Luke Malpass writes:

At ACT’s party conference in late May, president Tim Jago set what sounded like an outlandish goal: ACT wanted to double its number of MPs in the next Parliament from 10 to 20.

After the 2017 election I (and many others) thought an outstanding result for ACT in 2020 would be more than three MPs. If they stayed at one, they were in trouble. If they went from one to two that would be just acceptable. If they got to three MPs that would be a pretty decent result. Four or five would be awesome. And then they went and got ten.

Now 20 MPs is definitely a stretch. But not impossible. If they get 15% of the vote (with 5% wasted) they would get 19 MPs.

Seymour talks about “ACT’s voting universe”, which, according to the party’s research, seen by Stuff, is the proportion of the voting population that would potentially vote for ACT in the right circumstances.

He explains that a few months before the party scored almost 8 per cent in last October’s general election that universe was 16 per cent of the population. Today, it is 33 per cent.

“So that’s why we think we can double,” he says.

The size of your voting universe is vital. 33% is pretty high for a minor party.

Seymour goes on to say that the ACT’s research shows that of all potential ACT voters, about a third are former Labour voters. Certainly ACT events out on the campaign trail skewed younger and appear more traditionally working class then the ACT of yesteryear.

Seymour also thinks that his party is best positioned to grow into a party that attracts and retains the votes of many immigrants, because, in his words, many are “natural entrepreneurs”.

“We are actually stronger amongst Indian and Chinese at the moment than we are amongst European New Zealanders.

A third of potential voters being former Labour voters is important. ACT taking votes off National helps ACT but doesn’t help change the Government. ACT taking votes off Labour does.

The Herald reports:

A claim has been lodged with the Waitangi Tribunal accusing the Napier City Council of failing to take reasonable steps to introduce Māori wards and thus obstructing Māori representation.

The claim was lodged this week – and served on the Crown – by a group of five on behalf of Napier area iwi representative body Te Taiwhenua o Te Whanganui a Orotu.

It’s interesting how whenever one goal is achieved, then a new goal is introduced.

1. Allow one Regional Council to introduce a Maori ward, as they requested special legislation to do so.
2. Then use that as a precedent to argue all Councils should be able to have Maori wards, but have the final decision rest with residents and ratepayers.
3. Abolish the right of residents and ratepayers to decide if there should be race based seats for their Council.
4. Condemn any Council that doesn’t introduce a Maori ward
5. Make Maori wards mandatory
6. Require half of Council seats to be Maori wards, to achieve true partnership

I’d say Step 5 will be seriously pushed for within 15 years maximum. It might even be less than 10 years.

Step 6 will take longer but we already have one political party pushing it.

AKA – why no one gives a big Rat’s Ass.

In the last two weeks the Villa Education Trust (VET) has been engaged in a David vs a deaf, dumb and blind Goliath (Ministry of Education). This has shone a light on the massive failings on the NZ system and the complete lack of expertise and will to fix it.

I will do two posts on this – one today and one tomorrow. Today will be brief on why this is such a big deal that so few care about. Tomorrow on exactly what, the VET and others, are fighting for and the HUGE societal implications if we fail.

During the last (National) government I asked one of their prominent people: “How much does the government actually care about education in NZ?”

The response was: “They don’t. The main emphasis to senior officials within Education, and Health for that matter, is to keep it off the front pages of the paper.”

To be fair; this Labour government – to the surprise of no one except the teacher unions – has been worse. The unions are, of course, axial in voting Labour in. However, they were quickly rewarded and bribed out by large salary increases and have barely been heard from since. Nothing substantial has changed and when the rest of the world moves ahead and you stand still you end up, as we are, last in the English-speaking world. We have the biggest rich/poor and ethnicity gaps, and the worst bullying statistics in the OECD.

Why can they be so cynical? In short – they are tremendously confident that the ongoing failure and neglect in this area changes no votes.

In New Zealand we have 3,727,100 eligible voters. None under 18 of course and the largest bloc is over 70s.

In NZ we have 826,347 students in our primary and secondary schools. This represents approximately 330,000 families of varied composition. Approximately 30% of these are in real academic and social malaise in school – concentrated in Decile 1 – 3 schools and students with diverse needs throughout the Deciles. The other 70% do okay. This brings the number of families directly concerned with education down to 110,000 (approx. 185,000 eligible voters). Over 90% of 65+ vote. That turnout decreases towards the 18 – 24s. So approximately 3% of Kiwi voters have a direct family interest in Education and a portion of those don’t even vote.

