Seventy per cent of New Zealanders believe the Government is not doing enough to deal with gangs in Aotearoa, the latest 1News Kantar Public poll suggests. …
The poll found that 48% of Labour Party supporters believed the Government was not doing enough, while only 25% thought they were doing enough.
You have a problem when only one in four of your ow supporters think you are doing enough.
Of course the Government’s response to gang violence has been to change the law so serious repeat violent and sexual offenders get shorter sentences!
Ministerial diaries helpfully show the applicable portfolio for each diary entry – and in the case of the PM, since Oct 2020 to June 2022 (inclusive) she has spent a grand total of 14 hours on the child poverty portfolio – or on average, a meagre 40 mins per month.
A Government scheme to get counsellors in schools is on track to achieve less than 10% of the 100,000 hours of mental health support it was expected to deliver.
This scheme was announced in July 2020. They said it would see 210 schools accessing the scheme from the beginning of 2021.
The Government allocated $44 million to fund counselling at primary, intermediate and small secondary schools for four years. The Ministry of Education said it would deliver 100,000 hours of counselling each year, but going by actual delivery it looks set to provide just 9600 hours this year.
So two years after they announced it, and 18 months after they said it would start, and it is delivering 90% less than what they promised. This would normally be a huge scandal, but for this Government that is business as usual.
Again in November last year, Tinetti released a statement about the Counselling in Schools Programme saying it would help 24,000 students who needed urgent help due to the pandemic.
But it’s unclear how many students have received counselling. In responses to National Party mental health spokesperson Matt Doocey, Tinetti said the programme had averaged 800 hours of counselling a month since November.
This was meant to give them urgent help, yet they have had to wait two years!
And 800 hours a month is miniscule. That is 200 hours a week or 40 hours a day. So basically they have managed the equivalent of hiring five extra school counsellors!
Doocey said it was also concerning how much had been spent per counselling session. He said, given the 800 hours a month, it appeared the Government was spending north of $500 per session.
“Normally counsellors charge about $150, so you’d have to ask: Where is this money going?”
You are meant to get economy of scale, but this Government achieves the opposite – the bigger the buy, the less they get for it. They have managed a scheme that is costing $500 an hour!
The Hamilton West MP has come out swinging – in fact, he’s hit the nuclear button. He’s accusing the Prime Minister and her office of a “cover-up” and says the Labour Party held a “Kangaroo Court” to decide his fate.
He’s also played Newshub a recording of another MP saying to him the outcome of the caucus meeting in which he was suspended was predetermined the night before. …
Newshub knows the identity of the MP, but revoiced the recording to protect their identity. The MP tells Dr Sharma his fate was sealed at the meeting.
“It’s all predetermined. This is purely just to get them where they want to be, which is for caucus to be aware that a decision will need to be made and that it will be, it’s gonna be to whack you,” the MP said.
So this other Labour MP said that the secret caucus meeting was absolutely to predetermine what would happen to Sharma. But the PM said:
Earlier this week, the Prime Minister was adamant there was no predetermination.
“You have my assurance and word here, it would not have been in the rules to make any pre-determination,” said Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday. “We wouldn’t and we didn’t.”
So who do we believe – the person who convened the secret caucus meeting and tried to hide its existence from Dr Sharma and the public, or the Labour MP who spoke to Dr Sharma?
The MP on the recording accuses his colleague of bullying.
I have spent the last month acquiring and processing significant data on the leavers of every high school in New Zealand – with great help from the good people at Education Counts. This is far more important than the cohort data (by Year level) that comes out in February.
As I reflected on this earlier this week with some of NZ’s top educators the highlight was that there were schools in every decile achieving highly (as well as many most certainly not) which smashes the myth that poverty precludes education success.
(Credit: Education Counts)
Top schools in each decile by University Entrance achievement (schools with 75 or more students).
Decile 10. Diocesan School for Girls
Decile 9. Woodford House
Decile 8. St Peter’s College (Epsom)
Decile 7. Marist College (Auckland)
Decile 6. St Catherine’s College (Kilbirnie)
Decile 5. Manukura
Decile 4. Selwyn College
Decile 3. Zayed College for Girls
Decile 2. St Paul’s College (Ponsonby)
Decile 1. McAuley High School (Otahuhu)
I will let the reader draw conclusions. McAuley’s results exceeded that of 20 of NZ’s Decile 9 and 10 schools.
