A guest post by The Campaign Company:

There are plenty of digital marketing jobs in New Zealand. There are plenty of political jobs. There are a few public affairs and advocacy jobs.

But there are very few roles that sit properly at the intersection of all three.

The Campaign Company is hiring a Head of Political Digital Strategy— a specialist role for someone who understands politics, advocacy, public persuasion, and the practical realities of running serious digital campaigns.

This is not a generic marketing job where you are selling shoes, SaaS subscriptions, or smoothies. The successful candidate will be working with political, advocacy, public-facing and commercial clients in New Zealand, Australia and further afield, helping them sharpen their message, reach the right audiences, and run campaigns that can actually shift opinion, mobilise supporters, and influence decision-makers.

The role is part strategist, part campaign manager, part digital marketer, part political communications operator. One week might involve helping a candidate refine their online message. Another might involve coordinating creative, managing paid advertising, reviewing campaign analytics, building landing pages, or advising a client on how to respond to a fast-moving political issue.

In New Zealand, that combination is close to one of a kind.

The Campaign Company already has an established and interesting client base, and the role has significant room to grow. For the right person, this is an opportunity to help professionalise political and advocacy campaigning in New Zealand and Australia — and to lead work that sits much closer to public debate than ordinary agency work.

They are looking for someone with strong communication skills, good political judgement, project management ability, experience with digital campaigns, and comfort dealing directly with clients and stakeholders.

This would suit someone who is politically minded, digitally sharp, calm under pressure, and interested in doing work that actually matters.

And unlike most political jobs, it’s based in the City of Sails!

The job ad is here:
https://nz.seek.com/job/92878963

Radio NZ reports:

If the man who has spent more than 35 years in jail for one of New Zealand’s most notorious crimes is released from prison he will likely live unrecognised, according to a new ruling from the Parole Board

The board has ruled that current photos of Paul Joseph Dally, who raped and murdered 13-year-old Karla Cardno in May 1989, cannot be published.

The board has also made non-publication orders for the address from which he’d be released from prison to, if parole were granted, and any other relevant information leading to his identification.

So their concern is protecting Mr Dally, not allowing the families who will live next door to him being able to realise a convicted child rapist and killer is now hanging around their kids.

Maybe the Parole Board members should take him on as a boarder?

A review ordered by the board in 2009 found he scored highly on the “psychopathy checklist measure”, and that his characteristics pointed to the likelihood of serious violent and sexual recidivism.

Yet they’re now about to release him!

His risk of reoffending had changed from extremely high when he began his sentence to, in recent years, a low risk of violent offending and an average risk of sexual offending.

He has a life sentence. If they keep him in prison, then his risk of reoffending is extremely low for both violent and sexual offending.

Radio NZ reported:

Stunned Waitaki District ratepayers facing rates increases of up to 45 percent are calling for a government probe of council’s finances, with some worried people will lose their homes.

The council has been seeking feedback on three possible rates rises of 19 percent, 27 percent or 45 percent as it tries to plug a projected $14 million operating deficit for the next financial year.

Oamaru ratepayer Kurt Scriven said none of the three options felt feasible for residents, whose rates had already gone up about 30 percent over the past three years.

So the best option is a 19% increase and the worst a 45%. Outrageous. Heads should roll.

Ironically the Mayor stood on the following platform:

Affordability is our biggest issue, and we need to minimise council spend and find non-rate solutions to our funding challenges.

How can you campaign on that and then once elected say we need to hike rates from 19% to 45%???

A reader writes in:

 I read your article on the Royal Commission finding the disturbing part is this is 7 months before! 

We have caught the previous executive out on demonstrable untruths regarding a critical timeline, and have formally escalated complaints to both the Chief Archivist and the Public Service Commission (at the explicit suggestion of the Ombudsman investigator who is also investigating refused documents ).

The core of the issue centers on a high-level meeting involving the Prime Minister and senior Cabinet ministers on Friday, 13 August 2021 to decide on the youth vaccine rollout and the intentional removal of safety data from public communications.

