Among those most depressed on election night were probably many teachers, their trade unions, and school principals.

I’m not so sure about “many” teachers. Most teachers don’t give a stuff about politics and just want to get on with teaching. It is the teacher politicians who devote most of their energy to educational politics that would have been depressed, but they are a minority of teachers.

The first John Key-led government made a priority of ensuring children can read and write – the foundation for all later learning – and parents getting school reports in plain English.

Known by its shorthand name, national standards, the policy was steadfastly adhered to by Mr Key, who consulted educational experts before the 2008 election on what would make the most difference to the one in five children who leave school illiterate and innumerate.

The policy was equally steadfastly opposed by the primary teachers’ union and the Principals’ Federation, chiefly on ideological grounds.

Their biggest fear is that once data on how schools are doing under national standards is reported to the Education Ministry, it will be available to the whole community, which will learn which of the schools they fund from their taxes perform best.

Outraegous. I’m waiting for Labour to announce a policy that they will ban league tables not only for schools, but also for hospitals. It is appalling that Tony Ryall publishes which DHBs have the quickest times for A&E waiting times and cancer radiation treatment. Not all DHBs have the same sort of patients, and Ryall’s hospital league tables should be banned as they are unfair to the hospitals not at the top.

But it is criminal that up to 20 per cent of students leave school unable to read, write and do arithmetic.

Former Labour Party president and new Howard League for Penal Reform chief executive Mike Williams gets it: he is desperate to find literacy teachers willing to help prison inmates. Why would that be necessary if current education policy works as well as teachers claim? After all, those jailbirds went to school somewhere.

The NZ educational system works very well for the average student. However it works very badly for the bottom 20% and not that great for the top 10%.

If children who are failing can be helped to succeed by a different prescription – think kura kaupapa or Rudolf Steiner, for example – the trial is worth conducting to see what can be learned from it.

Absolutely. A great win for ACT and for New Zealand.

• A Regulatory Standards Bill to be enacted into law within 12 months, based on Option 5 in this paper.
• A spending limit law to be introduced within 24 months so that expenditure (excluding benefits, disasters, interest) can not increase by more than the annual rate of population growth and inflation. This is a huge win.
• RMA reform so there is only one unitary plan per district
• Trial charter schools in South Auckland so private and community groups (including Iwi) can establish schools that compete with existing schools, and receive funding on a per child basis

These are very significant policy wins for ACT. The spending limit and trialing of charter schools have the potential to have a major impact into the future – and for the better.

If these can be successfully implemented in the next three years, then I could see ACT gaining many of its former supporters back.

National’s second term is looking to have a lot of really positive and significant reform.

An Act candidate touted as a future leader has declared the party all but dead and represented by an “economically ignorant” John Banks who wants to “suck up” to National.

Stephen Whittington, 25, ran in Wellington Central and was seventh on the party list. Along with number five on the list, David Seymour, he was regarded as a future star.

On his Facebook page Mr Whittington called Mr Banks “economically ignorant and interventionist”, in response to the Epsom MP’s comments opening the door to Conservative Party leader Colin Craig. …

Mr Banks declined to comment, but party president Chris Simmons said Mr Whittington was wrong.

“The bottom line is that the party has a lot of work to do. In Parliament we’re represented by only one person, and John Banks signed up to represent Act and Act’s principles and he’s working really hard at exactly that.”

He believed the party would survive.

“Will it be a liberal party? Yes, it will be. Will it be the liberal party that Stephen Whittington thought it would be? I’m not really sure about that.”

Mr Whittington said Act needed a counterbalance to Mr Banks to maintain a consistent liberal message.

I think Steven’s comments are somewhat unfair to John Banks, even though I agree with his overall position that ACT as we know it is no more.

The problem is not that John Banks won Epsom. That is what stopped ACT being wiped out entirely. The problem is that ACT failed to win enough party vote to get a second MP in. A further 0.1% would have got Don Brash into Parliament. Brash inevitably would have made way before long for Catherine Isaac, and the combination of Isaac and Banks would have been a workable one for ACT.

I called the Brash coup a “cluster fuck” back in April. I think few would now disagree. If there had been some sort of deal where Don became co-leader with Rodney Hide, then it is quite possible ACT would have done well in the party vote. But the very nature of the coup where someone who is not even a party member demands he be made leader or else he will destroy the party was repulsive to even the most loyal supporter of ACT’s policies.

Having failed to get a second MP into Parliament, the brand of ACT will be the brand of Banks. That’s a perfectly good brand, but it is not the brand traditionally associated with ACT. I still think the best way forward is for ACT to rename itself and look at some sort of co-operation with the Conservative Party, and those who are economic and social liberals to form a new party without the baggage of the past.

