Labour has selected the former Auckland councillor and mayoral candidate Kerrin Leoni to contest the Tāmaki Makaurau seat.
The Auckland electorate is currently held by Te Pāti Māori’s Oriini Kaipara – who bested Labour’s Peeni Henare in last year’s by-election.
Ms Leoni was the first wahine Māori elected to the Auckland council – serving from 2022 to 2025.
She unsuccessfully ran against Wayne Brown for mayor last year.
She got just 23% of the vote against Brown. She was described by Labour MP Phil Twyford as not credible. Yet she is now their candidate in a seat they declare they want to win back.
I wonder if this is a cunning plot by Willie Jackson to help his old mate JT old, by ensuring Te Pati Maori retain their seats?
Some of New Zealand’s top exporters and business associations have signed an open letter calling on all political parties to back New Zealand’s free trade agreement with India. …
The open letter, organised by BusinessNZ, was signed by 28 exporters and industry associations, such as Federated Farmers, Zespri, Seafood New Zealand and Beef + Lamb New Zealand.
The letter said trade was critical to New Zealand’s prosperity and the FTA was the next significant step forward.
“In an increasingly uncertain global environment marked by rising protectionism, geopolitical tension and supply chain disruption, New Zealand cannot afford to stand still,” the letter said.
Having trade agreements with other countries protects us, especially in times like today.
Securing better access to India will help build resilience, spread risk and strengthen our economic position.
“An FTA with India is not a luxury; it is a strategic necessity for our economic security.”
If you’re worried we are too reliant on China for our exports, you should support the India FTA.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the letter was a “breathtaking” position for BusinessNZ to take.
“How they and the 28 other businesses and associations could have signed up to support the India FTA without knowing what is in it is an appalling commentary on them all,” Peters posted on social media.
“How on earth can there be any sort of proper analysis of the FTA if they haven’t even read the agreement?”
This is silly. The major details have been published and are well known. It is inane to say you can’t have a position on an FTA, unless you have read every clause. By this logic, Winston isn’t in a position to oppose it, because he hasn’t seen the full text either.
The summary of the FTA provides lots of detail. The final text gets wrangled by lawyers for months, and has to be consistent with the high level agreement.
Quantum computers are arriving sooner than we think. They pose a huge threat to Bitcoin, which relies on cryptographic codes to remain secure.
Fewer qubits may be required from quantum computers to breach the cryptographic codes of Bitcoin and Ethereum, Google has suggested. They believe it may take only 500,000 qubits, a figure that is 20 times lower than previous estimates. All of this has been derived from studies by Google Researchers, meaning Q-Day may arrive sooner than we think.
The Current State of Bitcoin
As of March 31st 2026, the BTC price NZD stands at $116,918. This is down from a short spike to $118,733 earlier in the day, brought on by potential alleviations of tension in the Middle East. Issues with oil in the Strait of Hormuz are severely impacting risk assets such as Bitcoin.
Binance noted how this is impacting possible economic data in the United States. It noted that CPI and PCE matter because oil’s pass-through hasn’t fully hit prints yet. They stated that an upside surprise delays cuts and reinforces a supply-shock pricing regime, with second-round food inflation risk building via fertiliser and input disruptions. All of this turns people away from risk assets, of which Bitcoin is one, to safe havens.
Alongside this, the risk posed by quantum computers is also weighing on its price. Testing by Google was done using two schemes. The first used 1,200 logical qubits along with 90 million Toffoli Gates. These essentially act as ‘and’ gates for quantum circuits, letting them reconstruct inputs from outputs due to their reversibility. A second used 1,450 logical qubits and 70 million gates. Both were sampled using a superconducting cryptographically relevant quantum computer. From this, the company has deduced that it would take between nine and 12 minutes to execute an on spend attack.
Discussing the revelation, Google added that “We aim to draw attention to this issue and provide the cryptocurrency community with recommendations to enhance security and stability while it is still possible.” All of this suggests that Quantum attacks may arrive much sooner than previously thought.
Google also added that it depends on which hardware scales first. A slower system may initially target stored funds, while faster ones may provide instant attacks as transactions are taking place.
The Threat to Bitcoin’s Sleeping Wallets
Wallets from the early days of Bitcoin utilise P2PK, a pay-to-public-key. This locks Bitcoin to a public key, meaning it can only be spent by the owner. Many of them are inaccessible due to their keys being lost. Some contain billions of dollars, including early Satoshi-era wallets. In fact, it is estimated that around 1.7 million Bitcoins are still dormant in them.
