Point of Order highlights a press statement from MPI about how it turns out singing waiata help seedings to grow.
This is a mammoth scientific discovery. I expect the Government has of course had this independently peer reviewed. It seems singing means they grow so fast they can be cropped in weeks rather than months.
The Northland Advocate reports:
However, one community leader who did wish to comment was Te Hau Āwhiowhio ō Otangarei Trust chief executive Martin Kaipo, who is also a former high-ranking Black Power member.
Kaipo said there was a place for harsher sentences such as those imposed under the Three Strikes law.
“If you look at the repetitive offenders, they need to be held accountable … you’ve got to look at the type of offending.”
Giving them repeated short sentences is not accountability. It is just creating more victims.
The Free Speech Union has published a report that ranks our eight universities on their commitment to free speech on campus. The grades are:
A very useful guide for those considering where to study, or teach. Worth reading the full report for the details of how each university was graded.
Congrats to VIW for ranking top for free speech.
Congrats to VUW for leading the pack.
Readers may recall that the Government spent $336,000 on the opening ceremony for Transmission Gully – an outrageous amount of money. A reader sent in an OIA asking for details of the spending, and the breakdown is below.
The He Waka Eke Noa Charitable Trust got paid $221,000 for planning and organising for a two hour opening ceremoney.
Even if you were charging $100 an hour for staff involved that is 2,200 staff hours to organise a two hour event.
And what is this charitable trust? Is it the one that appears to be based in Auckland and trades as “Ugly Shakespeare Company, Kete Aronui”?
Who are the trustees of it?
ACT have released their law and order policy. Key aspects:
I got sent this OIA response. That is a total of almost 1,500 health staff who were forced out of their jobs during the middle of a staffing crisis!
The UK Telegraph reports:
The approval rating for Jacinda Ardern’s government has plunged to its lowest level since her election victory, as New Zealand’s economy struggles to recover from her harsh pandemic restrictions. …
New Zealand’s current inflation rate of 7.3 per cent is the highest in more than 30 years.
And while the price of real estate has fallen, rising mortgage interest rates have kept many new buyers out of the market.
This week’s opinion poll also found that nearly half of those questioned believed the economy would worsen over the next year, as cost of living prices continued to rise.
The downbeat view follows a period of draconian Covid restrictions imposed by the government, including an international travel ban that isolated New Zealand from the rest of the world.
And our Covid death rate is now much the same as Australia’s.
John MacDonald writes:
When our kids were younger, I served a couple of terms on the board at our local primary school and never, during that six years, did it enter my mind that some of my fellow board members might be ex-prisoners.
I’m pretty sure none of them were but there could’ve been because we’re finding out today that if someone has served a prison sentence of less than two years they can put themselves up for election to a school board of trustees.
We’re finding out about it because it’s election time for school boards around the country and someone by the name of Philip Arps has put his hat in the ring to be a board member at Te Aratai College in Christchurch, which is being described today as one of Christchurch’s most multi-cultural schools.
If his name rings a bell, that’s because he’s the white supremacist who used to run the insulation company which charged a certain amount per metre for insulation, which was a hate symbol popular with white supremacists.
Back in 2016, he delivered a pig’s head to the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch and, more recently, he’s had connections with the anti-vaccine mandate movement.
But he’s probably best known for sending the video of the March 15 Christchurch mosque shooting to 30 people, and asking a friend to modify it by adding cross-hairs and a “kill count”.
Arps is a repugnant neo-nazi and human being.
That appalling, sickening behaviour earned him six months in prison.
But because he was sentenced to less than two years he is fully entitled to run in school board elections. Which is what he’s currently doing. In fact, anyone who has served a prison sentence of less than two years can.
So, in light of Arps trying to get elected to the Te Aratai College board, there are calls today for the rules to be changed because they provide no safeguard at all against parents with extremist views ending up on school boards.
I’m against there being some sort of body that vets candidates for school boards and decides they are suitable. I trust parents to make the right decision.
So I think letting someone stand for school board elections if they’ve served a prison sentence of fewer than two years is going to be fine in most cases – but much more transparency is needed.
That’s why I think that if there’s going to be any change to the rules, it shouldn’t be along the lines of banning ex-prisoners from school boards – but we should be requiring these people to be completely open and transparent from the outset about their past.
And I think the best way of doing that would be to require candidates to include their convictions in the blurb they write that goes out to the parents when it’s time to do the voting.
This seems a worthwhile idea – transparency is a good thing.
But why stop at school boards? Why not require disclosure of criminal convictions for local and central government candidates also?
