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July 28, 2025 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 28 July 2025

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General Debate

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balanced

Chris Penk is another quality National minister getting results.

NZs house building just for a lot more affordable thanks to Penk.
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July 28, 2025 8:01am
- Pope Punctilious II
  
  Penk is also one of the few MP’s who had the moral clarity and courage to vote against the inclusion of gender dysphoria in the so-called “conversion practices” ban, legislation that criminalizes any parents or medical professionals who are unwilling to “affirm” a child’s gender dysphoria.
  
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  July 28, 2025 9:58am
  - Notsofast
    
    Just saw this from Wesley Yang. I had not realised Chris Penk was one of the 8 not led by the nose on this mission to sterilise the children and it is 1000 and counting I believe.
    
    “Everybody wants transgenderism to be a subject that’s beneath them to discuss. they want it to be resolved with a handful of trite cliches about inclusion, a few shallow acknowledgments that parts of it went too far too fast. They want it to be a low salience issue that can be backburnered without penalty to their electoral prospects.
    
    No one wants to accept that transgender inclusion necessarily entails the propagandizing of millions of schoolchildren and institutional enforcement across American institutions of absurdities and cruelties that have inflicted direct harms on millions of lives and fatally undermined trust in enormous party affiliated organs of power (unions, schools, professional guilds) that shape the lives of the whole population.
    
    No one wants to accept that the project of expanding rights has fatally overreached into a Quixotic and dystopian attempt to confer a right to compel the whole world to acquiesce in counterfactual claims about the self, and that all of the institutions complicit in this overreach, the Democratic party above all, have subverted themselves beyond recourse until they explicitly abandon and disavow it.”
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:38am
    - balanced
      
      Transgender bs rightfully died when Ardern took off with our embezzled tax dollars……
      
      Lest we, and the newly formed public service corruption unit, forget.
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:31pm
      - Conservatarian
        
        Quite frankly it died at the Kelly Jay Keen / Posie Parker protests at Albert Park when those that screamed about fascism for weeks in advance of the event became fascists and started bashing in the faces of women.
        
        And the Green Party caucus stood on, steadfastly ignoring the violence.
        
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        July 28, 2025 5:03pm
      - Notsofast
        
        The policies snd actions she tried to promote have been adopted in the UK.
        
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        July 28, 2025 7:45pm
- pdm
  
  It is well past time he was elevated to the front bench.
  
  He could have the ditherer Goldsmiths place in a straight swap.
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:02am
- fightingtemeraire
  
  Naval Officer and Submariner.
  
  They only pick The Best for “The Trade”.
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:09am
  - Jimbo666
    
    Used to making decisions! and not procrastinating!
    
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    July 28, 2025 12:22pm
kiwikidsnz

“Despite ongoing restructures across the public service, the total number of public servants hasn’t actually decreased since the coalition Government came to power.

In fact, the most recent data from the Public Service Commission shows the headcount of full-time public servants increased by 121 people following the 2023 election.”

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360770397/despite-ongoing-cuts-public-service-isnt-really-smaller
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July 28, 2025 8:01am
- balanced
  
  The Government’s move to cut public sector spending on consultants and contractors is on track to save $800 million over two years – double the initial target, Public Service Minister Judith Collins says.
  
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  July 28, 2025 9:52am
  - kiwikidsnz
    
    Labour increased the public sector staff by ~18000 / 40% in 6 years with no significant improvement in public services.
    
    At average $100k each, that’s $1800M
    
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    July 28, 2025 1:01pm
    - Burtland
      
      $1.8B EVERY YEAR
      
      inefficiency supported by National
      
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      July 28, 2025 1:16pm
  - rouppe
    
    See my comment below. Depending on the department, it can be handled incredibly badly.
    
    https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2025/07/general_debate_28_july_2025.html/comment-page-1#comment-3742768
    
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    July 28, 2025 1:58pm
- Spam
  
  Didn’t stop Stuff publishing article after article screaming the exact opposite.
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:02am
- Ehlana
  
  If they are replacing consultants with permanent staff, that may happen and still save money.
  
  Though it does seem odd that while the rest of us tighten our belts and do more with less, the public service finds itself already as lean as possible…
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:10am
- NeverMindTheBollocks
  
  Paywalled. Does the article refer to back office staff only? Or does it show fewer back office staff, more than balanced out by more front office staff?
  
  Big difference.
  
  [Mod – article isn’t paywalled]
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:02am
- Gulag1917
  
  Only 20% of bureaucrats are cut out for the job.
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:07am
  - JackRabbit
    
    The other 80% are cardboard cutouts?
    
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    July 28, 2025 12:57pm
- Ghost
  
  Some of those increases include 1000 extra staff for Corrections, don’t think I mind an increase in that
  
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  July 28, 2025 1:23pm
  - kiwimike
    
    If they are all guards
    
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    July 29, 2025 7:39am
Cassandra

Remember “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”? Tom Lehrer has died aged 97. Black armbands.
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July 28, 2025 8:03am
- Cassandra
  
  Just one more. Tom Lehrer’s epitaph: “If, after hearing one of my songs, someone is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or to hit a loved one, it will all have been worthwhile.”
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:10am
  - G152
    
    One of my favourite performers.
    
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    July 28, 2025 9:09am
  - Sacha
    
    He came to Wellington too if I remember aright, before a season at Circa.
    
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    July 28, 2025 9:00pm
- Mike
  
  I saw Tomfoolery at Circa in the 1980s, and his songs still stand up well today.
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:16am
- Simon Arnold
  
  Vatican Rag was greatly appreciated at the vicarage, with the added cachet of his background in mathematics.
  
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  July 28, 2025 6:53pm
Cassandra

Stuff (yeah, I know) this morning:

“Despite ongoing restructures across the public service, the total number of public servants hasn’t actually decreased since the coalition Government came to power.

In fact, the most recent data from the Public Service Commission shows the headcount of full-time public servants increased by 121 people following the 2023 election.”

Talk but no action is not what we voted for.
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July 28, 2025 8:04am
- Tom Hunter
  
  As I predicted in 2021, There shall be minor changes.
  
  After I’d written that we could drop the bureaucrat numbers back to about 36,000 [from 60,000] – based on the rationale that in the year 2000 we had 28,000 ‘crats for a population of about 3.8 million, one ‘crat for every 136 subjects, while by 2020 the ratio was one ‘crat for every 83 subjects of the government – I was dismissed by a National Party supporter:
  
  Look, the reality is that you can shrink bureaucracy around the edges but Tom’s 36,000 is pie in the sky stuff and won’t happen even if there were to be an ACT/National government (as opposed to the other way round) which ain’t gonna happen either.
  
  And so it has come to be. Does anybody think we’re better off, especially with better public services, than we were in 2000?
  
  Anyone?
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:13am
  - cmm
    
    In 2025 we have a hugely computerised organisation that we didn’t have in 2000.
    In 2000, a large % of government staff were filing, interacting with the public, reading and entering detials and performing functions that the people now do themselves via web pages etc.
    
    If anything, administrative staffing numbers should be a good 10 to 20% less than they were in 2000.
    
    So call that 1 bureaucrat per 150 people. Approximately half of what we have now.
    
    Even in areas such as healthcare, computerisation has improved information gathering. There is no need for a nurse to sit with a patient for an hour taking their pulse every minute and plotting a graph.
    
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    July 28, 2025 8:54am
    - Caine9
      
      I’m not sure that taking the humanity out of nursing is necessarily the best strategy.
      It might make sense on paper, but not giving vulnerable people attention is unlikely to produce good results.
      
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      July 28, 2025 9:46am
      - cmm
        
        There’s always a “but what about the nurses” person to make an illogical strawman.
        
        It is disingenuous to hide tens of thousands of government office “workers” behind “but what about the nurses”.
        
        I am in no way saying nurses should be cut.
        
        The only reason I mentioned nurses is that modern monitoring equipment has freed up nurses to be more effective. My wife was a nurse back in the 1980s. One of her roles was monitoring people after surgery which took a dedicated nurse per patient monitoring their vitals and graphing those. Now that can be performed by a computer – freeing up the nurses to do more important things and take better care of patients.
        
        Nurses do not have to spend hours searching for lost patient files and writing notes. It’s all right there and easy to access.
        
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        July 28, 2025 10:32am
    - kowtow
      
      ‘Even in areas such as healthcare, computerisation has improved information gathering.’
      
      Less than a year I was sitting in a public health waiting room , nearly the reception.
      
      Ki Ora .
      
      Anyway I listened in as one of the other receptionists spent the whole time phoning up patients to make reappointments . They ( that public health service) had booked people for appointments for the provincial holiday , then some bright spark realised they’d stuffed up.
      
      I just wonder how the “system’ in 2024 can be so inefficient.
      
