Radically different views here. The Greens:

The Green Party is pushing for the Government to make police pursuit policy more restrictive following the deaths of three teenagers fleeing the police earlier this week.
Green MP Gareth Hughes said he has contacted Police Minister Stuart Nash to make his party’s wishes clear.
Hughes hoped that a new report from the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) on police pursuits, due out in February, will stir a conversation around police chase policy.
“No pursuit is worth the deaths of innocent bystanders or the potential offenders. Things just aren’t working and current policies are making it worse,” Hughes said.

So the Greens want a policy where anyone who wants to escape the Police can do so, so long as they are willing to speed.

And by letting all the offenders escape, how many more victims get created by their ability to carry on? They themselves may kill innocent people by being able to carry on driving dangerously.

NZ First takes a very different view. Here’s Darroch Ball:

We need to stop the “police blame game” when it comes to the rise in fleeing driver incidents and related deaths on our roads.  
We need to stop focusing on police pursuits as being the cause of the problem and instead look at the individuals whose actions create the need for the pursuit in the first place.
The data shows us police have been abandoning more and more pursuits, but the number of those who choose to flee from police has continued to climb.
Over the past decade, the number of drivers who fled from police on our roads has almost doubled from about 2000 in 2009, to about 4000 when the final official count for 2018 is published. That is an alarming increase.  

Some useful actual data. So the results of the Police changing their policy to restrict pursuits has led to more drivers fleeing the Police. This is no surprise.

Not only do the total number of incidents show an enormous increase over the past decade, the number of “police abandonments” has dramatically increased too.
In 2009, the proportion of car chases abandoned by police was about 25 per cent. In 2018, it was nearly 60 per cent.
Over that same period, those drivers have caused more than 400 deaths or serious injuries on our roads. 

The offenders know that the more dangerously they drive, the more likely it is they will get away and face no consequences.

Fleeing drivers now understand that all they have to do is immediately begin to drive dangerously – wrong side of the road, excessive speed, putting the public in danger – and the pursuing police officer must abandon the pursuit.
The greater danger the drivers then place on the public and themselves, and the more crashes and deaths we see. It is a perfect storm.

Good to see some common sense from NZ First.

There also needs to be harsher penalties for the “failure to stop” charge, including mandatory community service. Additionally, there needs to be a separate offence of “failure to stop while driving in a dangerous or reckless manner”, which comes with much harsher penalties than what is currently in the law – including prison time.
Fleeing drivers need to be held to account for the danger they present to both police and the public.
They think they can just drive erratically and get away with it.
It’s a problem that is adding to the death toll on our roads and needs addressing urgently.

I look forward to NZ First introducing such a law change. If National back it, it can get passed.

Max Christoffersen writes:

There are few things more insulting than the platitudes used by elected councillors when it comes time to hit the hustings.
And so it has begun already. It’s local body election year and those seeking another turn at the ratepayer trough are lining up for the October bun fight.
Hamilton has its first candidate out the gate with Councillor Angela O’Leary confirming a run for mayor.
It’s been obvious to anyone watching, O’Leary has been posturing and posing as the mayor in waiting since the middle of last year. The social media grandstanding and platitudes in the chamber have been thick in the air while O’Leary enjoys posing as the people’s champion.

There can be few more disturbing sights than sitting councillors positioning themselves as the solution for the very problems they were in part responsible for creating.
And so it is with O’Leary. No-one should be under any illusion Hamilton’s fiscal and social problems of today have been crafted by the councils of the past and O’Leary was present for all of it.

That’s a pretty brutal take down.

The V8s is council’s smoking gun of institutional and council bungling and O’Leary was there for crucial decisions, the Waikato Times reporting, “after the 2007 elections the (V8) subcommittee came under the chairmanship of Maria Westphal and with Kay Gregory, Angela O’Leary and Mr Redman, continued to make crucial contract spending decisions”.
This is not a track record of sound financial governance that lends confidence to any aspirations O’Leary may have for city mayor.

