Stuff reports:

After iteratively nudging the door shut to any potential coalition deal involving New Zealand First, ACT Leader David Seymour has finally slammed the door shut, turned the key, fastened the deadbolt and latched the door chain. 

There’s no room for Winston Peters in any Cabinet shared with David Seymour. 

When asked by Stuff if he categorically rules out working with Peters after the election, Seymour replied, “Yeah, look, it’s impossible to see us sitting around the Cabinet table.”

And Seymour left no room for doubt – no twerky wriggle room.

This is not surprising from ACT. It is worth looking at what this means in terms of potential Governments.

Let’s look at first what happens if NZ First don’t make 5%.

If they don’t make 5%, then whichever bloc of National/ACT or Labour/Green/Maori has 61 or more seats gets to form Government. There are basically just two options.

Four of the five most recent polls have shown that National/ACT would get a clear majority in an election. One showed a hung Parliament.

So if you want a National/ACT Government, it is more likely to occur if NZ First does not make 5%. If they make 5%, then basically each “bloc” would lose three seats to them making a majority harder.

But what if NZ First does make 5%. Here are the scenarios:

1. National/ACT have a majority without NZ First. NZ First would sit on the cross-benches. They might have a confidence and supply agreement with National in exchange for some policy gains.
2. National/ACT make up the Cabinet. NZ First gets seats outside Cabinet as part of a confidence and supply agreement.
3. National/ACT make up the Cabinet. NZ First sits on the cross-benches with a confidence and supply agreement with National in exchange for some policy gains.
4. National solely makes up the Cabinet. Both ACT and NZ First have ministers outside Cabinet as part of a confidence and supply agreement
5. National solely makes up the Ministry. They have confidence and supply agreements with ACT and NZ First, or NZ First abstain on supply and confidence.

The 1st scenario would be my preferred one if NZ First do make 5%. If National/ACT still manage a majority they can have a cohesive reforming Government.

Scenario 2 is unlikely. While Seymour only ruled out NZ First in Cabinet, I’m not sure whether he would be happy with them in the Ministry at all. Also more likely is Peters would not back a Cabinet with ACT in it, if he is not.

Scenario 3 is also unlikely. Will Peters want Seymour as Deputy PM? Also worth understanding that a confidence and supply agreement only applies to around two votes a year. Every other Government policy would be subject to the approval of NZ First, or getting an opposition party on side.

Scenario 4 is perhaps the least worst scenario of scenarios 2 to 5. Both parties having Ministers would give some incentive to try and make the Government cohesive. But again every law would need the support of both parties.

Scenario 5 is the most likely outcome. ACT and NZ First mutually veto each other and National governs alone. However this is a fairly weak Government that again needs both parties to agree to everything.

There is a sixth scenario where Winston gets pissed off with what he sees as a lack of respect from National and ACT, and does a deal with Labour. Now this is very unlikely. Winston has been far more explicit than normal in ruling Labour out, and his supporters would be outraged if he them put them back in. But you can’t be 100% certain unless you get it in writing as a sworn affidavit!

As readers will know I’m not a fan of many NZ First policies. They are economically to the left of me. I would much rather have a clean National/ACT Government.

But if they are in Government, there is one area they could do some good in, and that is the area of co-governance and the insistence that the Treaty is about equal partnership and equity (as opposed to equality and property rights).

The “blob” tends to throw the racist label at anyone who opposes what has been a revolution in the last five years in our constitutional arrangements. In theory Winston Peters, Shane Jones and Casey Costello could be the most effective politicians to fight back against this interpretation of the Treaty. Yell “racist” at them all you like, and it won’t get far.

But I did say “in theory”. I like a lot of the speeches that Peters and Jones have made in the last year in this area. But I also recall he made similar speeches in 2017 when he promised a referendum on the Maori seats. And according to numerous sources, this promise wasn’t even raised in the coalition negotiations.