The issues arise from the fact that they can not be upgraded to quantum-level security. This means they can be unlocked by whoever gets first access to a quantum computer able to prise them open. In a system that is decentralised, this is becoming extremely hard to police, and policing it flies in the face of what a decentralised network should be. Attacks of this type could have the potential to seriously disrupt the economics of Bitcoin. With floods of coins on the market, price drops would be endemic.
The Threat to Ethereum
Ethereum could be at a greater risk than even Bitcoin. Smart contracts are particularly at risk, and Layer 2 networks have KZG commitments, which are quantum vulnerable. This had led the Ethereum Foundation to place quantum security as its top priority.
Binance noted that Ethereum has outlined its “Strawmap” quantum-resistance roadmap and 2026 upgrades: Ethereum introduced Strawmap as a four-year quantum-resistance framework targeting 2-second slots and 6 to 16 second finality. It also had two 2026 upgrades, Glamsterdam and Hegotá, focused on L1 performance, privacy, and cryptography.
Senior researcher Justin Drake has noted that a dedicated research and engineering team is working on this. Their strategy will involve governance processes and live post-quantum development networks.
The Future of Cryptocurrency
The double whammy of unstable global politics and the threat of Quantum computing seems to be cooling the desire for cryptocurrency. Inflows to spot ETFs cooled this week, suggesting more traditional investors and those with low risk appetites are turning away from it. Added to this has been a slowdown in the growth of stablecoins.
Real interest rates also continue to rise. When compared to something like Bitcoin, which produces no yield, investing in crypto starts to look even less appealing. Yields on 10-year inflation-protected securities have risen, and this really does pull people away from risk assets. Any anticipation once held for FED rate cuts is now well and truly dead in the water.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are thus facing a double hit. In the short term, global politics and, particularly, the price of oil per barrel are hitting it hard. Yet long-term, quantum computing is a real threat that could collapse the whole ecosystem. The right security measures need to be found, and fast.
Do you remember Chris Hipkins complaining National hadn’t consulted Labour over NCEA changes, and then it transpired their spokesperson had turned down multiple offers from the Minister to brief her.
Chris Hipkins tried (and failed) to get a story up this morning in advance of his weekly media interviews, with his office claiming to TVNZ that we had failed to respond to a Labour MP’s concerns about the Waioweka Gorge. You might remember last year when he claimed the Government had failed to engage with Labour about NCEA changes, only for the facts to show we had tried several times and Labour had failed to respond.
Now it’s happened again.
Yesterday, before Hipkins’ weekly interview, Labour sent a letter about Waioweka Gorge that Jo Luxton had written to me back in January to TVNZ’s Breakfast, telling the producer that I hadn’t bothered to reply.
Unfortunately for Hipkins, a long email trail shows that’s just totally untrue.
Jo Luxton did write to me in late January, seeking a briefing from NZTA on recovery works through SH2 Waioweka Gorge. I take all letters from MPs seriously, so I asked my office to arrange a briefing for her.
A staff member emailed Ms Luxton on 18 February to organise the briefing. She didn’t reply, so he followed up a week later.
Eventually 4 March was settled on for her briefing, which she then cancelled as she was unwell.
The briefing eventually took place on 18 March, covered all the issues Ms Luxton had asked to be briefed on, and a staff member followed up on a couple of issues afterwards with her. Ms Luxton’s staff member sent a nice thank you message to my office afterwards.
So why is Chris Hipkins out there telling TVNZ that I never responded?
Former National Party candidate James Christmas, who was tipped as a potential minister and Attorney-General, will contest this year’s election as a candidate for the Act Party.
He is one of eight people vying to become Act’s candidate in Auckland’s Tāmaki electorate, which will be an intriguing contest after the departure from politics of MP Brooke van Velden, also Act’s deputy leader.
Christmas, a barrister who worked under senior National figures including Sir John Key, Sir Bill English and Chris Finlayson, will be considered a significant loss for National given he was considered a possible option to take on the Attorney-General role and act as a Treaty Negotiations Minister.
With a deep understanding of Treaty settlements and New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements, Christmas also presents as an ideal candidate to articulate the party’s next attempt at constitutional reform after the failed Treaty Principles Bill, which Christmas’ former mentor Finlayson condemned as divisive.
