Casey Costello announced:

Newly published data shows a continued decline in the sale of cigarettes and tobacco, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello said today.

“The figures are encouraging and are consistent with the long-term fall in smoking rates,” Ms Costello says.

“The latest annual tobacco returns show the volume of tobacco sold in New Zealand fell by more than 20 percent in 2025 compared with the previous year and has more than halved over the past decade. Since 2010, the volume of tobacco sold here has reduced by two-thirds and the number of cigarettes sold per capita is down nearly 80 percent.

A fall in legal tobacco sales is an excellent thing, if it means there has been a fall in smoking rates. So on the surface, this is good news. But I doubt there has been a 20% decline in smoking in the last year.

“It would be great if that reflected a corresponding decline in smoking rates, but it is likely that it is also to do with the availability of black-market cigarettes. It’s harder to encourage people to quit or use alternatives like vapes when they can get their hands on cheap cigarettes, which is why I asked Customs, Police, Health New Zealand, and the Ministry of Health to join forces to better tackle the illegal tobacco trade.”

To achieve the goal of fewer than 5% of NZers smoking, we need to tackle the growing black market.

David Cohen writes:

Right now, virtually anyone aged 18 or older can enrol if they have lived in New Zealand continuously for just 12 months and aren’t here on a visa requiring them to leave by a certain date.

So: a recent arrival, should they wish, gets a real say in who sits in Parliament or on the local council long before they are eligible to become a citizen. Even though the country asks five years of residence before citizenship, it’s apparently fine with only one year before voting.

This is bonkers.

It is bad policy.

Political pollster David Farrar makes the fairly obvious point that if people can vote without becoming citizens, some will understandably feel less urgency to take that critical final step.

I don’t want fewer people voting. I want more people becoming citizens.

It is worth noting what our own Bill of Rights Act says:

Every New Zealand citizen who is of or over the age of 18 years has the right to vote in genuine periodic elections of members of the House of Representatives, which elections shall be by equal suffrage and by secret ballot

Our own Bill of Rights Act says voting is a right that only citizens have. We may extend it to other groups, but the right falls with adult citizens.

Voters in the Western Australian state electorate of Secret Harbour just delivered a huge swing. Here’s the results.

1. One Nation 39.1% (+30.7%)
2. Labor 24.4% (-22.2%)
3. Liberal 17.3% (-7.7%)
4. Greens 7.5% (-1.3%)

The significance isn’t just the swing to one Nation, but that they won a safe Labour seat – ie they are not just picking up disaffected Coalition voters.

Now it is only a by-election, but Victoria goes to the polls in November and it will be very interesting to see how One Nation does there.

This is shocking, yet not surprising. A senior editor at CBC tells their journalists that they should not refer to 9/11 as terrorist attacks, but just as hijackings that led to crashes.

Hard to describe how much contempt one should feel at this.

Radio NZ reports:

After being caught stealing from Kmart, a recidivist shoplifter told police she could go where she wanted.

“I’m not trespassed; I was born here. I’m Tainui. I can go where I want,” Karrie-Ann Tiny Moana Lee Ngahere said.

Oh no, you can’t!

Nicola Willis has announced some changes to the student loans scheme to reward those who stay in NZ and repay the loans, and targets those who go overseas and don’t. The changes are:

• The repayment rate for NZ borrowers drops from 12% to 10%, boosting take home pay by $58 a fortnight for someone on $100k a year
• Increasing the interest rate on borrowers who move overseas from 5.6% to 6.6%
• Restricting KiwiSaver withdrawals for overseas borrowers so they can’t access it until they have paid back their student loans

A good mixture of carrot and stick.

Labour’s campaign is “Better Starts Now”. It sounds like an ad for a watch manufacturer, and in fact it is. They even have it trademarked in NZ!

Th parodies have been fun though

The headline:

Barrister says maternity leave battle added to neonatal intensive care unit stress

This makes it sound like a lawyer was being asked to go back to work when they had a week old child in neonatal care (which would be horrific if true). But what really happened is:

• A self-employed barrister (note self-employed – there is no big bad employer here) had her baby turn up early in June 2025. The baby was in NICO. She had been clearing her diary for the next ten months and asked for a client’s trial to be delayed until May 2026 (11 months time) when she would be available.
• The court set the date for March 2026. She fought against this.
• The Crown argued the trial should proceed out of fairness to the affected complainants giving evidence, and there was time for a new counsel to prepare.

I don’t think you delay a trial because the defendant’s lawyer is on maternity leave. Lawyers should arrange cover for maternity leave, just as doctors, teachers, nurses do etc.

