Stuff reports:

The waitlist for a state or social home grew by more than a thousand in September, to 21,415 households.

This new record high for the end of September continues years of surging growth on the waitlist – the figure is up about 7000 households on a year ago, and is about four times higher than it was when the Labour-led Government was elected in 2017.

The waiting list has increased by 266%, so indeed almost four fold.

In Labour’s first year it grew by 63%. In their second year by 47% and last year by 53%. In raw terms it increased by 15,571.

In National’s last term the waiting list grew by 1,655 (around 10% of the growth under Labour) or in percentage terms by 39% compared to 266% under Labour.

A guest post by Alwyn Poole:

I was once sitting in the staff room of a NZ boys school at the beginning of an academic year and they were discussing the previous year’s external exam results. The Head of Math stood and detailed how the student average in his subject was above the national level. The Head of Sciences did the same. The Head of English then stood and stated: “The English results are 5% below National average but keep in mind we are working with boys.” She spoke as if this was written in the stars and no one contradicted her. I guess if the likes of C. S. Lewis, Tolstoy or Tolkien, etc., were in the room then they at least would have guffawed.

In 2019 female school leavers in NZ were more likely to obtain UE than their male counterparts at 45.9% compared to 32.9%. Astounding and another indictment on our “world class” education system.

Throughout my adult life and through some of my formal qualifications – a Masters in the Education of High Ability students and a Post Grad Diploma in Sports Management – I have studied how people become good in education, sports, the arts, and professions. I have also had the privilege of seeing many great athletes in the flesh and to be astounded by their qualities. These are some of the males that I have seen (in no particular order).

All Blacks, NZ Cricket, B&I Lions, Nick Farr-Jones, John Eales, Australian Rugby Team (1990s version), M. D. Crowe, Frankie Fredericks, Donovan Bailey, Stuart O’Grady, Nick Willis, UCI World Champs 2015, Peter Sagan, Tom Boonen, Vincenzo Nibali, Greg Henderson, Cameron Brown, Hamish Carter, Bevan Docherty, Jan Frodeno, Javier Gomez

Alistair Brownlee, Craig Alexander, David Beckham, Julian Dean, France Rugby, Michael Jones, Jonah Lomu,  Aaron Gate, Sam Webster, Dennis Lillie, Jeff Thompson, Greg Chappell

Richard Hadlee, John Walker, Rod Dixon, Dick Quax, Roger Federer, Leyton Hewitt, Mark Phillpousis, Michael Schumacher, Kimi Rikkonnen, Dale Earnhardt Jnr, Cleveland Cavaliers

LeBron James, Chicago Bulls, Kyrie Irving, Tampa Bay Bucaneers, Arizona Cardinals

Larry Fitzgerald, Tampa Bay Rays, Evan Longoria, New England Patriots, Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman, Andre Greipal, Michal Kwiatwoski, Rui Costa, Alejandro Valverde, Denver Broncos, Peyton Manning, Peter Snell, Wynton Rufer, Auston Matthews, Bruins, Maple Leafs, Philemon Rono, Virat Kohli, Ross Taylor, Trent Boult, Kane Williamson, Jasprit Pumbra, Graeme Hick, Tim Southee, SA Cricket, Indian Cricket, Australian Cricket.

I also had the privilege of spending time with the great Arthur Lydiard and many, many hours with NZ Olympic athletics and triathlon coach Jack Ralston. I have read many books on the topic of people becoming good at something including the remarkable Bounce by Matthew Syed and a whole stack of biographies. No one could say it more clearly than Lydiard but all other sources confirm it. Achievement and excellence in sport has very little to do with talent. It is always and everywhere hours and hours of well-directed purposeful practice and opportunities to perform and be challenged (especially to gain experience).

Academics is just the same and many of our boys have been sold a lie that school work is about inherent ability and that, stereotypically, they cannot achieve in many areas – especially those involving significant amounts of reading and/or writing. Teachers use that excuse far to often. To do well in any field young people have to be challenged and need to work hard. The expectations need to be high and effort/progress well rewarded.

