The Herald reports:

Coster, speaking to media today, said police know gang members commit a large amount of the crime in New Zealand – 8 per cent of all violence and 18 per cent of serious violence.

That’s an astonishing level of violence from a group that is less than 0.2% of the population. They are over-represented in violent crimes by 4000% and in serious violent crimes by 9000%.

Yet Labour chose to fund them!

The National Gang Unit would be a dedicated, specialised gang unit of 25-30 people with ring-fenced staff of up to seven staff in every police district across the country.

If it reduces violent offending from gang members, it will be a success.

I don’t believe it is the job of Councils to provide free parking to car owners. They have a job in ensuring there is enough parking to meet demand, but not making it free.

From an economic point of view, one should pay to use a park at 2 am or 2 pm. The rates might be different, but the principle is the same.

Likewise even residential street parking should not be free.

Now this isn’t to say we should extend daytime parking rules and fees to all suburbs and overnight. It’s ridiculous to have a two hour time limit overnight for example. In suburbs there should arguably be no time limit.

And the fees for suburb parking should be way less than CBD parking and off-peak less than on-peak.

In an ideal world, we’ll have a parking app for all of NZ, and wherever we park, we just get charged automatically. It might be $2 while watching a movie from 6 pm to 9 pm, or $0.25c for parking in a suburb. There would also be maximum charges for parking near where you live.

That is some way off, but basically parking charges should follow the normal rules of supply and demand.

If some shops wish to have free parking outside their shops, then they should have the ability to lease the parks off the Council.

Radio NZ reports:

The Education Review Office says too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs.

In a report published on Monday, the review office said 60 percent of the principals it interviewed said their new teachers were not ready.

So if this was a normal enterprise, if 60% of your customers were unhappy with your product, you’d be in deep trouble.

It called for an exit exam for graduating teachers, higher entry standards, and a push to attract the most academically able students.

It also recommended the Teaching Council review the effectiveness of different teaching courses.

ERO’s Education Evaluation Centre head Ruth Shinoda said some new teachers were unprepared in key areas.

“Concerningly, we have found that new teachers are not prepared in key areas that really matter.

“For example, over a third of teachers said they were not able to manage classroom behaviour when they started in the role and a third of new primary school teachers said they were unprepared to teach science.

Hey its just science!

ERO Education Evaluation Centre head Ruth Shinoda told Morning Report non-universities were better at preparing teachers.

This doesn’t surprise me.

In my experience the old teachers colleges while far from perfect, did reasonably well on practical skills for teachers. Then many of them got taken over by universities and came under control of academics who often put ideological theory first.

Lindsay Mitchell points out:

Against a backdrop of high-profile, negative statistics it is easy to overlook the positive.

For instance, the fact that 64 percent of Maori are employed is rarely reported. For context, the employment rate for all New Zealanders is 68.4%. The difference isn’t vast.

In excess of 400,000 Maori have jobs, provide products and services and pay tax.

Maori are over-represented in the manufacturing, and utilities and construction workforces. They are disproportionately service workers, labourers and machine operators. As such they perform crucial roles.

97 percent of Maori aged 15 or older are not in prison or serving a community sentence or order. Over 99 percent of Maori are not gang members.

Yet as an ethnic group Maori take a lot of heat.

Their pockets of failure (which occur across all ethnicities) overshadow their success because it suits certain political aspirants to promote the negative. The predominant individualist culture wants Maori to get their act together and exercise greater personal responsibility. While the collectivists want the community to take the blame for Maori failure and fix it via redress. The finger-pointing at colonists as the culprits, which has ramped up immeasurably over recent years, has resulted in a great deal of misdirected anger towards Maori, the bulk of whom just want to get on with their lives. (To boot, this simplistic description ignores that since the early 1800s Maori and non-Maori have become indelibly interlinked by blood and it has become impossible to identify which finger is pointing in which direction, such is the absurdity of modern-day racial politics.)

It feels safe to say that most people want to live peaceful, happy and productive lives. We share those basic desires regardless of race. It’s that commonality that makes race irrelevant.

This is a useful reminder. For example 29% of Maori are in the top two income quintiles. Overlky focusing just on areas where some Maori do badly, can conflate that with all Maori.

More importantly Mitchell makes the point that blaming everything on colonisation, just spurs resentment. To improve bad statistics, you need to work with individual families, not just put it all down to race.

Winston Peters announced:

New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says.