Blunt.

If elected it will be O’Leary’s fifth term and she represents all that is wrong with local body politics. She is a career politician with little to show for more than a decade in Hamilton City Council chambers.
She now believes she has the answers to the city’s woes she has been powerless to implement over the past decade. It is why there should be a limit to three terms for elected representatives. In time councillors become jaded and subject to group think and round-the-table point scoring.

I support term limits but nine years is a little too short. I think 15 to 18 years would do.

Stuff reports:

Businesses caught handing out plastic bags to customers after July 1 could face six-figure fines.
The Government announced in August plans to phase out single-use plastic shopping bags, later opting for a ban after feedback that included 9000 submissions.
Ministry for the Environment documents confirm rule-breakers could be fined up to $100,000, depending on the seriousness of the offence.  

Only a $100,000 fine? No jail time? Surely giving a shopper a bag to hold their groceries in merits prison time. I mean this is a heinous crime.

At home we have almost run out of the plastic bags we used to get the shopping in, which we of course use as bin liners. So in a few weeks we’ll have to start buying bin liners.

Kiwiblog regulars will be sad, as I was, to hear the news that Flipper passed away today. He recently had his 80th birthday.

I will miss his comments here, and his regular e-mails sharing his views on issues of the day.

Stuff reports:

The text message high profile personality Richie Hardcore sent the Prime Minister concerning the Karel Sroubek case has been released.
The text, released to Stuff under the Official Information Act, confirms that Hardcore’s message was made in gratitude.
On October 30, after the decision to cancel Sroubek’s deportation was made public, Hardcore wrote: “Myself and my friends and the community wanted to pass on their respects and praise for the decision about Jan Antolik, Karoul Sroubek, he’s made a bunch of really bad choices but he’s a good guy deep down, so thank you to Ian and yourself for giving him another chance.”

Yeah a really good guy deep down. Heart of gold.

National Immigration spokesman Michael Woodhouse said the release raised “serious questions”.
 “Why was Sroubek’s main supporter texting her directly to pass on his ‘respect and praise’ over the decision to allow Sroubek to stay in New Zealand in spite of Sroubek’s criminal history and the fact he came here on a false passport?” Woodhouse said.
“Why was one of Sroubek’s fellow inmates – Alex Swney – texting and emailing the Prime Minister information on the case, which has only now been revealed in spite of months of questioning? And what was that information and what is her relationship with Mr Swney?”

This explains why ILG made the decision he did. Not that these messages influence him, but that some Labour politician live in a bubble world where giving residency to convicted drug dealers has all your friends praising you for being wise and compassionate.

Then they discover their friends are not that representative of New Zealand.

Whale Oil blogs:

In late October Cam had to go to hospital by ambulance not once but twice. After being discharged from his first stay in hospital he had to be readmitted due to complications. Cam suffered a serious stroke that left him partially paralysed down his right side and totally paralysed in his right arm including his hand and fingers as well as severe impairment in higher order functioning and moderate speech impairment. Prior to this event Cam was perfectly fit and healthy with no predisposing stroke risk factors. Doctors have concluded that the cause of the stroke was entirely due to stress.

Off memory Cam is being sued by three different people or groups. A collection of public health activists in one, Matt Blomfield in another and Colin Craig in a third. One can only imagine the stress that causes.

Now that more than two months have passed, we have decided it is time to let you, our loyal audience, know what has been going on behind the scenes. There will be no other public announcement or comment regarding Cam’s health other than to say that he is approaching his recovery with typical determination (some would say obsession) and a never-give-up attitude.
Progress is being made, but it is very long and very hard. Cam cannot concentrate, read or take phone calls for more than ten or fifteen minutes a day. He cannot cope with loud noises, background noises or being interrupted and he certainly does not have the ability to form complex thought structures. The vision in Cam’s right eye has also been affected.
On the day he was discharged from hospital Cam was presented with the results of a nerve impulse conduction test performed on his right arm which said there was exactly zero nerve impulse conduction detected by electrodes they had attached to that arm. That test is prognostic of long term outcomes. Obviously, zero nerve impulse conduction means zero movement.

