As almost everyone knows, Manage my Health was hacked by someone seeking a $60,000 ransom in return for not releasing the hacked files, which appear to be uploaded health documents.

I don’t criticise MMH for being hacked. It is hard to be hack proof. There may be legitimate criticism for them not encrypting uploaded documents and/or not having multi-factor authentication.

What I find incredible is that it took them 10 days to e-mail users to tell them if they had been affected or not. And even worse, they got it wrong, and had to do a second lot of e-mails saying you haven’t been affected after all. I’m one of those who got both e-mails. And annoying because I’m overseas, MMH won’t even allow me to log in and see any details.

A well governed and managed health software company should have hacking as one of their major risks in their risk matrix, and they should have a detailed contingency plan setting out what to do if it happens. As far as I can tell, MMH were not prepared in any way, and had to be prompted by the Ministry of Health to call in external advisors to help them manage it.

The MMH software is pretty good. I can book GP appointments with it. I can see all my test results and vaccinations. I can see all the reports from specialists. I’m glad my GP uses them.

But software is only part of it. They need to also be well governed and managed for situations like what just happened. And the evidence to date is they have not been.

While personally I’m not worried if some hacker has the results of my shoulder and ankle ultrasounds and x-rays, there will be many people very concerned about their health records. Bryce Edwards made the point:

The potential harms are immense. Think about what’s in these files. Psychiatric diagnoses. Sexual health information. Details of domestic violence. Records of abortions. The intimate confessions people make to their doctors believing, as they should, that such information is sacrosanct.

People could be blackmailed over sensitive diagnoses or traumatic histories. Identities could be stolen. As one furious patient told RNZ, she is “one part terrified, one part really angry, like ragingly angry” that details of her past sexual assault – secrets she hasn’t even told some family members – might be made public. This isn’t just a bureaucratic failure. Real people will suffer real consequences.

So this is a very big deal for some.

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NZ First scored 11.9% in the January 2026 Taxpayers’ Union – Curia poll. This is a very high level of support for NZ First generally, but especially for them in Government.

The last time NZ First polled this high was in the lead up to the 2017 election. They also spiked up there in 2003. Prior to that you would be talking about their formative period in the mid 1990s.

What makes their result even more exceptional is that it has occurred while they are in Government. Normally being in Government results in NZ First doing very badly in the polls, and at the subsequent election. I’ve charted below the four periods NZ First has been in Government.

The paywalled article shows you the comparison, and also shows you what share of the coalition vote NZ First has received this term.

Hipkins also ignores that Clark called a snap election in 2002, meaning the 2002 and 2005 election could not be held in November (or October). So if you exclude those you have November for 1999, 2008 and 2011 and October only in 2020 and 2023. Any time between September and November is not unusual for an election date.

Also worth noting every non snap election from 1946 to 1981 was also in November.

Newsroom asked some pollsters for their predictions for 2026. Mine are below:

Every poll (or almost every poll) will show that both National and Labour will need two partner parties to govern, not just one – that is: only National/Act/New Zealand First and Labour/Greens/Te Pāti Māori will have enough seats to make 61. 

All 71 public polls since the election have said Labour can’t govern without both the Greens and Te Pāti Māori and only two out of 71 have National and Act able to govern without New Zealand First.

New Zealand First will continue to poll above its 2023 result. The party has been above its 6.1 percent results in the past 20 public polls. 

The top three issues will remain cost of living, economy and health. These have been the top three issues in every Taxpayers’ Union–Curia poll since July 2024.

The vast majority of polls, before the campaign period, will have a narrow margin between the Government and Opposition – no bloc greater than 65 seats. No poll since November 2024 has had a bloc projected to win over 65 seats.

Key things which I will be looking out for are:

The state of the economy. I think this will be hugely influential. As well as economic data, and what the right/wrong direction polls are saying as a proxy for that.

What happens with Te Pāti Maori will also be important to keep an eye on. With the polls so close, the party’s current two-seat overhang could determine who gets to form government. But if they go into an election with new Te Pāti Māori candidates against incumbent MPs, then I think Labour will win those seats and Te Pāti Māori will not get overhang seats.

I’ll also be watching for any polls showing Labour can govern without Te Pāti Māori. This will boost Labour if they do, and damage them if Te Pāti Māori looks essential to their path to power.

How high New Zealand First rises, and whether that support is coming from former National or Labour voters is also something to watch.