I think this sends an unfortunate message. If you launch a major terrorist attack in Israel, and Israel responds (as was wanted), then you have the international community reward you by moving you closer to statehood. And yes it was Hamas who did the attack, not Palestine, but polls show it had widespread support with the populace.

Now I favour a two state solution (unless most Palestinians who sadly reject it). You just really need two things to occur, to get a Palestinian State.

1. A peace treaty where Palestine and Israel agree to not to attack, or allow attacks, from their territories into each other’s
2. Settling the boundaries

With regard to (2) I’m so sick of the death and destruction that frankly I don’t care that much if the boundaries are the 1947 boundaries (which were very generous and turned down), the 1949 armistice boundaries, the 1967 post-war boundaries or the 1967 boundaries with some land swaps.

The key thing is (1). You will never persuade Israel to agree to establish a neighbouring state whose aim is to wipe Israel out. Why would you?

Newstalk ZB report:

The man responsible for a horror hit and run in central Wellington last year was on a suspended licence and was so drunk he later asked police, “Did I kill someone?”

Jason Tuitama injured two women when he ran a red light in his BMW, striking them as they were on a pedestrian crossing in the early hours of June 18 last year.

Both were taken to hospital, one in a serious condition and one critical.

Casidhe Maguire, known as Cass, died in hospital several weeks later. The other pedestrian suffered serious injuries, requiring several operations.

Court documents show Tuitama had already been banned from driving multiple times in the months before the fatal incident and wasn’t supposed to be driving.

While the impact threw both women in the air, Tuitama refused to stop, driving off while his victims lay critically injured on Cable Street.

Today before a packed public gallery in the Wellington District Court, Tuitama was jailed for four years and four months after earlier admitting charges of manslaughter, reckless driving causing injury, failing to stop and drink driving.

So 52 months in jail (and presumably parole eligibility after 35 months) for the following:

• On a suspended licence
• Been banned from driving multiple times
• Speeds of up to 150km/h.
• Speed of 115km/ph in a 70 km/hr zone.
• Ignored his partner begging him to slow down and stop
• Drove through two sets of red lights.
• At traffic lights at an intersection narrowly missed a car coming through a green light.
• Didn’t brake as he ploughed through intersection at 85km/h, before hitting the women, who were crossing on a green light.
• Didn’t stop at the scene
• tried to flee Police
• Had blood alcohol nearly four times the legal limit
• Not wearing contact lenses that were required as part of his licence.
• Told police he was too drunk and couldn’t see properly
• Killed and seriously injured two victims

This was so far beyond reckless that a death was almost inevitable. I would have thought a sentence closer to ten years would be appropriate.

Jon Haidt writes:

We are now 11 years into the largest epidemic of teen mental illness on record. As the CDC’s recent report showed, most girls are suffering, and nearly a third have seriously considered suicide. Why is this happening, and why did it start so suddenly around 2012?4 …

There is one giant, obvious, international, and gendered cause: Social media. Instagram was founded in 2010. The iPhone 4 was released then too—the first smartphone with a front-facing camera. In 2012 Facebook bought Instagram, and that’s the year that its user base exploded. By 2015, it was becoming normal for 12-year-old girls to spend hours each day taking selfies, editing selfies, and posting them for friends, enemies, and strangers to comment on, while also spending hours each day scrolling through photos of other girls and fabulously wealthy female celebrities with (seemingly) vastly superior bodies and lives. The hours girls spent each day on Instagram were taken from sleep, exercise, and time with friends and family. What did we think would happen to them?

The Collaborative Review doc that Jean Twenge, Zach Rausch and I have put together collects more than a hundred correlational, longitudinal, and experimental studies, on both sides of the question. Taken as a whole, it shows strong and clear evidence of causation, not just correlation. There are surely other contributing causes, but the Collaborative Review doc points strongly to this conclusion: Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls.

This is startling, but not surprising. A graphical representation shows:

Hat Tip: MBS

The answer is basically nothing, but write some sad letters.

The Herald reports:

Robertson wanted more information from KiwiRail on the cost and risk of alternative options to the mega ferries.

He specifically wanted to know: “The extent to which seeking to renegotiate the shipbuilding contract to procure ferries that are more like-for-like with respect to the current fleet and/or are not rail-enabled would allow for landside infrastructure costs to be reduced and forecast with greater certainty”.