John Banks

MPs out

None were restanding except a party vote candidacy by John Boscawen in Tamaki

Result

3.0/10.

Banks winning Epsom despite the polls keeps ACT alive. It is worth remembering (as I warned) that no public poll has ever shown ACT winning and they have now won it three times. However the failure to get a second MP in, is a huge disappointment, as it brings their future into real question.

Ironically if ACT had not rolled Rodney Hide as Leader, I think they would have had at least three MPs.

In terms of allowing there to be a centre-right Government the ACT result is a 7/10 or higher. In terms of the result for ACT personally it is 3/10.

Challenges

Banks is a great campaigner, and I think he is likely to retain Epsom in 2014. Like Winston John turns 67 this year and I doubt one can expect more than two terms out of him.

The real challenge is that the ACT brand will now inevitable become the Banks brand, as their sole MP. And in my opinion there is nothing wrong with the Banks brand, but it is not the brand that has traditionally been associated with ACT.

ACT have always had two strong components to their brand. On economic issues they were strongly liberal, supporting massive tax cuts, no minimum wage, privatization of all SOEs etc. Those who served with Banks in the National Cabinet say Banks was not a huge supporter of the Richardson camp. He certainly is a fiscal conservative, and centre-right economically. But not someone who would privatize the hospitals.

The other component to the ACT brand has been a degree of social liberalism.  This has been patchy rather than consistent, but overall most ACT MPs have been social liberals. John Banks would not describe himself as a social liberal.

Therefore my conclusion is that ACT, as we know it, is dead. There is talk of a name change for ACT, and that would be a sensible move, both because of the different brand John Banks has, but also because the ACT brand itself is pretty tarnished also.

Banks should move to position ACT as a conservative party, which reflects John Banks. Banks would be a good leader of a conservative party. The challenge of course is you also have a Conservative Party led by Colin Craig. And as I understand it, relations between Craig and Banks are not friendly – Craig took many votes off Banks for the Auckland Mayoralty.

A merger between whatever ACT gets re-named and the Conservatives would be a win-win, if they can work together. Craig has the money and the membership base. Banks has the seat in Parliament which means you do not need to make 5%. However just because it is logical does not mean it will happen. Colin Craig doesn’t strike me as someone who would settle for co-leader.

As for ACT itself, my suggestion is that those who identify as economic and social liberals need to have a get together next year and look at who is willing to commit to a new party, perhaps calling it the Liberal Party, and targeting the 2014 election. Many many especially urban younger New Zealanders are classical liberals (even if they have not heard the phrase) and support lower taxes, a smaller state etc but also don’t think Parliament should be greatly restricting what consenting adults can do.

I’m not about to quit the party I support, but I would be prepared to spend quite a bit of time assisting the formation of a new Liberal Party, and making sure lessons are learnt from the mistakes of the past.

On the night after the speech, Don appeared on Campbell Live to defend it. The programme ran a poll on decriminalisation to coincide with his appearance. A record number of people—15000—responded; 72% supported him! Not for the first time, we saw that this is one of those libertarian issues where the voters are much more enlightened than most politicians. As the Press noted at the time, on this matter Banks rather than Brash is the dinosaur.

Here was Don’s chance to re-brand ACT unambiguously as the live-and-let-live party across the board, not just on economic issues. But he needed to hold his nerve. I had texted him a line from Rudyard Kipling just before his Campbell Live appearance: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you … “

I agree with Lindsay that the speech was not a mistake per se. However where I have been critical is that key stakeholders were not in the loop, and talking points agreed in advance. If that had been done, then the speech could well have worked as intended – showing Don as a social liberal, not just an economic liberal.

In his guest post Mr Parker stated that at the last election ACT took a large donation from the Sensible Sentencing Trust.

This appears to be a false statement. All donations over $10,000 are required to be disclosed to the Electoral Commission, and none was.This is an audited statutory return.

The ACT Party Treasuer and Secretary both say no donation of any amount was ever received, and the Sensible Sentencing Trust has said it never made any donation. In the absence of any proof from Mr Parker, I conclude the statement is wrong and have added a statement to that effect at the bottom of the post.

In a joint press statement, ACT Party Leader Don Brash and President Chris Simmons today confirmed that all ACT candidates would move one place up the list to fill the position vacated by the Party’s retiring Parliamentary Leader John Boscawen, and that the number two spot would be filled by former Party President Catherine Isaac.

