Ray Chung has surely scuppered his chances of becoming Wellington's next mayor, hasn't he?

Although, given the way voters in Wellington tend to cast their ballots given their previous form, perhaps not. Chung has sent an email to three of his fellow councillors with the heading ‘A sordid night on the town”, in which he proceeded to pass on a story he heard from a neighbour while out dog walking, trash talking Mayor Tory Whanau. It accused her of participating in an orgy with a couple of young men and taking drugs, and talked about the form of the woman involved, being Tory Whanau, having soft, pendulous breasts.

Whanau released the email to the New Zealand Herald as an example of the dehumanising personal attacks she's experienced during her term as Wellington mayor and part of the reason she's not running for the mayoralty again. She said this sort of behaviour (the sending of gossip to fellow councillors), is unbecoming for a public official, it's creepy, it's gross. If he's going to stay in the mayoral race, he needs to commit to a clean campaign. Whanau, who wants to be elected as a councillor but not mayor this election, provided the email to the Herald saying she wanted voters to see evidence of the abuse she and other female politicians endured.

This is the thing that stuns me: when questioned about the email, Chung said he had no idea if the contents were true. Absolutely none. He did no fact checking, he just found it interesting, thought his fellow councillors would agree. When pressed maybe three times, he thought perhaps he'd say sorry if it wasn't true, but didn't really see anything wrong with what he'd done. He said I passed on exactly what I was told, I'd call it gossip. And I suppose using the internet is just the modern form of whispering in someone's ear at the village fair.

Now the best form of gossip and lying is to feed a story with a grain of truth. Whanau has form in drunken carrying on, it's not a huge leap the way it would be with a teetotalley, happily married young female mayor. Whanau says she can prove she wasn't at this supposed orgy which Chung says took place on New Year's Eve. She was at a function for ambassadors in the city and then went on to a rainbow community party on New Year's Eve. She says she can show that the story is malicious gossip.

The scary thing about this is that people think they can say anything about anybody these days and get away with it. For all the faults of the mainstream media, we are accountable for the things we say and write. So if we get it wrong, we are censored. The records corrected and you know about it. We can certainly have opinions you disagree with, that's different, but if we had come out with a story like that, we could be sued for defamation. And in the past this radio station has been Most radio stations have been, because people take it one step too far, repeat something they've heard because they think it might be interesting. Wrong. It's false. It can be proved to be false, and they're censored, and they have to pay a fine, and they have to apologise and correct the record. I'd love to see how much faith people put in alternative media stories and sources, if they were held to the same level of accountability that we are. The internet is amazing, but it has always been an absolute cesspit of misinformation and lies as well.

You know for a fact that the story about Clarke Gayford and the nanny, Clarke Gayford and the Whangarei court appearance, Peter Davis, John Key, Tory Whanau, all of these public figures, you know, for a fact that it's true because your neighbour's niece went to school with the nanny, or your wife's brother's best friend was in the police force in Kerikeri, used to be and he knows for a fact that the court registrar... It's utter bullshit. Complete and utter BS, but you want to believe it. It feeds into how you perceive these people and what you want to believe about these people, whoever they may be. There's a grain of truth to it. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that it could have happened. And again, that's what makes it all so dangerous. I just don't believe anything until I am stepping over the writhing forms of the people allegedly involved and trying not to stand on their pendulous soft breasts.

I can't just put up a story because I think you might find it interesting, and I think you'll agree with the story, you'll agree with the narrative. You say where's your proof? Where's your evidence? And if I can't provide it, you can sue me for defamation. And that's a jolly good thing.

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Lizards living near the Macraes gold mine in Central Otago run the very real risk of becoming lizard skin boots on the feet of Resources Minister Shane Jones. The self-described Matua is on the warpath because hundreds of workers are at risk of being laid off after a decision by the Department of Conservation to reject an application by the country's largest gold mine owner. Macraes Goldman in the Central Otago region, which is owned by the Canadian company OceanaGold, recently applied for a permit under the Wildlife Act to clear grass and vegetation on its current site in order to expand its operation. Last month, the Department of Conservation declined it, citing insufficient information about how the company would manage the relocation of lizards. Shane Jones is beside himself and while talking with Heather du Plessis Allan this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast, he labelled the decision makers in DOC a bunch of quislings.

“These lizards are as common as acne on a teenager. That's the first thing. Secondly, they are scattered throughout the entirety of Otago. Every time a farmer does something on his or her land, they don't need a special wildlife permit. This piece of legislation is actually older than my good self, but the most important thing is, does the public want jobs in Otago? Does the public want $700 million worth of export revenue? I do. And I'm of the view that the decision makers in this case have just taken the public for a ride.”

Well, he's promised he's going to do something about it and he's taking it to cabinet, and he'll override the DOC decision. Quisling, by the way, as a colloquial term for traito Vidkun Quisling was the Norwegian Minister of Defence who collaborated with the Nazis in the Second World War.

