Robert Redford was arguably the dominant A list actor of my childhood. Out of Africa remains one of the saddest films I have seen. He kept working up until the age of 82, playing Alexander Pierce in Marvel movies.
I especially liked him and Paul Newman in The Sting.
Stuff reports:
Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere says MP Tākuta Ferris was, in essence, correct when he hit out at non-Māori supporting Labour’s Māori electorate campaign.
Tamihere said Ferris could have worded his comments better, but added that he generally agreed with what the MP had said. That is despite Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer telling the Labour and Green leaders that his comments didn’t reflect her party’s views.
This is very confusing. We don’t know if TPM is officially racist, or just unofficially racist.
Tamihere told Radio Waatea: “What Tākuta said, in substance, was right. It is wrong for other folk to politic in Māori seats, because I don’t go over to their countries, like the British Raj and destroy India.”
This suggests that Tamihere think NZ citizens who are non-Maori are not real New Zealanders. That a New Zealander with Indian ancestry (who was born in NZ) is basically a foreigner.
Tamihere and Ferris both are advocating for some citizens to be inferior to other citizens. They overlook that a Member of Parliament is not just a representative for their electorate, but they get a vote on laws that impact all New Zealanders. It is verging towards fascism to state that non-Maori are not allowed to campaign for the party of their choice.
Labour and Te Pati Maori have different policies. Whichever candidate won the by-election changes the balance of power in Parliament. It can even change the makeup of a Government. The MP for Tamaki Makaurau doesn’t just vote on laws for her constituents. She votes in laws that are binding on every single New Zealander. So to advocate for non-Maori to have no voice in a parliamentary election is wrong on every level.
The key statistic for NZ education vs the world – is that we have the highest gap between students who do well and those who do not.
These gaps exist within schools by ethnicity. E.g. For Auckland Grammar School 47% of their Maori students get UE, 77% of their European students get that qualification and 84% of their Asian students.
The gaps also exist MASSIVELY between schools.
This is how things look for the top 100 high schools vs the bottom 100.
| NCEA L2 avg % of Leavers. | NCEA L3 avg % of Leavers. | University Entrance avg % of leavers | Retention to 17yo | Transition to Degree level study. | |
| Top 100 Schools | 95 | 85 | 77 | 95 | 60 |
| Bottom 100 Schools | 58 | 28 | 9.8 | 60 | 5 |
You see … it seems positive to change the NZ Curriculum (although all that has been published – especially Elizabeth Rata’s “suggested texts” is significantly dated, irrelvant and boring).
It seems positive to suggest changes to the NZ qualification system but – by your own admission – things will go backwards for marginalised children.
You – Minister Stanford – have listened to very narrow views, you have not addressed the huge issue that many children arrive at school at 5yo well behind … and never recover. You have not addressed the needs of truly struggling schools.
You are winning the approval of NZ and international elites.
You are not addressing the true needs of young NZers and I am not sure you even understand the data and the NZ system.
Alwyn Poole
The NZ Initiative has put out a great report proposing a much more efficient structure for both Cabinet and the wider Executive.
NZ currently has 81 ministerial portfolios, 28 ministers and 43 executive agencies. By comparison Ireland has 15 Ministers and 18 departments.
The Initiative propose a Cabinet of 15 Ministers, being:
Incidentally I proposed a similar structure of 12 Ministers back in 2011. Fairly similar groupings but I couldn’t resist Department of Administrative Affairs instead of Home Affairs. Yes Minister fans will know why.
They also propose a rationalisation of the 43 agencies to 20 departments, being:
15 Cabinet Ministers, 20 portfolios and 20 departments or ministries. It would not just be more efficient, but it would be far far more effective.
The Herald reports:
Te Pāti Māori MP Tākuta Ferris has doubled down on social media comments he made last week which led to “racist” allegations and an apology from his party.
In a new Instagram video, Ferris said it is “unacceptable” for people of other ethnicities to campaign to “take a Māori seat from the Māori people” and accused Labour of “erasing Māori”.
What is fascinating, apart from the racism, is that Ferris is effectively saying that Maori candidates who do not stand for Te Pati Maori are not real Maori. The Labour activists were supporting Peeni Henare to win the seat, and Peeni is of course Maori.
I remind people that every poll since the last election has shown that the only way Labour could form a Government is with the support of Te Pati Maori. And things are so bad in TPM they are demoting one MP, while another goes rogue.
Radio NZ reports:
Teachers and principals warn the government is scrubbing Māori words and ideas from education documents.
