As most readers will know, Stuff ran a story that said PM Luxon had asked the Samoan Government to give him a title.

This was a hugely damaging story. Anyone who read that would think incredibly poorly of Luxon.

It was false. This is beyond doubt. This has been confirmed by both Governments.

Now to be fair to Stuff, the Samoan PM did say that the NZ High Commissioner said that Luxon had asked for it. So that was newsworthy.

However where Stuff went wrong, was rushing out a story before they got a response from Luxon, MFAT etc. There was no journalistic justification for this. This was not an urgent story. Once upon a time media would put a negative allegation to someone for comment, before running a story. Why did Stuff not wait for a response from Luxon’s office and/or MFAT?

Did no one at Stuff think how unlikely it was that the claim was true, and that they should wait for a response before running a story that would lower the view of the PM in the eyes of anyone who saw it?

As it happened, the Samoan PM was wrong, or confused, or just making things up. If Stuff had waited for a response from MFAT and Luxon’s office, then they would have been able to run an accurate story. But instead they ran a story that many saw, and not all will have seen the later story. Even now there are many on social media who are quoting the original story, and spreading it.

It seems some claims need to be authenticated before publishing, but not others.

Nicola Willis wrote:

Chris Hipkins has let the truth slip about Labour’s Covid spending.

On Newstalk ZB yesterday he admitted the Labour Government would have gone ahead with many of its spending decisions even without the cover of the pandemic.

That matters, because the Covid Royal Commission found about half of the $60 billion spent in the name of the pandemic went on unrelated programmes and projects.

Both the Royal Commission and Treasury say that spending pushed up the cost of living and government debt.

In other words, the pandemic became a convenient excuse to spend taxpayers’ money on things Labour wanted to do anyway.

And if Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori get another chance, they’ll do it again: borrow more, spend more, tax more.

This is a very important point. They used the tragedy of a global pandemic to raid taxpayers pockets for a spending splurge. They spent $30 billion meant for Covid-19 recovery on every pet project they had. This meant that National inherited a permanent structural deficit, and increasing debt.

Now as we face a potential oil crisis due to the Iran conflict, the Government has less ability to cushion us from this global shock, because of what Hipkins and Robertson did.

They promised in 2017 to keep spending below 30% of GDP. I thought 28% would have been a better cap (our long-term average) but hey both Labour and Greens said they would cap it at 30%, and I could live with that.

They used the excuse of Covid-19 to load an additional $30 billion of non-covid expenditure onto the books, and blew spending up to 34% of GDP – a level way way in excess of our tax take. It was an act of economic sabotage that leaves us today much more vulnerable to the Middle East crisis that we would have been.

It is the inevitable consequence of a non-adversarial fact-finding system that no matter how competent and diligent the fact-finder, mistakes are made in the findings. For example, in my case the IPCA said that I was 2-3 metres from the edge of the kerb when I was arrested, whereas in fact I was five metres exactly (I measured it). The IPCA also made various other minor errors in the report, including for example the following:

[150] We accept that, when Police first saw Lucy, she was holding a sign above her head and shaking it as Police describe, because she wanted the protestors to notice her and read her sign. That’s why she was there. Being noticed is the purpose of any protest or counter-protest.

The IPCA also said in para 84 that I was “waving” my sign.

In fact I did not wave around my sign. Even if I had wanted to (and to be honest waving signs around is not my style) I did not have time to because the Police started assaulting me within seconds of my arrival without speaking to me first. But it did not occur to the IPCA to ask me whether I was waving it. That is now problematic because another police officer has now come forward with a statement saying that I was “jousting” my arms up and down before the Police engaged with me, and accordingly said that my body language did not appear peaceful. In fact none of this is true.

More importantly however, the IPCA found that some of the officers who arrested me (although by no means all) did so in good faith. This is because one of them before the second video came out of my arrest told the IPCA that I was not yelling (which contradicted the evidence of the other officers). The reason that she did that was because telling the truth about that aspect of the evidence (when at the time if she had said that I was yelling I would not have been able to prove otherwise) meant that she had a massive credibility boost, and she knew that she would accordingly be given the benefit of the doubt that the arrest itself was in good faith. This strategy succeeded.