It’s one thing to make speeches, but another to have the willpower to actually drive change. I do rate Casey Costello. She will want to actually change things, but even if elected she will be just one MP.

I think the best way forward is ACT’s referendum policy. I’m somewhat hesitant as a referendum can be a blunt tool, and the debate could be challenging. But it is a debate that has to happen. We need certainty on whether or not NZ continues with equality of suffrage or not.

The Herald reports:

A resident at an Auckland Kainga Ora apartment block says she fears for her safety and that of other residents after she was allegedly threatened with an axe by one of her neighbours.

Police said they are investigating a complaint relating to an ongoing dispute at the residential complex.

Ada Shi, 48, has been living in her apartment since 2016 and said she called police after another resident allegedly raised an axe to threaten her and visitors to her home last weekend.

She claimed the neighbour also poured urine across her mat and front entrance of her apartment and put human faeces on the top of her rubbish bin.

Shi said she had reached out to Kainga Ora multiple times over the last six years asking to be relocated or for her neighbour to support.

“But every one of my pleas for help to Kainga Ora has fallen on deaf ears,” she said.

Again, I would abolish Kainga Ora and hand over the entire state housing stock to charities like the Sallies to run. They could only do a more humane job.

Newshub reports:

The National Party is accusing Labour of picking “politics over parents” after it voted against a Members’ Bill that would’ve allowed choice when taking paid parental leave. 

On Wednesday, National deputy leader Nicola Willis’ Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Shared Leave) Amendment Bill had its first reading in the House. Every political party voted in favour of the Bill except Labour, meaning any further progress on it was halted.

Willis said her Bill would have “modernised” the current settings of paid parental leave, allowing Kiwi parents to take their leave at the same time, one after the other or in overlapping instalments. 

“Whether you’re a Dad wanting to support Mum in the first few weeks after birth, or you want to divide your paid leave entitlement between two primary caregivers in overlapping instalments, the choice should be yours. But Labour wants to stop you.”

I’m staggered Labour voted against such a common sense law change. Every other party in Parliament supported it.

Allowing both parents to take say six weeks leave each, could be huge. Those first six weeks are so challenging, and even harder to do solo when your partner has had to return to work.

But Deputy Prime Minister and Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni said the advice the Government received is that the Bill is “unworkable in the form that it is in”. She said there are some potential “unintended consequences” the Bill would cause, including the health of the birthing parent.

“It is something that would need to be thought through more before we could agree to such a measure,” she said. 

“Part of the reason it was set to 26 weeks [of paid parental leave] was actually to provide the six months of breastfeeding that the World Health Organization recommends.”

This is basically bullshit. The law already allows the father to take the paid parental leave. It just doesn’t allow it at the same time as the mother.

Newshub reports:

New Zealand has experienced one of its worst-ever days of ‘ramping’, where ambulances are forced to sit idle and treat patients on hospital ramps because emergency departments are overloaded. 

Waikato had its worst day ever on Monday with almost every ambulance in the region parked for up to four hours waiting to get into the ED. Five of those ambulances had seriously ill, status two patients on board.

“At its peak we had twelve ambulances at the emergency department.

I remind people again that Labour abolished the successful target National implemented of 95% of ED patients seen within six hours.

Audrey Young has written about what a National/ACT Ministry may look like. Her predictions are:

National Ministers

1. Luxon
2. Willis
3. Bishop
4. Reti
5. Goldsmith
6. Upston
7. Stanford
8. Doocey
9. Brown
10. Collins
11. Mitchell
12. McClay
13. Lee
14. Bayley
15. Woodhouse
16. Simpson
17. Simmons
18. Watts
19. Penk
20. Grigg
21. Potaka
22. Christmas

ACT Ministers

1. Seymour
2. van Velden
3. McKee
4. Chhour
5. Stephenson
6. Hoggard

I look forward to the next article, which is what a Labour/Green/Māori Party Ministry may look like. I know which one I prefer!

A post by PaulL.