For those of you with school age children the formula for their success is not rocket science but done well they could become rocket scientists. Next guest post I will give you the recipe.

The report of the Auditor-General into Auckland University buying a $5 million house for their VC is here. Key aspects:

In my view, the University has not been able to show a justifiable business purpose for purchasing the house.

It is hard to accept that purchasing a house to provide
accommodation for the incoming Vice-Chancellor, and to host an anticipated 14 events in two years, justifies the $5 million expenditure.

Nor does that level of hosting, in my view, justify an almost 50% reduction in the property’s rent.

So in summary the AG is saying the university should not have purchased the house, should not have paid $45 million for it and should not be providing it to the VC at half price.

The Vice-Chancellor’s salary, as publicly disclosed, is in the highest echelon of public sector salaries. Whether or not the salary is high by international standards, or the University considers that to be case, the amount is high enough that the University does not need to offer discounted accommodation for the Vice-Chancellor.

The VC is the 5th highest paid public official in NZ. They indeed don’t need taxpayers giving them a 50% rent discount.

A guest post by Rodney Hide:

Are your records safe with Xero?

No.

Xero will hand out your personal and financial records.  

Xero won’t tell you.  

Xero staff will peek at your records.

That much we know from a court case this week.  The case is my good friend Kristina Buxton and her two companies suing Xero for breach of privacy.

Kristina is the wife of my good friend Dave Henderson who was bankrupt at the time.

The Official Assignee was after Hendo and spent an estimated $2,500,000 chasing him including $700,000 on private investigators.  At no time did the Official Assignee or the private investigators ask Hendo or Kristina for the information they sought.  

The OA used her power and resources to interrogate people and organisations hoovering up truckloads of information, not just about Hendo but also his friends and associates including me.

The upshot were two sets of charges.  The Crown withdrew the first set and stayed the second.  Hendo is applying to have the stay lifted.  Having been charged, he wants his day in court.

So no prosecution. No wrongdoing worth pursuing.

The Official Assignee initially asked Xero for Kristina’s username and login.  Xero couldn’t do that but gave the OA a spreadsheet with 250,000 transactions on it.  That was everything.  Xero subsequently updated the spreadsheet.  The spreadsheets included tens of thousands of deeply personal records over many years including medical bills and the like.  

Xero never told Kristina about the request or their release.  Indeed, Xero initially denied the release and only confessed when confronted with incontrovertible evidence.

And as for staff having a peek?  Xero’s lawyer justified the dump by declaring to the court: “[Kristina’s] supermarket transactions seemed far too high to be personal”.  

There was no court order.  There was no legal demand [the OA’s power to gather information only relates to a bankrupt’s property, conduct or dealings].

Xero released a client’s entire financial history to the state simply upon being asked.  We don’t know how often it happens.  We can’t trust Xero’s assurances.  Their initial response was to deny the dump.

The court case this week was preliminary.  Xero is asking the court either to strike the claim out or to issue summary judgement.

Whatever the outcome, we now know the facts: Xero has released a client’s entire financial history to a government department that simply asked.

NewstalkZB reports:

Ultra-conservative MP leaps from window as Belgian police raid lockdown-breaching orgy

A Hungarian European Parliament lawmaker on Tuesday local time admitted he was present at an illegal party broken up by Belgian police in central Brussels last week, following reports he took part in a COVID-19 lockdown sex orgy.

This is the good thing about not being ultra-conservative. If you are in an orgy, you don’t need to jump out the window if the police raid it.

The media are running countless stories on the push to take away from the public the right to decide if their Council should or should not have Maori wards.

The latest is at Stuff which quotes five different people who all believe the public should have no say on whether a Council has Maori wards or not, and not a single voice with an opposing view. Yep five advocates interviewed, and no one else.

Buit what is worse is that there seems to be no one in the media who will call bullshit on the claim put forward by proponents that it is racist to allow a referendum on Maori wards because there is no provision to do so for general or geographic wards.

