A former vice-president of your party (and son of one of your MPs) says your party is run like a dictatorship.

When this accusation is put to the co-leaders, the male co-leader refuses to answer and heads off. He sees the female co-leader is not following him and may be about to answer the question, so he grabs her and drags her away with him.

Yes, this will indeed convince people that Te Pati Maori is a democratically run party.

Tim Jago appealed against both his convictions and sentence for indecent assaults. The Court of Appeal has upheld both. He argued that he should have got home detention. I am glad he failed, as serious sexual offending should generally result in prison.

They noted previous offending:

Mr Jago has previous convictions for speeding, drink driving, driving while suspended, and failing to answer bail, so he does not have a clean criminal record to which to point, particularly given some of that prior offending was alcohol-related as was the offending here.

The speeding and even the drink driving is not that relevant. But driving while suspended is a big deal as is not answering bail.

They concluded:

This was serious and repeated sexual offending against a child on one occasion and young persons on two others, that has had significant and long-lasting effects on the complainants. It was open to the Judge to consider that imprisonment was the least restrictive sentence appropriate in these circumstances.

I agree.

A guest post by Mark Adams:

Every Saturday afternoon at 2:00pm Lucy stands in front of Britomart station protesting the Saturday pro-Hamas rally.

Yesterday I went to shake her hand and then stayed with her for over two hours.

She has been protesting for nearly two years, silent and steadfast and usually alone.

Lucy doesn’t fly an Israeli flag, she makes clear her focus is on freeing the hostages held in Gaza by Hamas – and protesting the police who wrongfully arrested her for doing just this, silently standing or sitting in protest.

She arrives and then makes hand-written signs such as “free the hostages”. Lucy does this every time because the pro-Hamas people repeatedly rip her signs away.

They will stand immediately in front of her, pointedly blocking Lucy with their flags and banners, but she doesn’t react.

The pro-Hamas people are there in hundreds. The rally is loud and intimidating to outsiders. But it is well organised and the stewards generally keep the most threatening people a metre or so from Lucy.

Lucy continues to stand or sit quietly resolute, consciously non-aggressive. 

Even when faced with verbal aggression she doesn’t react in kind, she either ignores it, or responds calmly.

Yesterday despite the obvious intimidation, the police weren’t nearby. They stood in a group and watched the protest go by and didn’t follow.

Towards the end of the rally, Lucy approached the three police officers standing by, with video of today’s sign-ripping attack – the same woman has done it several times before.

One said that even though there was wrongdoing, they would not go into the crowd to find the woman. It would soon be five and he wanted to go home to his family.

Lucy does this every Saturday, protesting to free the hostages.

She is nearly always alone.

I found the the pro-Hamas people very angry and deliberately intimidating. 

Confronted with this, Lucy’s combination of courage and calm non-aggressiveness, was truly remarkable.

If you live in Auckland and have a couple of hours free on a Saturday afternoon, perhaps sometimes you might consider standing alongside Lucy.

• Auckland – as expected Wayne Brown was re-elect in a landslide. It also looks like a good result for the centre and centre right with Victoria Short defeating an incumbent in Albany and Matt Winiata replacing retiring Angela Dalton in Manurewa-Papakura
• Wellington – as expected Andrew Little won easily. The Council remains controlled by the left. A couple of useful new Councillors though. Outgoing Mayor Tory Whanau failed to get elected in the Maori Ward.
• Christchurch – Phil Mauger wins easily. However the left do fairly well with some of the ward elections, so could be a more tense term
• Sophie Barker has been elected Mayor, with the incumbent in 4th place
• Selwyn – the LGNZ President Sam Broughton got hammered, getting around 1/4 of the votes of the winner
• Upper Hutt – Eight term Mayor Wayne Guppy loses
• Queenstown – Mayor Glyn Lewers loses after one term
• Rotorua – Tania Tapsell back in a landslide
• Nelson – Nick Smith back easily
• Hutt – Ken Laban wins comfortably
• Gore – Ben Bell re-elected easily
• Hamilton – Tim Macindoe elected Mayor

I’m in a first aid course most of the day, so won’t be able to summarise any significant results until later afternoon. Feel free to use this thread to comment on results as they become known.

