My kids were watching You Tube and an advertisement came up urging Māori to enrol on the Māori roll. It linked to this website. Tama Iti tells people the more people who go on the Maori roll, the more seats in Parliament. They do not mention that in fact the number of seats is now fixed for the next six years, so changing rolls before the election will have zero impact on the number of seats. What will count is which roll people are on in 2031.

At the bottom of the page it says that the campaign was made possible by a collective of 120+ Whanau Ora providers. That means it is funded by NGOs that are funded by taxpayers to provide support to Māori.

So we still have no idea who is behind it. So I looked up their .nz registration file. The registrant is Oxidar, a design company. I’m 99% certain they are not the actual registrant, but are a contractor to the registrant. When I was on the DNC Board, it was impermissible to hide your identity behind your design company (but rules may have changed).

So we don’t know who is actually behind this campaign, and if they have links or not to a political party.

Stuff’s headline:

The headline is based on the fact that the TU-Curia poll had Hipkins 0.1% ahead of Luxon as Preferred PM.

This is not statistically significant. In fact a probability analysis shows that there is only a 52% chance Hipkins is ahead, and 48% chance Luxon is ahead.

The Daily Mail reports:

Prince Harry appeared to criticise the High Court judge who ruled against him in his failed case against the Daily Mail.

In an extraordinary 374-word statement the Duke of Sussex referenced Mr Justice Nicklin’s previous work for newspapers just hours after he delivered a landmark judgement in favour of this newspaper.

Released jointly with Baroness Lawrence, Harry’s statement said the ruling felt like there was ‘one rule for newspapers and another for claimants’.

It’s more like there is a burden of proof, and the problem for Harry is he had none. His entire case was basically a theory that if the media had reported stuff about his wife, then they must have got hold of it illegally.

He failed entirely, and now may have to cough up 50 million pounds in costs, which must set a record for doing stupid things to see the wife happy.

News.com.au reports:

Anti-terrorism police have taken charge of the investigation into the killing of veteran British right-wing politician Ann Widdecombe after fresh evidence emerged, the interior minister said Monday. 

The announcement confirmed that police view terrorism as one of the possible motivations for the attack on the 78-year-old former Conservative minister, who was found dead Thursday at her home in southwest England. …

The regional police force initially leading the investigation, Devon and Cornwall Police, said late Saturday that a 28-year-old British man had been arrested in Yorkshire in northern England on suspicion of murder. 

The force said there was “still no information to suggest that this is a terrorism related incident”.

This is very embarrassing. They basically ruled out a terrorism aspect, and then they reversed course. They should have said all along something along the lines of “We can’t rule anything in or out”.

Meanwhile a former Labour and Greens candidate show how caring they are. The BBC reports:

The University of Aberdeen is investigating social media comments by an employee about the death of former MP Ann Widdecombe.

Heather Herbert, who is believed to be a web developer, had posted it was “good news” and that she hoped it was an “extremely painful death”. …

Trans activist Herbert stood for Labour in Aberdeen Donside in the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, and for the Greens in a council by-election in Aberdeen in 2022.

Such lovely people.

News.com.au reports:

Global oil prices have soared by 9 per cent after US President Donald Trump declared the US will be “taking over” the Strait of Hormuz

He added that he will reinstate the Iranian blockade and impose 20 per cent charge on cargo ships.

So both Iran and the US are now demanding a massive fee for ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Both are forms of piracy. Curses on both of them.

UPDATE: Trump has backed down on his piracy demand, but still what a world we live in.

When news broke that Lindsay Graham had died, many thought it was a mistake, and it was Mitch McConnell. Graham was only 71 years old and was one of the most influential US Senators due to his friendship with President Trump. Remarkable he started off as a harsh critic of Trump, but decided it was better to try and influence him than snub him.

Many Democratic Senators have praised him for his friendship and humour. Not all Senators get on with the other party, but he did.

He was one of the most hawkish members of the Senate. He gave a memorable speech in defence of Justice Kavanagh, which is below.

He was up for re-election this year. His sister Darline, has been appointed to fill the rest of his term. There will be a process to appoint a new candidate for the general election. Their parents died when she was 13, so he became her legal guardian at age 20.

Radio NZ reports:

The government says it will explore joining a defence alliance between Australia and Fiji, that commits both parties to “act to meet common danger”.

The NZ Defence Force has 10,000 regular force and 3,000 reserve force, Fiji has 6,500 regular and 6,200 reserve force, so not vastly different from NZ.

