Readers will know that the defendants in the NZ First donations trial were found not guilty. I acknowledge that verdict and my comments here are not to suggest they should be guilty, but that the logic used by the Judge is really (to be blunt) terrible and the decision should either be appealed, or the law changed quickly. The key aspects are:

‘Party donation’ is not defined by the party’s benefit, but by the party’s receipt of the
actual gift.

This is a preposterous and strained interpretation. The Judge has decided that you ignore the intentions of the person donating the money, and instead a donation only counts as a party donation if the person they gave it to actually passed it on. The intent of the law is very clear as it creates a duty to pass the money on, but the law is toothless because it has been decided that if you don’t pass it on, then it automatically can’t be a party donation that has to be passed on.

The law has a specific offence about not passing on party donations, and the Judge has said if you don’t pass the donation on, then by the fact you didn’t pass it on it isn’t a party donation, so there is no offence!

A key clause is that a party donation is “that is made to a party, or to any person or body of persons on behalf of the party who are involved in the administration of the affairs of the party”.

Now the Judge had strong evidence that both defendants were very involved in the administration of the affairs of NZ First. But in another shocking conclusion he decided:

The payments determinedly were not made to EF or FG in those capacities

So he has said that you can be totally involved in the administration of a party, and you can solicit funds for that party but if you then fail to hand the funds over to the party and instead stick it in the bank account of a company you own that provides services to the party, then you were wearing a different hat at the time, so that is all okay.

The people not meant to have a duty to pass a donation on are people with basically no connection to the party. If you go up to a random Mrs Smith on a street and give her $5,000 and say I want this to go to the Greens, then the obligation doesn’t apply. But these two individuals were given the money because they were representing the party, and it is beyond me how the Judge can decide they were wearing a different hat at the time because the people giving the money were not told of these different hats.

It really is an appalling judgement. I have no issue with the defendants being found not guilty on the basis there could be reasonable doubt, but the decision by the Judge that a donation intended for a party is not a party donation if you fail to pass it on to them can not be allowed to stand. It must be appealed or over-ruled by Parliament.

Zoe Strimpel writes:

At a small dinner party earlier this year—months before Boris Johnson resigned and she threw her hat in the ring to become prime minister, coming closer than anyone predicted—Kemi Badenoch, the 42-year-old MP for the Essex market town of Saffron Walden, was absorbed in fixing the TV so that it played cheesy early 2000s tunes. It was confusing to have to make a TV play music, but that was the only music source that night, and she went with it until Bootylicious by Destiny’s Child and Nelly’s Hot in Here rang from the speakers.

That done, she sensed trouble in the kitchen, and went to help the host out with the overheating purple sprouting broccoli. She drank the good French wine with zest, and, over dinner, asked sharp questions about the government’s handling of Covid, and the best way for those in power to approach the trans debate. 

Her demeanor in private that night matched her public persona, which, very suddenly two weeks ago, became a matter of intense public fascination. 

Pundits have described Badenoch as a Tory Barack Obama, with headlines boosting her as Labour’s “worst nightmare” and the “antiwoke crusader” Britain needs. She comfortably deploys the kind of bold and direct speech about complicated ideas that seem impossible for other politicians. In other words, she speaks like a normal person. And like Obama, Badenoch is an outsider: born to Nigerian parents, raised in Lagos, she worked at McDonalds when she arrived as a teenager in the U.K. 

Badenoch has garnered a fierce and widespread following, feted, in one prominent commentator’s words, with having “saved the Tories.” Last week, she beat the popular former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, 56 to 34 in a Yougov poll of Tory Party members.

She’s now out of the race for prime minister; the choice is now between Sunak and Liz Truss. But that almost seems secondary to what Kemi Badenoch has accomplished: A woman who doesn’t even hold a cabinet position has become the unequivocal star of the Tory Party.

She has become a real star and I predict she will become a full Cabinet Secretary once there is a new Prime Minister.

This speech has been much viewed and complimented.

Badenoch has rightly made a name for herself as the candidate who is “antiwoke, loves Britain, and is not afraid to take on the ‘hateful’ Left,” as the Daily Telegraph put it, but her conservatism goes well beyond questions of culture. She voted for Brexit, she loathes over-regulation and the expanding state bequeathed by Covid, and she is wary of green policies “bankrupting” the economy. 