At an urgently convened conference in Wellington this week, educators said mention of the Treaty of Waitangi and Māori words were being dropped from new English and maths curriculums, and from key documents that provided guidelines for schools.
They’re complaining that the maths curriculum doesn’t mention the Treaty of Waitangi enough. They really are the educational equivalents of a cult.
The Herald reports:
It has been revealed just how unimpressed Treasury was with the Reserve Bank for pitching for a 50% funding increase shortly before Adrian Orr resigned as governor.
As they should be.
Treasury raised “other concerns” with the bank’s funding bid.
It noted that it assumed funding would need to be adjusted to account for annual inflation of 3.6% – a rate above that which the Reserve Bank itself expected inflation to sit at, given one of its main jobs is to keep inflation between 1% and 3%.
This is pretty appalling. The Reserve Bank argued for extra funding on an argument that it would fail to keep inflation under the top of the target range.
Treasury said the Reserve Bank was “not sufficiently considering reprioritisation opportunities, such as downscaling non-legislative functions”.
It said “a disproportionate number of resources” had been concentrated at the upper echelons of management as well as within the non-legislative teams.
In other words trim the bloat and focus on your core job of monetary policy and bank supervision. You’re not the Ministry for the Environment or Te Puni Kokiri.
It has been interesting (and at times very sad) to see how various people have responded to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Kirk was just 31 years old and was assassinated while he was literally engaged in debate with someone of different views to himself. If you don’t share the political views of someone who is assassinated, how should you respond?
The best responses are those who just condemn it without reservation as appalling for Kirk’s family and for the country. The best examples are former US Presidents:
Just spot on.
Also spot on.
The next type of responses are those that condemn the killing, but feel the need to mention how much they disagreed with the person killed. These responses are still okay, but sub-optimal. By mentioning you disagreed you are making it about you. No-one thinks condemning a political assassination means you agree with everything the person said or did.
Then you get the people who think it is a good idea to quote in detail all the bad things they think the other person ever said or did, who suggest he or she incited their own killing – but still weakly condemn it the end. These are pretty terrible people.
Take Sam Stubbs, the founder of Simplicity. His post is lacking is basic decency and empathy that I am so so glad I do not have any investments with Simplicity.
He says turn the violence but not the man. So basically he is saying it is great Charlie Kirk is dead, but not that he was murdered. If it had been say a car accident, then that would be wonderful. Kirk leaves behind two young children and a widow, and Stubbs says don’t mourn the man.
But it goes beyond Kirk. What Stubbs is basically saying is that if you you apply labels like racist, sexist and bigot to someone, then as a person their death is a good thing, or at least not a bad thing. Now almost every person on the centre-right of politics has been called those labels at times, so one can only assume Stubbs has the same view towards many New Zealanders.
Stubbs has of course now had his PR team prepare a retraction, but I think everyone knows that he has shown us what his true views are, and his stunning lack of decency and empathy.
Finally you have the sociopaths like the President-Elect of the Oxford Union who actively celebrate the murder of people they politically disagree with. Beyond disgraceful.
If a political figure dies of natural causes, or in an accident, then it can be appropriate to say something like you are saddened by their death, despite your political differences. But when someone is assassinated due to their political views, your only response should be to condemn it with no buts, no ifs.
A related issue is judging motive when it comes to political assassinations or attempted assassinations. If a political figure is shot at, it is a reasonable starting point to assume the shooter is someone who disagrees with them politically, probably from the other side of the political spectrum.
But sometimes this is wrong. The first Trump shooter seemed to just want to shoot someone famous – he also looked at Biden, and didn’t seem to have a political motive. However the second Trump shooter was definitely targeting Trump directly because of Trump’s political views.
With Charlie Kirk though, the initial assumption that it was someone who hated his politics seems very likely by Occam’s razor. Kirk held no role in government.
Bizarrely, and on the flimsiest of evidence, left wing activists have argued that Kirk’s killer was actually a far right activist who thought Kirk wasn’t racist enough and was too pro-Israel. Russell Brown even said this scenario was “orders of magnitude” more likely than the possibility that a 22 year old raised in a conservative family, develops left wing beliefs. Orders of magnitude? Are you serious.
A sane take could be to say “Hey let’s not jump to conclusions over motive – he may have been a hard left extremist, but there is also a possibility he was a groyper”. That would be a reasonable stance. But Russell has said that it is almost beyond doubt he was a far right voyager, saying it is “orders of magnitude” more likely. Orders of magnitude means at least 100 times more likely.
