Labour leader Chris Hipkins vowed to scrap the requirement for primary schools to spend at least an hour a day teaching reading, writing and maths.

Opportunity have published their five bottom lines for any coalition, and they confirm that they are a party of the left. Their five bottom lines would fit perfectly in a Green Party manifesto.

Jeffrey Archer has died aged 86. He was one of my all time favourite authors. I literally purchased every one of his novels, and all his short stories collections.

Kane and Abel is probably my favourite of his novels. So gripping. Closely followed by First Among Equals and The Prodigal Daughter.

He was also a very talented politician, and a flawed human being. But only Archer could use his prison time to write more best sellers. He has sold more than 275 million books, which would make hime one of the top 30 authors of all time (Shakespeare is first and Agatha Christie 2nd).

Some books you don’t reread, but I find his books so great I will often go back to them after a few years.

He always has a twist at the end of his stories, and it reminds me once when I was flying to Zurich and reading one of his novels. I had around 10 pages to go and I let out a fairly loud yell on the plane. The stewardess came over and asked me what the problem was. I showed her the book, and how there was a misprint with the final 10 pages being a copy of the first 10 pages. This meant I was stuck in the air for a further 10 hours, unable to find out how the book ended. Fortunately I managed to find an English language edition in Switzerland, where I finished the book.

NZ has had a purely online passport application process for (off memory) well over a decade. I’ve often raved about how good it is, and also how quick it is. I got my latest passport three working days after I applied – and that was a non-urgent application.

The Herald reports:

Since the 1880s, a 37-acre site in the leafy Auckland suburb of Epsom was used to train teachers. 

Now Epsom MP and Act Leader David Seymour wants the site, empty since the last of the University of Auckland students left in 2024, to be the new location of an unzoned, co-educational public school.

And not just any school – one jointly operated by two of the country’s top state facilities – the neighbouring Auckland Grammar and Epsom Girls Grammar.

“They would like to co-sponsor a co-educational high school in the ethos of those two excellent schools,” Seymour told the Herald while walking through the empty university grounds.

“The motivation is that if this land becomes housing, it will put huge pressure on their rolls. On the other hand, if they can add a new high-quality school to Auckland, then that’s got to be a good thing for everybody.”

This is an incredible visionary plan. There are so many parents in Auckland who would love to send their kids to a school in the ethos of AGS or EGGS, but can’t afford the median $3.2 million house price.

37 acres is a huge site, so the school could be as large as needed by demand. I suspect it would soon become the largest school in NZ.

Thanks to Ruth Richardson, Governments can no longer hide the state of the accounts from the electorate, The pre-election fiscal and economic update is mandatory. The 2026 one is here. And for the first time in many years it looks positive. Key details:

• Unemployment forecast to drop from 5.6% to 4.3%
• Cumulative nominal GDP to be $18b higher than forecast in the Budget
• The OBEGALx balance is forecast to almost reach surplus in 2027/28 and grow to a surplus of $12b by 2030/31
• Core crown expenses to reduce to 29.8% of GDP by 2030/31 (30% is the level that Labour and Greens in 2017 said is the maximum NZ should have)
• Net core Crown debt is expected to peak at 43.9% of GDP in 2027/28 before gradually declining to 39.5% by the end of the forecast period

It is critical we get back into surplus and start reducing debt (before the next global economic shock). A change of government will doom this prospect.

Here’s how much extra spending the four parties of the left are promising:

1. Labour $50.5b
2. Opportunity $219.4b
3. Greens $236.7b
4. TPM – incalculable

The higher our debt goes, the more money that we have to spend on interest on the debt, rather than on education and health etc.

A couple of weeks ago, six parents launched The Parents Alliance, a new group to be a voice for parents in the education system.

We already have over 3,300 supporters signed up, which is amazing. But our aim is to have over 100,000 parents, grandparents and supporters signed up. Our ability to influence education policy for the positive benefit of families and kids will be proportional to how many people support us.

We have an amazing board chaired by former ANZ Chief Economist Cameron Bagrie. Cameron correctly says the economic performance of NZ in 30 years time will be dependent on the education system of today.

Some quick links for those interested are:

• Our initial policies, which polling has shown are overwhelmingly supported by National, Labour, Green, Act and NZ First voters (and Maori). Parents are parents, and are united in what they want.
• FAQs
• Donate page
• Our first newsletter

I’ve been involved in this initiative for around three years now. The impetus was when the “experts” produced a draft science curriculum that did not mention physics, biology or chemistry. This is when I realised that parents needed to speak up. Few things are more important to us than the education our kids receive.

Please sign up. Feel free to share with your friends who are parents or grandparents. Our kids’ education is too important for parents not to have an assertive and effective voice.

