The Mental Health Foundation has published its scorecard of the parties With regard to mental health. Reflects very well on Mental health Minister Matt Doocey who has been the first dedicated Minister for Mental health.

The Taxpayers’ Union has published their 2026 manifesto. Some extracts:

• Rule out new taxes, including wealth, death and new capital gains taxes.
• Automatically index income tax thresholds to inflation.
• Introduce full expensing for business investment.
• Keep GST broad and simple. 
• End corporate welfare.
• Extend the Official Information Act to Parliament.
• Proactively publish significant financial information.
• Give ministers greater responsibility for the departments they oversee.
• Introduce an immediate inflation-linked cap on rates, fees and levies.
• Give elected councillors proper rights to council information.
• Reserve voting rights for elected members and introduce recall referendums. 
• Restore stronger property rights in resource management law.
• Remove regulatory barriers that protect incumbent businesses.
• Force agencies to quantify the cost of major new regulation.
• Introduce sunset clauses so regulations must be periodically justified or expire. 

Chris Lynch reports:

HarperCollins and author Byron Clark have publicly apologised to Conservative Party leader Helen Houghton after she challenged her inclusion in a chapter about the Alt Right in Clark’s book Fear: New Zealand’s hostile underworld of extremists. 

Authorbook signing

The settlement is significant because Clark was regularly presented by New Zealand media outlets as a researcher and commentator on far right extremism, while his work was given substantial exposure through outlets including RNZ and The Spinoff.

Houghton objected to being named in a chapter titled “Women and the Alt Right”, arguing that placing her in that context could lead readers to believe she associated with, or shared the views of, far right extremists.

The left love to label anything that moves as far right or alt right. Clark is a hard left activist, and media treating him as an authority on the far right is very misguided. He’s very entitled to his views, but they should not be seen as anything more than that.

Owen Jennings writes:

Last week our worthy host, David, suggested that any encouragement to National party supporters to split their vote would be madness.   It’s a view that is reinforced on any busy street corner adorned with blue-backgrounded billboards carrying the need for National to gain both party and electorate votes.

In every election since MMP was unfortunately foisted on us, such entreaties would have been logical and supportable.  David’s reaction was right, “two ticks, blue” was a winning strategy for National based on historical data.  Looking back over all those elections – except the last one and, now this one coming, National had a sensible approach.

But this isn’t “every election”.  It is different, unique.  Centre parties who have dominated politics forever have found themselves polling in the mid and high ‘twenties’ only.  It’s at a level that will yield less than 40 seats in Parliament even allowing for “wasted” votes from parties under the 5% threshold to be factored in.  National and Labour could easily end up with a Party List vote that awards them as low as 30 seats total.  Remember its only the Party List vote that determines how many seats a party wins.  Electorate seats are filled first and the names on the party’s list are added.

That could well mean when the votes are added up and Electorate seats are added in first National will have won more of those Electorate seats than they are entitled to with their Party Vote. 

National could quite likely win over 37 – 38 Electorate seats.  They could even win a couple of new ones – Wigram from boundary changes and Auckland Central from a strong candidate.

At 29% in current polling National would get 35 to 37 seats – if polling figures reflect into Party List votes.  Remember National has got down as low as 21% in 2002 election.

It is possible they will pick up a few points, but the fact remains with their high number of Electorate Seats the following outcomes are almost certain:

1. All of National’s Party List votes will be wasted – have no effect at all.
2. National will be in Opposition for at least the next three years.
3. The chance of Labour and its motley mob of mates, who have already figured out splitting votes, are likely to win.  They have figured out “overhang”.

It is as simple as this.  If National voters put the needs of the country ahead of party and conclude that a Coalition of the centre right is urgently needed, they desperately need to split their vote.  

Hold their nose, shut one eye or do whatever is needed to use their Party List to vote for NZFirst or ACT.

Otherwise, the unthinkable could happen and we are into heavy taxing, runaway expenditure, increasing debt – an outcome that we could not recover from in a lifetime.

Is this suggesting there should be calls from the top National to drop the “two ticks, blue” campaign?  No.  It is simply saying that circumstances have changed from previous elections.  Voters who want the centre right cannot afford ‘wasted votes’ when the centre left is strategising to create its own overhang and take the House.

It is country first, party aside. 

Splitting votes. Supporting National’s electorate candidates ahead of anyone else with the Electorate vote.

