Cancer is tough at any age or stage, but battling it while having three young children is extra tough. Hopefully the chemotherapy is successful.

Ipsos report:

In a famous Yes, Prime Minister episode Sir Humphrey Appleby once explained to Bernard Woolley how you could get contradictory polling results on the same topic – in this case the reintroduction of national service – by asking a series of leading questions beforehand and asking the key question you want to know about in a certain way. 

But what would happen if we asked Sir Humphrey’s questions today? To find out we asked 1,000 British adults the first set of questions that were positive about national service and 1,000 British adults the second set that were negative. Below is a comparison of the results. You can see that it is indeed true that you get different results on the level of support for the reintroduction of national service based on the way you ask the question and the questions you ask before it.

The results are:

Ipsos point out:

First of all, to be clear, we would never ask questions on such a topic in this way. These are taken from a comedy sketch, a sketch that works because of the obvious absurdity of what Sir Humphrey is suggesting.   At Ipsos, we take great care not to ask leading questions. Questionnaire design is a key part in how our researchers are trained. Our professional reputation is based on providing quality data and acting with integrity. It is why clients come to us.

Related to this, it is worth pointing out that Sir Humphrey’s central allegation – that polling companies don’t publish all of the questions they include in surveys – is not allowed under British Polling Council rules. Under these rules, polling companies have to be transparent. They must publish all relevant questions asked in a poll in the order they were asked. Interested parties can then reasonably disagree on question wording and so on in an open way. In many ways this acts as something of a public peer review of survey results.

The same in true in NZ. All relevant questions must be published, and for political polls the primary voting question should be asked before any other question which could influence it.

I am no fan of Trump. No amount of good policies can make up his manifest psychological flaws. I’d take a zombie Biden over a robust Trump anyday.

But Trump has won the GOP nomination for President, and has a better than even chance of winning in November. This can be quite baffling to people as to how this is possible.

There is an answer on Quora, which helps explain his appeal well. It says:

I want you to try to imagine something:

Imagine that, for your entire life—or at least a significant chunk of it—the people who run for high office in your country have been, essentially, carbon copies of each other.

You’ve quit watching presidential debates, because there’s no point. You already know what everyone will say. The candidates are just talking heads. Zombies. Robots. They don’t give straight answers to moderators’ questions. They dodge, they prevaricate, they bring every conversation back to themselves and their pet issues. Their statements are a meaningless mishmash of buzzwords carefully calculated to appeal to their base and avoid offending anyone. And at the end of the day, they’re all the same: career politicians who just want your vote and the status quo to continue.

You are desperate for a candidate who’s different. Who says what’s on his mind, consequences and image be damned. Who promises to make real change, clearly means it, and isn’t just saying what he thinks you want to hear. Who is, in other words, not a member of the establishment, that shadowy political class currently running the country and driving it deeper and deeper into debt and chaos. In fact, he’s someone who will fight them and stick it to them, horrify and disgust them. (Them and their useful idiots, the woke progressives, who claim to stand for justice but in fact support tyranny and injustice.)

For such a person, you’d be willing to overlook almost any flaw.

And so it was with Donald Trump. People who only consider the man’s personality and character without really understanding what he represented (and still represents) to the American people are missing the key aspect of his appeal. The 2016 American presidential election wasn’t just Trump vs. Clinton. It was self-made man vs. professional thief. Private businessman vs. corrupt corporatist politician. Dark horse vs. reigning champion. Scrappy underdog vs. galactic overlord. Outsider vs. insider. Anti-establishment vs. establishment. The disenfranchised vs. the enfranchised. The real America vs. the privileged coastal political elite.

Get the idea, now?

The American political arena is chock-full of smarmy, slimy, wishy-washy politicos who speak in sound bites and talk a big game but never deliver. It doesn’t need any more. What it needs is more Archie Bunkers—assertive, unvarnished, politically incorrect types who care less about their positions and more about fixing what’s wrong with the country.

When the hero you’ve waited for your entire life finally comes along, you don’t turn your nose up at his hairdo or his spray-tan or his ego-stroking. You load him into the barrel of a gun and fire him at the enemies of the American people.

Now I might not agree with everything said, but I think it is a good explainer of how many feel. Polls have shown most Americans have felt negative about the direction of their country since the 1970s. Doesn’t matter who was run office. So when an outsider comes along, he strikes a chord with the disillusioned.

