This chart shows Trump’s approval on various issues. His tariffs have tanked his rating on inflation, and even his rating on immigration has gone negative because of over-reach.

Vision for Wellington announced:

Infometrics CEO Brad Olsen, Moore Wilson’s co-owner Julie Moore, company director Paul Ridley-Smith and Infratil’s director of sustainability Louise Tong will turn the spotlight on the city’s ballooning operating costs and debt – and how the city can turn its financial problems around and support business growth. Leading business journalist and commentator, Fran O’Sullivan, will moderate the panel conversation.

“Wellington has far and away the highest operating costs per capita of major cities like Auckland, Christchurch, Hamilton, Tauranga and Lower Hutt,” said Paul Ridley-Smith.

And the Wellington City Council already has the highest debt per capita of other significant New Zealand cities – with the debt burden forecast to climb significantly, he says.

“At the end of June 2025, it is expected that the Council’s debt will be four times higher than in 2019. Total Council operating costs are forecast to rise by 86 percent between 2022–2026 and capital expenditure to double in the same period.”

Louise Tong says Council spending has significantly increased across the board since 2019 with interest costs (+165 percent), urban development (+117 percent), Councillors and staff (+55 percent), waste reduction/energy conservation (+50 percent), insurance (+50 percent), utilities (+49 percent) and suppliers and contractors (+48 percent) leading the way. …

In summary, the panel claims to have identified $2.8 billion in potential savings over the next ten years.

“We need to pull some big levers to arrive at big savings,” said Tong. “But a financial turn-around for the city is possible. And with more money in the city’s back pocket, we can flourish and deliver on our potential.”

The 20% rates increases are not due to infrastructure. They are due to political decisions by elected Councillors.

Liam Hehir notes:

Imagine if somebody repeatedly accused you of genocide. Would you want them in government with you? Would you be offended at the suggestion? Or would you tacitly concede the high ground to them?

For Chris Hipkins and Labour, this isn’t a thought experiment. 

The pattern was established in October 2021, when Te Pāti Māori first crossed what should be a serious line. As COVID-19 cases rose among Māori communities, co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer didn’t just criticise the government’s pandemic response. She accused it of genocide.

“If the government is prepared to open the borders as soon as our country is 90% vaccinated, they are willingly holding Māori up to be the sacrificial lambs,” the Guardian reports her saying. “It is a modern form [of] genocide.”

You would have to be pretty desperate for power to consider going into government with a party that accused you of genocide. A self respecting party would say we won’t deal with a party that deals in extremism, division and such inflammatory language.

When Te Pāti Māori made genocide accusations, there was no media firestorm demanding accountability. No sustained questioning about whether such language was appropriate. No editorial demands for more measured discourse. No demanding interviews or editorial pushback.

The accusations were tacitly framed as legitimate expressions of concern.

When ACT leader David Seymour merely met with representatives of the 2022 anti-mandate protest at Parliament he was pilloried. Despite carefully qualifying his engagement and rejecting the protest’s more odious elements, Seymour was branded “irresponsible” by then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. National’s Christopher Luxon also felt the need to distance himself from Seymour.

But when Te Pāti Māori hurled literal genocide accusations at the Government, there were no hand-wringing editorials.

The double standard at work.

David Seymour took part in a debate at Oxford Union. Most of the reports were fairly balanced, but the one from Harriette Boucher (could she be related to the owner of Stuff?) at The Post said they did a straw poll of 7 audience members and none of them backed Seymour.

What they didn’t mention was that the actual vote at the debate was very close – I think 98 to 83. Considering the topic was “no one can be illegal on stolen land” with Seymour’s team opposed, that was a remarkably close result. Even more remarkable as his two teammates were both Trump supporting Republicans who would hardly appeal to liberal Oxford students!

The chance of choosing 7 members of the audience at random who all voted the other way is around 2.1%.

