The Herald reports:

Concerns are mounting among senior figures at Auckland Council over continued delays to appoint an investment manager for the city’s $1.3 billion Future Fund – with one councillor claiming the fund was missing out on $1m of growth every day.

Okay they are not missing out on $1m on growth a day. That is equal to a 28% annual return. There is no fund in NZ that gets anything close to that. The better funds can get 8% or so. Let’s say the Council is getting 3% from deposits, so they are missing out on maybe 5% which would be around $180,000 a day – still a useful amount.

Anyway the Taxpayers’ Union had the best solution for Auckland Council. It could be done almost instantly, would not need any consultants, and happen quickly. Ask the NZ Super Fund to manage the Auckland Future Fund for them. Why reinvent the wheel. The NZ Super Fund has demonstrated excellent returns over many years (and credit to Adrian Orr for his tenure there).

Stats NZ reports:

The gender pay gap was 5.2 percent in the June 2025 quarter, down from 8.2 percent in the June 2024 quarter, according to figures released by Stats NZ today. 

“The June 2025 quarter gender pay gap of 5.2 percent is the lowest since the series began in 1998,” labour market spokesperson Abby Johnston said.   

It is the lowest ever, and also the largest ever drop.

“Annually, the gender pay gap declined by 3.0 percentage points, the first statistically significant annual decline noted since 2017.” 

The pay gap under six years of Ardern and Hipkins declined 1.4% from 9.6% to 8.2%. This decline is twice as large as their entire six years.

No doubt the media will mainly ignore this data. If the gap had grown by 3% it would no doubt lead every news bulletin and be the subject of several weeks of columns.

Incidentally the gender pay gap is an interesting figure, but not that useful. It compares the median hourly earnings for men and women. So $33.76 for women and $35.62 for men which is a gap of 5.2%.

That doesn’t mean there is discrimination. It can reflect different occupational makeups for both gender. It can reflect women tend to have a longer absence from the labour market when children are young. It can reflect cultural differences in how assertive people are with pay negotiations. It may also have a discrimination factor, but you can’t tell from this data.

The more useful data is comparing within an industry, and adjusting for age and experience. For example do female 40 year old lawyers who have 17 years of experience get paid the same or less than male 40 year old lawyers with 17 years of experience. If the answer is yes, then discrimination is a more likely factor.

I suspect the gender pay gap will continue to decline, and may even end up with men on average being paid less than women. This is because so fewer men are going to university.

Stuff reports:

Labour’s Tāmaki Makaurau candidate stands by saying he’d repeal the gang patch law at an event on Wednesday night, despite the party’s deputy leader insisting he was “mistaken”.

Peeni Henare told RNZ he was asked his personal view on the issue, which was informed by his whānau experience, and understood that differed from his party’s view.

Henare is a senior Labour MP and is openly saying his party has the wrong policy.

So the official position of Labour seems to be they voted against the gang patch law, their MPs think it is a bad law that should be repealed, but their leader knows that would be unpopular so their policy is not to repeal it until they do coalition negotiations with the Greens who will demand it be repealed and Te Pati Maori who will probably want gang patches made mandatory!

James Kierstead at the NZ Initiative has done what hasn’t been done before, and looked at how many university students are getting As compared to the past. His findings show rampant grade inflation. Key findings:

• In the US the proportion of A grades has gone from 15% in 1940 to 45% a decade ago
• In England the proportion of degrees that are first class has gone from 7% in 1995 to 27% in 2019
• In NZ the proportion of A grades has grown from 22% in 2006 to 35% last year
• The largest increase was Lincoln that went from 15% As in 2010 to 39% As in 2024
• By discipline the largest increase was Arts and Humanities that went from 24% As to 40% As
• The smallest increases were Engineering (33% to 34%) and Law (17% to 21%)
• In 2020 49% of Auckland students got an A and 40% of Otago students

The reason for the grade inflation appears to be financial – the more students you have the more money the university gets, and failing too many students can drive numbers down. The same incentive applies at faculty level. Also an issue is courses with low pass rates can lost TEC funding.

There are some useful suggestions for how to reduce grade inflation in future, such as:

• List their rank or percentile in class as well as their grade (my old school reports would list my rank in every subject)
• Include the average mark on the report
• Include their distance from the mean in terms of standard deviations

Sadly I suspect no university will take up these suggestions.

The latest Term 2 attendance data is out. Term 2 can be the most useful as that can be tracked back to 2011. The other terms only track back to 2019.

