The Post reports:

New Zealand is capitalising on global instability — including the so-called “Trump effect” — with hundreds of wealthy Americans seeking residency by investing billions in the country.

Less than a year after the Active Investor Plus visa was revamped to make it more attractive, 573 applications worth nearly $3.4 billion have been approved or committed — about half from the United States.

Around $1.05b has already been invested into New Zealand businesses, with a further $2.34b expected to be deployed over the next six months.

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said she was under no illusions about the timing behind the surge. “It’s a visa at the right time.”

It’s a win-win. We get more wealth individuals living in NZ, and paying tax to fund our schools and hospitals. Businesses get more capital, and the investors get to live in a country where your chance of being shot by the Police at a protest is basically zero.

The Government has introduced a bill to recognise that English is an offical language of New Zealand. Of course English has been a de facto official language of NZ since 1840. The fact the bill is in English shows why it is not needed.

Māori and sign language are de jure official languages. That needed a law to state they are official because they previously were not. English does not need such a law. There is no problem that needs fixing. Parliament has better things to do than debate such a law.

But this was in the coalition agreement with NZ First, and it is important the Government does what it agreed to do. What I would suggest is that at first reading they ask for leave of the House to pass it through all three stages without debate.

An amazing interview at The Spinoff:

Swarbrick said she had regularly told Beck that contributing to a media narrative of the city centre being all “chaos and crime and knives and guns” resulted in less foot traffic, less vibrancy and less safety. “I have personally contacted Viv and spoken to her at a number of meetings about how I think that her approach, or I guess you could plausibly call it a strategy, is hugely detrimental to the city.

This just sums the Greens up perfectly. Rather than actually look to reduce violent crime, their stance is that people should just not talk about it, and then people will feel safer!

Who will be the Justice Minister in a Labour/Green/TPM Government? Tamatha Paul who wants to abolish police foot patrols or Chloe who just wants people to pretend crime doesn’t exist?

The BBC reports:

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

The last member of the Royal Family to be arrested was King Charles 1 in 1647 – 379 years ago.

King Charles III said the “law must take its course” in response to Andrew’s arrest and that the police had his “full and wholehearted support and co-operation”.

Have to feel for the King. Andrew is his brother. However it also shows how right he was to make him renounce his titles.

Police had previously said they were considering investigating Andrew over allegations relating to his association with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and were reviewing allegations he shared confidential material.

If Andrew has been arrested for sharing confidential materials with Jeffery Epstein, then surely Peter Mandelson’s arrest can’t be far off.

A few months ago I founded a Facebook group called NZ Against Hamas to organise Kiwis who are interested in pro-Jewish advocacy and counterprotests against the anti-Israel movement in this country. (Incidentally, if anyone wishes to join the link is here: facebook.com/groups/nzah.private) A month or two ago one of the members of the group (“Caoimhin B Morcant”) contacted me saying that he was part of a private group of individuals who compile dossiers of information on members of the far left. When I enquired as to why this was he said it was to keep Aotearoa safe from such people. He asked me to provide him with the name of someone I have seen at the street protests. I said I didn’t know.

A few weeks later another account (“Charles Gray”) contacted me referring to this conversation and asking me if I had discovered the name of the person in question yet. I was confused because I had never had a conversation with this individual about the matters in question. He made some bs excuse which I didn’t give too much thought to at the time. It was not until later that I realised that it was the same person messaging me from different accounts, and that he had messaged me from the wrong one on the second occasion.

It became obvious recently that our page had been infiltrated by spy accounts, and so I finally sat down to sort out the problem by systematically working through our membership list. Eventually I found an account which it became clear was a fake account. I Googled this person’s name and found that it was the known alias of a particularly militant and rather nasty far-left activist whom I had met at the anti-Israel protests in Auckland. The website which identified the alias provided the name of a second alias which it said was controlled by the same person. I ran the name through our membership list and it was one of the accounts that had messaged me asking me for information about a protester and who had said that he was compiling dossiers of information on political opponents.

