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May 29 2023

A warning to NZ Succession fans: Avoid social media

Succession’s fourth season has many twists and turns. (Photo: Supplied / Treatment: Tina Tiller)

The final ever episode of Succession will be hitting Neon at 7pm tonight, just a few hours after it’s finished airing in the US.

Right now, Twitter is a Succession spoiler minefield. My feed is currently made up of news, clips of the Taylor Swift Eras Tour… and Succession spoilers. Be careful out there.

It’s also the final episode of HBO’s Barry tonight, while other prestige shows like Ted Lasso and the Marvellous Mrs Maisel are all wrapping up this month too. The upside to all this is I can find new TV to watch. The downside is I have to find new TV to watch.

Read more: Is this the end of peak TV?

Succession’s fourth season has many twists and turns. (Photo: Supplied / Treatment: Tina Tiller)

Extra $11m for expansion of fog cannon subsidy

police-car-alt.jpeg

The government’s announced an additional $11 million to extend the fog cannon subsidy scheme, which the police minister said has given shop workers peace of mind during a spate of retail crime.

So far there have been 582 installations completed, said Ginny Andersen, with 1,664 applications approved. “The scheme has proved to be incredibly popular. I’m pleased to be able to expand the scheme with an extra $11 million to continue to give eligible retailers across New Zealand certainty that they can get a fog cannon if they need one,” she said.

Figures provided by the minister show most of the completed installations – 214 – have been in Auckland. There have been 110 in Canterbury and 96 in Wellington.

“We need to tackle the problem at both ends and ensure we are stopping retail crime in the first place,” Andersen said. “We’ve expanded a circuit breaker programme targeting recidivist child offenders into Hamilton, Christchurch and Auckland City and are making excellent progress on our goal to achieve 1,800 more police officers on the front line.”

Fog cannons can help deter ram raids and burglary, said Andersen, and the subsidy would help ensure retailers could afford to have a device installed.

Speaking at a post-cabinet press conference, prime minister Chris Hipkins said this scheme made a difference for retailers that couldn’t afford the regular costs, particularly those renting premises. “The retail crime spike that we have been experiencing is utterly unacceptable,” he said.

Asked whether it was concerning to see the rise in applications for the fog cannon subsidy, Hipkins said it was about providing businesses comfort and support. However, he said he also had an “unrelenting” focus on targeting the root causes of offending.

Hipkins said he was proud of the support his government had provided for frontline police officers. Later in the week he’ll be attending a police graduation ceremony to welcome new recruits.

Green MP says ‘fake meth’ at WINZ adds to argument for inquiry into agency

(Image: Archi Banal)

Reports a Work and Income staffer brought “fake meth” to a “cultural diversity” morning tea add to the argument for an inquiry into the agency, said a Green Party MP.

The Spinoff first reported today that a worker at the Hornby branch of Work and Income had taken bags labelled “methamphetamine” to the event, allegedly as a comment on WINZ’s clients (though this claim has been rejected by MSD).

On Twitter, Ricardo Menéndez-March shared the article and said: “These stories + the huge discretionary power that WINZ case managers have over people’s lives is why I proposed an inquiry into the culture and processes at WINZ at the start of the term. Despite being backed by multiple orgs Labour voted the inquiry down.”

He added: “Changing the culture at WINZ will take far more than giving the offices a redesign and finally letting people have greater access to water and toilets while they wait. If the assistance being provided continues to be from a place of low-trust we’re fostering an us vs them culture.”

We’ve approached Menéndez-March for further comment.

Meanwhile, deputy prime minister Carmel Sepuloni – who is also the minister for social development – confirmed she was unaware of the incident until The Spinoff’s approach for official information. This was normal, she told The Spinoff, as she wasn’t usually briefed on individual staff issues.

“The vast majority of MSD staff are dedicated people who work incredibly hard for their communities and clients,” she said.

“Sometimes individuals let the side down, and MSD have policies and systems to respond to that.  I’m satisfied they have acted quickly and appropriately in this situation.”

Read more: Work and Income staffer took fake ‘meth’ to ‘cultural diversity’ morning tea

(Image: Archi Banal)

Act owns ‘coalition of cuts’ line: ‘The next government will need to make cutbacks’

David Seymour doesn’t miss opportunities to compare New Zealand with the so-called “third world”

If you’ve been paying even a loose attention to politics over the past few weeks, you’ll almost certainly have come across two competing attack lines. One, the “coalition of chaos”. That’s the line National’s been rolling out to reference a prospective Labour, Green and Te Pāti Māori coalition. Then there’s “coalition of cuts”, which is how Labour has been referring to a possible National and Act coalition.

