Radio NZ reported:

A former Education Ministry employee says development of the new school curriculum was heavily politicised, causing extensive rewrites and sidelining subject experts.

Claire Coleman made the allegations during a submission to Parliament’s Education and Workforce Select Committee on the government’s Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill.

She told the committee the bill would politicise the education system by giving the government more direct control over the curriculum and over teachers’ professional standards.

I see this as a good thing. The curriculum changes under the pervious Government were often appalling, such as a science curriculum that failed to mention physics, chemistry or biology (off memory.

But it got me interested in the former staffer, so as I do I did a google. Assuming it is the same Claire Coleman, I saw this summary of a 2022 article by her, which says:

This article describes the critical process drama framework and highlights its potential to disrupt the status quo through an agenda of exploration and wonder. Generated through arts-based research exploring process drama as an enactment of critical pedagogy, the cumulative case study drew upon a document analysis of Cecily O’Neill’s Seal Wife workshop and exploration of the ‘mantle of the expert’ dramatic inquiry form. Developed to enact critical process drama, six key concepts – hope, aesthetic, agency, agitation, action and ambiguity – operate as an interwoven and reflexive framework to inform drama practice. Dynamic, relational and essential, these six concepts enact the theories of critical pedagogy and process drama as dialectical, improvisational approaches committed to transformation and social justice. As educators and artists, we cannot dance forever in the imagination or plod along hopelessly in reality. Through critical process drama participants, can operate critically in new worlds and significantly between worlds. We need to travel between and transform through transitions. In the crack between the light and dark we can dance and dance and dance.

I’ve now read this summary four times, and I still don’t understand it. I am sure this is a reflection on my own stupidity, so I am hoping a reader out there can translate the summary into something I can understand.

The Sensible Sentencing Trust has launched a campaign to make the new proposed coward punch law effective. Without minimum sentences, NZ judges will continue to give incredibly light sentences for coward punches that kill.

Look at that difference. The average non-parole prison term in NZ for a coward punch that kills has been around one year (if they get prison at all), while in NSW and Victoria it is around seven years.

The SST is calling for a minimum non-parole period of eight years for coward punchs that kill – recognising it is just one step down from murder.

You can make a submission at their campaign site.

Labour keep claiming that the Government gave the tobacco industry a $300 million tax cut. This was based on reducing the excise on heated tobacco by 50% to see if the price difference would move people form smoking tobacco to heating it. The difference is huge in health terms – it is the combusting of tar in cigarettes that kills you. Heated tobacco is like vaping – not healthy, but better than smoking.

So the $300 million lost revenue would only have occurred if there had been a huge drop in the number of people smoking – which would be a good thing.

Now I’ve seen an OIA which asks how much tax was paid on heated tobacco products, and the answer is $2.3 million in 2024/25. This means the 50% reduction in excise on those products was also $2.3 million.

That is 0.77% of $300 million. So if Labour keep repeating the $300 million lie, you should be aware the actual data is less than 1% of that.

Like many NZers I first heard of Sam Ruthe last year when he started to break NZ age records for the mile and other middle distances.

In March he became the first 15 year old to do a sub 4 minute mile. It wasn’t clear then if he was just going to be an exceptional athlete for his age group, or just exceptional full stop.

But this weekend he ran the 11th faster indoor mile ever in the world. That is an incredible achievement at any age, let alone 16. He also broke John Walker’s 1982 NZ mile record and set a new under 18 world record.

Ruthe is now faster than Sebastian Coe was in 1981 when he set a world record as a 25 year old.

I have a feeling we know who the Halberg Award winner for 2026 is going to be, even with 11 months to go!

Canadian PM Mark Carney got a lot of attention for his speech at Davos where he bluntly said the liberal rules based order we have had for decades is dead, and we need to realise it.

His full speech is here. Some extracts:

Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.

No punches pulled.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

This is correct. It is not just about Trump and the US. It is also about Europe being dependent on Russian gas and about countries like NZ being too dependent on China. Integration can become a took for subordination.

On plurilateral trade, we’re championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans Pacific Partnership and the European Union, which would create a new trading bloc of 1.5 billion people. 

A great idea.

Argue, the middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.

Sadly we are not a middle power, but Australia is. We need to work more closely with Australia.

We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation.

The powerful have their power.

But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.

Trump may go in 2028, but things won’t return to 2015. The great powers will not try to rebuild a rules based system that limits them.

NZ needs to be working with Australia, Canada, the EU and others to make sure we are not on the menu.

