A number of media outlets have written about government contracts that have gone to members of the Mahuta family.

The Platform reports in detail. It ranges from her sister being appointed to numerous boards to a five person waste strategy working group having no fewer than three Mahuta family members on it.

I should make clear that I don’t think this is a story about any wrong doing on the part of Nanaia Mahuta. The analogy I would use is that this is more a Hunter Biden situation. Joe Biden did nothing to help Hunter Biden gain board appointments, yet it is obvious that Hunter was appointed to roles he had no expertise for, because of his family connection. Hunter Biden was appointed to the boards of a Ukrainian energy company and a Chinese investment company.

Of course having a Minister as a family member should not be a bar to receiving Government appointments. What you have to look at is whether they are roles they would have gained anyway. Sir Wira Gardiner was appointed to many roles by both National and Labour Governments. But these started long before he married Hekia Parata. Denese Henare was appointed a Judge, but no one thinks this is because she was married to Wayne Mapp. Apryll Parata was appointed a second level manager at the Ministry of Education when her sister was Minister. But Parata had a long career in education. Interestingly the appointment of Apryll Parata was criticised by no less than Nanaia Mahuta.

But this is very different to three out of five members of a government working group all being members of the same family. I can’t recall that ever happening. And the process used was very non-transparent. Were these family members regularly gaining Government contracts before Mahuta was made a Minister would be a key question?

They were paid $90,000 for their work on waste strategy. Were there no other waste experts in New Zealand that three of the five members had to come from the same family?

News from Finland:

Finland’s Green Party (Vihreät De Gröna) has voted by a large majority at its party conference to adopt a pro-nuclear approach. The party manifesto now states that nuclear is “sustainable energy” and demands the reform of current energy legislation to streamline the approval process for small modular reactors (SMRs). Finland’s is the first Green Party to adopt such a position.

“This is a historical moment in the history of the green movement, as we are the first green party in the world to officially let go of anti-nuclearism,” said Tea Törmänen, who attended the conference as chair of the Savonia/Karelia chapter of Viite, the pro-science internal group of the party. The Green Party shift represents a win for the Finnish Greens for Science and Technology, (Viite) which was founded in 2008 as an internal party grouping to “advance political decision making that is based on scientific knowledge.”

Nice to see a Green Party put science ahead of hysteria.

I’ve been sent a copy of a very lengthy paper (101 pages long) that finds that pre 1840 Auckland was never referred to as Tāmaki Makaurau. They assert it was constructed in the 20th century from a proverb which originated in the 1860s

I do not have the knowledge or skills to judge if the paper is correct. But it is a very serious paper with 226 referenced footnotes. I have embedded it below so people can read it for themselves.

Dan Hannan writes:

Do watch Britain’s Strictest Headmistress on ITV on Sunday evening – especially if you are a teacher. It will cheer you up. The documentary about Michaela Community School in Brent shows kids who begin life with few advantages leaving school confident, ambitious and qualified.

But it may do more than cheer you up. It may restore some old truths that, deep down, we always recognised, however unfashionable they became among educationalists

Katharine Birbalsingh, the headmistress in question, did not start out as a traditionalist. At Oxford, she joined the Socialist Workers Party. When she began her teaching career, she went in with all the usual assumptions: schools were underfunded, the biggest obstacle facing non-white kids was structural racism. But she found that her classroom experiences could not sustain those pre-conceptions. The real problem, she came to realise, lay in the attitude of the people who oversaw our schools.

Instead of imparting knowledge, teachers were overseeing child-led discussions. Instead of promoting confidence, they were encouraging victimhood. Instead of upholding the canon, they were seeking out obscure texts on grounds of identity politics. Instead of expecting high standards, they were indulging pupils from under-privileged backgrounds, and thus unintentionally condemning them.

Sound familiar?

Note Birbalsingh is Indo-Guyanese and Jamaican and is technically a Kiwi – she was born in NZ.

