NewstalkZB reports:

The new crossing over Auckland’s Waitematā might not include any additional lanes for cars and instead focus exclusively on walking, cycling and rail.

I know this sounds implausible, but it is exactly what they are doing in Wellington – a second Mt Vic tunnel, but cars to be banned from it.

Here the Government is saying they could spend up to $30 billion on a second harbour crossing in Auckland, and would ban cars from it.

Stuff reports:

The Government has delayed the establishment of a streamlined way for people to report threats and suspected terrorist activities – a key recommendation after the Christchurch mosque attacks – documents reveal.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the March 2019 Christchurch shootings said there needed to be a system for the public to easily and safely report concerning behaviour or incidents to a single point of contact within the Government. It was recommendation 12 of 44 made by the commission.

“This reporting system should be implemented in the next 12 months,” the commission’s report, released in December 2020, says.

About 28 months on, the system has still not been set up – and papers released under the Official Information Act show one of the hold-ups has been within Cabinet.

Just another example of how bad this Government is at delivery.

It should be easy for people to report concerning behaviour that could constitute a terrorism threat. But if you become aware that someone is becoming radicalised, who would you contact? 111? Not an emergency. Local police station – probably won’t be open. Call the SIS – probably the best idea, but not something everyone would be knowing to do.

So a simple reporting system, both online and phone, which concerns can be passed on is a very good idea. It could save lives.

I am often asked to make clear the NCEA system. I have done my best below but please keep in mind I only have an undergrad (Economics), a Masters (Education), a Teaching Diploma and a post grad in Sports Management. Oh … and 32years in the “system”.

Back in the day the National Certificate of Education Achievement (NCEA) replaced School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate and University Bursary. University Entrance remained but the form it takes has altered.

Promises made were that “standardised assessment” would allow higher achievement (as opposed to set limits on how many could pass). At first you could only pass/fail but later Merits and Excellences were added for some standards. Life-long learning was to be encouraged as you could/can add to your “record of learning” anytime (actually a good thing but severely under-utilised).

Throughout the levels you study within Achievement Standards or Unit Standards. Achievement Standards have always been seen as more academic (and change was made so you could Achieve or with Merit or Excellence). Some Achievement Standards have been mainly internally assessed – others mainly examined. Unit standards have been a lower hurdle, trade directed and always internally assessed. As well as plain old L1, L2, or L3 NCEA – there has been a proliferation in all sorts of “certificates” (e.g. in Computing, Hairdressing). A student could decorate walls with these as pony club kids do.

When you pass an Achievement or Unit Standard at a particular level you get “credits”. A credit from either type is the same value (whether Physics or changing a bike tyre or organising a desk work-space).

A subject – e.g. Mathematics – could be made up of five/six Achievement Standards (effectively units of work that cover approx. 6 weeks) that describe what will be taught/learned and the mode of assessment. Roughly this could be Achievement Standards for Number, Geometry, Statistics, Algebra, Measurement, Research. Quite quickly it reached the stage that there were a limited number of Achievement Standards but MANY unit standards (a dog’s breakfast). It also has fractured having complete courses.

To Achieve L1 NCEA

Students need to accumulate 60 Credits from any Level (1, 2 or 3) courses and/plus students must have “Literacy and Numeracy” by having 10 credits in Math related standards (loosely) and 10 in English related standards (also loosely) i.e. a total of 80 credits. A well organised and motivated student (they do exist) will have 120 credits, have sat exams, and got a Merit or Excellence endorsement.

To Achieve L2 NCEA

Students need to accumulate 60 Credits from L2 or L3 courses (plus 20 from any Level) and have met the L1 Numeracy and Literacy Requirements.

To Achieve L3 NCEA

Students need to accumulate 60 Credits from L3 courses (plus 20 from any Level) and have met the L1 Numeracy and Literacy Requirements.

