A fascinating paper about the potential threat AI can pose to online research panels.

The advancement of large language models poses a severe, potentially existential threat to online survey research, a fundamental tool for data collection across the sciences.This work demonstrates that the foundational assumption of survey research—that a coherent response is a human response—is no longer tenable.

I designed and tested an autonomous synthetic respondent capable of producing survey data that possesses the coherence and plausibility of human responses. This agent successfully evades a comprehensive suite of data quality checks, including instruction-following tasks, logic puzzles, and “reverse shibboleth” questions designed to detect nonhuman actors, achieving a 99.8% pass rate on 6,000 trials of standard attention checks.

The synthetic respondent generates internally consistent responses by maintaininga coherent demographic persona and a memory of its prior answers, producingplausible data on psychometric scales, vignette comprehension tasks, and complex socioeconomic trade-offs. Furthermore, its open-ended text responses are linguistically sophisticated and stylistically calibrated to the level of education of its assigned persona.

Critically, the agent can be instructed to maliciously alter polling outcomes, demonstrating an overt vector for information warfare. More subtly, it can also infer a researcher’s latent hypotheses and produce data that artificially confirms them.These findings reveal a critical vulnerability in our data infrastructure, rendering most current detection methods obsolete and posing a potential existential threat to unsupervised online research. The scientific community must urgently develop new data validation standards and reconsider its reliance on nonprobability, low-barrier online data collection methods.

This is quite stunning. Online panels do have numerous features to identify bots etc. One I use is asking if respondents have a licence to pilot a space shuttle. But this says that AI can blow past these features and fool them.

I suspect what will happen is a sort of AI arms race where panel providers will use AI more and more to detect bots, and the bad actors will use AI to get even smarter against being detected.

This is one reason why Curia has not gone online panel only for most polls, and does a mixture of phone and online. The phone samples, while costly, provide a useful reference against the online panels.

The Post reports:

Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee is eyeing a tightening of attendance and dress standards in Parliament, following new te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara’s maiden speech which ended with Parliament suspended for disorder. …

Brownlee said he intended to go to Parliament’s Business Committee on changes to Parliament’s attendance records, dress standards and leave provisions.

I am all in favour of this. As I understand it, there is already a record of attendance. However they are not made public and Parliament doesn’t come under the OIA.

MPs do come and go from the House during the day, so one can’t have a record of who is in attendance for every minute. And in fact, you don’t want all 120 MPs in the House for every bill.

However question time is a key aspect of the House where Ministers are held to account. I think a public attendance record for question time would be a useful accountability tool.

If particular MPs or even entire parties simply never turn up to the House, we have a right to know.

The Supreme Court has ruled that four Uber drivers are employees of Uber, despite written agreements they are contractors, not employees.

The practical effect of this decision is terrible. Uber has been great for passengers. Not only can we hold drivers to account through ratings, we save a lot of money. An Uber to the airport costs me around $55 and a taxi around $110. If Uber wasn’t around, then it would almost cost me more getting to the airport than it does actually flying to Auckland.

Roger Partridge touches on a key issue that he thinks the Supreme Court didn’t consider – employees have a duty of loyalty.

The duty of loyalty (or fidelity) is a core incident of the employment relationship. Under settled New Zealand law, employees must not, during working time, take competing work in preference to their employer. The duty requires employees to act in their employer’s interests and not compete with the employer’s business during the period they are “at work.” …

Drivers with multiple apps like Uber, DiDi, Bolt – compare offers simultaneously. When Uber presents a ride request, a multi-apping driver evaluates it against competing offers appearing on other screens at precisely the same moment. If Didi offers a better fare or Ola shows a shorter pickup distance, the driver accepts that ride instead. The driver’s income depends on this instantaneous cross-platform comparison. 

This is not like a nurse who works part-time at two different hospitals. It is continuously and systematically taking work for competing platforms during the period they purport to be available to Uber. Under orthodox employment law principles, this conduct is the paradigmatic example of what the duty of loyalty forbids. 

So surely common sense says Uber drivers can’t be employees as they are free to work for competing platforms. So how did the Supreme Court deal with this:

The Court’s conclusion that multi-apping is impractical (at [124]) also mistakes how platforms work. A driver who wishes to accept a trip from DiDi or Bolt need only log out of the Uber app after accepting the rival job. Because Uber monitors refusals only while drivers remain logged in, logging out eliminates any sanction. The driver simply forgoes earning Uber ratings while unavailable. This is not a “penalty” for multi-apping – it is a feature of how the platforms operate. 

