The Post reports:
Indeed, she says in her sworn affidavit that Tamihere had been chairing the weekly caucus meetings of MPs in Parliament since September. And it was he who sent Kapa-Kingi an ‘ultimatum’ on her overspending that sent the simmering issue into overdrive.
To have the party president chair caucus instead of the leader or a co-leader is unprecedented. Chairing caucus is a major part of the role of the leader.
Dealing with parliamentary budget issues is also very firmly the role of the leader.
This makes it very clear that despite not being an MP, John Tamihere is both the president and leader of Te Pati Maori.
Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer are, at best, the co-deputy leaders.
If there is a Labour/Green/TPM Government, it will be John Tamihere deciding what TPM does, and how they do it.
Tamihere is the President and Leader. His daughter is the General Manager and one of his staff is the Secretary/Treasurer. One of the co-deputy leaders is his son-in-law. This is not a political party anymore. It is a family business.
This is where Kapa-Kingi alleges that Tamihere said he was “coming for [her] boys” and wanted “utu” (revenge).
Norman says in his evidence that Kapa-Kingi called Tamihere a “f….n c…t”.
This is the party that says tikanga must be followed!
The party’s caucus manual was included in the document bundle. Among many fairly anodyne rules and procedures it is revealed that TPM prohibits its MPs from “socialising with alcohol or other substances with Media or other Political Parites [sic] or Members of Parliament outside of Te Pāti Māori”.
This is both disturbing and explains a lot. The prohibition on socialising with other MPs is a control freak level of paranoia. It is also very bad. You want people from other parties to socialise and develop relationships. But the prohibition explains a lot about TPM not wanting to actually achieve anything legislatively. They want to divide, not work with others.
The year is almost over, so it is time for nominations for the annual Kiwiblog Awards. The nomination categories are:
Make your nominations in the comments (free free to say why) and then I’ll start a vote based on the most popular nominations.
The winners in 2024 were:
I did my usual 20 predictions for the upcoming year last December. How did I go?
Overall got 13.5 out of 20. Better than last year!
Judith Collins announced:
The Government has today released an app to make it easier and safer for people to access government services, Digitising Government and Public Service Minister Judith Collins says. …
“The app released today is just the start. Over the coming months additional features will be added, including secure messaging and notifications, and a digital wallet to hold identity credentials like licences and qualifications,” Ms Collins says.
“I look forward to seeing New Zealanders benefit from these improvements as we continue to expand the app’s capabilities.
“Participation will always be optional, and people will continue to be able to access government services in a range of ways. Our goal is to offer an option that is secure and convenient, while maintaining the highest standards of safety.”
The Govt.nz app is now available for download on both iOS and Android platforms.
Looks a very worthwhile initiative. The real value will be when they expand it to include identity credentials.
Business NZ says:
After a prolonged period of stagnation and negative per capita growth, the New Zealand economy is
now expected to expand at just under 3% per annum through to 2027.
Both official and forward-looking indicators point to a steady improvement in the economic outlook as
we enter 2026. Key indicators of growth include:
Business confidence remains relatively high, as reflected in multiple surveys.
Massey University’s GDP live indicates solid GDP improvement, while heavy traffic flows—
a reliable real-time growth indicator—are generally rising.
BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI) shows increased
activity. The October PMI marks four consecutive months above the breakeven 50 mark, a
milestone achieved twice in the past three years.
Underlying inflation is returning to target, despite headline rates remaining near the top of
the Reserve Bank’s range.
Interest rate reductions are easing pressure on struggling households and businesses.
Credit activity is increasing. Centrix data show new household lending rose 13.2% year-on-
year and mortgage enquiries remain elevated. Business credit continues to climb, up 3% year-
on-year. However, company liquidations remain elevated, with October marking the highest
monthly number of liquidations since 2011.
Retail activity is starting to increase in real (inflation and seasonally-adjusted) terms.
NZ dollar movements will boost returns for exporters converting foreign revenue back into
NZ dollars, though this may increase tradeables inflation.
Agricultural commodity prices remain solid despite some softening in dairy prices as a
result of higher production, both domestically and internationally. Dairy prices have softened,
with Fonterra revising its forecast Farmgate Milk Price for 2025/26 from $9.00–$11.00/kgMS to
$9.00–$10.00/kgMS, lowering the mid-point from $10.00 to $9.50/kgMS.
Fonterra’s sale of its global consumer and related businesses to French dairy giant Lactalis
for NZ$4.22 billion—subject to regulatory approval—will provide a significant boost to the
regional economy, expected to be completed in the first half of 2026.
