Richard Harman at Politik has this summary of data from the ASA
So the advertising spend has increased a healthy 30% in five years. But the proportion spent on digital advertising has gone from 6% to 60%. With this change, radio has held up very well as an advertising medium, but TV, newspapers and magazines have plummeted.
The solution here is not a government law change. It is a shift in business models.
Auckland Council Commissioners turned down consent for an 11 storey building on K-road – a decision labelled by Chris Bishop as “insane”.
Hayden Donnell covers it well:
The Da Vincis of denial weren’t done. They said the new building would compromise the heritage of the local area. When confronted with the reality of the site currently being an empty lot whose immediate neighbours are a carpark and a Mobil station, the council’s urban design expert Chris Butler argued the “real world” context of the development extends down Karangahape Road and through the southern end of Ponsonby Road. Why only that far? Surely the real world setting of this building is all of New Zealand itself, which broke off from the supercontinent Pangaea, which in turn was formed out of the dust flung across the galaxy by the Big Bang, and if you think about it that way, nothing should ever be built anywhere ever.
Great stuff, and further:
Faced with the prospect of people building apartments near a train station and other amenities in Sylvia Park, its planning team searched the recesses of their collective brains and came up to the ingenious conclusion that tall buildings would ruin motorway drivers’ spiritual connection to the vision of a small hill. Nice try developers, but it’ll take more than an overwhelming weight of evidence to force this team to consent to housing.
The RMA replacement needs to be very permissive, so even the most dedicated nae sayer has to say yes.
On Friday night in Takapuna, I had the opportunity to sit and have a, nearly four-hour, conversation with Sir Bob Geldof. He also sang a few tunes for me. I didn’t have much to say back – except much clapping, a little singing along, and standing to applaud for a long time when the conversation was over.
The lights went on and I suddenly remembered there were hundreds of others there too. Such was the quality of his story telling, the drama of his presentation and the skills of his music and voice that I had been in that wonderful zone of being focused to the exclusion of all else.
Born in 1951 Geldof, as he rightly recounts, is a phenomenon. As a viewer I was all the better able to engage as I knew something of the man and what he has gone about. The Boomtown Rats are way more than I Don’t Like Mondays and I have listened to them for many years. At 18, in 1985, I was madly in love with music and LIVE AID was a huge cultural moment. The purpose of it and the power of one man was also something of an awakening of compassion in me to do my best in life for those I could help … and to be prepared to challenge those who keep others downtrodden. I have read his 1986 biography Is that it? I vaguely followed the appalling mess of his marriage destruction and subsequent deaths of his former wife and Michael Hutchence (and in 2014, his 25 year old daughter Peaches). His global re-emergence in 2005 for LIVE 8 and the subsequent influence with world leaders (the then G7 plus one) to improve policy for African nations and get crippling debt cancelled. By then I had an economics degree and had been teaching the subject for 20 years so can claim a reasonable understanding of what was going on. Plus, I loved the music of LIVE 8 and much as I had LIVE AID and the concerts in 8 countries on that day are still a go-to for great entertainment.
But, of course, there was so much more to learn and take in and to try and bring great detail here would be to minimize the incredible performance. Geldof strode the stage recounting key stories, people and passages in his life. He seldom looked directly as us – but when he did it was for impact, and he achieved it. He juxtaposed humour, meaning and tragedy as so few could. His songs were poignant and powerful and yet he finished with the wonderful humour of The Great Song of Indifference with its twisted optimism in the face of all that he has struggled with and overcome.
In one sense it is terrible to be so brief but here is my take after two days reflection.
New Zealanders are, by and large, timid people. We have also become accustomed to living in a nation that has, what Tom Scott called in Drawn Out; “a tall lichen syndrome” where people who do speak out, protest and demand better for others risk being called a “river of filth” or worse.
Geldof reminded me, and I would think many others there, that to live at all is a wonderful privilege and that to live with great purpose is the best way to acknowledge that. Near the end of Schindler’s List Itzhak Stern quotes the Talmud to Oskar Schindler, saying: “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.” It is a thought worth waking up to each day.
Thanks Sir Bob – for the conversation and everything you have done so far! It is still far from “It”.
Alwyn Poole
alwyn.poole@gmail.com
alwynpoole.substack.com
Interesting data by Universities NZ, looking at average income by qualification and field of study.
So what is the average salary gain for a qualification, from the previous level:
And what are the average earnings for a Bachelors degree:
Sad that education professionals are paid so poorly at $74k average salary. I think the best teachers should be earning at least $120k.
