Roger Partridge writes:

Under section 93 of the Act, the Attorney-General must publish the process for recommending judges. He does so in the Judicial Appointments Protocol, reissued most recently in November 2025 under the signature of the then Attorney-General, Judith Collins KC.

For appointments to the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, it provides that the Attorney-General “will … with the agreement of the Chief Justice, who, in the case of appointments to the Court of Appeal, will confer with the President and, in the case of appointments to the Supreme Court, will confer with the other Judges of that Court, settle a shortlist of not more than three possible appointees.” (Italics added.) A parallel provision governs the High Court.

The italicised words matter. “Agreement” is not consultation. A consultee gives a view the decision-maker may weigh and reject. A person whose agreement is required decides whether the process continues.

On the protocol’s words, no lawyer or judge reaches the shortlist for the Supreme Court unless the Chief Justice, having conferred with the judges already sitting there, is content for the name to go forward.

This gives massive power to the Chief Justice. A Chief Justice is appointed at the personal discretion of the Prime Minister, and may serve for a long time. Dame Sian Elias did 20 years. Most do at least 10. The current Dame Helen Winkelmann will do 13 years.

And the current rules give the CJ an effective veto. No one can even be considered by the Attorney-General for the senior courts, unless the CJ agrees they make the short list.

For my 2c it would be more sensible to have the Chief Justice consulted on the short-list, but not needing to agree on it.

The WSJ reports:

Last week, a slow-burning selloff in France’s government bond market took an alarming turn as it spread across the continent, reviving memories of the eurozone debt crisis last decade. France’s 10-year borrowing cost has risen toward 5%, the highest level since 2002.

The more you borrow, the bigger the risk you become, and the higher the interest rates go.

With presidential elections approaching in the spring, leading candidates to replace President Emmanuel Macron, who is term limited, are showering voters with promises to expand government spending.

Sounds familiar? Two parties in NZ are promising over $200 billion each of extra spending.

The difference between paying 1% and 5% on your borrowing is, of course, massive. In NZ we were paying 3% in 2017, and we are now paying just over 5%.

In October 2023, Curia polled 1,000 NZers on whether they have heard of the Mongrel Mob and Black Power, and if they had a positive or negative view of them.

The results were:

• All voters: Mongrel Mob 3% positive/82% negative = -79% approval
• All voters: Black Power 4% positive/79% negative = -75% approval
• Green voters: Mongrel Mob 7% positive/82% negative = -75% approval
• Green voters: Black Power 5% positive/81% negative = -76% approval

Green voters are smart and get it. Green MPs do not.

Great article:

“Earlier this year the Ministry of Education awarded AGGS the Education Excellence Award for Raising Student Achievement after the school recorded NCEA and University Entrance results above 90% in 2025.”

“We need all the values that are important for young people to feel connected, supported and trusted. Māori students learn like everyone else. I don’t think we need to do things differently or make excuses for them.”

“In 2014 Tangaroa achieved an 88.1% NCEA level 2 pass rate, when nationally the average pass rate for Decile 1 schools hovered between 65% and 69%.”

“I knew how to lift achievement for Māori Pacific students.”

“[When I first got to AGGS] I felt there was a perception among some staff that these students weren’t as capable. I felt the students were being underserved.”

AGGS now has academic results ahead of Epsom Girls (EQI 397) and AGS (EQI 385).

To give you an idea of the progress for AGGS.

UE for LEAVERS

2022: 62%

2023: 67.1%

2024: 73.8%

2025: 84.6%

Retention until 17yo

2022: 87.2%

2023: 87.9%

2024: 89%

2025: 94.5%

Their Equity Index Number is in the high range (488) and many students will travel a long way to be on site each day.

Their ethnicity demographics in 2025 were:

21% Asian

19% European

20% Maori

72% Pasifika

(NB: Ministry stats allow double identification.)

A key thing about that part of the story is that the achievement differentials between ethnicities are minimal – as opposed to many high EQI schools.

