Eric Crampton notes:

On Newsroom-RNZ co-production The Detail, Espiner noted that “there’s some debate about what’s official and what’s not official” while damning New Zealand for not following Canadian examples.

While Canada’s official guidelines look similar to ours, Canada’s standard drink measure is 34.5% larger than New Zealand’s. If we take that into account, Canada’s low-risk guidelines are more liberal than New Zealand’s. Three standard Canadian drinks is four standard New Zealand drinks.

If New Zealand followed Canada’s example, we would be relaxing our guidelines rather than tightening them. And Canada’s guidelines have not changed since 2011. …

No-one listening to that NZ On Air funded episode of The Detail will know that industry intervention helped to correct an error. Or that, if we followed Canada’s actual example, our low-risk threshold would increase from 15 to 20 standard New Zealand drinks per week.

About five years ago, misinformation was almost a capital crime. Times change.

It is terrible that false information on a government website was corrected. This is clearly wrong. False information is good, if it comes from the right people.

We see another interesting example around pregnancy labels. Alcohol Healthwatch did a report which claimed 34% of alcohol products had no pregnancy warning label on them. They refuse to release details of which retailers they surveyed.

This so alarmed the Alcohol Beverages Council, that they commissioned an audit of a retail store where all 1,756 products were checked. They found 99.3% of products had correct labelling. They are able to provide full details of the store and the audit.

A key issue is that the requirement for labelling only came in on 1 August 2023, so products manufactured before then do not have to have the label. So while almost all beers will have the label, many wine and whiskeys etc which are often sold after they have aged will be on the shelves for a while.

The Government announced:

Today, leaders from New Zealand’s Muslim and Jewish organisations gathered at Government House in Auckland to present the New Zealand Harmony Accord to the Governor-General, the Rt Hon Dame Cindy Kiro.

This landmark agreement affirms their shared commitment to promoting understanding, rejecting hate, and strengthening social cohesion in New Zealand.

“This Accord is a powerful statement of unity, courage, and compassion,” says Rt Hon Dame Cindy Kiro, Governor-General of New Zealand. “It reminds us that dialogue, even when difficult, is the foundation of a peaceful and inclusive nation. I commend those who have worked so tirelessly to bring this vision to life.”

“To the leaders here today, you have my deepest respect. Your commitment to dialogue, to mutual respect, and to standing together in difficult times is something we can all learn from. Thank you for your leadership and for the example you have set,” says Hon Mark Mitchell, Minister for Ethnic Communities.

More than 70 guests attended, including Members of Parliament, senior faith leaders, and community representatives. Participants and guests at the ceremony included Race Relations Commissioner Dr Melissa Derby, Police Commissioner Richard Chambers, Juliet Moses (President of the New Zealand Jewish Council), Ibrar Sheikh (President of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand), Phillip Green (Jewish Community Security Group), Avigail Allan (Dayenu), and Salman Momin, Member for New Zealand, (The Aga Khan Council for Australia and New Zealand).

Very pleased to see this. It is vital that New Zealanders of different faiths can live and work together in harmony. The Accord notes:

The Muslim and Jewish communities in New Zealand have much in common. We share the same founding forefather, Abraham; we share faith in one God; and we share many of the same prophets, philosophies and practices, such as dietary restrictions and burial rites. We value education and family. We greet each other with “shalom” or “salaam”. We have a moral imperative to give charity (“sadaqat” in Arabic, “tzedakah” in Hebrew). The Jewish and Muslim communities contribute to, and are an integral part of, New Zealand’s rich and diverse ethnic and faith tapestry. We are proud of these contributions.

A guest post by Michael Littlewood:

As New Zealand’s population ages and, in particular, as the proportion of over-65s increases, the cost of New Zealand Superannuation (NZS) is rising. We know that and it doesn’t help us understand the issues to create headlines that catastrophise the expected costs.

The pensions payable in the future, public and private, will be claims on tomorrow’s economy, so the best way to express the expected cost of NZS is as a proportion of tomorrow’s economy. At present, this is probably best measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is not a perfect measure, given the number of factors that bear on its calculation, particularly for long periods into the future. But it’s the best we have.

A catastrophiser will cite the billions of dollars of costs today and the even greater billions of dollars of costs tomorrow but that is misleading and matters much less than the ability of tomorrow’s economy to meet those claims.

Pensioners pay income tax on NZS so the government pays with one hand and collects with the other. Again, what matters to future voters is the net cost of pensions.

With that introduction, let’s look at what the Treasury thinks about the expected net cost of NZS. Since 2000, the Treasury has published estimates that put together all the known information about the drivers of the cost of NZS: number (and expected number) of pensioners, mortality expectations, expected growth of the national average wage and prices (those drive the annual calculation of the level of NZS) and all the assumptions that drive estimates of future growth.