However, this could not have happened if I had been made aware of the IPCA’s thinking on the matter, because I could have pointed out that aspects of the officer’s evidence were untrue. For example, she says that Senior Sergeant Vaughan Perry was speaking to me before the police started assaulting me, which I believe that I can prove is not true. (I shall not go into the evidence in that regard now.) She said that because she was one of the people who assaulted me and she wanted to justify doing so, whereas she knew that assaulting me without speaking to me first would be illegal. There are a number of other aspects of her evidence which are also (in my opinion) provably untrue.

Accordingly, the IPCA is not minded at present to prosecute her for her actions. When I heard that this was the decision I kicked up a fuss and asked to be heard on the matter, but it is much harder to get the IPCA to change its findings retrospectively than it would have been if I had heard about it before the IPCA report came out. The Police by contrast get to see IPCA reports in advance where adverse comment is made, so they can provide comment of their own.

I do not hold it against the IPCA that they overlooked a slippery witness such as she: I see it as an ordinary consequence of a non-adversarial fact-finding system, rather than an indictment on IPCA competence. Mistakes will inevitably be made when both sides are not properly heard. In my opinion, the law needs to be changed to allow complainants to see IPCA reports in advance of publication, to avoid problems exactly like this. It is not fair that the Police get to see IPCA reports in advance of publication where adverse comment is made about them, but not complainants.

In the meantime, it is important that the public know that the IPCA’s articulation of the facts in public reports tends to favour Police, not because the IPCA are biased but because of the way the system works. (I note of course that IPCA staff did not choose this system.) When the Police can comment to their heart’s content (and when complainants have to fight blindfold with our hands tied behind our backs) that is simply the inevitable consequence. Unfortunately, I don’t think most complainants appreciate this, and so (I suspect) tend to attribute small mistakes in IPCA reports to IPCA sympathy for Police. It is yet another reason for widespread public distrust in the IPCA.

The Medical Council has proposed a statement on cultural competence that is basically a political litmus test. It is outrageous overreach, and an example of why Parliament needs to rein in all these regulatory bodies.

No one would object to a statement that doctors must be respectful of all cultures and beliefs, while undertaking their medical duties. But this goes far further. Extracts are:

• “Historical and ongoing colonisation means that Māori are prevented from accessing resources that promote good health and experience much higher exposure to health harms compared to non-Māori.” – This is a political assertion, not a medical fact. It is true Maori have worse health outcomes, but saying it is due to colonisation is a political statement
• “using your professional privilege and influence to work in partnership with Māori to identify and dismantle unfair systems and power imbalances that undermine hauora Māori.” – this means you must agree with our view of the world, and actively campaign for what we believe

The Taxpayer’s Union has done a report listing 103 ways local government can save money. Some of the more significant ones which I support are:

• Install water meters
• Avoid excessive advertising
• Do regional shared services
• Don’t rebrand
• Stop postal billing
• Sell unused assets
• Pay market rates for jobs, no more
• Stop corporate welfare
• Leave social housing to central government
• Let the ETS reduce greenhouse gas emissions

In this part, I look at how often urgency has been used to bypass select committee consideration of a bill, and also how often the 6 months standard consultation period has been reduced.

This practice is what should most strongly be pushed back. Bypassing select committee robs the public of the ability to submit on laws, and also for technical improvements to be identified.

This data, from the Clerk’s Office excludes money bills, or bills that the House (by leave) or Business Committee agreed to bypass select committee. So this is just bills that would normally go to select committee.

2015 was an unacceptably high year with 10 bills bypassing select committee. Then from 2017 to 2019 it was at more modest levels. It did rise to six in 2019 which is still quite high. Now in 2020 it went to 11, but many would agree that the Covid-19 emergency meant some (but not all of these) had to be done urgently.

However very high levels continued in 2021 and 2022 at 9 and 13. In 2023 there were 4 passed before the election and six afterwards. I do think you can justify a small number of law changes under urgency after an election, when they are repealing laws as part of a manifesto commitment.

But in 2024 it has been a huge 15 and 13 bills that bypassed select committee. This is way too many. Basically National passed 28 bills without select committee in two years, and Labour did 22. This is not a competition you want to win.

In any calendar year I would expect that the number of bills that bypass select committee due to urgency should be less than five as it was from 2016 to 2018.

