Ash have released their latest annual survey of Year 10 students with over 30,000 taking part.

This is a great trend. Only 1% of Year 10 students are daily smokers and the proportion who vape has also been declining over the last two years or so.

As always the most healthy option is to neither vape nor smoke. But if people need to get a nicotine fix, vaping is far less harmful than smoking.

The daily smoking rates by ethnicity and sex are:

• Māori boys 2.7%
• Māori girls 2.2%
• Pacific boys 1.6%
• Pacific girls 1.2%
• Other boys 0.8%
• Other girls 0.3%

Would be good to get all those groups to under 1%.

Chris Bishop and Simon Court announced:

“The economic benefits of our new planning system are significant. Independent analysis shows the new planning system is projected to boost GDP by an additional 0.56 per cent every year by 2050, worth up to $3.1 billion annually. A cost benefit analysis estimates $13.3 billion in savings over 30 years through reduced administrative and compliance costs. 

There is probably no other reform that could increase economic growth this much. An extra 0.56% a year is absolutely massive.

“Officials also estimate that up to 46 per cent of consent and permit applications required under the RMA could be removed under the new system. Based on 2023/24 volumes, that represents between 15,000 and 22,000 consents no longer needed.”

A 46% reduction in needed consents is huge. Unfortunately some planning staff will always make getting consent difficult and time consuming – even with a law change. But if many more things can bypass even needing Council permission – that is a game changer.

Fewer, faster plans: more than 100 existing plans will be reduced to 17 regional combined plans that bring together spatial, land use and natural environment planning in one place, making it easier for New Zealanders to know what they can do with their property.

Over 100 plans and over 1,000 zones is a crazy level of complexity.

“The new planning system will protect the environment by setting clear, science-based limits on what impacts are acceptable, ensuring councils and communities know exactly what must be protected and where development can occur. Mandatory regional spatial plans will safeguard important natural and biodiversity areas, while nationally consistent rules will provide a fair, modern framework for managing indigenous biodiversity and natural hazards.”

It is possible to improve environmental protection and also reduce compliance costs.

This reform package will make it much easier for renewable energy projects to get consented and built. That is a win-win.

The Guardian reported:

Britain’s budget watchdog has said the early leak of its budget documents before Rachel Reeves made her speech was the “worst failure” in its 15-year history as it emerged a similar breach had occurred earlier this year.

The details of how this “leak” happened resonated with me, as I have some experience with this. Basically they uploaded the budget to their website in advance of the Budget speech, and used the same URL format as previous years. This allowed someone to guess the URL, and bingo the Budget was out early.

In the early 2000s I was an opposition staff member and we knew the official crime stats would be out that evening. I went to the Police website to grab the stats from the previous year, so I could do comparisons once they were released. I noted the URL included the date of the crime stats, and thought I would see what happened if I changed the year from 2000 to 2001. To my huge surprise the latest crime states appeared on my screen.

I printed them and rushed them to the Spokesperson. This allowed the Spokesperson to ambush the Minister with the stats at question time (and they had worsened) which caused a stir, as they were not meant to be public – so the Minister was unprepared and looked pretty foolish.

Happy with my day’s work, I moved onto other mischief. But by chance around six months later I was having dinner with a friend who worked in the Commissioner’s office. I asked him if there had been any blowback over the opposition getting the data before the Minister.

You can imagine my surprise and delight when I was told that the Minister had been apoplectic with rage, was convinced that senior police had leaked it deliberately, that the relationship between the Minister and Commissioner had been destroyed and even worse the Minister had brought in private investigators to investigate Police HQ and try and find out who leaked it.

Once I recovered from my uncontrolled laughing, I told the staffer that there had been no leak, and I simply found it on the Police website by guessing the URL. To be fair back then website publishing was less sophisticated, and not all sites had the ability to time when something was published.

Anyway the staffer told the Commissioner, and the Minister’s private investigation of Police HQ was called off. But I will admit to a warm glow about having made the Minister apoplectic with rage.

I can understand that mistake being made in 2001, but am truly staggered that a UK government agency would make the same mistake in 2025. Basically if something is embargoed, don’t publish it until the embargo time. Hoping no one guesses the URL is stupid.

Cameron Slater exclusively reported on allegations by long-time union leader Matt McCarten against Willie Jackson and his wife around bullying at the Manukau Urban Maori Authority. I blogged about this four days ago.

