The Herald reports:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says he is open to discussing whether New Zealand’s superannuation should be means-tested. 

Hipkins told Newstalk ZB’s Kerre Woodham he would not want full means-testing of the country’s pension but added “there are questions”. 

“I don’t want to do this on a unilateral basis, I think these need to be conversations across the Parliament about whether somebody who is still working full time, earning a six-figure salary should be claiming superannuation. 

“I am open to a conversation about that, but I think it has to be done in a constructive, bipartisan way.”

Asked how long such discussions between parties could last before something happened, Hipkins said, “I guess it depends whether there is an appetite across the Parliament to even have that conversation”.

I hope there is. I think the current scheme (without means testing) should be locked in for everyone born before 1981. But for those aged 45 or under, the replacement scheme should be:

• Age of eligibility 67, and increases by 1 year for every two year increase in average life expectancy over 82 (so if it becomes 86, then eligibility at 69).
• A non work tested benefit for those aged between 65 and the eligibility age, set at 1.25 times the jobseeker benefit
• Annual adjustments to NZ Super of CPI +0.25% so it increases in real terms, but not as fast as wage growth
• Means testing with NZ Super abating if you earn $180,000 at 25c per dollars above that, so fully abated at $280,000

This would provide a generous but affordable scheme for the future.

Dear MPs

Deeply thankful for those who responded to mt previous email. Well done to those that are genuine interested.

For every list MP, and for every electorate MP you need to know the current state of education in NZ. 

Those that have replied are stunned that the top 50 NZ high schools have an average of 85.6% of their leavers with University Entrance.

They are also stunned that the bottom 50 NZ highschools have an average of 4.8% of their leavers with University Entrance.

Schools, community organisations and MPs are also stunned that the 2025 leavers data will show that we now have 20% of our school leavers have no qualifications at all. Ministry papers also predict that the new qualifications framework will have a negative impact on the achievements of students from marginalised demographics. 

As you head to the stage to defend/promote education policies … you need the most up to date data.

Please be in touch if you are actually interested in the young people of NZ. To many of you have your head in the sand …. our up your butt.

Alwyn Poole

[email protected]

Four members’ bill were drawn from the ballot. They are:

1. Better Regional Boundaries Bill by Tim Costley. Would require all government entities that have regions to align their regions with local government boundaries within five years. Small but useful.
2. Concealment of Location of Victim Remains Bill by Tom Rutherford. Would deny [pa]role to convicted killers who don’t disclose the location of their victim’s remains. Excellent.
3. Criminal Records (Clean Slate) (Additional Eligibility) Amendment Bill by Tangi Utikere. Expands the clean slate regime from those who were given non custodial sentences to include those who received a prison sentence of up to 12 months. Hard no from me, as to get sent to prison you need to have done some seriously bad stuff which should not be wiped.
4. Crimes (Virginity Testing Practices) Amendment Bill by Priyanca Radhakrishnan. Creates a criminal offence with a maximum five year term for virginity testing. In favour of banning this. Five year maximum term might be a bit too harsh though.

Fox News reports:

The State Department is rolling out limited-edition U.S. passports to commemorate the 250th anniversary of American independence. The new passport designs, obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital, prominently feature President Donald Trump’s image on the inside cover. 

His megalomania has no limits. Pity the poor Americans who have to use a US passport.

For those who think this is all fine, just imagine how you would feel if say your NZ passport had a huge photo of Jacinda in it. I doubt you’d be too happy.

As far as I can ascertain, no other country in the world puts an elected politician on their passports.

The Guardian reports:

Teaching pupils in classes grouped by ability improves the results of high-flyers but does not affect the progress of less able children, according to a study that upends decades of debate over mixed-ability education.

The research by University College London’s Institute of Education found that secondary school pupils in England with previously strong maths performances made slower progress in mixed-attainment classes than when they were taught alongside children with similarly high ability.