Her political sensibilities emerged from her experience of Africa—though in the opposite way that adherents of Black Lives Matter would want. “Growing up in a place like Nigeria means you appreciate what we have in the UK and in the West,” she told me on the phone on Wednesday, after she had dropped out of the race. “One of the things I find frustrating is the ethno-nationalism that you get in many countries like Nigeria: ‘Oh, we’re going to do things our way, we’re not going to do things the Western way.’ People start looking at things like free markets and capitalism as being Western things. And actually the whole world would be in a much better place if they adopted these systems, free markets in particular,” she said. “They are still the best way of lifting people out of poverty.”

Free markets have pulled hundreds of mullions out of poverty in India and China – hardly Western countries.

One News reports:

The newly-opened Countdown Metro store is located in the suburb of Herne Bay and cost $50 million to build.

Three groups, including the Waitemata Local Board, made submissions against the liquor licence – but there were no objections from Auckland Council or health officials.

Communities Against Alcohol Harm secretary Grant Hewison told 1News that there were vulnerable communities that lived near Herne Bay, that would be affected by the new supermarket.

The Waitemata Local Board is dominated by Labour and Green activists who don’t think people can be trusted to buy a bottle of wine from their local supermarket.

And the notion that anywhere near Hearne Bay has vulnerable communities (code for poor and hence deemed unable to decide things for themselves) is laughable. They are bounded by Ponsonby and Grey Lynn.

This chart shows the national surgical waiting list since 2017. National actually set targets for elective surgery and the result was not just record numbers of elective operations, but a national waiting list of just 1,421 at the end of 2017. It is now around 2000% higher.

And no it isn’t just Covid-19. By the end of 2019 it had already gone up 360%.

Once again this shows that Labour is entirely focused on inputs such as spending, and is failing totally at improving actual outcomes. We now have 20 times as many people waiting for a needed operation.

The latest benefit numbers show:

• 41% more NZers on jobseeker support than in Sep 2017
• 22% more NZers on sole parent support than in Sep 2017

That is over 60,000 more NZers on those benefits, despite unemployment officially being lower. Is it because there are basically no sanctions anymore if you don’t try and get a job?

The NZ Initiative have highlighted the results from a pilot test against proposed NCEA numeracy and literacy standards for students. Those meeting the standard were:

1. Reading 66.9%
2. Numeracy 65.3%
3. Writing 34.5%

Apart from this being terrible for the students, it also poses a problem:

However, there is a dilemma for the Ministry of Education. The new literacy and numeracy
would put in place a much-needed credential for these key skills. But should the Ministry go
ahead with them if doing so mean that two thirds of New Zealand students would leave
school without an NCEA certificate?

Their solution is:

1. Implement the literacy and numeracy standards, as planned in 2024, but not as corequisites for NCEA. Instead, they should contribute to a stand-alone literacy and
   numeracy certificate. Students who hold it will be credentialled as having sufficient
   literacy and numeracy for work and life.
2. Respecify the literacy and numeracy corequisite for NCEA. They should be at the
   highest level possible that will maintain an acceptable attainment rate for NCEA.
3. Urgently reform literacy and numeracy teaching at primary level. To avoid
   perpetuating the poor literacy and numeracy of young New Zealanders evinced in
   the TEC and Ministry reports cited here. A scientifically proven, structured approach
   to teaching must systematically be adopted.
4. Introduce and fund structured literacy and numeracy programmes for Years 7-10.
   These are needed for students who have come through primary school without
   having been taught these key skills effectively.
5. Stipulate a time at which the piloted standards will become corequisites for NCEA.
   It is important that a specific time is stipulated. Otherwise, the impetus to reform
   the way in which literacy and numeracy are taught in New Zealand schools may be
   lost. The task of remediating the problem created by decades of ineffective teaching
   is formidable. Given the size of the task, implementation in about 2027 may be
   appropriate.

The key is 3 and 4 – improving the literacy and numeracy of students.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has distanced herself from campaign material claiming “more than two million New Zealanders” received the cost of living payment on Monday, when in fact it was closer to 1.3m.

She can distance herself from it, but it is her party claiming it. They said it will go to over two million and it is barely half that.

It comes as the $116 payment – the first of three over three months – comes under criticism with potentially thousands of ineligible people receiving it.

700,000 fewer living Kiwis in NZ are getting it, but thousands of Kiwis living overseas or dead are getting it!

IRD has also explained for similar reasons it cannot rule out the payment potentially going to accounts of deceased people.

It has. I was informed by a lawyer yesterday that IRD paid $116.67 into the trust account of a client who died in December 2020. It seems the Government is incapable of ever cross-referencing with the deaths register.

On Tuesday, a Labour campaign email asking for donations stated: “More than two million New Zealanders received $116 from the new Cost of Living Payment”.

