The Herald reports:

Scandal-prone National MP Harete Hipango is withdrawing from the contest to be selected as National’s candidate for the Whanganui electorate, a seat she once held but which is now represented by Labour’s Steph Lewis.

Instead she will seek selection in the the Māori seat of Te Tai Hauāuru, currently held by Labour but which is fiercely contested by Te Pāti Māor co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

The seat has not voted for National since the party was formed. In 1931, Western Māori, as it was then known, elected Taite Te Tomoa, an MP from the Reform party, one of the two parties that formed a coalition and later merged to become the National Party.

Hipango will almost certainly lose that electorate if she is selected as the candidate, meaning her only chance of re-entering Parliament is by securing a good position on the party list.

It is hard at this point to estimate how many List MPs National will get. On current polls they look like getting 15 or so more MPs, but if they win say 12 electorates then that would be only three more List MPs.

A very informative article by Chris Finlayson on co-governance. First he covers what he used it for:

Since the late 1990s, governments have agreed in some major Treaty of Waitangi settlements to create boards formed of local government and iwi representatives to manage significant environmental features. These were originally called “co-management agreements”.

The idea was to help resolve long-standing treaty grievances by providing a defined role for iwi to reconnect them with a lake or a river. If we want to get technical, we can go back to article 2 of the treaty, which guaranteed Māori rangatiratanga over their lands and taonga (treasured possessions). So there is a treaty-based reason for doing what we were doing. Environmental features are more often than not taonga to Māori.

So co-governance was used for distinct areas of the environment of importance to an Iwi, and was done as part of a full and final legislated Treaty settlement.

In hindsight, I think one major thing went wrong. The word “co-management” morphed into “co-governance”. I do not know why. It was never intended to mean anything different, but in hindsight, it was regrettable. The problem is that the word “governance” is too close to the word “government”. That creates alarm bells in some people’s heads, but no confusion was intended. Just like “co-management”, “co-governance” was meant to describe the agreements I have set out above, subject in nearly all cases to local authority control. No more, no less.

So it wasn’t about governance in the wider sense, but management of a distinct area of the environment, and generally subject to local authority control.

So, how have we got into the mess we are now in with co-governance? The first reason is that the Peters-Ardern-Hipkins Government has instituted a range of controversial policies that have been referred to as containing co-governance. This has had the effect of expanding and confusing the original concept, but also created fear about what the endpoint might be.

Take the new Te Aka Whai Ora – Māori Health Authority, for example. It doesn’t fit the traditional definition of co-governance set out above, but is it problematic? Yes. It splits out Māori health, which should be at the absolute core of the health system, into a separate bureaucracy. I have heard frustrations directly from a number of iwi leaders about the imposition of yet another layer of bureaucracy when all they need are new nurses on the ground. National Party leader Christopher Luxon was correct to point out at Rātana that we do not need any more Wellington-based bureaucracies like the Māori Health Authority. He committed to providing its money directly to iwi to fund services on the ground. That is excellent, and hopefully a sign of more to come.

So Labour has expanded it from what was management of discrete environmental resources into governance of the health system, of Three Waters and more.

Unfortunately, Waitangi Day this year proved yet again that many in the political class and media are simply unable to engage in debate on these matters rationally. The only party leader who was able to name the three articles of the treaty when asked was Luxon. (In fairness, Chris Hipkins named two, which was two more than Jacinda Ardern managed at Waitangi when she became Prime Minister.)

Luxon went on to set out an orthodox view that co-governance might be appropriate for some article 2 matters, but nothing more than that.

But he also made it clear it is essential for the government to partner with iwi to deliver services on the ground, and that he favours iwi providing leadership at a local level rather than being over-governed from Wellington.

He was upfront that National wants a return to authority being exercised at a community level, whether we’re talking about polytechnics, charter schools or local health organisations. And he was upfront that in many cases that will mean it is iwi providing services. Why? Because that’s how we can best hope to improve the lives of different groups of people.

So, what was the response? Hipkins accused Luxon of stoking fear (an accusation reported uncritically by most of the media) and told him to reflect on his behaviour. In contrast to Luxon, Hipkins has provided no detail about his view on co-governance, and wasn’t even asked to provide any. How depressingly predictable.

The fear is being generated by Labour as they obviously have a radical agenda, but refuse to ever talk about it!

When I first became attorney-general, my first task was to repeal the Labour Government’s Foreshore and Seabed Act and replace it with a new regime that restored and respected Māori property rights. The Foreshore and Seabed issue had been divisive and fraught, and the replacement legislation (the Marine and Coastal Area Takutai Moana Bill) was also very sensitive, particularly given the complexity of the issues involved.

One day, John Key took me aside and told me to get out there and explain what the Government was doing, and then explain it again and again. He told me not to be too lawyerly about it (he was always telling me not to speak like a lawyer). I ended up conducting a nationwide set of meetings to talk about the issue. Tensions often ran high and they were not always pleasant occasions. But they were important.

At one particularly fraught meeting in New Plymouth, I asked one elderly man how he would react if his right to go to court had been taken away, at which point he shrugged and said he supposed he agreed. It was little breakthroughs like this that would have never occurred had I not made the effort. The law passed and its tests are being routinely ignored by the courts, but that is an issue for another day.

So, why won’t the government do the same thing with the range of policies it is introducing?

When is the last time a Minister fronted a public meeting on an issue such as Three Waters?