What I’m most interested in is:

• The ward results for Wellington City
• The results for Wellington Region
• The ward results for Auckland Council
• The Mayoralty and ward results for Christchurch
• The Mayoralty for Dunedin
• The Mayoralty for Hamilton
• The referenda on Maori Wards

Waatea News has an interview with Professor Lisa Te Morenga of the Health Coalition Aotearoa. Around four minutes into the interview:

Interviewer: You’re not advocating for temperance here are you, to get rid of alcohol might be a step too far. Some might say it is the way for us to go.

HCA: Yeah maybe, you know in the long term

So here we have it. They want prohibition. That is their end goal. If politicians listen to the extreme activists, then no more beer or wine.

The activists demand that the Government never ever listen to industry. I’d say the Government should never ever listen to prohibitionists.

Stuff reports:

Two recent Media Council decisions have been called out by media, with one labelled “a serious error” with “potentially wide reaching consequences”, and the other “alarming” and “potentially dangerous“.

NZME and RNZ have publicly criticised Media Council decisions upheld in relation to its stories. Such moves are highly unusual and speak to serious frustration at recent decisions.

It is rare for media outlets to say they disagree with the Media Council decision. 95% of the time the publisher accepts the Media Council decision.

In both these cases, I am with the minority of Council members who would not have upheld the complaint. I think both restrict journalists from doing their jobs.

Former Herald Editor Gavin Ellis writes:

Let me put it bluntly: The Media Council majority got it wrong.

How can the Daily Post have acted unfairly when the accused man’s name can be found in a simple online search and the accusations and investigation were well-known in the area. How can it be unfair when – for more than a decade – his name and association with the case had been referenced in a readily accessible Wikipedia article on Mona Blades’ disappearance?

Rewriting history is almost always a bad idea!

Stuff reports:

Celebration – tinged with anxiousness – has broken out in parts of Israel and Gaza after the announcement of a ceasefire deal between the warring parties.

Israel has begun implementing the ceasefire deal in Gaza, after it reached an agreement with Hamas for the Palestinian militant group to release all the hostages it holds.

Crowds in both areas gathered to welcome the news, with Gaza residents heard chanting “Donald Trump! Donald Trump!”

That is not a sentence you expected to read – Gaza residents chanting Donald Trump in celebration.

The ceasefire is a huge achievement, and all credit to Trump and the others involved in making it happen. A ceasefire is not a permanent peace, but it is a vital step towards it.

I look forward to the Green Party MPs getting up in Parliament and praising Trump for delivering what they have been demanding for so long.

The NY Post reports:

“My name is LaWhore Vagistan, my preferred pronouns are “she” or “aunty.” I chose ‘LaWhore’ because my family traces its origins to Pakistan: Lahore is an important city in Pakistan, and well, I’m a bit of a w*ore,” the drag queen said.

“And Vagistan because I see the subcontinent as one, big, beautiful Vag…istan,” he wrote in the tacky, naval-gazing self-interview.

Sounds like an excellent addition to the Harvard faculty.

To run a survey that doesn’t even include as an option having teams based on sex, makes it clear that this is not a consultation, but an exercise in propaganda.

The survey is about community level netball, not performance level. So it is school and club level. My general policy is to support participation based on gender identity at community level, but to have participation based on biological sex at the national and international competitive level. So if I was still involved in netball (I was at university) I wouldn’t choose the biological sex option. But to not have it as an option is appalling as it means those who disagree with me don’t get a say unless the choose other.

The Herald reports:

The University of Auckland’s controversial Treaty of Waitangi and te ao Māori courses are unlikely to remain compulsory after negative feedback from staff and students, and criticism from politicians.

The university senate has recommended that Waipapa Taumata Rau (WTR) courses become an optional choice, rather than a core requirement.

The courses were made compulsory for all first-year students this year. The backdown comes after just one completed semester. 

In March, Act leader David Seymour called on the university to scrap the compulsory courses, describing them as “a perversion of academic freedom” and “a form of indoctrination”.

“The university has been reviewing the feedback about the Waipapa Taumata Rau courses,” Auckland University Vice-Chancellor Dawn Freshwater posted online on September 12. …

“While students have found the courses valuable, they have also indicated where improvements could be made and told us they would like greater flexibility in how WTR fits within their programme of study,” she wrote.

“As we do with all courses, we aim to use staff and student feedback to strengthen how they are delivered. 

“To that end, and in response to that feedback, a proposal will be discussed at Senate on 15 September recommending that WTR become an optional choice within General Education for most programmes, rather than a core requirement.