The Court conflated refusing an Uber ride while logged in (which triggers consequences) with being logged out before a ride is offered (which does not).  

So it takes around 10 seconds for a driver to log out and be able to take the other platform ride.

The minimum wage compounds the absurdity. On the Court’s own reasoning, each of those “employers” would also owe the driver the minimum wage for the same hour of work. Employment law does not – and cannot – recognise concurrent minimum-wage obligations across competing firms, yet that is the inevitable consequence of the Court’s classification. 

It really is a bizarre ruling that seems ideological, and not at all practical.

The Government needs to change the law.

The Tamihere faction of Te Pati Maori may end up the victors, but a pyrrhic victory.

I understand that Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke is consulting her electorate over the next two weeks on whether she should remain with Te Pati Maori under its current leadership.

Also new MP Oriini Kaipara is battling with TPM leadership over control of her own electorate, and there is speculation the Greens may be a backup option for her if the TPM schism is not resolved.

You have as background the revelation that former MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp was also bullied by the leadership. The Herald reports:

Family of the late Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp say an interview that featured allegations the party sought to oust Kemp as she battled kidney disease “brought clarity to matters long carried in silence”. …

Ferris, speaking to RNZ’s Mata programme, claimed the party’s leadership had attempted to remove Kemp from her Tāmaki Makaurau seat during a time she was ill and before her eventual death in June.

Ferris claimed discussions earlier this year had taken place between himself, Kemp, Kapa-Kingi and MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, during which the four MPs agreed an “intervention” related to the party’s leaders was required. However, Kemp died the week after, according to Ferris.

When the family says that what Ferris claims brings clarity to matters carried in silence, this is them basically saying it is true.

So the reality appears to be the co-leaders and President had lost the support of every other MP. But as they control the National Council, they are using that to expel them from the party to shore up their own positions.

So far it is working for them, but the end result may be they lose two more MPs, until the only remaining MPs are the two co-leaders.

Dave Armstrong writes:

When Andrew Little was elected Wellington mayor six weeks ago, lefties on social media celebrated. …

Andrew Little is in the excellent position of having five loyal Labour councillors on his side, some of whom probably owe their council seat to his win. If there’s a progressive policy like building social housing or creating cycle lanes, Little can call on four Green councillors for support and get the policy through, regardless of what the right-wing independents think.

Similarly, if there is a progressive policy that our mayor thinks too radical or expensive, he can look over to the right and get them on board, with only four Greens voting against. It seems that despite the celebrations of the left and the pessimism of the right, centrism rules OK.

I’m not sure it is centrism as much as realism. It is also learning from Whanau’s mistakes. She refused to ever give the independent Councillors any “wins” at all, and it is hard to have a unified Council if a third of them feel the Mayor hates them and won’t deal with them.

Take the Golden Mile project. The right-wing hates it and doesn’t want a bar of it. They see it as an overly green and disruptive plan that aspires to make Wellington a little Copenhagen or Amsterdam. Andrew Little seems to agree with the project in principle but during the mayoral campaign promised to review it. That, with the support of his Labour councillors and the right-wing independents, is exactly what he’s done.

The meltdown on the left over this has been hilarious. Read The Spinoff and you would think Little has just voted to drop a nuclear bomb on the CBD.

Many elements of the Golden Mile project are uncontroversial. But the major aspect that gets opposition is turning it into a bus only route. This will destroy hundreds of car parks. Some argue that this will increase patronage, but the vast majority of the business owners (ie those with actual lived experience) think it will hurt their businesses, and even close some down. I think we should listen to the people who are most affected.

The bus only proposal is the worst of both worlds. You make it hard for people to drive in, but you still have huge buses hurtling through the Golden Mile. If the vision really is to be a city with a two km long outdoor mall, you should go the whole hog and make it both car and bus free.

Admittedly, the Golden Mile has gone only a smidgen over budget compared to the Town Hall blowout

Only a leftie like Dave could call 100% a smidgen 🙂

In 2020 it was $78 million. In 2023 it was $139 million and now it is $220 million. Sure that is less than the Town Hall blowout, but just because Saturn is smaller than Jupiter, doesn’t mean Saturn isn’t still huge.