The Treasury’s ‘New Zealand Superannuation Fund Contribution Rate Model’ (NZSF Model) works out contributions to the NZSF and expected future drawdowns. Those calculations are done twice a year and are archived here^[1].

Given the headlines created recently by apparently dire, future projections, I was curious to see what the Treasury now thinks is the best estimate of the net cost of NZS in future decades.

The table uses the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) versions over the last 25 years.

Yes, over the last 25 years the current year’s cost of NZS has risen by 19% (0.7% a year) but over the same 25 years (2000-2025), the expected net cost of NZS in 2050 has actually fallen from 9.0% of GDP to 5.4% (down 40%).

NZS is expected to cost less, in real terms, in 2050, 2060 and 2070 than we expected 25 years ago? That sounds like a ‘good news’ story to me. The pattern of possible costs across the table is consistent; consistently downwards.

We know this is all based on a bunch of assumptions that have varied over the 25 years but, in each case, the estimate is the Treasury’s best contemporary guess about those future costs.

Focussing on just the 2025 numbers, the Treasury expects the net cost in 2070 to be about 2 percentage points of 2070’s GDP higher than today’s 4.4% (+45%).

So how come the real future cost seems to be falling over the last 25 years? NZS is the numerator in this equation; the denominator is GDP and that has grown more than the Treasury expected in the early 2000s and in subsequent years, due to a combination of increasing labour force participation rates and higher immigration numbers. That combination drives the reduction. For example, the 2000 model predicted the net cost of NZS in 2025 would be 5.3% of predicted GDP. In fact, it turned out to be just 4.4%, a reduction of 17% in real terms.

That’s why real, future economic growth is so important in this discussion. An actuarial colleague and I put a substantial submission together for the 2019 Retirement Commissioner’s Review. We called it Informing the 2019 Review – 133 questions that New Zealand needs answered^[2]. Of nine key “reforms that really matter”, we ranked greater economic growth than we, or even the Treasury, expect as the #1 priority:

“Greater economic growth (than expected) should be central to discussions on every aspect of public policy, including retirement incomes. At the foot of every significant retirement or pension policy proposal should be the question: ‘How does this help New Zealand grow more than under current settings?’ Not all policy changes have to be about economic growth, but if we do not get that growth, we will not see material improvements in the standard of living of the population, including retirees.”

How do we judge whether NZS is/will be ‘affordable’ in 2070? 

We could compare the cost of our pensions with those in other countries. International comparisons of public pension systems are difficult – the OECD tries to do that in its Pensions at a Glance 2024^[3]. The net cost of government spending on public pensions across all OECD countries was an average 7.0% of GDP in 2020 (and will be higher now). And that doesn’t include the cost of favoured tax-treatment for private savings in all other countries. New Zealand’s $0.55 bn on KiwiSaver subsidies for 2026^[4] is exceptionally modest in that regard.

So, New Zealand’s net 6.4% for NZS in 2070 (up from today’s 4.4%) looks modest in that context. But that doesn’t necessarily make it affordable.

We need to talk about NZS. The 2019 Submission already cited had something to say about that as well:

“New Zealand needs a research-led review of every aspect of NZS… New Zealand has never done such a review before. NZS is the best Tier 1 scheme in the world but it can undoubtedly be improved.”^[5]

^[1] Accessible at https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/archive-new-zealand-superannuation-fund-nzsf-contribution-rate-models

^[2] Online at www.alt-review.com

^[3] Accessible here: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pensions-at-a-glance-2023_678055dd-en.html

^[4] Because of the 2025 Budget’s changes, the YE 2025 estimate of $1.06bn is expected to reduce to $0.55bn (0.12% of GDP) in the year to 30 June 2026 (Fiscal Strategy Model BEFU 2025). 

^[5] See Section 6 – ‘Framing a debate on every aspect of the NZS benefit design’: https://alt-review.com/section-6

It has been unbelievable that so many people have gone insane over the entirely sensible and trivial change to NZ passports where the language used by 99% of New Zealanders appears first and the language used by 4% appears second.

Both languages are still on the NZ passport. All that has changed is the order.

Ani O’Brien has a good take:

When the word Aotearoa started appearing more prominently in public life, most Kiwis didn’t mind. In fact, a lot of us thought it was a nice touch; an acknowledgment of heritage, a nod to the history of this land. We were told it was just a gesture of inclusion. That it was about respect, dual heritage, embracing both names as part of our national identity. Most Kiwis were fine with that. Shrugged and moved on.

I’m one of those who likes the increasing use of te reo, when it is done naturally. We have incorporated words such as whanau, kai, kia kaha into everyday conversation. I love the te reo version of the national anthem, and enjoy my primary school kids learning concepts such as manaakitanga.