Dr Brash said he was extremely pleased with the calibre of the list and that Ms Isaac would be a great addition to it.

“Catherine is highly respected in the Party, and in business and political circles, and I very much look forward to working with her in the next Parliament,” Dr Brash said.

Mr Simmons said Ms Isaac had the unanimous support of the Party Board, as did Leader Don Brash and all the candidates.

“We’re all very pleased Catherine will be standing at number two. She brings a lot of Party experience and has had a long and successful business career. She will make an excellent MP,” Mr Simmons said.

The ACT List is now:

1. Don Brash
2. Catherine Isaac
3. Don Nicolson
4. John Banks
5. David Seymour
6. Chris Simmons
7. Stephen Whittington
8. Kath McCabe
9. Robyn Stent

The challenge for ACT is to get at least five MPs again. If they get five or more MPs they’ll have a caucus with future leaders in it, and a path forward.

The issue isn’t so much that there is a diversity of opinion within ACT on this issue, but that the rest of the ACT team were in the dark about the speech.

It is absolutely basic political management that a major speech from the leader should have been circulated in advance to key people in the party. To be fair to ACT, it is more difficult when your candidates are not the same as your caucus, as this is bread and butter parliamentary stuff. But regardless it was a major failure to not have had anyone run the speech through John Banks and other top candidates.

This is not to give them a veto on the speech, but to make sure there are no surprises, and you know what each will say. It was 100% predictable that the media would ask Banks for his view. Now if they were smart, Don would have even mentioned in his speech that John Banks doesn’t agree with him, but that he is (for example) open to having a debate and a conscience vote on the issue. And again with better political management, you would have had Banks have his response to the media prepared in advance.

If you don’t get basic political management right, potential supporters will be deterred from supporting your party, even if they agree on policies.

Act leader Don Brash is calling for the decriminalisation of cannabis.

He says prohibition of the drug hasn’t worked, and policing it costs millions of tax payer dollars and clogs up the court system.

He’s told TVNZ’s Q&A programme there are other ways to restrict the use of marijuana.

“It’s estimated thousands of New Zealanders use cannabis on a fairly regular basis, 6,000 are prosecuted every year, a $100million of tax payers money is spent to police this law,” says My Brash.

I’m delighted to see ACT pushing socially liberal policies as well as economically liberal policies. And I agree with Don – I do think cannabis should be decriminalised, with the emphasis being to treat it as a health issue.

John was the only current caucus member standing again for election. His retirement means that the post-election caucus will be 100% turnover – a first I suspect for a political party.

He is citing wanting to spend more time with his family:

“It was an incredibly hard decision not to seek re-election because I believe it is vital for the future of New Zealand that ACT is successful on election day.  However, being a Member of Parliament can be extremely demanding and time-consuming, and I haven’t been able to give my family as much time as they deserve.

“After much consideration, I’ve decided that my family must come first.  However, I will continue to stand as ACT’s candidate in the Tamaki electorate to do everything I can to help ACT win as many party votes as possible.”

There will obviously be speculation on whether anything specifically occurred that led to this decision. Boscawen was one of the few people not involved in the factional politics, and has been a very solid MP. His departure is a blow for them, but is good news for Don Nicolson and David Seymour whose chances of coming in as a List MP are enhanced.

If Cactus Kate had ended up No 3 on the ACT List, this would have made her No 2 and arguably in line to be Deputy Leader

The Government’s stalled reforms of the justice sector have been given an unusual lifeline with a proposal to take the controversial issue of the right to silence out of Parliament’s hands and leave it to a group of legal experts.

The Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill is likely to have its second reading this week, having spent a month on the order paper while Justice Minister Simon Power sought the numbers to pass it.

The bill is a shake-up of the criminal justice system and includes the removal of an accused’s right to remain silent and not have that held against them.

As it stands, the bill would require the defence to disclose to the prosecution before a trial all issues in dispute. Failure to do so would enable a judge or jury to infer that the accused is more likely to be guilty.

At present, a defendant can say nothing, leaving the case to the prosecution to prove beyond reasonable doubt.

The Labour, Green and Maori parties are strongly against the bill in its present form, but the Herald understands Mr Power has won the support of United Future leader Peter Dunne and Act MPs Hilary Calvert, Heather Roy and Sir Roger Douglas by removing the disclosure regime from the bill (Act MPs are not “whipped” to vote as a caucus).

The ability of a judge or jury to infer a greater likelihood of guilt from non-compliance would also be removed.

A new clause would allow the Rules Committee, a panel of legal experts chaired by Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias, to decide if a disclosure regime should be enforced, and if so, how.

