many of the students came with complex presentations — whether that was encounters with the justice system, homelessness or drug and alcohol abuse, they had been through a lot and that was sometimes coupled with intellectual disabilities or learning difficulties, he said. Often there had been negative experiences with mainstream schooling and they were very disengaged, Mr Denton said. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for children it was not just a matter of making remote learning work, as some did not have the likes of desks or the internet, but also working with foodbanks to ensure they were fed. Literacy resources were typically designed for much younger children and Mr Denton wanted to build something that was more appropriate for those in their teenage years. He taught himself software engineering in Melbourne and then did further work after arriving in Dunedin with his New Zealand-born wife and two young children. He began talking to former colleagues, speech therapists and parents to find what was available for older students and the challenges they found when working with disengaged learners. He began working full-time on Spellcaster in February last year, saying he still felt a commitment to students at The Pavilion School, even if they were no longer there. The pilot phase had been about getting as much feedback from as many different learners, educators and the public as possible, to really "dial in the product". Initially, it was a game but the platform had been extended to have lesson plan support and an adult was needed to lead the work. Pricing was deliberately set to be affordable so it was not out of reach for anyone needing it. It was designed to layer in alongside what schools were already doing, rather than replace what they were doing, he said. Since its launch, about 4000 students throughout Australia and New Zealand had been on the platform. He was working with educators globally, including at an international school in Kobe, Japan, and a speech pathologist near Baltimore who was using Spellcaster to support someone with a speech language disorder. Mr Denton saw it being particularly used for students aged 9 and over. They were at the centre of everything the team of three — Mr Denton, game developer Josiah Hunt and software engineer Ethan Fraser — did. Mr Hunt was also based in Dunedin while Mr Fraser, who is originally from Dunedin, now lives in Wellington. While Mr Denton had never been to Dunedin before he moved here, he loved the sense of community and how supportive the startup ecosystem was. "I'm so proud to be doing something in Dunedin," he said.
Otago Daily Times
12 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
The ins and outs of what is in, and out, of the Standards Bill
On Thursday, as Act New Zealand leader David Seymour was touring Dunedin, back in Wellington a somewhat surreal select committee process of keen interest to him was drawing to a close. The finance and expenditure select committee — or at least a Covid lockdown-reminiscent Zoom version of it — spent all week considering submissions on Mr Seymour's trophy legislation, the Regulatory Standards Bill. Predictably, given the avalanche of criticism the Bill has received in the leadup to the hearings, the vast majority of submitters were implacably opposed to it, for a wide variety of reasons. This, somewhat disingenuously, mystifies Mr Seymour, who professes the Bill — which he has tried and failed to pass in previous parliaments — is nothing more than an attempt to improve the law-making process in New Zealand. This would be done by each piece of proposed regulation and legislation being reviewed through the lens of a set of regulatory principles ... and therein lies the fundamental issue critics have with the Bill. Put simply, what makes a good law is a contestable idea, and what Mr Seymour thinks should underpin responsible and responsive legislation is not a universally shared concept. The Bill does have a proposed safeguard in place — a committee to oversee its function — but many submitters also doubted it would, or could, be a truly independent watchdog. Some things in the regulatory principles are non-contentious: few would argue with laws being consistent with existing legislation, effective, having heed of the rule of law and not impinging unnecessarily on rights. But opposition to the Bill revolves, generally, around two things: what has been put in the Bill and what has been left out. What has been put in are things like guarantees of property rights and personal freedoms, and what has been left out is any consideration of the place and role of the Treaty of Waitangi or environmental protections. Bill supporters have been reassuring on this front, arguing that the principle that the public interest be considered when drafting laws and regulations covers a multitude of concerns; opponents, however, lack faith that those who will determine what the public interest actually is will truly reflect their concerns. A variety of southerners appeared before the committee this week. The first salvo from the region was one of the few in favour of the Bill, Queenstown's Basil Walker (once briefly an Act candidate) arguing that New Zealand could not increase economic growth, and hence income from business taxation, without the sort of better governance reforms the draft legislation proposed. Much more scepticism was evinced soon after by the Dunedin City Council, whose chief in-house lawyer Karilyn Canton said that the council was concerned the Bill was neither necessary or desirable, and overly narrow in some parts and over-simplified in others. She said the council felt the Bill ran counter to existing Local Government Act requirements concerning consideration of Treaty of Waitangi issues and environmental concerns. It also felt that it would be required to review bylaws and plans for their compliance to the Bill's principles — ironically adding to compliance costs when the Bill purported to reduce red tape. Speaking of the DCC, Tuesday featured a blast from the past when former mayor Aaron Hawkins (who was quite the juxtaposition to his preceding submitter, the Taxpayers Union) got his five minutes of fame. Mr Hawkins did not hold back, rejecting the Bill in its entirety — "no amount of tinkering can save this Bill from itself" — and saying he was appalled by Mr Seymour's attacks on opponents of the legislation. "Ultimately Mr Seymour's attacks leave me confused because either this Bill is necessary to shape all of our legislation coming through the House, as he says, or it's nothing to be worried about, as he also says, because it cannot be both." University of Otago Wellington public health academics Calvin Cochran and Amanda D'Souza did not have the same high-flying rhetoric but each had deep concerns over the Bill, which they felt posed unacceptable risks to public health, the environment and Maori/Crown relations. The law change could stymie future legislation on tobacco and vaping control, a potential sugar tax on junk food and drinks and controls on alcohol abuse. Mr Cochrane, a research fellow, further noted that health positive legislation — specifically the smokefree environment laws — might never have been passed had they first had to clear a scrutiny of their infringement on property rights. That afternoon the Otago University Students Association wheeled out its representative (and Labour-backed council candidate) Jett Groshinski. OUSA, in the manner of Mr Hawkins earlier, was not pulling any punches either, calling the Bill not just flawed, but dangerous. "Let's not sugarcoat it, this is a calculated attempt to rewrite how we make laws in this country, shifting power away from the public and towards an ideology that puts profits before people." Completing a local body candidate-packed lineup of southern submissions, on Thursday the Green Party opted for the party's Dunedin mayoral candidate Mickey Treadwell as the frontman for its organisational submission in opposition to the Bill. The Greens, unsurprisingly, highlighted the Bill's "egregious omission" of any reference to the Treaty, the environment and the Bill of Rights Act. More locally, Mr Treadwell felt it would create legal ambiguity for local bylaws, plans, liquor bans and freedom camping rules. Finally, and even more locally, he raised the spectre of residents in South Dunedin, from where he was zooming in, being ankle-deep in climate change-fuelled flooding, and asked rhetorically what the Bill's claimed improving of regulatory standards might do for them. Well, perhaps all the paper the Bill has generated this week might be used to build bulwarks and other defences?
