Roger Partridge writes:

The root of the problem is the Government’s distrust of immigration. It stems from a belief that productivity improvements will come from restricting the supply of migrant labour. Unfortunately, that belief is not founded on economic evidence. And it risks tarnishing our longstanding record as a favoured destination for skilled migrants.

The distrust also contrasts starkly with the new Labor Government’s approach to immigration in Australia.

In her address at the Anthony Albanese-led “Jobs and Skills Summit” in September, Minister for Home Affairs Claire O’Neil declared, “Immigration is one of the biggest levers we have to drive our country forward, and it is fast, and it is powerful.”

O’Neil promised her Government would switch from a system focussed almost entirely on keeping people out to one that “recognises that Australia is in a global competition for talent.”

“[F]or the first time in our history, Australia is not the destination of choice for many of the world’s skilled migrants,” she said.

O’Neil described Australia’s migration system as “fiendishly complex” with “multiple skilled occupation lists… and an outdated visa processing system that is anything but fit for purpose.”

If this sounds all too familiar, the Minister’s prescription was anything but. O’Neill promised, “A simple, fast system that’s easy for businesses, big and small, and for migrants, to use.”

Wouldn’t it be great to have a NZ Minister give such a speech!

A guest post by Barry Brill:

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s address to the the UN General Assembly 24/09/2022:

“We will remain a strong and passionate advocate for efforts to address the weapons of old but, also, the weapons that are new. The face of war has changed. And with that, the weapons used … prolific disinformation and manipulation of whole communities and societies.

How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists? How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?

But there is cause for optimism. Because for every new weapon we face, there is a new tool to overcome it.

We have the means; we just need the collective will.”

With these stirring words – at the very centre of the international stage – New Zealand’s leader declared all-out war on those who do not believe that climate change^[1] exists. All non-believers. Everywhere.

The NZ prime minister says “we” (by which word she presumably embraces all believers throughout the world) now need to muster the collective will to overcome the non-believers – by using the new tools that are now available. Non-believers must be made to recant their dangerous ideology. Their hateful rhetoric must be silenced.

It is no surprise at all that the Prime Minister employs the language of belief and ideology, rather than the language of science.

Beliefs

As “the greatest moral challenge of our times”, the dogmas of the climate change cult are no longer limited by any secular need for evidence or data

If climate change policy was ever based on “the science”, then that basis has long been overwhelmed by politics and tribal groupthink. It is now the very badge of a progressive left-wing worldview. In both USA and Australia, climate change alarm is the single greatest differentiator between the left and the right of politics.  .

The “climate justice” narrative is a post-modern cultural phenomenon, intertwined in endless mysterious ways with race and gender and other categories of perceived Marx-like oppression. Belief in the climate change credo is a sine qua non for every left-leaning politician (or journalist) – in the English-speaking world and further afield.

While an ideology for some, it is a quasi-religion for others. As long ago as 2003, author  Michael Crighton declared that mankind’s greatest challenge was to distinguish reality from fantasy, in the context of environmentalism becoming a religion. Regrettably, over the ensuing 20 years, faith in climate change has moved inexorably to fill the large vacuum left by the rapid decline of Christianity.

Intolerance

But religions can have their downsides. Over the centuries, there have been many instances of religious populations demanding total obeisance to the dominant dogma of that time and place. Some religions have even developed a fierce intolerance towards ‘infidels’ or ‘heretics’ who might tend to undermine the majority creed.

We have recently seen it in jihadist extremists, such as the efforts of ISIS to exterminate adherents of the Yazidi faith in Iraq  Earlier, it manifested in ruthless pogroms against jews and other minorities – and, the most infamous of all, the Spanish Inquisition.

Just as Torquemada declared war in the 15th century on those who could not believe in the teachings of the Vatican’s Holy See, Prime Minister Ardern has declared war in the 21st century on those who can not believe in the teachings of the United Nations’ IPCC.

