I recently went to an incredibly moving event where the family of Wladimir Riszko received his Righteous Among the Nation Medal. This honour is given exclusively to non Jews who risked their own lives in order to save Jews from the Holocaust.

Riszko was a Pole who hid not one, not two but 16 Jews in a bunker on his property. He would have lived every day for three years in terror of being found out. He would have been killed if they had been discovered. He didn’t hide them for money. He hid them for humanity. How he managed to feed 16 people for three years is also incredible, during a time of food rationing. Every day he would have been having to go out, and try to find food for them, risking death if the authorities worked out why.

He married one of the Jews, Renee. They moved to New Zealand. They had two children – George (deceased) and Eva. Eva spoke to us about how her mother was traumatised by her experience. She lived, but lost at least four of her siblings to the Holocaust. Her father had mentioned he saved some Jews, but rarely spoke of it. Some years ago their mother had written down what she could recall of the Jews who were hidden by Wladamir. It was a scrap of paper, that she didn’t know what to do with.

In 2021 Sara Bank-Wolf contacted the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand. Her father Dov was a child who was sheltered by Riszko, along with his parents. She did not know the name of their saviour, just that he had married one of the Jews and moved to New Zealand.

The Holocaust Centre initially said there was not enough info to go on, but by chance Dr. Ann Beaglehole, a volunteer, knew of Riszko’s story and the family. She contacted him and the children of Dov made contact with the children of Wladimir. They were then able to identify all 16 survivors, over time.

As Wladamir married Renee, their family were both descendants of the rescuer and the rescued.

We heard from Eva, from Sara (by video). Foreign Minister Winston Peters spoke, ACT MP Simon Court plus the Polish and Israeli Ambassadors, plus Deborah Hart from the NZ Holocaust Centre. The event was both incredibly sad and uplifting. Being reminded of the atrocities of the Holocaust, and how 99% of Jews in their local city were killed. But heart warming at the thought of this man, who became a New Zealander, who risked his own life continuously for three years, to save strangers from extermination. Many of have good intentions, but how many of us would do what Wladimir Riszko did?

He truly is one of Righteous of the Nations.

A guest post by Owen Jennings:

Giovani Riveri makes ‘healthy’ sandwiches and ‘coffee to die for’ in the centre of New New York, right under the tallest skyscrapers.  Giovani is not happy.  Some of his best customers and biggest tippers have disappeared.  Income is down again.  Giovani knows why, too.

“It’s Mamdani.  It’s his freakin’ taxes.”  He nods up at the glass offices towering above his little bar.  “Dey all going to Texas, man.  Mamdani is driving the wealthy outa ere”. 

He is actually right.  New York’s mayor Mamdani ran and was elected on taxing the rich.  He’s somewhere left of Bernie Sanders and the crazy Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez. If there is room, there.  He is all over rent freezes, LGBTQ rights, fare-free buses, building more houses, higher minimum wages and more.  Right out of Labour’s playbook although I guess Mamdani has never heard of Hipkins and the Labour Party.  He probably would not even know where New Zealand is.

The tax increases proposed were not just marginal changes. He wants a 34% increase on the top personal rate taking state and corporate taxes to nearly 20% of a high income.  And that is all before Washington gets a buck. 

That 20% compares with, say, Texas that has zero state and corporate taxes.  Guess where some of the big corporates are heading?  Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan among several are shifting top staff to Dallas. Citadel, Elliott, AllianceBernstein are heading to Florida.  Total staff numbers are only changing slowly but it is the high-income earners who are moving.  Giovani’s tippers.

Mamdani and his sycophants are playing it down, but he has also begun a series of meetings with relevant CEO’s to try and talk them into staying.  He is not totally silly.  He knows the top 1% of taxpayers are shouldering 45% of the local tax burden.  Washington isn’t helping.  There is no love between Trump and Mamdani or between the traditional Republicans and the extremist elements among the Democrats.

