It’s one thing to celebrate pensioners being wounded, but to do so while asserting you are a peace activist is really quite exceptional.

An excellent report by the ERO on chronically absent students, being this who are absent for more than three weeks every term. So this isn’t kids who have a week off for sickness, or a week off on an overseas holiday. It is kids who are attending less than 70% of the time – missing 12 weeks a year.

Some key details:

• One in 10 students (10 percent) were chronically absent in Term 2, 2024, double the level of 2015
• Students who are chronically absent are four times as likely to have a recent history of offending
• 55% of students chronically absent do not achieve NCEA Level 2 and 92% do not achieve UE
• Only 43 percent of parents and whānau with a child who is chronically absent have met with school staff about their child’s attendance.
• One in five school leaders (18 percent) only refer students after more than 21 consecutive days absent
• Only 22 schools make up 10 percent of the total chronic absence nationally, so under 1% of schools make up 10% of chronic absences.
• Students in schools in lower socio-economic areas are six times more likely to be chronically absent but there are 95 schools in low socio-economic communities with less than a 10 percent rate of chronic absence (so it is a factor, not an excuse)

The cost to the kids, and society, of such high rates are massive.

Note that lockdowns only occurred in 2020 and 2021. However in hindsight the decision to close schools was a very bad one, as it normalised non-attendance.

The Herald reports:

Young Labour has published an open letter urging the Government to follow Australia’s lead and stop Candace Owens entering the country.

The conservative US commentator and Trump supporter has caused controversy with her views questioning the Holocaust, and criticising feminism, the Black Lives Matter movement, and trans people.

She is booked to deliver a speech in Auckland next month — and had been expected to continue to Australia until she was refused entry. Tickets were selling for between $95 for general admission and $1500 for a VIP package with a pre-show dinner, champagne reception and meet-and-greet.

Australian Immigration Minister Tony Burke said the country’s national interest would be best served with Owens somewhere else, as she could “incite discord in almost every direction”.

An appalling decision from Australia, and one we should avoid.

I do believe Owens is clearly anti-semitic and says many terrible things. I find her a pretty contemptible person.

But if people want to go pay money to hear her in person (or challenge her) they have the right to do so.

Also banning her will just make her more popular and in demand.

Young Labour President Ethan Reille disagreed, and called on the coalition Government to deny Owens entry to New Zealand.

“Her views are not merely just controversial, but they are dangerous. So we do have an obligation to be protecting our communities from that kind of rhetoric that empowers divisive movements. So it is our view that allowing her a platform would fail to uphold our core values.”

Some pro-Palestinian activists are seem as divisive by many. What Young Labour really means is that views they disagree with should not be allowed in.

A comedian at a Trump rally referred to Puerto Rico as an island of garbage. This was very unhelpful to Trump as 100,000 people from Puerto Rico live in the vital swing state of Pennsylvania.

But then Joe Biden blunders in and says that the only garbage he sees are Trump supporters. The only thing more stupid than insulting 100,000 swing state voters is insulting half the electorate.

The White House amended the transcript to add an apostrophe so they could claim Biden meant only one supporter of Trump (the comedian) not all of them, but the damage is done. In an election that will come down to turnout, he has energised Trump’s base in a way which will enrage the Harris campaign.

And Trump is a genius when it comes to stunts, so today he turned up to a rally like this:

A genius troll move.

In just 48 hours an issue which may have cost Trump a swing state, has not turned into a plus for him thanks to Joe Biden. Bet you we won’t be seeing him in public again for the next six days!

The C&R team have once again done a clean sweep of the Entrust board elections, winning 5/5 seats.

Labour and Greens always put up a left leaning ticket, with a new name every time to try and hide who they are. They always have nonsensical policies such as saying they will increase spending, lower power bills and increase dividends. Magic!

Here’s the gap between the lowest polling C&R candidate and highest polling left candidate each election:

• 2024: 1745
• 2021: 838
• 2018: 5,680
• 2015: 4,657
• 2012: 547
• 2009: 2983

They keep trying for different names to appeal to people. They have been:

• 2009: Powerlynk
• 2012: Your Power Team
• 2015: City Vision – Community Voice
• 2018: City Vision
• 2021: More for you, better for climate
• 2024: More for you, better for Auckland

I wonder what name they will use next time?

