WWNews senior political reporter Al Seddon-Dunne trawls through all his free subs to find the best stuff to copy ‘n’ paste.
NZ’s most liked Prime Minister for the week ending July 5 Christopher Luxon has announced this country is likely to join with Australia and Fiji in an alliance to protect all three countries’ interests against possible hostile actors.
“Not Johnny Depp or even our own Robyn Malcolm,” he joked, assuming he was talking to a journalist from the Herald. “No, when I say hostile actors I mean other countries that might wish us harm. Though not, I hasten to add, any particular country that might have fired a missile in our direction in the past few days. Especially not one of our trading partners whom we wouldn’t wish to annoy. Not them, no way.”
Fiji and Australia had already agreed to become allies in defense, earlier in the week, but Mr Luxon thought there was still room for a small country to squeeze in. “There’s a lot New Zealand can bring to table,” he said. “Leftover school lunches for one thing.”
The new alliance will be called the Ocean of Peace, which Mr Luxon likes for its accurate summation of the broad aims of the agreement. “Plus it’s not as Shakespearean as ‘Sea of Trouble’, and the public is keen to keep ‘Depths of Despair’ for summatering our performance at home.”
In other news, the ACT party made an announcement of its own this week, showing it to be a serious contender in the coming election despite the polls. Their bold new Three Strikes policy is not about softball – ACT is going to play hardball with burglars, especially the ones who don’t listen to reason or watch Ministry of Work & Income videos on getting ready for work.
According to ACT’s Deputy Leader and Minister for Shooting Things Not People Nicole McKee, the policy was not “primarily” about deterring crime, but preventing it. Under the proposed law change a third strike would earn a burglar 3 years in the pokey, no questions, no parole, no free school lunches.
ACT’s research shows that of the 1800 people convicted of burglary last year about 925 went to prison and not all of them would be eligible for a third strike.
They didn’t say how many would be eligible but WWNews’s own research team – all right, Barry from Accounts – has extrapolated those figures to see how many HBHPAs (Home Burglary Hours per annum) are likely to be saved, and came up with about 7.
“That might not seem like a lot,” Barry said. “But ACT says removing any burglar from circulation for three years is going to lead to a reduction of offending from that person, and of course it will mean increased opportunities for inexperienced burglars to get into the game.”
Barry suggested there would be other flow-on benefits. “We’d likely see fewer insurance claims because of those reduced thefts, and also less strain on landfills and fly tipping areas around the country as the items previously claimed as being pinched wouldn’t be dumped late at night.”
To finance now, and the Reserve Bank announced Tuesday a change to the official cash rate, which will lead to an increase in the number of economic experts in the media contradicting each other and leaving everyone else totally in the dark as to what it all means. Again.
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