A reader shares a letter they sent to Auckland Museum:

I am writing to express my concern around your recently released vaccination policy, specifically that those over 12 must be double vaccinated to attend the museum.

Whilst I understand the current environment is extremely challenging I am becoming increasingly concerned that the children of parents who dont wish or allow  them to be vaccinated  are going to be severely disadvantaged in terms of their education and social exclusion at a key developmental stage. Lack of access to an excellent facility such as the Auckland Museum been just one example.

I implore you to reconsider your stance and perhaps look to provide some nuance. Perhaps allow children under the age of 16 to attend on organized visits such as a school trip without proof of vaccination. 

I fear that our current path is going to have intergenerational consequences and restricting the educational opportunities of children is something we should avoid at all costs.

I do hope that at the very least you dont extend this policy to younger age groups if and when vaccination for those under 12  is approved.

I look forward to your response.

I think there is a case for vaccine mandates in some areas. But banning children from museums and libraries because of their vaccination status is wrong.

Murray Bolton released:

Auckland businessman Murray Bolton says he has been “inundated” with requests for assistance from desperate, double-vaccinated and COVID-negative Kiwis trying to get through New Zealand’s broken MIQ system after his own successful court challenge, but that MBIE remains obstructive and “refuses to face reality”.  

“My lawyers have been absolutely inundated with requests for assistance from people from all walks of life, both trapped in New Zealand and overseas,” Mr Bolton said. “A number of people clearly have grounds for self-isolating on their return which fit with the purposes of the government’s health orders and the law as outlined by the High Court in its decision on my judicial review. But they are still facing an obstinate bureaucracy that refuses to acknowledge the law or the reality of the virus in New Zealand.” 

“The stories are heart breaking. There are so many accounts of personal loss brought about by this broken system, the furthest thing you would ever expect to see from the kind of society we like to think New Zealand is.”  

Mr Bolton said he has personally signed off a number of requests to fund New Zealanders’ legal assistance in navigating the MIQ exemption system through his lawyers, Martelli McKegg who are working as quickly as possible to help those they can. This may extend to further legal action to hold the government to account. 

“I have also shared my extensive investment in legal research on this issue with numerous people bringing their own actions, including Grounded Kiwis.” 

“Let’s call this situation what it is — obscene,” Mr Bolton said. “Scarce room spaces and our overstretched health workforce are tied up babysitting perfectly healthy returning New Zealanders, while hundreds of vulnerable Aucklanders battling COVID are left to fend for themselves.” 

“As of today there are 1382 New Zealanders who caught COVID in Auckland isolating at home,” Mr Bolton said. “And we know now that many are falling through the cracks, isolating in garages or cars, or suffering with severe symptoms but unable to get the attention of the health services.  These stories are appalling, and particularly unforgiveable with the resources being wasted on MIQ.” 

“Professor Michael Baker, one of the most principled and consistent independent expert voices since the beginning of the pandemic and certainly no COVID-appeaser, said today MIQ is ‘redundant’ for any double-vaccinated arrivals into Auckland.” 

“Every Kiwi who has contacted us for help is double-vaccinated,” Mr Bolton said. “But they have had to endure, lottery after lottery for MIQ spots and been left disappointed and hopeless. People’s loved ones are sick and dying and they cannot get back to see them.”  

“I also heard about people’s incredible business innovations and opportunities for the New Zealand economy, to keep going against the tide of the pandemic or to push forward into new frontiers,” Mr Bolton said. “But MIQ means business people are unable to get out of New Zealand. Others, who left in order to keep their businesses alive overseas, have been stuck outside the border and unable to get back for more than six months. Many of these people have empty homes sitting in New Zealand that they can easily and safely self-isolate in and be no burden whatsoever to the health system.  Other people have obtained spots on global programmes, with potentially invaluable networks between New Zealand and the world, but are unable to be able to take them up because they cannot get home if they leave the country.”  

“MBIE have not made any amendments to their website to reflect the outcome of the judicial review decision,” Mr Bolton said. “They are living in denial and trying to keep New Zealanders in the dark about their rights. There is no information reflecting the law that allows exemptions from MIQ on grounds other than “medical” grounds. MBIE is still rejecting applications with pro forma responses, plainly not having even considered them, telling desperate people that they have to submit information they are not legally required to, and even rejecting out of hand plainly eligible exemptions.” 

