I’m away tramping for six on the next seven days, and will be uncontactable during that time. There will be some blog posts appearing, written in advance. But don’t expect any coverage of any breaking events during the week.

Very sad that Hamish Price has died. I’ve known him for almost 30 years. My strongest earliest memory of Hamish was at a public meeting in Loaves and Fishes Hall in Wellington where he loudly asked Winston Peters if he would apologise to Selwyn Cushing (whom he had been found guilty of defaming). Winston got Hamish evicted.

Hamish was Nikki Kaye’s campaign manager for Auckland Central all four successful campaigns. It is fair to say that being Nikki’s campaign manager wasn;’t the easiest job in politics, but Hamish would spend months working full-time for no pay to help get Nikki over the line.

He had a wicked, often inappropriate, sense of humour. He blogged for a few years as Insolent Prick and not even his friends could work out when he was being serious and when he was trolling.

Despite his ability to be extremely undiplomatic, he also had the ability to be very diplomatic. He was one of the brightest people around on foreign policy and trade (his father was a diplomat) and he was a very trusted advisor to Todd McClay in the Key/English Government. He went out of his way to be as bipartisan as possible, and I recall him saying he always pressed MFAT to give Jane Kelsey access to documents etc – despite their different worldviews.

In the 2020 election he hit the spotlight while with Judith Collins, and his blue shoes even got their own Twitter account.

A nice tribute to him from Kate Freeman and also from Aaron Gilmore.

He had been battling Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma this past year, and generally responding well to treatment. But sadly it spread quickly, and he died very suddenly. He will be missed by his many many friends.

The BBC reports:

A 2026 World Cup fixture designated by organisers as an LGBTQ+ ‘Pride Match’ will feature two countries where homosexuality is illegal.

The local organising committee in Seattle, one of the host cities for the Fifa tournament next summer, have said the match at the city’s Lumen Field on 26 June will feature celebrations of the LGBTQ+ community.

The plans were put in place before the teams involved in the fixture were selected or the draw for the 2026 World Cup was made.

And following Friday’s draw and Saturday’s fixture allocation, it has been confirmed that the game on 26 June in Seattle will be the Group G match between Egypt and Iran.

So the pride match will involve two teams whose home countries make homosexuality illegal. Great work.

Stuff reports:

Wellington architects have put forward plans for restoring and reusing a block of “ugly” and “dangerous” flats set to be demolished.

Victoria University of Wellington confirmed this week it will demolish the earthquake-prone flats near its Kelburn campus, citing serious safety concerns and the high cost of restoration. …

The Architectural Centre said it was focused on finding a practical solution based on the building’s current condition, and had put designs to the university to show how it could be renewed to avoid demolition. …

“It would use over 90% less carbon than demolition and rebuild, and would include remediation of the building to perform with greater energy efficiency, both a win for the environment.”

The plan showed a mix of high-quality apartments, alongside shared study rooms, communal lounges, social spaces and a rooftop terrace.

“We have demonstrated it is viable to renew the building to achieve Victoria University of Wellington’s goals,” Tse said.

“It can be both flexible for different uses and attractive to modern tastes and trends in the student and non-student markets, here and internationally. Renewal would also honour the social ideals of the original building design. And cost up to 35% less than an equivalent new build.”

This seems like a great plan. I think the architects should approach a bank to lend them money, buy the flats off VUW, and then have their design implemented. That would be a win-win.

If they are really confident in their designs, that should be a no-brainer.

Joel McManus at The Spinoff writes:

Bishop sided with former Wellington mayor Tory Whanau’s call to allow more housing in the capital, even though every conservative councillor was opposed. He made Christchurch zone for high-density housing, which centre-right mayor Phil Mauger called a “kick in the guts”. In Auckland he could barely disguise his glee in forcing the left-leaning areas of Eden-Albert to allow 15-storey buildings around City Rail Link stations. 

He championed the Fast-track Approvals Act, which allowed major infrastructure projects to skip the usual consenting process. It was strongly opposed by environmental groups, but already, 30 renewable energy projects have applied to the scheme. 

If there’s a single idea that summarises Bishop’s actions this term, it’s the abundance agenda. That term was coined by writer Derek Thompson in 2022, then made famous by the book Abundance, which he co-wrote with Ezra Klein in 2025. Thanks to New Zealand’s notoriously fast legislative system, you could fairly make the argument that Bishop has done more over the past two years to advance the abundance agenda than any other politician in the world.