Speaking exclusively to the Herald, Christmas acknowledged some in National might be “disappointed” by his decision but he insisted it was not prompted by any ill will towards his former party.
I suspect it is simple numbers. National only got five List MPs in 2023, and on current polling may get zero List MPs. ACT will get 10 or more. Plus he may get the nomination for Tamaki, which ACT currently hold.
There quite a large number of people who feel comfortable in both National and ACT. Their differences are more of degree, than basic direction.
The thin policy slate has begun to get Labour into testy scraps during its regular sitting week media stand-ups, in which press gallery journalists from several outlets have decided the party has crossed the invisible threshold that marks the point at which it is no longer tenable to offer critique without proposing at least some solutions.
The lack of ideas is becoming a liability. MPs with nothing to talk about risk saying things they don’t really mean.
It’s one thing to have no policy two years out from an election. It’s another to have nothing a few months out.
Labour MPs are an academic bunch (sometimes to a fault), and they have plenty of ideas. They’re just afraid to show them.
Not brain dead, but brain scared. Labour’s problem is that on the outside, brain scared looks an awful lot like brain death.
Brain scared – I like it.
It’s weighing reinstating a form of its interest deductions ban, but with the country, particularly Auckland, in the midst of a multi-year property crash, the electorate’s appetite for taxes to whack depressed prices even lower is limited – particularly if Labour decides to lift the council rates cap, a policy desired by Labour-friendly local government, but which will blow a double-digit sized hole in Labour’s affordability message no number of free GP visits can fix.
I’d love Labour to campaign on allowing more 20% rates increases.
A lot of what is sold to students and families in NZ education is highly mythical and primarily for the benefit of the perception of the school – as opposed to the genuine good of the students.
“Sports Academies” within school are often an example of this.
I love sport and sporting achievements. I see no negative at all with young people (and adults for that matter) being fit and active in any range of ways.
A part of my background growing up was 1st XV rugby, age group and limited first class representation. I then went on to coach through school levels – including three years with the Tauranga Boys College 1st XV – club with two years of University of Auckland Under 21s and three years of University of Auckland Premiers. I was privileged to make small to moderate coaching contributions to 18 players who represented a range of nations at Rugby World Cups.
Throughout the world the perception of the opportunities in professional sport are significantly overblown.
For instance; for American Football approximately 7% of high school players make college rosters and only 2.6% of those are Division 1. One 1.5% get drafted to the NFL for careers that last an average of 3.4 years. So; 0.023% of High School players make the NFL and the vast majority of those careers are over well before 30 years old.
While in New Zealand I could look at the full range of sports rugby is enough to give an indicator of how limited – and short-lived – the opportunities are.
Rugby Union became officially professional in 1995. Recent statistics have approximately 400 domestically based players and 460 NZ overseas players that could be regarded as professional. Clearly there would be a huge range of incomes covering those 860 players (prior to a Ranfurly Shield game I once got a free pair of boots that I was pretty chuffed with). There is then a range of roles from administrators, coaches, match officials, etc – who earn an income through the sport. New Zealand is not alone in this – for example – less than 1% of South African High School rugby players make it into the professional ranks.
In terms of another sport; for all of the New Zealand boys who have player 1st XI Soccer over our history – only six have played in the English Premier League.
Many New Zealand schools now have “rugby academies” and high provision features for other sports. They often involve significant promises towards a professional future.
My best guess is that New Zealand has around 8,750 1st XV rugby players each year, There are 29,153 teenage boys registered as playing the game.
When the 2023 All Black squad travelled to the Rugby World Cup only 23 out of 460 schools were represented. In the history of the game – by that point – only 28 schools had seen 10 or more players go on to All Black representation. Over its 153 years existence to that point Auckland Grammar School has the most with 51 players – i.e. 1 All Black every three years. Christchurch Boys High School was second (and catching up fast) with 47 All Blacks over 141 years.
The average number of games played by an All Black is less than 13. That is also a number skewed by a small number of players who play a high number of tests. That is similar to the NFL where high profile players, of the Tom Brady type, create the impression that it is a long-term career option. In a conversation I has with NRL legend Paul Whatuira his point was that NRL stands for “not real long”.
