The Daily Mail reports:

Scotland Yard was facing yet more anger from Jewish groups on Saturday after a Holocaust memorial was covered up over fears it would be vandalised by pro-Palestine activists.

Officials in Hyde Park yesterday hid Britain’s first public memorial to the six million victims of the Nazi genocide under a blue tarpaulin in a move one Holocaust survivor called ‘shameful’.

The monument was then guarded by Metropolitan Police officers to stop it being targeted by pro-Palestine protesters who marched through London in yet another demonstration against the war in Gaza. 

Protecting the Holocaust memorial is a good thing. Covering it up is a very bad thing.

After being elected to Parliament in 2008 the maiden speech of Hipkins was substantially around education policy.

He was Labour’s spokesperson for education 2011 – 2017.

He was Minister for Education from 2017 until February 2023. This is approximately 88% of the time Labour were in power.

Tinetti took over in February until the election. Together, I believe, they oversaw the worst education oversight by government in living memory.

Whenever the recent six years of Labour government are referred to Labour avoid discussion of two personnel situations.

1. Ardern as Prime Minister (also 88% of the time).
   
2. Hipkins as Minister of Education.

Up until the books were opened he had only two legacies. They are; killing a Charter School model that was helping struggling children to succeed and the ditching of National Standards, although they were supported by parents, with no replacement.

He has two new legacies.

1. The appalling and deceitful oversight of the proposal to combine Marlborough Girls and Boys Colleges. This BALOONED to $450 million and he not only hid it from Cabinet but instructed the Ministry how to increment the amounts to disguise the extent of cost increases.
   
2. Grant Robertson made it apparent the whenever Hipkins did not get his way in a budget process he would threaten to throw his toys.
   
   “Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson in his recent valedictory speech also revealed facetiously that Labour leader and former Education Minister Chris Hipkins threatened to resign each year.
   “I also want to thank Chippy for not following through on his annual threat to resign during the education budget process,” said Robertson.

With the decline in all education measures during the Labour party it would have been better if Hipkins had resigned. The nation should be always reminded of his role and the effect on NZ young people and their families.

Alwyn Poole
Innovative Education Consultants
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

There is a legal fight between Elon Musk and the Australian Government over footage of the stabbing of an Australian Assyrian Bishop by a radicalised young Muslim. The Government has demanded that it be removed from all social media platforms, including Twitter.

At first glance one might think that this is comparable to the footage of the Christchurch mosque attacks. Very few people would argue that the footage of that attack shouldn’t be freely available on the Internet.

But there are some key differences.

1. The video wasn’t filmed by the attacker, as a way to glorify or boast of what he was doing. It was captured on the church’s livestream.
2. The victim in this case, Bishop Emmanuel has called for it to be available
3. The Australian Government isn’t just demanding it be removed in Australia, but globally

So in this case, I think the Australian Government is in the wrong.

Luke Malpass writes:

OPINION: Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Andrew Bayly has announced that the Government will be revoking the affordability regulations contained within the Credit contracts and Consumer Finance Act. …

The new CCCFA made getting a mortgage far more onerous and made people looking for mortgages feel like they were in front of some sort of star chamber. …

In one of the really stunning — but largely unacknowledged — own goals of the Ardern government, the CCCFA introduced some 11 pages of prescriptive instructions to banks and financial institutions. Taken together they were called affordability regulations. …

Prior to the changes being brought in, the Government was warned by the banking sector that the new requirements would add to the cost, time and complexity of new lending as well.

It was a rare instance where the politically inept meets the practically stupid. Credit became far more difficult to get while the legal small money lenders suddenly found compliance costs — time primarily — driving them out of small loans.

The thing meant to spare vulnerable people from predatory lending, opened up a new market for loan sharks, while middle class people out for a mortgage — first home buyers especially — were made to feel under cross-examination.

Bayly seethes at the idea that the previous regime helped protect the most vulnerable.