This is probably correct. What Bishop has done in housing and development is absolutely transformational. Both the breadth and pace of change has been huge.

Bishop will get to claim this law as his legacy. And while opposition MPs will raise issues with certain aspects, many on the left will be secretly pleased with the outcome, and glad they weren’t the ones who had to push it through. 

It is interesting (and good) that neither Labour nor the Greens have put out releases opposing the RMA replacement laws. I am sure they will critique aspects of them. However I think they realise the status quo was terrible.

By Lucy Rogers

I read an excellent Herald article today showing that arming cops with lethal weapons is an Utterly Stupid Idea:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/waikato-police-officer-jacob-collins-gives-up-suppression-appeal-after-pepper-spray-assault-conviction/PFNVGXWPQFFDXFG25PABWFPOJU

You can find it if you scroll down the Herald website for long enough, but most won’t. Here’s a summary for you: some guy in Waikato overtook Constable Jacob Collins while driving along State Highway 3. Collins took exception to this and flashed his lights. The driver pulled over compliantly. Collins had no way of knowing this in advance but it turned out the overtaking driver didn’t have rego or WOF and his licence was expired. Collins demanded the guy’s keys.

The driver refused to hand over his keys, and it turns out Collins had no legal right to demand them anyway. Collins threatened to pepper spray him if he didn’t hand the keys over. The guy held his hands up in a surrender gesture and held out the keys. Collins went to grab the keys but then the guy pulled the keys away from him. At this point Collins pepper sprayed him twice in the face and extracted him from the car.

As the guy was screaming in agony and posing no threat, Collins then pepper sprayed him a third time in the face for no apparent reason. (We know that he was screaming because Collins’ radio recorded it in the background.) Collins then placed him over the bonnet of his car and handcuffed him, informed him that he had been arrested for disorderly behaviour (!), and then drove him off in his police car to Te Awamutu. (There’s a technical legal term for handcuffing someone who has pepper spray in their eyes when there were wet wipes available in the cop car: it’s called Being a Dick.)

Collins had a chat with his boss about it afterwards and said that he thought the driver was a risk to the public and he had no other option but to pepper spray him. His boss found that he had done nothing wrong (sound familiar?) Judge Cocurullo disagreed, saying that the victim “hadn’t done anything wrong” and finding Collins guilty of assault with a weapon. The police are now proceeding with employment proceedings re: Collins.

Dishonest, evil bastards on power trips *LOVE* perceived legal grey areas. (I am not of course saying that all or even most cops are like this, but a minority are.) Arresting people, or hurting them in the name of the public good, is the highlight of their week. All this subcategory of police officer want is sufficient grounds that they think that they can get away with it. It’s irrelevant to them whether the prosecution succeeds: even if someone is found not guilty, there are no consequences for the officer in question. They just want to arrest someone.

They then get referred to internal police oversight whose natural instinct is to side with their own, believe everything the police say, disbelieve anything the complainant says because all complainants are lying anti-police troublemakers, and take the attitude that outsiders (and for that matter, the IPCA) just don’t understand the pressures and practical realities that honest, decent, morally upstanding constables like Jacob Collins face. Don’t believe me? I repeat, that is precisely what happened in Collins’ case: his boss said everything he did was fine. The Herald article says so. But Judge Cocurullo disagreed and found Collins guilty of a criminal offence.

(Again, does any of this sound familiar? )

Anyway, point is: imagine the scenario on the road to Te Awamutu but with guns in the mix. The victim moves his hand with his keys away from the officer: imagine the officer said that he thought he was going for a weapon and that he had to make a split-second decision as to whether to pre-emptively shoot him or not and that people just don’t get the tough decisions cops have to make. Imagine the victim dead on the roadside as Collins makes his excuses to his sympathetic boss. And then ask yourself whether there might actually be good reasons for the centuries-long prohibition on armed police.

Do you think there aren’t people in this world who enjoy killing people?

What if I told you that Officer Q who accused me of screaming at people in a state of “excited delirium” in order to justify arresting me is literally the commander of the Armed Offenders Squad? Because he is, and in the fullness of time I shall name him.

By the way: Collins’ case would not have come to the attention of the public if he hadn’t been stupid enough to seek name suppression, which was (in my view, wrongly) the focus of the Herald article. The article should have focussed not on name suppression but on what it means for police oversight that Collins’ boss was too blind to see that he had done anything wrong, and what the implications of this case are for arming cops.