Labour’s so called fiscal plan is a fraud. First here is what Barbara Edmonds said on Newstalk ZB:

Well, for example, a choice that we would not make is $300 million for a tobacco excise tax cut. Okay. That means there is $300 million more that is a choice. So only $12.7 billion more to find? 

This is a lie. The actual cost of a 50% reduction in excise tax on heated tobacco products has been $2.25 million, not $300 million. That is actual hard data. So Labour’s Finance Spokesperson is out by a factor of 100, in her finances.

This is beyond dishonest.

Their fiscal plan shows $365 million of revenue from removing the 50% discount on heated tobacco products. The actual revenue it will bring in is $2.25 million a year.

On top of that whopper, Nicola Willis has also found $16 billion of other spending they have forgotten to include.

Paul Goldsmith announced:

Legislation which disestablishes the Broadcasting Standards Authority has been introduced to Parliament today, Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith says.

“Our Government promised to get this legislation into the House before we rise. Today we’re delivering.

“New Zealand’s media landscape has changed dramatically, but our regulatory settings have not kept up. For some time now audiences have moved seamlessly between traditional broadcasting, on‑demand services, podcasts and online platforms – yet only a small portion of that content is subject to the BSA’s oversight. It doesn’t make sense, and can create inconsistencies and unfair outcomes for media providers.

“The reality is, the BSA regime was designed for a broadcasting environment that is rapidly disappearing.

“I’m confident greater industry self-regulation is the most practical way to level the playing field across platforms, and can provide an appropriate level of oversight to maintain ethical journalistic standards and audience trust.

“Print media already self regulates through the New Zealand Media Council, and some broadcasters have opted to be part of it. Our expectation is the Media Council will become the primary regulator for journalism. 

Good to see the bill introduced.

The Herald reports:

A protection order was supposed to keep a woman safe.

Instead, a judge said it proved “no better than a piece of soiled toilet paper” as her partner hunted her down, beat her, threatened her life and raped her during a sustained attack that left her fearing she would die.

Now the Northland man has been jailed in the Whangārei District Court for nine years after being convicted of multiple violent offences, including rape, assault and threatening to kill.

For once this isn’t about the sentence. It seems reasonable. It is about this aspect:

But on the second day of the trial, her evidence took a turn.

“She was now saying that everything she said in her evidential interview … was just a pack of lies,” Judge McDonald said.

“Apart from telling the truth about her age, her name, and the number of children she had and their names, everything else was untrue.

“You never assaulted her, you never supplied her with drugs, you never raped her. She painted you as a loving, gentle giant of a man who did everything that you could for her, and that she was the one that was violent, she was the one that was disrespectful, she was the one who was addicted to methamphetamine, she was the one who wouldn’t look after her children.”

Judge McDonald said he allowed the Crown to cross-examine her and, although she accepted some events, she continued to deny the vast majority.

Both the jury and judge rejected her evidence and found the man guilty of the charges.

It’s this part I find so sad. She was raped and almost killed by this man. Yet during his trial, she perjures himself to try and protect him.

I understand who some women do this. They think they won’t get anyone better. They think that as flawed as the man is, at least he is her man etc. So I am not blaming the poor woman.

I just find it so very very sad that she thought she had to do this, to protect this awful man.

I hope with him behind bars, she can find a better life.

The Mental Health Foundation has published its scorecard of the parties With regard to mental health. Reflects very well on Mental health Minister Matt Doocey who has been the first dedicated Minister for Mental health.

The Taxpayers’ Union has published their 2026 manifesto. Some extracts:

• Rule out new taxes, including wealth, death and new capital gains taxes.
• Automatically index income tax thresholds to inflation.
• Introduce full expensing for business investment.
• Keep GST broad and simple. 
• End corporate welfare.
• Extend the Official Information Act to Parliament.
• Proactively publish significant financial information.
• Give ministers greater responsibility for the departments they oversee.
• Introduce an immediate inflation-linked cap on rates, fees and levies.
• Give elected councillors proper rights to council information.
• Reserve voting rights for elected members and introduce recall referendums. 
• Restore stronger property rights in resource management law.
• Remove regulatory barriers that protect incumbent businesses.
• Force agencies to quantify the cost of major new regulation.
• Introduce sunset clauses so regulations must be periodically justified or expire. 

Chris Lynch reports:

HarperCollins and author Byron Clark have publicly apologised to Conservative Party leader Helen Houghton after she challenged her inclusion in a chapter about the Alt Right in Clark’s book Fear: New Zealand’s hostile underworld of extremists. 

Authorbook signing

The settlement is significant because Clark was regularly presented by New Zealand media outlets as a researcher and commentator on far right extremism, while his work was given substantial exposure through outlets including RNZ and The Spinoff.