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      July 28, 2025 10:54am
    - rouppe
      
      I heard on the radio this morning about an AI bot going through patient records (for a group of related gp clinics) and identifying patients who should be prompted to visit the doctor because of trends in recorded BP/blood test results/whatever that might have been missed in the noise of seeing 30 patients a day.
      
      That’s useful activity for technology
      
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      July 28, 2025 1:35pm
  - Paulus
    
    Do you really think that the Public Servants, based in Wellington, will do anything to cut their numbers or influence.
    Load of Rubbish – and they are mainly women who have crawled to get where they are, and will not help any Government touch their positions and salaries.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:01am
  - Stellaboxer
    
    They could get rid of entire departments and ministries and only make things better.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:38am
    - rouppe
      
      To avoid the inevitable squealing you could collapse all those ministries into one, with teams of say 10 for each of the old ministries, and see what changes.
      
      It could be called the ministry of Identity Politics.
      
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      July 28, 2025 1:42pm
- artemisia
  
  But take into account the number of contractors and consultants no longer employed – whatever that number is. Actual headcount may be well down.
  
  And the number of vacancies cancelled, thought that is widely seen as manipulation by departments.
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:15am
  - Mike
    
    Any decrease in permanent staff is usually offset by increases in (higher paid) contractors.
    
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    July 28, 2025 8:18am
    - Pope Punctilious II
      
      All of the demographic ministries could disappear overnight without any need to hire contractors. All of the diversity commissars throughout various other ministries could be fired without any need to hire contractors.
      
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      July 28, 2025 9:40am
      - Stellaboxer
        
        Don’t hold your breath mate
        
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        July 28, 2025 11:42am
      - James Stephenson
        
        Afuera!
        
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        July 28, 2025 2:43pm
    - rouppe
      
      You are correct.
      
      At my previous job, all the contractors were told either accept this perm employee offer or your contract won’t be renewed.
      
      Might have worked in different times. But bnz were hiring strongly at the same time.
      
      Result: 25% of the workforce left. Not the contacting workforce. The entire workforce. Quite frankly catastrophic for the organization.
      
      So they went about hiring perm replacements. Never mind the IP that had walked out the door. Next problem, they hit their headcount limit for OpEx. Still short of staff. What do they do now? Hire contractors.
      
      They had JUST let loads of experienced contractors go, and they’re now hiring replacement contractors who know nothing about the business or the systems.
      
      To my mind this is an unforgivable failure of leadership, planning and thought.
      
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      July 28, 2025 1:51pm
- keepcalmcarryon
  
  It is if you voted National.
  Please take note.
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:47am
- Simon
  
  This will be handled by National importing 500,000 low wage third worlders, most from India. Stated goal 50 k net immigration pa. So that’s 50 k above the numbers leaving NZ.
  
  500 k from the third world. Growth National party style. To offset public v private sector job imbalances as well.
  
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  July 28, 2025 9:30am
  - R
    
    Simon, you have had this explained to you before! National are not the government! We have a Coalition govt, thus we get a coalition wishlist of policies implemented. Try thinking deeper about policies before you vote at the next NZ Election
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:21am
  - Stellaboxer
    
    Yes and the inability to look at the UK and Europe and learn anything about attempting to boost growth by importing the third world should tell you all you need to know about our second and third rate politicians.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:45am
- I remember when
  
  “Despite ongoing restructures across the public service…”
  So how many of Stuff’s earlier articles does this one show to have been wrong?
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:29am
- leoj
  
  The do nothing Nats doing what they do best. NOTHING!
  
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  July 28, 2025 3:49pm
Bridgenag

My Tribe is Small
My party is truth By: Mikki Willis

“Looking back, Obama wasn’t the antidote to a broken system; he was the system perfected – wrapped in charm, eloquence, and just enough illusion to keep hope alive while the country’s foundations were quietly hollowed out. In the end, he didn’t heal old wounds – he deepened them, weaponized them, and left us more divided, distracted, and disillusioned than before.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/rwmalonemd/p/my-tribe-is-small?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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July 28, 2025 8:07am
- keepcalmcarryon
  
  And he let China take the South China Sea.
  A smooth talking waste of space.
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:49am
  - kowtow
    
    At the rate they’re building aircraft carriers etc, they will.
    
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    July 28, 2025 10:56am
  - Stellaboxer
    
    Not a waste of space to the Chinese just the West
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:47am
Damocles11

Economist Cameron Bagrie had some astonishing revelations on breakfast TV this morning. Apparently OCR cuts only provide a “short term sugar hit”, and what we really need to be doing is making productivity gains through more innovative use of our labour and capital. Apparently our productivity has been in decline for over a decade.
An economist is best defined as someone who states the obvious, 15 years too late.
It was also stated by a breakfast host that regarding the slogan ‘Survive ‘til 25’, we “now have to be patient for a bit longer.”
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July 28, 2025 8:07am
- Jack5
  
  Expanding industries that depend on cheap labour imported temporarily from overseas affect productivity measures.
  
  Even our meat industry depends on a lot of labour, though Scott Technology is leading robotics work in processing.
  
  Tourism, another of our major industries, is perhaps the most labour-intensive of all. How do you make it labour intensive?
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:58am
- Paulus
  
  Why has our Public Service productivity declined
  – I though it started with the famouis TV programme
  “Gliding On”,
  and has not changed.
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:04am
  - Prince
    
    Gliding On were the golden years.
    At least they turned up to the office.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:45am
- NothingLeft
  
  Productivity is inversely linked to the number of HR and DEI apparatchiks employed by or contracted to any organization (and the legislation that makes them mandatory). Both have skyrocketed in the last 20 years, especially in the public sector.
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:34am
  - Quail
    
    NL ,
    Late post on productivity
    Productivity has been in decline for decades.
    The decline in exports is related to this fact as is the growth in regulation.
    There are two economies in NZ.
    Internal vs Exporters
    Regulatory law has resulted in a huge growth of bureaucracy to service them .And this has to be paid for by productivity.
    This Governments growth is driven by inflationary deficit budgeting , immigration and increased spending.
    Now there is little manufacturing left in NZ (for example Fisher & Paykel )
    Agriculture is in the same boat.
    Forestry is in trouble with plants closing because of electricity infrastructure shortage.
    Pork is a net import.
    Sheep numbers have declined from over 70 million to about 20 million.Freezing works are closing and some co operative’s are under threat!
    So there is little left to sell in offshore markets, Many NZ exports have lost the critical mass required to be successful.
    Even horticulture/ wine is challenged.
    Energy in NZ is just left in the ground and even looking for it is prohibited.
    Governments just care about being re elected
    
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    July 28, 2025 6:44pm
- NZer In Exile
  
  Would be good to know what exactly he envisages with the “innovative use of our labour”.
  
  Making everyone gig workers uber style? Just hook them up to a algorithm driven “platform” so you can’t hear their screams?
  
  Productivity increases these days come from investing in quality tech. Businesses have to have confidence in the economy and future govts to make those investments. With a roughly 50/50 chance of a nasty idiocracy returning very soon, I’d say long term confidence is not great.
  
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  July 28, 2025 6:08pm
Scott

With all the negative publicity around the world about Lucy Connolly who is still in prison for one mean tweet, you might think that the government in Britain might be reconsidering their position on free speech? There are apparently areas of Britain where burglaries are not attended to by the police. The Conservative govt under Boris Johnson did nothing to change police priorities and indeed were responsible for the Online Safety Act that gave the police extensive powers to limit what people could lawfully say online.

However the Labour govt is saying to the conservatives, “hold my beer”. They are forming an elite team of police officers to monitor social media for anti migrant sentiment.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/britain-shut-up-the-government-explained/

In other words instead of solving burglaries they want to find more Lucy Connollys! Instead of doing something about illegal immigration, which they promised to stop, they are instead telling the people to shut up about it.

Why can’t the people of Britain get the govt they want? What is it about mass immigration and illegal immigration, that governments around the world are committed to it, to heck with the voters?

Great Britain is being flooded with 3rd world immigrants, both legal and illegal, and the labour govt and the Tories before them, are committed to doing nothing about it. If you want to account for the rise of Nigel Farage you need look no further. He’s the only person who will do something about mass immigration. Labour is just doubling down. To heck with free speech and the rights of people to speak their minds.
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July 28, 2025 8:07am
- Local Miller
  
  I find it interesting that we still refer to the conservative party in the UK as the Tories, but no one seems to refer to Labour and the liberals as the Whigs.
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:22am
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    The Whigs vanished many decades ago. Labour is in no way the heirs of the Whigs.
    
    More broadly, it’s a reminder that major political parties can and do disappear completely.
    