The killer had “hey fascist catch” inscribed on one bullet. That seems a pretty good clue that he didn’t think Charlie Kirk was too left wing!
Fortunately the killer was taken alive (thanks to his father who talked him into it – an act which must have been incredibly difficult considering the likely death penalty that will be sought), so we may get to hear first hand his motivation. But frankly anyone who claims that it is orders of magnitude more likely he killed Charlie Kirk for being not rightwing enough is just embarrassing themselves.
Going back to the main theme of how to respond to Kirk’s assassination, the best responses I saw were from various state chapters of College Republicans College Democrats who put out joint press releases condemning it. As much as there is a natural anger to blame the “other” side, a show of unity is what is needed.
It would have, in hindsight, been a good move if the majority and minority leaders in the House and Senate had done joint releases and/or joint press conferences.
I hope that at Kirk’s funeral, there are a decent number of senior Democrats in attendance. Maybe even that one of them speaks. Not because they agreed with his policies, or politics, but to condemn the idea that you assassinate people whose views you disagree with.
Stuff reports:
An immigrant who tried to rip off his health insurer twice by submitting fake X-rays and medical notes for bogus conditions won’t face deportation as long as he completes a community service sentence.
Earlier this year, taxi driver Umesh Yadav, 30, admitted to two charges of using forged documents in order to claim lump sum payouts from AIA.
Yadav immigrated to New Zealand in 2019 on a student visa and was granted residency in 2022.
Just days after Christmas in the same year, Yadav filed an insurance claim, saying he had slipped in the bathroom and fell on his right hand while visiting India in November, according to the police summary of facts.
He started defrauding the taxpayer within a few months of gaining residency in New Zealand. He should absolutely be deported.
The Herald reports:
David Seymour is standing by the driving that saw him land in the crosshairs of a State Highway 1 motorist’s cellphone, with footage posted to Reddit showing the Deputy Prime Minister apparently speeding and undertaking another motorist.
However, the Act Party leader will not be making a complaint to police about his accuser appearing to be using a cellphone while behind the wheel, Seymour told the Herald this afternoon.
“Police time is very valuable and I think Reddit man has already had enough community discipline to rethink his action here,” said Seymour, describing himself as “a very responsible driver”.
The Karen involved probably thought they had done something which would harm Seymour, by filming him overtake him on the left. But instead the vast majority of people have pointed out the Karen shouldn’t be filming while driving, and also that you should not be blocking the right hand lane unless you are overtaking yourself.
The Herald reports:
Northland College is making moves to become a charter school and is the first state school to publicly reveal it is doing so.
The Kaikohe school says it desperately needs to do something to lift achievement for its predominantly Māori students and has the backing of Northland iwi, Ngāpuhi.
Excellent. Great to see them ambitious to do better.
Northland College principal Duane Allen said he was formerly a strong opponent of charter schools, but after five years in charge of Northland College he saw a need to try a different approach.
“We’ve got really, really good people here who are working really hard to try and come up with innovative solutions within the current system… and we haven’t been able to get the direction that we’d like to. So it’s a genuine investigation and step into an alternative that we think could be quite powerful.”
Always impressed when people have genuine change of mind.
A Freshwater poll on the Auckland Mayoralty finds:
So the left wing Councillor challenging Wayne Brown is behind the Animal Justice candidate!
The Herald reports:
A young man jailed for a spree of armed robberies in the Waikato was back reoffending soon after being released, but this time targeted stores and people around the North Island.
When Katana Faulkner appeared in the Hamilton District Court for sentencing in May last year, Judge Denise Clark gave him 80% in discounts for his five aggravated robbery charges, stripping down his 10-year, two-month sentence to one of 23 months and three weeks in jail.
This is why 80% discounts are a terrible idea (and have now been banned). He should have been away for ten years and was out within months for five armed robberies.
But five months later, Faulkner was back at it, robbing people of clothing and stealing booze, cash, and cigarettes from stores in Hamilton, Rotorua, and New Plymouth.
So more victims, thanks to the 80% sentencing discount.
However, Judge Clark wasn’t as generous this time.
In court on Wednesday, she took a starting point of 10 years and four months, telling him that was “about half of your life”, before jailing him for five years and two months.
That’s still a 50% discount! Why? She gave him an 80% discount last time, and he reoffends within months and she rewards him with a further 50% discount.
The Herald reports:
Labour MP Willie Jackson has suggested price regulations as a possible option to address cost-of-living pressures, but also says it is not his party’s policy.
Yet is the missing word!