It’s a case of voting for a Coalition, not a party.  A partner.     With the Party List vote.

The alternative is unthinkable.

DPF: I allow guest posts from people who disagree with me. My original post is here.

One is a former ACT MP, and it is no surprise he advocates for something that will help ACT.

My view is crystal clear. Any attempt to win the election through an overhang strategy will almost certainly fail (to succeed you would need a massive overhang), would devastate National in a way it may never recover from, and would generate a huge public backlash.

The way to get the Government re-elected is to win more party votes than the Opposition. It is that simple.

National MPs are not interchangeable with NZ First (or ACT MPs). If you want more National MPs and more National Ministers, then party vote National. If you are an ACT supporter and want more ACT MPs, then sure party vote ACT.

But do not think you are actually helping National by not giving them your party vote. You are not.

ACT announced:

End compulsory employer collection of union membership fees and make payroll deductions voluntary. Currently, employers must collect and transfer union fees under the Employment Relations Act. Union membership is a relationship between an employee and their union, and employers should not be legally required to administer fee collection on the union’s behalf.

All other incorporated societies have to collect their own membership dues from members. It is pretty easy to do so with Internet banking APs. But unions should have the legislative privilege of forcing employers to collect their fees for them.

I am a big fan of polling averages and simulations. In fact I always say don’t pick just one poll, but look at the average, and the trend over time. So I was delighted when the Herald did Herald-Motu poll of polls. However whatever formula they are using is producing results that simply do not match the actual results it is meant to be averaging or simulating.

There are many ways you can do a poll of polls. I do one which just weights any polls within the last six weeks by size and recency. I don’t know what the Herald-Motu methodology is but it fails the most basic common sense test.

Their current poll of polls says “The Greens are on 12.1%, NZ First is on 11.8%, Opportunity is on 8.5%, Act is on 8.3% and Te Pāti Māori is on 2%.”

So they have Opportunity 0.2% ahead of ACT. Now let’s look at the actual poll results from the last few polls:

• Verian – ACT 11%, TOP 6%: ACT +5%
• Freshwater – ACT 9%, TOP 6%: ACT +3%
• Anacta – ACT 8%, TOP 7%: ACT +1%
• Curia – ACT 10.5%, TOP 4.5%: ACT +6%
• Roy Morgan – ACT 10.5%, TOP 9.5%: ACT +1%
• Reid Research – ACT 7.7%, TOP 5.3%: ACT +2.4%

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.

If this is what the formula produces, then bluntly the formula is wrong. This can’t be adjusting for house effects because all six companies have ACT ahead of Opportunity, yet the poll of polls says they are all wrong and actually Opportunity is ahead.

It can’t even be adjusting for the last election because in fact TOP got a lower election result than the polls had them.

I hate saying this, because I am a big fan of poll of polls. But the results being produced by the Herald should not be taken as an indication of the current polls. Once again, every polling company has ACT ahead of Opportunity, yet their poll of polls says Opportunity is ahead.

Simeon Brown pointed out:

“According to Labour’s own modelling, where house prices rise by 3 per cent and inflation sits at 2 per cent, the vast majority of the revenue collected from Labour’s Capital Gains Tax comes only from inflation rather than real gains.

“Under those conditions, a couple who buy an $800,000 rental and sell it five years later for $927,000 would have to pay a tax of $35,600. Once inflation is accounted for, that amounts to an effective tax rate of 81 per cent on the couple’s real capital gain.

Any CGT must be on real gains, not nominal gains, otherwise it is just a tax on inflation. The higher inflation is, the greater the tax take.

“If property prices only rise by 1.5 per cent per annum, a business owner with a $600,000 property who sells up after ten years will face a tax bill of $27,000, even though the value of their property has declined in real terms by nearly $35,000.

Yep people who make a real loss, will be taxed on the nominal gain and so end up paying $27k tax on a $35k real loss!

The Press reports:

New Zealand’s university vice-chancellors are earning between $466,000 and $827,000 a year – as the tertiary sector grapples with reduced government funding and staff redundancies.

$466k doesn’t seem over-paid, while $827 does seem a lot. But rather than go off my reckons, let’s look at how they compare to similar sized universities in Australia, as we are basically in the same labour market. According to ChatGPT:

That’s a useful contrast.

We then had this comment:

Otago University political science associate professor Brian Roper said “exorbitant” vice-chancellor salaries stem from a neoliberal model that treated public universities like private corporations to justify corporate-style executive pay.