This video is from the New York Times, but is worth viewing. It shows how the Democrat Party dominated states and cities enact policies that are the exact opposite of the party policy – for instance, schools in Cook County/Chicago are funded by Property Taxes on local properties. But because the taxes are given to the nearest school the best funded schools in Chicago are in the wealthiest neighbourhoods, while the poorest schools have no money for basic repairs.

Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilt of murder, and other associated charges. This is not at all surprising, based on the actual evidence presented in court. Reason magazine summarises:

The prosecution had hoped to convince the jury that a 17-year-old Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, without just cause when he traveled to the riots on August 25, 2020, although their case struggled to gain traction. Rosenbaum was described by a witness for the state as “hyperaggressive,” ultimately chasing Rittenhouse down and trying to wrestle away his AR-15 before Rittenhouse shot him. Video footage showed Huber striking Rittenhouse in the neck with a skateboard before also trying to take his firearm. And Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, the man who Rittenhouse shot in the bicep, testified for the prosecution that he approached Rittenhouse that evening with his own pistol raised, throwing cold water on characterizations that Grosskreutz had his hands in the air.

Rosenbaum told Rittenhouse twice he was going to kill him, and then tried to wrestle his gun away. Huber was battering Rittenhouse and Grosskreutz admitted in court that only when he pointed his pistol at Rittenhouse, did Rittenhouse shoot him.

The prosecution’s own evidence and witnesses were so helpful to the defence, that even without defence witnesses an acquittal always seemed likely, based on needing reasonable doubt.

When the shootings occurred, I was one of many who accepted the narrative in most of the media that he was a vigilante who hunted down peaceful protesters. It was only after the trial began, did I realise that the media narrative had been hopelessly biased.

​

As for Rittenhouse, despite the considerable amount of punditry devoted to a binary narrative—that he was a hero or a murderer—Neily presents another option: “I think he exhibited very poor judgement in arming himself and then going into that environment with a very visible, modern rifle. There’s no question that there are people who perceive that to be a provocative act,” Neily says. Based on the evidence, however, “I think he should be acquitted.”

It appears the jury agrees.

Indeed Rittenhouse is neither a hero nor a murderer. I think he is a douchebag and the last thing you want is people with rifles pouring into towns where they think there will be protests, or even riots.

However one commentator did make the valid point, that the Police may need to rethink their approach to such protests. The Kenosha “protest” caused around $100 million of damage. They were not peaceful, but the Police basically stood back and let it happen. By doing so, they may encourage Rittenhouse types to show up, in the absence of the state protecting local businesses.

Overall it just makes me glad we live in NZ, when you could never have a 17 year old turn up with a rifle to a protest

Andrea Vance has a good profile of National MP Erica Stanford. Worth a read.

A guest post by a reader:

NZs Dunkirk.
Bringing Kiwis home for Christmas.

The “sandbox” solution.

How does it work.
Set Queenstown as a “sandbox” destination.

NZ citizens/permanent residents etc can fly direct from overseas in to Queenstown.
Requirements:
a) They are fully vaccinated. Ie more than 14 days after 2nd Jab.
b) Come from one of the 46 low risk countries.
c) They have a negative test before departing on their flight(same as currently). Negative test on arrival.
d) They have a confirmed booking at a hotel(any of the 240 odd hotels/motels) in Queenstown.
c) They must remain in Queenstown for 5 days and get a negative test on day 5.
So they can play in the Queenstown Sandbox, eat, drink, do all the normal things. Think Level 1.

Then they can depart to other parts of NZ.

Family members, also with a negative test/vaccine can join them and stay for the 5 days.

What needs to happen.
1) Customs/immigration needs to be staffed as before Covid restrictions.
2) DHB needs to up its testing capacity or delegate it to Medical Centres in Queenstown.
3) Hotels need to produce “”5 day packages”” for inbound Kiwis to purchase.
4) Hospitality has to ramp up staffing along with all the feeder services.
5) Minister of immigration needs to allow extra Hospitality staff to be recruited in from low risk Covid Countries.
6) Airlines need to schedule Flights.
This may require a plane change at Auckland/Christchurch (think transit flights) as Large aircraft cannot land at Queenstown(Think B737, A320 only)
Given the opportunity, the airlines will find a way even if they organise charters.
7) A locals identification needs to be made available so locals can transit the road entry/exit checkpoint.
Check Points on only road access to Queenstown HW6.
SH6 at Shotover Bridge? And SH6 somewhere past the Remarkables (Drift Bay?)
8) ??% of Queenstown residents and workers to be double jabbed. (Southern DHB reports 80% plus already Double jabbed)

So how many Kiwis could come home this way?

