I’ve been busy all day so only had time this evening to write something on the Budget, but have realised there is basically nothing to write as it was so unsubstantial.

There two or three minor policy initiatives and projections for increasing debt. The Government has left themselves a large operating allowance so they can roll out some campaign promises.

Budget are about spending. We all know Labour is great at increasing spending. They will soon be spending $60 billion a year more than when they came into office. However almost every outcome in the health and education spheres are getting worse.

The Free Speech Union produced documentary ‘Last Words’ is now available free on the plainsight.nz homepage. 

‘Last Words’ (running time: 40 mins) is a co-production between the NZ Free Speech
Union and producer/ director and Jewish community member Dane Giraud. It follows Danish free speech activist Jacob
Mchangama (the author of ‘Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media’) on his
November 2022 visit to Aotearoa.

The documentary was shot just before our new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins put a halt
to proposed hate speech laws, so the film captures this moment in time and is
brimming with fantastic free speech arguments courtesy of the brilliance of Jacob. The
NZ Free Speech Union allowed cameras into some of their meetings and planning
sessions, so this fly-on-the-wall footage provides all-access insights into the often-
fraught terrain of defending this central progressive principle.

So, grab a bowl of popcorn and enjoy. And don’t forget to share ‘Last Words’ with all your
friends, family, and other networks. 

Available on plainsight.nz and on YouTube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63qT5i8dd7Q&t=44s

Rather than offer people a reason to come home, Labour are spending taxpayer money promoting that they can now become Australian citizens!

Roger Partridge writes:

But the big problem with the Council’s plan is the fifth principle and its Orwellian-sounding provision for growth “in the right place, at the right time.” If that feels like a know-it-all Big Brother dictating Auckland’s pace of growth, that’s because it is.

The Council’s planners propose a future growth strategy that will set even tighter restrictions on growth on the city’s fringes. The plan expressly states: “There will be less reliance on expansion into future urban areas, and what growth there is will be phased over a longer timeframe.”

This is the opposite approach to what is needed to ease Auckland’s housing affordability crisis.

Land for urban development at the city’s fringes is already in scarce supply. So much so that, after accounting for land conversion costs, a square metre of land inside Auckland’s rural-urban boundary is worth $1,300 more than land just outside the boundary. That equates to a gargantuan differential of $650,00 for a 500-square-metre section.

The only serious way to reduce house prices is to increase supply, and that means cities need to both build up and build out. Just doing one without the other will not work.

The council should be cutting the rural-urban boundary, not reinforcing it. And it should be flooding the periphery of the city with infrastructure for housing.

Phil Twyford was right in 2017 when he campaigned on abolishing it.

This week most secondary schools have rostered home Year 9 & Year 10 students. The teacher unions try and tell NZ that they are doing this for the good of the children. This is despite the huge decline in attendance and academic performance. It is also alongside a worldwide decline in confidence in State education systems.
I went back through some pieces I wrote and a piece that I wrote for the NZ Herald in 2017 is even more true today.

The Real Solution to the Teacher Shortage

There is a teacher shortage in New Zealand and it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. However is has very little to do with annual salary.

While the world around them deals with the incredible opportunities of life-long learning, open access to skills and information, several career changes in a lifetime, AI and VR and rapid global travel – the Ministry of Education and the teacher unions, have put their heads deep into the sand and their backsides high in the air.

The key problem is that these vested interests – along with the faculties of education in our universities – want to pretend that the art of teaching is a technical skill set that requires a qualification pathway mimicking that of medicine. It misses the point that every eligible adult has approximately thirteen years as a critical consumer of education.

The first step to solving the teacher shortage is to get rid of the year of secondary teacher training. The need to take a year out of earning an income to become a secondary school teacher is an outdated barrier to becoming a teacher that keeps the brightest, most innovative, experienced and capable New Zealanders from working with our children.