Almost every country on earth has geographic wards or seats for their national, state and/or local government. A decision on whether to have say five or six geographic wards for a council is generally an administrative decision. Geographic seats or wards have existed for around 755 years and again are a routine or standard feature of democratic institutions in almost every country on earth.

Whether or not to have race based seats or Maori wards is fundamentally different. Having seats reserved for people of one race, is incredibly uncommon in the world. No other developed country or OECD member does it.

Fiji used to do it. Only eight other countries (including Jordan, India, Colombia, Croatia) have race based seats at the parliamentary level, and I suspect even fewer at the local government level.

Deciding that a local council should have a Maori ward is a major political decision. It fundamentally changes the nature of representation in a council as it means some councillors will represent people of one ethnicity only, rather than everyone in a geographic district. Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not they are a good idea.

But to claim that race based seats are no different to geographic seats and hence the public should have no say on them is elitist nonsense. It would be like arguing that deciding whether or not to change electoral systems should be a decision left purely to MPs

They are trying to do away with voters having a say, because they think the voters have made the wrong decision. They hate the fact the public disagree with them on what is a controversial political issue. So their solution is to ban the public from deciding.

It is elitism at its worse. The public vote the wrong way, so we must take the vote away from them.

The table above shows how many members each party has on the various select committees and other committees.

Labour has a majority on 8 of the 15 committees. On a further five it comprises half the committee so can block any business it doesn’t like. On two committees (Petitions and Regulations Review) it does not have a majority.

National has two or three MPs on each committee. The ones with three are Finance, Health and Justice which might indicate areas of focus.

The Greens have chosen (as they don’t qualify for all) to not be on Economic Development, Governance, Justice and Primary Production – none of which are core areas for them, so quite sensible.

ACT have chosen not to go on Economic Development, Foreign Affairs, Governance and Maori Affairs – also pretty sensible.

The Maori Party has chosen to go on the Environment and Maori Affairs committees.

A must watch speech from the guy in charge of election systems for the state of Georgia talking about the death threats that his staff and others have had to endure.

Incidentally Gabriel Sterling is a Republican, not that this should matter.

This is what happens when you lie and claim the election was stolen because your ego is so fragile you can’t accept you lost. Some people believe you, and they honestly think there are people out there deleting votes and are threatening to kill them.

Stuff reported earlier this year:

In the early months of 2007, the Government made a bold commitment: The public service would be going carbon neutral.

13 years later they have reannounced this policy as a sign they believe climate change is abn emergency!!

It’s beyond farcical.

In the grand scheme of New Zealand’s climate pollution, it was a small fraction of the problem – equivalent to around 0.2 per cent of annual emissions.

And the policy will reduce annual emissions by 0.2%. That 0.2% of 0.1% global emissions so 0.0002% of global emissions.

We’re saved!

The Herald reported:

Festival hosts will be able to have drug-checking services at their events this summer and neither of them will face prosecution.

Health Minister Andrew Little revealed this morning that the Government will pass an urgent law to provide legal breathing space for drug-checking in time for the summer festival season.

I’m all in favour of this. It is a fact of life a significant number of people at music festivals will have party pills or other drugs. Would be better if they didn’t, but we live in the real world not an imaginary one.

The problem is sometimes what they think they have been sold isn’t what is claimed, and it can kill. There have been quite a few deaths from synthetic drugs.

So allowing a festival to provide a service for people to test if the drugs they have won’t kill them is laudable. Death should never be the price someone pays for wanting to pop some party pills at a music festival.

The Herald reports:

Labour list MP Naisi Chen, the second youngest MP at 26, came to New Zealand from Beijing, China, when she was 5. Her father had arrived two years earlier with $200 in his pocket. …

She said she only ever wanted to be a housewife, and was shoulder-tapped into politics at her high school Chinese committee, then with the NZ Chinese Students’ Association as president, where she realised most Chinese students never integrated.

“They come to New Zealand but still hang out in their own groups, seeking employment from Chinese businesses which, I soon realised. reflected the wider Chinese community.

