The Post reports:

Transmission Gully motorists will be able to travel at a new 110kph speed limit between Wellington and the Kāpiti Coast.

The new speed limit will take effect from 12.01am on Monday.

The new higher speed limit applies to the 27‑kilometre section of State Highway 1 between the Linden and Paekākāriki interchanges, currently 100 kph. Heavy vehicles and vehicles towing trailers will continue to have a 90kph limit.

“This change is part of a wider effort to fix the basics of our transport network and set it up for the future. We’re committed to providing state highways that help people get where they need to go quickly and safely,” Transport Minister Chris Bishop said in a statement.

Since opening in 2022, Transmission Gully has recorded low crash rates, with no deaths despite more than 150 barrier strikes.

This is good news. I would note however to might not lead to much faster speeds as in my observation many vehicles already travel at around 110 km/hr on the road.

The car haters claim that new or better roads don’t reduce congestion or travel times, but this is so clearly false. The time it takes to get past Levin now is so so so much faster than a decade or so ago.

You used to get significant delays at:

• Paremata Roundabout
• Pukerua Bay merging traffic
• Paraparaumu
• Waikanae
• Otaki

Each of these delays could range from 1 minute to half an hour or more. Levin to Wellington on a Sunday afternoon often could take more than three hours. Now it is barely an hour.

The Post reports:

Wellington mayor Andrew Little has given a personal pledge to bring down the city’s commercial rates differential but doesn’t yet know if he has the council backing he will need.

Shouldn’t be hard. The six independents should all be in favour. Little makes seven. He only needs one Labour Councillor with him to do it.

“But I accept it has got out of whack.” He added, that dropping the commercial multiplier could mean a “significant” increase in residential rates if care was not taken.

“That’s why getting spending under control is so important,” he said.

Yep. You need to restrain spending to be able to change the differential.

The Herald points out:

Residential properties are charged a base rate, while commercial and industrial properties are charged 3.7 times that level.

It equates to the capital’s commercial ratepayers being charged $20,000 more on average than those in New Zealand’s other main centres.

Businesses are covering about 48% of the city’s rates burden in Wellington, compared with Auckland and Canterbury where that number is closer to 30%, according to analysis by the chamber.

This is part of why so many businesses have shifted to Auckland or closed down. If we want a vibrant city, we need an affordable city.

The Herald has documents in relation to the court case between Te Pati Maori and Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. What is fascinating is how they reveal the extent of the Tamihere family control of the party. It goes well beyond what we already knew. Here is what has been revealed:

• President: John Tamihere
• Co-leader: Rawiri Waititi, son-in-law of John Tamihere
• General Manager: Kiri Tamihere Waititi, daughter of Tamihere
• Secretary/Treasurer: Lance Norman, employed by John Tamihere’s WOCA
• Waiariki electorate co-chair: Monica Waititi, sister-in-law of Rawiri
• Te Tai Hauāuru electorate chair: Hinemoana Durie-Shedlock, sister-in-law of John Tamihere
• Ikaroa-Rawhiti electorate chair: Te Rina Lemon, niece of John Tamihere

So a majority of the officers and at least three of the seven electorates are all linked to one man.

Could you imagine this occurring in any other party?

This would be like the National Party that has Bill English as Leader, Maria English as General Manager, Maria’s husband as a deputy leader, Mary’s sister as a regional chair, Libby English as another regional chair and Jo Coughlan as a third regional chair. It would be unthinkable.

The Herald reports:

A Judicial Conduct Panel investigating the actions of a judge has been played a video of a King’s Counsel being asked to leave a New Zealand First event, with a party official claiming the respected lawyer was “entitled”, “unstable” and she feared for her safety.

“I asked him to leave,” the party’s secretary Holly Howard said today during her evidence about the alleged incident at Auckland’s exclusive Northern Club in November 2024.

She claimed Michael Reed, KC refused to leave, took photos of those gathered, and threatened to sue her and a staff member if they touched him.

Reed was being a boorish bully. He gatecrashed a private function and started throwing his weight around.

Now Judge Aitken is not responsible for what Reed did, but his behaviour gives an insight into that night.