Good democracy and government truly relies on a well informed electorate.
I was very recently in a place of business and someone was telling a small audience that would should never forget Ardern’s/Bloomfield’s/Labour’s success with Covid. The were pretty much re-stating Robertson’s; “The best health response is also the best economic response.”
I have always been one who thinks that you need to back up an opinion and was interested that no one in the room knew the current overall stats.
How many kiwis know that:
– We are now 49th in the world for the most cases in a country (as a small – remote nation I found this astounding).
– We are now 47th in the world for cases per million (we have just pushed ahead of the UK – another little dance?)
– We are now 128th in the world for deaths per million and on the way to being above the world average (Australia now has a lower rate). This is being “achieved” with a high vaccination rate and a less harmful strain that the early ones.
I am not making this up: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
My questions are:
– Where has the opposition been (i.e. Chris Bishop) through all of this?
– Have we been buying and applying the best treatments – e.g. the mono-clonal antibody?
– Have we protected the vulnerable with nuanced approaches – of just the old kiwi one size fits all approach?
We have smashed our education system (my most direct concern) and caused incalculable health (mental and physical), economic, social (in all forms) harm.
The opposition are calling for an inquiry into the economic approach. Surely EVERYTHING should be examined – including the lack of rigorous questions from the opposition (while taking into account the crushing of the oversight committee).
A reader received this e-mail from their local medical centre. They encourage people to e-mail the Health Minister and local MP over the increased fees:
Kia Ora
We are very sorry that we have had to increase our patient fees and can understand the frustration and anger that this may cause our patients. (The updated fee schedule will be available on our website from the 15th of August.)
Why has this happened?
This increase is as a direct result of the government imposing a significant real terms cut in funding from our services with effect 1 July 2022.
As of 31 March 2022, national inflation rises were running at 6.9%. Additionally, general practice has experienced a range of further cost pressures which has meant our total costs have risen by over 10% compared to this time last year. The government has imposed a funding increase of just 3%. Our national representative body has been having further discussions with government officials but, to date, they are being ignored. General practice has no right or contractual means to negotiate our funding, despite what you might have heard the Minister of Health stating in the media.
We want to treat our staff fairly. Our nurses and GPs have continued providing core services as well as providing our essential COVID response over the past two years. Yet the government funds our staff at a much lower level than equivalent doctors and nurses doing the same level of work in government-run hospital settings.
We think this is unfair. We also think it is important that we can retain essential staff to be able to continue providing essential services for you. We are well aware that our staff could choose to go and work overseas for a much higher salary – and they could do so tomorrow.
What if I can’t afford the increased fees?
Most importantly, you should not avoid seeking medical help when needed. If you have any problems paying or the fees put you off from seeing a doctor when you need one – please talk to us about it. For medical emergencies, you always have the right to attend and be seen at the Emergency Department at our local hospital – and there is no charge for this service.
What can I do to help?
Firstly, thank you for asking and for allowing us to explain this no-win situation we have found ourselves in. We hope we can reverse the government’s decision and reduce our fees again.
Your understanding and offer of support is important to us, and you can definitely help if you wish to. This can be done very simply by e-mailing or writing to our local MP and the Minister of Health to express your concern at the government’s decision to reduce funding for essential family doctor services.
Below, we have suggested a possible message. You are of course welcome to create your own message of support.
Thank you
The Practice Team
Suggested e-mail to:
Hon Andrew Little, Minister of Health [email protected]
Kia ora
I am writing to express my anger at the real-terms funding cut imposed on my essential family doctor service from 1 July 2022.
This is not the action I expect from my government when this essential service is already struggling to recruit and retain staff in the face of historic underfunding.
I understand that the nurses in my family doctor service are already funded at a level which is well below that of their colleagues in the government’s own hospital-based service. I note that if I attend the Emergency Department at my local hospital, the service is free of charge.
I urge you to reverse this funding cut and address the significant crisis which is happening right now before we have no doctors or nurses left to serve in my community. I would be grateful for an individual reply to confirm what action you will be taking to avert this crisis which is happening on your watch.