So in the last three years the regular attendance rate has gone up 18 percentage points with all students and 17 percentage points with Māori students. In terms of percentage growth that is a 47% increase in the regular attendance rate for all students and a 62% increase for Maori students.

news.com.au reports:

Australia’s spy agency ASIO has found that Iran was responsible for a string of anti-semitic attacks in Australia in a bombshell finding that has prompted the expulsion of Iran’s ambassador.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made the shock announcement today flanked by AFP chief Reece Kershaw, ASIO boss Mike Burgess and Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

The anti-semitic campaign linked to Iran includes the attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne that occurred on December 6, 2024, when two masked men set fire to the building. 

The spy agency believes there are also links with the attacks on the Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Bondi, Sydney, which was damaged in firebombings in October last year.

These fire bombings were acts of terrorism, directed by a foreign power. The targets was Jews. If you firebomb a synagogue you are targeting Jews – not Israelis, not Zionists – just Jews.

If you firebomb a kosher cafe, again you are targeting Jews.

Iranian ambassador to Australia Ahmad Sadeghi was told just 30 minutes before the press conference that he – and three other officials – were being expelled from the country. 

The group – declared “persona non grata” – have seven days to leave. It also marks the first time since World War II that Australia has expelled a foreign ambassador.

This is a very big deal.

The IRGC will be listed as a terrorist organisation, with new laws set to be considered by federal parliament.

The question NZ media should ask our Government, is will they also list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. Surely planning terrorist attacks on Jews in Australia qualifies.

ACT MP Karen Chhour released:

Responding to the Green Party’s “Open Letter to the Minister of Children”, ACT Children’s spokesperson Karen Chhour says:

“The Green Party’s new manifesto for children is revealing. In their list of seven duties of care, they relegate child protection to fifth.

“Meanwhile, they’ve put ‘whānau and whakapapa must be centred’ first on their list. They clearly do not understand, or care, that many young people’s trauma is from their whānau.

“This focus on ‘cultural safety’ over physical safety is typical of the Greens, and sadly it’s an ideology that crept into Oranga Tamariki under the previous Government. That’s part of the mess I’ve been left to clean up as Minister.

I agree that physical safety must always be the top priority.

Winston Peters announced:

Cabinet has formally agreed this week to the closure of the greyhound racing industry in New Zealand.

A bill will be drafted to bring this decision into law. The move follows last December’s announcement of the Government’s in-principle decision to end greyhound racing as of 31 July 2026.

The decision was made following ongoing concerns about animal welfare and three reviews of the industry (2013, 2017, 2021) which all outlined significant safety issues.

Cabinet also agreed in full to the recommendations contained in an interim report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee – set up to plan the transition away from greyhound racing

When this decision was first announced last year, I instinctively thought it was a good decision. Part of what convinced me is that Winston was backing it, as it is known he has been a racing industry advocate. But as I have been involved with some research in this area, I have been alarmed by many of the details I have learnt about this decision.

I still personally back the in principle decision on the grounds of animal welfare. So this post is not arguing against that. But the way it is being done, and the hypocrisy is something people should feel uncomfortable with.

Here’s four things you may not know.

1. While this will end greyhound racing in NZ, the Government will still allow the TAB to take bets from Kiwis on 46,000 greyhound races a year in Australia. Even worse they will pocket tax on that betting, and hand the profits from the gambling to the NZ horse racing industry. This helps explains why Winston is supporting it – this is a massive income boost for the horse racing industry. My view is that if greyhound racing is truly so terrible for greyhound welfare, then the government should not be making money by allowing betting on Australian races, let alone earning tax revenue from it.
2. The period between a law being passed to end greyhound racing and the proposed end date of 31 July 2026 could be as little as three months. That is outrageously short for the over 1,000 or so people who will lose their jobs and the many trainers who have to close down their entire operations.
3. The Government will not pay any compensation to organisations that have been operating a sport that has been legal for 150 years, and has invested huge amounts into infrastructure and training.
4. The Government is proposing to confiscate the assets of Greyhound Racing New Zealand (a private industry body) and transfer them to a new government entity

A principled approach to this issue would be:

1. Have the end date for greyhound racing to be say two years after the law change
2. Either ban all greyhound racing gambling, or have any proceeds from gambling on Australian races go to NZ animal welfare charities rather than the horse racing industry
3. Have a modest amount of funding for compensation and transition support to the 1,000+ people who will be losing their jobs solely due to a government law change
4. Don’t steal the assets of Greyhound Racing NZ.