McLean replied to Robertson on June 6 saying KiwiRail had considered three alternative options.

The option of three new medium rail-enabled ships was estimated to cost $3.02b, two new large ships which were not rail-enabled was $2.59b, and a “do minimum” scenario of procuring and running three second-hand ships was $1.34b, KiwiRail estimated.

All options, including retaining the mega ferries, were Net Present Value (NPV) negative, meaning the cost of capital exceeds the long-term revenues it enables. 

So all three options didn’t make economic sense, yet the Government decided to carry on with the $3 billion one instead of the $1.3 billion one!

On July 12, Treasury and Ministry of Transport officials warned ministers the mega ferry project was still relatively early in its life, with detailed design work yet to be finalised and without contractually agreed costs.

They warned the final cost of the project could approach $4b.

Do I hear $5 billion? Quite conceivable.

A reminder that Bluebridge crosses the Cook Strat eight times a day and the cost to the taxpayer isn’t even $5.

David Seymour has done very well here. A few notes from me as the model/curriculum designer for two of the 2014-15 launched Charter Schools. South Auckland Middle School and Middle School West Auckland.

1. While I was involved the schools thrived at the NCEA L1 for leavers from the Middle Schools exceeded 80%.
2. Soon after they became Designated Character (State) Schools – I left the Villa Education Trust that have established the schools. The first tranche of data was poor and the schools are now actively avoiding OIAs and statistical evaluation.
3. There is huge need in NZ for schools that genuinely challenge the State system. In our State schools less that 40% of Maori or Pasifika students are fully attending. There is massive waste of resource and it should be notes that the first response of the PPTA today was to go on strike and deprive students of an afternoon at school.

I am in the process of forming a new Board to develop a number of brilliant schools. If there is anyone out there willing to come alongside I would love to hear from you.

Alwyn Poole

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

How did this ad get seen by more than one person and not stopped?

Interestingly, it isn’t too bad if you play it in reverse!

The Whanganui District Council released:

Whanganui District Council’s elected representatives have called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and condemned all acts of violence and terror against civilians on all sides.

I’m sure Hamas will agree immediately now that the mighty Whanganui Council has demanded a ceasefire.

Kata MacNamara reports:

Details of Tony Blakely’s involvement in the New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic raise serious questions about the work of the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry over which he presides.

It has long been clear that Blakely, a respected epidemiologist and professor at the University of Melbourne, has a network of colleagues who were key players in advising the New Zealand Government on its Covid policies and indeed who worked deep within the government response.

But the extent of Blakely’s personal involvement, including his friendships with these players and the advice he gave them, has only now been publicly disclosed. …

It seems pointless to carry on this work – either narrowly focused or otherwise – if there are questions over the impartiality of the inquiry chair.

Van Velden may yet ask Blakely to resign; she told the Herald: “The makeup of the inquiry commissioners, as well as scope of the inquiry are decisions that I am currently considering.”

Tony Blakely is an honourable guy, but is too conflicted to be seen independent enough to be Chair of the Royal Commission. I think he should be retained as a member, but the Minister should appoint a new Chair.

ACT in Free Press said:

Meanwhile, Three Strikes is coming back. Serious sexual and violent offenders automatically get the maximum sentence on their third conviction. 

This is not correct. The proposed law will exempt the majority of recidivist criminals from going a strike because of the new criteria that if a Judge gives them a light sentence, they they don’t get a strike. And the proposed law also gives judges much more discretion to change third strike sentences.

The law ACT is supporting is a Claytons Law – sounds like the old Three Strikes Law, but is a weak copy of it.

City Journal reports:

n continuous publication since 1845, Scientific American is the country’s leading mainstream science magazine. Authors published in its pages have included Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, Jonas Salk, and J. Robert Oppenheimer—some 200 Nobel Prize winners in all. SciAm, as many readers call it, had long encouraged its authors to challenge established viewpoints. In the mid-twentieth century, for example, the magazine published a series of articles building the case for the then-radical concept of plate tectonics. In the twenty-first century, however, American scientific media, including Scientific American, began to slip into lockstep with progressive beliefs. Suddenly, certain orthodoxies—especially concerning race, gender, or climate—couldn’t be questioned.

Once upon a time scientists welcomed debate, but now many scientific institutions seek to suppress it.

