Politics Central

There is concern over growing number of firearms incidents, after a dispute ended in a firearm being discharged at a crowded Auckland night spot.
A gun was fired at Dr Rudi's Rooftop Bar in the Viaduct just before 3 this morning.
Police received reports of an altercation after people who were asked to leave the bar became annoyed.
The group became aggressive, with one person pulling out a gun and firing a shot into the ceiling of the foyer.
Police Association president Chris Cahill told The Weekend Collective criminals began arming themselves years ago.
"First they arm themselves, then they start using them against each other. Then they use them against the Police - we saw the worst of that when we lost Matthew Hunt earlier this year - and then the public get caught in the middle of it, and last night was an example of that." 
No arrests have been made in relation to the incident yet.
It comes after a police dog was shot in Northland earlier this week, while a shooting was reported at an Auckland strip club two weeks ago. 
Cahill says that statistics support the fact that there is an increase in firearm-related incidents. 
He says that the gun buyback didn't cover pistols, but it doesn't mean that the buyback didn't work.
"Criminals steal them from legitimate firearms owners." 
Cahill wants to see a gun register, which has passed through Parliament, come into force. He says that when a register came into effect in other countries such as Australia, the number of thefts dropped. 
"People know the guns are registered to them, know they're responsible for them, and they lock them away and secure them better."
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It's a waiting game to see how Iran reacts to the killing of one of that country's leading scientists.
Iran's blamed Israel for the slaying of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was gunned down in a car near Tehran on Friday.
His death has raised fears of reignited tensions across the Middle East.
Otago University international relations expert Robert Patman says it plays into the wider relations of the Iran and the US.
He told The Weekend Collective Iran only became more defiant when the US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
"I can't see how this action of assassinating of their top nuclear scientist will make them any less defiant."
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The opening day of Parliament generated a number of headlines, as the Government announced plans for a climate emergency, Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins clashed on house prices, and Ibrahim Omer delivered a powerful maiden speech. 
However, it was also the first day of the new Māori Party, and their two MPs have walked out of the House in protest during Parliament's Address and Reply debate.
Under the rules, party leaders with more than six MPs get 30 minutes to speak and smaller parties only get the chance if time allows before the House rises at five.
However, because they are new MPs, if they spoke in the Address and Reply debate it would constitute their maiden speech, which are not scheduled until at least next week.
Co-leader Rawiri Waititi tried to secure a speaking slot today based on a standing order that such decisions not discriminate against a minority party.
He told reporters he and co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer walked out after being blocked by Speaker Trevor Mallard.
Former minister Peter Dunne says that the whole situation seemed stage-managed. 
"It's a sign of how they are going to operate in Parliament."
Dunne says Mallard acted correctly based on the standing orders, but this situation also highlights that there is this rare situation where a party leader also happens to be a new MP.
He says that the Maori Party can play to a very specific constituency, more so than other parties, so they don't have to worry about a
"I think what you're going to see from them over the last three years, is nothing too nuanced but a very blunt appeal about Maori sentimentalism and that Maori base of support to secure their future." 
Dunne says the Pakeha system will have to figure out a way of coping, and the more it behaves as it did this week, they will be portrayed as ganging up against the minor party. 
with text from RNZ

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Another referendum on cannabis is being called for - but this time it's to decriminalise it, not legalise it.
Wellington Central Young Greens activist Mathew Bouma has recently put out a citizen-initiated referendum asking whether New Zealand should decriminalise the possession of cannabis for personal use.
He told Tim Roxborogh believes many people would feel more comfortable with this, than the full blown legalisation we voted on at the election.
"Under a legalisation model, if it's legal, it's commercialised really, so companies can sell it, they can profit of it, it's all above board.
"But what decriminalisation means is you won't be charged for possession." 
The proposal is open for comments on the proposed wording until February 1.
House of Representatives Clerk David Wilson and Bouma must then agree on final wording, and the issue will go to a referendum if Bouma can collect valid signatures from at least one-tenth of the country's 3.55 million electors - 355,000 people - within 12 months.