The Inquisition used the old weapons of the thumbscrew, the rack, and the burning of books. Ms Ardern is a proud cheer-leader for the use of the “new weapons” of hate-speech laws, de-platforming, and cancel culture.

Now she anticipates new and even better weapons, calling for –

“…research and understanding of how a person’s online experiences are curated by automated processes. This will also be important in understanding more about mis and disinformation online. A challenge that we must as leaders address.”

So, given the collective will, how will new automated processes on the web overcome those who do not believe that climate change exists?

 Perhaps bots will detect such people and assign them demerit points, or impose instant fines? Or automatically erase their incorrect messaging; or bar them from access to the internet?  While we don’t yet know the details, we do know that the NZ government is assiduously researching all possibilities (at taxpayer expense).    

Orchestrated propaganda

And the dauntless Ms Ardern does not stand alone. By an extraordinary coincidence, the World Economic Forum (WEF) held a seminar on Davos Radio in the very same week: – “Tackling disinformation – how can we combat the lies that go viral?” – denouncing the “polluted information environment”.

Melissa Fleming, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, said the UN puts out lots of messages to its millions of social media followers that “give people agency to take climate action”.

She described how the UN’s country offices all around the world “localise” the central messages sent from Geneva and New York. They deploy influencers who have huge followings, and work with TikTok in “a layered deployment of ideas and tactics”.  

Ms Fleming said: “We own the science and we think the world should know it” –   explaining how Google searches are now massaged to ensure that only UN-approved messages appear on the first page of results.

This is big

Roll over Josef Goebbels: your stunted canvas was but a single nation. Now we have the entire globalist population of the planet united behind the most ambitious propaganda campaign in history – with limitless funding and with no tether to any known system of ethics.

The propaganda has been the carrot. And now Ms Ardern introduces  the stick.  No doubt chosen for this role by the UN (or WEF), she proclaims herself to be a “passionate advocate”

Her conviction is absolute that dangerous heresies like climate denial must be banished from this earth…

“But while I cannot tell you today what the answer is to this challenge, I can say with complete certainty that we cannot ignore it. To do so poses an equal threat to the norms we all value.”

Watch this space.

^[1] The term “climate change” is, as usual, employed as code for dangerous human-caused global warming

David Harvey writes:

There is an ambivalence in New Zealand towards freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is guaranteed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. It guarantees not only the expression of information – the outward flow – but also the receipt of information – the inward flow.

The receipt is arguably the most important aspect. If you stop someone publishing a book because you regard it as “harmful” then only one person’s outward speech rights have been curtailed but potentially millions of people’s right to purchase and read the book and consider its arguments have been curtailed.

Coincidentally there developed over the pandemic emergency a greater use of two terms – misinformation and disinformation. These became predominantly news media shorthand for any statements that departed from the received wisdom of the government.

Misinformation meant information that misled. Disinformation was false information that the disseminator intended to mislead – in other words lies.  The problem was and still is that those words lack certainty. It seems that they mean what people using them want them to mean and consequently they have taken on a perjorative aspect.

In June 2021 the Classification Office, headed by the then Chief Censor Mr David Shanks, released a paper entitled “The Edge of the Infodemic: Challenging Misinformation in Aotearoa”. It argued that misinformation\disinformation (neither term defined in the paper) was a problem, that it came primarily from Internet based sources, that when people rely on misinformation to make important decisions it can have a harmful impact on the health and safety of communities and can also affect us on a personal level, contributing to anxiety, anger, and mistrust.

It argues that that we should be looking at solutions that work to increase access to good information; lower the volume of misinformation; improve resilience to misinformation; and build levels of trust and social cohesion that can serve as a counter to the more harmful effects.

That this document emerged from the Classifications Office is something of a concern. The Classifications Office is involved in the administration of the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993. That Act allows for censorship of films, videos, publications, and online content in certain limited and restricted circumstances.

It seemed to be part of a concerted effort on the part of the Classifications Office to expand the scope of censorship and information control currently enjoyed by the Classification Office – another example of “mission creep”.

Absolutely it is attempted mission creep.

