Vice reports:

Several Penguin Random House Canada employees confronted management about the company’s decision to publish a new book by controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson at an emotional town hall Monday, and dozens more have filed anonymous complaints, according to four workers who spoke to VICE World News. 

Snowflake staff complaining that a book publisher is publishing a book because they don’t like the author.

Seriously they should all travel back in time to the 1930s and apply for jobs as book burners.

The Herald reports:

In a highly unusual move, the Speaker has released correspondence between himself, the Clerk’s office and Māori Party MPs over the row that blew up in Parliament.

Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard and the Māori Party are accusing each other of grandstanding after the Māori Party’s two MPs walked out of the first session of the new Parliament yesterday.

Co-leader Rawiri Waititi raised a point of order in te reo Māori when seeking to participate in a debate but was overruled by Mallard.

He was given a brief opportunity to convince the Speaker to hear him out, telling the House “Kei te mōtini te pāti Māori kia riro i a mātou, 15 miniti ki ngā kaiarahi o te pāti Māori i roto i tēnei wāhanga whakautu kōrero”, roughly translated as “to pass a motion so that the Māori Party leaders can have 15 minutes to speak in the Address in Reply”.

But the Speaker cut him off, which prompted Waititi and co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer to leave the chamber, in a dramatic start to the Māori Party’s return to the halls of power.

Under the rules, party leaders with more than six MPs get 30 minutes to speak and smaller parties would only get the chance if time allowed before the House rises at 5pm.

However, because Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer are new MPs, if they spoke in the Address in Reply debate that would constitute their maiden speech and these were not scheduled until at least next week.

Waititi tried to secure a speaking slot based on a standing order that such decisions do not discriminate against a minority party.

The problem the Maori Party MPs had is that they tried to move a motion while another MP was speaking. You can’t do that. They can complain all they want about it, but their best bet would be to have a staffer experienced in parliamentary procedure who can assist them.

Waititi replied: “The only Party being banned from the Address in Reply debate is Te Paati Māori … all other 4 Party’s are Pākeha led and dominated. These Party’s get 30 minutes speaking time, Māori get nothing”.

Actually all four other parties have a Maori leader or co-leader or deputy leader.

Stuff reports:

A soldier who led a white nationalist group has been charged with espionage, and is the first person to face such an accusation of threatening New Zealand’s security by giving information to another country or foreign organisation.

The Defence Force on Wednesday said the soldier, who has name suppression, would face a court martial on 17 charges including multiple counts of espionage, attempted espionage, accessing a computer system for dishonest purposes, and possessing an objectionable publication.

Much of the detail of the allegations remains unknown, including the information the soldier obtained and which country or foreign organisation he shared the information with.

A friend close to the soldier’s family said they were shocked at the charges. The soldier, who was 27 years old when he was arrested at Linton Military Camp in December, now faces the possibility of 14 years in prison.

Going to be a fascinating court martial. If I had to guess he was sharing information with a foreign organisation, not a country.

The soldier continued to be involved in Far-Right groups after the March 15 attack, Stuff understands, and had been planning to fly out to Russia with his partner a week after his arrest.

Or maybe it was Russia?

The Auditor-General writes to the MOT about Auckland light rail:

It seems unusual to us for such a fundamental reconsideration of project scope/parameters to occur alongside the selection of a party to deliver light rail, or at the same time as exclusive negotiations with a delivery partner might occur (once one was selected). In our view, where something occurs that causes the overall project parameters and the procurement approach to be reconsidered, or for the key policy settings to be revisited, the more appropriate step would be to terminate any existing process in an open and transparent way and revisit the policy and planning for the project.

Basically you decide what you want first, then you tender for it.

We were told at one point that it was open to the Government or Cabinet to choose not to follow the Rules in certain situations. Although it is correct that the Rules do not have the force of law, we note that they are mandatory for many public organisations. Where there is potential for international investors, we need to be mindful of the international obligations we have under free trade agreements. The Rules are designed to guide public agencies to procure responsibly and achieve public value, and maintain the integrity of government procurement and New Zealand’s reputation as a country that “plays by the rules”. This is something which Rules, and the principles in the Rules, are designed to promote.

Basically the process used by Twyford broke the procurement rules.

Stuff reports:

Wellington High School went into lockdown for about an hour on Thursday morning after police said they received a “credible threat” on social media.