This is a welcome backdown.

First of all no course should be compulsory across all faculties except something related to core academic learning such as how to do citations, references, not plagiarise etc. I would think it could be covered in a single one or two hour session.

The compulsory Treaty clauses were not about exposing students to diverse views on what the Treaty means. It was to tell them there is only one correct view.

Worse of all, students had to pay up to $6,000 for a compulsory course that many saw as of little or no relevance to their degree.

If the course does become optional, it will be fascinating to see how many students in each faculty elect to do it.

There is an article in the UK about an aborted prosecution of two men accused of spying for China.

Basically Christopher Cash worked for the China Research Group, a group of Beijing-sceptic Conservative MPs. He had a friend Christopher Berry who was commissioned to do 34 reports for a client, whom he thought was a Chinese corporate wanting to expand into the UK. In reality it was for a Chinese intelligence agent who passed it onto a Politburo member. Cash provided info to Berry for these reports.

None of the info was classified, or about defence issues. It has been described as:

it was said to be material in the public domain on how parliament or British politics works, or uncomplicated analyses – who he thought would win the next election.

It is absolutely normal for foreign governments to be interested in the domestic politics of a country. Over the years I would have had numerous conversations with several dozen Ambassadors or their staff on NZ politics. They’re interested in who may form Government, who may be key Ministers, likely major election issues etc.

Sometimes these are informal chats. Sometimes they are meetings. Sometimes over a meal. Sometimes one on one, sometimes with a dozen or more Ambassadors.

Sadly I have never charged for these. I get the odd meal or coffee in exchange! But I know some embassies in the past have paid government relations firms for advice. I recall a couple of decades ago one lobbyist returned from a meeting with an Asian Embassy, and they were very bemused that they were handed cash in an envelope at the end of the lunch to pay the invoice in advance!

Most of the Ambassadors or staff I have dealt with have been what you would call friendly countries, but not universally, In the 2000s I was acquainted with the Iranian Ambassador and when I got a visa from the Embassy to visit there in 2009, he asked if I could take some official papers over to Tehran for him, as he thought I would be more reliable than the diplomatic courier! If he had followed up, I would have declined, as I didn’t fancy explaining to a border officer why I had Iranian Government papers on me! I did take the precaution of getting advice from the then Foreign Minister’s Office.

I am not sure if NZ has any enemies, but I would not give insights to an “enemy” country. While Russia is invading Ukraine, I would politely decline any engagement there. But if the Chinese Embassy asked me to chat to them about how I saw the NZ political environment I would (they have not, by the way). I would probably be far more restrained in my observations than I would to say the Australian High Commissioner though.

So the attempted prosecution of the two men for espionage always seemed an overreach to me. What they were doing is pretty routine in most capitals. It isn’t spying. It wasn’t classified information. It was just political analysis.

Part of the prosecution case may have relied on whether China is officially an enemy of the UK – something which the UK Government might not want to declare in court. So we don’t know why the prosecution was dropped, but I think it was always a very weak case.

Governments of the left like to claim they are transformational, when they’re not. The Ardern Government achieved so little it was the opposite. They used wellbeing as a slogan, and did a couple of disastrous mergers. They spent a lot of money. To be fair the Clark Government did actually achieve some major stuff such as KiwiSaver, the Cullen Fund and the China FTA.

The Key/English Government was very competent, managed the economy well, and generally improved public services. But not even I would call them transformational.

However there is a case to be made that what this current Government is doing, is in fact transformational. By that, I mean implementing policies that will have a massive impact on New Zealand.

It is certainly true that the books are far from being balanced, and economic growth not where it should be. But we shouldn’t let that detract from some of the massively important, ie transformational, policies they are implementing.

What are they. Here’s the ones that come to mind.

1. The Fast Track Approvals Law will turbo charge around 200 to 300 projects, allowing them to be consented in months rather than years and years.
2. The scrapping of NCEA and replacement by new meaningful achievement certificates is massive for students and employers.
3. Legislation to allow congestion charging, which will have a huge impact on congestion in major cities
4. The planning law changes that will require Councils to allow for 30 years of housing growth, which will finally allow cities to easily build up and out.
5. The RMA replacement which will place property rights at the centre of resource management law
6. The changes to earthquake building codes that will save thousands of buildings from sitting empty.
7. The decision to have phonics as the primary method for teaching kids structured literacy
8. Changes to the Building Act which will make houses cheaper and easier to build
9. Replacing petrol tax with road user charges

These both individually, and collectively, will have a massive impact and transform New Zealand for the better.

