The Herald reports:

In a stark illustration of how acute services across the country are struggling to cope with crippling staff shortages, Palmerston North Hospital’s emergency department is so understaffed that on six occasions in the past few weeks, it had no junior doctors rostered overnight, according to internal documents. …

On one recent weekend, 14 patients each spent more than 24 hours “sitting in chairs in our ED waiting room” waiting to be admitted to the hospital.

I remind people that prior to this Government, almost 95% of ED patients were seen within six hours. Now you have people waiting 24 hours to be admitted.

Stuff reports:

A teen who avoided jail for the brutal beating of a 78-year-old man is back before the courts charged with aggravated robbery.

It hasn’t been three months since Judge Bridget Mackintosh addressed the teen in the Napier District Court, telling him there were “some kernels of hope” that he and his co-offender would go on to become “much, much better people”.

Media are only permitted to report on Youth Court matters with a judge’s approval. It was granted to Stuff on that occasion.

The youth and his older co-offender had violently assaulted the elderly man in his home and left him for dead in January 2022.

These kernels of hope are paid for by the victims of further crime.

Robert MacCulloch writes:

The newly released IMF Regional Economic Outlooks say NZ is projected to be the worst performing economy in the entire world in 2024 in terms of GDP growth, with one exception, Equatorial Guinea, which has been ripped apart by civil war. No other time in our history has NZ been bottom of the planet.

The details? NZ is projected to be in & out of recession at 0.8% GDP growth in 2024. Growth for 34 Asia-Pacific nations is expected to be way higher, averaging 4.4% (see links below). The IMF Outlook for Western Hemisphere has figures for North & South America. NZ is bottom out of those 36 sovereign nations. (Puerto Rico is the only place worse, but it’s a territory). The figures for 45 nations in Western & Eastern Europe again rank NZ bottom, with Italy.

This may be Labour’s legacy – growth alongside Equatorial Guinea!

The Herald reports:

Criminals being electronically monitored are “regularly” wrapping tinfoil around their ankle bracelets and reoffending, according to an internal police report.

Examples of the practice, known as foiling, include a man leaving his home undetected and allegedly going to his ex-partner’s where he lay in wait and held her against her will, assaulting her multiple times, threatening to kill her, and attempting to stab her.

Youths have also been foiling their bracelets before doing ram raids and smash and grabs. …

Frontline police in Canterbury said they were regularly encountering youth offenders doing ram raids who they believed were on EM bail, the report says.

“What was of concern was that although these people were subject to EM bail, police had not been notified by Corrections that they were breaching their conditions.”

Further investigations revealed the suspects were foiling their tracking devices.

So basically electronic monitoring is useless, and a teenager with $1 of tinfoil can breach their bail conditions without Corrections knowing.

Generally an incumbent Government will campaign on a mixture of two things, to try and get re-elected. They are:

1. Their successful record to date
2. Their policies for the future

The problem Labour has is it has almost none of either. The vast majority of NZers think NZ is heading the wrong direction and our health, criminal justice and education systems are worse than three years ago.

And their main policy for the future is to knock around $1.50 a week off the cost of fruit and vegetables.

So having no record and few policies to campaign on, they have no choice but to go negative and try and scaremonger about a change of Government.

Stuff reports:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has ruled out working with NZ First and Winston Peters.

“I will not be seeking to divide New Zealand communities,” he said.

LOL. The current Government has been the most divisive in at least a generation. And anyone who thinks a Labour-Green-Maori Party Government won’t be even more divisive should go and buy a bridge.

Chris Lynch reports:

The Government is facing accusations of manipulating news narratives, after paying TVNZ and Stuff advertising to feature content with hand-picked experts in their news segments and platforms. …

The allocated $300,000 encompassed a package of multimedia coverage across TVNZ.

This included an hour-long prime-time climate special on TV1, online content hosted at 1news.co.nz and TVNZ.co.nz with a dedicated web page, digital banners, logo placement, and pre-roll commercials.

Additionally, five articles on 1News.co.nz, five social media posts on platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, a week’s worth of interviews with climate and energy experts on Breakfast TV, a Seven Sharp interview with an EECA ambassador, and 12 months of on-demand hosting for the Climate Special on TVNZ+ were part of this media package.

Cranmer said “the government paying the state-owned broadcaster to run news stories and interviews with hand-picked “experts” was pure political propaganda.”