Baradene College and St Margaret’s College are the best at getting students into degree Level study.
On the down side there are a lot of schools that have a HUGE amount to improve upon plus attendance is even worse than is being generally told. In Term 1 of this year only 22% of Decile 1 students were fully attending.
I have had the processes checked by two of Australasia’s best education analysts.
The aim is very much to motivate change and improvement for those currently missing out as well as affirming the very good aspects of our system – and helping to put the spotlight on great practice that can then be shared.
The data is in spreadsheet form and includes sheets for all high schools on:
– high-school size – largest to smallest
– Level 3 NCEA and above percentage for school leavers for each school 2018-21 (ranked highest to lowest for 2021).
– UE percentage for school leavers for each school 2018-21 (ranked highest to lowest for 2021).
– Each school’s UE percentage for leavers for 2021 compared to decile mean and national mean.
– Level 3 NCEA and above gap to UE for leavers 2018-21 and ranked smallest to largest for 2021.
– Retention percentage until 17 years of age for each school and ranked highest to lowest.
– Percentage for each school of their leavers going onto L7+ Degree study in 2020 – ranked highest to lowest.
– The anonymised data mean for full attendance across deciles 2018-2022 (T1).
– UE percentage by school governance and school type.
Uses for the data
– for policy writers and influencers to be fully informed about the state of play.
– for all school leaders and management to have a better understanding of the NZ system.
– for Primary/Intermediate school leaders and management to have a better understanding of the schools their students may go to and to be able to better inform/prepare students and families.
– For high schools to better evaluate their situation/progress – plan for improvement with accuracy and seek the right kind of support from the Ministry and the Community.
– For every parent to better understand the schools their children are attending – or are looking to attend.
The information is of high value educationally and has taken a considerable amount of time and expertise. I can make it available for use within a school (under copyright) or professional organisation at a relatively small price.
For personal use happy to supply on a donation basis.
I’ve been sent a copy of an e-mail from Tim O’Connor, the headmaster of Auckland Grammar to the CEs of NZQA and the Ministry of Education. He beautifully sets out why the Government’s decision to just hand out free NCEA credits this year is a terrible one. The e-mail is below:
I write to express concern about today’s announcement. The points I raise below do not require a response, and are not a criticism of NZQA as such, as there are multiple contributing factors when making a decision to make changes to the 2022 qualifications. These are changes that will add to the demise and credibility of our national qualification.
NZQA is using the same solution as was applied in 2021 but the problem is very different this year. LRCs were applied last year to level the playing field for Auckland students, but this year all schools have been impacted equally. The situation this year calls for a different solution
The NZQA announcement suggests that these measures are intended to mitigate the impacts of “absences of students and teachers, as a result of COVID-19, (which) have had a substantial impact on teaching, learning and assessment”. The issues apparently being addressed, therefore, are: teaching & learning and low attendance, but NZQA’s solution is to adjust the national qualification rather than to address the 2 primary issues
Absences this year could be for COVID isolation, sickness such as the Common Cold, unjustified absences and other reasons. This year’s awarding of LRCs is precedent-setting as it isn’t a pandemic-related ‘temporary measure’; instead it is a reaction to low attendance nationally (for any reason). It implies that there is an attendance threshold, below which a student may be eligible for bonus credits. This sets an ambiguous precedent for future years, since Ministry attendance targets sit below 70% until 2024
Level 3 students with good attendance are likely to have accumulated at least 10 credits already, perhaps in all of their subjects. Since UE now only requires 14 credits in 2 subjects and 12 in a 3rd, final year students could finish their school year now. NZQA’s announcement encourages students to count the credits they have earned already and then calculate when they can stop learning, given the addition of the Learning Recognition Credits (LRC). This measure may actually encourage non-attendance in Terms 3 and 4 for those students
Lost learning may have occurred for students in Term 1 & 2, but this solution doesn’t address the lost learning (due to attendance, sickness, student disengagement). NZQA might have allowed schools to offer more opportunities for assessment for students who were absent earlier in the year, or offered the LRCs for internals completed from 1 August onwards, or for all external standards. Such an approach would have encouraged students to attend school.
