This is a very powerful graphic. It shows that the authors of the highly cited article that dismissed the lab leak scenario actually thought it was highly plausible.

This isn’t a case of we thought one thing at the time and changed our minds later as more evidence emerged. They published an article that directly contradicted their own internal messages.

This is why we must be wary of people who say “trust the science” because that relies on trusting all scientists to be honest. These ones were not.

Nate Silver has an excellent piece on how this should be a major scandal, widely covered by media. Sadly it has not been.

National has released its 2023 List, which is below.

To work out who may get in, we need to make assumptions over which seats National wins. These are not prediction, just an explicit assumption. National won 23 seats in 2020. They also won Hamilton West. There are 12 seats they were less than 4,500 votes behind Labour – Northland, Whangarei, Maungakiekie, Tukituki, Upper Harbour, Northcote, New Plymouth, Hamilton East, Otaki, Ilam, Hutt South and Rangitata. If they win all of those that is 36 electorate seats.

The last three polls all have National at 35%. The number of seats will depend on the wasted vote but let’s say that gets them 46 seats. so who would come in on the list:

1. Nicola Willis
2. Paul Goldsmith
3. Melissa Lee
4. Gerry Brownlee
5. Nancy Lu
6. Katie Nimon
7. Agnes Loheni
8. Maureen Pugh
9. Emma Chatterton
10. James Christmas

Every 0.8% they get over 35% they get another MP.

A reader has watched every episode of The Nation so far in 2023 and recorded down who the panelists were, and analysed their comments to categorise them from hard left to hard right.

His summary is:

So 24% of panelists had right-leaning views and 62% had left-leaning views. A 2.5:1 ratio.

Marc Daalder at Newsroom writes:

One has to wonder whether the Labour Party has replaced all of its policy staff with the reckons of a ChatGPT bot that has been fed a steady diet of Talbot Mills polling numbers and focus group transcripts.

That’s one way to explain the unambitious tax policy released on Sunday: To strip GST from fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables, saving the lowest-income households a little more than $2 a week – and to boost family tax credits for low- and middle-income workers with children.

Yep $2 a week for the lowest-income and some of the WFF changes such as the abatement threshold don’t come in until April 2026!

Bad policies parties believe in are understandable. Policy that clashes with a party’s values can be excused if it works.

This is neither. This isn’t a policy Labour believes in, it’s a policy Labour believes will win. The party has made policy by focus group rather than by principle or evidence base.

The tax policy also doesn’t help answer the key question that still looms over Hipkins: We’ve seen what he doesn’t believe in (wealth taxes, hate speech laws, the public sector media merger) but what does he want? Sunday’s announcement leaves the impression the Prime Minister supports whatever gets him another term of Parliament.

A fair summary.

Bryce Edwards writes:

Labour is budgeting $500 million per year on this tax cut. But how much of that will end up in consumers’ pockets? And how much will end up with poorer citizens?

The consensus among economists seems to be that when such tax exemptions are introduced, companies avoid passing the bulk of the savings on to consumers. Labour’s own 2018 Tax Working Group concluded that only about 30 per cent of a tax cut normally gets passed on. The rest goes into increased profits.

That TWG was chaired by Michael Cullen. So Chris Hipkins is going to give $350 million to the supermarkets as a tax cut and $150 million will flow through to consumers.

So Labour are saying this policy will save $5 a week for the average family. Well if Dr Cullen is right, it will in fact only say $1.50 a week.

I like National’s policy to allow people to have more than one KiwiSaver provider. If you are not 100% happy with your current provider you may be hesitant to transfer your entire savings over to a new one.

But if you like the look of another provider, and you had the option of say 50% of your savings going into your current provider and 50% into a new one, then you would be more likely to do so. And the increased competition between providers should lead to reduced fees.

1. Any convictions are state convictions are can’t be pardoned by the President. So even if Trump (or another Republican) wins, he can’t pardon himself.
2. The Governor can’t pardon state crimes. Only the board of pardons and paroles can, whose five members serve seven year terms
3. Even the board can only consider a pardon after the sentence has been served – not before
4. The RICO law in Georgia is very wide-ranging and makes it easier to secure convictions than under federal law
5. The minimum jail time for a conviction on the RICO charge is five years. The other indictments leave sentences more to the discretion of a Judge, but in Georgia there is a minimum five years.
6. Trump faces 13 different counts, and even some of the lesser ones carry a minimum one year jail term.
7. It is inevitable that some or most of the 19 co-conspirators will cut a plea deal and become prosecution witnesses
8. The trial is highly likely to be televised
9. It has transpired that Trump refused to pay many of his lawyers who tried to overturn the election result for them. They are co-defendants and are more likely to flip, considering working for him has left them near bankrupt
10. The Judge is a Fulton County Superior Court Judge. He is a former state and federal prosecutor and state inspector general. He was appointed by the current (Republican) Governor Brian Kemp.

