Here’s my 20 predictions for this year, which I’ll score at the end of the year. I got 14.5/20 right for 2022.

1. National will win more party votes and seats than Labour at the general election
2. ACT will win more party votes than the Greens at the general election, unless Chloe Swarbrick becomes a co-leader
3. There will be a National-led Government
4. NZ First will make 5%, but will not hold the balance of power
5. By the end of 2023 (after six years) the Government will not have achieved even 6% of its ten year targets for houses or trees
6. Ron DeSantis will announce he is standing for President of the United States
7. Joe Biden will announce he is seeking re-election
8. The Government will not pass its compulsory income insurance into law before the election
9. National will win at least 10 electorates off Labour
10. Construction will not have begun in light rail in Auckland
11. One or more major banks will have floating mortgage rates of 8% or higher in 2023
12. NZ will avoid a recession by having only one quarter of negative growth in 2023
13. Labour will deliver small tax cuts to the lowest rate or bracket in the Budget
14. At least two more Ministers will announce they are retiring at the election
15. The Maori Party will win at least two of the seven Maori seats
16. At least one Labour Minister who holds an electorate will go list only
17. Gerry Brownlee will become the 32nd Speaker of the House
18. Fighting will continue in Ukraine throughout 2023
19. The general election will be in November 2023
20. Stuff will introduce a paywall

Last December I did my usual 20 predictions for the year. Now it is time to see how I did.

1. Peeni Henare will not be Minister of Defence by the end of 2022. Wrong 0/1
2. There will be a by-election in 2022. There were two 1/1
3. NZ First will record at least 4% in at least once public poll. In more than one 1/1
4. By the end of 2022 (after five years) the Government will not have achieved even 5% of its ten year targets for houses or trees. They are at 1.5% and 4.3% so 1/1
5. The Republicans will win the House and the Senate in the mid terms. House yes Senate no so 0.5/1
6. Phil Goff will not be re-elected Mayor of Auckland. He did not stand 1/1
7. The Government will back down on Three Waters having equal co-governance between Councils and Iwi. They did not, silly buggers 0/1
8. Paul Eagle will be elected Mayor of Wellington. Came third 0/1
9. By the end of 2022, fewer than 7% of Government vehicles will be emissions free.At 5% so 1/1
10. Fleur Fitzsimons will be appointed the Labour candidate for Rongotai. She is not yet confirmed but little doubt it is here so 0.5/1
11. Construction will not have begun in light rail in Auckland. Easy 1/1
12. National will poll over 35% in at least one public poll. In many polls 1/1
13. Tim Shadbolt will not be re-elected Mayor of Invercargill. Thank goodness 1/1
14. Boris Johnson will be rolled as Conservative Party Leader. Called that one right 1/1
15. Labour will repeal the Three Strikes Law. Sadly 1/1
16. Donald Trump will announce his candidacy for 2024, if the Republicans gain at least 20 seats in the House and win the Senate. He did announce even though they fell short so 0.5/1
17. The Greens will change their rules so both co-leaders can be women. They have 1/1
18. Labor will win the Australian Federal Election. They did 1/1
19. At least one area of NZ will be moved into the red level of the Covid traffic light system in 2022. No, thankfully 0/1
20. There will be a state funeral in 2022. A lucky or unlucky call 1/1

My total score for 2022 is 14.5/20.

I will publish my 2023 predictions in the next few days.

The final results from Hamilton West are:

1. Tama Potaka, National 6,974 46.3% (+9.3% from 2020)
2. Georgina Dansey, Labour 4,541 30.1% (-22.9%)
3. James McDowall, ACT 1,515 10.0% (+7.0%)
4. Gaurav Sharma, Momentum 1,242 8.2%

The latest ANZ Business Confidence survey is out.

Business confidence has fallen to an all time low of -70.2

But if you think that is bad enough, look at the breakdown by industry:

• Services -64.0
• Retail -68.6
• Manufacturing -74.5
• Construction -75.7
• Agriculture -100.0

Yep Labour has managed to get it so that not a single farm or agricultural company in the entire country is optimistic over the next 12 months for the economy – a perfect 0, never before managed.

