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)
Term 3 2019
Term 3 2024
Term 3 2025
Total
59.5
51.7
50.3
Asian
71.3
63.8
63.4
European
62.0
52.7
50.9
Pasifika
47.6
40.3
38.6
Maori
46.3
38.0
36.5
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve done a matrix looking at which could be best to sell.
Asset
Competitive
Value
Sensitivity
Prospects
QV
B
$54m
D
Y
Landcorp
A
$1.6b
B
Y
AsureQuality
B
$100m
C
Y
Kordia
B
$62m
C
Y
Kiwibank
B
$2.6b
A
Y
Power companies
B
$7.9b
A
Y
TVNZ
C
$230m
B
N
NZ Post
D
$600m
A
N
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.
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.
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 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.
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 🙂
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.
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.
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?
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)
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.
