Readers will know Labour was planning to spend between $15 and $29 billion on a 24 km light rail system in Auckland that would have trains that go slower than cars.
For $14 billion China is constructing a 342 km high-speed rail line with a design speed of 350km/h!!
Egypt for the same cost is developing an 850 km electrified line with a design speed of 250 km/hr.
If the left leaning Mainstream Media globally is to be believed, former US President Donald Trump could end up in jail for many years after multiple indictments for various offences. An indictment is an American term meaning being charged with an offense of some kind. An indictment does not indicate guilt and in the context of the prosecutors doing the charging, Trump’s opponents are engaging in what is called lawfare which is a single word description for politically motivated legal cases.
Lawfare in fact is very common in 3rd world countries and in despotic regimes. Even the most infamous dictators in history would shroud their persecution of the perceived enemies of the state behind a patina of fake legality via corrupt or co-opted judges and prosecutors. Lawfare is less common in the Anglophile Common Law and western European Roman Law democracies outside of the corporate world. The exception in the west is the US where politicised prosecutions have been commonplace because the Judiciary and the Executive branches at every level of US government are highly politicised. Understanding the process in the US is an important backdrop to understanding the current Trump lawfare.
Whilst the US Federal Constitution formally separates the three branches of government (Legislative, Executive and Judicial) with a series of counter weighing checks and balances (that are mirrored in all the States’ Constitutions), unlike the rest of the Anglophile world that follows the Westminster model, almost all US judges at every level are political appointees. The sitting President gets to appoint Federal Judges, Federal Courts of Appeal judges and of course the Justices of the Supreme Court. These appointments must be ratified by the Senate but, with some notable exceptions, unless the nominee has some glaring and provable fatal flaws, a Senate controlled by the opposing party of the President usually ends up confirming the President’s choices. This is mirrored at the State level with the sitting Governor appointing State Appeal and State Supreme Court judges and usually the Superior Court judges in larger cities with some states mirroring the Federal system with a state Senate confirmation process. Elected County Supervisors oversee the appointment of County court judges and elected Mayors usually nominate Municipal or City Court judges. There are some jurisdictions that have merit panels staffed by lawyers and ex-judges and all state, county and municipal judges are subject to confirmation election by voters every 2 years at each Presidential and mid term election. Bad judges who make high profile seen to be incorrect decisions or who become embroiled in controversy and won’t resign, can and are voted out of office. In addition to the partisan judges are the partisan prosecutors, the most notable being District Attorneys. Most crimes are handled at the county and city level and charges are normally brought by DAs offices in County or Municipal courts. District Attorneys operate at either the County or City level, but they are an elected position and almost all DAs have a partisan political affiliation. Left leaning cities/counties elect Democrat DAs and right leaning cities and counties elect Republican DAs.
It is known that the incoming President selects his Cabinet from the ranks of parochial allies. Ditto at the State level, the Governor appoints departmental heads although in most states, the most high-profile State government positions are elected. What is less known is that the politicisation of the bureaucracy goes three layers deep below the level of Cabinet Secretary (equivalent of a NZ Cabinet Minister). On average the Federal Government in Washington DC has over 30,000 political appointees that change when an Administration is voted out of office. There simply is no equivalent of this level of politicisation in any other 1st world democracy.
American history is rife with examples of the law enforcement controlled by one party attempting to bring down politically motivated prosecutions against their political opponents. What is different with the Trump cases is that he is the first ex-President to be indicted and the sheer scale of the lawfare is also unprecedented.
Why are the Democrats engaging in lawfare on this scale with Trump?
1 – To tie Trump up in court to interfere with his ability to campaign,
2 – To financially drain him with civil fines that encroach on his financial empire and campaign funds,
3 – To try to make him electorally toxic because of possible prosecutions,
4 – To try and get Trump removed from the ballot in the 2024 Presidential election and
5 – To force him to give up and retire to avoid all of the above.
Generally speaking, prior attempts at lawfare usually results in success for the party of the prosecutors hence why it is undertaken. However, Trump is no ordinary politician as we shall see.
The seven lawfare cases being brought against Trump divide into 3 distinct categories and I will examine each one in summary and the likelihood of success in each case. I will cover the 14th Amendment and two civil cases in Part 1 and I will cover the four criminal indictments in Part 2. All seven cases have the same modus operandi in terms of the tactics used by Trump’s political opponents:
First – The judges presiding over each case (with one exception) have been carefully chosen for their impeccable left-wing credentials. They are all appointees of Democrat Presidents or Governors. They have a track record of being hyper partisan and have previously presided over lopsided politically motivated trials giving verdicts and sentences that have been crafted to damage or restrict a Republican or right leaning defendant.
Second – Like the judges, the prosecutors have also been hand selected for their hyper partisan biased ideologically left leaning orientations and have also been appointed by Democrat Presidents or Governors. In all cases, the prosecutors have previously brought notoriously partisan, exaggerated and even trumped up (excuse the pun) charges.
1 – 14th AMENDMENT CASES
Various Democrat elected officials in a number of states have attempted to use section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which states that at any candidate that “has engaged in insurrection or rebellion” shall be barred from office. The amendment was passed after the Civil War ostensibly to bar successionists from seeking federal office. On the premise that Trump supposedly incited rebellion on January 6th 2021, his opponents feel this clause should apply.
Democrat Secretaries of State or County Supervisors who oversee the administration of election ballots at the state and county level and who also oversee relevant state election laws, ruled Trump was ineligible under this clause and then attempted to remove him from their ballots for first their Republican primaries and then the General Election in November. Trump’s campaign or local Republican party organisations sued in local courts to oppose these measures. In thirteen states (Arizona, Alaska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming), these attempts were ruled against by state Appellate or Supreme courts on the grounds that Trump has never been convicted of the offense of insurrection. He was not convicted in his second impeachment trial by the Senate on this matter and even in the January 6th related charges he faces in Federal Court brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith (discussed in Part 2), Trump was not formally charged with any Federal insurrection indictments. It is important to note that even Democrat appointed judges in liberal states have ruled against these attempts which underscores the flimsiness of the arguments.