Cam is absolutely determined to battle on. He is one the most determined guys I know. But this is a real battle.

Please help us to help Cam with his recovery by supporting our efforts to minimise further stress which could prove fatal to him. You could do this by donating to his legal fighting fund, buying a subscription to Whaleoil, upgrading your existing subscription, or by buying lots of lovely restaurant quality meat from The Whale Meat Company.
Legal fund details:
Account Number: 12-3084-0009523-50 
SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANTS LIMITED

I’ve just donated and hope others will also.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand’s human rights record – including the high rate of family violence and a disparity in health outcomes for Maori versus non-Maori – will come under scrutiny from the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Justice Minister Andrew Little will lead a delegation to New Zealand’s universal periodic review at the council, which will take place on January 21.
“Generally speaking, our human rights record is a good one,” Little told the Herald.
“It’s important for New Zealand and for its reputation around the world that we maintain that reputation and continue to do the right thing.

“We’re not perfect. We won’t be perfect. But we should continue to strive to do the best we can.”
The council will consider a national report on New Zealand’s record, a compilation of UN information, and a report from civil society institutions such as the NZ Law Society, the Chief Ombudsman and Amnesty International.

These sessions are a hilarious farce as representatives from other countries tut tut us on stuff such as prisoners not getting the vote, and the NZ hasn’t managed to abolish domestic violence etc.

Here’s some of the countries on the UN Human Rights Council who will be telling us how we have to do better on human rights:

• Egypt where protests are banned and regime opponents arrested and tortured
• South Africa, where they are threatening to confiscate farms without compensation
• China, well need one comment
• Saudi Arabia, where women are second class citizens
• Cuba a one party state with no free press
• Congo where security forces kill, torture and rape
• Nigeria where politicians hire gangs to rig elections and you can go to jail simply for associating with a gay person
• Pakistan the home of honour killings of girls
• Eritrea a one party state with no free press

Stacey Kirk writes:

In a lineup where the first iteration only just managed to tick the box of adequate female representation, Ardern has to replace one woman who was arguably there to fill a quota in the first place – as incompetent as Clare Curran proved to be.
She also faces complications with sacked Meka Whaitiri, who is widely acknowledged to have bruised a staffer, yet is still fixing for a ministerial return. ‘Fat chance’ would be the appropriate response, but with the apparent support of the Māori caucus it’s an added layer of complexity at the least. 
In a pool of 14 potential women that could be brought to or near the Cabinet table, only three have been in parliament for more than a term. Poto Williams, Ruth Dyson and Louisa Wall. 

If Labour wasn’t obsessed with quotas, and the promotions were on merit, it would be very easy.

There is once vacancy in Cabinet. You look at who has been the best performing Labour Minister outside Cabinet. It is clearly Kris Faafoi. So on competence and ability he should move into Cabinet.

There is also a vacancy outside Cabinet. If you look at the next rank down you have a Parliamentary Under-Secretary in Michael Wood who is clearly capable of being a Minister.

So on ability and competence the two promotions should be Faafoi and Wood. But they have a problem. They have penises.

The Herald reports:

Auckland must dump the ideology of a compact city and spread out and grow to make housing affordable, says Auckland councillor Greg Sayers.

“Auckland should spread out predominantly to the south where there is a lot of suitable land,” Sayers says in a self-published book, How to Fix Auckland’s Housing Crisis.

The Rodney councillor joins other right-leaning advocates who believe the solution to the city’s housing crisis is to abolish the rural-urban boundary that controls land supply for housing, freeing up planning rules to make it easier for developers and funding infrastructure through user-pays.