I’ve been going through the latest achievement data for year 8 students in maths and writing. While it has stabilised, it still shows how badly change is needed. Here’s the data for year 8 students.

So as they finish primary and intermediate schools, only 1 in 4 students are at the level expected for maths. Shockingly 3 in 5 are more than a year behind.

For students at schools in low socio-economic areas only 1 in 12 are at the expected level in maths and 4 in 5 are more than a year behind.

However that doesn’t mean all is okay at the wealthier area schools. Only 1 in 3 of their students are at the level and almost 1 in 2 are a year behind.

Writing is little better.

Overall 1 in 4 at the level and 3 in 5 more than a year behind.

Of some interest is there is little difference between students at low and moderate socio-economic schools. There is an improvement in high areas, but still poor with 1 in 3 at the level and 1 in 2 more than a year behind.

Erica Stanford has announced:

“From Term 1 next year, a new Writing Acceleration Tool will be available to support 120,000 Years 6–8 students who are below expected writing levels and won’t have the benefit of structured literacy from Year 1. Teachers will be supported to deliver explicit teaching and will be able to monitor student progress in real time, adjusting how their teaching based on individual needs and responses to intervention.

“Every Intermediate and Secondary School will be funded to train their own structured literacy intervention teacher. This training will be tailored for older students and extends what is already available for those teaching in Years 0-6. As requested by the sector, teachers will gain the skills needed to work with small groups of students who need targeted support, using structured, evidence-based approaches.

Great to see the Minister focused on listing achievements while so many on the left are obsessed with trivia such as removing some te reo words from a few books designed to teach English.

When random trolls on Twitter compared the Ardern Government to the Nazis there were numerous articles decrying such language. Now we have a senior Labour frontbencher saying in a televised debate that the NZ Government is worse than Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin etc and will any media be demanding Chris Hipkins censure his MP for such an insane statement?

Chris Penk announced:

“Right now, councils are hesitant to sign off on building consents and inspections because they could be held liable for all defects, leaving ratepayers to foot the bill.

“This often happens when one of the parties responsible cannot pay for repairs, for example, if a business goes bust.

“Currently, building owners can claim full compensation from any responsible party – and it’s often councils, with the deepest pockets and no option to walk away, that end up paying out.

“The risk-aversion this creates leads to frustrating delays and extra cost for builders and homeowners.

This is definitely a big issue. I recall when I was a parliamentary staffer working on the leaky homes issue. We got told that almost inevitably councils end up paying the most because they are the last one standing.

The council (ie ratepayers) may only be responsible for 5% of the problem but they end up with 100% of the liability.

“The Government will scrap the current framework, known as joint and several liability, and replace it with proportionate liability.

“Under this new model, each party will only be responsible for the share of work they carried out.

“Building owners will be protected if things go wrong and we’re exploring options such as requiring professional indemnity insurance and home warranties, similar to arrangements in Australia.

This seems a very worthwhile change, as does the potential requirement for indemnity insurance.

“The second major change I am announcing will allow councils to voluntarily consolidate their Building Consent Authorities (BCAs) functions with each other.

“It is ridiculous builders, designers and homeowners must navigate 66 different interpretations of the Building Code, because of the number of council BCAs across the country.

“Builders can be rejected on paperwork that would be accepted by a neighbouring authority simply because each BCA applies the rules differently.

“Many councils have asked for this and I expect they will seize the opportunity to consolidate, share resources like building inspectors and IT systems, and pass the savings on to ratepayers.

Also a good change. The Wellington councils could lead the way and set up one consent authority for the region. Wellingtonians often look to buy or build across the region – whether it be in Wellington proper, the Hutt or Porirua.

In August each year I receive a large raw data-set from the Ministry of Education – and process it into a highly informative and useful form for schools, families, politicians and other education interested entities.

This data set is of all of the LEAVERS for every school each year and is far more important/definitive than those that schools put out in February as that only covers the students per year group.

In a time of great proposed change in our education system, being fully informed on the state-of-play is essential.

One aspect that seems clear from the data is the place of students feeling that they belong to a form of wider collective – as well as having individual aims. Wealth is clearly an advantageous aspect for many of the top performing schools but there are others – e.g. doing well as “young women”, having faith/purpose based foundations, having cultural belonging.

