Radio NZ reported in July:

On 2 April, then-police commissioner Mike Bush told the Pandemic Response Select Committee that while historically police had not used discretion fairly across all communities, this had changed.

“We’ve moved a very long way and we now have data to say that we now are in a place where we apply that discretion evenly across communities.”

According to information supplied to RNZ under the Official Information Act, that statement was based on data collected from police’s strategy to reduce Māori offending, Te Huringa o te Tai, which showed the number of pre-charge warnings for first-time adult offenders was the same for Māori and non-Māori, at 73 percent.

The discovery of “an analytical error” has however corrected the number of pre-charge warnings given to Māori as just 53 percent, compared to 59 percent for non-Māori.

Police Deputy Commissioner Wally Haumaha acknowledged there was bias in the police – but said he was confident it was changing.

This got me interested as a long time analyst of crime statistics. The first thing I know is that overall rates often mean little as they treat all crimes the same – a homicide and a drink driving.

Likewise the difference in pre-charge warnings might be related to the nature of the crimes, rather than racial bias.

This is not to say racial bias might not be a component. It is quite possible there is some. But the overall topline data is not a good evidence base on which to decide. So I asked the Police to break down the pre-charge warnings by offence type and ethnicity. Their OIA response is here.

The biggest difference is in violent offences where 32% of Maori get a warning and 49% of non-Maori. That does suggest racial bias, unless the makeup of offences within that category is very different for each ethnicity. You don’t caution someone for GBH but you might for a pub fight. If I have time I’d be keen to break down that category more.

Fewer Maori get warnings for harassment offences and property offence.

But in some categories it goes the other way. Non-Maori are less likely to get a warning for theft offences, for weapon offences and for offences against justice.

Worth noting that the overall difference in warning rates of 3% in no way can explain the huge gap between Maori and non-Maori offending. If the Police are slightly less likely to give a first time offender a warning if they are Maori, this won’t explain why overall offending is around 400% higher.

But nevertheless any racial disparity in who gets a warning is of concern. Even this data is somewhat inconclusive. Why are non-Maori less likely to get a warning for theft offences and Maori less likely to get a warning for violent offences?

To really answer that you’d want to get access to say a 10 year dataset and examine it down to the individual offence level.

My thanks to the Police for the OIA response.

The National Post reports:

The teenager who beheaded a teacher outside the school in a Paris suburb where he taught had approached pupils in the street and asked them to point out his victim, anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said on Saturday.

Police shot dead the 18-year-old attacker, who was born in Russia, minutes after he murdered 47-year-old history teacher Samuel Paty in broad daylight in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Friday. …

Earlier this month Paty had shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on freedom of expression, angering a number of Muslim parents. Muslims believe that any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous.

In response, France was preparing Sunday to expel 231 foreigners on a government watch list for suspected extremist religious beliefs, Europe 1 radio reported. France’s Interior ministry, responsible for expelling foreigners, was not available to comment.

An 18 year old doesn’t get radicalised by themselves. It happens because of other people they meet in person, or online.

People are entitled to have their religious beliefs. But they are not entitled to force them onto other people, and murder them because they are offended.

There is no room in secular countries for those who think their religious beliefs entitle them to murder those who don’t share them.

On Patreon I’ve done a fairly lengthy post on what I see as a strategic challenge for National – how it positions itself in a post-Covid world. One extract:

It is very possible that for the next decade or so New Zealanders will feel much more positive about a big state than they have in the past.

So National needs to spend the next few months not just reviewing the last three years, but thinking about the next ten years.  How does National position itself in a post-Covid era?

This is not an argument for National to embrace increasing the tax take from 30% to 40% of GDP, or the like. It is an argument that National has to think about how to make its principles relevant to people post Covid-19.

There are obvious areas to target such as government waste, as the less the Government wastes on failed projects, the more it could spent in areas like public health. But you don’t win an election purely be exposing waste.

You need to be able to advocate an alternative vision of Government – a smarter Government, a more agile Government, a tech friendly Government etc.

Basically National should not assume that once the we have a vaccine for the virus, everything returns to normal. The world and the country in 2023 and 2026 will be very different from 2017.

The Herald reports:

Labour deputy leader Kelvin Davis’ rhyming speech last night did not go down well, with Kiwis online describing it as “despicable”, “ungracious” and “disgusting”.

Speaking at the Labour election headquarters, minutes before Jacinda Ardern took the stage, Davis recited a confusing, nursery-rhyme type speech, hailing “whaea Jacinda” and slamming defeated National leader Judith Collins.