The moment they say neo-liberal, you know you can stop reading!

But compare that to this balanced comment from VUWSA:

Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association president Aidan Donoghue said the high salaries of vice-chancellors were necessary to attract high-quality candidates.

“Vic is the second largest employer in Wellington, they have a revenue of about 600 million [dollars]. If that was a private entity, you would expect that sort of compensation for the person who’s effectively managing all the daily operations.”

He acknowledged that students would find it hard to hear.

A pretty sensible comment. I would caution though that comparing to private sector is not apples and oranges as most private sector entities get the vast majority of their revenue from keeping customers happy, not from government funding.

The Herald reports:

The Labour Party cannot say how many additional Pacific Islanders will come to New Zealand under its proposal of visa-waiver travel.

The political party announced on Thursday morning it would expand visa-waiver access to citizens from the Pacific Islands Forum nations.

A Visa Waiver Visitor Visa allows citizens of particular countries to travel to New Zealand for up to three months without needing to first apply for a visa or pay a visa fee.

I’m all for making it as easy for people to visit NZ without paperwork and fees – so long as they are here to visit, not stay.

The Government agency also looked at the number of people who arrived between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2026 who were recorded as having overstayed their visa.

The US topped this list, with 925 individuals or 0.1% of the total temporary arrivals in that time period of that nationality.

In this period, there were 31,054 temporary visa arrivals of people of Tongan nationality, with 666 recorded to be overstaying – 2.14%.

That’s the highest recorded overstaying rate of those listed by Immigration New Zealand and compares to a 0.13% when looking at the overstaying rate for all temporary arrivals in that period. Samoa followed Tonga at 1.25% and then Vietnam at 0.61%.

So the Tongan overstaying rate is 21 times higher than the US overstaying rate.

I would have a simple rule. If the overstaying rate is less than say 1 in 200 (0.5%), then that country gets visa-free travel. If it is more, they don’t.

Curia did a poll of 1,000 Māori New Zealanders for Whakaata Māori. There are several stories on it:

• Maipi-Clarke tops preferred PM for Māori roll voters
• Labour leads party vote as Te Pāti Māori dominates Māori roll
• Analysis by Mani Dunlop

Some things that I found interesting:

• Te Pati Māori support varies massively by roll. They are at 29% (1st place) amongst Māori on the Māori roll but only 3% (7th place) with Māori on the general roll
• TPM’s party vote with Māori on the Māori roll is much the same as at the last election, so the infighting may not have damaged them electorally
• Labour has dropped 16% with Māori on the Māori roll, and Greens risen 8%, so they may be losing some support to the Greens
• Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke is incredibly popular, scoring 13% as Preferred PM, compared to 5% and 2% for her two co-leaders
• Maipi-Clarke is especially popular with wahine Māori at 20%, under 30 Māori at 23% and Māori on Maori roll at 19%.
• I wonder how much of a boost TPM would get if she became a co-leader
• As expected little support for the CR parties, but NZ First does well in areas. They get 10% party vote from Māori on the general roll and 14% from Māori aged over 60. Peters is also at 14% Preferred PM from Māori over 60 and 11% from Māori on the general roll

The Jerusalem Post reports:

A flydubai commercial passenger aircraft flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv diverted to and landed in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday morning after what Israeli officials said was an attempted hijacking by one of the pilots that led to a mid-air altercation.

An Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post a “major disaster was narrowly avoided” amid growing fears that one of the pilots attempted to hijack the plane with the intention of crashing it into the ground. Additional flight crew, aided by Israelis on board the flight, managed to subdue the pilot and bring him under control, the official told the Post.

One pilot stabbed the co-pilot and tried to crash the plane. Cpt. Smit Machchhar is the FlyDubai pilot who was stabbed by his co-pilot. He fought back and reportedly managed to open the cockpit door after he was stabbed, allowing passengers to enter and subdue the co-pilot.

If correct, the co-pilot and the passengers saves the lives of everyone on board. When so many people would panic, they acted.

Every year that I process the LEAVERS data for every high school in NZ, I learn a great deal. I enjoy finding remarkable results and engaging with people making those happen.

The Equity Index Number (EQI) is the main mechanism the government uses to address genuine equity issues for students. It takes into account 37 soco-economic indicators. The schools with many students who have risk factors recieve a relatively small amount of extra funding to try and address those issues. The range is from 344 to 569 – with the highed number meaning that they have a high percentage of children with multiple risk factors.