With the exception of The Platform, no media outlet has reported on the allegations. This is highly unusual. Even if you don’t think the allegations stack up, the fact a union leader is accusing a Labour MP of workplace bullying and locking a union out is newsworthy. You would expect the media would at least do a “He says, she says”.

Could this explain the silence? But normally defamation threats make media more determined to report a story. Surely Maori TV of all places would be reporting on this?

And now we have just learnt that Stuff have known all this for weeks.

The key thing here is that Tova doesn’t just repeat McCarten’s allegations. She says she spoken to multiple staff who all allege bullying, and they have detailed specific incidents, which have been corroborated.

That was four weeks ago. What happened to the story? Did Stuff kill it? Why?

Why has no other media outlet, bar The Platform, touched this story?

The result is trust in media declines even further.

The latest 1 News – Verian poll is very good for the Government. The party vote is:

• National 36%
• ACT 10%
• NZF 9%
• CR 55%

• Labour 35%
• Greens 7%
• TPM 1%
• CL 43%

So a whopping 12% lead on the party vote. This would give the Government 67 seats – the same as it got at the last election.

Also of importance is net economic optimism or confidence. The last poll it was at -3% and now it is at +12% – a net 15% improvement.

Also of interest was a poll question on whether the TPM co-leaders should go. Only 33% of Maori say they should stay and 45% say they should go. Of course they are not the real co-leaders. They are effectively the co-deputy leaders, and Tamihere is the real leader.

Two of the most leftwing (and pro-Hamas) MPs in the UK have been setting top their own political parties. They are Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. The infighting just between those two was hilarious enough as Sultana saying Corbyn was part of a sexist boys club. Defamation suits were threatened between them, but finally they agreed to work together.

Then they had their first conference and The Independent reports:

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana will be dropped as Your Party leadersafter members voted that a “collective” headed by a non-MP should make major decisions about its future.

The far left really take Life of Brian as a documentary!

It saddens me somewhat that some on the left see the Free Speech Union as a centre right institution. They ignore that it has stood up for the rights of pro-Palestinian activists, opposed the gang patch law etc.

One example of the great work they have done is detailed by journalist Portia Mao. Read about how pro-Beijing activists have been trying to silence here through both the HDCA, and also through defamation suits. All because she has written stuff he doesn’t want published.

A NZ Initiative report looks at grade distribution in NZ universities from 2006 to 2024. they find:

• Es static at 3%
• Ds from 9% to 5%
• Cs from 20% to 17%
• Bs from 47% to 38%
• As from 22% to 36%

If you assign an average score of 87% for an A, 72% for a B, 57% for an C, 45% for a D and 20% for an E, then the average score in 2006 was 69% which was a B- and in 2024 was 71% which was a B.

Simon Wilson, like many on the hard left, sees the West as basically malignant, and that its achievements were based on oppression. This is not an uncommon view from the left.

David Harvey does an excellent lengthy response to Wilson’s assertions.

Read it all, but here are some key aspects:

The article argues that Hammurabi had law and therefore rule of law isn’t Western; India had universities and therefore Western universities are not unique and Japan had novels and therefore literature is not Western.

These are all non sequiturs.

Civilisations develop particular institutional trajectories, not monopoly patents on ideas. The relevant question is not who invented something first, but where did our institutions come from? Which civilisation’s intellectual tradition shapes the society we actually live in?

New Zealand’s legal and political system is not Babylonian, Mayan, Indian, Arab, or Chinese. It is English common law, Westminster parliamentarism, and Greco-Roman intellectual tradition, synthesised through Christianity and the Enlightenment.

Claiming “Hammurabi existed, therefore Western legal tradition isn’t special” is historically and conceptually incoherent.

This is key – it is not who invented the idea, but who made it an enduring institution.

The abolitionist movement, parliamentary government, separation of powers, constitutionalism, and human rights came from the West, not despite it.

To claim Western civilisation “was built on slavery” ignores slavery was universal across all civilisations and still is present in some cultures. The West eliminated it first and globally through moral reasoning grounded in Christianity, natural law, and Enlightenment liberalism.

This is not triumphalism; it is historical fact.

In New Zealand slavery was legal and common prior to any Western colonialism. It was effectively made illegal by the Treaty of Waitangi. It did persist in the Chathams until the resident magistrate in 1863 issued a proclamation formally releasing the remaining Moriori from slavery.

