Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says updated guidance provided to the Health Research Council (HRC) means future projects will have an increased focus on Government priorities and improved health for New Zealanders when being considered for funding. …
“What that means is a sharper focus on real-world projects leading to improved health and/or health system outcomes, such as improving timely access to quality healthcare for New Zealanders.
Basically the HRC has been told to focus on those with high health needs, health system goals, achieving health gains and strengthening the health research workforce.
Hopefully this will mean less of projects such as these which were funded last year:
Judith Collins recently announced three new service heads for the defence force:
Commodore (now Read Admiral) Garin Golding as Head of Navy
Brigadier (now Major General) Rose King as Head of Army
Air Vice-Marshal Darryn Webb
Major General King is the first female general in New Zealand, and the first female service head.
She enlisted 33 years ago and graduated into the Corps of Royal New Zealand Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. She has served in Prevlaka (border between Croatia and Montenegro) and Afghanistan. Professionally she has a Masters of Management in Defence Studies (University of Canberra, a MA (Strategic Studies) from Deakin University and a Bachelor of Defence Studies from Massey University.
She is also one of only four NZers to have received the NATO Meritorious Service Medal.
Wellington ratepayers have shelled out out more than $550,000 on the upgrade of a 32m laneway to accommodate a new designer bike rack and two extra motorbike parks.
The Council has increased rates by almost 20%, and the Mayor is telling everyone there is no waste, and the big increases are all due to infrastructure underfunding and then we learn they spent half a million dollars on having a bike rack near the council office!
The total cost of the upgrade came to $562,942 with the cycle rack sucking up $136,000 of that – eclipsing the $85,000 spent on a similar bike rack alongside Freyberg Pool in Oriental Bay by $51,000.
So the bike rack only cost $136,000 but the total cost of upgrading the street to fit it was $563,000. Is that a must have or a nice to have?
Councillor Diane Calvert blasted the spend as an “unbelievable waste”.
“And especially when there is an empty bike rack 50m up the road outside council. This highlights yet again a troubling pattern of council spending decisions made without adequate oversight or insight into the real needs and concerns of our community.”
I bet you this bike rack also is near empty most of the time.
I recently had an interview (https://theplatform.kiwi/podcasts/episode/lucy-rogers-on-liberation-theology) with The Platform about my criticism of Cuban academic Professor Miguel de la Torre, who spoke at Auckland University. Some issues arose in our conversation which are worth more elucidation than was possible in a 10 minute radio interview.
Cuba’s human rights abuses are morally wrong
At one point in the interview I said that Cuban atrocities, like Nazi atrocities, are morally wrong and it was therefore morally wrong to invite a supporter of the Cuban government to speak at Auckland Uni. However, I emphasised that my commitment to free speech meant I did not believe in employing the apparatus of the state to prevent his talk from happening.
Morality: a social construct?
Michael Laws responded: “But isn’t morality subjective?” I said that I did not think so and that there was no academic consensus on that issue. He responded (and I am paraphrasing) that respect for free speech depends on the state presumption that objective morality does not exist.
Our law presupposes objective morality
In fact, the concept of objective morality is inherent to our law. Section 23 of the Crimes Act 1961 states that it is a defence to a criminal charge that someone suffers from “natural imbecility or a disease of the mind rendering him or her incapable of knowing that the act or omission was morally wrong, having regard to the commonly accepted standards of right and wrong”, i.e. insanity.
Moral wrongness is not the test of criminality
The question is not whether morality is subjective: rather, it is whether it is prudent for the state to involve itself in prohibiting an act. We do not criminalise every child who tells their schoolteacher an excuse for not doing their homework. But lying in other contexts, such as perjury, is a criminal act.
What was our culture’s historic answer?
The rationales against state censorship historically were various. Firstly, private institutions like the media, the family, the academy, the Church, etc play an important role as a check on the power of the state, as no one ideology can predominate. The concentration of too much power in one institution, whether in the monarch or the Church during the Middle Ages, was deemed undesirable due to the human tendency to misuse power. This requires limitations on the role of the state in steering social institutions towards monolithic views.
Censorship does not permit social pluralism
A second reason for state non-interference in the expression of opinion is that it permitted social pluralism, which was facilitated by an evolving concept of shared cultural identity despite our differences and a willingness of different ideological factions to peacefully co-exist. Our forebears discovered that it was possible for people to disagree without killing each other.