Given some time to Ramp up and a Government decision made to be to be effective from 1st December.

AirNZ /Quantas can accommodate 150-170 Passengers per flight on each A320.

Queenstown Airport can handle 1 million passenger arrivals per year(2019 Report)
That equates to 128 inbound flights a week/(or some 18,000 homebound kiwis)
Even at half that capacity, any Kiwi that wanted to would be home by Christmas.

The ONLY thing that the Government needs to do is give Permission and then stand aside.
The private sector will sort out the logistics and how to make it work.


Benefits.
Kiwis Coming Home when they want without the stupid MIQ system.
Unload Auckland MIQ problems.
Move any possibility of an overseas Covid case to a restricted area.(Queenstown)
Get Business working again in Queenstown and ready for International Tourism when it comes back on stream next year.
More Flights for Air NZ to keep their coffers topped up.

Think of it as New Zealands Dunkirk- Get our People Home, everyone can help.

I’ve started to ramp up again the analytical pieces I am doing on my Patreon (subs start from US4/mth). This week I’ve covered:

• The massive change in country direction in the Curia poll
• The favourability scores for 20 NZ politicians and political parties.
• The re-election prospects in October 2021 for Governments in NZ, US, UK, Canada and Australia
• Results from Lord Ashcroft’s poll on 25 policy issues ranging from immigration to hate speech to taxes
• The 11 electorate seats Labour is most at risk of losing over Three Waters

Radio NZ reports:

Raw sewage is leaking down the inside of walls in Whangārei Hospital’s medical wing. …

The Northland DHB has been seeking government funding to rebuild or redevelop Whangārei Hospital since 2015, but so far nothing has been allocated.

So who has been in Government for the last four years? Who boasted they were putting $1.9 billion more into health, yet nothing improved?

Andrew Sullivan writes:

The news is a perilous business. It’s perilous because the first draft of history is almost always somewhat wrong, and needs a second draft, and a third, and so on, over time, until the historian can investigate with more perspective and calm. The job of journalists is to do as best they can, day by day, and respond swiftly when they screw up, correct the record, and move forward. I’ve learned this the hard way, not least in the combination of credulousness and trauma I harbored in the wake of 9/11.

But when the sources of news keep getting things wrong, and all the errors lie in the exact same direction, and they are reluctant to acknowledge error, we have a problem. If you look back at the last few years, the record of errors, small and large, about major stories, is hard to deny. It’s as if the more Donald Trump accused the MSM of being “fake news” the more assiduously they tried to prove him right.

Sullivan provides a long list of issues where the original reporting was found to be wrong later on. And that in basically every case the original reporting was hostile to conservatives.

• The Rittenhouse case
• The Steele dossier
• The Covington boys
• The Covid lab-leak theory
• The Jussie Smollett case
• The fake rape allegations at UVA
• The Pulse mass shooting motivation
• The Atlanta spa shooting motivation
• Responsibility for the increased attacks on Asian-Americans
• The Wi Spa exposure
• The source of the Hunter Biden e-mails
• Reporting on border crossings
• The denial of critical race theory being taught, when it permeates everywhere

Basically if a story fits a pre-existing belief or narrative of the media, they run it without waiting to check out the facts.

Matthew Hooton writes:

New Zealand citizens have learned a valuable lesson that the Wellington bureaucracy will lock us up not just because we have been sentenced by a court or on public health grounds, but just because they can. …

The latest case to reach the media is Shelley Grierson, a 30-something New Zealander currently living in the UK, who tried to get home to be with her dying sister, Rebecca, who has days or weeks to live.

As Shelley says, this isn’t an 80-year-old grandparent, or even her parents, whose passing is part of life. It is her older sister, to whom she is close. Like my friend and her husband of 56 years that I wrote about in August, who were prevented last year from being with one another as he died, neither Shelley nor Rebecca has Covid.