Who knew that if the Government pays enough money, it can purchase an hour long prime-time programme. I bet you almost no one who watched it realised it was paid for propaganda, rather than genuine programming.

Labour’s Rotorua candidate decided to park their car on the footpath. Obviously rules are just for everyone else.

In another grasping at straws exercise within the last week the Prime Minister (the former worst ever Minister of Education) and the current (and second worst ever) Minister of Education (Tinetti) suddenly announced that the teaching of “Financial Literacy” from 2025 will be compulsory.

Despite Labour driving down qualification outcomes, increasing the percentage of NEETS (not in education, employment or training), and dropping school attendance through the floor – QUALIFICATIONS COUNT for earning. So, the first things that young people and families need to know for financial literacy and health are below. They can be summarised as stay at school, go to school, work hard, be nice to your mum and dad. But https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/80898/education-and-earnings adds great detail.

• Getting a school qualification makes a difference to how much you will earn. If you left school with NCEA Level 2, you can to expect to be earning twice as much, nine years later, as someone who left school when you did, but who had no qualifications.
• Staying on at school an extra year and entering the workforce with University Entrance (UE) gives you 25% more earnings, on average, than leaving school with just NCEA Level 2.

Non-degree tertiary qualifications

• So long as your tertiary qualification is higher than your school qualification, you can expect, on average, to have higher earnings. A Level 1 or 2 post-school certificate has the same earnings benefits as NCEA Level 1, on average, but 60% to 70% more benefit than no school qualification, 20% less benefit than NCEA Level 2, and 10% less benefit than a Level 3 post-school certificate.
• Completing a Level 4 certificate makes a difference. Nine years after leaving school, you can expect to earn 10% to 15% more than someone of your age with NCEA Level 2 as their highest qualification. Only those who completed a degree will be earning more per year. A large proportion of Level 4 qualifications are trade-oriented, and demand for trade-related skills and services has been high over the period covered by these results.

Degree qualifications

• Degree and higher-level education gives you higher annual earnings as well as higher earnings growth. Nine years after leaving school, you’ll expect to be earning 15% to 20% more than someone of your age who finished their education with UE, and 40% to 50% more than someone who finished with NCEA Level 2.
• But having spent less time in the workforce, the total cumulative earnings of people with degrees will still be catching up with those who finished their education with NCEA Level 2, UE, or a Level 4 certificate. The recent data – i.e. during a period of good labour market conditions – suggests it might take 12 years for the cumulative earnings of those that did degrees to overtake those of their peers who did a Level 4 certificate, and 10 or 11 years to overtake those who finished their education with NCEA Level 2 or UE.

Other messages

• Education contributes more to earnings through its ability to obtain and sustain employment over time. Lower employment accounts for much of the earnings disadvantage of people with no qualifications. But even when comparing just people in employment, there is still a benefit for higher qualifications. For example, those in employment with a degree, nine years after leaving school still earn 25% to 30% more than those in employment with NCEA Level 2 as their highest qualification.
• Field of study has a big influence on earnings. Average annual earnings benefits five years after graduation for a young degree graduate can vary by 30% or more (or around $20,000), depending on their field of study.

If you want a genuinely flourishing society and workforce educating young people well is a great start. It might help people on a job seekers benefit to budget – for a month of two – but it is hardly a future to aspire to.

Alwyn Poole ([email protected])
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
www.cambridgefestivalofsport.co.nz
www.alwynpoole.substack.com

Radio NZ reported:

The two brothers who drugged and committed sexual offences against multiple patrons at the Christchurch bar, Mama Hooch, have been handed lengthy sentences.

Danny and Roberto Jaz used their positions in the family businesses and neighbouring restaurant, Venuti, to routinely spike drinks, drug and sexually violate people between 2015 and 2018.

Roberto Jaz, 38, has been given 17 years in prison, with a minimum non-parole period of 8.5 years.

Danny Jaz, 40, has been given 16.5 years, with no parole available until at least eight years have been served.

They were remorseless predators. They boasted about drugging their victims so they could rape them.

Ideally, when they are finally released, they will be deported back to Australia

The Australian reports exclusively:

US President Joe Biden’s 90-day probe into the origins of Covid-19 censored the input of intelligence agency scientists who concluded the virus was most likely genetically engineered. …

When the report was published it concluded that most intelligence agencies assessed the virus, even if it had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was natural rather than manipulated in a laboratory

The Australian can reveal that this was not the assessments made by the four groups within the intelligence agencies that actually engaged in scientific analysis, who concurred that there was either a highly likely or reasonable chance the virus was genetically engineered.