Erica Stanford released:

Students returning to school this week will benefit from a significant change designed to give parents clearer, more consistent information about how their children are progressing at school.

2026 marks the first year of nationally consistent assessment and reporting in primary and intermediate schools, giving parents a clearer picture of their child’s learning and progress, no matter which school they attend.

I am a huge proponent of parents needing to be well informed about how their children are doing. This is a must have, not a nice to have. Education is meant to be a partnership with parents and the school.

• One of five clear progress markers describing learning progress
• An explanation of why that progress marker was chosen and how parents can support next learning steps
• Information on progress over time and attendance
• Information on phonics achievement and twice-yearly progress check-ins

Looks to be really useful info.

Some schools are very very good at keeping parents meaningfully informed of how their kids are going (we’re lucky enough to be at a school that does it really really well), but I have heard so many horror stories from other parents about how hard it is to find out how well their kids are doing being two ten minute meetings a year.

Nationally consistent higher minimum standards will be very useful, and everyone should welcome.

This column by Andrea Vance was actually last March but I only just discovered it, and it is so good it needs repeating. She writes:

In the Chlöe Swarbrick era, the Greens have been reduced to a caucus of anarkiddies posting out a flood of social-justice clickbait.

They indulge in culturally progressive obsessions, moored in symbolism and identity, none of which is accompanied by economic or material analysis.

What a great phrase – anarkiddies. So spot on.

The Greens want a new society. One with no prisons, police, carbon or rent. They want therapy in place of cops and a jobs guarantee.

Their ambitious proposals prioritise systemic change over short-term political feasibility that push the boundaries of what is currently achievable within existing political and economic structures.

As a result, their policies are shallow and sloganeering rather than fully developed, designed more for ideological appeal and political differentiation than for actual implementation.

Just imagine the fun a Labour-Greens-Te Pati Maori Government will be.

Susan Edmonds writes at Radio NZ:

Eligible students can now apply for funds to help with the cost of their final year of study.

But one economist is asking whether it’s the best use of the money.

People who are studying for the first time can now access up to $12,000 for their final year of study or final two years of work-based learning.

The fees-free scheme changed from funding the first year to the final year from 1 January last year.

Better final year than first year.

Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen pointed to government analysis of the scheme before the change was introduced, which highlighted that it had not achieved many of its objectives.

“It wasn’t lifting participation rates or anything like that. It wasn’t helping people who would not have otherwise gone to university,” he said.

“It wasn’t helping people in a more disadvantaged position. It was basically just making stuff free, which might have felt good, but it didn’t make a real difference in terms of access or engagement or in completions or anything else. And so I think the challenge there was that you were paying a fair amount to subsidise a group of people to start their university career, where they were probably already going to do that.

NZers who get a degree earn on average $1.5 million more than those who only do secondary school. Why are we giving so much money to the future very wealthy.

Matt Ridley writes:

I first wrote a doom–laden article for the Economist about carbon dioxide emissions trapping heat in the air in 1987, nearly 40 years ago. I soon realised the effect was real but the alarm was overdone, that feedback effects were exaggerated in the models. The greenhouse effect was likely to be a moderate inconvenience rather than an existential threat. For this blasphemy I was abused, cancelled, blacklisted, called a ‘denier’ and generally deemed evil.

The effect is very real, but the alarm is definitely overdone. I would call the greenhouse effect as more than a moderate inconvenience. I would call it a significant and complex challenge. But it isn’t and never has been an existential threat.

The activists who took over the climate debate, often with minimal understanding of climate science, competed for attention by painting ever more catastrophic pictures of future greenhouse warming. They altered the name to ‘climate change’ so they could blame it for blizzards as well as heatwaves. Then they inflated the language to ‘climate emergency’ and ‘climate crisis’, even as projections of future warming came down.

Yes it once was global warming, but now they use it to try and blame every natural disaster in the world on it.

‘I’m talking about the slaughter, death and starvation of six billion people this century. That’s what the science predicts,’ said Roger Hallam, founder of Extinction Rebellion, in 2019, though the science says no such thing. ‘A top climate scientist is warning climate change will wipe out humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years,’ tweeted Greta Thunberg in 2018. Five years later she deleted her tweet and shortly after decided that Palestine was a more promising way of staying in the limelight.