However, the Democrat controlled Colorado Supreme Court overruled the decision of the Colorado Court of Appeal that threw out the case forcing Trump to appeal to Federal court. Given the explosive potential of this issue, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) agreed to immediately take up the case directly rather than have it go through the two prior layers of Federal appellate courts. Similarly, the Maine Secretary of State has ruled Trump ineligible, and that case is pending the outcome of the Colorado Supreme Court v Trump case at SCOTUS. Just yesterday a Democrat Cook County (covering metropolitan Chicago) circuit judge in Illinois has just removed Trump from that county’s GOP Primary ballot.
How will the Colorado case fare do you think? Well various legal analysts on both sides of the political fence who read the tea leaves from the SCOTUS appearance of both legal counsel teams were pretty united in stating how weak the Colorado case was, how it poorly it was argued and that the aggressive questioning of the Colorado attorneys from even the three reliable liberals on the Court portent a lopsided defeat for the Colorado case. The only argument is whether it will be a 0 – 9 or 1 – 8 ruling. Once ruled on at SCOTUS, the Maine and Illinois attempts will be dropped and that will end this “Hail Mary” attempt to remove Trump from ballots.
2 – CIVIL CASES
(i) E Jean Carroll defamation suit
E Jean Carroll is an 80-year-old former Elle Magazine advice columnist from New York City who, in a column in New York Magazine in 2019, accused Donald Trump of raping her in a dressing room at prestigious Bergdorf-Goodman Department store in NYC sometime in the mid-1990s. As it turned out, the NY Police Department never pressed any criminal charges of rape or sexual assault against Trump because Carroll never made a formal complaint to the NYPD despite there being no statute of limitations on historical criminal rape cases and even after being invited to by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio (3′ 20″). There are a number of compelling reasons why, if she had laid a police complaint, it would not lead to any charges including:
Trump vehemently denied the claim and, in true Trump fashion, wryly said, “anyway, she isn’t my type”. Since Carroll made no formal criminal complaint, financially backed by Trump-hating left wing billionaire activist and Democrat donor Reid Hoffman, Carroll embarked on a campaign to change the law in the state of New York to extend the statute of limitations for the bringing a CIVIL complaint of battery. Carroll was prominent in the campaign to change the law and on the very day after the amended law came into effect in 2022, Carroll filed a civil battery suit in the notoriously left-wing Manhattan Municipal Court where she knew she’d have a left-wing jury and a Democrat appointed judge sympathetic to her cause. She also sued Trump for defamation claiming his strenuous and aggressive denials damaged her reputation by impugning her honesty.
The trial was conducted over April and May 2023 when the sympathetic jury did indeed find Trump civilly liable for battery but specifically noted that the verdict DID NOT make a finding of guilt of rape and awarded defamation damages in the order of $83 million.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has appealed the verdict. What are the chances of him getting the verdict overturned on appeal, if not at the New York Appellate and Supreme Court but more likely at Federal Appellate Courts? Based on the following that occurred or did not occur during the trial, Trump has copious and strong grounds for a reversal of the decision on appeal:
* One of the few bits of evidence allowed was a 2017 Facebook post of Carroll’s where she rhetorically asked “Would you have sex with Donald Trump for $17,000? Even if you could a) give the money to charity? b) close your eyes? And he’s not allowed to speak.”
* In a 2019 interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN after the allegations were made public, Carroll said that “most people think of rape as being sexy” and so bizarre was her conduct in the interview that Cooper immediately cut to an ad break.
* Carroll had falsely accused multiple other men of raping her including: a babysitter’s boyfriend, a dentist, a camp counselor, an unnamed college date, an unnamed boss and most significantly, Les Moonves former CEO of CBS News.
* She said on CNN in an interview “I do not know if the President ejaculated” – a most extraordinary statement for a supposed rape victim to say (see 2′ 40″)
* Carroll has tweeted a number of sexually charged Tweets that were bordering on inappropriate
Trump was allowed 3 minutes on the stand and could answer only a few selected and curated Yes No questions. Neither he nor his attorney were able to bring up any of this damning evidence as to the track record and mind set of Trump’s alleged accuser. On the fact alone that his right to proper self-defense was arbitrarily abrogated by the capricious decisions of a highly partisan Trump hating judge, this verdict will be easily overturned.
(ii) New York Attorney General fraud suit
The very definition of a politically motivated prosecution is demonstrated in the $250 million civil fraud case brought by New York State Attorney General Leticia James against Donald Trump, his sons Don Junior and Eric Trump and the Trump Organization. Letitia James literally campaigned for the AG’s office on a platform to “get Trump” and any cursory search of social media will unearth clips of James frequently bragging before mostly sympathetic Democratic audiences of her intention.
AG James alleged that Trump overvalued his assets to obtain loans from banks and to get more favourable insurance contracts that he later went on to profit from. The case was heard by Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron, a jurisdiction known to be very left leaning and hostile to Trump. In addition, Engoron’s wife posted a series of nasty anti-Trump memes on social media and when Trump made appearances in court, Engoron was visibly hostile to Trump and ended up fining him twice for contempt of court after Trump breached gagging orders from speaking publicly about the case.
Engoran found, without any jury trial (extremely rare for a case so large), that the Trumps had indeed committed fraud and so the trial was held merely to decide on the amount of the fine. It is clear from the penalty handed down ($355 million) that Engoron had already made up his mind to do the bidding of AG James by attempting to destroy the Trump’s New York base of business with not just punitive fines but a 3 year ban on doing business in the state of New York and applying for loans in the state.
Trump has commenced the appeal process, in and of itself financially onerous because the court will impose a 10% interest loading taking the total penalty to be allowed on appeal to $450 million. Whilst Trump is wealthy enough to pay this, it would drain his cash reserves and likely require the fire sale of assets. The most likely pathway he will take is to use a court Bond to cover the fine plus interest where normally he only has to find 10% of the amount being bonded or $45 million. That still hurts but is more doable for Trump.
What is the likelihood of this punitive award and the onerous restrictions surviving an appeal? Not high because of the unusual features of this case, setting aside the obvious political bias. These include:
* the fact that all New York based real estate developers to some extent exaggerate their net worth when applying for loans. It is actually a global practice. It is why banks and lenders rely on their own estimates of property values and it’s why properties used as security for large commercial loans are independently valued and the banks make a decision on the amount to advance and terms based on such independent valuations. All of the loans that Trump obtained were issued on that basis.