Radio NZ reports:
Western Bay of Plenty District Council is the latest council to leave national advocacy body Local Government New Zealand.
There were claims LGNZ had become “extremely political”, had swung “far left” and lacked professionalism.
As I understand it, the following Councils have left LGNZ:
That’s 44% of NZ’s population no longer covered by LGNZ.
The Chief Ombudsman has done proactive investigations of seven agencies in regard to how they deal with OIA requests. This isn’t just about data, but also culture. The key findings for each are:
So Treasury, Transpower, DPMC all come out pretty good. Pharmac, Kainga Ora and DIA are okay while Health NZ is pretty concerning.
Radio NZ reports:
An Otago student has set up a petition to have disgraced Dunedin artist John Middleditch’s sculpture removed from public display at the University of Otago.
The large bronze sculpture created in 1969 sits outside within the Dunedin campus and is currently the subject of a panel enquiry about whether to remove it.
In February RNZ revealed Middleditch was convicted of indecently assaulting young girls and a teenage girl in December 1976.
The convictions came to light after a Dunedin woman complained to Health NZ in January, asking that a 1980s water sculpture of Middleditch’s in Dunedin Hospital be removed. …
Now, a Change.org petition to remove both sculptures has attracted 245 signatures.
The petition, created by Bee Brown on 12 March, calls on fellow Otago University and polytechnic students, families, friends and residents to support the removal of the sculpture entitled Eleven Bronze Rods supporting Albatross Wingspan, as well as the water sculpture.
I have sympathy for his victim/s. However I think we need to be careful about not seeing an artwork as an endorsement of an artist. You can enjoy Der Ring des Nibelungen but also think Wagner was a pretty awful racist.
His offending should be a factor in whether to promote his artworks. But to say that one must remove a sculpture that has been in public for over 50 years would be an over-reaction.
Erick Erickson writes:
The press and left call the right “culture warriors,” but we were not the ones who put pornographic material in elementary schools. We were not the ones who demanded kids in colleges attend seminars to learn about their inner racism. We were not the ones who demanded boys get into girls sports.
The left and press call us “culture warriors” solely because we said no and fought back against them.
We do have a culture war, but it is one where the left are the aggressors.
We would have accepted neutral institutions. But you foisted DEI on us all. The New York Times declared the country is systemically racist and rewrote the founding history of the nation, which some of you then pushed into public schools for re-education. You used your cultural, institutional, and media clout to chase advertisers and revenue away from right-leaning institutions and voices. You attacked productive industries with media outlets subsidized by progressive environmental groups. You captured the government-funded national radio network and turned it into soft-spoken progressive hacks. You took over academic institutions and started discriminating against Asian kids. You took over public schools and decided learning the colors of the Pride Flag was more important than learning math. When COVID happened, you people shut down schools, kept those schools shut down, and when the inevitable collapse of learning occurred, you lied about keeping schools shut down and tried, with willing accomplices in the left-controlled press, to shift the blame. In Illinois, progressive educators dragged girls into bathrooms and forced them to change in front of boys. You even got the Voice of America to explain white privilege while refusing to call Hamas “terrorists.”
So now you’ll watch the rest of us wipe out those institutions. You could have had neutrality. Instead, you called us culture warriors all while waging war to capture and use neutral institutions against everyone else. You could have chosen to embrace diversity of thought. Now, you can embrace the rubble.
There are lessons for NZ here. As almost every institution has signed up to a leftist agenda of Treaty supremacy and equity over equality, those institutions will lose their previous neutrality.
The Broadcasting Standards Authority has found Stuff in breach of multiple broadcasting standards for a hatchet job on ASH – Action on Smoking and Health.
Basically what it all goes back to is that ASH is more supportive of reduced harm products (vaping, heated tobacco) on the basis of evidence that these are far less harmful, and do see people substitute them for smoking.
Other anti-smoking groups are basically keen on just prohibition (never mind it never works), and they hate the fact that ASH has a different view. Rather than accept different groups can look at the evidence and come to different conclusions, they are basically suggesting (preposterously) that ASH is in league with or funded by tobacco companies. And they convinced Stuff to do a hatchet job on ASH.
Basically the so called link was that the ASH Director traveled to Australia, and the guy who facilitated his travel works for a group (the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association) which seven years ago got $20,000 from an e-cigarette company. So we’re not talking third or fourth hand connections.