Worldviews are deeply important to many people
If we accept that to kōrero (speak) is an important aspect of what it means to be human, and that it is deeply important to many people to be able to express their sincerely wrong views, then social pluralism requires that the state remain out of the regulation of expression of opinion.
The subjectivity of morality undermines the concept of human rights
These arguments ought to challenge cultural assumptions across the political spectrum today. For one thing, the arguments I have outlined above emphatically do not (as Michael Laws believes) entail that morality is subjective. In fact, I submit that the supposed subjectivity of morality undermines the concept of human rights altogether, including free speech.
Is it important to constitutionally protect gratuitous offence?
The arguments I have made also challenge free speech absolutism, as nothing I have said justifies (for example) gratuitous offence. Readers may remember the phenomenon of Wicked Campervans a few years ago: I do not see the great historic rationales for free speech as applicable to displaying the word “CUNT” on a van. I do not agree that offence is subjective, although it may be in the interests of social pluralism that we should treat it as such.
My arguments also challenge ideological intolerance
I scarcely need add, however, that my arguments should also challenge anyone who cannot fathom how anyone could possibly hold a differing opinion, or who assumes ill-faith of her political opponents, or hates them. This discourages social pluralism and leads to totalitarianism. Liberty requires that people want to co-exist. Perhaps the most precious taonga (treasure) of Western culture was the belief that reasonable people can disagree.
My thanks to Michael Laws for a great conversation. He was an intelligent and reasonable interviewer who gave me a fair hearing. I thought his pushback at points was very appropriate, although I disagree with his conclusions.
There have been seven Maori Kings or Queens. The duration of each reign was:
Two years
34 years
18 years
21 years
32 years
40 years
18 years
While all the Maori Monarchs have been descendants of the 1st King, Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, this is not a requirement. The Tekau-mā-rua could appoint anyone, but tradition has been they don’t.
The three children of the late King are:
Whatumoana Te Aa
Te Ariki Taituruki Korotangi
Te Puhi Ariki Ngā Wai hono i te po
The oldest son is considered unlikely now. In 2022 the Herald reported:
Sources told the NZ Herald that the statement from the King’s office on June 25, 2022, of the disapproval of the marriage to Tahana, was an accumulation of 18 months of deep frustration and hurt, an attempted coup of the Kīngitanga by Whatumoana, mounting debts around the motu, and his dabbling in aspects of black magic.
So a coup, a cult and black magic don’t seem like a likely Monarch.
A son of the Māori King punched his girlfriend several times in the head leaving her with a black eye in what a judge called a clear case of domestic violence.
He also has a conviction for drink driving and got a discharge for alleged burglary and theft in 2014.
This leaves the daughter. She is only in her 20s but is a member of the governing council of Waikato University, where she got a BA and MA. She is also a member of the Waitangi National Trust Board, the Te Kohanga Reo National Trust, and the Waikato-Tainui College for Research and Development.
Not my call of course, but seems like a pretty easy decision to me!
A new Government-funded website intended to help youth foster healthy relationships and learn about the likes of “red flags” and “how to handle a first-time queer crush” has cost more than $800,000.
There was a closed competitive procurement process notified on the Government’s tender website GETS, the ministry said.
Since becoming viewable a month ago, the site has recorded 2300 user sessions.
More than $10 million has been committed to the campaign since development began in 2019, including current and forecast expenditure. That came from funding for family violence prevention work found in Budgets 2019 and 2022.
What a waste of money. There are scores of websites out there about healthy relationships, crushes etc. There is no need for a government one, especially one that no one goes to.
Multicultural New Zealand (MNZ) president Pancha Narayanan wants a new public holiday to recognise “we are a multicultural society”.
On the last Friday of August every year, the Multicultural Councils across the country celebrate a Te Tiriti based National Multicultural Day.
The initiative was first launched in 2021 as a way to encourage migrants to make their heritage visible in their daily lives by wearing cultural clothing, sharing traditional food with friends and colleagues, and speaking their native language.
This year, celebrations took place earlier at Parliament on August 26 where Narayanan proposed the inclusion of a Multicultural Day into the Holidays Act.
The Holidays Act is the legislation which outlines what public holidays New Zealanders are entitled to — currently we have 11 public holidays.
