US politics followers may have heard of Olivia Nuzzi.

She was a writer for New York Magazine and resigned after it was revealed she had a an affair with RFK Jr, while reporting on his presidential campaign.

She has just written a book about what happened, which seems to have upset Ryan Lizza, who was engaged to her at the time. He is also a journalist.

Ryan has just written a substack giving details of how he found out Nuzzi was having an affair with a presidential candidate she was reporting on. It is explosive, especially the final paragraph. Go read it, and you’ll see why.

All I’ll say is that I am a bit said that I was born in New Zealand, and hence can’t stand for President of the United States 🙂

Stuff reports:

The deaths of three children and their father at the scene of a Manawatū house fire are being investigated as a suspected triple murder-suicide, Stuff understands.

Dean Field died at a property on SH1 in Sanson that was consumed by fire on Saturday afternoon. It’s understood police believe he killed his three children – August, Hugo and Goldie, aged 7, 5 and 1 – before taking his own life.

It is hard to describe the rage I feel towards men like this. They are often in custody disputes and see their children as possessions. They get so full of hatred towards their ex, they would kill their own children rather than let the ex “win”. They are deeply evil.

You could include Tom Phillips in the above. He may not have killed his kids, but he treated them as possessions and effectively kidnapped them so that instead of growing up with friends, family and school, they lived in misery in the bush for three years.

As parents, our natural instincts are to do everything we can to protect our kids from harm. To have a parent kill or abuse their kids as a weapon against other adults is just evil.

This is a fascinating chart, from Putting Down The Vase. It looks at the combined favourability of the Labour and Conservative leaders. They note:

Previously, when one leader was in a rut there was usually someone else who voters liked. Major’s unpopularity in 1996 was offset by the popularity of Blair and Ashdown, Brown’s in 2009 was mitigated by the high ratings of Clegg and Cameron, etc. This is no longer the case. By way of example, in just 32 of the 476 Ipsos party leader survey questions since the start of 2011 has any leader scored a net approval rating above zero.

Of interest, this is not really the case in NZ. We don’t have the same time series of favourability ratings but in the 1990s it was pretty clear both Bolger and Clark were not popular.

For most of the period 1999 to 2017 the PM of the day tended to be popular, at least more so than the Opposition Leader was unpopular. And in 2017 both Bill English and Jacinda Ardern went into the election with +40 approval ratings. So if anything our leaders became more popular than the 1990s.

Fair to say that in the last three years, the PM and Opposition Leaders had ratings only slightly positive to slightly negative – so lower than the past. But still much much higher than in the UK where the latest Ipsos poll has:

• Starmer -66%
• Badenoch -47%

What a choice! This is why Farage will probably become the next PM despite being at -19% himself. -19% is not great but a lot better than -66%!

While I am not a fan of the BSA appointing itself as chief censor of the Internet, I do like some of the research they have produced. The annual survey of offensive words is always interesting, and they have just done a survey about trust in media which is interesting. They find the following factors that makes a news provider trustworthy:

• Reporting supported by credible evidence 69%
• Unbiased reporting 66%
• In-depth reporting 64%
• Prompt correction of mistakes 63%
• Stories show all perspectives and are balanced 62%
• Accurate headlines 62%
• Opinion and news are separate 62%

And the other way is the factors that make a news provider untrustworthy:

• Clickbait headlines 70%
• Not correct errors 69%
• Too much opinion 64%
• Too much attack journalism 61%
• Ads pretending to be news 60%

Now looking at those lists, it is no surprise why trust in media is so slow.

We see clickbait headlines all the time. Media are notoriously slow to correct errors. TV news always has reporters share their opinion, mixed into the story. And even I am often taken in by advertorials, as the disclaimer it is sponsored content is often hard to spot.

Radio NZ reports:

RNZ understands MPs Oriini Kaipara, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, Tākuta Ferris and a representative for Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke met without their party co-leaders.

The Tamihere family may have a majority on the TPM National Council, but it looks like they don’t in caucus.

Hard to see Kaipara and Maipi-Clarke voting to expel Ferris and Kapa-Kingi from Parliament, if they are meeting with them.