But somewhere along the way, inclusion morphed into dominance. What began as a well-meaning effort to honour Māori language and culture has, in the hands of our cultural elites, become a tool for ideological conformity and social stratification.

It’s not really about te reo, tikanga, or even Māori. It’s about power. The university-educated, bureaucratically-ensconced, BlueSky-scrolling class have seized on te ao Māori as a mechanism through which to assert their own moral superiority over the “low-status” masses. It’s a modern version of the noble savage trope only this time, the reverence isn’t for the culture itself, but for what revering it allows them to do.

By elevating mātauranga Māori to sacred, unchallengeable status, above science, above secularism, above democratic consensus, these cultural elites get to draw a bright line between the enlightened and the ignorant. They get to be the priest class. They can sneer at the plumber in Palmerston North who doesn’t want his kids doing karakia at school, and tell themselves they’re not just smarter, but better.

This is sadly spot on. We saw this under the last Government where numerous government agencies refused to even use their English name. The Reserve Bank would out out a press release referring to four other agencies only be their te reo names, meaning that 96% of NZers could not understand it without using Google. They must have seen it as their job to force the non-elite into compliance.

I worked in the public service for a few years and I didn’t think twice about participating in karakia, waiata, and tikanga when interacting with Māori communities and iwi. Being culturally sensitive is good manners in my view. I took advantage of the taxpayer-funded te reo lessons available to us and thoroughly enjoyed them.

Where I got frustrated was when we frequently had upwards of five meetings a day (always called hui) and in each of these meetings at least the first ten minutes (but usually longer) would be dedicated to ritualistic introductions and karakia. Most of these meetings were internal or with other public servants who we regularly interacted with. I tried once to figure out how much of my taxpayer-funded time was being dedicated to sitting through these performances. In a week I might attend around 25-30 hui (yes, that is a horrendous amount but it is how the public service operates) if we play it on the conservative side and say ten minutes of each meeting was karakia and pepeha that is 250-300 minutes each week. Four or five hours each week. Now multiple that by the 600 people who worked in the same building as me.

On top of that, a few times a week there was a “non-compulsory” “lunch time” waiata practice in our unit. It was explicitly not mandatory, but socially suicidal to skip it. Led by the cabal of middle-class white women who were the most ferocious enforcers of all things Māori, they made sure that choosing not to attend was not worth the grief that came with it. Only racists and people not sufficiently aware of their own privileges wouldn’t attend. The half hour of singing was officially a lunch time activity so that if someone sent in an Official Information Act request they wouldn’t find that taxes were being spent paying the generous salaries of professionals to sing out-of-tune. But everyone took their full lunch break as well as attending practice.

We no longer have separation of church and state.

The Integrity Institute was set up by Grant and Marilyn Nelson. They used to fund the Institute of Governance and Policy Studies at VUW, but took their money away when IGPS wouldn’t produce what they wanted. So they set up The Integrity Institute. It is a trust, which means its finances are secret, unlike an incorporated society which must publish annual accounts.

The trust deed is shown above. I suggest people read it and make their own minds up over whether this is a neutral institute that aims to improve integrity in politics, or whether it it is lobby group that wants to take out other lobby groups.

One interesting aspect of the trust deed is they seem to dislike lawyers. They actually ban anyone who holds a law degree from being a trustee! I can’t imagine why you would ban anyone with a law degree from being a trustee. Maybe a lawyer once ran over a pet?

The Trust Deed is equivalent to the constitution for an incorporated society. It must be followed by the board and staff. Normally a constitutional document lists aims, but doesn’t dictate a work programme. For example the Taxpayers’ Union Constitution lists general objectives around lowering the tax burden, reducing wasteful spending but doesn’t dictate specific work.

The fourth schedule of the trust deed lists the priority work which is binding on the staff, and it is incredibly detailed. There is obviously no trust in staff to develop their own work programme in line with the objectives of the Institute. It is all laid out for them, and a few items ring alarm bells about what they actually are about.

So their first aim is to undermine Transparency International New Zealand, because they don’t like the fact their Perceptions of Corruption Index usually have New Zealand as one of the best countries. They start with a conclusion (that TINZ has created a myth) and then say they want research to back to their view. This is the opposite of integrity, in my opinion.

They have done even better than that. They have given Newsroom an unspecified amount of money, so Newsroom can investigate the groups they don’t like.

It is no coincidence I suspect they named Stuff, not the Herald. Mr Nelson has stated they think the Herald has a vendetta against them.

Yes, that’s right. Their version of integrity is to pay media to conduct sting operations against groups they don’t like.

Note the direction that they are to cherry pick OECD statistics where NZ does badly. They are not to review all statistics and give a complete picture.

They have of course only listed entities whose policies they disagree with. They presumably are unconcerned with Green Party MPs going straight into CEO positions at Greenpeace and Forest and Bird.