We often associate achievement with EQI … the correlation is strong and I have no doubt that more should be provided for students in high EQI schools. 

The following is a list of 15 schools punching above their EQI.  
   

Up to Kiwiblog readers to see if they can note any patterns.

More details below on the full data set.


Data Process on the LEAVERS of every NZ High School – and aggregates.

Uses: 
– Info for Reporting to BoT, Staff, Parents & Community.
– Info for Goal setting and planning.
– Improved understanding of the NZ High-School system.
– Improved PD contact between schools.

Seventeen sheets:
1. Base data by #
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. 

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

For people using the data for personal reasons a donation is appreciated.


[email protected]

The Herald reports:

Minister for Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says she has lost confidence in Fire and Emergency’s chief executive Kerry Gregory, who she says kept information from her about a “seriously significant incident” for a whole year.

Speaking to media from Parliament this afternoon, van Velden revealed Fire and Emergency has been referred to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

“I have become aware of a serious breach of the no surprises within Fire and Emergency, it is of a nature that is so significant that I no longer have confidence in the chief executive of Fire and Emergency or have confidence that the information that I’m receiving is correct,” the minister said.

Wow, that is a bomb going off. A public declaration of no confidence in a CE, all but means the board must remove him. I’m fascinated by what is this information that was hidden from the Minister.

“I’m not at the ability to disclose further information, all that I can say is that within the last fortnight, I’ve been made aware that significant information was withheld from me by the chief executive of Fire and Emergency for a full year, even after he received external advice telling him that he needed to let me know.

If he had advice telling him he must inform the Minister, then who on earth did this not happen?

“I immediately contacted the board chair as well as the chief executive to let them know that I have no longer any confidence in the chief executive of Fire and Emergency,” she said.

That would not have been enjoyable calls.

This shows annual food price inflation for NZ and four other countries for each three year period (2015 – 2017, 2018 – 2020, 2021 – 2023, 2024 – Jun 26).

In NZ food princes only increased 1.4% annually in the last term of the Key/English Government. Australia and US were slightly lower and UK and Canada quite a bit higher.

In Labour’s first term they increased 1.8%, which was higher than the UK and lower than Australia (just), US and Canada.

Labour’s second term saw annual food price increases of 7.3%. This was ,much higher than Australia, and quite bit more than Canada and US. UK was even higher.

In the 10 quarters since 2023, annual food price inflation has averaged 3%, marginally higher than the US at 2.9%, but below US, Australia and Canada.

This to me doesn’t suggest there is a specific problem in NZ with food prices.

The Herald reports:

Former Speaker of the House Adrian Rurawhe has died this morning at Rātana Pā, his family announced.

Rurawhe was Speaker in the last Labour Government’s second term and was an MP in the Te Tai Hauāuru electorate since 2014.

“Adrian Rurawhe was one of the finest people ever to sit in the New Zealand Parliament,” Labour leader Chris Hipkins said.

“He carried the mana of his people and of the Speaker’s Chair with dignity and respect. He was firm without ever needing to raise his voice, and he was universally respected across every party in the House.“

Members of every party sought his counsel because they knew it would be honest, considered, and given in confidence.

I can’t recall an MP ever saying a bad word about Rurawhe. He was well liked and respected, and will be missed.

By Lucy Rogers

The two remaining anti-Israel factions I wish to cover in this series are (a) Muslims and (b) ethnic minorities struggling to process hurt and anger due to racism and colonial oppression of indigenous peoples. This post will cover the former.

As a preface: I have chosen not to label either of these factions “intellectually dishonest” per se, for a few reasons. Firstly, I know that I would be playing into the hands of my enemies because I would immediately face the bad faith accusation that I believe all Muslims intellectually dishonest by virtue of being a Muslim (or for that matter, all members of ethnic minorities struggling to process hurt due to racism by virtue of the fact) which would be grossly offensive and is not in fact my view.

Secondly, in fact the Muslims at these protests are by far the faction I have the most respect for (with people struggling to process race-related hurt a close second). I think that the mentality that “OK, what happened on October 7 was wrong, but I am a Palestinian and I am focussed on Palestinian suffering” is a perfectly respectable position, as long as violence towards Israeli civilians is genuinely condemned. My primary intention at these protests has always been to protest intellectually dishonest Westerners, not Muslims per se. However, Westerners have no such excuse for their wilful refusal to engage with atrocities committed against Israeli civilians on October 7.