One estimate of the prevalence of slavery in New Zealand prior to 1840 is that half of the North Island population were slaves.

On Q+A former Police Commissioner Andy Coster has said that he did informally brief both Chris Hipkins and Mark Mitchell on the fact McSkimming had an affair.

Putting aside that the issue wasn’t the affair per se, but the allegations of sexual assault and improper use of police resources, there is something very puzzling about this claim by Coster.

If he had already briefed Mitchell on the issue, why did his office instruct seconded Police staff in Mitchell’s office to hide all e-mails about McSkimming from Mitchell and his staff?

It is also worth noting that Coster claims he informed Deputy Public Service Commissioner Heather Baggott of the McSkimming affair. She has explicitly denied this. Also both Mitchell and Hipkins have explicitly denied Coster informed them. The IPCA noted:

There is a significant conflict of accounts between Commissioner Coster and Ms Baggott. We prefer Ms Baggott’s account because of the lack of reference to the matter in the file note prepared by the legal adviser at the meeting on 24 March 2023. The purpose of that meeting was to discuss probity and integrity issues to inform advice to Ministers. It is hard to conceive that if the topic of the relationship was raised, it would not have been recorded.

So the witnesses and the file notes all contradict Coster on his claim Baggott knew. Also it seems Baggott wasn’t even working at the PSC when Coster claimed he briefed her.

Radio NZ reports:

New Zealand’s minimum wage might have increased substantially over the past five years, but it hasn’t helped lift the wages of the population overall.

As a result, the median wage has drawn significantly closer to the minimum, and commentators say it will take a big productivity boost to boost incomes more generally.

We should focus on lifting the median wage through productivity, and tie the minimum wage to the median wage so that it gets automatically lifted as productivity increases.

The increase in the minimum was particularly noticeable during the period of 2020 to 2023, when it rose sharply and in 2023 was 72 percent of the median.

Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan said New Zealand’s minimum wage was high relative to average wages when compared with other countries.

In 2023, it was fifth-highest in the OECD compared to the median wage of fulltime workers.

“I think it’s partly a function of the last Labour government’s belief that by putting up the minimum wage, they could make those people who were at the lower end of the income spectrum better off without necessarily thinking through the process or the logic around what does that actually do to costs?

I think setting the minimum wage at two thirds, or 67% of the median wage would be a great policy. It is generous – higher than most OECD countries. But it would stop a bidding war for unsustainable further increases, and would focus governments on increasing wages through productivity gains, not through statute.

“If you’re not able to sort of grow your productivity and get more output per hour of labour that you’re putting in… then there’s no way that you can lift incomes on a sustained basis, whether that’s at the bottom end of the spectrum or further up as well.

There was almost no productivity growth in the world until 1600. We are fortunate to live in an era where innovation has allowed us to lift our standard of living so much.

ACT have listed the achievements of the Coalition Government over the last two years that they played an important role in. It is a long list, reproduced below.

Law & Order

• Increased funding for Corrections to lift prison capacity.
• Abolished Labour’s prisoner reduction target.
• Oversaw a 16% drop in youth crime.
• Brought about a 20% drop in the District Court criminal backlog
• Defunded Section 27 “cultural reports”.
• Strengthened consequences for Kāinga Ora tenants who engage in repeated antisocial behaviour.
• Strengthened Firearms Prohibition Orders.
• Made gang membership an aggravating factor at sentencing.
• Enabled greater use of remote participation by victims in court proceedings.
• Piloted military-style academies for young offenders.
• Restored Three Strikes for the serious repeat violent and sexual offenders.
• Toughened sentences for attacks on sole charge workers or those working in a business connected to their home.
• Given greater weight to the needs of victims at sentencing.
• Introduced tougher measures for serious young offenders.
• Successfully campaigned to overturn race-based prosecution guidelines.
• Advanced a member’s bill to criminalise non-consensual explicit deepfakes.
• Introduced tougher penalties for shoplifters.
• Giving Kāinga Ora more powers to evict unruly tenants.
• Rewritten the Arms Act to prioritise public safety while respecting the rights of law-abiding LFOs.