And as far as Taxpayers Union goes, the notion of a revolving door would make you think there is some sort of secret plan to have TU staff go into government jobs etc. The reality is other organisations poach the TU staff. I am tempted to joke that if ACT steal one more staffer from the TU, I’ll blow their building up!

Note again the only examples given are groups who broadly are seen on the non-left of politics. If they really want to research the origins of the TU, they could buy the very detailed 10 year history book which actually sets it out.

Again only certain organisations are targeted. There is no interest in the influence of the CTU on policy, or Eu Tu Union. I mean you have powerful lobby groups that actually fund the Labour Party, vote in their leadership elections, and get huge policy influence in Labour-led Governments. Do you think the Integrity Institute will ever cover these?

There are actually a number of policy areas where I agree with the Integrity Institute. I don’t think Ministers should go straight from the Cabinet table to a lobbying role. I do support a written constitution. I oppose corporate welfare schemes etc. I think transparency over lobbying is a good thing.

But unlike the founders of the Integrity Institute, I apply that to all lobbying. They have a view that lobbying by anyone who makes money is bad, and that lobbying by everyone else is good.

Politik has covered them:

An institute established to expose corruption in politics is now being accused of playing dirty politics itself.

The Wellington-based Integrity Institute is financing journalists to expose what it claims are corrupt practices in New Zealand politics.

But it is who the Institute is trying to expose and how they are going about it that is raising the questions about their own integrity.

Their current target is Federated Farmers, and the Institute has funded the website Newsroom to expose what it says is the “power of the farm lobby.”

The Institute was established after a wealthy Christchurch couple, Grant and Marilyn Nelson, who had funded the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, fell out with its director, Professor Jonathan Boston.

And Federated Farmers have commented:

Langford said Federated Farmers had never heard of the ‘Integrity Institute’ until last week, when they were clearly identified as the funders of a story by David Williams on Newsroom.

“We’ve since seen the organisation’s highly prescriptive trust deed and it’s safe to say we have some significant concerns – ironically, about what seems to be a lack of integrity,” he said.

“I think Newsroom, and in particular David Williams, have some serious questions to answer about whether they’re engaging in pay-for-play journalism and dirty politics.  

“The fact that Newsroom have taken money from the Integrity Institute seriously calls into question their editorial independence and journalistic integrity.”

Newsroom co-editor, Tim Murphy, rejects those charges.

“The grant we received from the Integrity Institute came with no strings attached,” he said.

“We are free to investigate any lobby group we choose.

This is, with respect, missing the point. For this grant, they may not have been told who to investigate, but if what the do doesn’t please the funders of the Integrity Institute, then they won’t get any future grants. If they do a series of reports on how the left wing Action Station hides its accounts behind a front company, will that get them another grant? Of course not. Only by targeting the groups explicitly mentioned in the Trust Deed.

The simple reality is that if you take money from one lobby group to investigate other lobby groups, you are compromised.

Here’s my challenge to Newsroom and the Integrity Institute. Reveal how much money they are being paid by the Integrity Institute, and publish the funding agreement.

Business Desk has also noted:

The institute’s deed of trust records 26 “first priority” areas of focus, of which the first is to take down TINZ.

Specifically, point a) in the “research and educate” section is to “research the track record of TINZ to expose the myth they have created to help businesses make money by corrupting Government decision-making”.

So far, TINZ has maintained a dignified silence in response to some pretty inflammatory blogging from Edwards, who describes the organisation as having a “strategy” to undermine good public sector practice.

To anyone who’s ever interacted with TINZ, this will come as a bit of a surprise. TINZ has been advocating for better governance practices among governments for years. If anything, it is guilty of a quality of earnestness that can tend to blunt impact.

It is fascinating that the II wants to undermine TINZ, rather than work with them. In the public policy space I often see organisations work together that disagree on some things, but agree on others. The TU and the NZ Initiative often have disagreements on particular policy issues (such as petrol tax reductions) but they don’t try and take each other out because of them.

Among the Integrity Institute’s other objectives is to “pay news media expenses to conduct a sting operation to record a lobbyist and a politician agreeing to arrange special favours”, such as “to get funds or favours for a business sector”.

Journalists: form an orderly queue, but don’t hold your breath for an early result.

Again what is interesting about this is what it reveals about the Integrity Institute’s beliefs. They are convinced that lobbyists literally buy off politicians.