* This case is probably the world’s first fraud case where there is no defrauded party. Indeed, every single loan and insurance product that Trump obtained using his Statements of Position were repaid on time and in full with never even so much as a missed or late payment and not a single financial institution suffering any loss at all. The notion of fraud is a victim who is out of pocket due to alleged fraudulent activity. To the contrary, various senior bank staff testified at the trial that not only was the Trump account flawless and blemish free from a banking perspective, but that Trump was considered an enormously valuable (so-called ‘whale’) client whose loan business was sought after by banks. A number of business commentators have noted this absence of any fraud loss as a major flaw in the AG’s case.
* This prosecution is utterly unique in New York legal history. Despite there being literally hundreds of high-end property developers who have built thousands of properties in the state over many decades, almost all of whom engaged in similar loan application conduct as Trump, not a single case of fraud of this nature has ever been brought. A number of financial commentators have remarked that this verdict will have an enormously chilling effect on the property development market in the state as developers will move their sights, funding and projects to states less hostile to entrepreneurial development activity.
* Judge Engoron ruled that Trump’s Statements of Position were fraudulent. Trump’s lawyers brought to the stand Eli Bartov, a renowned accounting professor of the Stern Business School at NYU who said of Trump’s financial statements submitted to get loans, “I’ve never seen a statement that provides so much detail and is so transparent. The footnotes provide an awesome amount of information.”
* Perhaps the single most staggeringly biased and ill-judged decision in this whole case, and on which perhaps alone would be ground for appeal, was the decision of Engoron to value Trump’s flagship property in Palm Beach, Florida (Mar-a-Largo) at a miniscule $18 million basing this off the Palm Beach County property tax valuation as an exhibit of the type of over valuation ‘fraud’ that he claimed Trump engaged in.
In order to understand the sheer ineptitude and blatant bias of this valuation, some knowledge of Palm Beach and its unique real estate is important. First off, as in NZ, local government property tax valuations (like the ratable value used by QV in NZ for what was commonly called the GV or Government Valuation and used for basing local council rates) are almost always well below market value, sometimes massively so.
Palm Beach is one of the most prestigious addresses in all of the US and of the highest value are properties in the southern and most narrow part of the long thin island that comprises Palm Beach that are large enough to straddle the width of the island and thus have a frontage on the Atlantic Ocean beach and the Lake Worth Lagoon between Palm Beach and West Palm Beach on the mainland. Indeed, the name of Trump’s property Mar-a-Largo means “sea to lake” in Spanish. Mar-a Largo is one of a handful of properties with this unique feature.
Trump paid $7 million for the property in 1985, admittedly in a distressed sale situation, and added a 20,000 sq ft (2,000m²) ballroom to the 17-acre (almost 7 ha) site making the total size of the buildings 62,500 sq ft (6,250 m²). It has extensive facilities as befitting a large luxury country club with pools, tennis courts and private access to the beach and lagoon. In 2018 Forbes magazine estimated the value at $350 million and upped that estimate to $500 million in 2022.
As an example of the massive prices being asked for properties in this part of Palm Beach, a property 2 miles (3 kms) south of Mar-a-Largo on Ocean Boulevard is on the market for $174 million for a house size of only 18,000 sq ft (1,800 m²) and on a section about ¼ the size of Mar-a-Largo. Famous prominent top end Palm Beach real estate agent Lawrence Moens is said to have told Trump he’d list MAL for $750 million. Letitia James charged Trump with fraud saying he spruiked the value by $250 million and that was her fraud claim above Judge Engoron’s claimed value of $18 million. For $18 million you might be able to buy the garden shed of one the houses in this area!
Aside from the massively chilling impact a verdict like this will have on New York property development, expert legal and real estate opinion on the verdict has been scathing:
* MSNBC (a left wing cable network implacably opposed to Trump) Legal Analyst Lisa Rubin quoted an Associated Press analysis of all historical fraud cases brought in the state of New York going back 75 years and found not a single precedent for Engoron’s penalty given there was no proven or even victim claimed fraud loss..
* A prominent Palm Beach real state broker told the NY Post “It’s utterly delusional to think that property is only worth $18 million.”
* Esteemed legal commentator Jonathon Turley, Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, wrote an excoriating assessment of Engoron’s penalties in “The Hill” where he stated, “The damages in my view are excessive and absurd after the court acknowledged that no one lost a dime in these exchanges. Indeed, the “victims” wanted to do more business with Trump and made handsome profits,” and later on he opines on the fate of this verdict, “The size of the damages is grotesque and should shock the conscience of any judge on appeal. Even if the Democrat-appointed judges on the New York Court of Appeals were to ignore the obvious inequity and unfairness, the United States Supreme Court could intervene.”
* Acclaimed Constitutional Historian Victor Davis Hansen agreed with Trump that the massive fine likely violates the 8th Amendment against excessive fines.
* Professor Steven Calabresi of the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law commented in Reason magazine: “Ms. James and Judge Engeron have essentially turned a vaguely worded New York State law into a modern day Bill of Attainder targeted at Donald Trump both for political gain and because they despise his political views and desperately want to call his truthfulness into question as he runs for President of the United States in 2024. In doing this, they have violated Trump’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech and of the press; his Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of liberty or property without due process of law; his Fifth Amendment right not to have property taken away from him except for a public use with just compensation being paid; his Eighth Amendment right not to be made to pay an excessive fine; his Article IV, Section 2 right as a citizen of Florida to do, make, and enforce contracts in New York on the same terms as are other New Yorkers; and his Fourteenth Amendment right to be free to pursue an occupation without unnecessary and burdensome regulation.”
I’ll end this analysis with two great ironies:
1 – Facing a hostile backlash from New York business owners and property magnates, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the quiet part out loud. In trying to reassure this skeptical audience that NY had not become a hostile place to do business, she claimed that no one ought to fear this verdict because it was unique against Trump further sealing the fact that this was a political witch hunt.
2 – Lest any Trump supporters among you fear that Trump may yet lose appeals and be stripped of $500 million of his worth, in the same week of the verdict, the SEC cleared the path for Trump’s popular social media platform Truth Social from previous market capital raising restrictions thus catapulting, with the stroke of a pen, the value of Trump’s holding in Truth Social to around $6.5 billion
These civil fraud cases are particular darlings of the left and the Never Trump RINOs but they will never amount to a hill of beans in their ability to stop Trump from running for the Presidency.