Crucially, the study backed by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) showed that setting by ability did not “significantly harm the attainment of low-prior-attaining or socioeconomically disadvantaged” pupils.

The study’s impact analysis showed negative effects on self-confidence in maths for pupils in mixed-attainment schools, compared with those in schools using setting – challenging previous reports that setting harms the confidence of those outside the top sets.

This is very important research. It disproves the assertion that grouping students by ability harms less able students. It shows it does not, and that more able students do considerably better.

So those who are very liberal are eight times more likely to say it is acceptable to cheer on the death of someone you disagreed with, than those who are very conservative.

This is no surprise. We saw this when Margaret Thatcher died. We saw it on Blue Sky when Charlie Kirk was murdered.

Politico reports:

Federal authorities have arrested an American soldier who allegedly used confidential information to place a series of wagers on the capture of then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro through the prediction market platform Polymarket.

Basically he bet on the prediction market Maduro would be removed from office by a certain date. One of them was a few hours before the mission he was on to capture him.

I was not surprised that Trump said he didn’t have a problem with it, so long as the solider was betting on the mission succeeding, not failing!

Prediction markets are meant to get “inside” information out by moving the market price. But in this case the placement of the bets could have compromised the mission. If you’re a world leader and see the price for your removal suddenly spike at 2 am, well I’d be swapping locations pretty quickly.

ACT released last week:

“An iwi group’s alleged demand for $180 million in order to approve the Bendigo Santana gold mine exposes how New Zealand’s resource management system has been warped by standover tactics and backroom dealing,” says ACT Resources spokesman Simon Court.

Kā Rūnaka say extracting $180 million from Santana has not been their ‘focus’, but they haven’t directly denied the report.

“It’s an outrage, but not one that surprises ACT,” says Mr Court. “Up and down the country, from minor subdivisions to major infrastructure, people are encountering standover tactics and sending me the receipts.

And this week:

Strong concerns have again been raised by iwi regarding a large gold mine in Central Otago proposed by Australian company Santana Minerals.

At a hearing of the Fast-track expert panel in Dunedin on Tuesday, Kā Rūnaka, made up of four rūnaka representing southern Ngāi Tahu hapū, said they opposed the controversial project in its present form.

They oppose it because the submitters refused to give them $180 million in exchange for them not opposing it.

This is why Iwi should have no special status when it comes to resource consents. They should have the same status as any other local group.

I also think any resource consent applicant should have to list all payments they have made to external groups, so we can see if they have been paying objectors off.

Luke Malpass writes:

Despite the rhetoric around savings, what the Government has largely done is cut in some areas to fund increases in others. If successful strategies are about aligning resources to priorities, that may be defensible. But it is not “savings” in any absolute or net sense — it is simply different spending decisions.

There have been no net savings to the Budget’s bottom line since this Government took office. Spending has increased. Willis defends this on the basis that the Government does not want to cut essential services.

Her explanation was: “It is not a saving in the sense that we are spending less as a government; it is a saving in the sense that, in the absence of making those savings, we would not have been able to fund increases to health and education and essential services without borrowing more.”

This is a good analysis. The Government has done a good job in redirecting spending from wasteful areas to frontline services. This should be applauded, and not something that Labour would have done.

However overall spending has remained too high. Labour blew it out from 28% of GDP to 34% and it is still way above the 30% that Labour and Greens promised as a cap in 2017. The Government must commit to getting it back under 30% – soon rather than later.

A guest post by Chris Scott:

 New Zealand’s problem is not simply that government gets things wrong. It is that government often has no reliable way to understand how one decision interacts with another across the whole system. 

That is why the same pressures keep returning in different forms. Housing affects labour. Labour affects immigration. Immigration affects infrastructure and public services. Education affects productivity. Productivity affects wages, retention, and living standards. Each agency sees a portion of the picture, but the state as a whole struggles to see how the parts combine. 

That is an architectural problem. 