I see in the NZ Herald that teachers have gotten a pay rise of 14.5% by December 2024. Sounds pretty good. But is it?

The same article says that teachers have had no pay rise since July 1, 2021, and that this agreement will carry them through till June 2, 2025. It also says that the CPI for the year to June 22 was 7.3%, and for the year to June 23 was 6.0%. So we know about 13.3%, and they’re 1.2% ahead. How likely is it that inflation in the year to June 24, plus the inflation in the year to June 25, will be less than 1.2% in total? Seems like between 3% per year and 6% per year would be a better forecast – 6-12% in total. Teachers will be going backwards by between 5-10%.

The government actually offered 11.1%, which was less than inflation, and arbitration forced them to settle. I guess their announcement is trying to make a good news story out of something they were forced to do.

The Herald has unquestioningly published the government press material that under National teacher pay had only increased 10%. But of course, under National inflation was generally around 2% a year. It seems that National’s pay rises didn’t keep pace with inflation, but on these numbers, nor do Labour’s.

Interesting that the media aren’t really doing any analysis on the claims.

Party Vote

• Labour 32.3% (-3.6% from May)
• National 36.6% (+1.3%)
• Greens 9.6% (+1.5%)
• ACT 12.1% (+1.3%)
• NZ First 4.1% (+1.1%)
• Maori 2.7% (-0.8%)
• TOP 1.5% (-0.6%)

Seats

• Labour 42 (-23 from election)
• National 47 (+14)
• Greens 12 (+2)
• ACT 16 (+6)
• Maori 3 (+1)

Governments

• Labour/Green 54/120
• Labour/Green/Maori 57/120
• National/ACT 63/120

Preferred PM

• Chris Hipkins 24.0% (+0.6%)
• Christopher Luxon 15.9% (-0.5%)
• David Seymour 10.9% (+3.4%)
• Winston Peters 4.3% (+0.7%

Background

In January/February of each year the NCEA/UE results get released for the students who sat in the previous year. For schools that keep the vast majority of their students until 17 years old – they are a reasonably accurate reflection of performance. For schools that lose many students prior to that those results are mythical. They only tell the stories of the survivors who have managed to stay until the qualifications years.

The best data set is the leavers results. Education Counts (the worthwhile arm of the ministry) have recently released the summary of NZ’s school leaver results. I am about to receive the raw data for the leavers results and destinations for every high school in NZ and in a few weeks will have my annual data process done to show – accurately – how every high school in NZ is actually doing.

The summary documents listed here are well worth a read: www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/school-leavers

A Summary of the Summary

Not being in employment, further education or training (NEET) affects around 30% of school leavers in the first year after they finish school, including almost 70% of leavers without a qualification and almost 50% of leavers with a Level 1 qualification.

In 2022 84.8% of all school leavers attained NCEA Level 1 or above. Compared to 2021, there was a 2.8 percentage point decrease in the proportion of school leavers with NCEA Level 1 or above. Attainment of NCEA Level 1 or above had been increasing between 2012 and 2017, since 2017 it has decreased 5.2 percentage points.

In 2022, 11,989 Māori school leavers (73.0%) attained NCEA Level 1 or above, a decrease of 3.6 percentage points from 2021.

In 2022, 48,344 school leavers attained NCEA Level 2 or above, equating to 75.0% of all school leavers. This is a 4.1 percentage point decrease from 2021 and a 4.9 percentage point decrease from 2019.

In 2022, 9,630 Māori school leavers attained NCEA Level 2 or above, equating to 58.6% of all Māori school leavers and a decrease of 5.1 percentage points from 2021. Between 2017 (when the rate was at its peak) and 2022, the proportion of Māori school leavers NCEA Level 2 or above decreased by 10.3 percentage points.

In 2022, 5,411 Māori school leavers attained NCEA Level 3 or above, equating to 32.9% of all Māori school leavers and a decrease of 4.4 percentage points from 2021.

