There have been numerous stories about forest fires in Europe, painting the current number as unprecedented. I never know how much faith to put in reporting, so I went looking for data. Here is the offical EU data.

The blue line is the average for 2012 – 2025, and the red line is 2026.

The Herald reports:

Labour will scrap National’s Investment Boost if elected – under a new plan focused on small businesses.

Investment Boost was the centrepiece of Budget 2025 and was widely promoted by the Government as an important means of attracting new investment to New Zealand. It applies to domestic and foreign investors.

National has described the move as a “$5 billion tax grab”, a reference to the rough amount Labour would have left over by ditching Investment Boost. Nicola Willis, National’s finance spokeswoman, accused Labour of ripping the money away from small businesses to fund other policies. 

“Scrapping National’s $6.6b Investment Boost to fund a $1.56b fig leaf means business owners lose the incentive to invest in genuinely transformative, productivity-enhancing equipment,” Willis said.

Investment Boost allowed businesses to deduct 20% of the cost of a new asset immediately. Labour is cancelling this, which means companies that invest in new assets will face higher tax bills and worse cashflow.

Chris Penk has been removed as a Minister, and is retiring from politics after the confidence vote in Christopher Luxon.

I have mixed feelings on this, which Ani O’Brien covers well. I think it was politically necessary and even essential that the Prime Minister send a clear signal to caucus that there must be no further ill discipline. It is ridiculous to have had to go through two confidence votes in election year. My long standing policy (which I have advocated to the party) is that in fact you should change the rules so leadership votes can not occur in election years.

But I am sad as Chris Penk is a very nice guy, who was an extremely able Minister.

The Herald reports:

A professor has resigned from the UK’s University of Cambridge after the Daily Telegraph revealed he falsely claimed to have published a book.

In a letter online, Jason Arday said he was resigning “with immediate effect” from his position at the university and also Jesus College, citing “unrelenting level of public scrutiny”.

The statement came hours after the university announced it was investigating him following new information regarding his “academic qualifications and honorary appointments”.

Arday, who was a professor of sociology of education, has also been the subject of plagiarism claims after the Telegraph reported that he had been accused of copying parts of his PhD thesis from another student.

There is far more to this story, than the Herald covers.

Arday has rejected each and every claim against him as motivated by racism. When a journalist e-mailed him with questions, he called the Police and accused the journalist of harrassment. And the universities defended him for as long as they could, until the mountain of evidence was too much for them to ignore. The tweet below has a full list of all his fantastical claims and plagiarism.

Stuff reports:

The ACT Party is proposing to make university student services feesvoluntary if re-elected in November.

These are compulsory fees charged by universities to fund services and facilities that support learners, but aren’t directly related to academic learning.

They include things like student media (e.g. Salient at Victoria, or Critic at Otago), counselling services, sports and recreation facilities, on-campus subsidised healthcare and clubs and societies.

This year, the fees average just over $1200 for a typical undergraduate student.

That is a huge amount of money, and for facilities and services that get rarely used.

The backdrop to these extortionate fees is VSM, or voluntary membership of student associations. In 2011 they were made voluntary which was a great decision. Many student associations were basically campus branches of the Labour and Green parties, and every student had to pay $100 or so to fund their political activities and campaigns.

The idea behind VSM was that student associations were voluntary, they would focus more on activities of most value to students, and lower fees. There are many faculty student associations that prosper like this (I was president of one that actually attracted more members than there were commerce students!).

But every single student association did a cowardly deal with their university. Rather than actually face the onerous task of having to persuade students that what they do has value, they cut deals where the university would fund them instead through the student services fee. Such fees already existed but used to be around $300.

This turned the student associations into tame house unions. No longer could they rigorously hold the university to account. You can’t get offside with your paymaster. So they abandoned independence, for money.

And just as importantly, universities now had no opposition to increasing their student services fees. They have gone around 300% in the last 15 years. Tuition fees have caps, but student services fees do not. So universities have been using student services fees to pillage students. And no student association opposes this, because they themselves get funded from them. So student associations sold out students in the interests of their own funding.

Today a four year degree can result in a student paying almost $5,000 in these student service fees. Yet no student association even campaigns for these fees to be lowered do they?

So ACT’s policy is welcome and needed. The status quo has seen students face 300% fee increases. And if you did a scientific survey of students as to whether they think they get value for money for what they pay, I think we know what the results would be.