This is one reason it is important in NZ to have Governments that do actually achieve things. If the population stays disillusioned for long periods of time, then populists do well.

ACT announced:

Employers will no longer be obligated to automatically deduct fees from union members’ pay if a bill lodged in Parliament’s ballot by ACT MP Dr Parmjeet Parmar is drawn and passes.

“Currently, the Employment Relations Act makes employers responsible for separating union fees from wages and salaries, and passing those fees on to the relevant union. This is an administrative burden, imposed by law, apparently intended to tilt the playing field in favour of unions at the expense of businesses,” says Dr Parmar.

“ACT believes union membership is a private agreement between a worker and a union. If a union wants to take fees from workers’ wages, that union should be responsible for the administrative process.

I agree absolutely. Unions should be given contact details of those who fall under a collective contract, and arrange directly with that worker for an AP or DD for their membership fees – as every other NGO has to do.

It will actually improve good unions, by incentivising them to be more responsive to their members.

The Herald reports:

Rotorua Library’s Rainbow Storytime event has been cancelled due to security concerns amid “hostile dialogue” and “rapid spread of misinformation”, the council says.

It comes after Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki last week pledged to shut down the event prompting calls for a counter-protest to protect attendees. Two Rotorua Lakes Council elected members clashed over differing views of the event.

The free event planned for tomorrow would have seen Taranaki drag queen entertainers Coco (Sunita Torrance) and Erika Flash (Daniel Lockett) reading children books such as Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae.

The council released a statement this afternoon advising the event will no longer be held.

This is the wrong call. This has deprived the parents who want their kids to be able to attend, to do so. It is forcing the views of some on others. Those who don’t want their kids to attend, don’t have to.

Those who think the event is inappropriate have the right to protest it. But there is no right to shut an event down. And the Council’s job is to provide security if needed, not to allow the threat of protest to stop an event.

NZ’s ethic breakdown is approximately:

• 70.2% European (3,297,860 people)
• 16.5% Māori (775,840 people)
• 15.1% Asian (707,600 people)
• 8.1% Pacific peoples (381,640 people)
• 1.5% Middle Eastern, Latin American and African (MELAA) (70,330 people). 

39% of Aucklanders were born overseas.

And yet … the Labour government edicts are still in place in Government departments. I looked at an Education Review Office advert on Seek today. To be fit to work for them you need to have:

“- a demonstrated commitment to biculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand.”
(www.seek.co.nz/job/74621849?savedSearchID=4d316ac8-0ee7-4b19-9b79-602e382904df&tracking=JMC-SavedSearch-anz-2)

Does the 25% Asian, Pacific Peoples, and MELAA (and all of those new Aucklanders) – know that they are either Pakeha or non-entities and do not matter in our education system?

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

The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote.

National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost half that of Labour. It’s a reminder that money can’t sell a bad product.

The left want to force taxpayers to fund political parties so go on about the impact of money on politics. But the empirical evidence is that the correlation between how much you spend and how many votes you get is very very weak.

Sure more money is better than less money. Just as more volunteers are better than fewer. And more members are better than fewer etc. But none are as important as a party’s leadership, brand and policies.

Here is the list of recessions since the 1980s, in NZ:

• Jun to Dec 86: -4.9%
• Jan to Jun 91: -4.8%
• Jan 08 to Mar 09: -2.9%
• Jul to Dec 10: -2.6%
• Jan to Jun 20: -10.6%
• Oct 22 to Mar 23: -0.9%
• Jul 23 to Dec 24: -0.5%

They do seem to occur a lot under or just after Labour Governments. Must just be coincidence and bad luck I guess.

1 News reports:

Amalgamating councils is being pitched so that challenges around the structure of local government in the region can be addressed.

Under the early plans there would be one council for Wairarapa, one for Wellington, the Hutt Valley and Porirua and one for Kāpiti and potentially Horowhenua.

There would still be one regional council.

That seems a good solution to me. The four urban city councils merge into one urban city council. The rural Wairarapa doesn’t merge with Wellington but does merge the three local Councils. And the provincial areas of Kapiti and Horowhenua join together. Otaki and Levin should not be in seperate Councils.

This is a fascinating trend. Polls are not an election result, but it does show a real weakness for the Democrats that their biggest drop in support is from Hispanics and Black voters. The tweet series also shows how the Democrats now lead the GOP amongst the wealthiest voters, while working class voters have increased support for the GOP.