Now another thing we are seeing more and more of is the House instructing a select committee to report a bill back in less than the standard six months timeframe. Now again there are times when this can be justified. Not every law needs months of submissions and consideration. Also a reduced select committee process is superior to no select committee process at all. Even a two week period to submit is better than nothing. However a shorter period should be the exception, not the rule.

So the proportion of bills that had a normal select committee process was 58% in 2015, around 80% from 2016 to 2018, and then a big drop to 44% in 2019. Since then it has rarely been over 50%.

A 3 to 5 months report back isn’t a huge shortening of time. But those with under 3 months are challenging. They often will have only a week or two for submissions.

So what proportion of bills had no or a very short select committee process. In 2016 to 2018 it was around 10% (ignoring the short post-election period). In 2019 it was 22%, then 40% in Covid-19 2020 and in the high 20s from 2021 to 2023. In 2024 it was 30% and in 2025 dropped back to 16%.

I started collecting this data because I was concerned that the National-led Government has been using urgency too often, and bypassing or shortening select committee too often. And I believe they clearly have been. However I was surprised to see that the Labour Government in 2021 and 2022 wasn’t much better (and with far less attention paid to it). 2020 was a justifiable reason for use of urgency, but not 2021 and 2022.

Hopefully 2026 will see less use of urgency, especially to bypass select committee.

The standard hours of the House are 17 hours a week, of which four hours are used for question time and general debate. The Government in its own right can do an extended sitting for four hours. The Business Committee can extend it even further.

It could even be time to look at making Wednesday and Thursday morning house sittings routine. That would be preferable to having so much urgency.

The Post reports:

Former wife of Labour leader Chris Hipkins, Jade Paul, has posted a series of unsubstantiated personal claims about their relationship on social media – claims Hipkins says he “reject[s] entirely”.

In a social media post referencing Labour’s election campaign themes of health, housing and jobs, Paul described a number of alleged incidents from their time together and criticised the behaviour of men in positions of power.

The claims portray Hipkins in a very negative light. As noted by the media, he has rejected them entirely.

The background:

The British-born public servant made the post on Sunday evening while on holiday in Fiji with their young son and daughter. The Post asked for her permission to report on her allegations.

The couple married at Premier House in 2020 after around six years together. Then-Finance Minister Grant Robertson was best man and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also attended the garden wedding.

She has said in a story on Stuff that asked if she would comment “No, other than I stand by everything I’ve said in the post.”

Now it is not unusual for a relationship to end badly, and a partner to feel aggrieved. I think it is very unfortunate for things to play out in public, especially with children involved.

But the unusual thing here is what Hipkins said three years ago:

“A year ago, my wife and I made the decision that we would live separately, that we would do everything we can to raise our children together.

“We remain incredibly close. She’s still my best friend. …”

Now it is very very hard to reconcile what Hipkins said in 2023, with what Paul is saying today. Either Hipkins was lying in 2023 when he said Paul was still his best friend and they were incredibly close, or something has happened since then so that they have gone from being best friends to threatened defamation lawsuits.

I generally think media should not report on personal issues around politicians. In 2006 Labour MPs harangued Don Brash in the House about Diane Foreman, and media reported on the affair. and chased him around the country seeking a response from him. They shouldn’t have.

It is a more difficult call when a family member states things in a public forum. The David Lange affair was not reported on until Lange’s wife and mother went to the media about it. That made it hard to ignore!

NB: As the allegations are contested, please do not link to them or summarise them in the comments. Doing so will get you suspended.

John Davidson has Tourette syndrome. He has the variety where he uncontrollably yells out offensive things. It isn’t what he is really thinking. It is just part of who he is. He has campaigned for awareness of this condition and was awarded an MBE. When he received it from QEII he exclaimed “f**k the queen”. She had been briefed and didn’t react, and just congratulated him on his award. He called the then Prince Charles an effing parasite, and again no reaction.

A film on his life, I Swear, was up for six BAFTA Awards. He was in the audience for it. The entire audience had been warned he was in attendance, and his condition means he may exclaim things. And so he did. He yelled out the N word at two black presenters. Now it is one thing to curse the Queen to her face, but the usual suspects decided that he must really be a closest racist and proceeded to rip into him.