Here is what the consensus science of the IPCC says:

• Global surface temperature was 1.09 [0.95 to 1.20]°C higher in 2011–2020 than 1850–1900
• Global mean sea level increased by 0.20 [0.15 to 0.25] m between 1901 and 2018. The average rate of sea level rise was 1.3 [0.6 to 2.1] mm yr-1 between 1901 and 1971, increasing to 1.9 [0.8 to 2.9] mm yr-1 between 1971 and 2006, and further increasing to 3.7 [3.2 to 4.2] mm yr-1 between 2006 and 2018 (high confidence)

So a 20 cm rise in sea levels over the last 117 years.

And what of the future:

• Relative to 1995–2014, the likely global mean sea level rise under the SSP1-1.9 GHG emissions scenario is 0.15–0.23 m by 2050 and 0.28–0.55 m by 2100
• While for the SSP5-8.5 GHG emissions scenario it is 0.20–0.29 m by 2050 and 0.63–1.01 m by 2100 (medium confidence)

So by 2100 the sea level increase with medium confidence is as low as 28 cm in the best case scenario and as high as 1 metre in the most extreme scenario. The extreme scenario would be a significant and complex challenge.

Perhaps Gore might now regret his exaggerated preachings of hellfire and damnation. In his 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, for which he shared a Nobel prize, he predicted a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet ‘in the near future’ – out by around 19 feet and nine inches. In 2009 he said there was a 75 per cent chance all the ice in the Arctic Ocean would disappear by 2014. In that year there were five million square kilometres of the stuff at its lowest point – about the same as in 2009. This year there were 4.7 million square kilometres. 

The doomsday cult have actually harmed the climate change cause. When doomsday doesn’t happen, people (wrongly) conclude it is all a hoax, rather than it was exagerrated.

Indoor air pollution caused by poor people cooking over wood fires because they lack access to gas and electricity kills three million a year. So yes, Gates, influenced by Lomborg and Wright, is correct to say that getting cheap, reliable, clean energy to the poor is by far the more urgent priority.

Agreed.

This is Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a 29 year old Dutch activist.

The UK Government banned her from visa-free travel on the basis her presence to “not be conducive to the public good”. It happened just days after she criticised Keir Starmer.

The threshold for banning someone from entering a country should be very high – direct incitement to violence. I think Candace Owens is deranged, but she should be allowed to travel to countries and claim that France and TPUSA insiders teamed up to assassinate Charlie Kirk.

In NZ you can marry your cousins, as you can in the UK. The Marriage Act 1955 prohibits you marrying your:

• parent (doh!) or grandparent, child or grandchild
• sibling
• parent’s sibling (aunt, uncle) or sibling’s child (nephew, niece)
• current or former spouses or partners of parents, grandparents, children or grandchildren

In the UK there has been a call to ban cousin marriage. Matt Goodwin writes:

When Keir Starmer was recently asked in Parliament whether he would allow legislation banning cousin marriage to proceed, he declined to give support.

Consistently, Labour has pushed against a private member’s bill introduced by the Conservative Party MP Richard Holden to ban the practice.

This is not an accident; it is a very deliberate choice.

For most of British history, cousin marriage was restricted or discouraged. It became taboo as family sizes shrank, knowledge of the genetic risks that accompany incest grew, and Britain evolved into a modern, open, civilised society.

There is a difference between discourage and ban.

For instance, one recent study, the Born in Bradford project, found that nearly half of all mothers from the Pakistani community in three inner-city wards —46%—were married to their first or second cousin, compared to 1% among White British couples.

Defenders of the practice will say the health risks are often exaggerated.

My grandmother’s parents were first cousins. She lived to 95.

But as Times columnist Matthew Syed has repeatedly noted, the real danger lies not only in isolated cousin marriages, but in repeating the practice across generations — cousins marrying cousins whose parents were also themselves cousins. 

In such cases, the risks compound dramatically. 

This explains why small communities, mainly of Pakistani origin, account for a vastly disproportionate share of recessive genetic disorders, and why parts of the NHS now employ specialist staff to manage the consequences.

As the courageous academic Patrick Nash summarised in a recent paper, children of cousin-marriage are about twice as likely to inherit a serious genetic disorder (which rises significantly in communities with multi-generational cousin-parents), and are far more likely to suffer from cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, various cancers, birth defects, cardiovascular conditions, mood disorders, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, higher infant mortality rates, and depressed I.Q. scores. 

“In short”, notes Nash, “the adverse biological consequences of cousin marriage are legion, severe, and long-lasting”.

This makes a stronger case, but I am still not convinced. First of all marriage and sex are not the same thing. People can have sex and children without being married. If this is an issue, then it is the incest law you should change, not just the marriage law.