Richard Prebble writes at NZ Herald:

Crime is going to get a lot worse. In the end-of-year rush of legislation, Labour, the Greens and the Māori Party passed the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill.

The minister claims the bill will reduce nicotine in cigarettes, reduce the number of outlets able to sell cigarettes from 6000 to just 600 and make it illegal to sell tobacco to anyone born after January 1, 2009. Actually, Labour has legislated to make New Zealand the only country to have prohibition for smoking.

Prohibition in America was a spectacular failure. Crime boomed. Alcohol consumption increased.

You almost have to wonder if the Government is working for the gangs, because that is who will benefit the most from prohibition.

Stuff reports:

A 501 deportee had several human rights breached by the Government and his treatment was unlawful, the High Court has found.

Two thousand people have been deported from Australia to New Zealand since 2014 under s 501 of Australia’s Migration Act 1958, giving them the name “501” deportees. …

The judgment, delivered by Justice Cheryl Gwyn in the Wellington High Court, found that the deportee’s treatment as a 501 returned prisoner from Australia breached the right to natural justice, freedom of movement, and to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

Additionally the government had breached the prohibition against retrospective penalties and double jeopardy.

New Zealand law allows the Government to apply strict parole-like conditions to returning offenders, and was passed to deal with deportees from Australia like G. It applies to anyone returning from another country after serving a year or more in prison, within six months from when they were released from custody.

Just another sign that the justice system is here for criminals, not victims.

Parliament explicitly passed a law to allow authorities to do stuff like collect fingerprints from the deportees. But Justice Gwen has decided in an Alice in Wonderland like judgment that this doesn’t apply to deportees who had already committed crimes overseas, but only to future deportees who commit future crimes. This was very clearly not the intent of Parliament.

National MP of the Year

• Christopher Luxon 29%
• Nicola Willis 23%
• Erica Stanford 20%
• Shane Reti 16%
• Simeon Brown 13%

Labour MP of the Year

• Gaurav Sharma 66%
• David Parker 25%
• Nanaia Mahuta 9%

Minor Party MP of the Year

• David Seymour 66%
• Karen Chhour 19%
• Brooke van Velden 15%

MP of the Year

• David Seymour 56%
• Christopher Luxon 29%
• Gaurav Sharma 8%
• Erica Stanford 7%

Stuff reports:

Former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson is facing widespread condemnation over an opinion piece he wrote for the Sun, in which he said he despised Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, “on a cellular level”.

In the column, Clarkson wrote that he was “dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”.

The full quote was:

“I hate her. Not like I hate Nicola Sturgeon or Rose West. I hate her on a cellular level,” wrote Clarkson.

“At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her.

I think this reveals (amongst other things) that Jeremy Clarkson is a Game of Thrones fan, as what he wrote is akin to the punishment handed out by the High Sparrow to Queen Cersei Lannister!

The so called walk of shame did actually happen in reality in medieval times, but more often in France than England.

Anyway goes without saying that Clarkson went too far. I am no fan of Markle, but the best punishment for her would be irrelevance and ignoring her.

The auction for the signed Hansard of the arrogant prick exchange between Jacinda Ardern and David Seymour is up to a huge $100,000 for the Prostate Cancer Foundation. That is incredible.

Worth reading the comments on the auction. There have been several hundred and David has responded to basically everyone.

Voting is now open for the 2022 Kiwiblog Awards.