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Act's leader David Seymour is fighting back over plans from Labour to repeal the three strikes law.
Under the 10-year-old law, a person who has three warnings for serious violent, sexual or drugs offending can be sentenced to the maximum jail time without parole.
Not only are they hoping to change the laws, but speaking to TVNZ, Justice Minister Kris Faafoi confirmed that they have sought advice to see if people who are currently on their second or third strike could be re-sentenced.
"We do want the law gone, it hasn't made any meaningful difference to people being safer."
However, Seymour told Tim Beveridge that this would be an early Christmas present from Labour for offenders. 
"Why you'd want to give a break to serious violent and sexual offenders - but only if they commit another crime - is beyond me."
He says that the best thing for victims to keep people who commit three crimes incapcitated.
Seymour says that it is too early to say if the law has worked or not, as it takes serious offenders a long time to commit a crime, be sentenced, serve that sentence, and then commit an offence again. 
"It takes a few more years from here until you start seeing people go away for a long time." 
He says that he is in favour of reducing the prison population, but those who should be incarcerated is those serious offenders.
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President Donald Trump participated in his final Group of 20 summit on Saturday by tweeting throughout the opening session and skipping a special side-conference focused on the coronavirus pandemic.
It was a fitting end to Trump's career in global multilateralism, which he has expressed his displeasure for since his first group summit -- a G7 meeting held cliffside in Sicily -- resulted in the feeling he was being ganged up upon by other world leaders.
It was unclear all week whether Trump would even be present for this year's G20, which is being held virtually because of the pandemic. But on Friday evening, the White House released a schedule confirming his participation.
When the event began, Trump was among the nearly two-dozen world leaders who appeared via video-conference, beaming in from the White House situation room.
But only 13 minutes after the scheduled 8 a.m. ET, start time, Trump was sending tweets focused on his efforts to overturn the results of the US presidential election.
By 10 a.m. ET, the President had departed the White House on his way to his namesake golf club outside Washington, DC.
He was there when the "side event on Pandemic Preparedness" got underway, featuring remarks from French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and several other world leaders. Trump did not participate.
He is due to join another session of the G20 on Sunday morning, according to the White House schedule. But that is likely the last time Trump will meet in a summit setting with other world leaders as the end of his presidency nears.
Trump's influence on the global stage is at a low ebb after losing the election. Most of the other G20 leaders have congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his victory, with a notable exception in Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There had not been high expectations for this year's G20, despite a pandemic that will require global efforts to contain the virus. That is partly down to the absence of American leadership, but other world leaders have also struggled to corral their counterparts into a joint effort to combat Covid-19.
Trump has never been partial to summit meetings, even when they were not held virtually. He departed a G7 meeting in Canada early and rescinded his signature on its final communique. Ahead of last year's G7 in Biarritz, France, he asked his aides whether it was really necessary to attend.
It was Trump's turn to host the G7 this year, but the pandemic foiled plans to host leaders in the United States. At one point, Trump raised the prospect of convening the G7 after the election, but officials say there are no plans in place now to arrange a meeting before the G7 presidency transfers to the United Kingdom in January.
text by Kevin Liptak, CNN

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National Party leader Judith Collins hopes her party's leakers are long gone.
Former Prime Minister John Key warned members at the party's Annual General Meeting yesterday, in a speech on what the Party
"Here is my very simple advice to those who like to leak to the media – if you can't quit your leaking, here's a clue: quit the party."
"The public look at it and say 'for goodness sake, if they can't run their own party, how on earth will they run a country'."
He told MPs that it was okay to disagree and to debate ideas but he said that should be done privately.
"We shouldn't do it by going behind people's backs."
Collins told Tim Beveridge that people lapped up the speech and agreed with his sentiment about leakers.
However, she told the Weekend Collective she's not going on a hunt for them.