And it seems like Act is OK with that line. Party leader David Seymour has sent out a press release with the simple subject line “Yes, we are the Coalition of Cuts”.

“Labour calls us the ‘coalition of cuts’, thinking it’s an insult, but it just shows they’re not listening to New Zealanders,” said Seymour. “Kiwis struggling in a cost-of-living crisis are having to cut back their own budgets to make ends meet, so they expect the government to do the same.”

The next government will need to make cutbacks, said Seymour. Part of that should include tax cuts, with Seymour labelling the tax burden on working New Zealanders “mad”.

“It can’t be right that someone earning $48,000 a year, just above minimum wage, pays 30% tax on every dollar they earn above that,” Seymour said.

Act’s David Seymour (Image: Getty Images, additional design Tina Tiller)

Get ready for Taskmaster NZ season four

Dai Henwood in Taskmaster NZ (Image: Supplied)

Big news for Taskheads dropped over the weekend as TVNZ unveiled the cast for the upcoming fourth season of Taskmaster NZ.

Dai Henwood, Karen O’Leary, Melanie Bracewell, Ray O’Leary and Bubbah are the lucky five who will be tackling whatever is thrown at them by Jeremy Wells and Paul Williams. The only teases we’ve got so far from TVNZ include: someone getting married, someone leaving New Zealand and… someone blowing out candles.

A launch date for the new season hasn’t been announced, but hopefully it won’t be too far away. And if you want to relive some of the highlights from seasons one to three, here’s our official ranking of all the tasks we’ve seen so far.

Taskmaster NZ season four is coming soon (Image: Supplied)

The Bulletin: Bouquets and brickbats for Wellington mayor Tory Whanau

Andrea Vance had an in-depth profile of Wellington mayor Tory Whanau on the paywalled Post (and a write-off on the free-to-read Stuff) that looks at her rise to the top job, and how she’s doing six months in. “She has delivered on a promise to unite council – public spats are largely a thing of the past. But almost eight months into the job, she needs to start putting some wins on the board,” Vance writes, pointing to rates rises, leaky pipes and threats to the long-promised light rail project as negatives on Whanau’s report card.

While she’s earned plaudits for, among other examples, her strong and empathetic handling of the Loafers Lodge fire, some say she’s not taking her public-facing responsibilities seriously enough. “One frequent complaint is her absence at civic functions – including monthly citizenship ceremonies, in which the mayor welcomes new residents,” Vance writes, and “councillors complain she either doesn’t turn up to public meetings, or stays just a short time”. Whanau says the demands on her time are intense. “I’ve told my team to prioritise what I’m going to… It’s about 60 hours a week of meetings and events, and I just can’t fit it in.”

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Bishop says u-turn on housing accord will offer more ‘flexibility’ for councils

Pictured: Chris Bishop not telling The Spinoff which charity advised him on policy (Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

The opposition’s housing spokesperson Chris Bishop has defended the decision to pull out of a cross-party policy agreement announced in 2021.

National and Labour worked together on legislation that would make it easier for higher density housing to be constructed in main centres.

Now, National has decided it wants out, after leader Christopher Luxon first signalled changes at a public meeting last week. You can read about National’s new housing policy, announced yesterday, in The Bulletin. But, in short, it will allow council’s to opt out of the mandatory rules set by the medium density rules. Bishop told TVNZ’s Q&A over the weekend that councils would need to show “they can meet future demand by either zoning land through greenfield development or through greater density”.

Speaking to RNZ this morning, Bishop described the changes as a “refinement” of what we have now. “We’re going to much more ambitious when it comes to housing supply,” said Bishop. It wasn’t a flip flop so much as an offer of increased flexibility, said Bishop. “Communities and councils wanted a bit more flexibility. We always said we were open to sensible changes. This is a sensible change.”

Bishop suggested it wasn’t a rushed policy announcement and nor was it a “captain’s call” for leader Christopher Luxon. “It’s not a simple binary of when did we decide… this has gone to full caucus. I worked on it, Nicola [Willis] worked on it, Christopher [Luxon] worked on it,” he said.

Deputy prime minister Carmel Sepuloni called the u-turn a “massive flip flop” from National and said the government’s priority was getting more houses built. The government didn’t want to “back down” on the scheme, she said, but was open to looking at potential tweaks.