The irony is great. All these lovelies were at the awards to praise a film highlighting his disability, But when he displayed the very same disability, many of them were horrified and condemned him.

The furore reminded me of a hilarious Southpark episode ages ago when Cartman found out about Tourette’s, and pretend to have it so he could be, well, Cartman.

As a keen follower of Parliament, one of the issues I have tracked in the past has been use of urgency. Back in around 2011 I was concerned about the amount of urgency being used, and actually worked with Grant Robertson and Trevor Mallard to publicise its use and overuse. I am told that campaign was part of the following reduction in urgency.

I’ve been meaning to do a follow up for some time, as there has been a lot of urgency in the last two years.

Now I am not one of those who think all use of urgency is bad. If urgency just involves the House sitting later at night, that isn’t a bad thing. The urgency which I think is most problematic is when select committee processes are entirely bypassed. This is generally bad as it robs the public of a say, and eliminate the ability of submitters to point out flaws in the bill.

There are sometimes reasonable grounds to bypass select committee. Budget or tax measures. A simple repeal. A change that was widely debated and submitted on in the very recent past – so all the issues are known. But these should be the exception. In Part 2, I will get more into this.

In Part 1 I wish to look first just as how many hours the House is sitting each year, and what proportion of these are in urgency.

I tend to think more sitting hours is not a bad thing. I want MPs passing laws. There is always a big back log of bills on the order paper. So we can see that 2024 and 2025 were some of the longest house sessions with 566 and 644 hours respectively. The average is 508 hours.

Now let us look at what proportion of the total hours were under urgency.

Here I have divided years with a change of government up into pre and post election. The short sessions after the 2008 and 2023 elections saw a high use of urgency as the incoming Governments repealed on introduced laws or bills in line with their manifestos. I don’t have a big issue with that. So let’s focus on the other years.

In 2009 and 2010 urgency was over 20% of the House sitting time. After extended sittings came in, it was generally 10% or less. In 2020 it rose to 30%, for obvious Covid-19 reasons. In 2021 and 2022 it was 11% to 13%. However prior to the 2023 election it was 25% in 2023. In 2024 it was 28% and in 2025 it hit a high of 32%. So last year almost one in three hours of the House was in urgency.

If we look at raw numbers, they are:

So over 150 hours of urgency in 2024 and over 200 hours in 2025. They are both record numbers.

Now again, not all urgency is bad. In Part 2 I will go into how often urgency was used to have bills avoid select committees. That is the use of most concern.

The Telegraph reports:

A short video went viral last weekend that briefly restored my faith in British policing. It showed a female Metropolitan Police officer standing alone in Whitechapel, surrounded by a crowd of angry Muslim men, calmly defending the right of a Christian street preacher to preach.

“In this country, we have freedom of speech,” she told them. The officer then added: “I understand that you guys don’t want to hear it, so I would just recommend that you walk away and don’t listen to him. He’s not in your home.” This was met with incredulity by the men, who seemingly could not believe the officer wasn’t immediately placing the preacher in handcuffs.

Hoping to spur her into action, one of them pointed out they were in “a Muslim area”. Happily, this ridiculous argument did not cut the mustard with the unblinking officer. There is no such thing in law as a “Muslim area” into which Christian preachers are forbidden to trespass.

I don’t know the officer’s name – the Metropolitan Police have declined to comment – but she deserves a medal. What she demonstrated, under considerable pressure, was a good grasp of the law: that a person preaching peacefully in a public place is exercising a right protected by Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998, and that the feelings of offended bystanders, however loudly expressed, are irrelevant. Unfortunately, she is the exception rather than the rule.

Once upon a time, a UK police officer correctly understanding and applying the law around freedom of speech would have been unremarkable. But today, it is a rarity as more and more street preachers are arrested for saying something someone finds offensive.

Stuff announces:

The official New Zealand Parliament account has announced it will no longer be posting on X (formerly Twitter) – and Winston Peters isn’t happy about it.

Neither is Chris Bishop, nor me.

The account, operated by the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, previously posted on the social media platform to alert people when oral questions and answers were available on the parliamentary website, or when laws were given Royal Assent.