Ngā mihi
[your name]
___________________________________________________________________________
If writing, letter can be addressed to:
Hon Andrew Little
Minister of Health
Freepost Parliament
Private Bag 18 888
Parliament Buildings
Wellington 6160
A guest post by Tavita:
Lindsay Mitchell draws attention to the increasingly relaxed approach to beneficiaries Lindsay Mitchell: No better time to be a beneficiary. What we are moving towards is a sort of universal basic income system (UBI) by stealth. Our current social benefit system is based on need. A needs-based social benefit is fine if people apply it and use it responsibly in the manner it was intended, but that doesn’t always happen. What we have now is a paid alternative to work that gives little or no incentive to getting a job. But what to do about it? Most people who are on benefits do need the money. The situation becomes worse the closer the benefit comes to the living wage. Two solutions – at opposite ends of the spectrum – are to substantially reduce / get rid of all benefits or make them universal. We will never achieve the first so are we are left with the second? Instead of introducing it in a haphazard way by stealth, should we look at a rationally designed UBI scheme?
The problem is that UBI are expensive and thus electorally difficult to sell. Treasury modelled a UBI of $300 weekly for 16+ year-olds in 2010. They estimated the cost (net of existing benefits) and calculated the flat tax rate required to raise this additional amount to be 48.6%. They then modelled (in addition) abolishing Working For Families and replacing this with a weekly $86 payment for 0-15 year-olds which pushed the flat tax rate up to 50%. https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2018-07/oia-20180164.pdf
You can see the problem if you plot the ‘proposed’ tax rate plus UBI against the current tax rates. It looks like this:
It is immediately obvious that taxpayers earning more than $50,000 per year are worse off – some significantly so. I estimated (based on Treasury’s 2010 figures) that there is a transfer of $10 billion from tax payers to non-tax payers.
Where does the money go? The Treasury scheme does not appear to be any more generous to those on benefits. Some money is going to people who are working but earning less than $50,000 per year but they may well be receiving benefits anyway. The rest must be going to people who are currently neither earning income nor on a benefit. What if we excluded people who are currently not working but do not qualify for a benefit? Ah – but then the basic income would not be universal.
The Treasury analysis asked the question – what tax rate would be needed to provide a universal basic income. They concluded that a universal basic income was unaffordable. But was that the right question? What we are trying to do is address the perverse incentives presented by the current benefit and income tax regime – trying to find a welfare safety net that does not take away the incentive to work. Ideally the system should be tax neutral (not system neutral as the Treasury model aims to be) and that replaces the current benefits, rather than expanding them.
The Treasury analysis was correct that if we have a UBI, we don’t need a progressive tax system – they are two ways of achieving a similar goal. Currently we have a progressive tax system such that lower incomes – and the first $50,000 or so of higher incomes – are taxed at a lower rate. You can approximate the tax payable under our progressive scheme by a flat tax of 32.9% and a tax rebate of $7,600 as shown below.
To make this tax neutral you would have to weight the incomes by the number of people at each income level – I haven’t done this but something like these figures can be made tax neutral. However, $7,600 per year is not going to cut the mustard as an UBI. What say we tweak the figures a little? So what I tried was a flat tax of 39% – the new top rate – and a UBI of $18,000 which is the benefit rate paid to married pensioners, You get the following picture.
This is definitely not tax neutral, but it could be ‘tax minus benefits’ neutral if the entitlement to benefits is also considered. Currently most low-income earners get some form of additional assistance. Looking at the figure, it seems that a flat tax plus a tax rebate or some form of UBI could replace the current regime of a progressive tax plus benefits.
Currently benefits are only available to a subset of the population. The Treasury model makes the UBI available to everyone, greatly increasing the cost which is why it is not feasible. Two possibilities are to introduce the UBI but at a much lower rate or to drop the ‘universal’ bit and limit the availability of the UBI to those who qualify for benefits currently – or are in employment. The former would be a hard sell – it would be seen as taking money away from people who need it and giving it to people who don’t.
The second option could largely be achieved by leaving the benefits system as it is, but allowing beneficiaries to work at the maximum tax rate. The latter is similar to what happens in effect now with the Government Superannuation. Since superannuation is taxable income, it puts the recipients into the higher tax brackets – so all income is effectively taxed at a high rate. Currently about half the benefit is clawed back by treating the income as secondary. If it were all taxed at the maximum rate, the entire superannuation would be clawed back in full for incomes over about $120,000.
But if that works for superannuation, why not apply the same rules to other benefits. In other words, allow the benefit recipient to return to work but on a high tax rate. Problem solved.
One News reports:
Seventy per cent of New Zealanders believe the Government is not doing enough to deal with gangs in Aotearoa, the latest 1News Kantar Public poll suggests. …
The poll found that 48% of Labour Party supporters believed the Government was not doing enough, while only 25% thought they were doing enough.
You have a problem when only one in four of your ow supporters think you are doing enough.
Of course the Government’s response to gang violence has been to change the law so serious repeat violent and sexual offenders get shorter sentences!