The $220 million cost is $2,750 per household in Wellington. We have many households feeling the pinch already, and The Spinoff is sulking that a Mayor who promised lower rates rises is not just whacking ratepayers with a $2,750 bill per household.

The Greens registered their opposition to Ray “Hot Mic” Chung being chair of the council-controlled organisations review and appointments committee, but supported the overall ratification vote for all chairs.

I’m surprised that so many on the left don’t appreciate how cunning Little is being. It is well known that Chung is a better retail politician than getting into the nuts and bolts. Little is effectively giving Chung enough rope to hang himself.

Little has said he will review committee chairs in 18 months. If Chung doesn’t perform as a committee chair, then Little can shuffle him out without it looking like sour grapes for standing against Little. It will be based on performance. It is a very smart tactical move.

Another interesting thing about this council is that it seems to vote more on party lines than the last. On the airport sale, Reading Centre and other issues, Labour, Green and independent councillors were divided. You had right-wingers Tim Brown and John Apanowicz, both no longer councillors, supporting some of Tory Whanau’s policies, while Labour’s Nureddin Abdurahman and Ben McNulty were opposed. Then you had independents like Sarah Free who often supported the right but not always, or ex-Green Iona Pannett who supported the left on some things, the right on others, and occasionally voted against almost the entire council.

This is an insightful point. All three blocs have changed and become more unified.

• Labour: Now has a Labour Mayor. They are actually constitutionally obliged to vote in line with party policy and/or local caucus if someone deems the issue important enough. But also Little will keep his team inside the tent and happy. So they will vote together almost always.
• Independents: Two of the independents did indeed vote often with Whanau. The two new independents are more fiscally conservative and on big spending issues, I expect we will see a unified bloc against the wasteful projects. On other issues, probably some differences.
• Greens: Free and Pannett got elected as Greens but were effectively kicked out for being too independent. All the Greens Councillors are now pretty hard left, and I imagine will vote together on almost every important issue if it means they can hike rates up, or ban cars or both.

I wonder if local Green MPs Julie Anne Genter and Tamatha Paul will face a backlash for the actions of a Green mayor who supported corporate welfare and the privatisation of public assets?

I don’t think they will. If they lose it will be more due to their performance as local MPs. Saying you want fewer police on the beat doesn’t tend to endear you to the housewives of Karori!

With former climate change activist Sophie Handford standing for Labour in Kāpiti, Craig Renney hoping to send Julie Anne Genter on her e-bike in Wellington Bays, and former health minister Ayesha Verrall challenging Tamatha Paul in Wellington North, this anti-government city may be interesting to watch come election time – mainly to see just exactly what flavour of anti-government Wellington chooses.

Both Wellington Bays and Wellington North will be very interesting races. Curia is happy to poll the electorates for any candidates 🙂

Radio NZ reports:

The NRL’s first openly gay player has slammed the NZ Breakers as “cowards” for not wearing the rainbow Pride flag in next year’s NBL Pride Round.

The Breakers are the second club to opt out of the pride jersey since the Round began in 2023, saying it’s to protect individual players from being singled out for their beliefs. Cairns Taipans did the same during the inaugural round, when the players did not wear a pride jersey.

There is a big difference between a sporting club being supportive of gay players and forcing players to wear a flag or logo which has political connotations.

Players can personally be 100% supportive of team mates who are gay, lesbian etc but also disagree on related political issues such as same sex marriage etc.

The Herald reports:

A probe into conflict-of-interest allegations at the Teaching Council was sparked by a whistle blower’s claims the agency spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds on an advertising firm run by the CEO’s husband.

An anonymous letter sent to Education Minister Erica Stanford in June this year, obtained by the Herald, claims Clemenger BBDO received up to $800,000 from the council for advertising and consultancy work. Brett Hoskin, who is married to Teaching Council chief executive Lesley Hoskin, is Clemenger Wellington’s managing director.

As first reported by the Herald, Lesley Hoskin went on a period of agreed leave last month amid an independent investigation into her conduct.

There’s two seperate issues here. The first is just wasteful spending. It is hard to imagine who a regulatory body would need to spend $800,000 with an advertising firm. That is around 5% of their entire budget.

The second is whether Clemenger got the contract through a transparent constable process, and one in which Hoskin was entirely recused due to her conflict of interest.

The fact that she is on leave while there is an investigation would suggest the answer is no. If she had notified the Board of the conflict and recused herself from all decision making around it, then there would not be much to investigate.