US trade developments are positive, with President Trump’s tariff rollback on beef and other
products benefiting NZ, though this is no substitute for a stable, rules-based international
trading system.
Tourism is recovering, with inbound numbers increasing, while domestic tourism remains
subdued.
Infrastructure pipeline projects identified by the NZ Infrastructure Commission present
long-term growth opportunities, though some will require sustained funding.
Regulatory support from the Government to reduce barriers to business growth continues,
helping lower costs for developers and supporting medium-term developments.
That does give good cause for optimism. That’s a lot of green shoots.
Advanced economies are expected to grow around 1.5% in 2025–26, with the US slowing to 2%
So anything over 2% would be very good for a developed country.
That is a very significant increase. Hopefully we will see the same in NZ.
Andrew Little’s campaign donors were:
That must be the most unusual mix of donors in recent history!
The first one isn’t a conspiracy theory. There is genuine uncertainty over how Covid-19 started.
The others though are depressing. 36% of Republicans think the moon landings were fake. The same number are Holocaust deniers or minimisers. This detachment from reality used to be a few cranks on the extreme left and now it is mainstream conservative thinking in the US.
By Lucy Rogers
NewstalkZB reported today that Amnesty found that Hamas committed genocide on October 7 2023: https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/world/mass-killing-of-civilians-on-october-7-amounted-to-the-crime-against-humanity-of-extermination/
I am glad to see that Amnesty caught up eventually, but I was appalled by the following sentence at the very conclusion of the article:
“Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 70,369 people, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.”
Gaza’s health ministry is Hamas, i.e. the organisation that Amnesty found guilty of genocide in the very same article. The article deliberately omits that.
I think NewstalkZB reshares a lot of garbage when its own reporting is of higher quality. It should reconsider the impact that stuff like this has on its number of subscribers.
After 34 years of working in Education in New Zealand I am desperate for Erica Stanford to make truly meaningful and substantial change.
I want every Minister of Education to be highly successful and would have loved Hipkins and Tinetti to be so. They were not and Stanford is a little better – but in the way that Mt Eden (at 196m) is higher than Mt Wellington ( at 135m). Everest is a very long way off. Some comments on her first two years:
The Good
– We have small sample test indicators that phonics checks are showing marginal improvements.
– We have small sample indicators that dedicated tuition in a narrow range of maths strands produces improvement.
– The secondary teachers have finally accepted their new collective contract that started with the Ministry of Education offering a ridiculous 1% per annum for 3 years. Students lost teaching through strikes, rostering home, etc.
The Not So Good
– Not a single secondary school subject association has endorsed the proposed new curriculum in their area. In fact, they have actively written to oppose the changes and the process used. Here is a direct quote from one of NZ’s truly outstanding teachers and a dedicated advocate for quality curriculum in their area (p.s. this is by no means a “lefty”.)
“The curriculum writing process that was meant to have a significant contribution from the teacher associations was a complete farce. Instead of monthly opportunities to critique draft materials, the various review groups were lucky if they got one opportunity and certainly no chance to fix the obvious bloopers that went out in the draft. We have given feedback to that effect to both the Ministry (who described it as “brutal”) and the Minister. From our early discussions we have high hopes that there will be a significant improvement in the writing process with considerably more input from teachers – both directly and as a critique/review role. But time will tell if the senior management has learnt their lesson.”
– Term 3 attendance data for 2025 dropped below the 2024 levels – from 51.7% of 50.3%. In terms of improvement for those who most need it – full-attendance for Maori students was down to 36.5% and Pasifika to 38.6%.
– 90 secondary schools wrote an open letter to challenge the proposed qualifications changes. 64 schools wrote to support them.
– There are very significant questions re the Ministry’s procurement processes for resources, Professional Development contracts, and contracts for systems like the SMART assessment tool).
– The Minister has proposed altering the terms of the Teachers Council to bring some of their functions into the Ministry and also to make a majority of Board appointments political. There are two HUGE problems with his. 1. Centralisation to the Ministry is never a good idea and the current members of the coalition government deeply opposed them under the “Haque Report” with the last government. 2. Political appointments seem great when “your team” is in power. Having the Green Party making appointments to the Teachers Council in the future may not be so flash.
– The Ministry of Education has been a MASSIVE handbrake to the progress of education in NZ. They have been so bad that, prior to the last election Oliver Hartwich (NZ Initiative) suggested TNT as the solution. Many Principals – including Tim O’Connor of Auckland Grammar – has suggested a full disestablishment and re-purposing.