The result is that the Hipkins Government will likely learn its lesson the hard way. In the meantime, co-governance – a limited, successful concept intended to address treaty grievances – has morphed into a source of genuine concern for some New Zealanders. ­­And they are owed an explanation by the government as to why it has allowed this situation to arise.

At the election, we will get a chance to explain out back to them.

As promised by Elon Musk upon his acquisition of Twitter, in early December 2022 thus began a gradual reveal of internal Twitter communications between senior staff and externally between key Twitter executives and government agencies on a variety of topics at the heart of the tumultuous political environment during and after Donald Trump’s Presidency. So far there have been 15 releases of Tweet threads dubbed the “Twitter Files”, many with embedded documents such as emails and internal Slack communications with the most recent beginning to examine files regarding Covid issues. You can find a link to each File release hyperlinked from the File number in the title of each section. Since Musk has promised to release so-called “Fauci Files” and, given the prominence of Covid (and responses to it) globally, plus given the depth of the releases on other matters to date, there will undoubtedly be a stream of Covid-related Twitter file releases over the coming weeks that I will attempt to summarise in a 3^rd Post once it looks like that subject has been exhausted. The bios of each of the contributors to the Twitter files are covered in Part 1.

File #1 and 1A – Hunter Biden Laptop – Matt Taibbi

The very first release concerned the highly controversial decision by Twitter to block the New York Post from disseminating its blockbuster stories regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop. As a refresher, around April 2019, then former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter left two laptops to be repaired with a computer repair shop owned John Paul Mac Isaac in Wilmington, Delaware. One of the laptops was never picked up and, after attempts by the repair shop owner to contact Hunter to pay for and retrieve the laptop, based on the repairer’s terms and conditions, the laptop became his property to dispose of to defray the costs of repair. Mr. Isaac extracted the hard drive, repaired it and began to view its contents and became alarmed by what he found. The contents were described as detailing Hunter’s seemingly corrupt business dealings in the Ukraine and China, the extent to which he traded off his famous father’s name for great financial advantage, the extent to which his father knew of and profited from such transactions and even more disturbingly, evidence of criminal sexual conduct with a minor within the extended Biden family. The implications of such material in the run up to the 2020 Presidential election contest between Joe Biden and incumbent President Trump were obvious. Mac Isaac gave a copy to the Delaware State Police and the FBI who both sat on the explosive information for over a year such that eventually, Isaac passed a copy of the hard drive to Rudi Giuliani, then one of Donald Trump’s private attorneys. The contents of the laptop made its way to the New York Post, one the oldest and largest conservative leaning newspapers in the US.

The New York Post published its findings in its print edition on October 14, 2020 and across its social media platforms, the most potent of which was Twitter. Very quickly the Biden campaign dismissed the contents of the laptop as hacked material as part of a supposed Russian disinformation campaign and pretty soon the mainstream media moved in lock step with this explanation. Twitter was persuaded to limit then block the dissemination of the New York Post’s article on its platform at first by de-emphasing the NYP’s Post and issuing a warning then limiting how it could be re-tweeted and commented on and then blocking the ability to direct message a link to the post (something normally Twitter only did in cases of child pornography) and finally deleting the post and blocking all mention of it across its entire platform by locking the accounts of anyone who mentioned it effectively helping kill the story. What this first Twitter file release shows is the decision to block the story was the subject of intense internal debate. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim this is part of the policy?” and that the ultimate decision to block was a tortuous interpretation of their “hacked material” policy and made without the authorization of then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Here was a reputable and venerable newspaper making claims of viewing material from the son of the man running for President (who was also partly implicated) of an explosive nature just 2 weeks before the election, an election that Biden won by an aggregate of the tiny margin of only 85,000 votes across 4 key battleground states and the world’s most politically influential social media company decides to throttle then kill all mention of the story!

Polling done by the Media Research Center has shown that some 16% of people who voted for Biden, had they known about the contents of Hunter’s laptop prior to the election, may have changed their vote. Here was a ‘October surprise’ of the type even bigger than that which almost cost George W Bush the 2000 election (the 11^th hour revelation of his DUI) that could be easily characterised as swinging the election. Of course since the election, not only has Hunter Biden’s laptop material been verified (and can be viewed in its entirety here via Marco Polo) but various Democrat friendly media outlets such as the NY Times and Washington Post have admitted the Russian disinformation story was a hoax and that the laptop is real. The 51 former intelligence officers who attested to the Russian disinformation cover story have proven to have been most economical with truth. Recently one has admitted he knew it was a false story all along but lied anyway, all undoubtedly to help Biden beat Trump.

In a supplemental entitled File 1A, Taibbi revealed how he was initially blocked from viewing critical internal communications by Twitter lead counsel Jim Baker, a well-known Washington swamp creature who was using his power as chief company attorney to block Taibbi’s access to the most sensitive material. When this was revealed, Musk publicly fired Baker thus paving the way for File #2.

File #2 – Twitter’s Secret Blacklists – Bari Weiss

This file reveals exactly how Twitter throttled high profile conservatives and lockdown skeptics. Weiss showed how Twitter used “visibility filtering” to emasculate the reach of top right-leaning account holders. Dan Bongino was subject to a search blacklist, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was subject to a “Trends Blacklist” and Charlie Kirk was hit with “Do Not Amplify”.

File #3 – The throttling of Donald Trump – Matt Taibbi

Twitter’s Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth not only met regularly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Also, Twitter was aggressively applying “visibility filtering” tools to Trump well before the election.