The NZ Crime and Victims’ Survey has released its latest data to August 2025, and it is staggering how much violent crime has dropped. When you declare war on the gangs, instead of funding them, the results can be amazing.

This shows the number of victims of violent crime over the previous 12 months. It peaked at 215,000 in the year from July 23 to June 24 and has dropped to 147,000 in the year September 24 to August 25. That is a staggering 32% drop and 68,000 fewer victims of violent crime.

This shows the number of Māori who are victims of violent crime. This has dropped an even larger 44% and that is 27,000 fewer Maori victims of violent crime.

What do you think has impacted Maori in New Zealand more – 27,000 fewer of them being victims of violent crime – or not mentioning the Treaty of Waitangi enough in the Maths curriculum?

Where are all the releases from Iwi, from Te Pati Maori etc celebrating this huge reduction?

The Herald reports:

Two senior police leaders visited disgraced former deputy commissioner Jevon McSkimming for the purpose of a welfare check because he was distressed and his wife was “incredibly distraught”, sources have told the Herald.

There was an official welfare contact appointed by the Police. They were not it.

Former deputy commissioner Tania Kura and another current leader visited McSkimming after he was charged over possessing objectionable material but before he admitted the offending in court.

This is the key aspect – it was after he was charged. What signal do they think it sends to junior police (who made the decision to arrest and charge) when they see their superiors visiting the person they have charged?

A police source said the pair’s decision to visit McSkimming was at the request of his wife and not unusual given the circumstances.

“Tania and [the other leader] visited him strictly as a welfare check – something they’ve both done many times for staff in serious strife. They would have done the same for Commissioner Richard Chambers if it were him, or for any other staff member,” the source told the Herald.

There is a difference between strife and having been criminally charged. It is disturbing they can’t see it.

However, Chambers has been highly critical of Kura and the other officer, telling Herald NOW when he found out about the visit he expressed “huge disappointment” in the pair’s actions.

“Lack of judgment, poor decision making. I addressed it with former Deputy Commissioner Tania Kura and one other member of the senior leadership team,” he said.

He said when a person is facing serious criminal charges it “wasn’t wise for any member of police to visit”, and he didn’t think there was any legitimate reason why Kura would do so.

The sensible thing for Kura to have done would have been to discuss the fact she had been contacted by McSkimming’s wife with the Commissioner and seek guidance as to what they should do.

The IPCA’s report said Kura assumed any problematic matters regarding McSkimming would have been flushed out during the top-secret security vettingboth she and McSkimming had to go through prior to getting their roles.

The job of the Police is to investigate, not to assume.

In 2013/14 the youth smoking rate for 15 to 17 year olds was 8.9% or 1 in 11 youth. In the latest NZ Health Survey results it is down to 0.7% or 1 in 140 youth. There is little doubt that this is because more youth are vaping instead of smoking. And while it is best if people neither vape nor smoke, vaping is far far less harmful than smoking.

This drop to 0.7% is great. If kids don’t start smoking when under 18, then they might never start.

The Government has announced major local government reforms, with one major aspects that Regional Councillors will be replaced by local Mayors. One of the problems of Regional Councils is that when they do a crap job, there is no real way to sack them as there is no elected Mayor, and to sack a majority of the Council would take massive co-ordination over the region.

Key details proposed are:

• Elected Mayors in a Region will collectively form a Combined Territories Board (CTB), that will govern the Regional Council.
• CTBs will develop Regional Reorganisation Plans within two years to be submitted to the Minister
• Mayors’ votes will be roughly proportional to the population they represent
• However on issues of spatial plan chapters and/or natural environment plan chapters a vote will need both a weighted majority and a simple majority (ie large urban mayors can’t impose requirements on small rural areas)

Looks like a vast improvement to me.

ACT has listed ten reasons to oppose Labour’s Capital Gains Tax. They are:

1. The rate will increase over time, as income tax has gone from 5% to 39% and GST from 10% to 15%
2. It’s a gift to tax accountants
3. It’s a tall poppy policy
4. It’s double taxation
5. It won’t affect house prices
6. NZ is already taxed highly at 34% of GDP
7. Believe New Zealand is Exceptional
8. A CGT is not inevitable
9. It will affect you in ways you least expect
10. The Greens will force Labour to expand a CGT

I oppose Labour’s CGT, but am not opposed in principle to a CGT if it followed these principles. They are:

1. Revenue Neutrality – there are income tax cuts to compensate
2. Inflation Indexed – tax is on real gains, not just inflation
3. No exceptions – all capital gains are taxed
4. Grandfathering – only assets purchased after the CGT is introduced are tax

The Greens announced:

Today, the Greens are announcing that a Green Government will commit to revoking any consents or permits handed out under the fast-track process for coal, Hardrock gold and seabed mining.