I think arming cops might actually be even more of an Utterly Stupid Idea than legalising weed, and that’s saying something.

Tova O’Brien writes:

Unrepentant, Labour’s finance team should at least consider being embarrassed by their boorish heckling of the Finance Minister.

Far from presenting a government in waiting to steward New Zealand out of a cost of living crisis, the party’s three most senior money MPs were more ‘Regina George’ than ‘rigorous opposition’. …

But what Barbara Edmonds, Deborah Russell and Megan Woods brought to Scrutiny Week was a het up and, at times, rude heckling that risked undermining their own credibility and Labour’s.

But the hearing won’t be remembered for showing the minister up on the matter, it will be remembered for the chaotic cacophony of Labour MPs yelling: “Which table?! Which table??!!” at Willis, drowning the finance minister out, after she suggested they had misread a table.

National should take the select committee footage and use it in “Vote Labour for more of this” ads 🙂

A great parody of the famous Monthy Python skit where Jews sit around moaning that the Romans took everything from them, and never did anything good for them – except for …

It is very pertinent when you apply it to TPM (and much of the left generally) who portray the colonisation of New Zealand as universally negative for Maori, and ignore minor things like ending slavery, democracy, the rule of law etc etc.

Radio NZ reports:

A controversial piece of artwork that prompted 101 complaints in a week has now been stolen from a Hastings art gallery.

The installation, Flagging the Future, at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery asked gallery visitors to “please” walk on top of a quasi-NZ flag.

Councillor Steve Gibson expressed his displeasure with the exhibition earlier this week. Since then there have been small protests outside, 101 complaints to the Hastings District Council and the gallery and at least one trespass notice issued.

The artist and the gallery probably think they are brave and edgy, but in reality they are cowards. They know what they are doing is hugely offensive to most NZers, but they are banking on the fact that the worst they will get is angry e-mails.

Think of the artist and gallery did a different display. Say they had four flags on display on the floor. The NZ ensign, the Tino Rangatiratanga flag, the Rainbow flag and a flag showing Muhammad on it. And they invited people to walk on the flag that displeases them most.

Would they ever do that? Of course not. They are cowards. They know the outrage would be so massive. They pick the safe option of the NZ ensign. They are not being edgy. They are not being provocative. They are just being sad.

Stuff reported:

Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi has been reinstated after an interim judgment by the High Court.

The Te Tai Tokerau MP had sought the injunction against her party’s decision to expel her, claiming her expulsion breached numerous parts of the constitution.

On Friday, Justice Paul Radich confirmed to Stuff that Kapa-King should be reinstated as a member of Te Pāti Māori, with a full hearing into the matter in February.

I was not surprised by this decision. In fact I predicted it.

The substantive hearing outcome will be harder to predict. Generally speaking parties should be free to expel members who they no longer want to retain. But that right is not unlimited. There are two caveats.

The first is you need to follow your own rules. There is a reasonable argument that TPM did not. However minor deviations may not be deemed consequential.

The second is there should be some semblance of natural justice. This generally would mean allegations are put to you in writing, where you have time to respond to them. It should be explicit that your membership may be terminated, and why.

In this area TPM appears to be seriously lacking. To this day they have not provided details of what Kapa-Kingi did that would require her expulsion. The parliamentary spending was resolved and only became public due to Tamihere. She never attacked the party publicly until they attacked her. She isn’t responsible for what her son says.

I think their actions were so lacking in natural justice, that she does have a reasonable chance of winning the substantive hearing. Of course TPM could remedy that by starting the process anew, and this time using a proper process.

Media have reported that there may be a debate between Nicola Willis and Ruth Richardson over fiscal policy. I thought it would be useful to lay out what I see as the key fiscal problem, and put context around it.

Now I’m not unbiased here. Nicola I regard as a long standing friend. We were opposition staffer colleagues together over 20 years ago. She is one of the most awesome and competent people I know. I also admire how she has managed to be an amazing mother to four young kids, while also having a successful career at senior levels in business and politics.

As a Young National in the 1980s and 1990s Ruth was one of my political idols. She saved New Zealand from fiscal disaster. She now Chairs the Taxpayers Union which I co-founded (but left the board around 30 months ago to give me more time to be a parent). I am also a big Ruth fan.