A PM normally does 80 – 100 hours weeks. So 40 minutes a month is around 0.2% of her working time.
Stuff reports:
A Government scheme to get counsellors in schools is on track to achieve less than 10% of the 100,000 hours of mental health support it was expected to deliver.
This scheme was announced in July 2020. They said it would see 210 schools accessing the scheme from the beginning of 2021.
The Government allocated $44 million to fund counselling at primary, intermediate and small secondary schools for four years. The Ministry of Education said it would deliver 100,000 hours of counselling each year, but going by actual delivery it looks set to provide just 9600 hours this year.
So two years after they announced it, and 18 months after they said it would start, and it is delivering 90% less than what they promised. This would normally be a huge scandal, but for this Government that is business as usual.
Again in November last year, Tinetti released a statement about the Counselling in Schools Programme saying it would help 24,000 students who needed urgent help due to the pandemic.
But it’s unclear how many students have received counselling. In responses to National Party mental health spokesperson Matt Doocey, Tinetti said the programme had averaged 800 hours of counselling a month since November.
This was meant to give them urgent help, yet they have had to wait two years!
And 800 hours a month is miniscule. That is 200 hours a week or 40 hours a day. So basically they have managed the equivalent of hiring five extra school counsellors!
Doocey said it was also concerning how much had been spent per counselling session. He said, given the 800 hours a month, it appeared the Government was spending north of $500 per session.
“Normally counsellors charge about $150, so you’d have to ask: Where is this money going?”
You are meant to get economy of scale, but this Government achieves the opposite – the bigger the buy, the less they get for it. They have managed a scheme that is costing $500 an hour!
Newshub report:
The Hamilton West MP has come out swinging – in fact, he’s hit the nuclear button. He’s accusing the Prime Minister and her office of a “cover-up” and says the Labour Party held a “Kangaroo Court” to decide his fate.
He’s also played Newshub a recording of another MP saying to him the outcome of the caucus meeting in which he was suspended was predetermined the night before. …
Newshub knows the identity of the MP, but revoiced the recording to protect their identity. The MP tells Dr Sharma his fate was sealed at the meeting.
“It’s all predetermined. This is purely just to get them where they want to be, which is for caucus to be aware that a decision will need to be made and that it will be, it’s gonna be to whack you,” the MP said.
So this other Labour MP said that the secret caucus meeting was absolutely to predetermine what would happen to Sharma. But the PM said:
Earlier this week, the Prime Minister was adamant there was no predetermination.
“You have my assurance and word here, it would not have been in the rules to make any pre-determination,” said Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday. “We wouldn’t and we didn’t.”
So who do we believe – the person who convened the secret caucus meeting and tried to hide its existence from Dr Sharma and the public, or the Labour MP who spoke to Dr Sharma?
The MP on the recording accuses his colleague of bullying.
“Those guys are bullies. No two ways around it.”
So it isn’t just Dr Sharma saying it.
I have spent the last month acquiring and processing significant data on the leavers of every high school in New Zealand – with great help from the good people at Education Counts. This is far more important than the cohort data (by Year level) that comes out in February.
As I reflected on this earlier this week with some of NZ’s top educators the highlight was that there were schools in every decile achieving highly (as well as many most certainly not) which smashes the myth that poverty precludes education success.
Top schools in each decile by University Entrance achievement (schools with 75 or more students).
Decile 10. Diocesan School for Girls
Decile 9. Woodford House
Decile 8. St Peter’s College (Epsom)
Decile 7. Marist College (Auckland)
Decile 6. St Catherine’s College (Kilbirnie)
Decile 5. Manukura
Decile 4. Selwyn College
Decile 3. Zayed College for Girls
Decile 2. St Paul’s College (Ponsonby)
Decile 1. McAuley High School (Otahuhu)
I will let the reader draw conclusions. McAuley’s results exceeded that of 20 of NZ’s Decile 9 and 10 schools.
Baradene College and St Margaret’s College are the best at getting students into degree Level study.
On the down side there are a lot of schools that have a HUGE amount to improve upon plus attendance is even worse than is being generally told. In Term 1 of this year only 22% of Decile 1 students were fully attending.
I have had the processes checked by two of Australasia’s best education analysts.
The aim is very much to motivate change and improvement for those currently missing out as well as affirming the very good aspects of our system – and helping to put the spotlight on great practice that can then be shared.
The data is in spreadsheet form and includes sheets for all high schools on:
– high-school size – largest to smallest
– Level 3 NCEA and above percentage for school leavers for each school 2018-21 (ranked highest to lowest for 2021).