There should be lessons for Kiwis.  Capital is mobile.  Many of our wealthiest have multiple houses in various countries.  Our few top earners are already copping nearly half our tax imposition.  In fact, apply a nett lens and over half of our taxes are generated by around 5% of our citizenry.  If “fairness” is till a key principle of taxation regimes then we are running a very unfair system.

Hipkins, bolstered by the incessant demands about inequality from the Greens and Te Pati Māori clearly has more and higher taxes in mind.  Would he take a minute to analyse the New York situation?  I doubt it. He knows the media won’t tell Mamdani’s story.  Few people, if any, in my street know the mayor’s name, let alone what his extreme socialist policies are doing to the once proud financial centre of the Americas. We may end up with more of our own Giovani’s down the Viaduct.

A guest post by Dr Corinna Proehl:

“Never again is now”. This comment of a GP on the official Instagram account of Hastings’s Mayor Wendy Schollum was enough to trigger a bullying, patronizing pack attack by two councillors, aimed to publicly shame one of their constituents.

The councillors involved are Heather Te Au-Skipworth, senior Hastings District Councillor and close ally of the Mayor. A current Green Party Candidate and former Te Pati Māori candidate, most famous for her racist views: “it is a known fact that Māori genetic makeup is stronger than others…”.  And Nick Ratcliffe, former Green Party candidate for Tukituki, newly elected (and lowest polling) Hastings District Councillor and political friend of the mayor.

The target Dr Corinna Proehl, a long-serving local GP. She grew up in Germany, in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Her father, a historian at the University of Hamburg, was clear: This shameful history of Jews being killed for being Jews is not allowed to ever happen again.  Her own family marked by a tragedy, involving her mentally-ill or “unworthy-of-life” great-aunt Hertha.  Her father, Hermann, found out about the upcoming deportation of their only daughter to a “mental institution”. He rang his son, Dr Proehl’s grandfather, and told him: “They don’t have to kill her, I can do this myself”. So he turned on the gas in their apartment in December 1936. The desperate parents Hermann, his wife Selma, and their beloved daughter Hertha all died together. Not only did the remaining family have to come to terms with this tragedy, it also had to be played down as an ‘accident’. Talking about the event openly would have been regarded as opposition to the Nazi Regime.

This makes “Never again” not just a slogan for Dr Proehl. It is a duty to stand up against anti-Semitism, no matter where it appears. 

When Mayor Schollum made a post in the wake of the Bondi Terror Attack, where Islamist gunmen fired on a crowd celebrating Hanukkah killing 15 people, she only expressed sympathy for ‘our Australian whanau’. No mention of the Jewish community, anti-Semitism or Islamic terror. So Dr Corinna Proehl stood up to her values and asked a simple question: “How can a community be assured of your support if you don’t even mention their name?…. Never again is now”. 

The mayor’s allies saw red, jumping onto the public post, castigating Dr Proehl. Te Au-Skipworth went for her family. Her son, a mayoral candidate, who took a stance against Māori wards, accused of not standing up to racism and gas-lighting her. Attacking family to silence a person is an all too familiar tactic employed by the Nazis. The councillors worked as a pack, claiming that she was not allowed to have an opinion on anti-Semitism because she hadn’t attended all the pro-Palestine protests Nick Ratcliffe had organised. She was called deeply racist, uneducated and told to recluse herself from discussions. Ratcliffe then misused his position as chair of council’s Multicultural Committee to add authority to his attacks. He clearly stated that he was protecting his ‘boss’, Mayor Wendy Schollum. At no point Mayor Schollum stepped in to stop the character assassination on her account.