According to the website containing the two aliases the individual in question has dozens of very sophisticated fake social media accounts with thousands of friends, and the person who controls these accounts has boasted publicly about building a database of information on members of the political right.

It was then that I joined the dots and realised that Caoimhin B Morcant and Charles Gray were one and the same person, and that he is spying not on the far left but on people he deems to be rightwing (which seems to include me, even though I am a queer, pro-indigenous Labour Party voter). I checked the posts made by these accounts on our Facebook page and they were consistently requesting information valuable to the other side, for example about my lawsuit against the Police or about a private pro-Israel social media page run by someone who joined our page. That is consistent with building a database on the owner’s political opponents.

The public need to know that these three Facebook accounts are fake accounts controlled by a far-left activist for the express purpose of harvesting your data:

Sally Jade Jones: https://www.facebook.com/jadejonesnz This account has over 4000 friends.

Caoimhin B Morcant/ Kevin Morgan: https://www.facebook.com/kevin.morgan.92754397 This account has nearly 2000 friends.

Charles Gray: https://www.facebook.com/gray.charles333/ This account has 800 friends. (Note that he has since placed this account into inactivity.)

If you have a Facebook account, I suggest unfriending these accounts immediately, or warning any mutual friends who are on his friend lists. A number of people have commented to me that they had overlooked adding these accounts, so I suggest checking to make sure.

Former PM Sir Geoffrey Palmer has written a column disagreeing with my call for New Zealand to become the seventh state of Australia. It is a very reasonable column, and I’ll use the blog to respond to some of the points here.

There is no respect in which Australia differs more from New Zealand than its constitutional structures and decision-making.

To give up the advantage of being a sovereign state to become a state of Australia means New Zealanders would have a very limited input into the decisions of the new government.

Yep that is the downside of not being a sovereign state. However I would point out state governments in Australia still provide many of the most important services to the public such as health, education and police. And we would be almost the third largest Australian state with 12 Senators and 28 MPs, which would be the balance of power often.

It also means New Zealand’s voice would  be  eliminated  at the international level and in the councils of the world.

There are two respects in which this would be a loss.

We would no longer have a seat in the United Nations General Assembly. .

New Zealand would lose its capacity to negotiate and participate in the making of treaties that apply to New Zealand, both multilateral and bilateral.

As a trading nation, that voice is essential and to lose it would be most unfortunate and have deleterious economic consequences.  

I think Sir Geoffrey overlooks the premise made by Mark Carney and myself. In the new world order of nationalism, multilateral institutions are far far far less useful and powerful. It is their weakening that makes us needing to be bigger and stronger. Wishing the world hasn’t changed doesn’t make it so.

As for a vote in the UN General Assembly. Even putting aside its general impotence, how often do Australia and NZ vote differently in the UN? Would an Albanese Government vote differently to a (say) Hipkins Government. Very unlikely.

The history of Australia’s written constitution, as interpreted by the High Court of Australia, places considerable limits upon the capacity of the Commonwealth to govern effectively.  

I found that out when assisting Sir Owen Woodhouse in Australia during the days of the Whitlam  government.

The Prime Minister wished to enact a measure comparable to the New Zealand accident compensation legislation. But there was an absence of federal power to do so.

This is actually a good thing for NZ, if we joined. It means we could keep ACC. I like having limits on the power of a federal government.

There are profound legal differences between a federation of limited central powers and a unitary state, such as New Zealand, where all the power lies with a single  government.

Yep, and if you are a state, those differences work to your benefit. Canberra can’t tell you what to do on everything.

New Zealand already has in force one of the deepest and most comprehensive trade agreements in the world: the Australia- New Zealand Economic Relations Trade Agreement 1983, known as ANZCERTA.

In effect, this gives New Zealand all the advantages of being a state of Australia.

New Zealand has free trade with Australia for all goods, including agricultural products. And it includes all services as well.

Therefore there would be precious little advantage for New Zealand to become a single state, rather than a separate country.