Internationally, most countries are currently looking at ways to resuscitate the learning lost over the past 2 years. New Zealand, by contrast, appears to be attempting to disguise lost learning and accommodate it by reducing what is required to earn the national qualification this year. When the evidence from international tests such as PISA and TIMSS shows that New Zealand students’ performances are already in decline, this contrast in approaches is concerning. By lowering the bar of the National Qualifications Framework even further, the Ministry and NZQA will continue to manufacture results that suggest there is no decline in NZ students’ learning (or achievement)
There is a message in this decision that external assessment is less important than internal assessment, as the awarding of LRC’s means that many if not most students will not need to sit external examinations in order to secure their 2022 qualification.
The credibility of University Entrance must start being questioned by universities, as they protect the entry standard for tertiary education. It would be understandable if universities started setting independent entrance tests as UE loses credibility.
The decision brings into question the credibility of our national qualification and the very purpose of education in this country. If our national qualification authority is not supporting each secondary school’ s primary purpose to educate our young, and measure their acquisition of knowledge through independent means what message does that present to schools, teachers and parents across the country? Academic rigour is a thing of the past? Let’s lower the aspirations we have for children? As schools it is not your role to be foundational institutions for encouraging every kind of human excellence?
Those directly involved with teaching on a daily basis know that students will attend and do their best to achieve, if they know that they accountable for doing so. Likewise, they know that if someone will intervene with a measure that elevates their performances without them even having to attend school, it sends the message that the usual standards no longer apply.
By failing to address the underlying problems, NZQA is prolonging the educational damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic instead of working to rectify it. By inflating students’ results and encouraging non-attendance, NZQA is masking and exacerbating the lost learning problem and is prepared to send students off to higher education and the workforce with significant gaps remaining in their knowledge, rather than attempting to provide assistance that would serve students (and our community) better in the long term. Such an approach is unacceptable to me in the role I hold and it is unacceptable to the community I serve. You will appreciate my views need to be shared with our community, so they understand academic rigour, and accountability for attendance and learning will remain unchanged at Auckland Grammar School, contrary to the messages our Government, NZQA and the MOE wish to send secondary school students and their parents nationally.
The control of assets is just as important as ownership, and control and ownership don’t always amount to the same thing. Most Kiwis understand this. Strangely enough, though, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern sat down with TVNZ’s Jack Tame this month and argued just the opposite.
Ownership without control is just a nine letter word rather than actual ownership.
The PM took a few twists and turns in her response. Tame was being “overly simplistic” she said: “… I’m arguing it’s simplistic because the ownership of these entities sits with local bodies and government. So it is not changing the ownership structures.”
Tame countered: “It’s not changing ownership but it is changing the representation, that’s an important distinction.”
Ardern insisted: “Well actually, local government maintain the ownership. They’re the ones with the public share … and with these regional representative boards, yes we have mana whenua represented and local government represented. But the ownership rights continue to sit with local government and with those local councils.”
Her final word on the matter was: “The reason I am coming back to ownership is because for most people power sits with ownership.
But the point is with three waters the owners won’t have the normal powers of ownership. The power will be with the regional groups.
Control matters: controlling parties will set the prices charged for the use of water assets (possibly subject to a regulated cap); they will decide how those charges are levied – by volume/use perhaps, or maybe by property value if that’s how they judge fairness; and they will almost undoubtedly decide that the cost of improving water assets in some regions will be met by ratepayers in other areas, so those who have already paid for adequate infrastructure will pay again for assets in areas which have underinvested.
If the Prime Minister thinks control is immaterial, she should try giving it up.
The merger and blurring of RNZ and TVNZ into ANZPM will not only ensure, during a cost-of-living crisis, that the Labour Government re-prioritised consultants for their mates over actual content, actual decisions and real outcomes for New Zealand’s media future but also permanently change New Zealand’s media landscape in a way that it will take years to unravel.
I am passionate about New Zealand’s broadcasting and media sector and I know that it’s future is not being corralled into a media monolith while other competitors wither and die and New Zealanders continue looking offshore for the content they desire alongside the talent choosing international destinations for their careers instead of homegrown production houses.