So I’m very fond of both of them. But I can also critique people I’m fond of. I thought John Key was great and had a superb relationship with him – and I also was critical at times of some of his decisions.

So what is the real problem New Zealand has that has Ruth and the Taxpayers Union so worked up?

Structural Deficits

The Government inherited a structural deficit from Labour. This is not a one off. The last three Labour Governments have left structural deficits for incoming National Governments to fix. This is not a bug, but a feature. They’ve done it every time. The last responsible Labour Finance Minister was probably Arnold Nordmeyer. This is why Labour should never be in charge again – they always leave a structural deficit.

Now it is important to understand the difference between a structural deficit and a cyclical deficit. A cyclical deficit is a temporary one. You have a global economic shock (Asian Financial Crisis) which reduces tax revenue for a year or two, or you may have something that requires a temporary large increase in expenditure such as the Canterbury earthquakes of Covid-19 support. But after that, the government books should return to surplus.

A structural deficit is much much worse. If left alone, it means you never get back into surplus. It means debt will just keep increasing, and interest on that debt keeps increasing. This then means less money for areas like health and education – or even greater levels of borrowing.

The economically prudent strategy is you run a moderate surplus normally so debt reduces, and then when you have an economic shock, you can afford to go into deficit for a year or two and keep the interest in the debt from getting too large.

So structural deficits are very very bad (especially for a small economy). So how does a New Government get rid of a structural deficit? There are broadly three paths.

Increase taxes

This is what Labour would do. They blow up spending so high, that they then claim they need to increase taxes to fund it. National was not elected to increase taxes. NZers already pay more in tax than Australians at every income level.

Labour and Greens pledged in 2017 to keep spending to under 30% of GDP. If they had kept to that, we would not have a structural deficit. Tax revenue would be more than sufficient as spending would be around $17 billion a year lower. We do not have a tax problem, we have a spending problem.

Cut Spending

One can get back into surplus by cutting spending. By this I don’t mean just reprioritising spending, but actually cutting the overall level of spending by the Government.

This is laudable but easier said than done. Governments can relatively easily cut future spending or entitlements, but taking away current programmes can result in a political backlash that can doom you or force you to back down later.

As an example of this we have Keir Starmer’s Government in the UK. They also inherited a fiscal mess, and they did some policies which I thought were the right thing to do such as cutting back the winter energy fuel payments. However this caused (amongst other things) a big backlash against the Government, with angry pensioners saying this is not what they voted Labour for. Labour have crashed in the polls. Starmer has a hugely negative approval rating, and nine months later they were forced to backtrack on it anyway so the net result was they didn’t actually save any money, and they just doomed themselves to be a single term Government.

The Government has cut spending in many areas. They have reduced the KiwiSaver subsidies (note this doesn’t reduce people’s current incomes – it just means they get less of a subsidy in future). They are the only Government in history (I think) to reduce the number of public servants. Bill English froze numbers, while Nicola and now Judith have seen them actually drop. And there has been a huge drop in spending on contractors and consultants.

Nicola was one of the only Ministers I can think of who rejected the sunk cost fallacy and refused to let Kiwirail force her to spend $3 to $4 billion on new ferries and port infrastructure on the basis they had already committed to so much spending, no politician would dare risk letting it go to waste. Nicola called their bluff and with help from Winston we ended up with new ferries for a much cheaper overall cost. But at the time of the decision, it was not known what the eventual outcome would be – it was a risky – but correct call.

Also I think Nicola deserves a lot of praise for how she handed the Reserve Bank demands for more money. Initially both the Board and Governor were staunch in their demands. Nicola could have buckled as she didn’t want to risk having a Reserve Bank Governor resign in a spat with the Minister. But she stood firm, and Orr resigned.

And the Government made changes to the pay equity law that would have made the structural deficit far far worse if unchanged. For doing so she was called the c word by a journalist in a column, and Labour decried the change as a war on women. But I’ll make you a bet. There is no way Labour will pledge to return to the pay equity law it its previous state in the first year of Government if they win. Quite simply there is not $14 billion available for it.

However despite all these worthy savings, core crown expenditure has been increasing not decreasing.

In Robertson’s 2023 Budget, he forecast spending of $141.3b for 2024/25 and $147.6b for 2025/25. By PREFU they were $143.4b and $149.2b.