It is because we are so economically integrated that it would be easy to become a state. The key thing missing is that when a super-power starts throwing its weight around, Australia is not going to economically defend New Zealand. If Trump puts a 200% tariff on our lamb exports because he doesn’t like our copyright law, we’re screwed, However if part of Australia, we can’t be singled out – and Australia as a whole would work to reverse them.

I’d also point out if we are a state of Australia, they could no longer deport the 501s to us. No such thing as an internal deportation.

I recall when Michael Kirby, the distinguished Australian judge, years ago made a proposal that New Zealand should be two states of Australia, not one.

That would not be acceptable either.

That would be great, but I don’t think we could convince the Aussies of that – even after a few drinks on Melbourne Cup day. Having 24 Senators instead of 12 would make us incredibly powerful in Australia – equal to NSW and Victoria combined in the Senate.

 It would hand over the interpretation of the law to the High Court  of Australia.

The NZ Supreme Court would rule on most NZ legal issues. The Australian High Court on federal law issues. There would be an appeal on issues such as whether a state law breaches the constitution.

Under what is proposed, major taxation decisions would not be made in New Zealand.

That is an advantage as 99% of Australians pay less income tax than New Zealanders on the same income.

New Zealand would be easily outvoted in both the Australian House of Representatives and the Senate.

That makes the mistake of think the Australian House and Senate vote as a bloc. They are divided on many issues. The 28 NZ MPs and 12 NZ Senators could well prove decisive on many issues.

The Public Service Commission has published a scathing report into how the Teaching Council managed conflicts and procured work with a firm part owned by the CEOs husband. They note:

It found serious and repeated failures in the Teaching Council’s procurement and conflict of interest processes between late 2018 and early 2025. These failures were not matters of minor or technical non‑compliance – they reflected poor oversight and immature organisational controls, particularly in relation to conflict management.

I’ve just read the report and what I think is equally note-worthy is how almost all the contracts were for projects that were far from core work for the Council – teacher registration etc. Even if the projects had been procured better, they were still just a massive costs that teachers were being levied to fund. They include:

• $400,000 on “unteaching racism”
• $600,000 on raising awareness and a stakeholder engagement plan
• $500,000 on digital engagement

I am sure the Medical Council doesn’t need to spend $500,000 on digital engagement. You’re a regulatory body, not a social media agency.

Spending $600,000 on a stakeholder engagement plan is just an excuse to fund contractors. A decent mid level comms staffer should be able to put together a stakeholder engagement plan in a week or so.

The change to Kainga Ora in the last two years has been massive. Chris Bishop has a long list of changes. Here are some of the bigger ones:

• Kāinga Ora’s 2023 Board-approved budget showed debt forecast to grow to $24.8 billion by 2026/27. That’s about 20 Transmission Gullies or 12 New Dunedin Hospitals.
• The social housing waitlist grew from around 7,000 to over 26,000 applicants at its peak in 2022.
• “In 2024/25, Kāinga Ora had an operating savings target of $41 million compared to the previous Financial Year, but with hard work and strong cost controls, they exceeded this target and delivered $211 million in operating cost reductions,”
• “Before the Turnaround Plan, Kāinga Ora’s peak debt was forecast to be $29 billion in 2032/33, the Plan brought this down to $21.3 billion, and now – a year into the Plan – debt is expected to peak earlier in 2029/30 at $19.5 billion. That’s a total reduction in peak debt of $9.5 billion, so far.
• “In 2024/25, Kāinga Ora delivered a total of 3,456 new homes and 874 upgraded homes. The agency also added 2,564 net new homes to its housing stock, exceeding its target of 2,230.”
• “In 2022/23, Kāinga Ora’s average build cost per square metre was $3,433. Kāinga Ora’s build costs were 12 per cent higher than the private sector. 
• Kāinga Ora’s build costs are now trending down, with build cost per square metre averaging $3,290 in the first quarter of 2025/26. The agency is also on track to meet its $2,980 per square metre target by June 2026.”
• “In 2022/23, around 80 per cent of tenants were satisfied with their homes and 70 percent felt safe in their homes and communities. Now, 87 per cent of tenants are satisfied and 90 per cent feel safe.
• “More whanau are also making use of Kāinga Ora homes as vacancy rates have dropped from 5% in late 2023 to 2% in December 2025.
• “In June 2024, around 8,600 tenants were in rent arrears. As of December, only 5,500 tenants were in arrears – a drop of around 3,000.
• In 2023/24, 12 tenancies ended due to disruptive behaviour, and in 2024/25 75 ended.
• At the end of 2023, it took Kāinga Ora 72 days on average to resolve a disruptive behaviour compliant .As of December 2025, it now only takes 10 days on average,”

