Cam Slater reports on a complaint my Matt McCarten against Willie Jackson. The allegations include:

• Orchestrate the sacking of the long-serving chair of Manukau Urban Māori Authority (MUMA) after an independent review found serious bullying by the CEO – Jackson’s wife, Tania Rangiheuea.
• Personally threaten the chair with loss of his $70,000 stipend and then engineer his removal.
• Hand-pick three new board members who are either Labour Party activists or his own staff.
• Issue trespass notices against McCarten and every union representative to block collective bargaining.
• Coordinate intimidation of staff and deploy top-tier law firms to silence the sacked chair with High Court action.

What makes these allegations even more startling is that McCarten has been good mates with Willie Jackson for over 40 years. Something has gone terribly wrong if Jackson is trespassing McCarten’s union from his workplace.

If these allegations were made against a National MP, they would be a major story for days on end.

Readers will no doubt have seen the numerous stories about mouldy lunches served at Haeata Community Campus. There were multiple stories on all media platforms reporting that these mouldy meals were the result of Compass, the meal provider.

Radio NZ, and other media, failed to ask any questions at all, as it fit the narrative that the revised school lunch programme was bad that the left love. They didn’t ask:

• As many schools receive lunches from the same distributor, how is it possible that only one school received the bad lunches?
• As this particular school principal has appeared in the media with almost a dozen complaints about school lunches, why does her school seem to be so disproportionately affected by issues?
• As the principal had recently asked for an ‘exemption’ from the programme, should this claim be assessed in light of this?
• Is it possible that the meals were leftover at the school and then served?

That would have been proper journalism. But instead they did multiple stories based on this allegation, and now NZ Food Safety has advised the following:

“We have considered all possible causes.

“We think it is more than likely that the affected meals at the school had been delivered the previous Thursday, remained at the school without refrigeration, and then were accidentally re-served to students alongside fresh meals delivered on Monday. This would explain the deterioration of the meals.”

School Lunch Collective spokesperson Paul Harvey said the NZFA finding “aligns with our internal checks and with what our teams observed on the day”.

He said nine Cambro [food storage] boxes of the savoury mince and potatoes meal were delivered to Haeata Community Campus on Thursday, but records showed only eight were returned.

So it seems the school stored the meals without refrigeration for three days, served them up on Monday, and blamed Compass for their incompetence in potentially poisoning their own students. The principal did multiple media interviews saying it was the fault of Compass, rather than actually investigating what happened before blaming Compass.

I’m not sure who comes out of this looking worse – the school principal, or the media for failing to be at all sceptical of her claims.

This is not the first time it has happened. A few months ago 1 News reported the claim that a fly somehow survived being cooked in an oven and being transported for hours in a heat-contained container. As I noted they reported a literal fourth hand rumour as news.

Did they learn anything from that? No.

Most people in NZ will not have heard of Nathan Gill. Most people in the UK probably haven’t. But they should.

He was the Leader of UKIP and Reform in Wales. He was an MEP from 2014 to 2020 and also a member of the Welsh Assembly from 2016 to 2017.

He has just been sentenced to 10.5 years in prison for taking bribes, effectively on behalf of Russian interests. He took around 40,000 pounds in cash in exchange for statements that would “benefit Russia regarding events in Ukraine”.

It would be naive to think this Welsh MEP was the only person in Europe on the take from Putin.

A former colleague, Gawain Towler writes:

I remember vividly when Nathan first started raising questions about Ukraine in the European Parliament. This was around 2018, as tensions simmered between Kyiv and Moscow. In my role as UKIP’s comms chief, I gave him a proper rollicking, our party’s focus was Brexit and the UK, not meddling in Eastern European geopolitics. It was completely outside our purview, a distraction that could dilute our message and alienate supporters. 

But Nathan countered smoothly, framing it as a matter of freedom of speech, defending the right to question narratives about press freedom and political persecution in Ukraine. He argued passionately that MEPs should speak freely without fear of censorship. I accepted his explanation at face value; after all, we were the party of free expression, weren’t we? It seemed principled, even bold. Little did I know, those “questions” were the opening salvos in a far more sinister agenda.

How wrong I was. My trust in Nathan was not just misplaced, it was foolish, a betrayal that stings deeply even now. The truth, revealed in the cold light of his recent conviction, paints a picture of calculated deceit. Nathan wasn’t voicing genuine concerns; he was parroting scripts fed to him by pro-Russian handlers, pocketing bribes to undermine Ukraine and bolster Moscow’s narrative in the heart of Europe’s institutions. 