In Part 2 I will cover the four criminal indictments.
Stuff reports:
When leader of the opposition, Chris Hipkins joined broadcaster Sean Plunket on radio outlet, The Platform, on Wednesday, it seemed a strange fit for the leader of the Labour Party.
The Platform is an online radio station that was founded by former Magic Talk broadcaster Sean Plunket in 2022. The station describes itself as an “independent digital media site” which does not “take your tax payer dollars through government funded agencies”. It promotes itself as a space to “receive and impart views and opinions the mainstream media simply cannot handle”.
While rare, it wasn’t the first time Hipkins had spoken to Plunket on the station. Plunket introduced his morning guest by saying it had been “a while between drinks”, and that Hipkins had “become and un-become prime minister”.
While mostly cordial, there was a bit of back and forth when Plunket suggested the Labour party was too “woke” for middle New Zealand and that the Labour Government “tended to cancel and de-platform people” and was “far from tolerant of people ideologically different from it”. Both claims Hipkins denied.
It seems weird for Stuff to publish an entire article on the fact Chris Hipkins was interviewed on The Platform.
The Spinoff’s readership is very left leaning, but no one suggests the National MPs should refuse to talk to them.
It is in fact smart to do media interviews with outlets that are not ideologically friendly to you. You get challenged in a way, you won’t with other media. It actually gives you a chance to confront issues that many NZers care about, but are not generally put to MPs.
The Herald reports:
The Association of Rape Crisis Centres in Israel on Wednesday said it has found evidence of “systematic and intentional” rape and sexual abuse during the Hamas attack on October 7 that ignited the war in Gaza.
The report said the attacks were more widespread than earlier thought, taking place at a series of locations across southern Israel.
“In some cases, rape was conducted in front of an audience, such as partners, family or friends, to increase the pain and humiliation for all present,” it said.
Orit Sulitzeanu, the executive director of the association, said in many cases, the bodies of male and female victims, including their genitals, were severely mutilated.
An Associated Press investigation also found sexual assault was part of an atrocity-filled rampage by Palestinian militant group Hamas and others who killed about 1200 people, most of them civilians, and took around 250 hostages on October 7. Hamas has rejected allegations its gunmen committed sexual assault.
People who deny Hamas were responsible for mass rapes should be treated as having as much credibility as those who deny the Holocaust.
The Herald reports:
Two government water reform chief executives have taken redundancy payouts of $355,000 apiece, while a third has “transitioned” to another water reform job within the Department of Internal Affairs, now under review.
Jon Lamonte and Colin Crampton both left their posts on December 15 with redundancy packages worth six months’ of their $710,000 “establishment chief executive” base salaries. They were each on the job for just 10 months.
Bizarrely, a third chief executive, Vaughan Payne, took up a new post, focused on the last iteration of the Labour-era reforms, on December 20, six days after the new Cabinet formally decided to legislate to repeal and replace that plan.
A department spokesman said Payne’s new job, regional establishment director, was agreed to in September, before the October 14 election, under the water reform law of the time.
Signing such a contract a few days before the election was wrong. The responsible thing would have been to delay any significant contractural obligations.
The Herald reports:
About $16.5 million will have been spent by June on what to do about over-tourism in Milford Sound, but Tourism Minister Matt Doocey says the work has been, at times, “incoherent”. Are we about to see very little change after so much money over more than seven years? Derek Cheng reports. …
One of the plan’s key proposals is to put most of the 5000 to 6000 people a day on buses, starting in Te Anau. There would be several places of interest – to be developed – along the Milford SH94 corridor where the buses would stop.
Other suggestions include banning cruise ships and fixed-wing aircraft, which some tourism operators fear would see them go belly-up.
So Labour spent $17 million on a working group, whose answer was to ban people being able to drive, fly or cruise to Milford Sound!
Tourism is a huge part of our economy, providing hundreds of thousands of jobs. Making it harder for people to access our most popular tourist destination is as daft as refusing to reopen the track to our second most popular one.
The obvious answer is infrastructure upgrades.
The Herald reports:
A former Labour leader believes Labour MP Ginny Andersen’s claims about Mark Mitchell’s past as a private security contractor are “divorced from reality” and encouraged her to speak with the Police Minister to better understand the nature of the work.
David Shearer, a former Labour MP and Opposition leader, recently concluded heading the United Nations mission in South Sudan amid working for about 20 years co-ordinating aid in a host of countries including Rwanda, Somalia, Iraq, and Sierra Leone.
It was during that work he interacted with many companies akin to Mitchell’s and said Andersen’s recent claim that the current Police Minister was “paid to kill people” is not a fair description of the work those companies do.
Companies such as Mark Mitchell’s allowed UN officials such as Shearer to do their job, and keep them alive.
Shearer said he felt her knowledge of security work in such areas was lacking and should learn more about it.
“Without understanding the reality, I suggest that you can’t really make those sorts of comments because you really don’t know and I think Ginny doesn’t really know and it’s probably better to stop digging and to understand what the reality is.
“It might look like something from a distance but believe me, when you’re in the operation and you’re in Iraq and you’re in Somalia and you want to save lives and you want to move goods from place to place, you’re going to have to have security.”
Maybe Ginny thinks UN staff and diplomats should not have protection?
(I know it is late but occasionally educators do work the long hours).
For many years in NZ schools have fudged their data. There used to be something called participation data that was, frankly, gamed to the point of being fraudulent.
The previous National government hit that on the head.
In February schools publish their “roll” data which does not account for all of the students who have left school prior to the relevant cohort. Some schools with apparent reputations will have lost 30% or more of their students before they turn 17. It is a much higher proportion for Maori and Pasifika students in those schools.
This data set is incredibly instructive about the NZ education system: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/how-nz-secondary-schools-rank-on-ncea-level-3-and-university-entrance-results/ITJFFEL225GATGRSI464TRYAE4/
I have no doubt that some schools will say that the Ministry data is not accurate. In the past when I have published that data some prominent Principals have told me that I am wrong. On each occasion my work has proved accurate. Others will complain that Derek Cheng and Chris Knox doing this is creating unfair league tables. Some will say UE is not important as a lot of their kids are not suited to study (they normally mean the brown ones). That is not why UE is important. It is the highest qualification most schools are involved in. It is aspirational.