    Chris Luxon, take note.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:06am
- Philview
  
  I listened to a podcast featuring Zia Yusuf who was the Chairman of Reform until a recent disagreement but he is still involved with them. He seems like a switched on man and enjoyable to listen to his view points. He is a 2nd generation immigrant whose family worked hard to get ahead and believes in hard work and meritocratic achievement.
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:24am
- kowtow
  
  ‘Why can’t the people of Britain get the govt they want?’
  
  Because there really is , as they call it in Britain , the Blob or more generally the Deep State .
  
  In other news and this is equally shocking,the UK Daily Telegraph is reporting about sectarian divisions in Dewsbury , a west Yorkshire town.
  
  ‘Supporters of a pro Gaza MP accused of a campaign of intimidation’ says the headline.
  
  This is said to involve threats , assaults , arson , panic alarms,and people having to move home.
  
  Sounds like Belfast of the late ’60’s and ’70’s , but hang on this is merry old England.
  
  What the hell has happened.
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:26am
- NothingLeft
  
  UK Govt is mostly irrelevant when it is the Guardian reading far-left civil service blob and judiciary that really control what govts can and cannot do in the UK
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:37am
- kiwimike
  
  Scott
  There clearly is a plan as it is all over.
  It would stop in a day of all benefits for non citizens were stopped and deport all illegals.
  
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  July 29, 2025 7:51am
artemisia

As Kiwis battle rising electricity bills, campaigners call for change – Power to the People, part 1

The Herald’s latest social justice campaign starting today is aimed at power company profits, cleverly curated as ‘poor people can’t afford to heat their homes’. The two examples featured appear to be 2 person households. Liz has one school age child, is on a benefit and is a full time student. Kim is on the pension and a full time carer for an adult son so presumably two incomes.

What would be interesting is to know what the household income and other expenses are. Rent, mortgage, rates, insurance, Accommodation Supplement, income related rent, child support, paying off debts – for example. And whether the households need budgeting advice, including how to plan ahead for winter so cold weather is not a big surprise.

Apart from Liz and Kim, a range of advocacy group interviews. And a useful review of power company hardship policies. Interestingly, none of the advocacy groups suggested budgeting advice, even though some of the power companies offer it. The usual solution is cheaper power aka someone else has to fix it.
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July 28, 2025 8:18am
- surfing
  
  Genesis can’t be doing that well, check their share price over the last 5 years. Not flash.
  
  Inflation has been so rampant, a lot of people must be having a hard tie.
  
  Media don’t help with their sob stories, you can’t trust reporters have any clue about the points you’ve raised.
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:33am
  - mogg
    
    Genesis has a yield of 8.2%, I would bet this is fully imputed so more like 10% plus to those in higher tax bracket. The share price looks ordinary because the profits are being paid out to investors who will be very happy with their dividends. The wonders of Capitalism, I am all for it.
    
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    July 28, 2025 10:22am
    - pdm
      
      mogg I would have thought Genesis and other similar companies would be retaining profits so as to pay for future generation capability rather than returning the bulk of profits to shareholders.
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:33pm
      - mogg
        
        Yes power companies are reinvesting their profits, but at the same time they are rewarding their shareholders. Around the 10% mark is a great return for what is a low risk investment.
        Having said that wealthy investors don’t like big dividends because they are taxable, it’s much better to retain earnings, then sell shares with the capital gain, if you want some money which is not taxable.
        I see I have managed to make my explanation as clear as mud !!
        
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        July 28, 2025 12:56pm
- Mod88
  
  Two names spring to mind immediately, Jacinda Ardern & Megan Woods. Those two alone have done more to make electricity expensive than any number of others combined.
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:36am
  - Bobba Fret
    
    Megan Woods is very quiet these days. Is she too embarrassed about being the failure she was and just keeping her head down?
    Hipkins was an even bigger failure, but he’s always mouthing off.
    
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    July 28, 2025 10:50am
    - pdm
      
      BF – so what you are saying is that Megan Woods (aka [Mod – deleted]) is smarter than Hipkins.
      
      Probably hard to find anyone anywhere who would argue about that.
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:35pm
- Cassandra
  
  I think the solution sought is to make benefits and pensions large enough so nobody has to go to work to enjoy a quality lifestyle. I know there’s a flaw in the logic of this but I can’t for the life of me see it. It’s certainly not in any of NZ’s newspapers and other media outlets.
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:37am
- keepcalmcarryon
  
  Power prices are extortionate in a country where the taxpayers already payed to build everything once.
  And please don’t defend Keys sell off against the country’s wishes , to subsidize a small group of industrial dairy farmers to get much wealthier.
  Crooked AF.
  We have been screwed over electricity.
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:52am
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    I agree. How can electricity be so expensive in a country with a small population that’s so richly endowed with hydro? Has anybody published a comparison of the % of an average family’s income that goes on powerbills, before and after de-regulation of the energy sector? And yes Key was a shyster – but get ready for a hail of downticks from his fanboys.
    
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    July 28, 2025 9:49am
    - imalwaysright
      
      A big component of electricity bills is the fixed charges.
      
      The average is nudging $1000/year and that is basically just for the right to have a power supply.
      
      Imagine having to pay a petrol station $1000/yr to let you buy their petrol.
      
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      July 28, 2025 10:29am
      - peterwn
        
        A rough cost of domestic electricity is 50% production, 25% Transmission, 25% Distribution. Distribution cost to a typical household is pretty well the same whether it uses little electricity (eg a crib) or lots of electricity. If there was a nil or low distribution cost, then cribs etc would be subsidising large households. There used to be a two tier fixed charge depending on consumption but that was merged to one tier as the two tiers was considered unfair.
        As far as service stations are concerned, they will only be in business if they pump a profitable volume of fuel. There is no general obligation for oil companies to provide service stations that pump uneconomic quantities of fuel. Indeed many service stations have closed down in recent years, especially where a major refit was required (eg underground tanks needing replacement). Many service stations used to be a part of a garage/workshop/dealership, but very few such sites survive. In Wellington there is not one petrol pump (as far as I know) anywhere along Kent/ Cambridge Terraces where there are many car dealerships/workshops. The nearest ones are in Taranaki Street and Adelaide Road.
        By contrast electricity distribution operators are obliged to supply and maintain any customer wanting power (admittedly they may require high up front contributions). Indeed the matter of abandoning ‘uneconomic’ parts of networks (eg in the MacKenzie Country) has been raised in the past especially in the wake of Rogernomics when everyone was required to go all ‘commercial’ but no one was quite prepared to pull the trigger on this.
        
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        July 28, 2025 11:12am
      - rouppe
        
        I have electricity and mains gas connected.
        
        While I was away in Thailand my bills were about $90 a month, and all that was running was a fridge and a freezer.
        
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        July 28, 2025 11:39am
      - NothingLeft
        
        NZ Wholesale to Retail electricity price is more like 3:1 than 2:1
        
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        July 28, 2025 11:40am
    - newview
      
      PP2 The last hydro power project of any size was the Clyde dam in 1993 population was 3.3mil population now 5.3 mil. Try building a large hydro station now in this country with the environmental resistance. Solar and wind are peanuts. That’s why electricity is as expensive as it is.
      
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      July 28, 2025 10:32am
      - NothingLeft
        
        Manapouri tail race upgrade in early 2000’s added 100MW – though all added to Tiwai pt.
        
        West coast rivers are main untapped option, but there is a lot of shingle and rock transported in those steep rivers and huge earthquake risk. Not sure if there are any economically viable projects possible there.
        
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        July 28, 2025 11:43am
    - R
      
      Endowed with hydro??????? The country hasn’t built hydro for about fifty years
      
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      July 28, 2025 11:27am
      - Jack5
        
        Water storage is the problem for hydro electricity in NZ — at least for any big schemes. For example, Clyde dam is “run of river”.
        
        Geothermal looks to have potential, though:
        
        https://www.tauponews.co.nz/stories/geothermal-potential-unleashed
        
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        July 28, 2025 12:16pm
    - Bridgenag
      
      Think they are back to school
      
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      July 28, 2025 1:53pm
  - Philview
    
    I haven’t really noticed that much of an increase over the last 10 years or so with Meridian. Are people using a power company that charges extortion rates?
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:31am
    - the deity formerly known as nigel6888
      
      you might want to check your rates and your usage. Over the last 10 years I replaced every bulb with LED, am a power nazi about lights and heaters, replaced oil radiators with heat pumps ($8k) and bought a heat pump drier ($1,600). One child moved out, the other went to big school, The average monthly bill in winter is $120 more.
      
      The heatpump drier is a huge disappointment, it might use 1/2 the power, but takes 41/2 hours to dry a load of clothes to “mostly” dry…
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:25pm
      - NeverMindTheBollocks
        
        What’s your return on investment? Genuine question. $8k would buy a lot of oil heater hours.
        
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        July 28, 2025 1:00pm
  - cmm
    
    You are never paying for the machinery you are using.
    Instead you are paying for the maintenance and the development of the next lot of generation etc.
    