It is not just right leaning advocates who say this. Phil Twyford campaigned on abolishing it. But to date I’ve not seen any legislation to do this. He should make it a priority.

The solutions in the book, he said, are essential to solving Auckland’s rapidly growing wealth inequality and poverty issues, dealing with homelessness, eliminating diseases associated with overcrowding and reversing house prices from being the ninth most unaffordable in the world.
“It is morally wrong that many of our next generation of youth have given up any sense of hope of ever becoming homeowners,” Sayers said.
When the Herald approached Mayor Phil Goff for comment, a spokesman said he had not seen or read the book yet.
For information about the book go to: www.gregsayers.co.nz

The Herald reports:

Labour MP and former police union boss Greg O’Connor has been hit with a $150 fine and 20 demerit points after a member of the public photographed him driving on the wrong side of the road.
It is embarrassing for O’Connor, who was the longest-serving president of the Police Association before he became the MP for Ohariu in 2017.
A member of the public reported O’Connor’s car to police as it travelled through Central Otago on Wednesday last week.
Police failed to locate O’Connor’s vehicle that night, but have since spoken to O’Connor.

“Following further inquiries, the driver of a vehicle which was reported to police on 9 January on SH6 near Queenstown will be issued with an infringement notice for ‘failing to keep left’,” a spokesperson for police said.
“The penalty is a $150 fine and 20 demerit points. Police would like to thank any member of the public who helps us keep our roads safe.”
Last week O’Connor said he had no memory of driving in a way that would warrant police attention, and he repeated that when contacted by the Herald yesterday.
But he had been shown photographs of him crossing the centreline.

I don’t think the infringement is a big thing. Few of us drive perfectly.

What I find interesting is the fact this story got out to the media. It looks like someone in the Police leaked it to the media. As Greg is a former head of the police union, this raises interesting possibilities about motives.

Stuff reports:

Work is under way on law changes that will impose a 10kmh speed limit for Lime electric scooters, with the Government set to consult on the new rules early this year.

How stupid.

I run faster than 10 km/hr. Some sort of speed limit for scooter use on footpaths might be sensible, but 10 km/hr is just nanny state overkill.

From the WSJ:

Nearly half of millennials say they prefer socialism to capitalism, but what do they mean? “My policies most closely resemble what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told “60 Minutes.” Yet Sweden’s experiment with socialist policies was disastrous, and its economic success in recent decades is a result of market-based reforms.

Sweden is not a socialist state.

In 1991 a market-oriented government came to power and undertook far-reaching reforms. Policy makers have privatized parts of the health-care system, introduced for-profit schools along with school vouchers, and reduced welfare benefits. Since 1997, government ministries that propose new spending plans have been required to find offsetting cuts in their budgets. As a result, public debt has declined from 80% of GDP in the early 1990s to 41%.
To increase incentives to work, Sweden reduced unemployment benefits and introduced an earned-income tax credit in 2007. The electricity and transportation industries were deregulated in the 1990s, and even the Swedish postal system was opened up to competition in 1993. The corporate tax rate was cut from its 2009 level of 28% to 22% today, and is scheduled to decline to 20.4% in 2021.

A corporate tax rate of 20%. Nice.

This policy mix has earned Sweden a Heritage Foundation ranking as the 15th freest economy in the world. The U.S. is 18th. And it’s paid off. Since 1995, Swedish economic growth has exceeded that of its European Union peers by about 1 point a year. Sweden is now richer than all of the major EU countries and is within 15% of U.S. per capita GDP. While Sweden still has a larger government than the U.S., its tax code is flatter. The progressivity of the U.S. tax code distorts incentives. These distortions would become even larger under the tax-increase proposals of democratic socialists like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.

AOC wants a top tax rate of 70%. Good luck with that. No one would actually pay it.

Tyler Cowan blogs:

China Daily reported Friday that unnatural deaths have taken the lives of 72 mainland billionaires over the past eight years. (Do the math.)
Which means that if you’re one of China’s 115 current billionaires, as listed on the 2011 Forbes Billionaires List, you should be more than a little nervous.