The Government has now published equity numbers and bands for all schools, replacing the old decile system. The equity numbers represents how disadvantaged students at a school are, and so the higher the equity number the more disadvantaged the students.

There are 2,463 schools with an equity index. The number in each range are.

• Fewest 325
• Few 345
• Below Average 346
• Average 351
• Above Average 361
• Many 331
• Most 404

I’ve merged some spreadsheets together so people can search for a school and see its equity number, its band and group.

Emeritus Professor of Engineering Mike Kelly has published a paper estimating the costs to New Zealand to achieve net zero emissions.

He says three major projects would need to be completed:

• Ground transport will have been electrified.
• Heat, especially industrial heat, will have been electrified.
• The electricity sector – generation, transmission, and distribution – will have been greatly expanded to cope with the increased demand from the first two projects.

And this has to be done within the next 26 years.

The electricity sector would need to grow from 155 PJ to 425 PJ. The total cost is estimated at NZ$500 billion.

Liam Hehir writes:

In 2019, the government led by Jacinda Ardern announced a ban on the issue of new permits for offshore exploration of oil and gas. The ban was nationwide but, naturally, hit some regions much harder than others. While centres of media, art and government like Wellington and Auckland were not directly affected the results were devastating for Taranaki.

Thousands of well-paying, blue-collar jobs would go. Tens of thousands of dollars would be lopped off average household incomes. Families would be forced to move.

There was some mention of this in reporting at the time. Nothing quite likes the outpouring of grief that has accompanied the recent loss of media jobs, however. To be fair, if Taranaki oil workers had means of mass communication, then we probably would have seen a fortnight of jilted-lover style attacks on the government of the day.

The media demand the Government must save jobs in their industry, yet show little empathy for employees in industries such as mining, oil, primary industries who face large industry job losses also.

The media is going to have to face the reality of its situation. There is no white knight who is going to ride to the rescue with an unconditional basic income for media firms. There is just not enough trust or goodwill among the public or the politicians for this to even be proposed. That is a fact that the sector has to come to grips with.

You should never, ever presume to tell anyone how they should feel about a tough situation. Journalists are facing great uncertainty and worry. And it’s not just them, remember, but production crews, makeup artists and all manner of others required to put together a quality broadcast production.

But as media is forced to cover itself, it may be good to look back and remember the disciplines and balance of sympathies that were maintained when it came to reporting on other sectors that underwent similar disruptions. Because the plight of welders servicing gas exploration companies in Taranaki were no less destabilised and worried by what the previous government did to them, and if nuance and detachment could be insisted upon then, it can be now.

Exactly.

Amy and Hamish Bielski write:

You might be thinking that everyone has to play their part – the sacrifice needs to fall on every sector in the battle against global warming. If that is the case, we should compare ‘apples with apples.’ Our ruminant methane and your car emissions are both greenhouse gases – but they differ significantly. Our emissions can only occur by our using lots of CO2 – greenhouse gas – to create them.

Compared to you, we have a ‘net’ position. Here is what our research showed.

According to a paper published called Phase 3 Multivariate analysis of Greenhouse Gas emissions from sheep and beef farms – April 2020 it takes up to 7 tonnes of CO2 to grow a hectare of grass on our farm. It’s called photosynthesis (if you can’t remember your college science.) Plants use CO2, sunlight, water and mineral salts.

We turn those 7 tonnes of CO2 per hectare into enough feed for 10 ewes. Those 10 ewes each emit about 20 – 22 grams of methane a day which means they produce in total 80 kgs of methane per year. It is accepted that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 – generally regarded as 28 times stronger. If we multiply our ewe’s 80 kgs of methane by 28 we get 2,250 kgs of CO2 equivalent.

We are, therefore, using over three times more CO2 than we emit. A car owner cannot say that. Or a coal fired boiler. Or a private jet going to a climate conference. Farmers are not quite the villains we are made out to be.

A reasonable argument.

Newsroom reports:

Rod Oram, a treasured Newsroom colleague and leading business and climate commentator in NZ public life for decades, has died in Auckland from injuries suffered in a cycling accident.

Rod, aged 73, died on Tuesday in Auckland Hospital, two days after suffering a cardiac arrest and crashing off his bike at Ambury Park in Māngere Bridge.

A family statement said he passed away peacefully, with his wife Lynn and daughter Celeste and her husband Keir present.

“We thank you for all your messages, thoughts and prayers at this difficult time,” the statement said.