There are approximately 71,500 teachers in NZ. The teacher unions have been highly supportive of Labour and it is safe to assume a majority vote that way. The former head of the PPTA, Angela Roberts entered Parliament this term for Labour. Current Associate Minister of Education Jan Tinetti was on the NZEI executive.

Decile 1 – 3 schools are concentrated in long-term Maori and Pasifika – and Labour – electorates. Their vote is taken for granted and the voters hold that line apparently regardless of the impact on their children and their family socio-economic circumstances.

Labour has bribed the tertiary students with the free fees for 1 year and, although there have been cracks in the façade, tertiary students still lean left.

All of which can be summarized in three statements.

1. Those with an intense personal interest in the failures of our education system are a tiny part (3%) of voters and even these currently tend towards Labour.
2. Labour has to do very little to retain their vote in the broader education sector. So – they do very little.
3. National are just as bad. They take for granted the affluent sector and do not believe they can win votes/electorates in the decile 1 – 3 areas. Historically they haven’t even tried with education where it is problematic. It is, at best, amoral.

Some brief indicators of the sector consequences.

• 10,500 students not even enrolled in school.
• Only 60% of students fully attending.
• Massive gaps between socio-economic levels and for Maori and Pasifika.
• HUGE under-provision for students with diverse learning needs.

The flow-on.

• 35% of the population unable to earn enough income to buy a house and, increasingly, to even pay rent. 22,000 families on an emergency housing wait-list.
• A significant portion of the population on benefits or long-term minimum wage and low prospect jobs.
• Our prisons where 70% of the inmates are functionally illiterate.
• Alcohol abuse, metal health issues and physical health problems concentrated in the demographics with high education failure.
• Family violence and OT interventions concentrated in the demographics with high educational failure.

Those consequences are the symptom of the Education Disease – but the Ipsos Poll highlighted on Kiwiblog shows we are only focused on the symptoms.

Cynical, amoral and self-interested politicians. A dysfunctional Ministry with nearing 4,000 employees running cover for the Minister and each other. A tiny voting bloc if you look to single issue education voters and a long-term political bias towards Labour in the sector. Self-interest focus as voters and the impact of identity politics. They all add up towards our education disaster and the train being stuck on the tracks.

Any hope or rope ladder out? I will tell you tomorrow.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

It is, I’d argue, the sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation. It is, in essence, an ongoing moral panic against the specter of “white supremacy,” which is now bizarrely regarded as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy in human history.

We all know it’s happened. The elites, increasingly sequestered within one political party and one media monoculture, educated by colleges and private schools that have become hermetically sealed against any non-left dissent, have had a “social justice reckoning” these past few years. And they have been ideologically transformed, with countless cascading consequences. 

We are seeing the same in NZ. If you for example view the Treaty of Waitangi as being about respecting property rights instead of partnership, you are ineligible for funding by NZ on Air. You won’t get a contract with many government agencies. You may even lose your job.

The best moniker I’ve read to describe this mishmash of postmodern thought and therapy culture ascendant among liberal white elites is Wesley Yang’s coinage: “the successor ideology.” The “structural oppression” is white supremacy, but that can also be expressed more broadly, along Crenshaw lines: to describe a hegemony that is saturated with “anti-Blackness,” misogyny, and transphobia, in a miasma of social “cis-heteronormative patriarchal white supremacy.” And the term “successor ideology” works because it centers the fact that this ideology wishes, first and foremost, to repeal and succeed a liberal society and democracy.

In the successor ideology, there is no escape, no refuge, from the ongoing nightmare of oppression and violence — and you are either fighting this and “on the right side of history,” or you are against it and abetting evil. There is no neutrality. No space for skepticism. No room for debate. No space even for staying silent. (Silence, remember, is violence — perhaps the most profoundly anti-liberal slogan ever invented.)

Sound familiar?

Liberalism leaves you alone. The successor ideology will never let go of you. Liberalism is only concerned with your actions. The successor ideology is concerned with your mind, your psyche, and the deepest recesses of your soul. Liberalism will let you do your job, and let you keep your politics private. S.I. will force you into a struggle session as a condition for employment.