I don’t know about you but I find it somewhat improbable that among such a small population there could be so many “suicides,” “accidents” and “death by disease” (the average age of those who died from illness was only 48).

I guess killing off the super rich is one way to redistribute wealth.

UN Watch reports:

A human rights watchdog organization today condemned the UN’s election of Yemen, the worst-ranking country in the world on gender equality, to be vice-president of the Executive Board of UN Women, which is the United Nations entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women.
“Electing Yemen to protect women’s rights is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental human rights group.
“We’re calling on UN chief Antonio Guterres and high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet to speak out against this absurd and morally repugnant decision, which sends absolutely the wrong message from the very organization that is supposed to be protecting women from discrimination.”
Yemen was ranked 149th out of 149 in last year’s Global Gender Gap Report, produced by the World Economic Forum.
“How could the UN choose Yemen, a country that tolerates female genital mutilation, denies women hospital treatment without the permission of a male relative, and counts a woman’s testimony as worth half that of a man?” asked Neuer.
“We remind the UN that women in Yemen cannot marry without permission of their male guardians, and face deeply entrenched discrimination in both law and practice, in all aspects of their lives, including employment, education and housing.”
“The election of Yemen as vice-president at UN Women is an insult to women’s rights activists worldwide who struggle against the persecution exemplified by Yemen’s misogynistic laws and practices,” added Neuer.

If Nazi Germany had survived WWII, they would probably be sitting around the table at the UN getting elected vice-president of some human rights body.

Martin van Beynen writes:

we are now seeing the rise of another form of repressive politics called identity politics.
This is a creed which holds that society is structured to disadvantage certain groups defined by ethnicity, race, gender, religion and sexual orientation. Identity has always been part of the political landscape but it has taken a more pernicious form.
Now your identification with a certain group has little positive about it. For instance, you rarely hear about the advantages of being a woman or Māori. You tend to hear only about the wrongs, grievances and slights. In this way we have all become victims, including white males. You are defined not by the opportunities society has given you but by how much the unfairness of life exerts its pull on you.

And it encourages a mentality of blame others, and no individual responsibility.

One of my main beefs with identity politics is that it encourages the formation of artificial and pretentious alliances.
So you get professional, middle class women communing with women from poor and abusive backgrounds on the basis they have all been victims of male oppression. In this environment a sexist remark at the water-cooler is placed on the same plane as gross childhood sexual abuse. Their solidarity is founded on an emotional empathy that tends to overlook all of their economic and social differences.
In truth, a middle class professional women has much more in common with a middle class professional male than she does with women who have survived or are still living an underclass lifestyle.
In the same way, a middle class Māori man has a great deal more in common with a similarly-placed Pākehā person than he does with a single Māori mother living in a state house with four children and a violent boyfriend.
This alignment with identity rather than with more genuine common interests means people choose the wrong enemy. So the patriarchy is the enemy rather than the education system. Institutional racism is the adversary rather than entrenched welfare dependency and drug and alcohol addictions.

Spot on.

One of the most troubling aspects of identity politics is its tendency to repression. The intolerance and vitriol that greets any dissent from the orthodoxies of a particular identity allegiance stifles discussion and free speech.

Which is why so many try to stop Jordan Petersen from speaking. He dares to challenge the orthodoxy.

Jeremy Leibler writes in The Spectator:

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel once famously wrote ‘what hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.’
New Zealand’s actions at the UN General Assembly in December were those of a stand-for-nothing bystander, choosing to have a bet each way rather than follow the moral imperative to unequivocally condemn terrorism in all its forms.
Despite 87 countries, including Australia, supporting a US-backed resolution condemning the terrorist tactics waged by Hamas against Israel, the resolution was sabotaged by an earlier vote instigated by the Arab League that required a two-thirds majority for it to pass.
Although New Zealand voted to condemn Hamas for what it is – an extremist terrorist organisation committed to the destruction of the State of Israel and Western values – it abstained from the Kuwait-driven vote to impose the two-thirds majority hurdle.