A moving story at The Free Press about Mark Swidan who spent 12 years in a Chinese prison on trumped up charges. Basically totalitarian states arrest random US citizens from time top time to use as bargaining chips to get their spies etc released. Some extracts:

For more than a decade, he had been served two meals a day, the same meal every meal: a bowl of mushy, yellowish rice with a quarter-size morsel of pork fat. Sometimes, there would be boiled bits of pumpkin or cabbage.

Swidan, who is 6-feet-2, said: “I was 225 pounds when I went in, and then I went down to the 120s, and I was about 140, 145 when I got out.”

In prison, they rarely let him outside. His immune system had taken a hit from the lack of sun. He also got frequent fungal infections—mostly from showering on grimy, concrete floors. “It would go all over your head and face and down your neck,” he said. He would get red and splotchy. It made sleeping for weeks at a time nearly impossible.

The aftereffects were visible: His skin was covered in tiny lines and scars. And his teeth were a mess. His eyesight had been compromised.

Worst of all were his hands—over the years, he’d broken lots of bones in his fingers and wrists and hands from fights with other prisoners but mostly with guards. “I’m not the guy who’s just going to stand there when you threaten me,” Swidan said. “Someone would put his finger in my face, and I’d knock him the fuck out, and there would be four or five of them—I didn’t give a shit. You’ve given me two death penalties already.” He learned how to scrounge for bits of cardboard and tape so he could set his broken fingers. The Air Force doctors in San Antonio said there wasn’t a lot they could do about his hands. “They said it’s worse to rebreak and then fix them,” he said.

What is scary is this could happen to anyone randomly.

Do you recall Labour MPs and others saying that the changes National made to speed limits (basically reversing Labour’s across the board reductions, and replacing them with case by case limits) would kill many more NZers.

Well the 2025 road toll was the lowest per capita in 100 years and the second lowest in gross terms in 73 years.

Of course the road toll is about more than speed limits. It is car safety, drink driving etc. But Labour MPs insisted that the changes would kill people.

A crazy article by Halim Rane at the ABC:

In the aftermath of violent attacks, public commentary quickly reaches for a familiar label like “religiously motivated terrorism”. The term sounds intuitive but it is analytically flawed, socially harmful and counter-productive to both national security and social cohesion.

I would argue that a more accurate and useful concept is “identity-motivated terrorism”: the use or threat of violence against civilians to advance an agenda grounded in the perceived defence, restoration or supremacy of a collective identity.

This shift in language is not semantic politeness. It reflects what decades of research in political violence, radicalisation and security studies have consistently shown — namely, that religion is not the causal driver of terrorism, even when religious language is loudly invoked. The underlying motivation is identity: racial, political and/or civilisational.

This is like 1984. You can’t speak the truth.

It is quite correct to say that Islamist terrorism is based on an extreme minority interpretation of Islam. It is not correct to say that it isn’t based on religious belief.

The attackers were supporters of Islamic State – whose mission is to explicitly have a state run on 9th century Islamic rules.

Since the 9/11 2011 attacks there have been over 50,000 seperate attacks where Islam was a factor. Not 50, not 500, not even 5,000 but 50,000. To claim religion is not a factor is crazy.

The death toll since 9/11 is 313,262 killed and 380,603 wounded. I don;t think those victims think it is socially harmful to call a spade a spade.

The election will be on Saturday 7 November

Have spent two weeks in Bali doing an extended family holidays with the boys, their cousins, mother, uncle and grandparents.

A long wait for bags at Denpasar Airport, with Sam having a rest. There was around 45 minutes gap between the first and last bags coming off.

We were staying (at Garden View Ubud – highly recommended) near the Monkey Forest in Ubud and if you open your bag for any reasons a monkey will jump down and try to get into it. We also had them come around our hotel swimming pool and steal a bag of chips off us.

We visited Taman Safari Bali which I highly recommend. Heaps and heaps of animals and encounters.

If you think climbing a tree to get away from a tiger works, I have bad news for you!

This is the view from the toilets at the restaurant!

Feeding a giant turtle.

The first part of the visit is walking around, and then you get to do a bus, jeep or cage visit around the wilder animals.

Not often you see the double humped camels.

You can even stay at the safari, so wake up to a rhino outside your place!

An elephant looking for food.

And after all that walking about, they have a water park to cool off on.

If you go to Bali with kids (or without), I highly recommend the Safari Park. We thought we’d be there for two to three hours and ended up there for eight hours.

Where do you start. First of all the Norwegian Government has zero votes on who gets the Nobel Peace Prize. But to link him not getting the prize to the US demanding Greenland is like a two year old having a temper tantrum. He really is deranged.