And the next bit is familiar:

A plank of successor ideology, for example, is that the only and exclusive reason for racial inequality is “white supremacy.” Culture, economics, poverty, criminality, family structure: all are irrelevant, unless seen as mere emanations of white control. Even discussing these complicated factors is racist, according to Ibram X Kendi.

It is the death of debate and analysis. If one ethnic group is over-represented in arrest statistics, it must be the system. It can’t be other factors.

Due process? If you’re a male on campus, gone. Privacy? Stripped away — by anonymous rape accusations, exposure of private emails, violence against people’s private homes, screaming at folks in restaurants, sordid exposés of sexual encounters, eagerly published by woke mags. Non-violence? Exceptions are available if you want to “punch a fascist.” Free speech? Only if you don’t mind being fired and ostracized as a righteous consequence. Free association? You’ve got to be kidding. Religious freedom? Illegitimate bigotry. Equality? Only group equity counts now, and individuals of the wrong identity can and must be discriminated against. Color-blindness? Another word for racism. Mercy? Not for oppressors. Intent? Irrelevant. Objectivity? A racist lie. Science? A manifestation of white supremacy. Biological sex? Replaced by socially constructed gender so that women have penises and men have periods. The rule of law? Not for migrants or looters. Borders? Racist. Viewpoint diversity? A form of violence against the oppressed. 

Depressing.

We are going through the greatest radicalization of the elites since the 1960s. This isn’t coming from the ground up. It’s being imposed ruthlessly from above, marshaled with a fusillade of constant MSM propaganda, and its victims are often the poor and the black and the brown. It nearly lost the Democrats the last election. Only Biden’s seeming moderation, the wisdom of black Democratic primary voters,and the profound ugliness of Trump wrested the presidency from a vicious demagogue, whose contempt for our system of government appears ever greater the more we find out about his term in office.

Trump almost won, despite his huge flaws, because the now ideology of the elites is so appalling.

Stuff reports:

The trial for a man accused of murdering his childhood friend has been adjourned until 2023.

Christchurch man David Charles Benbow was charged with the murder of Michael McGrath in September 2019.

McGrath, a builder, vanished from his Halswell home on May 21, 2017. His body has never been found despite intensive police searches.

Benbow was due to go to trial on August 9. However, on Tuesday a court spokeswoman confirmed the trial had been adjourned until February 13, 2023.

Almost four years wait for a trial is far too long. It is unacceptable.

Benbow has been in custody since his arrest after being declined bail. He earlier pleaded not guilty to the murder charge.

It is sometimes necessary to hold people in custody while they await trial, especially for repeat offenders. But a wait of over 40 months is again far too long.

That’s an amazing representation of the difference. Just as many cases but around 95% fewer deaths.

Nice wee video showing that the Mongrel Mob not only told people before the election to not vote National but explicitly also said to vote Labour to keep Judith out.

TVNZ reports:

The Te Huia service was between Paerata heading toward Pukekohe in an 80km/h zone on Monday evening when without warning it pulled apart – causing the emergency brakes to lock on. No one was hurt.

KiwiRail’s acting chief operating officer Walter Rushbrook said the rear two carriages drifted apart from the front part of the train.

“When that occurs all the emergency systems kick into place and the train automatically stops.”

He said a worker connects the carriages using a coupling system and it is checked before each train journey.

Maybe the back carriages got bored of having almost no passengers and decided to go AWOL, figuring it would takes weeks before anyone noticed they had disappeared?

More seriously trains should not decouple like this. Something has gone seriously wrong.

I’m looking to start a regular podcast on NZ politics along with a couple of other people from the right. We hope it was be insightful and amusing, and will share details in due course.

Ideally I’d like to do as little of the technical side as possible. If there is someone out there who can set up podcast software, edit files, add theme music etc and upload the files to the various syndicator sites, please drop me a line at [email protected]. At least at first it will be unpaid. If we commercialise it later on with subscriptions or advertising, then that could change.

We would probably be recording in the mid to late evening, and aiming to have the podcast available by the next morning so people could listen to it on their way to work etc.

Stuff reports:

Less than two months​ after March 15, the New Zealand Film Commission was in talks with Hollywood producers looking to make movies about Christchurch’s terrorist attack.

The commission offered its support, and stayed in contact – even coordinating and offering advice as it came time to go public with the project.

What is wrong with these people? Just two months after 51 people are slaughtered and you are already working on a film about it.