The Minister, her MAG, the Ministry, many, many schools – should be beating a path to Ngaire Ashmore’s door.

For more information:

Each year as I do the leavers data process it reveals a range of examples such as above – and points in the direction of examples of great practice – such as AGGS.

Towards exams and final assessments in Term 4 schools also use the data for goal setting.

Many schools, and other organisations, have obtained the data this year. 

If you would like your copy – please see below. The cost is $400 plus GST and the data set will be sent immediately upon order and payment can be made in your normal time frames.

The seventeen sheets cover:

1. Base data by School Number

2. Base data by EQI

3. Listed by Size

4. Listed by L2 NCEA for leavers 2022 – 2025

5. Listed by L3 NCEA for leavers 2020 – 2025

6. Listed by UE for leavers 2018 – 2025

7. Listed by L3 NCEA to UE for leavers gap – 2028 – 2025

8. Listed by student retention until 17yo 2018 – 2025

9. Listed by Progression to L7+ degree study 2019 – 2024

10. Listed by UE results in EQI 10ths – 2021 – 2025

11. Listed by UE results with EQI coded – 2021 – 2025 (highlighted those doing well from higher EQI situations)

12. STATE only: Listed by UE results with EQI coded – 2021 – 2025 

13. National Measures – Attendance & UE Means by EQI 10ths (2022 – 2025)

14. Broad Sector Measures – Overall, Ethnicity, Gender, School Governance, School Type, Geographical Area.

15. Boys’ School Groups (Super 8, South Island) – UE and Retention 2024 – 2025.

16. UE Data for 59 Impressive Improvers – 2023 – 2025.

17. Data Summary and Goal Setting Sheet for Schools to Use. 

[email protected]

The Greens are campaigning on:

• Funding gangs to do drug rehabilitation
• Their right to campaign at gang pads for votes and selfies
• Repealing the gang patch law
• Allowing all prisoners to vote, even mass murdurers
• Abolishing life sentences for murder
• Abolishing preventive detention for repeat sexual offenders
• Allow home detention sentences for murder
• Ban imprisonment as an option for people who breach parole and bail conditions
• Have all defendants up to the age of 25 sent to the youth court instead of criminal court

This is all in their policy.

The Herald reports:

In 2017, Ngaire Ashmore walked into a school in crisis. Now Auckland Girls’ Grammar School is winning awards, fielding hundreds of out-of-zone applications per year, and 92% of its Year 13 students have gained University Entrance – compared to 48% a decade ago. 

The school’s first Māori woman principal spoke candidly to Carolyne Meng-Yee about becoming a mother at 19, challenging low expectations and the personal experiences that shaped her conviction that every student has potential – even when they can’t see it in themselves.

AGGS has an equity score of 487. This means it has a higher than average number of socio-economic barriers. It has fewer than 10% European students.

She has not just doubled their UE rate, but she has almost no difference in outcomes between Maori, Pacific and other students. So how did she do it?

The first two years were tough. There was a lot of resistance to change, and getting everyone on board — particularly the teachers — to believe every student could be an achiever was a challenge.

She overcome resistance to change, and raised expectations.

I knew how to lift achievement for Māori Pacific students.

[When I first got to AGGS] I felt there was a perception among some staff that these students weren’t as capable. I felt the students were being underserved.

She resisted the bigotry of low expectations for ethnic groups that traditionally don’t achieve as well.

Do you think the education system is still asking Māori students to fit into a system that isn’t designed for them?

I think there are things in the system that we need to do better. But I would hate to think the system isn’t working because we must have another system for Māori — because we don’t. 

[At school] we need all the values that are important for young people to feel connected, supported and trusted. Māori students learn like everyone else. I don’t think we need to do things differently or make excuses for them.

She explicitly rejects that there must be another system for Maori, and that Maori students learn differently. And she has almost 90% of Maori students at her school getting UE.

I learned that every student can succeed and that what happens outside the school gates should not define their success at school.