“Don’t touch me or I will sue you for a lot of money,” Reed is heard telling a Northern Club staff member in the video played to the panel.

”Will you tell Winston from me please that I’m upset about being a New Zealand First supporter. I’m on the mailing list,” Reed continued.

So Reed clearly knew it was a NZ First function. In fact it seems clear that he went into the room purely because it was a NZ First function.

The judge – who says she did not realise it was a political event or that the speaker was Peters – appeared to be focusing her comments at NZ First Cabinet minister Casey Costello, adding, “How can you let him say that?”

So the Judge is testifying (presumably under oath) that she did not recognise Peters’s voice, did not see Peters, did not see the two large NZ First banners and also did not recognise Casey Costello. She just happened to very soberly comment to a total stranger that another total stranger was lying. I mean, who hasn’t done that.

Howard said another man then appeared in the foyer, who was “loitering” outside the room for about 20 minutes.

She claimed the man accosted Peters as the veteran politician was leaving the venue, accusing him of “doing a shit job”.

Howard said she later learned the man was the judge’s husband, celebrity doctor David Galler.

And here is where it gets interesting from a further story.

Judge Aitken said it was only as she was being escorted away from the room that she looked over her shoulder and realised that speaker was the Deputy Prime Minister.

She returned to her own function and took a seat at her table, admitting: “Oops, oh God. I’ve just called Winston Peters a liar.” 

The judge said she warned her husband not to get involved and had no idea he would later disrupt the NZ First function, allegedly calling Costello “despicable” and accusing her of “killing hundreds of people”, in apparent reference to the party’s tobacco policies. 

Judge Aitken said she only got wind of Galler’s alleged behaviour days later when she received a call from another judge.

So she is saying she told her table that she had just called the then Deputy PM a liar by accident. The table would have been aware this would be very very bad for her, and her husband ignored her explicit instruction not to get involved, and he did so anyway. And more remarkably she didn’t notice he was gone.

The judge said she felt “pressured” to write the letters but was prepared to offer a genuine apology for her behaviour, which she described as “completely out of character”.

So the Judge didn’t;t really want to apologise.

Judge Aitken defended “venting” comments she made in another letter to Judge Taumaunu in which she wrote, “There is a time and place to get involved and this is one of them”, and “I can no longer stay silent” in the face of divisiveness “coming from politicians”.

To me this tally undermines her claim that she had no idea at all the speaker was Winston Peters and that it was a NZF function. In this letter she states she can’t remain silent and must respond to what politicians are saying.

She really doesn’t seem to understand what being a Judge entails.

She also expressed disappointment at the contents of a letter of apology sent by Judge Taumaunu to the NZ First Party president, in which he “unreservedly apologised” on behalf of the entire district court. 

Judge Aitken felt this was unfair on other judges, given the incident was of her making alone.

It wasn’t. The two other people who disrupted it were spouses of judges. They were only at the function in that capacity. The bottom line is an event for judges led to people being harassed and abused at a neighbouring event. Entirely appropriate the apology should be on behalf of the wider court.

The Australian Liberal Party has just rolled leader Sussan Ley, and replaced her with Angus Taylor. Ley was in the moderate faction and Taylor in the National Right or conservative faction. The Liberals had fallen behind One Nation in recent polls, which is what precipitated the change. However it is far from clear if this will help them recover support.

Only three Australian Liberal leaders had served more than six years – Robert Menzies 20 years, John Howard 16 years and Malcolm Fraser almost eight years.

Ley was leader for only 276 days. The only shorter tenure was Alexander Downer’s 252 days who was between John Hewson and John Howard.

NZ National has longer surviving leaders. Holland did 17 years, Holyoake 15 years, Bolger 11 years, Muldoon 10 years and Key 10 years.

The Herald reports:

Labour MP Cushla Tangaere-Manuel is suggesting her party will work with Te Pāti Māori “when they sort their issues out”.

It follows Labour’s Māori caucus co-chairman Willie Jackson telling a Waitangi Day festival crowd his party will “work with the Greens, the Māori Party, whoever” to oust the coalition Government.