    Our electricity could be cheaper, yes, but that will not come from solar and wind (which make it more expensive). It will only come from more coal, geothermal etc.
    
    Is our electricity really that expensive? I would argue that given the constraints of being a small island nation they’re actually not too bad.
    
    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-electricity-by-country
    
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    July 28, 2025 12:01pm
    - JerJer
      
      Yes, but we can sit around and complain bitterly for no reason that we were a) dumb enough to not pay our power bill and get disconnected and have to pay again, and then to resolve this issue sign ourselves up to a different power company and idiotically sign up a two year fixed contract with a big break fee and high power prices. Obviously someone else’s fault. Must call stuff to report this.
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:20pm
  - Observant Octagenarian
    
    Yes, but what about the Ferrari, Audi and BMW etc dealers who rely on these multiple, over paid executives for their customer base.
    
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    July 28, 2025 12:23pm
- cmm
  
  Butter. Don’t forget the 50 cents a week more that butter costs.
  
  This is all just envy-driven nonsense.
  
  What I don’t understand is why these single mums don’t get together and share a house. Two or three of them get together and split cost.
  
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  July 28, 2025 9:14am
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Can you just imagine
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:08am
    - cmm
      
      These days they could probably turn it into a reality show and make millions.
      
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      July 28, 2025 2:35pm
- JerJer
  
  To be honest I am getting a bit bored with people pleading poverty and making it everyone else’s problem. Sure, prices have gone up, but not as much as people are saying, and most of the inflation has got to do with the last Labour Government, no one is talking about that.
  
  I agree, with regard to their expenses, what are they ? My guess is we are talking about people that are highly indebted, and have no idea about budgeting and think money grows on trees and is topped up with handouts.
  
  I’m in the fortunate position of having listened at school, progressed to university (which I paid for) and now earn a very nice salary. However, I am not an idiot, and I do not spend money to match my income. My family operate a very tight budget which we check regularly and we have not noticed expenses rising outside what we would expect.
  
  As far as I can tell there are loads of people out there earning $100k+ who then spend that 100k+ and then a bit more, and are in loads of debt because they have purchased a car or a extra house thinking interest rates would never rise. As soon as something changes, they cannot afford it any more, so they complain loudly about butter prices or get on the bandwagon with whatever anyone else is complaining about. These people are not poor, the are stupid, and they need to be more careful with money and/or learn about budgeting.
  
  I had to laugh yesterday when I saw some article saying that people no longer had savings. I started off my career saving 50% of my income, and that was 30 years ago. I have continued to do that. So, I do have a large pile of savings, but I will not spend it to start some sort of economic recovery, those savings earn income and that income is simply re-invested to earn more income.
  
  As a result of our terrible education system where people no longer learn basic mathematics (or even attend school), we have an entire generation of idiots coming through the system ready to complain that they have no skills and income (and that will be my fault too). It is very sad.
  
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  July 28, 2025 9:24am
  - Simon
    
    National could bring in changes to rein in the welfare industrial complex but it’s so far beyond them.
    
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    July 28, 2025 9:38am
  - cmm
    
    “As a result of our terrible education system where people no longer learn basic mathematics (or even attend school),”
    
    Nope, it is all (or at least mostly) on them. The schooling might not be perfect, but it is adequate and those who actually turn up and put in the effort will get far better results than those that do not.
    
    We can blame lots of external factors (social media giving a distorted sense of work and reality, education,…) but at the end of the day it comes down to personal choices.
    
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    July 28, 2025 9:42am
    - JerJer
      
      Well of course. Some schools are better than others, and some parents are miles better than others. School attendance has gone from 44% under Labour and increased to 59% regular attendance since the election. An improvement, but still shocking. But don’t worry, out of the 59% regularly attending school, a good percentage of them (maybe half) will end up being net taxpayers in 20 years time, and will be described as rich and Elite, and it will the their fault that all those that did not go to school have nothing.
      
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      July 28, 2025 9:53am
      - cmm
        
        Some schools are better than others. There is variety in everything.
        
        I would argue though that the primary reason kids do well or not has little to do with the school and more to do with the attitude of those around them – especially their home life.
        
        Of course there are exceptions.
        
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        July 28, 2025 10:35am
  - Reg Perrin
    
    I see a correlation to the above comment about Economist Cameron Bagrie’s comments. If as a country we were more productive, then this would be less of an issue. Until productivity is addressed this problem will continue to get worse
    
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    July 28, 2025 9:56am
    - Interested Party
      
      Hopefully the new depreciation rules on plant and equipment will speed up business investment on more productive infrastructure
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:45pm
  - Spam
    
    You have savings! HOW DARE YOU! We need a wealth tax to discourage that sort of behavior!
    
    /sarc.
    
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    July 28, 2025 10:06am
    - R
      
      Spam, I appreciate that you gest; but, if the country returns Labour, Greens and TPM next election, the provident element of the country who saved, will be quickly fleeced; and further steps will be taken to reduce productivity even more.
      
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      July 28, 2025 11:34am
  - Paulus
    
    These articles are the media assisiting the left wing to denigrate everything that the elected Coalition Government is actually doing.
    What are we going to finish with at the next elction
    Shudder if you will, and I do not like Luxon’s attitude either.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:08am
  - Bobba Fret
    
    The problem is not usually what you earn, but what you spend.
    I know a couple of people earning over $180k per year and they are ‘apparently’ always broke.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:50am
    - JerJer
      
      Right there. Correct answer. Their full salary will be committed to debt servicing and HP. Any additional cost like a few bucks for butter……and the world ended.
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:58pm
  - Observant Octagenarian
    
    Even worse than the poorly educated students is the lack of work ethic.
    My father worked two jobs, and as soon as I was 15 I got to help him as a paid assistant (early morning milk run).
    I have retained a work ethic my entire working life.
    Today students rely on ‘the Government will always help you’ ethic.
    
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    July 28, 2025 1:01pm
- rjay
  
  In times past the wider aiga would have supported a down and out family member. Perhaps the father. And if family weren’t able to help sufficiently the church would step in. Or the mother might have found work while the child was at school. Now we rely on a distant bureaucrat in Wellington.
  
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  July 28, 2025 9:28am
  - mogg
    
    In 1959 my father died in an accident, I was very young at the time but I remember very well the night time knock on the door, it was somebody from the local Anglican Church who gave my mother an envelope with a generous amount of cash in it. This was repeated just before Christmas every year.
    
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    July 28, 2025 10:38am
  - NothingLeft
    
    Welfare only functions well in a community context where there is tracking of recipient behavior to ensure that they are making an earnest effort to help themselves as much as possible. State administered free money to baby farmers, addicts, indolent, malingerers and other wastrels is bad for everyone (taxpayers and recipients). There simply has to be a powerful pressure on recipients to improve and lift themselves up through their own efforts or it fucks them, their kids and their communities up. Govts don’t seem to be capable of providing that pressure due to media endlessly championing the wastrels with selective hagiographic reporting.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:51am
- Simon
  
  The call here is if you have a job and own your house you are greedy and need to pay more tax.
  
  Excluding Nat Super, but including “social housing” welfare spending is 40 billion pa. It’s never enough. National’s total inability to roll this back or even stop the decline
  
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  July 28, 2025 9:36am
Maggy Wassilieff

Yes, it is true….

Many of our little kiddies were not being taught to read and write fluently whilst in primary school.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/568180/schools-in-literacy-crisis-advocacy-group-warns

For years there’s been serious gaslighting about the decline in NZ’s children’s literacy and numeracy abilities.

Now that the literacy and numeracy requirements for NCEA have been established, educators can’t fudge the issue any longer.
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July 28, 2025 8:35am
- Swifty
  
  Good grief.
  
  Never have we spent more on education but our results continue to decline.
  
  Meanwhile Labour and the unions continue to tell us we have a world class education system but we just need to pay teachers more.
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:45am
- keepcalmcarryon
  
  But they do get pride week and lots of maori culture.
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:53am
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    With Erica’s blessing too.
    
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    July 28, 2025 9:51am
- cmm
  
  NCEA is far too late in the piece to be measuring anything. Those kicking the can down the road (ie. the primary school teachers) are not the ones who have to deal with the mess.
  
  Bottom line though is that if you want your child to read and do basic maths then get involved and teach them yourself.
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:58am
  - BeaB
    
    Unfortunate primary schools have no accountability for achievement. It is a scandal that after 8 years so many kids still can’t read. This morning on RNZ a teacher suggested literacy should be a separate subject! Surely literacy is the paramount objective of English classes.
    Let’s hope the Coalition reforms lead to better teaching and better outcomes.
    
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    July 28, 2025 9:17am
    - pdm
      
      When I was at primary school through the 50’s we had:
      
      1. Mental Arithmetic tests – ie recite the times tables.
      2. Written tests most terms for English and more complex maths.
      3. Regular reading comprehension tests.
      