This is the top 20 schools, by % of students gaining University Entrance for Leavers in 2024

Manukau Christian School
Diocesan School for Girls
St Cuthbert’s College
Rangi Ruru Girls’ School
Iona College
Pinehurst School
Kristin School
Craighead Diocesan School
Baradene College
ACG Parnell College
Marist College
Saint Kentigern College
Woodford House
St Mary’s College (Ponsonby)
St Oran’s College
King’s College
Christchurch Adventist School
Columba College
Waikato Diocesan School For Girls
Wellington Girls’ College

The apparent advantage of the faith, purpose and culture does not stop with that group either. If you break the set of 430+ schools into 10ths based on the Equity Index Numbers (which replaced “deciles”) the top schools in those divisions are:

1st 10th: Manukau Christian School
2nd 10th: Iona College
3rd 10th: Liston College
4th 10th: Christchurch Adventist College
5th 10th: Zayed College for Girls
6th 10th: Southland Girls High School
7th 10th: Auckland Girls Grammar School
8th 10th: Manukura
9th 10th: TKKM of Hokianga
10th 10th: Te Wharekura o Te Kaokaoroa o Patetere

NB: The first 10th are the lowest EQI numbers – having, according to govt. data, the least “at risk students”.

I have the full data set – showing the NZ School LEAVERS’ outcomes for 2024 – available now.

For every high school the process looks at in ranked order (including their Equity Index Number – which replaced “deciles”)
– School size
– NCEA Level 2 and 3 for Leavers (for all schools)
– University Entrance (UE) for Leavers (for all schools)
– The gap between L3 and UE (for all schools)
– The gaps – by school and aggregate – between ethnicities.
– Retention until 17 years of age (for all schools)
– Progression to Degree Level study (for all schools)
– Data split between the EQI 10ths (for all schools)
– Data that shows which schools are thriving above their demographics
– Case study data on the Super 8 Boys’ Schools and the 13 Boys’ Schools in the South Island seeking improvement
– System wide data gender, ethnicity, etc.

(NB: The UE statistics include equivalents for Cambridge and IB).

For those who would like the data set please email me: [email protected]

• if it is for personal use – a donation is appreciated.
• if it is for professional/business/school use – the costs is $350 (plus GST) I will send the data set with an invoice.

The Herald has a story about how someone with indecency convictions passed registation as a teacher, seemingly due to the Clean Slate Act. The timeline is:

• 2002: Convicted of three counts of committing an indecent act.
• 2004: Clean Slate Act passed
• 2011: Registered as a teacher, passed police vetting, did not disclose convictions
• 2014: Failed police vetting – they advised he not have unsupervised access to children, young people or vulnerable members of society. Certificate not renewed
• 2015: Passed police vetting
• 2016: Teachers’ Council renewed certificate
• 2017: Passed police vetting, Teachers’ Council renewed certificate.
• 2021: Censured by a teachers disciplinary tribunal in for misconduct in 2017, including making a sexual hand gesture to students, but was not required to inform his employer of the findings
• Aug 25: Jailed for four years and five months for indecently touching young girls at a private after-school tutoring company, and making objectionable child abuse material.

There appear to be several failures here.

1. Why did the Police flag him in 2014, but not in 2011, 2015 or 2017? Did they interpret the Clean Slate Act correctly?
2. Why did the Teachers Council register him in 2017 despite having been told in 2014 he should not [edit] have unsupervised access to children. Did they ask any questions about this?
3. Why did the tribunal in 2021 not require him to inform his employer?

The combination of these led to him abusing nine girls. This was preventable.

Jenee Tibshraeny writes:

Five years on from the onset of the pandemic, it is becoming clear the Government’s finances are suffering from long Covid – not just a Covid hangover.

Many Kiwis have taken their medicine – stomached high interest rates and faced job cuts, as the Reserve Bank has curbed inflation and the Government removed pandemic-era spending initiatives.

But still, the Government’s books are not back in shape.

In fact, its debt position is expected to continue deteriorating before it improves.

Treasury is warning the books are in a “structural” deficit.

Spending is at a fundamentally unsustainable level, even once you strip out the ups and downs associated with different parts of the economic cycle.

The reckless spending by the Ardern/Hipkins Government has left the country in a terrible place to be. Rather than temporarily increase spending to help cushion the Covid shock, they permanently increased spending across the board.

In 2017 Labour and Greens promised to hold core crown spending to under 30% of GDP. In 2016/17 it was 28.5% of GDP. They said they would increase it – at most – to 30% – a 1.5% increase.

They left it at 33.6% of GDP for 2023/24. Instead of increasing it by no more than 1.5% of GDP, they increased it by 5.1% of GDP – more than three times as much.