Whereas politicians usually try to stay gracious, in victory and in defeat, Davis – who will likely take up the role of deputy Prime Minister, chose to go down a slightly different route, by ridiculing his opponent.

It was a nasty ugly display from NZ’s Next Deputy PM.

The vast majority of people are very good on election night. The Nelson Labour HQ sang “For he’s a jolly good fellow” to Nick Smith when he turned up to concede, and Nick stayed for a few drinks.

We have a great tradition in NZ that losing candidates go to the HQs of the winning candidate, concede in person and congratulate them. And the winning candidate normally praises the losing candidate. It’s a great piece of civility that we should retain.

What you don’t do is mock and ridicule those who lose on prime time TV on election night. But that’s what Labour Deputy Leader decided to do.

The Herald reports:

A United Kingdom court has sentenced New Zealand businessman Eric Watson to a four-month jail term.

TVNZ reports a High Court judge in London found Watson in contempt of court for withholding information about his assets from philanthropist Sir Owen Glenn.

It is rare for someone to be jailed in relation to what was a civil matter, but read on for why:

In an October 2 decision, Lord Justice Christopher Nugee said it was “demonstrated how blatantly Mr Watson lied to the Court of Appeal” about the state of his assets.

Watson’s formal witness statement to the Court of Appeal displayed his “willingness to tell outright lies if he thinks they will remain undetected”.

“It is one of the clearest examples of why I regard him as a witness whose evidence is almost worthless.”

I can’t recall a Judge damning someone to that extent before as a liar. This explains I think why a jail term has been imposed. Watson seems to think his wealth gives him immunity from consequences.

The bad news for Trump is he is at 12% in the 538 model. The good news is he was at 13% on the same date in 2016. However the election is five days earlier in 2020 so less time to change things. 538 project:

• 93% chance Biden gets over 50% of popular vote
• 37% chance Biden wins by a double digit figure
• 4% chance Trump wins popular vote
• 8% chance Trump loses popular vote but wins electoral college

On the average of the polls Biden has a 10.7% lead.

In terms of states Trump needs to win his odds are:

• Georgia 49%
• North Carolina 32%
• Arizona 31%
• Florida 28%
• Pennsylvania 13%

Also Trump needs to not lose:

• Ohio (51% Trump prob to win)
• Iowa 58%
• Texas 69%

The Democrats are now at 74% probability to win the Senate with a likely 52 seats.

11 parties failed to gain MPs in Parliament at all. How did they go?

1. NZ First 2.7%. Prognosis: On life support
2. New Conservative 1.5%. Prognosis: They’ll be back so long as there is evil to smite
3. TOP 1.4%. Prognosis: As healthy as a cat in the living room of their former leader
4. Advance NZ 0.9%. Prognosis: World famous due to dismemberment by Tova. Advance NZ will probably go away but expect Billy TK and NZ Public Party to continue and thrive
5. ALCP 0.3%. Prognosis: On the assumption the referendum is lost, they’ll carry on.
6. ONE Party 0.12%. Prognosis: There isn’t room for two Christian parties.
7. NZ Outdoors Party 0.11%. Prognosis: Will be subsumed by NZ Public Party
8. TEA Party 0.08%. Prognosis: They should join ACT.
9. Sustainable NZ 0.06%. Prognosis: Hugely embarrassing for a party with such promise. May try again if Greens fail to deliver on issues such as Kermadecs despite no NZ First in Government
10. Social Credit 0.06%. Prognosis: They will never go away. I mean never. They should retire though as the Reserve Bank seems to be implementing their manifesto.
11. Heartland NZ 0.04% Prognosis: Not many votes in opposing healthier waterways

Back on 3 September I wrote on my Patreon whom might make up a sole Labour Ministry. The full list of 26 Ministers and six others is behind the paywall, but here’s some extracts:

2. Kelvin Davis, Deputy PM, Education
11. Stuart Nash, SOEs, Small Business, Corrections
17 Michael Wood, Community Sector, Internal Affairs, Environment, Statistics, Youth
18. Deborah Russell, Revenue, Tertiary Education
19. Kiri Allan, Justice, Courts

And my pick for the Whips:

• Chief Whip: Kieran McAnulty
• Junior Whip: Jo Luxton
• No 3 Whip: Camilla Belich

This is brilliant. Someone has taken the current Five Thirty Eight election forecast and turned it into the traditional Star Wars film opening.

This interview of Jami-Lee Ross by Tova O’Brien has been viewed almost six million times. It is quite brutal.