Clerk of the House David Wilson told Stuff he decided to put a stop the practice, as he could no longer support the platform.

“I stopped it because of the news I had seen about the way X’s AI chatbot Grok can be used to generate deepfake nudes and child exploitation material,” he said.

This was a hasty decision, and I submit the wrong one. First of all the focus should be on serving the public. With rare exceptions, you should go where the public are.

There were 35,000 following the NZ Parliament account on X. The crowd on X are very focused on politics. People on Facebook are there for many different reasons, but people on X are there for current events etc.

Yes Grok had a week or so when people could ask it to change photos to put people in bikinis etc. That was distasteful and was stopped after a few days. X terms of service prohibit nudes and child abuse material.

All platforms have some distasteful content. Go to Bluesky after Charlie Kirk was killed and there were so many people celebrating, it was sickening.

Almost all NZ MPs have X accounts and many are regular posters there. It seems bizarre that the official Parliament account won’t post there, yet most MPs do. The decision has a whiff of moral superiority.

Since Elon Musk purchased X, it has been a platform which has more centre right voices than previously. You used to get banned for using the wrong pronouns, but no longer. However it also still has many many prominent left wing voices. Other platforms like Bluesky are overwhelmingly only populated by people with left wing views.

So while it was not intentional, the impact of the decision by the Clerk actually has a partisan impact. It cuts off easy access to Parliament for people on X.

I hope the decision is reconsidered and reversed.

Liam Hehir also makes good points about a better course of action:

• He would first have prepared a formal, neutral assessment setting out the operational risks and statutory considerations, consistent with his duty to manage the Office with integrity, efficiency and concern for the public interest. 
• He would then have referred that assessment to the Speaker, to whom he is responsible for the management of the Office and who occupies the central governance role in Parliament’s institutional administration. 
• As the issue carries wider institutional or symbolic implications, the Speaker should have tested it through an appropriate collective forum such as the Business Committee, which the Speaker convenes and chairs and which operates on a cross-party basis.

Liam Hehir writes:

The debate over whether Tamatha Paul bears meaningful responsibility for Wellington’s sewage crisis has gathered pace and heat in equal measure. At the centre of it sits a blog post attributed to a writer named Peter Bassett, which has been widely circulated and confidently asserted as fact.

The claim is stark. In May 2021, faced with a choice between major wastewater renewals and expanded cycleways, Paul chose cyclists. The argument is simple, morally charged and politically explosive.

It is also worth noting that Peter Bassett may be an alias. There appears to be no person of the name on the Wellington electoral rolls.

Hehir sets out that while it is true Paul moved an amendment to adopt a more expensive option for cycleways, there was no actual vote in wastewater funding.

But as far as I can see, the minutes contain no reference whatsoever to wastewater infrastructure, other than a section concerning bulk water charging methodology between councils. There is no option presented for wastewater renewal spending. There is no discussion recorded of sewage treatment investment. 

There is no figure resembling the $391 million wastewater programme that sits at the centre of the case against Paul. There is no moment where the committee considered and declined to invest in underground pipe infrastructure of any kind.

It looks like while there was an option in the papers about wastewater investment, it was never considered or voted on by council.

The issue here is that the case against Paul makes much about a choice between two presented options. The minutes do not show that choice being made. They show cycleway acceleration being voted on. They show no corresponding wastewater option being voted down.

This is important. There was only one vote, not two. You can make the case that WCC has under invested in water infrastructure and has been fixated on cycleways (both true) but there was no simple vote at this meeting.

Tamatha Paul moved a cycleways amendment. That is documented. The claim that she did so by directly turning down a wastewater option placed before her is not.

What would be interesting would be to ask the Greens and Ms Paul whether she thinks in hindsight she thinks water infrastructure should have been a higher priority than cycleways.

I’ve just been looking at the 19 charter schools approved to date, and am impressed with how well they cater for all types of kids, They are not about replicating state schools, but providing alternatives for those who need or desire them. The focus of the schools are:

• Autistic/Neurodiverse
• Cambridge
• Classical academic
• Creative and visual arts
• Distance learning
• Employment focused
• Fresh start
• French
• Learning needs
• Maori – 7
• Outdoor immersion
• Pacifica girls
• Sport focused learning
• US curriculum

And not a single student at these schools will be there because they are forced to by a zone. Every single one will have chosen to be there.

