Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern oversaw recent changes which meant people didn’t need to visit their local police station to apply for permits for military style guns.

Critics of the move – designed to allow for online applications – say the changes are “crazy” because they take away important face-to-face contact between police and gun buyers.

“It’s been done for all the wrong reasons – this is exactly an example of the type of problem that’s caused this event [in Christchurch],” says firearms lawyer Nicholas Taylor.

“It’s a problem with the vetting – it’s going in totally the opposite direction as it needs to go in.”

READ MORE:
* Police firearms staff proposed restructure could affect more than 350 jobs
* The Christchurch mosque shooter was able to get hold of large capacity magazines with ease
* Christchurch attack: Government has agreed to gun law changes, will tell public within week

The accused gunman got his New Zealand firearms licence in November, 2017 and began buying weapons soon after, including online from Gun City in Christchurch.

A spokesperson for Ardern said although applications for gun licences could now be made online, there was still a requirement for an in-person meeting as part of the vetting process.

Ardern was the chair of an executive committee which ushered through changes to arms regulations just before Christmas last year.

Ardern says firearms law will be overhauled in the wake of the mosque attacks and has not ruled out a ban on semi-automatic weapons. New laws are expected to be rolled out on Thursday.

She has described our guns laws as a “blueprint [for] what not to do”.

The changes were made by a mechanism known as an order in council, where regulations are amended without the need for an Act of Parliament.

Previously under the Arms Act, if someone wanted to become a gun dealer, get a firearms licence, import a restricted weapon, or get a permit to buy a military-style semi-automatic, they had to physically deliver an application to their nearest police station.

Under the changes, people can now apply for those things online, although police can still direct someone to deliver an application in person.

The regulations also allow for a buyer of a restricted weapon to show that weapon to police by video call – whereas in the past they had to take it into the station.

A spokesperson for Ardern characterised the changes as “allowing some paperwork to become electronic” and did not remove the requirement for a face-to-face meeting as part of vetting for a licence.

“Cabinet sought advice and was told that the amendments would not change the strength or rigour of the vetting process. It simply provides an alternative option for the filing of paperwork.”

A Government source said the Christchurch mosque shooter was able to convert guns bought on a standard licence to MSSAs [military style semi-automatics], so even if the online option was available at the time it wouldn’t have been relevant in his case.

Taylor said the changes had already come into effect but there had been no public announcement.

“Really no-one knew about it at all.

“I heard from a dealer who phoned up, he was told by local arms officers in Auckland that permits to procure restricted weapons like MSSAs [military style semi-automatics] and pistols…now aren’t being dealt with by the local arms office – they all have to go to Wellington.

“That would have been unlawful before the change [in December] because it’s specified in the Act that an application for a restricted weapon…has to be done at your local arms office.”

Taylor said applying in person allowed police to assess someone.

“Quite often I had police officers saying ‘your client came in to see me and he was aggro and…saying strange things and acting weirdly’.

“So you’re actually missing out on that very vital step.”

It’s understood the changes were part of a police move to centralise firearms vetting.

Police arms officers were told in January they would be restructured, with 76 district-based positions disestablished and 280 casual vetting staff positions cut entirely.

They would be replaced by 36 field-based positions and 47 centralised positions at a facility in Kapiti.

Firearms groups were furious, saying there had been little consultation.

It’s unclear how the events in Christchurch will impact on the changes.

Acting Superintendent Mike McIlraith said “any final decision will reflect Government intent”.

He said police had reviewed their administration of the Arms Act because it was more than 30 years old and had been “very paper-based, manual and at times inconsistent across districts”.

Firearms staff and the community were consulted, he said.

“They told us we need to make changes.”

McIlraith said the new system would allow people to access police arms services wherever they were needed, with support online.

“Police want a structure focused on both improving our service and ensuring it is aligned to our mission to be the safest country.”

National’s police spokesperson, Chris Bishop, said he understood the proposed restructuring had been dumped even before events in Christchurch, but police were denying that.

Bishop has faced criticism for posting a photo of himself on Facebook celebrating the “victory” of having the policy dropped.

He said centralised vetting was a retrograde step and would impact on public safety.