From December 2018 to July 2019, he accepted cash, thousands of euros, from figures linked to Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch and close ally of Vladimir Putin. In exchange, Nathan delivered speeches in the European Parliament criticising Ukraine’s democracy, defending Medvedchuk against treason charges, and even hosting events to promote pro-Russian “peace plans” for Donbass. He toured Ukrainian TV studios owned by Medvedchuk’s associates, and questioned Ukrainian rights to self protection. All while posing as an independent voice.

Again, it is very very unlikely Gill is the only one on the take.

1 News reports:

Speaking in Māori, former party president Dame Naida Glavish said Te Pāti Māori was not established to belittle people, but rather for the betterment of all Māori.

She said that had not been evident this year. 

Dame Naida, Sir Pita Sharples, Te Ururoa Flavell, Marama Fox, Hone Harawira, and Tukoroirangi Morgan were among those represented on a list of former party leaders who had penned a letter to the current leadership.

So those concerned about the Tamihere leadership (it is clear he is the de facto leader) are every living former co-leader, and at least two former Presidents.

This would be the equivalent of Helen Clark, Geoffrey Palmer, Jacinda Ardern, Mike Williams and Andrew Little all writing a letter to the Labour Party leadership saying they think they are stuffing the party up.

How many stories have you seen in the Media where some group is complaining about there being less of a focus on the Treaty of Waitangi in the education system? I’ve lost count, but it is scores and scores.

How many have you seen about the results of the maths acceleration trial?

The trial was for Year 7 and 8 students who needed extra support in maths. So it was about helping 1,500 students who were at risk of failing. They were a year behind where they should be. They received targeted, small-group tutoring up to four times a week over 12 weeks. The tutoring was in-person, hybrid or online.

The gain in maths ability was:

• In-person: Two years (yes, years!)
• Hybrid: 14 months
• Online: 12 months

Why is this not the lead story in every news medium? Where are the 30 minute TV specials interviewing parents of kids in the trials, talking about what a difference they have made?

Now you might say they we can’t afford to do small group tutoring for every pupil who is falling behind. Well the news is even better.

The biggest breakthrough was for the students who were working in their usual classes with their teacher. These students were not part of the first 12-week trial but were benefiting from hour-a-day maths, the new curriculum, and new workbooks. They made, on average, a full year’s progress in just 12 weeks. That shows the reforms are lifting achievement for all children, not just those receiving additional tutoring.”

What a change a new curriculum, new workbooks and a minimum time allocation can make.

I don’t think anything is more important to New Zealand than Erica Stanford getting the time to bed in and complete her education reforms. Our kids deserve nothing less.

Attended a breakfast meeting with Cardinal John Dew where he spoke about the recent Papal Conclave. I found aspects of it very interesting, and thought readers might also.

I asked how well the Cardinal-Electors know the other Cardinals before the Conclave, and whether the pre-conclave meetings are very important for getting to know them. I assumed they wouldn’t know each other that well, but it turns out they do. Cardinal Dew said that he sits in three Curia committees or groups that meet several times a year and each one has around 20 cardinals on it, so that is regularly meeting around half the Cardinals through those.

Also when new Cardinals are inaugurated, existing Cardinals are encouraged to attend the ceremony in Rome, so that helps get to know them also.

I was interested that at the actual Conclave there is a book with profiles of all Cardinals, with their biographical details, where they have served etc etc. This reminded me of List Ranking Committees where you get profiles of all the candidates before voting on their List places.

Also there are unofficial publications put forward by certain groups which might only include profiles of their favoured candidates, which to keep with the political analogy was like the pamphlets at party conferences. We were told though these had little sway.

And unlike the Conclave film (which is excellent) there is no overt politicking. However Cardinal Dew did say that there was a consensus at the pre-conclave meetings that they were looking for someone to continue on the work of Pope Francis, rather than change course.

During the voting each cardinal has a tally sheet with the names of all cardinals, so they can record votes for them as the names are read out. These tally sheets are burnt after each vote, along with the actual ballot papers.

There is no official person reading out the vote tallies as they go, but when Cardinal Prevost got his 89th vote on the fourth ballot, there was spontaneous applause so all the Cardinals had obviously been keeping track of the votes as they were read out. And once Cardinal Prevost responded to Acceptasne electionem de te canonice factam in Summum Pontificem? with “Accepto”, he became the Bishop of Rome, and 266th Successor to Saint Peter.