However the co-leaders are safe as they are appointed by the National Council, not caucus.

At Patreon, I have exclusive Wellington poll results about the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and MPs for Rongotai, Wellington Central and Ohariu.

Radio NZ reports:

Far-right US influencer Candace Owens’ Auckland event next year has been cancelled, after the commentator was earlier denied entry into Australia.

Owens lost her bid to enter Australia after the country’s highest court backed the government’s decision to deny her a visa over concerns she could “incite discord” in the community.

The NZ event’s venue Trusts Arena confirmed the event was cancelled some months ago, due to its controversial nature.

They should not have done this. Owens should not be denied a venue just because she is “controversial”. Hosting an event is not an endorsement.

Let there be no mistake. Owens is a deeply repugnant person. I can’t decide if she is evil or just amoral. Her baseless accusations that Charlie Kirk was murdered by his own staff or colleagues in TPUSA and the Jews is almost sociopathic.

But her views should be countered, exposed and ridiculed – not shut down by a venue.

Unlike other public service entities who are appointed by the Public Service Commissioner, the Commissioner and statutory Deputy Commissioners of Police are selected by the Prime Minister. There are usually multiple qualified candidates, and they get to pick the one that they think will do the best job.

And Labour’s record is almost beyond belief – they managed to pick four “duds” in a row. Not one, not two, not. three but all four of their appointments turned out to be seriously flawed.

Their four appointments were:

• Wally Haumaha appointed by PM Ardern in June 2018 as Deputy Commissioner. Transpired he had defended officers accused of raping Louise Nicholas, and was accused of bullying by three different female government staff. He called convicted rapist Brad Shipton a “big softie” and Bob Schollum a “legend” with women. Another office said that Haumaha said “we have to stick together” in regard to the Louise Nicholas allegations against the men. The IPCA said his behaviour was improper, inappropriate, unprofessional, belittling and humiliating.
• Andy Coster appointed by PM Ardern in April 2020. The IPCA said that Commissioner Coster failed to inform the PSC panel his knowledge of Deputy McSkimming’s relationship, inappropriately tried to influence the NIU’s investigation into Ms Z’s complaint and to persuade the IPCA that the matter could be resolved quickly. which he sought to bring a serious criminal investigation to an unduly rapid conclusion so that it did not impact on a job application process.
• Tania Kura appointed by PM Hipkins in April 2023. The IPCA said that Kura failed to make sufficiently robust enquiries, failed to refer the allegations to the NIU and the IPCA.
• Jevon McSkimming appointed by PM Hipkins in April 2023. Has pleaded guilty to possessing child sexual exploitation and bestiality material.

Ardern and Hipkins are just the unluckiest Prime Ministers around to have had all four of their top Police appointments turn out to be sub-standard by pure coincidence.

Little to say here – the Ministry numbers speak for themselves

“Highlights”: Full attendance statistics (90% of days attended)

The Minister responsible (Seymour) getting into a blame game over a possible 1% difference shows that he has simply not grasped the enormity of the problem and all of the long-term consequences being built up.

[email protected]

Samira Taghavi writes at Law News:

When a statutory regulator begins to stretch its mandate beyond what Parliament intended, it is not a minor procedural concern – it is a constitutional matter.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has recently asserted that its jurisdiction may extend to “internet radio” and other forms of internet-delivered audio content. At first glance, this might appear to be an administrative or technological question. It is not. It is about the limits of state power, the certainty of the law and the preservation of freedom of expression in a democratic society.

The Law Association’s Public and Administrative Law Committee has written to Paul Goldsmith, the Minister for Media and Communications, because this development cuts to the heart of our constitutional framework: no regulator may enlarge its own powers through “interpretation” which defies the legislature’s textual exactitude.

Good to see the Law Association realise the importance of this.

In a 2019 paper and a more recent interlocutory decision, the authority suggested that it may have jurisdiction over “online broadcasting that resembles a traditional radio or television station”. That word – ‘resembles’ – is where the problem lies.

Resemblance is not a legal test. It is a subjective, functional concept untethered from statutory language. A regulator cannot expand its jurisdiction because new technologies look similar to old ones. Jurisdiction is not a matter of convenience or analogy; it is a matter of law.