To Achieve University Entrance

Students need NCEA Level 3 including 14 credits in each of three “approved subjects” at Level 3. There are approximately 60 of these and yet many schools fail to have their Y13 students doing even three of them – therefore they cannot get UE. They also need UE Literacy – 10 credits at Level 2 or above, made up of: – 5 credits in reading – 5 credits in writing. They also need UE Numeracy – 10 credits at Level 1 or above (the same as the requirement for NCEA numeracy – a very low bar). Universities will also have points requirements to get into certain courses.

If you want to really blow your mind – go here for the “approved subjects” list.

There has been tinkering over time to make things more or less academic, etc, not worth detailing. It is like a mansion built by drunk idiots, in the dark, with no overall plan, over 30+ years.

As it became clearer and clearer that you could get right through all of these qualifications and lack any real ability to be numerate or literate the 2018 Labour government, under pressure (boom, boom, ba bep), chose to introduce “Co-Credits” in Numeracy and Literacy that are, theoretically, at L1 but can be sat in any year (even Y7). They are worth 10 Credits each and have been designed to ensure a basic level of both aspects. If you cannot pass them, you cannot get any qualification. (They have created them as on-line assessments  which is stupid but I won’t detail the reasons here).

They were supposed to be compulsory in 2023. Three things have screwed that up.

1. Labour’s union affiliated hatred of assessment meant that no one had any idea just how badly students were being taught and doing in these basics. This has been deliberately hidden for years and years.
2. Hipkins failed to put in place any effective teaching and learning programme to rectify a situation that he had chosen not to discover.
3. Trial testing over the last three years have had appalling results and even the most recent ones showed that if the co-credits were made compulsory in 2024 (a year later that original intended) up to 50% of students could/would leave school with no qualifications (and 90% of decile 1 students).

Therefore Hipkins/Tinetti has now chosen to make them compulsory in …. 2026 and stipulate a grab bag of alternatives that schools can use in the meantime (although the well-prepared ones will use the co-credits next year).

The overall “cluster balls-up” (I needed to coin a new phrase to stop myself crying for the kids) of our system, and the degree needed to understand it, is one of the reasons the NCEA has both lost credibility and has little impact as a motivator for many students. Many of those who are moderately organized – accumulate credits throughout the year in all manner of ways – get to the number needed and switch off (not bothering with exams) and often will even leave school at the end of term three and go and work.

On top of the mess it was in 2018 – only Hipkins/Labour could have made it worse – and in spectacular style. Add to this the “Curriculum Refresh” (which is appalling) and …

How many teachers, bureaucrats, parents and politicians could pass a test on this from their everyday knowledge?

[email protected]

One News reports:

A key role for the Human Rights Commission is to be independent of the Government and to hold it to account on its human rights record – including on race relations.

Foon also donated $1000 to National Party candidate Tania Tapsell’s campaign in the same year.

“I spoke earlier about having received and declared an in-kind donation from the Foon family in 2020 when I was a back bench MP,” Allan said in a statement this evening.

“It is fair to say I couldn’t recall all of the details of all of my donors when questioned earlier, but having had the opportunity to review I can say I also declared a $1500 cash donation from Meng and Ying Foon in 2020 as well.”

Allan had earlier said: “I didn’t take any monetary donations from Meng Foon.”

A company called Triple Eight Investments Limited also provided Kiri Allan a rent subsidy worth $9185 according to the declaration.

Triple Eight Investments has three directors, including Meng and Ying Foon.

“The in-kind donation I referred to was from a company that the Foons were directors of, for a rent subsidy on a campaign office space.

“This was a campaign office, not an electorate office, and no parliamentary funds were used,” Allan said in her statement.

This is incredibly bad judgement from Meng Foon. Once he was appointed a Human Rights Commissioner, he should not have been donating money to any MPs election campaigns.

He donated over $10,000 to Kiri Allan, who is now the Minister responsible for deciding if he gets reappointed, and $1,000 to National’s Tania Tapsell. Both donations were inappropriate, but the Allan one especially has now created a significant conflict of interest.