Economy & the Cost of Living

• Cut wasteful spending to bring down inflation and give the Reserve Bank the confidence to lower interest rates.
• Restored the Reserve Bank’s focus on tackling inflation.
• Repealed the Ute Tax.
• Repealed the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax.
• Repealed/reworked the earthquake regulations which only ACT opposed.
• Tightened sanctions on people who can work but choose not to look for a job.
• Eased restrictions to accessing credit under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act.
• Restored interest deductibility for residential property.
• Restored the option of 90-day trials for all businesses.
• Repealed “Fair Pay” Agreements
• Unveiled a new contracting gateway test to provide certainty to workers and businesses.
• Simplifying Health and Safety Law to reduce compliance costs.
• Changes to the personal grievance process
• Enable Pet Bonds for renters with pets.
• Restored 90-day ‘no cause’ terminations.
• Advanced a member’s bill to allow mutually agreed settlements for termination of employment.
• Advanced a member’s bill to liberalise Easter trading rules.
• Restored tenants’ and landlords’ notice periods to 21 and 42 days.
• Introduced legislation to improve access to building products available overseas.
• Delivering regulatory relief for consumers and businesses dealing with costly and time-consuming AML rules.
• Reversed blanket speed limit reductions and enabled faster speed limits on our safest roads.
• Established the Ministry for Regulation to cut red tape to make doing business simpler and remove unnecessary costs for New Zealanders.
• Established a Red Tape Tipline so Kiwis can report the most pressing regulatory issues to be fixed.
• Commenced regulatory reviews to reduce compliance costs across multiple sectors.
• Passed the Regulatory Standards Bill to provide more transparency and accountability for bad law makers, raising the political price for those who want to make laws that increase costs on your family or business.
• More than doubled the speed of overseas investment approval decisions, and changing the Overseas Investment Act to make it easier to invest in New Zealand.
• Reversed the oil and gas ban and passed legislation to promote the use of Crown minerals.
• Progressing a supermarket ‘fast-track’ to increase competition.
• Rolled back climate reporting requirements for financial institutions.

Backing Rural New Zealand

• Secured and completed a select committee inquiry into rural banking.
• Ensured methane is measured correctly.
• Slashed methane targets.
• Got rid of He Waka Eke Noa and ensured no emissions tax on farmers.
• Making freshwater farm plans more affordable and practical.
• Kept agriculture out of the Emissions Trading Scheme.
• Scrapping SNAs and bringing in biodiversity credits.
• Cutting red tape around importing agricultural and veterinary products.
• Increased the cap on RSE workers.
• Passing legislation to improve public safety and ease regulatory burdens on firearms clubs and ranges.

Defending Equal Rights & Democracy

• Stood alone for the Treaty Principles Bill.
• Abolished the Māori Health Authority.
• Ended race-based health waitlists.
• Secured a Government directive to deliver public services based on need, not race.
• Removed compulsory Treaty education from schools.
• Restored local referendums on the introduction of Māori wards.
• Repealed section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act to ensure child safety, not race, is at the centre of state care decisions.
• Scrapped diversity quotas for government procurement.
• Removing unelected Ngāi Tahu representatives from Environment Canterbury.
• Reviewing special entrance pathways for medical degrees.
• Successfully campaigned to overturn race-based prosecution guidelines.
• Increased investment in defence to protect New Zealand’s sovereignty and national security.
• Broadened the scope of the Covid inquiry with a second phase including public hearings.
• Halted work on hate speech laws.
• Advanced legislation to protect free speech in universities.
• Initiated a social media inquiry to gather all the evidence on its benefits, harms, and possible solutions that respect parental responsibility rather than a kneejerk ban without proper consideration.

Health

• Delivered Pharmac its largest-ever budget to fund or widen access to 66 medicines.
• Delivered a record funding boost for GPs.
• Enabled 12-month prescriptions from 2026
• Streamlined medicine approval through the ‘Rule of two’ so New Zealanders can benefit from medicines widely available overseas.
• Restored the sale of medicine containing pseudoephedrine.
• Enabled access to weight loss drugs for prescription.
• Enabled access to Melatonin off the shelf.
• Allowed prescription of Psilocybin for cases of depression where other treatments haven’t worked.
• Repealed the Therapeutic Products Act which would have imposed excessive and costly regulations on consumers, businesses and exporters.
• Lowered the bowel cancer screening age and reversed Labour’s change that gave people different access to screening based on race.
• Outlined expectations that Pharmac should have appropriate processes for ensuring that people living with an illness, along with their carers and family, can participate in and provide input into decision-making processes around medicines.
• Removed the ban on medical conferences to improve access to lifesaving medicines, help upskill the health workforce, and deliver an estimated $90 million in economic benefits.
• Allowing charities to run online lotteries such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices to ensure they have the funding they need to operate.