A guest post by a reader:

Labour and Jordan Rivers are breaking the law as far as I see it. Based on https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/media-insider/popular-social-media-creative-jordan-rivers-employed-in-labour-party-leaders-office-private-post-falls-foul-of-speaker-gerry-brownlee/premium/ENVW6HTILVFTTK7EH7NKAOGYWQ/

If you work for a political party and you are pumping out political content on social media, you cannot pretend you are just an ordinary citizen sharing your thoughts. You are not neutral, independent, or unaligned. You are paid political staff producing political messaging.

That is the core issue with the Jordan Rivers situation. He was hired into the Labour Party leader’s office, a taxpayer-funded and politically sensitive environment, then continued using his large platform to comment on politics without disclosing that he was now financially tied to a political party. Labour hired him because he influences. He knows that and so do they.

The idea that the rules do not apply because he is on a salary instead of being paid per post is nonsense. A salary from a political party is payment for political advocacy. Whether it comes as $500 for a single post or $80,000 a year, the effect is the same. His commentary is not independent.

Under the Advertising Standards Code, if content is controlled directly or indirectly by the advertiser and intended to influence behaviour or opinion, it is an advertisement. The form of payment does not matter. If you work for a political party and post political content that aligns with its aims, it is not magically personal.

Under electoral law, social-media posts that encourage support for a party or candidate can qualify as election advertisements and must carry a promoter statement identifying who is behind the content. The law does not carve out a special exemption for creatives with ring lights and stage make up.

The fact that his posts were not individually commissioned does not create a loophole. The Electoral Commission is clear that the reasonable market value of services provided to a campaign, including staff time, counts toward campaign activity. If Labour hired an influencer knowing he would keep influencing, that value is part of their political machinery.

Covert political influence is corrosive. When someone with a large platform pushes a party line while hiding a financial relationship with that party, it is not clever comms. It is deception. If National pulled the same stunt with a TikTok comedian, Labour and most of the media would be screaming.

Jordan Rivers should have been upfront. He should have disclosed his employment with Labour every time he posted political content. Social-media creators do not get an honesty exemption just because they use emojis and fart noises instead of podiums and press conferences.

If Labour wants to hire influencers, fine. If they want to embed content creators into their comms strategy, also fine. But they have to play by the same rules as everyone else. They must disclose who is paying for the message.

The Herald reports:

A jury deliberating whether a young couple committed murder in a bizarre case involving a festering tenancy dispute and a hired armed “muscle” man dressed as a soldier have found the defendants not guilty. …

The court heard the 40-year-old had been hired to evict the couple by his landlady, Rebecca Allcock, who told him they owed rent money and were dealing drugs.

He expected to earn “big money” for the job, telling Allcock he might need to “rough them up a bit” to get them out, to which she responded: “I’m fine with that.” 

Faatoia drove to the couple’s townhouse on a motorbike armed with two blades, a wire garrote and rope, smashed his way into their bedroom and threatened them with a Bear Grylls “survival knife”.

But his plan to intimidate the couple backfired with tragic consequences when the boyfriend grabbed his own orange-handled hunting knife and plunged it into Faatoia’s neck.

As Faatoia suffered heavy blood loss from the wound, the couple dragged him outside on to a patio where they stomped and kicked him about his body as he lay face-down on the ground.

If you break into someone’s places with blades, a knife and a garrote then they have every right to defend themselves. I actually think the landlady should face charges for her role in what happened.

Though fatally injured and bleeding heavily from his severed jugular, Faatoia continued to fight and the two men fell struggling to the bedroom floor, where Faatoia punched and bit the boyfriend, Hamlin said. The woman then tried to grab Faatoia’s knife from his hand, cutting her finger in the process.

“She says she’s terrified. She thinks she’s going to be killed.” 

Faatoia wouldn’t die for several minutes and was still talking, mumbling about calling the “troops”. 

Fearing he was still a danger to them, the couple pushed the intruder out the sliding ranch door, where they beat him until he was no longer a threat.

While you certainly can argue that the couple should have ceased once he was not a danger, the evidence suggests what they did on the balcony didn’t kill him. Also if he is a metre 1.90 tall and 115 kgs, you can understand you want to make sure he is no longer a threat.

