Lloyd Burr at Newshub writes:

Are Labour’s woes ill-discipline, arrogance, or incompetence?

Why the or? A strong case can be made it is all three.

The Hipkins era was defined from the outset as a back-to-basics administration that would focus on the cost of living rather than enacting Labour’s wishlist of controversial policies.

This clean-slate approach started out well and appeared to be a smart way to transition and differentiate from Ardern’s regime.

But like any item of white clothing, Hipkins’ clean slate soon attracted stains. One stain is annoying, two is frustrating – but any more than three leaves people questioning your life choices.

There are now six stains: Nash. Whaitiri. Tinetti. Wood. Allan. Leary.

Soon it may be quicker to list the MPs who are not stains!

It could be a coincidence that these scandals have surfaced under Hipkins – or it could be a sign that Labour has lost all discipline under his leadership.

Are his MPs going rogue? Are they just arrogant? Or are they politically incompetent? Whatever the answer, something needs to change.

Lock in “all of the above” for ten points.

Here are the number of violent crimes recorded by Police for the first four months of each year since since 2016:

• 2016: 16,385
• 2017: 16,802
• 2018: 16,384
• 2019: 17,152
• 2020: 19,932
• 2021: 22,499
• 2022: 23,137
• 2023: 25,318

Almost a trend eh!

Newshub reports:

Hipkins has also stressed while New Zealand may have an independent foreign policy, “independent does not mean neutral”.

Hipkins told a crowd of diplomats, business people and officials at an event at Parliament it was “humbling” to recently meet Ukrainian civilians being trained by the New Zealand Defence Force in the United Kingdom.

He said that had “strengthened my resolve” in relation to providing support to Ukraine “in order to defeat Russia” and also “the absolute necessity to avoid armed conflict where we can”.

There are many policy areas where I disagree with the current Government, but in foreign policy I think Ardern and Hipkins have done a pretty good job in changing our foreign policy so that we clearly stand against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and have moved closer to like minded countries in NATO.

We are not neutral when it comes the the invasion of Ukraine. We independently decided not to be neutral and to back the democratic country against the authoritarian invader.

Newshub reports:

Appearing on AM’s political panel, Newstalk ZB’s senior political correspondent Barry Soper and Newshub’s Patrick Gower from Paddy Gower Has Issues slammed the current Labour Government. ,,,

Soper said earlier this year he told Hipkins, who took over the reins from Jacinda Ardern, his Government is going to “fall apart” because of “the numpties that surround [him].”

“He had a bonfire of policies but he needed to have a bonfire of the numpties,” Gower replied.

“His Government looks like an utter shambles. It has been a terrible year…. They look like an arrogant, out of ideas Government in its third term rather than one in its second term.”

Numpties, shambles, terrible, arrogant – not quite the words you want your Government described as.

One News reports:

The Government have announced a ban on most disposable vapes from August, but one health professional says they’re a positive for public health overall. 

Speaking on Breakfast this morning, Australian anti-tobacco campaigner Dr Colin Mendelsohn, says disposable vapes are a tool in helping people give up smoking cigarettes. 

“I think there’s no question now, the evidence is becoming stronger and stronger, vaping is a highly effective method, it’s the best method we have, it’s not perfect but it’s by far the most effective method,” he said.

They are highly effective. Without vaping we would have no chance of meeting our 2025 target of fewer than 5% smoking tobacco.

Across the ditch, similar concerns around vapes prompted a crackdown on the sale of disposable vapes – and the requirement to obtain a prescription, but health experts say it’s having the reverse effect – driving an underground, black market. 

He believes it would be a “big mistake” for New Zealand to go down the same path. 

“There are no age restrictions in the black market and the products are not being assessed for quality or safety.”

Dr Mendelsohn says the prescription model is a “slow train wreck”.

I hope we listen to him.

The Herald reports:

Cabinet Secretary Rachel Hayward said it was “highly unusual” for Labour MP Michael Wood to continue to have shares in Auckland Airport despite being told repeatedly to sell them.

She also said the “difficulties in getting traction on the issue” called for the involvement of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, which usually resolved the issue – but in Wood’s case, it had not.

The letter is below:

This reinforces a point that I have made before – the PMs Office under Ardern was reasonably incompetent. There is no way they should have allowed it to stretch on for months yet alone years. And when you can’t get even such basic stuff right, is it no surprise that the Ardern Government failed to deliver on so many of their promises?