But also you need to be careful about restricting individual choice on the basis of healthcare costs. Would you ban downs syndrome adults from having sex? Would you ban people with Huntingdon’s Disease from breeding? It is a slippery slope.

Education on the health risks of breeding with your cousin is preferable to a ban.

Nearly 80 per cent of the British public, according to recent polling by YouGov, say they support a ban on cousin marriage.

Many people support bans that won’t affect them.

Today I counterprotested yet another anti-Israel protest on Queen Street (specifically, the one protesting Brian Tāmaki) with a sign saying WESTERNERS WHO ATTEND PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTS WITH TRANSGENDER FLAGS ARE HYPOCRITES.

Almost immediately I was accosted by members of the LGBTQI+ community who were there with trans flags. I was asked if I was queer. I said yes. They then called me a “self-hating lesbian” (purely for holding the sign in question) and said I was not representative of the LGBTQI+ community, before swiftly attempting to block my sign from view with a kheffiyeh.

The protest continued up Queen Street and so I followed silently with my sign. Eventually when we came to a stop in a nearby park I sat down with my sign in the shade. Some of the protesters discussed who should stand in front of me to block people’s view of my sign and one of them said “I’ve got it. I have experience dealing with loser lesbians.”

I took a video of them blocking me from view with a sign which is briefly visible at the start of the following video saying (hilariously, because it made my point) “Queer as in: free Palestine! Death to the IOF! ACAB! TRANS RIGHTS! FUCK BRIAN TĀMAKI! TOITŪ TE TIRITI!” Video footage is here: https://youtube.com/shorts/nULe8VyBWlU To my deep amusement, when they saw I was recording they swiftly turned the sign around so that the above caption was not visible.

I then asked them to confirm that they had referred to me as a “loser lesbian”. The person I was addressing denied that she had been the one to say that. I asked her whether she would agree that calling someone a loser lesbian is homophobic. She refused to reply. I caught this exchange on video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/glC-vdkVQ4s

These people are hypocrites of the highest order. Despite being queer themselves, they are no true allies of LGBTQI+ people. If their concern for LGBTQI+ people were sincere they would apply it in countries most in need of that advocacy. Not only that, but they are willing to engage in homophobic abuse of queer people like me who disagree with them, while at the same time accusing me of being the one who is self-hating. The intellectual dishonesty is limitless.

The Economist commissioned a poll of 600 Venezuelans. The results are:

So only 13% of Venezuelans oppose the capture of Maduro.

So a plurality want the US to run the country. Certainly would be a better choice than the Vice-President.

Elections are what should occur, rather than let the current regime carry on.

This would explain why the poll has been almost ignored by other media.

Politico reports:

Gavin Newsom is fully embracing his status as his party’s foremost podcast bro. …

It got off to a polarizing start last March, with a succession of friendly interviews with conservative influencers like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon. And while the headlines that tended to enrage Democrats have fallen off, the California governor’s podcasting reach has not.

The show has racked up more than 10 million views and has upwards of 230,000 subscribers just on YouTube, and it was the second-highest ranked official podcast channel for a politician, according to a Washington Post analysis, trailing only Sen. Ted Cruz. Across all platforms, the show has racked up more than 120 million views or listens, according to a tally from his office.

And he’s continuing to sit down with conservative firebrands, and yes, some liberal figures too, in the new year. This week, he’s taping a show with Ben Shapiro.

The almost two hour interview is here. I have listened to around an hour of it. I think it reflects very well on Newsom that he will interview people who he strongly disagrees with. At a time when so many in the US think those who disagree with them are an evil that needs to be destroyed, it is a much needed tonic to have a two hour interview between the leading Democratic candidate for President and the leading conservative podcaster. It is how politics should operate – debate and discussion.

I found the Shapiro interview very interesting as Shapiro used to live in California and moved his family and business to Florida, partly because of what he says are bad Democratic policies making LA a bad place to live. So to hear him actually debate these with the Governor was fascinating.

As has been widely reported, NZ Reserve Bank Governor Anna Breman was one of many central bank governors who signed a letter saying:

We stand in full solidarity with the Federal Reserve System and its Chair Jerome H. Powell. The independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve. It is therefore critical to preserve that independence, with full respect for the rule of law and democratic accountability. Chair Powell has served with integrity, focused on his mandate and an unwavering commitment to the public interest. To us, he is a respected colleague who is held in the highest regard by all who have worked with him.