But unlike my friend and her husband, this latest monstrosity is playing out despite vaccines now being available. Shelley is not just double-vaccinated but consistently tests negative for Covid. Yet Wellington bureaucrats have so far turned down four applications to leave MIQ early, so that she can be sure of being with her sister as she dies. This is despite work by no less than professors Michael Baker and Nick Wilson and their epidemiology colleagues from the University of Otago’s medical school advising that New Zealand now represents greater Covid risk to people like Shelley than they do to New Zealand. That is, there is no public health justification for Shelley continuing to be detained by the state against her will.

The way the Ardern Government is treating Shelley is the polar opposite of kindness. It is maximally cruel and it is impossible to imagine a court thinking it is consistent with her citizenship rights under the Bill of Rights Act. After all, under our legal system inherited from England, it has been unlawful since the 12th century for the state to detain someone without good reason.

Matthew is dead right. Maybe why Shelley and others should do is file writs of habeas corpus ad sub judiciem, which are designed to secure people’s release from unlawful detention.

Shelley would almost certainly be set free if she had the resources to judicially review MBIE’s decisions, or even if she threatened it. Our lawmakers have provided for an exemption system. If the bureaucrats won’t apply it in Shelley’s case, what possible case would they ever apply it to?

If a dying sibling isn’t grounds for a early release, what is?

Ironically actual prisoners are probably more likely to get compassionate early release than MIQ detainees.

As of Wednesday, Wellington bureaucrats were allowing 2119 people in Auckland who are positive with Covid to self-isolate instead of being confined to MIQ, plus another 2616 who may have Covid. There are another 91 people with Covid self-isolating in the Waikato, plus a further 153 possible cases.

Yet Shelley and tens of thousands of double-vaccinated, Covid-free New Zealand citizens like her are either being confined to MIQ or are being prevented from exercising their citizenship rights to even get that far. It is a disgrace not just to Ardern’s regime but to all of us.

MIQ made sense a few months ago. It makes zero sense for vaccinated NZers who have tested negative when 2,000 Covid positive people are self-isolating at home.

Todd Niall writes:

Sometimes in politics it is worth remembering old wisdoms.

One is: if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. (Despite what your lawyer might tell you).

The Court of Appeal has found one of Auckland mayor Phil Goff’s first initiatives in 2017 was, in fact, such a duck.

Last week, it ruled it was not a valid, legally sound additional rate on visitor accommodation providers.

It was an illegal $28 million tax.

The targeted rate was Goff’s first and highest-risk play upon election in 2016. He had pledged to keep the rates rises paid by voters to a bargain-basement 2.5 per cent, and pre-election, floated the notion of “targeted rates”.

He arrived with his ready-made inner circle of local government newcomers, and within weeks APTR was floated publicly in his first Budget proposal.

So rather than control spending, they imposed an illegal new tax.

Since Monday – via Kiwiblog (https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2021/11/press-release_psa.html) and other mechanisms the Villa Education Trust proposed a nationwide online provision via our Private Mt Hobson Academy. This is for families who are looking for predictable year or two with high quality provision. It is for education workers either losing their jobs because of the mandate or those simply looking for another opportunity.

We have been very positively inundated. The quality of the CVs are fantastic for the education workers. Lots of families getting in touch too. We have decided to go ahead and accept applications for student places from Monday.

Some of the messages from teachers are deeply moving. To one I could only give the perspective of the great J.R.R. Tolkien.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

For those considering become teachers British Educationalists Armstrong and Miller put some basic encouragement together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBjUiJFuXYQ&ab_channel=myLastTears Give it some thought!

Alwyn Poole
[email protected]

Two epidemiologists and three GPs are arguing that NZ should delay a decision on extending the Pfizer vaccine to 5 to 11 year olds. I’m not convinced by their overall conclusions, but there are some points they raise worth debating. I will be getting my five year old vaccinated, if Medsafe approves it. I trust the health experts at the FDA and Medsafe to weigh up correctly the benefits vs the risks.

The first and most crucial point is that the long-term safety and efficacy data from the trial will not be available until 2023. Although short-term safety and efficacy data looks promising, this has only been tested in a small cohort of children, with 1,131 children receiving the vaccine at the time of writing.

I am not persuaded by this as it is very very rare that side effects from a vaccine do not emerge within days or weeks. It is different to long-term effects in medicines you take every day.