The Guardian reports:

When Keir Starmer announced a shake-up in his No 10 operation last month he hoped to put an end to the missteps of his first few months in office. But an embarrassing error by Downing Street this weekend demonstrates how many pitfalls there are for a new government still learning the ropes.

In a press release on Friday, Downing Street said five new freeports would be announced in the budget. The Guardian and other outlets covered the news, which was given first to reporters who had travelled with Starmer to Samoa for the Commonwealth summit. Both the prime minister and his aides answered questions on the policy they had unveiled.

Two days later it emerged that there would be no new freeports. The Financial Times reported that the announcement, which had baffled officials and port executives, was wrong. Instead the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will unveil new customs sites within three existing freeports – a comparatively minor move, though it will make Humber freeport operational for the first time. …

What has baffled everyone in Westminster is how such a major mistake could be made when government announcements – especially those related to the budget – go through a lengthy signoff process involving a large number of people. “You could see this mistake happen if it was the PM saying it and getting the language wrong,” one former special adviser remarked. Instead it was at the top of a No 10 press release.

Having worked in a PMs Office, I find it hard to understand how you can accidentally announce five new freeports in a media release. This would be signed off by multiple officials in ministerial offices and agencies. It does suggest either incompetence or very bad systems.

I do have some experience with the more common experience where a Minister or spokesperson announces something in an interview and gets the details wrong. In one election a spokesperson announced something that was not agreed policy, and it was reasonably significant.

This posed a problem, as announcing the next day the spokesperson was wrong would dominate the day, so would be a bad news day a few days before the election.

As the campaign committee discussed how to correct the spokesperson’s remarks to align with the policy, I suggested why didn’t we just align the policy with the spokesperson. MPs said that it wouldn’t be possible to get the policy amended in time as would have to go through caucus committee, caucus, policy committee, board etc. I clarified that I meant that I just changed the policy on the website. MPs nervously looked around and asked if that was possible. I said sure – could do it in five minutes.

There was a long silence, and then the campaign chair said “OK I think we can move onto the next item”, which I took to mean they didn’t want to explicitly say I should do it, but did want me to do it!

At The Conservation:

We surveyed 316 researchers from research organisations across New Zealand on their engagement with Māori and their attitudes towards mātauranga Māori (Indigenous knowledge system). We found the majority agree engagement is important and mātauranga Māori is relevant to their research.

Our preliminary findings show most of the surveyed researchers engaged with Māori to some degree in the past and expect to keep doing so in the future. A majority agreed mātauranga Māori should be valued on par with Western science.

Any academic who refers to science as “western science” can almost certainly be dismissed as not serious. There is no such thing as western science, just science. We don’t have western gravity.

Oxford defines science as:

the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.

Anything from any country, race or culture that meets that definition is science. Note it is not just observation but testing against evidence.

The Guardian notes:

What is only now becoming clear (to many in the west) is that during the dark ages of medieval Europe, incredible scientific advances were made in the Muslim world. Geniuses in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus and Cordoba took on the scholarly works of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, India and China, developing what we would call “modern” science. New disciplines emerged – algebra, trigonometry and chemistry as well as major advances in medicine, astronomy, engineering and agriculture. Arabic texts replaced Greek as the fonts of wisdom, helping to shape the scientific revolution of the Renaissance. What the medieval scientists of the Muslim world articulated so brilliantly is that science is universal, the common language of the human race. 

Again science is not western. All cultures and races own science. It is about a method.

So an easy rule of thumb is to dismiss anyone who talks about Western science. They have no understanding of either science or history.

Thomas Newman argues against lifting the threshold for jury trials from two years maximum imprisonment to three, five or seven years.

Submissions to the Government on this close today.

The ABC reports:

Israel’s parliament has passed legislation targeting the main UN agency providing aid to people in Gaza.

The new laws designate the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) a terrorist organisation, cutting diplomatic ties with the agency and barring it from operating on Israeli soil.

Two bills passed in the Knesset prohibit ties between Israeli officials and the agency, and strip its staff of their legal immunities.