It is very sad that the guy died. But the landlady should never have hired him to rough the couple up, and he should never have broken into their house armed and threatening them.

National announced that if re-elected they will increase the default KiwiSaver contribution rates from 3% to 4% (already announced as government policy) and then to 6%. The rates will be:

• April 2026 – 3.5%
• April 2028 – 4.0%
• April 2029 – 4.5%
• April 2030 – 5.0%
• April 2031 – 5.5%
• April 2032 – 6.0%

This will basically align us with Australia that also has 12% contributions.

I think this is a good move, for two reasons.

1. People will tend to save more when their contributions are taken out of their pay before they even reach their bank account. Expenses often rise to match income, so having the savings taken out at source helps save. I have my KiwiSaver set at the maximum 10% contribution rates, so that the money goes to my retirement savings before I even get a chance to spend it! This is also why PAYE tax is so effective. People would pay a lot less tax if they had to send a cheque into IRD every month.
2. I want private retirement savings to increase, so the burden on taxpayers of the public superannuation scheme can decrease. Once you have a generation of NZers who have been contributing 12% of their salary into KiwiSaver, they won’t need such a generous NZ superannuation scheme. These changes would see a new worker have $1.4 million in their KiwiSaver account at age 65. They then won’t need $414 a week from the taxpayer.

This will have an impact on employees and employers. They are:

• Net take home pay for employees will be 3% lower on a 6% contribution rate than a 3% contribution rate. But this is over seven years. Over seven years wage rates will increase by around 33% nominally, so take home pay will be 30% higher, rather than 33% higher. Also worth noting employees can stay on a lower rate than the default rate if they face hardship.
• The cost to employers of staff will increase 3% over seven years. Now again this will be on top of a probable 33% or so increase anyway.

If the future cost of NZ Superannuation isn’t reduced, then NZ faces massive tax hikes. Having more NZers with greater private savings will create a political environment where changes to NZ Super are more palatable in future.

School attendance in NZ is in deep trouble. Not just in reference to our historic levels but also compared to other OECD countries.

New Zealand’s school attendance is lower than the OECD average, especially in upper secondary ages, with rates dropping from 70% to 50% between 2015 and 2025.

We also saw further decline for Term 3 2024 – 25.

Full attendance statistics (90% of days attended)

There are three levels of solutions:

1. Societal Leadership

At present we have a genuinely chaotic education sector for a range of reasons. Protests re the removal of treaty clauses in the Education Act, strikes, 90 high schools opposing qualifications changes (60 supporting), no support from subject organizations re curriculum changes, many in the sector calling for a slow-down in curriculum changes.

 The Minister – Stanford – has led by imposing – as opposed to convincing and leading her “team”. The sector sees her as someone who has listened to a small group of international idealogues, and a couple of detached NZ “academics” and chosen to barely engage with NZ educators. She could look to blames unions, rogue Principals, Maori academics – etc – but she knew the arena, or should have, before she entered it. Promising policies do not work without carrying the sector with you.

As I have written before David Seymour is exactly the wrong person to have the Ass. Minister responsibility for Attendance. He is publicly viewed to be anti-Maori/Pasifika and I would vote him the least likely to be able to encourage any child/family to get themselves to school. His handling of the school lunch situation has been appalling. There are two choices here – either – provide really high-quality school lunches (even if they cost more) as it makes children and families feel welcome and valued – or don’t provide them at all and genuinely put responsibility on parents.

The sector, as a whole, looks like they barely care. When, under the last government, there was a select committee investigation into school attendance – only 8 schools (of 2,600) submitted – and the committee chose not to seek any broad sector investigation. I.e. We have not detailed stats on why students are not attending. Nor do we know why we have up to 10,000 students not enrolled anywhere. Reasons for non-attendance are far more readily available in Australia – and we need to catch-up. We need to know this information for EVERY schools – and tailor the response.

In 2025 ERO reported – before the Term 3 decline – that things were improving and now “only” 31% of parents are comfortable with their children missing a week or more of school each term. They also noted that the government has allocated $140m over 4 years to support improvement. That is about 1.4% of VOTE Education. In 2022 ERO did produce a reasonably good report on attendance in NZ schools.

The Ministry of Education is seen by the sector to be highly ineffective and bogged down. The appointment of a long-term Deputy Secretary – involved in all of the most significant decline period – as the Secretary for Education – does nothing to assure anyone of genuine change in the Ministry towards being more effective in overseeing the education of our children.