In Nicola’s 2024 budget she allocated $143.9b for the upcoming 2024/25 year – so $2.6b more than 2023 BEFU and $0.5b more than PREFU . And she projected spending of $147.7b for 2025/26.

In Nicola’s 2025 budget she allocated $150.3b for 2025/26 which is $2.7b more than both what Grant was projecting and what she herself projected in 2024.

Labour and their union allies have for two years been claiming that this Government is implementing austerity policies. This is simply deluded or a lie. There is no austerity.

However it is almost beyond doubt that if Grant Robertson had remained Finance Minister, we would be spending massively more. Grant never found an operating allowance he could keep to. He always had modest spending increases projected in the budgets, and ended up spending way way more. To be fair to Grant he was relatively fiscally restrained in his first term, but in hindsight Parliament made a huge mistake voting the Government so much extra money for Covid-19 with so little restraints on it. No-one thinks the Government shouldn’t have done a wage subsidy for employers who were forced to close down for weeks or months. But Labour used the excuse of Covid-19 to massively increase spending not temporarily but permanently. They funded journalism, arts etc – all in the name of Covid-19!

So Nicola Willis is spending more than Grant Robertson said he was going to spend, but beyond doubt is spending less than what Grant Robertson would have spent.

The problem is the level of spending remains at a level, where a path back to surplus is fragile at best, and unrealistic at worst.

This takes us to the third potential path to get out of a structural deficit.

Economic Growth (and fiscal restraint)

This path is basically let’s increase spending (which an aging population and health care needs puts upwards pressure on) but at a slower pace than revenue rises. If you have strong economic growth then that plus the impact of fiscal drag on tax brackets means tax revenue rises faster than spending and the deficit reduces over time, and eventually you get back to surplus.

This is basically what Bill English did. It is worth noting that Cullen projected 09/10 spending to be $61.9b, PREFU had it at $65.8b and Bill English first budget had it at $65.3b. So more than Cullen promised, but slightly less than what was projected at the election.

Now this approach is one that seemed sensible when National first came into office. Restrain spending, and let economic growth get you back to surplus. If you had asked me my opinion back then (I do not get asked on fiscal policy!) I would have said that was the sensible strategy.

The problem is economic growth has not been strong enough. The hangover from high interest rates from high inflation carried on longer than expected, and Trump’s tariffs have dented confidence etc. Labour claim the subdued economic growth is because National cut spending, but as I point out they haven’t – they’ve just spent less than what Labour would have – spending in real and per capita terms has not been cut.

So it is unclear if the books will be projected to return to surplus in three years, when we get an update next week. And the longer the path to surplus is, the less likely it is you will achieve it. There may be a change of Government. There may be another global shock. What is important isn’t so much whether the surplus is projected to be $100 million or a deficit of $100 million. What we need to see is a credible path to debt reducing significantly so that by the time of the next global shock we have a buffer.

So I do think it is very reasonable to critique the Government and the Minister of Finance on the fact that the path to repaying debt is fragile. If we are not running healthy surplus by the time NZers are silly enough to elect Labour again, then Labour will use that as an excuse for massive tax hikes.

The moderate fiscal restraint path was arguably the right decision in 2023 and even 2024. But my worry is that it is not going to work, and the Government does need to look at some more significant spending cuts – and yes some of them may be politically painful.

But before we go down that path, it is important to look at what are the constraints on the Minister of Finance doing that. And they are significant, and not ones that the Minister can unilaterally ignore.

Manifesto commitments

I am a big fan of parties keeping their manifesto promises. Not just because you can become unpopular if you break them, but trust in democratic institutions breaks down if people think Governments don’t deliver what they promised. Labour miserably failed to deliver on many of their promises – but to be fair not so much by changing their minds, but just by total incompetence.

The rise of populist parties in Europe and the US is partly driven by the public thinking the system doesn’t work. So political parties should work hard to keep faith.

National in 2009 and 2010 did break a couple of their promises. They scaled back their tax cuts package as it became apparent that they were inheriting s structural deficit. And they also did increase GST, but did it by way of a tax switch.

You could make the case that Nicola and National should have reneged on the tax cuts they campaigned on. My friends at the NZ Initiative tend to take that view. But I think that would have been the wrong call.

