Thomas Coughlan writes:

There’s a joke going around the UK at the moment about soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s 2024 election campaign.

“Britain is broken,” the slogan goes, “let’s do nothing about it”.

The soon to be former will be correct. Will happen soon after the May local elections.

You’ll know by now Labour is running a “small target” strategy of little policy and therefore giving the coalition as little space as possible on which to attack it. 

The thin policy slate has begun to get Labour into testy scraps during its regular sitting week media stand-ups, in which press gallery journalists from several outlets have decided the party has crossed the invisible threshold that marks the point at which it is no longer tenable to offer critique without proposing at least some solutions. 

The lack of ideas is becoming a liability. MPs with nothing to talk about risk saying things they don’t really mean.

It’s one thing to have no policy two years out from an election. It’s another to have nothing a few months out.

Labour MPs are an academic bunch (sometimes to a fault), and they have plenty of ideas. They’re just afraid to show them.

Not brain dead, but brain scared. Labour’s problem is that on the outside, brain scared looks an awful lot like brain death.

Brain scared – I like it.

It’s weighing reinstating a form of its interest deductions ban, but with the country, particularly Auckland, in the midst of a multi-year property crash, the electorate’s appetite for taxes to whack depressed prices even lower is limited – particularly if Labour decides to lift the council rates cap, a policy desired by Labour-friendly local government, but which will blow a double-digit sized hole in Labour’s affordability message no number of free GP visits can fix.

I’d love Labour to campaign on allowing more 20% rates increases.

A lot of what is sold to students and families in NZ education is highly mythical and primarily for the benefit of the perception of the school – as opposed to the genuine good of the students.

“Sports Academies” within school are often an example of this.

I love sport and sporting achievements. I see no negative at all with young people (and adults for that matter) being fit and active in any range of ways.

A part of my background growing up was 1^st XV rugby, age group and limited first class representation. I then went on to coach through school levels – including three years with the Tauranga Boys College 1^st XV – club with two years of University of Auckland Under 21s and three years of University of Auckland Premiers. I was privileged to make small to moderate coaching contributions to 18 players who represented a range of nations at Rugby World Cups.

Throughout the world the perception of the opportunities in professional sport are significantly overblown.

For instance; for American Football approximately 7% of high school players make college rosters and only 2.6% of those are Division 1. One 1.5% get drafted to the NFL for careers that last an average of 3.4 years. So; 0.023% of High School players make the NFL and the vast majority of those careers are over well before 30 years old.

While in New Zealand I could look at the full range of sports rugby is enough to give an indicator of how limited – and short-lived – the opportunities are.

Rugby Union became officially professional in 1995. Recent statistics have approximately 400 domestically based players and 460 NZ overseas players that could be regarded as professional. Clearly there would be a huge range of incomes covering those 860 players (prior to a Ranfurly Shield game I once got a free pair of boots that I was pretty chuffed with). There is then a range of roles from administrators, coaches, match officials, etc – who earn an income through the sport. New Zealand is not alone in this – for example – less than 1% of South African High School rugby players make it into the professional ranks.

In terms of another sport; for all of the New Zealand boys who have player 1^st XI Soccer over our history – only six have played in the English Premier League.

Many New Zealand schools now have “rugby academies” and high provision features for other sports. They often involve significant promises towards a professional future.

My best guess is that New Zealand has around 8,750 1^st XV rugby players each year, There are 29,153 teenage boys registered as playing the game.

When the 2023 All Black squad travelled to the Rugby World Cup only 23 out of 460 schools were represented. In the history of the game – by that point – only 28 schools had seen 10 or more players go on to All Black representation. Over its 153 years existence to that point Auckland Grammar School has the most with 51 players – i.e. 1 All Black every three years. Christchurch Boys High School was second (and catching up fast) with 47 All Blacks over 141 years.

The average number of games played by an All Black is less than 13. That is also a number skewed by a small number of players who play a high number of tests. That is similar to the NFL where high profile players, of the Tom Brady type, create the impression that it is a long-term career option. In a conversation I has with NRL legend Paul Whatuira his point was that NRL stands for “not real long”.

My point. I have a son who competed well for a number of years as a professional athlete in NZ, the USA and other international situations. Soon into that “career” he realised that academics is not “Plan B” but “Plan Also” … and the long-term foundation. He completed his sporting career with some achievements to be proud of and now, through his qualifications, has a superb professional career in developing medications in the USA. One of his greatest privileges was to spend a weekend with Sir Peter Snell. Sir Peter fully acknowledged the deep sense of achievement with his three Olympic Golds and world records. He retired from competitive athletics in 1965 at the age of 27. In 1971 he moved to the USA and had a remarkable academic career that he was equally proud of.