In education, transport, housing and resource management the changes are profound, and vitally needed. The Government should be trumpeting them more.

Radio NZ today cover an Education Review Office Report on Education – with good detail.

Two mentions I would highlight.

1. Why attitudes are improving.

“The report said the improvements in student and parental attitudes were linked to schools providing clearer expectations, practical supports and rewards, as well as making students feel connected to school.

“Students are five times more likely to think daily attendance is important if they feel they belong at school. Three-quarters of students (73 percent) feel they belong,” the report said.

“Schools setting clear expectations about attendance is the most important factor for parents reporting that school is important for their child’s future – parents are twice as likely to report school is important if the school is setting clear expectations).”

2. One negative that can easily be fixed.

“The report said the number of days of instruction mattered for primary schools and 35 percent of parents said their children’s school was sometimes or often closed on days they thought it should be open.

“We found that frequent or poorly timed closures can encourage absenteeism. Closures on Thursdays or Tuesdays can lead to extended weekends. Similarly, halfday closures can result in full-day absences due to practical incentives, such as saving on transport costs and easier household arrangements,” the report said.”

Schools should not have ANY teacher only days in term time. They should also not be having half-day closures for Parent Interviews.

Not only are both hugely inconvenient – and often expensive – for families but they also send completely the wrong message on the value of a school day.

[email protected]

The BBC reports:

Speaking after the speech on the BBC’s Politics Live, Lammy was asked whether he thought Farage was a racist. 

He said the PM had been calling out policies “that would line people up who have a right to be in this country, who might be Indian, who might be Nigerian, and send them home”.

He added: “It’s not British. It doesn’t respect our values.

“I’m not going to play the man. I’m playing the ball, as our leader did.

“I will leave it for the public to come to their own judgements about someone who once flirted with Hitler Youth when he was younger.”

The UK Deputy PM says he is going to play the ball, not the man, and in the same breath alleges Farage flirted with Hitler Youth. The hypocrisy is so immense.

A small problem is that Farage was born in 1964 and Hitler died in 1945. But hey, let’s call our opponents Nazis because that always works so well.

The Herald reports:

The Reserve Bank has cut the Official Cash Rate by 50 basis points to 2.5%.

The bank delivered its latest Monetary Policy Review at 2pm today.

The Monetary Policy Committee reached a consensus to reduce the Official Cash Rate (OCR) by 50 basis points (bps).

The committee said it remained open to further reductions in the OCR as required for inflation to settle sustainably near the 2% target mid-point in the medium term.

This is welcome news for home owners and others. I was a bit surprised they did a 0.5% cut as inflation is still close to the top of the target range of 1% to 3%, but the fact it was a consensus decision seems to indicate they don’t think it will be inflationary.

The committee revised its assessment of spare capacity in the economy following the worse than expected second-quarter GDP results, but only marginally.

An unusually large seasonal balancing item had contributed to the weakness in the headline figure and was likely to be reversed out in the third quarter, it said.

A good third quarter result will be needed for business and consumer confidence.

Stuff reports:

The gunman who opened fire on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas, killing a detainee and critically wounding two others, left behind a note saying that he hoped the attack would “give ICE agents real terror,” the FBI director said Thursday.

Another case of someone using weapons instead of words.

Guido Fawkes points out:

The same judge who spared jail for a man who attacked someone burning a Quran with a knife gave a man a prison sentence for sending nasty email to John Bercow. Rule of lawyers in action…

Judge Adam Hiddleston gave Moussa Kadri a 20-week prison sentence, suspended for 18 months. In Knightsbridge in February Kadri had seen a man setting alight the Quran and shouted “I’m going to kill you” before “slashing at him with a knife.” …

In 2021 Hiddleston jailed a 35-year-old businessman for one year for sending rude and at times threatening emails to Bercow, Ed Davey, Ian Blackford, Corbyn, and Amber Rudd among others. He said: “I have no doubt that you did harbour a deep-seated animosity to those who held opposing views to your own and that appeared to have been your motivation. The contents of those emails were vile.” More vile than a knife attack?

While I can be critical of some of the NZ judicial decisions, they pale in comparison to UK ones which are just so terrible. An e-mail gets you jail and a stabbing does not.