New Zealand desperately needs direct and paid pathway into teaching. Consider this from two perspectives: Firstly the view of a university graduate from a four year degree course that has now spent a minimum of 17 years in the New Zealand education system. They know a thing or two about learning and about what makes a good teacher or lecturer. They are faced with a high employment and a high remuneration economy. They have significant opportunities for adventure through travel and employment overseas. Our system asks them to take another year of zero income while they learn how to pronounce the word pedagogy. Then see it from the perspective of a second, third, or fourth career individual who has added experience to a degree or has forged an effective life pathway without a tertiary qualification. They are likely to have significant family and financial commitments but have come to the point where they feel that contributing back to young people is the next step in their lives. What our current system asks them to do is to give up a full year’s income and pay full fees for the privilege of making a contribution to our youth. These people may have incredible value to offer but the barrier to them is insurmountable. Through the arrogance of the teaching profession we try and make outstanding individuals start again at scratch.

The above system is the main reason we have a quantitative and qualitative teacher shortage.

In the public sphere teachers often do the sector no favours. They complain about conditions. They complain about student behaviour. They complain about pay. They complain about workload. They complain about policy change. In terms of what they present to the children in their classes on a day to day basis it would to remember that they are representing a future career opportunity to these young people. If they do not like their job and cannot speak highly of it then they should go and do something else.

I learnt nothing through my College of Education and it was not worth a year of not earning an income. My main lecturer was a burnt out biology teacher who could not remember when he last had an inspired idea. He put half of my course group off teaching. My only real learning that year was in my teaching practices at schools. The pathway to teaching in New Zealand should be a well-paid apprenticeship for either tertiary or industry qualified individuals. There can be a rigorous application and interview process to ascertain suitability and significant ongoing professional development. The year off earning an income is no longer desirable or tenable. We also need to recognise that 21^st century humans are unlikely to stay in the one vocation for 40 years and have exit and return pathways for teachers that value and recognise the things they do in between stints in the classroom.

There is a solution to the shortage. But it is palatable to the current teachers and their representatives?

[email protected]

Stuff reports:

Not a single Gore district councillor was prepared to put forward a vote of no confidence in 24-year-old mayor Ben Bell.

Despite the deputy mayor Keith Hovell and seven councillors signing a requisition calling for an extraordinary meeting be held on Tuesday to pass a vote of no confidence – no one wanted to move the motion.

Good. This whole attempted coup was backfiring badly on those responsible with thousands signing a petition calling for the CEO to be sacked.

The Israel Institute of NZ points out:

National MP, Simon O’Connor has accepted a petition from the Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ) calling on the government to stop funding schools that glorify terror and incite violence. It will be presented in parliament today.

For decades, New Zealand has funded UNRWA, which operates schools in which children are exposed to lessons that glorify the murder of Jews and taught that martyrdom and jihad are “the most important meanings of life”.

A report published in March this year contains 25 examples from 10 different UNRWA schools of hateful educational content, including 9th grade study material created by UNRWA that celebrates a Palestinian firebombing attack on a Jewish bus as a ‘barbecue party’. It also contains 10 new examples of UNRWA teachers and other taff posting support for hate or violence, including conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world and praising Hitler.

O’Connor says funding these schools is incompatible with New Zealand values

“Kiwis are tolerant, but we should not be funding blatant racism and incitement to violence. It is especially hypocritical for the current government to do so while talking of imposing ‘hate speech’ laws on New Zealand citizens. This is an issue I have frequently raised in parliament and to date, there has been no satisfactory response as to why New Zealand continues to fund UNWRA while it uses such intolerant literature.”

The petition comes only days after the EU passed a resolution that, for the first time, explicitly links the textbooks to ongoing Palestinian terrorism and, especially, to attacks perpetrated by young people. The resolution also acknowledges the existence of antisemitism, and explicitly demands its removal.

Similarly, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has expressed concern “about the existence of hate speech in [PA]… school curricula and textbooks [used by UNRWA], which fuel hatred and may incite violence…”.