I have no issue with schools having high quality sporting provisions and encouraging students to be aspirational in that area. But they must never exploit those young people for their own reputation and MUST see that their academics/qualifications are of, at least, equal value.

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A guest post by Mark Adams:

I was part of the Te Papa Treaty exhibit design team

 I’ve been waiting for the trial before assembling my reactions. Now that a court trial won’t happen here are my thoughts.

It’s disconcerting to see your work attacked with such vehemence, but admittedly Te Wehi Ratana’s stunt was carried out with some elan.

 I do feel sorry for the historians who briefed us on the design team.

All that effort bringing together the evidence, documents and records of the actual event at the time it happened. Plus the for-and-against arguments that took place at the time, the many various treaties signed elsewhere around the country, and stories and subsequent developments that grew from the signing.

They were aware of the potential for racist politics and specifically stated that the planned exhibit was not to be a “white/brown man bad, brown/white man good” display but an honest presentation of what happened at the time, and a commemoration of the pivotal event in the process of our becoming a nation.

The space we designed accommodated all this and provided for the contemplative and the dramatic, befitting its central place in the heart of Te Papa, the nation’s museum.

But our historians made a terrible mistake.

They neglected to adopt and elevate a particular opinion written nearly a century and a half after the events took place. 

Fortunately that was easily put right with spray paint and an angle grinder.

I oppose Ratana’s revisionist ethno-activism but he was effective. He knew his audience, played them perfectly and they responded just as those who think the correct thoughts should.

Te Papa’s managers witnessed living history taking place in their own museum. How exciting! Oh we’ll show it at an activist exhibition before we hide it out of sight, and now we can talk about the treaty the correct way!

The judge and the destruction of tens of thousands of tax payers’ property? Oh that. Dealing with that particular vandalism with a trial is not in the public interest. How could the public think otherwise. Charges dropped.

Why stop there. 

Obviously displaying what actually happened at the time it happened, in an exhibit about the Treaty was a mistake. So many complaints! 

Let’s pay Ratana to destroy the other text panel too – then give him the tools to properly attack the centrepiece of the whole thing – the large glass replica of the Treaty itself.

From Patreon:

The Canadian Government is riding with wave of popularity while re-election prospects for the New Zealand and US Governments take a tumble.

Ani O’Brien writes:

Every election cycle, like clockwork, Opportunity (TOP) reappears. It refreshes its branding, gets a new leader, rolls out a new slate of candidates, and the media, just as predictably, froths over them. Since Gareth Morgan founded the party in 2016, this has become a familiar ritual in New Zealand politics.

Their results have been:

• 2017: Gareth Morgan 2.4%
• 2020 Geoff Simmons 1.5%
• 2023: Raf Manji 2.2%

The language TOP uses, the issues it elevates, and the solutions it proposes sit squarely within the worldview of the contemporary Left. Climate transition, inequality, child poverty, biodiversity, housing equity, “regenerative” economic systems, co-governance, and a persistent critique of “short-term politics”. This is a standard issue framework of modern Leftist politics, but delivered in a tone designed to sound above it all. There is a moral narrative underpinning it that systems are failing, outcomes are unjust, the current model is unsustainable, and the answer lies in structural reform guided by experts to produce fairer and more equitable results.

None of this is inherently illegitimate. But it is not ideologically neutral. It is a more polished, less confrontational version of the same arguments that animate Labour and the Greens. TOP’s point of difference is not in what it believes, but in how it presents those beliefs. It strips out the activist rhetoric, softens the edges, and wraps the whole thing in the language of rationality and competence. It is Left-wing politics for people who do not like the current aesthetic of Left-wing politics.

In the unlikely event that TOP made 5% and got into Parliament, I would say there is a 99.9% chance they would support a Labour/Green/Te Pati Maori Government over the current Government.

Henry specialises in foreign elections, and has visited Hungary during the campaign. He thought Orban would lose, and the results are indicating the opposition may not just win, but even gain a two thirds majority allowing constitutional changes.

Note that Tisza is not a left wing party. It is a centre-right party that has opposed Orban’s corruption.

Orban’s Fidesz is a nationalist authoritarian party.