Secondly the authors seems to be referring to the study of 12 to 15 year olds which had 1.131 children. The study of 5 to 11 year olds has 2,268 participants. Also worth noting that since the study of 12 to 15 year olds, millions of 12 to 15 year olds have had it with few consequences – so we are not just relying on the trial data for younger persons.

The second reason against vaccinating children is the very small risk that the virus poses to this group.²² There is a 1,000-fold difference in mortality risk between comparing children with frail elderly people after testing positive for covid-19. It is extraordinarily rare for a child to suffer any significant illness from covid-19 and orders of magnitude more rare for them to die from this virus.

This is a valid point, that very few children will due from Covid-19. The benefit to risk ratio is of course lower than in older people. But lower does not mean it is negative. Also many of us get our kids vaccinated against the flu, even though we don’t expect people to die from the flu. We’d rather they didn’t get it at all, or a very mild version of it.

And the deaths are not zero in children with Covid. Covid-19 was in the top 10 causes of deaths in the US for 5 – 14 year olds, with 143 deaths. And around 30 out of every 100,000 children with Covid-19 get hospitalised.

Reviewing the latest Covid-19 vaccine safety report from Medsafe (New Zealand Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority) published on 9 October 2021³⁴ – a total of 27,651 Adverse Events following Vaccination (AEFI) have occurred. With 982 of these being Adverse Events of Special Interest (AESI) which are paid greater attention due to their seriousness. Most concerning is the number of deaths that have occurred following vaccination which now totals 91. 

This is where I think the paper is unhelpful. The 91 deaths within three weeks of getting a vaccination is less than the normal number of deaths in that period. Only 1 death is conclusively linked. If my polling company managed to phone 90% of over 12 year olds this month, then several hundreds of those polled would be dead by the end of December. But they would not be dead because we polled them.

So the paper has some valid aspects to it around the lower risk of children dying from Covid-19, but overall I’m pretty unimpressed with it.

Audrey Young recently gav Carmel Sepuloni 9/10 for her performance. Maybe she means in the House, as opposed to improving the welfare system.

Lindsay Mitchell has some startling facts, from MSD’s own progress indicators.

• Average future years on a benefit have increased from 10.6 years in 2017 to 12.4 years
• Median time to house clients has increased from 54 days to 168 days
• Percentage of clients who exit a benefit who return to it within one years – increased from 51% to 69%
• Client net trust score dropped in the last year from +43 to +40

If that is a 9/10, I’d hate to see a 1/10

Jared Savage reports:

There have been 178 individuals identified since the Delta outbreak in August with gang links, police confirmed to the Herald, according to police assessments of every community case to help decide where they should isolate. …

The Herald has previously revealed that half of all community cases in the Delta outbreak were flagged by police as “high risk” and MIQ staff were worried about working in the facilities, according to newly released documents.

According to the latest Police data there are 1,600 gang members in Auckland so it looks like around 10% of gang members have tested positive for Covid-19, compared to 0.1% for the overall population.

The Free Speech Union has exclusively announced:

The Free Speech Union can reveal that two academic fellows are being investigated by The Royal Society of New Zealand for being among those to put their name to a letter in defence of science which was published earlier this year in The Listener Magazine.

Two distinguished New Zealand scientists and members of The Royal Society of New Zealand co-authored a letter to the Listener in July in which they claimed that “…Indigenous knowledge is critical for the preservation and perpetuation of culture and local practices and plays key roles in management and policy. However, in the discovery of empirical, universal truths, it falls far short of what we can define as science itself…”. 

Emeritus Professor Michael Corballis was a third individual who signed the letter to also be included in the investigation, yet he sadly passed away on Saturday morning after a battle with cancer. This leaves Professor Garth Cooper and Emeritus Professor Robert Nola to face investigation by the Society after several complaints were made against them. They have been informed that their membership could be terminated.

And the investigation appears to have a preconceived outcome, as The Royal Society has already published criticism of the 7 letter signers, including the two fellows who face disciplinary action.

Free Speech Union Spokesperson, Jonathan Ayling, says the investigation is an affront to free speech.

“The Royal Society was set up for the purpose of advancing and promoting science, technology, and the humanities in New Zealand. This investigation sends a chilling message to other academics: defend science at your peril.