I think this is so important. Far too many people in education seem to think socio-economic success is destiny. They explain away everything as a function of poverty. They think that a school with a high equity number can’t be expected to get results as good as a low equity score.

This is not an argument that socio-economic factors don’t matter. Of course they do. But it is an argument that they are not and should not be determinative.

The Herald reports:

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick won’t say if she would have advised her MP Hūhana Lyndon against meeting with members of the Mongrel Mob.

After being asked the question twice, Swarbrick said she needed to “understand more of the context as to what has played out here”, although she earlier said having those types of engagements were important to understanding and addressing issues in the community.

Swarbrick’s co-leader Marama Davidson said meeting with the Mongrel Mob is “not a new thing” – she made headlines for meeting members in 2021 – and her party was “unapologetic” for engaging with marginalised communities.

The Greens seen gangs as a marginalised community. The reality is they are the ones who create victims.

Gangs are not some sort of community group or extended whanau. They are organised crime. The crime is not incidental to their existence. It is their defining characteristic. Can you name a single gang in NZ that isn’t part of organised crime?

The Greens see them as a marginalised community, and think it is fine to go to gang headquarters and campaign for their votes. There is no empathy for the law abiding New Zealanders who have been killed, raped, bashed or robbed by gang members, because in the Greens world, the gang members are the real victims – of a patriarchal racist society.

On the 2nd of October I wrote:

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.

On the 8th of October the Herald did an explainer, and have made some changes. Much of their explanation has nothing to do with why they had Opportunity above ACT, when every single pollster had them 1% to 6% behind. But there were some nuggets of useful info:

Well, most importantly, it means the Poll of polls is not a polling average.

Then don’t call it a poll of polls!!!

Crucially, the Poll of polls doesn’t just take polled values as is. Instead, it considers how polling values have changed in the recent past, which it uses to predict how voter sentiment may have evolved since the polls were actually conducted. The model’s predictions are then updated as new polls are included.

This seems to be saying that if a party has been going up in the polls, or down in the polls, then they predict that trend will continue. Now I’ve been following polling aggregators and forecasts for over 15 years, since Nate Silver made them famous (and prior to that Real Clear Politics). This is a very very rare practice, and would normally only occur in an environment where you have hundreds or thousands of polls, as inputs to a model.

Certainly some forecasters such as Nate Silver do include non polling information such as economic data, and even expert predictions. But they make it crystal clear that they are doing so, and in Silver’s case they provide different outputs (lite, classic, deluxe) so readers can pick between the simple polling average and that which incorporates other data.

Could you imagine what would happen if an actual polling company said “Hey National got 32% in this poll, but as they were at 30% in the last poll, they have momentum, so we are going to report they are at 34%!”

It is worth reflecting on what the actual polls since the Herald poll of polls had Opportunity ahead of ACT have said. They are:

• Roy Morgan: ACT 4.5% ahead
• Reid Research: ACT 3.5% ahead
• Verian: Act 2.0% ahead
• Curia: ACT 4.4% ahead

So if the momentum formula was a useful thing to do, then you would have expected the next set of polls to indeed show Opportunity ahead. But none of them do – the last 10 polls all show ACT ahead, but the herald poll of polls still shows Opportunity ahead of ACT.

This is not a trivial issue. Millions of people may have seen this forecast and thought it accurately reflected the state of the race.

The Herald will continue to use predictions of the outcome of a “hypothetical election held today” as the primary output of the Poll of polls. This is, after all, what we are most interested in.

However, to make it easier to understand what the model is doing, we will also publish two additional estimates. First, we will publish the model’s estimate of the polling average today to help readers understand the magnitude of pollster effects.

Second, we will publish the model’s estimate of the polling average one month ago to help readers understand the model’s sense of underlying momentum. It will also enable readers to check the model’s estimates against the most recent five or six polls.

Extra data is good, as is the explanation. But what the Herald should have done is made clear from the beginning that they were not just taking poll results and weighting them for size, recency or house effects, but also adding in an assumption about momentum (that is very dubious).