When Key and English changed their tax cuts package, NZ was caught up in the GFC,. This was a global economic shock, and the public accepted that you may need to change things as the facts change. But in 2023 there was no global economic shock. Yes Labour did leave a structural deficit, but you can’t point at an event as having changed things in the latter half of 2023.

Also the tax cuts were broadly fiscally neutral due to savings elsewhere. More importantly they were needed. NZers were in a cost of living crisis and these tax cuts were targeted at low and middle income households. Someone on $1 million a year got the same tax cut as someone on $80,000. In fact the tax cuts were basically just a partial compensation for fiscal drag from not having inflation adjusted tax brackets. Nicola delivered partial inflation indexation – which was a major campaign demand from the Taxpayers’ Union. I’d like to see indexation made automatic, once we are back in surplus.

Coalition Agreements

If you want to have a stable government, you need to do everything you can to deliver commitments made to your coalition partners. Now ACT’s agreements generally didn’t want more spending, but NZ First did have some.

Cabinet risk appetite

The Minister of Finance (unless they are Muldoon) is not a law unto themselves. They can’t unilaterally tell their colleagues that they are chopping $10 billion from their portfolios. They certainly do have tough bilateral meetings looking for savings, but the senior leadership of Cabinet basically agrees to the overall fiscal strategy and how hard you cut spending, if you do – and where.

Yes the Minister of Finance is a very key player in these discussions, but they are not God. They have more say than the No 20 in Cabinet, but the reality of how things work is the six to eight senior most Ministers tend to collectively decide what the risk appetite is.

Coalition Partners

As I have said ACT is fiscally very conservative. They would cut spending everywhere, except Pharmac, if they could. NZ First is not traditionally fiscally conservative. Their demands are usually huge amounts of money for provincial projects, for oldies, for favoured industries such as racing and most of all for whichever ministry Winston is in charge of. MFAT don’t even know how to spend all the money Winston gets for them. To be fair Shane Jones has been much more fiscally conservative this term, and I often hear praise from Ministers for him in terms of his willingness to reduce spending in some areas. Basically NZ First will resist spending cuts in areas that are core to them, but may be persuadable in areas they are agnostic on and even enthusiastic in areas they dislike (taxpayer funded public health activists).

What I would do

So one can recognise the constraints around cutting spending, and also acknowledge there has been considerable fiscal restraint in various areas, but also come to the conclusion that it still isn’t enough. We are still spending around 34% of GDP on core crown expenditure, when Labour and the Greens in 2017 said that we shouldn’t go beyond 30%.

Here is a few examples of what I would have done differently (some with benefit of hindsight) or would do in future.

1. Public Sector numbers. Yes the Government did reduce the numbers. The media ran such a hysterical campaign in conjunction with the PSA (every minor reduction was a major story) that NZers think staff numbers were cut by 25%, when in fact it was under 5%. I think cutting numbers back to 2017 levels is unrealistic, but I do think Cabinet left it too much to chief executives. I might suggest agencies be reduced to 2017 levels but adjusted for population and economic growth since then.
2. Free Tertiary Fees. National’s policy was to change the free tertiary fees subsidy from the first year of study to the final year. I welcomed this at the time as it would cost taxpayers less, and provide an incentive to finish. It also meant no real uproar from students. But now the fiscals are so challenging, this is a luxury we can’t afford. It is still a subsidy to a group of people who will go on to be very wealthy due to their degrees. It has not got poorer people going to university. National should scrap the thing entirely. And as no one is currently receiving free fees, you don’t risk as great a backlash. You justify it on the basis of the data showing it goes overwhelmingly to people from wealthy families, and is not helping poorer families access tertiary education.
3. School Lunches. At the time it seemed a smart move to keep free school lunches but save money by going to some centralised providers. Who would be against saving money. But with the benefit of hindsight I think this was a mistake. If they had cancelled the entire programme they would have had a few weeks of bad headlines, but then nothing – there would be nothing left to report. Now you get an endless litany of stories where School A or School B complains about their meals. The Government should have said that parents manage to feed their kids every weekend, and through 14 weeks of school holidays and it is their job to also feed their kids on school days. Recognising there are some kids whose parents are not particularly competent, you could have a voucher system for meals for the odd kid who turns up without lunch. I recognise that this is probably now too late to change though.
4. Have a spending cap. I would cap spending for each year at whatever was in Grant Robertson’s last budget. This would mean that if Labour tries to claim it is austerity, you can say “No it’s exactly the same as what you said you would do”. Yes Labour would have ended up spending more but they can hardly openly claim their Budget forecasts were junk as they have no fiscal discipline.