I understand there is considerable tension in ACT over this bill.  If Calvert, Roy and Douglas vote for the the bill, they will be effectively crossing the floor against their party as the ACT Board has voted to oppose the bill, and it is also opposed by Leader Don Brash, former Leader Rodney Hide and Parliamentary Leader John Boscawen.

It raises one of the criticisms of MMP, where you have List MPs voting against the wishes of their party.

Now I have to say that by referring the disclosure regime to the Rules Committee, it almost guarantees it will not proceed as Dame Sian submitted on behalf of the high court, appeal court and supreme court judges against the disclosure regime. Interestingly the District Court Judges (who actually hear most of the trials) were in favour of a disclosure regime.

But even though it is unlikely to proceed, there are valid constitutional issues about whether something as fundamental as the right to silence should be decided by the High Court Rules Committee, rather than by Parliament itself. You normally delegate technical non-controversial issues to outside bodies – not issues affecting the Bill of Rights!

The other issue is about these changes being negotiated outside the select committee process, rather than through the select committee. Substantive changes at the committee of the whole stage are best avoided if possible.

• 12 Oct 96 – 6.1% v 3.2% – 2.9% better
• 27 Nov 99 – 7.0% v 5.0% – 2.0% better
• 27 Jul 02 – 7.1% v 3.5% – 3.6% better
• 17 Sep 05 – 1.5% v 2.o% – 0.5% worse
• 8 Nov 08 – 3.7% v 0.6% – 3.1% better

So on average ACT has scored 2.2% better than the TVNZ poll had them three months before the election. In the last election they got 3.7% despite a poll result of 0.6% three months earlier.

In the August 2011 Colmar Brunton poll, ACT were at 1.7%. While this is well below what Don Brash would have wanted or expected, I think people should be very cautious with suggestions that ACT may only have one or two MPs. I believe it is quite possible they could get a result such as they did in 2008 with five MPs or so.

• ACT would promptly re-introduce youth minimum wages – or better still, abolish minimum wages entirely for those under 20.
• further reform of employment law so it is less heavily stacked against employers
• scrap the Emissions Trading Scheme
• radical reform of the RMA
• seek to reduce government spending to below 30% of GDP, the level it was at at the end of Labour’s second term in office in 2005
• Longer term, as the economy grew, we would want to get the government share of the economy to a lower level, perhaps 25%, as it was for much of our history up to the mid-seventies
• harmonise the top personal, company and trust tax rates at 21%; or
• radically reduce the company tax rate, to perhaps 10 or 15%, with the top personal and trust tax rates remaining at, say, 28%
• age of entitlement for NZ super has to rise gradually over the next 10 years or so
• favours the sale of government-owned businesses
• see legislation passed which would constrain the future growth of government spending
• see legislation passed which would make it harder for governments to pass laws and regulations which would impinge on the rights of citizens
• see the Bill of Rights amended to protect the property rights of citizens

While I don’t agree with every single item, there’s a lot I do agree with, and they would definitely help push New Zealand faster in the right direction.

The list is below, along with what % of the vote ACT approximately needs to get them into Parliament (assuming Banks wins Epsom).

1. Don Brash 1.2%
2. John Boscawen 2.0%
3. To be confirmed 2.8%
4. Don Nicolson 3.6%
5. John Banks
6. David Seymour 4.4%
7. Chris Simmons 5.2%
8. Stephen Whittington 6.0%
9. Kath McCabe 6.8%
10. Robyn Stent 7.6%

Nicolson and McCabe are both strong rural voices, and will no doubt target the rural sector and campaign against the ETS. Of course there is no way it will be dumped, unless ACT got a massive proportion of the vote, such as 15%

David and Stephen are both very very bright guys, and first class debaters. I’ve seen Stephen beat many an MP in a debate, and he would be a real force in the debating chamber. Of course ACT would need around 6% to get him in.

Don’t know Chris Simmons really, but he has managed to keep the party organisation intact while the leadership wars occurred, so I guess has proven himself. Robyn Stent has good credentials as the former Health & Disability Commissioner.

The big story is that four of the five current ACT MPs are retiring at the election. One willingly, and three unwillingly. This is very significant, and I think a sign that the party wants an end to the factional infighting of the past.

The other major challenge for ACT is that they need to get in one or more MPs who could become leader after Don, possibly around 2016 or 2017.

This might be the No 3 unnamed candidate, if they agree to stand. Otherwise Nicolson might be a possibility.