“At the moment, there is no discretion: If you front up and say ‘I want 500 bucks’ or if you fronted up and said ‘I want a million dollars to buy that that’. Lenders should be able to use their judgment on a case-by-case basis and we’re going to reinstate that,” Balyy said.

The regulations were a debacle, and a great example of how good intentions and a lack ion real world understanding can lead to awful outcomes.

The Heraald reports:

NYU Stern Professor of Marketing Scott Galloway practices what he preaches. The prolific podcaster and Algebra of Wealth author has founded a string of tech, branding and education start-ups, which have pushed his estimated wealth to over $100 million. The Herald asked him for his verdict on New Zealand’s mobile phones-in-schools ban.

The ban kicked in this week and covers breaks and class time, as per National’s campaign pledge.

Will it be good for students?

“There are probably some apps and some tech that they won’t be as apt at,” Galloway said.

“But on balance, I think it’s a fantastic idea. New Zealand gets it right again.” (The academic and entrepreneur was also a fan of NZ’s move to ban most semi-automatic weapons after the Christchurch Mosque massacres.)

“I’m friends with and colleagues with Jonathan Haidt, who catalysed this global movement. It’s inspiring to think that, in academia, we might occasionally get it right and have an impact,” Galloway added.

Haidt – also a professor at New York University – is a social psychologist and author of a seminal 2019 essay called “Get phones out of schools now” – which associated a rise in teen anxiety and depression with the use of mobiles in schools.

“Getting students’ attention was harder because they seemed permanently distracted and congenitally distractible. Drama, conflict, bullying, and scandal played out continually during the school day on platforms to which the staff had no access,” Haidt wrote after talking to teachers and principals.

Many schools wanted bans but feared push-back from helicopter parents.

Galloway said he liked to think his colleague’s work helped to inspire New Zealand’s move.

He added, “It just makes sense. A 13-year-old girl doesn’t need the high school cafeteria following around 24-7. Look at what’s happened to teen depression and suicide. The moment it started escalating it was when social went on mobile.”

Nice to have international support for the move.

While hard evidence was “weak and inconclusive”, anecdotally, schools that implemented the ban before the deadline have reported positive changes in attention and learning. The head girl of Hornby High School in Christchurch said the grounds were now “almost louder during intervals and lunches”.

Her principal said, “I wish we had done the phone ban five years ago.”

And, responding to a Herald article on LinkedIn, Freeview general manager Leon Mead said, “It’s made a difference at Rangi [Rangitoto College – the biggest school in the country]. Last year fields were empty at lunchtime. Now kids are off phones and out having fun.”

Will be really interesting to assess after say 12 months, what impact it has had.

NewstalkZB reports:

Former deputy prime minister and senior Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni is understood to be one of the contestants on the new season of Celebrity Treasure Island. 

A sure sign she is running for the leadership!

1 News reports:

Carterton’s deputy mayor is “disappointed” and “disgusted” at the response to a proposal to erect a memorial sculpture of the late Georgina Beyer.

“I’m just really disappointed at how some people have expressed their views by tearing apart a deceased person and their character when they can’t defend themselves,” Carterton’s Deputy Mayor Dale Williams said.

Beyer, who died last year, was elected mayor of Carterton in 1995 — making her the world’s first openly transgender mayor.

Williams said he was “disgusted” by the comments his council had received regarding a proposal to erect a life-sized bronze statue of Beyer.

Carterton councillors met on Wednesday to discuss the proposal, but decided to seek public feedback on the idea and potential location before supporting the project further.

The sculpture would be externally funded and has been endorsed by the executors of Beyer’s estate. The estimated price to complete the sculpture is between $300,000-$500,000.

Beyer became the world’s first transgender Member of Parliament and was celebrated for her courage, sharp humour, and fierce advocacy of the communities she represented.

Georgina Beyer was a good Mayor of Carterton. She got re-elected with 90% of the vote. And her election as both Mayor and MP was significant, especially in such a rural area. She wasn’t elected because she was transgender, or in spite of it. It just wasn’t an issue to locals who judged her on her performance.