This makes more sense in terms of actual spending. So here is what it means in June 24 dollars:

• Ardern/Hipkins inherited spending of $118 billion
• Ardern/Hipkins promised that spending would not go beyond $124 billion
• Ardern/Hipkins left spending of $139 billion

That extra $15 billion a year is why we have a structural deficit. It has nothing to do with Covid-19 – that should have been temporary spending.

The last time spending was this high a proportion of the economy was in 2011, when we had the Canterbury earthquakes. The difference is that while spending spiked up to around 35% of GDP, it then dropped back down again in the years afterwards. Labour didn’t drop it back down. They used the Covid-19 crisis to increase spending on all sorts of non-covid activities.

Lloyd Burr writes:

Will he look into getting rid of seatbelts in cars? What about aircraft safety briefings? We ask how far is too far for the Regulation Minister’s red tape crusade.

A lot of people seem to have got outraged that David Seymour even asked for advice on the issue of compulsory cycle helmets for cyclists. I think it is a good thing to have a Minister who will ask for evidence about whether something is actually providing more benefits than costs.

In London, people can wander up to a ‘Boris Bike’ rack, hire one and cycle around the city without having to worry about wearing a helmet.

When you’re done, you park it up at another rack and you’re good to go. It’s a similar system in New York and Los Angeles. In the Netherlands, it’s like this but on steroids. There are special bike highways and massive bike parking lots.

Helmets aren’t mandatory in those places – so why are they mandatory in New Zealand? This was a question a staff member of Regulation Minister David Seymour’s asked, and so the ministry looked into it.

As Burr helpfully points out there are lots of places where helmets are not compulsory, so looking at the issue is worthwhile.

“The long and the short of it is, there are a lot of countries where they don’t require you to have a helmet, but they also seem to have cities that are more set up for cycling,” Seymour says.

“London is better set up for cycling. They have slower traffic, more cycle lanes and so on. I would argue having a helmet law and still being able to share the road and drive at a decent speed is probably better for New Zealand,” he says.

That’s a useful thing to know. If you wanted to do away with compulsory helmets, you would need to have slower speed limits.

The argument in favour of not making them compulsory is that doing so discourages cycling (which is healthy for people) and more people would cycle if they were not compulsory.

Interestingly for Seymour, Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick – a person often dubbed his political nemesis – supported calls to scrap the helmet law in 2016 when she ran for the Auckland mayoralty.

No courage when she suggested it of course.

What about airline safety videos? It’s mandatory to watch them even if you’ve watched them hundreds of times.

“There should be a test. If you can pass the test, you never have to watch another one,” he says jokingly (we assume).

“The torture of continually having to watch it would be enough to motivate people to pass the test. It’d be better than anything NCEA has ever thrown up.”

That’s a great idea. I would happily sit a test to avoid having to pay attention to the same video as I have heard 500 or so times before.

Erica Stanford made the pretty obvious decision that books designed to teach kids English should use English words, and the usual suspects are claiming it is everything from white supremacy to cultural genocide. I don;’t think they realise that when they scream that at every issue every week, it becomes meaningless.

Anyway Sir Ian Taylor has a useful explanation which is below.

Basically he points out that these are specialised books called coding books, and coding books are designed to teach only one language. There will be lots of other school books that include te reo, but not coding books.

UPDATE: Sir Ian has now done a column in Stuff which expands in more details:

As I discovered, decodable books are specialist books designed to help children crack the code of reading. They turn letters into sounds, blend those sounds into words, and build the foundations of literacy.

More importantly, by international best practice, decodable books are written in a single language. That’s the way they work everywhere in the world.

French decodables are in French. German in German. Spanish in Spanish. And, by extension, back here in Aotearoa, Māori decodables are in Māori. …

So, what’s the difference between decodable books and reading books?

A quick search revealed that reading books are designed to develop comprehension, imagination, and enjoyment. There is no rule that says they must be in a single language. These are the books my 5-year-old moko will soon move to, after she finishes the decodable books she currently thrives on.

So there will still be hundreds or even thousands of reading books in schools that have both English and te reo words in them. It is just the English decodable books that will in English just as the te reo decodable books will be in Maori.

I blogged in early August on how MPs appear to have been scared into supporting a retrospective law change to protect ANZ and ASB Banks form a six year old law suit over their failure to make correct disclosures with some of their loans, on the basis that the banking system could be at risk with a potential cost of $12.9 billion.

I was always sceptical of this number, as the lawyers for the plaintiffs actually offered to settle the case for $300 million. But I’ve now read the advice from the Reserve Bank, and it is even worse than I imagined.

Here’s some key takeaways from the Reserve Bank advice.