Here is the hard data and the paper trail we have uncovered:

• The Verified Attendance List: Ministry of Health OIA response (Ref: H2026082262) explicitly confirms that Chair Chris Hipkins, PM Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, Andrew Little, Dr. Ayesha Verrall, Aupito William Sio, and Peeni Henare all attended this Zoom meeting.
• The Diary Omissions & Physical Alteration: Despite official confirmation that this high-stakes meeting occurred, it is entirely missing from the proactive monthly diaries of Ardern, Hipkins, and Little. More egregiously, in Deputy PM Grant Robertson’s official diary, the “1” was stripped off the front of the “13” (rendering it a single digit), causing the entry to sit completely out of chronological sequence on the page to effectively bury it.
• The Admission of No Minutes: In the same OIA response, the Ministry of Health officially admits that this high-stakes meeting—where core executive ministers made pivotal decisions—was completely unminuted, and no official notes exist.
• The Smoking Gun on Data Removal: Real-time operational papers place Chief Science Advisor Ian Town directly at the meeting with a 7-point clinical briefing paper. Three days later, a Cabinet paper signed by Hipkins completely scrubbed any reference to myocarditis risks in young people. This matches the official CV TAG Minutes from 17 August 2021 (chaired by Town), which state in black and white under Section 6.0: “It was requested that references to increasing dosing intervals potentially providing some protection against myocarditis be removed from communications. This has been actioned.”

This is a fundamental breach of Section 17 of the Public Records Act 2005, which mandates a strict statutory duty to maintain a full, accurate, and uncorrupted chronological ledger of executive action. When official ministerial records can be quietly scrubbed, physically manipulated, or left entirely unminuted to bypass OIA and Ombudsman oversight, it sets a dangerous precedent for public service accountability. regardless of who is in power.

Also worthy to note is the sanitisation of the Jan 16th cabinet meeting. You can see from the cabinet paper signed by Hipkins after the 13th and before the 16th, that any references to the dosage intervals reducing risk of Myocarditis in 12 to 15 years old is sanitised from the papers to the rest of the cabinet. So they kept their own cabinet in the dark AND the public 

On Patreon I write:

Ideologically I have never been a fan of compulsory superannuation. In fact I campaigned strongly against a yes vote in the 1997 referendum on Winston Peters’ compulsory retirement savings scheme. There were strange alliances with the Young Nationals and the Business Roundtable working with the Council of Trade Unions to campaign against it. We succeeded, with 92% of voters voting no, on a massive 80% turnout.

I opposed it on the grounds that individuals are better placed to decide on how to save for their retirement, than the Government. For some, investing in a farm or business is their best course. For others, paying off a mortgage.

Yet today, I am excited by the decision of the National Party to make KiwiSaver compulsory, if it wins the next election. Why?

An interesting Substack article which has 10 rules from Roger Douglas for reform. They are:

1. For quality policies, you need quality people
2. Implement reform in quantum leaps, using large packages
3. Speed is essential. It is almost impossible to go too fast
4. Once you build the momentum, don’t let it stop rolling
5. Consistency + credibility = confidence
6. Let the dog see the rabbit
7. Never fall into the trap of selling the public short
8. Don’t blink. Public confidence rests on your composure
9. Incentives and choice versus monopoly — get the fundamentals right
10. When in doubt, ask yourself, “Why am I in politics?”

The Taxpayers’s Union has looked at what a change of government could cost NZ farmers. It isn’t pretty:

• Labour’s no rates cap – an extra $10k rates after three years
• Labour’s ute tax – $6,900 per ute
• Green’s wealth tax – $131k/year
• Green’s death tax – $2.07m
• TPM wealth tax – $150k/year

Imagine what food prices will be as farms become unprofitable with taxes greater than profits!

I recently went to an incredibly moving event where the family of Wladimir Riszko received his Righteous Among the Nation Medal. This honour is given exclusively to non Jews who risked their own lives in order to save Jews from the Holocaust.