      I suspect those are all gone now and therein lies a large proportion of current problems.
      
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      July 28, 2025 10:13am
      - Local Miller
        
        In my experience the largest drop in education standards has been over the past 15 to 20 years, and it’s been an exponential decline. When we arrived in NZ ~20 years ago, our then 10 yo was specifically tested by the teacher who would determine which class she should be placed in. She was given various books and asked to read different sections in each, asked a range of questions about what she read, and had to do several maths problems, both mentally and on paper. Based on what he saw, she was placed one level above her age level and the teacher was very aware of the standards expected and achieved by the other students. As fresh off the boat immigrants, we were very aware of the NZ education system and standard, which is why we were prepared to go from homeschooling to public school.
        Since then we have become acutely aware of the drop in standards. If I were doing it all again now I’d go for homeschooling. I’m glad at least 2 of my 4 grandchildren will be home schooled. Hopefully more than this over time and when the parents of the other two come to their senses.
        
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        July 28, 2025 10:45am
      - mogg
        
        I was a child of the 50s, I remember the magic of reading Tom Sawyer at school. To this day I am still haunting the book sales at local church halls and finding some real gems, out of print books many from deceased estates.
        
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        July 28, 2025 10:47am
      - greybeard
        
        As well as those we had full employment, stay-at-home mothers, parents who could teach us reading and writing before we went to school.
        
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        July 28, 2025 10:57am
      - Jethrod
        
        Yes, but we didn’t have iPads, calculators and Harry Potter//
        
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        July 28, 2025 12:55pm
  - Colville
    
    cmm.
    
    Bottom line though is that if you want your child to read and do basic maths then get involved and teach them yourself.
    
    So what is your nice white, privileged well educated answer for those parents that cant read or write well, who also had parents that couldnt read or write well , never went to school and didnt have a single book in the house?
    
    Because that is the reality of the sector of society that is the issue.
    How does a parent help with something they dont know exists?
    
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    July 28, 2025 9:18am
    - Rusty
      
      @Colville, a quiz show on tv recently had a well spoken girl in her early 20s who admitted she didn’t know how to read a clock with numbers on it.
      
      How many kids and young adults have similar problems like that?
      
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      July 28, 2025 9:40am
      - hookerphil
        
        I was told about 5 or so years ago how the classroom clocks in the local High School were changed to digital ones because the kids didn’t understand the number ones.
        
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        July 28, 2025 10:34am
      - Jack5
        
        Rusty’s …she didn’t know how to read a clock with numbers on it …
        
        You can still buy watches with Roman numerals on them. Even fewer will be able to read them.
        
        I doubt that few parents now teach kids “how to read a clock”.
        
        As they grow older few will even wear watches. Time is read on the digital numbers of their smart phone or computer, or on the car dashboard.
        
        However, they may be more comfortable than many of us oldies with alternative 24-hour “military” digital time.
        
        We forget we had to learn how to read a modular number system such as a 12-hour circular clock face.
        
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        July 28, 2025 3:53pm
    - [email protected]
      
      Those parents who can’t read, write or do maths can still try and make their kids go to school and insure that the kids do their homework. Limit their time on TV and the tablets/cellphones.
      
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      July 28, 2025 9:44am
    - cmm
      
      “So what is your nice white, privileged well educated answer for those parents that cant read or write well, ”
      
      Adult education. There are massive amounts of resources for people to learn to read and write as adults. Even if you wagged every day at school, you can still learn to read, write and do maths etc at age 20, 30 or, heck, even 60.
      
      ” How does a parent help with something they dont know exists?”
      
      Come on, bullshit. Are you really suggesting that there are parents that don’t know that reading exists? Even those that can’t read know that reading exists.
      
      Please draw me a picture why Asians who come to this country not being able to read English properly still end up with their kids reading and writing fine. It really comes down to their attitudes.
      
      Here’s just one of the services providers for adult education. https://www.literacy.org.nz/
      
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      July 28, 2025 9:50am
    - Local Miller
      
      My daughter recently downloaded audiobooks for her 5 yo daughter. The physical books are available from the library and she’s now taking them out and getting her daughter to follow along. There are ways and means to help your children even if you don’t have the skills yourself, but you first have the recognize there is a problem. And therein lies the problem.
      
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      July 28, 2025 10:51am
      - Colville
        
        And therein lies the problem.
        
        Well its one of the problems.
        
        Why dont some families cook healthy meals? Well they dont know how because their parents never did it either.
        Why dont some people mow their lawns and take rubbish out? They have never lived anywhere with a lawnmower. If they leave it long enough someone will do it for them.
        
        So why dont they read to their kids? help kids with maths? social studies?
        
        You have got to be kidding right?
        
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        July 28, 2025 11:29am
      - cmm
        
        “first have the recognize there is a problem”
        
        Well, more importantly, first you have to care.
        
        I grew up in rural-ish South Africa in a predominantly Zulu area.
        
        Many of the Zulu adults could barely read or write, but most of them drummed it into their kids that education was very important and expected that their kids would do homework etc and do better than they had. Some of the adult Zulus I knew made use of adult education resources and learned to read and write English well into their 20s and 30s.
        
        As I understand it, Polynesian families in NZ were much the same until a decade or two ago. They came to NZ for the opportunities for improvement and insisted that their kids went to school, did homework and made use of the resources.
        
        Somehow that has now fallen apart and Polynesians wag school at the same rate as Maori.
        
        No matter how good a school is, the results will be terrible if people don’t put in the effort.
        
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        July 28, 2025 12:39pm
      - cmm
        
        Colville, I think you’re falling into the White Messiah Complex trap:
        
        *Darkies are simple-minded beings and can only flourish with My Magic Touch.
        * We cannot expect them to thrive unless we shower them in benevolence.
        
        Bollocks.
        
        Even the most simple-minded people are not entirely foolish. They can see the benefits of education and can access it if they want to. Uneducated people in the 1950s understood.
        
        Even if you were not exposed to education as a child, there is a virtual infinity of adult education available and there is no reason to not learn to read, write etc when you’re 30 or 40.
        
        And the same happens with home made meals. Even the most backward people know that groceries exist. There are thousands of recipes on You Tube and Tiktok which are no harder to access than ordering fast food.
        
        Telling people they are victims and that they are unable to sort out ehir lives robs them of agency. Agency is the most important part of action. People need to realise:
        1) They CAN get off their arses and do thing. All the resources are there.
        2) It is their responsibility to do so for themselves and their kids. It is not someone else’s responsibility.
        
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        July 28, 2025 2:15pm
    - R
      
      How does a parent……..This comment sounds very much like a description of the Ardern/Hipkins government!
      
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      July 28, 2025 11:53am
    - Yabster
      
      what is this white, privileged myth you commented on Colville?
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:34pm
      - cmm
        
        Apparently I had a great childhood just because I am white.
        
        My mother being a mental patient and my father being an alcoholic had zero bearing on my life because my Magic White Skin turned it all to advantage.
        
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        July 28, 2025 2:38pm
- Eastlander
  
  We get the traditional plea for more funding, followed by an admission that the problem is actually quite easy to address with a few phonics lessons. Are the primary schools still screwing around with that ‘whole language’ nonsense?
  
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  July 28, 2025 8:58am
  - NothingLeft
    
    whole language is mostly gone I think
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:55am
- Paulus
  
  They will continue to tell us, and do whatever, that only they know how to educate children, and that is it.
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:10am
Yvette

Former All Black Sir John Kirwan is involved in a project to build New Zealand’s first surf park, which will include a heated wave pool and tourist accommodation in the Auckland region. The project, developed in partnership with Aventuur and Wavegarden, is planned for a rural area near Silverdale on the North Shore. The surf park will feature a 2.2-hectare, diamond-shaped wave pool with 30 different wave settings, capable of producing between 600 to 1000 waves per hour. The development will also include a wellness retreat, restaurant, and visitor accommodation. In a world-first, excess heat from a data center on the site will be used to warm the surfing lagoon, making it usable year-round.
A $100 million Auckland surf park project headed by Sir John Kirwan now includes about 500 homes, under the Government’s new Fast Track Approvals Act.

An inverse question may be: if a data center has this output of heated water, what is the input of electricity sucked out of the New Zealand grid and how many such centres can New Zealand accomodate, given that EVs are also proposed to sweep the nation, but haven’t yet.
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July 28, 2025 8:46am
- Pope Punctilious II
  
  A surf park? FFS, go to Raglan or Piha.
  
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  July 28, 2025 9:53am
  - Local Miller
    
    While the surf at Raglan and Piha can be excellent, they are both unpredictable, and Piha can be quite dangerous, especially for beginners. A resort like this would be a good tourist attraction, and like ice skating rinks and Snow Planet probably rent out boards and have on site instructors. Personally I hope the venture is a raving success.
    