Stanford has done the complete opposite. The coalition government pledged to reduce the Full-Time-Equivalents of the Ministry of Education to the pre-Hipkins era of 2,700. At the end of the September quarter the number stood at 3,939 and was up 2.7% on the previous quarter.
Stanford also proposed significant Ministry directional change. She has done none of it. Her first step as the new Minister was to bring a Deputy Secretary of Education into her office (Ellen MacGregor-Reid) who was a HUGE component of the previous six years of failure. Stanford then appointed her Acting Secretary for Education and – during 2025 – made her the Secretary of Education. IE – endorsing the long-term bureaucratic status-quo that has served NZ children and young people so poorly.
The NZ Initiative – previously outspoken on the poor performance of the Ministry of Education – have become silent with complete self-interest as – and I quote – they consider themselves to be in the “tent”.
– The Charter School roll-out has been poorly managed and significantly under-whelming. At the recently Select Committee “scrutiny week” the outgoing CEO, Jane Lee, had to declare that only 427 students are attending (at an exorbitant cost – 25% of which has been spent on the Charter School Agency itself). That is less than 10% of the Mt Albert Grammar School roll. This is what David Seymour meant when he explained to Mike Hosking and Jack Tame that he was “going hard and fast”. Add to that that few of the approved schools have anything to do with improving the outcomes of NZ’s most needy students – the international purpose of the development of the Charter School model.
– The Minister made a monumental error by removing the clause in the Education Act for schools to give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi. No good could have come from it and I would imagine that the choice to do it was through the coalition agreement and through pressure from the people of Hobson’s Choice. This would not have been helped by Stanford’s choice to have Elizabeth Rata in her Minister’s Advisory Group and her highly embarrassing email rants to the Prime Minister – et al – about re-colonising the curriculum (let alone her bizarre reading lists for the senior English curriculum). I have it on very good authority that she is now well outside “the tent”.
The effect of the removal of the Treaty clause from the Education Act is that – as of yesterday – 1,823 (73%) of schools (Boards of Trustees/Principals) have said that, regardless of the Minister’s decision, they will continue to give effect to the Treaty in the delivery of education in their school.
Stanford (and people of the likes of the Sam Uffindell – who really should NEVER comment on education) have made matters so much worse by saying that sending these letters of support and signing up to the pledge is “DISGUSTING” and that these are lists created by “activists”. As an indicator – schools like St Cuthbert’s College, Kings College, Kings High School, Diocesan School for Girls, Hutt International Boys High … have written letters to declare that they will give effect to the Treaty. These are hardly left-wing radical establishments.
Like the great majority of NZers – I want the NZ education system to be the very best in the world … for every-child. Therefore, I want Erica Stanford – and all subsequent Ministers – to be outstanding and fully carry the parents/sector with them.
The Minister told Kerre Woodham on Newstalk earlier this week that she would spend a couple of weeks lying on the beach over Summer to think through next steps.
The key things are:
– a vision for how to get almost all NZ children (regardless of wealth, ethnicity, family structure) through a great first 5 years of life and arriving at schools ready to thrive.
– a plan of how to have families fully involved in our education system and convinced of the worth of getting their children to school every-day. This involves school and teacher quality development and a great deal of communication.
– how to improve the outcomes for those within our qualifications system over the next three years. They cannot be the lost generation as schools focus on all of the transition and change. I am very interested in the school leavers results for 2025 – they are on Stanford’s watch. NZ is the country in the OECD with the greatest gaps between the highest and lowest achievers. There is nothing substantive happening to change that and in fact, Stanford has stated that results may even move to incrase the gap for a while.
– how to get the sector on her side and reduce the HUGE amount of division that has been created – in part through the policy and processes. This should involve reviewing all of the proposed curriculum and qualifications changes that can only succeed if she has – like any great leader – convinced the sector of both the need for change – and the direction and detail. Few people believe in change for changes sake.
The 15 people shot by the Islamic State inspired father and son duo in Sydney is the worst terror attack in Australia’s history. A further 25 were injured. It was anti-semitism at its most lethal. Jews everywhere, including New Zealand, live in fear they will be next. I’ve been to a couple of Hewish community events in Wellington and security is always paramount for organisers. Jewish schools and synagogues have to have plans for terrorist attacks.
But Bondi was not the only bad news this week. Six days ago a gunman shot 14 people at Brown University in Rhode Island, Two of them were killed. They were studying for exams and were gunned down. The gunman has not yet been caught or identified, and reports about whether he yelled particular words are not confirmed by authorities. But regardless of motivation, it is a terrible crime.