Finally a very insightful take by Deborah te Kawa:

Sometimes, those who claim to defend democracy are the ones who misunderstand it most. The Integrity Institute’s recent campaign, ostensibly about exposing undue influence over policy, has revealed something more troubling: a fundamental confusion about how policy advice, participation, and legitimacy actually work in democratic systems. …

The policy advisory literature has long since moved past the myth of the neutral bureaucracy. As Craft and Howlett (2012) argue, modern advisory systems are pluralised and layered. Policy advice no longer flows solely from within the state. It emerges through dynamic interaction between political actors, ministerial advisers, public servants, and external stakeholders: including iwi, hapū, academics, commentators, lobbyists, consultants, contractors, industry and community interest groups, and civil society. This is not a breakdown in integrity. It is a shift in how democratic knowledge is produced and contested; a shift that has been underway since 1996, when we began correcting for the distortions of the 1980s’ new public management reforms.

Rather than engage with this shift, the Integrity Institute appears to reject its premise. In targeting Federated Farmers, the Institute frames visible, declared advocacy as inherently suspect. Yet publishing policy platforms, meeting with ministers, or advocating for sector interests is entirely within the bounds of democratic practice. As Craft and Halligan (2020) remind us, robust advisory systems must accommodate both internal and external sources of advice. To treat advocacy as corruption is to misread the core architecture of modern policy-making.

This conflation is not just technically inaccurate. It is democratically dangerous. Legitimacy in policy does not come from insulation. As I have been exploring in the Waitangi Tribunal Thursdays series, and arguing in The Practical State, it comes from contestability, transparency, and deliberative engagement.

The bolded parts are key. We are seeing concerted campaigns to basically say that advocacy should be limited or ignored, if it is from certain sectors. They demand that public servants refuse to respond to e-mails from advocates they don’t like. They complain that officials spent more time meeting with farmers who have to implement freshwater regulations than groups who don’t have to.

It is democratically dangerous to say that the Government which has the power to pass laws and regulations that can make or break businesses, should limit interactions with those businesses.

That does not mean they should always agree with the point of view of business lobby groups. All regulations and laws produce a mixture of benefits and costs. Decisions will be made based on the respective magnitudes and priorities.

If there is corrupt secret lobbying with promises of donations for policies, I am 100% in favour of exposing those. But public open advocacy by groups such as Federated Farmers should not be seen as is any way suspect.

Anyway in the interest of integrity and transparency I look forward to the contract between the Integrity Institute and Newsroom being published.

Even if you think the pols are biased against Trump, that doesn’t impact the trend. Trump had a good first month, then a bad three months after that. and a slight decline since.

This helps explain why. His tariffs have pushed him underwater on the cost of living. His other strength on immigration has also flipped.

And then we have the Epstein files issue. I am one of those who think he killed himself – Occam’s razor. He had gone from a life of luxury, sex, and privilege to a life in prison. Suicide is no surprise, and there is no evidence to contradict it. But if you spend a year hyping it up as a conspiracy and then in power suddenly say nothing to see here, you just annoy everyone.

You reap what you sow.

Nicola Willis announced:

Kiwibank has been given the green light to compete more vigorously with the big four Australian-owned banks that dominate the New Zealand banking sector.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today that, following a market testing process, Cabinet had approved Kiwibank’s parent company raising up to $500 million of capital to fund the bank’s growth.

“Allowing Kiwibank to raise up to an additional $500 million is the first step towards giving Kiwibank access to the capital it needs to truly compete with the big four Aussie banks while retaining its intrinsic New Zealand identity. 

“The Commerce Commission reported last year that New Zealand’s four largest banks did not face strong competition when providing personal banking services. 

“Advice to the Government is that an additional $500 million of capital could support up to $4 billion of business lending or $10 billion of home lending. 

This is a smart move, for a number of reasons.

1. Having private capital in Kiwibank will be beneficial with those shareholders being able to push for greater commercial discipline
2. Kiwibank is too small to compete effectively with the larger banks. Access to more capital means they should be able to increase their market share
3. By using private capital, the government doesn’t ned to borrow money. I would rather the Government put $500 million into hospitals and schools, than a commercial bank – as should any sane person.

It is important to note this is not an asset sale where the Government is selling some of its shares, and receiving money for them. It is the company (with government permission) doing a capital raise. The money from that goes to Kiwibank, not the Crown, allowing them to expand. It will mean that a percentage of Kiwibank will be privately owned (I estimate around 20% to 25% based on Kiwibank net equity of $2.24b) but the Government has committed to keeping a majority stake.

The Herald reports:

A prominent New Zealander whose case was shrouded in secrecy last month can now be identified as former Deputy Police Commissioner Jevon McSkimming.

The ex-top cop faces eight charges of possessing child exploitation and bestiality material.

McSkimming, 52, first appeared by audio-visual link in the Wellington District Court in early July, but was granted interim name suppression as well as suppression of his charges.

It was widely known that McSkimming was the individual, so it is good name suppression has lapsed.

While it is sad to see the second most senior police officer in court on criminal charges, it is good that we have a system where no one is above the law. There are many countries where such an individual would never be charged.