Thus we have developing a number of strands that seem to be directed towards suppressing or marginalizing dissent or disagreement. Although the Disinformation Project casts a sinister shadow over the terms, and although the Classification Office may see misinformation and disinformation as having potential objectionable qualities, the reality is that every expression of disagreement or dissent, every expression of a contrary view or opinion, every expression of a challenge to the State message is a part of the normal discourse of society. Disagreement is a fundamental aspect of being human. We all have differing points of view, beliefs, values and standards. And it is part of the democratic tradition that we should be able to express those views.

Let’s agree to disagree used to be a common saying. Less so today.

Ms. Ardern is possessed of a high sense of the righteousness of her cause. She does not debate ideas. She rejects them or refutes the premises of opposition without engaging in debate. She therefore avoids confronting the uncomfortable reality that she may be wrong. And by rejecting and refuting she adopts an air of superiority that views dissent as evil and, because it has become “weaponized” it is too dangerous to allow.

It is perhaps evidence of that sense of righteousness that Ms. Ardern went to the UN and called upon the General Assembly, looking for support for her cause. She called upon the nations present to exercise their collective power to deal with this new weapon of war – contrarian speech.

But deeper than that what Ms. Ardern is talking about is ideas. What she is concerned about, what has been “weaponized” is the way that those ideas have been expressed. Ideas that conform with hers are benign. Ideas that conflict with hers must be stamped out. The days of debate are over.

A good summary.

Stuff reports:

Inflation is adding significantly more to the Government’s tax take than its new top tax rate, data shows.

Inland Revenue annual reports show the tax take has increased sharply over the past five years.

In 2017, total tax revenue was $69.2 billion, of which individual taxpayers contributed $33.2b.

By the 2022 financial year, tax revenue had hit $100.6b, of which individual tax was $51.4b.

This is why greedy Governments love inflation – it pushes people up into higher tax brackets, and the tax take explodes.

Inflation-indexing the tax thresholds going forward is not a tax cut though – it simply prevents taxes from automatically ratcheting up whenever the Reserve Bank lets inflation run hot.”

This is what I want to see happen under the next Government – automatic inflation indexing of tax thresholds. Stop inflation from robbing you of more of your pay.

The Herald reported:

The school, nestled in the heart of Fenton St on the corner of Tilsey St, caters for up to 45 children aged 5 to 13. Today was the first time its representatives had spoken publicly about their plight since the area became a hub for emergency housing.

The school’s property manager Roger Marshall, principal Lanea Strickland and former board chairwoman and current board member Victoria Finch listed incidents that had left the staff and students fearful and stressed.

The school has spent $70,000 on security fencing – money it had set aside for a new adventure playground to replace one that rotted and was destroyed. Right now, the children don’t have an adventure playground, they said.

Since emergency housing proliferated, Marshall said the school had kept record of more than 60 incidents of either abuse, assault, vandalism or other crime. There were none in the previous decades.

So from no incidents over ten years to 60 incidents in the last two to three years. Well done Labour.

So readers can see how dramatic the change in attendance has been for school students, I’ve graphed the official data.

Only 40% of kids attended school regularly in Term 2 of this year, compared to 63% in 2017.

For Maori students, it is even worse. They’ve gone from 55% to 27%.

Now some apologists for the status quo claim that not making 90% is no big deal, as one week off school can qualify. This is true, but one week off school every term is equal to a month every year and over 13 years, it is equal to missing an entire year of school).

So to show the problem isn’t just people missing one week a term, I’ve also graphed the data for the chronically absent – those attending less than 70% of the time.

The proportion of students chronically absent has gone from 6% in 2017 to 14% today. That is 1 in 7 students are missing over 60 days of schooling a year.

And for Maori students it is 1 in 4 are chronically absent. No amount of co-governance, working groups or authorities will impact Maori disadvantage as much as improving the attendance rate at school.

NewstalkZB reports:

A Kāinga Ora tenant is accused of confronting her neighbours with a shovel and large knife then threatening to kill them and “bathe in your blood” while her dog feasted on their remains.