The next generation of New Zealand audiences simply doesn’t get media and broadcasting content from our public sector. It chooses innovation, ideas and imagination. It doesn’t care where they come from or who has funded it. We need to think about media as platform neutral and flexible. We need to think about supporting media not in terms of $$$ but in better regulations, in growing an economy that supports best practices and a platform neutral approach to content funding over feeding whatever comes along just from the public purse with little accountability.
A Public Media Monolith guarantees the latter and discourages the former.
I hope you take the time to submit on the Bill. I hope you take time to understand the implications of a merged RNZ and TVNZ. I hope you will talk with your friends and family about this and encourage them to also have their say. I can ask the questions, I can challenge the Ministers (past and present) but ultimately, the voice of the people of New Zealand is what is most important to stop the Public Media Monolith and to stop the spend.
Comments sections on blogs and news articles, for better or worse, are no replacement for your voice to New Zealand’s Parliament through the official submissions process so we need your help. There’s less than a month to go before submissions close and the Government is moving at full pace to ensure the disestablishment of RNZ and TVNZ happens before National returns to Government, they want it done and dusted by March next year.
One of the jobs of the government is to sort out the real climate actions from the greenwashing, to hold industry to account. And of course, one of the jobs of the government is to not engage in greenwashing themselves. The problem with some of the actions of the current government is that rather than holding business to account for its greenwashing, on some vital climate issues the government is actually a proponent of greenwashing.
And who is to blame:
People assume that the Climate Minister, especially a Green Party Climate Minister, will not perpetuate greenwashing, and will call it out, but it has not always been the case with James Shaw, and that makes it all the more insidious.
No love lost there.
Jacinda Ardern makes the climate policy in this Government and James Shaw presents it. The first rule of politics is to learn how to count – look at the numbers and you will understand this Government – Labour has a simple majority and Shaw isn’t even in Cabinet.
The Government’s winning $70.4 million offer for rural land known as Ferncliffe Farms trumped private sector bids because it constituted a “huge upfront payment” with no conditions to mitigate risk, sources close to the process have told the Herald. …
In order to outbid private sector developers, the agency obtained two valuations for the land, both of which were likely to inflate its value, and one of which made the “significant and special assumption” that rezoning was already achieved.
Critics, including opposition parties National and Act, say the case illuminates how the Government is using taxpayer funds to bid up land prices, unnecessarily baking additional cost into the “affordable” homes it hopes to build.
Yep the Government is so desperate to be seen to be making housing better that they paying over the top prices for land, which of course just pushes the price up.
In July 2021, the Treasury advised Minister of Finance Grant Robertson that the programme would overlap considerably with other government housing initiatives and was likely to “increase the risk of public funds maintaining or increasing urban land prices rather than reducing them”.
Another Labour Party MP, who did not wish to be named, said there were bullying issues within the party, as well as Parliament.
They told 1News a conduct commissioner is crucial to getting to the bottom of the concerns raised this week.
So this can’t be simply dismissed as Dr Sharma. Also he posted screenshots from other Labour MPs:
In Monday’s Facebook post, Sharma said that one “MP spent almost three hours in tears talking about how they were treated”.
He claimed he is now “being silenced again as such the bullying continues”.
“I have been driven to this point because even now the party and its leadership refuses to believe that there is a problem.”
He added screenshots to the post. None of the screenshots he posted had names or dates attached and no MPs have come forward with bullying allegations.
He posted a screenshot from a message that said the person wanted to say to another MP “that I’ve caught a cold off the boy and therefore I’m not well and off to get a test”.
“What are the steps for me so I don’t f*** things up. How long do I have to sit this out etc? I want to avoid going in on Wednesday and Thursday.”
Another said, “I fear that I will have serious mental health related issues staying here bro”.
“I feel like I’m being poisoned.”
He added another screenshot that said, “I feel the same. Every day I wake up wondering if I’m going to be in trouble.”
The likely response to all of this will be to expel or suspend Dr Sharma from caucus later this week, in the hope he becomes less newsworthy.