Foon has probably doomed any chance of reappointment now. It would be a terrible look to reappoint someone who donated $10,000 to the Minister, even if she recuses herself. And I can’t see National reappointing him, if they win.

Stuff reports:

The IPCA analysed whether there was undue political influence impacting how police responded to the occupation. The main question around political interference centred around a meeting between Wellington MP (and then deputy prime minister) Grant Robertson, Attorney-General David Parker, then-Speaker Trevor Mallard and Police Commissioner Andrew Coster.

The MPs wanted the occupiers gone. After the meeting, Coster called an assistant commissioner and told him they needed to bring an end to the occupation.

“[Coster] made clear his expectation that there was to be a Police operation on the following day to clear Parliament grounds of protesters. The Assistant Commissioner told us he regarded this expectation as an order from the Commissioner,” the report said.

So did the meeting show undue political influence on the police?

The IPCA concluded there was no undue political influence. The investigation said those who attended the meeting between Coster and MPs did not believe there had been “express or implied direction” from ministers.

So the Commissioner has a meeting with the Deputy PM, the Attorney-General and the Speaker, where they say they want the occupation ended, and within minutes of the meeting ending, the Commissioner orders an operation to end it, and somehow this is not undue pressure?

If that is not undue pressure, then what would be?

What was the purpose of having the Deputy PM and Attorney-General attend the meeting, if it was not to pressure the Commissioner?

“There were some ministers in the room at the time, but it was ultimately the Speaker who instigated that meeting. He is the occupier of Parliament,” he said.

So again why were the Ministers there?

NZ First leader Winston Peters wasn’t convinced. He picked up on a statement from the investigation, where Coster said the meeting with MPs was “uncomfortable”.

“How on earth is this not raising a red flag for direct `political interference’,” Peters asked.

So the Ministers made the Commissioner uncomfortable, and persuaded him to order action against the occupiers, yet again somehow this is not undue pressure!

A National candidate in an unwinable seat two years ago shared a poem on Facebook that made a comparison between Jacinta Ardern and Hitler. National’s responses is to (correctly) make him resign.

A Labour MP compared John Key to Hitler and defends what she said, before eventually apologising. She is now a front bench Cabinet Minister.

Another 30+ year high for food inflation. The longer it goes on, the bigger the cumulative impact on Kiwi households.

This is how much food prices have increased since 2017:

• All food 27%
• Fruit 36%
• Vegetables 51%
• Cheese 50%
• Eggs 100%

Who has had their income go up 27% to cover a 27% increase in food costs?

It is a small step in the right direction that overall annual inflation has fallen from 7.2% to 6.7%. It is of course still twice the maximum agreed to by the Government and three times the midpoint targeted.

But what is really interesting is that all the decrease has come from the tradable sector, which is the sector with international competition. That has dropped from 8.2% to 6.4%. The quarterly figure for March 2022 was 2.4% and March 2023 was 0.7%.

But non-tradable or domestic inflation has actually increased from 6.6% to 6.8%. The quarterly figure for March 2022 was 1.5% and March 2023 was 1.7%. The 6.8% for non-tradable inflation is the highest since they started recording it over 20 years ago.

So basically what is happened is the international component of inflation is dropping, but the domestic component is still increasing. This suggests the OCR will still go up at the next review.

The Guardian reports:

Fox and the voting equipment company Dominion reached a US$787.5m settlement in a closely watched defamation lawsuit, ending a dispute over whether the network and its parent company knowingly broadcast false and outlandish allegations that Dominion was involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election.

That is a lot of money. Almost $1.3 billion in NZ dollars.

It is almost impossible in the US for a company to win a defamation case against a media organisation due to the first amendment. But the claims by Trump and his proxies were so clearly wrong (and Fox knew they were wrong) that they were facing a high probability of losing, hence they settled.

It is worth noting that if even one sliver of truth was attached to them, it would have come out. But what actually came out is that everyone knew the claims were batshit crazy, but they wanted to appease Trump’s cultish followers, so they aired them regardless.

That’s a billion dollar mistake they won’t make again.