In 2022, 51.8% of all school leavers achieved Level 3 or above, a 4.5 percentage point decrease from 2021.

In 2022, 38.0% of all school leavers attained UE Standard, a 3.4 percentage point decrease from 2021 (41.3%).In 2022, UE Standard was attained by 17.8% of Māori school leavers. For Asian leavers the UE rate was 62.5%. For Europeans 41.7%. For Pasifika students 20.7.

Of the 63,417 domestic students who left school in 2021, 59.3% enrolled in tertiary education during. This is down 5.6 percentage points from the 2020 leavers participating in tertiary in 2021.

A Summary of the Summary of the Summary

1. Chris Hipkins is, by a significant margin, the worst performing Minister of Education I have ever seen in 30 years in the sector.
2. Jan Tinetti could well be worse but jumped into the slide well after Hipkins started the flow and may not have time to catch up.
3. The long term consequences for the young people, their families, and NZ as a whole will be catastrophic.
4. Change from the new government cannot be tinkering.

Alwyn Poole ([email protected])

Innovative Education Consultants

Cambridge Festival of Sport

www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
www.cambridgefestivalofsport.co.nz
www.alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

The NZ Initiative has analysed data on staff numbers in NZ universities. They found:

• 7,380 ‘academic staff’ and 11,265 ‘other staff’ at New Zealand universities in 2021.
• A ratio of approximately 1.5 non- academics to every academic.
• In other countries the rations are Australia 1.2, US 0.8, UK 0.8
• Non-academic staff salaries make up around 45% of the total staff costs

This might partially explain why the universities have such large deficits!

Stuff reports:

Data shows ongoing racial bias in police warrantless searches

Note the headline which reaches a conclusion that the disparity is due to “bias”.

New data obtained by the Sunday Star-Times once again shows that if you are brown in Aotearoa, you are far more likely to be subject to a police search without a warrant.

The use of warrantless searches provides a unique glimpse into interactions between police and the public. In certain situations, an officer can make a call to carry out a search without first obtaining a warrant from the courts, or without direct oversight from any other agency.

In the past two years, Māori were 3.9 times more likely to be subject to a warrantless search compared to Pākehā, and Pasifika 1.6 times more likely.

For some strange reason they don’t mention the rate for warrantless searches for Asians.

The missing context is that the Police can’t just decide to search you for no reason. The law requires them to have reasonable grounds for believing there are weapons or drugs.

Now it is quite possible there is racial bias with the Police, but you can’t just conclude it on the frequency of warrantless searches.

What would be far more useful data is what proportion of warrantless searches didn’t lead to charges, broken down by ethnicity. If (for example) 25% of searches of Maori lead to a charge but 40% of searches of Europeans, then you might conclude there is racial bias.

Newshub reports:

Newshub can reveal the number of complaints about migrant exploitation have increased more than sixfold in the last five years.

That is a huge increase.

The Government’s claims that the explosion is because they’ve made it easier to complain simply doesn’t wash.

Their new work visa was promised to prevent exploitation, but it appears to have done the opposite

That means Labour – the party of the worker – has overseen an explosion of migrant exploitation.

We are desperately short of workers. I would allow any overseas worker who gets a job offer from a small or medium employer (under 50 FTE) to have an automatic three year work visa, not tied to a specific employer.

Then at the end of three years they can either apply for residency if they qualify, or return home.

Stuff reports:

A more than 900% spike in police call-outs to just five Rotorua emergency housing motels can finally be revealed after the Ombudsman ruled data requested by Stuff a year-and-a-half ago, which the police admitted “paints a very unattractive picture”, should be released.

Back in January 2022, Stuff asked police to provide data on the number of times they had been called to five motels in 2016 – before their use for emergency accommodation – and also in 2020 and 2021.

Police declined to provide that information, citing privacy reasons and commercial interests.

Stuff referred the matter to the Ombudsman and more than 18 months later, it ruled police should hand over the data.