The alleged incident, which neighbours claimed was witnessed by at least one child, occurred last month at a South Island social housing complex and followed what neighbours claim has been a terrifying 18-month campaign of harassment and racial abuse.

18 months of this! 18 days would be too long.

Neighbours say she has been moved to temporary accommodation following multiple police call-outs and complaints about her behaviour from fellow tenants who claim that they have feared for their families’ lives.

Don’t move her. Evict her. Make her realise you don’t get a massively cheap taxpayer subsidised state house if you terrorise your neighbours. Build a concrete barracks in an isolated area for people like her.

She said another neighbour suffered fractured ribs after allegedly being assaulted with a piece of wood by the woman and her then-partner last year.

And this wasn’t enough to evict here?

The Herald understands the man had complained repeatedly about the woman to Kāinga Ora tenancy managers before eventually being transferred out of the complex to escape the situation.

They moved the victim, not the assailant!

Pam said police had responded to numerous 111 calls about the woman’s behaviour and firefighters had been called when she lit large fires in her yard fuelled by rubbish.

How about three 111 callouts and you get evicted?

In an October 3 email, Pam claimed the woman “has used weapons [shovel, long bladed knife and aggressive dog] to threaten the lives of myself, my partner and my children”.

“My 11 year old daughter is extremely traumatised and, like other tenants in this complex, we are living in fear.

“None of us should have to live this way.”

But this is Government policy. Labour has instructed them to not evict tenants.

Martien Lubberink writes:

Another reason to tread carefully on taxing banks is that the government relies on them to support the economy in difficult times.

The recent Covid years are an obvious example. Important policy initiatives, such as the Funding for Lending Programme and the Large Scale Asset Purchase Programme, relied on the banks’ cooperation. So it isn’t obvious why our government should turn its back on the banks when profits are high and ask for assistance when times are difficult.

More important, however, is the empirical evidence on bank taxes: do they work in practice? I am sorry to disappoint the good intentions of those in favour. Recent studies have shown that such taxes do not work as intended.

A study by the Bundesbank, which examined levies imposed on German banks from 2011 to 2014, showed the tax take of the German bank levy was lower than expected as banks managed to avoid the levy. A bigger worry is that banks affected by the levy reduced lending.

Another study on German bank levies showed banks increased their lending interest rates by about 0.14 percentage points, which is substantial. Interestingly, the study also showed non-levy paying lenders increased their rates. These banks piggybacked on the bank levy, at the expense of borrowers.

So the extra levies result in less lending, and higher rates on those who do get a loan. Just what we need in NZ!

The studies showed a bank tax increases the cost of doing business for banks and banks respond to that by avoiding the tax, lending less, and charging higher fees. For New Zealanders, this means that homeowners, small businesses, and other borrowers will suffer the consequences of the bank tax.

This is what the Greens want!

The High Court granted an injunction to stop the demolition of huts in Te Urewera. The applicant is himself a member of Tuhoe, whose family have lived there for generations and he has use the huts for recreation and food gathering since he was a child.

Some key points that came out of the injunction hearing were:

• Some of the huts are used for biodiversity work including trapping predators and monitoring rare species. This work will suffer without the huts.
• The motivation for the governance board is not to have new huts or safer huts, but to emove all “DOC infrastructure” from Te Urewera
• There was no consultation with hapu before deciding this
• Around 20 huts were already burnt down before the injunction was granted
• No annual operational plan for Te Urerewa had been approved, which the law says is mandatory for removal of any Crown assets
• The Nga Tapuwae O Taneatua Tramping Club says the huts play a vital role in providing an essential contingency for travel if things go wrong due to weather, illness, or injury

As I blogged previously, the sensible thing to do is build new huts first, then demolish the old ones. But it appears the motivating force is simply to get rid of any huts that being to DOC, regardless of the impact on those who rely on them.

A guest post by Simon Lusk:

The current government has legislated constitutional change without the consent of New Zealanders. They have promoted a move away from one person one vote to a co governance system where Maori votes are worth far more than Non Maori votes.