It is very simple. They will do a deal because they must do a deal. They are just trying to hide it.

There have been 88 public polls since the last election. In all 88 polls, Labour needs Te Pati Maori to have any chance of forming a Government. Not a single poll shows Labour can do it with just the Greens.

The only question is whether Labour (if they win) will do a coalition with Te Pati Maori, or have a confidence and supply agreement (which makes TPM more unpredictable).

Stuff reports:

With a fiery show outside Parliament, politicians heard how “discriminatory” immigration rules mean Pacific Islanders are being blocked from attending funerals, graduations, and other important events in New Zealand. …

Unlike travellers from more than 60 other nations, who can get online travel authority (NZeTAs), travellers from the Pacific face far more stringent paperwork to enter New Zealand.

This is because the overstaying rates from those countries are high. I blogged previously how 1 in 50 people from Samoa and Tonga illegally overstay and effectively become illegal immigrants.

These rules have been a long-lasting barrier for families split across New Zealand and other Pacific islands. But it could soon change, with NZ First leader Winston Peters promising to try and change the rules by the end of the year.

Make no mistake about what this means. It means Winston is advocating for a policy that will open up the borders to thousands more illegal immigrants.

“All the Pacific people want is a fair go, according to what other nations are getting. And they’re not getting it,” Peters told reporters, outside Parliament on Wednesday.

He said it was “a disgrace” that New Zealand made it so hard for people to visit from the Pacific.

Here’s a simple solution. Any country that has an overstaying rate of say less than 0.25% gets automatic visitation rights to New Zealand. So if a Pacific country doesn’t have a lot of overstayers in NZ, they get to join the countries that basically get visa free travel. However if the rate goes over 0.25% then that country loses that right. Have this apply to all countries, not just the Pacific. That would be fair.

But Winston is calling for countries with the highest levels of overstaying (by a factor of 10) to get visa free entry into NZ. It is opening the borders to huge numbers of illegal immigrants.

So a vote for NZ First is a vote for more illegal immigration. They want less legal immigration and more illegal immigration.

UPDATE:

I asked ChatGPT to make me a billboard based on Winston’s new policy. I hope you all like it.

The Herald reports:

The Government’s flagship regional development body has more than half of its loan book flagged as at risk after recording a surge in impairment write-offs over the past year.

Crown Regional Holdings (CRH) warehouses government regional development initiatives and manages hundreds of millions of dollars in loan and equity funding provided to businesses.

Most of its balance sheet covers the Provincial Growth Fund (2018-2021) and the Regional Infrastructure Fund (2024-) championed by Shane Jones during his two recent stints in the Government.

CRH’s provision for loan impairments for the year to June 2025 increased sharply from $19 million to $28m. The notes record now more than half of CRH’s $433m loan book is considered at risk of – or is currently in – default.

I’m not a huge fan of any corporate welfare. There are a few discrete industries where you can make an economic case such as film/TV subsidies as you are globally competing with other locations. But overall I’m am very sceptical.

It seems to me loans are the worst form of corporate welfare. If a venture is commercially sound, they should be able to get a commercial loan. But when they get a loan from the Government, they feel less pressure to repay it, because the Government is less likely to hold them to account for late payments etc. So we end up with a massive proportion of loans at risk.

If there has to be corporate welfare I would almost prefer it is just a straight out grant. If there is a case for an art museum in Kerikeri, then you give then a couple of million, but after that it is up to the entity running it to make it break even. But when you do a loan or equity from taxpayers, you have an ongoing exposure.

There has been an exception such as the fibre to the home programme which was done primarily through loans, and was a stunning success. However that had a very very clear objective, and was done through established companies who were not risky.

Stuff reports:

It is a New Zealand first. A District Court judge is having her conduct examined by a Judicial Conduct Panel after she allegedly shouted “he’s lying” as Winston Peters was making a speech at Auckland’s Northern Club.