“The process of the human pursuit of science depends on free speech, including of those who may hold views contrary to the mainstream. The Royal Society are abandoning its own heritage and tradition of academic freedom.

“Academics should be the critics and conscience of society, not group-thinkers aligned to any particular ideology.”

The Free Speech Union has launched a crowdfunder to defend these individuals and academic freedom from the Royal Society and similarly close-minded organisations.

“We stand behind the academics freedom of speech and are proud to help them defend their right to critique and raise consciousness of important contemporary issues” said Mr Ayling.

The Royal Society Te Apārangi has strategic objectives to “better inform and educate Aotearoa New Zealand” and “develop an increasingly diverse Academy and membership”. Their code of conduct states that members must “not harass, bully or knowingly act with malice towards individuals or groups of people;” Yet the authors seem to have been subjected to bullying themselves.

“The academics have been called ‘racist’ and smeared by fellow scientists and are now having to engage lawyers to defend their opinions on science from an institution that should, instead, be encouraging debate and promoting science.”

Scholars within a university frequently disagree, and the role of academic institutions is to maintain the ground on which that disagreement can take place, in good faith and in a scholarly fashion. That means that The Royal Society of New Zealand, like the FSU, ought to take a neutral stance, to unequivocally defend the right and duty of its academics to make good-faith arguments, and to defend them from unfair attacks on their reputations. Instead, the Royal Society has chosen to proceed with disciplinary investigation and so has made it more difficult for academics in New Zealand to voice honestly-held views on contentious topics in the future.

New Zealanders who wish to support the Free Speech Union’s efforts to defend the two academics and the principle of academic freedom are encouraged to support the cause at www.fsu.nz/donate_academic_freedom. 

Similarly, all academics, and members of the Royal Society are encouraged to join the Union at www.fsu.nz/join

It is incredibly sad to see the Royal Society looking to expel scientists because they actually defended science. They are doing enormous damage to their own institution.

I’d say the best investment an academic can make is joining the FSU for a measly $50. It’s the cheapest insurance* you can get, for when the mob comes after you.

The Tertiary Education Union has time and time again made clear it will not defend its own members who fall on the wrong side of the mob. If anything, it will join the mob. We saw this recently at Waikato University when a lecturer was under siege for criticizing religion. The TEU did nothing for him, while the FSU went in all guns for him.

• NB The FSU will choose if they think a member’s case is one they should intervene in – they are not obliged to act. However over the last six months they have shown that in genuine cases of attempted suppression of free speech and academic freedom, they will act.

The Herald reports:

The Government’s old error-prone MIQ billing system has led to a failure to issue and collect more than $36 million in fees.

Newstalk ZB can reveal invoices for close to 14,400 people weren’t issued due to “incomplete or inaccurate [MIQ] data” – this is despite these people having left managed isolation months ago.

There are also roughly 7800 returnees who officials have not been able to figure out whether, or how much, they should be charged.

If this was the private sector, anyone involved in allowing 15,000 people to not be invoiced would be sacked.

This is not rocket science. Thousands of accommodation providers manage to record who is staying with them, and charge people for it.

Thomas Coughlan reports:

In 2018, the new Government, less than 1-year-old, sought advice on lifting the performance of its ailing SOEs. …

“Our analysis showed that actual performance is poor against the SOE Act’s primary legislative objective of being a successful business, and the sub-objective of being as profitable and efficient as comparable privately owned businesses (as measured by shareholder returns),” Treasury told ministers in 2020. …

In 2018, three ministers, Jones, then-SOEs Minister Winston Peters and Finance Minister Grant Robertson tasked officials with investigating merging the companies into a massive holding company similar to Temasek, a large Singaporean firm which has a portfolio worth more than NZ$400 billion.

This would be far preferable to the Government being the shareholder directly. Rather than set up a Temasek, you could use the NZ Super Fund.

Treasury estimated the poor, almost uncommercial performance of the SOEs had cost the crown $13.6 billion in the 10 years to 2018 which might have been earned were they as successful as other, more commercial entities the Crown has an interest in.

Think what you could do with an extra $1.3 billion a year. This is the opportunity cost of retaining 100% ownership.

“Entities in 100 per cent Government ownership have produced aggregate returns of 0.1 per cent per annum, against a cost of capital of 10.9 per cent,” Treasury wrote.