“Arms officers and vettors are a really important part of the system and we were really concerned.

“That proposal came out of nowhere – the licensed firearms community felt really blindsided by it.

“The reality is that at 1.40pm on Friday everything changed and we’re now going to have to have a good look at the whole system.”

Six KiwiBuild homes contracted ”off the plans” in November had already been built in September, Google Maps imagery shows.

The buying off the plans initiative is generally designed to help developers build affordable homes that would not have been built – or not built in the right price range – if not for the Government’s underwrite of the development.

But six homes now for sale as part of the KiwiBuild scheme in West Auckland can be seen clad and roofed in Google Map imagery from September of 2018, despite documentation showing the final contract was not signed until November.

The houses had also been offered briefly on the open market.

Fully 104 KiwiBuild homes from developer Mike Greer were announced in February, including the six homes already completed.

Housing Minister Phil Twyford noted at the time that the deal had been “in the works for a number of months” and the developer had “been building while the details have been hammered out, meaning the first homes are already ready to sell”.

“The deal is much wider than the six homes in Huapai and includes 104 homes in West Auckland and Christchurch. Mike Greer has been clear that the agreement enabled him to save costs, lower his profit, and have certainty to build faster. This meant both the homes were cheaper for first home buyers and more homes were built,” Twyford said.

The underwrite scheme basically guarantees the developer that if the homes do not sell through KiwiBuild or sell at a discounted price the Government will pick up the tab.

National’s housing spokeswoman Judith Collins drew attention to the already-built homes in Question Time on Thursday, asking if Finance Minister Grant Robertson was aware that the underwrite was covering homes that already been built.

When the contract was signed in November the Government had not yet admitted it would not make its goal of 1000 KiwiBuild homes built by July 1.

Collins believed that at this point Twyford was desperate to save that promise.

“The Minister was still saying in late-November that he was confident in reaching his 1000 houses mark. He was signing up anything,” Collins said.

“These are houses that are not adding to supply.”

Twyford said in the House that the KiwiBuild underwrite allowed an existing Mike Greer project to be greatly expanded and include more affordable homes.

“As Mike Greer himself explained in the media, he’d been negotiating with the KiwiBuild unit for several months while he put that development together, and, as he said, the KiwiBuild underwrite allowed him to build a larger development with more affordable homes,” Twyford said.

“It reduced his financing costs, enabled him to reduce his margin and build more affordable homes, and that’s why the KiwiBuild homes are at a lower price than the other homes in that development.”

Collins said she was worried that developers were “rubbing their hands with glee” and taking advantage of the Government’s generous terms.

Well over 10,000 homes have been contracted as part of KiwiBuild, but only 313 potential buyers have completed the pre-qualification process. Just under 50,000 have registered interest, however.

Mike Greer said the prospect of a partnership with KiwiBuild ”allowed us to push ahead with the Huapai development and build homes we otherwise may not have. We formally moved these six homes into the KiwiBuild programme as the contract was finalised.”

Stuff Circuit

The government is approaching the halfway mark of its first term. Perhaps it is time to take a look back at the last 18 months and see what they have achieved, what they are in the process of doing and to give them a bit of a report card. This could be an interesting exercise.

Free Tertiary Fees. So the first thing a socialist government did was to engage in middle class welfare and give free first tertiary year fees to the children of millionaires and wealthier people. They also gave all superannuiants, including millionaires, a free heating allowance of $400 each per year, but they cancelled National’s planned tax cuts, which would have benefited all taxpayers… not just John Key’s ‘rich mates’.

Working groups. There are approximately 130 of them and they are all going to report back this year. Apart from the obscene waste of money, no government is going to be able to deal with this well; some of the proposals will contradict others and will produce a Gordian knot of policy issues.

Destroying the Oil and Gas Industry. Climate change may be Jacinda’s nuclear moment, but it would be worth her while remembering that the nuclear moment never actually happened. In the meantime, the government has destroyed a profitable industry and thrown away our energy security; all in an effort to look good on the world stage.