It should not take 18 months to get this data released.

A promised response from the Police Minister’s office to questions about whether police were pressured into keeping the data secret failed to arrive.

How interesting.

The Herald reports:

Tāmati Coffey has been selected to replace Kiri Allan as Labour’s candidate in the East Coast electorate.

This is great news.

Less than a year ago he came just 9th out of 16 in an election for the Rotorua Trust.

The July 2023 Roy Morgan is out.

Party Vote

• Labour 26.0% (-4.5% from June)
• National 33.5% (+3.5%)
• Greens 9.0% (-0.5%)
• ACT 14.0% (-1.0%)
• Maori 6.0% (-1.0%)
• NZ First 5.0% (+2.0%)
• TOP 4.0% (+1.0%)
• DemocracyNZ 1.0% (nc)

Seats

• Labour 33 (-32 from election)
• National 43 (+10)
• Greens 12 (+2)
• ACT 18 (+8)
• Maori 8 (+6)
• NZ First 6 (+6)

Governments

• Labour/Green 45/120
• National/ACT 61/120
• Labour/Green/Maori 53/120

Direction

• Right 29.0% (-9.0%)
• Wrong 60.5% (+6.5%)
• Net -31.5% (-15.5%)

The party vote for Labour is basically the equal lowest for a governing party since November 1991, when National got 24% in the wake of the 1991 Budget. The only other result this low was 25.5% in November 2022.

On this poll Labour is forecast to lose half of their current seats – from 65 to 33. This would represent the largest loss ever under MMP.

The net country direction is at the lowest level in the history of the Roy Morgan poll (since 2007).

National has announced funding of $24 billion for a dozen so so transport initiatives. The $24 billion is less money than the likely cost of Labour’s light rail obsession for Auckland. It’s a good reminder of the opportunity cost.

National has a good history of actually delivering what it promises. Auckland finally got a direct motorway link to the airport and a highway to the beginning of Northland. Wellington got Transmission Gully, the Kapiti Expressway and the Otaki Expressway.

The major projects National has committed to are:

1. Four lanes from Whangarei to Tauranga
2. Manukau to Drury highway
3. Onehunga to Mt Wellington highway
4. 21km of highway south of Hamilton
5. Petone to Grenada link road
6. Second Mt Vic tunnel
7. Removal of North-South traffic from the Basin Reserve
8. Auckland Rapid Transit
9. Lower North Island rail upgrade

There’s a lot more in the full policy.

New Zealanders have a stark choice – a Government that wants you to spend less time in congestion, or the current Government that wants you to spend more time in congestion to try and force you out of your cars.

Labour has released their list for 2023 election, so now we can assess who is likely to be back or not.

The table below shows who would get in at different levels of the party vote. In the latest Curia-TU poll they were at 31% which gets them 43 seats, down from 65 last election.

To assess who gets in on the list, we need to make assumptions over which electorates they retain, and the likely wasted vote. Again the latest Curia-TU poll there was 8% wasted vote, so we’ll use that.

They won 46 electorate seats. Let’s assume they lose those where their majority over National is under 3,000 – Northland, Whangarei, Maungakiekie, Tukituki, Upper Harbour, Northcote, New Plymouth, Hamilton East and Otaki. Also Hamilton West stays National and they lose Te Tai Hauauru to the Māori Party. That is 11 seats, so leaves them 35 electorate seats.

On current polling they would get eight List MPs, which would be Robertson, Tinetti, Verrall, Jackson, Prime, Rurawhe, Little and Parker.

If you assume they hold more electorate seats, then they get that many fewer List MPs. If you assume they lose more, they get that many more.

On current polling and assumptions they lose Radharishnan, Belich, Halbert, Bennett, Walters, Rosewarne, and all those below them who don’t win their seat.

I think readers instinctively understand that the Māori Party policy will not result in much extra revenue from high wealth NZers. It will in fact result in less revenue.