New Zealand’s shameful abstention allowed the motion to pass with 75 countries in favour, 72 countries against and 26 countries abstaining. Had New Zealand exercised moral clarity like its other Western allies and voted against the motion, the result could have been very different.

So we tried to have it both ways – voting for the motion, but abstaining on the resolution that would have allowed the motion to pass.

Since its inception, the UN has passed over 500 resolutions that condemn Israel. Not one resolution has been passed to condemn Hamas, whose official covenant states that ‘Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.’ Article 13 of the Hamas Covenant states that ‘[t]here is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.’ Let’s be clear: this Covenant, or Charter, openly and explicitly advocates for a violent and bloody resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the UN has the audacity to ignore this.

Sadly no surprise.

Stuff reports:

Jim Yong Kim’s surprise resignation from the World Bank this week could lead the way for a battle of succession.
In a tradition that began at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, the leaders of two of the main bodies of global governance, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are always respectively American and European.
But this tradition has been the source of the occasional political flare up as developing nations have grown in economic influence. The World Bank has well over 100 member states, so why should the leadership always fall to an American?

Because they are the largest shareholder is the brutal realpolitik.

So could a New Zealander ever be a candidate? 

Former prime minister Sir John Key was at one point rumoured to be tipped as IMF head, and Helen Clark was widely thought to be a strong contender for the UN secretary general role, before former Portuguese prime minister António Guterres got the job. 
Christine Lagarde at the IMF may be the exception but women have not traditionally been given these roles, either. Clark’s defeat was seen by many as a glass ceiling situation. 
Thirkell-White said “[John Key] wouldn’t be my choice because its a development role more than a finance role. Helen Clark would be a better fit, but traditionally the bank has liked people more economist than Helen Clark. I would pretty surprised if either of them were nominated.”
Stuff asked both Key and Clark if they were considering a run at the role, if nominated. Key said that he was very happy with his current roles and will not be putting his name forward. Clark has not responded.

Key would have no interest in the job. Clark would love it I suspect. It is basically a development agency, like UNDP was.

Will Jacinda write to Donald Trump asking him to consider Helen?

A guest post by Alwyn Poole:

I have had a read of the Bali Haque led report on Tomorrows Schools by the “INDEPENDENT” taskforce (led by someone who is a former head of PPTA [DPF: Haque was on the executive of the PPTA but never its head)] and held a high NZQA position). I have also read his defence of it published here: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/109818999/our-schooling-system-needs-changing–and-heres-why
 
I have never read a document on the NZ education system to has more potential to cause irreparable harm to NZ children and their families. It doesn’t take long for their massively ideological pre-supposition to be made clear.
 
“Because schools are self-governing, agencies have lost the capacity and capability to deeply influence [i.e. control] schools in their core business of teaching and learning.” (p9 of their summary document).
 
Their work clearly was trying to find a whole lot of problems that their “solutions” fit and failing miserably. It is all about control – of Boards, Principals, teachers, resources, etc. Adding another layer of bureaucracy to the NZ system and removing parental influence is the VERY, VERY last thing needed.
 
Their proposals aim to hugely reduce the democratic influence of the NZ people in the education of their children.
 
Some of the problems they have identified need attention but that needs to be well directed. Their approach is like finding that 10 cars in a fleet of 1000 have bald tyres so ordering the replacements for all (as well as painting them dull grey and having State selected and controlled drivers). The vast majority of the recommendations they propose would set NZ education back decades. They appear to have no understanding of where the actual teaching/learning interface is.
 