Birbalsingh began to dream of a different kind of school – a school with houses and uniforms and discipline and classics. Why, she wondered, should these things be the preserve of the rich? Didn’t children in deprived boroughs need them more?

Not in the view of the Labour councillors who ran those deprived boroughs. The last thing they wanted was a traditionalist school showing up its neighbours. Again and again, Birbalsingh was rebuffed before, in 2014, finally being allowed to take over an old office block by Wembley Park tube.

In these unpropitious surroundings, she has pulled off what I can only call a secular miracle. Many of Michaela’s children come from estates poisoned by drugs and gangs. Perhaps nine in ten are from ethnic minorities, with dozens of different home languages. Forty-one per cent of her first intake were officially classed as disadvantaged, meaning they had qualified for free school meals. Yet in 2019, that cohort, the first to sit GCSEs, secured some of the best grades in the country: 54 per cent got 7, 8 or 9 (the top grades, equivalent to A or A* under the old system) as against a national average of 22 per cent.

So her school got results two and half times as good as the national average, despite being in a very poor area. It shows the difference one person can make.

What is Michaela’s secret? A set of principles that could be made to work in any school: gratitude must be taught; phones banned; competition encouraged; learning teacher-led; national cohesion promoted; high standards expected; adult authority upheld.

Not rocket science.

I did; and I did. I have never met more impressive teachers. They engaged their students through dozens of techniques that would work in any classroom. For example, when questions are posed in class, instead of responding immediately, pupils are encouraged to pair up and explain their answer to their partners, so that everyone has to formulate it.

As they walk into lunch, the kids belt out verses that they have memorised – Kipling’s If, Henley’s Invictus, passages from Shakespeare. This is the only time they make a noise inside; there is usually no talking in the corridors – which means no misbehaviour and no bullying.

Over lunch, they are given a topic to talk about. Afterwards, they express their appreciation for someone – a teacher for helping them, another student for making them feel welcome, their mother for always having their uniform ready. Gratitude is a happier emotion than grievance, and perhaps the most striking feature of Michaela is how cheerful its children are. The school’s detractors imagine it as a Dickensian poorhouse; in fact, children like order and respond to being stretched. The listlessness, anxiety and rudeness that I have seen in schools that pride themselves on their liberalism are unimaginable here.

Gratitude not grievance,. I like it.

Stuff reports:

Former Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has launched legal proceedings against Parliament Speaker Trevor Mallard over a defunct trespass order.

Peters said he filed judicial review application against Mallard at the High Court in Wellington on Monday afternoon.

He was seeking a declaration from the court that a trespass order placed on him, and then withdrawn, was “unlawful, unreasonable, and irrational”.

This will be a fascinating case, if not settled out of court.

Kiri Allan announced that the disclosure level for donations to political parties will be reduced from $15,000 to $5,000. Once again we see Labour trying to push through partisan changes to electoral law without wide support.

The current level of $15,000 was the result of a bipartisan agreement in 2008 or 2009 between National and Labour. National wanted the level increased from $10,000 as it hadn’t kept pace with inflation and Labour opposed that. Labour wanted to keep a registration regime and spending limits on third parties, which National had opposed. They compromised and agreed on a bill which increased the disclosure limit and retained the third party spending limits. That was the system working – compromise and agreement.

Now Labour is reneging on that, and planning to push through a partisan law change to try and suppress donations to other parties. They are proposing a disclosure limit that will represent around 0.1% of what a major party spends in an election year. The idea that a donation to a party that represents say 0.2% of its income would buy policy influence is conspiracy theory land.

What this is really about is Labour has had its donations dried up. So they want to discourage donations to other parties.

The donation disclosure limit was set at $10,000 when MMP came in, in 1996. In 2022 dollars it would be $17,000. So the current level of $15,000 is less in real terms than in 1996.

Stuff reports:

Wellington mayoral candidate Paul Eagle says he won’t be removing his election signage from digital billboards around the city, despite being asked to by the council.