Riszko was a Pole who hid not one, not two but 16 Jews in a bunker on his property. He would have lived every day for three years in terror of being found out. He would have been killed if they had been discovered. He didn’t hide them for money. He hid them for humanity. How he managed to feed 16 people for three years is also incredible, during a time of food rationing. Every day he would have been having to go out, and try to find food for them, risking death if the authorities worked out why.

He married one of the Jews, Renee. They moved to New Zealand. They had two children – George (deceased) and Eva. Eva spoke to us about how her mother was traumatised by her experience. She lived, but lost at least four of her siblings to the Holocaust. Her father had mentioned he saved some Jews, but rarely spoke of it. Some years ago their mother had written down what she could recall of the Jews who were hidden by Wladamir. It was a scrap of paper, that she didn’t know what to do with.

In 2021 Sara Bank-Wolf contacted the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand. Her father Dov was a child who was sheltered by Riszko, along with his parents. She did not know the name of their saviour, just that he had married one of the Jews and moved to New Zealand.

The Holocaust Centre initially said there was not enough info to go on, but by chance Dr. Ann Beaglehole, a volunteer, knew of Riszko’s story and the family. She contacted him and the children of Dov made contact with the children of Wladimir. They were then able to identify all 16 survivors, over time.

As Wladamir married Renee, their family were both descendants of the rescuer and the rescued.

We heard from Eva, from Sara (by video). Foreign Minister Winston Peters spoke, ACT MP Simon Court plus the Polish and Israeli Ambassadors, plus Deborah Hart from the NZ Holocaust Centre. The event was both incredibly sad and uplifting. Being reminded of the atrocities of the Holocaust, and how 99% of Jews in their local city were killed. But heart warming at the thought of this man, who became a New Zealander, who risked his own life continuously for three years, to save strangers from extermination. Many of have good intentions, but how many of us would do what Wladimir Riszko did?

He truly is one of Righteous of the Nations.

A guest post by Owen Jennings:

Giovani Riveri makes ‘healthy’ sandwiches and ‘coffee to die for’ in the centre of New New York, right under the tallest skyscrapers.  Giovani is not happy.  Some of his best customers and biggest tippers have disappeared.  Income is down again.  Giovani knows why, too.

“It’s Mamdani.  It’s his freakin’ taxes.”  He nods up at the glass offices towering above his little bar.  “Dey all going to Texas, man.  Mamdani is driving the wealthy outa ere”. 

He is actually right.  New York’s mayor Mamdani ran and was elected on taxing the rich.  He’s somewhere left of Bernie Sanders and the crazy Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez. If there is room, there.  He is all over rent freezes, LGBTQ rights, fare-free buses, building more houses, higher minimum wages and more.  Right out of Labour’s playbook although I guess Mamdani has never heard of Hipkins and the Labour Party.  He probably would not even know where New Zealand is.

The tax increases proposed were not just marginal changes. He wants a 34% increase on the top personal rate taking state and corporate taxes to nearly 20% of a high income.  And that is all before Washington gets a buck. 

That 20% compares with, say, Texas that has zero state and corporate taxes.  Guess where some of the big corporates are heading?  Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan among several are shifting top staff to Dallas. Citadel, Elliott, AllianceBernstein are heading to Florida.  Total staff numbers are only changing slowly but it is the high-income earners who are moving.  Giovani’s tippers.

Mamdani and his sycophants are playing it down, but he has also begun a series of meetings with relevant CEO’s to try and talk them into staying.  He is not totally silly.  He knows the top 1% of taxpayers are shouldering 45% of the local tax burden.  Washington isn’t helping.  There is no love between Trump and Mamdani or between the traditional Republicans and the extremist elements among the Democrats.

There should be lessons for Kiwis.  Capital is mobile.  Many of our wealthiest have multiple houses in various countries.  Our few top earners are already copping nearly half our tax imposition.  In fact, apply a nett lens and over half of our taxes are generated by around 5% of our citizenry.  If “fairness” is till a key principle of taxation regimes then we are running a very unfair system.