Mockery is the best response. Well the 25th Amendment would be the best response, but this is second best.

The various memes of Trump claiming prizes won by others have been good. My favourites are Serena Williams and Milli Vanilli.

Trump is not just sending demented e-mails over Greenland. He has said he will impose 10% punitive tariffs on all the NATO allies like the UK and Germany who don’t back his campaign to take over Greenland. The US is now more of a threat to NATO than Russia!

Nick Shirley has had over 135 million views of his video where he went around various Minnesota state funded daycare centres and found no pupils. It gave the visual element to the reporting around fraud in the state, especially involving Somalis who makes up around 3% of the Twin Cities population.

Tim Walz who was standing for a third term as Governor has now withdrawn. A year ago he was close to becoming Vice-President and today he can’t get re-elected in his own state.

1. At last count 10,000 5 to 13 year olds in NZ were not enrolled anywhere and no one was actively looking for them.
   
2. Approx. 11,000 children are home-schooled. These children are not “truant” but it does indicate an amount of dis-engagement with our state system.
   
3. Term 3 2025 attendance data showed a statistically significant decline on Term 3 2024.
   
4. Daily attendance statistics in term 4 2025 showed more decline:
   
   “The government wanted 80 percent of students attending more than 90 percent of their classes – the benchmark for regular attendance. To reach that goal, daily attendance needed to reach and remain at 94 percent, but the highest point reached in term four was 90 percent, with 88-89 percent recorded often and average daily attendance of 85 percent, similar to term three.”
   
5. Australia considers themselves to be in deep crisis mode with attendance as their full attendance (students attending 90% of the time) is at 60%. Ours is at 50%.
   
   These comments are important:
   
   “We can’t nudge our way out of this crisis. Australia needs a wholesale rethink of how to get children back into the classroom. We are not alone. Many countries have had problems getting school attendance to where it needs to be. But some have taken the issue far more seriously than us. England is one such country we can learn from. Students in England attend school 94 per cent of the time, compared to Australia’s 89 per cent. England has made attendance a national priority, driving a relentless public messaging campaign to elevate the importance of school attendance, radically increasing the transparency of attendance data, setting higher expectations for families and schools, and adopting a whole-of-government approach to tackle barriers to attendance.”

As I have said many times, curriculum changes, “structured literacy”, etc – can only produce marginal gains if the children who need help the most are attending school irregularly – at best.

Just released NCEA/UE cohort data (as opposed to leavers data that comes out later) shows a small improvement in L1 NCEA but declines in Level 2 NCEA and UE (key indicators).

Education in NZ in 2026 needs a great deal of work – from attendance to achievement. Let’s hope.

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Day 4 was a fairly short 7 kms to the water taxi pick up. But we left early again as it was now a 10 am pick up. Again a bit undulating.

A nice view of the last hut as we went around the track.

Nice and easy track here.

Opening up a bit.

Again so many beautiful lakeside views.

This is where the water taxi picks us up. I went swimming for around 20 minutes before it arrived and wow was it a great way to end the tramp – very refreshing.

This is the view from the water taxi of the climb on Day 1.

Got back to the holiday park where I had a much needed ice cream and pie!

The original plan was to get the water taxi at 4 pm and stay overnight in Wairoa. But as I got out at 10.30 am I decided to just drive back to Wellington that day. I offered to pay for the night I had booked at Vista Motor Lodge (where I had left spare luggage) but the owner kindly refused and said they were just glad I had a great time. Definitely a good place to stay at in Wairoa.

I went into the tramp with similar views to many that the Great Walk was going to be inferior to others, and this was due to the Tuhoe taking over management of the Ureweras. But I was pleasantly surprised by how good the track was, and I actually really enjoyed hearing from the Tuhoe wardens and water taxi skipper about the area.

Like many I was aghast at the removal of private huts in the area (they explained they want to plan where huts are needed in the future, but my view is they should leave the current huts in place until they have such a plan), but this didn’t extend to the Great Walk, and despite tensions the partnership between DOC and Tuhoe in running it is working.

I would definitely recommend doing the track. I’d happily go back and do it again.

Next summer is Great Walk No 10 – the Routeburn!

The Herald reports:

Several cases of potentially defamatory comments, breaches of privacy and unsupported assertions were found in Youth MPs’ draft speeches by officials tasked with reviewing them before delivery during a Youth Parliament overshadowed by censorship claims earlier this year. 

For example, edits were suggested after speeches implied MPs were “accepting bribes or promotion in exchange for supporting certain policies” or made “accusations that funding was misappropriated”, according to the Ministry of Youth Development (MYD).