This is not surprising, considering the many UNRWA staff who have also been terrorists. But it goes well beyond that. UNRWA has allowed their schools to be used to teach hatred. They are part of the problem, not the solution. For example UNRWA will not teach the Holocaust in their schools, as it will upset Hamas who insist the Holocaust is a fiction invented by Zionists.

The vote passed 92-10 and followed a fiery debate between supporters of the law and its opponents, mostly members of Arab parliamentary parties.

The Government only has 68 MPs, so at least 24 opposition MPs voted to ban UNRWA also.

UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini said the move set a “dangerous new precedent”. 

“It ⁠will deprive over 650,000 girls and boys there from education, putting at risk an entire generation of children.”

Not having them taught in UNRWA schools will probably be a good thing. There are in fact over 3,000 schools in Palestine, and only 15% are run by UNRWA. Children in UNRWA schools will be able to access other schools.

There are also other aid agencies that do or can operate in the Palestinian Territories. With UNRWA being banned, we should cease funding them, and instead donate what we used to give to UNRWA to other aid agencies that operate there. I’m absolutely in favour of NZ Government funding aid agencies to help Palestinian families., I’m just not in favour of doing it through UNRWA.

Previously on my Patreon (paywalled) I compared Chris Luxon’s approval ratings to the last six UK PMs, and last six Australian PMs. They were favourable towards him.

In this final part I compare his ratings in his first year to the last four New Zealand Prime Ministers – Key, English, Ardern and Hipkins.

The Education Review Office have published a report correctly calling school attendance in New Zealand a crisis and stating:

“Tens of thousands of “chronically absent” students are missing weeks of school – and the Education Review Office (ERO) says it has reached crisis point.

In the past decade, chronic truancy has doubled in secondary schools and nearly tripled in primary schools.”

The core reason students are not going to school is that many, many families have completely lost faith in the school system as a whole, their local schools, the Ministry of Education and the efficacy of our qualifications system. Don’t forget 10,000 students are enrolled nowhere at all.

We are the nation in the developed world with the most bullying in schools and the greatest difference in achievement between haves and have nots.

Ethinicity statisitics are telling too. In Term 2 of 2024 approx 53% of students fully attended but only 41% of Pasifika and 39% of Maori.

Instead of accepting any level of responsibility for this dire situation the teacher unions come straight out with … give us more money and will will fix things and buy the Auckland Harbour Bridge as well.

Post Primary Teachers’ Association president Chris Abercrombie said “governments need to be brave enough to address underlying causes of chronic non-attendance, including poverty, housing insecurity and mental health”.

This included integrated and funded solutions involving “gateway, alternative education and activity centres, pastoral care and learning support”.

No mention there of teacher quality, school quality, qualifications quality.

NZEI Te Riu Roa President, Mark Potter, says “the weaknesses identified in the current system are down to either lack of resourcing or socioeconomic factors that contribute to absenteeism like trauma and poverty.”

There are two key problems/solutions here:

1. Parenting. This is not to dump on parents but as a society we need to recognise that we need mechanisms to massive improve our parenting – starting from having outstnding information and programmes from pregnancy to 5 years of age. This should in no way be funnelled through the Ministry of Education or schools. Good parenting can, and should, occur – regardless of wealth, ethnicity, parent’s education levels.
   
2. The Ministry and schools need to accept their very significant part in creating the problem – and actually set our to reform and inprove. At present they offer no genuine solutions to the attendance crisis.

Alwyn Poole
alwyn.poole@gmail.com
Innovative Education Consultants Ltd
Education 710+ Ltd
(both sites currently being re-done)
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

An excellent address by Attorney-General Judith Collins to the University of Western Sydney (which has also made her an Adjunct Professor of Law).

The criminalisation of speech is one of the most serious limitations on the right to freedom of expression that can be contemplated.

There are situations where this may be justified, such as where speech serves to incite violence.

However, criminalisation should not extend to speech that is merely insulting or offensive.

It is important to condemn speech that is purposefully designed to insult or offend, but this is quite distinct from criminalising it.

To do so could have a chilling effect on democratic participation, leaving people reluctant to express their opinions or views for fear of prosecution.