A student has revealed how he tipped the school off about an alleged would-be-shooter targeting the Wellington High LGBTQI+ community.

The student’s parent confirmed his son had raised serious concerns about another teenager – not from the school – planning a school shooting.

The shooting was allegedly planned for 2021 but this was moved forward after messages sent by the alleged shooter were passed on to school staff, the student said.

God this is beyond terrible. The poor kids knowing that someone was planning this, even if it never eventuated.

Stuff has seen Instagram messages between the alleged would-be shooter and another person.

Those messages said he planned to share the incident on Facebook: “I can’t wait I’m soo excited.”

His public Instagram page, which has since been taken down, included white supremacist imagery.

Among the posts were a picture of the Christchurch mosque shooter – posted on Thursday morning – as well as a rifle and bullets being held in someone’s hand, posted the night before.

Another student at the school told Stuff the alleged would-be shooter had been posting on social media about having a gun and bullets and being a “Nazi”.

Thankfully many neo-nazis and white supremacists are thick as shit, otherwise they wouldn’t post on social media about how they have a gun and are a Nazi.

We don’t know if the would-be-shooter did in fact have access to guns, and how he became so radicalised. Thank goodness the Police were informed in time.

There was also a planned school shooting in Tasman in early 2019, whose trial outcome has just been publicised. Also very disturbing. We don’t know in the Nelson case what the motivation was. Was it just a disturbed loner, or was there an ideological motive. It is unfortunate the court has suppressed these details so we don’t know.

The Herald reports:

Parliament will next week debate if a climate emergency in New Zealand should be declared, leader of the House Chris Hipkins has told MPs.

Speaking in the House after the Speech from the Throne, Hipkins said that the motion will be debated next Tuesday.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will personally introduce the motion next week, according to a spokesman.

Rather than implement policies that will actually reduce emissions, they are instead distracting people by saying “Oh we care so much about this we will call it an emergency”.

They promised the Government vehicle fleet would be emissions free within eight years. After three years they are yet to reach 1%!!!

Yet they have the temerity to next week sit in Parliament and declare this is an emergency when they haven’t even been capable in three years of getting 1% of the government fleet electric.

This graph shows the death rates per million in the 30 OECD countries. We should feel great that we have the lowest death rate. Most OECD countries have death rates 80 times greater than us.

Australia’s rate is four times the rate in NZ, but it varies by state. If we ranked NZ and the states in order they would be”

1. NT 0
2. Queensland 1.2
3. South Australia 2.3
4. Western Australia 3.4
5. NZ 5.1
6. NSW 6.5
7. ACT 7.0
8. Tasmania 24.2
9. Victoria 123.1

UPDATE: Vic and WA corrected

Research NZ polled 1,000 NZers on possible electoral changes. The results are:

• Move from three to four year term – 61% yes, 25% no = +36% net support
• Introduce compulsory voting – 40% yes, 46% no = -6% net opposition
• Lower voting age to 16 – 20% yes, 72% no = -52% net opposition

I’m in the majority or plurality for all of those.

Stuff reports:

The push for water meters to be installed in every home in Wellington to prevent future shortages has been labelled a “no brainer” by one of the region’s mayors, while another has described it as “false hope”.

A Wellington Water report recommended the region spend $144 million on infrastructure which would allow it to record and report on residents’ daily-water usage, in a bid to encourage residents to save water and prevent drought-like shortages

Without introducing water meters, water usage was expected to exceed drought-level supply by 2026 based on current consumption, the amount of water lost to leaks and projected population growth, the Ernst Young and Beca report warned.

This doesn’t affect me directly as I live on a property with no mains supply, so we live off two 30,000 litre tanks. When you face having to pay money to top up your water, you definitely conserve it far more. We are constantly doing things to conserve water. I’m one of the few who loves it when it rains as our tanks get filled up.

We even now have an Internet connected sensor in our water tank that through an app tells us how full the tanks are, and can alert us to any leaks.

If people know how much water they are using, and pay for what they use, they use less.

Kāpiti Coast District Council introduced water metering and charging in 2014 and saw a 26 per cent drop in overall water use over the following year with two-thirds of homes in the district ending up paying less for water under the metering system.

Kāpiti Mayor K Gurunathan said: “It’s inevitable that other councils come on board. It’s an absolute no brainer.”