Once again we find out the truth later.

One of the scientists discovered that the size and location of a fragment of Covid-19 resembled the same fragment in Wuhan Institute of Virology research from more than a decade earlier, in 2008. It was the same technique that the WIV had used in grant applications to make chimeric viruses. 

“This paper is the smoking gun of everything. When the team reviewed this data, they thought ‘This is created in the lab. It’s a reverse genetics construct,” a source said.

I suspect those scientists who know the truth in China are now all dead.

Stuff reports:

National Party leader Christopher Luxon says his party would put an end to gangs getting government contracts, if elected in October.

The idea that if you just fund them, gangs will become benign has been exposed as optimistic stupidity.

Stuff reports:

The report into Tim van de Molen has just dropped. It has found Tim van de Molen should be censured for his behaviour towards Labour MP Shanan Halbert, and is in contempt of Parliament for stopping him doing his duties.

“We find that Mr van de Molen’s conduct towards Mr Halbert amounted to threatening him, that Mr Halbert was impeded in the discharge of his duties as a member, and that in doing so, Mr van de Molen committed a contempt of the House.”

The privileges committee said van de Molen’s conduct was not normal or acceptable, and that Parliamentary staff all considered calling security at the time of the incident. 

When the evidence is clear, it is good to see the Privileges Committee agree unanimously that the actions of an MP were wrong. In fact all their decisions this year have been unanimous.

This is a real change from 2008 when disgracefully Labour MPs dissented from the findings about Winston Peters, despite overwhelming evidence.

Newshub reports:

A Green Party MP has slammed Japan’s decision to release 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean, saying not all factors have been considered.

That sounds like a lot. Or is it. It is 1.3 million cubic metres which is equal to a 109 metre cube.

That is 0.0013 of a cubic km. The Pacific Ocean is 714 million cubic kms so it is equal to around 0.00000000018% of the Pacific Ocean.

The wastewater will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, below the World Health Organisation drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre, according to Tepco. A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity.

Japan claims the water release is safe. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, greenlighted the plan in July, saying that it met international standards and that the impact it would have on people and the environment was “negligible”.

And the level of radioactivity is 1.9% of the safe limit, so 50 times under.

The Herald reports:

Westpac economists expect to see a continued deterioration in the books when the full-year results are published on September 12, alongside an updated set of Treasury forecasts. …

Westpac economists believe this will mean that instead of issuing $120b of New Zealand Government Bonds (debt) in the four years to 2026/27 (as forecast in May), Treasury will need to issue $135b.

In other words, if the Government sticks to its spending plans, and if Westpac economists’ forecasts of Treasury’s forecasts eventuate, the Government will need to borrow an extra $15b over the next four years.

This would add to a string of previous upward revisions, which would see Treasury issue $35b (or 35 per cent) more debt over the four-year period than expected in December.

So a $35 billion projected debt blowout in just eight months. That’s around an extra $7,000 of debt per person.

Stuff reports:

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi could face referral to Parliament’s powerful Privileges Committee, after appearing to breach both a court order and Parliament’s own rules.

Waititi appeared to substantially breach a name suppression order in Parliament’s debating chamber on Wednesday.

But Waititi denied he breached any suppression order, after he left the House. He told Stuff that because he did not say the defendant’s name, he couldn’t have breached a name suppression order.

Waititi is wrong. You can breach a name suppression order without naming someone. If you refer to details about them that can allow people to work out their name, then that is also a breach.

For example if Waititi was before the courts and had name suppression, and I said that the male co-leader of the Māori Party was before the courts, then I would have breached his name supression.

Waititi can’t be hauled before the court for his breach of name suppression, as it was done in Parliament, but it seems inevitable he will be referred to the Privileges Committee.

NB: Any comments that breach name suppression orders will be deleted and may get you suspended.

A depressing article by Gary Judd KC about the NZ Law Society abolishing their Rule of Law Committee.

The reason isn’t because it did nothing, but because it did too much. Specifically it raised concerns about judicial independence when Oranga Tamariki persuaded two heads of bench to try and intervene with a presiding Judge in a current case.