The third party that might gain seats is also on the right – Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland), which is close to neo-fascist.

Orban has conceded defeat a few minutes ago, which is good. If the result was close, he may have tried to stay on, but the result is so over whelming that he can’t.

Turnout was a record 78%.

The Herald reports:

Iran and the United States failed to reach an agreement to end the war in the Middle East, US Vice-President JD Vance said after marathon talks in Islamabad, adding that he was leaving negotiations after giving Tehran the “final and best offer”.

We should, sadly, get used to higher petrol and diesel prices for a long time.

The Post reports:

A woman who accused her husband of rape, only for her story to be proven to be almost impossible, hasn’t been charged with making a false complaint or giving false evidence in court.

That’s despite her former husband being convicted of rape, and spending nearly two-and-a-half years in prison.

Why not? If it is proven she lied, she should be charged.

An inquiry found:

• The woman had been unclear and inconsistent in her account, and was uncooperative with authorities, including not preserving crucial corroborating evidence.
• Her accounts of the events and her drinking on the day of the alleged second rape, did not match her level of intoxication, with the woman having a blood alcohol level 2.5 times the legal driving limit when tested at 7.50pm in hospital that day.
• At the hospital, she asked for the morning-after pill, despite knowing her former husband had had a successful vasectomy. The woman said she had forgotten this.
• Photos of her legs taken the following day showed yellowing of bruises, indicating they couldn’t have been caused by the alleged assault.
• She gave “different false explanations” for her head injury, saying it occurred when she was pushed on to a bathroom window sill, but it was also consistent with her slipping and hitting her head while intoxicated.
• The cellphone evidence also led Kincade to conclude the woman wasn’t at home when she claimed Mr Z attacked and raped her, and Mr Z’s account was more reliable, she found.

He spent two years in jail because she lied, and she gets no consequence.

The Taxpayer’s Union has found:

• Total crown borrowing per household went from around $60k in 2017 to $120k in 2023
• The govt deficit per household is around $7,000 each
• Finance costs per household on crown debt gone from $2k in 2017 to $4k in 2023
• The number of public servants went from 48k to almost 63k

From Nate Silver:

Trump has gone from +12% to -17% net approval rating. That’s overall. On immigration he is at -10%, economy -21%, trade -22% and inflation a massive -34%.

This is how he compares to other Presidents after 446 days in office.

1. JFK: +65%
2. Bush 43: +57%
3. Johnson: +56%
4. Bush 41: +52%
5. Eisenhower: +44%
6. Nixon: +22%
7. Clinton +13%
8. Carter: +9%
9. Ford: +6%
10. Obama +1%
11. Reagan: -1%
12. Truman: -2%
13. Biden: -12%
14. Trump 1: -13%
15. Trump 2: -17%

Shane Jones announced:

The Government will enter into an agreement to support an additional 90 million litres of storage for diesel at Marsden Point in Northland to boost New Zealand’s fuel resilience as the Middle East conflict continues to impact global fuel supplies, Regional Development and Associate Energy Minister Shane Jones says.

Senior Ministers yesterday signed off on up to $21.6 million from the Regional Infrastructure Fund (RIF) to Channel Infrastructure NZ Ltd.

This is one of the most important things the Government can do. If we end up with supply issues, then the more storage capacity we have in NZ, the better placed we are to get through it with fewer restrictions.

The Government announced:

The proposed wind farm will be developed across 58km² of privately owned land in eastern Southland, about 30km southeast of Gore. 

Minister Chris Bishop said approval has taken around 5 months following the commencement of an expert panel.

“This project, with national benefits, will significantly increase the amount of power supplied to the national grid. The wind farm will generate up to 380 megawatts (MW) and provide power for up to 150,000 households and includes 55 wind turbines, each up to approximately 7MW in capacity.”

Minister Shane Jones said the project would inject $13.5 million into the local economy and create up to 300 jobs during construction.

This is a great outcome – more renewable energy and more jobs in Southland. The project died under the RMA, but has been consented under the fast track law.

A guest post by Rhys Hurley, Investigations Co-ordinator for the Taxpayers’ Union:

Taxpayers have a right to know what is being done with their money. The Official Information Act (OIA) is one of the only tools they have to find out. 

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has, however, asked his officials to review the cost of this system and even floated the idea of restricting access to some of this information.

He is right to acknowledge that the system is under pressure. Requests are up. Complaints into response times continue to rise. The process has become slower, more legalistic, and far more defensive.

