That is a very significant increase. Hopefully we will see the same in NZ.

Andrew Little’s campaign donors were:

• A former National Cabinet Minister
• A former Labour Deputy Leader
• A former right wing Councillor
• A property developer
• Four unions

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.

[email protected]

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:

• 15-24: 2.1
• 25-34: 2.2
• 35-44: 2.1
• 45-54: 2.4
• 55-64: 2.8
• 65-74: 3.0
• 75+: 3.6

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:

• 15-24: 0.9 x 633,000
• 25-34: 0.8 x 710,000
• 35-44: 0.9 x 661,000
• 45-54: 0.6 x 625,000
• 55-64: 0.2 x 600,000

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.

• Only 24% approve of the Government and 54% disapprove
• 28% of Labour voters say they won’t even consider voting for them again
• The net approval from Labour voters on issues are:
  • NHS: -30%
  • Immigration: -42%
  • Crime: -22%
  • Education: -6%
  • Taxation: -37%
  • Inflation: -35%
  • Economy: -45%
• Starmer’s approval from Labour voters is 30% positive, 60% negative for -30% net
• Labour out of touch: Net +35%
• Labour incompetent: Net +19%

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:

• Northern Ward: +69%
• Western Ward: +64%
• Over 60s: +62%
• Men +56%
• Under 40s: +54%
• Eastern Ward: +52%
• All Wellingtonians +51%
• Women +46%
• 40-59: +38%
• Southern Ward: +57%
• Lambton Ward: +33%

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:

• Northern Ward: +80%
• Western Ward: +69%
• Over 60s: +68%
• Men +67%
• Southern Ward: +66%
• All Wellingtonians +65%
• Under 40s: +64%
• Women +63%
• 40-59: +62%
• Lambton Ward: +56%
• Eastern Ward: +49%

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.

1 News reported:

The latest estimates put the market share for illegal tobacco sales between 25% and 65%, illicit tobacco and e-cigarette commissioner Amber Shuhyta told a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday night.

Rising tobacco taxes have driven the average price of a pack of over-the-counter cigarettes towards $50 and incentivised criminal gangs to set up shop.

In stark contrast, a pack of black market cigarettes bypassing legal import channels can be easily found for about AU$15 (NZ$17.17).

The result is a steep decline in taxation revenue and sales for legitimate retailers.

The same has been happening in NZ. If you tax something too much, then illegal sales replace legal sales.

Following yesterday’s terrorist attack in Bondi Beach, a march against antisemitism has been organised on 21 December 2025 at 3pm in Auckland. We will start with speeches at Aotea Square, then march down Queen Street at 3.30pm. You would be welcome to join us.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1122340829974909

I blogged previously on the remarkable stats achieved by Haeata Community Campus, where school lunches is their special focus.

Well the Auditor-General has just revealed:

Haeata Community Campus School paid $18,500 for a trip to Queenstown for professional coaching and wellbeing for its senior leadership team but did not provide enough evidence that all the spending had a clear business purpose.

Almost $20,000 on a trip to Queenstown for school senior leaders. What a great use of taxpayer money. Think of many school lunches that could have paid for. They spent $3,000 per SLT member on “coaching and wellbeing”.

Of the $18,000, $6,000 was on meals, drinks, and tourist activities in Queenstown according to Chris Lynch. That is $1,000 each. That’s a lot of wellbeing!

Psypost reports:

A new longitudinal study published in Personality and Individual Differences provides evidence of a complex, two-way relationship between environmental activism and specific personality traits. The findings suggest that while manipulative and aggressive tendencies can predict involvement in environmental causes, engaging in activism may also reinforce traits such as narcissism and psychopathy over time.

They go on to explain:

Perhaps the most unexpected findings concerned psychopathy. The researcher had not initially hypothesized a link here, and the 2024 study found no unique associations. Yet, the current analysis showed that both civic environmental actions and participation in activist groups predicted higher levels of psychopathy one year later.

This suggests that the confrontational nature of certain forms of activism might foster characteristics associated with psychopathy, such as callousness or impulsivity. It is also possible that the disruption associated with protests allows for the expression of these traits.

This may explain why so many Green Party MPs have been exposed for bullying, not paying wages or shoplifting!