South Wairarapa Mayor Alex Beijen said it was “inevitable” that the wider Wellington region would eventually follow his district’s lead on water meters as without such a measure Wellington could end up in the same boat as Auckland, which has been in the throes of drought since 2019.

It really is a no brainer

Stuff reports:

t’s a serene, sunny Sunday summer’s morning in the suburbs. Only birdsong and the odd lawnmower punctuate the serenity. Then a flame-red truck rolls around the corner and disgorges a uniformed squad of union activists, who leaflet-drop your neighbours, chant, sing, and organise a picket line at your front fence.

This, says, Matt McCarten, is utu. After three years of “plotting in the dark” since his exit from the Labour Party’s high command, this is his solution for worker exploitation.

The targets for his Sunday “church for sinners” will be the recalcitrant employers whom he cannot get to the negotiating table to hear complaints against them of bullying, sexual harassment and migrant exploitation.

If an employer has bullied or harassed or exploited them complaints should be laid with the ERA or MBIE who can prosecute.

But instead McCarten is demanding they must deal with him rather than the legal authorities, and if not he’ll harass them at home.

He’ll publish stories on Martyn Bradbury’s Daily Blog, use a social media team to disseminate it further, publish their names, photographs, home address and phone numbers. “I am going to be quite hardline on this,” he says, “and I know there will be some pushback.”

This is doxxing. When Cactus Kate joked about doing it to someone, the left and media went on about it as if it was the crime of the century. You now have two left activists declaring in a newspaper they are going to dox people, and not a peep.

That leaves most reliant on advocates such as McCarten, many of whom work on a percentage of the settlement. McCarten says One Union will take a case through to mediation for $500, payment deferred if the client can’t afford it, and ask for a voluntary donation of 10% of any settlement towards the union fighting fund – and he’ll cover his own wage through demanding his costs from the employer.

So this is in fact a money making venture. Agree to negotiate with us, rather than use the legal process, or we will dox you and harrass you at home – and we get 10% of the cut.

The Thomson report on Invercargill City Council is here. It deals with Sir Tim’s difficulties more bluntly than I expected:

This void is seen by participants as most clearly manifesting itself in the Mayor’s reported increasing inability to carry out many aspects of his role.

The reported deterioration was stated by many as being evident in the previous triennium but as getting progressively worse. The Mayor appears, according to most of those interviewed, to be struggling to follow Council agendas and papers without assistance, although a couple of participants see that as a situational issue rather than cognitive difficulties (“he works off paper whereas the rest of us work off computer and the pages don’t always line up”, although I am advised by management that this has not been the case since early in the adoption of digital board papers). Many interviewees reported a range of obvious concerns including short term memory deficits, confusion, and the need to be closely managed by both Council staff and senior Councillors in order to chair a Council meeting. They report increasing incidents of embarrassment during meetings
which a, generally, compassionate Council has done their best to hide from the general public. This approach is now failing (as is evident from the increasing media statements regarding aspects of his performance) and many Councillors report a general community concern about “what is happening to Sir Tim”.

I’m all for compassion but not at the expense of common sense. If a Mayor is unable (as opposed to unwilling) to perform his role, then he must resign of the Minister must step in.

This meant that the Mayor would essentially be chairing a full Council whose agenda was primarily only the approval of minutes, thus ensuring that the Mayor was chairing difficult or complex meeting agendas less
frequently. The Mayor saw this as a deliberate diminution of his power, which it accurately was, but, in my opinion, that was a side outcome of the change rather than the primary motivation for the change. Many of those I spoke with saw it as a compassionate way to protect his reputation and mana by reducing the opportunity for his difficulties to be apparent to the public.

Basically what the Council has done is delegate everything except approval of minutes to committees of Council, as the Mayor can’t chair a meeting which has to decide on a difficult issue. Chairing of the Council is a bare minimum part of the job for a Mayor, and if he can’t do that, then I’m sorry but time to retire.

Worth reading the entire report to see how bad it is.

Worksafe has a downloadable database of all workplace deaths since 2011. There have been 771, which is of course far too high. Going through the database I was interested in the classifications as some workplace deaths are clearly avoidable (falls) while others much harder to minimise (assaults causing death).