Criminalising speech that forms part of public discourse carries a risk of undermining the function of democracy.

In the words of Lord Justice Sedley, free speech allows for “not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence.”

It is, therefore, fundamental to a functioning democracy that all people are able to freely express their views. While words matter, the fact that someone possesses an unpopular view, or an opinion that may cause offense to another individual, does not serve as a basis for limiting the right to freedom of expression.

It is undisputable that certain forms of speech are unacceptable – but what level of harm does the speech need to meet for criminal prosecution to be appropriate?

We can, and should, take steps as a society to clearly condemn speech that is offensive or insulting, without always needing to resort to measures that create a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

Good to see the Attorney-General state this, especially as so many other politicians do want to criminalise speech they deem hateful.

The Electoral Commission announced:

A referral has been made to Police on 4 October 2024 relating to Te Pāti Māori’s failure to file annual financial statements with the Electoral Commission. The financial statements and accompanying audit report were due on 30 June 2024 under sections 210G and 210H of the Electoral Act.

Their financial statements are not a few days late, but 115 days late.

Has anyone asked the co-leaders or president why they are refusing to file audited accounts for the year ending 31 December 2024? Every other parliamentary party has done so.

One week to go, and the forecasts improve slightly for Trump.

All but one of the forecasts now has Trump winning Nevada also, giving him five of the seven swing states and a 287 to 251 victory. Nevada is important as with it, he can afford to lose Georgia or North Carolina yet still win. However Pennsylvania remains a must win for Trump (and Harris). If Trump loses Pennsylvania he loses 268 to 270.

All three forecasts that do a probability estimate have increased Trump from around a 52% to 54% chance of winning. Still very much a toss up.

The Daily Mail reports:

Shortly after winning the prime ministership in May 2022, Mr Albanese asked then-Qantas CEO Alan Joyce to make Nathan, 23, a member of the Chairman’s Lounge, an invitation only perk of the airline, a new book claims. …

Mr Albanese defended the arrangement saying his son became his ‘plus one’ after his marriage to former Labor MP Carmel Tebbutt ended. 

But that does not account for his partner Ms Haydon also reportedly being a ‘plus one’ for the Lounge. 

It is also claimed in The Chairman’s Lounge book, by former Australian Financial Review columnist Joe Aston, that Nathan’s Chairman’s Lounge membership was not listed on Mr Albanese’s register of interests, which logs gifts of significance to MPs. …

He denied getting special treatment.

‘People get plus ones, and if anyone knows anything about aviation, what they will know is that there are regularly, regularly, a range of airlines will put in,’ Mr Albanese said.

In his book, Aston also claims Mr Albanese personally approached Mr Joyce to get dozens of free Qantas flight upgrades including with an international partner on a trip to Rome. 

Mr Albanese said he had declared ‘every single flight upgrade’ which were purchased by himself.

‘From time to time members of parliament receive upgrades, what’s important is that they are declared, all of mine have been declared, I note that a range of them go back a long period of time,’ he said.

An airline upgrading a politician at their discretion is quite routine and normal. A politician personally contacting an airline CEO to ask for upgrades or perks for family members in not normal. It isn’t quite clear whether what happened here is the former or latter, but if it is the latter, the PM is in a lot of trouble.

Albanese was the actual Minister of Transport in the previous Labor Government. To have the Transport Minister asking an airline CEO for favours, when he regulates the airlines, is a terrible look.

NewstalkZB reports:

Former Labour Minister and list MP Ginny Andersen has reshared a meme on her personal Instagram of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and King Charles meeting at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Samoa that poked fun at the shape of His Majesty’s trousers.

The former police minister has since removed the post from her social media accounts.

Luxon and Charles were attending the meeting in Apia this week, as leaders and foreign ministers from 56 Commonwealth nations came together for the annual summit. The pair snapped a photo together while there, which the Prime Minister shared on Instagram.

“King Charles III has a great love of New Zealand. It was a pleasure to have an audience with His Majesty today in Samoa,” Luxon captioned the post.

The post Andersen reshared – a meme created by the page @cindywithsign – took the picture shared by Luxon, overlaying the screenshot with a sign that labelled a clothing blunder the King had in the photo as a “king*ssy”.

