It is becoming more and more frequent to see companies liquidate owing huge amounts of money to IRD, ie the taxpayer. While part of being in business is the risk of failure, it is unacceptable to have businesses continue to operate by virtue of simply not paying their taxes.

The NZ Initiative has a report on this, and a solution.

This is not a small problem. There is currently $8 billion in tax arrears owing.

They proposed a law based on the German model, being:

• If a a company fails to remit its collected taxes, such as GST and PAYE, by their due date, they have somewhere between 30 and 90 days to remedy this.
• If they have not remedied this within the deadline, they must place the company into a formal insolvency process like administration or liquidation
• If a director failed to place the company into insolvency by the deadline, they would assume personal liability for the unpaid GST and PAYE

I think this looks like a very good model, and one that all parties in Parliament should look at. No one wants companies going bust owing taxpayers huge amounts. This would presumably also apply to unions, such as UNITE which failed to pay PAYE on time over a long period.

The Initiative suggests the deadline for action should be 30, 60 or 90 days. I think 30 is far too short. If you accidentally missed a payment just before Xmas, and were away for a few weeks, you could suddenly find yourself personally liable.

I think 90 days is about right. If a business is having financial problems, it can take some time to work out if it is just a cashflow timing (your customers are late paying you, but they will), or a structural issue (you are losing money).

As readers would know, the US podcaster Candace Owens has been going down the conspiracy path for some time. She has been openly anti-semitic and has posted bizarre theories that Charlie Kirk wasn’t in fact killed by Tyler Robinson, but by Israel and TPUSA insiders.

I thought Owens was simply a grifter. She just said more and more outrageous stuff because she knew it got attention, clicks, listens and revenue. It was all just a way to make money.

But now I wonder if she is seriously mentally ill, as she is now alleging …. well see for yourself.

Yes, she is claiming the French Government is trying to assassinate her, along with the Israeli Government. And they also killed Charlie Kirk it seems.

Such detail – a French female assassin, and a male Israeli one.

And Candace is so important, that it costs $1.5 million dollars to kill her.

Egypt is involved also. It was a joint Israel-Egypt-France operation!

I suspect the next stage will be she does a Jussie Smollet and arranges an attack on herself, to prove her delusions are real.

It is probable she is still just grifting, and doesn’t believe a word she says. But I don’t think you can rule out mental illness. It reminds me of an incident in the 1990s when I was in Young Nationals.

One of the Young Nationals office holders was admitted as an in-patient to Wellington Psych Unit. I visited them a couple of times. It was coming up to a general election, and I mentioned Young Nats were working at National HQ on election night (this was pre-Internet, when we chalked results up on a giant board). He asked if he could come along. I asked if that is allowable, and he said it was – he wasn’t the subject of a compulsory treatment order.

When I went to pick him up on election day, I heard the charge nurse saying to him how all the staff thought him going to this event was a terrible idea. This got me slightly nervous. Then as we were driving over, he asked me if I knew why he was in the psych unit.

I had deliberately not asked, but I told him I assumed he had been suicidal. But he wasn’t. He told me he had been having severe delusional fantasies. More specifically he thought that because he had sometimes been critical of the Government, that it was trying to assassinate him, and Cabinet had established an Assassination Sub-Committee chaired by Murray McCully. He explained that his delusions were so powerful he literally boarded up all the windows at his house, wouldn’t go outside etc.

At this stage I started to share the nurse’s views that him going to National’s election night function might not be a great idea, especially as Murray McCully was actually going to be there! He did say though that he was better now, and now realised it wasn’t real.

When we got there, I immediately hunted Murray down and told him that it would be really useful if he could avoid this particular Young National. He of course asked why, so I told him. Murray commented that if there was an Assassination Sub-Committee of Cabinet, he would be the logical chair of it. I told him that would not be a helpful comment to make!

I relate this story, because believing multiple Governments are trying to assassinate you is not a normal thing. It can be paranoid delusions. So either Owens is a world-class grifter, or she needs serious help.