Secrecy prevails. A Code of Conduct complaint investigation found clear breaches, and the councillors were forced to write apologies. However, the council asked that these be kept secret, ignoring Dr Proehl’s request to publish them on the official channels. Publicly smeared on the Mayors’ official Instagram account, and yet the atonement remains hidden. Further consequences for the bullying behaviour: None. Schollum refusing to strip her allies of any council appointments or positions. Te Au-Skipworth continues to be the most senior councillor after the mayor and her deputy. Ratcliffe is still the Chair of council’s Multicultural Committee, the position he abused to bully Dr Proehl. How Mayor Schollum can still have confidence to continue in this role beggars belief. Bullying an immigrant for whom English is a second language, is now an officially sanctioned role of the Multicultural Committee’s Chairman. Both councillors are still “youth council liaisons”. One wonders what “guidance” these councillors have to offer.

DPF: So Dr Proehl criticised the Mayor for not naming the group that was attacked at Bondi. Then allies of the Mayor attacked her. A secret code of conduct investigation found they were in breach, and they had to apologise. But the outcome and the apologies were to be kept secret! Media should ask why an upheld code of conduct complaint is kept secret.

The Free Speech Union is doing a series of ten “good faith yarns” where interesting and topical issues get discussed between one or two locals, and FSU board member Ani O’Brien. We absolutely need more conversations, rather than just shouting at each other. And the line up of discussions looks really good. They include:

• Queenstown Mayor John Glover on growth and infrastructure and tradeoffs
• ACT MP Todd Stephenson and former National MP Simon O’Connor in Wellington on euthanasia
• Historians Alistair Reece and Paul Moon in Tauranga on Maori spirituality and secular NZ
• Former Health NZ Chair Rob Campbell on public service neutrality
• Far North Councillor Davina Smoulders on co-governance and local government in Whangarei
• Sir Ian Taylor in Dunedin on AI, tech and identity
• Professor Te Maire Tau Upoko from Ngai Tahu on the Treaty and partnership

I’d love to attend all of them if I can. They are all interesting issues, and many speakers whose views I suspect I won’t agree with, but I really want to listen to so I can consider their ideas and arguments.

The NY Post reports:

A woke new bill erases the terms “mother” and “father” from state child custody and parental laws — a gender-neutral rewriting that’s expected to spark a flood of similarly clunky legislation.

“Mother” would be replaced with “gestating parent” while “father” becomes “non-gestating parent” or “parent” in family court along with in domestic and education law, under the legislation, passed this week by state Democrats.

It’s just crazy stuff. Treat people with respect on an individual level when it comes to their gender identity. But don’t try and wipe out terms such as mother and father. This is what causes the huge backlashes.

An article at The Post has no less than four principals complaining that the new ERA reports will allow make it easier for parents to see how a school is doing. There wasn’t a single view of a parent about whether or not they think it would be good to be able to see how their school is doing.

Was The Post unable to find any parents to interview?

Were they unable to find a principal who supports the easier to understand new ERO reports?

A very good explanation of why we need LNG in the short term. Without it we face supply shortages in a dry year which would send power prices sky rocketing. This keeps prices from increasing. No other solution is quick enough to fill the gaps caused by our dwindling gas supplies.

The Spinoff reports:

The government has been spending around $300,000 per year to provide Crown limousines to former prime ministers and their spouses – even though the service goes mostly unused. 

Former prime ministers and governors-general are entitled to lifetime 24/7 access to chauffeur-driven cars from the Crown fleet for any travel “related to his or her role as a former prime minister”. The perk is managed by the government’s VIP Transport Service, part of the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).The government spent a total of $340,646 providing this service in 2025, according to the DIA annual report. That’s despite the 15 eligible former prime ministers, governors-general and their spouses barely using the service. The entire cohort claimed just $10,921 towards land transport, which includes the use of chauffeur-driven cars charged out at an hourly rate.

This is crazy. Only Government would spent $300,000 so they can provide a service that only incurs $10,000 of use.

I’m fine with former PMs and GGs being given access to government funded transport. They often get asked to attend events etc. But you don’t need to have a fleet of limos on 24/7 standby for them. Just give them each an Uber account and you’ll save $290,000.