Hipkins, bolstered by the incessant demands about inequality from the Greens and Te Pati Māori clearly has more and higher taxes in mind.  Would he take a minute to analyse the New York situation?  I doubt it. He knows the media won’t tell Mamdani’s story.  Few people, if any, in my street know the mayor’s name, let alone what his extreme socialist policies are doing to the once proud financial centre of the Americas. We may end up with more of our own Giovani’s down the Viaduct.

A guest post by Dr Corinna Proehl:

“Never again is now”. This comment of a GP on the official Instagram account of Hastings’s Mayor Wendy Schollum was enough to trigger a bullying, patronizing pack attack by two councillors, aimed to publicly shame one of their constituents.

The councillors involved are Heather Te Au-Skipworth, senior Hastings District Councillor and close ally of the Mayor. A current Green Party Candidate and former Te Pati Māori candidate, most famous for her racist views: “it is a known fact that Māori genetic makeup is stronger than others…”.  And Nick Ratcliffe, former Green Party candidate for Tukituki, newly elected (and lowest polling) Hastings District Councillor and political friend of the mayor.

The target Dr Corinna Proehl, a long-serving local GP. She grew up in Germany, in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Her father, a historian at the University of Hamburg, was clear: This shameful history of Jews being killed for being Jews is not allowed to ever happen again.  Her own family marked by a tragedy, involving her mentally-ill or “unworthy-of-life” great-aunt Hertha.  Her father, Hermann, found out about the upcoming deportation of their only daughter to a “mental institution”. He rang his son, Dr Proehl’s grandfather, and told him: “They don’t have to kill her, I can do this myself”. So he turned on the gas in their apartment in December 1936. The desperate parents Hermann, his wife Selma, and their beloved daughter Hertha all died together. Not only did the remaining family have to come to terms with this tragedy, it also had to be played down as an ‘accident’. Talking about the event openly would have been regarded as opposition to the Nazi Regime.

This makes “Never again” not just a slogan for Dr Proehl. It is a duty to stand up against anti-Semitism, no matter where it appears. 

When Mayor Schollum made a post in the wake of the Bondi Terror Attack, where Islamist gunmen fired on a crowd celebrating Hanukkah killing 15 people, she only expressed sympathy for ‘our Australian whanau’. No mention of the Jewish community, anti-Semitism or Islamic terror. So Dr Corinna Proehl stood up to her values and asked a simple question: “How can a community be assured of your support if you don’t even mention their name?…. Never again is now”. 

The mayor’s allies saw red, jumping onto the public post, castigating Dr Proehl. Te Au-Skipworth went for her family. Her son, a mayoral candidate, who took a stance against Māori wards, accused of not standing up to racism and gas-lighting her. Attacking family to silence a person is an all too familiar tactic employed by the Nazis. The councillors worked as a pack, claiming that she was not allowed to have an opinion on anti-Semitism because she hadn’t attended all the pro-Palestine protests Nick Ratcliffe had organised. She was called deeply racist, uneducated and told to recluse herself from discussions. Ratcliffe then misused his position as chair of council’s Multicultural Committee to add authority to his attacks. He clearly stated that he was protecting his ‘boss’, Mayor Wendy Schollum. At no point Mayor Schollum stepped in to stop the character assassination on her account.

Secrecy prevails. A Code of Conduct complaint investigation found clear breaches, and the councillors were forced to write apologies. However, the council asked that these be kept secret, ignoring Dr Proehl’s request to publish them on the official channels. Publicly smeared on the Mayors’ official Instagram account, and yet the atonement remains hidden. Further consequences for the bullying behaviour: None. Schollum refusing to strip her allies of any council appointments or positions. Te Au-Skipworth continues to be the most senior councillor after the mayor and her deputy. Ratcliffe is still the Chair of council’s Multicultural Committee, the position he abused to bully Dr Proehl. How Mayor Schollum can still have confidence to continue in this role beggars belief. Bullying an immigrant for whom English is a second language, is now an officially sanctioned role of the Multicultural Committee’s Chairman. Both councillors are still “youth council liaisons”. One wonders what “guidance” these councillors have to offer.