There are a couple of pieces of reported progress with education recently. They are anecdotal but are at least in the right direction.

1. The government has found out what many parents, who pay for private tuition, have known for a long-time. That is: small group or individual intensive tuition actually works. The Ministry claims to have been measuring this through “progressions”.

2. The Ministry reported to the Education and Work-Force Committee that the new Maths and English curriculum have been well-received and there are some good, anecdotal, signs.

A major issue is that the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) has produced a report that makes it clear that the Ministry of Education has pretty much no idea how students between Y1 and Y10 are doing (as well as pretty narrow data for Years 11 – 13).

Key statements are:

“The Ministry of Education does not have comprehensive information about student achievement or progress in Years 1-10.”

“The Ministry of Education needs to work with others to address gaps in its information.”

These two statement are stark given an experience in 2017 that shows the significance of the impact of Ministry incompetence.

From 2013 – 2018 I had oversight of South Auckland Middle School. It was a Charter School with the genuine focus on improving education for marginalised children.

The school started on Day 1 2014 with 120 students – and – as soon as possible went to 180 (with 100 students on a waiting list). Children were chosen through a police supervised ballot. There were special features of the school such as a split-day (academic morning, Arts and Activities afternoons) 15 children per class, a project based curriculum – alongside high-quality core subject teaching.

As a researcher/statistician/economist/educator I was determined to measure the effects of what we were doing.

1. A tool called E-ASTTLE was valid at the time in the NZ system. With the assistance of Evaluation Associates I designed a spreadsheet to measure each student’s progress for Maths and Reading via E-ASSTLE testing three times per year. This tool told us how much progress students made against norms for each year with us.

2. I tracked every student who left SAMS at Year 10 and went into local schools to do NCEA.

3. We fully engaged with Ministry contracted evaluations – Martin Jenkins and Cognition.

All of the results were outstanding.

1. Across the four years with us students were making two years progress for each year in Maths and Reading. This was done through our normal classroom teaching and not through extra tuition.

2. Our students were achieving Level 1 NCEA at 85+% in their first year out. Even better than outstanding given that our students were Decile 1 and over 85% were Maori and Pasifika and that stats were well above national averages.

(It is a sad but important note to make that – after I left the Villa Education Trust in 2021 – the CEO – Karen van Gemerden – now with NZPAA – decided to take the view that the Middle School was not responsible for the subsequent results of the students. If you don’t know how your students do when they leave – you have no idea if your programme is working. The key purpose of a Middle School is to enhance achievement in the qualification years.)

3. Both the Martin Jenkins report and the Cognition report were entirely positive. E.g. Cognition concluded:

“In summary we find and conclude that in both schools, the management and staff are actively involved in continuous development, and the delivery, of a unique programme of teaching and learning which is based on a comprehensive ‘local’ curriculum that is aligned with the New Zealand Curriculum, and which provides for the personalised needs of priority learners ‘many of whom have been failed by the current education system.”

Given that we could show that our model was working and, probably more importantly, we had developed a way of measuring “student progressions” with validity – I invited the Ministry of Education to meet with myself and Michael Absolum from Evaluation Associates.

We met with a senior manager who still holds a high level leadership role in the Ministry.

We patiently outlined how the measurement methodology we had developed was exactly what the Ministry kept saying publicly that they were working on – for six years at the point.

We offered the tool to them, for free, and it could have been rolled-out broadly and enhanced practices in the whole NZ Year 1 – 10 system.

The senior manager – in the meeting – without further evaluation – said NO!

Not only is there the consequence of the OAG report, but students/families have been further impacted for 8 more years and any “data” currently released from the Ministry of Education/Minister is treated with well-deserved scepticism.

Dr Oliver Hartwich or the NZ Initiative previously asserted that the solution to the issues created by NZ’s Ministry of Education involved a truckload of TNT. They haven’t changed under the new government and Erica Standford recently rates the 4/10 for policy advice.

Why do we constantly allow bureaucrats to undermine the delivery of high-quality systems for the good of NZ society?