Actually we have 12 as provincial anniversary days are also public holidays.
The second is a “cultural day” which gives New Zealanders a day off to celebrate an event that is culturally significant to them.
This could be taken on a religious holiday that is not a public holiday in New Zealand, like Vesak Day which is observed by Buddhists, or a cultural celebration, like Lunar New Year.
So that is actually 14 public holidays plus 20 days annual leave where employers hav e to pay staff not to work.
I am a fan of having more flexibility with holidays, but not increasing the total amount. So what I would do is abolish Labour Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Christmas Day and Boxing Days as public holidays, and instead give everyone five extra days annual leave. That way people could choose which holidays they wish to celebrate and take time off for.
I have been leaked a copy of the latest staff survey from AUT Law Faculty and it is very clear that it is a very unhappy place. Here are some of their results:
Would recommend AUT as a great place to work 45%
AUT is in a position to succeed 42%
Have confidence in senior leaders at AUT 35%
AUT has a thriving research culture 35%
Am comfortable reporting inappropriate behaviour 30%
Workloads are divided fairly 25%
Innovation is recognised and rewarded 20%
At AUT we are good at learning from our mistakes 20%
The right people are recognised and rewarded 20%
If someone is not delivering in their role we do something about it 5%
You never get 100% staff satisfaction but to have such a low level of satisfaction should ring warning bells.
As if that isn’t bad enough, a whopping 35% of law faculty staff who responded said they had experienced bullying or harassment at work in the last six months. Also 20% said they had been discriminate against.
This is a quote from an e-mail from one of the law faculty professors discussing the results. He seems to blame it all on the central AUT administration, a view not shared by his colleagues.
Now readers will recall that the Dean of Law is Khylee Quince and she attracted a lot of publicity when she called a senior KC a racist dinosaur who should go off and die in the corner.
Readers will be interested in how AUT dealt with this. Did they tell the Dean that this is unacceptable behaviour for a first year law student let alone the Dean of Law?
This is from the Pro VC in charge of the law faculty. So their focus was to make the Dean feel safe and supported for her outrageous behaviour, and not on how her comments may have made staff and students feel.
This is unintentionally hilarious. The Law School Dean blasts someone she disagrees with as a racist old dinosaur who should die in the corner, and the Dean’s boss says our values are to be kind and supportive!!!
This is from a powerpoint presenting the findings of the survey. So is AUT doing anything about this?
As you can see the results for the Law Faculty are much much lower than AUT as a whole. So this would suggest the major issue is not the central administration, but the faculty management itself. I am told by sources that everyone knows what the major problem is, but people are too scared to say so.
So only 1 out of 20 law staff thought something is done when someone is not delivering in their role. I wonder who they might have in mind when they answered that question!
There was a strange story in The Post this weekend. The basic theme of the story is that everyone is leaving Wellington and it is the Government’s fault. One particularly weird extract was this:
An out of work contractor, an open home, the finance minister flashing the cash.
The stuff of nightmares, according to 48-year-old Pete, the aforementioned unemployed contractor, who earlier this week spent eight hours on the Northern Explorer from Hamilton to Wellington staring out of a window as he pondered his – and his family’s –future.
A day or so before he had dreamt he and his wife had to sell their house. “We were doing an open home, and Nicola Willis blew through the place and says, ‘I’ll have this. It’ll make a great rental’.
“That was actually a nightmare I had.”
So the story starts with Pete (who isn’t actually Pete) talking about a nightmare involving Nicola Willis, and someone this is part of the story.
But the main focus is about a couple:
Te Hinemoa Hiroki-Tuiono and partner Aaron Moss are heading to Asia next week. …
Said Hiroki-Tuiono: “It is utterly bleak. The cuts to the public sectoraren’t just constrained to the Government ‒ it’s affecting the private sector as well. Small businesses in the Wellington CBD seem to be taking quite a big hit from this and there are hiring restrictions in the larger organisations too.
“Making the decision to leave was really difficult. I have met some amazing people in the public sector who work insanely hard. It has been awful to see their work degraded.”
I always get interested when I see random members of the public get interviewed, and they seem so highly critical (or supportive) of the Government. So I did a google.
Now how did it happen that The Post of all the people in Wellington happened to find a former staffer for Kiri Allan for their story? Well the journalist who wrote the story just happened to be a former press secretary for Kiri Allan.
