Liam Hehir points out:

You might think the decision to cancel the so-called mega ferries for New Zealand’s Cook Strait was a mistake. Reasonable people can disagree on whether the new government’s pivot to smaller, more affordable vessels was the right call. But one thing should be clear: the situation was the Hospital pass from Hell 

You probably won’t pick that up reading Newsroom or Stuff. The simplistic media narrative here is that this has been a completely self-inflicted wound for National. 

But if the current situation is the disaster the journos are making out, it’s hard to see why they are also giving a free pass to Chris Hipkins. If this is a catastrophe (and that’s a big if), then he deserves much of the criticism – and it’s hard to see how both Labour and the press gallery expect to have it both ways here.

What Hehir is referring to is this:

As KiwiRail noted to incoming finance minister Nicola Willis, the 2023 PREFU made no meaningful allowance for the additional funding required to save Project iReX. This was despite repeated warnings from KiwiRail throughout 2023 that at least $950 million in additional funding was necessary to proceed.

Hehir points out there are are two explanations for this:

• Scenario 1: Labour Wasn’t Serious About Funding the Ferries
• Scenario 2: Labour Deliberately Hid the Problem

The conclusion:

If the mega ferries were so crucial we had to say yes to the extra cost then the omission of funding from the PREFU is not a minor oversight. It is a glaring example of political evasion that demands accountability. 

If we accept the argument of Chris Hipkins that the mega ferries were so critical to New Zealand’s infrastructure then we must also agree that he is condemning bimself. He was prime minister at the various key points and so he bears responsibility for that failure as much as anyone else does. The only thing more galling than his current outrage is the fact that he isn’t being asked any questions about it.

The hypocrisy is great.

Stuff reported:

A renowned Auckland University of Technology historian has cancelled an upcoming speech at the National Library of New Zealand, after claims they tried to censor what he was going to say.

Professor Paul Moon was set to give a lecture in February 2025 on British policy leading up to the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi.

“The library asked me to provide a summary of my talk, and when I did, they were concerned that the word ‘whakapapa’ was included, with no explanation as to why,” he said.

He “very reluctantly” removed it.

“I then received notice yesterday from the Library that they wished me to take out a quote from the summary of my speech by the historian John Seeley, which famously described the British Empire being ‘acquired in a fit absence of mind’.”

Moon says according to the libraries director, the reason was “there was some anxiety that this quote ‘could be seen as us agreeing with Britain conquering the world’.”

The quote, according to Moon, was actually about the “chaotic and disjointed process of policy development among the various branches of the British Government in the 18th and 19th centuries.”

Moon said the talk was set to be “orthodox”, with nothing

Sad to see the National Library trying to control what an academic can say in a public lecture they host.

The Minister weighed in:

Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden has spoken to Rachel Esson, the National Librarian responsible for the National Library of New Zealand, about the importance of the Government institution remaining impartial and not attempting to censor academics hosted to talk at the National Library.

“It is essential that Government agencies act impartially and do not attempt to censor the speech of academics. I have been assured by Ms Esson that the National Library share this view and look to host a range of speakers with diverse perspectives”, says Ms van Velden. …

The National Library often make minor edits to the summary of public lectures for length and clarity. However, changing an author’s summary out of political sensitivity is not acceptable and the National Library has acknowledged this.

Good to have the Minister make clear this was unacceptable.

Brooke van Velden announced:

Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says she has directed her officials to change the proposed direction of Holidays Act reform.

“The Government recently conducted targeted consultation on an exposure draft Bill which built on work that had started under the previous Government. The feedback I have seen indicates that the draft Bill is not going to solve the issues of the Act,” says Ms van Velden.

“Not only have I heard from submitters that further simplification is possible, but there were some who believed that what we put out for consultation was more complex and had higher compliance costs than the legislation we have now.

“I want to get this right, and I have always said that this consultation would be genuine. It has become clear that a fundamental change is required to give employers and employees the simplicity and certainty they have been calling for. 