Long-Term Solutions.

1. As a nation we need to deeply understand our crises in parenting. If your want our education system to work well then you need to understand the “glory days” of NZ being world leading (i.e. the 1970s) was not because out schools were simply fantastic – but because family and school values were closely aligned.

We have a significant portion of parents in NZ who have failed in their own education, have no affinity for schools, were often traumatized there, and have no heritage of good parenting.

Until we make great parenting the key attribute of NZ society – many schools are on a hiding to nothing. As I have advocated previously – we need an information based Crown Entity for Parenting with the key aim of improving the development of children from conception to 5yo.

2. Schools and teachers need to be a great deal better. There is a great deal of research on the competence of NZ teachers in certain areas (e.g. Maths) that is not encouraging. Children will not come to school and engage every day – unless they see the worth of doing so. This can include having great extra-curricula provision but making participation in it dependent on attendance and classroom behaviour/performance.

3. Schools need to make ALL parents very welcome in the school at all times. There are some schools who won’t let parents passed reception. Having high-quality interactions with parents and a genuine Community Liaison Manager in schools I have operated has made the family feel a part of the school community.

4. There needs to be full recognition that a significant number of students in NZ have logistical changes to get to school. Leavers’ data shows that students from poor homes are a long way behind those from wealthy homes. It also shows rural children are behind also. I lived in the Bay of Islands for six years. Some students need to wake at 5.30 each day – take two buses and a ferry to get to school – and the same to get home. They wake up in the dark and return in the dark. We need to develop hybrid schools.

5. A few years back I visited a wonderful New York organisation called Harlem Children’s Zone. They are what this article calls a “Full Service School”. At these schools the children are cared for 7am – 7pm – and their families are deeply included. We need these in our poorer communities to break cycles that are 5 generations in the making.

6. The Minister must apologise and undo the completely facile division she has created by removing the Treaty of Waitangi clause from the Education Act. With well over half the schools already rejecting it shows the folly of listening to people like Hobson’s Pledge and Elizabeth Rata. The Minister simply did not under the sector on this and to call the school response “disgusting” just made it worse.

Short-Term Solutions

1. Seymour needs to step down from this role – or be removed. He is simply the wrong person and the results are showing it. James Meager?

2. Every school should be required to publish their attendance stats on their websites/Facebook – every week and to push the joint responsibility onto the community.

3. Where school breakfasts and lunches can make a difference – they should be well-funded and of high quality.

4. High quality broad media engagement and the value of school attendance.

5. Schools should not be allowed to take teacher-only days within the term. Each day either matters – or not.

6. Making all extra-curricular activities from sport, kapa-haka, productions, field-trips – dependent upon attendance.

7. Each school allocating 20 students per teacher for attendance and well-being monitoring. An attendance officer can have support value, but the influence of a teacher on a small group of students/families can be much greater.

8. Genuine money must be spent on broad media campaigns to “encourage” full attendance. Threatening parents with fines and jail is futile and pathetic and designed to appeal to a small section of the voting public.

[email protected]

The ERO has done a report on the impact of removing cellphones from schools. Their major findings:

• Around eight in ten secondary leaders (83 percent) and teachers (79 percent) report prohibiting phone use at school has improved their students’ ability to focus on schoolwork
• The increased ability to focus in class appears to have contributed to learning, with around six in ten secondary teachers (61 percent) and leaders (58 percent) reporting student achievement has improved.
• Over three-quarters of secondary teachers (77 percent) and leaders (78 percent) also say restricting cell phone use has improved student behaviour in the classroom.
• Over two-thirds (69 percent) of secondary leaders say that bullying has decreased.
• Almost seven in ten (69 percent) leaders in secondary schools in low socio-economic communities said achievement improved, compared to four in ten (42 percent) in high socio-economic communities

So student achievement has improved, behaviour has improved, bullying has decreased and the biggest gains are in low socio-economic communities. That’s superb. This shows the positive difference good government policy can make.

Isabelle Sin from the Ministry for Regulation writes:

For more than 20 years, temporary traffic management (TTM) in New Zealand has been guided by the Code of Practice for Temporary Traffic Management (COPTTM).

This 567-page tome lays out in painstaking (and painful) detail exactly how to use traffic cones, temporary speed limits, stop/gos, and other devices to manage risk and disruption on our roads.