“I believe that every migrant needs to integrate into New Zealand by adopting Kiwi values. We shouldn’t ever condone racism, but instead, be able to let each culture adapt to New Zealand so that it becomes a uniquely Kiwi-Chinese Kiwi-Korean Kiwi-Muslim culture.

“The harmonisation of New Zealand values and cultural heritage, that’s what I see as the biggest challenge in our society during the years I will serve in this house.”

Wise words from Naisi Chen. I am a huge fan of immigration and I don’t care about which country they’re from or their ethnicity. But I do care about integrating into New Zealand, especially the second generation.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will declare a climate change emergency in Parliament today, promising a carbon-neutral Government by 2025.

A carbon-neutral Government by 2025. Three years ago they promised a far more modest carbon-neutral Government vehicle fleet by 2025. After three years they are at 0.9% acheieved.

So having managed 0.9% in three years just on government vehicle emissions, they expect people to believe they will totally eliminate or offset all government emissions within five years.

I guess you can fool some of the people all of the time.

If you multiply a candidate’s vote share with the turnout, then you get what share of the overall adult population voted for a candidate. This can tell us a lot about how widespread their appeal was, and their ability to motivate people to vote for them.

Trump may have lost to Biden but he got a greater share of the population voting for him than any other candidate since 1972. Even more than Reagan in his landslide of 1984.

Here’s the share of the overall adult population candidates have got since 1968.

1. Biden 20: 34.2%
2. Nixon 72 33.5%
3. Trump 20: 31.6%
4. Reagan 84: 31.3%
5. Obama 08: 30.8%
6. Bush 04: 28.7%
7. Obama 12: 28.1%
8. Kerry 04: 27.4%
9. Clinton 16: 26.8%
10. Bush 88: 26.8%
11. Carter 76: 26.8%
12. Reagan 80: 26.7%
13. McCain 08: 26.6%
14. Nixon 68: 26.4%
15. Humphrey 68: 26.0%
16. Romney 12: 25.9%
17. Ford 76: 25.7%
18. Trump 16: 25.7%
19. Gore 00: 24.8%
20. Bush 00: 24.5%
21. Clinton 96: 24.1%
22. Clinton 92: 23.7%
23. Dukakis 88: 22.9%
24. Mondale 84: 21.6%
25. Carter 80: 21.6%
26. McGovern 72: 20.7%
27. Bush 92: 20.6%
28. Dole 96: 19.9%

So in 2016 only 25.7% of adult Americans voted for Donald Trump and in 2020 it rose to 31.6%. Again that is astonishing.

Of course in 2016 Clinton got 26.8% of Americans voting for her and Biden in 2020 got a modern record of 34.2%.

It will be fascinating to see in 2024 if voting turnout stays so high. I imagine that will depend on who is standing!

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern paid personal tribute to former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters tonight at a function at Parliament, saying he had been by her side during tough times.

No surprise she would be appreciative of the man who made her Prime Minister in 2017.

She also said she respected Peters for his policy of preventing political appointments in diplomatic posts – with the exception of former Labour deputy leader Dame Annette King who is High Commissioner to Australia.

Hopefully this means he won’t be taking one up himself, as that would be the height of hypocrisy.

The Herald reports:

On June 19 Matthew Hunt was meant to have dinner with his mother Diane after work.

But he never made it.

Several hours after he put on his beloved blue uniform, Constable Matthew Hunt was dead – gunned down in an Auckland street while attending a routine traffic stop.

Tomorrow his mother will present a petition to Parliament in his name and honour, calling for changes to the Sentencing Act 2002 and the Parole Act 2002 that would see anyone convicted of murdering a police officer receive a mandatory life sentence and have their parole eligibility automatically declined. …

Diane Hunt launched a petition on July 30 – the day her son would have turned 29.

“I want no parole for the killers of police officers in New Zealand – a murder sentence here can mean about 10 years in jail and I don’t believe that’s an appropriate sentence for the murder of a public servant doing their job,” she said.