Building & Infrastructure

• Launched a framework for long-term Regional Deals between central and local government to deliver reliable, more affordable infrastructure.
• Launched a refreshed framework for Public Private Partnerships so taxpayers benefit from private-sector commercial discipline.
• Replacing the Resource Management Act with a system based on property rights to make it cheaper to build new housing, infrastructure, supermarkets, factories, and more.
• Created new guidelines for market-led infrastructure proposals to make it easier for people and businesses to contribute innovative ideas for solving New Zealand’s infrastructure problems.
• Reforming the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act to ensure we have the tools to pay for growth.
• Made overseas building products available so the cost of building is lower.
• Cut red tape for garden sheds and small structures near property boundaries.
• Begun public consultation on the 30-year National Infrastructure Plan.

Education

• Restored charter schools, now with the option of state school conversion to provide families with the choice of an education that works for them. Eight charter schools already open, nine more already announced for next year.
• Streamlined early childhood education regulations.
• Delivered an action plan to improve school attendance and started publishing attendance data weekly.
• Taken a firmer stance on prosecutions for parents of students who refuse to send their children to school and won’t engage with support offered to them.
• Improved the school lunch programme to feed more students for less money.
• Passed legislation to uphold freedom of speech in universities.
• Reviewing funding of Early Childhood Education to ensure it is simple, fair, and gets value for money with a commitment that there will be no reduction in overall funding.
• Restored balance to the Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories curriculum.

A change of government next year would see most of this put at risk.

It is becoming more and more frequent to see companies liquidate owing huge amounts of money to IRD, ie the taxpayer. While part of being in business is the risk of failure, it is unacceptable to have businesses continue to operate by virtue of simply not paying their taxes.

The NZ Initiative has a report on this, and a solution.

This is not a small problem. There is currently $8 billion in tax arrears owing.

They proposed a law based on the German model, being:

• If a a company fails to remit its collected taxes, such as GST and PAYE, by their due date, they have somewhere between 30 and 90 days to remedy this.
• If they have not remedied this within the deadline, they must place the company into a formal insolvency process like administration or liquidation
• If a director failed to place the company into insolvency by the deadline, they would assume personal liability for the unpaid GST and PAYE

I think this looks like a very good model, and one that all parties in Parliament should look at. No one wants companies going bust owing taxpayers huge amounts. This would presumably also apply to unions, such as UNITE which failed to pay PAYE on time over a long period.

The Initiative suggests the deadline for action should be 30, 60 or 90 days. I think 30 is far too short. If you accidentally missed a payment just before Xmas, and were away for a few weeks, you could suddenly find yourself personally liable.

I think 90 days is about right. If a business is having financial problems, it can take some time to work out if it is just a cashflow timing (your customers are late paying you, but they will), or a structural issue (you are losing money).

As readers would know, the US podcaster Candace Owens has been going down the conspiracy path for some time. She has been openly anti-semitic and has posted bizarre theories that Charlie Kirk wasn’t in fact killed by Tyler Robinson, but by Israel and TPUSA insiders.

I thought Owens was simply a grifter. She just said more and more outrageous stuff because she knew it got attention, clicks, listens and revenue. It was all just a way to make money.

But now I wonder if she is seriously mentally ill, as she is now alleging …. well see for yourself.

Yes, she is claiming the French Government is trying to assassinate her, along with the Israeli Government. And they also killed Charlie Kirk it seems.

Such detail – a French female assassin, and a male Israeli one.

And Candace is so important, that it costs $1.5 million dollars to kill her.

Egypt is involved also. It was a joint Israel-Egypt-France operation!

I suspect the next stage will be she does a Jussie Smollet and arranges an attack on herself, to prove her delusions are real.

It is probable she is still just grifting, and doesn’t believe a word she says. But I don’t think you can rule out mental illness. It reminds me of an incident in the 1990s when I was in Young Nationals.

One of the Young Nationals office holders was admitted as an in-patient to Wellington Psych Unit. I visited them a couple of times. It was coming up to a general election, and I mentioned Young Nats were working at National HQ on election night (this was pre-Internet, when we chalked results up on a giant board). He asked if he could come along. I asked if that is allowable, and he said it was – he wasn’t the subject of a compulsory treatment order.