I think it is quite appropriate to honour a former Mayor, who attracted significant attention nationally and globally.

But a $500,000 statue is way over the top, especially in a district of 10,000 people. That is $50 per person or over $100 per household.

Naming a street or a park after her, with an appropriate plaque would be far more sensible.

The Conversation in 2019 reported:

Former federal trade minister Andrew Robb says he has quit his A$880,000-a-year consultancy job with Chinese-owned Landbridge Group because it didn’t have anything for him to do.

Former Victorian premier John Brumby says he has quit as a director of Chinese tech giant Huawei in Australia because he has too much else to do.

Former federal foreign minister and ex-NSW premier Bob Carr has quit his job as director of the Australia-China Relations Institute, an organisation bankrolled by a Chinese billionairewith a history of using donations to cosy up to politicians.

It might be just a coincidence that these decisions have come just days before new foreign influence transparency laws come into effect on March 1.

I’m sure it was coincidence.

This is what made the tawdry scandal involving former NSW senator Sam Dastyari so alarming. 

Though a humble senator, Dastyari was a key Labor Party fundraiser and powerbroker. He later admitted that vanity and arrogance made him susceptible to the charm offensive of Huang Xiangmo – the billionaire who courted Bob Carr to head up the Australia-China Relations Institute. 

Dastyari accepted financial gifts from Huang’s company, including a A$44,000 payment to settle a legal dispute, along with payments from other donors connected to the Chinese Communist Party.

I’m really surprised the NZ Labour Party invited Bob Carr to come to New Zealand, to tell us that we should not have closer relations with Australia through AUKUS. Very undiplomatic to have foreign former politicians intervening in NZ policy discussions.

DOC has published a 30 page report with options for restoring walking access to Cathedral Cove, which close almost 18 months ago. It is unbelievable that it has remained closed for so long, especially having just been ranked one of the world’s top 50 beaches.

The obvious priority is option 2A which is stick in a new boardwalk on the one section where it is damaged, and put in some steps from the beach. This should have actually happened automatically- take a week or so.

After you get access going, then you can consult on which long term solution is chosen, so long as it isn’;’t the one to ban visitors from walking in.

Read the whole tweet. A Member of Parliament got up in the House and said the Government (which has a Cabinet which is 35% Māori) wants to exterminate Māori. Has the media reported this, with the editorials decrying such nonsensical and abusive language?

Imagine if an ACT MP said in the House that a Labour-led Government was trying to exterminate Europeans? It would be the major story in every news medium, with cries for them to resign.

This is why trust in media keeps falling. The blatant double standards.

Gary Judd KC writes:

At present, the compulsory law degree subjects are The Legal System, The Law of Contracts, The Law of Torts, Criminal Law, Public Law and Property Law.

The tikanga regulations make it compulsory for all students commencing a law degree from 1 January 2025 to complete a subject on the general principles and practices of tikanga Māori | Māori laws and philosophy, and for tikanga Māori | Māori laws and philosophy to be included in all other subjects which are part of the compulsory requirements for the LLB and LLB Honours degrees.

This will not be about education, but indoctrination. Law students will have to agree with a particular interpretation in order to become lawyers.

The principal purpose of this complaint is to urge that one of the committee’s members move a resolution that the House disallow the tikanga regulations.

That’s a good idea, and a way for Parliament to say this is going too far.

IMO Parliament need to go even further and legislate so that no professional body can insist on completing some sort of cultural course as a requirement for registration. We’ve seen this for real estate agents now, and this is actually all about trying to impose a unilateral world view on all professional bodies.

UPDATE: The Dean of the AUT Law School, Khylee Quince, responded to Mr Judd’s article on social media saying:

I suppose it was inevitable that one of the old racist dinosaurs would make a pathetic squeal in an attempt to preserve the status quo…. Mr Judd and his “matauranga Maori is not science” friends can go die quietly in the corner…

Mr Judd points out:

What sort of lawyers will be produced by a law faculty led by someone who resorts to petty abuse instead of engaging in rational argument? 