The BSA found Stuff:
This is a very damning decision. It has been either ignored by most media, or placed in a very non-prominent place. The seriousness is shown by the BSA sanctions:
It is very rare to have a finding for costs to the Crown. The BSA notes:
Given our clear view these two ThreeNews broadcasts fell short of the standards the public expects of New Zealand broadcasters, with a serious impact on the reputations of ASH and Youdan, we consider the conduct and seriousness of the breaches justify an award of costs to the Crown in this instance. A punitive response is required to hold the broadcaster to account, deter future non-compliance, confirm our expectations around an appropriate level of editorial oversight, and ensure fairness to programme participants. …
As we have discussed in our findings above, these stories appeared intentionally slanted against ASH and the broadcaster persisted with that narrative despite having information to the contrary, causing serious damage to the reputation of a charitable entity and its director.
Nice to see the hatchet job facing consequences.
Bob McCoskrie asked Stuff why they publish cartoons of Jesus, but not Mohammed.
— Anarū (@AnaruHayes) March 21, 2025
Their response was basically that Muslims are more likely to chimp out in response.
Yikes#TwoTierEverything pic.twitter.com/6tM4jSNqEs
At a human level, of course no one wants to risks their lives by publishing a cartoon. It is very understandable.
But as a media organisation, it is saying that terrorism works, and we will censor legal material, to avoid violence. This is of course the exact desired response from the terrorists.
ACT announced:
For the first time ever, ACT is looking to stand candidates in local council elections.
Today ACT Leader David Seymour announced the Party is seeking expressions of interest from New Zealanders to stand for their local council under the ACT banner.
“ACT has been focused on tackling the cost of living, wasteful spending, and co-governance in central government. But when I travel the country, I’m constantly told that local councils have failed to address these same concerns at the local level.
“Kiwis voted for real change in 2023, but our councils seem to have missed the memo. It’s time for a clean-out.
This is a good thing. Too often voters don;’t really know if candidates are going to councillors who will vote for or against massive rates increases. ACT candidates will clearly be candidates who will vote against large rates increases, so having candidates stand under their name will be a good guide to voters.
Judith Collins announced:
The Government’s move to cut public sector spending on consultants and contractors is on track to save $800 million over two years – double the initial target, Public Service Minister Judith Collins says.
“We set a two-year target to cut $400 million in spending on consultants and contractors across the public sector by 2024/25,” Ms Collins says.
“The latest update anticipates savings will come in at more than $800 million by the end of June.
“That’s $800 million that can be spent on delivering core services to taxpayers, in areas such as healthcare, law enforcement and education.
This is great news. This is a huge amount of savings. It shows how out of control it got under Labour.
In 2022, spending on contractors and consultants was 14.5% of workforce expenditure. It has now dropped to 4.8%. Again, a huge reduction.
This is of course all the work of the Green Party Police and Corrections Spokesperson, Tamatha Paul. I think it is fair to conclude that there is a pattern.
Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell has a simple proposed members’ bill to amend the Bill of Rights Act to have equal suffrage extend to local government.
Equal suffrage is a fundamental human right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says:
The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also states:
To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors
So equal suffrage is a fundamental human right, included in both major global human rights declarations. It is also in the NZ Bill of Rights Act:
has the right to vote in genuine periodic elections of members of the House of Representatives, which elections shall be by equal suffrage and by secret ballot
So our law already states that equal suffrage applies to national elections. Uffindell’s bill would change NZ BORA so it reads:
Every New Zealand citizen who is of or over the age of 18 years has the right to vote in genuine periodic elections by equal suffrage and secret ballot of members of the House of Representatives; and members of local authorities.
So a very simple law change that enhances human rights in New Zealand. So how does Radio NZ report on this proposed bill. Well in this article they quote two opponents of the bill as a “backward step”, and doesn’t go to a single person (about from the MP proposing it) supporting it for comment.
Radio NZ reports:
Green MP Tamatha Paul is doubling down on her comments that a “visible police presence” makes people feel “more on edge.” …
The Wellington Central MP said she’d received “nothing but complaints” about police beat patrols.
Paul told the event people in Wellington didn’t want to see police officers everywhere, and “for a lot of people, it makes them feel less safe”.
This is a great example of how out of touch the Greens are with average New Zealanders. I’m sure all her friends do dislike seeing the Police, but the vast majority of NZers do not.
In fact the latest Crime and Victims Survey found only 2% of NZers had no trust and confidence in the Police and 83% believe the Police conduct themselves professionally.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Paul’s comments were “outrageous and insane”, and police were out there doing an “incredible job.”
Insane is a good description of her advocacy to defund police and abolish prisons.
Hipkins said her comments were “ill-informed, were unwise, in fact were stupid”.
