The Herald reports:

Former National Party deputy leader Paula Bennett, who appeared on the TVNZ panel after the debate, said Hipkins referring to Uffindell’s bed leg incident was a “low moment” for Hipkins.

“It was vile and quite despicable,” Bennett said.

It shows how desperate the Prime Minister is that the best he can do in defending his Government is to refer to something a backbench opposition MP did when he was 13 years old. It really is sad and pathethic.

The excellent The Facts site has set up a new site – kpi.nz. It shows how NZ has performed on numerous key indicators. Check them out and share them widely.

These two charts alone show how fire things are. Unvaccinated two year olds have gone from 1 in 20 to 1 in 4 and he crime rate is steadily climbing after years of stability.

On my Patreon (paywalled) I have been analysing the electorate races over the last few weeks.

The summary of all 72 electorates is at this post.

A projection of overall seats in Parliament and likely List MPs is here.

At this stage the projected seats for parties that want to change the Government are 66 (including Port Waikato) and Government supporting parties 55.

Felix Desmarais at 1 News writes:

It’s the final week of the 2023 election campaign and Christopher Luxon is talking about dinosaurs.

It’s not by choice — it was spurred on by a query by comedian Guy Williams, based on a rumour.

The rumour goes that National leader Luxon, while chief executive, blocked an Air New Zealand in-flight safety video based around dinosaurs from production because he didn’t believe in them.

Luxon has clarified he does believe dinosaurs existed and that the rumour about the in-flight safety video is rubbish.

It may have been a genuine (comedy) question from Williams, but the question of it soon proliferated, unironically it appears, from left-leaning social media accounts.

The inference from many of those was clear and it was mischievous — that because Luxon is religious he doesn’t believe in dinosaurs.

What a miserable state of affairs.

By all means criticise and critique politicians for their policies — and there’s always room for light-hearted questions to politicians — but that undertone shows that some think grasping at rumour and innuendo is a reasonable response to poor polling.

New Zealand deserves better.

There does appear to be an increasing desperation from the left, not seen since 2008.

They are desperate, and the dinosaur smear is no coincidence.

Labour even got their polling company to ask a question about belief in dinosaurs last month. There is no way this question was unrelated to the rumour/smear the left have been pushing against Luxon, and then Guy Williams on Newshub just happens by coincidence to ask it on air, so that it will get more currency.

Education in NZ has been highly problematic and on the decline in the last six years. Neither Hipkins or Tinetti have been inspirational and it is very hard to think of a good thing they have done.

Parents must not sit on their hands for the next couple of months. Whoever is in power needs to hear from masses of families to state they want the very best education for their children.

The top 20 bureaucrats at the Ministry of Education should simply stand down and allow a new Minister to select her own team.

Newshub reports:

Oranga Tamariki spent over $1000 of taxpayer money on fast food in just one week to end standoffs with young offenders who escaped onto the roofs of its youth justice facilities, AM has revealed.

That’s around 105 Big Macs! They did do well!

The Daily Mail reports:

Hamas terrorists massacred at least 40 babies and young children before beheading some of them and gunning down their families in a small kibbutz in Israel, horrified Israeli soldiers have claimed.

Outside the destroyed homes, the soldiers told i24News correspondent Nicole Zedek how they saw the bodies of babies next to their cots, their heads chopped off, in a sign of the depraved acts committed by the terrorists since they attacked Israel on Saturday.

As many as 40 babies and small children were killed, IDF soldiers told i24News after taking them to the scene of the atrocity. Harrowing images from the scene show a baby’s cot covered with blood, her small bloodied dress lying next to it.

Yet there are still groups and individuals who are justifying what Hamas did as legitimate. Absolutely sickening.

The Daily Mail reports:

Pro-Palestinian protesters were allowed to chant ‘gas the Jews’ and burn the Star of David in front of Sydney‘s Opera House on Monday night – while a counter-demonstrator was arrested for attempting to fly the Israeli flag. …

Police are now under fire for allowing the rally to go ahead – while telling Jewish Australians to ‘stay home’ for their own safety.

In one sense it is a relief that the hatred some people have for Jews is exposed and they can’t hire between sophistry and claim it is really about disputed territory. But it is incredibly sad that we see such scenes in Australia.

There were scenes of chaos at the Opera House as the demonstration was hijacked by radical Muslims –  some wearing black masks – who threw lit flares at police and chanted ‘f*** Israel’ and ‘f*** the Jews’ beneath the steps of the iconic harbouside venue.

At one point, there were even chants of ‘gas the Jews’.  

Hopefully some of these charming people are publicly identified.

Newshub reports:

Chris Hipkins has revealed he will “pause” a policy that would’ve seen the Palestinian ambassador to Australia be invited to New Zealand. 

Prior to Hamas’ surprise attack, Labour announced, if re-elected, it would invite the Canberra-based ambassador across the ditch to New Zealand to present their credentials to be considered an official ambassador here.  …

The notion that recognising Palestine as a state will somehow lead to a more peaceful outcome is fanatical, and what has happened this week shows that.

The death toll in Israel is now over 900, the vast majority being civilians, women and children who were slaughtered. That is huge for any country let alone a population of nine million. It is equal to say 35,000 civilians in the US being killed in a terrorist attack.

No country can allow terrorists to slaughter almost 1,000 of their citizens. Israel has no choice but to move into Gaza and remove their ability to attack Israeli civilians.

The latest Newspoll has support for The Voice referendum dropping to 34% and No up to 58%.

Net support by demographic is:

• All: -24%
• Coalition: -69%
• Labor: +6%
• Greens: +54%
• Men: -32%
• Women: -18%
• Under 35s: -3%
• 35 – 49: -16%
• 50 – 64: -38%
• 65+: -46%
• Metro: -20%
• Regional: -33%
• No tertiary: -33%
• University: -4%

Even Labor voters are almost split 50/50.