The big challenge for ACT is to lift their party vote. On current polls they would get Banks and Brash only. Really at a minimum they need to get 4 MPs and get their No 3 candidate in. Now traditionally they get a better result than the polls have shown, but history is no guarantee of the future.

ACT are announcing their list at 3 pm in Auckland. Act on Campus have set up a live chat facility where they’ll cover the list live. I’ve embedded the facility here so those interested can follow it also.

For the most part, my teachers were outstanding, giving me a strong love of learning and a strong grounding in the basics. This was the era – in the late forties and fifties – when English teachers still taught grammar, and that means that to this day I still know when to use “I” and “me,” “who” and “whom” and where to put commas and apostrophes – knowledge which seems totally beyond more recent school graduates! (And yes, I’m fluent in text-ese as well! I can butcher words with the worst of them!)

In fact when Reserve Bank Governor, Don e-mailed all the staff a grammar guide, as so many staff were making basic mistakes!

We have some outstanding schools – primary, secondary, and tertiary – and some extremely well-educated people. But far too many people are coming out of 11 or even 13 years of schooling without even the rudiments of literacy or numeracy, while even those who come out with good qualifications are too often unable to write grammatical English: an inability reinforced, I would suggest, by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s position that in NCEA assessments, “any spelling, punctuation and/or grammar errors that do not appreciably affect the intended message” don’t matter.

Sigh. So sad

And this leads on naturally to my main concern about the educational system in its entirety – the fact that education in New Zealand is effectively a one-size-fits-all state monopoly.

The overwhelming majority of New Zealand children attend state-owned or state-controlled (integrated) schools – fewer than 4 percent attend independent schools. Not only that, but many children also have no choice over the particular state school they attend, thanks to rigid zoning laws. The remuneration of teachers is highly centralised, and is determined as a result of negotiations between a bureaucratic Ministry of Education and two powerful teacher unions, one covering primary schools and the other covering secondary schools. There is little scope to reward good teaching performance, and almost no scope to dismiss teachers for poor performance.

Absolutely correct. And ACT’s policy proposals:

Have state funding for primary and secondary schools “follow the child” – to any school, state or private, meeting basic standards, including standards of literacy and numeracy. In other words, you’d get to decide which school you’d send your child to with the money the state now spends on his or her education – currently some $80,000 over the 12 or 13 years of primary and secondary schooling.

There’d be no quicker way of incentivising existing schools to lift their game.  Schools that once had guaranteed state funding would now have to answer to the parents instead. And if they didn’t respond to their children’s needs, these parents could take their money to a school that would. Free schools, such as Tū Toa, would be opened to respond to children’s needs. Bad schools would close because their once captive audience would have been freed.

You may even have good schools take over bad schools, and turn them around.

*ACT would allow and require popular schools to expand to meet demand, including by taking over the land and buildings of failing schools. Massey University has campuses in Albany and Wellington as well as Palmerston North; why couldn’t secondary schools do the same? Could you imagine the demand for places if, for example, Auckland Grammar established a Porirua campus?

Exactly. They would be flooded with applications.

We would ensure the best teachers, and principals, are the highest-paid. Boards of Trustees would be allowed to negotiate directly with staff and be able to offer performance pay and incentives. The national award system between the government and the Council of Trade Unions was dismantled in the late 1980s because it was outdated and inefficient. It is long past time we abolished it in education.

This is so important. Good teachers should be earning over $100,000 a year, but bad teachers should not even be earning $50,000 a year.

ACT should campaign to parents up and down New Zealand on this policy. Many parents would welcome choice.

And if ACT get a decent enough proportion of the vote, this should be their primary policy demand of National. They should say we don’t want want any portfolios, we don’t want any baubles of office, we just want you to implement our education policy because it is so important to the future of New Zealand.

On 15 August 2011, the Electoral Commission referred the following matters to Police:

• Charles Chauvel MP, Ohariu Census,
• ACT Party newspaper advertisements in Sunday Star Times and NZ Herald
• Labour Party ‘Prices are Rising Faster than Wages’ flyer.

It is the Electoral Commission’s view that the publication of each of these items constitutes a breach of sections 204F and 204H of the Electoral Act 1993 because the items are election advertisements that do not contain a valid promoter statement and were not authorised in writing by the party secretary.

This isn’t rocket science. The requirement for a promoter statement has been a core part of our electoral law since 1977, and something every party should be complying with out of habit. Failing to do so is a basic failure of political competence. After all, if you can’t publish a fucking ad properly, how do you expect us to believe you can run the country? Sadly, I don’t think Labour will acknowledge that failure and commit to fixing it. Based on their past performance, we’ll be treated to more arrogant whining instead.