What has also been unacceptable is the refusal to actually release the formula being used, so people can judge for themselves. I do a simple polling average at Curia, and the methodology is published here.

If it is necessary to modify the underlying model to more accurately reflect voter sentiment, then we will make changes and explain the reasoning that prompted them to readers. However, at present we do not believe changes are necessary.

You’ve still got a “poll of polls” claiming Opportunity is ahead of ACT, despite the last 10 polls saying the opposite. I think changes were necessary some time ago.

Finally a note of caution. As the election gets closer, the Herald’s model will no doubt reduce the adjustments it makes for stuff like momentum, so that the final pre-election forecast is basically just a polling average (with house effects adjusted for). It is quite possible, even probably, that will be accurate. Polling averages done well, are often superior to any individual poll.

But that doesn’t mean their “poll of polls” six weeks out is at all accurate, or useful. In fact it is highly misleading. Readers should not have to read a 10 page article to understand what it is and isn’t. Do not call it a poll of polls when by your own words “it is not a polling average”.

Here is Labour’s fiscal plan:

You will see they are forecasting $365 million over four years from “reversing tobacco tax cut”.

This is the 50% reduction on excise tax for heated tobacco products. This was a minor change designed to incentivise smokers onto a less harmful product. So it is easy to calculate the “lost” revenue from the policy, as you simply double the actual excise paid on heated tobacco products, and subtract what was collected – ie the lost revenue is equal to the actual collected revenue.

Labour’s fiscal plan has $365 million from changing this excise tax back to what it was. So what has been the actual data?

A March 2026 OIA said that excise tax was $2.26 million in the 2024/25 year, which means the “cost” was also $2.26 million.

Now I wondered if there was data for the most recent 2025/26 year, so I asked. And I just got the reply. It was $3.45 million.

Labour’s fiscal plan says they will make $82 million from reversing the change, while the actual data is it will bring in $3.45 million. So the actual revenue is 4.2% of what they claim, or to put it another way their fiscal plan is out by 2377%!!

UPDATE: The fault may be Treasury’s, not Labour. It seems Treasury doesn’t even look at actual data and has kept in its forecasts a projection the HTP excise reduction will cost $82 million a year. This is clearly nonsense, as seen by the actual data.

So Treasury is under-estimating revenue data by $82 million a year. Labour is claiming that reversing the policy will magically bring in $82 million a year. It won’t. Both Treasury and Labour are wrong, as the Customs data is crystal clear the fiscal impact is less than 5% of that. But the greater blame lies with Treasury.

Also thanks to The Post who did check this out, and pointed me to the Treasury estimates.

Erica Stanford released:

New independent assessment results show primary and intermediate students made the equivalent of four months’ additional progress in mathematics between 2024 and 2026, signalling a turnaround in achievement, Education Minister Erica Stanford says.

The latest Progressive Achievement Test (PAT) data, released today by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER), show statistically significant improvements in mathematics and reading comprehension and vocabulary.

“Our number one priority in education has been raising achievement and closing the equity gap, and these results are incredibly encouraging.

“It means more children are building stronger foundations in literacy and numeracy. These are significant gains and another sign that we are finally starting to turn achievement around.

This is great news, and shows the importance of bedding in the reforms, rather than passing them or scrapping them.

Wow, that is some difference. This is just such great news.

The Guardian reports:

The man accused of murdering Ann Widdecombe has been charged with engaging in conduct in preparation of acts of terrorism including against Nigel Farage. …

So this young man didn’t just (allegedly) bludgeon a 78 year old woman to death because he hated her politics, but also wanted to kill Nigel Farage because Farage had the wrong beliefs.

Where are all the hundreds of articles bemoaning the rise of the extreme violent left? Where are the taxpayer funded documentaries about them?

Political violence is not unique got any one side of politics, but the focus on only one side is what stands out.

Parliament has replaced the RMA. It is dead and buried. Replacing it are a Planning Act and Natural Environment Act. They are both vastly superior to the RMA.