DPF: So Dr Proehl criticised the Mayor for not naming the group that was attacked at Bondi. Then allies of the Mayor attacked her. A secret code of conduct investigation found they were in breach, and they had to apologise. But the outcome and the apologies were to be kept secret! Media should ask why an upheld code of conduct complaint is kept secret.

The Free Speech Union is doing a series of ten “good faith yarns” where interesting and topical issues get discussed between one or two locals, and FSU board member Ani O’Brien. We absolutely need more conversations, rather than just shouting at each other. And the line up of discussions looks really good. They include:

• Queenstown Mayor John Glover on growth and infrastructure and tradeoffs
• ACT MP Todd Stephenson and former National MP Simon O’Connor in Wellington on euthanasia
• Historians Alistair Reece and Paul Moon in Tauranga on Maori spirituality and secular NZ
• Former Health NZ Chair Rob Campbell on public service neutrality
• Far North Councillor Davina Smoulders on co-governance and local government in Whangarei
• Sir Ian Taylor in Dunedin on AI, tech and identity
• Professor Te Maire Tau Upoko from Ngai Tahu on the Treaty and partnership

I’d love to attend all of them if I can. They are all interesting issues, and many speakers whose views I suspect I won’t agree with, but I really want to listen to so I can consider their ideas and arguments.

The NY Post reports:

A woke new bill erases the terms “mother” and “father” from state child custody and parental laws — a gender-neutral rewriting that’s expected to spark a flood of similarly clunky legislation.

“Mother” would be replaced with “gestating parent” while “father” becomes “non-gestating parent” or “parent” in family court along with in domestic and education law, under the legislation, passed this week by state Democrats.

It’s just crazy stuff. Treat people with respect on an individual level when it comes to their gender identity. But don’t try and wipe out terms such as mother and father. This is what causes the huge backlashes.

An article at The Post has no less than four principals complaining that the new ERA reports will allow make it easier for parents to see how a school is doing. There wasn’t a single view of a parent about whether or not they think it would be good to be able to see how their school is doing.

Was The Post unable to find any parents to interview?

Were they unable to find a principal who supports the easier to understand new ERO reports?

A very good explanation of why we need LNG in the short term. Without it we face supply shortages in a dry year which would send power prices sky rocketing. This keeps prices from increasing. No other solution is quick enough to fill the gaps caused by our dwindling gas supplies.

The Spinoff reports:

The government has been spending around $300,000 per year to provide Crown limousines to former prime ministers and their spouses – even though the service goes mostly unused. 

Former prime ministers and governors-general are entitled to lifetime 24/7 access to chauffeur-driven cars from the Crown fleet for any travel “related to his or her role as a former prime minister”. The perk is managed by the government’s VIP Transport Service, part of the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).The government spent a total of $340,646 providing this service in 2025, according to the DIA annual report. That’s despite the 15 eligible former prime ministers, governors-general and their spouses barely using the service. The entire cohort claimed just $10,921 towards land transport, which includes the use of chauffeur-driven cars charged out at an hourly rate.

This is crazy. Only Government would spent $300,000 so they can provide a service that only incurs $10,000 of use.

I’m fine with former PMs and GGs being given access to government funded transport. They often get asked to attend events etc. But you don’t need to have a fleet of limos on 24/7 standby for them. Just give them each an Uber account and you’ll save $290,000.

Oliver Hartwich writes:

The announcement caused a bit of confusion in our office because there is more than one way in which you could read the policy.

The first reading is small. If the saving really is $25 a week, then $65 million stretches to about 54,000 people, or one New Zealander in a hundred. A modest scheme for a lucky few.