Don’t you love it. They take money from taxpayers, and then give some of it back to some people, and claim that in return for doing so, you should donate money to Labour!

The Government has hired an extra 700 people just to administer this handout which has gone to half the people they claimed it would, and thousands who are overseas or dead. There is a way they could have avoided all this.

They could have dropped the bottom tax rate on income up to $14,000 by 3% for a year. It would have needed no extra staff for IRD and would have gone to every single New Zealander who earned income and paid tax in New Zealand.

But Labour hate cutting taxes, so instead they went for an inefficient handout that isn’t getting to half those they promised it would, and to people who are no longer living in New Zealand.

Lots of discussion around the state of play for education in NZ and the rolling disaster that is evident at 2021 school leavers data is becoming available.

More importantly we look at schools that are doing things well … it is possible.

The Herald reports:

A bill allowing Ngāi Tahu to appoint two voting councillors to the Canterbury Regional Council was passed tonight with fractious debate in Parliament about whether it will diminish or enhance democracy and whether other councils will follow suit.

This ends equality of suffrage in Canterbury. All residents get to vote for the elected Councillors but those residents who belong to Ngai Tahu get additional Councillors because of their ancestry.

Tirikatene described the bill, the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngai Tahu Representation) Amendment Bill was “about the evolution of our treaty partnership and representation of Māori, of iwi at the local government level”.

The next step will be all Councils to have 50% of their representatives appointed by Iwi.

National’s Paul Goldsmith said National would repeal the law if it became the Government because it did not uphold equal voting rights for all New Zealanders and did not provide electoral accountability. 

The most basic part of democracy is being able to vote those in power out. The Government seems allergic to this.

“It is our view on this side of the House that the Treaty of Waitangi does not trump democracy and the country has not decided that,” he said.

Sadly such a view should be uncontroversial, but it seems only one side of politics thinks so.

In response to growing criticism of the Reserve Bank allowing inflation to hit 7.3%, Grant Robertson labelled critics as having hindsight. Well that was a mistake, as it allowed the NZ Initiative to respond showing their many many criticisms over the last four years. They include:

• Mar 2018: Warned about price stability
• Aug 2019: Published a research note about the loss of Reserve Bank focus
• Oct 2019: Highlighted loss of economists at Reserve Bank
• Oct 2019: Criticized the decision to cut OCR 50 points instead of 25
• Apr 2020: Warned about funding deficit spending through the central bank
• May 2020: Warned against RBNZ monetarising govt debt
• Jun 2020: Warned against money printing
• May 2021: Warned the current path would end in inflation
• June 2021: Warned against using balance sheet to but climate bonds instead of reducing debt

Think how much better we would be off if the Government or the Reserve Bank had listened!

Professor Robert MacCulloch also notes:

Yes, the RBNZ was flagging future negative interest rates and Quantitative Easing even before the Coronavirus Pandemic. The NZ Initiative fully warned the Finance Minister of the implications. We had perfect foresight. There is not one grain of hindsight in the Wheeler-Wilkinson Report, contrary to the Minister’s assertion.

Basically it was smearing the critics for being right!

As for forecasting the rise in inflation, this blog commented in April 2021, “Our prediction is that the cost of living is on the way up in NZ and interest rates will be going up sooner rather than later”. In May 2021 we wrote, “Amusingly (if that’s the right word?) the RBNZ’s Monetary Policy Committee seems to be the only group in the country which doesn’t think prices are on the rise”. Why? Since in May 2021 the ANZ’s Business Outlook survey showed inflationary pressures were soaring. “Reported costs are through the roof”, said ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner”.

And these statements were made whilst the RBNZ was still printing money!

So Hindsight Economics, is it, eh Grant? No, that’s your style of economics. Folks like Wilkinson, Hartwich & Crampton at the NZ Initiative, former Governor Wheeler & me, we do Foresight Economics. We do so to try to prevent inflation & cost-of-living crises like the one you threw us into. We put in effort to help serve the public interest – my work for doing so is unpaid – and all you can do, Grant, is put us down for political purposes.

Again, think if they had listened!

Radio NZ reports:

Specialists on statistics warn a proposed law change poses the threat of official data being corrupted by political meddling and unregulated sharing.

They are alarmed the new legislation will let the Government Statistician delegate their currently tightly-corralled powers to others, and that it fractures the longstanding constitutional divide between statistics and government policymaking.

“It is a sea-change,” said constitutional lawyer and former Labour Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer.

Government agencies other than Stats NZ use statistics in policymaking, but at present don’t get to decide themselves what to collect and how.