There are two important points to make. The LEAVERS data is far more honest and respectful to the school communities as it shows the schools in a much more accurate light in terms of academic achievement (i.e. what school is for).
Here are some examples of schools with those “problem areas” we talk about in NZ – boys,Maori, lower decile.
Manukura: 85.7% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
St Joseph’s Maori Girls: 88.9% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
St Peter’s (Epsom): 94.2% UE pass rate for LEAVERS (their neighbours Auckland Grammar at 74.9%)
Here are 8 schools who pump their reputations – especially through sporting prowess (i.e. the Super 8 competition).
Rotorua Boys: 14.9% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
Tauranga Boys: 30.4% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
Hamilton Boys: 40.0% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
Palmerston North Boys: 41.8% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
New Plymouth Boys: 32.3% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
Napier Boys: 42.0% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
Hastings Boys: 35.0% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
Gisborne Boys: 22.6% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
Have a thought for the UE pass rates for LEAVERS from these pivotal South Auckland high schools.
Manurewa High School: 12.2% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
Alfriston College: 22.2% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
James Cook High School: 12.2% UE pass rate for LEAVERS
Those three are by no means the worst in the country and have been trending up a bit but should we be at all comfortable with the gaps? The school I went to – Whanganui City College – sits at 2.6%. Which brings me to my second point.
A school like Rotorua Boys (or any other low performing academic school) will not become a St Peter’s overnight.
What each Board of Trustees, Principal and community can do is be very honest about where they are at and set aspirational but incremental goals (not like Hekia Parata’s blunt axe goals).
These are the relevant ones:
– Full attendance (published weekly).
– Retention to 17 – accompanied by tracking destinations.
– NCEA L1 for LEAVERS
– NCEA L2 for LEAVERS
– NCEA L3 for LEAVERS
– UE for LEAVERS
– Percentage going into Tertiary study/full apprenticeships.
– Surveyed parental/family engagement.
What this data set shows is not solvable by government and certainly not by the Ministry – although both must massively lift their games and the top 12 in the Ministry really do need to move aside as their failure is monumental for young people, families and the national as a whole. From 2,700 to 4,300 employees in 6 years and this is the definitive data.
Every school & community needs to work very hard and with great skill to lift the students.
Alwyn Poole
Innovative Education Consultants
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/
www.wood2water.co.nz
www.russellinfo.co.nz
Radio NZ report:
In March and August 2018, up to a year before he attacked two Christchurch mosques, Brenton Tarrant posted publicly online that he planned to do so. Until now, these statements have not been identified.
In fact, for four years before his attack, Tarrant had been posting anonymously but publicly on the online message board 4chan about the need to attack people of colour in locations of “significance”, including places of worship. …
When he wrote in his manifesto that he was driven to violence by the lack of a political solution – a realisation that came to him in 2017 – we now know he had been calling for attacks against civilians at least as early as 2015.
Where he claimed he was not driven by antisemitism, we found hatred and conspiratorial distrust of Jews were central to his entire worldview.
The researchers have done an excellent job here. It is significant that Tarrant was posting such things. Now obviously not under his name, and he might not have been traceable, but at the least it should have rung some alarm bells.
Because 4chan posts are anonymous, we used a combination of indicators to identify Tarrant. 4chan’s “politically incorrect” board – referred to as /pol/ – provides the time, date and location of each post, allowing us to match this against Tarrant’s travel to numerous countries over five years.
Tarrant also frequently provided personal information in his posts, and he used the same distinctive language. In some cases, he repeated points we know he made elsewhere. He openly and proudly stated his Australian identity, even as he called for violence.
He also often made specific grammatical errors which make his posting stand out. He uses this style in online writing samples as early as 2011, in his 2019 manifesto, and in a great deal of online posting in between. In combination, these indicators identify Tarrant.
Our team of four researchers reviewed thousands of anonymous posts and hundreds of threads on /pol/. We used the platform’s search function for particular words, phrases and images. As a team we carefully evaluated all posts which included several of the above indicators.
We maintained a very high evidence threshold for including posts in our analysis. We excluded some important statements that were almost certainly written by him, but for which only one or two of the above indicators were present.
This seems a very robust methodology.
Winston Peters announced:
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has appointed Leon Grice and Heather Simpson to serve on the Antarctica New Zealand board.
Good and interesting appointments. Leon Grice is very very capable.
The appointment of Heather Simpson is especially interesting. She is also very capable, and very no nonsense. I suspect she is partly there to sort out the cost blowouts on the Scott Base rebuild. The staff responsible should be somewhat nervous!
The NZ Association of Economists released:
The ninth NZAE Member Survey asked questions inspired by the recommendations recently released by the Independent Hearing Panel on the Wellington District Plan.
A great idea. Here is what they found:
Land use restrictions in district plans reduce housing supply – 96% agreed
Land use restrictions in district plans reduce housing affordability. – 94% agreed
Easing restrictions in district plans will tend to increase housing supply and affordability. – 98% agreed
There is an overwhelming consensus on the economics of housing supply. Yet the IHP decided white is black and that housing supply is immune from supply restrictions.
The Council should over-ride their recommendations. This will then refer the disagreement to the Minister (Chris Bishop) whom I am confident will be on the side of common sense.
Newsroom reports:
The veteran MP is smarting at a revelation in new disclosures published by the Electoral Commission: ASX-listed mining firm Bathurst Resources donated $32,600 to 29-year-old independent Patrick Phelps to fully fund his campaign for more mining on the West Coast.
Candidate spending limits were $32,600 at last year’s election. So Bathurst, unhappy with a Labour policy banning more mining of conservation land, funded Phelps’ entire campaign – every last dollar. It gave him a far bigger war chest than the more established candidates.
“Look, it was a very credible result for him. And I acknowledge that,” O’Connor tells Newsroom. “Clearly, across the wider West Coast region, people saw our policy as a blockage to further any further mining development.
It’s a worthwhile story that one company entirely funded the campaign of an independent.
Richard Tacon says the company’s man was never going to win – but he did pull enough votes away from O’Connor to hand the West Coast-Tasman seat to National’s Maureen Pugh.