These changes have been made without our consent. The purpose of the Citizens Initiated Referendum is to show the liberal elite in Wellington they are out of step with what many New Zealanders think, and what may be acceptable in government departments is not acceptable to a great many of us in the rest of New Zealand.

The question that has been approved is:

“Should New Zealand implement a form of co-governance where 50% of elected representatives to Parliament and local authorities (including community boards and local boards) be elected by voters of Māori descent, and 50% by non-Māori?”

To download the approved signature form to collect signatures please go to:

https://www.justsayno.org.nz/download_form

Only signatures collected using this form will be accepted by the Clerk of the House.

To support the referendum financially please go to:

https://www.justsayno.org.nz/donations

Your support matters. We are fighting against the huge budget of Government, Government Agencies and the disgraceful Public Interest Journalism Fund that mandates media have to promote the Government’s policies using your money. This is a David v Goliath battle where Goliath has vast sums of taxpayer money to oppose what many of us think is a fair & reasonable question to be put to the public.

Donations of any size will allow us to fight back against the giant we oppose. They will help us send a message to Wellington that they have moved too far and too fast on co governance. They will help us tell Wellington that making the vast majority of New Zealanders’ votes count less than Maori votes is unacceptable to true democrats across our country.

Time for Honesty and Aspiration in NZ Schools.

“Some key indicators are that: Even our Level 2 NCEA graduates often lack functional numeracy and literacy. We have in excess of 8500 students not enrolled in any school as of July. Our full attendance for Term 2 was less than 40% across all deciles and just 23% for decile 1 students. We have 12% of our students graduating with less than Level 1 NCEA (33% for Māori students in South Auckland). The gaps across socio-economic levels are the worst in the developed world. Our ethnic gaps are also horrendous with Asian students getting University Entrance for leavers at 67%, back to Māori at 18%.”

Lots of change can be made and the piece discusses that.
Sometimes on Kiwiblog commentators express their frustration that it seems hard to get narratives into the MSN that challenge powerful institutions. I appreciate this opportunity and a positive comment to: [email protected] would be a bad thing for readers to send.

[email protected]

Food prices have gone up over 10% in the last year. But the cumulative impact is even worse. Since Oct 2017, seasonally adjusted food inflation has been:

• Vegetables up 36%
• Fruit up 25%
• Milk, cheese, eggs up 24%
• Meat, poultry up 22%
• Bread up 19%
• Grocery food up 17%

And what was food inflation for the five years before that (under National):

• Vegetables up 6%
• Fruit up 13%
• Milk, cheese, eggs up 7%
• Meat, poultry up 1%
• Bread down 7%
• Grocery food up 2%

The Term 2 attendance figures are truly dismal and Term 2 was after we left the Covid protection framework, so the old excuses of blaming it all on Covid-19 doesn’t wash.

• The number of students attending school less than 70% of the time has gone from 20,620 in 2011 to 101,559 in 2022 – a 400% increase. We have 100,000 kids who attended less than 7 in 10 days. As a percentage has gone from 4.8% to 13.8%.
• The number of students attending school less than 90% of the time has gone from 31% in 2011 to 60% in 2022.
• In 2017 63% of kids attended 90% or more of the time and today it is just 40%.
• The proportion of kids absent without justification (truant) on an average day has increased 40% from 2017 to 2022
• Only 27% of Maori kids attending school more than 90% of the time, and 24% attended less than 70% so almost as many are attending under 70% as are attending regularly. And we wonder why we have disparities later on in life.

Stuff reports:

The Midwifery Council of NZ has revised its midwifery scope of practice guidelines to entirely remove the words “woman” and “mother”.

The omissions are among a raft of changes to the document in an effort to be more inclusive and “address a detrimental imbalance of representation, understanding and appreciation of Māori knowledge, values and practice”.

Health researcher and former midwife Dr Sarah Donovan has questioned the move, saying it is likely to be out of step with public expectations about the profession of midwifery, including how it describes who it cares for.