Former chief statistician Len Cook has made submissions to select committee and written media commentary condemning the new bill, and said people in power knew the influence stats had.

The idea the powers could be “transferred in full to other people, with no controls, with no limits” was “unusual in the world” and posed risks, Cook said.

I agree with Len Cook that the powers should not be transferable.

In fact I think the importance of the independence of the Government Statistician is so high, that appointments to that role should not be made just by the Government of the Day (Cabinet has an effective veto), but requite the consent of the Leader of the Opposition also.

In the late 1980s, when inflation was running at around the rate it is now, the government wanted to raise the tax on tobacco – and approached him about it, Cook said.

“Michael Cullen as Associate Minister of Finance requested the government statistician to remove tobacco out of the CPI and the government statistician said, ‘I’m not going to do it’.

Excellent decision.

He knew then he had the legal backup to guard his independence, Cook said – and believes the new Data and Statistics Bill risks that.

“The moment you transfer the authority and all the powers of the government statistician to someone who is more directly connected to a minister, and themselves has a role in keeping ministers content, is a very different thing.”

The country’s longest-serving statistics minister – most recently in 2014, National’s Maurice Williamson – said no one would think multiple agencies printing money was a good idea, and the same applied to statistics.

Yep – one stats agency.

The July 2022 Roy Morgan is out.

Party Vote

• Labour 34.0% (+0.5% from June)
• National 35.0% (-4.0%)
• Greens 10.5% (+0.5%)
• ACT 11.0% (+1.5%)
• Maori 4.0% (+2.5%)
• NZ First 1.5% (nc)
• TOP 2.5% (+0.5%)
• New Conservatives 1.0% (+0.5%)

Seats

• Labour 43 (-22 from election)
• National 45 (+12)
• Greens 13 (+3)
• ACT 14 (+4)
• Maori 5 (+3)

Governments

• Labour/Green 56/120
• Labour/Green/Maori 61/120
• National/ACT 59/120

Direction

• Right 40.5% (+1.5%)
• Wrong 51.0% (-0.5%)

To quote a Stuff story:

A shortage of electric vehicle (EV) chargers in Wellington has drivers frustrated, particularly with big businesses parking their fleet vehicles at public charge points for hours at a time.

He ruarua nō ngā pūkiho waka hiko (EV) ki Pōneke kua raruraru ngā kaihautū waka, ina koa ngā pakihi e whakatū nei i ō rātou tini waka ki ngā pūhiko ā-marea pō te ao, ao te pō.

Lower Hutt residents have complained to The Warehouse Group about its fleet vehicles being left in parks designed for ChargeNet customers, after they have finished charging, blocking others from taking a turn.

Kua amuamu ngā kainoho o Te Awakairangi ki The Warehouse Group mō ōna waka kua waiho kau noa ki ngā tūnga i tōna tikanga mā te kiritaki ChargeNet kē, i muri i te whakahiko, me te aha e kore nei e wātea ki ngā kiritaki anō.

If Stuff is trying hard to lose readers, this is a great way to go about it,.

Don’t get me wrong – I have no problems with them having a te reo version of their stories. But for God’s sake have the te reo version either at the end (or the beginning) of the story (or on another page, so people can click through to it if they want it). But having the story switch from English to Maori every paragraph just makes it unreadable.

I can’t imagine any newspaper in Canada prints stories where they have alternating paragraphs in English and French.

I have been a huge fan of Youth Parliament for the last 20+ years. I have cheerleaded for it, I have reported on it, I have encouraged Youth MPs and journalists. I love the idea of giving young New Zealanders an opportunity to experience being an MP.

But I was dismayed to see TVNZ report:

More than half of this year’s Youth MPs walked out of the debating chamber in response to a fellow participant’s speech on gun rights at Youth Parliament on Wednesday.

The walkout was planned before the speech by 10 to 15 Youth MPs.

I’m sorry, but if half the Youth MPs think that Youth Parliament is about walking out because you disagree with what someone says, then it is time to scrap Youth Parliament. Let them get together and form a school debating club.

What a terrible terrible signal for Youth MPs to send, that they stage a media stunt of a walk out, rather than listen to what someone says, and respond to it.

I also understand that someone (I do not know who) decreed that Youth MPs were not allowed to caucus by party. They were allowed to caucus by their race, their sexual orientation, their gender etc but not by political party. I’m sorry but a Parliament without political parties is absurd. Who made the decision to ban party caucusing?

Anyway as I said I have been a huge huge fan of Youth Parliament. But if it just becomes a forum for media stunts and walkouts, then it has outlived its purpose and should be abolished.

