National’s party vote increased 12.5% and its electorate vote by 7.7%.
The overall party vote for the right increased 17.0% and the left fell 17.5%. So in 2020 the left won by 23% and in 2023 they lost by 11%.
ACT’s party vote went up 1.1% but electorate vote 3.5%.
The Greens’ party vote went up 3.7% and electorate vote 1.0%
The Parliament of 122 MPs has a record 32 who are Māori. This represents 26% of Parliament, which is approximately twice the 13.7% of the adult population who are Māori. This is a good thing that Māori New Zealanders are so well represented, and contradicts the narrative that the system is somehow hostile to Māori.
So who makes up the 32 MPs. Let’s break it down by the six parties.
Labour – Nine MPs out of 34 (26%). Labour has seven List MPs who are Māori, one Māori seat and one Māori MP who won a general seat.
Greens – Six MPs out of 15 (40%). Five List MPs and one Māori MP who won a general seat.
Te Pāti Māori – Six MPs out of six (100%). Six Māori seat MPs.
National – Five MPs out of 48 (10%). All five won general seats.
NZ First – Four MPs out of eight (50%). All List MPs.
ACT – Three MPs out of 11 (27%). One Māori MP who won a general seat and two List MPs.
This shows that there is no unified view on behalf of Māori. Five of the six parties have a greater proportion of Māori MPs than the adult population, and one has slightly fewer.
National is the party that is most successful at selecting Māori candidates in general seats.
Te Pāti Māori of course holds the most Māori seats.
Labour has the most List MPs who are Māori.
NZ First has the highest proportion of their caucus Māori, after Te Pāti Māori.
The Herald reports:
Peters said NZ First wanted negotiations to be conducted with urgency.
“What can we agree on … we can’t all get what we want, we have to get a sound much much better government underway,” Peters told the Platform.
The NZ First leader said the most useful thing was for National, Act and NZ First to all get in the room together as opposed to having separate conversations.
The desire to have direct three-way talks is a very positive thing. If National had to negotiate separately with ACT and NZ First, it would be more time consuming and challenging. But if all three parties are willing to meet together, that is the best way to do it.
It may also be the first time it has happened. Off memory the main party in the past has only negotiated with individual parties, rather than collectively.
Electorates that changed party from the provisional results are:
Parliament will have 123 seats so 62 needed to govern. National and ACT are 59 seats (and 60 probably after Port Waikato) so need NZ First who bring the Government to 68 seats and 55 seats for the opposition.
Stuff reports:
Incoming prime minister Christopher Luxon has responded to potential legal action by the Mongrel Mob on his party’s gang policy, saying it’s “lovely that they want to engage in that process”.
The Mongrel Mob is seeking legal advice regarding the National Party’s gang policy, as the party is set to crack down on gangs once they enter government.
National has a four-pronged plan to address gangs; it includes a ban on gang patches and insignia in public places, dispersal notices, a new police gang unit, and tougher sentences for gang members.
It must be hard for the Mongrel Mob having had their preferred government lose office.
Let me be 100% clear. To appoint David Seymour or Brooke van Velden to a role as important as the Minister of Education, in the current context, would be a disaster. Neither or them have the knowledge or charismatic ability to lead the sector through change that needs to have our parenting and schooling leading the world in six years.
Seymour was an architect of the Charter Schools model and – while good things were done through the expertise of Karen Poole, Nick Hyde and Raewyn Tipene – it was so poorly implemented that only 11 schools got going and were easy targets for Labour and the unions when they regained power.
Be in no doubt … out education system is in crisis and this is a sweep the table and start again moment. I would much rather Seymour has the symbolism of Deputy PM than the actual effect of Minister of Education.
I spoke to Michael Laws on this today.
Stuff reports:
Crown Law won’t appeal the home detention sentence of a man who attacked a dog-walker with a samurai sword, leaving him lying bleeding in a ditch.
I blogged previously on this case. It’s an obscenely light sentence. So much work needs to be done to reform the legal system, and that includes Crown Law appealing more light sentences.
Stuff reports:
Camp Chippy is feeling confidently chipper that their guy has the numbers to retain the leadership of the Labour Party and there’s a desire to call for a vote to cement Chris Hipkins’ dominance as soon as reasonably possible. …
Some in the caucus are grumbling, angry with Hipkins for prioritising centrist ‘bread and butter’ policies at the expense of Labour Party ‘bread and butter’ ideology.
But talk of David Parker moving against Hipkins isn’t being treated as a particularly serious threat by those in camp Chippy.
I think there is at least a 95% chance Hipkins will be re-elected Leader in a few weeks. But I also think there is almost as great a chance he won’t be leader by the next election.
Hipkins will be an effective Opposition Leader, but Opposition Leaders who are relentlessly negative often become quite unpopular – as happened with Goff, Cunliffe and Little. Hipkins default mode is to attack. He will do well at putting pressure on a new Government, but I suspect he will become too unpopular with the public and Labour will then replace him probably in 2025.
The Daily Mail reports:
A furious row has broken out after Metropolitan Police officers were filmed pulling down posters of Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas during the terror group’s barbaric October 7 attack.
Two officers stripped the outside of Cullimore Chemist in Edgware, North London of flyers of the missing innocents after receiving calls from residents concerned about tension within the community.
Some locals in the area, which is home to a sizeable Jewish community, have slammed the officers over their ‘disgusting actions’. But the Met has insisted they were merely taking steps to ‘stop issues escalating’ and to ‘avoid community tension’.