But Minister Goldsmith’s potential restrictions are a huge problem. If the question is how to reduce costs, the answer cannot be to shut out the public.

Making it harder for the taxpaying public, journalists and elected politicians to get information will not fix the problem, but will just weaken decision makers’ already-limited accountability.

Instead, reform must start from first principles. The 1978 Danks Committee, set up to review how government information was handled and which ultimately led to the OIA, was clear: official information should be made available unless there is good reason to withhold it. The whole point was to move away from secrecy as the default.

That principle is now being eroded.

The pressure Goldsmith is pointing to is not just requesters with too much time on their hands, but the result of how the system now operates. What should be simple has become slow and bureaucratic.

Even the insiders agree. The Public Service Census 2025 described a culture focused on avoiding OIAs, with processes clogged by multiple approval layers and an approach that treats requests as a risk rather than a duty. That is the real problem.

Why people are having to ask for information in the first place is another question for the review. Too much information that should be routine seems to be locked up until somebody forces it out.

OIA volumes rise as departments are repeatedly asked for the same briefings, the same communications, and the same spending data, with each time seeing the possibility of the four-week process starting again from scratch. 

The obvious answer is to publish more of this data up front. Other countries already treat this as standard procedure.

In Canada, agencies must proactively release contracts, grants, expenses, and audit reports on one central portal. Australian agencies publish disclosure logs, so every information request is available to all, and repeated requests are less likely.

The United Kingdom also has mandatory transparency rules around what information must be released by departments. Unlike New Zealand, Brits also have the right to send their questions to Parliament.

By comparison, New Zealand has no consistent approach. Instead, people are forced to rely on the Ombudsman just to get information that has already been deemed in the public interest in previous rulings and guidance. This drags the process out and further drives up cost.

The real issue here is that too much information is still being held back in the first place. 

If any findings of the review recommend a cost-recovery exercise and clamping down on requests, the Government will have learnt the wrong lesson. Yes, responding to OIA requests costs time and money, but that is the cost of a healthy democracy.

There is a better approach. 

By setting rules on what should be proactively published and following the Ombudsman’s guidelines on what should be considered in the public’s interest, there would be less need for requests in the first place. 

Additionally, a streamlined sign-off process so multiple layers of bureaucracy don’t need to approve a response would cut through the layers of management that often lengthen the wait times on responses. 

Either of these would reduce pressure on agencies while strengthening transparency and accountability. Both would solve the problem Minister Goldsmith is looking to fix.

When governments feel pressure, the instinct is always the same: release less, control more, and complain about the people asking questions. That would be a mistake. 

Open government itself is not the problem. The problem is that every request is being treated like handing over the nuclear codes.

If ministers are tired of taxpayers asking how their money is being spent, the solution is simple: Stop making them ask.

d

The Judicial Conduct Panel’s report is scathing of Judge Aitken, but concludes her behaviour doesn’t meet the threshold for removal as she is such a junior judge, and due to retire soon anyway.

Some of their findings were:

• the Judge’s actions were a serious breach of comity
• the Judge had a poor understanding of the constraints upon a serving judge, and hence a significant lack of appreciation of the seriousness of her actions
• find as a fact that the Judge spoke loudly and called out or shouted into the Wintergarden thereby causing a disturbance during Mr Peters’ speech
• the Judge did not appear to have any comprehension about how her conduct might be perceived
• the Panel rejects the proposition that the Judge’s conduct was in her personal or private capacity
• the Judge did not respect the role of the parliamentary process on this matter and risked undermining public confidence in her impartiality on the proper role of tikanga in the law in a matter that could come before the court.
• We have no doubt that the Judge’s conduct would have likely affected the perceptions of other members of the executive and at least some of the general public as to the Judge’s ability to silo her own political views when dealing with matters of political sensitivity
• the Judge understated the nature of her conduct, in particular portraying the incident as “trivial” and telling her head of bench that a “brief comment” had been blown out of all proportion
• The Judge failed to comprehend that her revulsion at a view expressed on a political issue and her own self-conviction on the point do not provide a justification for her speaking out in a context where the principle of comity applies.
• It gave the Panel no confidence in the Judge’s understanding of the restrictions that apply to a Judge speaking on political matters
• Certainly aspects of the Judge’s subsequent conduct and some of the justifications advanced for it in this inquiry have given the Panel pause

So pretty damning stuff. But in the end they say it does not meet the threshold for removal because:

Ultimately however we have concluded that, although the conduct in its entirety came reasonably close to the line, the case falls short of the high bar warranting removal. Having regard to the jurisdiction in which the Judge sits, her previously unblemished record, and her better understanding of her judicial obligations as explained in these reasons, we do not consider that there is a realistic possibility that an order for removal of the Judge would be made.