The second reading is enormous. Labour says 1.3 million people ride public transport each year, and if they all saved as promised, the bill would not be $65 million but well over a billion. On that reading, the $65 million is not a budget at all. It is a down payment.

The third reading sits somewhere between the two, and it turns on figures Labour never gave us. How many drivers will switch to the bus, and how many riders already spend enough to gain anything? Nobody outside Labour can say.

Three readers, three answers. We could not agree on what the policy was, let alone whether it was any good.

The reason is simple. Labour gave a headline and kept the workings. No model, no spreadsheet, no table of who saves what and where. In fact, not even a problem definition.

Without those, you cannot argue with the policy. You can only guess at it.

Will 1% of NZers benefit from this or will 25% of NZers benefit from it. We don’t know.

Commentators asked Labour for policy. But Labour only gave us a press release with a dollar sign on it.

Parties that want our votes owe us their workings, not just their answers.

Yep, it was a press release, not a serious policy.

Reuters reports:

“The return for major concessions that will be ⁠asked of Iran is the lifting of sanctions, sanctions that were taken at the United Nations,” Barrot said, referring to a vote in September last year.

As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, France holds the power to veto any accords.

“So, as was the case 10 years ‌ago, France will have to give its approval for the sanctions to be lifted,” Barrot declared, a reference to the landmark nuclear deal that suspended international sanctions on Iran in January 2016.

This its basically France saying they think the US has surrendered too quickly, and they won’t go along with lifting sanctions without a better deal!

Where France is saying you have surrendered too quickly, you know it is a bad deal!

The proposed senior English curriculum in NZ – with the design led by Elizabeth Rata – is deeply dull and narrow. It is also ideologically aimed – by her own admission – to prevent the success of any “decolonisation” in our schools.

It is limiting in terms of the fact that great literature can come from any culture across the globe.

No one doubts that C. S. Lewis was influential through his range of writings in the 20^th century – including through WW2. And yet Lewis regarded a man called George MacDonald as his “master”. He wrote:

In making this collection I was discharging a debt of justice. I have never concealed the fact that I regarded [MacDonald] as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him. But it has not seemed to me that those who have received my books kindly take even now sufficient notice of the affiliation. Honesty drives me to emphasize it.

As we try and improve education in NZ, reduce reliance on screens, improve literacy, inspire imagination and creativity we would do well to embrace broad authorship. MacDonald was “the friend and mentor of Lewis Carroll, and a friend and arguable literary influence of Mark Twain. Besides C.S. Lewis, he has also been an influence to many other authors: J.R.R. Tolkien, E. Nesbit, and Madeleine L’Engle, to name a few. MacDonald’s books are worth being considered for inclusion in any curriculum/reading list:

My favourites are:

The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

The Princess and Curdie (1883)

Phantastes (1858)

The Golden Key (1867) – read to every class I have ever taught.

At the Back of the North Wind (1871) – a sitter to ne a GREAT movie by the likes of Sir Peter Jackson.

Lilith (1895)

[email protected]

I’ve been sent a copy of a report by FTI Consulting on the tobacco black market in NZ. It is referenced here by Retail NZ. It is 63 pages long and full of data. It is produced for the three main tobacco companies in NZ (not surprisingly they are against their product being stolen). Some of the findings are:

• The black market grew from 27.2% to 33.5% of the total NZ market
• Over half the black market is contraband
• Legal tobacco consumption fell by 19%
• The estimated lost revenue to the Government from the tobacco blackmarket is $817 million in excise tax and GST. Black market sales pay 0% excise tax, 0% GST and 0% income tax!
• In 2025, New Zealand Customs Service reported intercepting 7.7 tonnes of illicit tobacco in 1,701 interceptions
• Legal tobacco in NZ costs double Singapore and Hong Kong and seven times as much as in Japan, Taiwan and Korea
  

It reminds me that the previous Government’s policy was to eventually entirely ban all legal tobacco sales, so that 100% of tobacco consumption in NZ would then be the black market! Gangs were very upset when this Government reversed this policy.