Donovan said given that midwifery is arguably the most woman- and mother-centred of all health professions, the removal of the words ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ will likely not make sense to a lot of people.

“If this is about being inclusive, there is scope for terms to be used alongside each other.

“My understanding of what inclusive language in healthcare means is that it actually includes rather than excludes; it is additive of new terminology rather than removing widely-recognised and culturally cherished terms such as ‘mother’ and ‘māmā’.”

Exactly.

Clarification was needed on what evidence base and advice underpinned the decision to remove the words entirely, she said.

Evidence base – LOL

“A reasonable question to ask would be, has the Midwifery Council actually sought the views of the population they serve, and of the wider NZ public on removing the words ‘mother’ and ‘woman’ from midwifery care in New Zealand?

“Have they asked mothers-to-be as a group how they would wish to be described instead?”

Of course they haven’t.

To be consistent the Midwifery Council should also rename itself!

Stuff reports:

A new study has carbon-dated the arrival of Māori settlers to as early as the 13th century.

Mātauranga histories and current archaeological work are estimates only – thought to be some time between the 12th and 14th centuries.

The study, published in the journal PNAS, used updated radiocarbon technology at 436 archaeological sites in the North Island and 145 in the South.

Dr Magdalena Bunbury from Australia’s James Cook University, who led the study, said the estimated timeline of when Māori arrived in Aotearoa was initially between the 12th and 14th centuries.

“This study has narrowed that down and shown that early Māori settlement happened in the North Island between AD 1250 and AD 1275,” Bunbury said.

She said Māori reached the South Island a decade later between 1280AD and 1295AD where the population rapidly grew during a time when they hunted the flightless moa bird.

It’s incredible what you can learn from carbon dating.

So Maori have lived in the North Island for around 770 years and the South Island for around 740 years. Assuming earlier generations reproduced around age 20, then some Maori may have had 30 or so generations living here.

David Farrer states:
“I would like to see 20 hours “free” from age three to become 35 hours free from age one. There is no other policy which would have such a beneficial long-term impact on child welfare, on education, on providing opportunities to disadvantaged families, to closing the gaps between Maori and European.”

I simply do not believe children 0 – 5 are made to thrive in full-time child-care. I believe that one of the causes of our declining education statistics/systems is that we have professionalised pre-school education and much reduced the emphasis on great parenting, reading to your kids, family activity, etc. A significant portion of the reason that we have a major childcare system is for the adults not the children.

A couple of years back I spoke a good friend who was an incredible professional rugby player on this topic. He and his two siblings are lawyers and I asked how they had succeeded so well. They are Samoan. He told me that his parents valued education highly and that, even though both parents had great careers – they made sure one was always home. My wife and I did the same. I cannot imagine how my kids would have done with 35 hours a week day-care but I can assure you it would not have been as well as they have done. And I sat on the couch and read to them for at least 30 mins every night. No TV/Playstation, etc, and limits of 30 mins screen time.

If some parents are opting into child-care and are getting 20 free hours … an equitable policy would be to pay 20 hours per week to parents who stay at home to look after their children (I would add a house and care check as happens for each international student in NZ).

I don’t believe what David/Jacinda are advocating would have the long term benefits they suggest.

If I had a dream policy to see implemented after the next election it would be:

• Massive education and support for pregnant women/partners re care for their child in-utero. Huge counter programme to counter FASD and other harms.
• Massive parents as first (and most important) teachers programme age 0 – 5. Including health, reading, numeracy, movement, music, languages. See Eagleman: The Brain

This documentary is a wee bit dated but if you want a simply superb example of GREAT parenting without money – this is it and it is deeply inspiring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QQBj2EucZk

Since the documentary was produced I have always shown it to the students and families of schools I have been involved with.

(I could not load it as a video as it has an age restriction through a couple of surgery shots).