On the substance I think it is entirely appropriate for central bankers to be concerned when a central banker is threatened with prosecution on a fake pretext because he has refused to lower interest rates in line with the government’s preference. In NZ I have tut tutted both John Key and Christopher Luxon for even expressing a view on what they think the Reserve Bank should or will do. What Trump has done in the US is so far out of the mainstream, it can be in a different dimension.

If a country doesn’t want independent monetary policy, that is fine. You can change the law and have the President or Prime Minister set interest rates, like Muldoon used to do. It won’t be good for the economy, but you can do it. But if the law of the land says the Reserve Bank Governor should decide the official cash rate, and sets down the criteria they should use, then they should not be threatened with prosecution for simply following the law. And please don’t argue that the prosecution threat is unrelated to Powell’s interest rate decisions. If you truly believed that your IQ would be so low, that you would be unable to tie up your shoelaces.

So ơn the substance, I fully back Breman. It was the right call.

Should she have sought advice from MFAT, and advised at a minimum the Minister of Finance in advance? Yes.

Having said that, after getting advice from MFAT, she should have still signed the statement. But MFAT and the Foreign and Finance Ministers should have been aware of the decision, so they could manage any reaction to it – presumably emphasising the Reserve Bank is independent from the Government.

Some argue that the Reserve Bank has no role in talking about US domestic politics. But that misses the point. This isn’t about the US. It is about the terrible precedent that a central banker can be threatened with prosecution simply for following the law in doing their job in a democratic country.

I used to be on the board of .nz. If the Canadian Government threatened the manager of the .ca domain with arrest because they didn’t like decisions made by the .ca manager (CIRA), I’d damn well be signing a letter supporting the .ca manager. In countries that support the rule of law, you should not face criminal consequences because your decisions annoy the head of government.

I would also note that Jerome Powell has been backed by every Fed Reserve Chair since and including Alan Greenspan who served Presidents Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2.

Maureen Pugh, the current MP for West Coast-Tasman has announced she is retiring, and Damien O’Connor the former MP has said he will not seek to stand again (but may be a Labour List candidate). This means there will be a new MP.

Maureen is a former Westland District Mayor and entered Parliament in 2016 as a List MP. She lost to O’Connor in 2014, 2017 and 2020 but beat him in 2023. She has been a tireless advocate for the West Coast, and I doubt anyone but her could have beaten O’Connor.

The seat used to a traditional red seat, and in fact was the both of the Labour Movement. Labour held Buller from 1919 to 1972 (home to Harry Holland and Bill Rowling) and Westland from 1928 to 1972.

They merged into the West Coast electorate which was also held by Labour from 1972 to 1990 when Margaret Moir won it off Kerry Burke in 1990 for the first time. Damien O’Connor won it back in 1993 and held (now with Tasman added under MMP) until 2008 when Chris Auchinvole won it for one term. O’Connor held it again from 2011 to 2023 when Pugh won it.

So there have been three one term National MPs, but otherwise a safe Labour seat. However Labour today is not the Labour of old, and I think who wins it in 2026 will very much come down to candidate quality. Also whether NZ First stand a strong candidate who might split the CR vote.

I expect O’Connor to stand for Labour on the list, but depart Parliament after the election if Labour doesn’t get into Government.

Radio NZ reports:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has labelled the government’s so-far refusal to rule out joining US President Donald Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ an “absolute disgrace”.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has been invited to join the new organisation, saying last week he would give it “due consideration” and on Tuesday confirming it was still a possibility.

Hipkins is just playing silly games.

I am confident in saying that the probability of Christopher Luxon joining the Board of Peace is somewhere between 0.0% and 0.0000%.

Trump’s Board of Peace requires a $1 billion contribution to stay in (makes the UN look like value for money!), and the Chair (Trump) can:

• decide who is invited as members of the Board
• decide who gets renewed unless they pay $1 billion
• Approve every member country’s representative to the Board 
• approve the selection of the members of the Board of Peace’s Executive Board
• veto any decision of the Executive Board
• unilaterally adopt any resolution to implement the mission
• can dissolve the board at any time
• is the final authority on any disputes

Also Trump is the Chair for life – not just while he is the US President.

So let’s be clear – the Board of Peace is a crazy institution which New Zealand will not be joining.

But how and when you decline is important. It is well documented that Trump can take offence very easily, and his response can be to impose 100% tariffs in a country if he is offended. It’s ridiculous, but it is the reality we live in.

Hipkins and others think that doing a Hugh Grant Love Actually performance where you give the US President a verbal bollocking is what New Zealand should do. Well sure it will get you cheers on Bluesky. But when 100,000 more New Zealanders are out of work because of 100% tariffs on our exports, was that a price worth paying just so you feel tough? 100,000 families who lose their main source of income because you want to feel like you’re a tough man?