I was stunned to see this news on Twitter today. I’ve been on several panels with Rod, and have always enjoyed our conversations and discussions. He had a real passion for both NZ businesses and our environment.

My thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues.

It is always hard to say but , like many New Zealander’s of my time growing up – I was repeatedly sexually abused by a relative (an uncle). I was thirty-five years old before I came to the point that I could tell my parents. I told them over dinner and their response was, literally; “Can you pass the salt and what do you have on tomorrow?”

One of our problems is that we see that type of abuse as predominantly actions of the past. According to information below it has never been worse.

We are worried about feeding kids in NZ and all manner of people throw themselves into that argument. There is so much more to protecting children and ensuring their innocence lasts as long as it should.

I recently met with a person who is now researching and advocating in this area as well as working alongside amazing people in the field. I cannot name her but below is her summary of the situation (unedited by me).

The NZ child sexual abuse epidemic.

An ordinary person likely associates child sexual abuse (CSA) with stranger-danger or child trafficking that occurs elsewhere. Contrary to this, in NZ, in-person CSA:

• Mainly brews quietly in domestic (family and extended family) and high trust environments (friends, schools, youth clubs)
• 40%+ of CSA is incest
• 70% if not more of all reported sex crimes is CSA (children and youth under 16)

CSA as a topic that naturally produces cognitive dissonance “It can’t possibly happen, so it does not happen”. CSA exploits children’s natural trust of adults and thrives on this dissonance.  

Online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) including abuse live streaming is growing at an alarming rate and interacts with incest and other in-person offending A Sea of Red Dots: The Explosion in Online Child Sexual Abuse, with Elizabeth and Ted Cross and Stefan Turkheimer – One in Ten (oneintenpodcast.org)

New Zealand Police Statement on End-to-End Encryption

Online harm: ‘Children don’t know where to go for support’ | RNZ News

CSA thrives because it causes invisible to the naked eye damage to silent victims, who deteriorate gradually over time to the point of suicide.

CSA is a modern-day societal leprosy where crippled survivors are segregated in leper houses of life-long therapy.

A crisis of seeing sexual object in a child is a moral and behavioural one, a crisis of cultural ethics. CSA cases are not isolated incidents, they are symptoms of our society attitudes.

CSA atrocities are committed in peace time on our soil by members of our society.

The societal cost is compounded by life-long health impacts on victims, as well as the cost of government’s child protection and prosecution functions and legal aid assistance afforded to perpetrators.

CSA can be stopped tomorrow if we got serious about it. It’s on us to take the first step.

• We owe to our kids an honest conversation and an apology for how low we have fallen
• CSA must become shared responsibility of every adult
• We need to revise the role of children in society and the value we assign to them
• The ultimate indicator of societal prosperity should be the quality of childhood
• It’s time for a collective action, NZ’s social foundation depends on it.

Insightful articles:

Child Sexual Abuse: Private Trouble or Public Issue?
Regulating Bodies: Children and Sexual Violence (marquette.edu)

Statistics:

HELP (helpauckland.org.nz)
WellStop – Home
CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE – TOAH-NNEST
About the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse | New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse (nzfvc.org.nz)
Family violence & sexual violence work programme | New Zealand Ministry of Justice
Home – Safeguarding Children

Her final note was:

” [there is] the added problem of inhumanity of the current legal system towards child victims, which is well documented in this Chief victim advisor report. I do not understand why it is so hard to fast track judge only trials as was recommended in the 2015 system review, for at least under 12 years of age victims.”

PS (from me): It is easy to feel high and mighty (or self-righteous) on a topic like this. I posted this on Monday on substack the other day to set myself aside from that: https://alwynpoole.substack.com/p/i-have-been-thinking-a-lot-lately

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

A guest post by a reader:

I listened recently to an interview on The Platform between Michael Laws  and Prof Boyd Swinburn speaking about the Food in Schools Programme.

The interview was conducted respectfully notwithstanding totally different perspectives.

To my mind (and lets accept my centre-right instincts at the outset) Prof Swinburn gave the game away towards the end of the interview.  What I mean by that is that after giving all the expected nutritional arguments for the programme he then resorted to supplementary benefits like freeing busy parents from having to prepare food in the morning and creating employment for food preparers.

To which I can only say “are you kidding me?”.  