Absolutely judges should be flexible with scheduling when it comes to clashes with other trials etc. But I don’t think one can have all proceedings involving a defendant put on hold for 12 months because their lawyer goes on maternity leave.

Shayne Currie reports:

One of the country’s more colourful legal cases has been revealed in the High Court, with media firm NZME trying to strike out a Waiheke Island woman’s claim that Hauraki radio host Jeremy Wells defamed her and breached her privacy as he impersonated Mike Hosking 12 years ago.

So this was Jeremy Wells taking the Mickey out of Mike Hosking.

This week, the High Court heard that on July 30, 2014, Wells focused his Like Mike commentary on a stoush that was unfolding on Waiheke Island between TV personality and former sports star Marc Ellis and a neighbour over Ellis’ construction of a driveway.

The Like Mike piece was quoted at various stages during Monday’s proceedings, including the opening lines: “If there’s one thing that annoys me more than even Green voters it’s silly do-gooding neighbourly nosy parkers, in particular the ones that stop you doing things on your own property.

“Marc Ellis knows all about them – he’s trying to build a driveway to his practical, unpretentious five-bedroom family bach on Waiheke and some neighbour is getting in the way. The council has granted consent so what’s the problem?

“My guess is that the complainant is either a lesbian or bi-curious, both of which spell danger. Most people who block progress on Waiheke Island are lesbians. You see, lesbians are often lesbian and by their very nature they complain. They’re often jealous, they own dogs …”

Wells, impersonating Hosking, also said: “Occasionally you’ll get a good lesbian, one that plays sports. But in my experience, which is zero when it comes to lesbians because I’ve never met one, they’re potentially terrible neighbours.”

This sounded hilarious. He is taking the Mickey out of Hosking and Marc Ellis. The part about occasionally you get a good lesbian that plays sports (remember he is saying this is what Hosking thinks or would say) is especially funny.

The Waiheke Island resident – named in news reports in 2014 as a neighbour in dispute with Ellis – took exception when she discovered a transcript of the Like Mike item on an independent and anonymous blog site more than nine years later, in October 2023.

So nine years later she discovered the transcript, and despite it not even naming her, she decided to sue for defamation!

NZME maintains that neither Wells nor anyone else at the company knew the woman’s sexuality when the segment aired, a point central to its argument that the privacy claim cannot succeed.

What this infers is that the complaining neighbour was in fact a lesbian! And she is so thin skinned she is trying to sue a decade later, over a satirical peace that wasn’t even aimed at her. Sad.

The Post reports:

The Wellington City Council is one step closer to getting the Government to axe heritage listings for four buildings, including the former General Headquarters Building (GHQ) and the old British Imperial Oil storage tank in Miramar.

Councillors agreed on Thursday to send a letter to RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop asking him to use new powers under the Resource Management Act to remove heritage protections for the GHQ building beside Pukeahu National War Memorial Park, the Miramar tank, the Karori Tunnel and the Kelburn Viaduct.

Good.

This what Hertitage NZ regards as a building needing heritage protection. Once the protection is remove, we should get permission from the owner to have a fireworks display inside it, and burn it down.

By Lucy Rogers

I found this photo in a newspaper article the other day, and I’ll never pass up the opportunity to have some good-natured fun at David Seymour’s expense:

Andrea Vance summarises what we know:

• In May 1999, an engineering and geotechnical consultant Dr Laurie Richards explicitly told council that putting campers under those over-steepened cut slopes was “imprudent” because of the high risk from fast-moving mud and rock.
• In 2005 and 2006, Avalon Industrial Services warned that a major slip could kill 21 people in one hit.
• Avalon called fir an end to earthworks, excavation and tree clearance without a full geotechnical check
• In 2005 Council ignored Avalon and trenched a fire main across the fragile hillside
• In 2019 Council felled large trees directly above the campground without an engineering review
• In 2023 and 2025 two seperate consultants recommended a Trigger Action Response Plan which is a simple operational rulebook so that if rainfall hits a set threshold, or if muddy water starts seeping from the toe, evacuations are immediate.
• The Council never did that
• Not a single hazard sign warning incoming campers

That is all bad enough to clearly identify the deaths were preventable. On the day we had people warning of the danger, but council staff did nothing.

The Council Chief Executive must resign/ Not because he is legally or morally culpable. But because it demands accountability – just we saw at Cave Creek. For years they had these reports telling them there was a risk to life, yet this never ended up on their corporate risk register. That is a failure of management, not governance.

Stuff fact checks TOP’s claims, and Top doesn’t come out of it with any credibility.