Must be tempting to make Winston Attorney-General as a response 🙂

Now, a Judicial Conduct Panel, comprising of Brendan Brown KC (former Court of Appeal judge), Justice Jillian Mallon (Court of Appeal judge) and Sir Jerry Mateparae (former governor-general) will hear evidence about what happened on November 22, 2024. …

Stephens said that report should set out – with reasons, findings of facts and the panel’s opinion – whether Aitken should stay in her role and why.

The decision would sit with Goldsmith.

“The Attorney is the ultimate decision-maker,” Stephens said.

That is not quite right. If the Panel doesn’t consider removal is justified, then the Attorney-General can’t remove the Judge. It is only if the Panel concludes removal could be justified, that the Attorney-General then gets the discretion over whether they get removed.

If the Panel considers removal of the judge is justified, I can’t imagine any Attorney-General would decline to remove them.

The appeal by Brendon Tarrant is a desperate bid for attention, rather than a serious judicial process. Tarrant is obviously unhappy that he has faded from public consciousness, so this is a way to try and get a few more minutes of fame, or infamy.

It is dangerous to predict the Court of Appeal, but I would be staggered if they order a new trial. Let’s look at what has been reported:

The Christchurch mosque shooter claims that he was effectively “forced” to plead guilty because of harsh prison conditions that drastically impacted his mental health.

If he didn’t want to have harsh prison conditions, he shouldn’t have shot scores of innocent people.

“I did not have the mind frame or mental health required to be making informed decisions at that time,” the gunman said. 

“I think the issue is, did I really know what I wanted to do or what would be a good idea? No, I didn’t actually.”

The legal test isn’t whether you were in perfect mental health. It is whether you were either clinically insane or mentally competent. Tarrant has provided zero evidence he was mentally incompetent apart from his own assertions.

Tarrant’s lawyers, who met with or phoned him some 40 times while he was awaiting trial, said he didn’t exhibit any signs of serious mental illness.

This is how you know it is not serious. His own lawyers have said he showed no signs at all. He’s just having a go because he can.

He said that there was limited reading material made available to him in prison, and the process for requesting more books was not explained to him.

This is what he claims is torture and harsh treatment!

He said he went through roughly two books per week and would request articles and content about world events from his lawyers, some of them about himself and others about things like the Notre Dame Cathedral burning down.

Oh poor diddums. He didn’t have unlimited access to articles about himself.

The appeal is a farce. But everyone has the right to an appeal so it has to have due process. But unless the entire Court of Appeal themselves go clinically insane, there won’t be a new trial.

Chris Bishop announced some significant and sensible changes to the driver licence system. They are:

• You only need to pass a practical test for your restricted licence, not for a second time a few months later when you get a full
• The learner period for under 25s goes from 6 to 12 months
• The restricted period for under 25s is 12 months
• The cost of a full licence drops by $80
• Getting demerits on a restricted licence will extend the restricted period by six months
• A zero alcohol limit regardless of age for all learner and restricted licence holders

These look like they should lead to safer learner drivers, but also fewer costs and hurdles.

The NZ Energy blog has excellent analysis of this decision. They write:

To readers of this Substack this will come of no surprise and was expected. It’s not a good solution for New Zealanders but it is a necessary.

Necessary is the key point. We simply don’t have enough of our own energy for peak times. The less supply you have, the higher prices go.

For New Zealand’s industries to operate at full capacity, to protect the electricity system against dry year risk, to displace coal fired generation and to ensure reasonably priced domestic reticulated gas, we have typically needed a supply of about 200PJ annually. This translates to approximately 550TJ of daily production.

As of a couple of days ago the daily production had dropped to approximately 225TJ, or about half of what is historically needed to support NZ Inc’s economy.

A failure to act could have been disastrous.

I liken what we are experiencing to Germany if the Nordstream pipeline had been blown up slowly. German manufacturing capacity is now severely constrained, and the country is de-industrializing rapidly as they head into a third consecutive year of recession.

The Greens probably want us to go back to the 1200s, but I’d rather we don’t.

Importing LNG is a last-resort attempt to avoid being pushed over the apex of the Seneca Cliff by the energy-physics of production and the economy. It’s like jamming a finger in the dike to hold back the flood.