When I went to pick him up on election day, I heard the charge nurse saying to him how all the staff thought him going to this event was a terrible idea. This got me slightly nervous. Then as we were driving over, he asked me if I knew why he was in the psych unit.

I had deliberately not asked, but I told him I assumed he had been suicidal. But he wasn’t. He told me he had been having severe delusional fantasies. More specifically he thought that because he had sometimes been critical of the Government, that it was trying to assassinate him, and Cabinet had established an Assassination Sub-Committee chaired by Murray McCully. He explained that his delusions were so powerful he literally boarded up all the windows at his house, wouldn’t go outside etc.

At this stage I started to share the nurse’s views that him going to National’s election night function might not be a great idea, especially as Murray McCully was actually going to be there! He did say though that he was better now, and now realised it wasn’t real.

When we got there, I immediately hunted Murray down and told him that it would be really useful if he could avoid this particular Young National. He of course asked why, so I told him. Murray commented that if there was an Assassination Sub-Committee of Cabinet, he would be the logical chair of it. I told him that would not be a helpful comment to make!

I relate this story, because believing multiple Governments are trying to assassinate you is not a normal thing. It can be paranoid delusions. So either Owens is a world-class grifter, or she needs serious help.

There are a couple of pieces of reported progress with education recently. They are anecdotal but are at least in the right direction.

1. The government has found out what many parents, who pay for private tuition, have known for a long-time. That is: small group or individual intensive tuition actually works. The Ministry claims to have been measuring this through “progressions”.

2. The Ministry reported to the Education and Work-Force Committee that the new Maths and English curriculum have been well-received and there are some good, anecdotal, signs.

A major issue is that the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) has produced a report that makes it clear that the Ministry of Education has pretty much no idea how students between Y1 and Y10 are doing (as well as pretty narrow data for Years 11 – 13).

Key statements are:

“The Ministry of Education does not have comprehensive information about student achievement or progress in Years 1-10.”

“The Ministry of Education needs to work with others to address gaps in its information.”

These two statement are stark given an experience in 2017 that shows the significance of the impact of Ministry incompetence.

From 2013 – 2018 I had oversight of South Auckland Middle School. It was a Charter School with the genuine focus on improving education for marginalised children.

The school started on Day 1 2014 with 120 students – and – as soon as possible went to 180 (with 100 students on a waiting list). Children were chosen through a police supervised ballot. There were special features of the school such as a split-day (academic morning, Arts and Activities afternoons) 15 children per class, a project based curriculum – alongside high-quality core subject teaching.

As a researcher/statistician/economist/educator I was determined to measure the effects of what we were doing.

1. A tool called E-ASTTLE was valid at the time in the NZ system. With the assistance of Evaluation Associates I designed a spreadsheet to measure each student’s progress for Maths and Reading via E-ASSTLE testing three times per year. This tool told us how much progress students made against norms for each year with us.

2. I tracked every student who left SAMS at Year 10 and went into local schools to do NCEA.

3. We fully engaged with Ministry contracted evaluations – Martin Jenkins and Cognition.

All of the results were outstanding.

1. Across the four years with us students were making two years progress for each year in Maths and Reading. This was done through our normal classroom teaching and not through extra tuition.

2. Our students were achieving Level 1 NCEA at 85+% in their first year out. Even better than outstanding given that our students were Decile 1 and over 85% were Maori and Pasifika and that stats were well above national averages.

(It is a sad but important note to make that – after I left the Villa Education Trust in 2021 – the CEO – Karen van Gemerden – now with NZPAA – decided to take the view that the Middle School was not responsible for the subsequent results of the students. If you don’t know how your students do when they leave – you have no idea if your programme is working. The key purpose of a Middle School is to enhance achievement in the qualification years.)

3. Both the Martin Jenkins report and the Cognition report were entirely positive. E.g. Cognition concluded:

“In summary we find and conclude that in both schools, the management and staff are actively involved in continuous development, and the delivery, of a unique programme of teaching and learning which is based on a comprehensive ‘local’ curriculum that is aligned with the New Zealand Curriculum, and which provides for the personalised needs of priority learners ‘many of whom have been failed by the current education system.”

Given that we could show that our model was working and, probably more importantly, we had developed a way of measuring “student progressions” with validity – I invited the Ministry of Education to meet with myself and Michael Absolum from Evaluation Associates.