Once again this doesn’t mean she should not get to write political stories, but shouldn’t this be disclosed? A former press secretary for a Labour Minister interviews a former staffer for the same Minister for an article critical of the Government, and none of this is disclosed.
And people wonder why trust in media keeps dropping.
I also wonder why the Government is planning to pass a law to bail out media that readers are abandoning by forcing Internet companies to fund them.
TVNZ has just announced an $85 million loss and a huge $39 million drop in revenue.
I’ve never seen why taxpayers own a commercial media company. There is a case to be made for owing public service broadcasters such as Radio NZ and Maori TV, but not a commercial broadcaster.
Think if ten years ago we had sold TVNZ. It was making a $35 million profit so could have sold for say $400 million. Now think if that $400 million has been invested in say some Netflix shares. They were around US$50 in 2014 or NZ $60. So they could have purchased 6.66 million shares in Netflix. Today those shares are US$692 on NZ$1,105. So we’d have $7.36 billion rather than an asset that is now probably worth close to zero on the open market.
The Government wants to “get tough” on the “selfish behaviour” of people who misuse car parks reserved for disabled people by hiking the fine by 400%.
Towage and impoundment fees and parking infringement fees are also going up. Some haven’t been updated since 2004 and the minister said it can now be cheaper to pay a parking ticket rather than paying for parking in Auckland.
Louise Upston, the Minister for Disability Issues, today said misusing car parks for disabled people was the “epitome of arrogance” and the financial penalty will increase from $150 to $750.
I think this is a good move. $150 is not enough of a deterrent.
It does remind me of one of the funniest stories I have heard from a friend of mine some years ago. He was driving from Auckland to Wellington and stopped in Taihape for a toilet stop. The public toilets had a huge carpark with no cars in them, so he parked in the space next to the toilet, even though it was marked as a disabled park. He thought that as it was a Sunday afternoon in Taihape with an empty carpark, the chance of it inconveniencing anyone was close to zero.
However as he came out of the toilet he was horrified to see a bus parked next to his car. A bus for disabled kids, with a dozen kids on board who were being helped out of the into their wheelchairs etc. And all 12 kids were staring at this guy who was parked in their park! Safe to say he slunk away and never did it again 🙂
National MP David MacLeod says he is “hugely relieved” by the police decision not to take any action over his failure to declare more than $178,000 in donations before the last election.
The Electoral Commission referred the issue to police to investigate in June after MacLeod initially failed to declare the donations in his 2023 return, something he said was “a genuine mistake”.
Police have decided not to take any further action against the New Plymouth MP over it. MacLeod had amended his return in May to include the missing donations after the National Party discovered they had not been disclosed during post-election checks.
MacLeod told the NZ Herald it was the result of a genuine mistake and he had addressed it once it was discovered.
I believe this was the wrong decision by Police, and another example of why they should not be the body that enforces electoral law.
I am sure it was absolutely a genuine mistake, but the Electoral Act takes that into account. Here’s S209(B)(2):
A candidate who files a return under section 209 that is false in any material particular is guilty of
The return was false, as it omitted $178,000 of donations.
a corrupt practice if he or she filed the return knowing it to be false in any material particular
As it was a genuine mistake (he thought the return was only for donations in 2023, and didn’t realise it was for his entire candidacy) the Police are correct not to regard the false return as a corrupt practice.
an illegal practice in any other case
So the law is designed so that there is a lesser offence for accidental false returns. But there is a way to escape even that:
unless the candidate proves that he or she had no intention to misstate or conceal the facts; and he or she took all reasonable steps in the circumstances to ensure that the information in the return was accurate.
Now again the candidate had no intention to misstate but to escape an illegal practice you also need to have taken all reasonable steps to ensure it was accurate.
It is contestable whether all reasonable steps were taken, such as seeking advice. As it is contestable, I think the Police should have laid a charge of an illegal practice, so that the court could decide is all reasonable steps were taken. It could well be that they decide in the candidate’s favour, but I want a court to decide that, not the Police.
The Marsden Fund is funded by taxpayers and administered by the Royal Society.
It is meant to be for research in science, engineering and maths, social sciences and the humanities. It says it is regarded as the hallmark of excellence for research in New Zealand.