The commission understood the film was a “love letter to Jacinda Ardern and the two mosques”. However, when the script leaked this month, families from the mosque attacks said its details were “worse than the terrorist’s livestream”.

The draft script is a love letter tp Jacinda, and one that may cost taxpayers $20 million. It says a lot about the Film Commission that they didn’t see any problems with funding a film that would be nakedly partisan.

Around the same time, the commission’s former chief executive, Annabelle Sheehan, received a draft script of They Are Us. Producer Tim White told her: “The script is strong.”

The script is vomitous.

Newshub reports:

Chris Hipkins is pushing back on criticism he was “slow to even order” COVID-19 vaccines amid revelations the first batch wasn’t requested until late January. 

The COVID-19 Response Minister has revealed in written parliamentary questions from National MP Chris Bishop that the Government made its first purchase order with Pfizer on January 29, for 65,520 doses. 

So it took three months to order any vaccines, and when they finally did, it was for around 1% of the country.

“New Zealand’s advance purchase agreement with Pfizer was signed on 12 October and it was the first vaccine agreement we signed. The Government should’ve then immediately ordered as many doses as possible and moved as quickly as possible to approve the vaccine use in New Zealand,” Bishop says. 

Why on earth did they wait three months to place an order?

“We weren’t able to put in an order for that first delivery until we knew that we were getting Medsafe approval. Once we were confident of that, a few days before that, we got the order in so that we could take the delivery fairly soon after the approval was officially given.

Oh nonsense. Of course you could order them ahead of approval. You just couldn’t use them.

NewstalkZB reports:

National is calling on Police Minister Poto Williams to resign following her comments on Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking Breakfast today.

The Minister pushed back at the suggestion the police should be armed, and says the communities she represents – Māori and Pasifika – are against arming officers.

National leader Judith Collins says Williams should be replaced by someone capable of caring about police officers.

Ms Collins told Heather du Plessis-Allan firstly, Ms Williams representing claims are incorrect.

“You’ve got a minister there who says she represents Māori and Pasifika communities – no she doesn’t, she doesn’t at all. She represents Christchurch East.

“I can’t imagine too many people in Christchurch East agree with her pathetic response when asked to condemn the activist group People Against Prisons Aotearoa, who want to disarm, defund and abolish what they call the blood-stained, racist institution that of the New Zealand Police. She couldn’t even stand up for Police then.

“Police can’t come out and fight for themselves when it comes to the media, the least thing they want from their Minister is to have some spine and to stand up for them, and if she can’t do that she should go.”

It is sad that front line police officers don’t have a Minister who will back them.

Ipsos have done a poll on what issues are of most concern to NZers. The top ones are:

1. Housing 53% (+19% from a year ago)
2. Health 27% (nc)
3. Cost of living 27% (+4%)
4. Poverty 26% (nc)
5. Economy 22% (-18%)
6. Crime 21% (+5%)

So housing is massively up and the economy massively down. Labour will be pleased to have the economy low down as major issue as that is not a traditionally good area for them to compete on. Housing is usually a better issue for them but obviously they are not doing well in this area. The question is whether people will see National as doing better?

Cost of living and crime are both up modestly from last year. They are both areas potentially useful for National if they continue to grow as a concern.

Ipsos also ask people to rate the Government’s performance on a 0 to 10 scale. It has declined from 7.3 a year ago to 6.4 today. So not a good trend but 6.4 is still pretty damn good. Only 15% gave them a rating of 0 to 3 compared to 58% who gave them a 7 – 10.

Also of concern to National should be the number of people rating Labour as better than them on managing key issues. The scores are:

• Cost of living – Labour +17%
• Health Labour +28%
• Poverty Labour +37%
• Economy Labour +9%

National needs to lead Labour on the economy and cost of living to be competitive.

Stuff reports:

Broadcaster Martin Devlin is in hospital after attempting to take his own life, his ex-wife says.

Andi Brotherston said she and the pair’s 20-year-old son found the Newstalk ZB sports broadcaster unconscious on Monday night.

“So many families don’t get that second chance we do here, and we were so lucky. If it had been another five or 10 minutes it would have been quite a different outcome,” she told Stuff before she was about to visit Devlin at Auckland Hospital.

“He’s in terrible shape,” she said.

“I don’t know what to say other than it’s been utterly, utterly heartbreaking – but we got lucky.”

Thank goodness his son found him in time.

It is a timely reminder that us human beings all have limits at which things can get too much. Should employment disputes be made into front page news just because they involve a broadcaster?