This is disgusting. The rights of Jews to highlight the 200+ kidnapped children and adults has been demoted by the Met as being less important than not upsetting people who think kidnapping Jewish children is a legitimate tactic≥
The Waikato Times reports:
The body established to investigate potential miscarriages of justice in New Zealand has referred just one case to appeal since being formed in 2020 – while in the UK its equivalent quashed 100 convictions in just one year.
That points to a “wonderful initiative” that lacks resources, according to Waikato University senior law lecturer Dr Anna Brennan.
However, the Te Kāhui Criminal Cases Review Commission chief executive Parekawhia McLean said they are in fact ahead of operational time frames.
I was so pleased when the Labour Government established this body as cases such as Peter Ellis showed that we needed an institution dedicated to reviewing dodgy convictions.
But something has gone badly wrong with just one case referred to the Court of Appeal on three years. The claim it lacks resources seem credulous as it has spent $15 million over three years.
Andrea Vance writes:
There is something sorely lacking – in addition to common sense – from Wellington City Council’s decision to pour more cash into the over-budget, under-managed Town Hall project.
A financial impact report.
Exactly. How much will rates have to increase to fund this white elephant?
In the absence of any transparency, and in fear of another stroke-inducing rates bill, three residents recently commissioned analysis from Castalia, which used public documents to assess the state of the books. The economists concluded the council is about $1bn short, and will exceed its debt cap.
It’s outrageous that three residents had to commission their own advice, because the Council won’t tell us.
Democracy dies in darkness. Wellington City Council is addicted to spending, pumping ratepayers for cash with little regard for transparency or accountability. If they can’t stop, there must be an intervention.
The best intervention would be an election!
Like many watched the RWC Final with both kids.
When Sam Cane was red carded, I almost gave up. How can you beat the Springboks with 14 players for most of the game. And the discipline was so lacking.
But the second half gave hope. Two great tries (one disallowed) by the All Blacks and one point in it. The last ten minutes were nail biting as the All Blacks were on the offence so often, but as we all know they couldn’t quite do it.
It turned into an epic final. The Springboks deserve their win, but the All Blacks came back and did us proud also.
Bruce Cotterill writes:
We were promised the most transparent Government ever. We received the opposite. Now they’re gone. …
I believe it’s now part of our history that her Government and that of her successor were the least transparent in our lifetimes.
Along with her co-conspirators Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins, David Parker and Nanaia Mahuta, Ardern presided over a Government that chose not to be completely open or honest. They misled us and manipulated the media in the process, while they conceived, crafted and delivered policies that in some cases bore no resemblance to what they had campaigned on. Furthermore, they set out on a pathway to racially divide and re-engineer us socially, while core services such as schools, hospitals, roads, police and even the judiciary failed us.
We should never forget the impact of a Government that claimed to be “the single source of the truth”. The worst part is that they seemed to believe that. During the Covid-19 pandemic, when many New Zealanders were genuinely fearful of their safety, our Government cruelly promised we were “in the front of the queue for vaccines” when the reality was that we were far from it.
I’m not sure what was worse – the lack of transparency or the blatant gaslighting.
Joel MacManus writes:
The Wellington Town Hall is a building that has lost most of its architectural and aesthetic value. It is notoriously earthquake-prone and seems almost certain to face more issues in the future. The city already built the Michael Fowler Centre, the venue that was intended to replace it, 40 years ago. The council has already moved its offices to a different location and doesn’t plan to return.
This week, Wellington City Council approved another $147m to bring the heritage-listed building up to code, bringing the total cost as high as $330m – more than the construction of Spark Arena and the new Tākina Convention Centre combined.
The Stadium in Wellington cost only $130 million, and the Council is spending more than twice that on reopening a building that has been closed for ten years.
With the Michael Fowler Centre under construction, the question became: what to do with the old town hall? The Historic Places Trust in 1978 commissioned a report on the building’s heritage quality by William Toomath, one of New Zealand’s most prominent architects and a graduate of Harvard’s school of design.
That report has never been available online, but a scanned copy was provided to The Spinoff by Heritage New Zealand.
“Externally, the building in its present state is of dubious merit both historically and architecturally,” the report said. “This building has lost the greater part of its original Victorian swagger, pomposity, and grandeur, an ill-proportioned mockery of a classical work of architecture.”
“As it stands now, the building’s external design is inexpressive and insignificant… As a townscape or scenic unit in the texture of the city, the existing building has little to offer.
“The building might be allowed to stand as a sad joke, regarded with kindly humour and tolerance. But it is another question whether the expenditure of considerable amounts of public money would be justified for the sake of preserving such a debased work under the guise of a worthy example of the classical style in architecture. This, categorically, it is no longer.”
Basically the building is a dog. We’re paying $4,000 a household for a building that will have only a minuscule proportion of the city actually use it.
It began in 2012, with a $30m budget. A year later, it was re-estimated at $43m. This was the figure that started to set alarm bells ringing. The council’s chief executive Kevin Lavery warned it was “an awful lot of money for zero return” and property council president Ian Cassels said the town hall was becoming a “white elephant”, asking, “Is it important enough to justify the amount of spend?”
It was a bad deal at $43 million and an insulting one at $330 million.
Stuff reports:
Man with 150 convictions, including manslaughter and killing pet dog, granted parole
Sounds an ideal candidate for parole!
But the Parole Board has confirmed he was released last month, with a report detailing that he had ‘’embarked on a fundamental process of change’’ while inside.
Would be good to have data on what percentage of people whom the Parole Board grants parole to, reoffend.