File #4 – Trump and the run up to January 6 – Michael Shellenberger

Shellenberger outlines how right after January 6, 2021 (the protests at the Capitol that ended in people entering the building and disrupting the 2020 election Electoral College certification process), Twitter staff were contorting themselves in knots trying to find ways to bend their policies to justify suspending President Donald Trump. Various employees questioned the wisdom of censoring such a prominent world leader.

File #5 – Removal of Donald Trump – Bari Weiss

Despite widespread loathing of Trump by most Twitter staff, saner heads were struggling to see how his famous Tweet on January 6 (see below) could be seen as incitement to violence, the reason given for Trump’s Twitter ban. A staff member originally from China says, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation”. Senior staff proceeded to find a way anyway, justifying the removal due to Trump’s “Banality of Evil”.

File #6 – Twitter and the FBI – Matt Taibbi

These files reveal the shocking extent to which the FBI surveilled ordinary Americans’ activity on Twitter and sent lists of ‘offending’ accounts for Twitter to take action against (throttle, suspend or ban). The FBI became a clearing house for other Federal Government agencies and entities who channeled a vast array of requests to “bounce” or moderate content including DHS (Department of Homeland Security) agency CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) and the left leaning so-called Election Integrity Project. Twitter staff were processing such a massive volume of these requests that the FBI’s San Francisco office (where this surveillance activity was run from) sent a memo congratulating Twitter staff on successfully completing such a “monumental undertaking”.

File #7 – The FBI and Hunter Biden’s Laptop – Michael Shellenberger

These files focus specifically on the mode of communication between the FBI and Twitter over the NY Post revelations about Hunter Biden’s laptop and contains two shocking revelations: first, that the key FBI agent (Elvis Chan) overseeing the relationship with Twitter used the FBI’s special secured portal called Teleporter (used to transmit classified documents) to transmit moderation requests to Twitter’s Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth and secondly, that the FBI compensated Twitter for its time taken to action the FBI’s gagging requests to the tune of over $3 million!

File #8 – Twitter’s role in spreading Pentagon PsyOps – Lee Fang

This is the first appearance of Lee Fang as part of the journalist contingent examining Twitter’s files and he takes a detour into an entirely different but nonetheless illegal operation conducted by the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) based out of Qatar. This was to use social media to manipulate public opinion with respect the Arab world by amplifying over 50 fake accounts as directed by the Pentagon. Senior US military commanders testified dishonestly to Congress that no such operations existed.

File #9 – Twitter et al and other Government agencies – Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi reveals the involvement of Twitter (and other social media companies) with other Federal government agencies in joint suppression of free speech operations. CIA officials attended a conference on the subject at Twitter HQ in the summer of 2020. Regular industry briefings were held also with Facebook in conjunction with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The FBI and the “Foreign Influence Task Force” met regularly “not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo, Twitch, Cloudfare, LinkedIn, even Wikimedia.”

Files #11 and 12 – How the FBI became the “Other Agency” coordinator into Twitter – Matt Taibbi

As the so-called Russia gate controversy mushroomed from August 2017, Twitter came under pressure from Congress then the State Department to moderate what were seen at the time as Russian driven social media accounts. The FBI agreed to become the focal portal for such requests with Special Agent Chan describing the FBI’s operations in this regard as the “belly button” for all requests from the US IC (Intelligence Community). The thread in File #12 shows how Twitter took in requests from everyone — Treasury, HHS (Health and Human Services), NSA (National Security Agency), FBI, DHS and more and, shockingly, also received personal requests from politicians like Democratic congressman Adam Schiff who asked Twitter to suspend journalist Paul Sperry, which they duly did! Paul Sperry’s crime was to publish and support the so-called Devin Nunes memo (the former Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until the GOP lost the House in 2018) about the whole Russia gate situation, a conclusion that, over time, proved to be correct and that Adam’s Schiff’s assertions that Trump was influenced by Russia were false.

File #14 – Russia gate Lies – Matt Taibbi

A unified Democrat (and sympathetic MSM) cry was that the 2016 election was unduly influenced by Russia and that this was done to benefit Trump. An influential liberal think tank called Hamilton 68 claimed that their investigations unearthed a myriad of Russian controlled bot accounts on Twitter that were talking up the Nunes Memo (that refuted all the Russian gate allegations that lay at the heart of the investigations by the Special Counsel Mueller and the subsequent first Trump impeachment). These allegations were amplified by senior Democrat politicians such as California Senator Dianne Feinstein, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal and then Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff and were spread like wildfire across the entire mainstream media spectrum as well as many influential commentators and publications and even to so-called “Fact Checkers” such as PolitiFact and Snopes. Twitter’s staff reverse engineered these 600 odd supposed Russian influence/bot accounts and found that, with the exception of a small number of Russia Today accounts (RT is Russia’s primary English language media outlet in the West), all the remainder of these accounts belonged to ordinary Americans and even Brits merely giving private opinions on the Nunes memo and were never Russian controlled bots. All three Democrat politicians were told by Twitter staff that the Hamilton 68 files they were citing as evidence were NOT Russian bots and yet they persisted with the fiction anyway and allowed this misinformation to spread across the media landscape to help fuel a false narrative that Trump was supported by Russia.

In a supplemental to these files, Taibbi revealed that on ten occasions, Adam Schiff and his office demanded that Twitter ban or “deamplify” the accounts of anyone critical of him and his role as Intelligence Committee Chair, any criticism of the Steele dossier and of attempts to dox the whistleblower in the Ukrainian phone call issue that became the main reason for the first Trump impeachment.