Isn’t that astonishing? A 567 page handbook for temporary traffic management. I suspect once upon a time, it was guided by common sense.

Consider a construction company planning road maintenance. Suppose one approach costs the company $100,000 more than an alternative, but it would reduce the impact on local businesses by $150,000.

It would be better for society, but the company sees it as making the bid less competitive. The council chooses the cheapest option, and society suffers an avoidable $50,000 loss.

Yes they don’t take the external costs of businesses and motorists into account.

Simeon Brown announced:

Cabinet has agreed to introduce new safeguards on the prescribing of gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues, while ensuring patients with medical needs can continue to access appropriate care, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. …

“Gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues play an important role in treating a range of medical conditions. We are ensuring they remain available for patients who need them for conditions such as early-onset puberty, endometriosis, or prostate cancer, where there is strong clinical evidence of benefit.”

So where the science has shown they are beneficial, they can be prescribed.

The Ministry of Health’s evidence brief found that there is a lack of high-quality evidence that demonstrates the benefits or risks of the use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues for the treatment of gender dysphoria or incongruence.

Again following the science. The UK Cass Review found the evidence that they were beneficial or even fully reversible was weak.

New patients seeking treatment for gender dysphoria or incongruence can no longer be prescribed gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues, pending the completion of the United Kingdom’s clinical trial on their use in this context.

This is a pause, not a ban. It is sensibly saying we will await the results of a high quality clinical trial, before deciding on their future use.

The new approach will not impact patients currently receiving gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues for the treatment of gender dysphoria or incongruence, with changes applying only to new cases going forward.

That is sensible. Anyone who has started treatment should be able to continue.

By Lucy Rogers

Today I was the latest recipient in a series of antisemitic postcards which have been sent to members of the Jewish community and allies across NZ over the last few weeks in an attempt at intimidation, including a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor. It was sent to my work mailbox and contained a request for me to forward it to Karin Horen once I had read it, which I found rather bizarre as I have never met Karin in my entire life. (For anyone unaware, Karin is the woman who aroused controversy when she ran for Takapuna local board for the crime of having lived in Israel a long time ago.) The postcards are all the same, depicting a man doing a haka, and contain messages of varying degrees of nastiness.

To the anonymous coward responsible for these postcards: if you’re trying to intimidate me into stopping protesting, you’ve picked on the wrong woman. I want you to know that I had actually been taking a break for the past month from counterprotesting given that the hostages were released in October but you have now managed to rekindle my resolve. I shall immediately resume weekly protests starting tomorrow and I promise you that I shall spare no effort in coming up with ways to be even more of a thorn in your side than before (while of course remaining silent, peaceful and law-abiding). I haven’t had much time to come up with anything yet (although I welcome suggestions from Kiwiblog readers) but preliminary ideas include chalking a gigantic Star of David outside Britomart and organising regular group counterprotests.

I shall also be donating to peace initiatives promoting dialogue in Israel/ Palestine like Musalaha, to Holocaust education in New Zealand and to my local synagogue, and I encourage Kiwiblog readers who are able to do so to support these initiatives as a positive affirmation against bigotry.

Newsroom has an article on the 10 SOEs that a Government could sell.

I’ve done a matrix looking at which could be best to sell.

The competitive column is on whether those companies face much competition. Landcorp is the most competitive as there are thousands of other farms. Most of the other companies are in reasonably competitive industries – so you are not selling a monopoly.

TVNZ has limited competition as broadcast media is dying. And NZ Post has competition for courier service but not really for postal services.

Sensitivity is my assessment of whether there would be much of a public outcry. I don’t think anyone (bar hard core activists) will care about selling QV. Kordia and AsureQuality also won’t get people marching in the streets. However those three are only worth around $200 million.

Finally prospects is whether they are in an industry with much of a future.

TVNZ and Landcorp would be politically challenging, but you could manage through risks. TVNZ declines in value every year and most people probably don’t realise the Govt owns a bunch of farms.

The most difficult would be NZ Post, Kiwibank and the power companies. Kiwibank was set up to be state owned, and NZ Post is seen as critical infrastructure, even though its future is bleak.

The power companies could be sold at a time when power prices are not increasing (which is due to lack of supply at peak times), but that isn’t now.

So some easy sales, but is it worth it for $200 million? You could add in two more but that only gets you to $360 million. If you really want some decent money from them, you need to do Landcorp.

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.