“First responders have this on their shoulders every day they go to work, they all need to get home. …

In Victoria, Australia the law was changed in 2016 to ban parole for police murderers.

In New South Wales cop killers are sentenced to imprisonment for “the term of the person’s natural life”.

Diane Hunt wants the New Zealand Government to do the same.

I was unaware that Victoria and NSW have done this. It would be interesting to ascertain if there have been any killings of police officers since they changed the law.

Jacinda Ardern is moving a motion today in the House declaring climate change an emergency. It is more of the usual empty gesture to show one cares about an issue, as a substitute for actually doing something that would reduce emissions (which requires actual policy decisions with painful tradeoffs that might be unpopular).

Here’s Labour’s record to date:

• Promised 100% renewable electricity by 2030. In fact renewable share has dropped from 83.4% in Sep 2017 to 82.2% in Jun 2020.
• Promised to complete light rail (hence reducing traffic emissions to Mt Roskill by 2021. Nothing has occurred except the Auditor-General slamming the process.
• Promised the entire Government fleet would be electric or emissions free by 2025. As at Sep 2020, had managed just 0.9%
• Promised to fund one billion trees, to reduce net emissions. After three years have funded just 3.7% of the one billion trees.
• Promised to reduce net emissions to zero by 2050. However they are projecting an increase in net emissions from 55,000 to 70,000 kt from 2017 to 2023.

So rather than actually implement any of their promises that would reduce emissions, they are now passing a motion declaring it is an emergency.

They may even announce some new policy today, but as we know they are very good at announcing things and very bad at implementing them.

The turnout in the 2020 presidential election is around 157 million, compared to around 137 million in 2016. Turnout went from 56% to over 67%.

Donald Trump had 11 million more people vote for him in 2020 than in 2016. That is quite an extraordinary achievement. But Biden had 14 million more people vote for him than voted for Clinton in 2016.

If Trump had got his 2020 vote in 2016, he would have won 342 to 196. He would have picked up Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and New Mexico.

Conversely if Trump had not grown his vote by 11 million, then Biden would have beaten him by 394 to 144. Biden would have also won Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Utah.

So it is a real lesson about the power of turnout. There were not a lot of swinging or undecided voters. It came down a lot to turnout.

Interesting vote splitting stats just published. The summary below is for people who party voted for a party, what they did with their candidate vote.

• ACT – 65% voted Nat cands, 21% ACT cands
• Greens – 57% voted Labour cands, 29% Green cands
• Labour – 78% voted Labour cands, 8% National cands
• National – 88% voted National cands, 4% ACT cands
• New Conservatives – 64% New Cons cands, 25% Nat cands
• NZ First – 37% Lab cands, 22% Nat cands, 18% NZF cands
• TOP – 35% Lab cands, 21% TOP cands 18% Nat cands,

National voters did the least vote splitting.

Newshub reports:

A man has been shot twice by police in Northland after a police dog was left with a gunshot wound to the head, according to a report.

The small township of Tangowahine, between Whangarei and Dargaville, is in the process of being shut down as police swarm the area to offer assistance to the officers, the NZ Herald reports.

It’s understood the police dog is being rushed to a vet clinic in Dargaville to receive treatment.

Hopefully the police dog survives.

Turnout in 2017 was 79% and in 2020 hit 82.2% – the highest since 1999. Turnout has been:

• 2002: 77.0%
• 2005: 80.9%
• 2008: 79.5%
• 2011: 74.2%
• 2014: 77.9%
• 2017: 79.8%
• 2020: 82.2%

Pretty good to have had it increase the last three elections.

A lot of variation by electorate. The top 5 are:

1. Wgtn Central 89.4%
2. Selwyn 89.4%
3. Banks Peninsula 89.1%
4. Waitaki 88.2%
5. Ohariu 87.7%

The bottom ones are:

• Tamaki Makaurau 65.1%
• Ikaroa-Rawhiti 67.1%
• Panmure-Otahuhu 67.6%

So gear some electorates have almost 90% turnout but a lot still below 75% also.