Please note: Files #9, 10 and 13 are all Covid related and will be covered in Part 3 in the future.

Conclusion

For some time it was apparent to most on the right that social media platforms skewered in favour of left leaning parties and candidates and towards liberal and progressive causes and policies and tilted against parties and candidates on the right and the causes and policies of a conservative hew and most particularly against President Trump and the conservative media and commentators most supportive of him. The release of the Twitter files not only dramatically confirmed these biases but demonstrate the extent to which Twitter actively put its thumb on the scales of public opinion to achieve this end. For years its staff engaged in the systematic suppression of the posts of right leaning politicians, commentators and ordinary people in a way that most definitely infringed on the protections of free speech enshrined in the 1^st Amendment to the US Constitution. But far more insidious and dangerous was the revelation that major organs of the Federal Government were complicit in these activities devoting staff time and resources to the task of suppressing conservative voices and shockingly, that US taxpayers’ own money was used by the FBI to pay one of the world’s most influential social media platforms to muzzle the views of its own citizens expressing their First Amendment right of free speech!

In the specific case of the suppression of the New York Post and its attempts to advise the world of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, here was a supposed free speech platform doing the bidding of the supporters of a candidate for President in killing an explosive story detrimental to that candidate in the dying weeks of the 2020 Presidential Election campaign that, had the story had unrestricted dissemination, the nature of the allegations were such that they highly likely would’ve influenced the outcome of the election. Over 125 million Americans voted in the 2020 election and Biden’s aggregate winning margin in 4 key states was a measly 85,000 votes or 0.068%. The actions of Twitter, at the behest of senior supposedly neutral public servants in law enforcement and intelligence agencies, has not only stifled free speech but played a crucial role in the outcome of an election. Twitter’s lead role as the shaper of mainstream media and public opinion and narratives ensured that false narratives favourable to Democrats and detrimental to conservatives were able to dominate print and broadcast media and other social media in a way to move public opinion in favour of only one ideological side of the hotly contested political divide. We have not heard the end of this as the material revealed in the Twitter files was confirmed in recent hearings before the now Republican controlled House Oversight and Accountability Committee where former Twitter executives faced the wrath of Congresswomen who themselves had been censured or suspended. There likely will be some regulatory and even legal repercussions for Twitter’s actions going forward. The GOP controlled House has already issued subpoenas to Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta (parent to Facebook and Instagram) and Alphabet (parent to Google and You Tube) for all documents on “collusion with the government to suppress free speech” The Twitter Files on just this subject alone has only just begun to open Pandora’s box and it’s not going to end well for the social media companies who engaged in this suppression.

As we move to another matter that became the subject of intense debate in most first world countries, that of the various responses to the Covid pandemic, it will be interesting to see how much Twitter again put their thumb on the scales of public discourse on the issue of lockdowns and C19 treatments. Watch this space!

In a somewhat surprising move Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has resigned. There are a number of factors in her resignation:

• Second referendum obsession. She was obsessed with holding a second referendum on independence, despite the 2014 referendum being billed as a once in a generation decision. The UK Supreme Court had ruled there could not be one, without the agreement of the UK Parliament.
• Her Government passed the Gender Recognition Reform bill by 86 votes to 39 with opponents saying it would conflict with the UK-wide Equality Act by, for example, making it more difficult for women-only spaces to exclude people who were born biologically male. In an unprecedented move the UK government blocked it from receiving royal assent, a move actually backed by the majority of Scots in opinion polls.
• Just after the law passed, it was revealed a double rapist, now called Isla Bryson, had been placed in a women’s prison.
• The most recent poll showed Sturgeon’s net approval had fallen 11% from +7% to -4%, support for independence fallen 6% to 47% and support for the SNP 6% to 44%
• The 44% SNP vote is critical as Sturgeon’s plan was to treat the next Socttish election as a de factor independence referendum, with a threshold being a 50% or greater vote for the SNP

So somewhat like Jacinda Ardern, she went because she had unpopular policies, and had become unpopular herself. We won’t know her successor for a while as it goes to a membership vote. Candidates must have 100 nominees from at least 20 branches. Nominations stay open for a huge 77 days and then voting starts 35 days and concludes after 21 days. So total time is 133 days or around four months, so expect a decision in June or July.

Today you can be pilloried as a heretic for suggesting that there were any benefits of colonisation, let alone whether the benefits may have been greater than the downside for Māori. This is despite the fact that there has been almost zero balanced analysis of what the benefits and detriments were. We have slogans rather than analysis.

There tends to be two polar opposing camps when it comes to colonisation. The first camp features exclusively on the (many and significant) detriments such as loss of lands, languages, status etc but totally ignores the benefits such as an end to slavery, the rule of law, property rights, democratic government etc.

At the other end you have a camp that regards Māori in 1840 as a tribal civilianization that was thousands of years behind the rest of the world, and that they should be grateful to the British for taking over the country as it brought them into the 19th century. That camp ignores that even without colonisation the Māori people today would of course be vastly different to what they were in 1840 as communication and trading could occur without colonisation.

So the first camp judge colonisation on the basis of whether Māori today are worse off than Europeans in New Zealand. But that is not the comparison that one should look at, to answer whether colonisation’s harmful effects were less than or greater than its benefits.