The Provincial Growth Fund. Giving an obscene amount of taxpayers money to a rogue minister desperate for an electoral seat was always a bad idea. So far, the PGF has lent money to risky schemes, such as Westland Milk and was the reason for 190,000 tree saplings being mulched. Apparently, however, it has created a massive 54 jobs. The benefit to regional New Zealand so far is questionable.

Karel Sroubek. Our most ‘open and transparent government’ told us to ‘read between the lines’ when it decided to grant residency to a drug dealing, wife beating Czech, while hard working restaurant owners were told to leave. We were never sure what sort of ‘lines’ we should be reading, but this was a debacle of epic proportions.

Banning plastic bags.

Yep. Makes complete sense.

UN Migration Compact. The government that campaigned on reducing immigration then signed up to a UN agreement that allows absolutely anyone who arrives on our shores the right to live here… but it is okay… the compact is not binding. Yep. That makes complete sense too.

Kiwibuild. The government’s flagship policy, designed to provide affordable housing for those ‘locked out’ of the housing market, ran aground very early on. After promising a modest 1,000 houses to be built in the first year, they then decided that measuring their progress was ‘not helpful’. In other words, the scheme is failing badly, with $2 billion of taxpayer’s money involved and no one wanting their houses. Another stunning success for the government.

Health deficits. The Minister of Health has managed, until now, to keep quiet the fact that every single district health board is now in the red, creating a $200 million national deficit. He kept this quiet by refusing to release data that used to be published quarterly. Nothing like ‘open and transparent’, is there, David?

Capital Gains Tax. In spite of the majority of the electorate being opposed to the idea, the government is hell-bent on forcing CGT on New Zealanders. There have been various reasons given for this, most of which have been refuted, but these days we seem to be down to ‘because it is fair’ (although no one will tell us who it is being fair to), or ‘we are the only OECD country without one’. Apparently, Belgium doesn’t have CGT, so there goes that excuse as well. “Because it is fair” seems to be all that we have.

Reducing the MMP threshold to 4%. All of the above demonstrates how very badly this government is performing, and it seems that they are actually aware of it. Fearful of an electoral disaster next year, they are now proposing to drop the MMP threshold to 4% without a referendum, and without even the usual requirement of approval of 75% of parliament. This should guarantee two of the government’s coalition partners that are currently on life support at least one more electoral term. Nothing like democracy, is there? The people are most definitely NOT getting the chance to speak on this one.

I give the government a total score of 0/10 on all of the above. They are a disgrace.

OPINION: What’s laden, but never full. Pure, but never clear. Given, but never received?

Why, the Government’s answers to most questions of general accountability, of course.

Expanded, it may read: What’s laden with hyperbole but never full of any substance, pure of intention but never clear with solutions, and given but never in a way where any real information is received.

It leaves the public trying to decipher the head-scratching riddles that have been coming from the mouths of ministers, wondering what any of it actually means.

This is the so-called “year of delivery”. And with that, surely, comes the expectation that the Government has developed a position or plan to deliver on its promises.

But a flurry of announcements, some made when they shouldn’t have been and some buried when they should probably have been declaimed in bold to the sound of ringing sirens, has done little to deliver the sense that there’s a plan.

There’s been a string of issues that have flown mostly under the radar in the past couple of weeks – relatively minor in isolation, but together they paint a picture of artful dodging.

Here are some of the issues where the Government communications plan may threaten to create more questions than it answers.

The Provincial Growth Fund: And this isn’t just about the flowery speech patterns of self-styled regional saviour Shane Jones (though it’s always a little bit about that).

It emerged on Thursday that the Treasury advised Jones against giving a $10 million loan to private firm Westland Milk, on the basis the company couldn’t get a bank loan and thus the Government ran the risk of looking like a “lender of last resort”.

The debt-laden West Coast company is hoping to build a new plant with the money, to make higher-value products.

It was announced to both huge fanfare and raised eyebrows, in November last year. So much fanfare that Jones had to share the regionally hallowed ground he walks on with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

There were enough unanswered questions then – namely why the loan had passed the Government’s threshold for a good spend.

They were only added to, this week, when Jones was asked to justify the Government’s reasons for pressing ahead with a loan that the Treasury had effectively branded a shonky deal. (Unsurprisingly, there was no Government fanfare to accompany this announcement.)