And four people members of the Turtle Island Liberation front have been arrested for planning a bombing campaign for New Year’s Eve. It seems Turtle Island is an indigenous name for North America so they want to liberate North America from, well themselves (those arrested are not indigenous).
I previously blogged:
Labour’s policy to have taxpayers fund three GP visits a year to every NZer aged 15+ will be costly and will also make it much harder for people to see a GP.
The policy is not targeted towards low and middle income NZers. It will apply to everyone regardless of income or wealth. So every Labour MP will get taxpayer funded GP visits despite earning around $200,000 a year or more.
More concerning is that it will lead to even larger delays in actually being able to see a GP when you are sick. This is because when there is no charge for a service, people will use it more. Labour says (I have asked for independent data to verify this) that on average NZers see a GP 2.5 times a year. Well if taxpayers pay for three visits a year, you can be sure everyone will go three times a year at least, as almost no one is in perfect health and never has a concern or niggle.
With 3.6 million adults that is an extra 1.8 million visits a year. That would be a 13% increase in the number of GP visits a year. With 5,600 GPs, that would suggest an extra 720 GPs would be needed to just keep even.
I now have access to more detailed data, broken down by age. The average no of visits per age group is:
So if each age group moves to a minimum of three visits a year (as who won’t see a GP, if it is free), the addition number of visits is:
This adds up to an additional 2.228 million GP visits a year. That would be a 16% increase in the number of GP visits a year. With 5,600 GPs, that would suggest an extra 890 GPs would be needed to just keep even.
The 1.1% increase in GDP in the third quarter of 2025 is great news. It is well above what the Reserve Bank was forecasting, and above most private sector forecasts.
14 out of 16 industries grew with the largest increases being $136m in business services, $115 million in manufacturing and $74 million in construction.
But it is only one quarter. We need to keep the momentum going.
Two days earlier the half year fiscal update showed that the return to surplus had slipped away by another year. The structural deficit Labour left the Government is a real problem, and the coalition Government needs to do whatever is necessary to get back into surplus and repaying debt before the next global economic shocks hits.
The latest YouGov poll is brutal for UK Labour. Don’t even look at what all voters think. Let’s just look at what voters who voted Labour in 2024 say.
Now again all the above is what people who voted Labour think. I’ve never seen such bad data for a party from people who voted for it.
Green MPs and Councillors in Wellington are claiming that Wellingtonians don’t want a second Mt Vic tunnel. This might be true in their vegan book clubs, but is not true of Wellingtonians as a whole.
By chance Curia did a poll for Wellington Airport (prior to the announced design) that asked 1,000 Wellingtonians:
On land transport issues, do you support a new Mt Victoria tunnel for both private and public transport?
Here is the net support on that question:
And also asked was:
Do you support roading improvements around the Basin Reserve and the Arras Tunnel to separate east-west and north-south traffic?
Net support:
This is overwhelming support across the city, in all genders, ages and wards.
Eric Crampton writes:
Legislation before Parliament bans greyhound racing over animal welfare considerations.
Buying out the industry, shutting it down, and rehoming the dogs would seem right if you thought animal welfare warranted it.
The legislation instead proposes shuttering Greyhound Racing New Zealand and an assortment of private racing clubs. Their net assets will be handed to a new Greyhound Racing Transition Agency. That Agency will wind down the industry and rehome dogs, with no requirement for compensating either dog owners or clubs.
That is bad enough – zero compensation.
After the wind-down, the Transition Agency’s remaining assets will be redistributed – but not to anyone whose business was destroyed by the racing ban. Thoroughbred and harness racing codes get the proceeds instead, despite the deaths of fifteen horses last year and injuries to over three hundred more. I wish I were joking.
Let’s put this plainly: The Bill proposes stealing the assets of greyhound clubs, using the money to cover some of the government’s costs in shutting down the sector, and handing anything left over to the Minister’s preferred horse racing codes.
Some unenlightened folks might call it corruption that would embarrass even Springfield Mayor “Diamond” Joe Quimby.
This is just appalling. They steal from the greyhound clubs and give it to the horse racing clubs. If this was truly about animal welfare, they would give the assets to the SPCA. They would also not legislate so that horse racing clubs will make huge amounts of money from people betting on Australian greyhound races.
The Post reports:
Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith has made clear that a law change designed to assist the media was shelved because of concerns over how US President Donald Trump might respond. …
Responding to questions from his Labour Party counterpart Reuben Davidson in Parliament on the long hold-up, Goldsmith said “as is highly obvious to everybody, circumstances changed somewhat at the end of 2024 with the US presidency changes, and a more cautious approach was adopted”.