It is total nonsense. Luxon is nothing like the hapless Muller. The only politicians who no one bothers to dislike are those who are totally useless. Around a third of the electorate are committed lefties. They dislike Luxon because they think he can win. Labour would not be testing attack ads if their polling did not say the National Leader is a threat.
Objectively, Luxon’s achievements as a leader are astonishing. When he took over as leader the National caucus was a poisonous bear pit.
It is a remarkable turnaround. He could now boast to his conference that his “MPs have their hopeless Labour counterparts on the run”. He now leads what appears to be a cohesive team.
Luxon has been in Parliament for less than two years and leader for just eight months. It takes most MPs six years and three elections to become effective. What is remarkable is not his occasional slip-up, but that he has made so few.
National received just 25.58 per cent of the vote in the last election. Now it is New Zealand’s most popular party.
I don’t think people realise how remarkable that swing has been. They were 25% behind Labour at the last election and now lead them in every major poll. A swing of 10% is considered significant. A 25% swing is huge. Here’s what the swing has been for every MMP election (gap between National and Labour):
1999: -15%
2002: -12%
2005: +18%
2008: +13%
2011: +9%
2014: +2%
2017: -14%
2020: -32%
So Luxon has had a 27% or so swing (so far) – much larger than any other swing in history except the landslide to Labour in 2020.
An article on New Zealand in The Canadian Globe and Mail. This is not a right leaning newspaper like the (UK) Daily Telegraph. Justin Giovannetti writes:
I arrived in New Zealand’s capital of Wellington in early 2020 with my fiancée, a New Zealander, to buy a house and start a family. We knew that the Pacific country’s overheated housing market would be a challenge, but we’d lived in Toronto and Vancouver. We considered ourselves prepared. We’d soon learn that New Zealand’s housing problems are similar to Canada’s, just much worse.
New Zealanders found themselves with some of the developed world’s most unaffordable homes before the pandemic. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern quipped back in her days as an opposition politician that the country’s economy was basically “a housing market with a few bits added on.” Since she came to power in 2017, house prices have increased by nearly 60 per cent.
Labour campaigned on how a 25% increase in house prices over three years was a crisis, and they’ve now gone up a further 60%!
However, Ms. Ardern came into office with a marquee promise to build 100,000 homes within a decade. The program became an embarrassing failure, delivering only 1,000 homes in its first five years. Her government then changed course, putting forward a rebooted $321-millionprogram to help first-home buyers. The country’s Housing Minister drew laughs with a triumphal press release where she announced that only 12 families were helped.
The Government is on track to complete Kiwibuild in the year 2308.
Leaders should take note, not only of Ms. Ardern’s rapidly fading popularity at home, but the speed with which a housing crisis can become a catastrophe.
He didn’t even mention the massive blowout in emergency housing, people living in cars and the state house waiting list!
This may surprise some, but I don’t think people should rush to judgement over Kieran McAnulty and Anna Lorck.
It is clear that there has been a terrible breakdown between the Labour Party and Hamilton West MP Dr Gaurav Sharma. But we don’t know enough to judge who has been the major contributor to this. The job of a party whip is to enforce party discipline. It may be that Kieran McAnulty is a terrible bully, but it may also be that Dr Sharma is just pathologically unsuited to being a Member of Parliament for Labour.
What we can say is that the situation has been handled disastrously. To have this dispute go on for 18 months and end with an MP lodging newspaper columns against his own party, bringing lawyers to meetings and revealing he has felt suicidal is a terrible indictment on those who are meant to solve such issues.
There are some interesting aspects to the claims by Dr Sharma, which I will touch on.
He claims the Relationship Manager assigned by the Parliamentary Service was conflicted as he was an active Labour Party member who opposed Dr Sharma’s selection. If this is correct, this is highly unusual. The employees of Parliamentary Service (as in core employees, not those working directly for MPs) should not be active party members. It would destroy trust.
The accusation that a Labour MP and staffer misused taxpayers’ money needs some sort of specificity and then investigation
There is an interesting constitutional issue about the involvement of a Whips Office in being able to veto an MP hiring staff. I understand the practical desirability of it, but should an Electorate MP be able to have the Whips dictate whether or not he can hire staff?