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    July 28, 2025 10:59am
    - imalwaysright
      
      LM
      Well said.
      Fingers crossed it goes well, a great facility.
      
      If they get past the RMA, the extortion by the activists, the fleecing by the construction companies, and the ball bashing from the poppy harvesters, they will hopefully make plenty of money and give people a good time.
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:19pm
  - greybeard
    
    Ego Park.
    
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    July 28, 2025 10:59am
    - imalwaysright
      
      Nothing wrong with ego, as long as its backed by ability.
      
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      July 28, 2025 1:24pm
      - cmm
        
        … and stays out of my wallet…
        
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        July 28, 2025 2:47pm
- cmm
  
  The power usage depends somewhat on what the load is.
  
  Some loads such as AI learning can be throttled back depending on the available power, but nobody likes to do that because it means your expensive capital investment is not being fully utilised.
  
  Other loads are demand driven and need to supply answers when people make queries. Those need power when the requests are made.
  
  Yet another question:
  Why place a data centre in the relatively power-starved Auckland area? Why not in the relatively power-rich South Island?
  
  But, yes, if the waste heat from a data centre really is enough to heat a 2.2 ha pool, that would seem like an awful power guzzler.
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:43am
  - Local Miller
    
    Yes, data centres are power guzzlers, but a major component of their power consumption is for cooling, so using excess heat to “heat” the wave pool is a good example of thinking smarter and using symbioses to get a better result for all. Remember that once the pool is up to the required temperature, the rest is just maintaining that temperature, which requires a lot less energy. The electricity saved by running what would essentially be a big heat pump is probably substantial.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:05am
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Why place a data centre in the relatively power-starved Auckland area? Why not in the relatively power-rich South Island?
    ————————-
    
    Proximity to expected users plus international data cables, would be my guess. Hamilton would have been a good choice, I would have thought.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:43am
    - cmm
      
      Pretty much everything is short over a network cable, but yes, proximity to the international cable feeds would be useful.
      
      Much depends on what data they are dealing with. Some loads like AI learning perform many calculations on relatively small amounts of network data. For web-server style data centres it is pretty much the opposite: little processing on lots of network traffic
      
      People need to get over the idea that Auckland is a big place or a big market for anything. It is tiny.
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:44pm
- NeverMindTheBollocks
  
  So long as there are no public subsidies involved, all power to his arm, says I.
  
  As to the basic idea, recall that there was a prawn-growing operation down near Taupo, using warm water emerging from one of the local geo power stations. Seems like a sound idea, if they can make the numbers work.
  
  [Mod – fixed]
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:40am
Vidar

Trump finalises a trade deal with the EU overnight. Two days before another tariff hike. They blinked.

The Terms:

A flat 15 percent tariff on most EU imports. No special categories.

Steel and aluminium still at 50 percent.

The EU agrees to buy 750 billion dollars worth of American LNG and nuclear fuel over the next three years.

600 billion in EU investments into U.S. infrastructure and industry. Energy. Defense. Chips. The sectors that actually matter. Not handbags and cheese.

Ursula von der Leyen called it the best deal they could get. That’s political code for we got smoked.

But yeah sure. Let’s all panic. Trump has the nuclear codes. He’s unstable. He’s dangerous. He’s a madman. etc etc
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July 28, 2025 8:57am
- Prince
  
  According to TV News last night he was only in Scotland to play golf and the population was rising up in protest against him.
  Who knew there was business on the agenda ? Not TV One anyway.
  
  Oh, and something about Epstein of course.
  
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  July 28, 2025 9:41am
  - Tarquin North
    
    I’m just surprised Maiki Sherman didn’t leap out of the woodwork and harague Trump for daring to play golf and blame him for the price of butter.
    
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    July 28, 2025 10:14am
  - Paulus
    
    Epstein is the media’s Red Herring at the current time.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:11am
- mogg
  
  The Trump tactics work again, threaten 50% tariff, and they are delighted to negotiate down to fifteen.
  A big win for the American economy, negotiated between rounds of golf.
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:53am
  - Northshoredoc
    
    Market reaction is largely positive.
    
    https://www.reuters.com/business/view-reaction-us-eu-trade-deal-2025-07-27/
    
    Time will tell I suppose.
    
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    July 28, 2025 2:23pm
    - mogg
      
      Yes for financial markets this is yesterday’s news, mostly priced in I would think. But markets do hate uncertainty so it will still be a positive.
      
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      July 28, 2025 3:56pm
- rouppe
  
  About 5 months ago I dug into what my ESG investment fund excluded. Not just cluster munitions, chemical weapons and nuclear weapons, no. It excluded every company involved in military production, every oil company, every tobacco company. Specifically, it excluded Boeing, Airbus, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.
  
  I switched to a different fund that I could verify included those companies. Hopefully these deals mean better returns from these companies.
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:25am
- Colville
  
  Vidar.
  
  I dont get why aluminum and copper are at 50% as (to me anyway) it would seem to hurt the USA more than anyone else.
  
  USA needs to build massive industrial capacity ASAP to re-shore the jobs and industry and first cab off the rank is electricity infrastructure. Gonna need copper!
  
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  July 28, 2025 12:41pm
BeaB

Mr Luxon is always polite and civil. It was startling therefore this morning to hear Corin Dann launch into a particularly aggressive interview with a bombastic tone. Perhaps he could listen to the cosy deferential chats he and his colleagues used to have with Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson and try the same approach with Mr Luxon.
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July 28, 2025 9:21am
- pdm
  
  I don’t think I have listened to Corin Dann since he left Q&A where I thought he was better than Jack Tame – soon to 3 or 4 on Labour’s list, he (Jack) hopes.
  
  Obviously I have not missed much.
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:19am
- MCōs
  
  I don’t listen to those interviews with our political leaders unless there’s likely to be something of real significance/controversy to be discussed
  With respect to the topics covered today there’s an obvious conflict between what the PM wants to do with regards voter enrollment and the advice from the Attorney General.
  In the interview the PM the quite clearly winding down the clock and the interviewer wanted him to address the conflict, not go off on a tangent about what happens in Australia
  https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018997401/pm-luxon-on-electoral-law-changes-clashing-with-constitutional-rights
  
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  July 28, 2025 2:41pm
I remember when

Bit late to the supermarket pricing debate but, I wonder if the errors cause annoyance rather than genuine financial pain.
Jon Duffy from Consumer was quoted as saying,
“While pricing errors may seem minor on an individual basis, they add up when multiplied across the population.”
“This isn’t OK, particularly at a time when people are struggling to pay their bills, he said.”

It isn’t okay whether people are struggling to pay their bills or not.

From my weekly visit to two local supermarkets, I find that relating the shelf ticket to a product is often a work of art.
I also find that it is not unusual to find a lower price is sometimes charged than expected.
It may just be a local outcome, but I find that the owner operator stores seem to have better control of this problem.
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July 28, 2025 10:01am
- imalwaysright
  
  I’ve noticed some supermarkets use electronic price displays that can be changed at will by the office.
  I wonder what the law says about them changing the price between when you put it in the basket and when you pay for it.
  A price scanner on the trolley would be the solution, the shopper could keep a running total and check the price is correct.
  
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  July 28, 2025 12:29pm
MCōs

Ben Stokes was pissed off because the two Indian all rounders refused to end the game when they were in sight of centuries each.
He wanted to protect his bowlers from being ground into the dust and expected the opposition to cooperate!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/cricket/england-v-india-fourth-test-result-ben-stokes-furious-at-indias-refusal-to-shake-hands-on-a-draw/J72AVZK6XBCBFOIRYNLFZFHYJ4/
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July 28, 2025 10:16am
- Vidar
  
  Post match he couldn’t wait to talk about personal milestones not mattering to his team.
  
  Was that the point of it?
  
  They did what they should have done if they were that worried about their bowlers. Put a part timer on and give up the hundred. No big deal.
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:43am
  - MCōs
    
    He would say that because his own test stats are nothing out of the ordinary. I suspect Vettori and de Grandhomme were better all rounders, but they weren’t the flamboyant characters Stokes has been
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:25am
    - NeverMindTheBollocks
      
      200 Test wickets & 7,000 Test runs makes Ben Stokes just the third member of a club that includes Gary Sobers and Jacques Kallis.
      
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      July 28, 2025 11:46am
      - pdm
        
        To me Sobers will always be the best of the best when it comes to cricketing all rounders.
        
        Not only his batting but the fact he could open the bowling then bowl orthodox left arm spin and mix it up with overs of chinamen.
        
        Excellent in slips or the outfield too.
        