So less debt, a drop in the waitlist, lower build costs, higher tenant satisfaction, fewer vacant homes, less rent arrears and fewer disruptive tenants. Now a bad job.

The geniuses at NZEI have launched a campaign called Make It Stop. Their campaign video has kids playing the recorder and people begging them to stop. It is meant to be some sort of super clever analogy aimed at the Government, but most people will just see it as the NZEI dissing kids learning music.

Learning the recorder is a hallowed part of school. I remember learning it at Island Bay Primary. And here the NZEI thinks it is something to be mocked.

Now I wasn’t the best recorder play at school, but as it happens one school girl who was very good at the recorder is a certain Erica Stanford. And she has just shot a video showing off her recorder skills, and urging music teachers not be to be out off teaching kids the recorder as it is such a great entry into learning music.

If there was a award for worst political campaign of the year, the NZEI would be an odds on favourite to take it out, even though it is only February.

Vernon Small points out:

But what should also be a concern to the party is that he is the latest in a long line of senior male MPs (including a significant clutch of Māori MPs) who have taken their leave since the 2023 election or have announced they are going.

Which is where the “eight” comes in.

The tally of the Blokesit so far is: former deputy leader Kelvin Davis, Grant Robertson, Andrew Little, David Parker, Duncan Webb, Rino Tirikatene, Adrian Rurawhe and now Henare. That includes, worryingly, four senior Māori MPs against the backdrop of Labour’s ambition to win all seven Māori electorates.

Also Greg and Damien O’Connor have no seats, so may both leave also.

Labour only had 16 male MPs elected in 2023, and 8 – 10 of them have left or are leaving. That is a huge departure rate.

Te Ururoa Flavell writes:

1. Māori Party in court with its MPs

2. Two former Māori Party candidate options have gone to Greens. There may be others.

3. Peeni Henare gets the chop by his Party. He is a good man with a heart for the people. He rangatira no tētahi kāwai rangatira.

4. Willy Jackson moves in on Tamaki seat against Orini. Orinis team was from JTs team. Orini is on the outer with the Māori Party. JT and Willie are thick. Figure out the rest!!!

5. Māori Party at 1% down from 7%.

6. In to each other at Waitangi

The interesting aspect is his statement that new MP Orini Kaipara has already fallen out with Tamihere and that Tamihere and Willie and working to take her out.

The Taxpayers’ Union reports:

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union can reveal through an Official Information Act requestthat staff at the Ministry of Education were paid $414,119.68 by taxpayers to do 8,528 hours of union work.

This includes organising and advocating on behalf of the New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa (NZEI), the Public Service Association (PSA) and the Association of Professional and Executive Employees (APEX).

Labour approves collective contracts where taxpayers fund union officials to work on behalf of Labour. It’s basically corruption.

“Ministry staff were paid to help coordinate strikes that last year left kids out of the classroom and parents forced to fund childcare. Minister Seymour has already announced that union strikes tanked school attendance last year.”

Incredible. The Ministry is funding its own staff to help organise strikes against the Ministry!

Liam Hehir writes:

Wayne Brown’s claim that the Government’s proposed rates cap would save Auckland households “just $2.79 a month” is eye-catching, quotable, and deeply misleading. Not because the rates cap is necessarily a good idea, but because Brown’s framing badly understates its real effect. …

Rates are a compounding charge. What matters is not the first-year saving, but the rate base that is locked in and carried forward year after year. A slightly lower increase today permanently reduces every future increase that follows. This is basic arithmetic, familiar to anyone who understands mortgages, interest rates, or inflation.