Newshub reports:

Stephen Jack has tonight resigned as National’s candidate for Taieri, a National spokesperson has confirmed to Newshub.

Jack’s resignation comes after two controversial social media posts recently came to light.

The first was reported by Stuff on Sunday, revealing Jack shared a video in 2020 which contained the joke: “I like my COVID like I like my women. 19. And easy to spread.”

The second offensive post reported earlier on Wednesday showed that in 2021, Jack reposted a poem on his personal Facebook account originally shared by an Otago farmer. In the since-deleted post, which Newshub has seen, it likened former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to Hitler.

“Cindy’s showing us her colours; we know why she chose red. She started out a communist and lately this has spread,” the poem read.

“Just as Hitler had the SS, our prime minister’s on the job. She’s given up on the police and bought the Mongrel Mob.”

Comparing politicians to Hitler is always a very bad idea. It is insulting to victims of Hitler, and always makes you look unbalanced.

Radio NZ report:

The Green MP at the centre of a party investigation, Elizabeth Kerekere, has been accused of ongoing poor behaviour – including badmouthing and undermining her caucus colleagues and staff.

Five individuals close to the Greens – including current and former staffers – have spoken to RNZ under the condition of anonymity after Kerekere accidentally sent messages to a group chat which were unsupportive of Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick.

Those spoken to by RNZ said the messages were characteristic of the Tai Rāwhiti-based MP’s behaviour since her arrival at Parliament in 2020.

Many were unhappy with Kerekere putting her own interests ahead of the party, and wanted the inquiry widened to cover her broader behaviour and for it to report back before the party list was finalised.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, a Green insider had previously told me that Kerekere was one of the most unpleasant people they had ever met.

Now what is interesting is that the Green hierarchy still ranked her No 4 on the draft party list, promoting her four places from last time. Why?

One source told RNZ Kerekere had exhibited “bullying” and “general mean girl behaviour” throughout this term.

“Elizabeth has a tendency to call people ‘racist’ if they disagree with her,” the source said. “People walk on eggshells around her.”

Ha, welcome to the centre-right. We get called racist for daring to disagree with people on the left almost continuously. Not as pleasant I guess, when it is done within your own party.

Newsroom details four pieces of misinformation (or disinformation) from Three Waters Minister Kieran McAnulty. I won’t detail them all here, but do want to focus on the most egregious.

Below the board, or below the belt? That’s the question prompted by McAnulty’s further attempt to minimise the role of these representative groups. He says every district council will have representation on their local water services entities through the regional representative groups, where council representatives and iwi will form a partnership to provide strategic oversight and direction to the entities.

“These groups will continue to sit below the governance board, in which each member will be appointed on merit and qualification,” he says.

Under questioning, he says the 50-50 council/iwi membership survived only because of the representative groups’ subordinate status. “I was comfortable with what has been proposed, because it’s a regional representative group. It may have been a different outcome if this was actually the governing board, but it’s not.”

But it’s not correct that the representative groups are subordinate. Somewhat like a congress of shareholders, they will appoint the directors to the governance board. According to the bill before Parliament (and the government says this won’t change) they will provide regional and local level direction and oversight, including setting strategic and performance expectations, and approving the strategic direction.

By any definition they sit above the governance board. To claim these bodies sit below the boards of qualified directors is wrong, and downplays the importance of the council and iwi stakeholders in determining how the water assets are managed for their communities. 

I’m glad this lie has been called out because it is an important one.

They are not below the governance board. They effing appoint the governance board. You don’t sit below something if you appoint it.

On my Patreon I have given details from a Curia poll of 1,000 New Zealanders about whether eight media outlets are seen as right leaning, left leaning or neutral.

The eight media outlets are:

• TV: One News and Newshub
• Radio: Radio NZ and NewstalkZB
• Newspapers: NZ Herald and Stuff
• Internet based: The Spinoff and The Platform

Five of them were seen to lean to the left, one was seen as roughly balanced and two as leaning to the right.