Oliver Hartwich writes:

The announcement caused a bit of confusion in our office because there is more than one way in which you could read the policy.

The first reading is small. If the saving really is $25 a week, then $65 million stretches to about 54,000 people, or one New Zealander in a hundred. A modest scheme for a lucky few.

The second reading is enormous. Labour says 1.3 million people ride public transport each year, and if they all saved as promised, the bill would not be $65 million but well over a billion. On that reading, the $65 million is not a budget at all. It is a down payment.

The third reading sits somewhere between the two, and it turns on figures Labour never gave us. How many drivers will switch to the bus, and how many riders already spend enough to gain anything? Nobody outside Labour can say.

Three readers, three answers. We could not agree on what the policy was, let alone whether it was any good.

The reason is simple. Labour gave a headline and kept the workings. No model, no spreadsheet, no table of who saves what and where. In fact, not even a problem definition.

Without those, you cannot argue with the policy. You can only guess at it.

Will 1% of NZers benefit from this or will 25% of NZers benefit from it. We don’t know.

Commentators asked Labour for policy. But Labour only gave us a press release with a dollar sign on it.

Parties that want our votes owe us their workings, not just their answers.

Yep, it was a press release, not a serious policy.

Reuters reports:

“The return for major concessions that will be ⁠asked of Iran is the lifting of sanctions, sanctions that were taken at the United Nations,” Barrot said, referring to a vote in September last year.

As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, France holds the power to veto any accords.

“So, as was the case 10 years ‌ago, France will have to give its approval for the sanctions to be lifted,” Barrot declared, a reference to the landmark nuclear deal that suspended international sanctions on Iran in January 2016.

This its basically France saying they think the US has surrendered too quickly, and they won’t go along with lifting sanctions without a better deal!

Where France is saying you have surrendered too quickly, you know it is a bad deal!

The proposed senior English curriculum in NZ – with the design led by Elizabeth Rata – is deeply dull and narrow. It is also ideologically aimed – by her own admission – to prevent the success of any “decolonisation” in our schools.

It is limiting in terms of the fact that great literature can come from any culture across the globe.

No one doubts that C. S. Lewis was influential through his range of writings in the 20^th century – including through WW2. And yet Lewis regarded a man called George MacDonald as his “master”. He wrote:

In making this collection I was discharging a debt of justice. I have never concealed the fact that I regarded [MacDonald] as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him. But it has not seemed to me that those who have received my books kindly take even now sufficient notice of the affiliation. Honesty drives me to emphasize it.

As we try and improve education in NZ, reduce reliance on screens, improve literacy, inspire imagination and creativity we would do well to embrace broad authorship. MacDonald was “the friend and mentor of Lewis Carroll, and a friend and arguable literary influence of Mark Twain. Besides C.S. Lewis, he has also been an influence to many other authors: J.R.R. Tolkien, E. Nesbit, and Madeleine L’Engle, to name a few. MacDonald’s books are worth being considered for inclusion in any curriculum/reading list:

My favourites are:

The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

The Princess and Curdie (1883)

Phantastes (1858)

The Golden Key (1867) – read to every class I have ever taught.

At the Back of the North Wind (1871) – a sitter to ne a GREAT movie by the likes of Sir Peter Jackson.

Lilith (1895)

[email protected]

I’ve been sent a copy of a report by FTI Consulting on the tobacco black market in NZ. It is referenced here by Retail NZ. It is 63 pages long and full of data. It is produced for the three main tobacco companies in NZ (not surprisingly they are against their product being stolen). Some of the findings are:

• The black market grew from 27.2% to 33.5% of the total NZ market
• Over half the black market is contraband
• Legal tobacco consumption fell by 19%
• The estimated lost revenue to the Government from the tobacco blackmarket is $817 million in excise tax and GST. Black market sales pay 0% excise tax, 0% GST and 0% income tax!
• In 2025, New Zealand Customs Service reported intercepting 7.7 tonnes of illicit tobacco in 1,701 interceptions
• Legal tobacco in NZ costs double Singapore and Hong Kong and seven times as much as in Japan, Taiwan and Korea
  

It reminds me that the previous Government’s policy was to eventually entirely ban all legal tobacco sales, so that 100% of tobacco consumption in NZ would then be the black market! Gangs were very upset when this Government reversed this policy.