“I have listened to the feedback and have asked officials to begin work on an hours-based accrual model for annual leave.

An hours based system would be much much simpler.

Basically if you work 40 hours and get four weeks annual leave then you would accrue 3.2 hours. You have a running balance of hours, and as you take leave they go down, and if you leave you get paid out.

It wouldn’t matter what pay rate you were on when you earnt them – you just get paid the rate you are on when you take them. This is in fact how many employers already operate – but technically they are breaking the law.

The full list is here. Those who got a titular honour were:

DNZM

To be Dames Companion of the said Order:

Mrs Julie Clare Chapman, of Auckland. For services to children and the community.

Mrs Nea Ingrid Collins, MNZM, of Gisborne. For services to Māori, business and health governance.

Ms Bogyung Ko (Lydia Ko), MNZM, of Orlando, Florida, United States of America. For services to golf.

KNZM

To be Knights Companion of the said Order:

Mr John Allan Gallagher, CNZM, KStJ, of Hamilton. For services to business, education, philanthropy and the community.

Mr Edward Colin Manson, CNZM, of Auckland. For services to philanthropy, the community and business.

Honorary Professor Peter Robert Skelton, CNZM, of Christchurch. For services to environmental law.

ASH have released their annual survey of Year 10 students. They found:

• Only 1.2% smoked daily (down from 16% in 1999)
• 8.7% vaped daily (down from 10% in 2023)
• Regular smoking rate is 2.8%, down from 28% in 1999
• Regular vaping rate is 14.1%, down from 20% in 2021
• 88.3% of Year 10 students have never tried smoking (was only 32% in 1999)
• 34.7% of Year 10 students have never trued vaping (down from 42.7% in 2021)
• Daily smoking rate for Maori students down from 30% in 1999 to 3% in 2024
• Regular smoking rate for Maori students down from 43% in 1999 to 6% in 2024

It is worth noting that smoking and vaping is banned for under 18 year olds, yet we used to have 68% of 14 year olds who had tried smoking. The legal status has not changed since 1999, but policies, tax and social acceptance have. It’s a good reminder that prohibition doesn’t work.

Newsroom reports:

Cabinet has endorsed an ownership bid for the Whakapapa ski field and has agreed to loan Whakapapa Holdings up to $5 million to support its purchase.

The funding is conditional on Whakapapa Holdings obtaining a concession from the Department of Conservation to operate in the Tongariro National Park.

If the bidders have a commercially viable bid they should be able to get a loan from a bank. Banks should be those who finance commercial investments, not taxpayers.

If taken up in full, the Government’s $5m loan to Whakapapa Holdings would take direct Crown expenditure to save skiing on Ruapehu post insolvency to $35m.

It’s the sunk cost fallacy – we have already put to much money in, we need to keep doing more to stop it failing.

The Government bravely said no to the ferries sunk costs continuing. They need to do the same here.

I’ve been charting the NASA Land-Ocean Temperature Index data for many years, as charts can get across trends very clearly. I’ve updated the data to include 2024.

It is reasonable to debate what is the best policy response to global warming. It is also reasonable to debate how significant a problem this will be in future.

It is not reasonable to deny that global warming is happening, and very rapidly. Normally large temperatures changes occur over centuries, not decades.

This is the annual mean temperature. There is of course variation from year to year due to normal weather patterns, but the trend since 1975 is very clear.

If you look at the average for every half decade, then you see a much smoother trend.

Since 1965 every half decade has been warmer than the previous one.

The decade averages are even clearer.

Almost two years ago I wrote:

Jimmy Carter is 98, and in hospice care meaning he will die quite soon. Almost every decent person can only admire the work he has done as a former President, and his work ethic where he was still active into his late 90s.

He was not a successful President. I was just starting to follow US politics in 1980 when Reagan got elected and thought the US chose well. Most historians rank Carter in the third quartile, so a poor President, but not one of the truly terrible ones.

