The Herald reports:

Early Childhood Education leaders are seeking an urgent meeting with the Minister and Associate Minister of Education as they fear the Government’s 20-hours-free expansion could compromise childcare standards and force centres to close.

Budget 2023 included extending 20 hours of free early childcare per week to apply to 2-year-olds in addition to children 3 and above, which was a welcome relief for some new parents struggling with the high cost of living and by sector leaders.

However, those same leaders are now sounding the alarm about conditions within the expansion that childcare centres must meet in order to offer the 20 hours for free.

New Shoots Children’s Centre director Kelly Seaburg told the Herald the Government’s additional funding of the 20-hours-free package – $1.2 billion over four years – was developed using a 1:10 teacher-to-child ratio.

Seaburg said it was generally accepted that 1:10 was not an appropriate ratio to deliver quality childcare, particularly to 2-year-olds, who had higher needs than older children.

We’ve been fortunate that our two kids have gone to two great ECE centres. They generally operate around 1:4 to 1:5 and I would never send them to a centre with a 1:10 ratio.

Having spent a lot of time at our ECEs, I’ve observed that much of the time one or more teachers will be dealing with an individual kid – changing their nappy, comforting them etc. So even with a 1:5 ratio you often have one teacher keeping an eye on 9 or 10 kids while the other teacher is dealing with one kid.

So if the Government is only funding at a 1:10 ratio, then at times you may have a teacher having to look after 20 kids at once. And that might be okay with say four year olds for short periods, but not for two year olds.

So extending 20 free fours to 2 year olds, but only funding at a 1:10 ratio will mean higher quality ECEs with smaller ratios get hammered. Lower quality ECEs with high ratios will prosper.

Newshub reports:

The Government is being savaged online after it announced a new public information campaign with tips on how Kiwis could save up to $500 on their power bills.

They include suggesting New Zealanders have shorter showers and don’t turn their heaters above a certain temperature.

Interest rate are at 8% and inflation at 7% due to the Government overheating the economy, and their message to struggling families is to advise people to limit their showers to five minutes!

This brings back the last time Labour tried to fiddle with showers – the Clark Government wanted to reduce the maximum water pressure for showers.

Stuff reports:

The parents of a 22-year-old Kiwi man killed by a sheriff’s deputy while suffering a mental health crisis will get US$19 million (NZ$30.27m) from US government state and local agencies and changes to how officers are trained, under a newly announced settlement.

There’s many great things about the US, but trigger happy cops is not one of them. This was a totally unjustified shooting. In NZ cops shoot as a last resort. What happened in the US would be almost unthinkable to occur here.

But one good thing about the US is that at least in this case their civil laws allow for decent compensation. Nothing will make up for losing a son, but $30 million compensation sends a message this was serious misconduct.

Labour is coming up to six years in power – including their much discussed Māori caucus. The current Prime Minister is the second worst Minister of Education I have seen in that role. He is second worst only because his successor is not only incompetent but has also been found to have been manipulating data releases and having to make frequent trips to the House to correct answers.

They should all be deeply ashamed. Level 1 NCEA is an incredibly low bar. And yet young Māori (those that Labour like to say that they care for the most are only attending fully in 38% of cases. They are leaving school with 24% not having gained Level 1 NCEA. That is:

i.e. 27.320 wasted years for our NZ Māori students … every year … to place into adult society 18,000 youth per year who are unlikely to earn a good income, rent a good home, buy a reliable car, save for a house, take care of a family, travel for holidays …

Can anyone recall Labour acting with accuracy and passion on this? They simply take the Māori vote and support for granted.

Stuff reports:

Sometime in the future, the Government will look to “reset” income tax brackets, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says.

You almost have to laugh out loud at this. Does anyone really think a Labour/Green/Maori Party Government would cut taxes?

Kiwis in jobs shouldn’t have to rely on the goodwill of a Prime Minister to stop their tax bill increasing every year. The tax brackets should be automatically adjusted for inflation, just as benefits and NZ Super has been also.

We should not have to beg and grovel to the Government to simply stop our tax bill increasing every year, even when our income stays static in real terms.