This is not the first time man has collided with environment. Remember the powelliphanta augusta snail in Westport? Solid Energy wanted to mine the snail's habitat, and there was a real hue and cry over that. Aren't we lucky that we are a country where people will take to the streets for the protection of snails? The snails were moved to different areas. Some were taken under the protective wing of DOC, and if you were a powelliphanta augustus snail you really did have a better chance in the wild because an oopsie at DOC saw the snails frozen one fateful Labour weekend. They were being stored in a refrigerator to be put into a habitat that suited them. After a few ups and downs, it appears the snails have survived the disruption. Twenty years after they were moved, the population has grown to 1884 with an additional 2195 unhatched eggs, and the species had been observed on camera laying eggs for the first time. It was tough but they adapted and good for them.

The Northern Expressway. Along with building the highway, NX2 —the coalition of companies that was charged with building the expressway— were also charged with building fishways. So inanga, or native white bait, could swim around the culverts and weirs that were required with the expressway. We've heard from your everyday builders and developers who have to count skinks and lizards before they can move earth on a project. In some cases they have to relocate the skinks and lizards. Sometimes they count the skinks and lizards, and the friendly neighbourhood cat reduces their number overnight by one or two. Then there's the taniwha, who've popped up during the construction of the Waikato Expressway and the Light Rail project.

Shane Jones asked the question: do you want lizards or jobs? Do you want a company that's going to get some export earnings in to help us get back on track, or do you not? We're not talking about taking a thundering great excavator and churning up the ground and leaving it a sad and sorry toxic mess. Modern day mining is vastly different to what it used to be. It's not even as if Mcraes said buggar the lizards – they said we will lovingly pick them up and transport them somewhere where they can live like they used to. But DOC said no, that’s not the plan we like. Come on.

When you get an attitude like this from DOC, then it hardens other people's attitudes. People might have said, love a lizard, if they can move them, that'd be great. But when you've got DOC saying no, that plan’s not good enough and they stall, and they ensure that companies have to pay more and more, and that people don't get to sign on to work, and Mcraes/Oceana decide stuff it. They do the sums, they do the number crunching, and they say it's not worth our while to be here and they leave - I don't think in this case that it is the best thing for New Zealand, that the lizards win.

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27-year-old Auckland engineer Shyamal Shah has been sentenced to two years, two months imprisonment for what is believed to be one of the largest public sector thefts on record – a 17-month scheme in which he managed to swindle roughly $1 million from his employer, Watercare.

The court was told yesterday that the theft and deception came about through Shah’s gambling addiction that started at Sky City Casino, then escalated after three men approached him and invited him to a residence where private games were being held. It was a racket where addicts were targeted and given a significant line of credit before payment is demanded, often through coercion. I mean, if we've ever seen any Good Fellas type movies, you've seen it before.

In Shah’s case, the court was told the defendant was shown photos of another man who had been violently assaulted after they didn't pay. So he was hooked, he was reeled in, and he turned a promising career in a promising life into a complete and utter train wreck. He will go to jail, his parents, who had taken a gamble and backed that their son was going to be an exemplary citizen, are financially ruining themselves to try and pay back as much of the money as they possibly can.

This is what a gambling addict looks like, and it comes at the same time as the nation's independent gambling regulator, the Gambling Commission, has issued a damning report into the Ministry of Health's problem gambling section, saying it is impossible to judge whether the services actually reduce gambling harm. The report recommended Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and Internal Affairs Minister Brook van Velden reject the Ministry of Health request to increase a levy from $76 million to $92 million over the next three years. The levy comes from the gambling industry, which makes sense. A lot of people can gamble and just have, you know, $5 on the nose of a horse, a pretty chestnut at Race 9 at Te Rapa, but others can't, so the industry helps fund problem gamblers, helps fund assistance and help for problem gamblers.

But the Commission’s expert reviewer Doctor David Rees said when it came to the money that has been given to the Ministry of Health to help problem gamblers, we don't know if it's enough. We don't know if it's too much. And that's a point made by a number of people. There's a lack of data, a lack of understanding, we don't know what's working, and we don't know what's not working. Sounds like my hero, the Auditor General John Ryan. He said, I don't know this money's been well spent, there's no track of it, no record of.

So same again, the Ministry of Health gets millions of dollars from the gambling industry to help problem gamblers, does it work? Dunno! Ddn't really know. Matt Doocey said it's not good enough, symptomatic of what happened under the last Government. Doocey said in mental health and addiction services, increased funding had led to no material difference. And it's true, that's exactly what happened under the last Government. We're seeing lots of ads for the TAB right now: “You know the odds, now beat them”. In the pregame build up before the All Blacks there's always a punters report: what the totes paying for which player to score the first try. You can bet on anything and it's being very, very normalised.

As with every addict across every addiction, you start off thinking it's a bit of harmless fun, think you can handle it until you can't, until you've found yourself like Shyamal Shah, in the dock with your promising life and career absolutely ruined. All addicts need help to get the monkeys off their back, but just throwing money to the Ministry of Health and thinking there we go job done, is not good enough. They have to show that the millions of dollars they have been granted have done some good.

And this hasn't come out of the blue. In 2019, they were asked to account for the money. They didn't. In 2022, they were told to carry out a major strategic review of its problem gambling strategy and they didn't. And then they had the temerity to come back and ask for more money. Can we have another $11 million? No. If you want $92 million, then you have to show what you're spending it on, not just for the sake of the money and for the sake of proper accounting, but for the sake of the addicts. It's so hard for addicts to know they have a problem before it's too late. I'm talking about any addiction. And when you reach out for help, you need that help to be there.

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