What Tacon and O’Connor do agree on is that Phelps took more votes off O’Connor than he did off Pugh.
This is where the data disagrees. The split vote analysis shows that only 940 Labour Party voters voted for Phelps compared to 2,198 National Party voters. He basically took twice as many votes off Pugh as O’Connor.
O’Connor lost the seat because around 23,000 voted for CR parties and only around 13,000 for CL parties.
O’Connor had 77% of Labour voters vote for him while Pugh only had 70% of National voters. On the basis of the split vote data, she would have a larger majority of Phelps had not stood.
Across the whole electorate in the 2020 election, O’Connor had won 6208 more votes than Pugh. In 2023, Pugh turned that around to a 1017 vote majority.
And the difference? There was a big nationwide swing against Labour, but that on its own wouldn’t have been enough to unseat O’Connor.
Yes it was. The 7,225 change in the majority was one of the smallest in NZ. 39 seats had a majority change by over 10,000 votes.
The CR beat the CL by 21% in WCT – that is why O’Connor lost.
Pugh saw her vote cut from 14,545 to 13,317. But the impact on O’Connor was far worse: his vote plummeted from 20,753 to 12,300.
Yes her vote dropped because helps took votes off her. The only seat which had a bigger drop for National’s electorate vote was Tamaki. Damien O’Connor’s drop was because Labour lost support everywhere. 26 other seats had larger drops for the Labour candidate.
The data totally contradicts the story.
As an adult – now in my 50s – I have been rocked four times by periods of depression and/or anxiety. It comes with a lot of complications – especially when you have children and professional responsibilities. Also – when the issue that seems to be hacking at you is a society wide one such as the government’s response to the pandemic – you can also have a form of survivor guilt. Appearing outwardly successful can also stand in your way for getting help as it becomes an irrational fear that if people know you are struggling you will be sidelined.
I went to a wonderful concert last weekend by Ohio band The National. Lead singer Matt Berninger is someone who has at times spoken of his bouts of depression including during the US pandemic response. Here he speaks with the great David Letterman. Well worth an evening’s listen. Below that is the final song in the same manner it was sung in Auckland – with 10,000+ singing it for him.
Alwyn Poole
Innovative Education Consultants
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/
www.wood2water.co.nz
www.russellinfo.co.nz
Joshua Drummond writes:
To recap, quickly: The Atlas Network is a “think tank that creates think tanks“; a global network of more than 500 right-wing think tanks and lobby groups. New Zealand members of Atlas include the Taxpayers’ Union and the New Zealand Initiative (formed from a merger of two think tanks, one of which was the infamous Business Roundtable.)
This, like everything else, is wrong. Atlas does not create think tanks. It did not create the NZBR, the NZ Initiative or Taxpayers Union. I know. I co-founded the NZTU and don’t think I had even heard of Atlas when I did.
Seymour’s extraordinary denial came during a recording of Mata with Mihingarangi Forbes on RNZ, recorded and released on Waitangi Day, February 6 2024. The relevant parts of the transcript are excerpted below.
Forbes: And those indigenous Australians are now warning Māori that the same groups are behind this referendum. Are they, do you think?
Seymour: Well, if you’re about to go into the new Pizzagate of the left conspiracy theory, then I’ll be real disappointed.
Forbes: What’s that, the Pizzagate?
Seymour: That’s some crazy conspiracy theory that Trump has had in the US.
Forbes: The campaign in Australia had links to the Atlas network.
Seymour: Oh, here we go.
Forbes: A network of think tanks, which promote individual liberty and free enterprise. And it said that the network pushes opinion pieces in favour of free speech. Do the ACT Party have any links or connections to the Atlas group?
Seymour, very quietly: No.
That is a lie. David Seymour and the ACT Party have numerous links to the Atlas Network. Here are some of them.
They have links, in the sense that people are linked to Kevin Bacon. They have links in the sense that I am linked to Hitler because Hedy Lamarr once babysat my father, and her husband had dinner with Hitler. You can claim almost anything is linked to anything else if you try.
After a 10 month stint as an electrical engineer – his sole non-political, non-think tank job – David Seymour worked for a Canadian think tank called the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, from 2007 to 2011. From January 2013 to February 2014, he worked for The Manning Foundation (now called the Canada Strong and Free Network). Both these think tanks were members of the Atlas Network at the time.
Yes David Seymour interacted with Atlas when he worked for a Canadian think tank. As Atlas is basically a support network for freedom focused organisations, this is about as surprising as the fact someone who worked for Greenpeace interacted with the Climate Action Network.
There are other overt ACT links to Atlas. According to his LinkedIn profile, Louis Houlbrooke is currently “working at Parliament in support of ACT’s vision of an open and benevolent society in which individual New Zealanders are free to achieve their full potential.” Before this, he worked as Campaigns Manager for the Taxpayers’ Union, an Atlas Network member, for four years, eight months. During this time, Houlbrooke attended multiple Atlas Network events, as documented by the Atlas Network.
This is even funnier. Louis attended events when he worked for NZTU. He then went overseas, and when he came back he got a job (again) working for ACT. Somehow this means Atlas controls or influences ACT.
One former NZTU staffer was the daughter of a Labour MPs. That means Labour is linked to Atlas by this insane conspiracy theory,.
Forbes: Have you spoken or taken advice from them or any group associated with them about the treaty?
Seymour, even more quietly: No.
This is not true, as Forbes quickly demonstrates. Seymour attended a Taxpayers’ Union (which is part of the Atlas Network) function in Wellington where British politician Lord Daniel Hannan – one of the principal architects of Brexit, and founding president of the Initiative for Free Trade (which is, if you haven’t guessed, part of the Atlas Network) – spoke specifically about the Treaty.
This part gets funnier. In conspiracy world, taking advice from a group means listening to a speech by someone whose organisation is a member of that group.
This would mean I take advice from the Fabian Society, the CTU, the Greens etc etc.
Now why I am even wasting my time on ridiculing this stuff? If it was just Josh blogging I wouldn’t. But again his theories formed the basis of an entire program on TVNZ which was funded by taxpayers. Its the equivalent to the state funding a program on how the WHO and WEF secretly control the NZ Government.
Graham Adams at The Platform dissects the conspiracy theory and actually talks to some people involved.