But as a former President, he has worked tirelessly for good causes. Not holding international talkfests, but actually getting out there and making a difference.

His Carter Centre has helped eradicate diseases and provided election observers for many decades. He has been a major figure in Habitat for Humanity which has built 35 million houses. Carter himself has led work projects constricting over 4,000 houses – and doing this well into his 90s.

He is a man of deep faith who has been teaching Sunday School at his local church since the 1980s. He even carried on teaching while battling cancer.

He is a great example of someone you can profoundly disagree with politically, but still respect immensely.

He made 100 years old, which was a pleasant surprise, but finally succumbed. The world is a worst place for his passing. To still be helping build houses for needy people at age 95 is astonishing. An incredible work ethic.

Radio NZ reported:

The report recommended reviewing the curriculum so it was clearer about the core knowledge and skills students should learn, and increasing relationships and sexuality education in the senior secondary school when many students needed it most.

Senior secondary school is where the most focus should be, as this is when most children become sexually active.

A primary school principal said their school removed gender identity from its lessons “to appease, to calm, and to ensure that RSE continued in our school”.

I have no problems with gender identity being taught at secondary school. A case can even be made for intermediate schools, but I think it is quite inappropriate to be teaching gender identity to primary school age children.

I’m not against having character questions as part of residency applications but I note that these questions could see TPM co-leader Rawiri Waititi fail to get residency, if he was an applicant.

In 2023 he said:

It is a known fact that Māori genetic makeup is stronger than others

He also once said about European New Zealanders:

‘archaic species is becoming more extinct as a new Aotearoa is on the rise.’

If they are asking character questions, I hope they also include ones like:

• Do you believe it can sometimes be legitimate to use violence to achieve political ends
• Do you think religious beliefs should allow you to break the law
• Do you support equality of suffrage

Here’s my 20 predictions for 2025, which I’ll score at the end of the year. I got a low 10/20 right for 2024, a B+ in NCEA 🙂

1. National will outpoll Labour in at least 90% of public polls in 2025
2. Wayne Brown is re-elected Mayor of Auckland
3. Floating mortgage rates are below 6% by the end of 2025
4. Carmel Sepuloni will become Leader of the Labour Party
5. Pierre Poilievre will be elected PM of Canada, with a majority Government
6. If Labour stand a candidate for the Wellington Mayoralty, they will be elected Mayor
7. PM Luxon will do a Cabinet reshuffle with at least one Minister dropped out of the Ministry
8. The Government drops its bill to force Internet companies to fund media companies
9. Two South Island city Mayors are not re-elected
10. A Te Pati Maori MP will be referred to the Privileges Committee in 2025
11. Unemployment will peak at or before 5.5% in 2025, and then drop
12. Trump will get all his remaining Cabinet picks confirmed
13. Labor will be re-elected in Australia, but will lose its majority
14. Reform will outpoll Labour in at least five polls in the UK in 2025
15. The 2025 budget will have less core crown spending for 25/26 than was forecast in the 2024 budget.
16. There will be a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, lasting at least three months
17. There will not be an Ohariu seat after the new boundaries are finalised
18. Labour will commit itself to a Capital Gains Tax, if elected
19. At least 15 projects will be consented by the end of 2025 under the new Fast Track Approvals Law
20. The Treaty Principles Bill will not pass its second reading

A guest post by a reader:

The taxpayer subsidised study for 7355 PhD students in 2023. These are both foreign and domestic students. Because the foreign students pay domestic fees, NZ is considered a cost-effective place to do a PhD.