My point. I have a son who competed well for a number of years as a professional athlete in NZ, the USA and other international situations. Soon into that “career” he realised that academics is not “Plan B” but “Plan Also” … and the long-term foundation. He completed his sporting career with some achievements to be proud of and now, through his qualifications, has a superb professional career in developing medications in the USA. One of his greatest privileges was to spend a weekend with Sir Peter Snell. Sir Peter fully acknowledged the deep sense of achievement with his three Olympic Golds and world records. He retired from competitive athletics in 1965 at the age of 27. In 1971 he moved to the USA and had a remarkable academic career that he was equally proud of.
I have no issue with schools having high quality sporting provisions and encouraging students to be aspirational in that area. But they must never exploit those young people for their own reputation and MUST see that their academics/qualifications are of, at least, equal value.
I was part of the Te Papa Treaty exhibit design team
I’ve been waiting for the trial before assembling my reactions. Now that a court trial won’t happen here are my thoughts.
It’s disconcerting to see your work attacked with such vehemence, but admittedly Te Wehi Ratana’s stunt was carried out with some elan.
I do feel sorry for the historians who briefed us on the design team.
All that effort bringing together the evidence, documents and records of the actual event at the time it happened. Plus the for-and-against arguments that took place at the time, the many various treaties signed elsewhere around the country, and stories and subsequent developments that grew from the signing.
They were aware of the potential for racist politics and specifically stated that the planned exhibit was not to be a “white/brown man bad, brown/white man good” display but an honest presentation of what happened at the time, and a commemoration of the pivotal event in the process of our becoming a nation.
The space we designed accommodated all this and provided for the contemplative and the dramatic, befitting its central place in the heart of Te Papa, the nation’s museum.
But our historians made a terrible mistake.
They neglected to adopt and elevate a particular opinion written nearly a century and a half after the events took place.
Fortunately that was easily put right with spray paint and an angle grinder.
I oppose Ratana’s revisionist ethno-activism but he was effective. He knew his audience, played them perfectly and they responded just as those who think the correct thoughts should.
Te Papa’s managers witnessed living history taking place in their own museum. How exciting! Oh we’ll show it at an activist exhibition before we hide it out of sight, and now we can talk about the treaty the correct way!
The judge and the destruction of tens of thousands of tax payers’ property? Oh that. Dealing with that particular vandalism with a trial is not in the public interest. How could the public think otherwise. Charges dropped.
Why stop there.
Obviously displaying what actually happened at the time it happened, in an exhibit about the Treaty was a mistake. So many complaints!
Let’s pay Ratana to destroy the other text panel too – then give him the tools to properly attack the centrepiece of the whole thing – the large glass replica of the Treaty itself.
Every election cycle, like clockwork, Opportunity (TOP) reappears. It refreshes its branding, gets a new leader, rolls out a new slate of candidates, and the media, just as predictably, froths over them. Since Gareth Morgan founded the party in 2016, this has become a familiar ritual in New Zealand politics.
Their results have been:
2017: Gareth Morgan 2.4%
2020 Geoff Simmons 1.5%
2023: Raf Manji 2.2%
The language TOP uses, the issues it elevates, and the solutions it proposes sit squarely within the worldview of the contemporary Left. Climate transition, inequality, child poverty, biodiversity, housing equity, “regenerative” economic systems, co-governance, and a persistent critique of “short-term politics”. This is a standard issue framework of modern Leftist politics, but delivered in a tone designed to sound above it all. There is a moral narrative underpinning it that systems are failing, outcomes are unjust, the current model is unsustainable, and the answer lies in structural reform guided by experts to produce fairer and more equitable results.
None of this is inherently illegitimate. But it is not ideologically neutral. It is a more polished, less confrontational version of the same arguments that animate Labour and the Greens. TOP’s point of difference is not in what it believes, but in how it presents those beliefs. It strips out the activist rhetoric, softens the edges, and wraps the whole thing in the language of rationality and competence. It is Left-wing politics for people who do not like the current aesthetic of Left-wing politics.
In the unlikely event that TOP made 5% and got into Parliament, I would say there is a 99.9% chance they would support a Labour/Green/Te Pati Maori Government over the current Government.
Tisza now leads in 95 constituencies and is projected to win 135 seats by the national election agency. Fidesz only leads in 11 seats, and 6 of those are 1,000 votes or less.
Henry specialises in foreign elections, and has visited Hungary during the campaign. He thought Orban would lose, and the results are indicating the opposition may not just win, but even gain a two thirds majority allowing constitutional changes.
Note that Tisza is not a left wing party. It is a centre-right party that has opposed Orban’s corruption.
Orban’s Fidesz is a nationalist authoritarian party.