IINZ co-director, Dr David Cumin, says New Zealand officials have only acknowledged the issue because of pressure, and had previously filed to brief ministers,

“There is no evidence that MFAT officials briefed previous ministers despite decades of public evidence that we are funding hate. It was only when IINZ started asking questions in public and the Human Rights Commission raised concerns that Minister Mahuta was briefed. It is especially disappointing that Mahuta has not put a stop to the funding, and has openly praised UNRWA for their work. Would she be as happy to fund schools that glorify the Christchurch terrorist as she is to fund schools that glorify the person who murdered 38 civilians, including 13 children, on a bus.

We are never going to get peace in the region of the NZ Government is funding textbooks that teach children to celebrate firebombing a bus as a bbq party. We should cease funding until UNRWA has at least three years of no terror supporting materials being used in schools.

The Herald reports:

Westpac economists have lifted their expected peak for the Official Cash Rate (OCR) to 6 per cent in a new report which highlights the inflationary risks of the surge in migration numbers.

“Monetary policy is working but a historic increase in migration looks set to add demand at an inconvenient time,” says Westpac chief economist Kelly Eckhold.

More interest rate rises would be required to finish the job, he said.

Westpac now sees the OCR rising to 6 per cent by August and remaining there until mid-2024.

If Westpac is correct, then the OCR up a further 0.75% which means floating mortgage rates could hit 9%.

The Rest is Politics is a great British politics podcast hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart. Campbell is Tony Blair’s former communications chief while Stewart is a former Conservative Cabinet Minister.

Their 26 April podcast saw Stewart talking about his role as Ambassador in Iraq and having to evacuate and being under siege at the Government compound in An Nasiriyah he was in charge of. And he mentioned Mark Mitchell.

Mitchell has been asked about his time in Iraq and specifically about this seige by NZ media several times over the years. Mitchell has always stated he was proud of his service in iraq and those he served with but would not go into more detail. Rory Stewart goes into more detail and share’s some insights into what occurred during the seige of Nasiriyah. So as Stewart has talked publicly about some of what happened there, Mitchell has for what is the first time elaborated on what he was doing in Iraq.

The left of politics have attacked Mitchell for years as being a mercenary for his time in Iraq, but listen to what Stewart said.

Stewart incidentally has been a soldier, diplomat, author, Cabinet Minister, and human rights professor at Harvard University plus a a fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for International relations.

He is also involved in doing restoration work in Afghanistan and Jordan and is President of an NGO providing financial support to the poor in Africa. Stewart states he holds Mitchell in high regard and attributes his actions in helping to save the lives of journalists, diplomats and NGO workers by holding off a determined attack by a militia with overwhelming numbers and fire power for several days until air support finally arrived. 

Italian Senator Barbara Contini, who was also a coaliation provisional authority Ambassador to Iraq, was also attacked by insurgents and wrote in a commendation that if it was not for the cool heads and courage under fire of her two body guard teams one of which Mitchell was team leader then she had no doubt the outcome would have been her capture and death.

British Baroness Emma Nicolson was evacuated overland from Basra to the Kuwait border when terrorists attacked the Basra airport and coalition bases in a wide spread Terror operation. She cited the confidence, experience and local knowledge of the close protection team as the reason she was taken safely to the border. Mark Mitchell was the team leader there also. 

Mitchell moved from his close protection role into a fully embedded advisor and trainer role with the newly formed Iraqi Police special tactics unit known as the Tactical Support unit or TSU.

Mitchell along with 4 other advisors lived with the TSU in their base in the heart of Basra city. 

They were regularly targeted with mortar, RPG and small arms attacks.

It was a difficult environment running operations against terror organisations, criminal gangs sponsored by tribal groups and religious death squads with the involvement of Iranian Quds forces.

The TSU focused its operations on stopping the kidnap and ransom of children from wealthy families, targeting the death squads who were killing gay men and women and working with coalition forces on counter terrorism operations against Al Queda. 