Bryce Edwards writes:

The study by Caroline Shaw, Ryan Gage, Alice Miller, Katherine Cullerton, and Alex Macmillan looked at five years of ministerial diaries for transport and associate transport ministers, from October 2017 to November 2022. They pulled together 11,079 diary entries for five ministers and associates (Phil Twyford, Michael Wood, Julie Anne Genter, Shane Jones, and Kieran McAnulty) and then painstakingly identified every meeting related to the transport portfolio.

About a third of all their diary entries related to transport. Within those, the researchers found 880 meetings with outside interest groups, involving 974 separate organisations – everyone from airlines and airports to health NGOs and iwi authorities. Each of these groups was classified in two ways: by type (commercial, non‑commercial, or iwi/hapū) and by focus (what bit of the transport system they mainly cared about – air travel, freight, road safety, public transport, and so on).

The headline result is stark: close to three‑quarters of all these encounters were with commercial organisations (for‑profit firms and business associations) while only about a quarter involved non‑commercial groups such as unions, citizen groups, or research bodies.

This is just, with respect, meaningless drivel. It tells us nothing about how many groups there were, how many meetings were sought, etc etc. It also tries to portray meetings with commercial players as somehow bad.

Before we even get into the data, it should be no surprise that the commercial sector meets with decision makers. The commercial sector are the ones who have to comply with laws and regulations. The non for profit sector are people who want a particular outcome in a sector, but don’t generally have to comply with the laws and regulations imposed by Government.

Secondly the commercial sector is far far far larger than the non-commercial sector (which they fund through taxes). Between 80% and 90% of private sector employees in NZ work for a for profit organisation than a not-for-profit.

There will also be far far more commercial companies or sector groups, than non-commercial. If you look at meetings compared to number of organisations, the commercial sector probably get far fewer meetings than they should.

Overall, just 15 organisations accounted for about a third of all encounters. KiwiRail – a state‑owned enterprise, with the minister as its shareholding minister – had more meetings than any other single entity, followed closely by airports, big airlines and business associations.

For eff’s sake. Kiwirail is owned by the Government and costs taxpayers billions of dollars in losses. In what world would they not be having lots of meetings with the Minister?

The diaries don’t list who asked for meetings and was turned down, so you can’t see all the doors that never opened.

Which makes the entire thing meaningless.

But this is part of a pattern. There is a continual campaign to try and discourage Ministers from meeting commercial interests. They want their world views to be the only ones acceptable for Ministers to hear. They can’t win in the merits of their arguments, so instead they just try and pressure Governments to not listen to anyone else.

A companion study led by Alice Miller digs into this second question by looking at the public submissions and rhetoric of what the authors call the “road lobby” – organisations like the Automobile Association, Motor Industry Association, Motor Trade Association, Transporting New Zealand, and the BusinessNZ Energy Council.

Their conclusion is uncomfortable: on transport and climate, these groups often use tactics that look remarkably similar to the old tobacco playbook. 

This is a great example of what I was saying. First of all they include the Automobile Association as part of the commercial sector, when they are in fact a non-profit. This tells us much about the authors – they group people by whether they disagree with them, not by whether they are commercial or not.

Roger Partridge writes:

The LNG terminal is not the Government’s preferred energy policy. It is the consequence of its predecessor’s.

In October 2018, I wrote about the gulf between virtue signalling and virtue. The occasion was the release of MBIE’s Regulatory Impact Statement on the Ardern Government’s ban on offshore oil and gas exploration.

MBIE’s advice was sobering. Rather than reducing emissions, the Ministry warned the ban would likely increase global greenhouse gas emissions, as production shifted to less efficient plants overseas. And far from making New Zealanders more prosperous, it would make them poorer. The mid-point estimate of losses to the Crown alone was $16.6 billion.

I warned then that the Government would be judged not by the virtues it signalled, but by those it delivered. The verdict is now in.

The exploration ban did not reduce emissions. It capped New Zealand’s offshore gas reserves at a stroke, scaring off for the foreseeable future the investment needed to discover and develop new fields and extend the existing ones.