The third party that might gain seats is also on the right – Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland), which is close to neo-fascist.
Orban has conceded defeat a few minutes ago, which is good. If the result was close, he may have tried to stay on, but the result is so over whelming that he can’t.
Iran and the United States failed to reach an agreement to end the war in the Middle East, US Vice-President JD Vance said after marathon talks in Islamabad, adding that he was leaving negotiations after giving Tehran the “final and best offer”.
We should, sadly, get used to higher petrol and diesel prices for a long time.
A woman who accused her husband of rape, only for her story to be proven to be almost impossible, hasn’t been charged with making a false complaint or giving false evidence in court.
That’s despite her former husband being convicted of rape, and spending nearly two-and-a-half years in prison.
Why not? If it is proven she lied, she should be charged.
An inquiry found:
The woman had been unclear and inconsistent in her account, and was uncooperative with authorities, including not preserving crucial corroborating evidence.
Her accounts of the events and her drinking on the day of the alleged second rape, did not match her level of intoxication, with the woman having a blood alcohol level 2.5 times the legal driving limit when tested at 7.50pm in hospital that day.
At the hospital, she asked for the morning-after pill, despite knowing her former husband had had a successful vasectomy. The woman said she had forgotten this.
Photos of her legs taken the following day showed yellowing of bruises, indicating they couldn’t have been caused by the alleged assault.
She gave “different false explanations” for her head injury, saying it occurred when she was pushed on to a bathroom window sill, but it was also consistent with her slipping and hitting her head while intoxicated.
The cellphone evidence also led Kincade to conclude the woman wasn’t at home when she claimed Mr Z attacked and raped her, and Mr Z’s account was more reliable, she found.
He spent two years in jail because she lied, and she gets no consequence.
Trump has gone from +12% to -17% net approval rating. That’s overall. On immigration he is at -10%, economy -21%, trade -22% and inflation a massive -34%.
This is how he compares to other Presidents after 446 days in office.
The Government will enter into an agreement to support an additional 90 million litres of storage for diesel at Marsden Point in Northland to boost New Zealand’s fuel resilience as the Middle East conflict continues to impact global fuel supplies, Regional Development and Associate Energy Minister Shane Jones says.
Senior Ministers yesterday signed off on up to $21.6 million from the Regional Infrastructure Fund (RIF) to Channel Infrastructure NZ Ltd.
This is one of the most important things the Government can do. If we end up with supply issues, then the more storage capacity we have in NZ, the better placed we are to get through it with fewer restrictions.
The proposed wind farm will be developed across 58km² of privately owned land in eastern Southland, about 30km southeast of Gore.
Minister Chris Bishop said approval has taken around 5 months following the commencement of an expert panel.
“This project, with national benefits, will significantly increase the amount of power supplied to the national grid. The wind farm will generate up to 380 megawatts (MW) and provide power for up to 150,000 households and includes 55 wind turbines, each up to approximately 7MW in capacity.”
Minister Shane Jones said the project would inject $13.5 million into the local economy and create up to 300 jobs during construction.
This is a great outcome – more renewable energy and more jobs in Southland. The project died under the RMA, but has been consented under the fast track law.
A guest post by Rhys Hurley, Investigations Co-ordinator for the Taxpayers’ Union:
Taxpayers have a right to know what is being done with their money. The Official Information Act (OIA) is one of the only tools they have to find out.
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has, however, asked his officials to review the cost of this system and even floated the idea of restricting access to some of this information.
He is right to acknowledge that the system is under pressure. Requests are up. Complaints into response times continue to rise. The process has become slower, more legalistic, and far more defensive.
But Minister Goldsmith’s potential restrictions are a huge problem. If the question is how to reduce costs, the answer cannot be to shut out the public.
Making it harder for the taxpaying public, journalists and elected politicians to get information will not fix the problem, but will just weaken decision makers’ already-limited accountability.
Instead, reform must start from first principles. The 1978 Danks Committee, set up to review how government information was handled and which ultimately led to the OIA, was clear: official information should be made available unless there is good reason to withhold it. The whole point was to move away from secrecy as the default.
That principle is now being eroded.
The pressure Goldsmith is pointing to is not just requesters with too much time on their hands, but the result of how the system now operates. What should be simple has become slow and bureaucratic.
Even the insiders agree. The Public Service Census 2025 described a culture focused on avoiding OIAs, with processes clogged by multiple approval layers and an approach that treats requests as a risk rather than a duty. That is the real problem.