• TOP claimed their tax package would see Farmer Kev better off by $48 a week. In reality the average farmer would be worse off by a massive $575 a week!
• TOP claimed Shane and Katie who earn $205k between them and own a home with $1.5 million land value would be $18 a week better off. In reality they would be $2 a week worse off. And when Katie goes back to FT work, they would be $84 a week worse off

A speech in Parliament by Green MP Steve Abel which is so deranged, that it should make him inadmissible for ministerial office. In response to the bill which simply states climate change policy is to be formulated by Parliament, not the courts, Steve Abel said:

There’s a concept that was conceived by a philosopher called Hannah Arendt. She came up with the concept of the “banality of evil”. She described the character of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi who participated in the Holocaust. It strikes me that those corporate bosses today—and, frankly, complicit politicians—are a truer form of the banality of evil, because though they will never personally come so close, as Eichmann did, to transporting human souls to the gas chambers, collectively their actions are far more consequential. They are gassing our whole planet towards an inconceivable human and animal death.

This is simply outrageous. The media should be all over this. He actually says Government MPs who vote for this law are more evil than Adolf Eichmann. It is an absolute insult to victims of the Holocaust that he trivialises their slaughter by saying Government MPs are comparable to Eichmann.

I have just completed the annual data process I do that covers the LEAVERS data for every high school – as well as data aggregates. The raw data becomes available from Education Counts (a part of the Ministry of Education) in August. School leavers are those that leave a school during or at the end of the school year – from any level – and do not enrol in another school. It is a far more accurate indicator set than the cohort (Year Level) data that comes out in February.

I have made some significant improvements to the process from previous years. Please see the listings of the Excel sheets below. 

Key Uses: 

– Schools use the data for Reporting to BoT, Staff, Parents & Community.

– Schools use the data information for Goal setting and planning.

– Schools use the data for improved professional development contact between schools through seeing examples of positive change. Some school principals have based sabbaticals around the data showing clear examples of remarkable achievement/improvement.

– Schools, education interested organisations, politicians, researchers, media, parents use the data for improved individual and collective understanding of the NZ High-School system at this time of rapid change.

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. 

If you order the data for professional use I will send it immediately (with an invoice that can be paid in your payments cycle). The cost is $400+ GST.

For private use – a donation is a good thing – in recognition of the work and value.

In the next couple of weeks, I will detail some of the interesting aspects – for example – the huge improvements over the last three years from schools such as Auckland Girls Grammar, St Catherines (Kilbirnie), St. Paul’s Ponsonby, McAuley High School, etc.

Alwyn Poole
[email protected]

A criminal defence lawyer did the following:

• took a boxing match too far with his son in April 2022, striking him repeatedly after knocking him down, despite the boy’s pleas to his dad to stop
• removed his son from hospital against medical advice
• delayed the case for four years by ignoring timetabling for submissions
• Avoided summons
• Filed numerous meritless pre-trial applications
• showed no remorse according to the judge

Yet despite all that, he got permanent name suppression.

UPDATE: Even worse. I missed he had 10 previous convictions!! And he is a lawyer!

Te Pati Maori has announced the following as part of their tax policy:

• A top marginal tax rate of 48%
• GST of 15%
• A 2.5% tax on assets above a certain threshold
• An increase in the company tax rate by 5%

Let’s say you are a very high wealth NZers with $100 million of assets. Let’s say they produce income of 5% of their value, or $5 million a year. Very roughly the tax they would pay would be:

• Income tax of $2.4 million
• GST of say $350k
• Asset tax of $2.5 million

This would see that high wealth NZers paying an effective tax rate of over 100%. Now unless they are a moron, they would simply leave NZ. And then the actual tax paid in NZ would zero.

Stuff reports:

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford has expressed support for MBIE’s chief executive, hours after he was found to have deliberately misled a select committee.

The Privileges Committee found on Wednesday that Nic Blakeley and MBIE’s former deputy secretary in charge of Immigration NZ, Alison McDonald, deliberately misled the Education and Workforce Committee when answering questions about the failed Immigration Capability Biometric Upgrade project (BCU) in March.

“The ministry would have been aware that in choosing to answer as it did it was certain that the committee would have been misled … on this basis, we find that the ministry deliberately misled the Education and Workforce Committee and, in doing so, committed a contempt,” the committee found.

I don’t understand how this is survivable. I’m sure Blackly and McDonald are very good people who made an uncharacteristic error of judgment. But unless there is a serious consequence for misleading a select committee, other public servants will potentially do likewise.