Let’s say you have $50 million of assets and you get a 6% return on those assets. Your income is $3 million a year.

Currently you pay income tax of $1,150,120. That leaves you $1,849,880. So their overall tax rate is 38%.

Now let’s look at the Māori Party Policy. Their taxes would be:

• Income tax of $1,395,900 or 47%
• Asset tax of $3,460,000 or 115%
• Total tax of $4,855,900 or 162%

So this policy isn’t Muldoon type policy of 66% top tax rate. This is a 162% effective tax rate. Not even the USSR or North Korea would have had policy like this.

So if you’re a high worth New Zealander, how moronically stupid would you have to be to stay residing in NZ? You’ll relocate to Sydney or anywhere else, and just spending five months visiting NZ every year during summer (or not visit at all).

The net result of the policy will be losing all the tax revenue they already pay.

A guest post by David Garrett:

However Labour might wish to argue otherwise, New Zealand is in the middle of a violent crime wave. We have just had a mass shooting by someone who should not have had a gun, let alone a pump action shotgun. Ram raids are an almost daily occurrence. Last year saw the cold blooded murder of a policeman. A man is currently on trial for shooting a fellow drug dealer, apparently over money. In other words, the country is unrecognizable from what it was 50 or 60 years ago. Why is that? How have we reached this sorry state?

Let’s go back to 1959, two years after I was born. In that year there were zero culpable homicides – not onemanslaughter or murder in the whole  country  in that twelve  month period. Hanging was still the mandatory sentence for murder – albeit that many  of those so sentenced  were reprieved. Aside from the 1959 “blip”, our homicide rate  per 100,000 per annum – which allows us to compare New York with New Plymouth – averaged about 0.5 per 100,000  p.a.  as it had since the early 20^th century.

Violent offenders – even low level ones – were invariably sent to jail. Those whose crimes had aggravating factors, or who were repeat offenders, could be sentenced to hard labour, where prisoners built their biceps breaking rocks next to Mt Eden, not in a nice clean gym in prison with underfloor heating. Those who didn’t want to behave could and did receive extra punishment, such as solitary confinement on “Number One diet” – bread and water. The cold unheated cells had a “piss pot” – a  bucket – in the corner,  which had to be “slopped out” each morning.

Bail was a rare privilege – one had to have “sureties” who put up money which was forfeit if you didn’t appear for trial. Bail would rarely if ever be granted for violent offences; the idea of those accused of murder being bailed would have been seen as absurd for a 1960’s  lawyer or  judge.

From the mid 1960’s, that all began to change; in short, criminals began to be seen as victims of their backgrounds and circumstances, rather than law breakers deserving of punishment. Hanging having been abolished in 1961, we began a trend of ever more  liberality in sentencing which has continued with ever increasing  speed ever since. The Sentencing Act 2002 has more than a few surprises for those unfamiliar with its provisions. Every sentence of two years or more is automatically cut in half – no parole required. There is a sub-section of the Act – s.8 (g) –  which says that Judges must impose the “least restrictive sentence possible”. 

As is becoming well known, the Act allows judges to make numerous  discounts for this or that, so that a sentence with a starting point  of – say –   five or six years in prison  can eventually result in the ludicrous non punishment of six or 12 months at home, smoking weed and playing computer games. If the offender is Maori he or she may request a “cultural report” which will helpfully include a long list of reasons for the offending, beginning with the supposed ongoing effects of colonization. One such happy beneficiary of such a report recently  thanked the judge and yelled “cracked it!” as he left the dock.

Where has that all got us? Our homicide rate has tripled from 0.5 per 100,000 p.a. in 1960  to about 1.5 – and this at a time when massive advances in trauma treatment since  our starting point of 1959 means those who would have died of a wound back in the day now often survive, albeit  after a period in intensive care. A British prison doctor – Tony Daniels (writing as Theodore Dalrymple) –  has opined that were if not for such advances there would be up to a third more homicides than there are.

