Highlight of the day was spotting this koala bear in a tree just next to the cycle trail. I don’t think I’ve seen a koala in the wold before – has always been in zoos or reserves.

A collection of galahs and little corellas, both types of cockatoos. They were mainly flying overhead and hard to take a photo of, but then we saw this lot in a paddock.

So far this was my favourite day. Lots of variety on the trail. A long down hill at the beginning, and then many kms across the country.

Overtook these cyclists.

A cool bus shelter at Everton, a very small settlement that consists of a store and a bus shelter!

Very peaceful cycling away from traffic, and even other cyclists. Very few people around during the week.

The Phoenix Tree greets you as you enter Myrtleford.

An outdoor snakes and ladders board.

Bird mosaics down by the river.

Almost at the motel.

My mobile office in the afternoon.

Around 50 kms today. A bit of rain again in the morning but sunny by mid afternoon.

I blogged some time ago that the Herald Poll of Polls was producing nonsense results as it said Opportunity was ahead of ACT, despite every single poll showing the reverse. They justified it on the basis of assumptions about momentum.

The results shows their model was not high quality.

As you can see they had Opportunity 50% higher than what they actually got. They also had ACT and NZ First both significantly lower, and TPM significantly higher.

I’m a huge fan of poll of polls models in theory. But one that actually contradicts the actual polls is not a good model. And it misled potentially hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders by insisting Opportunity was 50% higher in support than they actually were. This could well have had a non-trivial impact on how people voted.

Perhaps Opportunity should declare the cost of the Herald Poll of Polls as an election expense on their return?

Day 3 starts with an easy track out of town.

This wallaby crossed the track ahead of us. Very cool to see a wallaby.

After a long downhill stretch, it levelled out.

Lots of birds around.

Had a coffee break in Wangaratta (reminded me on Dannevirke) and then carried on to Milawa.

The Milawa mustard store.

Had lunch at this cafe in Milawa, which is next door to the cheese factory (highly recommended).

A transfer back to Beechworth where we had a spicy meatball pizza at the local pub.

Around 65 kms today. First part downhill. It rained for the last couple of hours, so sped up to get Milawa quicker.

Not quite as nice scenery as Day 2, which was far more through the bush. Today went past a lot of NZ looking farmland, and was next to main roads for a while. Still very enjoyable though.

The Post reports:

Meanwhile, CCTV footage supplied by a local business appears to show a young boy on a bicycle selling illicit cigarettes from a bumbag.

A man who interacted with the boy estimated he was just nine or 10 years old.

He said it had become increasingly common to see young people selling tobacco and drugs in Papakura. On a previous occasion, he had seen another school-aged child selling bulk cartons of Double Happiness.

The tobacco black market has exploded in recent years due to poor policy decisions by Government. And this is the result.

“In a cost of living crisis, it makes no sense to hit heavy smokers with a tax increase. The concern is that smokers won’t pay it. They’ll instead turn to the gangs supplying illegal, unreported and unregulated smokes,” said Kaushal.

The evidence is crystal clear that this has happened.

Hoek strongly disputes that reducing excise is the solution.

I don’t support reducing the excise tax, but I do support freezing it. Further increases will just fuel the black market.

Instead, she argues the nicotine content of cigarettes should be substantially reduced, making smoking less “satisfying” and encouraging smokers to quit.

Of all the many many dumb things to come out of Otago University, this is arguably the dumbest. People smoke because of the addiction to nicotine (the tar kills them, not the nicotine). Reducing the nicotine content in legal cigarettes will be the stupidest thing possible as it will drive even more people to the black market.

A nice sealed path heading out of Beechworth.

More traditional rail trail path.

A lot of sculptures about.

Around 25 kms along.

Osbornes Flat, around 36 km done.

I just love being totally aware from normal roads and traffic.

Heading down hill.

A nice cider at the Yack Hotel, after a pretty easy 45 kms.

The Herald reports:

Beloved Kiwi comedian, author and advocate Dai Henwood has died after his six-year cancer battle.

He was 48.

Henwood, known for his regular appearances on Kiwi shows like 7-Days and Taskmaster, was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in 2020 and went public with the news in 2023.

There are two types of comedians. Those who are funny, and those who are not. Henwood was in the former camp. He was extremely talented, and from all accounts a great person.

He comes from an arts background, with his parents being a huge part of the success of Circa Theatre in Wellington. It is so sad he died so young.

Thought go out to his family, friends and colleagues.

Am in Victoria for a week cycling some rail trails as my post-election holiday. Day 1 saw us drive to Beechworth, where we will be based for three nights. Beechworth is a historic town, famous for gold mining and Ned Kelly.