Modern government is full of expertise, data, and policy capability. What it lacks is an integrated way to model itself, test changes, and learn across domains rather than inside silos. Ministries produce competent analysis within their own boundaries, but many of the country’s biggest problems are created by interaction between boundaries. 

So the real opportunity is not just better policy within the existing framework. It is to build a system that allows government to simulate itself, evaluate structural changes before rolling them out, and improve its own understanding over time. 

That does not mean replacing politics with software. It means building a simulation that runs alongside government: a living model of the state, continuously updated by real-world feedback, that helps policymakers test reforms, identify trade-offs, and spot unintended consequences before they harden into failure. 

This is where artificial intelligence has a real role. 

AI should not be asked to govern. It cannot supply legitimacy, judgement, or democratic consent. But it can help government do something it currently does badly: connect scattered information, detect patterns across domains, compare scenarios quickly, and keep an evolving model up to date as new information comes in. 

In that sense, AI becomes part of the state’s reflective capacity. It helps government see itself more clearly. 

That matters because the challenge is now too complex for siloed human interpretation alone, but far too important to hand over to automated decision-making. The right model is hybrid intelligence: AI-assisted modelling and simulation, combined with human judgement, democratic oversight, and real-world correction. 

This also helps clarify the top-down and bottom-up question. 

The architecture is necessarily top-down in one sense: a government-wide model has to integrate the whole system. It has to trace how pressure in one area produces effects in another. Without that, the state remains trapped in departmental fragments. 

But a good top-down model should not smother feedback from below. It should make that feedback more meaningful. It should help local knowledge, citizen experience, and domain expertise travel upward into a wider structure that can actually use them. 

So the aim is not bureaucracy tightening its grip. It is the opposite. It is a governing system that becomes more coherent from above while remaining corrigible from below. 

A side-by-side simulation could do exactly that. It could link housing, labour, migration, education, infrastructure, fiscal settings, and health capacity into one evolving model. AI tools could assist by integrating data, surfacing hidden pressures, and stress-testing possible changes. Human decision-makers would still interpret the outputs, weigh trade-offs, and decide what is politically and socially acceptable. 

That would not eliminate politics. It would make politics better informed. 

Singapore offers one useful analogy. Its digital-twin work shows the value of joining up planning, infrastructure, land use, and population data rather than leaving them scattered across separate systems. It is not a full model of government, but it points toward tighter coordination and better system visibility. 

The Human Genome Project offers another. It did not cure disease by itself. What it did was make an immensely complex system legible at a new level. After that, specialists could understand their own work as part of a larger architecture. Government needs something similar: not a genome of biology, but a map of its own interacting structure. 

New Zealand is unusually well placed to attempt this. We are small enough for the machinery of government to be tractable, but complex enough for the gains to be real. Our main problems are not mysterious. They are structural. What we lack is not intelligence in the abstract, but a way of organising intelligence across the whole system. 

A government simulation supported by AI would not solve every problem automatically. But it would allow the state to test itself, refine itself, and learn in a more disciplined way. It would also strengthen democracy by giving citizens, officials, and ministers a clearer view of the system they are actually operating inside. 

New Zealand does not need an automated state. It needs a state that can observe itself, model itself, and adapt. AI should be part of that architecture, not as a substitute for human government, but as a tool that helps human government become more intelligent. 

Radio NZ reports:

The ACT Party leader David Seymour has floated dishing out $500 to every year 11 student for an investment account, to promote investing at a younger age.

It was not an ACT policy “yet”, he said.

Seymour said the idea could be funded by taking about five percent, or $30 million, of the $600 million annual KiwiSaver subsidy – the government’s $260 contribution to people’s KiwiSaver accounts.

“I think most people would say that’s a bargain,” he said.

“For a relatively modest amount of money, we could give a generation a practical introduction to saving, investing, ownership, and financial responsibility.”

Using actual money, rather than a simulator, means students have “skin in the game” and would be more motivated, Seymour said.

I think this is a great idea. I already chat to my kids about the benefits of saving, and even give them an incentive that if they have any chore money unspent at the end of the month, I will match them dollar for dollar if they save it rather than spend it.