So some Youth MPs were planning to make defamatory allegations of bribery and theft. No prizes for guessing which party the MPs they were representing would have been from.

Steven Pinker wrote at the Free Press:

Human progress continues, with some backsliding.

Since publishing two books on human progress (The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, and Enlightenment Now, 2018), every year I update my graphs on the major dimensions of human well-being. Most people think everything’s gotten worse, but that can be a misleading impression from following headlines, a nonrandom sample of the worst things happening anywhere on earth. The data show that, after the pandemic blip, global life expectancy, affluence, and literacy are at all-time highs, while extreme poverty and violent crime are at all-time lows. The world has backslid in democracy and war deaths, taking us back to levels in the late 1990s—though we’re still better than at any time in the 20th century since relevant data were recorded.

Worth remembering how much things have improved (especially for those in the third world) in recent decades.

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

Bold ambition and fearless execution – that’s what it has taken to get intense bilateral negotiations between India and New Zealand finalised so a trade deal could be announced just before the country broke for Christmas.

Bold ambition by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon who faced down his detractors and pledged he would get an agreement in place during his Government’s first term in office.

Fearless execution by Trade Minister Todd McLay, who the PM empowered to deliver the deal and who brought it home within nine months of Luxon’s four-day visit to India earlier this year.

The relationship with India was regarded as almost broken under the previous Government.

Even back in 2018, Fonterra was forecasting that over the next seven years, the demand for dairy from Indian consumers is set to increase by 82 billion litres – seven times the forecast growth for China.

The country’s young population was looking to level up its dairy consumption with new products that met with their expectations of higher quality and nutrition.

There are opportunities now to invest in food manufacturing, infrastructure – including digital services and more to meet market demands.

One of the more interesting aspects is the ability to form joint-venture manufacturing facilities in India for exporting product into third markets.

Chinese dairy firms have exploited a similar regime in New Zealand to produce product for export to South East Asia.

Lots of opportunitiies.

Forgot to mention on Day 2, that the Tuhoe hut warden at Waiopaoa Hut was superb. She told us some of the history of the area, the legends about Lake Waikaremona, and also opened it up to general questions. An hour later she finally finished and commented she had never had so many. One of the questions was on pest control, and she explained that Tuhoe are trying to train up Tuhoe members in traditional trapping methods and that while there are fewer traps around the area, they are committed to protecting the birdlife etc.

The warden also allowed us to change our hut bookings for the next night. Really great to have such flexibility.

Today was going to be a long 18 to 20 km day so we set off around 7 am.

Many views of the lake as we walked alongside it.

Day 3 is euphemistically described as mainly flat. In reality is is quite undulating and you still do a fair bit of up and down. But nothing like Day 1.

This is a private hut between Korokoro and Maraunui campsites. It has potable water from a spring and trampers are welcome to fill up their bottles there, which is great of them. Even more important as Maraunui Hut had no working water supply from the hut, so anyone staying there has to fill up from the lake.

This large field is where Maraunui Hut is.

I had a very nice lunch at Maraunui Hut, and was soon joined by around a dozen King’s College students during their Duke of Edinburgh Award. It is an old and small hut and I strongly recommend to anyone doing the track to bypass this hut. even though it is in a convenient location.

The track was generally in good condition. It was muddy in places, but nothing out of the ordinary. In a couple of places some boardwalks would be nice, but far from essential.

During the final stage it started to rain, and then to my surprise it turned into hail. Can’t recall the last time I’d tramped in hail. Didn’t last too long, but my sunhat proved useful in protecting my head!

Finally got to Waiharuru Hut around 3.30 pm. Pretty tired after 20 kms but very glad we changed our plans and carried on. There are actually two huge huts here. The left hand one is sleeping quarters for 40 people – all with individual bunk beds. The right hand one is the communal dining and socialising hall.

This hut also had a Tuhoe warden, and again he was great. After dinner he introduced himself and his background and then asked each table to do the same. Was really nice to hear everyone talk about their groups. The Scottish trampers even sang Scotland the Brave. The warden touched on some of the issues between them and DOC (they were not happy a hut was put on Mt Panekire without consulting them as they regard it as sacred, but they said now it is there they will support it). We actually saw this warden on day 1 also when he was fixing parts of the track up there. He often walks much of the track most days, while the other warden comes in by boat.

I’ve stayed in dozens of other DOC huts with many friendly wardens. But there was something special about having the Tuhoe wardens share the history of the area and make you feel so welcome in what is effectively their home.