Liam Ratana writes:

But crucially, if a proposed amendment bill linked to the census changes passes as expected later this year, the number of Māori electorates will be set at seven until at least 2032. What’s more, since 2022 voters have been able to switch between the Māori roll and the general roll whenever they like, as long as it’s not in the three months prior to an election. Before this, changing rolls could only take place during a set four-month period once every five years.

This makes switching rolls for this year’s election a much more viable option with few if any negative consequences, Smit says, and it’s easy to move back to the Māori roll at a later date. It’s about thinking strategically, she tells The Spinoff. “Who’s on the field, and where are the levers, where are the gains to be made?”

She suggests many Māori voters wouldn’t mind if it was the Labour, Te Pāti Māori or Green candidate who won the Māori electorate they’re enrolled to vote in, but would have a much clearer preference in the general electorate. Given this, Smit suggests that where it makes sense to, Māori on the Māori roll should consider swapping to the general roll. …

“Take the Wairarapa for example – it is full of Māori people,” says Smit. “If I was living there, I’d ask how many people do I need to make the seat go left? How many people are down at the rugby field on a Saturday morning who could potentially switch? That’s what I’d be thinking about,” says Smit.

For Smit, the decision is an easy one – she is happy with anyone from a left-leaning party winning the Ikaroa-Rāwhiti electorate where she lives (the incumbent, Labour’s Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, is being challenged by Haley Maxwell for Te Pāti Māori and Heather Te Au-Skipworth for the Greens). But she is keen to see the Labour candidate, Ginny Andersen, win in her general electorate of Hutt South, where it’s been a close contest between Andersen and National’s Chris Bishop for the past few elections. Bishop took the seat off Andersen by the slim margin of 1,300 votes in 2023, and with around 4,400 Māori voters on the Māori roll living within the Hutt South boundaries, the outcome could potentially be swayed if they chose to change rolls and vote for the Labour candidate, Smit reckons.

This is exactly what I predicted would happen when the rules were changed to allow Maori to transfer at whim between the general and Maori rolls (rather than only after each census). It means they can swap rolls to the electorate where they can most disadvantage a centre-right candidate. I note this is a power no non-Maori has.

Then just before the period when the number of Maori seats are determined, they can all switch back to the Maori roll, to game the number of seats.

This sort of gaming just makes for a stronger case to abolish the Maori seats. The claim is that they are equal but different to general seats. But non-Maori do not have the power to swap between rolls to target a candidate they don’t like, or to increase the number of seats.

Policy No 3 is Animal Welfare. Some extracts:

• Ban cats from roaming outdoors (mandatory catios!)
• Establish a Parliamentary Commissioner of Animal Justice
• Limit the number of companion animals an individual can have at once
• Make it illegal to have just one guinea pig or rabbit
• Ban horse racing
• Ban rodeos
• Taxpayer funded spaying and neutering

Mosts of the costs here are societal, not economic. But the annual cost of taxpayer funded spaying and neutering would be around $25 million a year.

Banning the horse racing industry would cost around $1.9 billion to the economy and put around 15,000 people out of work. So not bad for one of their smaller policies.

Radio NZ reports:

New Zealand First will campaign on scrapping the Independent Māori Statutory Board (IMSB), which they say has significant influence over Auckland Council’s decision making.

In a statement, the party said a member’s bill had been written and introduced, which would see the unelected body that has “exercised significant influence” over council decision making since the creation of the Auckland Supercity in 2010.

It is worth remembering that the IMSB was a compromise, when the Auckland Council was formed. Some were pushing for two Maori Ward Councillors, and the IMSB was the alternative – representation on some Council committees, but not on the main Council.