The following month, Shermer submitted a column discussing ways that discrimination against racial minorities, gays, and other groups has diminished (while acknowledging the need for continued progress). Here, Shermer ran into the same wall that Better Angels of Our Nature author Steven Pinker and other scientific optimists have faced. For progressives, admitting that any problem—racism, pollution, poverty—has improved means surrendering the rhetorical high ground. “They are committed to the idea that there is no cumulative progress,” Shermer says, and they angrily resist efforts to track the true prevalence, or the “base rate,” of a problem. Saying that “everything is wonderful and everyone should stop whining doesn’t really work,” his editor objected.

Progress can’t be celebrated or even acknowledged!

In 2021, SciAm published an opinion essay, “Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.” The article’s five authors took issue with the effort by some social-justice advocates to create a cute new label while expanding the DEI acronym to include “Justice.” The Jedi knights of the Star Wars movies are “inappropriate mascots for social justice,” the authors argued, because they are “prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic light sabers, gaslighting by means of ‘Jedi mind tricks,’ etc.).” What all this had to do with science was anyone’s guess.

Vomitous nonsense.

Shermer believes that the new style of science journalism “is being defined by this postmodern worldview, the idea that all facts are relative or culturally determined.” Of course, if scientific facts are just products of a particular cultural milieu, he says, “then everything is a narrative that has to reflect some political side.” Without an agreed-upon framework to separate valid from invalid claims—without science, in other words—people fall back on their hunches and in-group biases, the “my-side bias.”

Traditionally, science reporting was mostly descriptive—writers strove to explain new discoveries in a particular field. The new style of science journalism takes the form of advocacy—writers seek to nudge readers toward a politically approved opinion.

Sadly this is correct.

Recommended viewing for those why deny the rapes and sexual assaults of women by Hamas terrorists on 7 October, you may (optimistically) change your mind after viewing this film, Screams before Silence.

It features many interviews with survivors by Sheryl Sandberg.

Eric Crampton writes about an appeal against a solar farm:

It isn’t crazy to object to a land use change that would have substantial adverse flow-on effect on your land use. 

It’s nuts that the system entertains objections like this one where there is zero reported real effect – only what amounts to a view that the outfit putting in the solar farm might lose money as compared to keeping it as a dairy farm. 

It’s nuts that Todd felt they had to commission an economic analysis to prove net benefits.

The objector was objecting on any impact on him. He was objecting that the owner wasn’t making the best economic use of his land, and the owner had to defend this in court over many years – just to use his own land.

Chris Bishop had a great time in the general debate with Carmel Sepuloni doing Celebrity Treasure Island. Some extracts:

Now, I’ve also discovered that in this most recent season of Treasure Island, they did a special thing, the first time in the game’s history. This is real. They introduced a thing on this this year’s season called “The Captain’s Coup”, in which the day’s winning team gets to pick a member from the losing team to go up against their captain. Now, I can see why Carmel jumped at the chance. What better form of professional development could there be for a senior Labour Party MP than spending weeks deserted on an island while everyone around you is trying to bring you down and participate in a captain’s coup.

Kieran McAnulty’s been there biding his time slowly and quietly, which is why he’s asked only two oral questions in the last six months. Now, Michael Wood would have been there, ready and waiting, but the captain, the current captain, Chris Hipkins, got there first, eliminating him from the island. What a savvy thing to do, because we shouldn’t rule out a come-back for Mr Michael Wood. He’s been elected to the illustrious body of the Labour Party policy council. Chris Hipkins, the policy council has spoken. Extinguish your torch and leave the island.

Hilarious – Carmel takes part in a show which has a coup as part of it.

And then we’ve got the “Hapless Hipkins” faction. That’s sort of the other people left right out, who are backing the current leader of the Labour Party. And then, of course, we’ve got the people who are considering walking the plank. They’re just considering leaving. They’re considering abandoning ship. Megan Woods, off to be the next Mayor of Christchurch, I’m told. Adrian Rurawhe, he’s considering it. Greg O’Connor and Jenny Salesa—people who are considering abandoning the good ship Labour.

Of course, there’s one thing we can all agree on and that all of the Labour Party agrees: when the tribal council meets, also known as the caucus meeting, there’s one person who’s never invited, and that’s Ginny Andersen.

Ouch. Harsh but true.

Radio NZ report:

Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins said the Electoral Commission should make sure the system ran smoothly and “taking away the right of thousands of people to vote” was not the answer.

“Thousands of people enroled and voted on the day. If they’re saying they’ll stop that happening they’re basically saying that thousands of people won’t have their vote counted.