This is the Old Beechworth Gaol, where Ned Kelly and many others were imprisoned. Amazingly it was still operating up until shortly after 2000.

A standard room.

There were many hangings at the prison, and you can see where they took place. The tour guide was full of history about some of the more famous inmates, including “stars” of the Underbelly TV series.

The old Beechworth Post Office.

One of several historic hotels.

A monument to the gold rush and the famous Golden Horseshoes incident from 1855 when a newly elected Legislative Council member Daniel Cameron rode through the main streets on a horse shod with real golden horseshoes, to celebrate.

This has now become an annual festival and parade, with a new pair of golden horseshoes ridden every year.

Talking of elections, I predict this bloke will win a seat as I have seen scores of his posters around the place, and zero for anyone else!

Many of the houses here have wonderful gardens – a mini Christchurch.

An Australian White Ibis, Lots of magpies around, but thankfully also many other birds.

The old gunpowder battery storage where gunpowder for mining was safely stored. Designed to funnel a blast upwards in case of an accident.

A view from a nearby lookout.

One of the original cottages.

I don’t think people have fully realised how much the 2026 election results will impact 2029, in terms of overhang.

As readers will know I actively opposed the overhang strategy where people advocated National supporters do note vote National to deliberately create overhang seats. I wrote against it here several times. I did around 40 – 50 public speaking engagements where I had questions on it, and warned against it. I went on Reality Check Radio (who campaigned for it) to make the case against it.

But let’s look at the arguments I made against overhang, and how they now stack up.

1. This would mean National has no List MPs at all, and you lose Willis, Bishop etc. Well this has already happened now, so is not an argument for 2029.
2. A public backlash against a government formed by deliberate overhang strategy. Well I think this still holds true, but National did not advocate for people not to give them their party vote, and presumably never will. National will always seek the party vote. But unlike 2026 when most of its supporters listed to National and did not tactically swap party votes – this will not be the case in 2029 as now overhang is a reality, not a mathematical possibility
3. It creates an arms race, where all parties will then try to manipulate the system. Yep, but TPM started it, and even if it does National would win any such arms race as it generally does better in electorates due to the existence of the Māori seats accumulating left wing voters in seven seats, rather than in say 20 marginal seats.
4. It weakens National as it can’t attract future star candidates through the list. Well this has already happened. Anyone who thinks they will be a National List MP in 2029 should go by a lotto ticket. Unless National can have a huge 6%+ increase in its party vote support, there are no List MPs in its immediate future.
5. It treats National, NZ First and ACT as interchangeable parties. Well they are not. But overhang has now happened and the reality is National now has a ceiling of 42 MPs. So with no path to get more National MPs through the list, then it doesn’t hurt National to have NZ First and ACT get more List MPs.

The two critical changes from 2026 to 2029 are National no longer has List MPs to try and retain, and overhang is not a theoretical possibility, but a reality. This will inevitably mean that in 2029, National supporters will be far far more likely to vote tactically with their party vote. National I am sure will still campaign for the party vote, but supporters will work out what makes sense, and won’t need an advertising campaign to convince them.

The only way this won’t happen is if National is polling up around 35%, or unless there is some reason to think National could lose a huge number of electorates.

In 2029 one could well see NZF and ACT both get say 15% of the vote. This is because there is a world of difference between a theoretical overhang based on assumptions around electorate victories, and an actual overhang where National already has seven overhang seats. This would give them an extra 12 seats, and so long as National held onto at least 32 of 42 electorates, they would almost be guaranteed re-election. I am not advocating this – I am just stating the the overhang result in 2026 change the 2029 landscape massively.

I support changing the law to remove overhang seats, but this is far from likely. Especially as solutions being put forward by many on the left would only remove overhang seats for National, but not for Te Pati Maori. If the left don’t want to be locked out of power for a generation, due to overhang, they need to seriously engage about genuine MMP reform, not pseudo reform that doesn’t deal with the TPM overhang (which they seem to all be ignoring).

SFGate reports

Comedian Dave Chappelle has drawn criticism for saying he “feels better” after last year’s shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Chappelle made the comments Saturday night during a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden as part of his “Karmageddon” tour. Although the performance was supposed to be phone-free, video clips of the show were leaked on social media.

“Ever since that guy Charlie Kirk got murdered – and I shouldn’t say this publicly – but I feel better,” Chappelle said, according to one video posted to X. “I know I shouldn’t say that, but it’s just a feeling.”