She asked him about Act’s links to the Atlas Network, which fosters connections between centre-right think tanks around the world. When Seymour expressed his incredulity and disappointment that she was raising a “conspiracy theory”, she defended her line of questioning with: “My role is to ask questions on behalf of other people.” In fact, at that moment, Forbes closely resembled an arsonist asking a fire crew if they could help her find out more about how a blaze had started when she had lit it herself. In effect, she was asking Seymour to respond to insinuations she herself had made in her earlier 25-minute documentary on the proposed Treaty principles referendum.
Yes it was asking about her own program.
The first culprit to be singled out for attention in the programme was the prominent “No” campaign lobby group Advance Australia, “bankrolled by some of Australia’s richest people”.
However, this was only the prelude to introducing the Atlas Network — which Advance Australia was alleged to be linked to. Dr Jeremy Walker, a political scientist at the University of Technology Sydney who “studies the Atlas Network”, told us it was established in 1981 “to promote free-market policies around the world” and that some of its funding comes from “oil and gas interests”.
Advance Australia incidentally is not a member at Atlas. An inconvenient fact they ignored. And one prominent Yes campaigner is on the board of an Atlas member.
Every major Australian news outlet in the run-up to the referendum publicised the eye-watering amounts of money that major businesses pledged to the “Yes” campaign. Some estimates put the total in the tens of millions of dollars. And, ironically, the biggest donors included the big oil and gas producers.
BHP and Rio Tinto donated $A2 million each, while resource giants Woodside Energy, Newcrest and Origin Energy, among others, publicly advocated for the “Yes” vote. The Minerals Council of Australia backed it too.
That Forbes failed to mention these well-established facts about corporate Australia’s enthusiasm for the “Yes” campaign while she pumped the narrative that a sinister and secret conspiracy with links to the oil and gas industries had propelled the “No” side to success is a sorry indictment of the programme’s integrity.
So in fact big oil all backed and funded the yes campaign.
However, New Zealander Debbi Gibbs — who is the chair of the Atlas Network, headquartered in the US — told The Platform that Forbes had not contacted her for comment.
Asked whether Atlas had put any money into supporting David Seymour’s campaign on the Treaty principles, or whether it intended to, she replied:
“We don’t make donations to campaigns, candidates, or parties. Additionally none of the partners in our Network are political parties. They are all independent, non-governmental, civil society organisations.
The entire conspiracy theory is based on the fact that freedom orientated think tanks belong to a network of freedom orientated think tanks.
“We have just finalised the figures for the 2023 Annual Report that is not yet published, and we spent a total of $62,000 on grants to partners in Australia and New Zealand… You can see examples of the projects we have supported on our web site.”
Yep $62,000 spending in Australia and NZ. This is publicly available information, but one they chose not to report.
In addition, Gibbs corrected two claims made or implied in the documentary: “Advance Australia is not an Atlas Network partner… and the statements made about the Atlas Network’s source funding are completely false.”
I understand that any industry donations or Koch donations happened around 20 years ago. Yawn.
Perhaps the greatest irony of Forbes’ allegations about well-funded groups working behind the scenes to promote Seymour’s principles bill is that the $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund, administered by NZ on Air, has been running for three years with explicit criteria about how the Treaty must be presented and promoted by successful applicants — namely as a partnership.
Ironic indeed.
“Trick or Treaty?” was funded by taxpayers’ money, but surprisingly NZ on Air doesn’t seem to have ready access to the exact amount the programme cost. The Platform’s request for that figure has been classed as an inquiry under the OIA, with a response promised “within the statutory timeframe”.
I think I know a good area Nicola Willis can save money.
Oliver Hartwich from NZ Initiative also writes:
Many of you have probably heard about Atlas Network in recent weeks. It is a network of think tanks around the world, and the Initiative is proud to be a part of it.
Despite being a friend of Atlas, I was unaware of its influence. There is a conspiracy theory that Atlas controls government policy in many countries – at least in Australia and New Zealand.
If only that were true. Atlas promotes sound policies, noble ideas and inspiring projects.
To achieve this, Atlas provides support to local organisations. Although these policy shops are diverse, they share a commitment to individual liberty, property rights, limited government, and free markets.
Atlas’ affiliates make abstract ideas concrete. In the favelas of Brazil, they helped residents establish property rights, become entrepreneurs and escape poverty.
Against a bureaucracy that prevented independent Nepali e-rickshaw drivers from operating, Atlas helped them register.
In the US state of Georgia, Atlas partners with the ‘Georgia Center for Opportunity’. They embarked on a large project to rehabilitate former offenders. That was a decade ago. Since then, the prison population and recidivism have significantly decreased.
There are dozens of success stories like this from all around the world that were supported by the Atlas Network.
So, when the Initiative started in 2012 and Atlas asked if we wanted to be affiliated, we felt honoured to join this network. We still are.
Atlas does not fund our work. Well, they gave us a camera a decade ago (and thank you, it still works). That was it.
For us, it has always been about belonging to an organisation that helps people achieve amazing things, and being part of a network whose goals we share.
I can say the same for the NZTU. Not once in ten years on the board was there ever a conversation about what Atlas might think on a policy issue.
So people might wonder what does Atlas do? Why would organisations join. Well here’s my experience:
This is all unexceptional. This is why almost any NZ organisation joins a global body of like minded organisations.
As I said I don’t think I even knew of the Atlas Network before we formed NZTU. It is possible before 2013 I have interacted with someone from Atlas as I have attended events in the US hosted by Heritage, Cato, ATR and the IDU, but they were not on my radar.
Since 2013, I attended one Atlas forum in Sydney in 2022 or 2023. It was a small gathering of around a dozen people where we talked about how to increase support for policies that enhance economic freedom. If the Australian referendum or the Treaty of Waitangi was ever discussed, it must have been while I was taking a five minute toilet break.
I look forward to the taxpayer funded documentary on how the Open Society Foundation is actually influencing events in Australia and NZ. After all like Atlas they are a network of 120 partners. They have funding of US$32 billion, compared to Atlas annual spending of US20 million.
Of course when it happens on the left, it is not something the media show any interest in.
Dave Armstrong writes:
Imagine you’re a struggling Wellington apartment owner. Your mortgage payments have skyrocketed and you’re struggling to make the council deadline for earthquake strengthening your building. It’s going to cost you half a million bucks which you don’t have.