This is a nonsensical argument. Saying that not allowing someone to vote because they didn’t;t enrol in time is depriving someone of their vote is like arguing that now allowing someone who turns up at 7.10 pm to vote, is depriving them of the right to vote.

Allowing people to enrol on election day causes massive logistical problems, and it is not unreasonable to expect people to enrol before election day – especially as doing so is mandatory.

In Germany you must register 21 days before the election. In Australia it is 26 to 51 days before an election. In the UK it is 16 days. In Sweden it is 30 days. Ireland is 18 days. France 37 days.

For NZ the sensible thing to do would be to set a deadline of the day before advance voting starts. Then during the voting period, the sole focus can be on voting not registering.

Simeon Brown announced:

I wish to make a ministerial statement relating to low gas production. This morning, Minister for Resources Hon Shane Jones released a public statement following the release of updated projections from industry coregulator, the Gas Industry Company. The assessment from the Gas Industry Company is dire. Insufficient gas is available to meet all contracted demand. …

It is important for the House to understand the magnitude of these updated projections. Natural gas production has decreased following the previous Government’s decision in 2018 to ban gas exploration beyond Taranaki. Since 2018, New Zealand has imported record levels of coal from Indonesia. Gas production has fallen by 51 petajoules between the years 2018 and 2023, investment in gas exploration, including to maintain production from existing wells, has collapsed, and existing fields are now in decline. The speed of reductions in production has also exceeded expectations.

So we no longer have enough gas to even meet current contracted demand.

The lights must stay on. Less natural gas will mean more coal being used to firm our electricity grid, as Genesis confirmed this morning. If it is not gas that keeps the lights on, then it must be coal. That is the reality of this situation the country finds itself in, and it is why this coalition Government has made urgent decisions on coordinating gas supplies and will lift the 2018 ban.

Another Labour legacy.

Chris Bishop announced:

“I have agreed with the Council’s alternative recommendations in nine instances, relating to development around Adelaide Road, the walkable catchment around the City Centre Zone (including Hay St), character precincts, building heights and controls on the interface of the City Centre Zone and Moir and Hania Street, setbacks for 1-3 residential units, the Johnsonville train line and its walkable catchments, the Kapiti train line walkable catchments, and hydraulic neutrality as it applies to the City Centre Zone.

“The reasons for accepting these recommendations vary depending on the precise issue, but in general, the Council’s recommendations give better effect to the National Policy Statement on Urban Development in that they provide additional capacity for housing and business land, will better achieve a well-functioning urban environment, will better provide for a competitive development market and provide for a more efficient use of land.

“The Council asked me to not upzone the Kilbirnie centre, as was recommended by the Hearings Panel, to allow them to undertake a plan change within one year. I have not accepted this recommendation and have instead accepted the Hearings Panel recommendation. This will apply a 10-minute walkable catchment around the Kilbirnie centre and consequently mean a High Density Residential Zone will apply.

This is great. There were 10 areas where the Council and the Hearings Panel disagreed. In all 10 cases Bish has gone with the option which will be best for allowing more housing.

“The Council also asked me to remove ten buildings from the schedule of heritage buildings in the District Plan. However, the question of whether a building should be on the heritage schedule is an evidential one. In the original District Plan that was notified for public consultation, the Council’s position was that the ten buildings in question should be on the heritage schedule. The Council’s own heritage expert and planning officer supported this and provided evidence to this effect to the Hearings Panel. The Hearings Panel therefore recommended the ten buildings be listed or retained on the heritage schedule.

“The Council has not pointed to any evidence to support its reasons for rejecting the Hearing Panel’s recommendations. No expert heritage evidence was lodged by buildings owners.

“Given the evidence before me, and without the ability to seek further evidence, I have therefore agreed with the recommendations of the Hearings Panel in relation to the ten heritage buildings.

“That said, I understand the Council’s position regarding the ten buildings and I have received separate correspondence from the Mayor around making it easier to delist heritage buildings. I have already asked for advice on this matter and I look forward to conversations with her and other councils regarding the issue of heritage and how it impedes development.”

Basically the Council made the right decisions on removing the heritage provisions, but did so without an evidential basis so Bishop can’t legally go along with their decision. Instead a law change is likely allowing Councils to remove buildings from heritage listings more easily.

So all in all a great outcome for more affordable housing in Wellington.