– UE percentage for school leavers for each school 2018-21 (ranked highest to lowest for 2021).
– Each school’s UE percentage for leavers for 2021 compared to decile mean and national mean.
– Level 3 NCEA and above gap to UE for leavers 2018-21 and ranked smallest to largest for 2021.
– Retention percentage until 17 years of age for each school and ranked highest to lowest.
– Percentage for each school of their leavers going onto L7+ Degree study in 2020 – ranked highest to lowest.
– The anonymised data mean for full attendance across deciles 2018-2022 (T1).
– UE percentage by school governance and school type.
Uses for the data
– for policy writers and influencers to be fully informed about the state of play.
– for all school leaders and management to have a better understanding of the NZ system.
– for Primary/Intermediate school leaders and management to have a better understanding of the schools their students may go to and to be able to better inform/prepare students and families.
– For high schools to better evaluate their situation/progress – plan for improvement with accuracy and seek the right kind of support from the Ministry and the Community.
– For every parent to better understand the schools their children are attending – or are looking to attend.
The information is of high value educationally and has taken a considerable amount of time and expertise. I can make it available for use within a school (under copyright) or professional organisation at a relatively small price.
For personal use happy to supply on a donation basis.
Please email me for details: [email protected]
I’ve been sent a copy of an e-mail from Tim O’Connor, the headmaster of Auckland Grammar to the CEs of NZQA and the Ministry of Education. He beautifully sets out why the Government’s decision to just hand out free NCEA credits this year is a terrible one. The e-mail is below:
I write to express concern about today’s announcement. The points I raise below do not require a response, and are not a criticism of NZQA as such, as there are multiple contributing factors when making a decision to make changes to the 2022 qualifications. These are changes that will add to the demise and credibility of our national qualification.
The decision brings into question the credibility of our national qualification and the very purpose of education in this country. If our national qualification authority is not supporting each secondary school’ s primary purpose to educate our young, and measure their acquisition of knowledge through independent means what message does that present to schools, teachers and parents across the country? Academic rigour is a thing of the past? Let’s lower the aspirations we have for children? As schools it is not your role to be foundational institutions for encouraging every kind of human excellence?
Those directly involved with teaching on a daily basis know that students will attend and do their best to achieve, if they know that they accountable for doing so. Likewise, they know that if someone will intervene with a measure that elevates their performances without them even having to attend school, it sends the message that the usual standards no longer apply.
By failing to address the underlying problems, NZQA is prolonging the educational damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic instead of working to rectify it. By inflating students’ results and encouraging non-attendance, NZQA is masking and exacerbating the lost learning problem and is prepared to send students off to higher education and the workforce with significant gaps remaining in their knowledge, rather than attempting to provide assistance that would serve students (and our community) better in the long term. Such an approach is unacceptable to me in the role I hold and it is unacceptable to the community I serve. You will appreciate my views need to be shared with our community, so they understand academic rigour, and accountability for attendance and learning will remain unchanged at Auckland Grammar School, contrary to the messages our Government, NZQA and the MOE wish to send secondary school students and their parents nationally.
Kate MacNamara writes:
The control of assets is just as important as ownership, and control and ownership don’t always amount to the same thing. Most Kiwis understand this. Strangely enough, though, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern sat down with TVNZ’s Jack Tame this month and argued just the opposite.
Ownership without control is just a nine letter word rather than actual ownership.
The PM took a few twists and turns in her response. Tame was being “overly simplistic” she said: “… I’m arguing it’s simplistic because the ownership of these entities sits with local bodies and government. So it is not changing the ownership structures.”
Tame countered: “It’s not changing ownership but it is changing the representation, that’s an important distinction.”
Ardern insisted: “Well actually, local government maintain the ownership. They’re the ones with the public share … and with these regional representative boards, yes we have mana whenua represented and local government represented. But the ownership rights continue to sit with local government and with those local councils.”
Her final word on the matter was: “The reason I am coming back to ownership is because for most people power sits with ownership.
But the point is with three waters the owners won’t have the normal powers of ownership. The power will be with the regional groups.
Control matters: controlling parties will set the prices charged for the use of water assets (possibly subject to a regulated cap); they will decide how those charges are levied – by volume/use perhaps, or maybe by property value if that’s how they judge fairness; and they will almost undoubtedly decide that the cost of improving water assets in some regions will be met by ratepayers in other areas, so those who have already paid for adequate infrastructure will pay again for assets in areas which have underinvested.
If the Prime Minister thinks control is immaterial, she should try giving it up.
If only.