The response did not answer another question about what evidence there was Labour created an environment where prices started to come down.
Stats NZ figures show food price annual percentage change of up to 12.5% in the final year of the Labour Government. That happened in June 2023.
This was a Willie whopper.
Here’s annual food inflation (seasonally adjusted):
Law News reports:
Opposition leader Chris Hipkins says he has learned from past mistakes and will avoid wholesale repeal of coalition policies if Labour wins next year’s election, ending the economically damaging stop-start cycle that incoming leaders typically follow. …
While some coalition policies, such as the controversial pay equity reforms, will clearly be on the chopping block, Hipkins said Labour would work with existing settings on infrastructure and RMA reform, even if they do not fully represent the party’s preferences.
“What we won’t do is repeat the cycle that we’ve seen over the last couple of decades of a change of government leading to everything grinding to a halt for a period of time,” he said. “Where the [coalition] government have made decisions around infrastructure investment, even if they weren’t necessarily our first priority, we will keep going, because stopping and starting all the time is one of the reasons why everything takes so long.
This is a welcome pledge. I think the RMA reforms especially are of critical importance and it would be terrible if they didn’t survive a change of government.
A businessman who was at the speech said he thought Hipkins was impressive, and what he said went down very well with the audience.
I do wonder though if Greens and Te Pati Maori have the same view!
Hipkins also pledged to end constant public service overhauls that he said sapped productivity and created uncertainty.
“New governments like to come in – we did this, as the current government are doing it now – they reorganize everything.
I’d like to believe this, but Hipkins is the one who did the disastrous mega-merger of the polytechnics and was part of the government that tried to ram through a mega-merger of the DHBs in just two years.
Hipkins did not go into specifics or address Labour’s tax policies, although he did say Kiwis should stop viewing housing as New Zealand’s primary form of investment, which could hint at a capital gains tax.
In case he hadn’t noticed, house prices have fallen around 25%. Saying you need a CGT to discourage housing investment is ignoring what has happened in the real world.
The Herald reports:
The Latu family’s eight children are among more than tens of thousands of New Zealand children living in poverty.
“Our car needs to be fixed, but you know, we don’t have enough money to fix” says Folau Latu, the children’s father. A knee injury has kept Folau off work for the last three years, making the family’s income, which is heavily reliant on a benefit, always stretched. Despite the challenges, the family say their faith helps them keep going.
I don’t mean this to be directed at this particular family, but don’t keep having children if you can’t afford them. The vast majority of families decide to stop having children, and often cost is part of that discussion. A vasectomy is cheap. Very very few families could afford to have eight children, let alone one benefit dependent.
I earlier blogged on a Labour activist endorsing Brown, but this is even more newsworthy as here we not only have a Labour MP endorsing Brown, but he explicitly says there is no “credible opposition”.
As Councillor Kerrin Leoni is a Labour Party member. She was elected to Council in 2022 as a Labour Party candidate. To have one of your own MPs dismiss you as not credible is, well, incredible.
Stuff has a story about a 16 year old boy who died drunk driving. The details are that he and two other under 18s were served alcohol eight times in both bars and bottle stores, including when they were clearly intoxicated.
I’m with the parents that those outlets that sold alcohol to 16 year olds should faec significant fines, as well as suspensions or even loss of licence.
There is really no excuse for not checking ID. The best practice is to ask for ID for anyone who looks under 30.
I also support there being increased compliance checks or sting operations. Compliance with the law is not voluntary.
The issue of serving someone intoxicated is a bit more nuanced. It is not as simple as asking for ID. Someone can be drunk but appear sober. In this case it certainly sounds like it should have been apparent, so again charges should be laid. But this is a more subjective area.
The Herald reports:
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi says Te Pāti Māori’s leadership has removed her from the role of party whip despite her enjoying the work.
The role is now listed on Parliament’s website as being held by Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. Losing the job comes with a roughly $20,000 salary decrease.
Speaking to the Herald outside Parliament on Thursday night, Kapa-Kingi said she couldn’t speak about the decision but said “things are changing”.
They have one MP who doubled down on comments the co-leaders said were wrong, and now they have unilaterally sacked the whip (in most parties whips are elected by the caucus, not anointed by the leader). These are not signs of a well functioning party.
UPDATE: Reliable sources tell me this is much bigger than I realised. There is a huge split in TPM, basically between the Tamihere aligned MPs and the rest. I have been told that some existing MPs are facing deselection, and that this is behind what we are seeing with the Whip sacked and Ferris defying the co-leaders.