I should also note that McSkimming is entitled to a defence to the charges. While I presume there is proof the material was on a device or devices he owned, he has potential defences such as they were related to a case, or someone else accesses his device, or they came through malware. How credible those defences are will depend on the evidence that goes before the court. So please no-one rush to judgment.

Erica Stanford and the PM have announced incredibly significant changes to New Zealand’s secondary and vocational education system. I’ll explain what they are shortly, but first everyone needs to understand that the status quo is not working. That’s not an opinion, but backed by hard global data.

Since 2000 our scores on the global PISA test has dropped 28 points for reading, 44 points for maths and 26 points for science. If you defend the status quo, you are saying we should settle for more decline. Ironically over the same time period NCEA achievement rates have risen.

It doesn’t have to be like this. In Ireland the changes since 2000 have been just -11, -11 and -4 compared to -28, -44 and -26 for NZ. The UK is -1, -6 and -15. The US +0, -18 and +10.

The decline is not due to our top students performing less well. It is because of the tail end of students having a greater and greater gap. So if you care about equity in education and closing the gap between the top and bottom performing students, you should be not be supporting the status quo.

The changes announced today are huge. This is no tinker. They were designed by an advisory group of principals who are at the coalface and know what does and doesn’t work. The key changes are:

• NCEA Levels 1, 2 and 3 are gone.
• Year 11 will do a Foundational Skills Award in literacy and numeracy. Year 12 the New Zealand Certificate of Education and Year 13 the New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education.
• The standards-based assessment system where you can do a collection of individual standards such as coffee making is replaced with a subject-based approach that requires coherent programmes of learning.
• English and Maths will become compulsory for Year 11
• The two certificates will require you to pass at least four out of five subjects
• Assessment in each subject will get students a grade out of 100, with the traditional grade ranges of A to E. Parents, students and employers will once again be able to understand how a student is doing.
• There will be a focus on stronger vocational pathways with new subjects and standards co-designed with industry experts in areas like construction, automotive and hospitality.

The case for change is overwhelming. Apart from the massive decline PISA scores (despite an increase in NCEA achievement rates, which shows the two were not aligned), research has found the following:

• 60% of teachers don’t believe NCEA Level 1 is reliable
• 71% of employers don’t see NCEA Level 1 as a reliable measure of knowledge
• Only 54% of Year 12 and 65% of Year 13 students achieved NCEA with three or more full subjects
• The focus on accumulating credits gets in the way of learning
• Often students stop studying as soon as they achieve the minimum number of credits, students tell teachers they are only interested in learning if it’s worth credits 
• Lack of deep learning and does not encourage students to learn independently- tertiary providers report having to teach students how to learn 

The proposed overhaul is open for consultation until 15 September. I would urge parents especially to submit on it. This is arguably the most important reform the Government will undertake, in terms of New Zealand’s future.

The consultation document is below.

The Post reports:

The man who threatened to kill then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the judge sentencing him “I’m horrified I’m in prison” – but that’s where he will spend the next 11 months.

Richard Sivell was sentenced at Tauranga District Court on Wednesday after being found guilty at a judge-alone trial back in October of threatening to Kill Ardern, obstructing police and failing to provide a phone PIN.

It was revealed at his trial that Sivell told an online channel he’d be “quite happy to execute” Ardern – he’d make the gallows if needed – and he claimed he wanted to hear her “neck snap”.

Sivell also described via text in a different social media channel how “common law” or sheriffs would be able to “apprehend her [Ardern] and put her in a cell”.

“Judge her for high treason and crimes against humanity and execute the c….”

This is horrific language, and a rare example of where you should go to prison for what you say. I don’t care what you think of a politician, nothing excuses saying you want to murder them and hear their neck snap.

Megan Woods has announced she will go List only at the next election. There are two reasons for this.

1. She was at serious risk of losing the seat at the next election. It is the most likely seat for National to pick up on the proposed boundaries, and National’s Wigram electorate has had soaring membership and finances
2. If Labour loses the next election, she can leave Parliament without a by-election.

Woods has held the seat since 2011 when she succeeded Jim Anderton. At the last election her majority was only 1,179 compared to 14,770 the election prior.

The Taxpayers’ Union released:

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is pleased to announce the appointment of two new members to its Board of Directors: Hon. Stuart Nash and Dr John Harman. Their combined expertise strengthens the organisation’s leadership as it continues to champion lower taxes, less waste, and more accountability.

Stuart Nash, a former Cabinet Minister of Revenue and Member of Parliament, brings deep experience in public policy and governance. His insights from inside government will add valuable perspective to the Taxpayers’ Union’s advocacy for efficient public spending.