The Broadcasting Act defines ‘broadcasting’ by reference to radio waves and broadcasting apparatus. Internet-based services do not meet that definition. They operate over an entirely different infrastructure – one that was never within the BSA’s statutory contemplation.

To interpret otherwise is to legislate by stealth.

If they truly believed that had jurisdiction, they would have been asking all Internet based video and audio services to be paying the broadcasting levy.

The cornerstone of administrative law is that state power must have a legal source. Public bodies cannot act unless authorised by statute and they cannot exceed the scope of that authorisation. This principle – sometimes described as the ultra vires doctrine – is not a mere procedural technicality. It is the constitutional mechanism that keeps power accountable.

This is why the Minister should have intervened. It is not an operational matter. It is a constitutional matter.

Legal certainty demands that the law be clear, knowable and predictable. Citizens and content providers should not have to guess whether their speech falls under a regulator’s jurisdiction. Nor should they discover, after the fact, that the scope of regulation has expanded through interpretation rather than legislation.

This is key. It is totally unacceptable that video and audio providers on the Internet may be subject to a regime without their knowledge.

To assist the government in restoring certainty and clarity, the Public and Administrative Law Committee has prepared two short draft bills for officials to consider.

Broadcasting Amendment (Abolition of the BSA) Bill

This bill proposes abolishing the Broadcasting Standards Authority in its entirety, with appropriate transitional provisions

The rationale is simple: the BSA model is an anachronism. The media landscape it was designed for – centralised, largely state-owned and frequency-based – no longer exists.

Most major broadcasters and content platforms already adhere voluntarily to the jurisdiction of the New Zealand Media Council, which provides a robust, independent and adaptive self-regulatory framework. The BSA, by contrast, duplicates oversight in a shrinking sector while being ill-suited to the realities of online communication.

An excellent bill. Maybe a backbench MP could submit it to the ballot.

UPDATE: As it happens, since I wrote this ACT MP Laura McClure has done so. Excellent.

The McSkimming affair, in a nutshell, is:

• A woman repeatedly accused the Deputy Police Commissioner of sexual assault and other offences.
• She was charged with harassing the Deputy Police Commissioner, while he was never investigated over the allegations until after she was charged.
• Multiple people at Police HQ not only failed to investigate the allegations, but also went out of their way to hide them from the Public Service Commission appointment panels, the IPCA and the Minister – all so it would not interfere with the Deputy Commissioner’s chances of being made Commissioner

Before we look at the legal side, let’s take it from a common sense point of view. If McSkimming had been appointed Commissioner (which was almost certain if there had not been a change of government), then the scandal, once fully exposed, would probably be regarded as New Zealand’s biggest ever corruption scandal, and would have made global news. It would have resulted in an incumbent Commissioner being found guilty of serious offences etc etc.

The Oxford Dictionary defines corruption as:

dishonest or illegal behaviour, especially of people in authority

By that definition, what happened is clearly corruption. It was clearly dishonest behaviour of people in authority.

Whether it was illegal Is another matter. I know some lawyers who have suggested that what happened could be considered “conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice in New Zealand” which is an offence under S116 of the Crimes Act. In the end any decision on potential charges would be for Crown Law to reach, after a full investigation by Police.

It could well be that the behaviour by multiple senior officers was not illegal, even though it was clearly disgraceful. One can have a view that what happened in its entirety was corrupt, even though no individual person broke the law. McSkimming did of course break the law around objectionable material, and that only was discovered once the Police launched a proper investigation of him over the allegations by Ms Z.

An astonishing video of Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa playing basketball with Admiral Brad Cooper (Centcom Commander) and Brigadier General Kevin Lambert (Operation Inherent Resolve  Commander).

President al Sharaa is a former al-Qaeda leader, and was designated a global terrorist in 2013.

To see him playing basketball with top US commanders is surreal (and his foreign minister posted the video).

He is far from an angel, but he is the best hope for a more peaceful Syria in future. It is good to see the US having positive relations with him.