Alwyn Poole

[email protected]

North and South has a really good article on the history of the (NZ) Free Speech Union. Well worth a read for those interested. An extract:

Perhaps more telling are the numbers supporting their cause — 1500 paid-up members and 70,000 supporters — and the amount of money they donate. Compare this to the 70-year-old NZCCL’s membership and funding, and it’s clear that whatever the FSU has done differently, it’s worked in recruiting members and money. Since 2021 the organisation has received enough cash from more than 4000 individual donors to fund two full-time staff in Wellington, as well as a communications specialist as needed. The average donation, FSU sources say, is $75 and fewer than 10 people have chipped in more than $1000.

This is grassroots funding at its finest – 4,000 donors who give an average of $75.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the one big idea she would have if money was not a factor would be to make early childhood education completely free.

Ardern was asked for one big blue-sky idea as part of the NZ Herald’s The New New Zealand: Rebuilding Better series – for what she would do if cost and the difficulty of putting it in place was not an issue.

Ardern said she had a long list, but if she had to pick one it would be in early childhood education.

“One of the things I know makes a difference to kids’ lives in the long term is their access to early childhood education.

I agree. I would like to see 20 hours “free” from age three to become 35 hours free from age one. There is no other policy which would have such a beneficial long-term impact on child welfare, on education, on providing opportunities to disadvantaged families, to closing the gaps between Maori and European.

“I’d make it completely free. Completely free. And when I say completely free, I’d also give choice to families about at what point and stage their child accesses it. Because for some we know it provides stability to kids that they might not have in their home life.”

Ardern said it was clear there was a price to be paid down the line if children did not get a good start in life.

“It also gives families choices. And it’s a massive cost of living issue. That’s what I’d do. It’s such a shame that it is just so expensive.”

It is hugely expensive, but it is about priorities.

Labour campaigned in 2017 not on making ECE free, but on making university free. They prioritised wealthy future doctors and lawyers and accountants over early childhood education. That is because they wanted students to vote for them.

They wasted billions on pet projects like the failed Auckland Harbour cycle bridge, Kiwibuild etc.

Think if Labour in 2017 had promised free early childhood education within ten years, and was now halfway to achieving that. They would be cruising to a second term.

So instead we have a Government that wastes money left and right on relatively unimportant priorities, and the PM laments they can’t afford to do more for ECE.

The Herald reports:

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says the prospect of steep rates rises is not acceptable and will not happen as a result of a huge financial hole in the council budget.

Brown was responding to a story in today’s Herald saying stubbornly high inflation, wage rises and interest costs have seen the projected budget hole of between $90 million and $150m balloon to $270m.

This is why we need a Mayor and Council who will work hard at reducing spending and costs, not just keep putting rates up by huge amounts.

Mayoral sources say Brown accepts inflation and falling council revenues are part of the problem, but he also blames head office overheads and inefficiencies in delivering services not just at Auckland Council but throughout the wider council group.

The Herald understands Brown will ask councillors to agree to a forensic, line-by-line analysis of the council, CCOs and port company. This work will have to happen in a hurry as the mayor has to publish the first draft of next year’s budget before Christmas.

Can we do this for central Government also?

The October 2022 Roy Morgan is out.

Party Vote

• Labour 29.0% (-0.5% from September)
• National 32.0% (-4.0%)
• Greens 15.5% (+3.0%)
• ACT 12.5% (nc)
• Maori 3.0% (-0.5%)
• NZ First 3.5% (+2.5%)
• TOP 3.0% (+0.5%)
• New Conservatives 0.5% (nc)

Seats

• Labour 38 (-27 from election)
• National 42 (+9)
• Greens 20 (+10)
• ACT 16 (+6)
• Maori 4 (+2)

Governments

• Labour/Green 58/120
• National/ACT 58/120
• Labour/Green/Maori 62/120

Direction

• Right 42.0% (+4.5%)
• Wrong 50% (-1.5%)

This is the second poll to show Labour in the 20s, an extraordinary decline from the 50% they got at the election. They would lose a massive 27 MPs on this poll. However they could form a Government with the support of Greens and Maori Party/