"I haven't seen anything myself of any importance leaked since the election, and I hope that whoever it was is gone." 
A speech that was less well-received was that from National Party president Peter Goodfellow, who compared the 1pm press conference as being like "gospel", and says that democracy was replaced by tyranny.
Collins says that Goodfellow was just expressing his view, and that National did struggle to get air time. 
"It's really hard to have the Prime Minister up every day at 1pm talking about what's happening." 
She says that there were similar complaints after the Christchurch earthquake, when John Key was on the news regularly after the disaster. 
Collins says that it was a "surprisingly good mood" at the AGM, with people more accepting of the defeat than they were in 2002 when she and Key both entered Parliament, and more aware of what needs to be done to right the ship before the 2023 election. 
She says that the party needs to think forward and more boldly than the Labour Party.

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Fervent supporters of President Donald Trump rallied in Washington on Saturday behind his spurious claim of a stolen election and swarmed his motorcade when he detoured for a drive-by on his way out of town.
"I just want to keep up his spirits and let him know we support him," one loyalist, Anthony Whittaker of Winchester, Virginia, said from outside the Supreme Court, where a few thousand assembled after a march along Pennsylvania Avenue from Freedom Plaza, near the White House.
A week after Democrat Joe Biden was declared the winner of the election, demonstrations in support of Trump took place in other cities. Fury at the prospect of a transfer of executive power showed no signs of abating, taking a cue the president's unrelenting assertion of victory in a race he actually lost.
A broad coalition of top government and industry officials has declared that the Nov. 3 voting and the following count unfolded smoothly with no more than the usual minor hiccups — "the most secure in American history," they said, repudiating Trump's efforts to undermine the integrity of the contest.
In Delray Beach, Florida, several hundred people marched, some carrying signs reading "Count every vote" and "We cannot live under a Marxist government." In Lansing, Michigan, protesters gathered at the Capitol to hear speakers cast doubt on results that showed Biden winning the state by more than 140,000 votes. Phoenix police estimated 1,500 people gathered outside the Arizona Capitol to protest Biden's narrow victory in the state.
The crowd in Washington was beginning to gather Saturday morning when cheers rang out as Trump's limousine neared Freedom Plaza. People lined both sides of the street, some standing just a few feet away from Trump's vehicle. Others showed their enthusiasm by running along with the caravan.
They chanted "USA, USA" and "four more years," and many carried American flags and signs to show their displeasure with the vote tally. After making the short detour for the slow drive around the site, the motorcade headed to the president's Virginia golf club.
Among the speakers was a Georgia Republican newly elected to the U.S. House. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has expressed racist views and support for QAnon conspiracy theories, urged people to march peacefully toward the Supreme Court.
The marchers included members of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group known for street brawling with ideological opponents at political rallies.
The march was largely peaceful during the day before turning tense at night, with multiple confrontations as small groups of Trump supporters attempted to enter the area around Black Lives Matter Plaza, about a block from the White House, where several hundred anti-Trump demonstrators had gathered.
In a pattern that kept repeating itself, those Trump supporters who approached the area were harassed, doused with water and saw their MAGA hats and pro-Trump flags snatched and burned, amid cheers. As night fell, multiple police lines kept the two sides apart. By early evening, police had arrested at least 10, including four on firearms charges, according to both The Washington Post and WTOP.
Videos posted on social media showed some demonstrators and counterdemonstrators trading shoves, punches and slaps. A man with a bullhorn yelling "Get out of here!" was shoved and pushed to the street by a man who was then surrounded by several people and shoved and punched until he fell face first into the street. Bloody and dazed, he was picked up and walked to a police officer.
The "Million MAGA March" was heavily promoted on social media, raising concerns that it could spark conflict with anti-Trump demonstrators, who have gathered near the White House in Black Lives Matter Plaza for weeks.
In preparation, police closed off wide swaths of downtown, where many stores and offices have been boarded up since Election Day. Chris Rodriguez, director of the city's...