Breaking down those 7355 (data from the TEC website):

Natural and Physical Sciences 21.5% (n = 1580)
Society and Culture 20.1% (n = 1500)
Engineering and Related Technologies 15.2% (n = 1120)
Health 15.1% (n = 1110)
Management and Commerce 8.0% (n = 590)
Education 7.2% (n = 530)
Creative Arts 4.5% (n = 330)

Agriculture 0.95% (n = 70)
Horticulture and Viticulture 0.07% (n = 5)
Forestry 0.14% (n = 10)
Fisheries 0% (n = 0)
Environmental Studies 0.54% (n = 40)

And remembering that we mostly live in trade deficit and ultimately debt!

I think the point stands that changing the focus of the Marsden fund is a minor move relative to the huge investment that the taxpayer makes (through the TEC) in social science and humanities research in the tertiary sector, and while those social science and humanities research activities can identify what is wrong with NZ, they rarely create new wealth or foreign earnings that we might spend to fix the challenges we face (e.g. increasing social housing, fixing potholes, building cycle lanes in Westport (ain’t going to happen :)) increasing benefits, getting more doctors or teachers, addressing inequality, getting greater school attendance and achievement, etc.).

We need to earn more money, and while our export economy (which is strongly based on primary sector exports) serves us well, the appallingly low numbers doing PhDs (or studying at the undergraduate level) in ‘Agricultural, Environmental and Related Studies’ must be a much greater concern than minor changes in one research fund.

One also needs to realise that just because we are doing research in one area or another, doesn’t mean that that research is applied and used to inform better practice. We need people that can not only do research, but who can use that to realise material advantage or improvement in NZ. That is how our agricultural and horticultural scientists carry some of the weight of our collective well-being on their shoulders!

The reader makes a good point that the changes to the Marsden Fund should just be the beginning of focusing our research priorities so that they can improve New Zealand.

The FSU announced:

Today, the Free Speech Union will sue both Hutt City Council and its Chief Executive, Jo Miller (in her personal capacity), after they censored an insert at Council libraries and information centres, breaching Hutt City residents’ freedom of expression, says Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive of the Free Speech Union.

“Last year, the Hutt City Council removed a paid advertisement inserted in newspapers from all council sites. We believe this is an unlawful act that flies in the face of ratepayers’ speech rights.

“The insert was from ‘Treaty of Waitangi – An Explanation’ by Sir Āpirana Ngata and was published in 31 NZME and Stuff newspapers by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research (NZCPR). 

“We’ve attempted to communicate with Miller and the Council to find a resolution, but it’s fallen on deaf ears. So now we are taking action.

“Hutt City’s reasons for banning it from its premises were that it “spread a very particular political viewpoint” and was “viewed as spreading misinformation”.

“We simply cannot have local councils and bureaucrats dictating what information ratepayers do and don’t consume. It’s as simple as that. 

“Hutt City ratepayers deserve to think for themselves, and the Council has a responsibility to uphold free speech under the Bill of Rights Act. We’re ensuring that the Council and Chief Executive are held accountable.

Amazing that the Council tried to suppress a brochure quoting the arguably most esteemed Maori New Zealander – who is on our $50 note.

Some councils are notoriously reluctant to say they got it wrong, and won’t do it again. The only way they can be incentivised to behave properly is if there is a cost to their arrogance – and having them lose in court is costly to their reputation.

Andrea Vance does her list of the 50 most powerful people in Wellington. Some extracts are:

• 1 Nicola Willis & Chris Bishop
• 4 Dame Therese Walsh
• 5 Sir Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh
• 7 James Cameron
• 8 Nick Leggett
• 16 Patrick Morgan and Alex Dyer
• 24 Paul Tolich & Neale Jones
• 29 Fleur Fitzsimons
• 44 Tory Whanau

44 seems a bit high for the Mayor!

Upcoming elections will mean by mid 2025 they will be:

• US – Trump, right
• UK – Starmer, left
• Canada – Poilievre, right
• Japan – Ishiba, right
• Italy – Meloni, right
• Germany – Merz, right
• France – Macron, right (centre)

So Starmer will soon be the only left leader in the G7. This is a major change from a few years ago.