It will never compete with unconstrained pipeline gas. Too much energy is lost in liquefaction, shipping, and regasification. The EROI (Energy Return On energy Invested) is low, which means costs are high.

If we had acted years earlier we might be able to avoid the extra costs of importing LNG. But we didn’t, and so we do.

We can debate whether LNG is expensive. But the real question is: compared to what?

Compared to biogas? Too little, too long to scale if it even could.

Compared to electrification? Higher the energy costs, billions in capex and it has it’s own security of supply issues as a result of the dwindling gas supply.

Compared to doing nothing? Empty factories, lost exports, lights that don’t come on.

LNG won’t save us. But it will buy us time.

And right now, time is the one resource New Zealand can’t afford to run out of.

I’m pleased the Government has acted.

Peter Bassett writes:

On 27 May 2021, Wellington City Council’s Long-Term Plan Committee faced a clear fork in the road.

Officers presented councillors with water investment options, including one — Water Option 3 — that contained a $391 million wastewater renewals programme. It was not vague. It was explicit. It was designed to reduce sewage pollution, starting with the central city and south-coast catchments now making headlines.

At the same meeting, officers recommended Cycleways Option 3, a staged programme set out in the consultation document presented to councillors. 

Councillors were not choosing between water and nothing. They were choosing priority. 

What happened next is the hinge moment of Wellington’s current disgrace. 

An amendment was moved by then-councillor Tamatha Paul, seconded by Jill Day (now Labour Party President), to adopt Cycleways Option 4, expanding the programme to $226 million over ten years, compared with $120 million under Option 3, as set out in that consultation document. 

That amendment passed. 

Accelerated wastewater renewal did not.

So let’s be very clear on this. They were given an option to spend $391 million on improving wastewater and $120 million on cycleways. The now Green MP and now Labour Party President moves to spend instead $226 million on cycleways and not to accelerate the wastewater renewal.

The Wellington press gallery now demands accountability, inquiries and transparency — yet appears to have collectively forgotten the meeting where the decisive trade-off was made.

Columns thunder about “decades of under-investment”, a phrase that has the great advantage of removing responsibility from the true enablers. Contractors are blamed. Systems are blamed. Governments are blamed.

What is not mentioned is the moment when councillors explicitly chose more cycleways over fixing basic infrastructure.

Every Labour and Green Councillor voted for cycleways over wastewater. Great job.

Radio NZ reports:

More than 45,000 people have signed a petition demanding equal treatment of visitors from New Zealand’s Pacific neighbours.

At the moment they must apply for a visitor visa, provide proof of funds for the duration of their stay and could be asked to get an x-ray or doctor’s check to show they’re in “good health”.

But the petition wants visitors from six Pacific nations to be treated the same as travellers from 60 other countries – that it says are eligible for a cheaper more straight forward electronic authority to enter Aotearoa.

Visa free travel is given to countries that don’t have a significant prevalence of travellers overstaying. It isn;’t about their location, it is about whether people abuse visitors visas.

Here are the overstaying rates, which are the percentage of temporary visa arrivals who overstay:

1. Tonga 1.9%
2. Samoa 1.7%
3. Malaysia 0.3%
4. Fiji 0.3%

If 1 in 50 visitors are overstaying, then of course visitors from that country will face more stringent eligibility to visit. And this is based on there already being these current hurdles. Presumably if they were removed, the percentage overstaying would go from 1 in 50 to maybe 1 in 20 or more.

Until now, members’ bills only get debated in the House if they get drawn at random from the ballot.

However for a few years no Standing Order 288 allows for a member’s bill to be automatically out onto the order paper if 61 MPs who are not Ministers state in writing they support it. In practice this means it has support from both government and opposition MPs.

This has now happened. Stuff reports:

National and Labour party MPs have teamed up to fast-track lawmaking that will tighten regulations to stop modern slavery.

Labour MP Camilla Belich and National MP Greg Fleming have co-sponsored the Modern Slavery Bill. It would mean that large companies report on how they have identified or mitigated the risk of slavery being used in supply chains they are part of.