The existence of the IMSB has made it easier to say no to having Maori Wards. Basically you can have one, or the other, but not both.

If the IMSB is abolished, then I would expect that there will be a move for the creation of full voting Maori Ward Councillors. Now under the current law this would need to go to referendum, but around half the recent referendums did pass, so it could happen in Auckland.

Jonathan Ayling writes:

To be clear, these bodies have legitimate roles, and their operational independence is important. No sensible person wants ministers deciding which professional should be disciplined or registered. Political control over individual professional decisions would be dangerous.

Regulators are independent when it comes to their individual decisions. That is how it should be. Ministers get no say in whether a doctor is found incompetent or a broadcaster is found to have breached broadcasting standards.

Operational independence is not the same as saying ministers should stand back while public bodies rewrite the rules, redefine their missions, and treat oversight as an affront.

Exactly. If the BSA decides it has the unilateral authority to regulate Internet based media outlets, they should expect a response from a Minister. Likewise if the Medical Council decides that doctor competence now includes affirming a left wing political ideology, of course they will get a response.

But ministers are not visitors to their own portfolios or regulatory bodies. They are accountable to voters for what happens inside them.

Of course, every individual is free to advocate for whatever view of the world they want. But they should do so as private individuals, not under the false pretence of state regulators, charging the cost of this activism to each one of us.

Push political views in your own time. Don’t do using powers of coercion as a regulator.

Radio NZ reports:

The Green Party has had to correct an error to its tax policy, which had put its costings out by $800 million.

The mistake involved extra funding for Inland Revenue being calculated as a revenue measure, rather than a cost.

The party then quietly re-uploaded the policy document with the correct figures after RNZ made enquiries.

It then released a press release saying there was a “typo” just after 12pm.

It wasn’t a typo. A typo is when you type in the wrong thing.

It was a fundamental error where they treated an expense and revenue. They stuck the $400 million in the wrong part of the spreadsheet, used it incorrectly in calculations and based a fiscal impact on it which was out by $800 million.

The Herald reports:

A former prominent sportsman has been discharged without conviction for drink driving and granted permanent name suppression. …

The charge arose following a situation last July that the police described as “morning-after driving”.

After Ubering home from a function the night before, the man slept. But when he got up and drove the next morning, he was stopped at a routine traffic stop.

The man gave a blood sample, which returned a blood alcohol level of 135mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood. The legal limit is no more than 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood.

His lawyer, Lucie Scott, made lengthy submissions, outlining the efforts her client had made since the incident and the impact a conviction would have on him and his family.

I have sympathy for the argument that he shouldn’t get a conviction for “morning-after driving”. The argument is you did the right thing by. not driving home, and you just misjudged the impact it would have the next morning.

ChatGPT estimates he would have had 15 or more standard drinks the night before to have that high an alcohol level eight hours later. So you could argue with that many, maybe you should be aware.

But I could go along with him not getting a conviction, but I can’t see why you get name suppression?

But there is a further twist?

Given the sportsman had a 28-day disqualification from driving at the time of the offending the judge declined to further disqualify him, saying he was at a low risk of offending.

This changes things for me. If he was disqualified from driving, then he shouldn’t be driving at all, let alone the morning after a huge drinking session.

Duncan Garner got pinged for totally sober driving because he was five days away from having his licence back from some speeding demerits. Garner got his name prominently splashed over the media.

But this guy not only gets off for driving under the influence while disqualified, he also gets name suppression. It doesn’t seem right.

I note though the Police did not oppose it. So maybe there were special factors here, but overall doesn’t quite seem right.

UPDATE: The article implied the 28 days disqualification was in place at the time of the offending. I am told it wasn’t – it was an automatic disqualification from the offending. So this means he wasn’t driving while disqualified, which does make it less serious. So I’m okay with the lack of conviction, but still think name suppression shouldn’t have occured.