Here’s the number of workplace deaths by type:

• Trucks/Utes 126
• Christchurch Earthquake 63
• Quad Bikes 56
• Hit by falling objects 53
• Falls 50
• Trapped between moving and stationery object 41
• Tractors 37
• Slips, trips, tumbles 30
• Drowning 29
• Hit my moving object 27
• Aviation Transport 26
• Cars 22
• Mobile plant rollover 22
• White Island explosion 21
• Machinery 17
• Electric Shocks 13
• Assaults 11
• Motorbikes 10
• Hit or bitten by animals 9

If you exclude White Island and the Christchurch quake, the numbers by year are:

• 2011: 73
• 2012: 69
• 2013: 72
• 2014: 65
• 2015: 59
• 2016: 73
• 2017: 79
• 2018: 63
• 2019: 87

Far too many for a country our size.

One News reports:

Kelvin Davis says when schools accept low achievement rates from its Māori students, without aspiring to better them, it shows there is “systemic racism” in the education system.

The Associate Education Minister (Māori Education), speaking today about anti-racism school programme Te Hurihanganui, said “Māori deserve nothing worse” than achieving “at the highest levels in the world whatever they do”. 

But, Davis said among some teachers, there was an “acceptance” low Māori achievement was simply the way things were. 

Davis said accepting the status quo wasn’t good enough. 

I agree the status quo isn’t good enough. So let’s look at how Labour has done in improving Maori achievement rates in their fight against systemic racism.

So under the racist National Government the percentage of Maori leaving school with no qualifications dropped from 37% to 18%. The kind caring Labour Government saw it increase to 22%.

And how have the rates changed for NCEA Level 2, generally regarded as the minimum someone should leave with?

Again under the racist National Government the percentage of Maori leaving school with NCEA Level 2 increased from 46% to 69%. The kind caring Labour Government saw it drop back to 65%.

So Kelvin Davis is right in saying he rejects the status quo. Labour has actually worsened the status quo for Maori school leavers!

Danyl Mclauchlan writes:

Jacinda Ardern has responded to a surge in house prices, concerns about carbon emissions and calls for action on child poverty by pledging to care more about these issues. The pledge comes after a week of harsh criticism and opposition attacks, and in response to them Ardern has promised to drastically raise the already high levels at which she cares.

The move has delighted her supporters and international admirers, with US vice-president-elect Kamala Harris liking Ardern’s announcement on Instagram, while calls for the prime minister to receive a Nobel Peace Prize have intensified. But critics and commentators have raised doubts about the new caring, wondering whether the promised new levels of care are credible, and even questioning whether the government should solve problems in addition to caring about them.

This is so funny as it is so close to reality.

Details about the increased caring are yet to be revealed but experts predict it will be in line with the prime minister’s previous track record of looking thoughtful and sad whenever questioned about an issue in front of media, and will consist of furrowed brows, worried frowns, and empathic nodding. The furrowing, frowning and nodding, which Treasury refers to as F2N, will increase by one percentage point a year, aggregating each year to an astonishing 9% increase in Net Prime Ministerial Caring, or NPMC, by the end of the decade.

It might be part of their living standards framework!

Further details about the caring will be determined by a task force, and the State Services Commission has formed a working group to determine the terms of enquiry for the interdepartmental agency that will establish the task force.

Ardern would not be drawn on whether climate, housing and child poverty were challenges, crises or disasters, and in response to questions about their priorities she explained that each of them was her highest priority. “Let me be clear. Child poverty is the reason I became a politician. And climate is the greatest problem facing the world, while housing touches every whānau. So in answer to the question of which I care about more, my answer is: be kind to one other.”

Some people on Twitter thought that last paragraph was an actual quote from Ardern. To be fair, it almost could be!

Donald Trump’s attempted coup against American democracy has failed. I call it a clownish coup not because what they tried to do isn’t deadly serious, but because the people involved were so incompetent or mad or both that they became ridiculous.

And that’s now just my view, but the view of Trump confidant Chris Christie:

In an interview on ABC News’s “This Week,” Christie said the president should give up his legal strategy. “Elections have consequences, and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn’t happen,” he said.

“The conduct of the president’s legal team has been a national embarrassment,” Christie added, noting that Trump’s lawyers have made a flurry of fraud allegations but have offered no evidence to back them up in court.

Christie criticized Trump’s lawyers for proffering false conspiracy theories at news conferences and other media appearances.