[email protected]

The Herald reports:

A shirtless man, wielding a garden tool, chased a bloodied woman and her crying baby down a Wellington street and assaulted her before police tasered him, causing a fall that left him with a serious head injury. 

He fell to the ground, knocked his head, and suffered a brain injury and memory loss. The police watchdog has found the three officers acted appropriately. …

She was reportedly bleeding and screaming as he was hacking at the wooden shelter with half of a hedge-trimming scissor.

When police arrived, the man was standing at a bus shelter, where the woman and baby were sitting, and he was holding the blade.

Police distracted him and the woman escaped from the bus shelter behind him, but when he noticed her running away, things escalated.

Amid the chaos, with the man shouting at police to “f*** off”, he began moving towards her.

In an effort to protect the woman, an officer shot their Taser at the man.

But that shot did not work properly, and he began ripping out the Taser cords.

He turned to face police, only 3-4 metres away, with the blade still in hand.

Two other officers at the scene both fired their Tasers at him.

His body went stiff, and he fell to the ground, hitting his head on the road, causing a brain injury.

In many countries that man would have been shot dead. He was armed with a blade, had been assaulting a woman, and refused to back down. He is lucky he only was tasered.

Haeata Community Campus’ Principal Peggy Burrows is indeed a media frequent flyer attacking the Government over everything from school meals to curriculum reforms.

It made me think that Haeata must be doing very well for the principal to have so much time to focus on school meals and the like. So I looked up their data on the Education Counts website. Here’s what it revealed:

• The school roll has dropped a massive 38% since 2017, from 908 to 566. That is an astonishing decline considering school zoning.
• Their stand down rate per 1000 students is 120, compared to an average of 32 for other composite schools. So a stand down rate 275% higher than the average.
• Their suspension rate per 1000 students is 45, compared to an average of 4.5 for other composite schools. So a stand down rate 900% higher than the average.
• Their exclusion rate per 1000 students is 23, compared to an average of 1.8 for other composite schools. So a stand down rate 1178% higher than the average.
• Only 67% of their students say until 17, compared to 84% for other schools
• Their UE pass rate is 9% vs an average 40% for other schools
• Only 4% of school leavers go on to university

It might just be me, but maybe the principal should be focusing more on student retention, discipline and achievement than school lunches?

Nicola Willis announced:

The Christchurch City Council has been selected to serve as a one-stop consenting authority for large-scale supermarket developments.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis says the new service is the latest step in the Government’s plans to make New Zealand a more attractive destination for new supermarkets.

“More supermarkets equals more competition equals lower prices. 

“Until now, new supermarket developers have faced having to deal with up to 66 different councils, 66 different processes and 66 different responses. That’s a disincentive to setting up shop here. 

“The establishment of a one-stop shop means a developer looking to build in multiple locations now only has to deal with one authority.

What I find interesting is that the Council chosen is Christchurch.

Just 11 years ago the Council was so incompetent, it actually got stripped of its consenting power. And today it is so good at consenting, it got the job to deal with nationwide consenting for supermarkets.

I’m not sure who is responsible for this change – former Crown Manager Doug Martin, or Council CEOs since then. But it impressive to go from unable to be trusted to even issue its own consents, to doing them for all of New Zealand for one sector.

A must read article by Ani O’Brien where she details all the vicious posts made by Jordan Rivers against government MPs, all while he was employed by Chris Hipkins – something he never ever disclosed.

He regularly praises Chris Hipkins, while never ever revealing he is paid by Chris Hipkins, and works for him!

By Lucy Rogers

As readers may recall, I laid a complaint into my arrest in November 2023. The Police conducted an investigation involving errors so numerous that to list them would derail this post (I’ve reached a list of 25 so far), the most serious was that the investigator misspelt Jonathan Ayling’s email address when he invited me to be interviewed and took my non-reply as an admission of guilt, which coloured his perception of all of the evidence after that. He did not make a single further effort to contact me even though the Police had my phone number and personal email address in their database. Even when footage came to light of the entire incident sans a couple of seconds at the start, the investigator was unable to see the stark contradictions with police evidence because of his biases.