• The RBNZ’s $12.9 billion scenario was on an assumption that every single bank in New Zealand would refund every single residential mortgage customer all interest and fees for a full four years.
• The actual breach periods are much shorter. ANZ (which has around 30% of the mortgage market) has said it breach period was just over 12 months. Westpac and BNZ disclosed breach periods of 2-5 days only.
• Some banks have already repaid customers: Westpac and BNZ self-reported their breaches to the Commerce Commission and repaid customers in full under the CCCFA. They have no further liability for those breaches.
• Under the law, claims must be brought within three years after the date of disclosure. This means the vast majority of any potential claims are already time-barred.
• The RBNZ’s own analysis noted “nothing… gave them credible reason to believe there was large-scale liability.” The $12.9 billion was an extreme sensitivity test, not a real-world estimate.
• Market share maths makes $12.9 billion impossible: ANZ is 30% of the market and has said their liability is under $300 million. Westpac and BNZ are ruled out and they are 40% of the market. ASB were in breach for four years but they are just 20% of the market.

So MPs should ask themselves why would they retrospectively amend the law to protect two banks from a lawsuit, when there clearly is no risk to the banking system stability – just to the profits of the two banks, which were $3.75 billion last year.

Audrey Young observes:

Chlöe Swarbrick became a distraction from the debate on Palestine during a crucial week in which Israel stepped up bombardments of Gaza City and New Zealand began debating a huge issue. But outrageously, she made it about whether being asked twice to apologise was unprecedented. 

It wouldn’t be so ironic if she hadn’t used her speech to the Greens’ AGM on Sunday to rail against politics that is “designed to outrage”.

“It gets headlines. It gets cut-through. It sucks up the oxygen and depletes the energy necessary to focus on the bigger picture. It benefits the multi-multi-multi-millionaire and billionaires, and their puppet politicians. All of this is designed to deflect, distract and divide,” she said.

Of course, she was talking about other politicians, not herself. In her self-centred world, it is only others that deflect, distract and divide.

Ouch.

Simon O’Connor also points out:

Imagine being so assured your knowledge is correct, that even an entire Parliament – its Members, its Speaker, and Clerks – must all bend to your view.

Imagine being right in all things, that rules don’t apply to you.

And finally, imagine being so self-righteously assured of your own opinions today, that even the entirety of history will judge you correct.

Some might describe this as delusional. Some might suggest it’s narcissism. Others might use simpler words such as arrogance, contemptuous, petulant, and overconfident.

All these words apply, but the best two words to describe above are Chlöe Swarbick, co-leader of the Green Party.

Double ouch.

Over the course of 48 hours of extraordinary politics, nominally around the situation in Gaza, she has demonstrated an extraordinary confidence in her own viewpoint that she believes that no one should question it and that an entire democratic parliament must bend to her will. No rules applies to her – in fact, despite being told she was ‘out of order’ by the Speaker of the House she was insistent that any engagement with him would not be for dialogue but only to impress upon him how wrong he was.

Another sad part of this spectacle is it confirms that the likes of Chlöe and the Greens are not actually prioritising the cause of the Palestinian people. The show in parliament over recent days was all about her. Sure, she and others will say it is on behalf of Gazans but her actions today loudly say otherwise.

We have the Chloe show, and soon thanks to taxpayers we will have the Chloe film!

The Herald reports:

KiwiRail has settled with Hyundai Mipo Dockyard with a $144 million final payment following the cancellation of the Project iRex ferries. 

In a press statement, Rail Minister Winston Peters was highly critical of previous media reporting that predicted a much larger figure for cancelling the contract for two large ships. 

The decision to ditch Project iRex was among the first made by the Government after its formation in late 2023. 

A procurement process has been under way for new ferries to be delivered by 2029, led by the Government’s new Ferry Holdings company. 

“Doomsayers said cancelling the contract would cost the taxpayer the full $551m contract value,” he said.

Only having to pay under a third of the contract is not too bad. Well done to the negotiators.

“But these are some of the same people who accepted Project iReX ballooning from $1.45 billion when approved in 2021 to Treasury warning it was on course to $4b in 2023 thanks to eyes-bigger-than-their-mouths ambitions and absentee management. Even their criticisms blew out.”

$4 billion on the project was just crazy. Bluebridge have just done a new ferry that doesn’t cost taxpayers one cent. I’d rather spend $4 billion on new hospitals and schools than ferry terminals.

We’re still going to get new rail enabled ferries, and for a lot less than what the previous Government set in motion.