One lawyer was so crazy, she was even too crazy for Trump. That was Sidney Powell who claimed the Republican Governor of Georgia was in a conspiracy with the dead Hugo Chavez and the CIA to steal the election from Trump.

Trump’s problems hasn’t just been the morons posing as lawyers, but Trump himself. He told so many people about his plans to steal the election before election day, that every media outlet in the country knew about them and knew he was going to claim victory on the night. If you are going to try and steal an election, you’re best not to tell everyone about it in advance.

There have been a number of different aspects to Trump’s attempt to steal the election. They are:

1. General undermining of faith in democratic elections. Trump has raised baseless fraud allegations not just in 2020, but also in 2012, 2016 and 2018 elections. He has spent a decade telling people US elections are rigged. What sort of President campaigns against his own democratic institutions?
2. Claiming victory on election night in states where the vote count wasn’t anywhere near complete. He had signalled he would do this for weeks ahead of time, but it doesn’t make it less shocking. He tweeted and raged that he had won various states, when there were millions of ballots not counted, that had been cast before the election.
3. When he realises that merely claiming on Twitter he had won didn’t work, he spread numerous conspiracy theories about fraud. But not only has he been unable to find proof of widespread fraud, he hasn’t found proof of even minimal fraud. It’s sort of amazing that they have around 1,000 lawyers looking for fraud and there were 160 million votes cast and they haven’t been able to locate any fraudulent votes. Either those fraudsters are super smart or maybe his own Department of Homeland Security was right when they called them the most secure in history.
4. Then you had the lawsuits. Now absolutely in an extremely close race it is quite proper to seek a judicial ruling on the election rules. But Trump has filed 36 lawsuits, of which he has lost 34 and had two minor wins which are of basically no consequence. The lawsuits are so incompetent and in such bad faith, that they are basically just a delaying tactic. It is possible Trump actually think if he can get one to the Supreme Court that the Justices there will rule for him simply because he appointed a third of them. He doesn’t really understand the concept of an independent judiciary or justice department.
5. Then there was the pressure on Republicans not to certify election results. Sadly the US doesn’t have an electoral administration system totally removed from politicians like in NZ. In NZ we don’t have the Minister of Justice sign off on the election results. But in the US there is a bureaucratic procedural step where a board or state official must certify the results. Trump has pressured Republican officials to refuse to certify the results, which would effectively disenfranchise entire counties or states.
6. Finally he has been trying to delay certification so that in the absence of a certified result he can then have a state legislature declare Trump the winner regardless of the popular vote in the state. This is the most brazen part of his attempted coup. Now the constitution does of course give state legislatures the right to select electors but for the last 175 years every state has a law saying the electors are assigned to who wins the popular vote in that state (or district). Now if politicians want to stand for office to the state legislature on a platform of taking the presidential decision away from voters and giving it to the state legislature they’re welcome to do so (and will no doubt get 1% of the vote). But to try and convince state legislators to ignore the results of an election, is authoritarian or worse.

So Trump’s coup has failed. He will go down in history as the worst President in the history of the United States, and also the biggest sulkiest loser. But his tactics have done massive damage. He has set the stage for someone smarter and more competent to try and do the same in future.

All because he can’t accept the fact he lost.

A guest post by Alwyn Poole:

New Zealand is a small and distant nation by world measures. We also rate very poorly in education given of diminutive size and high relative wealth. While we were once regarded as “world-leading” the most recent measures (PISA 2019) have us 7^th for Science, 8^th for Reading and an abysmal 22^nd for Maths. Other concerns were:

“an alarming rise in bullying, gaps between high and low achievers, drastically deteriorating attitudes toward reading, a rise in truancy, poor learning environments and a negative attitude toward school.”

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/117890945/new-zealand-topend-in-oecds-latest-pisa-report-but-drop-in-achievements-worrying

New Zealand leads the world in the wrong way with some of the highest gaps between have and have-nots and between ethnicities. There is a 45% gap for school leavers between young people from Asian families achieving UE as compared to those from Maori and Pasifika families. New Zealand also performs poorly in terms of children with diverse learning needs such as those with dyslexia, autism or ADHD.