If rates rise by 9% instead of 4% in a given year, the difference does not vanish after 12 months. It becomes the new starting point. Next year’s increase is applied to a higher number. And the year after that. Over time, modest differences at the margin turn into material differences in household budgets.

Take the current average Auckland rates bill of about $4,000. An extra 4% instead of 8% sounds trivial if you treat each year in isolation, as if the increase simply resets back to zero. On that mistaken view, the difference is about $160 a year, forever. But rates do not work like that. They compound. 

Each year’s increase is applied to a larger base created by the year before. Over 10 years, a 4% annual increase lifts the bill to around $5,900. An 8% path takes it to roughly $8,600. The gap is no longer $160. It is nearly $2,700 every year, locked in permanently.

In Wellington it may be even greater savings.

The average rates bill is around $6,000 and increases have been over 10%. A 10% annual increase vs 4% annual increase will be a difference of $6,680 within 10 years. That is $128 a week difference.

The Taxpayers’ Union points out:

Too often, Hōne Heke is reduced to a caricature: “the man who chopped down the flagpole.”

What’s missing from most retellings is why he did it.

Hōne Heke wasn’t just protesting symbolism. He was protesting taxation.

In 1841, he was angered by the new Government’s introduction of tariffs on tea, sugar, flour, grain, spirits, tobacco, and other foreign goods — taxes that hit Māori trade in the north particularly hard.

Hōne Heke saw immediately that the Treaty he had signed was being followed by higher prices, reduced economic opportunity, and decisions being made without meaningful consent.

So he resisted. Not with speeches or submissions – but with the blunt tools available to him at the time.

It’s well documented that Hōne Heke was inspired by the way America had responded to British-imposed taxes with full-blown revolution. He even flew the American flag as a symbol of his anti-tax, anti-colonial protest (an image often left out of modern depictions of his rebellion).

And here’s the part that really matters: it worked.

After Hōne Heke’s rebellion, the Government abolished customs duties in the Bay of Islands and declared it a free port. Bad taxes were repealed because someone was willing to stand up and say, “this isn’t fair.”

Hōne Heke supported and was a signatory to the Treaty. His protest came when the Crown failed to honour it, particularly through unjust taxation and centralised decision-making.

He stood up for economic dignity, self-determination, and common sense. Ideals that transcend party lines, ethnicity, and political fashion.

That’s a lineage we’re proud to be part of.

I recall talking about asking Bob Jones (when he was alive) to place a statue of Hone Heke in Lambton Quay, with the plaque “Tax Hero” beneath it. More people need to know his legacy.

Radio NZ reports:

Rurawhe, who served as the Te Tai Hauāura MP for three terms, also offered a candid reflection on Labour’s time in government, saying the party should’ve done more to bring the public along on key Māori policies.

He said that while he had advocated for a Māori Health Authority, Rurawhe said in hindsight that Labour had not convinced the broader electorate of the need for it.

“Unless people see themselves in the policy, they’re not going to support it,” he said.

If Labour were to pursue similar policies again, Rurawhe said the party would need to take a different approach, focusing on outcomes rather than structures.

“I think it is to concentrate less on the Māori Health Authority and focus more on achieving the outcomes that we want for Māori health,” he said.

Outcomes rather than structures – absolutely. Sadly I doubt his colleagues agree.

Asked about Te Pāti Māori’s chances at November’s election, Rurawhe was blunt about his opinion after months of infighting in the support party. 

“They’ll be lucky to keep one [seat],” he said. “I believe if it’s consistent across the whole country of what I’m hearing, then they will be lucky to have one seat.”

I hope he’s right.

NBC reports:

Japan’s conservative prime minister Sanae Takaichi has won a landslide victory after she gambled on a high-stakes snap election.