Their grants are online since 2008, so in my spare time I have been analysing them, and dividing them into four rough categories.
Science
Humanities/Social Science
Maori/Colonialism
Identity (gender/ethnic/refugee focus etc)
Policy/Political
Here’s how the proportions have changed over time.
2008
2017
2023
Science
88%
80%
72%
Humanities
8%
11%
13%
Maori
3%
5%
8%
Identity
1%
2%
5%
Political
0%
3%
2%
So almost 90% of the funding used to go to what you might call hard sciences, and it has now fallen to under three quarters. At the current rate, science will get less than half the funding within a couple of decades.
Maybe the Government should take away 75% of the Marsden Fund from the Royal Society and give it to a new science body, and leave them to distribute the remaining 25% to whatever their current fashion dictates.
The Local Government Minister is questioning why patched members of a gang were able to wear their regalia inside a council building when a ban is in force.
The Hawke’s Bay Regional Council faces backlash over a Facebook post featuring photos of patched gang members celebrating the decision in its council chambers to retain its Māori constituencies.
On Wednesday, in what was described as a “significant step towards ensuring Māori representation”, the council voted unanimously to keep its Māori wards. This means there will be a binding poll at the next local government elections in 2025.
But the Facebook post released by the council soon after featuring photos of patched gang members celebrating the decision has been met with frustration from Simeon Brown, who is surprised a current patch ban was not enforced at a meeting.
Members of the public also hit the comment section with concerns about the presence of gang members in the meeting.
Members of the public will be grateful that they will get to decide the issue in a secret ballot, rather than have the final decision made at a Council meeting with patched gang members in attendance to support one particular view.
The Hawke’s Bay Regional Council justified its decision in the Facebook comments.
“We acknowledge that seeing gang paraphernalia can be distressing to some people, and we appreciate your feedback on our post,” it said.
“Regional Council meetings are open to all members of the public and our post is a factual record of this meeting. We do not have the authority to exclude members of the public who are following our meeting rules.”
This is nonsense. If a dozen people tried to enter the meeting naked, the Council would not allow them to do so. The Council does have the authority to tell people that they must be dressed in accordance with the law, to enter. Bars do this every day.
“I am pleased to announce that Grant Illingworth KC has been appointed as the Chair of Phase 2 of the Inquiry. Mr Illingworth joined the Inquiry in July to support the final stages of Phase 1 and will assist the Inquiry in transitioning to Phase 2.”
“I am also pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will be joined by Judy Kavanagh and Anthony Hill, who have been appointed as Commissioners for Phase 2. Their experience in economics and public health respectively will benefit the Inquiry in achieving its purpose.”
These look to be excellent appointments for the phase that will be looking at the decisions made, and the weighing up of economic and social benefits. The three Commissioners are:
A KC who specialises in public and constitutional law
A public policy professional and economist
A barrister with specialist health sector experience including having been Health and Disability Commissioner, Deputy Director-General of Health and Ministry of Health’s chief legal counsel
At around 8pm on Friday August 23rd , in front of an overflow crowd of 17,000 (with 6,000 turned away) at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale Arizona (a huge indoor ice hockey rink often used for concerts and located in one of the suburban cities of the Phoenix area), the son of assassinated Kennedy administration Attorney-General Robert (Bobby) Kennedy and nephew of assassinated US President John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy Junior (RFK Jr) emerged onto the stage and, backdropped by perfectly timed indoor fireworks, shook the hand of former President Donald Trump in one of the most consequential political endorsements in the modern Presidential era!
What are the impacts of such a momentous political event in the midst of one of the most eventful Presidential election seasons in decades?
1 – Impact of RFK Jr’s Evisceration of the Democrat Party
At 11am the same day, at a hotel in downtown Phoenix, as the perfect entre to the Main Course served at the Glendale Arena later that evening, RFK gave one of the most masterful discourses on the state of modern US politics and in it, he utterly tore apart his former party in one of the most damning and devastating eviscerations of the Democrats, Biden and Harris you will ever hear. In 47 minutes, he laid bare:
Harris’ consummate incompetence and unsuitability for office “I do interviews every day. Everyone who asks gets to interview me. Sometimes I do 10 a day. President Trump also does many interviews. How could the Democrat Party choose a candidate who refuses to do an interview?” Yes, finally Harris did one …. a softball, edited, scripted faltering interview on the most Democrat friendly network with her ‘chaperone’ VP nominee Tim Waltz.