Stuff reports:

Teachers and education experts say the Government’s plan to reduce the funded teacher to student ratio for years 4 to 8 by one will have little impact.

On Monday, Education Minister Jan Tinetti​ announced plans to change the class size funding, allowing them to reduce the ratio from one teacher for every 29 students to 1 to 28.

So few students are even attending school, the actual class size on any day will be far less than what a school is funded for.

But even putting that aside, the Hattie analysis of over 1,200 studies of education impacts found that class size changes have a minor impact.

See if you can find class sizes there.

A class with a size of 15 vs a size of 30 will have an impact on children’s learning. But a size of 28 vs 29 is really going to have minuscule impact.

The whole country is aware that State school education in NZ is poor overall shape. Significant absenteeism, let alone achievement. Term 1 was challenging with strikes (because the Ministry and unions have failed to reach agreement from May of last year). Add in storms, cyclones and teacher only days and students and families, at some level, must be wondering why they bother.

Apparently Year 4 – 8 classes have a funded ratio of 29 students. This is not a strict rule and schools can use the operation funds to reduce that. It would also be interesting to know just how often every student is present in a class so far into 2023.

So … Labour decide to make an announcement. They tell journalists it will be at Remuera Intermediate – which must have struggled to get a quorum in the holidays. And not just the Minister of Education is going to be there but the PM himself. This must be huge.

The announcement … that from 2025 they will reduce class sizes for Years 4 – 8 from 29 to 28. But wait – there is more and extra 320 teachers across 2000 Primary and Intermediate schools and … a new Ministerial Advisory Group (5.5 years into their term) to investigate class size in our schools and make recommendations.

Some high profile Principals, normally supportive of Labour have shown it for what it is:
“I just think it’s ludicrous,” Finlayson Park School principal Shirley Maihi told Checkpoint. “I think it’s a slap in the face. And it certainly won’t entice people to come into the teaching profession.”

Can teachers choose which child they don’t want to have in their class?

Watching it I thought it was the funniest political announcement I have ever seen and this scene would have been mimicked across newsrooms and the members of the other parties.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins will attend the NATO leaders summit in July as the United States-led military alliance seeks to increase its presence in the Pacific and further strengthen its ties in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Very pleased to see Hipkins agree to attend. It is important we are seen as resisting autocratic regimes trying to overthrow democratic regimes through military might.

John Tamihere writes:

If we were playing Jeopardy, the answer is Māori, and the winning question is, who owns the water?

What is bizarre to me is that people who have stolen an asset are now having a debate about the rights over it.

We reject co-governance because we want to have the appropriate conversation about the elephant in the room: how did Pākeha get to the table on a 100% Māori-owned asset?

So there we have it clear as day – the assertion that water is owned 100% by Maori. Yep nothing less than the liquid responsible for life on earth is owned by Maori.

And people wonder why there is going division in New Zealand.

The Herald reports:

Taxpayers are forking out $1.2 million a week to keep the wheels turning on the Government’s $14.6 billion light rail project in Auckland.

Auckland Light Rail (ALR) is paying about $920,000 a week to two engineering companies to plan and design the central city-to-airport light rail project and a further $310,000 to its own contractors and consultants.

They’re just burning cash!

$1.2 million a week is $30,000 an hour. So even if we assume the contractors get paid $300 an hour that means 100 contractors working 40 hours a week on a project that will end up like their cycle bridge to nowhere.

The Herald reports:

The Local Government Minister is causing concern in the Opposition after detailing his belief that New Zealand’s founding document contains provisions that are different from a “purely academic democratic framework”.

Equality of suffrage is not just an academic concept. It is a fundamental human right according to two international conventions we subscribe to.

The Local Government Minister is causing concern in the Opposition after detailing his belief that New Zealand’s founding document contains provisions that are different from a “purely academic democratic framework”. …

There are provisions that we have in this country that wouldn’t stand up to a purely academic democratic framework but that’s not how we work in New Zealand.”

Again he is talking about equality of suffrage here.