The contest for National MP of the Year is between:

• Simeon Brown, for constant highlighting of the Government’s war against motorists
• Christopher Luxon, for leading National from losing to winning
• Shane Reti, for exposing how Labour has failed the health sector
• Erica Stanford, for getting the Government to back down on its anti-immigration policies that have been crippling businesses
• Nicola Willis, for holding Labour accountable for the cost of living crisis

The contest for Labour MP of the Year is between:

• Nanaia Mahuta, for constant advocacy of co-governance
• David Parker, for constant opposition to co-governance
• Gaurav Sharma, for constant opposition to Labour

The contest for Minor Party MP of the Year is between:

• Karen Chhour, for putting children ahead of politics
• David Seymour, for constant opposition and proposition
• Brooke van Velden, for her ability to work across party lines on numerous issues

The contest for MP of the Year is between:

• Christopher Luxon, for moving the centre-right from 25% behind to 7% ahead
• David Seymour, for ensuring the ACT team have had an error free year and gone up in the polls
• Gaurav Sharma, for allowing the voters of Hamilton West to pass judgment
• Erica Stanford, for winning the debate in both education and immigration

You can vote at the link here, or it should appear embedded below.

Stuff reports:

Fiji’s government for the next four years is down to a kingmaker, after final results from its general elections left no party with a clear majority.

The battle is between Frank Bainimarama’ Fiji First Party (FFP) and coalition between People’s Alliance and National Federationparties (PAP-NFP), who both finished with 26 seats each after the final count on Sunday. …

A party can form a government if they win 28 or more seats in Fiji’s 52-member parliament.

The kingmaker that wields the power to Fiji’s future lays in the hands of the Social Democratic Party (SODELPA), who gained three seats with their 5.1% of votes.

Actually they have 55 seats, not 52.

The four parties are:

• Fiji First, 26 seats. Led by last coup leader Bainimarama
• People’s Alliance, 21 seats. Led by 1st coup leader Rabuka and formed in 2021
• National Federation Party, 5 seats
• Social Democratic Liberal Party, 3 seats

Sodelpa campaigned on free tertiary education and 1,000% increase in the budget for indigenous affairs. Also Rabuka used to lead Sodelpa but got rolled in a (non military) coup and then set up the People’s Alliance.

The current Sodelpa leader is also saying setting up a consulate in Jerusalem is non-negotiable, which seems a weirdly specific major policy.

Also an issue is Bainimarama has got close to China, while the other parties want to have more distance.

It seems more likely Sodelpa will go with People’s Alliance, but in negotiations anything can happen. If they do, then it will (hopefully) be the first peaceful transfer of power in a generation.

Damien Grant writes:

Wellington Airport security generates an extra degree of irritation because, despite being designed with two security wings, only one is ever in operation, no matter how many passengers are waiting to take their shoes off.

To emphasise the indifference of management to the factors of production that us commuters are, at the front of queue is an officer who points you to the empty spot immediately in front of you.

Unless Wellington is expecting a tsunami of the visually impaired, this is the second-most-useless public servant, after the chair of the Commerce Commission.

Heh.

Airport security serves no purpose. In the three decades we have endured this nonsense, not a single act of sky-terrorism has occurred. Or been prevented. Not one.

Tens of thousands of toenail clippers, toothpaste and a small number of extra-large tubes of personal lubricant have been confiscated, but not a single terrorist has been thwarted.

Having security screening for international flights makes sense, but it is a pointless exercise for domestic flights.

I know. I know. The head of the airport security agency will be rushing to the Media Council to make the point that it has been their effectiveness that has prevented our own 9/11, but this argument fails as soon as it is examined. …

The argument that it has been the diligence of the pre-flight screening programme that has prevented airborne terror is an example of the false cause fallacy.

Tossing salt over your shoulder prevents the evil that would occur from the spilling of salt. If conducted faithfully, no evil occurs after spilling salt. Ergo, tossing salt into the eye of Satan is effective at warding off the devil.

A simple thought experiment confirms the point. If there were individuals willing to die to bring down aircraft for some religious or political cause, yet our current processes thwarted this ambition, what would their second-best alternative be?

Would these frustrated martyrs shrug their shoulders and live out a quiet civilian existence, or would they express their ideological belief by attacking the limitless other soft targets that a free society presents?

The opportunities for carnage are limited only by the imagination of the prospective terrorist and their access to chemical fertiliser.

If airport security has prevented hijackings, what has prevented attacks at sporting events, schools or airport security queues?