The good news is that the Labour government and Education Minister Chris Hipkins will no longer be able to bring out the “nine years of neglect” ploy – or blame other governing parties. They did very little in their first three years expect have a couple of working groups that we highly contradictory of each other and had very little implemented. They promised Designated Character Schools to crack open the one size fits all model but did not deliver. They threw millions of dollars in laptops, modems and hard-packs – even though largely unsolicited – during lock-downs. They now need to look at the day-today where NZ students have reported:

New Zealand had one of the worst scores for classroom behaviour of any OECD nation with more students reporting noise and disorder in their classroom (41 percent) and more saying students did not listen to their teachers (35 percent). 

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/404762/nz-teenagers-hit-new-lows-in-reading-maths-and-science-tests

We have a system that – through a bi-lateral monopoly on the demand and supply of teachers (unions vs the Ministry of Education) means that we have a collective contract that prevents any incentives for teaching in schools where the students have highest needs. The government is looking to do away with the decile system and, what they consider, is that labels that go with it. It will take the students and families between 6 and 8 days to decode the new system and realise that, to paraphrase The Who; “the new boss is the same as the old boss.” It is well past time to look for mavericks people and maverick models. It is time to break down the “one-size-fits-all” as it fails many and reinforces societies disparities.

Minister Hipkins, his associate (Jan Tinetti) and the Labour Maori caucus have no ongoing excuse. No party has been handed a change mandate on a plate like this is recent history. Will they bring genuine change or defer to the unions and simply aim to preserve power through being moderate, mediocre and middle-of-the road? The 2019 school leavers results have just been released. Asian 63.8 of leavers have UE, 43.8% of Europeans, 22.8 for Pasifika and 18.6 for Maori. Overall girls 45.9%, boys 32.9%.

Our children deserve the best and state-of-the-art learning theory clearly shows what is required to bring about high levels of aspiration and fulfillment. If Labour make significant moves in the right direction I will be the first to support them – but there is no indication from them of anything but Sergeant Schultz on Education and Dug the Dog from Up being trained to be distracted by HOUSE PRICES …

ACT are proposing that select committee membership should change from being proportional to the total number of MPs in Parliament to being proportional to the number of MPs not in the Executive.

I hope this proposal is given serious consideration as it would be a change that would enhance Parliament massively. They explain:

Select committees are a rubber stamp because the Government has a majority on most of them. Instead, their membership should be made proportional to non-executive MPs (i.e. those MPs who aren’t Ministers) so the Opposition has a majority on most committees. Select committees would then be worth submitting to because they could actually change legislation. The Government could still change it back in the main Parliament where it would still have a majority. But the possibility of real change would make select committees a place of real policy debate. The Government has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to use its large majority to make this change at little cost to itself.

Select Committees would become a forum where the Government can be scrutinised far more strongly – as we saw with the Epidemic Response Committee.

There would be political incentives for opposition parties to not use select committees just to vote down government bills. An opposition that was purely obstructionist would suffer a backlash.

An associated change that I would make is to mandate that if a select committee is not unanimous it can produce two reports – a majority and minority report – each with their own marked up amended bill.

And then at 2nd reading the House can vote not just on whether to proceed with the bill, but whether to accept the majority or minority version of the bill. This would allow the Government to still gets it way (as it should if it has the numbers in the House), but means the House explicitly votes on the two reports.

So this standing order change would not be about stopping the Government from being able to legislate. It would be about empowering select committees to be more independent. Without near automatic government majorities, they will be more likely to pursue inquiries, call in expert witnesses etc.

This would not be a minor change. This change would make a huge difference to the role of select committees and Parliament. I hope it is considered.

Stuff reports:

The National Party looks set to run candidates in the Māori electorates in the 2023 election.

Leader Judith Collins confirmed the party’s board is keen on the idea, although a formal decision has yet to be made.

The last election National ran candidates in the seats was 2002. It didn’t run candidates in 2005 and has continued to stay away from the Māori seats since then.

Collins told Stuff that there had been ongoing discussions with the National Party board about running in the seats, and the board was broadly supportive. If the board gives the go-ahead, the party could start looking for candidates who would run in the seats in 2023.

The strongest argument for standing in the Maori seats is that it may boost the party vote for National in those seats.

You can have a principled view that you think the electoral system would be better without the Maori seats, but also recognise that while they exist National should compete in them.