A spokesman for Jones said: “The PGF, when granting a loan, is able to consider wider benefits than a commercial bank would, such as wider regional development and employment outcome.”

The number of jobs bandied about at the time was 10 and, although there’s an escape clause if the company’s ownership structure was to change, it emerged a little more than a month later that Westland Milk had entered discussions to be sold in part, or wholly, to a Canadian company.

What of due diligence, when there are regions to save and the chance to look good while doing it.

The Wellbeing Budget: The Government has hyped its “living standards framework” for which the full capability is expected to be revealed in the May Budget.

We know from Ardern touting it on the international stage that every cent will somehow be run through a filter to show how it contributes to “intergenerational wellbeing”.

What we don’t know is how that applies to things like intelligence and security spending, or the important but completely unvirtuous funding of an unaccountable slush fund that doles money out to struggling private businesses.

Even if the Government manages to tell an effective story to explain how it works, it’ll have a job on its hands explaining how it all adds up to help any single struggling family.

Don’t forget, it took at least two years for most people to realise the last Government’s social investment approach was a tangible thing.

The Government also faces a rather substantial vulnerability over an accompanying tool, which applies monetary values to pretty much anything, to help it weigh up funding decisions.

The fact that befriending a neighbour appears to hold more value than curing diabetes appears ripe for mischievous exploitation from the Opposition.

The argument that it’s merely an “accounting function” didn’t count for much when Labour was feigning outrage over the last government’s use of the term “liability” to describe the total welfare bill on the state.

​DHBs in the red: About the time the Tax Working Group was dropping its CGT-shaped bomb on the completely suspecting country was the time Health Minister David Clark chose to reveal that every single district health board had finally made it into the red – a $200m national deficit.

This, after months of ministry blocking and refusal to release the numbers that used to be made public on a quarterly basis.

With his release was the assurance that the proactive minister had put them all “on notice” and an attached letter he’d sent, to DHB chief executives, expecting them to prioritise saving a non-specified amount, in non-specified areas.

Oh, and he was most displeased that services were also slipping for specialist waiting times, elective surgical waiting times, and those for radiology or cancer services. Most displeased indeed.

This is your periodic reminder that he abolished the reporting of those targets.

What of Whanau Ora: It gained little fanfare, despite the fact it’s an apparent success story. And at first blush, that’s perhaps the biggest cause for confusion – why was this not being sung from the rooftops?

Journalists expecting the report had expected a press conference and possibly even the release of embargoed copies – a common practice that allows detailed stories to be done justice in their first iteration. But no such forward planning was allowed.

Puzzling, until it’s considered that Whanau Ora doing well goes against NZ First’s principles of “one law for all”, and even against some elements of the Labour Party’s own views of universality.

So when the Government ordered a review into the flagship Māori development funding model under the last government, everyone held their breath that it was the beginning of the end.

It may well still be. Except that the review which came back called for nothing really, except more resourcing of a policy programme it said was making a real difference to individual families.

It’s yet to make a decision on how it approaches the review’s recommendations, so we’ll just add it to the pile of reviews so far returned on which the country is waiting for answers. That also includes mental health, welfare and tax.

Let’s see the coalition spin these.

* Comments are now closed on this article.

Don’t listen to Jacinda’s rhetoric about how only the top 20% of taxpayers will pay CGT. That 20% will include a lot of people who are far from wealthy. It will include people with small businesses, with lifestyle blocks and with KiwiSaver. As everyone who has a KiwiSaver account will be affected on an annual basis, her claim that only the top 20% will be affected is incorrect anyway. quote.

In his first big economic speech of the year, at least Finance Minister Grant Robertson acknowledged there is an issue for this country at the moment. Like all good relationships, he said, there will be issues arising from time to time that have to be dealt with and we can’t shy away from those.

Exporters were encountering issues around softening demand and there were regulatory issues with China, which is shorthand for trouble at the border.
And the elephant trumpet in the room full of suits of course couldn’t be ignored.
Robertson unwittingly confirmed the reaction to the Taxation Working Group’s report is causing some consternation on the upper floors of the Beehive. end quote.