“I don’t think responsible members of parliament should be undermining the police in that way, I think the New Zealand public have huge confidence in the New Zealand police and they should have.”
Nice to see Luxon and Hipkins agree that the Greens are barmy.
Mitchell pointed to Wellington Central as an example of the success of beat policing.
“We’ve seen a 5.5% decrease in violent crime in the area that the Beat Team is deployed, compared to a 2% drop nationally,” the minister said.
He said the Greens “don’t believe in our police or prisons”.
I think the Greens believe in hugs.
In what could be a attempt to join the Keystone Cops, we have learnt that Trump’s National Security principals set up a private chat channel to discuss a US strike on Yemen, and accidentally added a journalist to it.
This is exactly why you are not meant to use commercial apps for national security discussions. Secure channels don’t allow you to accidentally add on external people such as journalists. They also can be set up to only allow access if you are on a secure connection, or dedicated IP addresses etc.
David French notes:
I’m a former Army JAG officer (an Army lawyer). I’ve helped investigate numerous alleged spillages of classified information, and I’ve never even heard of anything this egregious — a secretary of defense intentionally using a civilian messaging app to share sensitive war plans, without even apparently noticing a journalist was in the chat.
There is not an officer alive whose career would survive a security breach like that. It would normally result in instant consequences (relief from command, for example) followed by a comprehensive investigation and potential criminal charges.
This is the most interesting aspect of what happened. The total lack of acceptance that anything wrong was done at all. Sure you might not expect resignations, but in any normal government you would have an admission that what happened was wrong, was a stuff up, should not have happened, and they will make sure never happens again. But we now have a culture of never ever admitting fault, so instead they just attack the journalist (who did a better job of protecting classified information than the NSA and SecDef).
The other very interesting aspect was the purely transactional view of J D Vance. He said the US should not be bombing the Houthi, as only 3% of US trade goes through the Suez Canal and 47% of European trade. So he saw Trump’s decision as allowing the Europeans to freeload, and wanted them to somehow pay for it.
First of all, it shows a lack of knowledge (or disinterest) in the fact that having extra costs on European trade, will cost US consumers as US companies then trade with those European businesses. There is a lot of data about how the Houthi attacks have contributed significantly to global inflation.
The second segment is that Vance doesn’t see any value in stopping terrorists from controlling a major sea, just because it is the right thing to do. You gain the impression that in WWII he would have been arguing the US shouldn’t get involved in WWII unless someone paid them to do so.
Vance is even more isolationist than Trump, which suggests that if he wins in 2028 (as is likely), the US foreign policy is unlikely to swing back to traditional allies and values.
The latest CNN/SRSS poll has the Democrats historically unfavourable.
That is an awful trend. So in Bush’s second term, they were very popular. Then they fell away in Obama’s first term, rebounded, but then went negative. But they were marginally favourable in Trump’s term, however the Biden administration was a disaster for them going from +5% to -25% today. And they are showing no signs of rebounding.
The breakdown by demographics are:
J D Vance will be feeling pretty confident right now.
Good to see the Greens focusing on the issues that really matter to NZers, such as abolishing the Police!
Some useful recommendations from the LGNZ working group on local elections.
Move to a nationally consistent system of in-person voting for all local elections that is as similar as possible to parliamentary elections over a two-week timeframe in which to vote, with polling booths in venues where people frequently visit. Preferably by the 2028 local elections or the 2031 local elections at the latest.
If you really want to boost turnout, then I would allow all three methods of voting – postal, in booths and online. Postal is dying, and in booths did not do well in the days before postal.
If we do not shift away from postal voting in 2028, then the Local Electoral Act should be amended to enable overseas voters to use the same electronic voting approach as central government elections, and make it easier for voters to have voting papers reissued if they do not arrive.
Not just for overseas voters. Everyone should be able to access this.
The Government should amend the Electoral Act and Local Electoral Act to put the Electoral Commission in charge of administering and promoting local elections.
Strongly agree, and well overdue.
Local government and central government should move to a four-year term with elections spaced two years apart.
Also a strong agree. If in 2026 people vote for a four year term, then presumably central government elections would be 2029, 2033, 2037 etc. You could then have local elections in 2025, 2028, 2031, 2035, 2039.
The Local Government Act should be amended to strengthen the Code of Conduct process by Empowering the Local Government Commission to investigate complaints relating to significant breaches
I disagree with this one. It would change the nature of the LGC dramatically and politicise it.
Overall some good food for thought, and hopefully the Government adopts many of them.