The Herald talked to 12 tax experts on Labour’s Get policy. Here is the summary.

• VUW Taxation Professor: “I think it’s one of the worst ideas I’ve heard for a while.”
• NZ Initiative Chief Economist: “It’s complicated, it’s annoying, it adds an awful lot of cost to running a tax system, it makes everybody’s tax returns more complicated… and it’s all for nothing. It doesn’t give you any benefit.”
• CTU Chief Economist (and former Advisor to Grant Robertson) – not his first choice, worth exploring, but better than anything National and ACT would do
• AUT senior taxation lecturer: “Inequity will increase because the benefit will go more in the pockets of rich people.”
• Infometrics principal economist: “If you can find an economist that supports this policy, they don’t deserve the title”
• Chair of GST design committee in 1985: “It’s a very inefficient way of helping the people you most want to help – presumably, low income people. Most of the money spent on food and vegetables is spent by middle and high income people, so you give away a lot of revenue as a government for very little benefit to the people you most want to help.”
• Tax specialist: “It’s an expensive option for little gain,”
• EY tax partner: “From a tax policy perspective, it is not a good idea,”
• Former head of policy for IRD: “Once you take it off something, how do you stop? We also have GST on doctors’ fees. How do you justify that? “Eventually, you end up with a very narrow base and if you want to collect the same amount of GST, you would have to massively increase the GST rate on everything else that you do catch.
• Child Poverty Action Group economics spokeswoman: “It’s probably one of the least cost effective ways for helping people who are struggling to feed their families.
• Tax specialist and member of 2009 Tax Working Group: “The compliance and administration costs in tax is large, and people tend to ignore those… indeed, there are some studies that suggest that those administration and compliance costs are the biggest component of the deadweight loss of taxes, tax costs, and they go through the roof as soon as you complicate the design of the system.
• Findex tax partner: “The basic bottom line is that removing GST just isn’t a smart way of lowering food prices,”

Labour know this is a terrible policy. Both the Minister of Finance and Associate Minister of Revenue have condemned it in the past.

Tova O’Brien writes:

What could possibly be worse than having your flagship cost of living policy leaked and announced by the opposition? 

Finally announcing your leaked and already announced flagship cost of living policy but buggering up the cost.

You also have to wonder who in Labour is leaking to Nicola. Their policy was Labour policy, not Govt policy, so the leak can’t be a public servant. It also wasn’t leaked (as is more usual) to a media source, but direct to Nicola. So really has to be a Labour MP or very senior staffer.

C’mon Labour! The Finance Minister pitched his election year budget as ‘getting the basics right’.

Someone hand that man a calculator. Just a basic one mind, let’s not confuse things with all those extra buttons on a scientific calculator.

Maybe an abacus?

So to miss the mark with the cost of its GST off fruit and veg policy by about $250million dollars is the gnarliest own goal we’ve seen since the FIFA Women’s World Cup kicked off. 

Making matters so much worse for Labour, the person who alerted the masses to the miscalculation was the very same person who was leaked the policy and cut Labour’s lunch in the first place, National’s Finance Spokesperson Nicola Willis.

To be fair, Labour did notice the error themselves. They just decided not to tell any and hope no one would notice the difference between the embargoed documents and the speeches.

The spin machine was quick to fire up about falsehoods from the opposition with a government spokesperson telling journalists, “the fact sheet was an earlier version that was only sent to media under embargo ahead of the announcement”.

“The materials that were publicly released at the time of the announcement were all correct.”

Problem was there were no materials publicly released at the time of the announcement – or at any point after it for that matter.

So they never told anyone about the hole and never issued new material correcting it until after Willis pointed it out.

A guest post from Matt King:

Three years on from Covid, this election is a time for us to make choices about what we stand for, and what we want to protect. 

In the name of Covid – we saw the most radical limitations on Kiwis’ rights we have seen in recent memory. Kiwis were required to stay home, shut up their businesses, funerals, weddings and gatherings were curtailed, and some workers were mandated to have vaccinations. 

Hundreds of thousands of businesses laid off staff, and many closed down as a result of Covid restrictions. 

International travel effectively stopped. Kiwis who were overseas were trapped by border closures, while those at home were unable to visit sick or dying relatives abroad. When borders did reopen, getting back into New Zealand became literally a lottery system. 