The ADF is around 60,000 regular and 30,000 reserve.

I like the idea of a Pacific Alliance.

In May I blogged a report from a meeting in Wairarapa which quoted former Speaker Trevor Mallard that the parliamentary protest was funded by Russia. I regarded the claim as risible.

Someone with ties to the former Government told me that Trevor wasn’t just hallucinating, but that in fact the then PMs Office had been telling people that they thought the protests were foreign funded. There was zero proof of this, but it seems it was a fervent belief by senior Government figures. There was even some reference to a report from DPMC that backed this up.

So I sent in an OIA to DPMC. After several extensions and transfers, I got the reply. There are many blacked out portions, so I can’t tell if they really did lend any credence to foreign funding, but what they do show is that PM Ardern had a significant interest in this.

A briefing to Ardern on 2 March 2026 says:

So the PM personally asked for info on funding, and DPMC said that they would need Police warrants or production orders to properly investigate. I wonder, if such production orders were then done?

So on 23 March 2022, they stated the protest was domestically crowd funded (which was always my assumption).

On 25 March 2022, DPMC noted:

So they said Police are looking into funding streams,

Nigel Farage took a 5 million pound donation (NZ$11.5m) from Christopher Harborne in 2024. This was not a donation to Reform but a personal gift to Farage. That is a staggering amount of money for a politician to accept as a personal gift. In NZ an MP must disclose any gift over $500.

The donation was equivalent to 140 years on the average wage.

It was not hospitality, but a cash gift.

IMO no politician should be accepting personal donations of that quantum. And if they do, it should be disclosed publicly. It doesn’t matter that Farage was not an MP at the time – he has been the de facto leader of UKIP./Reform for 20 years. And the parliamentary rules say MPs have to disclose any gifts in the 12 months before they were elected – which covers this donation.

He has now resigned as an MP, to try and avoid an investigation by the Parliamentary standards watchdog. No other party (except Count Binface) will contest the by-election. If the investigation finds he breached parliamentary rules, and he is suspended for over 10 days, then a second by-election will be triggered.

ACT have announced Paul Henry will be a list only candidate for them.

This is good for ACT. Henry is an incredibly talented broadcaster and communicator. He will draw crowds on the campaign trail, and will help them compete with NZ First for the anti-woke vote.

Salient reports:

What’s the most effective way to make change? Have a broad church representing multiple interests? Or have small, targeted groups trying to make incremental change in specific areas? It’s a question now being posed by Te Herenga Waka academics. Law professor Nicole Moreham and biology professor Wayne Patrick have formed the University Academics Union (UAU), with a focus on academic protections and problems at universities. 

Why the new union? Moreham attributes it to fear of losing academic voice, citing recent attacks on academic freedom in the United States and the financial vulnerability of most academic institutions.

Academic freedom is critically important. Ironically one of the biggest threats at academic freedom is the Tertiary Education Union. Time and time again, they support the mob rather than the academic under fire.

One potential advantage of the targeted strategy is how membership of the UAU is cheaper than the TEU, but unlike the TEU, it does not (yet) offer representation in employment disputes.

The TEU charges 0.8% of your income up to $1,032. The UAU charges $550 and is pro-rata for part-time.

Sad to hear that Sam Neill has died (he had cancer but was free, however died of pneumonia which may be due to his weakened immune system) and NZ has lost arguably its greatest actor.

I first saw him as a kid, in Sleeping Dogs – a film which I still regard as one of the Kiwi greats. I was an addict of the Omen books and films (well the first three) and he was a super anti-christ.

The Hunt for Red October, Jurassic Park were also very memorable, and I loved Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

As Jeffery Archer fan, I enjoyed him as William Kane in Kane and Abel. And he was superb in Reilly Ace of Spies. I could go on and on.

I may not have always like his politics, but to me they detracted in no way from his legacy as a great actor. He will be missed.

Nicole McKee becoming ACT Deputy Leader means that four of the six leadership roles in the Coalition are now held by Maori NZers.

Six out of 20 Cabinet Ministers are Māori – a massive 30% (double the population share).

ACT has released a policy which is:

• Consolidate New Zealand’s 43 departments into 19, grouped around real policy domains so one department owns an outcome instead of several sharing it.
• Consolidate 78 portfolios into 18 ministers
• Let ministers appoint their departmental chief executives for a fixed term for a fixed term, renewable once, with clear protections for officials

I’m a big fan of this policy. I would go even further and consolidate into 12 departments and have 12 Cabinet Ministers.