The second camp judge colonisation on the basis of whether Māori today are better off than they were in 1840. And that is equally flawed as it ignores universal progress.

The correct comparison is are Māori today better off than they would have been if the Treaty of Waitangi had never been signed and New Zealand had not become a British colony.

Now of course there is no way to answer that question without Uatu the Watcher or the ability to travel to an alternate dimension where history played out differently. But what we can do is look for a proxy. NZ is a Pacific country and Māori settled from the Pacific. Is there another Pacific country that could be a reasonable proxy for how things may have turned out without the Treaty of Waitangi and colonisation?

Well as it happens, there is. Tonga.

Tonga is very proud of the fact it has never been colonised. It was a British protected territory but it was never colonised and the indigenous population makes up the vast majority of the population and controls the Government.

Now of course Tonga is not a perfect proxy for a non colonised New Zealand. It has a much smaller land mass which could be seen to make economic prosperity harder (however look at Singapore and Zimbabwe to consider how little natural resources can matter). You can also argue that Tonga was more peaceful than New Zealand was before 1840, as they had a relatively strong central monarchy and not the same degree of intra-tribal slaughter as in New Zealand. So you can argue in either direction that how Tonga has turned out is a bit worse or a bit better than how New Zealand would have.

Any comparison is obviously imperfect. But perfect is the enemy of good. What I have long been interested in, is whether comparing the outcomes for NZ Maori today to Tongans in Tonga, we can illuminate in which areas colonisation has been clearly detrimental and in which areas it has been beneficial. Anyone who claims there were not benefits is wrong, just as anyone who claims no detriments is wrong.

So I have spent many hours going through the data for Tonga and for Maori in New Zealand, to see how they compare.

First what are the populations, before we look into key areas of economy, education, health and crime.

Population

In 1840 there were around 80,000 Maori living in New Zealand. There does not appear to be a record of Tonga’s population then but in 1891 it was 19,196.

Today there are around 850,000 Maori living in New Zealand and 105,000 Tongans living in Tonga. Population growth has not been static with periods of declines and increases. But of interest both Maori and Tongans have had a 1.32% annual increase.

Incomes and Jobs

The average income from employment in Tonga is 1,539 Tongan Pa’anga which annualised is 18,468 TP. This is equivalent to NZ$12,618.

The latest income data from Stats NZ has the average weekly income from employment in NZ for Māori as $1,084. This is $56,369 annualised which is five times the average income in Tonga.

There are also far more Māori in the Labour Force than Tongans in Tonga. In Tonga only 47% of the working age population are in work or looking for work. In New Zealand 70% of Māori are in the labour force. However Maori unemployment is at 6.9% compared to 3.1% in Tonga. So the percentage of the working age population in actual employment is 45.3% in Tonga and 65.2% for Māori in New Zealand.

So Maori in New Zealand are much more likely to be in employment and those in employment on average earn five times as much as Tongans in Tonga.

Health

The infant mortality rate for Māori is 4.9 per 1,000 births and for Tongans (in Tonga) it is 11.6 per 1,000 births.

In terms of obesity, 60% of Tongans are obese and 90% are overweight. With NZ Māori, around 51% are obese and 80% overweight.

The current smoking rate for adult Maori is 25.7%. The smoking rate in Tonga is 31%

Comparing alcohol abuse is more difficult, but we have some data. In NZ the average person consumed 10.7 litres of pure alcohol. The figure for NZ Maori will be higher than that – estimate 12 litres or so. 40% of Maori are classified as hazardous drinkers.

In Tonga the average alcohol consumption is 1.6 litres per person so less than 20% of the level of NZ Maori. This has profound implications for negative statistics for Maori in terms of health, domestic violence and other criminal offending.

In terms of suicides, the rate per 100,000 is just 4 in Tonga and 21 for NZ Maori.

Only 17% of adult Tongans smoke. This is around half the 31% of Maori who are smokers. This also has profound implications for negative statistics for Maori in terms of health and life expectancy.

Life expectancy for Maori is 75 years from birth, while in Tonga it is 71 years from birth. So Maori on average live four years longer. Presumably the negative impacts of alcohol and smoking are outweighed by a more developed healthcare system.

Education

The literacy rate in Tonga is 99.4% and in New Zealand 99%, so no big difference. Note this is basic literacy, not meeting a qualification standard.

In terms of post-secondary education, 17% of Tongans have completed tertiary study compared to 49% of Maori.

Crime

The incarceration rate of Tongans is 0.17%. The NZ Maori incarceration rate is 0.46%.

The murder rate in Tonga is 0.001% (1 per 100,000). For Maori is is around 2.7 per 100,000.

The road fatality rate is 16 per 100,000 people in Tonga and 17.6 per 100,000 for NZ Maori (100 per 100,000 vehicles)

Summary

In terms of incomes and jobs, I think it is very very clear colonisation has benefited Māori in NZ. They earn five times more than Tongans in Tonga, and are far more likely to be in employment. The only negative is slightly higher unemployment for those wanting to work.

Even without data, this is a logical conclusion. New Zealand has a first world or developed economy. This did not happen by accident. There is no reason to think that without colonisation, the New Zealand economy would be akin to France or Sweden per capita, instead of other Pacific countries like Tonga.

In terms of health, it is more mixed, but mainly negative for Māori. NZ Māori have alcohol abuse rates massively higher than Tonga, and smoking rate significantly higher. Yes life expectancy is still longer, but the impact on quality of life is huge. If New Zealand had not been colonised, Māori would arguably have far fewer health problems than they do today.