The rationale that lies behind scanning carry-on luggage should require similar measures at malls and nightclubs.

Damien nails it here.

The rationale for flight screening is you don’t want a terrorist taking over a plane. But this would never happen post 9/11. For one cockpits are no longer able to be accessed, and secondly passengers have shown that they will overpower any attempted hijacker (even armed ones) rather than let them take control of a plane.

We should scrap entirely security screening on domestic flights. It produces no benefits and inflicts great costs, both fiscal and time. Smaller flights in NZ don’t have it anyway.

The year is almost over, so it is time for nominations for the annual Kiwiblog Awards. The nomination categories are:

• 2022 Minor Party MP of the Year
• 2022 National MP of the Year
• 2022 Labour MP of the Year
• 2022 MP of the Year

Make your nominations in the comments (free free to say why) and then I’ll start a vote based on the most popular nominations.

The winners in 2021 were:

• National MP of the year – Christopher Luxon
• Labour MP of the Year – Louisa Wall
• Minor Party MP of the Year – David Seymour 
• MP of the Year – David Seymour

1. Man shot to death outside Auckland church.
2. Machete wielding dairy robber chops off workers fingers
3. Many hospital patients waiting over 24 hours for a bed.
4. Drug dealer orchestrated violent burglary while on bail.

Just another Saturday in paradise!

Both the Herald and Stuff have proclaimed their politicians of the year. The Herald goes for Chris Luxon and Stuff for Nicola Willis.

Hard to disagree as between them, they have taken National from 25% behind Labour to a small but comfortable lead.

Claire Trevett at the Herald writes:

But Luxon took over as leader in December 2021, just a year after becoming an MP.

HIs caucus was in a state of crisis and polling in the mid-20s.

He ends this year with polling in the high-30s and a realistic chance of becoming Prime Minister in 2023. …

That meant delivering something of a miracle: turning the zoo that was the National Party caucus of 2020 and 2021 back into a well-disciplined, focused and generally hard-working team.

The caucus of today is like a different lot of MPs than late last year.

Meanwhile Stuff’s political team hand out a few awards:

• Worst mistake: David Parker’s tax on KiwiSaver
• Rising Rookie: Barbara Edmonds
• Opposition MP of the Year: David Seymour
• U-turn of the Year: National scrapping the 39% tax rate
• Backbencher of the Year: Karen Chour
• Scott Morrison Award: Chris Luxon for his Hawaii holiday
• Survivor Award: Nanaia Mahuta
• Fixer of the Year: Chris Hipkins
• Statesperson of the Year: Jacinda Ardern
• Hardest tryer: Paul Eagle
• Drama Award: Gaurav Sharma, runner up Louisa Wall
• Politician of the Year: Nicola Willis, runner up Grant Robertson

Josie Pagani writes:

The Treasury has released a new report to accompany its Living Standards Framework.

The framework is a salad of abstract concepts like ‘’knowledge’’, ‘’voice’’ and ‘’subjective wellbeing’’ attractively arranged in columns and bubbles with no development of logical relationships between them. Nor any use of old-fashioned analytic tools such as whole sentences. …

Anyway, the nation’s leading economic agency is trying to define ‘’advantage’’ and ‘’disadvantage’’, how to measure them and understand the causes, and ‘’the normative challenge of assessing whether advantage and disadvantage is cause for concern’’.

In summary, the Treasury finds that ‘’life is better for some people than for others’’. Crikey! Who knew?

It adds, “Life has got better over time in some ways but worse in others”. That sentence is so banal that I can’t be bothered coming up with a sarcastic barb.

So the report is full of the all too common meaningless buzzwords. But does it matter?

‘’Wellbeing’’ is the descent of politics into diplomacy and bureaucratic blancmange. Who could disagree with ‘’wellbeing’’?

Well, me. ‘’Wellbeing’’ does public policy by replacing choices and priorities at the heart of politics with fog. Instead of looking around us and seeing obvious problems to fix, we get: Depends what you mean by ‘’disadvantaged’’.