The job of the Prime Minister is to work in New Zealand’s best interests. And of course that doesn’t mean joining the Board of Peace. But it means taking your time in considering it, and when you decline, doing so in a non-insulting way. If Hipkins thinks that is disgraceful, then he is not fit to take up his old office.

Frankly our best option might be to just say nothing and hope Trump forgets he even invited us!

UPDATE: Since I wrote this, the PM has just come out and said he will not be joining the board in its current form.

There has been some discussion about the role of climate change with the terrible tragic landslides at Mt Maunganui that killed six. In discussing this it is important to understand the difference between climate change mitigation and adaptation.

First of all the scientific consensus is that increased levels of greenhouse gases in the environment will lead to more extreme weather events. That doesn’t mean any individual event can be linked to greenhouse gas levels, but that overall there is a link.

Now climate change mitigation is about reducing the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In terms of mitigation, there is absolutely nothing that NZ could do that would have reduced the probablity of the extreme weather event that caused the slides. Even if ten years ago we had magically found a way to produce no greenhouse gases, the difference would be minimal.

Today there are 423.9 parts per million of CO2. If we had been net zero for the last 10 years it would be 423.8 parts per million – a 0.024% reduction. This is a simple fact. Not opinion, not speculation. That is the data.

This is not an argument for us not mitigating climate change through our CO2 emissions. I support an ETS which uses market forces to reduce our emissions for reasons of trade access amongst other things. It is just stating a fact that no policy by the NZ government could have reduced the level of greenhouses gases enough to make Mt Maunganui even slightly less likely to occur. It is impossible.

The other part of climate change is adaptation. This is what a country does to prepare for more adverse weather events. This is where the focus should be. Mt Maunganui was known to be prone to slips. What steps were taken to make it more resilient? Was it a good idea to remove exotic trees from the mount (note any impact of this would be minimal, but it is still valid to query whether cultural purity over trees should trump resilience.) What planning had been done for slips which were a known hazard? Had the Council ever considered moving the park’s location etc? Had they considered a massive tree planting operation to stabilise areas? Had they considered retaining walls in vulnerable areas?

Any inquiry should also look at the failure of authorities to act when warned. The timeline is not flattering:

• 5am – Lisa Maclennan warns and wakes campers about the slips. Can’t find and camp staff. No answer on camp emergency number (camp is owned by the council)
• 5.47 am – 111 called. FENZ notifies TCC but does not attend
• 5.51 am – FENZ calls TCC main contact centre, but not the emergency operations centre
• 6.18 am – camper calls Police. Police said they would attend but no one did
• 7.42 am – campground manager and council staff inspect slips and drive off to surf club
• 7.45 am – council ute drives past three slips
• 8.02 am – councils closes tracks above slips, but do not close campground below them
• 9.30 am – slip kills six people including the heroic Lisa Maclennan

It is hard to think of a more preventable disaster.

Lewis Holden writes:

I come to this argument from an unusual starting point. I am not a monarchist by instinct, nor am I a republican absolutist. As many know, I am openly supportive of New Zealand becoming a republic, on the grounds that our constitutional arrangements should reflect our own democratic maturity and national identity. 

That position, however, does not require me to believe that monarchy is always and everywhere a bad idea. Constitutional arrangements are tools, not moral absolutes, and their value depends entirely on the historical, cultural, and political context in which they are applied.

This is in fact a large part of my argument for a New Zealand republic: the institution of monarchy in our context is British (no matter what silly arguments might be constructed claiming the British Royals are not in fact British). This is not the case in Iran, where monarchy was the product of thousands of years of history.

I was on the Republican Movement National Council with Lewis (and Kieran McAnulty) for many years. I broadly agree. A constitutional monarchy in the UK makes sense as it has been part of their history for 1,000 years. But in NZ, we should have a New Zealander as our head of state.

It is from that perspective that I argue the return of the Iranian monarchy would be a good thing, and quite possibly a necessary one, if Iran is ever to fully escape the grip of totalitarian theocracy and transition to liberal democracy. Iran’s circumstances are exceptional. The familiar Western assumption that a secular republic is the natural and inevitable destination for all societies fails to account for Iranian history, political culture, and the reality of where power currently lies.

Done well a constitutional monarchy can act as a unifying institution. A democratic Iran as a constitutional monarchy would be a very good thing. As present they basically have a non-hereditary monarchy with an absolute ruler for life.