Political reports:

The European Union and Australia overnight announced they would start negotiating a “Security and Defence Partnership” and noted their commitment to “advancing free trade negotiations.”

In a statement announcing the planned defense partnership, the European Commission said it “will provide a framework for current and future cooperation including in areas such as defence industry, cyber and counter-terrorism.” But Brussels stressed the future pact “does not have military deployment obligations.”

This is a very good idea, and one NZ may want to emulate (or join). It is apparent the US is no longer a reliable security partner. NATO is effectively defunct (as Trump has said he will not unconditionally help NATO allies who are attacked), so we need new security alliances. These shouldn’t be obligations to defend, but advancing mutual interests, sharing technology and ensuring forces can deploy together.

The Herald reports:

GDP grew at 0.8% in the first quarter of 2025 – stronger than even the most optimistic of economists’ forecasts. 

Activity increased in the March 2025 quarter across all three high-level industry groups: primary industries, goods-producing industries, and services industries.

The Reserve Bank had forecast 0.4% for the quarter, but more recently, the consensus of economists moved to 0.7%.

That’s a pretty good result. It is only one quarter and with great international uncertainty, no one should think we’re guaranteed to keep growth at these levels. But regardless it is good news.

The Washington Post reports:

But there are also hints that she’s still living with some trauma from her time as Prime Minister.

She pre-signed all her books and only takes questions at the event that were submitted in advance. She’s ushered in and out of the room in record time by several large security guards.

I’m sure this is normal for book authors to require questions in advance!

At my Patreon (paywalled) I cover the tactical and strategic issues at play in the Israel-Iran war, and why they lead me to a conclusion that President Trump will authorise US forces to take out the Fordrow nuclear site in Iran.

The Herald reports:

Ngāti Hine leader Pita Tipene is ruling out a settlement under this Government after remarks made by Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith. 

Goldsmith said on Tuesday the Government would not agree to Treaty settlements that disputed whether the Crown is now sovereign. 

Under the previous Labour Government, an initial deed of settlement with Te Whānau-ā-Apanui was drawn up which included the first case of a clause agreeing to disagree on who holds sovereignty.

Goldsmith said the coalition Government was uncomfortable with the clause and was not prepared to progress the settlement without it being removed.

Absolutely correct. There can be only one sovereign government in an area. You can have a form of sovereignty within tribal lands such as in the US. But that does not apply in NZ. Maori do not live on reservations. They live in rural areas, suburbs, towns and cities.

Tipene said although his hapū was “dead keen” on progressing a settlement, they would also want a clause like that in the Apanui deed.

“If the Government is going to progress on that basis (of not allowing such clauses), I will be the first one to say it is impossible to progress anything on those grounds.

“Our people have been very, very clear that we want to be proactive and we want to move forward but that is a bottom line that accepting the Crown is sovereign is totally unacceptable.”

This is a line the Government can’t compromise on. If Ngati Hine refuse to settle, then that is their decision.

If Labour want to go into an election promising that sovereignty is negotiable, then good luck to them.

Stuff reports:

There has been a lot written about Cook Strait ferries lately but far off in the distance, a new ship that will sail between the North and South Islands is slowly making its way here.

Called Livia, the ship has had a fresh coat of paint to transform it from the Stena Line colours into the livery of StraitNZ Bluebridge.

Built in 2008, the ship’s original name was Norman Voyager and it made its maiden voyage that same year between Rosslare, Ireland and the French port of Le Havre.

A number of ferry lines operated the ship until it was bought in 2021 by Stena Line to sail the Baltic Sea. Bluebridge then purchased the ship in March, 2025.

Bluebridge manages to find and purchase suitable ferries without any fuss or costing taxpayers a cent. Why can’t Kiwirail do the same?

Chris Bishop announced:

The derelict and unsafe Gordon Wilson Flats in Wellington will lose its protected heritage status and become eligible for demolition through an amendment to the Resource Management Act (RMA) in the coming weeks, RMA Reform and Housing Minister Chris Bishop says.