Dr John Harman, a seasoned business leader and healthcare expert, joins the board with decades of experience in management, innovation, and public health. He brings a strong commitment to transparency and performance-driven systems to further the Taxpayers’ Union’s mission.

Delighted with both of these appointments. Especially pleased to see a former Labour Cabinet Minister join the board. Reducing wasteful spending should be a priority for all political parties.

Scott Simpson announced:

Surcharges will be axed to put money back in Kiwis’ pockets, says Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson.

“Surcharges are a hassle and an unwelcome surprise when shoppers get to the till. That pesky note or sticker on the payment machine will become a thing of the past.

“We’re banning surcharges so consumers can shop with confidence knowing how much they will pay for their purchases.

“New Zealanders are paying up to $150 million in surcharges every year, including excessive surcharges of up to $65 million. That’s money that could be saved or spent elsewhere.

This should be a popular move, that Consumer NZ has been calling for. Some have worried it will mean businesses will just put prices up, but that misses a second aspect to the announcement:

The ban follows the Commerce Commission decision to reduce interchange fees paid by businesses to accept Visa and Mastercard payments, a move to save businesses around $90 million a year.

The interchange fees are a bit of a scam. I’ll use an analogy with the telco sector. Telcos used to change a mobile termination fee. So if you were on (then) Telecom and called or texted a (then) Vodafone phone, the telcos would bill each other a few cents a minute. This allowed them to then have plans where you can call other phones on their network for free, but had to pay to call or text phones on other networks. This led to entire schools having all their students on one network as you couldn’t afford to be on the one your mates were not on.

This was basically a scam. The actual cost of transferring a text was miniscule. Think 0.00001c or the like. But the fees were great for the incumbent telcos, as they kept out new comers and also generated money for them.

Interchange fees are somewhat similar. The Commerce Commission stated:

It costs New Zealand businesses around $1 billion a year to accept Visa and Mastercard payments, which is often passed onto their customers through surcharges and higher product costs. 

The Commission has determined this cost is too high and has acted to reduce this cost for businesses by around $90 million a year.  

“This is an important step in our continued work to cut costs for businesses and consumers. Our latest decision builds on the initial fee caps set in 2022, which led to $140 million in annual savings to New Zealand businesses,” Commerce Commission Chair Dr John Small says. 

The actual cost of transaction is near zero. There are definitely fixed costs in the network that have to be covered, but the variable cost is very very small. There is a case that fees should be based on the number of transactions, not the value of them. A $1,000 payment costs the same to process as a $10 one. The Commission noted:

The current retail payment system lacks strong competitive pressure and most merchants are price takers for interchange fees. Despite current regulatory caps, interchange fees on the Mastercard and Visa networks in New Zealand remain significantly higher than in comparable jurisdictions. For example, interchange fee caps for personal domestic credit card transactions in New Zealand are more than double the caps in Europe.

So the combination of the Commerce Commission reducing the interchange fees, and the surcharge ban should see both businesses and consumers better off.

Net farmer confidence has jumped from -66% a year ago to +33% in the Federated Farmers Survey. That’s great news. I can’t recall ever seeing such a dramatic change in just 12 months.

Michael Reddell writes:

When our kids were little one of the books we often read them was “Bears in the Night” in which the young bears, hearing a noise outside, sneak out of the house at night, climb Spook Hill and then, terrified by the sudden appearance of an owl – not the most threatening of birds – whose call they’d heard, rush back to the comfort and security of home and bed. 

It came to mind when reading some of the arguments being advanced by government officials and banks over the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill currently making its way through the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee.

The key controversial bit of the bill is the proposal to legislate retrospectively to close down class action suits currently before the courts against ANZ and ASB in respect of flaws in loan variation procedures etc that occurred between 2015 and 2019. 

My position is retrospective legislation is wrong, especially to explicitly interfere with a case that has been before the courts for almost six years. No problem with changing the law to prevent or change future law suits, but definitely not to change the rules for a legal action already underway.

Retrospective legislation is, almost without exception, an odious concept. Perhaps one might make an exception where, say, there was a clear typo in the legislation, giving a quite different meaning to the words of the legislation than Parliament had clearly intended. That wasn’t the case here. Rather, right or wrongly, Parliament changed its mind in 2019 about what the law should be going forward. Now the government – egged on by the banks – wants to make it as if a consciously and deliberately chosen law never was.

I agree.

What is puzzling is why the government would propose to amend the law retrospectively to help out large and highly profitable foreign banks. And in so doing to bypass what is apparently usually the practice when (as happens on rare occasions) retrospective legislation is passed, when cases already before the courts are (apparently) protected.