ACT points out:

It’s hard to see Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market, perhaps that’s why media don’t report on its many successes. They’re first to complain when things go wrong, but who’s around to praise the market when it works? Free Press, that’s who, and this week we look at the crisis that wasn’t.

So, what happened to the fuel crisis? Only two months ago, it felt like we could be digging in for a COVID-level crisis. Shock jock commentators seemed to hope so, as they made scarier forecasts and called for deeper Government interventions.

Former Herald columnist Matthew Hooton wrote that we were entering a Mad Maxscenario, and the Prime Minister should go overseas and trade food for diesel, immediately. Westpac Chief Economist Kelly Eckhold appeared to be auditioning for the role of Michael Baker for this crisis, calling for dramatic controls on diesel and forecasting $150/bbl oil.

At various times the opposition stood up in Parliament and demanded the Government copy the most extreme version of every rationing or subsidising policy they could find overseas. There was some wild stuff to find.

The Australians made public transport free and halved fuel excise taxes. Various countries started down the path of rationing, others got into buying fuel by the billions.

In New Zealand we refurbished a tank, bought nine days’ diesel to fill it, just in case. We also raised per-kilometre reimbursement rates for low-income care workers who need to drive from house to house.

We gave low-income working households with kids $50 extra per week on the Earned Income tax Credit. The $50 will cease when petrol is back under $3 for a month – an ACT idea – that will probably save the taxpayer $250 million.

And the crisis? Now on Auckland’s Manukau Road, the super competitive strip of upstart fuel retailers, Unleaded 91 is going for $2.75. Diesel has been spotted at $2.10. The market has worked, but the media won’t thank it.

I can only assume a Labour Government would have imposed fuel restrictions from Day 1, and spent $10 billion on the crisis, with less than half actually being spending on anything to do with the crisis.

A guest post by William Foster:

As the 250^th Anniversary of the American Constitution approaches, attention has been drawn to Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America”. [11] The connection of his 19th-century political philosophy directly to the modern realities of New Zealand’s local government history is striking.

Since the mid 20th century, central governments in New Zealand have cajoled and coerced local government representatives in support of progressive amalgamations and centralisation (in the absence of any Constitution protecting communities’ decision-making rights), leading to government by officials (through consents, bylaws, extensive rules, inspections, and enforcement). 

This natural shift that Tocqueville observed as a character of the people has been reinforced by the desire of officials to promulgate rules they can follow as a defence against criticism and to lower the skill and judgement needed to perform.

The trajectory of local government in New Zealand since the mid-20th century—specifically leading up to and following the radical 1989 local government reforms—serves as a textbook case study of Tocqueville’s warnings regarding the erosion of local autonomy and the rise of a technocratic “government by officials”. [1, 2, 3, 4] 

The historical reality of New Zealand’s structural shift aligns perfectly with Tocqueville’s theory across three key dimensions:

1. The Absence of Constitutional Protection

Tocqueville noted that the American system survived because states had deep constitutional legal protections against federal overreach. New Zealand lacks a supreme, entrenched codified constitution.

Because local government in New Zealand exists entirely as a creation of parliament, it can technically be altered or abolished by a simple 51% majority vote. This lack of a constitutional shield allowed the central government to systematically coerce and reshape local representation, culminating in the 1989 reforms where the Fourth Labour Government unilaterally amalgamated over 850 fiercely independent local and single-purpose bodies into just 86 multi-purpose authorities—largely without allowing the affected communities a democratic vote or veto. [1, 5, 6] 

2. The Separation of Politics from Administration (The 1989 Blueprint)

The deliberate shift toward “government by officials” reflects the explicit legislative design of the Local Government Amendment Act 1989. [7] 

Borrowing heavily from corporate management theory, the reforms legally decoupled elected councillors from the day-to-day operations of the council. They created the mandatory role of the non-elected Chief Executive Officer (CEO), who became the sole employer of all council staff. [2, 7] 

• The Result: While elected mayors and councillors became part-time political figures focusing strictly on high-level strategy, the actual mechanics of local governance—the drafting of bylaws, the issuing of resource consents, and the setting of extensive rules—shifted entirely into the hands of permanent, unelected career officials and technical planners. [2, 7] 

3. “Defensive Bureaucracy” and the Reduction of Judgement

The tendency for officials to promulgate rules as a shield against criticism perfectly mirrors the institutional psychology Tocqueville identified.