They also noted her warrant expires in February.

The Post reports:

Wellington City’s residential rates have more than doubled since 2012, making them among the highest and least affordable in the country, a new council-commissioned report says.

Including the levy for the new $511 million Moa Point sludge-minimisation plant, median Wellington City residential rates soared from $1985 in 2012 to $5177 last year – far outpacing the 56% rise in median household wages over the same period, according to an Infometrics rates-affordability report commissioned for the council’s next long-term plan.

That’s 160% increase in a decade. Staggering. And it hasn’t been core infrastructure. It has been a series of political projects and white elephants.

The Spinoff becomes an unlikely fiscal conservative:

Tourism minister Louise Upston was excited when she announced that Robbie Williams will play two shows in Auckland and Christchurch later this year. “It’s fantastic to welcome a showstopper act like Robbie, giving fans the chance to see him entertaining us,” she said in a press release.

The Robbie Williams concerts will receive funding from the government’s $70m major events and tourism package. Upston was definitive that the government funding was essential in securing the concerts: “Without government investment, New Zealand would not have been part of the global tour,” she said.

The fund was in part a response to the public perception that a number of high-profile international acts had skipped New Zealand in recent years, including Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish. But does Robbie Williams really fall into that category?

The two concerts this year will be the 13th and 14th times that Robbie Williams has performed in New Zealand. In 28 years, Williams has never toured Australia without including New Zealand.

Excellent point.

Linkin Park were among the first recipients of the government fund, announced in December. They performed to a packed crowd at Spark Arena last week. It was their fifth show in Auckland and their fourth at the same venue. Auckland is far from the most obscure city the band is visiting on their 100-stop From Zero tour – the upcoming leg features Nürburg, Germany, Donington Park, England, and Werchter, Belgium.

So the fund is really just corporate welfare for bands.

You can make a case for film production subsidies because films can only be made in one location, and there is a globally competitive market.

But subsidies for major events are not needed, in my opinion. Bands will come to NZ if they think the revenue they will gain from doing so is greater than the marginal cost of adding us onto an Australian tour.

Investing in infrastructure such as Eden Park, so they can perform at a large venue can be worthwhile. But simply paying them money to come over, is not.

An Auckland Councillor has revealed the Council has spent $5 million on catering over the last four years. This is staggering.

In 2022 they spent “just” $750k and in 2025 they spent $1.4m. Wasn’t Wayne Brown going to cut costs?

The Herald reports:

A cowboy-inspired bar in Wellington has been caught selling alcohol to a 16-year-old twice in one year. 

Now, Dakota Bar could be riding the mechanical bull to an alcohol licensing ban as it has a 100% fail rate for serving those underage in police operations. …

They served alcohol underage in Sep 24 and Oct 25. It is highly highly highly unlikely that this was the only times. Let’s say they serve 100 people a night so around 40,000 times a year. The chance this was the only time they didn’t check is 1 in 40,000 x 1 in 40,000 or 1 in around 1.6 billion.

This is not rocket science. If they look under 30, you ask for ID. This doesn’t require weeks or training. It is a simple requirement.

Ubiaga said he’d welcome a system where every venue gets tested regularly by police, so no one felt singled out and the venues “genuinely cutting corners” would be caught out.

“I just wish they’d work with us more. To be a fair test they need to test every venue at least once every two years, not just a handful of venues.”

I don’t understand why it is not more regular. It would take one police officer and one teenager a few hours to do say all of Courtney place. They could do it monthly.

For many years I have regards the term aspirational as polite code for “No actual chance of this happening in reality”.

I now wonder whether the term ambitious is heading the same way. The Post reports:

A scathing report into the $1.3 billion project to allow bank cards and phones as payment on public transport has found the delayed launch dates are still “ambitious” despite ongoing cost risks.

The National Ticketing Solution (NTS) was first signed off 16 years ago and is designed to replace all of the country’s public transport cards and make one contactless payment system for all travelling via bus, train or ferry.

I still regard this as a solution looking for a problem. Certainly each major city needs an app or smart card solution for integrated public transport use. But I don’t need my Wellington snapper card to work on Auckland buses.