The TSU in Basra were so effective that American General David Petraeus travelled from Baghdad to be briefed by senior Mitchell on the core components of success. 

During this time Mitchell was approached by global logistics Company Agility logistics and asked to take over its security and risk management programme. 

Mitchell was appointed Chief Security Officer for the company which had 30,000 employees in over 140 country’s. He formed Threat Management Group to provide high quality security services to Agility Logistics but quickly had requests for services and support from the UN, NGO’s, multi Nationals and US, British, Australian, Japanese and Italian Governments. 

Mitchell resigned from Agility Logistics in 2010 and Threat Management Group was sold the same year as he wanted to return to New Zealand and re enter public service.

Prior to his time overseas Mitchell had a Policing career. Most of his service was as a Police Dog Handler and member of the Armed offenders Squad. Mitchell and his Police Dog Czar were stabbed stopping an offender armed with a Samurai sword from attacking medical staff at the Rotorua hospital. They received the Police Gold Merit award for bravery and dedication to duty. Mitchell also received the Police long service and good conduct medal. 

Two ambassadors and a Baroness credit Mitchell and his team with keeping them alive. 

The top American general in iraq  sought a briefing  from Mitchell on how a Special Tactics unit he was embeded with was so effective in dealing with terrorists and death squads. 

A global logistics company head hunted Mitchell to help keep thier employees safe. 

Labour MP Emily Henderson took a call in Parliament two weeks ago on a countering terrorism bill in which she acknowledged Mitchell and the work he had done overseas supporting Rory Stewart. 

I wonder if Rory Stewart, Barbara Contini, Emma Nicolson, the men of the TSU, the gay men and women who were being hunted and killed by death squads, the logistics workers and truck drivers keeping supply chains open in war zones and protected by Mitchell and his team would describe him as a mercenary. 

Both past Labour Party Leader David Shearer and current Labour Party MP Emily Henderson don’t seem to think so.  Maybe the rest of the left should follow their lead and praise someone who risked their own life on multiple occasions to save the lives of others.

Act have released their alternative budget. It includes:

• Two tier tax system of 17.5% on first $70,000 and 28% thereafter
• Increase capitation grants to GPs by 13%
• 50% of GST on new homes to go to Councils
• Increase defence spending to 2% of GDP
• Shrink public service back to 2017 levels and index pay to inflation
• Increase super age to 67, and then index to life expectancy
• Index benefits (including Super) to inflation not average wages
• Abolish fees free tertiary subsidies
• Abolish corporate welfare programmes
• Means test KiwiSaver subsidies and Winter Energy Payments
• Abolish four ministries, an office and the Human Rights Commission
• Sell 49% of remaining SOEs and 100% of Landcorp

Their budget is fully costed and balanced.

I’d love to see a top tax rate of 28%, matching the rate for companies and trusts. Also further partial asset sales. The Government now gets more in dividends from 49% of the power companies than it did when it owned 100% of them!

Christoper Luxon announced three initiatives to improve fiscal discipline.

1. Treasury required to report annually on the performance of major programmes to demonstrate whether they are achieving results.
2. Every taxpayer will receive a “Taxpayer’s Receipt” from Inland Revenue, showing taxes paid and government payments received including Working for Families and benefit payments. It will breakdown where taxpayers’ money has been spent, eg education, health, and welfare.
3. Public sector chief executives and their deputies will have their pay linked to achievement in order to encourage high performance and ensure accountability.

All good ideas. This Government has managed to increase spending by $50 billion a year yet produce worse outcomes. It can’t continue.

Ben Youdan from ASH writes:

Vaping is far less harmful than smoking and is helping millions worldwide to quit the deadly habit.

In Aotearoa between 2018 and 2021, smoking rates fell by an unprecedented 30%, and an almost unbelievable 40% for wāhine Māori.

The reason for such a large shift was a huge switch to vaping, as addicted smokers ditched cigarettes for good.

I see many many more vapers in the streets now than actual smokers. In fact I can’t recall the last time I saw someone actually smoking a cigarette.