What some MPs should perhaps reflect upon is that almost beyond doubt Jami-Lee was one of those leaking stories to Tova for some time. He was a source. Tova would never reveal this, but it seems pretty obvious.

There is a lesson here for MPs. You may think leaking stories to a journalist helps build a relationship and will get you a friend in the gallery. But it doesn’t. The journalist is doing their job, in cultivating you. You are useful to them. They are doing their job.

And as you see in the above interview, it doesn’t mean you get the kids glove treatment. If anything, you arguably get treated harsher.

So the lesson here, is don’t leak to journalists. If you think doing so means you will get favourable treatment in future, you are wrong.

On my Patreon I’ve done an analysis of which list candidates in ACT, Greens, Labour and National may drop out or make it in after special votes are counted.

This shows the rough demographics of every party in Parliament.

Gender

Overall almost evenly balanced. Labour and Greens have males under-represented and National and ACT have females under-represented.

Age

Greens and ACT have young caucuses, with no one over 60. National and Labour quite similar but Labour slightly younger.

Ethnicity

ACT has the highest proportion of Maori MPs (excluding Maori Party).

One is six Labour MPs is Pasifika.

National’s caucus is heavily European.

I’ll blog more on this over the next few weeks, but here’s an initial take on what I think were factors in National’s loss. I’m dividing them up into two categories – those National did and did not have control over.

Factors beyond National’s control

• Covid-19
• The Government’s response to Covid-19
• Jacinda Ardern
• Jacinda’s 1 pm press conferences
• The media
• The huge infection rates and death rates in other countries
• The fact that no Government has failed to win a 2nd term since 1975

Factors National has some control over

• Having seven different Leaders and Deputy Leaders in one term
• Jami-Lee Ross
• Three years of leaks to Newshub
• Hamish Walker
• Andrew Falloon
• A fiscal hole
• SFO charging donors to National
• Messy selections (Auckland Central)
• Mistakes such as Goldsmith’s ethnicity, misfiring walkabouts

This is not a definitive list. It is to make the point that you can’t blame the result all on Covid-19, but also you can’t ignore the fact there were significant factors outside National’s control.

The key is to be realistic about what were the factors you did have control over, and how to minimise a recurrence in future. Also to look at the factors you don’t control and consider how you mitigate against them.

So who are the winners and losers of the election. Mostly it is pretty obvious. Here are the winners:

1. Jacinda Ardern. She rescued Labour in 2017 and has delivered them the only majority Government in MMP history. Their victory is 99% Jacinda and 1% the others.
2. Labour. They won not just 64 seats in the House but 14 net electorate seats. Some (not all) of their new MPs are talented and future Ministers.
3. Chloe Swarbrick. Like Sandra Lee in 1993, she won Auckland Central as a third party candidate. An incredible victory which marks her out as a future co-leader.
4. ACT and David Seymour. I put them together as up until now they were the same. Seymour not just expanded his caucus, but delivered the best ever result for ACT – 10 MPs. Over six years he has rebuilt ACT and changed its brand and they are now the third highest polling party.
5. Greens. They not only exceeded 5%, they got 10 MPs. Not their best result, but one of their better ones. They may get to be part of a pure left Government for the first time ever.
6. Rawiri Waititi. Ahead in Wairaiki at this stage and gets the Maori Party back in.

Losers

1. NZ First. They are out of Parliament and the party could well not be around in 2023. Winston will be 78. The SFO case is next year, and Shane Jones was a distant third in Northland.
2. National. They’re still in Parliament but this is a devastating result. Not just for the overall party vote (which was still poor) but the loss of electorates that were not even thought to be at risk. Losing 15 electorates will hurt National a lot and make 2023 a hard challenge. However worth remembering that in 2002 they did even worse and then three years later they almost won in 2005. I’ll do a seperate post on what were the factors in National’s loss.
3. Tamati Coffey. Not a great look to be the only Labour MP to lose their seat, when it is a landslide election for Labour.

Also this sounds cheesy, but is sincere. Democracy is the big winner. We had over 2.5 million people vote with little or no drama. No court cases. No voter suppression. No alleged voter fraud. No massive queues to vote. No chance of a losing party refusing to accept the results.

This is the provisional list of the 120 MPs elected tonight. I expect some change with specials.

At this stage the House is:

• 52% male, 48% female
• 63% European, 19% Maori, 9% Pasifika, 5% Asian
• 24% under 40, 9% over 60

Rather than post updates both here on Twitter, I’m embedding my Twitter feed below, for those interested.

