Top 10 for Wednesday, December 6

Almost 80% of young voters oppose National's reversal of SmokeFree laws; DoC stops installing smoke alarms to save money; Nicola Willis wants to cancel bonuses for te reo-speaking officials

Even many young people who smoke support smokefree policies, fitting in with previous research showing the large majority of people who smoke regret starting and most want to quit. Photo: Lynn Grieveson

TL;DR: Here’s my pick of the top 10 news and analysis links elsewhere on the morning of Wednesday, December 6, including:

1. Nearly 80% of young voters don’t want the SmokeFree legislation changes reversed, a survey has found,;

2. Local scoops of the day: DoC has decided against installing smoke alarms in all its huts to save money; Newsroom David Williams

3. Local scoops of the day: Nicola Willis wants to cancel extra payments for bureaucrats able to speak te reo Māori; RNZ Phil Pennington

4. Global scoop of the day: American forces are being attacked by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea and some US officials see it as an Iranian escalation of the conflict in the Middle East; Politico Lara Seligman

5. Deep-dive of the day: A landlord in Mosgiel attempted to get around the rules banning no-reason evictions in order to kick out a lady with a brain tumour; Stuff Esther Taunton

6. Column of the day: Simon Wilson lays out the new (weird) lay of the land in the Auckland Council a year into Wayne Brown’s (first?) term; NZ Herald-$$$

7. Thread of the day: Richard Hills points out via X the previous National Government passed the Māori Language Act of 2016 encouraging the use of te reo Māori in the Public Service;

8. Op-Ed of the day: Merja Myllylahti asks how journalism will be funded once news fades from site on big social media platforms, via The Conversation;

9. Gift link of the day: China’s massive property developer and local government debt issues are coming to a head, the WSJ-gift reports.

10. Substack of the day: Michael Thomas at Distilled points out the big methane agreement at COP 28 ignored one billion cows. Again.

The full detail, links, excerpts and analysis is below the fold for paying subscribers.

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