But the fight is not over. The new Acts allow Ministers to issue National Policy Statements that will have huge influence in the new system. A National Policy Statement by Chris Bishop will be far far superior to one by a Labour/Green/TPM/Opportunity Government.

Labour to their credit have said they will not repeal the new laws. But they can promulgate NPSs that will make it much harder for good projects to get consented. So the election outcome will matter.

The independent review of the monetary policy response to Covid-19 is here. It seems fair and balanced. The key takeaways are:

• MPC’s initial response was praiseworthy; rapid and, for New Zealand, innovative monetary accommodation was provided
• Reserve Bank and the banks were insufficiently well prepared for policy near zero interest rates
• As inflation accelerated away from target, MPC decided to stop adding stimulus, but without sufficient urgency
• Inflation rose as far as 7.3%, 5.3% above target, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.2%, an unsustainable historic low,necessitating a costly reduction in economic growth and employment to restore stability
• The law was altered to introduce a Dual Mandate, adding scope for discretion and guiding the MPC to focus less on price stability
• the combined stimulus, while appropriate in the early stages, was too strong for too long

So Labour’s introduction of a dual mandate was a contributing factor to the high inflation we had, along with the RB being too slow to act as inflation started to increase.

The latest update from the Taxpayers’ Union bribe-o-meter:

Two of the seven parties are being fiscally responsible. Two are being irresponsible, and three are just in the money goes on trees category.

The Herald talks to Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan:

A search of Hansard shows that, besides the Speaker, his assistants and deputy, Xu-Nan is the only one who comes close and is by far the MP with the most recorded speeches and questions this term, over 1100.

“Even in the House, you’re learning from your colleagues, you’re learning from each other in the committee stage, you’re learning from ministers, and there are some fantastic ministers who really know their portfolio and are really willing to share their expertise, and those are the ones that you’ll find where the committee stage is the most enjoyable.”

He cited Chris Bishop, Nicole McKee, James Meager and former minister Chris Penk as his favourites.

“There’s such an easy-flowing dialogue and conversation. You ask a question, they respond,” he said. “They’re not there to be political. They’re there to genuinely engage and answer questions.”

His favourite committee stage the whole term was a Statutes Amendment Bill in 2025 in the name of McKee – a bill that makes non-controversial technical changes or corrects or updates a variety of acts.

What he loves most about his job is “the infinite opportunity to learn”.

This is such a good attitude for an MP to have. Quite a few MPs think their job is to create outrage on Instagram and TikTok. But Xu-Nan sees his job as both holding the Government to account, but also an opportunity to learn. We could do with more MPs like him – in all parties.

Politico reports:

So the net support is:

1. Canadians on Carney’s reciprocal tariffs: +54%
2. Americans on Carney’s reciprocal tariffs: +2%
3. Americans on Trump’s tariffs: -30%
4. Canadians on Trump’s tariffs: -75%

Trump is looking to not only lose the House, but also lose the Senate. He managed to get a plurality of Americans backing Canada!

A really fascinating article by Erika Aliarez who went viral over footage of her at a ballpark game returning to her seat with a baby strapped to her chest and her hands full of ballpark food. She was dubbed Mother of the Year and her husband a lowlife who received death threats.

Her poignant article shows the damage that gets done by the viral lynch mobs who determine the entree worth of a person, based on one incident, especially one without full context.

LBC reports:

An investigation has revealed that a man known only as ‘Mr X’ worked as a personal bodyguard for Ismail Haniyeh, who was Hamas’ leader in Gaza between 2007 and 2017. 

He then successfully applied for asylum and eventually indefinite leave to remain in the UK, and was able to plot an antisemitic attack on the second anniversary of the October 7 attack perpetrated by Hamas. …

However, not only were his ties to Haniyah — who was assassinated in 2024 — reportedly well known, he also had a criminal history in Egypt where he was arrested for digging tunnels and smuggling weapons and gold into Gaza.

The UK Government knew all this, yet gave him citizenship!