So the impact of Labour’s gas ban was known and predicted seven years ago. Today we are paying the price.

As domestic gas became harder to secure, generators leaned on the only fuel that was stockpilable, dispatchable and available at scale: coal. A policy designed to hasten decarbonisation made New Zealand more dependent on its dirtiest fuel.

Labour’s ban was an economic, environmental and energy disaster.

The result was the electricity crisis of 2024. Wholesale prices spiked. Winstone Pulp International closed, costing 230 jobs. Transpower came perilously close to ordering rolling blackouts. This was not a market failure. It was the predictable consequence of regulatory choices that had stripped the market of the tools it needed to function.

Rarely has such a high price been paid for virtue signalling.

Roger Partridge writes:

A principal who runs a school well does not get to tell parents what to cook for dinner. The authority is real – but it is specific. It does not travel home with the children.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand seems to have the same problem – mistaking authority in one domain for authority in everything adjacent.

Previously the Reserve Bank seemed to think it was in charge of climate change and the Maori economy. They were so far out of their lane, they would driving through a forest instead of the motorway.

The latest foray into an area where they have dubious authority does at least involve money, which is something they have a legitimate interest in.

The Bank released a consultation paper proposing to require banks to establish over 1,200 new “full-service” cash sites across the country. New Zealanders in urban areas would be no more than a three-kilometre walk from free cash services. Rural residents would face no more than a 15 to 30 kilometre drive. Banks would bear the cost – an estimated $104 million a year, at least in the first instance.

This to me is akin, to NZTA telling petrol companies they must have a petrol station within 30 kms of every house, and they must keep these maintained even if 90% of the vehicle fleet is now electric.

The substance of the proposal is only one issue though. Partridge notes:

The 84-page document does not identify any express statutory power authorising the Bank to mandate where banks provide retail cash services. It relies instead on three propositions: that “one of our functions is ensuring the cash needs of the public are met”; that providing cash services is part of a bank’s “social licence to operate”; and the Bank’s self-described role as “steward of cash.”

None of these is a legal power. The Bank’s central banking function under section 116 of the Reserve Bank Act involves issuing currency, monitoring its distribution, and monitoring the impact of technology on the public’s needs. Those are observational functions – not a power to compel private businesses to establish a national cash distribution network. “Social licence” is a rhetorical concept, not a regulatory authority. And “stewardship of cash” is a title the Bank gave itself.

What the Bank appears to be doing is borrowing the coercive authority it holds as prudential regulator to keep the banking system sound – where it can impose binding requirements on banks under prudential legislation – and deploying it in a domain where no such power exists. 

Prudential regulation guards against systemic risks – the kind that can bring down the banking system.  It does not cover the colour of the bank’s carpets, the hours they keep, where they operate shopfronts or where they place ATMs.

Mandating minimum geographic cash coverage across the country is a service requirement, not a financial stability issue. And no financial stability regulator in any comparable country has used prudential powers for this purpose.

If Parliament wants the Reserve Bank to dictate where ATMs must be, then they should explicitly give that power.

The Reserve Bank itself recognised this just six years ago. In its October 2019 “Future of Cash” consultation, the Bank proposed that new regulation-making powers be added to the Reserve Bank Act. The Bank said these powers were “only intended to be invoked if there is risk of a significant reduction in access to cash across the country.” The envisaged model was that the Reserve Bank would design regulations and recommend them to the Minister of Finance, with parliamentary oversight.

Parliament then had two opportunities to grant those powers – the Reserve Bank Act 2021 and the Deposit Takers Act 2023. It enacted the Bank’s other 2019 proposal (standards for banknote-processing machines), but not the cash access mandate. The current consultation skips over all of this. The Bank is asserting a power that Parliament was asked to legislate and chose not to grant.

If the Bank believes it has the statutory power to compel banks to establish a national cash distribution network regardless, it should say so.

I agree. They should release legal advice that they have the power, if they wish to proceed.

To me it is like the BSA – government entities trying to expand their power by dictate rather than legislation.

AP reports:

A former Army National Guard member who had spent eight years in prison for attempting to aid the Islamic State opened fire on a classroom at Virginia’s Old Dominion University on Thursday before ROTC students subdued and killed him, authorities said. 