In terms of education, Māori have done better at tertiary level. The literacy rates are similar, but many more Maori do post-secondary education than Tongans in Tonga.

In terms of crime, the impact of colonisation has arguably been worst. Māori in New Zealand are around three times more likely to be in prison and to be victims of violence and homicides than Tongans in Tonga. They are more likely to be offending at a young age, and the impacts of crime are often generational for children of those in crime, end up also in crime.

I don’t think one can reach an overall conclusion about whether the benefits of colonisation outweigh the detriments, as it depends on what you value the most. Earning five times as much in wages would count for a lot to many, but not having so many people in prison and victims of crime would also count for a lot.

The key rationale of this post is to try and demonstrate that there have been both benefits and detriments, and to rejects extremists who claim it has been all good or all bad. And also to educate media that inequality is not the same thing as judging the impacts of colonisation.

Stuff reports:

Tea and scones might be off the menu for MPs as inflation eats into Parliament’s budget.

Parliament’s Clerk of the House, David Wilson, told MPs on Wednesday he was considering spending cuts as he grappled with rising costs. Services that could be slashed included AM radio broadcasts of the House, tea trolleys for MPs sitting on committees, and education trips overseas for MPs.

“We can no longer meet the cost of all of our operations in supporting Parliament. We’ve done what we can to keep our costs down, but we’re a small agency, with a limited budget, and facing rising costs,” he told Parliament’s Governance and Administration Committee.

Wilson said one of the few “big ticket” items the clerk’s office spends on was broadcasting sittings of Parliament across AM frequencies. The $1.3 million contract for the broadcast service was up for review, and was “close to the amount we need to save”.

That’s easy then. Scrap it.

“I realise it is a big move, we’ve been broadcasting on radio since 1935. It’s not something I want to rush into.

It is now 2023.

Damien Venuto writes at NZ Herald:

In November last year, 54 per cent of respondents to a poll from the Taxpayers’ Union and Curia said they were opposed to the state broadcaster merging. In contrast, a follow-up poll conducted by Research NZ on behalf of the Better Public Media Trust in December found that only 29 per cent of respondents did not support it.

The difference here lay in the way the questions were asked to the public.

The Research NZ poll asked: “The government is planning to merge TVNZ and RNZ into a new state-owned public media service, with an extra $109 million per year, which equals to $22 per person per year. If this organisation provided new content for niche, minority and regional audiences while keeping the current TV, radio and online services as well, would you support it?”

The Taxpayers’ Union poll did not provide that framing, which ostensibly contributed to higher levels of opposition.

This is incredible. The Curia-TU poll asked a simple non-leading questions – Do you support or oppose the proposed merger of TVNZ and RNZ.

The poll by the Better Public Media Trust uses a hypothetical scenario to engineer higher support and the journalist basically complains that the Curia-TU poll didn’t!

The Minister of Education (Hipkins) who drove attendance in NZ off the cliff was planning to make a big ANNOUNCEMENT this week on how to cure the disease he has significant responsibility for causing.

The announcement has been delayed.

From Mike Hosking this morning

“The real crime here, though, is the cynicism of the announcement.

Hipkins, as well as overseeing an education system that is badly wanting if not embarrassingly poor, especially when you read the testing around numeracy and literacy, has overseen the growth of truancy.

The major problem with being in government for two terms is you have a record, a record in this case of abject failure.”

Also of significant interest has been the apparent collusion between the Ministry and Hipkins/Tinetti. The Select Committee held an “investigation” into attendance. Just 8 schools submitted and no deeper research was done. On that basis Hipkins/Tinetti spent $88million and told us in the House – that Term Two 2022 would be better. It was significantly worse. The Ministry has kept the Term Three figures hidden for over four months. They were due to come out this week. If they don’t come out this week – it can only be because they are shielding the new Prime Minister.

The graph below gives just a small clue as to how this government is robbing children of a future and Hipkins has been THE central player. Last time anyone could check – less then half of all students fully attending and only 20% of decile 1 students. If Hipkins is this incompetent with one portfolio – that he had nine years to prepare for – what real prospects as PM.

Nice campaign video from Nikki Haley, launching her presidential campaign. Somewhat Reaganesque.

I’ve been a fan of Haley since she was South Carolina Governor. Did a very good job at UN Ambassador for Trump also.

Hard to see her winning the nomination, but if she did, I think she would beat Biden.

Politico has a useful 55 facts on her.

Alex Penk writes:

What do Climate Karanga, Podiatry NZ, and the Free Store Wellington have in common? Probably very little, apart from their common commitment to co-governance. They are among 50+ NGOs who signed an open letter, duly and dutifully amplified by media, urging the government to continue its work to implement the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights after Minister Willie Jackson signalled this work might be paused. It represents the emergence of a phenomenon known as the Blob—a gelatinous agglomeration of elite opinion that suffocates and skews public debate.

The Blob takes its name from a 1958 sci-fi movie about a “carnivorous amoeboidal alien” that absorbs everything in its path. In the UK, the term refers to the mutual embrace of civil servants, quangos, NGOs, and vested interests. In the US, it refers to a foreign policy establishment that tends hawkish and interventionist. In both cases, the Blob maintains and advances a very particular view of the world, often at odds with public opinion and even political will. The open letter looks distinctly Blobby—NGOs, unions, academics, supportive media reporting, all lined up in favour of a position that is, at best, highly controversial. But what’s wrong with the Blob? Isn’t this just a group of public-spirited citizens and community-minded organisations sharing their sincere views on a matter of public importance? Isn’t this simply Democratic Deliberation and therefore an uncontrovertibly Good Thing? No. No, it isn’t.