Houghton objected to being named in a chapter titled “Women and the Alt Right”, arguing that placing her in that context could lead readers to believe she associated with, or shared the views of, far right extremists.

The left love to label anything that moves as far right or alt right. Clark is a hard left activist, and media treating him as an authority on the far right is very misguided. He’s very entitled to his views, but they should not be seen as anything more than that.

Owen Jennings writes:

Last week our worthy host, David, suggested that any encouragement to National party supporters to split their vote would be madness.   It’s a view that is reinforced on any busy street corner adorned with blue-backgrounded billboards carrying the need for National to gain both party and electorate votes.

In every election since MMP was unfortunately foisted on us, such entreaties would have been logical and supportable.  David’s reaction was right, “two ticks, blue” was a winning strategy for National based on historical data.  Looking back over all those elections – except the last one and, now this one coming, National had a sensible approach.

But this isn’t “every election”.  It is different, unique.  Centre parties who have dominated politics forever have found themselves polling in the mid and high ‘twenties’ only.  It’s at a level that will yield less than 40 seats in Parliament even allowing for “wasted” votes from parties under the 5% threshold to be factored in.  National and Labour could easily end up with a Party List vote that awards them as low as 30 seats total.  Remember its only the Party List vote that determines how many seats a party wins.  Electorate seats are filled first and the names on the party’s list are added.

That could well mean when the votes are added up and Electorate seats are added in first National will have won more of those Electorate seats than they are entitled to with their Party Vote. 

National could quite likely win over 37 – 38 Electorate seats.  They could even win a couple of new ones – Wigram from boundary changes and Auckland Central from a strong candidate.

At 29% in current polling National would get 35 to 37 seats – if polling figures reflect into Party List votes.  Remember National has got down as low as 21% in 2002 election.

It is possible they will pick up a few points, but the fact remains with their high number of Electorate Seats the following outcomes are almost certain:

1. All of National’s Party List votes will be wasted – have no effect at all.
2. National will be in Opposition for at least the next three years.
3. The chance of Labour and its motley mob of mates, who have already figured out splitting votes, are likely to win.  They have figured out “overhang”.

It is as simple as this.  If National voters put the needs of the country ahead of party and conclude that a Coalition of the centre right is urgently needed, they desperately need to split their vote.  

Hold their nose, shut one eye or do whatever is needed to use their Party List to vote for NZFirst or ACT.

Otherwise, the unthinkable could happen and we are into heavy taxing, runaway expenditure, increasing debt – an outcome that we could not recover from in a lifetime.

Is this suggesting there should be calls from the top National to drop the “two ticks, blue” campaign?  No.  It is simply saying that circumstances have changed from previous elections.  Voters who want the centre right cannot afford ‘wasted votes’ when the centre left is strategising to create its own overhang and take the House.

It is country first, party aside. 

Splitting votes. Supporting National’s electorate candidates ahead of anyone else with the Electorate vote.

It’s a case of voting for a Coalition, not a party.  A partner.     With the Party List vote.

The alternative is unthinkable.

DPF: I allow guest posts from people who disagree with me. My original post is here.

One is a former ACT MP, and it is no surprise he advocates for something that will help ACT.

My view is crystal clear. Any attempt to win the election through an overhang strategy will almost certainly fail (to succeed you would need a massive overhang), would devastate National in a way it may never recover from, and would generate a huge public backlash.

The way to get the Government re-elected is to win more party votes than the Opposition. It is that simple.

National MPs are not interchangeable with NZ First (or ACT MPs). If you want more National MPs and more National Ministers, then party vote National. If you are an ACT supporter and want more ACT MPs, then sure party vote ACT.

But do not think you are actually helping National by not giving them your party vote. You are not.

ACT announced:

End compulsory employer collection of union membership fees and make payroll deductions voluntary. Currently, employers must collect and transfer union fees under the Employment Relations Act. Union membership is a relationship between an employee and their union, and employers should not be legally required to administer fee collection on the union’s behalf.

All other incorporated societies have to collect their own membership dues from members. It is pretty easy to do so with Internet banking APs. But unions should have the legislative privilege of forcing employers to collect their fees for them.

I am a big fan of polling averages and simulations. In fact I always say don’t pick just one poll, but look at the average, and the trend over time. So I was delighted when the Herald did Herald-Motu poll of polls. However whatever formula they are using is producing results that simply do not match the actual results it is meant to be averaging or simulating.

There are many ways you can do a poll of polls. I do one which just weights any polls within the last six weeks by size and recency. I don’t know what the Herald-Motu methodology is but it fails the most basic common sense test.

Their current poll of polls says “The Greens are on 12.1%, NZ First is on 11.8%, Opportunity is on 8.5%, Act is on 8.3% and Te Pāti Māori is on 2%.”