We met with a senior manager who still holds a high level leadership role in the Ministry.

We patiently outlined how the measurement methodology we had developed was exactly what the Ministry kept saying publicly that they were working on – for six years at the point.

We offered the tool to them, for free, and it could have been rolled-out broadly and enhanced practices in the whole NZ Year 1 – 10 system.

The senior manager – in the meeting – without further evaluation – said NO!

Not only is there the consequence of the OAG report, but students/families have been further impacted for 8 more years and any “data” currently released from the Ministry of Education/Minister is treated with well-deserved scepticism.

Dr Oliver Hartwich or the NZ Initiative previously asserted that the solution to the issues created by NZ’s Ministry of Education involved a truckload of TNT. They haven’t changed under the new government and Erica Standford recently rates the 4/10 for policy advice.

Why do we constantly allow bureaucrats to undermine the delivery of high-quality systems for the good of NZ society?

[email protected]

The Herald reports:

A shirtless man, wielding a garden tool, chased a bloodied woman and her crying baby down a Wellington street and assaulted her before police tasered him, causing a fall that left him with a serious head injury. 

He fell to the ground, knocked his head, and suffered a brain injury and memory loss. The police watchdog has found the three officers acted appropriately. …

She was reportedly bleeding and screaming as he was hacking at the wooden shelter with half of a hedge-trimming scissor.

When police arrived, the man was standing at a bus shelter, where the woman and baby were sitting, and he was holding the blade.

Police distracted him and the woman escaped from the bus shelter behind him, but when he noticed her running away, things escalated.

Amid the chaos, with the man shouting at police to “f*** off”, he began moving towards her.

In an effort to protect the woman, an officer shot their Taser at the man.

But that shot did not work properly, and he began ripping out the Taser cords.

He turned to face police, only 3-4 metres away, with the blade still in hand.

Two other officers at the scene both fired their Tasers at him.

His body went stiff, and he fell to the ground, hitting his head on the road, causing a brain injury.

In many countries that man would have been shot dead. He was armed with a blade, had been assaulting a woman, and refused to back down. He is lucky he only was tasered.

Haeata Community Campus’ Principal Peggy Burrows is indeed a media frequent flyer attacking the Government over everything from school meals to curriculum reforms.

It made me think that Haeata must be doing very well for the principal to have so much time to focus on school meals and the like. So I looked up their data on the Education Counts website. Here’s what it revealed:

• The school roll has dropped a massive 38% since 2017, from 908 to 566. That is an astonishing decline considering school zoning.
• Their stand down rate per 1000 students is 120, compared to an average of 32 for other composite schools. So a stand down rate 275% higher than the average.
• Their suspension rate per 1000 students is 45, compared to an average of 4.5 for other composite schools. So a stand down rate 900% higher than the average.
• Their exclusion rate per 1000 students is 23, compared to an average of 1.8 for other composite schools. So a stand down rate 1178% higher than the average.
• Only 67% of their students say until 17, compared to 84% for other schools
• Their UE pass rate is 9% vs an average 40% for other schools
• Only 4% of school leavers go on to university

It might just be me, but maybe the principal should be focusing more on student retention, discipline and achievement than school lunches?

Nicola Willis announced:

The Christchurch City Council has been selected to serve as a one-stop consenting authority for large-scale supermarket developments.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis says the new service is the latest step in the Government’s plans to make New Zealand a more attractive destination for new supermarkets.

“More supermarkets equals more competition equals lower prices. 

“Until now, new supermarket developers have faced having to deal with up to 66 different councils, 66 different processes and 66 different responses. That’s a disincentive to setting up shop here. 

“The establishment of a one-stop shop means a developer looking to build in multiple locations now only has to deal with one authority.

What I find interesting is that the Council chosen is Christchurch.

Just 11 years ago the Council was so incompetent, it actually got stripped of its consenting power. And today it is so good at consenting, it got the job to deal with nationwide consenting for supermarkets.

I’m not sure who is responsible for this change – former Crown Manager Doug Martin, or Council CEOs since then. But it impressive to go from unable to be trusted to even issue its own consents, to doing them for all of New Zealand for one sector.

A must read article by Ani O’Brien where she details all the vicious posts made by Jordan Rivers against government MPs, all while he was employed by Chris Hipkins – something he never ever disclosed.

He regularly praises Chris Hipkins, while never ever revealing he is paid by Chris Hipkins, and works for him!