To enter community centres, pools, libraries, cafes, restaurants, and many other venues you needed to show a vaccination pass. Children from 12 upwards were also affected by the same rules, and some missed out on the opportunity to play sport, visit the library, and enjoy normal activities with their friends. 

Some Kiwis supported these measures – while others didn’t. But wherever you stand on these issues – it’s well time that we reflected back on what happened. Was it right? Was it fair? And if it happens again can we do things in a better way, with less economic and social carnage? Because, as they say, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. 

New Zealand is fairly unique as our Bill of Rights Act explicitly says that Kiwis should have the right to make their own medical decisions, and to refuse medical treatment. And yet, this didn’t work well in retrospect – as this clause was over ridden by the Government, and in some cases by our courts. 

Some Kiwis may be comfortable with this right being overridden. Personally, I am not. The right to make choices about what goes into your body is a fundamental freedom. I also feel strongly that people should be able to make a living by operating their businesses, and we should not have the right to do something as basic as visiting family and friends limited.

Other countries made different choices about how they responded to Covid, without mass loss of life and with less impact on individual freedoms. For example, the focus in Sweden was on protecting those most at risk from Covid – the elderly. The rest of their population went about their lives pretty much as normal.

During Covid, we saw laws like the introduction of vaccine passes rushed through under urgency, which meant there was no public consultation on these changes. 

I believe the community needs to have a say in how much restriction and control the Government can exercise over our freedoms in the future. 

I also believe we need to consult on, and strengthen, the protections in our Bill of Rights Act. In the US, their constitution means that citizens know exactly what their rights are. They can, and do, often take the Government to court when it breaches their rights. In this way, citizens help keep their Government in check. 

Here, after Covid, our rights seem pretty murky. It’s not clear when the Government decides to limit your right to freedom of speech or movement, if this will be ruled legal or not by our courts. 

Personally, I’m deeply concerned by the Government’s attempts to impose new hate speech legislation, and its recent talk of introducing a new internet regulator. 

I’m sure I’m not the only Kiwi whose blood runs cold at this thought of these changes. Who decides what is acceptable and what’s not? Whose voices will be allowed to be heard, and whose could be silenced?

DemocracyNZ, the party I head wants to reform constitutional law, so that the rights set out in the Bill of Rights Act – your basic rights to freedom of speech, movement, and medical autonomy – are better protected. 

We want every Kiwi to be certain about what their rights are, and we also need future Governments to have a clear line in the sand about what they can and can’t do. We also want to invite ordinary Kiwis to be part of this process of reforming our legislation so our rights are better protected. It’s time for the Government to listen to it’s people, and respect our wishes. If they can’t do that, I question if New Zealand can really call itself a democracy. 

Matt King is the party leader of DemocracyNZ and is contesting the Northland seat this election. He is also a farmer, and a former police officer. 

I blogged in July:

I’ve been following the Dickason trial where she is charged with murdering her three daughters. I don’t want to comment on the specifics of this case, as it is before a jury but I wanted to share my reaction to when the news of their deaths was first reported.

When I heard they had been killed by their mother, my instinctive reaction was to almost feel sorry for her, and just conclude she must be mad, not bad. I was thinking “Oh the poor woman, she’ll have to live with this for the rest of her life”. 

But I know that if I read about a father killing his three children, my instinctive reaction would be a deep deep despising of the man, and I would be concluding he is evil. I would want him strapped to Ixion’s flaming wheel as punishment.

So I went into the trial with an instinctive sympathy for Lauren Dickason. But that soon changed as the facts emerged. I won’t go into all of them here, but the fact she had researched methods, had resented the kids as they got on better with the father did not paint to me a picture of a temporary moment of insanity.

The expert evidence of the prosecution seemed persuasive that while she was deeply stressed and depressed, she was not insane. Some of the things she complained about the kids doing, are things almost all parents have had to cope with. And it is very sad she couldn’t cope and didn’t get enough support, but that can not excuse what she did. I do still feel sorry for her, but only a fraction of the sorrow for the father and the rest of the family. And I actually shudder as I think about the poor kids.

So a very very sad case. The murder convictions are correct and a life sentence inevitable for a triple murder.

Ian Harrison of Tailrisk Economics has published a paper analysing the evidence behind the claims that disparity in health outcomes between Maori and non-Maori is due to colonialism and racism. His summary is:

Our main conclusion is that there is very little robust empirical evidence that racism contributes materially to the gap in life expectancy. The main drivers are different smoking and obesity rates. Other behavioural differences such as higher risk taking may also contribute. The response by the institutions and individuals pushing the racism narrative would be that this is a superficial understanding and that the differences are driven by more fundamental causes such as differential access to resources, which are in turn are the result of colonialism. But this claim is never substantiated, and on the limited data on the issue it appears that resources are not really the issue. The gaps primarily come back to behaviour.