Politico reports:

Donald Trump’s team is crafting an executive order to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, a monumental move the president-elect’s allies say is a key step in their long-term strategy: getting the issue before the Supreme Court.

The effect of Trump’s order would be to exclude the children of undocumented immigrants and short-term visitors to the U.S. from the right to citizenship by birth that is established under the 14th Amendment. And while there are few details on what exactly he would do and how sweeping the action would be, immigration restrictionists say Trump could do several things, including directing the State Department to refuse to issue passports to children without proof of the parents’ immigration status or the Social Security Administration to withhold Social Security numbers.

It is very rare in fact for countries to automatically give citizenship to people born in the country, whose parents are not legal residents. Take the NZ Citizenship Act:

the person was born in New Zealand on or after 1 January 2006, and, at the time of the person’s birth, at least one of the person’s parents was a New Zealand citizen; or entitled in terms of the Immigration Act 2009 to be in New Zealand indefinitely, or entitled to reside indefinitely in the Cook Islands, Niue, or Tokelau.

So the substance of what Trump wants to achieve is basically to copy our law. However as their citizenship clause is in the US constitution, it may not be something that can be achieved by executive order. The 14th amendment says:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The part in bold can be read as meaning it only applies to legal residents. The best way forward would be for the US Congress to pass a law stating that citizenship only applies children of citizens and permanent residents. This is likely to be given more deference by the courts than an executive order.

This is PJ. The Herald reports how in 1995 she abducted and raped a 12 year old girl.

“She tied a rope around the girl’s neck, causing her to lose consciousness, and dragged her into another room where he stripped and raped her.”

It’s very very unusual to have a lesbian rapist.

Some great questions for those who cheered on the killing of a healthcare CEO:

1. Are we allowed to assassinate the CEOs of other industries you view as harmful (e.g., fossil fuels), or is it open season only on insurance executives? – Murdering Brian Thompson will do literally nothing to increase the availability or affordability of healthcare.
2. Is it justified to shoot someone in the back simply out of frustration with the industry in which he works?
3. How far down the corporate hierarchy can we target? Are all employees of insurance companies valid targets for assassination, or only senior executives? What about mid-level executives? Managers? Actuaries? Entry-level analysts? The custodians who clean their offices?
4. CEOs are hired by boards of directors, who, in turn, are elected by shareholders. If it’s morally acceptable to assassinate the CEO, it should also be fair to kill the shareholders who appointed him, no? If this is the case, what level of ownership is required to merit inclusion on the kill list? Are the 10 shares I own in a Robinhood account sufficient? What about if I don’t own shares directly but I own mutual funds that hold shares?
5. As a society, we generally agree that murder is a more serious offense than other violent crimes, such as carjacking, assault, or kidnapping. If it’s acceptable to murder an insurance CEO, is it also acceptable to violently assault him, steal his car, and hold him hostage?
6. The largest insurance operator in the US is the federal government, via Medicare. Is it therefore acceptable to kill political officials, since Medicare also denies some claims?
7. Who determines the industries for which assassination is justified and merited? For example, if a religious extremist murdered the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that produced abortion drugs, how would you be able to condemn that in a logically consistent manner?

A good decision by Winston Peters:

Racing Minister Winston Peters has announced the Government’s plans to end greyhound racing in New Zealand.

“This is not a decision that is taken lightly but is ultimately driven by protecting the welfare of racing dogs.

“Despite significant progress made by the greyhound racing industry in recent years, the percentage of dogs being injured remains persistently high and the time has come to make a call in the best interest of the animals,” Mr Peters says.

The injury rates were horrendous. Winston is known to be very very pro-racing, so for him to agree to this is no small thing.

Earlier he announced:

Racing Minister Winston Peters has announced the introduction of legislation to amend the Racing Industry Act 2020 which will extend TAB NZ’s current land-based monopoly for sports and racing betting to online.

There should be no monopoly. There should be a level playing field, with multiple companies offering betting under the same regulatory regime.