Thirdly, I think that “intellectual dishonesty” is quite harsh language, and while various other factions (such as Westerners who are starry-eyed about Hamas because allyship with the oppressed makes them feel good about themselves) are deserving of it I am reluctant to describe anyone I have more respect for in such terms.

Anyway, I have a number of insights on the Muslim faction resulting from regular kōrero (dialogue) with them over the past two and a half years. Muslims tend to perceive the Palestine/ Israel conflict as a defensive war. (Ditto the Israel/ Lebanon conflict.) This is not just due to the displacement of 700,000 Arabs in 1948: it is also because ongoing violence from a small group of Jewish extremists in the West Bank/ J&S is a serious problem according to Palestinians I have spoken to at the protests. Apparently attacks are happening weekly at present and according to people I have spoken to at the protests this has been happening ever since the American embassy was transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem some years ago. (I note by the way that the Jewish extremists in question are a couple of hundred lunatics out of 8 million Israelis: they’re less numerous than the Mongrel Mob.)

One man I spoke to has just got back from the West Bank/ J&S. Apparently a Jewish extremist was caught by the Palestinian Authority with a rifle in the past fortnight as he was about to attack a mosque in Ramallah. The PA handed him over to Israel, who allegedly released him. (I have no way of verifying this because it isn’t being reported in Western media.) He sent me a video from the Arab media showing the handover, available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13LdVrouz-g

Furthermore, the IDF detaining Palestinians in the West Bank/ J&S without trial is perceived to be the moral equivalent of Hamas taking Israeli hostages on October 7. According to the same man, Jewish extremists attacked his village during the past fortnight as of the time of writing, and the villagers tried to stop them. The actual villagers involved could not be identified, so the IDF allegedly then came and arrested three random villagers instead out of revenge. Having been the victim of police bullying myself, I can well believe that this happens when police (or soldiers) exercise unaccountable power.

I disagree by the way that Israeli prisoners and Hamas hostages are morally equivalent. No Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli prison has ever been forced to his own grave, unlike Evyatar David. While as in any country isolated cases of rape no doubt happen in Israeli prisons it would be severely punished by the Israeli courts, whereas the idea of Hamas prosecuting the people who raped Israeli hostages is laughable. And until recently Israel did not engage in the death penalty, whereas many hostages were murdered without having done anything wrong.

According to the protesters, Israel also arrests journalists who are critical of them, including people who work for Al Jazeera. (Again, this is one side of the argument. Many Al Jazeera “journalists” are Hamas operatives. The hostage handover was planned, directed and filmed by Hamas. But I am relaying what I have been told by Palestinians at the protests.) Accordingly, there is considerable resentment amongst Palestinians at the protests in Auckland that people called for the release of the 251 Israeli hostages but following the ending of that crisis that the plight of 9000 Palestinians held without trial in Israeli prisons is perceived to be being ignored. (One person I spoke to estimates that about half of Palestinians in administrative detention are there for no good reason, including women and children.)

There is a lack of awareness amongst most of the Muslim protesters of the extent of the atrocities committed on October 7. Many of them sincerely believe that civilian casualties are exaggerated and some of them also believe that the Israeli army murdered its own people pursuant to the Hannibal Directive. (This is a discredited conspiracy theory which was refuted in a UN report on the subject, which found that only 14 Israeli deaths could be attributed to the Israeli military. I am not agreeing with this nonsense, I am simply explaining here how many of the Muslim protesters see things.)

Also, in their view the casualties in Gaza (70,000 people including combatants) far outnumber the casualties of October 7. (Again, I am not agreeing with this logic necessarily, but explaining their perspective.) Accordingly, some Muslim protesters can get quite upset with me at the protests in Auckland for predominantly focussing on the Israeli narrative when they think that the suffering in the conflict disproportionately falls on Palestinians.

Many Muslims also perceive Israeli expansionism in the West Bank/ J&S as a form of fascism. Netanyahu’s government is believed to want to take over the entire West Bank/ J&S (not entirely without reason, I should add) and the belief that Jews are God’s chosen people is perceived to justify the conquest of the land. I have heard people sincerely compare Netanyahu with Hitler. (In my view of course this is beyond ridiculous because the casualties in Gaza are nowhere near comparable with the 11 million victims of Nazi Germany, and the number of Palestinians killed by Jewish extremists in the West Bank/ J&S this year is in the double digits.)