Far too many on the left cheer on and celebrate the murder of people, if they disagree with their political views. And this creates a culture that encourages it, which is why Charlie Kirk and Ann Widdercombe are now dead.

The Greens quadrupled their party vote in the seven Māori seats, as Maori voters did what TPM asked them to do, and did not give TPM their party votes.

This gave the Greens an additional 2.1% of the total vote. Without it they would have got 11.2% in the election instead of 13.3%. This means that without the TPM overhang campaign, the Greens would have had 14 MPs instead of 16 MPs.

So when Chloe goes on about how outrageous it is that the Mowbrays pushed an overhang campaign on the right (which didn’t actually change the party vote), then the question to Chloe should be whether she will give up the two extra MPs the Greens got due to the TPM overhang campaign?

Radio NZ reports:

Chris Hipkins says National is only in pole position to form a government because it “manipulated the electoral system”.

“There are a lot of people very angry about the direction that the country has been heading under this government, and you actually see that in the fact that after only one term, National has lost the party vote in this election, they’re only holding on to the prospect of power because they’ve manipulated the electoral system.

“They’re in a position where if they weren’t manipulating the electoral system, they would be gone at this point.”

He said they manipulated things through the overhang strategy.

Chris Hipkins seems to be morphing into Donald Trump. He is lying and refusing to accept an election outcome. I hope the media condemn him as much as they did Trump.

National has in no way manipulated the electoral system, unless you regard being successful at retaining electorates as manipulation!

The leader and campaign team and MPs all actively campaigned for the party vote. The party that did not campaign for the party vote was Te Pāti Māori, whose MPs are critical to Hipkins chances of gaining power. And as I pointed out National’s party vote of 29% is at the same level as it was three months ago.

Asked how that was the case when National had pushed back strongly against vote-splitting, Hipkins said Winston Peters and Chris Bishop weren’t doing that.

“Oh, for goodness sakes! I saw Chris Bishop in the electorate right next to mine, standing next to Winston Peters, asking New Zealand First voters to vote National on their electorate vote,” Hipkins said.

Now he is hallucinating. There was no joint appearance by Peters and Bishop where Peters told people to vote for Bishop. Peters was at a public meeting that Bishop was not at, and said because Bishop is good good a Minister, he thought people should vote for him. I think it is a good thing to endorse good MPs. And I also note of course that Bishop did not win Hutt South, so Hipkins comes over even more deranged by trying to use his hallucination as evidence of manipulation.

And consider this story from 2002:

Labour is encouraging supporters to vote for Green leader Jeannette Fitzsimons as their Coromandel electorate MP in a bid to court support for a potential post-election ally.

“I haven’t used the word endorsement … but just as we haven’t discouraged Labour voters from supporting Jeannette in 1999, we wouldn’t be discouraging them this time either,” Prime Minister Helen Clark told NZPA today.

Miss Clark said Labour’s position on the key electorate for the Greens hadn’t changed since the last election and was part of a long term strategy to ensure Labour had coalition partners.

So according to Donald J Hipkins, Helen Clark (who he worked for) was manipulating the electoral system.

Hipkins has lied about what National did, has hallucinated a joint appearance by Peters and Bishop and has claimed that something Helen Clark did is a manipulation or rigging of the electoral system.

Labour should hurry up and roll him, before he embarrasses them further.

Having looked at how the polls did with the party vote, I thought it would be interesting to also look at the electorate polls. There were 11 electorates with public electorate polls. Seven with Curia and four with Community Engagement.

Curia got the winner right in 7/7 polls and CE for it right for 3/4 polls.

If you look at the gap between the winning and second placed candidate, Curia had the gap under the maximum margin of error in six out of seven polls. In WCT, Katie Milne won by 18% margin compared to 6% in the poll.

Of the four CE polls, only one (Wgtn North) had the gap within the margin of error for their sample size. In Hutt South they had the gap 10% too large, in Mt Roskill 16% too large and in Kapiti a 4% margin for Labour was actually a 5% loss.

Then we have the Māori electorates. As I blogged previously, these are exceptionally hard seats to poll.

There were nine polls in the seven seats.

Curia got the winner right in 6/7 seats (which is a near miracle) and Horizon got the winner wrong in both seats they polled.

To be fair, events had an impact. The resigning of Kerrin Leoni as an endorsed Labour candidate occurred after both polls in that seat, and probably helped increased the TPM margin in that seat.

I also think the Te Tai Tokerau result was probably as a result of tactical voting to give TPM an extra overhang seat.

So overall I’m delighted Curia public polls correctly called 7/7 general seats and 6/7 Maori seats.