Eagle says he will be leaving the signs up until this weekend, as he had planned.

The signs caused confusion online on Monday, the day Eagle announced he was running for the mayoralty. Twitter users questioned their legality as they were on display outside of the permitted election advertising period.

Wellington City Council electoral officer Warwick Lampp said he had asked Eagle to remove the ads until the formal election hoarding period began on August 27, but Eagle maintained he was within his rights.

He was clearly within his rights and it appalling that a returning officer would try to pressure a candidate to remove a legal sign. I have long advocated that rather than have each Council appoint a Returning Officer, the Electoral Commission should be in charge of all local elections. They have legal expertise and resources so they don’t just make things up.

Lampp said the policy is designed to create a level playing field for candidates and has been generally respected for many years. The council website says signage on private land must be displayed only between August 27 and October 8.

But lawyer Graeme Edgeler says this applies to only temporary corflute signage.

“I am entirely confident that these are lawful,” Edgeler said. “As long as this is a commercial billboard space – and Paul has said it is, and it clearly looks to be one in the picture.”

Edgeler is an electoral law expert. The Returning Officer should apologise for his actions.

UPDATE: It is even worse. A later story points out:

Two previous mayoral candidates also have confirmed they were never told to take down their advertising at a similar stage of their campaigns.

An invoice viewed by the Herald shows 2016 Labour mayoral candidate Justin Lester paid for campaign advertising over the course of July that year.

Lester’s opponent Nick Leggett also has pictures on his Facebook page of advertising on buses and billboards as early as May.

The Returning Officer should potentially be sacked for this. He has effectively smeared a candidate by inventing a new rule and claiming the candidate broke it. Further evidence shows previous mayoral candidates were advertising in July and never asked not to. This smacks of partisanship.

Stuff reports:

Traditional values advocate Family First New Zealand has lost a bid to be able to register as a charity.

In a unanimous decision issued on Tuesday the Supreme Court said the main issue in the appeal was whether Family First met its stated charitable purpose of advancing education.

“The activities of Family First do not support the proposition that its purpose is educational,” the court concluded after reviewing its purposes, activities and 17 research papers it had published.

Family First lacked balance and objectivity, the court decided.

I actually agree with the decision. I do not think lobby groups should get charitable status. However the Supreme Court made the opposite decision with Greenpeace and ruled they can be registered as a charity. That decision was wrong – both Greenpeace and Family First are lobby groups.

So effectively what we seem to have is a Supreme Court that says lobby groups we like can be charities, but ones we don’t like can’t be. That is very unfortunate.

I personally think the definition of charitable purposes should be far tighter. Charitable status should be reserved for charities that primarily actually help people like the Red Cross, CCS, Fred Hollows etc.

Stuff reports:

The Government was sent a letter by all district health boards a year ago, warning of “considerable pressures” and outlining “critical workforce issues” being faced by DHBs and exacerbated by the immigration settings at that time.

DJs were being allowed in while doctors and nurses were not.

“DHBs are experiencing significant challenges to maintain safe levels of services that are being exacerbated by workforce supply challenges. Most importantly this includes the risk that existing overseas-trained employees will leave due to an inability to secure their futures as residents of New Zealand,” it said.

And this happened.

The worst kept secret in Wellington ended this week with Rongotai MP (and former Deputy Mayor) announcing he will run for Mayor of Wellington. I was interested in a couple of tweets.

Fleur Fitzsimons is one of the most left leaning Councillors and Diane Calvert is very much on the opposite side politically to her. Quite remarkable to have both of them endorse Paul Eagle. That would suggest he is seen as someone who can work with a Council made up of very different views.

Andrea Vance writes:

“I’m a Covid Healthcare Hero.”

Like the lapel pin, the insult was sharp. This tiny badge was about the final straw for a GP in a busy, urban practice.