The Blob is neither democratic nor deliberative. It creates a false consensus that sucks the oxygen out of dissenting opinions, overpowering them with the weight of apparent institutional authority. Take, for example, RNZ’s uncritical reporting of the open letter: “More than 60 organisations”, we’re told, have signed the open letter (I make it 53, plus 10 individuals), including “major organisations” like the Mental Health Foundation. The article doesn’t explain why the Foundation has any particular expertise in co-governance or UNDRIP, nor does it include any contrary viewpoints.

The Blob also skews the debate: here and in the UK, the Blob tends left. Can you imagine 50+ NGOs signing a right-leaning position on co-governance, or the media amplifying this uncritically? (Come to that, can you imagine 50+ right-leaning NGOs?) Some members of the Blob are also “sock puppets”. These are organisations that receive government funding and in turn lobby the government, for example the Citizens Advice Bureau, also named by RNZ as a “major” signatory to the open letter. Nor is the Blob representative. No-one selected these people to take a public position on co-governance; instead, they wield cultural power beyond their numbers, influence without accountability.

This would all be much less of a problem if the signatories had some kind of relevant expertise on the subject, as when a (much smaller) group of constitutional law academics signed an open letter against the Three Waters entrenchment provision. But the open letter is signed by organisations like Podiatry NZ, which is unsurprisingly expert in podiatry, Barbarian Productions, a Wellington theatre company, the NZ Society of Authors, which represents writers and promotes literary culture, Free Store Wellington, a retail food waste distributor, and Climate Karanga, which is focused on climate education in Marlborough. I could go on, but none of these organisations have any obvious qualifications that entitle them to pronounce on progressing UNDRIP implementation, or that suggest the rest of us should listen to them.

It’s tempting to treat this as a bit of a joke, but this is how we end up with an elite consensus disconnected from, and dismissive of, the majority of us. To be clear, the key problem with the Blob isn’t that NGOs have a view—they’re fully entitled to do so and to express it. The issue is agglomeration amounting to groupthink and ideological capture of a series of society-shaping institutions and debates. By contrast, a single actor or handful of individuals or organisations can’t stifle or skew debate.

Our immediate response should be to see the Blob for what it is, and discount its influence accordingly. The second thing we should do is diversify the Blob, and this is much harder. This means doing the long, slow work of introducing a range of perspectives into civil society and giving them all a fair hearing. Effectively this means de-Blobbing the Blob because, as astute readers will realise, a diverse Blob is no longer truly a Blob. If we can do this and drain the Blob of its threat, perhaps then we’ll restore the public square to what it should be—not the monolithic imposition of a consensus position, but a genuine conversation among equals.

An excellent post on the danger of the blob.

The NY Post reports:

Hunter Biden slipped his legal assistant thousands of dollars under the table while the two were in a sexual relationship over several months in 2018 and 2019, text messages recovered from the first son’s laptop show.

After sending her another $1,500, Hunter offered her an arrangement: “I will bake [sic] up for back pay. You have to make up for back work.

“By [FaceTime]ing me and/or going to our next-club party,” he added. 

Two days later, on the morning of March 9, Hunter sent his assistant $500 and told her: “If we [FaceTime] the rule has to be no talk of anything but sex and we must be naked and we have to do whatever the other person asks within reason.”

Okay imagine if the son of a Republican President was found to not only be having a sexual relationship with their assistant, but was not paying her on time, and only agreeing to do back pay if she agreed to do video sex sessions with him.

This would be the lead story in all the legacy media.

This is not a fully consensual relationship. He is her boss, and holding back wages until she has video sex with him. This is the sort of thing the left normally jump on and condemn. But hardly a whisper.

The Herald reported:

An unrepentant social media manager has defended sharing private photographs of Gore mayor Ben Bell amid accusations of dirty politics.

Natasha Chadwick, who was paid $9200 by incumbent mayor Tracy Hicks to run his social media as part of his $14,000 campaign, shared the photos of Bell with media outlets after the election, saying “what he (Bell) does socially is absolutely the people’s business”.

Hicks yesterday said Chadwick approached him during his campaign about using the photos but he declined saying it was not his style.

However, he stood by Chadwick, who says she waited until after the election before sharing the pictures with media, calling her an “absolute professional” who was a pleasure to work with.

I’m sorry but if someone who worked for my campaign was shopping around photos in an attempt to out someone’s private life, I would not then refer to them as an absolute professional.

In an email to councillor Bret Highsted, released to the Otago Daily Times, Bell addressed the issue, saying “unless you get directly from me, it’s simply rumours”.

Highsted replied saying he was not aware of any “explicit” photos of Bell being circulated.

“I have seen a relatively harmless photo of you being kissed on the cheek at what looks like a festival.

“My response … is the next generation would think nothing of it,” Highsted said.

Chadwick, who lives in Tapanui, said she did not share the photos or rumours during the campaign, although she had tried to get the media to pick up on them after her contract with Hicks had ended.

She was unrepentant about spreading the photos.

“To me, if you’re going to run in a public office and you’re going to be in a public space I think you need to present authentically,” she said.