One example of how real problems disappear: An enormous inequality in New Zealand exists in access to dental care. Half of us do not have adequate dental care, causing massive ongoing problems, from shorter lives, to pain and social exclusion. Yet there is no reference to dental care in Treasury’s 115-page discussion of ‘’the distribution of advantage in Aotearoa New Zealand’’.

It is a triumph of spin over action.

The reality is every Budget is about wellbeing. The tens of billions of dollars spent every year on health, education and welfare isn’t about economics – it is about improving the wellbeing of people. And then Grant Robertson comes along in 2018 and claims it is something new, and get lauded around the world for it.

I suppose wellbeing is trying to find a language to understand this mysterious phenomenon of people whose periodic ‘’disadvantage’’ is a ‘’cause for concern’’.

I have a better alternative: make our public institutions genuinely representative, so the priorities and language of working people will surface on their own.

This mush is the opposite of progressive. Tough choices are obscured behind fifty shades of bureaucratic beige. That makes for an amusing column. Less amusing, it stops us making decisions at all.

Great points.

Stuff reports:

Cabinet has rejected a move that would have raised petrol and electricity costs.

But now big polluters can keep gaming the carbon system and banking cheap credits – potentially putting New Zealand’s climate goals in jeopardy. 

Under the Emissions Trading Scheme, big carbon emitters have to pay for every tonne of emissions – one of the Government’s major tools for doing its bit on global heating.

Cabinet papers show the Government has gone against the advice of both the independent Climate Change Commission and Climate Change Minister James Shaw.

Shaw recommended following the commission’s advice and letting the price of carbon rise – and stopping pumping extra credits into the market so frequently. That would have given big polluters more incentive to rein in planet-heating emissions, as heat waves, floods and droughts keep worsening.

Instead, Cabinet has chosen to allow only small, inflation-linked price rises.

This is bad economics and bad environmentalism.

The price of emissions unit should be set by the market, not by politicians. If you allow the ETS to work properly, you don’t need all those daft expensive policies foisted on us by Cabinet. Yes an ETS price of $100 will be painful for some, but it is a whole lot better than policies that effectively cost $12,000 a tonne.

While this would have hit household bills, the commission also wanted the Government to protect those who can least afford their cost of living to increase. Shaw, in turn, told Cabinet he thought “unacceptable” impacts on the cost of living could be dealt with using other policies (like discounts and subsidies), rather than blunting the carbon price.

Some proceeds of carbon sales could have been funnelled into schemes like clean car discounts, replacing old boilers and a cash-for-old-dungers scheme or other household subsidies like electricity rebates. Some economists favour direct cash payments.

And again the Government is at fault. If the Government hadn’t spent all the ETS revenue on stupid ineffective policies, it could have given every family a climate dividend which would offset increased fuel and electricity costs.

Sarah Vine writes:

Last week, when the first instalment of the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan dropped, I wrote that I had some sympathy for Harry, after all that he had been through with his mother.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I genuinely felt there were some extenuating circumstances.

This week, having watched the final three episodes, I feel like a fool. More than that, I feel like I’ve been played. Like we’ve all been played — the public, the Press, the Palace.

Because not only is it clear that Harry is very far from a vulnerable individual, scarred by his trauma but fundamentally well-meaning; I’d say that from the footage presented, the pair of them — Harry and Meghan — also planned all this right from the start.

First, Harry. Don’t be fooled by the adorable footage of him cuddling the dog or goofing around on holiday. On the basis of his behaviour in the documentary, the real Harry turns out to be rather a nasty piece of work.

Arrogant, bitter, vicious; the kind of person who likes to present himself as carefree and easy-going and everyone’s buddy — but who, when crossed, is capable of acts of great spite.

It is beyond pathetic. He is raking in tens of millions from Netflix in order to smear his brother. Who would do that to their now brother?

And he whines that Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace was too small, implying he deserved better. Guess who lived there before him? Prince William with Kate and George.

The only thing positive you can say about him is that he isn’t as repulsive as his great great uncle.