There is no doubt that this huge impact on adult smoking in Aotearoa has been because people can get vapes where they get cigarettes; vaping is cheaper, better promoted and easier to buy than cigarettes.

Australia, on the other hand, has just proposed a policy that essentially bans the sale of vapes outside a medical prescription model – but at the same time leaves cigarettes in every petrol station, supermarket, dairy and convenience store.

Could the tobacco industry ask for any better gift than a government-sanctioned monopoly for cigarettes, by far the deadliest nicotine products.

It’s a crazy policy where you make the product that is 95% less harmful harder to access than the product that is 20 times more harmful.

The Australian ban is the worst kind of policy making, and lacks empathy for the 2.2 million Aussie adults who smoke.

It will reduce their access to much less harmful alternatives. Especially when good access to alternatives are genuinely helPing people, and likely reducing the future death toll of tobacco.

The bottom line is that this policy will prolong the life of the tobacco industry in Australia and shorten the life of the smoking population that will likely increase. This is not a policy we should adopt.

I hope the NZ Government agrees.

The Herald reports:

A top Auckland private school has so little confidence in the new NCEA Level 1 curriculum it is ditching the qualification in favour of its own Year 11 diploma next year.

St Cuthbert’s College informed parents on Wednesday that next year’s Year 11 students would not take part in NCEA Level 1 but rather work towards the school’s own bespoke Year 11 Diploma.

Principal Justine Mahon said several of the school’s senior academic staff had been on Government advisory panels for the Ministry of Education’s proposed changes to NCEAand had become increasingly concerned by what would be taught in 2024.

“We don’t think it provides sufficient, in-depth learning for our students,” she told the Herald.

This is concerning. Their teachers have been involved in the changes to NCEA and what they have observed is enough to make them want to ditch it. Of course only private schools have that flexibility.

Mahon also believed “fundamentals” like the writing requirement and mathematics had been “dumbed down”.

They have to, otherwise too many will fail!

A post from PaulL, regular commenter and occasional author.

This story in the Herald tickled my fancy.

It’s behind a paywall, so let me give a summary for those who don’t choose to pay.

Grant and Marilyn Nelson, from Canterbury, became quite wealthy in the 90s through selling their building products company, which they had built from scratch. They created a foundation with the intent of giving away most of that money. As part of that they created an endowment of $3M to Victoria University in 2013 to establish the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies (IGPS), and in particular they wanted the Institute to do research into the influence of money and lobbying in politics, which was a particular concern for them.

They appear to have believed that this institute would be a long term thing – other people would donate too, and it would become a permanent fixture at Victoria University. Accordingly their gift deed was quite general so that it would still be relevant in 100 years time. It did provide some information about their areas of interest, but it didn’t mandate that those get researched.

After 3 years they concluded that pretty much nothing had happened. The money had been spent on accommodation and staff, but no research had actually happened into the areas they were interested in. They talked to the University about it, and seem to have agreed the problem was that there wasn’t enough money, so they gifted another $7M, taking the total to $10M.

After another few years, little if any research has actually occurred into the area they were interested in. So they threatened to take the money back entirely (presumably their deed of gift allowed that), and ended up agreeing to shift to a contestable grants model. Under that model academics can apply for funding for specific research, and are funded to conduct that research.

None of the academics at the IGPS applied for any of these grants, so the IGPS no longer has funding from the Nelsons. It may need to close down with associated loss of jobs. A former director of the centre, Professor Jonathon Boston, is upset at the University for not pushing back, and thinks it’s a violation of academic freedom.

So what about this story entertained me?

Josie pagani writes:

Rawiri fumes at the royal family who “ask you to turn a blind eye to the genocide, rape and oppression they continue to be responsible for”, while telling us to turn a blind eye to the genocide, rape and oppression in plain sight in Ukraine.

He tells us not to “stick our noses in other people’s business”, that this is a “proxy war” between the US and Russia. As if the indigenous people of Ukraine have no agency in fighting their oppressors.