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        July 28, 2025 12:46pm
- Prince
  
  Used to be the Ugly Aussies.
  Now it’s the Poms who whinge and moan and complain that no one plays the game the way they do.
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:54am
I remember when

Is Kuku now the home of the revolution?
The flags that ‘racists’ removed has resulted in an uprising from the locals.
They have not only been replaced but had brand spanking, largely maximum sized, new flags added in increased numnbers.
Also, as I journeyed north, around 3.15pm on Sunday, the roadside fence of the Marae was lined by a crowd of supporters vigorously waving hand-held flags.
How much did the display cost and who financed it?

Incidently, if they could offer this level of support, why don’t they just ensure they vote their own representatives on to councils?
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July 28, 2025 10:18am
- Eastlander
  
  That town looks like some bizarre Polynesian version of Shankill Road and has done for more than a year now. People are already speaking of the ‘Ulsterisation’ of Britain, perhaps it shall happen here too.
  
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  July 28, 2025 10:46am
  - Tauhei Notts
    
    I drove north through Kuku on 4th July and was surprised by the signage. Eastlander’s reference to the Shankhill Road is apt.
    
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    July 28, 2025 11:58am
    - kowtow
      
      Shankill Road is loyalist and adheres to the Crown.
      
      This is more Ballymurphy or Crossmaglen.
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:24pm
      - Eastlander
        
        ‘Conditional loyalty’ as they say. But whether unionist or nationalist you’re looking at ethnic territories marked out with murals, flags, bunting. Shankill Road was just the first one that came to mind.
        
        You can see the beginnings of it in Wellington too – parts of the eastern and southern wards where those idiotic ‘together te tiriti’ stickers and signboards proliferate. What we don’t have yet here are overt signifiers from the other side.
        
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        July 28, 2025 12:58pm
I remember when

Not found in any press articles but to what extent has the number of people shopping, dropping off and picking up their children after school, etc, in their Pyjamas increased?

As I remember it the answer was Nil, Zero, Absolutely No-one, when I attended school.
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July 28, 2025 10:35am
- Flossie
  
  When I went to school parents dropping off/picking up kids just didn’t happen, pyjamas or no pyjamas was obviously not an issue! Everyone walked, biked or came on a school bus.
  The same when my kids went to school a generation later.
  And nobody was even seen putting out the rubbish in their pyjamas never mind shopping!!
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:35am
  - MCōs
    
    In Wellington, in my early days of home ownership about fifty years ago, we never put the rubbish out because it was collected from round the back of the house.
    Blokes would run down the side of our house, empty the bin in a bloody great bag, chuck the bag over the fence & jump over and collect the neighbours rubbish
    
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    July 28, 2025 12:06pm
    - MCōs
      
      Those days are long gone and now one of us puts the rubbish out in our pajamas because we’re South Auckland
      Btw
      When we were kids we always walked/biked to school except in bad weather because Mum didn’t have a vehicle (same as all the other Mums) or a driver’s liscene
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:27pm
    - NeverMindTheBollocks
      
      Wellington’s back door rubbish collection service was a jewel.
      
      Then, it was funded through rates. Now, we pay for bags, which we ourselves have to lug down to the street.
      
      And they call it progress.
      
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      July 28, 2025 12:55pm
    - Jethrod
      
      That sounds like what the night-cart people used to do. Used to bung it on their head (the tin) until one night the bottom came out of the bin and the bin man got a shower of shite. Devils only problem with getting the bin off head too!
      
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      July 28, 2025 1:15pm
  - Ghost
    
    Here are some kids getting taken to school by horse and cart in 1925.
    
    https://discoverywall.nz/album/394/42951
    
    Don’t know when you went to school, but when I did parents took their kids to school. Many of us walked or biked, but there were still those who went in the car
    
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    July 28, 2025 12:14pm
    - mandk
      
      Those kids getting carted to school were lucky.
      
      When I were a lad, we would walk 14 miles to school on gravel roads and no shoes, even in winter.
      
      And when we got home, our Dad would beat us and send us to bed with only a chicken bone to suck.
      
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      July 28, 2025 2:16pm
      - Keith White
        
        Luxury!
        
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        July 28, 2025 3:46pm
Jack5

Britain is ready to fight in the Pacific if conflict breaks out over Taiwan, John Healey, the UK Defence Secretary, has suggested in Darwin, where one of Britain’s two new aircraft-carriers is visiting.

Britain can’t even stop the Channel invaders in their rubber boats.
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July 28, 2025 11:15am
- cmm
  
  “Britain can’t even stop the Channel invaders in their rubber boats”
  
  I’ll wager they could. Easily. But they won’t.
  
  One helicopter and a 50 cal is all you need.
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:49am
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    What’s the Royal Navy doing these days?
    
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    July 28, 2025 12:41pm
  - Colville
    
    60mm mortar. 3km range. Put a drone up for targeting co-ords.
    
    Like real life battleships 🙂
    
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    July 28, 2025 12:48pm
  - Sir Henry Morgan
    
    Indeed. Opening fire on the boars years ago, even just warning shots to turn them back, could have stopped this whole crisis before it started.
    
    There might have been a casualty or two, from drowning or maybe even a stray bullet. But letting the thing become a crisis has also resulted in casualties – victims of violent crime, destroyed social cohesion, loss of institutional legitimacy, eye-watering financial costs, etc.
    
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    July 28, 2025 2:34pm
- kowtow
  
  ‘Britain is ready to fight in the Pacific’
  
  Bwa hahahaha.
  
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  July 28, 2025 1:12pm
- Sir Henry Morgan
  
  It’s fantasy politics. This week’s elected idiot larping as Churchill. They are addicted to soundbites and cannot think more than a few hours ahead.
  
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  July 28, 2025 2:37pm
Ghost

I’m sure the ratepayers would prefer a drunk tank and an invite to dunk the commissioners

The Chief Ombudsman has found Tauranga City Council’s reasons for withholding the invitees and sponsors of a $40,000 private cocktail party it co-hosted did not outweigh public interest.

The invite-only May 10, 2024, event at the Cargo Shed was billed as a “celebration of the city” and also used to… farewell the city’s outgoing Government-appointed commissioners.

Article
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July 28, 2025 11:17am
PurplePen

Here’s a thought. What’s the point in a co-leadership arrangement such as greens and TPM.

Originally it was one male one female. Presumably this was to ensure certainty of a female getting to be a leader. Not for representation, or to a lesser extent it might have been about representation. Ironically, just when they did this females were finally in CEO and leaders positions in the late 20th century. The co-leadership arrangement effectively guaranteed females could not then lead on their own! A win in a way for the males. The greens after some decades cottoned on to this and changed things, a bit slow really. TPM are behind the 8 ball.

My point though, eventually is, if you end up with two females in your co-leadership, what’s the point. Why not just have one. And I’d it’s about representation why is sex and race, in the case of the greens, the only representation that matters.
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July 28, 2025 11:21am
- cmm
  
  It’s a virtue signal to the biases of your user base.
  
  I’ll wager the average Green voter believes there is some patriarchy where men conspire to keep women barefoot, pregnant and slaving in the kitchen. Anything that tilts the playing field to “rectify” the situation is met with approval.
  
  Don’t try to make too much sense of it. That can only damage your brain.
  
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  July 28, 2025 11:48am
- kowtow
  
  I’d vote Green if they were standing two co leader trans “women”. That would be real theatrics .
  
  ( is that a sentence with two oxymorons , co leader and trans woman , there’s no such thing)
  
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  July 28, 2025 12:57pm
- keepcalmcarryon
  
  Each has a half a brain.
  
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  July 28, 2025 1:35pm
  - PurplePen
    
    There’s possibly some wierd truth there in that it says you’re not fully human if you’re just a male or just a female. Otherwise if you were you’d be capable of leading on your own. Successful leading can only be done by two humans working together. In the Greens case 2 females or 1 of each sex.
    
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    July 28, 2025 1:57pm
    - mandk
      
      There should be one co-leader for each gender, and then they could all be co-leaders.
      
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      July 28, 2025 2:11pm
cmm

“Entrepreneur arrested at Auckland International Airport, 1kg of meth found in carry-on luggage”

Whenever someone calls themselves an entrepreneur, they generally are not.

When someone calls themselves an “entrepreneur” it’s a bloody red flag that they have, ahem, an unconventional income stream or no income stream at all (eg. a hobby posing as a business).

I know plenty real entrepreneurs. They call themselves many things, but seldom entrepreneur.

And surprise-surprise a “life coach” was also arrested a few days ago.

I bet there are many occupations that set off alarms in customs.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/entrepreneur-arrested-at-auckland-international-airport-1kg-of-meth-found-in-carry-on-luggage/55MJJDMH5BDQVKDOPHXXVHID7M/
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July 28, 2025 11:44am
- kowtow
  
  Could face life imprisonment !
  
  Pull the other one.
  