I’m away in Victoria for the next eight days, cycling from the Murray River to the Mountains. There will be some light blogging, but not much as during the day I will be enjoying amazing scenery and trails. I do not expect a Government to be formed while I’m away 🙂

Incidentally I am in Melbourne for one later afternoon and evening on Tuesday 17 November. If you’re Melbourne based and want to catch up for a drink, send me an e-mail and might be possible.

Radio NZ reports:

RNZ has revealed a near $12 million budget blowout after a litany of financial blunders, setting the stage for sweeping job cuts.

In its just-published annual report, the public broadcaster set out plans to axe the equivalent of 58 full-time jobs – about one in six staff – by the end of March and cutting running costs by at least 5 percent.

My sympathy to the Radio NZ staff. Losing your job is always hard, but even harder when it is because of incompetence by management.

The $11.8m loss is more than 25 times the $470,000 RNZ had expected to lose over the year to June.

This is incredible as Radio NZ is not a commercial entity. It has guaranteed revenue from the taxpayer. It is not like a commercial broadcaster who has to suddenly cope with a drop in advertising revenue. It has none.

Among the errors, RNZ wrongly counted $2m from land sales as income in its budget.

That is an Accounting 101 type error. Only the surplus above book value should be counted. Did no one on the board ask about the unexpected $2 million in revenue? Or did no one on the board understand that selling an asset isn’t revenue – it is swapping one asset for another?

RNZ chair Brent Impey – who assumed the role in July – told Checkpoint the board would commission an independent review into what went wrong.

“It’s incomprehensible to have got to this position,” he said.

Incomprehensible is the right word for it. The review must include the board and especially the audit and risk committee. It sounds like the CFO was out of her depth, but this is why you have governance.

Good governance isn’t just accepting what is put in front of you. I recall my Institute of Directors course where Don Trow told us how you should never believe the P&L or the Balance Sheet as they can lie. You can classify an expense as an asset. You can classify a liability as income. He said always read the cashflow, as that is the only document that can’t lie. Did any board member scrutinise the cashflow? Did they get a reconciliation of the P&L to the cashflow and examine that? Did they notice the steep decline in cash balances?

Impey also defended keeping chief executive Paul Thompson in the job until his planned departure on 31 December, saying he had accepted responsibility for the result and still had work to do.

I like Paul Thompson and think he did many fine things at Radio NZ. But my God this is sackable offence territory. The problem may have been with the finance director, but the CEO is responsible. And he hired her!

Asked why those in charge still had their jobs, Impey replied: “Well, someone’s got to run the place, don’t they? What do you suggest?”

Yes but just as a board member became acting CFO, one could also have arguably become Acting CEO.

The broadcaster ended June with $8.5 million in cash, down from $18.8 million a year earlier.

Did anyone on the board notice the declining cash position? Again always read the cashflow.

EY, which audited the accounts for the Auditor-General, also flagged a breach of the Crown Entities Act over a $5m overdraft RNZ set up without the required approval from ministers.

Not breaking the law is the first duty of senior management and the board.

It is profoundly disturbing that someone can go through the NZ education system and get to 46 years old, and still be unable to do simple addition, such as 1 + 4 = 9, not 5.

As I pointed out previously, the overhang campaign did not actually see National lose party vote in the three months since it launched. NaNational lost party vote prior to that campaign, but in fact it had an exceptionally good campaign compared to previous MMP elections.

The table below shows the average party vote in the polls three months before an election, the actual result, and the change.

In nine out of the ten previous MMP elections National’s party vote slipped from 1% to 8% in the last three months. In 2026 it stayed constant despite a $500k campaign urging National supporters to not vote National. This is a remarkable result and shows National’s campaign was incredibly effective.

The overhang was not caused by National voters voting tactically on the party vote. It was caused by National over-performing on the electorate vote.

Where there clearly was party vote tactical voting was on the left. Te Pati Maori’s party vote in the seven Maori electorates fell from 30% to 5%!!! The TPM MPs did not even vote for their own party on the party vote.

Overhang was caused by Te Pati Maori. If you don’t like the result, blame them.

This looks at how each party did with advance voting compared to the voting on the day. Two thirds advance voted and one third voted on the day.

National got almost exactly the same proportion in advance votes as E-Day votes. They had the smallest variation.

Labour and Greens did around 3% worse on E-Day as Advance. So it looks like they were better at getting their supporters to vote early but not as good getting them out on the day.

ACT and NZF did around 2% better on E-Day than Advance, so that could be last minute tactical voting?

TOP did 1.5% better on E-Day than Advance, so may have got the last minute undecideds.

Once we know special votes I will add them on also.