By Lucy Rogers

I recently uncovered a detail about the police investigation into my arrest which (in my eyes) sheds some light on the relationship between the IPCA and the New Zealand Police. People seemed interested to read my analysis of those dynamics the last time I wrote on the subject, so I thought I’d share.

As readers may recall, I was wrongfully arrested in November 2023, and laid a complaint to the IPCA. Although I did not know it, the police conducted a parallel investigation into my complaint. The investigator sent an email inviting me to be interviewed to Jonathan Ayling’s email address but misspelt it, and when he did not receive a response to this concluded that I was admitting guilt and did not make any further effort to contact me.

This appears to have influenced how evidence was subsequently evaluated. It seems that no interviews were conducted with any of the arresting officers, instead relying on their written statements. Then when footage later came to light showing the entire incident from start to finish (sans a few seconds at the beginning) the investigator does not appear to have revisited those statements, and as a result stark contradictions between the police statements and the footage went unnoticed.

In December 2024 he was sent a draft of the IPCA report about my arrest for comment. I have learned through a Privacy Act request that, although the IPCA reached the opposite conclusions from the police about my arrest (and the assault which preceded it), the investigator read only the recommendations section (i.e. about three sentences) and not the IPCA’s reasoning, which made up most of the report. Thus, for example, he was not made aware that one of the police officers said that I was not yelling, which contradicted the evidence of the other officers.

Given that the investigator had not interviewed the officers involved and had only skimmed the evidence, I would have expected some degree of curiosity re: the IPCA’s reasoning. Accordingly I suspect that his decision not to read it reflects wider internal attitudes toward the IPCA. PPC seem well aware that PPC, not the IPCA, hold the real power, and I suspect that this can foster a casual approach to the IPCA’s views. I suspect PPC also see the IPCA as “sticklers for the rules” and/or removed from the practical realities and pressures of street policing, which reduce the weight given to its findings. (Ironically, according to my sources this is exactly how PPC itself is seen by other police officers.)

In turn, I suspect the IPCA (who, in my experience, are good and honest people doing a very difficult job) are weary of on the one hand conducting investigations with integrity only to have the results routinely ignored by the police, while on the other hand facing extreme distrust from complainants and the general public (who are often dissatisfied with the outcomes of IPCA reports for a whole variety of reasons which I shall not here explore).

In short, the dynamics of the relationship between the IPCA and the police are very different from public perception.

A couple of caveats: I am appalled at the way that the investigation was handled and I maintain that not interviewing me was a shocking error, but it matters that PPC have apologised and acknowledged fault. Furthermore, having reviewed all of the correspondence and materials related to the investigation, I have tentatively come to believe that the investigator acted in good faith. I note that two people have spoken highly of him to me, which carries a lot of weight with me.

I note also that while the investigator’s attitude towards the IPCA objectively speaking is very arrogant, I understand how someone immersed in police subculture (and its blindnesses) might get there. Nine witnesses including some senior police officers told lies about me of varying degrees of seriousness: that’s a lot. I can understand the perception that outsiders just don’t get what it’s like to be a cop, and how that might affect someone’s approach to police oversight. I can also understand how he would develop a cynicism about complainants if people who complain about police are often dishonest.

But to pre-empt any criticisms that I am overly generous: I am not justifying the errors of the investigation (which are truly staggering, and which are not even covered in full here) but I’m writing an article trying to shed some light on the mentality of police investigators which by necessity entails setting out the investigator’s perspective. This post is not about rehashing my grievances with PPC. It’s about debunking the myth that the IPCA and the police are drinking buddies.

A great article by Zoran Rakovic. He starts by defining science:

“Science must begin with myths,” Karl Popper wrote, “and with the criticism of myths.” The operative word is criticism. Science doesn’t function on reverence; it thrives on tension, on the perpetual risk of being wrong. That’s what makes it public. I don’t need a PhD to challenge a scientific claim; I need only logic, evidence, and courage. In the words of Richard Feynman, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” A rather deliciously impolite notion in a world obsessed with credentialism.

This norm, that anyone may challenge anything, is not an optional feature; it is the beating heart of science. Robert Merton called it universalism: claims must be evaluated independently of the claimant. You don’t get special exemption because you’re Indigenous, French, Catholic, or a Nobel laureate. As C.S. Peirce saw it, scientific truth is not revealed to a priestly caste: it is what “the community of inquirers” would eventually converge on if they kept arguing long enough.