“The Gordon Wilson Flats were used as social housing until 2012, when an engineer’s report showed the building was so unsafe that large slabs of the concrete exterior could come off in an earthquake or even a strong wind. The building has sat vacant since then, becoming more dangerous and more of an eyesore every year,” Mr Bishop says.

99% of Wellingtonians will cheer this news. The flats are horrific.

But amazingly Heritage New Zealand is upset. The Herald reports:

Heritage New Zealand has condemned the Government’s decision to remove protection for a derelict housing block, saying the building is “part of Wellington’s social and architectural landscape”.

They are part of the landscape, but in the same way a giant turd would be.

A week ago Radio NZ ran a tragic story about a teenager who starved to death alone despite the involvement of multiple agencies in their life. They developed anorexia at age 12 (and were sexually abused at age 5) and ended up hospitalised ten times. They died age 17 weighing 30 kgs. The heart break of the parents is wrenching, and their years of battling to try and prevent this end leaves you with despair.

One aspect of the story is that some years after being diagnosed with anorexia and autism, their daughter said she was non-binary and then later she identified as a male. Her parents were not supportive of her proclaimed gender identity on the advice of her long-term psychiatrist:

“The psychiatrist advised us that Vanessa was using the transgender identity as a mask for her continuing anorexia – that Vanessa was saying the reason she didn’t want a curvy, female body was not because she was suffering from anorexia, but because she was really a boy.

“The psychiatrist recommended not affirming Vanessa’s transgender identity.”

The non recognition of Vanessa’s gender identity led to estrangement from her parents, and various government agencies shunned them, and seemingly focused on everything except her anorexia which killed her.

Ani O’Brien and Liam Hehir have both written about the failings of the state in this issue.

Some have been outraged that Radio NZ dared to run a story from the parent’s point of view. They seem more upset by misgendering the dead 17 year old, than the fact they are, well, dead.

To my mind the gender identity part of the story is not the most important. It is the fact a 17 year old under the care of multiple state agencies was allowed to starve to death, and the removal of the compulsory treatment orders that had been in place.

No one can know for sure whether the teenager did truly have gender dysphoria, or whether it was linked to the anorexia. The fact the parents were acting on the advice of the actual psychiatrist who had been involved with their child for half a decade seemed a reasonable thing to do.

Liam Hehir has a second article and makes the point:

It is a position found in standard clinical literature, including journal articles in Transgender Health and the Journal of Eating Disorders. It is true some clinicians and guidelines recommend early affirmation as a form of harm reduction in some complex cases. But there’s just no reason to assume that this wasn’t considered and carefully rejected by the treating professional. 

To reduce this kind of judgment to conversion therapy or bigotry is to misunderstand what psychiatry is for. The job of a psychiatrist is not to affirm whatever a patient believes about themselves. It is to assess those beliefs carefully, especially when they may be part of a harmful pattern. This is not cruelty. It is care.

None of the people now attacking the parents or the journalist treated this young person clinically. They weren’t there across the five years of hospitalisations. They weren’t involved in the long-term psychiatric management of the case. Yet many feel entitled to accuse the family of emotional abuse and the reporter of transphobic malpractice.

The parents have also put out a statement:

We acknowledge that there was tension and conflict between Vanessa* and us. We discussed this in detail with Ruth Hill from Radio New Zealand. The challenges in our relationships were painful and it is appalling that the details of the most devastating aspects of our family life is being used by activists to paint us as bad parents.

Children often become very angry with their parents when we have to assert our authority and make decisions we consider to be best for them. We made Vanessa* eat when she did not want to, we took away her access to the internet when she was using it to take part in pro-anorexia forums, we took her to doctors and psychiatrists when she wanted to be left alone with her eating disorder, and yes, we had her hospitalised when she was dangerously ill due to that disorder. She was very angry with us. Doing the right thing by our child was often the very hardest thing.