This is the Greens saying that they will revoke consents and permits that were legally granted. This is the sort of behaviour you expect from marxist dictators in Africa, not in developed countries.

Thomas Coughlan writes:

The attacks made by National, Act and NZ First, that the party is all theatrics and no substance, and that its MPs never bother spending much time in Parliament, have begun to land – even Labour leader Chris Hipkins this week was explicit that he wanted to see the leadership in Parliament more.

It’s a pity Parliament doesn’t release attendance data for the House and select committees. It would be very very telling.

Proverbial chickens have come home to roost. The party has placed too much emphasis on style, social media, and assorted theatrics, at the expense of policy and hard graft in Parliament. On its worst days, it’s a party of influencers. As a result, it has almost nothing to show for the past five years in Parliament beyond changing the parliamentary dress code (a change that may soon be reversed).

Their only achievement from five years in Parliament is the dress code. What a waste of space.

The Post reports:

Whitcoulls management have ordered staff to refuse all customer requests for a local literary journal it deems offensive, and to send its remaining stock back to the publisher.

Last week Whitcoulls pulled copies of the recently published Folly issue three from its shelves, citing offensive content that didn’t fit with the retailer’s brand identity as a family-friendly store, according to an email The Post has seen. It was to be made available only on request.

Folly is an independent literary publication of writing and art, published annually in New Zealand. Each issue blends established and emerging voices. …

Broadmore is still in the dark on the exact reason for Folly being pulled from shelves in the first place, however one Whitcoulls staff member told her it may have been to do with the word ‘f…’ being included the issue’s inner cover page. The word is used in a poem by Australian writer Rachel Apps, entitled It Costs F… All To Look This Cheap.

Whitcoulls has the right to stock what it chooses, but it does seem to be overly puritanical. The f word on an inside cover may have been shocking in 1970, but hardly in 2025.

Chile has just had elections, the first with compulsory voting. They voted for the Chamber of Deputies, half the Senate and the first round for the President.

The President is currently Gabriel Boric, who can’t stand again. He is a socialist and not very popular with a -30% net approval rating. An uber-woke constitution he proposed was rejected massively a couple of years ago.

The results of the first round of voting was:

1. Jeanette Jara, Communist 27%
2. Jose Kast, Republican (populist right) 24%
3. Franco Parisi, Party of the People (centre right) 20%
4. Johannes Kaiser, Libertarian 14%
5. Evelyn Matthei, Democratic Union (conservative right), 12%

It goes to a run-off of the top two. One would regard Kast as the favourite as the four right candidates got 70% between them.

In the Chamber of Deputies the left parties got 44% and centrist and right parties got 54%. One in five votes were blank.

However the left parties did gain a majority in the Senate.

Politico reports:

House Democrats are back at work — and, boy, are they mad.

They’re mad at the Senate Democrats who cut them out of negotiations and cut the deal to reopen the government after a record 43-day shutdown. They’re mad at Speaker Mike Johnson for keeping the House out of session all that time for what they’re calling a “seven-week paid vacation.” And they’re mad that, after all that, there’s still no clear path forward on meeting their key demand — an extension of health insurance subsidies that expire next month.

The Democrats basically achieved nothing for their 43 day shutdown. It was obvious Trump would never give into their demands, but still they insisted on a 43 day shutdown so they would feel they were doing something.

Politico reports:

Israel’s president and high-ranking military officials on Wednesday condemned attacks a day earlier by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, calling for an end to a growing wave of settler violence in the occupied territory.

President Isaac Herzog described the attacks as “shocking and serious,” adding a rare and powerful voice to what has been muted criticism by top Israeli officials of the settler violence. Herzog’s position, while largely ceremonial, is meant to serve as a moral compass and unifying force for the country.

Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians should be prosecuted and jailed. I’m glad the President has spoken out, but what is needed is the PM to instruct the legal authorities to stamp it out with serious consequences for those who take part.