When central government shifts complex national frameworks down to the local level (such as the administration of building codes, food safety regulations, or environmental planning), local officials face massive legal liability and public scrutiny if something goes wrong. To defend themselves against political or legal criticism, bureaucracies naturally react by: [8] 

• Replacing individual human discretion and judgement with rigid, black-and-white checklists.
• Multiplying the number of required inspections, enforcement procedures, and compliance bylaws.
• Designing a system that intentionally lowers the skill level required to execute a task. If an official strictly follows a prescriptive, exhaustive rulebook, they cannot be personally blamed for a bad outcome; the fault belongs to the process.

The Tocquevillian Outcome

As a result of this dynamic, local governments in New Zealand are often perceived less as forums for local self-expression and more as regional compliance branches of the Wellington-based central government. [9] 

By choking elected officials and local communities in a sea of highly complex, technical reporting and planning frameworks, the system creates what Tocqueville feared most: a public that becomes politically disengaged and cynical because their local democratic institutions feel less like a community decision-making body and more like a cold, administrative machine. [8, 9] 

William Foster

Chair, Northern Action Group Inc

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org

[2] https://teara.govt.nz

[3] https://mro.massey.ac.nz

[4] https://nationdatesnz.org

[5] https://www3.parliament.nz

[6] https://briefingpapers.co.nz

[7] https://www.tandfonline.com

[8] https://briefingpapers.co.nz

[9] https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz

[10] https://www.ghd.com

[11] https://www.economist.com

A reader writes in:

There are instances of credit card scams where some baddie gets hold of your CC details and enough of your ID to do a bit of spending on your behalf. There was a cunning one in the news where the baddies rented AirBnB places and used them as delivery addresses – collect the goods (paid for on purloined CC) and move on.

Nothing is perfect but here is how you can limit possible losses.  

Cancel your Visa and replace it with a debit Visa.  Behaves just like a regular Visa except that the card credit limilt is zero – money from a nominated bank account.  Create the account in your Net banking and top it up from time to time with enough money to meet the CC spending. If you want to be truly paranoid, kill Paywave on the debit card.

Baddie gets card and tries to use it. Might work if paywave is active, but card will run out of money if the account has been provisioned sensibly.  Ditto if it is used online.  If paywave is dead then card is no use offline as it will need a PIN.

Might be seen as a hassle for some, but works for me ….

A reader writes in:

Toi Foundation’s proposal to sell TSB Bank to Heartland Group for $620 million has generated fierce community opposition in Taranaki — public meetings, widespread ‘don’t sell the family silver’ sentiment, and an informal survey finding 90% of those with a firm view opposed.

In looking closely into the background, however, I’ve found aspects that go well beyond the sale itself. Some numbers that I think will interest you:

• 25% of all Toi Foundation grants in FY2025 ($6.6 million of $26.4 million) went to organisations governed by sitting trustees — including the single largest grant of $1.5 million to Te Kotahitanga o Te Atiawa Trust, whose chair and former CEO are both Foundation trustees.
• Māori kaupapa grants grew from 14.3% of total grants in FY2020 to 41.0% in FY2025, following a wave of ministerial appointments between 2018 and 2021 — eight of the ten current trustees were appointed by Grant Robertson.
• The sale price ($620 million) represents a 24% discount to TSB’s book value of approximately $815 million. $264 million of the purchase price is being provided by Toi Foundation as a vendor loan to the buyer.
• The 90% opposition figure comes from a survey by local journalist Jim Tucker: 209 of 232 people who expressed a firm view opposed the merger.

The paper includes an interactive dataset covering all 1,178 grants made by Toi Foundation in FY2025, searchable by category, alongside a full trustee conflict of interest analysis.

I am not a professional researcher or academic, but a well-informed and concerned member of the public who has spent considerable time examining the primary sources — annual reports, NZX announcements, grant listings, and public records — and checking figures carefully. I have verified every substantive claim against source documents as thoroughly as I am able.

I have posted the research online at https://toifoundationtsbsale.vercel.app/. My interest is in getting accurate information into the public domain.

There may be angles I have missed or inaccuracies I have not caught — I welcome further scrutiny. What I am confident of is that the material lifts the lid on a governance situation that is genuinely concerning, and probably not unique to Taranaki. The consultation window is short. I am writing to you as someone whose judgment I trust. Over to you to assess whether my conclusions warrant wider attention — and to do so before that window closes.