So they have Opportunity 0.2% ahead of ACT. Now let’s look at the actual poll results from the last few polls:

• Verian – ACT 11%, TOP 6%: ACT +5%
• Freshwater – ACT 9%, TOP 6%: ACT +3%
• Anacta – ACT 8%, TOP 7%: ACT +1%
• Curia – ACT 10.5%, TOP 4.5%: ACT +6%
• Roy Morgan – ACT 10.5%, TOP 9.5%: ACT +1%
• Reid Research – ACT 7.7%, TOP 5.3%: ACT +2.4%

So the last six polls, all from different firms, have had ACT ahead of Opportunity by margins ranging from 1% to 6%, and the Herald-MOTU poll of polls says that the poll of polls means Opportunity is ahead of ACT.

If this is what the formula produces, then bluntly the formula is wrong. This can’t be adjusting for house effects because all six companies have ACT ahead of Opportunity, yet the poll of polls says they are all wrong and actually Opportunity is ahead.

It can’t even be adjusting for the last election because in fact TOP got a lower election result than the polls had them.

I hate saying this, because I am a big fan of poll of polls. But the results being produced by the Herald should not be taken as an indication of the current polls. Once again, every polling company has ACT ahead of Opportunity, yet their poll of polls says Opportunity is ahead.

Simeon Brown pointed out:

“According to Labour’s own modelling, where house prices rise by 3 per cent and inflation sits at 2 per cent, the vast majority of the revenue collected from Labour’s Capital Gains Tax comes only from inflation rather than real gains.

“Under those conditions, a couple who buy an $800,000 rental and sell it five years later for $927,000 would have to pay a tax of $35,600. Once inflation is accounted for, that amounts to an effective tax rate of 81 per cent on the couple’s real capital gain.

Any CGT must be on real gains, not nominal gains, otherwise it is just a tax on inflation. The higher inflation is, the greater the tax take.

“If property prices only rise by 1.5 per cent per annum, a business owner with a $600,000 property who sells up after ten years will face a tax bill of $27,000, even though the value of their property has declined in real terms by nearly $35,000.

Yep people who make a real loss, will be taxed on the nominal gain and so end up paying $27k tax on a $35k real loss!

The Press reports:

New Zealand’s university vice-chancellors are earning between $466,000 and $827,000 a year – as the tertiary sector grapples with reduced government funding and staff redundancies.

$466k doesn’t seem over-paid, while $827 does seem a lot. But rather than go off my reckons, let’s look at how they compare to similar sized universities in Australia, as we are basically in the same labour market. According to ChatGPT:

That’s a useful contrast.

We then had this comment:

Otago University political science associate professor Brian Roper said “exorbitant” vice-chancellor salaries stem from a neoliberal model that treated public universities like private corporations to justify corporate-style executive pay.

The moment they say neo-liberal, you know you can stop reading!

But compare that to this balanced comment from VUWSA:

Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association president Aidan Donoghue said the high salaries of vice-chancellors were necessary to attract high-quality candidates.

“Vic is the second largest employer in Wellington, they have a revenue of about 600 million [dollars]. If that was a private entity, you would expect that sort of compensation for the person who’s effectively managing all the daily operations.”

He acknowledged that students would find it hard to hear.

A pretty sensible comment. I would caution though that comparing to private sector is not apples and oranges as most private sector entities get the vast majority of their revenue from keeping customers happy, not from government funding.

The Herald reports:

The Labour Party cannot say how many additional Pacific Islanders will come to New Zealand under its proposal of visa-waiver travel.

The political party announced on Thursday morning it would expand visa-waiver access to citizens from the Pacific Islands Forum nations.

A Visa Waiver Visitor Visa allows citizens of particular countries to travel to New Zealand for up to three months without needing to first apply for a visa or pay a visa fee.

I’m all for making it as easy for people to visit NZ without paperwork and fees – so long as they are here to visit, not stay.

The Government agency also looked at the number of people who arrived between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2026 who were recorded as having overstayed their visa.

The US topped this list, with 925 individuals or 0.1% of the total temporary arrivals in that time period of that nationality.

In this period, there were 31,054 temporary visa arrivals of people of Tongan nationality, with 666 recorded to be overstaying – 2.14%.

That’s the highest recorded overstaying rate of those listed by Immigration New Zealand and compares to a 0.13% when looking at the overstaying rate for all temporary arrivals in that period. Samoa followed Tonga at 1.25% and then Vietnam at 0.61%.

So the Tongan overstaying rate is 21 times higher than the US overstaying rate.

I would have a simple rule. If the overstaying rate is less than say 1 in 200 (0.5%), then that country gets visa-free travel. If it is more, they don’t.