What I did not know is that he is a former colleague of one of the police officers who was involved in my arrest (incidentally, one of the ones who told the most serious lies). I did not discover this until the officer in question mentioned in his statement for the civil proceedings that he had worked at one point for Police Professional Conduct i.e. the sub-department within the Police dealing with complaints about police misconduct. I made some OIA requests accordingly and discovered to my shock that the officer in question had worked for the same regional branch of PPC as the man who botched the investigation into my case, namely Waitematā PPC.

I was particularly unimpressed with the defensiveness of the OIA response, which said that the officer had not worked together on cases with the investigator but had primarily had an administrative role. Nevertheless, because two people have spoken highly to me of the investigator I reserved judgment and made a further OIA request about the size of Waitematā PPC. I was prepared to accept that if it was a large department that the investigator might simply have overlooked a conflict of interest. Accordingly in my last Kiwiblog post on my case I tried to be understanding of the investigator’s position and said in effect that I believed him to be a good man who had made mistakes in good faith.

However, two days ago I received a response to my OIA request clarifying that the Waitematā PPC team consists of four police officers at any given time, and that in the six month period during which the investigator’s employment overlapped with that of the officer who lied about me there were only nine employees in total. I was gobsmacked.

My sympathy for the investigator is now exhausted. I can overlook nearly any number of errors made in good faith, but the fact that (a) he was defensive in response to a query about a conflict of interest instead of acknowledging fault and apologising and (b) that he did not admit that the team consisted of four people (which instead I had to discover with further OIA requests) is unforgivable because it shows a lack of true remorse.

I laid a complaint to the regional superintendent about the investigation immediately following receipt of the OIA request on Thursday, and also in the same letter asked the Police to clarify whether they consider this a conflict of interest or not. I admit I’m not optimistic about them acknowledging fault, even though it’s a conflict of interest so glaring it could be seen from outer space.

Very pleased to see the Government commit to a law that will tie rates increases to a mixture of inflation and GDP. The era of local government being able to fund every pet project Councillors like is coming to an end. In future they will need to prioritise spending on core infrastructure and facilities.

But Labour and Greens are vowing to fight this law, and I am sure will get rid of it if they win the next election. This will mean Councils can go back to 20% annual rates increases. Here’s some of the increases over the last three years that Labour and Greens are vowing to allow to continue:

• Hastings 49%
• Wellington 47%
• Hutt 45%
• Napier 43%
• Hamilton 41%

So if Labour and Greens get in, expect your rates bills for the next three years to increase by 40% or more, while if National is re-elected the rates increase over three years should be no more than 12%. With households already struggling, who can afford your rates to go up by another $1,500 or more?

Labour’s policy to have taxpayers fund three GP visits a year to every NZer aged 15+ will be costly and will also make it much harder for people to see a GP.

The policy is not targeted towards low and middle income NZers. It will apply to everyone regardless of income or wealth. So every Labour MP will get taxpayer funded GP visits despite earning around $200,000 a year or more.

More concerning is that it will lead to even larger delays in actually being able to see a GP when you are sick. This is because when there is no charge for a service, people will use it more. Labour says (I have asked for independent data to verify this) that on average NZers see a GP 2.5 times a year. Well if taxpayers pay for three visits a year, you can be sure everyone will go three times a year at least, as almost no one is in perfect health and never has a concern or niggle.

With 3.6 million adults that is an extra 1.8 million visits a year. That would be a 13% increase in the number of GP visits a year. With 5,600 GPs, that would suggest an extra 720 GPs would be needed to just keep even.

So Labour’s policy will not only benefit the wealthy, rather than be targeted, it will cause people who are really sick to be unable to see a GP when they need one. This policy will make things worse, not better.

Shayne Currie writes:

Somewhat of an introvert, Simon Dallow gave a rare insight into his character on the eve of his debut as TVNZ’s 6pm newsreader almost 20 years ago.

