The Herald reports:

Anger and emotions threatened to boil over as MPs debated and one even called for the minister’s resignation following the murder of a 5-year-old boy by his carer who’d been approved by the child protection agency Oranga Tamariki.

The debate was spurred by the Chief Ombudsman’s damning investigation that found Oranga Tamariki failed to take the “bare minimum” action for Malachi Subecz, who died last November following repeated abuse by his caregiver Michaela Barriball.

MPs from each party also raised issues of confidence in the agency and the minister responsible, Kelvin Davis, who took on the role in 2020 seeking to reform it after controversy around the uplifts and mistreatment of predominantly Māori children.

“Somebody must pay. Somebody must be accountable,” Te Paati Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, visibly emotional, said.

“Not an education facility. It starts at the Minister, Kelvin Davis.”

Some child abuse deaths are not preventable. The first time the family comes to attention of the authorities, is after the child has been killed.

This case was not one of them. An uncle and cousin did alert authorities. Oranga Tamariki did not act.

The childcare centre saw the bruises. They did not act. They have been deregistered so at least there is a consequence there.

But what consequence has there been for Oranga Tamariki?

National’s spokeswoman for children Louise Upston said there needed to be accountability.

“The accountability has to sit with the people in Oranga Tamariki that the concerns raised about this child’s wellbeing were raised with. That’s what accountability looks like.”

Rather than fewer children in state care, Upston said the right measure was fewer children being harmed.

Exactly.

In the justice area the Government has a policy to reduce the number of prisoners, rather than reduce the number of criminals.

In this area their policy is to reduce the number of children in stare care, rather than reduce the number of children being harmed.

Stuff reports:

Police officers are reporting a change in the pursuit policy prioritising safety over arrests may be leading to more police cars being rammed, with offenders believing it will force police to abandon the pursuits.

Figures reveal 105 police cars across New Zealand were rammed between January and August 16 this year. May was particularly bad with 27 cars rammed. The damage cost police nearly $200,000 in insurance claim payouts from May to August.

It’s understood the rammings include youths in stolen cars trying to evade police, officers rammed while performing routine traffic stops, as well as some incidents without any provocation. In one incident, a ute was signalled to stop in South Auckland, but the driver reversed at speed into the front of the police car.

The kids may be little thugs, but they’re smart little thugs. They know that the Police are no longer allowed (mostly) to chase them, so of course they will try and ram past police cars etc.

Ngai Tahu publishes:

This same sense of duty further explains why we – Michael Stevens, Te Maire Tau and Atholl Anderson along with Puamiria Parata-Goodall and Tā Tipene O’Regan – were compelled to respond to a problematic article that the Royal Society Te Apārangi published in June 2021.

Written by a senior academic at the University of Otago, Priscilla Wehi, and six co-authors, this article advanced several spurious claims. Chief amongst them was that Polynesian explorers, beginning with a navigator named Hui te Rangiora, journeyed from Rarotonga into Antarctic waters ‘and perhaps even the continent likely in the early seventh century.’ The authors’ evidence? Their own inferences drawn from 1890s English translations by Percy Smith of Rarotongan narratives recorded in the 1860s. As we noted, with characteristic restraint, the authors presented this “traditional” material without nuance, qualification or critique, and based extraordinary claims upon it without commensurable evidence. For example, how the extreme practical difficulties of sailing a Polynesian waka to and through subpolar westerlies might have been overcome.

Our view is that these Rarotongan traditions need to be critically evaluated, which is how we approached them. Having done so, we found the authors’ assertions debatable on key points of interpretation and plausibility. As Te Rangi Hīroa remarked nearly a century ago in 1926, ‘Sometimes we, or the Maori themselves, read into a tradition something that the original narrators of the tradition never attempted to convey.’

As he explained, different methods of speech and forms of expression have to be considered and one ‘must be careful of the overlying strata of popular exaggeration and modern interpretation that have been superimposed on the original narrative.’ According to Te Rangi Hīroa, such recent ideas lead to ‘erroneous explanations … that throw discredit on the truth of tradition.’ We cannot agree more.