The sad death of ACT’s Neil Christensen means the local candidate election for Port Waikato has been cancelled.

The Electoral Act has a section which states that the death of any candidate (no matter if they were likely to win the seat or not) between the closing of nominations and E-Day will result in the election for that seat (party vote still counts) being cancelled.

This may end up affecting the overall Parliament. Because only 71 electorates will declare a result, we will then end up with 49 List MPs instead of 48. So when the final vote is declared, the 120 seats will all be allocated. Then in probably December there will be a by-election for Port Waikato and whichever party wins that seat basically gets an additional MP.

A Parliament of 121 will need the same majority as a Parliament of 120 – 61 MPs. But if say National and ACT got 60 seats in the general election, then by the end of the year they might have 61.

These provisions of the Electoral Act have not been used in my memory, and probably should be replaced with a provision that allows an election to continue if a candidate dies, and only if the dead candidate wins, do you then have a by-election.

According to the average of the public polls, Labour is going to have a results in the mid to high 20s, which means their drop off in support (in absolute terms) will be between 21% and 25%.

I was curious as to whether this would one the largest ever drop in support for a governing party, so I looked it up.

As you can see the likely drop in support for Labour is unprecedented. Even disastrous elections such aa 1990 only saw a 12% drop in support and in 2023 Labour may drop twice that.

Ian McRae writes:

Six months ago I stated that “the whole system is quickly descending into hell in a handbasket and every day the news gets worse”. Well, that’s happened as any chronically ill patient waiting in the public system or health worker will tell you.

We would know the full extent of the crisis if we had the usual reporting of waiting list numbers, surgery cancellations, ED and GP wait times, etc.

However, Te Whatu Ora and the Health Minister have conveniently paused all reporting until October 31, 2023, two weeks after the election. I have been told privately that the numbers are appalling and senior doctor conversations confirm this.

A new Government should hold an inquiry into how this health data has been suppressed and kept private despite the requirements of the Official Information Act. For over 15 years we have had quarterly data on the health sector within a few weeks of the end of each quarter. Now we are told this new improved health structure means we have no data for the last six months, and voters will be robbed of making an informed choice.

An immediate first step has to be getting regular quarterly reporting of the numbers (good and bad) restarted, with an emphasis shift to measure outputs/results rather than inputs (what was spent).

This is a core minimum we should expect.

On the resourcing front, many commentators glibly state that the answer is to simply train (or hire offshore) more doctors and nurses. There is no doubt that we need more health professionals but that’s going to take a decade or more to deliver.

Meanwhile, waiting lists continue to grow and the public system has no chance of clearing these anytime soon. So we need to seriously explore how private services might help without cannibalising public health.

Then we should look at wastage.

We should be getting rid of the expensive consultancy firms (their advice is mostly rubbish), the hundreds of communications experts and a good chunk of Wellington bureaucracy. Call time-out on some of the crazy Government boondoggle projects that never went to proper procurement and have never delivered and this should all free up a fair amount of money to give doctors and nurses well overdue pay increases.

All good ideas.

This is where organisation efficiency is vital and New Zealand has two extreme examples of good and terrible. Firstly, Labour’s single centralised health system (Te Whatu Ora) has been a terrible failure. It will deliver more bureaucracy, stymie innovation, frustrate the coalface workforce and deliver a less productive healthcare system. Though they have solved the postcode health problem, as right across the country everyone now gets the same rubbish healthcare.

This is so often what Labour does – drag everyone down to the same level rather than lift performance across the board.

For those who are interested I’m doing analysis and commentary for Sky News Australia for our election.

I’ll be interviewed every day during this week, and also be on during election night coverage. They won’t cover our election continuously (they have their own referendum on also) but will be doing crosses to us in New Zealand at least once an hour.

New Zealand is standing out like a sore thumb as the only country not calling out Hamas for their terrorist attack which has seen hundreds of civilians and children killed, kidnapped and wounded.

This tells us a lot about the mentality of the Government. No doubt in a few hours they will realise their mistake and do a further statement but it speaks volumes that their initial response was to not call out Hamas or condemn terrorism but instead make it look like Israel is culpable.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

A barrage of rockets slammed into southern and central Israel Saturday morning, amidst which Ofir Liebstein, Head of the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council, was killed in an exchange of fire with terrorists. …

“The Hamas [terrorist organization] has made a grave mistake this morning and launched a war against the State of Israel. IDF troops are fighting against the enemy at every location,” said Defense Minister Yoav Gallant following a situation assessment. The State of Israel will win this war.”

The IDF declared that it was “ready for war” after widespread rocket fire was shot into Israeli territory from Gaza, and terrorists infiltrated Israeli territory through various entry points. Dozens of IAF fighter jets have attacked targets of the terrorist organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip in several locations.

Yes NZ won’t designate Hamas as a terrorists organisation!

Stuff reports:

During the 2020 general election, you could barely go anywhere without seeing Jacinda Ardern’s face.

The former prime minister’s stock was at its zenith and Labour rode it to the biggest slice of the popular vote in nearly 70 years, and, the power to govern alone.

But less than three years later, her only foray into Labour’s campaign has been a short Instagram post about voting overseas. She hasn’t appeared at all on the campaign trail.

Hiding Jacinda is a very sensible tactic for Labour.

Those who are not Jacinda fans would be turned off Labour even more if she was prominent campaigning for them. Hipkins is not as polarising as Ardern.

Those who are fans of Jacinda would compare Hipkins to her, and be reminded that he is mainly campaigning on ditching many of her policies.

So it is a lose-lose to use her, so a sensible decision by Labour not to do so.