Even the Royal Society of London, that dusty establishment of wigs and brass telescopes, etched this into its very motto: Nullius in verba: “take no one’s word for it.” It’s an epistemic rebellion: trust no one, test everything.

So science is about challenge, about verification, about what is said, not who says it.

Mātauranga Māori is, quite rightly, described by Māori scholars as a taonga, a treasured body of knowledge. Sir Mason Durie frames it as a Māori way of knowing: formed through whakapapa, whenua, observation, and deeply embedded values. Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal sees it as a rich, evolving knowledge tradition, not static but anchored in Māori cosmology. Leonie Pihama, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Margaret Mutu have all powerfully defended its sovereignty. And they are absolutely right to do so.

But here’s the twist: it is precisely because mātauranga is treasured that it cannot be science. A body of knowledge that is sacred, protected, or governed by identity-based restrictions, that cannot be openly challenged by outsiders, cannot be modified without permission, cannot be replicated or reinterpreted without cultural clearance, is not operating under the rules of science.

And that is not a critique. It is a category distinction.

That is a very good way of looking at it. It is not a sub-category. It is a different category.

Science demands universality. Mātauranga demands kaitiakitanga. Science is desacralised; mātauranga is often deeply spiritual. Science invites critique from the stranger; mātauranga reserves knowledge rights to tangata whenua. These are different systems. They are both legitimate. But they are not interchangeable.

To call mātauranga “science” is not to elevate it: it is to misunderstand both traditions. It’s like declaring a haka to be a form of quantum mechanics because it requires timing and energy. Beautiful? Yes. Scientific? No.

One could even argue that to categorise mātauranga as science is to colonise it again, this time epistemologically. The very act of insisting “this too is science!” risks flattening its uniqueness. As Aroha Mead and others have pointed out, mātauranga is not merely data collection: it is bound up in whakapapa, atua, ethics, ceremony. Science, by contrast, seeks to strip knowledge of its ancestry and test it in the naked light of reproducibility.

A very good argument.

So, when defenders of mātauranga insist that its use and interpretation must be governed by iwi, hapū, and tikanga: that’s reasonable, even vital. Knowledge systems deserve protection. Intellectual property has boundaries. But once you set those boundaries, you’re stepping out of science and into the domain of treasured cultural knowledge, which is another thing entirely.

Let me be clear: this is not a denigration of mātauranga Māori. Quite the opposite. It is a plea to let it breathe in its own category, rather than forcing it to sit awkwardly at the science table where it must endure questions it may not wish to answer. Not every form of knowledge benefits from being run through the algorithms of peer review and Popperian falsifiability.

We do mātauranga no favours by forcing it into a lab coat.

The mythology that whales and kauri are brothers so that the first has a brother in the sea is a wonderful cultural artefact. It is something that until a few years ago no-one would scorn at, just as you wouldn’t scorn at the mythology of Rome or Greece.

But when you insist that this cultural artefact is actual science, and you get taxpayers to fund a $4 million science project to ascertain if playing whale songs will cure kauri dieback, then you invite scorn and ridicule. Because you have taken something from one category and tried to fit it into another.

In fact, one might say that cherishing mātauranga as mātauranga, not as science, is an act of integrity. Let it remain plural. Let it remain richly different. Just as the Bible is not biology, the karakia is not chemistry, and quantum field theory is not whakapapa. That doesn’t make any of them inferior; it makes them honest.

To insist they are the same is to collapse meaning in the name of equality.

I hope the Royal Society of NZ read this column.

Radio NZ reports:

A geopolitical analyst says Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should have stepped in to fix New Zealand’s diplomatic spat with Cook Islands, as Foreign Minister Winston Peters is making things worse.

The latest development in the breakdown between the two nations has seen New Zealand pause an additional $11 million in funding to the Cook Islands. That brings the total amount of funding paused to $29.8m over two years.

I disagree. Rewarding what the Cooks PM has done by backing down would be a mistake.

