We all know the state house waiting list has grown massively under Labour, but possibly we assumed that those on it were the lower priority families. Well the waiting list is divided up into Priority A and Priority B and within Priority A those in the most urgent need are category A20.

In 2017 those in urgent need waited an average of 45 days or six week to be housed. Not perfect, but perhaps a tolerable time. It means any emergency housing for them would be relatively brief.

Today as at the first quarter of 2022, those in category A20 are waiting an average of 421 days or 60 weeks.

And it isn’t just the time that has got longer. In 2017 when Labour claimed we had a housing crisis, there were only 3 families in category A20. This year there are 297 so an almost 10,000% increase.

Don Brash writes:

The Prime Minister pretends that local councils will still own the water infrastructure which their ratepayers have funded but by every measure on which “ownership” is judged, this is a total nonsense: local councils will have absolutely no authority over the water infrastructure in their area. Among other things, because any new urban development is dependent on water infrastructure being put in place in a timely way, this means that the great majority of the decisions which a council makes around urban development – where roads and houses should go – will be effectively determined by the four enormous “entities” into which all water infrastructure will be grouped.

This is a very salient and important point. By giving these entities control over water, they will also have de facto control over urban development. Now if they were controlled by Councils this would not be an issue, but Councils will not have control of these entities.

Stuff reports:

A Government project aimed at filling empty ‘ghost homes’ will not be pursued after a $500,000 investigation and trial. …

Drawing on 2018 Census data, Wise Group wrote there were nearly 95,000 empty dwellings across Aotearoa, however a survey of owners of empty homes suggesting only 10% intentionally kept their properties empty.

So the true number of so called ghost houses is 9,500 in a country of five million people. Hardly significant.

This shows how many children and young people managed to access specialist mental health and addiction services. Under the terrible evil uncaring National Government it went from 25,499 to 48,788 – a 91% increase over six years.

In the first four years of the lovely good caring Labour Government who announced $1.9 billion of mental health funding, the number of young clients seen increased 1.6% over four years.

Stuff reports:

The Opportunities Party has hung out its shingle for the 2023 election announcing a policy of $6.35 billion in income tax cuts, paid for by a land tax on residential housing, and welfare debt write-offs.

This is an excellent policy. I have long advocated a tax swap with income tax and land tax.

The rule of thumb is that anything you tax, you reduce. So:

• A tax on income reduces labour
• A tax on capital reduces investment
• A tax on goods and services reduces consumption

This is why the best tax system is broad based and low rate – to minimise distortions.

But a tax on land is a bit different, as land is a finite amount. So a tax on land won’t reduce the amount of land available – it will instead encourage land owners to get a better economic return from the land.

So TOPs policy will see people rewarded more for working more, and discourage people from land banking. I support it.

The NZH is currently carrying an article out of Britain re the tragic death (suicide) of a 14 year old girl under the headline: A tragedy foretold: How social media killed Molly Russell.

The family, and the coroner, with evidence and justification point to appalling content on the internet that had huge affects on the mental health of the child.

Parents have to understand the virtual world of the internet as if it is a physical world and that their child(ren) are living on the edge of a wild and shark infested ocean. With supervision and guidance swimming and fishing can happen but protecting them is a big part of parenting in 2022. Some practicals:

–          Children do not need a smart phone – regardless of Margaret down the road having one. You will get the age old generational arguments. I will lose my friends. I will be the only one in the whole school. The teachers say I need one. You’re the worst parents in the world. Message phones are fine and fit for purpose until 16 or so.

–          If you allow a smart phone and when students are on work-stations at home – they should NEVER be behind closed doors. Always visual and open to discussion – such as the kitchen table – not squirreled into a corner.

–          Any/all devices get packed away 30 minutes before bed-time. They should never been in a child/young person’s room. Don’t underestimate the cunning of a child who is addicted – or nearly so. They will borrow phones from friends, have a spare phone in their room and will swap the sim cards.

–          Work on replacing time children may have used surfing and swiping for activities, dinner at the table, reading books.

–          If you need help to deal with things then find it – for the sake of your family.

Something connected was a Newhub article yesterday: Youth mental health organisations inundated with callers concerned about world problems

The biggest, terrifying click-baits are often things people can do nothing about. Explained well that has an escape route – and I am not being trivial.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

[email protected]

Andrea Vance writes:

So why then, when Labour are clinging to power by their fingertips, are Kelvin Davis and Willie Jackson so determinedly trashing that brand?

Last week, Davis was forced to apologise to Karen Chhour for a personal attack. The ACT MP had proposed the repeal of a requirement for Oranga Tamariki to operate in accordance with Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Davis accused her of viewing the world through a “vanilla lens” and failing to understand te ao Māori. She has Ngāpuhi whakapapa and grew up in state care. His words cut deeply and later reduced the backbencher to tears. …

Davis’ response to Chhour carried echoes of Jackson’s recent attack on David Seymour. He called the ACT leader “a man who claimed he was Māori”. It’s a theme: Jackson has also accused Paula Bennett, Mike McRoberts and Miriama Kamo of betraying their Māori identity and highlighted Simon Bridges’ inadequate te reo. (He’s also told Dan Bidois to go back to Italy.)