Chris Luxon has won a second confidence vote. This MUST be the end of speculation and disunity. The election is in around 90 days and too much is at stake.

There is a clear choice – the current Government or a four party hydra of Labour, Greens TOP and Te Pati Maori.

The caucus will meet at 9.30 am tomorrow. Like all National supporters, my wish is that the caucus meeting resolve the speculation, and the focus then goes onto improving the life of New Zealanders.

The Post reports:

A law change that would do away with the traditional five-year census in favour of cheaper annual surveys is unlikely to progress this side of the election, following opposition from the Labour Party.

The hiatus raises questions over how Stats NZ will be able to comply with the law, given it has indicated it would then be too late to conduct the census the normal way in 2028. …

However, because the census can help determine electoral boundaries, it is protected by an “entrenchment” clause that would require three-quarters of MPs approve a change, rather than the usual simple parliamentary majority.

Labour and the Greens made clear in a select committee report last week that they would not back the amendment bill.

I am far from convinced that the answer to Stats NZ struggling to do a comprehensive census is to scrap the census, rather than improve Stats NZ.

Chris Lynch reports:

The Sensible Sentencing Trust has launched a blistering attack on The Opportunity Party’s policy to raise the age of Youth Court jurisdiction, describing it as one of the craziest ideas it has seen in years.

Opportunity’s “Smart on Crime” policy promised until recently to “raise the age of the youth court jurisdiction to 25, in line with developmental science”.

The words “to 25” were quietly removed from the party’s website between March and late July, while the commitment to lift the age remained.

Party leader Qiulae Wong was unable to say last week where the new limit should be set.

Sensible Sentencing Trust spokeswoman Louise Parsons said the original proposal was extreme and dismissed the suffering of victims on the basis of an offender’s age.

“Around 25 percent of all sexual violence and 30 percent of all crime is committed by offenders aged 18 to 25,” she said. “Sending them to the Youth Court will only reduce consequences, hide offending from the media and the public, and will incentivise more crime, because there are far fewer consequences.”

TOP’s policy is for 24 year old rapists and bashers to get sent to a family group conference, instead of face criminal responsibility for their actions. They are more extreme than the Greens.

The Guardian reports:

The US and Saudi Arabia have agreed a landmark deal that would use American technology and expertise to establish a civilian nuclear program in the Gulf country, a move that has caused alarm across the Middle East and through the corridors of power in Washington.

Much of the deal remains unclear, but concerns centre on whether Saudi Arabia would have the capability to enrich uranium domestically, and what that means for nuclear proliferation.

They claim it is for nuclear power, but if that was the case there would be no need for domestic enrichment. You only want domestic enrichment if you want to be able to ensure you can go up to the level needed for weapons.

Now if Iran develops a nuclear weapon, there is a case to be made that Saudi Arabia should be able to develop them also, as they can hold each other in check. But it would be better if neither of them have any domestic enrichment capability.

The Taxpayers’ Union released:

Health New Zealand spent $490,043.75 on a single advert featuring former Lotto presenter Russell Harrison, documents obtained by the Taxpayers’ Union reveal for the first time.

Harrison, who remained suspended from the Ministry of Justice on full pay for years, was paid $3,000 to appear in the 30-second advertisement.

Taxpayers’ Union Spokesman Tyler Groenewald said:

“The $3,000 payment to Russell Harrison might grab the headlines, but the real scandal is that taxpayers were charged nearly half a million dollars for a 30-second ad.”

“This was not a nationwide rebrand or a major emergency public information drive. It was one advertisement costing $490,043.75.”

The Ministry of Justice Health NZ spent $500k of our money to make a 30 second advertisement. That is not the cost of showing the ad. That is the cost to make it. The average cost to make a TV ad is around $40k to $50k. The Ministry of Justice Health NZ spent 10 times that.

UPDATE: Health NZ have commented:

Please be aware the $490,000 investment was for more than one single advertisement. It supported a wider campaign at a time where childhood immunisation rates were low immediately post-Covid-19.

I have asked HealthNZ what were the other outputs of this campaign, as it is unclear.

Seven of the 20 Auckland Councillors voted to have a lower rates rise that what Wayne Brown wanted. All seven of them have been given no significant role with committees, with several removed by the Mayor.