What the modern Democrat Party has become: “It became the party of war, censorship, corruption, big Pharma, big tech, and big money.”
Detailing the vicious lawfare that was waged against him to first shut him out of the Democrat Primary and then to keep him off the ballot in as many states as possible once he announced his run as an Independent: “In the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it. Lacking confidence that its candidate could win in a fair election at the voting booth, the DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself.”
His speech culminated in his endorsement of Donald Trump and some of his reasons for the endorsement: “Last summer, it looked like no candidate was willing to negotiate a quick end to the Ukraine war, to tackle chronic disease epidemic, to protect free speech, our constitutional freedoms, to clean corporate influence out of our government, or to defy the neocons and their agenda of endless military adventurism. And now one of the candidates has adopted these issues as his own, at a point where he has asked to enlist me in his administration. I’m speaking, of course, of Donald Trump.”
Whilst the legacy corporate media tried to muddy his message by either talking over his speech, cutting away from it or not covering it at all, RFK’s Twitter link to his speech was shared by Trump, Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson across their hugely popular accounts on various platforms where tens of millions viewed his speech. The subsequent attempts at undermining Kennedy by Democrat talking heads have mostly fallen flat.
2 – Impact on the DNC
Vice President Kamala Harris’ bloodless coup on President Joe Biden and her ascension as the official Democrat nominee for President in the November 5, 2024 Presidential election without a single Primary vote cast was predictably met with fawning sycophantic MSM media coverage. This culminated at the Democrat National Convention held in Chicago from August 19 to 22. Harris gave a slick, well-choreographed but largely vapid and substance-less speech on the final night of the DNC to what was expected to be days of MSM hype and uncritical praise. Conventions are worth anything from a 5 to 10% bounce in the polls post-convention. Hillary enjoyed a 5% bump over Trump in late August 2016 and Biden got a 7% bounce in 2020. The RFK endorsement wiped Kamala and the DNC off every front page and lead broadcast and dominated the media news cycle for the following week as Trump and RFK gave substantive interviews fleshing out more details of their 16 months of discussions that led to this unique alliance.
Whilst most of the MSM aligned and promoted polls have been screwing the polling scrum somewhat since Harris’ ascension in the race by reducing Republican turnout and increasing Democrat turnout models giving Harris artificially high and often conflicting polling leads, if you factor in the two or three least biased and most historically accurate polls (Rasmussen, Democracy Institute and Des Moines Register), it is clear that Harris emerged from the DNC with no discernable bounce largely thanks to the RFK endorsement leaving her and Trump statistically neck and neck in both the national popular vote and the battleground state polls. Given that Trump over performed in the MSM aligned polls by about 5% in 2016 and 2020, the truth is Harris exits their huge weeklong DNC promo likely behind Trump as we enter into the real meat of the campaign post US Labor Day weekend (this weekend).
3 – Impact of RFK’s campaign suspension
RFK has not formally ended his campaign rather he has indicated he will be taking his name off the ballot in 10 battleground or swing states (AZ, PA, GA, WI, MI, NV, FL, OH, NC and IA). He will stay on the ballots in so-called Blue states (Democrat) and also in whatever strong Red states (Republican) where he might have managed to get on the ballot. This means that the presence of RFK on the ballot in the key states Trump needs to win is no longer a possible distraction whilst RFK reserves the right to try and split the vote in the less strong blue states like say Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia where Biden did win in 2020 but by under 10% in the hopes of triggering a Trump upset in states no longer considered pure swing states. This a very cunning and savvy strategy. It’s unclear how successful he will be in extracting his name off the ballot in all of the swing states as planned. He has succeeded in doing so in PA, GA, NV and AZ but in WI, NC and MI, local Democrat election officials are standing in the way of his name removal.