A real pattern.

That Davis and Jackson were quick to temper betrays their character. But it also speaks to a wider problem within the Labour tribe – who prefer invective to rational debate.

This is the anger of the pure believer towards the apostate. It is easier to suppress criticism by dismissing or marginalising the critics as ‘bad’ people (whether that be racist, over-privileged, transphobic, etc) rather than actually addressing the issues.

Ardern’s empathy and cool-headed compassion was not a construct – that is her nature. But it’s easy to be nice when you are winning. Now that the political landscape looks significantly less favourable, some of her MPs are becoming defensive. It is the wrong kind of anger to harness if they want to remain in Government.

I suspect we will see more of it as the polls worsen for them.

The Herald reports:

President Joe Biden sought out deceased Rep. Jackie Walorski on Wednesday during remarks at a hunger conference, saying “Where’s Jackie?” The White House press secretary later said the congresswoman had been “top of mind” for the president at the time.

Karine Jean-Pierre did not acknowledge that Biden had misspoken during his remarks at the White House conference on hunger, nutrition and health when he looked around the room for Walorski, the Indiana congresswoman who died in an August car crash.

Biden, in his remarks. praised bipartisan lawmakers who worked on addressing childhood hunger, including Rep. Jim McGovern, Sen. Mike Braun, Sen. Cory Booker and Walorski, who was seen as a leader on the issue before her death.

“Representative — Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie? I think she wasn’t going to be here — to help make this a reality,” Biden said.

There is little doubt that Biden’s cognitive abilities are affected by his age. That doesn’t mean he has dementia, but it certainly is showing.

That is a shitload of money.

Most households have two people working. Say you Jane on on $120,000 and Jim on $70,000. Their household income will drop by $2,600 a year or over $50 a week.

The jobs tax will be the biggest drop in take home pay for families in over 30 years.

The only way to stop it will be to vote Labour out.

Enter your captions below. They should be funny, and must not be nasty.

Through the work that I do and the data-sets I process on NZ high-schools I do receive a lot of contacts on the issues in NZ education from families. My first point often is, that if you are asking, you are heading towards the right path for your child(ren) to be doing well because you are engaged. There is, of course, more to being a parent that supports and enhances a child’s education than that – but if you are indifferent things are not as likely to turn out well.

The NZ education system, through Boards of Trustees (BoTs), is designed to be lead by families. This is often de-emphasised as the Ministry of Education, or school senior leadership seem to hold all of the cards and keep them close to their chest. This coming week most newly elected BoTs will hold their first meetings.

It is the BoTs that are the employers of the Principal and staff. The BoTs can have a huge role in setting the direction of a school and in improving outcomes for students. The past three years, around the globe, have seen parents come back to the realisation that need to be much more pro-active for their children and challenge what is being taught, the quality of teaching and how their children are doing. There has been significant growth in home-schooling – even in New Zealand.

Most new Board members will be aware that there are significant challenges in our system. They might be aware of NZ’s rapid comparative decline in international measures of literacy and numeracy. They might be aware of the attendance problems in the NZ system (although the government seems very reluctant to release Term 2 figures). They might even feel that they have some understanding of how their school does through figures for NCEA that are release in February. Those figures are cohort figures – Year group by Year group for who remains. Some schools are losing 40% of their students before they turn 17 years old and that does not show up in cohort measures.

The figures the new Trustees need are the figures for LEAVERS that are released in August and I do a full process on against a range of metrics that can be compared to every other high school in NZ. I have two data sets available – one against the decile system (still in place this year), and one against the newly released Equity Index numbers – that should have some correlation to achievement – that are being used for some aspects of funding from 2023.

If you – or anyone you know – has gone onto a high school BoT (or simply if you are interested) – please make contact. Please also keep in mind BoT meetings all have to be open to all parents and the public. You can make a difference.

[email protected]

The NZ Association of Economists polled members on the best response to climate change. The results show there is a massive consensus.

• Tightening the Emissions Trading Scheme’s cap on net emissions would be a less expensive way to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions than a collection of policies, such as fuel economy standards for imported vehicles, that target emissions already covered by the ETS. – 87% agree, 5% disagree for +82% agreement
• If other market failures unduly hinder adjusting to rising carbon prices, policies directly targeting those market failures may reduce the cost of mitigating emissions. – 81% agree, 2% disagree for +79% agreement
• Undesirable distributional consequences of rising carbon prices are better handled through a carbon dividend that rebates government ETS revenues to households as an annual lump-sum transfer (potentially with higher transfers to lower-income households) rather than through regulatory measures requiring targeted emission reductions in sectors less likely to affect poorer households or through measures like subsidies for electric vehicles. – 93% agree, 2% disagree for +91% agreement

This is what you would call settled science. The sad thing is the Government is doing the opposite and pursuing policies that will achieve less and cost more.