Let me illustrate how this issue would have been dealt with by three previous PMs Chief of Staffs:

• Doug Martin (Jenny Shipley): “Minister, this is untidy. It should have been resolved by now. It shouldn’t have even got to me, but now it has, we are going to make sure I don’t need to tell the Prime Minister she has a problem with her Transport Minister”. Outcome: shares sold in 72 hours.
• Heather Simpson (Helen Clark): “Michael, you will sell those shares today. I want to see the sale certificate by Friday, otherwise don’t come in on Monday”. Outcome: shares sold in 12 hours, and several sessions with a psychiatrist to recover from an H2 encounter
• Wayne Eagleson (John Key): “Michael, I’ve just had the Cabinet Secretary in. This may seem minor to you, but it exposes the Prime Minister to potential attacks that his Cabinet is acting in self interest, not the public interest. It needs to be sorted really quickly, otherwise I’m going to have to talk to the boss. I haven’t bothered him with it yet, because it’s my job to look after stupid stuff like this, so if you get it sorted this week, then all will be good”. Outcome: shares sold in 72 hours.

I can guarantee you that under Martin, Simon or Eagleson this would not have dragged on for two and a half years.

Robin Grieve writes:

In a recent opinion piece, Herald senior writer Simon Wilson challenged National and Act party donors to prove that their donations were not motivated by their desire to pay less tax. His implication being that they were.

As a former member of the Act party board and having met many of these donors, I can say that Wilson’s characterisation of them is unfair, offensive even. …

Likewise, Wilson’s characterisation of them ignores the fact that these donors will have concerns and opinions on any number of areas in which government policy has an impact, not just tax.

A higher standard of living for all New Zealanders, a world-class health system, a world-leading educational system, safe streets, a sound democracy where everyone is valued and respected equally, and where freedom of expression was paramount, were the most common desires of the National and Act donors I spoke to for this article. These are the reasons they gave me for making their donation and none of them mentioned tax.

Some had more specific concerns and one such donor is Chris Reeve, who is a donor to both National and Act. His latest donation to Act was motivated by his desire to help the party with a private members bill to repeal legislation that has led to children in the care of Oranga Tamariki being ripped away from the only stable and loving family they have ever known.

For the Government, the emotional harm these children suffer when it tears them away from their families is not a concern, it seems. For Reeve it is, and he is prepared to use his money to help these children by getting this abuse stopped.

I was going to do a column for Stuff on this issue, but Grieve has covered it off quite nicely.

I have been staggered by how many people have made massive donations to National and ACT in the last 18 months. Most large donors give $30,000 to $50,000 but we have seen dozens giving $100,000 or more including a recent $500,000 donation to National.

I know a few (not many) of these donors. It is definitely not tax policy which has led to such huge donations. At this point in time National’s tax policy is to index the brackets to inflation. This will only benefit someone earning say $1 million a year by a few thousand dollars. No way are you donating $500,000 for that.

I think the answer is quite simple, for many of the donors. They see the current Government leading New Zealand down a path away from democracy as we know it, to a country which doesn’t value equality of suffrage, freedom of speech and other human rights. They worry that such changes, if embedded in, will fundamentally change NZ for the worse.

You don’t give $500,000 on the basis of indexing tax brackets to inflation. You don’t give it on the basis of their regional development policy. You give it because you want to get rid of the Government, because you think it is a terrible Government.

The reasons will vary as to why donors think the Government is terrible, but that is what is motivating large donors – not tax policy.

Stuff reports:

Housing is a human right, and the current and future Governments should use all available resources to tackle the housing crisis, Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission says.

It has released its final report after a two-year housing inquiry.

The report makes six recommendations including committing to legislative recognition of the right to a decent home, integrating the right to a decent home into policymaking, appointing human rights, Te Tiriti o Waitangi and equity officers in housing agencies, and strengthening accountability across the housing system.

Amazing – two years looking at housing and they have nothing to say on what drives up house prices – land restrictions.

Let’s look at what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says on housing:

• Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
• No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
• Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services

So what it says is you should have the right to own property, a right not have it taken off you arbitrarily and a right to a standard of living adequate to afford housing.

That does not mean the Government has to own or even provide housing. It means that people should have an adequate standard of living so they can afford housing.