4 – Impact in battleground states
RFK’s polling in battleground states varied between 4 and 7% with 5% being the average. On paper that doesn’t sound much but the dynamics of the race since Biden stood down is that the switch to Harris almost halved Kennedy’s polling numbers. This is because he was mopping up Dem voters who were either anti Biden or, post Biden’s disastrous debate against Trump, were despondent that the Dems could win with Biden at the top of the ticket and so voting for RFK was a kind of small protest vote. With the temporary sugar high of the Harris campaign fueled by over-the-top uncritical media fawning, some of the despondent or disgruntled Dem voters flirting with RFK came home. This meant that the residual 5% of RFK’s vote was much more likely to be Republicans not comfortable with Trump and seeing RFK as a better option that voting Democrat. Indeed, surveys done by the Kennedy and Trump campaigns and some early post endorsement polling indicates that 67% to 75% of that residual RFK vote will now go to Trump which means an up to 2 to 3% bump for Trump in key battleground states. In a tight race where some polls still have Harris up and others have Trump up in these key states, even a small percentage of new voters arising from the endorsement is only going to benefit Trump rather than Harris.
5 – Impact on women voters
One of the most interesting aspects of the endorsement has been to read literally dozens of Twitter monologues of the political journey of anti-Trump ‘soccer moms’ for whom RFK’s endorsement of Trump and the planned roles have excited them and caused them to overlook what they saw as Trump’s negative traits. Trump has polled poorly amongst college educated suburban women due to his aggressive persona, mean Tweets, presumed racism and his frat boy alpha male image. Kennedy’s championing of child health has resulted in a sizeable minority following of very influential health oriented female social media influencers and their excitement about what Kennedy may be able to achieve in Trump’s new administration is bring many of them over to publicly saying they will vote for Trump. RFK’s endorsement, and the mutual goals he and Trump are setting in the public health space, is softening Trump’s image with one of the few demographics that he is still struggling with. RFK doesn’t just bring his direct supporters over to Trump, but he gives permission for hundreds of thousands of former never Trump women, many of whom are moderate Republican, Libertarian or old school socially conservative Democrats but who were stuck on Trump’s personality negatives.
6 – RFK’s likely role in a 2nd Trump Administration
This marriage was many months in the making and in recent days, RFK in particular has given a lot more detail on the process he went through to get to the decision he made. It was a decision not made lightly and Trump’s willingness to more fully embrace some key planks of the things that drive Kennedy only came after his own brush with death at the Butler, PA rally on July 13th. Kennedy has become a very vocal opponent of Big Pharma to the point that social media companies blocked some of his commentary during Covid over the lab leak origin, Dr Anthony Fauci’s role in gain of function research and the C19 vaccine efficacy and side effects and indeed RFK has become a more prominent critic of vaccines in general. In more recent years he has widened his attacks on Big Food over addictive chemical additives in American food and the deleterious impact on obesity and child health. Expats in the US all attest to the poor quality of mainstream food available in the US and how we have to carefully read labels and hunt for niche suppliers to find the quality of food we take for granted in NZ. In his speech, RFK set his sights firmly on the corruption he sees in all the big regulatory and government research agencies seen to be in the pocket of Big Pharma, Big Food and chemical companies. It is highly likely Trump will appoint Kennedy as his Health and Human Services Secretary with oversight over the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), the CDC (Centre for Diseases Control), the NIH (National Institute of Health – a health research funding clearing house) and other agencies. This prospect was the main driver for RFK accepting the new relationship with Trump as he would have real power to clean shop in these agencies.
Whilst Trump announced this at the Glendale rally with RFK by his side, this appointment got limited media attention, but Trump will appoint Kennedy to a role investigating US Presidential assassination attempts. With this comes the promise of a full declassification of the JFK assassination files, a step Trump was talked out of by the intelligence agencies in his first term. Kennedy has been on the public record in his belief that CIA connected operatives were responsible for the murder of his father and uncle, a view hitherto viewed by the establishment and for a long time many Americans as a conspiracy theory. With so many questionable and multiple lapses in security under the administration of the US Secret Service over the attempted assassination of Trump, on this issue these two men are both of a mind to really get to the bottom of what happened to the Kennedy brothers and at Butler PA that day. This portends some tantalising new material likely to excite the growing minority of Americans who see nefarious ‘Deep State’ fingerprints all over these assassinations.
Conclusion
The mood of the country and even the elite chattering classes can be summed up in this iconic New York Post front page. The story of the Kennedy clan and their travails still captivates America all these decades later and they were lions and icons of the Democrat party for a generation. That one of their favoured sons would endorse a man like Trump is a political earthquake the impact of which is only just now beginning to be felt.