“What I’m saying to you is that showing his king*ssy on main like that is just crazy [crying emoji],” the sign read.

I don’t think she needed to remove it. When do you look at the photo, it is sort of funny.

Not particularly wise for an MP to reshare it, but it is sort of funny, and done in humour not malice.

The Liberal Party has been the dominant party in Canada for many years. However in the recent provincial elections in British Columbia they were not even on the ballot, as they were looking to come a distant third – so they pulled out.

Their withdrawal has allowed the more leftish NDP to narrowly beat the Conservatives by one seat, but what the Liberals did would be the equivalent of Labour not standing any candidates in an election, so the Alliance could win.

The Liberals ruled BC from 2001 to 2017. Here’s the number of seats each party has won since 2000:

The Conservatives went from 2% in 2020 to 43% in 2024, a remarkable achievement. They won’t quite get to form Government due to the Liberals pulling out to stop vote splitting, but probably will in time.

Stuff reports:

A Northland principal has questioned the level of nutrition in the new free school lunch programme that will be rolled out from next year at a cost of $3 per meal.

The moment I saw this paragraph, I knew who the principal would be.

However, Hora Hora School principal, Pat Newman, said at $3 per meal, he doubted the new external providers of the food would prioritise health.

“I don’t think families from homes with more funds would be sitting down to $3 meals. Why should kids from lower income families be made to do that?“ Newman told Stuff.

The current model of providing lunches on site meant children had “nutritious, healthy and nice food”, he said, whereas the Minister was only interested in “saving money”.

Of course it is Mr Newman, who is quoted regularly by media as a critic without reference to the fact he stood for Parliament for the Labour Party.

Radio NZ reports:

The Ministry of Health has not won itself many friends this week with its failure to inform minister Casey Costello that one of its staffers is related to her arch-rival in Parliament.

Costello has every right to feel aggrieved.

For months, she has been working with health officials on tobacco reform policy, all the while, unbeknownst to her, one of them was the sister-in-law of Labour’s Ayesha Verrall.

It is staggering that no-one told the Minister. This was not a minor conflict, but the sister-in-law of her direct parliamentary opponent, and in an area which she had been most attacked about.

The Chief Executive and/or the secondees in the Minister’s office should have advised the Minister.

It is true, as has been stressed by Verrall and Labour leader Chris Hipkins, that many MPs have relations who work in the public service. Hipkins points out that when he was a minister, he regularly held meetings attended by a National MP’s sibling.

Public servants can’t choose their relatives. That should not be a barrier to them being in the public service, and we never want to see again the disgraceful treatment of Madeleine Setchell who was sacked at the behest of a Minister, who then lied about it, because her partner worked for National.

But Ministers should be aware of political conflicts with senior staff, so that it comes as no surprise to them, and that they can be reassured about how the conflict is being managed.

The ministry has accepted as much and apologised for the “oversight”. It says the responsibility lay with the ministry and not with the staffer, who it says followed all the correct protocols.

“The ministry’s conflict of interest protocol is well communicated to all staff and was adhered to by the individual in this case. Specifically, appropriate declarations were made and management plans put in place.”

Given that, the health official herself should also feel deeply let down by her employer.

By the ministry’s account, she did everything that was asked and expected of her.

The fault is with the ministry, not the employee. Having said that, it would be prudent considering the seniority of the staffer, the role of the person she is related to, and the sensitivity of the policy area she was in, to have proactively asked if her conflict had been disclosed to the Minister.

Hipkins has not helped Labour’s case in initially describing the official as Verrall’s “distant relative”.

When it comes to in-laws, there are varying degrees of closeness, but “distant relative” is not a fair descriptor for a sister-in-law. Hipkins says he misspoke.

A distant relative would be a second cousin, not someone married to your sibling or is the sibling of your wife.

There has been a large amount of confidential material in the area of tobacco and vaping leaked to the opposition and/or the media. Now personally I think it is highly unlikely that Verall’s sister-in-law would be the leaker, as she would know she would be under intense scrutiny. But you can imagine the surprise to the Minister who has had ministry staff leaking to Verrall in this area, and then finds out the principal advisor in this area is Verrall’s sister-in-law.