This is pretty disgusting. There’s a photo of Bell being kissed on the cheek by another guy, and this woman is trying to ship it to the media. Is she still living in the 1950s?

I have no idea if Bell is gay or not. Who cares. It seems his real crime is beating her client who seemed to think he was Mayor for life.

Stats NZ reports:

• grocery food prices increased by 11 percent
• restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food increased by 8.3 percent
• fruit and vegetable prices increased by 16 percent
• meat, poultry, and fish prices increased by 9.2 percent
• non-alcoholic beverage prices increased by 7.1 percent.

Food prices overall are 16.8% higher than two years ago.

Stuff reports:

A national state of emergency has been declared, after a night of extreme weather which left towns cut off across the North Island.

Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty declared a national state of emergency at 8.43am on Tuesday.

It was only the third time a New Zealand Government had declared a national state of emergency. The previous declarations came for the Christchurch earthquakes and Covid-19 pandemic.

He said the declaration would apply to the six regions that had declared a local state of emergency: Northland, Auckland, Tairāwhiti, Bay of Plenty, Waikato, and Hawke’s Bay.

So it is more a multi-regional state of emergency.

Hope everyone is okay in the most badly affected areas. Where we are it is cold and strong winds but not particularly bad.

Gareth Hughes writes:

Green strategists must be champing at the bit now that Grant Robertson won’t be standing again in Wellington Central, and Jacinda Ardern, Paul Eagle and David Clark are retiring from their Mount Albert, Rongotai, and Dunedin electorates.

Those are four of the Greens’ highest-performing five seats. The other is currently held by Chlöe Swarbrick, opening up a unique opportunity in October for the Greens to ditch a decades-old strategy that shuns seriously standing in electorates.

Hughes thinks the Greens have a real chance of winning both Wellington Central and Rongotai. Both seats will be very interesting to follow.

In fact this election, there will be a record number of seats which could potentially switch hands.

Northland
Whangārei
Maungakiekie
Tukituki
Upper Harbour
Northcote
New Plymouth
Hamilton East
Otaki
Ilam
Hutt South
Rangitata
Nelson
Napier
West Coast Tasman
East Coast
Wairarapa
Takanini
Whanganui
Ohariu
Rongotai
Wellington Central
Te Tai Hauāuru
Tāmaki Makaurau
Waiariki 

So that’s 25 out of 72 electorates which could be in play.

As I did in 2020, I plan to analyse the race in each of the 72 electorates on my Patreon page later this year. I’ll start the series once the major parties have completed candidate selection.

Andrea Vance writes:

A couple of weeks ago, a document dropped in my inbox. Wellington City Council wants feedback on its goal to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

The brochure itself is gorgeous, cheerfully yellow, quixotic photographs of children tending a cabbage patch, or dragging rubbish from a beach, and full of stupefying jargon like “designing out waste.”

Certainly, the comms team have been busy with it. (Too pre-occupied to tell locals about the faulty 15kg street lamps, threatening to brain them from a great height).

But it runs to 80 pages. And honestly, life is too short. Even for me, and I get paid to read consultation papers.

This is the first sign that something is fake consultation. As Andrea says, only the most masochistic would read an 80 page document. If you really wanted lots of people to read and respond you would have a one to four page document.

The pertinent information for busy people, juggling households, families, careers and an already unreliable waste collection service doesn’t come until page 61.

The carrot: a proposed introduction of food and organic waste collection. The stick: the $17 bin bags will be collected fortnightly or monthly. Suck that down with your cup of 12.8% rates rise.

So a true consultation would lead with something along the lines of “Would you support or oppose introducing organic waste collection if it cost you $17 a fortnight”. Not have it buried in Page 61.

The NY Times reports:

His pronouncements could hardly sound more drastic.

In interviews and public appearances, Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale, has taken on the question of how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society.

“I feel like the only solution is pretty clear,” he said during one online news program in late 2021. “In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly?” Seppuku is an act of ritual disembowelment that was a code among dishonored samurai in the 19th century.

As you can imagine, his comments have caused an uproar in Japan – partially because he has actually become a bit of a hero to some young Japanese who resent that age and seniority stand in their way.

It reminds me of when I was a National staffer in the early 2000s. I was asked to do some modelling for the Caucus Economics Committee on potential changes to NZ Superannuation to show how they would impact the long-term cost. So I had a dozen slides showing the impact of means testing, inflation rather than median wage indexing, changes to rates etc etc. The final slide showed the largest decline in cost – reaching zero dollars within ten years. This slide was titled “Logan’s Run policy”.

Most got the joke, but afterwards a fairly worked upon Senior Citizens spokesperson told me in no uncertain tone to delete that slide and never use it again. She explained that she attends around 100 Grey Power events a year and doesn’t want to ever have to explain my sense of humour to them. So alas the slide was euthanised!

The Herald reports:

The ministry last month released a proposal for public consultation on how it plans to reduce tobacco retailers from 6000 to 600 by July next year and has released maps indicating how many retailers should be operating in different regions across the country.

The proposal relates to the world-first reform to the sale of tobacco in New Zealand introduced by now Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall, which included the significant reduction of retailers and the inability for anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, to buy smoked tobacco products.

Despite having roughly a third of the national population, the Auckland region would have only 33 tobacco retailers – the fourth-lowest out of the 12 regions identified.

This is so crazy. They are going to have 33 outlets for 150,000 smokers in Auckland. The black market will not just explode but it will explode exponentially.