Our violent crime rate per 100,000 has increased  about  200 times since 1960, with the use of guns, knives and other weapons  now being commonplace – and thanks to the benevolent provisions of the Sentencing Act, with its exhortations to be as least punitive as possible, and its “cultural reports”,  such crimes frequently don’t result in any prison time at all, and if the sentence is imprisonment, it will be a fraction of what would have been handed down in 50 years ago.

All of this sorry picture has resulted from “experts” who simply cannot accept that some humans are simply born evil; not only are they not remotely interested in rehabilitation, they laugh at those who suggest they change their criminal  path.  There are currently more than ten men serving time for their second  homicide – not a double or triple murder like that committed  by the now happily deceased Auckland construction site shooter, but a second murder, committed  after having served time for the first.

Our present situation  results from psychologists and criminologists who think everyone  is capable of reform, no matter what they have done. It has resulted from Parole Boards with the same mindset, who let out murderers like Graeme Burton, Paul Tainui and Pauesi Brown. We are where we are because many people – perhaps most – are not taught what the Sensible Sentencing Trust has called the ABC’s – Accountability, Boundaries and Consequences.

Rather than be held  accountable  for their actions, criminals find a plethora of “experts” willing to put their bad behavior  down to everything from colonization – the current favourite – to not having been brought up properly in a loving environment . Tragically of course the latter is frequently accurate; if a person’s parents are gang members who inculcate the “values” of the gang in their children, there is virtually zero chance of those children become decent citizens, and we now have a third generation of gang member parents.

Boundaries are all so last century – lately we have the absurdity of schools and other institutions bending  over backwards  to destroy  boundaries; accommodating children who identify as cats with dirt boxes in the toilets, and allowing men who claim to identify as a woman into women only spaces. I have already referred to the lack of consequences  at some length above.

The only thing that hasn’t been tried since the ever more liberal treatment of criminals  began in the 60’s is truly punitive prisons – and sentences which are at the upper end of the scale, and not “the least restrictive possible”. I cannot see the Nats or even those in my former party proposing to repeal the Sentencing Act – now gutted of its three strikes provisions – to turn off the underfloor heating, to  bring back hard labour as a sentence, and to  build prisons like the cold castle that is Mt Eden, and not a  nice clean well lighted and centrally heated  place like the New Auckland prison. Perhaps such a change will eventually happen, but I doubt we will see it in my lifetime – and I intend to live for a while yet. Until that change happens, I fear things are only going to get worse.

A reader pointed out to me how massively dominated by Wellingtonians the Cabinet is. 10.3% of the population live in the Wellington Region so you would expect them to be two Cabinet seats. But what we have is they make up almost half the Cabinet:

1. Hipkins – Wellington
2. Sepuloni – Auckland
3. Davis – Northland
4. Robertson – Wellington
5. Woods – Canterbury
6. Tinetti – Bay of Plenty
7. Verrall – Wellington
8. Jackson – Auckland
9. O’Connor – West Coast
10. Little – Wellington
11. Parker – Auckland
12. Henare – Auckland
13. Mahuta – Waikato
14. Radhakrishnan – Auckland
15. McAnulty – Wellington
16. Andersen – Wellington
17. Edmonds – Wellington
18. Prime – Northland

So the proportion of Cabinet vs the proportion of NZ is:

1. Wellington 7/18, 39% vs 10% population
2. Auckland 5/18, 28% vs 34% population
3. Northland 2/18 11% vs 4% population
4. Waikato 1/18 6% vs 10% population
5. Canterbury 1/18 6% vs 12% population
6. Bay of Plenty 1/18 6% vs 7% population
7. West Coast 1/18 6% vs 1% population

So Auckland has fewer Cabinet Ministers than Wellington despite more than three times the population.

Canterbury and Waikato have one Minister each to seven for Wellington, despite much the same population.

This is part of why the Government is out of touch. It is run by the professional politicians in Wellington, telling the rest of the country what to do.