Thomas Coughlan writes:

The Greens have proposed a 1.5 per cent tax on assets held in trust, mainly so that trusts cannot be used to avoid the wealth tax. The difficulty with this is that we know very little about how many people will be caught up by this tax and how it will affect them.

The two key things to remember about this asset tax, is it applies from the first dollar, and it is on gross, not net assets.

You will pay $15,000 a year tax on your family home if it is owned by a trust, whether or not it is mortgage free or if you have an $800,000 mortgage on it (which means $15,000 tax on $200,000 of equity).

For active trusts that filed a return this year, the median net equity in the trust is $370,060 – hitting the trust with a tax bill of $5550 a year.

That is net equity – but the tax will apply to gross assets so higher than that.

An information vacuum is ideal for a scare campaign and some of those numbers look very scary. If there are, say 500,000 trust beneficiaries, that would equate to 12 per cent of all taxpayers – 1 million trustees would equate to a quarter of income taxpayers.

Yep, a huge number will be affected.

The Herald reports:

The Government is being accused of “mind-boggling” mismanagement because it has $531 million worth of rapid antigen tests (RATs) still in stock. …

Te Whatu Ora has almost 60 million RATs around the country, with 30 per cent of them already expired or due to expire by the end of July. The total cost of all of these RATs, at almost $9 each on average, is $530 million.

$530 million is more than the cost of the proposed new medical school at Waikato University, which the Government says can’t be afforded.

It is around one third of the cost of the new Dunedin Hospital, which the Government is downgrading as it says it can’t afford to spend more.

Such shocking waste.

Mike Hosking writes:

Labour is a bit of an open question between now and election day given so much seems to be a shambles both internally and economically.

The simple equation is this: they look worn out and chaotic, we are in recession, crime is appalling and there is a dangerous malaise and growing anger around the running of the country.

But large parties bottom out in the 20s, so it’ll be a bad night but not necessarily catastrophic.

So, my call is: National 38-42 per cent; Act 12-15 per cent, an easy election-night victory; Labour 29-32 per cent; Greens 6-7 per cent.

That would certainly be a nice result!

The Herald reports:

Boys at single-sex schools tend to leave school with higher qualifications than their counterparts at co-educational schools, a new study has found.

The findings contradict the traditionally-held belief that boys do better in co-educational schools while girls fare better in single-sex settings.

I’ve never heard of this so called traditionally-held belief. I’ve been aware for a long time boys do better in single-sex schools.

I blogged in 2021 the 2019 UE data which showed the following UE rates for school leavers:

• Girls single sex 55% vs co-ed 39%
• Boys single sex 43% vs co-ed 25%

I also noted:

Boys at a single sex school are 68% more likely to get UE than those at a co-ed school while girls are 40% more likely.

For schools in the top quintile (deciles 9 and 10) the male UE rate is 43% for co-ed and 69% for single sex. For those in the bottom quintile the male UE rate is 9% for co-ed and 37% for single sex. So almost as many boys get UE in bottom quintile single sex schools as in top quintile co-ed schools.

If we want to improve the dismal education stats for boys in New Zealand, I would do two things:

1. Amend our zoning regulations so that all children are zoned for both a same sex school and a co-ed school – so they can choose which type of school is best for them
2. Require a proportion of new schools built, to be single sex (there have been no new ones since 2004)

Stuff reports:

A third of patients who visited Wellington Hospital’s emergency department this year spent at least some time waiting in a bed in the corridors, new data shows.

At some stage during virtually every single day since the start of the year, the ED has reached or surpassed 90% capacity, Te Whatu Ora Wellington’s interim lead on hospital and specialist services Jamie Duncan said.

One in three ED patients in corridors. That’s horrific

In addition, just 44 to 51% of ED patients were admitted, transferred or discharged within six hours – falling well short of the 95% target.

It was only six years ago that almost 95% of ED patients were being seen within six hours. Now it is below between 44% and 51% in Wellington. Many more people will be dying because of this.

Stuff reports:

National has confirmed the party will back a third medical school to boost doctor numbers.

That – along with adding 50 training places across Auckland and Otago’s schools – will mean an extra 220 doctors graduating each year by 2030, party leader Christopher Luxon said.

He announced the measures at the University of Waikato on Wednesday morning.

Capital costs to set up the Waikato med school are expected to be about $380m, a statement said, with the Crown contributing up to $280 million (pending a final business case) and Waikato University raising the rest.