Do intelligent people who think about such things really believe that the taxpayer should spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year (much of it wasted) to feed children, with employment creation and an easier morning school-run as part justification?  To answer my own question, they clearly do.  And the reason why, and also the reason why I say Prof Swinburn gave the game away, is because their thinking is ideological.  Like much of the school food, their reasoning is pap and rooted in assumptions which place no value on prudence, self-reliance, and efficiency.

So let me approach the problem from my own perspective, and let me state as part of this a number of assumptions which you may or may not believe but which to me are at least arguable.

First Thing: Food in schools can only ever be a partial solution to wider nutritional and family issues.  

A simple point by which I mean that if a family genuinely is in high need then one free lunch a day for five days a week for that part of the year that a child goes to school will only ever partially meet the need.  And I think most supporters of the programme would agree with that.  So to that extent the programme is ad hoc and the debate about its scope is always about the degree of ad hocness.

Second Thing: A genuinely hungry child who is impacted by that hunger to the extent it inhibits school participation, will seek out food.  

When a child is hungry the type of food is going to be less a concern than the fact of the food.  An assertion yes, but to my mind a reasonable one.

Third Thing: A child that is not genuinely hungry or comes from a family that could make other choices will to some extent regulate the demand by their response to what is provided.

By which I mean if you serve burgers and chips discretionary users may well take up the offer, but if you serve something more nutritious and less attractive they may not.

Corollary: If our programme is inherently ad hoc, but is highly likely to capture real need, and can be framed to exclude discretionary choices, then let’s do exactly that! 

Surely the solution here is simple, highly nutritious, relatively low-cost food made available freely to those who seek it but not so attractive as to create significant discretionary demand, with the limited objective (as is the case now) of to some extent meeting the needs in a child’s life?  

I am no expert but what about milk and bananas for every one who wants them but not provided universally within a school?  Or simple well-made sandwiches high on nutrition and low on luxury?  Provide them on request but freely; perhaps more than once during the day.  Choose practical and easily-shifted products that minimise cost.  

Many of us grew up on peanut butter or marmite sandwiches, raisins and a quarter of cheddar cheese all set out in a lunch box with compartments for each.  I am not advocating for that necessarily because I dont know the nutritional benefits of that combination.  But surely it is not beyond the minds of people like Prof Swinburn to step out of their ideological swamp where big is always better and inclusiveness always trumps managing cost and think of simple, practical, minimalist solutions which give lots of bang for not much buck?  Especially when appropriate design will exclude that part of the recipient group that doesn’t actually need or want the service.

The counter-argument will be that because people are poor we only want to give them yucky food.  Which is nonsense of course because I am suggesting the opposite.  If nutritional value means desirable then I want to give kids desirable food.  But I do think that using the attributes of food to distinguish between those who genuinely need to have their diet supplemented and those who don’t really care is sensible and an acknowledgement of the fact there is ultimately no such thing as a free lunch.

Lindsay Mitchell writes:

Between the passage of the Social Security Act in 1938 and the early 1970s the percentage of working-age people on a benefit never exceeded two. Today it stands at almost twelve, with the time people stay dependent growing every year.

As a society we have created this level of reliance by believing and acting on a bad idea. That we must not judge others. We must not mention their faults and shortcomings. We must bend over backwards to not blame the person responsible for their own troubles. That’s the ‘kindness and compassion’ we are taught to aspire to.

Until Louise Upston said something quite contrary but actually utterly sensible.

In assessing applicants for emergency housing case managers must take into account whether they have “unreasonably contributed” to their need.

One assumes that if the answer is positive, there will be no emergency housing offered.

Behaviour should have consequences, and bad behaviour should not result in being rewarded.

Grant Duncan writes:

I too have questioned the boot camps (on grounds of a lack of evidence of effectiveness) and queried the possible reduction of the school lunches programme. But Prof Kidman let herself down, as an academic, by resorting to an ad hominemattack. Accusing the present government (the elected representatives) of hating children and asking if they’re a “death-cult” was nothing unusual on X, but was well below par for credible academic debate. And she does display the title Prof. on her X profile.

There is a world of difference between saying boot camps are bad public policy and saying the Government hates children and is a death cult.

In this case, however, I can’t defend the professor, as her words strayed from academic standards. Of course she’s free, by law, to say what she likes, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences for her academic reputation. …

DPMC have since expressed concern that Prof Kidman’s comments “may bring the centre into disrepute”. May? I’d say the damage is done.

Absolutely. The centre no longer has any credibility.

The Free Speech Union notes

You may have been following in the media the backlash Professor Joanna Kidman has received since tweeting some criticism against the Government. 