His full paper is below.

One thing I was very pleased with when involved with establishing and supporting South Auckland Middle School and Middle School West Auckland was that they really did work hard to put the outcomes for children and their families first. One part of this was NEVER taking Teacher Only Days.

I have not been on the Villa Education Trust or in an advisory role for two years now. Last year I was contracted to track and report on outcomes for leavers of these Middle (Year 7 – 10) schools. As these were diving the new Boards of Trustees took the action that is prevalent through much of the education sector – stop tracking the data and remove all transparency.

To some extent the schools avoided the strikes but I regard teacher only days as worse than strikes as there is not even a smidgen of over-riding or collective purpose.

Teachers get at least twelve weeks of holiday a year. They often claim that they work right through them. That is pulling the wool and I know these two schools very well. They have good teachers – and they also enjoy their holidays to close to the fullest extent. There are not too many on site after 4pm.

Education as a whole is well known to be in crises – enrollment, attendance, literacy, numeracy, qualifications achievement (e.g. in South Auckland 33% of Maori leave school without L1 NCEA). It is also well documented that low decile (high Equity Index) schools are struggling the most as a rule, as are Maori and Pasifika students. Both of these schools are decile 1 and have well over 80% Maori and Pasifika by ethnicity. Both were also thriving on all measurables through their first 7 years but latest available data says otherwise. If they were still Partnership Schools their approach to data and outcomes would be unacceptable.

When you have 12 weeks holiday a year. When you have a student teacher ratio of 15:1. When you have all resourcing administration done externally – as well as a significant amount of academic preparation. How do you justify a teacher only day? You can’t.

What is the effect on decile 1 families?

Disruption and potential expense. I know a lot about many of the families in South and West Auckland who want their children at these schools. They are often hard working and parents often have two jobs – with minimal benefits such as annual leave. They are often large families and sometimes even using their garages for sleep-outs. Many of these conscientious parents have to either take a day’s leave or pay someone to care for their 10 – 15 year old children. The alternative is to fend for themselves.

The effect on the students is that they miss yet another day of learning. Keep in mind that in our high school system Year 13s are the only ones who have had a normal year without multiple disruptions. Teachers try and say “everyday matters”. Clearly they do not believe that to be true.

Am I an a%$^hole for pointing this out for schools I used to be associated with? Probably. However it was either that or being a hypocrite given that I have criticized others for striking and taking teacher only days. Given the holiday conditions that teachers work under and the available of call-back days under the collective contract – no school should be taking Teacher Only Days. They are an anathema to quality education. They are a scourge to families, deny students a day of learning and potentially put them at risk being out and about with no supervision – and strangely, they are pretty much are always a Friday or Monday and so allowing a nice long weekend for teachers.

Te Pukenga has published its 2022 annual report. This allows us to see how well the personal brainchild of Chris Hipkins is doing. A summary:

• Deficit of $80.4 million
• A 10.6% drop in EFTS (effective full time students)
• Targets for course completion and credit achievement for Maori and Pacific learners were generally not met
• Overall targets for all learners generally not met
• Lower achievement levels on the industry training side

Luke Malpass writes:

When Chris Hipkins finally announced the badly kept secretthat Labour would do away with GST on fruit and vegetables – if Labour is re-elected – he confirmed what will be a contender for being the stupidest and most principle-free decision of a major party of this election campaign.

…

This proposed change – beloved by certain sections of the old-school political left – is really the idiot cousin of Labour’s craven desperation. 

It’s framed as a response to the cost of living crisis, but it won’t come in for eight months, and some of the rest of their policy doesn’t impact until a further year after that.

It is a rare combination of desperation and idiocy.

The Government has released the latest benefit data. Here are the changes from June 2017 to June 2023.

All working age benefits

• Total working age 276,331 to 351,759, an increase of 27%
• Maori 97,916 to 131,413, an increase of 34%
• Under 25s 42,615 to 52,689, an increase of 24%
• More than one year 72,558 to 92,814, an increase of 28%

So in six years we have around 75,000 more working age NZers on welfare. Of concern is the increase of Under 25s and those on welfare for more than year because we know from social investment data that being on welfare early and for a long time has highly negative correlation with doing well later in life.

The situation is even worse for those who are on jobseeker.