Most of the Muslims at the Auckland protests do not support a two-state solution. People I have spoken to say that they think that Jewish and Muslim communities have coexisted in the past (for example, in Iran, which still has 8000 Jews today) and could co-exist in the future in one state. I think this is absolutely naive of course because it would just result in a massacre (October 7 is evidence of that) and Hamas has sworn to drive all the Jews into the sea, but this is what they think.

I have some criticisms of the Islamic faction. Firstly, I think that hostility towards Jews is far more common amongst Muslims than many of them want to admit, and this plays far more of a role in the Israel/ Palestine conflict than many of them acknowledge. Secondly, as I already mentioned earlier in this series it is entirely possible to form sincere beliefs which are influenced subconsciously by things that a person wishes to be true. October 7 denial is really no different from Holocaust denial. They arrive at that stance because that is what they want to believe. (In fact, I suspect that Holocaust denial would be more common amongst Westerners if the villains weren’t white.) The same is true of October 7 denial, which comes back to hostility to Jews qua Jews.

In other words: despite the very legitimate criticisms that Muslims and Palestinians have of Israel, and despite the fact that many of them are good people, the refusal of many of them to believe what happened on October 7 in the face of overwhelming evidence available via a simple Google search reflects there is something more to the attitude that many Muslims have on the conflict than just balanced criticism.

This is complicated of course by the fact that when sufficient numbers of people within a culture accept falsehoods because that is what they want to believe, people who are genuinely intellectually honest and who hold beliefs for the right reasons can come to believe those falsehoods. Which is to say: I think there is genuine room for kōrero (dialogue) amongst Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and whakaako (education) about October 7, which is encouraging and which is consistent with Gazan political commentator Ahmed Alkhatib reporting that about 50% of Gazans he encountered while on a humanitarian trip there were willing to change their views on what happened on October 7 when confronted with video evidence.

Lindsay Mitchell writes:

The protesting podcaster took issue retorting that a beneficiary would never get more than an employed person. That Henry was just making stuff up.

Henry himself appeared on the NewstalkZB show and said, “I certainly didn’t say this person was single. My assumption actually was that this was a couple that just had a child.” …

An entry-level/apprentice mechanic wage starts around $23 to $26 per hour (training wages for registered apprentices can start lower around $19.16/hour). A qualified/General Mechanic earns an average of $30 to $43 per hour.

So the mechanic’s wage for a six day week would range from $763 – $1,541 take home pay.

What would an unemployed couple with just one child receive? No need to guess or speculate.

The latest MSD report on beneficiary incomes (April 2025) shows the couple would receive, on average, $976 net. If they had two or more children that figure would rise to $1,255. These figures would have increased on April 1, 2026.

So it is entirely likely that the mechanic wasn’t lying and, by proxy, neither was Paul Henry.

Be great to see an analysis like this in the legacy media.

Rod Dixon epitomises what it means to be a kiwi.

I am very happy to help any school/organisation to run a Rod Dixon’s Kids’ Marathon.

[email protected]

The Press reports:

“Globally, Meta has invested more than US$20b in safety and security since 2016 and employs over 40,000 people in safety and security roles worldwide.”

40,000 staff!

Meta said that in the first quarter of 2025, it removed “5.1 million pieces of bullying and harassing content globally – 73.3% of which was removed before anyone reported it to us”.

TikTok said similar things in its submission to the committee: “TikTok invests more than US$2b each year in our trust and safety work globally. This supports tens of thousands of trust and safety experts, alongside sophisticated AI tools, who work around the clock, across the globe, to keep our platform safe.”

TikTok said that from the start of 2023 to mid-2025, it permanently banned more than 375,000 accounts and removed more than 1.3m videos in New Zealand for violating community guidelines. It said it removed more than 280,000 accounts in New Zealand of users suspected of being under 13.

Wait – Til Tok banned 375,000 NZ accounts?? That’s a huge number. Why?

Meta said that in the first quarter of 2025, “we found and took action on 6.8m pieces of suicide and self-injury content, including eating disorder content, on Facebook and 9.9m on Instagram, of which 98.9% and 99.1% respectively was found and actioned before it was reported to us.”

The problem with eating disorders isn’t people on Meta promoting anorexia. It is young women and girls constantly seeing images of perfect bodies, and it driving them to thinking their body needs to change, and developing anorexia.