I could give more examples, but I’m not setting up a political party. The point I am trying to make is I do think the current approach isn’t going to work to get us back into repaying debt quickly enough. I think the Government does need to risk some political backlash by cutting more spending so that debt doesn’t keep rising. But I also think the Government and Nicola Willis have done many good things fiscally, and that the Minister of Finance does have constraints, as I have outlined, as to what she can do.

My hope from any debate between Ruth and Nicola is that it will help shift the Overton Window from Labour claiming the Government is cutting too much spending, to a realisation that actually they are not cutting enough.

The political challenge is that almost all voters generally support a reduction in spending – so long as it is in areas that doesn’t disadvantage them. But I do think New Zealanders do recognise the massive increase in spending under Labour was unsustainable and that reducing debt is a must have, not a nice to have.

The ODT reports:

When speaking to 1News yesterday, Ms Leary was asked “do you use ChatGPT to generate any of your questions?”

Ms Leary told the reporter she did not “directly use ChatGPT to ask questions”.

“I use AI to help me analyse documents. I formulate my own questions.”

This was a lie.

In the email to Ms Costello from Ms Leary, there were 20 questions and a range of prompts.

The prompts promised that “below are sharper, more specific and more prosecutorial question sets tailored precisely to Ingrid Leary’s style.”

They came from her parliamentary email at 11pm on Tuesday.

Another prompt said “these are designed to trap the minister, create clear contrasts and highlight delay [and] resident harm”.

Ben Thomas has a great take on this.

Heh.

1News then showed her the email, and Leary claimed she was “not aware of that email”, did not recall sending the email and could not comment.

Ms Leary then said she would “check with her office”, and suggested the email could have come from a someone else in her office.

“There are others in my office who have access to my emails, so I’ll need to find out what’s happened.

Further lies.

Ms Leary later told 1News she did, in fact, use ChatGPT and the email did come from her.

There was just no reason to lie. There is nothing wrong with using ChatGPT to suggest questions for select committee. Leary should have just said “Yes of course I used ChatGPT to suggest questions. It’s a great tool and can read through a huge amount of documents in seconds, and highlight areas of focus. However I then decide for myself which actual questions to pursue”

It is interesting to look at the list of Maori MPs who have won general electorates in NZ. The list is:

1. James Carroll, Liberal, 1893
2. Rex Austin, National, 1975
3. Ben Couch, National, 1975
4. Winston Peters, National, 1978
5. Ian Peters, National, 1990
6. Clem Simich, National, 1992
7. Sandra Lee, Alliance, 1993
8. Jill Pettis, Labour, 1993
9. Georgina Beyer, Labour, 1999
10. Paula Bennett, National, 2008
11. Simon Bridges, National, 2008
12. Mike Sabin, National, 2011
13. Jami-Lee Ross, National 2011
14. Louisa Wall, Labour, 2011
15. Shane Reti, National, 2014
16. David Seymour, ACT, 2014
17. Paul Eagle, Labour, 2017
18. Harete Hipango, National, 2017
19. Dan Bidois, National, 2018
20. Kiri Allan, Labour, 2020
21. Shanan Halbert, Labour, 2020
22. Jo Luxton, Labour, 2020
23. Tama Potaka, National, 2022
24. Willow-Jean Prime, Labour, 2020
25. Arena Williams, Labour, 2020
26. David MacLeod, National, 2023
27. James Meager, National, 2023
28. Tamatha Paul, Greens, 2023

So the breakdown by party is:

• National 15
• Labour 9
• Alliance 1
• ACT 1
• Greens 1
• Liberal 1

Of Labour’s nine Maori MPs who won an electorate seat, five of them were in the 2020 landslide. Prior to that there had been only four. Just four Maori MPs in general electorates over 104 years!

At Patreon I write:

Over 2025, Curia has been asking in the monthly Taxpayers’ Union poll whether those in employment work in the public or private sector. If public sector, we further ask if they are a public servant or work in the wider state sector. If private sector, we further ask if they work for a for-profit entity or a not-for-profit.

I can reveal here the exclusive results of NZers voting preferences broken down by which sector they work in. And there are some huge differences. Let’s first look at public vs private sector generally.

That data is paywalled, but many may find it interesting.

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.