I think the age of NZ Super should be lifted from 65 to 67. But that doesn’t mean I’ll refuse to apply for Super when I’m 65.

There were three pre-election public polls, from One News Colmar Brunton, Newshub Reid Research and Roy Morgan. With final results, we can now compare how they did.

The table above shows the results, the poll, and the difference. The MOE column indicates whether the difference is within the 95% margin of error.

ONCB and NRR had Labour lower than the actual result and outside the margin of error.

All three polls had National higher than the actual result and outside the margin of error.

This is a fairly significant “miss”, but I think it is understandable. Polls can be self-fulfilling prophecies and I think a fair number of National voters simply didn’t vote or voted tactically. A poll is a snapshot at a point in time.

ONCP was spot on with the Greens, NRR was too low (outside MOE) and RM too high (but just inside MOE).

All the polls got ACT broadly correct.

All three pollsters had the Maori Party too low and outside the MOE.

ONCB and RM were spot on with NZ First. NRR were too high but just within the MOE.

All three polls had TOP correct.

The TV polls had New Conservatives correct.

ONCB had Advance correct but NRR had thenm too low.

So which poll was most accurate?

If you take total difference, then this time Roy Morgan did best with 8.4% vs 11% for ONCB and 14.1% for NRR. If you average that per result then RM and ONCB had an average 1.2% error and NRR 1.6%.

Another way of looking at it is how many of the results were within the margin of error. They are:

• ONCB 6/9
• NRR 4/9
• RM 5/7

Now let’s look at the referendum polling

Note the results exclude informal ballots and the polls exclude undecideds so it compares like and like.

The only poll that was within the margin of error was in fact the internal polling released by the Greens. They were only 2.6% out from the actual result.

The two TV polls were the only ones that got the overall result of a loss correct, while the other four incorrectly forecast a win.

However in terms of the actual gap between the poll and the result the closest were the Greens and UMR and the furthest away was NRR.

For the euthanasia poll, the only poll within the MOE was ONCB. They had the yes result just 1.4% below the actual result. NRR was 3.2% below and Research NZ was 6.2% too high,. Note the Research NZ poll was in August though.

They all were right in clearly predicting a comfortable victory for yes, but ONCB got closest to the actual result.

This is the second post in my series analysing the election results. Patreon doesn’t have good formatting tools for tables so I’m trying to post this on my blog using the Patreon plugin, to see if this works.

The above figures are on the boundaries of the five National Party Regions.  The seven Maori seats are treated as a de facto sixth Region to allow a cleaner comparison from Region to Region.

National did best in CNI at 31% and worst in LNI at 23%

Labour got over 50% in LNI and CW and lowest in CNI at 45%

Greens were best at 11% in LNI and lowest in CNI at 5%

ACT were best in Southern at 9% and lowest in LNI at 7%

TOP did best in the LNI Region at 1.9%.

Advance NZ got 2.5% in the Maori seats.

The gap between the CR and CL for each Region was:

• Northern -19%
• CNI -8%
• LNI -31%
• C/W -23%
• Southern -20%

• Auckland is defined as the 22 seats in greater Auckland.
• Wellington is the six seats south of and including Mana and Rimutaka.
• Christchurch is the six seats wholly or mainly in Christchurch including Waimakariri and Banks Peninsula.
• Provincial are those 17 seats which have more than 50% of their population in minor cities such as Nelson, New Plymouth, Dunedin, Hamilton, Napier etc.
• Rural are the 14 seats where less than 50% of the population live in a city.

Labour is strongest in Wellington at 53% and weakest in rural NZ at 43%

National is lowest in Wellington at 18% and highest in rural NZ at 32%. 

Greens are high in Wellington at 16% (just behind National) and also Christchurch at 10%. They even exceeded 5% in rural NZ.

ACT did best in rural NZ with 11% and lowest in Wellington at 5%.

TOP got 2.6% in Wellington and below 2% elsewhere.

The gap between CR and CL for each area was:

• Auckland -21%
• Wellington -45%
• Christchurch -30%
• Provincial -21%
• Rural -3%

So even in rural NZ, the centre-left got slightly more votes than the centre-right. This is of course very rare, and shows how seismic the shift was this election.

And in Wellington, the gap between the two is huge. There are almost 3 CL voters for every one CR voter in Wellington.

The next post will look at the change between 2017 and 2020 for each region and area.