ACT have released their draft law and order policy. Safe to assume that unlike Labour, funding the Mongrel Mob is not part of their policy. Their key points are:

1. Introduce Gang Injunction Orders based on the UK ones introduce in 2009
2. Ban gang members on welfare benefits from spending the benefit money on alcohol, gambling or tobacco
3. Automatically increase Police numbers annually to maintain ratio of 1 officer per 500 population.
4. Abolish the target to reduce the prison population by 30% as the role of Corrections is not to reduce the number of people in prison, but keep the community safe
5. Make rehabilitation programmes compulsory for prisoners to gain parole

Had another look at the latest Covid-19 vaccination data. We are still last in the OECD with just 17% vaccinated almost eight months after the vaccine became available.

Not only are we the only country under 20%, we are the only one under 25%.

Four countries have a rate at least one and a half times us.

Nine countries are at least double us.

17 countries are at least triple us.

Five countries are at least quadruple us.

Chris Keall reports:

Wellingtonian Jonathan Brewer – who has been stuck in Singapore since March 2020 – wants to be home by Christmas.

The odds look long – and are longer because Brewer has too much integrity for his own good.

After battling bots (automated software) for a place, Brewer has now laid a complaint with the Government’s top watchdog saying the MIQ booking site is simply not usable for those who play within the rules.

The booking system is a disgrace. No one but a Government could come up with such an awful system.

It would not be hard to have a fairer system where for example people go on a waiting list. But you have a system that not only makes it near impossible to book a place without cheating, it also ends up with thousands of rooms sitting empty.

Sean Gourley, a Canterbury University Physics and Complex Systems PhD who went on to become a NASA research scientist before founding an AI startup, divides his time between the US and NZ, and told Brewer’s experience was typical. Gourley’s logs showed bookings “happening in under 750 milliseconds which is faster than a human can navigate this UX [user-interface].

“The only way to book a spot to come back to New Zealand is if you pay $1000 to a third party to employ bots for you,” Gourley said.

Again there are so many better ways you could run this. You could allow private MIQ operators. You could block assign rooms to airlines, and allows them to allocate a room as they sell a ticket.

And Gourley has publically suggested a simple change, which he says would make the site workable.

“The simplest change [MBIE] can make to the booking code is to keep the date open for 10 minutes and let anyone choose the date. Then randomly select from all those who have clicked on this date within the 10-minute window,” he posted.

“It removes the speed advantage bots have. And Importantly, makes it accessible to people who can’t afford to pay $950 to the black market. It’s a simple code change that you can push out today if you want, MBIE.”

Also a workable change.

VUW academics Michael Johnston and James Kierstead write:

If the ability to say things that may offend is legally hindered, then the contest of ideas necessary to keep a democracy healthy is hindered as well, write Dr Michael Johnston and Dr James Kierstead …

A society that leaves it to politicians, the courts or – worse still – the police to determine which ideas may be expressed and which may not is no true democracy, whether or not it holds elections. If the ability to say things that may offend is legally hindered, then the contest of ideas necessary to keep a democracy healthy is hindered as well. Many good ideas may never be expressed, and many bad ones may go unrebutted.

Supporters of the Government’s intended ‘hate speech’ legislation might argue it is only the ill-intentioned – those who would deliberately offend, hurt or stir up hatred against vulnerable minorities – who need fear these laws. But if we hand to those in power the ability to control public discourse, they will inevitably use it to advance their own agendas. They might even do this with a clear conscience, having convinced themselves they are merely protecting the vulnerable.

There are many contestable and topical questions that affect vulnerable groups, such as whether trans women ought to be incarcerated in women’s prisons and whether separate political representation for Māori is compatible with universalist democratic principles. Three years ago, Massey University’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Jan Thomas justified banning Don Brash from speaking there on the grounds that his expressed views on the latter issue came “dangerously close to hate speech”.

Statements like Thomas’s make it clear why the Government’s proposed legislation might stifle public debate. Had this legislation been law at the time at which Brash expressed his views, would he – the leader of the National Party until 2006 – have been liable to jail time?

This is indeed the huge danger. These laws will be used to intimidate and prevent debate on controversial political issues. If hundreds of people flood the Police with complaints that someone’s view on an issue is promoting hatred, then of course the Police will investigate. And even if not charged or convicted, that will be enough to have a chilling effect.