I asked ChatGPT what was the chance this was random:

Auckland Council has 20 Councillors. 13 voted for the Mayor’s rate increases and 7 voted for a lower increase. All 13 Councillors who voted for the rates increase had a significant role to chair or deputy chair a committee and none of the 7 who voted for lower rates have such a role. What is the probability that this occurred randomly?

The answer:

Assuming exactly 13 of the 20 councillors held significant roles, and those roles were randomly distributed, the probability that all 13 role-holders would be precisely the 13 councillors voting for the higher increase is:$$P=\frac{1}{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0px}{}{20}{13}\right)}=\frac{1}{77,520}$$P=(1320​)1​=77,5201​

That is approximately:$$\boxed{{\displaystyle 0.00129\mathrm{\%}}}$$0.00129%​

—or about 1 chance in 77,520.

This calculation assumes the votes and committee roles were independent and that every possible group of 13 councillors was equally likely to hold those roles. It does not by itself establish causation.

So Wayne Brown was elected on a platform to have lower rates increases, and he now punishes the Councillors who have tried to do what he promised. He seems determined to make Aucklanders wish for Phil Goff to return as Mayor!

As usual in election year, I am publishing on my Patreon, profiles of all 71 electorate races.

I am starting at the bottom of the South Island with Invercargill, which is here. This one is freely available. Subsequent ones will be paywalled. The next two will be Southland and Taieri.

Each profile looks at the following:

• Party vote
• Electorate vote
• Boundary change impact (if any)
• Split voting
• Māori roll changes
• 2026 candidates
• Demographics
• Overall outlook

Each electorate will be given one of the following ratings in terms of who wins the seat:

• Safe – 95%+ probability
• Likely – 75% to 95% probability
• Leans – 60% to 75% probability
• Too close to call – Under 60% probability

So if a seat is classified as likely for a particular party, I am saying I think there is an up to 1 in 4 chance it may go the other way. Leans means there is an to 2 in 5 chance it goes the other way.

The Herald reports:

It comes as Peters unveils new election policy proposing to create a “Kiwi Kids Grant” for parents, one of whom must be a New Zealand citizen, for their first three children. 

The grant would be worth $5000 per child for each of their first three years, meaning families could receive up to $45,000 in total. …

In a statement ahead of Peters’ address, he referenced the country’s current birthrate of 1.53 births per person, which fell below 2.1 births per person which the party said was needed to maintain the population.

Falling birthrates is a concern, but there is zero chance that splashing out money like this will increase the fertility rate.

In Hungary they had a policy where a mother who has three children is exempt from income tax for the rest of her life. That is worth a lot more than a one off grant for three years. Hell I’d have another kid or two if it meant no more income tax.

But I am in a minority. The policy has not worked. Their fertility rate is only 1.56 today. It has not grown.

NZ First’s policy will also not work.

The Guardian reports:

Former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has defended the actions of senior members of his government, whom the state’s anti-corruption watchdog found engaged in “serious and concerning” conduct in their dealings with the leader of the firefighters’ union.

A long-awaited report by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, tabled in parliament on Wednesday, stopped stopped short of making any findings of corrupt conduct.

But it found senior members of the Andrews government engaged in “serious and concerning” conduct in their dealings with Peter Marshall – the secretary of the United Firefighters Union (UFU) – when negotiating pay deals for the Country Fire Authority (CFA) and Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB), and their later amalgamation into Fire Services Victoria (FSV).

Basically they did a secret backroom deal.

This included “actions contrary to policy, procedure and codes of conduct, deliberate attempts to conceal and mislead, and the misuse of information”.

The findings led the Victorian opposition to claim the state is being led by a “gangster government”.

An example:

Ibac’s report said Jennings, Bates and Marshall, accompanied by a small team of UFU negotiators, held negotiations over four days in April, “with the first sessions held at a rented meeting space, and the final session on 12 April held in a hotel meeting room”. An unnamed federal Labor senator also attended as an intermediary.

So these were not meetings in ministerial offices. They were secret meetings.

Ibac’s report also raised concerns about the way the 2019 bill that amalgamated the MFP and paid parts of the CFA into the FRV passed parliament. It found Marshall had sought to secure the support of a crossbench MP by hiring their relative days before it was due for a vote in the upper house.

In another intercepted phone call in June 2019, Marshall told a friend the MP was “100 per cent behind us … just to make sure we just employed [their relative].”

This is how Australian unions operate.