For those interested, this is what I will be looking out for tonight. First it is important to note that different parties will do better at different parts of the count. My expectations based on experience and polling are:

• Advance votes. I expect these to more heavily favour Labour than later votes. Those who were voting on how Jacinda handled Covid-19 didn’t need to wait for the final leader’s debate etc. So I expect the votes that come in before 8.30 pm to be good for Labour
• Early booths. Smaller booths tend to report quicker than larger booths. Smaller booths tend to be in more rural areas which favour National, so after the advance votes are in, you may get some results which are relatively better for National.
• Final booths. The last booths to report tend to be the huge central city booths that favour Labour and Greens. So expect to see them start to do even better later in the night.
• Specials. These will not be counted on the night, but normally the specials favour Labour and the Greens, so you could see one or two extra seats swing on the specials.

Now what to look for for each party.

Labour

Based on pre-election polls there seems little doubt that Labour will form the next Government. The question will be how well do they win. Questions I’ll be looking for are:

• Will they be able to govern alone?
• Will they beat their MMP best result of 41.3% in 2002? (hightly likely)
• Will they beat the best ever MMP result of any party being National’s 47.3% in 2011?
• Will Labour lose Taieri?
• How close will the Māori Party get to them in Waiariki, Te Tai Hauauru and Tamaki Makaurau?

National

• What will their result be comparable to? It will be better than National’s 2002 result of 20.9%. Will it beat Labour’s 2014 result of 25.1%, Labour’s 2011 result of 27.5%, Labour’s 1996 result of 28.2%, National’s 1999 result of 30.5%, Labour’s 2008 result of 34.0%?
• How many electorates will National lose? In the South Island I will follow Invercargill, Nelson and Rangitata. In the North Island I will be watching Hutt South, Wairarapa, Otaki, Whanganui, Tukituki, Hamilton East, Hamilton West, Maungakiekie, Auckland Central and Northcote.
• Will National pick up the new seat of Takanini?
• Who gets in on National’s List

NZ First

• Do they make 5%?
• If not, do they get close (above 4%), as that may determine if they carry on
• Does Shane Jones come 2nd or 3rd in Northland?

Greens

• Does their vote under-perform the polls as usual?
• How many MPs will they get? Their results from best to worst are 14, 14, 9, 9, 8, 7, 6

ACT

• How many MPs will they get? Their results from best to worst are 9, 9, 8, 5, 2, 1, 1, 1
• Will ACT or the Greens be the third largest party?

It’s now Election Day.

This means no posts or comments on New Zealand politics. You will get suspended if you break this legal requirement.

You can comment on the election in terms of if you voted, the queue at the voting booth etc. But not who you voted for.

You can also comment on US politics or other countries.

At 7 pm normal commenting can resume.

The Herald reports:

Labour leader Jacinda Ardern has moved to try to kill off National’s claims she would bow to the Green Party’s wish for a wealth tax by saying she would not implement a wealth tax as long as she is Prime Minister.

It is a step further than she has gone before – her previous comments on it related to the next term.

Ardern made the comment after the issue was raised yet again following Green Party MP Chloe Swarbrick’s comment that it would be on the table. She was asked if she would resign if she implemented a wealth tax – the promise she had made about raising the age for superannuation.

Ardern said there was no need to make such a promise about “a hypothetical” because it would not happen.

“I won’t allow it to happen as Prime Minister.

This is a significant movement in Labour’s position. All previous statements deliberately left wriggle room. They ranged from “We will implement our policy” to “not in this term” but none of them were as categorical as what Ardern did with CGT, where she ruled it out so long as she was Prime Minister.

This shows the power of a good campaign to affect public policy. Ardern has now three times had to rule out a new tax permanently. They are:

• No more regional fuel taxes
• No capital gains tax
• No asset or wealth tax

These are significant victories. Labour of course would love to have more tax revenue. They love taxing and spending. And a Labour Prime Minister has ruled out three significant taxes for as long as she is Prime Minister.

Of course, if they win, they will need to find someway to plug the 15+ years of deficits they are projecting. It is near impossible to imagine they will have fiscal discipline and cut low quality spending, so they’ll look at other taxes. What else might left activists now campaign for, having lost on CGT and wealth tax?

Maybe a Financial Transactions Tax or a Land Tax?

Anyway politics is not just about elections, but also about changing the “Overton Window” of what policies are deemed acceptable for serious political discourse. And both CGT and a wealth tax have been knocked out of contention. They’re off the table.