Radio NZ reports:

Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere is calling an investigation into his charities political donations racist.

The Charities Services is investigating Tamihere in relation to two donations made by National Urban Māori Authority and Te Whānau o Waipareira, of which Tamihere is also chief executive.

Tamihere said they disclosed everything in audited financial statements and that there was no cover up or attempt to be dishonest.

“It is a sad day for democracy in Aotearoa when Māori get demonised for being honest in publicly ensuring that every cent spent to advance the Te Pāti Māori, or Māori causes by Māori people is somehow deemed illegal or unworthy.” …

Tamihere said should the Charities Commission find against them, they would litigate this because he said they had a right to overtly and openly stand up in a free democracy.

You can be a charity or be a political party, but you can’t be both. This has nothing to do with race. It is about charities only being able to spend money on charitable purposes.

Stuff reports:

Michael Hill jewellery store in Albany mall was smashed with hammers on Friday night as people nearby ate dinner.

Eyewitnesses report a group of masked thieves smashing cabinets at the Michael Hill branch at the Westfield mall.

An eyewitness said they saw five police officers guarding the store after the incident, and they could see at least four display cabinets had been smashed.

Shocking that they will break in and burgle a place during daylight hours. They have no fear of being caught or of consequences it seems.

The Chief Ombudsman has found:

Mr Boshier says most agencies have set up media teams to respond to queries from journalists but these teams do not seem to apply the law.

“There appears to be a widespread misapprehension that many media information requests don’t fall under the OIA, and that applying the law is difficult and complicated. These perceptions are false.”

Mr Boshier discovered multiple examples of media teams within agencies breaching section 19 of the OIA.

This is a damning finding. If anyone should be experts in the OIA it should be the media teams. But instead the Chief Ombudsman has found they are the worst offenders.

“In fact, the processes adopted by the agencies have little or nothing to do with the law itself and I intend to consider this matter further.”

Good.

Mr Boshier says he found gaps in all 12 agencies in terms of their record keeping and Information Management systems, with several agencies breaching the Public Records Act.

Most open and transparent Government ever!

This data tells such a powerful story. There are four parts to it.

1. In June 2009 when National had just come in, immunisation rates were shocking. 1 out of 5 2 year olds were not fully immunised. 1 in 4 Maori kids not immunised
2. National lifted overall rates to 92% to 94%, the Maori rate to 93% and the most deprived decile rate to 95%. The unvaccinated went from 1 in 5 to 1 in 20 and for Maori from 1 in 4 to 1 in 14. Rates stayed fairly constant from 2011 to 2017.
3. After Labour dropped the health targets, the rates started to slip for Maori and the most deprived. Maori dropped to 88% and Decile 9/10 to 89%.
4. The last two and a half years have been a disaster with rates dropping to 67% for Maori and 73% for Decile 9/10. We’ve gone from 1 in 14 Maori kids unvaccinated to 1 in 3. We’ve gone from 1 in 20 Decile 9/10 kids unvaccinated to 1 in 4.

We need a Government that will make lifting the immunisation rates a priority.

Greenwald has 1.8 million followers on Twitter, has won multiple journalism awards and doesn’t like censorship. The video has been viewed by over 800,000 people, been retweeted over 5,000 times and has made Fox News.

It is amazing NZ media have almost ignored the extraordinary speech by the Prime Minister where she referred to the free and open Internet as a weapon of war, and the fact that some people online deny climate change as a reason for Governments to step in and regulate the Internet.

The NZ media often report breathlessly that the PM got some minor plaudit in a US newspaper, yet seem oblivious to the fact that millions of people reacting with horror to her UN speech.

The Herald reports:

Vodafone’s NZ chief executive has defended the company’s rebranding to One New Zealand amid criticism the new name has white supremacist connotations.

The telecommunications company ditched the red and white used by Vodafone globally in favour of an emerald or greenstone green.

However, it now shares a similar name to the One New Zealand Foundation, an organisation that describes itself as “concerned about increasing privilege being given to one race of people over all other[s]” and has called the Waitangi Tribunal “an undemocratic and secretive institution”.

The telco’s chief executive officer Jason Paris took to social media to defend the company’s new name.

“One NZ stands for the best of NZ (diversity, inclusion, trust, innovation etc),” he tweeted.

Vodafone is uber-woke so it is hilarious that they chose a new brand name that was best known for being the exact opposite.

I thought Telecom’s rebranding to Spark was a good move (and worked well) but One New Zealand is just so blah.

The merger of TVNZ and Radio New Zealand will cost taxpayers $368 million according to the recent Budget.

The last annual reports for TVNZ and RNZ had their net worth at $298 million and $67 million respectively. Together they have a net worth of $366 million.

So taxpayers are going to be out of pocket by $368 million to merge together two companies worth $366 million. Isn’t it ludicrous? Especially as the merger is a solution looking for a problem.