He had yelled “Allahu Akbar” before the shooting, which left one person dead and two wounded, according to the FBI.

Terrible. But could have been much worse.

Dominique Evans, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk field office, said at a news conference that the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps students showed “extreme bravery and courage” and prevented further loss of life by stopping the gunman, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh. 

The students subdued him and “rendered him no longer alive,” Evans said. “I don’t know how else to say it.” She confirmed Jalloh wasn’t shot but didn’t provide further details.

That must be the euphemism of the year – “rendered him no longer alive”.

The unarmed students managed to subdue and kill an armed terrorist. I hope they all get medals.

The NZ Herald has an op ed by John Howard and Tim Ewing-Jarvie on national security.

I was privileged to hear them speak recently on this issue, and it was hugely illuminating (and depressing).

Before we get into what they say, it is worth highlighting what they have done – as that is relevant to their opinions.

Major General Howard was the head of defence intelligence for NZ. More impressively he also served for several years as the deputy director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency. He was only the second non American to serve at that level. It has more than 16,000 staff and is a major contributor to the US President’s Daily Brief. He previously led our deployment of 7,000 troops to East Timor, now Timor-Leste.

Major Tim Ewing-Jarvie was the Chief Instructor of the NZ Army Combat School. He spent three years as an advisor in The Pentagon, and previously was the Recon and Sniper Platoon Commander.

Both gentlemen have seen combat, and have worked professionally in intelligence at the highest levels. They know more the the average blogger, to put it mildly.

They write:

The United States–Iran war has punctured any residual belief that distant conflicts stay distant, with airspace disruption affecting flights through Middle East hubs and adding renewed pressure to the prices of energy, key imports and inputs. Set this alongside Russia’s war in Ukraine grinding into its fifth year, a pressured Nato, the weaponisation of trade and escalating tension across the Indo-Pacific.

We are a long way from Helen Clark’s benign strategic environment.

It’s fair to say that national security is not a policy area most people encounter directly, in the same way personal experiences of a classroom, a hospital waiting room, or a burglary shape views on education, health or crime. But national security is not all about warships and intelligence agencies. It’s about protecting New Zealand’s freedom to prosper (economically, ideologically and physically) and the resilience of those systems and dependencies that underpin everyday life.

In other words, it is really really important.

Addressing these challenges may, for one, call for broader public-private information sharing, greater contingency planning with critical sectors, and a more explicit national view of which dependencies (energy, medicines, critical minerals) warrant prioritised investment for greater resilience. We need to talk more about the potential function of government subsidies to offset commercial viability issues in the process, and the prioritisation of infrastructure resilience. Perhaps more challenging, we also need more nuanced discussions about our sensitivity to resource extraction at a time when the inputs needed to secure sustainable technologies could become increasingly unaffordable, or inaccessible, without valued chips to trade.

We need to be prepared.

Take one example. What if China moves on Taiwan within the next 12 months? If the US uses up the huge bulk of its offensive capacity in Iran, this could tempt China to move earlier than later. China is building 10 warships a year and a new aircraft carrier every three years or so.

I used to think China moving on Taiwan was possible, but not probable. I now think it is probable – more when, not if. President Xi has said multiple times they will unify, with force if necessary. We should believe him.

Has the NZ Government got a plan for what to do if this happens? Have we war gamed what the effect on our supply lines will be, on the economy – let alone the diplomatic and military response. Do we have a mitigation plan for this eventuality, that we are already putting into place?

Some other thoughts I have had, since hearing them speak.

1. We should follow Australia in identifying critical industry supply chains, and directing the industry that over the next x years, no more than y% (say 50%) should come from one country.
2. We should consider a Director of National Intelligence who co-ordinates all the intelligence functions from Defence, SIS, GCSB, Customs, Police etc. However only to do this if it doesn’t just become an extra bureaucratic agency.
3. Should the National Security Advisor be the Chief Executive of DPMC (who has many other things to look after), or be a standalone position?
4. Should our commitment to increase defence spending to 2% of GDP be legislated, so that future governments follow through (or explicitly change the law). We have made the commitment in theory, but most of it is set for many years away.

I think we underestimate how devastating for regional security (and our economy) a conflict between China and Taiwan would be. Hoping it never happens is not a strategy.