But again I would be careful about judging who is right between Sharma and McAnulty. There are aspects of what Dr Sharma says which make me cautious of taking his version of events as objective, rather than subjective. People who talk about hundreds of pages of dossiers tend to have lost perspective on an issue, in my experience.
This brings me to the second issue with Tukituki MP Anna Lorck. On the basis of what has been published, one can’t conclude that Anna Lorck is a bad boss. She may be the boss from hell, but you can’t conclude that on the basis she had a staffer move furniture around the office, do menial tasks and once sober drive her home.
I have observed many many MP-staff relationships. In the best ones, the staffers are absolutely dedicated to the MP, and that includes what you might call pastoral care – driving them about, making sure they get good family time etc etc. But equally the MP is massively appreciative of their staff, and care and look after them. This isn’t generally a job which is 9 to 5, and you switch off the moment you walk out the door.
I’ve seen staffers who are so dedicated to their MPs, that they even follow them from Government to Opposition, despite halving their pay.
Now not all MP-staff relationships are like the best ones (but it might surprise you how many are). Sometimes you do get MPs who are bullies, and sometimes you get staff who make mistakes that cause huge grief to their MPs.
And sometimes you may just get a situation where an MP thinks they have a good enough relationship with their staffer they don’t think it is a big issue to ask them to give them a lift home, but they have misjudged it and the staffer does feel it is an inappropriate imposition.
I don’t know which, if any, of the above applies to Anna Lorck and her (ex) staffer but I think we should be fair and not jump to conclusions. Likewise the same applies Kieran McAnulty. Accusation is not the same as proof. Just because they are MPs in a party whose policies I don’t support, means that they are necessarily in the wrong.
I have just finished a data process on the leavers of every high school in NZ from 2021.
The NZ psyche is that if you are from a poor home you are screwed. Not even close.
For upper level achievement NZ’s best decile 1 school in McAuley in Otahuhu. Metrics have their leavers ahead of 17 decile 9 schools and 9 decile 10 schools. The decile 10 schools who are in their dust are three of the most expensive (at least $50million establishment) new schools with great new learning theories and acclaimed leaders. Hobsonville Point Senior High, Albany Senior High School and, worst of all, Rototuna Senior High near Hamilton.
The best thing any education interested person (e.g. a parent) can do in NZ is seek out who is performing well and work out why. I can help them with the data.
The Health Minister’s announcement included a colossal porky in falsely claiming that the above measures could not have been introduced until his new health system established by the Pae Ora Act took effect on 1 July.
In particular, Andrew Little asserted:
Our changes to the health system only came into force a month ago, creating a single national health service. That means we can now have a single point of co-ordination and put some real heft into a national campaign to address the decades-old workforce shortage and ease pressure on the health system. These changes just weren’t possible under the old disjointed and bureaucratic structure.
Absolute balderdash! Minister Little’s claim that a single national health service only came into force a month ago is both senseless and untrue. A single national health service came into force as a result of the Social Security Act 1938. But give the Minister a break; he is only out by a mere 84 years!
Since that time Aotearoa has had a single national health service in which, of necessity, has been delivered locally, largely through public hospitals and general practices. That situation remains substantially unchanged today.
What has changed is that points of statutory decision-making closer to the provision of healthcare in these hospitals and practices have been removed. Consequently, our single national health service has seen its bureaucracy repositioned and much more centralised.
But there is an even bigger Ministerial porky than this. His final sentence states: “These changes just weren’t possible under the old disjointed and bureaucratic structure.” Absolute double balderdash!!
Prior to the establishment of Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand – HNZ), it was the Ministry of Health who had overall responsibility for the health workforce; not district health boards (DHBs).
On 1 July HNZ did not just replace the DHBs. It took over the Ministry’s national planning and funding functions. This included the Ministry’s responsibility for workforce planning and development.
The Labour led government could have required the Health Ministry to implement all the measures it announced on 1 August as early as October 2017. Instead it waited for nearly five years.
“Parliament received an overwhelming 88,324 public submissions on the Water Services Entities Bill, so National suggested a time extension to consider them. …
“A Parliamentary committee will now spend only four days travelling the country to hear submissions in-person from concerned communities.
Over 10,000 people asked to make an oral submission. The Government obviously has no intention of allowing people to have their say in person.