Both parties in the US have at times gerrymandered their electoral maps to favour themselves, as boundaries have to be redrawn every 10 years after a census.

Last year the GOP, pressed by Trump, did a gerrymander in Texas, adding four likely seats to the GOP, to try and protect them in the mid terms. There was no requirement to do new boundaries. They just did it because they could.

But the Democrats learned that you fight fire with fire. Rather than be idiots and just complain about it, they said well if you do it, we will also.

Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio did new maps that moved nine seats to the GOP. But California, Utah and Virginia have moved 10 seats to the Democrats, which is a net loss of one for the GOP.

I’m very grateful in New Zealand the Representation Commission sets the boundaries, not MPs. While there are two political appointments on the Representation Commission, the majority are neutral officials. It is chaired by a former judge and members are the Surveyor-General, the Government Statistician and the Chief Electoral Officer.

Audrey Young writes:

There is one verdict that stands out among others, however, his scathing assessment of Dame Jacinda Ardern.

He even weaponises her self-deprecating admission that she suffered from “imposter syndrome” against her. 

“She talked a number of occasions about an imposter syndrome, and I think she genuinely felt that because I thought she was an imposter in the job,” he tells the Herald.

He says he really liked her in the beginning and welcomed the idea of a young liberal, woman Prime Minister, but his view changed quickly.

“She didn’t have the depth to be the Prime Minister of the country and was to me, more than any other Prime Minister, the biggest manipulator of the media.”

Barry Soper has covered 12 Prime Ministers, so his views are interesting – whether or not you agree with them.

Soper rates Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark highest of those he calls the “significant Prime Ministers”

The fact he rates Clark the best and Ardern the worst would suggest his assessmentment of Ardern is not related to the fact she is Labour, or that she is a woman.

On 7 May, there will be elections in Scotland, Wales and much of England. Up will be:

• 5,066 councillors on 136 English councils
• Six directly elected Mayors

The latest poll projections have Labour losing around 1,700 of their 2,200 councillors with the gains being Reform +1,450, Greens +900, Lib Dems +330. Losing 80% of your seats is terrible.

In the Welsh Senedd, Labour have 30 seats of the 60 seats. Current polls have them dropping to 12 behind Reform on 37 and Plaid Cymru on 36 (increase in seats to 96).

In the Scottish Parliament they are running in third place behind the SNP and Reform.

This may lead to an unusual situation where the Parliaments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will all be led by parties that wish to secede from the United Kingdom.

The Herald reports:

The Government has signed a “letter of intent” with Z Energy to procure 90 million litres of diesel, which is the equivalent of an additional nine days’ supply. 

The fuel will be delivered to Marsden Point, either as a single cargo or two cargoes. It will be stored here in a refurbished tank, which is expected to be available for use from early June.

This is a very important, even vital, thing to do. We currently have sufficient supply into NZ. But when or if that diminishes, what will be vital is how many days storage we have in NZ.

There is no point in reducing demand if we don’t have the storage capacity. Doing one without the other, will just mean we start turning tankers away as there is no storage for them.

Henry Cooke points out:

At this point in 2023, National had launched its income tax policy, its FamilyBoost childcare policy, its renewable electricity generation policy, its policy on interest deductibility for rentals, its brightline test policy, some of its Overseas Investment Act plans, its boot camp and gang patch policies, its youth welfare policies, its “Local Water Done Well” repeal of Three Waters, and a whole bevy of other promised reversals or initiatives.

At this point in 2017, Labour had announced KiwiBuild, its Healthy Homes policy for tenancies, its intended expansion of the Reserve Bank’s mandate, its Tax Working Group to look at capital gains taxes (CGT), a Centre of Digital Excellence in Dunedin, and a whole bunch of other reversals and initiatives, all under the leadership of Andrew Little.

This is in contrast to Chris Hipkins who has announced close to nothing.