Victoria University say while they stand for academic freedom, her comments don’t “support an inclusive conversation” and they are “discussing this matter” with her.

But, academic freedom depends on individuals having their say and participating in debates. So in Joanna’s role as a professor, the university should butt out. 

However, her tweet was made in the capacity of her role as director of He Whenua Taurikura, the Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism, funded by the Department of Cabinet and Prime Minister (DPMC). This brings some other implications. The Government doesn’t have to fund someone whose output they clearly can have no confidence in.

So, was Joanna allowed to make the claims she did, or wasn’t she? In the capacity as a professor, absolutely. But as a DPMC-funded, minister-appointed advisor, her contribution needs to be credible, moderate, and principled. And big questions exist as to whether that’s the case!   

I think that is correct. As an academic she has the right to call the government a death cult and appear unhinged. She won’t be the only one. So she would remained a tenured Professor at VUW.

But as the director of a government funded anti-extremism organisation, her role is untenable. She is an extremist, and isn’t suitable to keep her current role.

Sky News reports:

The fact-checking director who oversees Mark Zuckerberg’s misinformation program on Facebook has been caught in secret emails colluding with a now disgraced operation which suppressed journalism during Australia’s Voice referendum. …

RMIT FactLab was suspended from fact checking on Facebook after a Sky News Australia investigation in Augustfound the operation was filled with partisan activists who used their powers to censor journalism on Facebook they disagreed with, particularly in relation to the Voice referendum.

The investigation, dubbed The Fact Check Files, revealed the university had breached the IFCN’s rules of impartiality several times, including when its fact checking director Russell Skelton was campaigning for a change to Australia’s constitution during a contentious referendum debate.

A fact checker that is also a campaigner!

RMIT university was paid up to $740,000 from a Meta Irish subsidiary to finance its operation which targeted just one side of the Voice referendum debate, censoring journalism by reducing the reach of content on the platform.

Facebook fact checkers can reduce or kill your visibility on Facebook.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Housing Minister Chris Bishop today announced the Government had ordered Kāinga Ora’s board to scrap the Sustaining Tenancies Framework, which aimed to sustain tenancies with a goal to avoid evictions and exits into homelessness, while also balancing obligations to neighbours and wider communities.

Labour prioritised tenants who terrorised their neighbours over their victims. They instituted a policy of basically no consequences for bad behaviour which was a disaster.

It didn’t only victimise neighbours. It also created a backlash against Kainga Ora housing projects, as communities don’t want neighbours who can terrorise them with impunity. Decades of goodwill for state housing projects got wiped away by this disastrous policy.

Bishop claimed the framework had removed incentives for tenants to improve their behaviour. He cited the “most recent stat” that there had been 335 serious complaints per month, which included intimidation, harassment and threatening behaviour. In 2023, three tenancies had been ended due to disruptive behaviour, Bishop claimed.

So around 0.1% of serious complaints result in evictions.

“At a time when there are over 25,000 people on the social housing waitlist, Kāinga Ora should not be prioritising tenants who abuse their home or their neighbours above families who are anxiously waiting for a home,” he said.

Yes Labour had a policy that prioritised gang members who terrorise their neighbours over families who are waiting for the privilege of a state house, and will be good neighbours.

Greens housing spokeswoman Tamatha Paul believed the Government was “seeking to define a category of undeserving poor people”.

Normal Greens ideology. The fact is people who terrorise their neighbours are undeserving. Greens views criminals as victims and victims as, well collateral damage.

“This politics of punishment from the coalition must come to an end before it does irreparable damage to communities who have historically been let down, time and time again, by successive Governments.”

The communities being let down are the 98% of state house tenants who don’t terrorise their neighbours.

Paul said it would be cruel if the Government evicted more state housing tenants during a cost-of-living crisis and following changes to benefit increases which mean beneficiaries will receive less over time.

Anyone evicted is replaced by a family that benefits from the income related rent. And it is easy not to get evicted. Its called not acting like a sociopath.

A resident on Auckland’s North Shore said his family were “over the moon” at the Government’s announcement after having constant problems with a neighbouring Kāinga Ora property when new tenants moved in last year.

William Macneil said an abusive Kāinga Ora tenant on electronically monitored bail lunged at him with a large “butcher’s knife” and threatened to kill Macneil’s family by ramming their house with a car in September last year.

Labour and Greens don’t want this to result in eviction.