Takaichi, who took office in October after being elected leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), surpassed the 310 seats needed for a supermajority in the 465-seat lower house, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported from the official election count Sunday evening. The supermajority allows her ruling coalition to override the upper house, where it lacks a majority.

I think it can also propose amendments to the Japanese constitution. But they also need to get 2/3 in the upper house and go to referendum.

For many voters, Takaichi — a motorbike enthusiast and heavy metal drummer — is a refreshing change of pace in Japan’s male-dominated politics, despite having traditionalist views that are not always seen as advancing women, and the appointment of just two women in her cabinet.

Much of the craze for Takaichi has been based less on her policies than on her style, with her pledge to “work, work, work, work and work” being named the catchphrase of the year. Items associated with her have gone viral, from the pink ballpoint pen she uses to take notes in parliament to her $900 black leather handbag, now sold out months in advance.

Wow she doesn’t believe in quotas, so she is anti-women. Luckily Japanese voters aren’t woke.

It looks like they have gone from 191 seats to 316 – a huge swing. It is the most seats won by a party in The Diet since 1942, so basically the largest ever post WWII result.

The Herald reports:

A damning review of the Teaching Council says the agency has lost focus on its core function of safeguarding children and needs transformative change to ensure it is meeting critical regulatory responsibilities. …

The report says the council is focused on “building the mana” of teachers and “being liked by the profession”.

However, this had come at the expense of child safety and key regulatory and stewardship functions.

“As a regulator, the council will not always be liked. Instead, it should aim to be respected,” Francis wrote.

I’ve chaired a regulator. This was a key thing you would know. Your aim wasn’t popularity but respect, predictability, and fairness.

To have the Teachers’ Council put popularity with teachers ahead of child safety shows why the Government has stripped it of some of its roles. Child welfare is too important not to do so.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand First is campaigning for a referendum to be held on the future of Māori electorates.

Let’s do the time warp again!

But this isn’t the first time Peters has called for a referendum on the Māori seats.

Ahead of the 2017 election, he said a binding referendum on the policy was a “bottom line” policy for his party. Yet, his coalition agreement with the Jacinda Ardern-led Labour Party did not commit to such a referendum.

Not only wasn’t it in the coalition agreement, Labour sources all say NZ First didn’t even raise it during the negotiations.

I’d personally like to see a referendum on the Maori seats, but not just on abolition.

I think we should have a referendum on what the Royal Commission on the Electoral System recommended in 1986. The chapter is here. Extract below

Parliament ignored this recommendation and unilaterally decided to keep the status quo. I say NZers should get to vote on the Royal Commission recommendation.

One think I like about the recommendation is it would probably lead to several Maori parties, representing different views. There would probably be conservative Māori Party, a socialist Māori Party, an urban Māori Party, an Iwi rights party etc. And this is how it should be as Maori don;t have one monolithic view. Abolishing the seats in favour of no threshold for Maori parties would allow all Maori who wish to support Maori parties to have representation in Parliament. It would get rid of the arrogant notion that Te Pati Maori (for example) speaks for Maoridom. It would also mean no more seperate rolls.

A guest post from the Sensible Sentencing Trust:

The October sentencing of Daytona Thompson in the High Court at New Plymouth has  reignited debate about how New Zealand responds to single-punch killings.

Thompson fatally struck Daniel Nganeko outside the Tukapa Rugby and Sports Club in  July 2025. There was no provocation. The blow caused Nganeko to fall backwards and suffer catastrophic head injuries. He died three days later in Auckland City Hospital.

Justice Paul Radich adopted a starting point of seven years’ imprisonment. However, after applying discounts for a guilty plea, youth, background factors and the impact of imprisonment on Thompson’s child, the final sentence was four years and two months. 

Under current parole rules, eligibility arises after one-third of the sentence has been served. In practical terms, that means Thompson can seek parole by the end of this year.

The case highlights a structural issue within New Zealand’s sentencing framework that manslaughter carries no statutory minimum term of imprisonment. While the maximum penalty is life, actual sentences vary widely and are heavily influenced by discounts.