In summary, we think the Hui te Rangiora narrative is more mythic or legendary as an origin story, than historical as a voyaging narrative. Taking our methodological cue from Te Rangi Hīroa, we did not find any reference to Hui te Rangiora sailing to Antarctica. The shortfalls that led to this situation might be of only passing interest to Ngāi Tahu whānui. However, three of the article’s seven authors were employed by Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and their institutional affiliations are listed, in posterity, as such. Media coverage of the article described Te Rūnanga as co-leading the project from which the article stemmed. Ngāi Tahu whānui ought to be interested and concerned.

What was the nature and extent of the media coverage this article generated? It was, unfortunately, uncritical and celebratory. News outlets throughout New Zealand and around the world lauded the prowess of pre-modern Polynesian voyaging and the capacity of indigenous knowledge to survive colonial marginalisation and speak truth to patriarchal Western power on the dawn of the Anthropocene of its own making. A year later, the original article has been viewed nearly a whopping 19,000 times: a career-enhancing statistic by any measure.

How did the Royal Society respond to our request to publish a critical response to Wehi et al? To put it politely, utterly inconsistently with academic conventions, the principle of open debate, and the society’s stated aim of advancing and promoting the pursuit of knowledge. This attitude was unexpected, especially by Atholl and Tipene, a Fellow and Companion respectively of the Royal Society.

It was only our dogged determination that led to the eventual publication of our reply in September 2021. This has been viewed little more than 450 times, bringing to mind the quip of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, that ‘A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.’

So the Royal Society published and the media gushed over the original paper, yet almost zero coverage of this response.

The society has also attempted to ‘unlock the innovation potential of Māori knowledge, resources and people’ and ‘blend’ mātauranga Māori and Western science, which are suspiciously treated as bounded. No matter how well-intentioned this all might be, were he alive today, Te Rangi Hīroa would likely have some difficulties with how institutional biculturalism and “cultural awareness” has unfolded within the Royal Society, and for that matter, New Zealand’s universities. In short, uncritical acceptance of Māori knowledge is arguably just as patronising as its earlier blanket rejection. 

It is interesting that Ngai Tahu seem to have a higher regard for critical scholarship that the Royal Society of New Zealand.

The Herald reports:

The Government has abandoned plans to auction radio spectrum.

Instead, it will directly allocate the 5G-friendly to telcos for a 20-year term – on the proviso that they make commitments to better address mobile calling and broadband gaps in rural and small-town NZ.

The move means Communications Minister David Clark has gone for public good over a windfall for Crown coffers that could have run to hundreds of millions, based on previous spectrum auctions.

Clark says the arrangement means more people will get better mobile coverage more quickly, and in more places.

This is a terrible decision. It is crony capitalism and corporate welfare at its worse.

The bad outcomes are numerous:

• It entrenches the incumbent telcos and locks out any other party that may have wanted to bid. In the supermarket sector they claim they want more competition and in the teclo sector they are handing over an asset worth maybe half a billion dollars to incumbents
• The taxpayer misses out by not having an auction for the spectrum. Based on the 4G auction it could raise anywhere from $300 to $500 million – even more. An auction allows you to find out how valuable it is. This is money that could have been spent on doctors and nurses that instead has gone to incumbent telcos
• The trade-off of helping extend rural connectivity also suffers. By doing a quid pro quo, you don’t necessarily get the best outcome there either. The proper way to extend rural connectivity (which I fully support) is to tender it out.

In the meantime, Spark – which paid $149m for its 4G spectrum at the 2014 auction – said in an NZX filing that “in return” for it receiving an 80MHz allotment of 5G spectrum, it will commit an additional $24 million in funding to the Rural Connectivity Group between 2023 and 2025 (the RCG is a joint venture formed by Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees for the public-private Rural Broadband Initiative).

So Spark paid $150 million for its 4G spectrum and for the 5G spectrum it just has to contribute $24 million to rural broadband.

If this had been done by a National Government, Labour and the entire left would be howling loudly, alleging corruption and deals for corporate mates.

The PM could have chosen to have the Hamilton West by-election on 19 November. Instead she has gone for almost the last legally allowable date of 10 December, in the hope that by that time of year, no one will notice if they lose a seat they have a 6,500 majority in.

The key dates are:

• Wed 2 Nov – Writ issues
• Tue 8 Nov – nominations close
• Sat 10 Dec – Election Day
• Wed 21 Dec – final results
• Tue 17 Jan – writ returned

A fascinating story by the CBC about the leading indigenous legal scholar in Canada. Basically it turns out that she has no Cree ancestry at all – her grandfather once worked in a Cree reservation, and somehow she has interpreted that as being Cree.

The story is very well researched with lots of interviews and documents scanned.

This is not a unique story in Canada:

Recently in this country, claims to Indigenous ancestry by a number of high-profile people in academia, the arts and other sectors have been questioned.

For example, a 2016 APTN story about author Joseph Boyden raised doubts about his claims to Indigenous ancestry. A 2020 CBC investigation raised similar concerns about filmmaker Michelle Latimer. In October 2021, CBC revealed that Carrie Bourassa, Canada’s leading Indigenous health scientist, appeared to be of entirely European ancestry.

Fortunately we don’t seem to have this issue in New Zealand.

A fascinating valedictory speech by Trevor Mallard. He said:

Our select committees used to lead the world, but I think they’ve become rubber stamps for Governments. Members form the legislative branch and they should take responsibility for legislation. Reform isn’t hard. They should sit more. Recesses used to be called select committee weeks. Submitters were heard—half an hour or an hour, if they had something really important to say. Committee membership should be based the same way as questions—based on the number of non-executive members the Party has, similarly to chairs.

This is in fact ACT policy, and one I also support 100%. It would make a huge difference to how select committee operates.

Submitters to committees need to know that their submissions will be treated on their merits by committees, not vetoed by a political adviser in a Minister’s office, who is often breaching privilege by merely being in position of the committee material. Ministers should trust the process. Let the committees do their work, and if, in the end, they don’t like the result, then they can change the bill at the committee stage of the House. The Government has the power to pass legislation here; it should trust the select committees to try and improve it.

Agree strongly.

And now for a left-field suggestion. I’ve long been concerned that the Reserve Bank only has one instrument—other than printing money—to wind up or cool down the economy. With so many mortgages being fixed, the cash rate tool has become a bit like using a hammer to fine-tune an EV. The results are both slow and unpredictable.

An extra tool for the Reserve Bank could be to give them discretion over, say, the last 2 percent of individuals’ KiwiSaver contributions. They could increase or decrease net pay almost immediately and, in that way, boost or tighten the economy. It would have a much more immediate effect than interest rates. Most of us would prefer to see a bit more of our incomes go into KiwiSaver than go to banks through increased mortgage rates.

I’ve seen this idea before and quite like it for the reasons Trevor outlines. It has drawbacks, but so does hiking up interest rates.

Also some other interesting parts:

Two-year-old Beth sighted Sir Robert and called out “Daddy! Daddy! There’s ‘Piggy’ Muldoon!” His response: “Ha, ha, ha! What’s your name, little girl?” Later in Copperfields, he pointed at me and said in his stage whisper, “Who’s that one McKinnon?” “That’s Mallard, Prime Minister; he beat Minogue.” “Oh, good on him. We’d better send him a bottle of whisky, hadn’t we?” Like many Muldoon promises, delivery never ensued.

Heh.

Annette went into Cabinet just before the Lange resignation. At the time, two-thirds of the Labour caucus wanted Lange to be leader, and two-thirds wanted Douglas to be finance Minister, so about a third really believed in fairies.

Could be worse – Roger as PM and David as Finance!

The situation in the UK is best summed up the the person who tweeted their son is about to move onto his 3rd PM, Fifth Chancellor and 2nd Monarch and they are just three months old!

The Conservatives are basically f**ked. Their brand is terrible as families are facing a cost of living crisis and the Government is playing non stop musical chairs.

A new leader and PM should help them close the current 30% gap in the polls, but the reality is their job will be to lose slightly less badly in 2024. Kier Starmer will be the 80th Prime Minister of the UK.

What made things so bad for Truss is she was pretty unknown to the public before the disaster of the mini budget (you can cut taxes or you can massively increase spending but you can’t do both at the same time) so her brand went toxic.

Boris already has a well established brand. It might not be particularly popular with the majority but he probably has a higher floor (and lower ceiling) than Rishi Sunak. If you accept the next election is about losing less badly, then he might be the best bet.

If they think they actually have a chance of winning in 2024, then Sunak would be best. But he might lose what remains of the base, as he has never been that popular with them.

Very sad to hear that Peter Lorimer has passed away. Peter was a “lifer” at Treasury having worked there from 1968 to 1977 and after 11 years at Dept of Labour since 1988 to a few months ago. Yes he was still working well past normal retirement age.

He was a near permanent secondee in Finance Minister’s offices and was invaluable. He was both the source of institutional knowledge but also a clear headed mind who never got flustered. He was also an incredibly decent and person and colleague.

His citation for ONZM in 2018 reads:

Mr Lorimer has played a key role in developing legislation, such as the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994 and the Public Finance Act 1989. He was instrumental in supporting the passage of the Public Finance Act by providing advice and information. He has supported the ability of successive generations of officials to understand and deliver on the technical practicalities and the broader intent of the Public Finance Act. His contributions have enabled the Act to remain up-to-date and effective through changing circumstances.

Those two Acts are the bedrock of our fiscal accountability.

Earlier this year he was the Lifetime Achievement Award winner for the Public Service Commission’s Spirit of Service Awards.

Peter is a career public servant who truly embodies the spirit of service. His service has been dedicated to strengthening the institutions of constitutional and democratic government and working for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

At the heart of all Peter does is a desire to create a Public Service that delivers for all New Zealanders. His expertise is widely recognised and sought out within the Treasury, across the public service, and beyond. Peter demonstrates humility through the dedication of his time, and he lives the public service principles of political neutrality and free and frank advice every day. He has supported successive generations of officials to instil the intent of the financial management system.

Peter’s knowledge and leadership has been pivotal in the development of significant fiscal reform over more than three decades. He has been a guardian of public financial management, ensuring it remains relevant and supports New Zealand’s wellbeing, most recently, through the Canterbury Earthquakes and COVID-19 pandemic.

Peter is a strong advocate for financial stewardship, accountability, and the important role the public service plays in supporting Ministers and Parliament for the benefit of New Zealanders. His intellectual curiosity, personal integrity, and desire to help others exemplify the ethos of the public service. He is a worthy recipient of the Spirit of Service Lifetime Achievement Award.

Generations of Treasury and ministerial staffers will be mourning Peter’s passing. He was an outstanding servant of New Zealand.

Newshub reports:

Leading economist Shamubeel Eaqub believes New Zealand should “absolutely” copy the US in raising the tax brackets to inflation.

“Our political parties want to make it seem like they’re giving you tax cuts by adjusting the brackets, so it feels good,” he told Newshub at 8pm host Rebecca Wright.  

“But the reality is we are paying more taxes, our income is not going as far because of the rising cost of living. CPI is currently about 7 percent and if our index is increased by 7 percent, the average worker at $65,000 would be paying $500 less in tax.” 

National is proposing a similar policy but as a one-off change while Eaqub believes the brackets should be changed consistently. 

I agree 100%. We should not have to persuade politicians to stop our tax going up due to inflation. It should be automatic.

A principled Government would pass a law that states on 1 April every year the brackets for each tax rate get increased by the rate of inflation for the previous calendar year.

This would mean that the Government will only get an increased tax take due to the economy growing, rather than the current situation where the higher inflation goes, the more tax the Government gets.

“I think it’s actually unfair the Government gets the benefit of the rising cost of living through higher taxes. That should always be adjusted over time and what it has become is a cynical political ploy on both sides,” he said.

“They don’t want to do anything during the years between elections and they want to adjust the tax brackets when the election is near because it makes it seem like they’re giving you a great gift, but in reality, all they’re giving you back is the cost of inflation of the last three years.” 

Again absolutely agree.

This post is by PaulL, a regular commentor and occasional contributor.   It is the ninth post in a series on the financial incentives to work and the impacts of our tax and transfer system on household formation, and the second post on the “what could we do” subsection.  The index to all posts in the series can be found here.

One of the options to address abatement rates and EMTRs is to make programmes universal.  When something is universal everyone will get it, irrespective of income.  Therefore no abatement rate applies, and no disincentives to working.

A Universal Basic Income is the biggest example of this.  At its most glorious a universal basic income would give every citizen (permanent resident?) a standard amount of income, with no abatement.  Even the richest household gets it. 

In theory this would mean that we save a lot of administration costs – there is no need for complex eligibility rules, abatement rules, means and income testing rules.  There are no distortions to incentives to work.  The UBI would be set at a level where anyone on a benefit today would be no worse off.

However, there are problems.  In broad terms a UBI that leaves nobody worse off will leave a lot of people a lot better off.  It will be fantastically expensive.  A UBI that isn’t fantastically expensive will not deliver on some of the promise – it won’t be universal any more.

Almost everyone was shocked by the sentence of nine month’s home detention for Jayden Meyer who was found guilty of raping five young girls. Even worse it turned out the Crown Prosecutor didn’t even seek a jail term.

After the outcry the Solicitor-General did appeal, but because the appeal was filed late and because the original sentence was supported by the Crown Prosecutor, the appeal failed.

But reading the ruling gives you an idea of how serious the offending was, and what sort of sentence should have been imposed.

• The starting point should have been 10 years
• The end sentence after adjusting for his age and lack of criminal record should have been five years and six months

So if the Crown Prosecutor had not advocated a position totally outside sentencing guidelines, then Meyer would be in prison for 66 months. Instead he merely has home detention for nine months.

Wayne Brown released a letter to Auckland Transport:

“You appear to have been focussed on changing how Aucklanders live, using transport policy and services as a tool,” he wrote.  

“Instead, AT must seek to deeply understand how Aucklanders actually live now, how they want to live in the future, and deliver transport services that support those aspirations. Aucklanders do not always have the choice of using an e-bike, a bus or even a train but rely on the roading and carparking networks to make their life functional.”

It shouldn’t be necessary to send such a letter, but sadly it is. In the last few years the central and local government transport agencies have been on a mission to force change on people, rather than deliver services that people need and want.

AT must understand the families who are struggling to move around the region: pick-up their children, do the groceries, get home safely after-dark, and juggle other commitments. You must understand the local businesses who rely on transport connections and their needs now and in the future. 

We need a similar directive for Wellington!

In a speech yesterday, Nicola WIllis committed National to the social investment approach pioneered by Bill English.

At its core social investment is about data and science. It is about identifying the risk factors for vulnerable families, and spending money on interventions that will work. It is about spending more money now, to help turn lives about.

It is basically the opposite of what Labour does. Labour just throws money at an issue with no idea about whether it will actually work, and in many cases it doesn’t. Just look at housing waitlists, ED waiting times etc etc.

Nicola said:

The growing gap between spend and impact has eroded trust in Government programmes, and made many cynical about funding another set of political good intentions.  

There’s an unwillingness to throw good money after bad, or to lock in yet more state dependency when self-determination, mana motuhake, is what we want for each other.

New Zealanders are thirsty for a better way. 

National’s Social Investment Approach is the better way New Zealand needs to deliver for people with the greatest needs.

Intuitively, there is great appeal in the basic idea underpinning social investment – that if only we intervene earlier and more effectively for our most at risk citizens then their lives could be so much better. 

And an example:

Let me share a story of what can be achieved when we get it right.

At a recent press conference the Prime Minister highlighted research showing positive social impact from the Healthy Homes programme.  The programme was started in 2013 by the former National Government to help deliver on its goal to reduce rates of rheumatic fever in children.

Families in the programme were referred by health authorities and assisted by community-based co-ordinators to insulate, warm and dry their homes, or where that wasn’t possible to find more suitable housing.  Healthy Homes was so successful in reducing disease and hospitalisations that the Government expanded it in 2016 to a larger group of families.

A full data-led evaluation of the programme showed children of families in the programme had far fewer visits to hospital emergency rooms, their attendance at school increased, and overall their parents were receiving fewer Government benefits. The return on investment was clear and measurable: For every dollar the Government invested in the programme it reaped more than $3 in savings, with more savings expected to accrue over time.

What a success story. 

Basically social investment is about accountability for improving outcomes, not just good intentions.

National will set a small number of Better Public Service Targets to focus Government activity and effort towards measurable goals. They will be transparently and publicly reported against with Ministers held accountable for progress towards them.  

Excellent. It was abhorrent that Labour abolished them, They seem to hate accountability.

It’s worth considering their seven demands to understand what they really want.

1. Venues must be non-alcoholic. Why? Is alcohol bad and pot good? Backbenches is a show set in a pub. The audience turn up on the basis they can have a drink and a bite before and during the show. No one will turn up to watch youth wings debate in a church hall.
2. I don’t know what trained equity officers are I suspect safety provisions don’t mean earthquakes but instead someone saying something they disagree with should be deemed unsafe and removed
3. Now they want to control what the other youth reps can say? They no doubt consider opposing Maori seats in Parliament as discriminatory, so really they are saying they want to veto what others can advocate
4. This definitely means that no views which are different to their views on the Treaty can be tolerated
5. What do they mean by a code of conduct? Do they mean you can’t heckle or interrupt?
6. The speaking panel is not decided by Backbenches but by the youth wings. The four or five youth wings decide individually who will represent them. If all four presidents are women, then why should you be forced to have a male on the panel?
7. Who do they suggest should be in charge of fact checking? Them? Does this mean that if say the Green youth president claimed GMOs are unsafe, they should be halted as this is factually untrue?

It worries me that more and more young people in politics don’t seem to believe in debate, and want to place huge barriers in the way of open debate.

Creative NZ, not content with making NZ a global laughing stock, has hit back:

The Government has recognised that the MoE is better placed to provide this funding.

This highlights the positive impact that additional government investment can have on the arts.

While it’s great that a solution has been found for this one organisation, questions remain about other arts organisations and individual artists who find it difficult to mobilise or who don’t have the international pulling power to draw attention to their funding needs.

Whine, whine we want more money and it is unfair that we got mocked around the world.

The facts are their funding has gone up massively from $57 million in 2017 to $101 million last year. They should be grateful to taxpayers for the 77% increase in funding.

This is a great outcome for SGCNZ, but we’ve found some of the rhetoric over the last few weeks alarming, misleading and racist. 

Of course criticising them is racist!

Sixty-two organisations submitted proposals to our Kahikatea programme for funding from 2023 to 2025. Fifty-eight proposals were successful. We have a limited amount of money to invest, and we had to make some tough decisions. Unfortunately for Shakespeare Globe Company New Zealand (SGCNZ), their proposal wasn’t as strong as others and didn’t align with the Kahikatea programme requirements, and so they missed out this time around.

So 94% of applications were approved for funding. Yet there was no money to continue supporting getting the works of the world’s best playwright to secondary school students. What Creative NZ is saying is that they rate Shakespeare in the bottom 5%!

The Toi Uru Kahikatea investment programme that SGCNZ applied to is contestable funding – in other words, applicants compete for funding because there’s only so much money to go around.

The annual budget of Creative NZ is now over $101 million. Their suggestion that they could not afford a measly $30,000 to Shakespeare in Schools is laughable. It represents 0.03% of their annual budget.

Many people have taken exception with some of the comments made about SGCNZ’s proposal. These comments have been taken out of context; they were a small component of a thorough decision-making process.   

The comments are not out of context. They explain perfectly why Creative NZ decided not to continue funding them despite it being such a meagre amount and approving 94% of other applications.

However, we’re appalled that some of the criticism has become about race. 

The criticism has become about race because that is what Creative NZ did with the comments from their assessors. If you decline to fund Shakespeare because it doesn’t fit a decolonised New Zealand, of course it takes on a racial aspect.

We challenge the narrative that our decision was driven by reverse racism and that we are the “cultural Taliban”. Creative New Zealand’s mandate is to fund New Zealand made work within the limited resources we have.

Actions speak louder than words and to whine about limited resources when you have had a 77% increase in funding is insulting to taxpayers.

NewstalkZB reports:

Middlemore hospital has been undergoing a wait time crisis, with people being unable to receive medical care for hours after arrival.

This has become more apparent after a five page report was released that confirmed Middlemore hospital was dysfunctional, overcrowded, and unsafe. 

The problem is not just Middlemore. Only 77.2% of ED patients there get seen within six hours and nationally it is only 78.5%.

Labour came into office and effectively abolished the public health target of 95% of patients seen and treated within six hours, and long before Covid-19 they dropped away.

It is almost as bad now as when Labour were last in office. In 2008 only 70% of ED patients were seen within six hours. National got it to 95% by 2012. So in National’s first four years they took it from 70% to 95% and Labour have taken it from 95% to 78% (and still dropping).

Dr Gaurav Sharma writes:

I have resigned.

A Labour Party panel last week recommended to the party’s governing body (the New Zealand Council) that I be expelled from the Party as a member. I have also been advised that the Prime Minister and the Party plan to invoke the Waka Jumping rule 6 months before the next General Election to remove me from Parliament which will ensure there is no need for a by-election. I have sincere concerns that this underhanded move will mean people of Hamilton West will have no voice in Parliament for 6 months preceding the next General Election.

As such I have decided to resign from Parliament pre-empting Labour’s next step. This will trigger a by-election, giving the people of Hamilton an opportunity to not lose their democratic rights of having a voice in Parliament by underhanded tactics of the government and the Labour Party.

He regrets the cost of a by-election but points out:

Over the years many Labour MPs have triggered by-elections for one reason or another – in fact Labour MP David Shearer resigning and triggering a by-election is how Jacinda Ardern won the Mt Albert electorate seat in 2017.

3. Since stepping down as the Speaker Trevor Mallard has been sitting in the House with no Select Committee duties, no Bills to speak on, no constituent work. In the last 2 months he has been paid well over $25,000 to just enjoy his retirement. Soon he will be on the gravy train to be the Ambassador of NZ to Ireland. And don’t forget he is on the old Parliament contract which means he gets free business class flights for life.

4. Also a quick remind of government’s failed recent spending

– $51m spent on axed Auckland harbour cycling bridge project

$500k in office rent paid after Auckland cycle crossing canned

– $66 million on Dominion Rd Light Rail report – $44million out of this is on external consultants

– $350 million on TVNZ/RNZ merger

– $200 million on Te Pukenga botched polytech reform

Once he formally resigns, the by-election can be held as early as four weeks time – Saturday 19 November. The PM decides the timing within a certain range.

Hamilton West was won by Labour with a 6,267majority. It is the 33rd largest majority in Parliament.

On the party vote Labour got 52.6%, it was their 26th best seat. The electorate vote was 53.0%, their 25th highest.

If you look at combined party vote in 2020, the CR parties got 34.3% and the CL parties 58.3%. So normally you would expect Labour to easily hold the seat. But of course they are polling well below what they got in 2020.

A big wildcard is how much support, if any, will Sharma get and where will that come from?