Such a narrow policy platform makes it easy for opponents to intimate that there must be something far scarier hidden up your sleeve – or in the platforms of your potential coalition partners. It forces your MPs into media appearances where they can only talk of the problems with their opponents and never about the positive ways they want to change New Zealand. And it can simply make you look unserious and uninterested in the challenges the country has, like a restorationist project for New Zealand in 2023, rather than a team trying to take things forward.

Unserious is a good term.

The Herald reported:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held crisis talks with Foreign Minister Winston Peters in the Beehive last night after Peters’ office released emails to the Herald showing Luxon wanted to shift the Government’s position to show “explicit public support” for the US-led war in Iran days after it broke out.

Luxon was talked out of this position by Peters and staff in Peters’ office, the emails show.

Responding to the emails before the crisis meeting, a spokesman for Peters said Luxon’s support for the war was “imprudent” and would have “run counter to New Zealand’s national interests”.

“Experience matters in foreign policy,” he said.

The Herald contacted Luxon’s office for their response to the story. A spokesman for Luxon responded on Wednesday night, after the meeting, saying the emails “mischaracterise the PM’s position”.

“As you’d expect, it is the PM’s job to always challenge the advice he receives and, in this case, he sought to test New Zealand’s position against that of Canada and Australia.

“The public statements made by the Government reflect the PM’s position. If they didn’t, they would not have been made,” they said.

The normal aspect to this is a Prime Minister gets feedback on a draft position, and the final position varies after receiving the advice. This is a good thing.

The Labour/left Prime Ministers of Australia, Canada and UK all took more supportive stances towards the initial (not later) US strikes on Iran. It would be no surprise that the PM would say, should our stance not be the same. MFAT and the MFA said no, and their advice was taken. That is all normal.

What is abnormal is the release of these e-mails under the OIA, and how they were done. The OIA states information should not be released that could prejudice the international relations of NZ. Additionally it can be withheld under protecting collective and individual ministerial responsibility, the confidentiality of advice tendered by Ministers of the Crown and officials; or free and frank expression of opinions by or between or to Ministers of the Crown. I’d say it is 99.99% likely the Ombudsman would rule those e-mails do not have to be released under the OIA.

Further more Peters’ office unilaterally released these, not in consultation with the other Minister involved (the PM). This was a gross breach of policy and procedure. It was clearly deliberate, and designed to make the Prime Minister look bad.

What Peters did is very abnormal. There seem to be only two reasonable explanations.

1. He is peeved off that Luxon and Willis hit back at him, after he needlessly started commenting on the National Party leadership. So he did it in a fit of pique. It is just tit for tat.
2. He is setting things up, so he can backtrack on his promise not to go with Labour.

I don’t know which it is.

The Herald reports:

The Speaker has stepped into a stand-off between the National Party and TVNZ over the way two of its journalists – including political editor Maiki Sherman – tried to interview National whip Stuart Smith in a Parliament corridor late on Tuesday night last week.

Sherman and at least one other colleague could face a temporary ban from covering politics at Parliament if the Speaker has found TVNZ breached longstanding press gallery rules.

“The matters relating to gallery behaviour and that of the TVNZ political editor last week are being considered in a process long agreed by the gallery,” Speaker Gerry Brownlee said in a statement provided to Media Insider today.

He said he would “not be making any further comment at this point”.

The key document here are the rules on Interviewing MPs. Rule 18 says:

Members of the Press Gallery must not pursue members, staff, or users of Parliament who decline to be interviewed.

Pretty clear. You can question them and film them in the public area (the tiles) outside the House. But you are not allowed to follow them from there. On the basis of what has been reported, the TVNZ staff clearly broke that rule.

Interviewing, filming or photographing a member in the corridor outside the member’s office is permitted only if the member agrees.

Also very clear.

If the reports are accurate of what TVNZ did, there seems no doubt that they have broken the rules (which are long standing). The only real issue is what the sanction will be.

UPDATE: The Herald has reported a five day suspension for Sherman.