The New Zealand government believed it should have been consulted over the agreements while Brown disagreed. Cook Islands is a realm country of New Zealand, which means it governs its own affairs, but New Zealand provides some assistance with foreign affairs, disaster relief and defence.

Geoffrey Miller, an analyst at the Democracy Project, said Brown and Peters seem completely at-odds with each other, and Peters’ approach was not working.

“He’s not solving it – it’s just getting worse,” he said.

“And Winston Peter’s only solution, it seems, is to escalate further. And that’s when I think the prime minister needs to come in.”

I take the opposite view. We should escalate even further.

Part of being in the Realm of New Zealand gets you the high benefit of automatic NZ citizenship. If the Cooks Islands PM wants to do secret deals with China behind our back, then they should understand that they can’t remain in the Realm of New Zealand.

I’d grant the Cook Islands full independence from New Zealand. Then they can cosy up all they want to China and become a funded micro-state of China. Maybe they can even negotiate Chinese citizenship for all their residents. But possibly that won’t be quite as attractive as NZ citizenship.

Damien Grant writes:

The current leader of the opposition, Chris Hipkins, stumbled into a policy release on the party’s capital gains tax. The term policy is generous. This was a marketing plan sketched on the back of a napkin that had been used to wipe the lipstick off a chardonnay glass after drinks at a Fabian Society soiree on Courtney Place.

I digress. The policy amounts to a few pages in a glossy press-release with less substance than a frozen coke. The details are sketchy. If you own property in July 2017, and sell it after that date, you pay 28% of any increase in value; with no allowance for inflation. Family homes are exempt.

Damien no doubt recalls how Labour came up withs its policy to build 100,000 Kiwibuild homes in the back of a taxi.

Labour wants to use the money from this tax to subsidise visits to see the doctor; which makes no sense as the cost of this policy will hit in year one but, as the Institute explains, income from a capital gains tax will take many years to build up.

There is a cash shortfall on Labour’s own analysis in the early years which, like everything else in this policy, the resolution is left to the imagination. Sydney Sweeney’s dresses are more transparent.

I wonder how long it took Damien to find a way to mention Ms Sweeney!

Chris Hipkins is asking us to reinstate him to Premier House. For us to believe that he has learnt from his catastrophic reforms of the education sector that thrashed more than a dozen polytechnics, the fall in literacy and numeracy during his five years as education minister and his gross mishandling of the covid vaccine roll out.

This policy announcement, like the ones before it, are not the product of serious consideration.

It’s more a media stunt than a policy.

The Press reports:

Members of a South Island ski club cannot soak in its hot tub with an alcoholic drink after health experts warned someone could drown.

Wait until they find out that there are hundreds of thousands of people who own a spa pool at home, and that they also sometimes drink in them!

The Post reports:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says Te Pāti Māori still isn’t ready for Government, as the party booted two of its MPs from its caucus this week.

This is a meaningless statement. He is not ruling out a coalition with them. He’s just hoping people interpret it that way.

“I’d like to see Te Pāti Māori focused on representing the people who voted for them, showing up in Parliament, constructively participating in debates, coming up with some new ideas. I think those are all things that are opportunities available to them,” Hipkins said.

What a low bar he sets. Hipkins is saying that so long as they actually turn up to Parliament, he’ll do a deal with them.

It is very clear they have no interest in Parliament, except as material for their social media. They don’t even turn up for the Budget debate.

On Patreon, I have done a list of who were the good cops and bad cops in the McSkimming affair. I’ve managed to identify 90% of the bad cops by name. I note:

What is astonishing with this list isn’t just how many there were, but how senior they were.

The three most senior officers, all personally appointed by PMs Ardern and Hipkins comes out of this terribly.

Also showing bad judgement was a further Deputy Commissioner and two Assistant Commissioners. And several very senior non-sworn staff at Police HQ also come out looking badly.

So a Commissioner, three Deputy Commissioners and two Assistant Commissioners can’t be seen as just one bad apple.

It is worth reflecting that all three top cops appointed by Ardern and Hipkins turned out to either be a criminal (McSkimming) or incredibly bad at their jobs (Coster and Kura). A 0 out of 3 strike rate is not good.