Michael Laws posted:

It is with great sadness that I note the overnight passing of my good friend Tony Randle. His death is a shock, unexpected, from a heart condition. I first met Tony at Otago Uni, and he always impressed me as one of nature’s true gentlemen. An inner integrity that burned bright with a compassion for all. Loved Central Otago, served Wellington superbly. Thoughts and prayers for his family at this very difficult hour. Go well, my friend.

I was stunned to read this (I note there is no official announcement yet). Tony was only a couple of years older than me.

I first met Tony 40 years ago in Otago University Young Nationals. He was a couple of years ahead of me (as was Michael). Even back then Tony was a super brain – he wrote detailed 12 page policy papers of the merits of privatisation, when most people were doing one sentence remits.

I reconnected with him decades later in Wellington. He would spends days and weeks going through NZTA business cases and finding out their errors, and doing guest posts on Kiwiblog for me detailing them. He was a huge proponent of better buses for Wellington, and was frustrated that officials would often skew business case in favour of rail over bus.

I was delighted when he stood for Council, and got elected. He was both a great local representative for the Northern Suburbs, and a very principled Councillor. He again often scrutinised business cases and found massive error by officials that could have led to even more wasteful spending if he hadn’t been on the case.

Tony was a lovely guy. He lost his wife to illness some years ago, and was a solo father. I always enjoyed catching up with him, and would happily have his hoardings on my property.

He will be a real loss to Wellington City Council, but even more to his family and friends, of whom I was proud to include myself.

Stuff reports:

US President Donald Trump in a Saturday evening (local time) social media post claimed that Middle East allies have reached the parameters of a deal to end the Iran war and said that he would hold off on ordering new strikes in the five-month old conflict for now.

Trump added that the emerging deal “would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total opening of the Hormuz Strait, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.”

How many times has he announced this? He threatens, back downs, claims a deal, then repeats the cycle again. There is zero evidence that Iran has, or ever will, agree to end their nuclear program.

Deborah Chambers QC reviews the Dotcom extradition saga:

The Kim Dotcom saga should be a source of deep shame to New Zealanders. To successive governments who failed to fix the legislation. To our courts. And to every New Zealander who believes this country can run a competent extradition system.

Fourteen years. That is how long it has taken – and counting – to get a man arrested in a high-profile raid in January 2012 to the point where he might finally be put on a plane to face the music in the United States. 

It should take 12 – 18 months max.

A better approach would be for the relevant Minister to decide both eligibility and whether the person is to be extradited, with the legislation providing only for limited judicial review to safeguard against a Minister going seriously wrong. 

This would be a vast improvement.

On top of all this sits the character of the man New Zealand has hosted for so long. During his years in the Queenstown area his online output increasingly featured material that critics have described as antisemitic. In August 2024 he posted a lengthy thread extensively quoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious antisemitic forgery, and presented it as an explanation for current world events, while denying he was antisemitic. Earlier, in 2015, he tweeted that US actions reminded him of Nazi Germany and added that it was “ironic” Hollywood was “run by mostly Jewish entrepreneurs”. In 2014 he confirmed ownership of a rare, signed copy of Mein Kampf, drawing sharp criticism from the New Zealand Jewish Council. These are not obscure footnotes. They are part of the public record of the man who has consumed so much of our legal system’s time and resources.

There can be no doubt that Dotcom is anti-semitic.

ACT have released a policy on discipline at school. It is mainly good, but potentially problematic.

ACT will give classroom teachers an explicit legal power to direct a student to leave the room for serious or persistent disruption, backed in law, very much like the operation of the school cell phone ban.

This sounds reasonable, but I know there are lots of parents with kids who are neurodiverse, who think (some not all) schools already use removing their kid from the classroom as a first resort, instead of a last one. There is of course a balance to be had, but younger kids especially sometimes just need help with emotional regulation, not being evicted from a classroom.

ACT will give clear legal protection to staff who use reasonable and proportionate intervention to prevent harm, so that order in the classroom can be maintained.

Fine.

ACT will ensure any assault on a teacher, student, or any member of school staff triggers an automatic school response: immediate removal, then a mandatory stand-down or suspension, ending the current school-by-school inconsistency.

This is potentially problematic. If you are talking about say a 16 year-old whacking a teacher, sure. But are they saying that two seven year olds who get in a fight must be stood down? That would be crazy.

ACT will require a parent or guardian meeting when behaviour repeats or turns serious.

Fine.