I’m still bemused as to why a National-led Government wanted to pass a law forcing Internet companies to fund NZ media organisations. NZ media have spent a month refusing to report on the MUMA and Willie Jackson story, and National wants to force Internet companies to write huge cheques to them as a reward!
Donald Trump is terrible on Ukraine, on tariffs, on the rule of law, on democracy etc, but he does do well in stopping the NZ Government from doing stupid things sometimes!
The Herald reports:
Te Pāti Māori has broken with tradition and decided against running MP constituent offices in their electorates, despite getting additional funding for the large electorates it won at the 2023 election.
New Zealand First, as well, has decided not to run any offices in the community – but it has no electorate MPs.
All electorate MPs in other parties have at least one office each, with 14 MPs having two offices, and four MPs having three offices. The Māori Party previously ran electorate offices from 2005 to 2017.
Electorate offices are typically open during the week, and staffed with people who can offer practical help to the community – on behalf of their MP – with issues as diverse as housing, immigration and concerns about crime.
This is interesting and new information. I have never before heard of an Electorate MP not having an electorate office. They receive taxpayer funding specifically to allow them to rent offices and have electorate staff in them.
I guess TPM have as much contempt for their constituents, as they do for Parliament.
Radio NZ reports:
A district court judge has reserved his decision on whether a by-election is needed in an Auckland local body election.
The hearing followed a petition by former Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board member Lehopoaome Vi Hausia, who claimed to have received reports of voting papers being stolen from residents and submitted without their consent.
Dale Ofsoske, an independent electoral officer for Auckland, was the respondent to the petition.
At a preliminary hearing at Manukau District Court in November, Judge Richard McIlraith ordered five ballot boxes containing votes from the electorate to be transferred from Auckland District Court, where they were being kept, to Manukau for scrutineering in the presence of Judge McIlraith, legal counsel for Hausia and Ofsoske, as well as Ofsoske himself.
Seventy-nine voting papers were subsequently identified during examination as having been cast without the rightful voter’s knowledge.
79 is a lot. That is not an isolated case where say someone received voting papers for someone who had moved address and decided to vote for them (which is of course illegal). This looks like an orchestrated campaign where ballot papers were stolen from letter boxes, filled in, and posted back.
“We say there are 3000 new votes in the Papatoetoe subdivision,” he said on Monday.
“And that is the only subdivision or local board area in the entire Auckland city that has had an increase in voting. Every other local board had a decrease in voting.”
Mitchell argued that the irregularities and unexplained surge in voting in Papatoetoe could only be explained by mass voter fraud.
This isn’t quite right. The surge in voting could be through legitimate means. If you get a team of volunteers to go around door knocking, urging people to vote, and even waiting while they fill the ballot in, and then dropping it into a ballot box for them – you can lift voting turnout. That is quite legitimate and even commendable.
But if you bypass the actual voter, and just steal the ballot paper and fill it in for them, that is illegal and corrupt.
And there are 79 proven instances of this.
Under the Local Electoral Act, a by-election could be called if enough unlawful votes were proven to have changed the outcome.
“The problem here is that the victors of the election won by about 1200 votes,” he said. “So, you would have to prove that there was a very widespread pattern of unlawful voting.”
Geddis said it was unclear whether a judge, if unable to prove whether enough unlawful votes could have changed the outcome, would let the result stand or could void the election due to public distrust in the process.
“I would hope it’s an option that’s available because it would be pretty bad, I think, to have a judicial inquiry that finds, yes, there were widespread irregularities, but the judge just has to let the results stand,” he said. “I think that would be a bad outcome.”
The 79 proven fraudulent votes are a lot less than the 1,200 margin. But here is the quandary. How many more were there? Unlike online voting, where the voter is notified that a vote has been cast on their behalf, there is no way voters know if someone voted on their behalf, if they themselves did not vote. Only if you noticed you did not receive ballot papers and cared enough to follow up, would this be discovered.
So I suspect there were more than 79 fraudulent votes. Is it 1,200? No idea. But a by-election would be the best outcome as both tickets could campaign, and do all the legitimate things around encouraging people to vote, and then see who wins.
If there is a by-election, I would suggest there be a safety mechanism where the Returning Officer sends a letter to any voter whose ballot has been received, saying it has been. This would allow the voter to know if someone voted on their behalf. In fact that could be a good safeguard for all postal voting elections.