Michael Goodwin writes at the NY Post:

By the end of this week, there will be at least seven contestants in a race to see who gets to go head-to-head with Donald Trump for the GOP crown. 

But wait, there’s yet another obstacle for that lucky survivor. 

If he or she manages to defeat Trump for the nomination, there is a good chance Trump will take many of his supporters and run as a third-party candidate, or tell them to stay home, dooming the GOP nominee to defeat in the general. 

Oh, what fun. 

Just as it was when he first came down the escalator in 2015, everything in 2023 is still about Trump. 

And just as it was then, it’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t for Republicans. 

Those assumptions are why I have concluded that, as it stands, the GOP can’t win with Trump, and can’t win without him. 

This is sadly probably true. Biden and Harris are very beatable, but Trump showed in 2020 he can’t beat them, and any other candidate will face a fractured party as Trump will never endorse someone who beats him in the primary.

A guest post by Nicola Young:

Nero is alleged to have fiddled while Rome burned – a bit like Wellington City Council, which is ploughing ahead with its biggest-ever programme of projects despite rising costs, rising debt, and lack of manpower. Rather different to the Government’s approach, which has acknowledged capacity constraints and scrapped or re-prioritised some major projects.

At the recent Annual Plan debate, Council’s six staunch independents (Cllrs Apanowicz, Brown, Calvert, Chung, Randle and me), plus Cllr Free, urged a tough rethink of projects. We argued Council’s focus should be on core services and resilience, and wanted a balance between ensuring critical projects are delivered while Wellington remains affordable. Most Councillors didn’t heed Wellington economist Brad Olsen’s advice: ‘We don’t have the resources or people to fix everything overnight, so we need to make a plan for the future: to maintain, replace, upgrade and bolster our infrastructure. That means deliberately putting some critical needs front and centre and being bold enough to say, ‘not now’ to other investments.’ – Brad Olsen, Stuff, Feb 26, 2023

Predictably every one of our suggestions was rejected by the Labour-Green bloc, which doubled down, adding even more projects to the spending, and followed WCC officers’ recommendation to ‘cut costs’ by postponing debt repayments. 

This just makes our dire situation worse: Council’s current debt of $1.24billion will increase to $1.55billion next year. We’ll be paying $41.4million in interest this year (the final cost of the St James Theatre upgrade); next year’s debt repayment is an eye-popping $61million – almost what we’re paying for the recently completed Omāroro reservoir in Mount Cook. None of these figures include $400million for the Sludge Minimisation Project – essential infrastructure we must prioritise.

Remember last year’s local body election when candidates pledged to ‘fix the pipes’? Yet when Wellington Water asked for an additional $10 million to repair pipe leaks, Council voted to fund only $3.3million. In real terms that’s a decrease in operational funding due to rapidly escalating costs across all sectors; for example, our roading contractor Fulton Hogan has warned its estimated costs for its WCC contract will rise by 55% over the next 12 months. So we’re delaying tackling our poor infrastructure – just like the debt repayments.

Let’s Get Wellington Moving (LGWM) is another problem – at an alarming estimate of $7.4billion. Its consultants’ fees are expected to hit $60million this year; in addition to the $73.5million already spent. The proposals include light rail from the railway station to Island Bay – which doesn’t go to the airport! The Golden Mile ‘revamp’ will include the removal of about 300 car parks, at a time when retailers and hospo operators are already struggling – there are now 17 empty shops in the Courtenay Place area. 

The independents put forward a number of recommendations that balanced resilience and prudence: prioritising water infrastructure, continuing support for the arts and culture sector – a pillar for Wellington that’s been our competitive advantage for several decades – and financial resilience (rather than increasing debt). 

We were outvoted. The proposed average residential rates increase of 12.3% starts in July, and there’s no glimmer of light next year – when funding for the much-needed sludge treatment plant starts, adding a 2-3% levy to the rates.You can give feedback on Council’s Nero-style financial planning by submitting on the Annual Plan, which will be finalised at the end of May. Tell the Mayor and councillors what you consider important – and the ‘nice-to-haves’ that can wait. There’s more information on Council’s website. Google ‘WCC Annual Plan 2023/24’ or go to https://www.letstalk.wellington.govt.nz/annual-plan-2023-24.

Stuff reports:

A new Whānau Ora campaign has been launched encouraging a future built on Māori aspiration and inspiration. 

The “Our Future is Māori” message will be visible on billboards, bus stops and televisions throughout Aotearoa, asserting that Māori must take control of their future. 

It seeks to reinforce tino rangatiratanga while reminding whānau of the effectiveness of by-Māori, for-Māori approaches.

This campaign looks to be a total waste of money. I saw their advertisements in the Dom Post – it was a double page ad which just said something like “Maori Unemployment is higher than non-Maori” and something about taking control of destiny.

The hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on these ads could actually achieve some real good if used to support Maori whanau and hapu. But this advertising campaign is just going to transfer money from taxpayers to media companies.

A guest post by Mark Keating:

For tax practitioners the talking point of the Government budget was the unexpected increase in the tax rate for trusts – but post-budget discussion by the main stream media has largely overlooked this feature.

This change was justified by the Government as a “revenue integrity measure”.  Inland Revenue released a Fact Sheet explaining that the increase is necessary to prevent taxpayers from deriving (and presumably holding) income in a trust, and thereby being taxed at 33% rather than deriving (or distributing) that income to the beneficiaries personally – some of whom Inland Revenue obviously suspects would otherwise be taxable at the highest personal tax rate of 39% on income over $180,000 per year.

It is questionable whether all beneficiaries of trusts might be subject to the top 39% rate … but Inland Revenue is clearly targeting the minority of trusts it considers are being used by those high income taxpayers to continue paying tax at the 33% trust rate. The Fact Sheet explains:

In the 2021 income year there were 177,000 trusts that reported assessable income. Of those 177,000 trusts, only 9,000, (5%) accounted for 78 percent of trustee income ($13.3 billion out of $17.1 billion). These trusts would pay most of the additional tax. 

The lower 75 percent of trusts in terms of trustee income (133,000) accounted for only 2.5 percent of trustee income ($0.4 billion). This includes the lower 24 percent of trusts (43,000) that had only beneficiary income; they would not be affected by a change in the trustee tax rate.

The logic is that:

• If income is retained by the trust, it will be taxed at the increased 39% rate; or alternatively
• If income is distributed to beneficiaries then it will be taxed at their personal rates – meaning if it is received by high income taxpayers it will also be taxed at their top 39% rate.

So Inland Revenue is explicit that this increase is targeted at the wealthiest trusts – and estimates that the 39% rate will generate an additional $300million tax each year.  

As with all revenue estimates, this presumably does not take account of changes in taxpayer behaviour in response to tax changes.  And, strangely, Inland Revenue even gives tax planning advice for those less wealth trusts on how to avoid the new 39% rate.   The Fact Sheet provides an example of a family trust in which:

• The wife already has $180,000 of income; 
• The husband has $70,000 of income; 
•  The trust has $50,000 of income;  and
• The couple have an adult son (Bary) not subject to the minor beneficiary rule.

Inland Revenue explains that to avoid the new 39% trust rate the trustees may distribute the trust’s income:

• to the husband, so that income is taxed to him at the 33% personal rate; or
• to the adult child, so that income is taxed to him at the lower marginal rates.

Inland Revenue explains with respect to the son:

Income can be allocated to him as beneficiary income and taxed at his personal tax rates (e.g., up to $14,000 at 10.5%, over $14,000 and up to $48,000 at 17.5%). 

If the trustees do not want to distribute this income to Bary, it can be credited to his current account, available to be called upon at any time, or a sub-trust arrangement can be set up so that Bary’s interest in a portion of the trust assets is recognised and protected.

So Inland Revenue are explicitly advising Trustees to distribute income to lower income beneficiaries for tax purposes to avoid the new 39% rate, while actually retaining those funds within the Trust.  How is that recommendation a “revenue integrity measure”?

The Government seems to be daring the opposition to pledge to reverse this tax increase on trusts, just as it dared the opposition to reverse the top 39% personal tax rate – something National originally vowed to do … only to quietly drop that pledge.  It therefore seems both our major parties favour imposing higher taxes.

Was it merely a coincidence that the increased tax for trusts follows closely the findings of the Inland Revenue high-wealth individuals research project in April?

At that time many commentators question the motives behind the report and suggested it was deliberately designed to sway public opinion in favour of increasing taxes (or introducing new taxes) upon the wealthy.  A few brave responses stated that we should celebrate and be grateful to (rather than tax more) our most successful citizens for the economic growth they generate for the rest of us.  But those voices have been ignored.

The Inland Revenue report on our wealthiest citizens disclosed that collectively the 311 families surveyed paid almost $1billion in tax in the 2021 income year – or approximately 1% of total tax.  Their taxes paid for a lot nurses and policeman and other government services that we all enjoy. 

Some commentators have noted that the new 39% rate only comes into effect from 1 April 2024 – meaning its implementation will actually depend upon the will of the new Government elected later this year.  

The Finance Minister acknowledged that tax policy will be a key issue in the coming election.  It therefore must be remembered that the Law Commission report into trusts published in 2011 both:

• acknowledged the valid, non-tax benefits provided by trusts for preserving assets, or business and estate planning; and 
• noted the sheer number of trusts in New Zealand.  

Each trust generally has a number of beneficiaries and all of them now have a personal interest in that tax debate when they cast their vote later this year.  

The Greens have published their final list. Here is who gets in at different levels of the party vote.

1. Marama Davidson (list only) 1.2%
2. James Shaw (list only) 2.0%
3. Chlöe Swarbrick (Auckland Central) – assumes holds electorate
4. Julie Anne Genter (Rongotai) – 2.8%
5. Teanau Tuiono (Palmerston North) 3.6%
6. Lan Pham (Banks Peninsula) 4.4%
7. Golriz Ghahraman (Kelston) 5.2%
8. Ricardo Menéndez March (Mount Albert) 6.0%
9. Steve Abel (New Lynn) 6.8%
10. Hūhana Lyndon (Te Tai Tokerau) 7.6%
11. Fa’anānā Efeso Collins (Panmure-Ōtāhuhu) 8.4%
12. Scott Willis (Taieri) 9.2%
13. Darleen Tana (Tāmaki Makaurau) 10.0%
14. Kahurangi Carter (Christchurch Central) 10.8%
15. Celia Wade-Brown (Wairarapa) 11.6%
16. Dr. Lawrence Xu-Nan (Epsom) 12.4%
17. Francisco Hernandez (Dunedin) 13.2%
18. Benjamin Doyle (Hamilton West) 14.0%
19. Mike Davidson (Ilam) 14.8%
20. Stephanie Rodgers (Ōhāriu) 15.6%

Stuff reports:

The Reserve Bank is likely to be unimpressed by the Government’s injection of money into the New Zealand economy, economists say – and it could mean higher interest rates to come.

After accounting for reprioritisation and reshuffling of spending, this year’s Budget is set to add more than $5 billion in additional spending in the year to June 2024, compared to predictions in the half-year update.

Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan said that was likely to weigh on the Reserve Bank’s mind when it made an official cash rate (OCR) decision next week. The rate is currently at 5.25% but is expected to increase.

He said the bank took a “dim view” of the lack of fiscal restraint or assistance it was getting from the Government in trying to balance the economy.

So floating mortgage rates are already above 8% and thanks to Grant may hit 9%.

“This was the year we were hoping inflation was going to be brought down and demand was going to rebalance across the economy. The timing couldn’t be worse really.”

Bond issuance will increase significantly, with an additional $20b of bonds issued over the next four years, twice the rate predicted by ANZ. Net debt is forecast to reach $95.3b by 2025/26 compared to $5.4b in 2019.

$90 billion of borrowing, and it is no surprise we have high inflation.

Manurewa MP Arena Williams used her father as an example of someone who will benefit from scrapping the $5 prescription co-payment. As you can see Twitter community has pointed out that he would not pay $600 a year for prescriptions, but instead a maximum of $100.

Now generally you lave family members out of politics, but when the MP themselves tries to use them to score political points, I don’t think it is inappropriate to fact check. She implies he is in such poverty that he has to choose between paying his $5 fee or heating his bedroom.

So who is this poverty stricken pensioner who can’t afford $100 a year of prescriptions fees, so he can heat his room. According to her maiden speech, her father is Sir Haare Williams who has been a broadcasting general manager and an academic dean. Her mother is a GP and a former Royal Commissioner. And of course Arena herself is an MP and her husband is a legal partner at Meredith Connell, who is currently Chief of Staff to the Mayor of Auckland.

So trying to portray your family as living in poverty having to decide whether or not to switch on the bedroom heater seems rather far fetched.

The Herald reports:

A Hamilton solo mother-of-four says she dreads coming home every day after years living next to Kāinga Ora “neighbours from hell”.

Katelyn Park, who lives with her children aged 14, 10, 9 and 6, says that she has repeatedly complained to Kāinga Ora but the agency only responded when she shared a TikTok video about her struggles and it went viral.

I don’t understand how the entire Board and CEO have not been sacked after so many stories about their tenants terrorising other tenants. If Kāinga Ora was a private landlord, it would be shunned by society.

Park told the Herald she had been living a nightmare for the past five years, constantly under the shadow of her neighbours’ anti-social behaviour, saying she had repeatedly complained about them by phone and eventually email earlier this year.

It started when Labour changed the policy so it was no longer possible to evict tenants for, well anything.

The Herald has heard recordings of the calls Park made to the agency, pleading for help.

How heartless can they be?

Park said that she was “being made to feel like they have more rights to live there than I have to live in my home, where I have been raising my children for 10 years” after Kāinga Ora failed to act.

That’s because under Labour they do. They can’t be evicted for terrorising you. At best they will move you to a new location, and leave them there to terrorise the next set of neighbours.

The callouts earlier this are a fraction of the over 90 callouts police have made to the house during the neighbours’ tenancy. We know that number because Park asked for it, going through the Official Information Act process to show just how regularly police visited the property.

90 callouts!!! And Kainga Ora did nothing. The Minister should be sacking people.

She also said that children who live on the neighbouring property have entered her home, damaging her property and deliberately smashing one of her children’s tablets.

She said she “works her ass off” to provide for her family and was not in a position to replace the damaged items.

The poor woman. I really feel for her.

Mark Rawson from Kāinga Ora said the agency takes “disruptive behaviour” seriously and aims to respond quickly and effectively to it.

LOL. 90 callouts! Pleading voicemails,

Stuff reports:

While they concede they will be named eventually, lawyers for the Mama Hooch sexual predators are fighting to keep their identities secret for now.

In one of the biggest prosecutions of its kind in New Zealand, the 40-year-old and 38-year-old men were convicted of dozens of crimes – including rape, sexual violation, indecent assault, and spiking drinks – after a two-month trial in the Christchurch District Court that began in February.

For her client, defence lawyer Trudi Aickin said his relatives would suffer extreme hardship from his name being published.

They will suffer hardship, but that is a natural consequence of having a relative drug and rape people.

They boasted to each other about how they were drugging women so they could take advantage of them. They will be facing lengthy prison sentences, and they will be named.

The Herald reported:

A text message between sacked Police Minister Stuart Nash and Police Commissioner Andrew Coster stressing the need for more police resources in cyclone-ravaged Hawke’s Bay contradicted Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, who was playing down the level of crime occurring.

So proof we were being gaslighted. They told us claims of looting was disinformation etc.

On February 20, the day after Nash’s text, Hipkins accused National and Act of promoting unsubstantiated rumours regarding the level of crime in Hawke’s Bay, saying “any suggestion that things are out of control is just wrong”.

So the PM was saying there were no issues, and Nash was pleading with the Commissioner to send in more Police. A shameful coverup.

A guest post by Roderick Mulgan:

Joining a professional group entails submitting to its prescripts. Along with a lawyer’s duty to uphold the Rule of Law, the New Zealand Law Society has floated a new statutory duty for lawyers – to discharge their duties in accordance with the “principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi”.  This will surprise many people and lawyers who see real dangers in this proposal have until May 31^st to put submissions to the society.

Oddly, the Treaty proposition arose from examining recent sexual misbehaviour in the profession. But the society’s leadership adopted investigative terms of reference well beyond that issue, established an ‘independent review panel’ and staffed it so it was likely to champion ideological reforms that most lawyers do not endorse.   

The review panel’s report admits a clear majority of lawyers who were surveyed and expressed a view are opposed to importing Treaty principles into their regulatory structure – but the authors are undeterred. The report’s slant is not surprising when one sees that the panel included an academic who also co-authored the government’s He Puapua report, which report was hardly supportive of majoritarian rule. 

This project to include such Treaty references into the ‘lawyers’ code’, pretends that the scheme does not trample across a highly contentious area of party-political debate, when it obviously does.  Treaty-principles endorsements pervade the lexicon of parties on the left and attempting to infuse ideologically-partisan positions into its statute should not be on the agenda of a professional body with a membership that holds beliefs spanning the political spectrum. 

It has become fashionable for the Treaty to be slotted into all manner of official pronouncements and mission statements. However, while vague concepts might suit the politically progressive, Law is about accurate and circumscribed concepts. Working out what the Treaty principles might actually be is a fraught exercise, with no widespread legal or community consensus. 

If Treaty adherence is to become obligatory, lawyers will need to sort that meaning out, particularly if they could be disciplined for non-adherence. So what might follow for legal practitioners, who are ethically required to advance anything credible that might help their clients, regardless of personal (and political) feelings?  

Commentators, and not just the most radical ones, regularly assert that the chiefs who signed the Treaty did not relinquish sovereignty.  This is especially so for theorists who prioritise the Maori version – ‘Te Tiriti’ – over the English text, which is the terminology the Law Society report prefers. 

The commonest modern Treaty-principles interpretation routinely articulated is that the Treaty created a partnership between two races. This stumbles on the obvious problem of how Maori citizens can partner with a government that represents everyone, including Maori citizens. Partnership actually requires two parties that are separate and that is where the logic of contemporary Treaty activism is leading – racial separatism. The end game in this long march of treaty activism through the institutions is to inculcate into our legal system this ideology. If the Treaty gets imported into the heart of legal system, this activism will have laid an enormous landmine in the underbrush. 

Might lawyers, obligated to insert treaty principles into their practices, be obliged to submit that His Majesty’s courts no longer have jurisdiction over their Maori clients?  Might lawyers be hog-tied in representing landowners who face claims against their land constructed on Treaty-based arguments? Might clients lay complaints about counsel who decline to go down these paths? The law has a way of following the path it gets set on, regardless of what might or might not have been intended.

The modern legal ‘meaning’ of the Treaty was first given statutory imprimatur in 1986 when the government passed a bill to transfer state forests to separate entities. Maori objected, as some of the land was subject to Treaty claims, so a statutory clause was inserted requiring the Crown to act consistently with Treaty principles. Most considered the move a quiet ‘fob-off’ which would not make a difference, but the Court of Appeal subsequently gave the concept serious legal teeth. The judgment was also the first time the ‘partnership doctrine’ was promulgated. 

The lesson with undefined terms is clear; don’t put words into statutes if you don’t want them to take on legal life. Because the statute will be used to give them that life. Lawyers who see where this Treaty-principles trajectory will ultimately land, have only a few more days to submit.

Roderick Mulgan is a criminal defence lawyer, medical doctor and author

I’ve been following for some time the alleged rape of an Australian Parliament staffer (Brittany Higgins) by another (Bruce Lehrmann). After the trial ended in a hung jury, the chief prosecutor (Shane Drumgold) demanded an independent inquiry into the case, where he was basically alleging the Police were hostile to the prosecution.

He got his inquiry, but so far it has mainly emerged that he was determined to prosecute at all costs and refused to hand over some Police records to the defence. This has now resulted in him having to step down as chief prosecutor.

That is an incredible own goal – to demand an inquiry into others, and end up with it resulting in your effective suspension.