President Vladimir Putin is an old-fashioned empire-builder, running amok like a modern-day Christopher Columbus.

He has form for this. He has suggested Russians are indigenous to Ukraine, instead of Ukrainians. Instead of solidarity for the indigenous people of Ukraine, he effectively sides with their wannabee coloniser and conquerer.

Ukraine has a chance to end this war, but only if others, including New Zealand, continue to have the moral courage to stand up to modern-day colonisers.

The war will end when Russia is militarily defeated and its leaders conclude their colonial war was a mistake.

Spot on. Once it can no longer be upon as a victory, then we will get peace.

It is surely right that a free people fighting for their lives and their culture in a war they did not provoke, against what is unquestionably colonisation, deserve the maximum support we can give them.

When you can find the courage to condemn a tie as a symbol of past colonisation, but lack it to condemn Russia for abducting children and ethnic cleansing, I suggest it is time to reset your moral compass.

Just wait until he is a Cabinet Minister, setting our foreign policy!

Stuff reports:

The West Coast Regional Council is the latest local authority to drop its paid membership of Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) – the body that represents New Zealand councils.

In 2022, the council put LGNZ on notice that it may not renew its annual membership.

This year’s annual invoice of $36,372 excluding GST failed to get backing at a council meeting on Tuesday. …

While there was evidence LGNZ could give value to the council on ‘big picture’ policy affecting councils, “the Three Waters debacle” still rankled.

“We don’t feel we’ve been represented,” Gibson said.

LGNZ needs to apologise for taking money from the Government in return for agreeing not to oppose Three Waters. They need to make clear that never again will they do this, and that their job is to promote the views of Councils to the Government not vice-versa.

NewstalkZB reports:

Not everyone who signed a letter asking for the rich to be taxed more heavily is mega wealthy.

The signatories described themselves as wealthy New Zealanders.

Tax Justice Spokesperson Glenn Barclay is one of them.

He says he’s not extremely wealthy, but is still probably in the top 10 percent of income earners.

“If the tax system was a bit more fair, I might find myself paying more tax. And I’d be happy to do that.”

The open letter was produced by Oxfam and Tax Justice Aotearoa. Half a dozen of those who signed are very wealthy, but many were just the normal suspects.

Take Barclay, a former PSA Secretary. If he is at the 90th percentile then his income is around $100,000. He is not even paying the top tax rate of 39% but instead the second top rate of 33%. So presumably he is urging for that 33% rate to be increased, which applies to all income over $70,000!

Politik reports:

The Ministry of Health has now spent $50 million on consultants and held three years of meetings while it watched its liability for an unpaid holiday pay increase for health workers by $150 million a year. The Ministry has not paid the correct holiday pay to 260,000 current and former health workers since 2015. It is estimated the pay error could now cost the Ministry $1.8 billion.

So the Ministry of Health has had to spend $50 million on consultants just to work out how to properly calculate holiday pay, and it seems they may own $1.8 billion.

If the Ministry of Health with $50 million of consultants can’t work it out, then how are small businesses expected to comply?

We need a total rewrite of the Holidays Act so that the rules are clear and simple, and can easily be incorporated into payroll software.

Here’s one way you could do it.

• Convert all annual leave entitlements into a percentage of wages so a four week entitlement is equivalent to 8%, five weeks to 10% etc.
• Every pay period, just calculate their annual leave as if they were casual staff, but don’t pay it out. So if your wages were $2,000 you get $160 credited to your annual leave account.
• When you wish to take annual leave you get paid your normal current wages and it is debited against your annual leave account. So if you take 3 days leave and normally get paid $200 a day you have $600 debited
• When you leave your job you get out any outstanding balance

Keep it simple.

Amused by the sheer amount of trivia ACT MP Nicole McKee knows about King Charles, as you can read in Hansard.

I found out that the Prince of Wales is the Patron of the National Rife Association (UK)!