New Zealand’s education problems are in a narrow but significant band. Our students are increasing competing in an international education and career market and need to be prepared superbly to do so. Our upper levels – predominantly higher socio-economic, Asian and European students still do well on international measures. This reports more than edges towards restricting the ability of higher decile schools to keep developing and extending their students. The attitude reminds me of one of my first representative rugby practices as a 20 year old. We started with laps as a warm-up and I was away running. One of the old clunkers crossed the middle of the field and pretended to do up his shoe laces, grabbed me as I went past and said; “Slow down you little prick – you are making us all look bad.” The schools that are flying in NZ should be given more freedom – not less. That other schools are faltering is not their fault or problem.
 
But it is a problem! The cumulative effect of 13 years NZ education results in  comparative UE pass rates of 67% for Asians, European 44%, Pasifika 22% and Māori 19%. This is a national disgrace and we have given up on believing it can be different. It is also a problem that Haque’s report will do nothing to change (although more “equity” may be achieved by slowing down the thriving schools). I would expect Labour Maori caucus will see this and stand against the proposals. The principles of tomorrows schools are far more valid and workable that what the new proposals provide but the Decile 1 – 3 schools need much more help and some of these are obvious:
– provide a qualified business manager alongside the Principal and Trust Board struggling school (30% of schools fail to stay within budget – which means 70% do and don’t need Haque’s governance interventions. This allows a much more significant concentration on academics.
– resource all Decile 1 – 3 schools to have class size of 15:1 and have highly specialised assistance to do all of the things that research shows to work if you differentiate the learning and the model with those ratios.
– massively alter the structure of the Collective Agreement to allow Decile 1 – 3 Principals to incentivise working at these schools. Also provide significant Professional Development in these schools to enhance teacher quality and best practice environments.
– have specialist roles in Decile 1 – 3 schools to have families engaged in the education of their children from Year 1 through to UE and on into tertiary education.
– actually trust the Principals and support them to do an excellent job – don’t take opportunities away from them and thus put in place a massive disincentive for mavericks and change agents.
 
The NZ curriculum is generally very good in that it contains enough content and an understanding of skill but also had a remarkable amount of freedom for staff and schools to work with. The current NZ teaching profession is in grave need of improvement but I would argue it is more qualitative than quantitative. The bar to entry for Primary training if far too low, university graduates are not tolerating another year without income therefore not considering secondary training and the main incentive to get more income is to teacher another year. Haque’s report – in the main – ignores most of this. Too offensive to the unions?
The Ministry of Education have 3000 staff already. What on earth do they do? How much does that cost? When were all schools asked for an evaluation of their performance? How much of what they do has any kind of impact on the day to day success – or otherwise of our children? As a Trust we have had the misfortune of having to work closely with the Ministry for the last 6 years – while there are some good people each time we are interacting with them I am unsure whether I am a character in 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, Catch 22 or a Monty Python Film. We have wasted so much time in these processes and the mode is an anathema to good educational practices. The very last thing that schools in New Zealand need is another layer of bureaucracy and control. Haque states that the “Hubs” would select the Principal for State schools (for a 5 year period) but the schools could provide up to half of the interview panel and have the right to veto. Would they also be able to view all CV’s or will the short list be vetted for those who are ideologically pure and will toe the line?
 
The education sector and NZ public are being told they will be able to submit and comment on the proposals. This reminds me of Eddie Izard’s “Cake or Death” skit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZVjKlBCvhg). There needs to be a third option – i.e. completely reject the report, put a much less ideologically disposed and far more creative group to the task, address the real problems getting in the way of high quality education for our young people … and get on with it.

The Guardian reports:

The most extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know the least about science but believe they know the most, researchers have found.

This explains the success of the Green Party.

The results from more than 2,500 respondents revealed the curious trend. “What we found is that as the extremity of opposition increased, objective knowledge went down, but self-assessed knowledge went up,” Fernbach said.

Can we get MPs to do this test?

The finding has echoes of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the observation from social psychology that incompetence prevents the incompetent from recognising their incompetence.

It’s the environmental equivalent.