Great to see National and Labour MPs working together.

The Herald reports:

The number of disadvantaged students using the fees-free scheme for university in 2024 slumped to the lowest figure in the scheme’s short history. …

But only 1.3% of the fees-free students at university in 2024 came from EQI 7 schools. In actual numbers, this translated to 230 fees-free university students in 2024 from EQI 7 schools, while there were 775 students from EQI 6 schools. Both of these are the lowest numbers on record for the scheme’s six-year history.

So 230 of the most disadvantaged students were helped at a cost of over $100 million.

“It’s a tremendous way to spend a lot of money to no effect,” tertiary education consultant Roger Smyth, who used to work at the ministry, told the Herald.

“They seriously believed it would make a big difference to participation. 

“But the drivers of tertiary education participation occur in early childhood, the expectations built up in children’s minds through their schooling, through parenting, and so on, which keep getting reinforced year by year through the schooling system.”

Access to money was only a “small component” of what drives participation, Smyth said, but fees-free made no difference to students in terms of cash in the hand.

“All the scheme paid was your fees, but you could borrow anyway, so nobody was better off, in cash terms. 

“It made a difference in debt terms, which meant that six, seven, eight years down the track, you paid your loan off a year or so earlier – at the very point when you didn’t need it so much.”

This is key. This hugely expensive scheme doesn’t even affects students when they are relatively cash poor and studying because they get loans. All it does is mean that when they are say in their 30s and on high incomes, they stop repaying their loans a bit earlier.

The ministry recommended axing the policy altogether; it costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year for essentially no beneficial change, though applying it to the final year of study will at least cost less than the first-year scheme.

Changing it from first to final year fees free is in the coalition agreement with NZ First so can’t be changed this year. But I hope National goes into the election pledging to discontinue it if reelected.

That money would be far far far better spent on early childhood education than subsidising wealthy graduates.

Richard Shaw is a Professor in Politics at Massey University. He writes:

I’m part of an international project hoping to survey former political (ministerial) advisers from 14 different countries (mostly European, but also NZ, Canada and Australia). I’ve written about ministerial advisers in NZ for years, but now a bunch of us are trying to kick off a large-n study comparing/contrasting advisers’ roles, relationships and policy contributions across countries. 

The survey will take around 15 mins to complete, and all respondents’ data will be anonymised. The project is taking place within the European Union’s personal data protection framework, and we’ve secured ethical approval from the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research.

If you were a ministerial adviser on an events based contractor between 2014 – 2024 and are happy to participate in this project, please e-mail Richard at [email protected] and he will forward you a link to the survey.

Recently a number of news outlets including the Herald and Newstalk ZB published articles about the IDF’s desecration of ANZAC graves in Gaza. Headlines included for example “New Zealand World War 1 graves among those bulldozed at Gaza cemetery”: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/new-zealand-world-war-i-graves-among-those-bulldozed-at-gaza-cemetery/3BU24SYRSNFSHGPWOBP2PT7PP4/ and “Graves of 20 NZ soldiers killed in WW1 and WW2 bulldozed by IDF at Gaza cemetery”: https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/new-zealand-world-war-i-graves-among-those-bulldozed-at-gaza-cemetery/ There was similar reporting in overseas publications like The Guardian.

Although the truth was reported in the body of the articles, the headlines had people contacting me on social media asking for comment and expressing their outrage at the IDF’s actions. To me this shows how disingenuous the relevant media outlets are. Headlines frame a story. In fact, not everyone reads more than the headline.

The truth is that (a) there were underground terror tunnels beneath the cemetery which the IDF needed to destroy and (b) the cemetery itself was an active combat zone above ground. In response, for the safety of its own troops, the IDF destroyed the cemetery. But that doesn’t lend itself to biased clickbait headlines.

It is despicable that Hamas turned a veteran cemetery into a military target, and that should be the real story. Hamas has no respect whatsoever for deceased New Zealanders or Australians, just as it has no respect for living New Zealanders and Australians. It would gladly kill every single one of us for not sharing their beliefs just as it murdered Israeli civilians en masse on October 7 2023.