We object to the portrayal of Vanessa’s* struggles with anorexia, autism, and gender as though they were simply the result of our lack of understanding or ignorance. To be clear, Vanessa* was not “lost” due to her ‘gender identity’. Her anorexia, a long-standing and deeply painful struggle, was the cause of her death. She was 30 kilograms when she died. That is what killed her.

Parenting is never easy, but when your child is autistic, has anorexia, and is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, the challenges can feel overwhelming. As parents, we have always done our best, but the complexity of Vanessa’s* needs and the trauma she carried meant we often had to be the ‘bad guys’ advocating for her best interests when her mental illness was telling her to harm herself.

I can’t even imagine what life must have been like for these parents. I hope those attacking the parents, and Radio NZ for giving them a voice, desist.

The Rotorua Daily Post reports:

Waititi said the removal of the homeless people was “callous attacks” on “vulnerable whānau”.

He said they were woken by police, trespassed like criminals and had their belongings “tipped out, broken, or hauled away like trash”, with some also arrested “for being distressed at the violent way they were being treated under cold, heartless council bylaws”.

He described it as “state-sanctioned cruelty”.

“These whānau are being pushed from footpath to footpath, not into homes. In the harsh winter weather, this kind of treatment is not just unacceptable, it is dangerous.”

He said homelessness was not a lifestyle choice but a failure of successive governments.

That’s wrong for a start. In most cities there are organisations that will take in rough sleepers no questions asked.

Tapsell responded to Waititi’s statement on his Facebook page, saying in her view his comments were “overdramatic”, “radical” and “lies”.

“If you bothered to be present in Rotorua, which you barely are, you’d know these people have been intimidating and threatening others, s***ting, taking and selling drugs, and having sexual intercourse all in the public’s view and causing significant distress to the innocent families (including very young tamariki), workers and tourists walking by.”

She told the Rotorua Daily Post the council had taken action to solve an issue “causing massive concern for our community”.

The behaviour of some in the homeless group was “crossing a line”.

I love Tania. Such a great Mayor who takes no crap.

The Rotorua Daily Post reports:

Whakatāne Mayor Victor Luca has made an appeal to the Government for support to keep Air Chathams flying out of Whakatāne.

A response from Associate Transport Minister James Meager has provided hope, though no firm promises.

Earlier this year, Air Chathams requested additional support from Whakatāne District Council, saying it would otherwise have to discontinue its route between Whakatāne and Auckland.

The council refused the majority of Air Chathams’ requests, taking the stance that it should not be up to ratepayers to fund a commercial operation that a large portion of the district’s population did not use.

This is the right call by the Council. The Government should make the same call.

Neither taxpayers nor ratepayers should subsidise airlines.

He pointed out that, in the 2023 financial year, Air NZ made a $412 million net profit.

“A subsidy of $1m to Air Chathams from Air NZ profits would represent only 0.2% of that.”

This would be subsidising mainly wealthy people.

Let’s say for the $1 million subsidy wanted you get one flight a day to and from Whakatane. Probably a Saab340 with 34 passenger capacity. On average 75% of seats filled so say 26 passengers a day.

That works out to a subsidy of around $105 per passenger. And many of this epassengers might be repeat travellers who have work in Auckland so wealthy Whakatane business persons might get $2,000 a year or so to subsidise their flying.

Astonishing the UK Government regards concerns over a lack of integration by certain cultural groups as a sign of extreme right wing terrorist ideology.

I would estimate around 70% of the UK has concerns over a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups. It is the inability to rationally discuss these concerns that leads to extremism.

“Apology to David Garrett

In the event my statement “Our tough on guy on crime got convicted” has been interpreted as a reference to former Act MP David Garrett, I wish to make it clear that Mr Garrett was not convicted of a crime while a Member of Parliament. I apologise to Mr Garrett for any embarrassment or distress my statement may have caused.”