 

Honestly, I just don’t get these guys. They have had plenty of warning that CGT is political suicide, but they are so governed by their socialist ideology, they seem to think that we will all come to our senses and realise that they know best. It won’t happen.quote.

When one politician repeats verbatim what another one has said, the orchestration of the response is obvious. Think of the National Party parrots at the height of the bullying allegations. Both Simon Bridges and his sidekick Paula Bennett were word-perfect, emphasising the “strong culture” in the party and that “people liked coming to work”.

They’d been schooled – just like Labour’s been over the working group’s recommendations.

Robertson’s buddy boss Jacinda Ardern told us after Cabinet that “by and large the New Zealand tax system works well”, a line repeated word for word by the Finance Minister to the business boffins. end quote.

It does work well. Compared to many tax systems around the world, it is relatively simple… something that will change dramatically with the introduction of CGT. quote.

The end result will probably be very different now, but only because the reaction to CGT has been so negative. Remember how the TWG said they couldn’t make CGT work, and Grant Robertson told them to go back and try harder? quote.

The view of James Shaw of the Greens – that the Government doesn’t deserve to be re-elected if it doesn’t adopt a capital gains tax – won’t be that difficult to resolve. As Winston Peters has repeatedly said, we already have a capital gains tax, it’s called the brightline test.

A Newspaper end quote.

That is where I think this whole debacle will end up. All businesses will be exempt, and possibly shares because we have long been told to invest in productive assets. The ridiculous attempts to tax the family home by any means possible will be thrown out, meaning lifestyle blocks and homes that have had rooms rented or used as an office will be exempted. Retirement savings, including KiwiSaver, will be exempted on the grounds that people must be encouraged to save for retirement. Farms will be left alone. That only leaves investment property, which has been the focus of this whole exercise from Day 1 anyway. We will end up with a perpetual Bright Line Test.

This will finish off the private rental market, and will leave hundreds of thousands of people with nowhere to live. Yes, those rental houses that are sold will go to first time buyers, but there will always be a pool of people who need to rent. Some people will never own their own house, and some will need temporary rental accommodation. Either way, it is more bad news for tenants, as landlords sell up in droves and take their nice, juicy capital gains with them before the tax is introduced. This is what socialist ideology does to our society.

Figures released to Newshub show that the KiwiBuild targets have turned out, like every other target from the current inept bunch of bunglers in the Beehive, to be ‘aspirational’.

The KiwiBuild programme was launched in July 2018 and we were assured by Twyford that it would deliver 100,000 homes for first home buyers over the next decade.

That seems rather like 10,000 per year for 10 years, in simple average terms. quote.

Since the annual targets were dropped, the Government has been using “over 10,000” as the number of KiwiBuild homes that it’s got contracted or committed.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern celebrated the figure in her official start of the year statement.

The number of houses expected to be built

• 2019: 341
• 2020: 1121
• 2021: 1515
• 2022: 1205
• 2023: 1329
• 2024: 1022
• 2025: 917
• 2026: 1045
• 2027: 1010
• 2028: 850

A total of 10,355 houses in 10 years. Has anyone seen the lost 89,645 houses? Lurking in Te Kauwhata perhaps? quote.

[…] on November 8, a new manager began at the Ministry. Around that time, [former head of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development’s KiwiBuild unit Stephen Barclay] left the office, never to return. And by November 26, the number of homes that were highly likely to be built plummeted.

The Ministry would not do an interview with Newshub, but sent a statement saying it became aware of potential issues with the numbers, and looked into it further.

Its official statement says: “The number of dwellings reported in the October status report included a very broad definition.”

That meant houses that were in very early stages of negotiations were being sold to the Housing Minister as a done deal.

In a statement, Mr Barclay told Newshub his numbers were accurate, and that it appeared something changed after he left.

Phil Twyford is in Australia so was unavailable for an interview, but sent Newshub a statement.

“This matter is related to an ongoing employment dispute so it would be inappropriate for me to comment,” he said.

“There is new leadership in place in the KiwiBuild Unit which is working hard to get much-needed affordable homes built.” end quote.

Yadda, yadda, yadda Phil. Its dead, Phil – give it a decent burial.