I hadn’t paid an awful lot of attention to the whole issue until two or three weeks ago when big scary numbers generated by the Reserve Bank were reported (eg here) and thus entered the public debate under headlines (not, to be clear, sourced to the Reserve Bank) about threats to the financial system unless this retrospective law was passed. $12.9 billion (the maximum estimate reported) sounded like a lot of money

It is a big number, and a nonsense number. The current legal action has had a $300 million settlement offer, so you could simply change the law for future legal actions, and cap the exposure at $300 million.

One of those KCs – James Every-Palmer – actually told FEC (at about 24 minutes in) that the sums being sought in the cases against the ANZ and ASB were “as I understand it, hundreds of millions of dollars” (before then handwaving to tie this to a system-wide $12.9 billion dollars). ANZ and ASB together make up the best part of half the banking system, so if the Bankers’ Association understands the claims against them to be “hundreds of millions” then even if that represented $1 billion in total, it is all but impossible to see how the rest of the system could be exposed to $12 billion of claims.

Yet it is this ridiculous number that has convinced Government Ministers that they must push through a retrospective law change.

You can understand why the ANZ and ASB and their shareholders would prefer not to pay such a sum, and would (a) fight it in court, and b), if they could, lobby for a retrospective law change. But it simply isn’t a financial stability issue. It is worth remembering that 15 years ago a big tax case went against the banks, costing them $2.2 billion in an economy then about half the size (nominal GDP) of today’s (and in the midst of a severe recession). Banks affected emerged just fine. 

Lobbying for a law change is cheaper than complying with the consequences of not following the law!

Business Journalist Jenny Ruth also writes:

I’m starting to think New Zealand’s banks must be sitting on mountains of undisclosed errors and emissions, all of them committed within a specific four-and-a-half year period.

How else to understand the hysteria and wildly improbable claims in their submissions to parliament’s finance and expenditure committee (FEC)?

Chicken Little and the boy who cried wolf have nothing on them.

I do hope the politicians sitting on the FEC have their bullshit detectors finely tuned.

Nice calling out.

In my previous post on this issue, some commenters said that consumers weren’t really “harmed” by the banks’ disclosure failures, so requiring full refunds is unfair. This misses the point of consumer protection laws.

Take an analogy – if you get a speeding ticket, you can’t argue your way out of it by saying “but I didn’t crash into anyone, so no harm done.” If you broke the law, you pay the fine. That’s how deterrence works.

From a consumer protection perspective, banks are dealing with other people’s money and making billions in profits from it (which I support – you want profitable banks). But we expect that they follow basic disclosure rules that help customers understand what they’re signing up for. These rules exist because there’s a massive power imbalance between banks and their customers.

Consumer protection laws work because they create real consequences. Take away those consequences retroactively, and you’re basically telling every bank in the country that compliance is optional – as long as you can afford the political lobbying afterwards.

Paul Goldsmith announced the following electoral law changes:

• Closing enrolment the day before advance voting starts, so that a final vote count can be done in a timely manner (In Australia it closes 26 days before the election)
• Banning provision of free food etc within 100 metres of a polling place
• Adjusting for inflation the disclosure limits for party donations from $5,000 to $6,000 (it used to be $15,000!)

It has never been easier to enrol and vote. The advent of advance voting has made it far far easier to vote. so long as people know the enrolment deadline, the vast majority will enrol on time. When there is no enrolment deadline, it is no surprise so many people leave it to the last minute, which then requires special votes which take so much longer to check and process.

Do you recall Jacinda promised to solve homelessness? I think she said in four weeks.

Would it surprise anyone to learn that according to the census, it increased 37%?

The Homelessness Insights report shows that the numbers homeless increased from 3,624 in 2018 to 4,965 in 2023. In the previous five years, it dropped 12%. So Key and English saw a 12% decline and Ardern a 37% increase.

Paul Goldsmith has appointed the Judicial Conduct Panel into Acting Judge Ema Aitken. The members are:

• Honourable Brendan Brown KC. Brown will chair it. He was a Court of Appeal Judge for 8 years and High Court for 11.
• Honourable Justice Jillian Mallon. She is a current Court of Appeal Judge for 2 years and High Court for six years before that
• Right Honourable Sir Jerry Mateparae, GNZM, QSO, KStJ. He is a former Governor-General and Chief of Defence Force

He has also appointed Tim Stephens KC as special counsel for the inquiry.

I attended the last Judicial Conduct Panel’s hearings. I look forward to attending this one.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand exports will face a 15% tariff after the latest moves from US President Donald Trump.

Trump signed the order for new tariffs to go into effect in 7 days on a wide swathe of US trading partners.

The tariff will be levied on New Zealand exports to the US. In Trump’s “Liberation Day” event on April 2 New Zealand exports were marked down for a 10% tariff – so the new rate is an increase.

A bad decision, economically and politically. US consumers will pay more, and NZ businesses will suffer.

It also means that we will end up trading more with other countries such as China, so it is also geopolitically stupid.