Why people are having to ask for information in the first place is another question for the review. Too much information that should be routine seems to be locked up until somebody forces it out.
OIA volumes rise as departments are repeatedly asked for the same briefings, the same communications, and the same spending data, with each time seeing the possibility of the four-week process starting again from scratch.
The obvious answer is to publish more of this data up front. Other countries already treat this as standard procedure.
In Canada, agencies must proactively release contracts, grants, expenses, and audit reports on one central portal. Australian agencies publish disclosure logs, so every information request is available to all, and repeated requests are less likely.
The United Kingdom also has mandatory transparency rules around what information must be released by departments. Unlike New Zealand, Brits also have the right to send their questions to Parliament.
By comparison, New Zealand has no consistent approach. Instead, people are forced to rely on the Ombudsman just to get information that has already been deemed in the public interest in previous rulings and guidance. This drags the process out and further drives up cost.
The real issue here is that too much information is still being held back in the first place.
If any findings of the review recommend a cost-recovery exercise and clamping down on requests, the Government will have learnt the wrong lesson. Yes, responding to OIA requests costs time and money, but that is the cost of a healthy democracy.
There is a better approach.
By setting rules on what should be proactively published and following the Ombudsman’s guidelines on what should be considered in the public’s interest, there would be less need for requests in the first place.
Additionally, a streamlined sign-off process so multiple layers of bureaucracy don’t need to approve a response would cut through the layers of management that often lengthen the wait times on responses.
Either of these would reduce pressure on agencies while strengthening transparency and accountability. Both would solve the problem Minister Goldsmith is looking to fix.
When governments feel pressure, the instinct is always the same: release less, control more, and complain about the people asking questions. That would be a mistake.
Open government itself is not the problem. The problem is that every request is being treated like handing over the nuclear codes.
If ministers are tired of taxpayers asking how their money is being spent, the solution is simple: Stop making them ask.
The Judicial Conduct Panel’s report is scathing of Judge Aitken, but concludes her behaviour doesn’t meet the threshold for removal as she is such a junior judge, and due to retire soon anyway.
Some of their findings were:
the Judge’s actions were a serious breach of comity
the Judge had a poor understanding of the constraints upon a serving judge, and hence a significant lack of appreciation of the seriousness of her actions
find as a fact that the Judge spoke loudly and called out or shouted into the Wintergarden thereby causing a disturbance during Mr Peters’ speech
the Judge did not appear to have any comprehension about how her conduct might be perceived
the Panel rejects the proposition that the Judge’s conduct was in her personal or private capacity
the Judge did not respect the role of the parliamentary process on this matter and risked undermining public confidence in her impartiality on the proper role of tikanga in the law in a matter that could come before the court.
We have no doubt that the Judge’s conduct would have likely affected the perceptions of other members of the executive and at least some of the general public as to the Judge’s ability to silo her own political views when dealing with matters of political sensitivity
the Judge understated the nature of her conduct, in particular portraying the incident as “trivial” and telling her head of bench that a “brief comment” had been blown out of all proportion
The Judge failed to comprehend that her revulsion at a view expressed on a political issue and her own self-conviction on the point do not provide a justification for her speaking out in a context where the principle of comity applies.
It gave the Panel no confidence in the Judge’s understanding of the restrictions that apply to a Judge speaking on political matters
Certainly aspects of the Judge’s subsequent conduct and some of the justifications advanced for it in this inquiry have given the Panel pause
So pretty damning stuff. But in the end they say it does not meet the threshold for removal because:
Ultimately however we have concluded that, although the conduct in its entirety came reasonably close to the line, the case falls short of the high bar warranting removal. Having regard to the jurisdiction in which the Judge sits, her previously unblemished record, and her better understanding of her judicial obligations as explained in these reasons, we do not consider that there is a realistic possibility that an order for removal of the Judge would be made.
Wellington City’s residential rates have more than doubled since 2012, making them among the highest and least affordable in the country, a new council-commissioned report says.
Including the levy for the new $511 million Moa Point sludge-minimisation plant, median Wellington City residential rates soared from $1985 in 2012 to $5177 last year – far outpacing the 56% rise in median household wages over the same period, according to an Infometrics rates-affordability report commissioned for the council’s next long-term plan.
That’s 160% increase in a decade. Staggering. And it hasn’t been core infrastructure. It has been a series of political projects and white elephants.