Why did she not explain why tikanga is law? Why did she not explain why a body of law built up over centuries for the purpose of testing whether a custom should be accorded the status of law must be jettisoned because tikanga cannot meet those standards? Why did she not answer other matters raised in my complaint to the regulations review committee? Responses like those could have been expected from a person holding a privileged leadership position.

The mindless abuse by Dean Quince of Mr Judd is something you might expect from an excitable first year law student, not the Dean of a Law School.

t makes you worry for any student at AUT Law School. If they dare disagree with the Dean, will they also be subject to such abuse? Does AUT Law School strike you as a place that welcomes debate and disagreement?

I can only suggest that law firms and others avoid hiring anyone who graduates as a lawyer from AUT. We want lawyers who are trained got debate and think, not just call people names and say they hope they die.

Incidentally Mr Judd has been a KC/QC for 29 years. As far as I can see he has appeared before the Supreme Court over a dozen times, and before the Privy Council almost the same. I’d say he has learnt the right to express his opinion on legal matters, without being abused for it.

Dean Quince, before she became an academic, was a staff solicitor for three years.

Incidentally the Rules for Lawyers specify the following:

• A lawyer must promote and maintain professional standards.
• A lawyer must, when acting in a professional capacity, treat all persons with respect and courtesy.
• A lawyer must not engage in conduct that tends to bring the profession into disrepute.

You’d expect the Dean of a Law School to not just act with the highest ethical standards, but at least the minimum standards set down under the law.

Stuff reports:

Kāinga Ora has been ordered to pay a tenant $6000 after she was “terrorised” by her neighbours and fellow social housing tenants, who pooed outside her door and allegedly threw a woman off a balcony.

Poor woman.

The tenant said they had been “terrorised” by their neighbours, who had made death threats, left blood, urine and phlegm around the complex, pooed outside her door, slashed car tyres, had fights in the hallways, used methamphetamine, intimidated other tenants and invited antisocial visitors onto the premises who knocked on residents’ doors asking for money.

Any of these should lead to eviction. Being able to carry on doing all of these is unthinkable.

Kāinga Ora sent six notices to the tenants requesting a meeting to discuss the bad behaviour – all which went ignored – before finally applying to the tribunal to have them evicted in March 2024, two weeks after the complaining tenant filed their own complaint to the tribunal.

Why six notices? At the most you would do two and the third should be a final warning or eviction notice.

The tribunal decision noted that Kāinga Ora had offered to move the complainant to another home multiple times, instead of applying to the tribunal to have the unruly tenants evicted sooner.

“I am very confident in concluding that any reasonable landlord would have applied to the Tenancy Tribunal well before the landlord did in this case,” Woodhouse said in his decision.

Would be nice to have the state being a “reasonable landlord”

Minister of Housing Chris Bishop said Kāinga Ora needed to be a better landlord.

“There are many communities around the country that are sick to their back teeth of disruptive Kāinga Ora tenants.”

Great to have a Minister call it straight. I hope heads will roll at board level if things don’t improve.

Two articles give a useful contrast in balance. Both seek to be neutral explainer articles.

This one in the Herald on Social Investment covers the pros and cons nicely. It links to critical pieces and talks about aspects that failed and aspects that are more promising.

Then we have the Stuff article which says it is about explaining Maori Wards. I don’t think it means to be biased, but the total absence of any of the principled arguments from opponents means it is. I suspect it is because they have never been reported in almost any medium.

Some extracts:

Aotearoa never even noticed as nearly two-thirds of its councils adopted Māori wards, but that quiet revolution could be set for a very public execution.

They did notice. They just had their right to have any say in it removed by Labour.

Unlike every other type of ward, Māori wards could be overturned by community-initiated votes (also called referendums, or polls).

There is no mention of the view of opponents that wards based on racial ancestry are fundamentally different to wards based on geography. You can change where you live but can’t change your ancestors.