• Jobseeker 118,776 to 173,130, an increase of 46%
• Maori jobseeker 43,430 to 67,029, an increase of 54%
• More than one year JS 51,299 to 70,365, an increase of 37%

A huge 46% increase of people on what used to be called the dole. even higher for Maori New Zealanders, and despite low unemployment a 37% increase in those who have spent over a year on jobseeker.

There are some interesting discrepancies in the evolving story of how City Councillor Tamatha Paul replaced James Shaw as the candidate for Wellington Central.

On the 2nd of February Tamatha said:

Shaw’s approach was entirely unexpected, said Paul. 

So in February the story was James Shaw approached Tamatha to stand, and that this was totally unexpected.

In an RNZ story she said:

Paul said Shaw rang her while she was in Bunnings, and his nomination was completely unexpected.

So Shaw phoned her while she was at Bunnings.

On the 3rd of February, it is explicit:

Paul, 25, said Shaw asked her to consider standing.

So here again she says it was Shaw who asked her to stand.

But fast forward to 30 July, and here is what she told Salient:

Tamatha: Yea I was at Bunnings, …

And then my phone started blowing up, and everyone was telling me that Grant Robertson has resigned, and I was like, what does that have to do with me, like ok, cool, alright, sweet, ok. And then Thomas Nash who is a regional councillor was just blow – he rung me he’s like ‘I think that you should do this’ …

And then Chloe was ringing me like ‘just do it bro, just do it’ like she’s being saying that for the last 5 years like ‘come on, join us’ and I’ve always been like ‘Nah, I’m good, serving my community.’ Um but yea, just everyone was blowing my phone up and then I just thought look I’m not gonna um, I was like ‘what does James think?’, and they’re like, ‘well we don’t know, cause we can’t find him,’ cause he was like out on a trek in like the South Island somewhere.

So quite a different story here. A Green Regional Councillor was the one who phoned her at Bunnings and Chloe Swarbrick phoned her also urging her to stand, and all this before anyone had talked to James Shaw who was out trekking.

And then we get more details on Facebook on 31 July:

Tamatha: So, what brought me here. Well, I was standing in bunnings as you do, probably trying to fix something on behalf of my landlord. And then my phone started blowing up and it was none other than Mr Thomas Nash. And he told me that Grant Robertson, Our MP for 15 years was standing down. And I was like ‘ok, ok cool’. And then I got a phone call from none other than MP for Auckland Central, Chloe Swarbrick. And she was like ‘Tam’ join me.  …

So I had 2 whole days to make my mind up. I needed to get out of the house and go have a breather, so I went to Te Rā o te Raukura in the Hutt with Te Rehia. And who should show up? Mr Thomas Nash with his son strapped to his belly. And he was following me around the whole time. And I was just trying to have a breather. And conveniently, James Shaw was somewhere in the wilderness, uncontactable. And I thought it’s just not meant to be. But miraculously, with the power of 5G, James text me and he said ‘I’ll back you, but only if you’re 100% all in.’

So it is quite clear that there was no call from James Shaw asking her to run. What actually happened is Chloe urged her to run, and then James Shaw was approached and agreed to back her.

Pretty amazing to have a Green Party MP urging someone to run for the seat their co-leader had stood in, without even talking to the co-leader first.

Another interesting aspect to Tamatha’s changing story is I had no idea how high rents are in Aro Valley. In an interview with Salient, Tamatha said:

Tamatha: So I have to say, my, the biggest thing that I want to be judged on as, in my first term as MP is how many houses I can get built. And I, and I want more public housing and affordable housing because I think that if you look at the city and what is holding us back its the lack of affordable housing and good quality housing. You know, you look at the cost-of-living crisis, for me, most of my, most of my money that is coming in every week is going on my rent and that seems to be the universal experience we’re all paying exorbitant amounts on rent, that’s where all of our money is going but we’re paying to live in shitholes. You know we are living in the darkest, dingiest, mouldiest flats. 

Later (17:35)

Host: Can you tell us a little bit about your housing situation, so like what’s your setup?

Tamatha: Yea so, I live in Aro Valley, and I’ve lived there for four years now. But obviously I’ve just been flatting flat, never owned a house, probably won’t for a very long time. Um so, I live with four people, four flatmates, and my dog, and um.

So Tamatha said that most of her income goes in rent, despite living with four flatmates. Let’s look at this.

Her salary as a committee chair is $123,265. Her tax would be 31,597 giving her net income of around $92,000. At least half of that going on rent would be $46,000 or $885 a week. With four flatmates, then their rent would be $4,400 a week if they share equally.

Trade Me has the highest rent for a house in Aro Valley as $1,100 a week.

So who thinks it is credible that Tamatha is personally spending $885 or more a week on a “shithole” in Aro Valley that she shares with five others?