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Public health experts argue mandatory rules around mask-wearing will help counter New Zealanders' complacency about Covid-19.
Following the community case in Auckland last week, the government plans to make it compulsory to wear masks on public transport in the city, and all domestic flights.
Public health expert Michael Baker told Tim Beverage mandatory mask use would be a visual reminder to people we're not out of the woods yet.
"If we look back over the last four months, we've had one border failure every two weeks over that period.
"It does remind us that we do want to avoid a repeat of that August situation in Auckland."
Baker says masks will also enable society to keep functioning, when there are small outbreaks like the one seen last week.
He says Taiwan made face masks mandatory even though they haven't had any cases for 200 days now as a way of preventing an outbreak. 
He says they are one of the limited tools that the public has to prevent themselves catching the virus. 
Baker says that the alert level system could use more nuance. 
"When we have a heightened concern as we've had in Auckland, rather than telling everyone they have to stay home as that's tough on businesses, we can say 'carry on, but let's use masks on public transport, and if the risk is higher, than schools, workplaces and meeting places'." 
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President-elect Joe Biden's victory was celebrated by civil rights activists and Black leaders who warned that a tough road lies ahead to address America's persistent inequalities and the racial division that Donald Trump fuelled during his presidency.
Biden will take office in January as the nation confronts a series of crises that have taken a disproportionate toll on Black Americans and people of colour, including the pandemic and resulting job losses. Many cities saw protests against racial injustice during a summer of unrest.
During a contentious campaign against Trump, Biden made explicit appeals for the support of Black voters. He pledged to unify the country, acknowledged systemic racism, criticized his rival for stoking division and picked Kamala Harris as his running mate, making her the first Black woman on a major party's presidential ticket. While those were all welcomed steps, Black leaders and activists say they will keep pushing the incoming administration to do more.
"This is just the beginning of change and the election of any one administration does not mean the work is done," said civil rights leader Martin Luther King III, who noted the vision of his father, Martin Luther King Jr., has yet to be fully realized in America, 57 years after he delivered his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech. "Dad and Mom wanted to eradicate poverty, racism and violence from our society and that will take a monumental effort. A Biden-Harris administration has to constantly be challenged and pushed to move."
Black voters powered Biden's successful campaign, particularly in critical states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia. Nine in 10 Black voters nationwide supported him, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 110,000 voters across the country.
"Vice President Biden understands that we are fully formed American citizens who deserve to have full access to all the parts of progress in the United States," said Stacey Abrams, a voting rights activist and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate. "He's been willing to commit not only to plans, but he's been willing to take responsibility for how those plans get lived out. … I want to see proper access to opportunity and I think fundamentally that is the wish, that is the hope, and that is the deserved right of every Black person in this country."
Latino voters supported Biden over Trump, 63% to 35%, according to the survey. White voters, who made up roughly three-quarters of the electorate, were more likely to support Trump, 55% vs. 43% for Biden.
More than 74 million Americans voted for Biden, more than any other presidential candidate in history. But some Black political strategists and activists noted the 70 million votes for Trump, suggesting that some of those Trump supporters at a minimum turned a blind eye to the racism he demonstrated.
"We have been lullabied for so long in this country that when you have somebody like President Donald J. Trump come along and be so blatant with his racism, it's a shock to the senses," said Nina Turner, a Black progressive and former Ohio state senator. "But this country should not be deluded that it's just Trump, it's millions of people. A lot of white liberals, they're very comfortable with pointing the finger at President Trump. But they need to look in the mirror...because he is just a reflection of what is already a reality in this country."
While Biden enjoyed strong support from Black voters, there was also frustration about the pressure placed on their communities to deliver a victory.
African Americans, who are the Democratic Party's most loyal voting bloc, face a battle for racial progress in a nation whose very founding embraced racist, predatory systems that continue to disparately harm Black people today.
And America has yet to fully reckon with that racist past, which left generations of Black Americans struggling to achieve the American dream or to...

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