Geographic wards or constituencies exist in almost every democratic form of Government, and have been around for hundreds of years.

A decision on whether or not to a specific geographic ward is routine. A decision on whether to introduce a race based ward is a significant constitutional change, and opponents argue one the public should get to decide, not politicians.

Now you may not agree with my view, but that is the view of many who are opposed, and it is never given a mention in the story,. They accept the framing of the left/proponents entirely that there is no difference between the two type of wards.

If a Council wanted to introduce a gender based ward, would that be no different? Or an age based ward? A religious ward?

The article quotes Professor Meihana Durie (Ngāti Kauwhata), a long-time campaigner for Māori wards in Manawatū and Kaihautū for Māori Laws and Philosophy at Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Dr Carwyn Jones. No opponents are quoted. The latter said:

Fundamental rights like equality and non-discrimination ‒ giving voice to under-represented communities ‒ is something all democracies recognise as important, he said.

No mention of the fact that after the 2019 local body elections, we actually had Māori Councillors slightly over-represented to their shoe of the adult population – 14% to 12%. The removing of the public in having a say, now means Māori Councillors are massively over-represented at 21%. So there is no under-representation.

Also note 75% of Maori members were not elected in Maori wards, so if there were no wards, there would still be around 16% of members who are Maori.

The actual under-represent ted communities are Asian NZera and Pacific NZers.

There’s nothing fundamentally different about Māori wards ‒ they ensure people who haven’t been “well-served or well-heard” can be involved.

That’s his view, and it should be in the article. But the total failure to give voice to a different view, means this is not an explainer – it is advocacy.

This is very funny, and if you don’t think so, you suffer from humour derangement syndrome.

The Media Council released:

The NZ Media Council has found that an opinion piece written by Damien Grant contained a significant factual inaccuracy.

However, the Council agreed with Dr Ali that the statement: “The worst intentional crime committed by Israel is to buy land off West Bank farmers and build houses” was inaccurate. The word “buy” is problematic.

The vast balance of opinion is that a lot of the land acquired by Israelis in the occupied territories was not purchased from Palestinians in the usual sense of an agreement and payment of money. It is inaccurate to describe the West Bank and/or the territories as having been bought off the Palestinians.

The Media Council said that Stuff, to their credit, published a correction and explanation, changing the word “buy” to “acquire”.

Let’s assume that the word acquire should have been used instead of buy. It is still interesting that a one word inaccuracy can get a negative finding by the Press Council. Will this standard be applied to all opinion columns in future? If so, I think they will be very busy.

And whether buy is inaccurate is highly debatable – it is a contentious topic, not an undisputed fact.

Lindsay Mitchell writes:

“There are less children in care now than as at 30 June 2019 when there were 6450 children and young people in care and protection custody and 140 in youth justice custody, a total of 6590 children in care. As at 30 June 2023 there were 4317 children and young people in care and protection custody and 162 in youth justice custody, a total of 4479 children in care.”

So the number of children in care or custody have dropped by a third since 2019.

This could be a good or a bad thing. It is like Labour’s policy to reduce the prison population by 30%.

If you achieve that because less violent crimes are occurring, that is good. If you achieve that because you are just not sending serious recidivist criminals to prison, and more violent crimes are occurring, it is a bad thing.

In this case, a good thing would be if fewer kids are in care, because fewer kids are being abused and assaulted.

There were (in 2019) 891 acts intended to cause injury perpetrated against 0-4 year-olds.

There were 1,296 acts intended to cause injury perpetrated against the same age group. That’s an increase of 45% (with no equivalent rise in the size of the demographic.)

So violent offending against under 5s has increased 45% but the number of kids in care has decreased by 33%. That is a huge concern.

Spend 20 minutes viewing this video by Unherd about the disinformation industry, and how this is used by social media to suppress sites who interview the wrong people!