We are desperately short of doctors, and unless we want to be totally reliant on importing doctors we need to train more ourselves.

Australia has 21 medical schools. We have just two – fewer than even Western Australia has.

So, one of the co-writers – Cathy Bunting – has stated:

Cathy Buntting co-wrote the draft curriculum and says it’s about modernising our curriculum. 

“It’s proposing to teach those subjects differently, not operating in the silos that have been traditionally the structure of science education in secondary schools”.

In interviews and her comments make it apparent that she has very little idea about genuine science – but also has the extreme of bizarre arrogance that she considers that she can re-write science as a subject in and of itself. This puts her in direct conflict with every reputable Science Faculty in universities around the world. Not only would this make a laughing stock on NZ teaching/teachers, it would be a massive hinderance to students in our system and certainly drive many more schools into their own design and/or Cambridge (not altogether bad things). The effect on our schools being attractive to international students would be cataclysmic.

In typical fashion the Ministry threw her under the nearest bus.

The Ministry of Education said in a statement any speculation on the curriculum is premature, as this is a very early draft.

Here are THE major questions on the Cathy Bunting situation:

• Who contracted her?
• What was the brief she was given?

This information needs to be made public and quickly. Someone in the Ministry – or above – has used her as a deliberate ideological Trojan Horse and that person(s) needs to front. It is not an accident.

[email protected]
​www.alwynpoole.substack.com

Stuff reports:

The Government’s accounts have deteriorated further from the track marked out by Finance Minister Grant Robertson in the Budget.

The Treasury reported that the Government’s operating (Obegal) deficit for the 11 months to the end of May stood at $6.5 billion, which was $2.1b higher than the forecast it released in the Budget.

Under the current Government I doubt we will even get back into surplus, and start paying back debt, before the next global crisis hits.

Net core Crown debt has now risen $5b above forecast to $73b, or to 18.9% of GDP.

That is significantly above the Budget forecast which had charted that it would stand at 17.6% of GDP at the end of May.

Borrow, borrow, borrow. It’s a lot easier than having discipline over your spending.

Radio NZ reports:

Science teachers are shocked that an advance version of the draft school science curriculum contains no mention of physics, chemistry or biology.

Just think about the near insanity of this paragraph – the Government is producing a science curriculum that excludes physics, chemistry and biology!

The so-called “fast draft” said science would be taught through five contexts – the Earth system, biodiversity, food, energy and water, infectious diseases and “at the cutting edge”.

It was sent to just a few teachers for their feedback ahead of its release for consultation next month, but some were so worried by the content they leaked it to their peers.

Teachers who had seen the document told RNZ they had grave concerns about it. It was embarrassing, and would lead to “appalling” declines in student achievement, they said.

One said the focus on four specific topics was likely to leave pupils bored with science by the time they reached secondary school.

My six year old loves science. He already does chemistry experiments. Loves astronomy. The proposed curriculum will indeed drive kids away from science.

Association of Science Educators president Doug Walker said he was shocked when he saw a copy.

“Certainly in its current state I would be extremely concerned with that being our guiding document as educators in Aotearoa. The lack of physics, chemistry, Earth and space science, I was very surprised by that,” he said.

Again it defies belief they could have drafted a science curriculum that excludes physics, chemistry and space.

The Herald reports:

A plan to lower the speed limit in Whakatāne district towns to 30 kilometres per hour has been described as fanatical by Mayor Victor Luca.

“I have no problem with a 30kmh limit near schools, which seems sensible. I am not in favour of a 30kmh limit around urban Whakatane,” Dr Luca said.

I doubt anyone is. If the Mayor thinks it is lunacy, why is it on the table?

With legislation introduced in 2022, the transport ministry has laid down a framework for councils throughout New Zealand for setting speed limits in their districts.

The framework states speeds must be reduced to 30kmh for areas around schools and school travel routes, and 30 to 40kmh for local urban streets. Speed limits of 40 to 60kmh are allowed for urban connector streets linking residential areas.

So basically it is being forced on local communities by the Labour/Greens Government.

Deputy mayor Lesley Immink said it was another example of a Crown agency imposing changes on councils.

“It’s going to be a really hard ask. I don’t think anyone disagrees with keeping it at 30kmh around urban schools, but [the plan] raises lots of concerns, for example, Harbour Road, at 30kmh.

The only way to stop this will be to change the Government.