“What am I supposed to do with those?” she asked of the parcel, sent from a local Primary Health Organisation. “Pay my nurses?”

She sent them back.

Lapel pins. Whose genius idea was that.

The strain on the system has knock-on effects. People who should have seen a doctor are spilling into already-crowded emergency departments (ED). Wait times have blown out. Patients are stuck in the ED, waiting for beds to be freed up on wards.Tragically, a 51-year-old woman died of a brain bleed after leaving Middlemore ED because of long waits.

Shorter ED waiting times save lives.

The health system is in meltdown. Call it a crisis, or don’t. It is collapsing around us.

Healthcare staff are at the end of their rope – undervalued and underpaid for years, the wave of strikes is a cry for help. Most are distressed because they know people will die because they can’t access treatment.

As the system buckles, there is incredulity that Health Minister Andrew Little is pushing ahead with a bureaucratic overhaul. Doctors are being asked to work – unpaid – on groups advising the ministry on how to bed in the new regime. No-one seems to know how it will work – the changes are yet another burden that the workforce cannot absorb.

Instead of prioritising a flow of overseas healthcare workers, or returning normal care to reasonable timeframes, his Ministry is pre-occupied with an administrative rejig.

It does seem the worst possible time to undertake what will be the largest restructuring of the health system in recent memory.

They have a nickname for the Health Minister: Dr Do-Little.

Quite fitting for a Minister who laments he doesn’t know why the $1.9 billion in mental health funding didn’t lead to any improved outcomes.

Luke Malpass writes:

A recession, which was unthinkable even a year ago, is now all but a certainty. It is a matter of not if, but when.

A bold call. Why? Malpass points to the following:

• Shortage of workers
• Shortages of supplies
• Entrenched inflation
• Lowest ever consumer confidence
• Massive decline in competitiveness
• Major cities becoming less liveable
• Rising interest rates

A nasty mix it is.

TVNZ reports:

New statistics have revealed the failure of KiwiBuild to increase home ownership rates for Māori and Pasifika New Zealanders.

Figures released to Q+A with Jack Tame under the Official Information Act show just 4.8% of KiwiBuild buyers who gave their ethnicity on their application forms are Māori, and 4.4% are Pasifika.

These figures are well below the ethnicity breakdown of the general population, which is 16.5% Māori, and 8% Pasifika.

This is no surprise. The same happened with their free tertiary fees policies which mainly benefited wealthy European families.

Basically this shows that around 60 Maori families have been helped by Kiwibuild, so this may have increased the Maori home ownership rate by 0.027%.

At the current rate of progress, the original target of 100,000 KiwiBuild homes will be reached around the year 2300.

Not 2100, not 2200 but 2300!!!

They promised 100,000 homes in ten years and they are on track to deliver it in 283 years!

How long is 283 years? Well the time from 1739 to today.

Can you imagine some politician in 1739 promising something, and then you find out they won’t complete it until 2022!

Kate McNamara writes:

The Productivity Commission delivered a new inquiry into immigration last month, at the same time that it is facing its own story of migration: an exodus. It involves a string of departures that have not yet been stemmed by an independent HR investigation and a slew of recommended remedies.

A distinct wave of resignations began in February last year, when two of the independent Crown entity’s principal advisers left. In subsequent months they were followed out the door by six more staffers, including two lynchpin managers, each of whom had been directing one of the commission’s two inquiries of the time. The eight departures in 2021 made up more than half the commission’s 15 employees (the head count as of January 1, 2021, including one part-timer).

Losing half your staff in a year is generally a sign of severe problems.

An HR review called late last year found problems at the commission including a troubled transition under the leadership of Ganesh Nana, who became chair on February 1, 2021. It also found an uneasy relationship between the new chair and many staff, especially senior ones. While efforts to improve staff retention are underway, at least four more employees have resigned from the commission in the first half of this year. Of the senior leadership team described in commission documents at this time last year, only one of the five remains.

So in 18 months they have lost 80% of their staff.