A 0.1% return is laughable.

However, SOEs had a handful of benefits: the key ones being that while SOEs are commercial, they are not fully independent and are required to follow certain high-level directions of ministers – this includes areas like phasing out fossil fuel use, or continuing certain essential services.

This created a problem for ministers who, according to Treasury, faced a “strong personal and political accountability” for SOEs in the area of a “relatively broad set of wellbeing objectives” – but who faced significantly less accountability to deliver returns to the Crown – in other words, ministers had an incentive to use the companies to deliver on political promises, rather than to deliver value to the Crown.

So the cost of keeping them as Minister’s playthings is billions of dollars.

Treasury said that all of the SOEs were rolled into one company, it would want that company to have this power too – the company needed to operate a “dynamic portfolio” that could buy and sell assets at will.

Referring back to Temasek, Treasury said the company was able to grow through “the sale of underperforming state-owned assets and purchase of better growth prospect assets”.

The ability to part or fully privatise companies was central to the way the Temasek model worked. Underperforming parts of SOEs, like NZ Post’s letters division, could be sold, and the proceeds could be reinvested in parts of the business that were growing.

Any sensible business owner sells the unprofitable parts so they focus on the more profitable businesses.

A guest post by Jonathan Ayling of the Free Speech Union:

Academic freedom is defined in s161 of the Education Act as “the freedom of academic staff
and students, within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new
ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions”. Without an unwavering
commitment to this principle, universities are unable to perform their role as the ‘critic and
conscience’ of society, which the Act also requires of them. But in recent years we have seen
attempts by university administrators to limit this cardinal rule in response to the purported
need to protect students from ideas that risk causing ‘harm’; an undefined, ambiguous
notion that may often be reduced to fear of having one’s worldview challenged.

This limitation on academic freedom is informed by the notion that universities should be a
‘safe space’ for students, particularly those hailing from marginalised communities. But
trying to create a safe space for feelings inevitably costs the ability of universities to play
host to a safe space for ideas.

Massey University’s academic freedom policy, for example, revised after the Brash affair in
2018, pays lip service to the sanctity of academic freedom and freedom of speech. Yet it
claims that these freedoms might properly be restricted by the University in order to
“safeguard the safety, health and welfare of its students”. Previously, attempts to suppress
the exercise of fundamental freedoms required more than vague pronouncements that a
person is made unsafe, or has their well-being threatened, by the fact that somebody is
discussing ideas they don’t like (perish the thought).

As public institutions, universities have an obligation to uphold freedom of expression with
the usual justified limits imposed by s5 of the Bill of Rights Act. Indeed, the only constraint
envisioned by the legislation is that academic freedom must be exercised within the ‘bounds
of the law’. But according to Massey’s proctor Giselle Byrnes, Massey’s ‘policy supports and
validates academic freedom while emphasising that with this freedom comes the
responsibility to ensure that others are neither harmed nor hurt in the exercise of this
privilege.”

This is not some difficult balancing act. It is an irreconcilable contradiction​ ​​​— either
academic freedom is a right to be exercised within the bounds of the law, or it is
a privilege to be exercised with regard to the feelings of others — it cannot be both. And if it
is the latter, it is difficult to see how our public institutions of higher learning can function if
anyone who may find the confrontation of a debate stressful holds a veto power over them
taking place.

It is a fact of life that asking questions runs the serious risk of offending others, and it is
absolutely advisable that academics exercise their freedoms in accordance with the highest
standards of not only ethics and professionalism, but simply manners and decency. But, to
cite Professor Clark Kerr of the University of California, “The purpose of the university is to
make students safe for ideas – not ideas safe for students”. While universities must be
cognisant of their pastoral duties, they must also remain places where the space to think
freely, to state controversial ideas, and to challenge orthodoxies is vigorously protected.

What might be deduced from Massey’s policy specifically, and the troubling culture
embraced in each of our universities generally, is that pastoral care has taken over from the
academic and discursive role of universities. To place the potential for hurt feelings over
academic freedom flies in the face of the whole purpose of a university; not for fragile minds
to be coddled, but for robust thinking to be tested. In light of that, are universities now more
akin to young-adult daycare centres than training institutions for tomorrow’s innovators and
leaders? For surely it is only children who would need such patronising ‘protection’.