America’s greatest newsreader, Walter Cronkite, once said: “Our job is only to hold up the mirror – to tell and show the public what has happened.”

It is a mantra that Dallow has tried to live by.

“A number of years back, I reflected on the role of newsreader in the modern environment and made a couple of commitments around that,” he told me in 2023, in an articulate refusal to be interviewed.

“As a viewer, I want to see and hear unbiased, dispassionate information that is not influenced or coloured in any way by the presenter; leaving the viewer truly free to make up their own mind.

“A newsreader’s role is essentially functional and to me is fundamentally different from the role of a presenter in almost every other sense. Overlaying celebrity on to it changes the parasocial relationship from neutral to one influenced by preference – and thus plays a subconscious role in influencing the viewer’s perspective.

I’ve only met Simon a couple of times, but he has always been extremely friendly, down to earth and approachable.

His views on the role of a newsreader are ones we need more of. To this day I have no idea of Simon’s views on anythings. He could be an ardent Greenie, or a an ACTolyte. Or he could have no strong views at all. Whatever it is, he has kept them to himself as he is a professional.

Simon has not been alone in this. I recall Lindsay Perigo as a fearsome interviewer, and he never gave out any sense of his actual opinions until after he left TVNZ, when he expressed strong libertarian views. Likewise Peter Williams and Sean Plunket were inscrutable in their political views when they worked for TVNZ and RNZ, and only later did we learn they do have opinions on various issues.

Dallow’s approach to his job is one we need more of.

The first Stuff story:

Robert Purchase says he’s applied for almost 8000 jobs over the past two years.

He’s had five interviews, but no offers.

“I’m pretty much stuck on welfare,” he said. …

But there was one thing holding him back.

Almost three decades ago, in 1997, aged 20, he was sent to prison for a string of crimes ranging from shoplifting to unlawfully carrying a weapon and assault.

At the time, Purchase said, he was “young, dumb, drunk and hanging out with the wrong people”.

He served his time and said he had not committed a crime since.

Purchase provided Stuff with a copy of his New Zealand criminal record dated till September 2024. It supported his claim that he had not been convicted of a crime in New Zealand since he was jailed in 1997.

Purchase said he had turned his life around since leaving prison. He was committed to his church and volunteered there twice a week.

This was part of an ongoing campaign by Stuff to change the Clean Slate laws so not only non-prison crimes can be “cleaned” after seven years, but so can crimes that were serious enough to get you a term of imprisonment.

And their star story was how someone who hadn’t offended for 28 years had failed to get 8,000 jobs because of a youthful mistake. This was central to their campaign.

They failed to ask him for what jobs has been doing for the past 28 years, and any proof of employment during that time. This was a mistake as this second story reveals:

We would like to clarify that Purchase was convicted of crimes overseas after being released from jail in New Zealand. In 2003, he received 25-year jail sentences in Florida for kidnap, and for carjacking with a deadly weapon. He was released in 2023 and returned to New Zealand.

That’s some clarification!!

Radio NZ reports:

“I think Te Pāti Māori has got themselves into a world of difficulty. They’re not in any fit shape to play a constructive role in the current Parliament, much less a future government,” he told RNZ head of Labour’s annual meeting in Auckland on Friday night.

“And that’s one of the reasons that we’re going to be out there to win every one of those Māori seats back at the next election. I know Māori voters want a change of government at the next election, and my message to them is, voting Labour guarantees you a change of government.”

I’m all for Labour winning all seven Māori seats. It would be excellent for NZ to not have the party under its current leadership in Parliament. The way they treat their own MPs tells you a lot about them.

However it is not right that voting Labour in the Maori seats guarantees you a change of government. If Labour wins all seven Maori seats, this will in fact help National considerably.

The October 2025 TU-Curia poll had the CL on 61 seats and CR on 59 seats. TPM had 4.4% party vote. If TPM did not win any electorate seats, that would be wasted vote and the outcome would be CL 57 seats and CR 63 seats. You would go from a Labour-led Government to a National-led Government.

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.