In addition, reports of divisions at board level have been underscored by the early and unexplained departure of commissioner Andrew Sweet in March, two months before his term was to end. Also leaving is commissioner Gail Pacheco, who did not seek reappointment for a second term. Pacheco has agreed to remain temporarily past the end of her term, which expires at the end of the month, in order not to leave the board without a quorum (Sweet’s departure reduced the board to three).

Half the board gone also. You don’t have to be a genius to work out where the problem is.

Of the staff who spoke to the Herald, many elaborated that they found Nana’s economic and analytical input to their work “light weight” and his manner detached and awkward. They said Rosenberg was distant, and he was repeatedly described as “ideological” and set in his thinking.

This is no surprise. Both men are hugely ideological and the area of productivity is a highly technical one.

Some staff felt the HR review did not adequately reflect the interviews they’d given, especially the strength of their emotions. “I cried through the whole interview,” one said. Another described being surprised and overwhelmed by the strength of reaction the interview gave rise to: “I just felt this surge of rage”.

Sounds like a terrible place to work if former staff cry or get angry talking about it.

Stuff reports:

The House sent US President Joe Biden the most wide-ranging gun violence bill Congress has passed in decades on Friday (local time), a measured compromise that at once illustrates progress on the long-intractable issue and the deep-seated partisan divide that persists.

The Democratic-led chamber approved the election-year legislation on a mostly party-line 234-193 vote, capping a spurt of action prompted by voters’ revulsion over last month’s mass shootings in New York and Texas. The night before, the Senate approved it by a bipartisan 65-33 margin, with 15 Republicans joining all Democrats in supporting a package that senators from both parties had crafted.

The bill would incrementally toughen requirements for young people to buy guns, deny firearms from more domestic abusers and help local authorities temporarily take weapons from people judged to be dangerous. Most of its US$13 billion cost would go to bolster mental health programmes and for schools, which have been targeted in Newtown, Connecticut, Parkland, Florida and many other infamous massacres.

And while it omits the far tougher restrictions Democrats have long championed, it stands as the most impactful gun violence measure that Congress has approved since it enacted a now-expired assault weapons ban nearly 30 years ago.

The House vote was 220 Democrats and 14 Republicans in favour.

Pleased to see this pass. Taking a more cautious approach to teenagers buying firearms is very sensible.

Stuff reports:

Auckland and Wellington were top of the pops last year, rated the world’s second and fourth most liveable cities.

This year, they have dropped down the rankings like a stone – and Covid-19 is largely to blame.

The 2022 Global Liveability Index, by the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranked cities around the world on factors including health care, crime rates, political stability, infrastructure and access to green space.

It ranked Auckland 34th out of 173, a considerable drop from second in 2021. …

Wellington also experienced a notable drop, falling to 50th from fourth in 2021. …

The city in first place this year is Vienna, Austria. In last place is Damascus, Syria.

Vienna is a beautiful city – my favourite city in Europe. Pleased to see we still rank higher than Damascus.

The top 11 are:

1. Vienna
2. Copenhagen
3. Zurich
4. Calgary
5. Vancouver
6. Geneva
7. Frankfurt
8. Toronto
9. Amsterdam
10. Osaka
11. Melbourne

I’ve been to most of those cities. Slightly surprised Frankfurt ranks so highly. I do love Vancouver.

The cities that have dropped the most are:

1. Wellington -46
2. Auckland -33
3. Adelaide -27
4. Perth -26
5. Houston -25
6. Reykjavik -25
7. Madrid -24
8. Taipei -20
9. Barcelona -19
10. Brisbane -17

The ratings are based on five criteria:

• Stability 25% (crime etc)
• Healthcare 20%
• Culture/Environment 25%
• Education 10%
• Infrastructure 20%

I suspect the rise in inner city crime in Auckland and Wellington will be a factor in the droppings.