Imagine what the outcry would have been if it was discovered in the 1990s that Bill Clinton didn’t just have affairs, but that he:

• Arranged for a friendly newspaper to buy up all the stories of affairs, so they could bury them, as confirmed by the one
• Had the newspaper pay off some of the women, as illegal undisclosed campaign contributions
• Had the newspaper pay off a doorman who said that Clinton had a baby with a woman he wasn’t marred to
• Also arranged for the newspaper to invent fake stories about his contenders for the nomination, and then repeated the fake stories after they were published.
• Had his lawyer pay off the women he had affairs with, and claimed the payoffs were legal expenses
• had a newspaper editor who said ““At least if he wins, I’ll be pardoned for electoral fraud,””

I suspect those who say it is no big thing for one former President, wouldn’t say the same if it was Clinton.

Stuff reports:

Another allegation has come to light against Green MP Julie Anne Genter, with a business owner claiming the MP, who is working from home after an incident this week in Parliament, grabbed her arm “and gave it quite a strong shake” as they spoke.

Wellington business owner Nicola Cranfield said she saw Genter at Midlands Park at the end of last year.

“I didn’t know if it was her, so I said, ‘excuse me, are you Julie Anne Genter?’

“I was really curious to know about the letter that she had originally written to [former mayor] Justin Lester and I’ve never been able to get any clarification on it. And I thought, ‘Oh, this is a great opportunity’.

“I asked her about it and she immediately got really, really defensive and quite… She definitely blocked me and didn’t want to talk about it.

“I also said to her, ‘you might not realise but I’ve got a retail store just there and I just don’t think it would be viable if [the Golden Mile] goes ahead.’

Cranfield, who has run the Cranfields homewear store on Johnstone St for 25 years, is closing this year after 33 years of business in Wellington, citing uncertainty over the Golden Mile project.

“I thought maybe she doesn’t hear stories on the ground. Maybe everything’s filtered through and that could be useful information for her and that was when she grabbed my arm and gave it quite a strong shake.”

Cranfield said she was quite “quite surprised that she grabbed my arm”, and said it felt “really inappropriate”.

“I was so shocked… I was just like, ‘oh, that’s next-level to be grabbed by a politician.

So that is No 3.

Simon Woolf, formerly a Wellington city councillor, now with the Greater Wellington Regional Council, alleged an incident in 2019 where he was photographing an event, in a personal business capacity, outside Parliament. Genter was attending as associate transport minister. Just a few months earlier Lets Get Wellington Moving had been launched, sparking heated debate about cycleways and mass rapid transit.

Woolf said Genter “came right up to my face and complained bitterly about the slow progress with the city council and the cycleway implementation. I had to tell her three times that I wasn’t there as a councillor, I had two cameras around my neck, and that I was there as a photographer”.

And No 4.

So we have allegations of:

1. Losing her cool in Parliament and storming across the House to shut at an MP opposite
2. Losing her cool at a small business owner in her electorate on the issue of cycleways, and filming her
3. Grabbing the arm of another small business owner who wanted to talK to her about the Golden Mile project
4. Haranguing a City Councillor who was attending an event in his capacity as a photographer

I don’t think it is unfair to conclude she seems to have anger issues.

The FSU reports:

Last week, we were sent draft principles for what discourse Victoria University intends to allow on campus. …

“We should not provide a platform for, nor invite, individuals or groups to speak on campus that have previously demonstrated or are expected to express hate speech as the current law defines…”

So Vic wants pre-crimes where they can decide in advance what someone is likely to say, and ban them on that basis. The left see hate speech as anything that isn’t identity politics, and hence Don Brash was banned from Massey.

No one in NZ has ever been prosecuted for so called hate speech under the current law, so this is why VUW needs to allow them to decide in advance that someone might.

We should not provide a platform for, nor invite, individuals or groups to speak on campus that have previously demonstrated or are expected to express hate speech as the current law
defines or are likely not to support the principles above.

Once again, expected to express.

How about you just let invited guests speak. If what they say breaks the law, then someone can complain afterwards.