Then you get a call from the local council who want to take you out for dinner and buy you expensive bottles of wine so they can buy the land underneath your apartment. This will allow you to pay for earthquake strengthening yourself and if you want to buy back the land years down the track, no problem, it will only cost you what you sold it to the council for.
I know this seems absurd, and yet it is exactly what happened to Reading Cinemas just days after Tory Whanau was elected mayor.
Lots of Wellingtonians would love such generosity.
Wellingtonians should be asking hard questions about the Reading deal. The first is why can’t Reading pay their own strengthening bills like everyone else? Didn’t they get an insurance payout? Remember that they are a multinational company owned by millionaires who recently opened three cinemas in Australia.
If Reading are such a great company, concerned about revitalising Courtenay Place, why have they done absolutely nothing about renovating their building to the required level, apart from quaffing from free council-provided wine at Ortega and putting out their hands for over $30 million? Why are some councillors so worried about one of the ugliest buildings in the city? Old St Pauls the Reading Centre is not.
If a tornado were to flatten it tomorrow, Wellington’s heritage value would increase. Not decrease.
I agree but as Wellington thinks rusty storage tanks are heritage buildings, I suspect the cinema complex will soo receive heritage status!
Councillor Iona Pannett, hardly a raging, pro-austerity Thatcherite, has filed a “notice of motion of revocation” to nix the Reading deal. This time around few councillors, apart from Green councillor Nīkau Ni Weera and Independent Tim Brown, have confirmed they still support the deal.
And our Labour councillors with possibly the crucial votes? Unlike their colleagues at national level, I have noticed that Wellington’s Labour councillors have often outflanked the Greens on the left when it comes to supporting low-income people and protecting council assets from privatisation.
Will they vote against the neo-liberal madness of bailing out a struggling overseas company to possibly strengthen its central city eyesore, when water is continuing to leak and library hours and swimming pools are being openly touted for the chop?
Voting for Pannett’s motion would send a message that our Labour councillors did not just have the best interests of ordinary Wellingtonians at heart, but were also fiscally responsible.
This will be a test indeed for Labour Councillors.
The Heraald reports:
One of our biggest commercial media company’s newsrooms – Newshub – is set to close at the end of June, with dozens of journalists out of roles.
Warner Bros. Discovery has laid out plans to close its Newshub news division from the end of June, and will apparently look to “co-fund” local news with a partner.
“Look this is awful,” Warner Bros. Discovery NZ boss Glen Kyne told staff at the meeting.
The company would look to co-fund local news but Three was now the “core” of the future business, staff were told.
This is sad, in two different ways.
A lot of people are losing their jobs, and have families who depend on them.
The other sadness is a loss of competition. This will leave TVNZ as the dominant broadcaster. We do have many new media players such as The Spinoff, Newsroom, The Platform and RCR but they don’t have the reach that television still has.
The Herald reports:
Police have launched a homicide investigation after a man died at a Kāinga Ora housing estate in the Auckland suburb of Mount Albert this afternoon. …
In 2020, newsroom.co.nz reported Kāinga Ora had spent $300,000 on security guards to ease concerns about one resident at the housing complex on He Ana Way.
Madness. People need to learn about consequences. Paying $300,000 to protect the neighbours just rewards the person for their behaviour. He should have been evicted long ago.
A person living in the nearby area, who asked not to be named because of fears for their safety, said Kāinga Ora refused to answer their complaints about the ongoing poor behaviour of some tenants living in the complex.
”We had bodyguards here for months,” he said. “There was a lot of smashing but this has been escalating and escalating.”
No-one should have to live like this. Labour’s no-eviction policy should be scrapped asap.
A man who was allegedly involved in the incident has been causing issues in the area for at least a year, witnesses said.
“If they [Kāinga Ora] actually dealt with stuff, it would be a deterrent to others,” one resident said.
Exactly. And maybe someone would still be alive.
Newstalk ZB report:
Police are laying a fourth charge against former Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, who had her first court appearance for alleged shoplifting delayed again.
Astonishing. How many more incidents might there be out there?
It seems this is from a third store, and for another expensive designer item.
The Greens defence that this is all because she received some nasty e-mails looks very weak.
NewstalkZB reports:
Nash – who took over as Police Minister from Chris Hipkins when the latter became Prime Minister – said the first thing he did in the role was talk to Hipkins about dropping the seizure limit to $0.
“He said, ‘Well, see if you can get it past Kiri [Allan]. And I went to Kiri and said this is what I want to do. And she said ‘No, we need to leave it at $30,000.’”
Nash then asked to take the issue to Cabinet.
“And she said ‘No, this is what it’s going to be.’ She obviously went to Hipkins and Hipkins said, ‘Okay, we’re going to leave it at $30,000′. Why? Because it’s anti-Māori. Bulls***.”
Nash claimed police were “race-agnostic” when it came to gangs.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re Māori, European, Chinese, Indian, what ethnicity – a gang member is a gang member is a gang member and they need to be held to account.”
Nash said the harm gangs perpetrated across communities, including destroying communities through methamphetamine, meant “we need to go really hard” on them.
I would have thought being anti-gang was being pro-Maori considering the huge harms to many Maori caused by gangs.
Radio NZ report:
Air New Zealand and Auckland Airport are continuing to trade accusations over a planned increase to the airport’s charges.
The same issue came to light last year, when some airlines claimed travel would become unaffordable as the airport announced a five-year plan to help fund its multibillion-dollar redevelopment plans.
Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran said based on “information that we receive from them [the airport] and we can see in the public arena”, the airport’s regulated charges would add about $46 to the price of a domestic ticket by 2032.
An extra $46 per ticket is very significant. As some tickets are under $100, that could increase fares by 50%.
Airports are regulated by the Commerce Commission as they are near natural monopolies. But the maximum price they can charge airlines tends to be a percentage of their asset base. So it provides airports with an incentive to spend up large, as this will allow them to increase landing fees to airlines.
In an ideal world you might have more than one airport in a city, as competition is the best answer. But this is very unlikely in NZ, as most cities do not have the space for a second airport.
The next best options seems to be having the Commerce Commission change the basis of its price regulation, so that it doesn’t provide an incentive for massive capital expenditure beyond that which is necessary for an efficient and pleasant airport.