  Too bad they weren’t caught going the other way .Now that would attract a deterrent sentence.
  
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  July 28, 2025 12:50pm
greybeard

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360771886/three-youths-including-11-year-old-evade-police-spikes-stolen-vehicle
The first thing that should happen to these little ferals, and others like them, is to be taken to the nearest police station and given 6 of the best with a cane.
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July 28, 2025 11:53am
- cmm
  
  People only modify behaviour based on feedback they receive: positive feedback encourages more of the behaviour, negative feedback encourages less.
  
  At this stage, these scrotes are getting zero negative feedback because there is no punishment. They are getting heaps of positive feedback in the form or notoriety etc. Some are even making coin out of streaming on social media.
  
  Thus the behaviour only gets amplified until they encounter a power pole at high speeds and find out that the laws of physics do not belong to the leftie luvvie club.
  Then it is too late.
  
  So perhaps a caning would actually be the kindest thing to do here. Perhaps posting their snot and tears covered faces on social media to serve as a warning to others.
  
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  July 28, 2025 2:00pm
Swifty

A wonderful piece of new retail strategies in Melbourne – clearly modelled on recent New Zealand experiences.

https://x.com/goodfoodgal/status/1949581117771989078?s=46
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July 28, 2025 12:19pm
- NZer In Exile
  
  Very good. I’m looking at moving out of that dark and corrupt shit hole.
  
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  July 28, 2025 6:13pm
NeverMindTheBollocks

Four hapu of Nga Puhi have had their Mandate recognised by the Crown. This means they can negotiate for a Treaty settlement.

Good. Hopefully a good example for the rest of Nga Puhi also. There are too many lives being wasted up north.

http://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/568217/bay-of-islands-hapu-achieve-ngapuhi-first-treaty-of-waitangi-milestone
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July 28, 2025 12:52pm
- Jack5
  
  The hapu will obviously ask for later top-up payments, Ngai Tahu style, when the rest of Nga Puhi settles with the Crown.
  
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  July 28, 2025 4:10pm
cmm

Stupidity wins… again…

The government is to ban merchants adding paywave surcharges.

“The change will save shoppers, but cost merchants,”

Nope it won’t. Prices for non-Paywave users will go up to cover the surcharges for people that do use paywave. That’s what always happens when you hide costs to make things “fair”.

“New Zealanders are paying up to $150 million in surcharges every year, including excessive surcharges of up to $65m. That’s money that could be saved or spent elsewhere.”

Bullshit again. The surcharge has not gone away. It has been hidden. It is not extra money in your pocket.

This should have been left as a surcharge and for a very valid reason: Currently, the people choosing to use Paywave or not are the people paying the surcharge or not.

If you want to use Paywave, fine your choice. Now you can also pay the surcharge.
If you don’t want to pay the surcharge, fine your choice. Pay with a swipe card or cash.

There is now no way to avoid the surcharge because it is baked in to the price you pay.

But no, the people with leftie brain (ie. our current government) think that everyone’s choices should be subsidised by others. Now swipers must subsidise Paywavers.

Bad decision. Numpties with more feelz than brains.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/companies/retail/government-to-ban-card-payment-surcharges-businesses-to-pick-up-the-tab/MCE57QRYDNEZFM7LPAMXHIOWZY/
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July 28, 2025 2:29pm
- MCōs
  
  I don’t know exactly how these things work, but I like to have a daily coffee and nearly all the regular places I go to don’t either add a few cents for paywave or have a surcharge for public holidays for that matter. I think the latter may have pretty much faded out.
  The coffee and muffins etc at these places are not expensive
  One imagines the banks have a standard charge per transaction. 1 or 2% or whatever.
  Why is it only hospo that insists on adding the surcharge onto the bill, but not supermarkets or Briscoes or Gucci?
  I’d have thought
  
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  July 28, 2025 3:06pm
  - NothingLeft
    
    The marginal cost of a paywave transaction to the banks etc is near zero. They are charging a fee to cover system costs, maintenance and fraud/theft indemnification largely independent from volume of transactions.
    
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    July 28, 2025 3:46pm
  - cmm
    
    Sure, it is the choice of the vendors to add or not add explicit Paywave fees.
    
    It is also the choice of the card holder to use Paywave or some other payment method if they want to avoid fees.
    
    What is problematic though is the government wading in and removing those choices.
    
    It reminds me a bit of when Meridian Energy used to give a 10 or 15% discount to people paying their bills on time. People complained it wasn’t fair and they stopped.
    
    How the hell it could be fair or not, I don’t understand. People can choose to pay bills on time and get the discount.
    
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    July 28, 2025 5:04pm
    - Ghost
      
      Even visa didn’t support surcharges being placed on their cards.
      
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      July 28, 2025 5:24pm
mogg

I think we are about to see Lucky Luxton, Trump’s recent new trade deals will stimulate world trade driving NZ’s already booming export prices even higher. More overseas income, higher tax receipts, means more spending/bribes at home. Hipkins could very easily be a two time loser, that will be the end of him as a credible politician.
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July 28, 2025 2:35pm
- MCōs
  
  Jo Luxton is a Labour list MP from diary country of South Canterbury, but I doubt she’s who you were referring to?
  
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  July 28, 2025 3:12pm
  - Ghost
    
    And she isn’t lucky. Lost her seat, closed her office and fled to Wellington.
    
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    July 28, 2025 3:18pm
    - MCōs
      
      She was lucky because the previous National MP was the wretched Andrew Falloon who fell to pieces. She also swept in on 2020 Labour landslide. Nevertheless it was still a shock win and things returned to normal in 2023.
      Apart from the late eighties Timaru was a very long term labour stronghold
      
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      July 28, 2025 4:27pm
      - Ghost
        
        Yeah, and then national put up Megan, out of district and barely came into the area, people didn’t know who she was
        
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        July 28, 2025 4:47pm
  - mogg
    
    Quite right, Lucky-Luxon.
    
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    July 28, 2025 3:46pm
- mandk
  
  ” end of him [Hipkins] as a credible politician”
  
  When was he ever credible? As a Minister, everything he touched turned to shit.
  
  And he only became PM, after Ardern cut and ran, because no one else in Labour wanted the job at the time. They all knew that Labour was going to lose.
  
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  July 28, 2025 4:48pm
Don Beckett

Those who constantly bag Israel regarding the Gaza situation and all who want a true perspective need to watch this video. (9.05 min.)
It criticizes those national leaders who blame Israel as conducting genocide including Albanese & those who support Hamas & the Palestinian state. It shows the falsehoods of the UN – indeed their co-operation with Hamas.
A British military officer who has been in Gaza very recently is interviewed & reports what he has seen. Bit of an eye opener.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3hnvzheiuk
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July 28, 2025 2:45pm
- Chuck Bird
  
  Don, I saw this on Outsiders yesterday. Rowan is pretty, but not always right. This video is 6 m 35s. Israel is not blameless.
  
  Former US Green Beret says Israel committed war crimes at Gaza food distribution site | BBC News
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72aZhsNMOWk
  
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  July 28, 2025 3:24pm
Jack5

Boo’s, ballyhoo, or boohoo’s?

Big, black, bold headline at the Red Radio site:

“Watch: Christopher Luxon booed
at netball premiership finals”

The report beneath says:

“Prime Minister Chrisopher (sic) Luxon appears to have been booed by spectators at the ANZ Premiership netball finals over the weekend.

“Luxon was on stage to present awards after the final game.

“Loud jeers from the crowd could be heard as Luxon was introduced, video from the official broadcast shows.”

You can listen to something vaguely like a boo or two at the link below.

Almost faint, more like whimpering than boo-ing.

Red Radio climaxes its report with this:
“Comment has been requested from the prime minister’s (sic) office.”

Good grief! And all for “appears to have been booed”.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/568235/watch-christopher-luxon-booed-at-netball-premiership-finals
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July 28, 2025 3:41pm
cmm

“My biggest blessing”

The mother of a 20 year old Mongrel Mob hoodlum that was killed on the week end referred to the scumbag as “My biggest blessing”.

Auntie, if that’s the biggest blessing you’ve had in your life then I really feel sorry for you!

Well, almost.

Quite likely you helped lead him down the path that lead to this outcome.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360772008/homicide-investigation-launched-after-critically-injured-man-dies-rotorua
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July 28, 2025 5:08pm
- Ghost
  
  Gang member, or what ever someone does, at the end of the day it’s still family, still her son, still a huge awful loss for her.
  
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  July 28, 2025 5:37pm
  - kowtow
    
    One person’s loss is, in this case, a societal gain.
    
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    July 28, 2025 7:08pm
greybeard

Talbot Mills poll just out in regard to Covid-era: nonsense of course.
I see that their website no longer refers to them being the pollsters for the Labour Party, just Hipkins.
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July 28, 2025 6:56pm

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