The US system of elections is very different in New Zealand. In New Zealand politicians have basically no role in determining who wins an election. The PM sets the election date, but after that the administration of the election is done by the Electoral Commission who independently declares who has been elected.

In the US, politicians are involved at multiple levels. County Clerks (often a politician) runs the election in their county, and the State Secretary of State runs it in each state. The Governor signs off on who has been elected, and then Congress certifies the results.

This has worked well for most of the last 200 years, but we saw in 2020 how the system could be used to try and overthrow the result with such ridiculous notions such as the Vice-President can unilaterally decide who has won.

The Guardian reports:

A bipartisan group of senators reached a deal on Wednesday to reform a federal law and prevent a future presidential candidate from overturning the will of the people and the result of a valid presidential election.

The lawmakers have agreed to two bills that would reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs how electoral votes are counted after a presidential election. Citing ambiguities in the law, Donald Trump and his attorneys pushed his vice-president, Mike Pence, to disrupt the counting of electoral votes that showed he lost the 2020 election, escalating calls for the 135-year-old law to be reformed.

I hope this law passes. The voters should decide who gets elected, not politicians. The major changes include:

• Raising the threshold for objection to a state’s electors from one Representative and one Senator to 88 Representatives and 20 Senators – so an objection will only be considered if there is a huge number of legislators who believe there is a legitimate issue
• Setting up a quick judicial oversight process where any disputes goes firstly to a three panel court, with a right of appeal to the US Supreme Court.
• Clarifying that only a Governor can submit a slate of electors
• Clarifying that a “failed election” allowing a new slate of electors can only be triggered if there were “extraordinary and catastrophic events”
• Clarifying beyond doubt the Vice-President does not determine which electors are legitimate

Anyone who thinks the US should be a democracy should support these changes.

Stuff reports:

The Prince of Wales accepted a £1 million payment (about NZ$1.9m) from the family of Osama bin Laden, The Sunday Times can reveal.

Prince Charles secured the money from Bakr bin Laden, the patriarch of the wealthy Saudi family, and his brother Shafiq. Both men are half-brothers of Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda who masterminded the September 11 attacks.

Charles, 73, had a private meeting with Bakr, 76, at Clarence House in London on October 30, 2013, two years after Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces in Pakistan.

The future king agreed to the donation despite the initial objections of advisers at Clarence House and the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund (PWCF), where the money was ultimately deposited.

This is our future King and Head of State!

Here’s what should happen when the Queen dies.

1. NZ automatically becomes a republic with the current Governor-General becoming the NZ Head of State, exercising the same powers as they currently do under delegation.
2. Future Heads of State are appointed by a super-majority of 75% of Parliament for a single five year term. The super-majority will mean no politician is appointed as only someone acceptable to both major parties could be appointed.
3. In the absence of a Head of State, the Chief Justice acts as Head of State

Stuff reports:

Russia has blacklisted 32 more Kiwis – including defence force leaders, mayors, councillors, academics and journalists – in response to what the embassy has described as a “Russophobic agenda”.

The Russian Foreign Ministry-issued statement said those included on the list had been banned from entering Russia on an “indefinite basis” in response to New Zealand government sanctions applied to “an increasing number of Russian citizens”. …

Those banned include Matthew Hooton and Josie Pagani. I’m pretty pissed off that Matthew and Josie make the list, and I missed out.

On the other hand it is hilarious that the Russian Government thinks banning Matthew Hooton from travelling to Russia will persuade the Government to go easier on Russia. If anything, it will have the opposite effect!

The Guardian reports:

New Zealand has been ranked second-worst place in the world to move by immigrants, according to a survey.

The expatriate networking organisation InterNations surveyed nearly 12,000 respondents of 177 different nationalities, living in 181 countries. Respondents were asked how their new homes performed on factors including quality of life, cost of living, safety, financial outlook, bureuacracy, and ease of fitting in.

In a resulting ranking of 52 countries – those for whom there was a large enough sample size – Aotearoa New Zealand ranked in the doldrums, at 51. It was beaten to the bottom by Kuwait.

Australia was ranked ninth best overall – people arriving were far more likely to rate the economy positively, feel that they were fairly compensated for work, or think they had fair working hours.

Hey at least we beat Kuwait!

New Zealand was the worst-performing country in the survey’s personal finance measure: 49% of respondents said their disposable household income was not enough to lead a comfortable life, compared with 28% globally. For general cost of living, 75% rated the country negatively, compared with 35% globally.

I remind people that Labour is planning to impose an extra tax of up to $1,800 a year on working people, so unemployed people can get up to $600 a week for six months in return for not getting a job.