David Seymour

The PSA would have you think that the Government has culled a huge proportion of the public service, as they hysterically oppose even the most minor reductions in staff numbers. Of course they have a self interest – fewer public servants means fewer PSA membership fees.

The media have not helped. Radio NZ and others breathlessly report every minor restructuring with coverage that no private sector employer gets. The result is that the average member of the public thinks that the public service has been shrunk by a quarter. Curia asked in a May poll how many public servants are there today, telling them there were 65,000 at the change of government. The average answer was 50,000.

The correct answer is 63,000. If you want examples of misinformation, this is it.

This chart tells such a story. Labour Governments love increasing public servant numbers. Not good at increasing outcomes in health or education, but great at hiring more public servants. The Clark Government increased the number of FTEs by 15,650 or 54%.

The Key/English Government did remarkably well in terms of restraint. A modest increase of 2,500 or 16% – less than population growth.

Then just six years of Ardern and Hipkins saw a huge 18,500 extra FTEs, which was a 39% increase.

Now give the Luxon Government credit. It is the only Government to have ever decreased the size of the public service. The Key/English Government flatlined it for a bit, but this Government has seen a decrease of around 2,500. That’s not nothing, but it is very modest being a 4% reduction. All that outcry and fuss that the world is ending, over a 4% reduction.

So basically the size of the public service in March 2025 is the same as June 2023, three months before the election.

A guest post by a reader:

I wrote recently how the PM dislikes taking a stand on issues, until he sees how the land lies. That may have be a better approach before he came out guns blazing reprimanding the Israel Defence Force, who stopped activist Greta’s passage to Gaza to deliver her Aid, as he appears to have got his facts muddled.

He was probably reliant on reports from our activist media or our left wing public servants who, weirdly, appear to support Hamas and keep him in the dark as to the truth.. Bad decision.

I can put the PM’s mind at rest that Greta’s Aid will in fact get to its destination, more likely than if she and her activist friends were left to their own devices (as he desired) and Hamas got hold of it and reverted to their old ways of stealing much of it and SELLING the rest to their citizens.

This is what they were doing when UNRWA were running it and the PM and Mr Peters (misguidely) decided last year to continue to send Kiwi’s hard earned tax dollars to the UN agency, UNRWA, who for years have worked in tandem with the terrorists.

This could have been discovered if they had strayed outside the public service and the left wing media’s biased beliefs and coverage of Gaza, (like me and many other New Zealanders) and read some conservative reporting which is not consumed with hatred for Israel and concentrates more on the facts. 

For example (more recently) it is highly unlikely that shootings are happening around the new food distribution areas, as people are arriving in their thousands, with IDF protection, to collect food, but CNN et al, continue to print Hamas reports that the IDF are killing its citizens.

Hamas and UNRWA have lost control of food distribution so in desperation, Hamas keep their propoganda going. The new GHF could be a master stroke by Trump’s administration as it may contribute to faster elimination of (under seige) Hamas by the IDF as they have lost a food source and importantly, an improved, reliable food supply for hungry Gazans.

Apparently the most common comment from Gazans collecting food is:  Is it free? (see link below)

​

Greta was not kidnapped as our media suggested. (more likely she was saved from herself!) The whole thing was filmed and reported by the IDF no doubt to cover themselves when the activists and their propaganda arm, the media, came out with their own version:

@IsraelMFA

“The “selfie yacht” of the “celebrities” is safely making its way to the shores of Israel. The passengers are expected to return to their home countries. While Greta and others attempted to stage a media provocation whose sole purpose was to gain publicity — and which included less than a single truckload of aid — more than 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel within the past two weeks, and in addition, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distributed close to 11 million meals directly to civilians in Gaza. There are ways to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip — they do not involve Instagram selfies. The tiny amount of aid that was on the yacht and not consumed by the “celebrities” will be transferred to Gaza through real humanitarian channels.”

Link:

Report: Palestinians Shocked U.S. Aid Is Free, After Being Charged by Hamas for U.N. Aid