A guest post by a reader:

Large numbers of well meaning people have been campaigning against Three Waters since it was announced. Unfortunately the government has done nothing to change its approach. This is not surprising. There have been no direct electoral consequences for any politician. Noise & PR campaigns can be ignored. Losing your job cannot. A far more direct approach is needed, where those holding elected positions see that they are likely to lose their positions if they do not change their policy. A direct, personal consequence sharpens the minds of politicians in a way that public meetings and protests do not. The general election is not until late next year, so Labour politicians are largely immune to the current campaigns against Three Waters.

The two opportunities to stop Three Waters through elections in 2022 are the local government elections in the spring, and the LGNZ conference at the end of July. Councillors in favour of Three Waters need to understand that they have to persuade their constituents if they want to get reelected. Campaigns against three waters supporters at the council elections are likely to have an impact. The more immediate opportunity for the Local Government sector to show their disgust at Three Waters is for a council to move a motion of no confidence in the President of Local Government New Zealand, Stuart Crosby. Crosby sold out Local Government New Zealand by accepting money to work with the government on Three Waters, when as many as half of LGNZs member councils oppose it.

A vote of No Confidence in Crosby will show there are genuine consequences for supporting Three Waters, and that politicians will be held to account for imposing unpopular policies without the consent of their voters. Failure to deal with LGNZ selling out its constituent councils on Three Waters will embolden Labour to push for the second phase. Once councils lose their water assets they will have much less to do, so Labour will likely push through amalgamations, and impose co governance on amalgamated councils. LGNZ members  need to seize the initiative away from the government and sack Stuart Crosby.

I have to say I was aghast when LGNZ (an organisation that has done much good work in the past) took money from central Government to promote Three Waters to Councils. The job of LGNZ is to represent Councils to the Government, not vice-versa. It was a monumentally bad decision.

Even if LGNZ thought that working with the Government to make a bad policy better was preferable to opposing it outright, they should have done that without signing a contract with the Government that required them to not oppose Three Waters. The loss of independence and integrity was massive.

So it will be interesting to see if Councils do hold anyone at LGNZ responsible.

Eric Crampton writes:

Just before 3pm on a Sunday afternoon, about a dozen New Zealand Transport Agency and Ministry of Transport officials received a weekend-ruining email. Subject: “Cabinet paper: Urgent.”

It provides a depressing insight into how policy gets made.

The agency that would have to administer a fuel tax and Road User Charge (RUC) holiday had less than a day’s notice that the change was coming.

Important detail had to be filled in after the policy was announced, which also may have prevented improvements that ran counter to what had already been announced.

The scheme was obviously fraught with complexity and potential for gaming.

I expected that the NZTA may have provided a few warnings about the messes that the Government would encounter, so I put in a request for any advice that NZTA provided in advance of the scheme’s announcement, and correspondence about it.

The very first email in that trail was an urgent email from an NZTA senior manager in Investment and Finance to a collection of NZTA and Ministry of Transport officials at 2.53pm Sunday, March 13. An urgent cabinet paper was due to the minister at 11am the next day.

Officials were told to calculate how much it would cost to reverse the increases in RUCs and Fuel Excise that had occurred since 2018, assuming normal use volumes. They had 20 hours, less any amount of time spent sleeping.

This shows you how panicked Labour were by their falling poll numbers. They were desperate to do something, anything, on the cost of living front so they gave officials 20 hours to work out a policy on cutting road user and fuel charges.

It would make Mickey Mouse look like Michael Bloomberg.

NZTA did an admirable job, under circumstances that should not be faced except under real emergency.

There was no emergency that required inventing policy on less than 24 hours’ notice to officials, forcing them to work past 11pm on a Sunday night.

There was only a political emergency caused by Labour’s drop in the polls, resulting in a ruined weekend for officials, extensive and imperfect backfilling of details afterwards, and theft from the Covid fund to cover road costs.  

It is a terrible way to run a country.

They say you get the Government you deserve, but I think we deserve better.