The result is that in cases involving a single fatal punch, the effective time served can be very short.

Single-punch deaths, also called Cowards Punch, are almost always prosecuted as manslaughter because the Crown cannot prove intent to kill. But, the absence of intent does not alter the outcome for the victim or their family. A life has been taken in violent circumstances.

Under section 102 of the Sentencing Act 2002, murder carries a mandatory life sentence with a minimum non-parole period of 10 years, but manslaughter has no equivalent sentencing floor. Full discretion is in the hands of judges to set starting points and apply mitigating factors and Justice Radich made clear in this case that he was required to apply the law as it stands and could not take into account community sentiment or proposed legislative changes.

Those proposed changes refer to the Crimes Amendment Bill currently before Parliament. It proposes to introduce a specific designation for coward-punch manslaughter. However, it does not alter sentencing ranges, introduce mandatory minimums, or adjust parole eligibility provisions. In practical terms, the reform is not worth the paper it is written on.

All victim advocates like the Sensible Sentencing Trust are asking for is that the Government at least bring our sentencing up to the same levels of comparable international jurisdictions. In Australian jurisdictions such as Victoria and New South Wales, legislative reforms over the past decade have addressed single-punch deaths directly. 

Courts in those jurisdictions frequently impose total sentences in the range of 10 to 11 years for aggravated one-punch killings, with non-parole periods commonly set around six or seven years.

Proponents of judicial discretion argue that mandatory minimums risk rigidity and injustice in individual cases. But, Parliament regularly sets statutory baselines for serious offending when it considers certain conduct to warrant consistent denunciation and deterrence. 

Murder is the clearest example. The Government’s return of the three strikes regime, despite amendments, reflects similar legislative intent.

The issue, therefore, is not whether Parliament can set minimum non-parole periods for particular forms of manslaughter. It clearly can. The issue is whether it chooses to do so in the case of Coward Punches causing death.

The Coalition Government campaigned on strengthening law-and-order responses and restoring public confidence in the justice system. The current Bill signals recognition that single-punch deaths have become a distinct category of concern. However, without changes to sentencing parameters, the practical impact will be negligible.

Justice Radich’s remarks illustrate the constitutional boundary. Judges apply the law and Parliament defines it. If sentencing outcomes are viewed as disproportionate, the responsibility for reform lies with legislators, not the judiciary.

NZ First and ACT have both historically supported firmer sentencing in cases involving serious violence. Their influence within the current parliamentary arrangement gives them the ability to press for amendments to the Bill to give it some teeth.

Sensible Sentencing Trust says they can do this by establishing a statutory minimum non-parole period for unprovoked single-punch killings of 8 years imprisonment, being two years less than the present mandatory minimum term for murder, 10 years.  

Reasonable people can differ on whether the mandatory minimum for a Coward Punch causing death should be 8 years or something a little less.  But, without Parliament clearly laying it out at law, the Judiciary cannot impose measurably firmer sentencing.

The present framework leaves a clear gap between public expectations and sentencing outcomes. Introducing a new label without modifying the sentencing architecture risks reinforcing that gap rather than resolving it.

The purpose of sentencing, under section 7 of the Sentencing Act, includes holding offenders accountable, denouncing conduct, deterring similar offending, protecting the community and providing for rehabilitation. The weight assigned to each purpose is ultimately a legislative choice reflected in statutory structure.

But, if Parliament intends to signal stronger denunciation and deterrence for coward punch killings, it must do so through substantive change, not merely tweaking the name of the offence. Legislative clarity, consistency and proportionality are central to maintaining public confidence in the criminal justice system. If Parliament believes that the taking of a life through an unprovoked act of violence warrants a more substantial custodial response, the law must reflect that belief in concrete terms.

A label alone will not determine time served. Sentencing provisions will. The Government have an opportunity right now to amend their Bill and make meaningful change for victims.

Submissions on the Crimes Amendment Bill close at midnight tonight, Monday 16 February.  You can submit here: