Te Pati Maori in a burp of disinformation declared Eric Crampton as the policy mind between the Foreshore & Seabed law and Marine and Coastal Area law. Of course once again the media largely ignore the fact they just tell blatant lies.

Three inconvenient facts:

1. Eric, then a university economics lecturer, had nothing to do with either law
2. An MP who did advocate for and voted for the Foreshore & Seabed law was John Tamihere – the now President of TPM
3. The Marine and Coastal Areas law (replacing the FS law) was negotiated with Te Pati Maori, whom all voted for it

The Herald reports:

Te Pāti Māori has again failed to file its audited financial statements on time, despite being formally warned by police last year. 

It’s also yet to provide the Electoral Commission with an audit report for last year’s financial statement.

Of course they have. They don’t think the law applies to them, and why should they when the Police fail to take action time after time.

“Te Pāti Māori has not yet filed financial statements or an audit report but has told the Commission they are being prepared and will be filed soon,” said Temel.

This is not rocket science. You have six months from your year end to prepare and file the accounts. They could easily do it in time, should they choose to. But they choose not to.

Erica Stanford released the following:

• 57 per cent of students achieved the NCEA numeracy standard across all year levels – up from 45 per cent in May 2024.
• 61 per cent of students achieved the NCEA literacy standard across all year levels – up from 58 per cent in May 2024.
• 55 per cent of students achieved the NCEA writing standard across all year levels – holding steady from May last year.

Some useful progress. I’,m still angry at those principals who demanded we remove any literacy and numeracy requirements from NCEA, on the grounds it was unfair to those who were illiterate or innumerate!

The Herald reports:

The Labour Party has formally selected sitting MP Peeni Henare as its candidate for the Tāmaki Makaurau byelection.

This means, if he wins, Georgie Dansey of Hamilton East would become a List MP.

Henare held the seat since 2014 but was unseated by Kemp in 2023 by just 42 votes. He will square off against former journalist and broadcaster Oriini Kaipara, who won selection for Te Pāti Māori. The Greens announced last week they would not be standing a candidate.

I assume this time the Electoral Commission will not place a polling booth at the workplace of one of the candidates!

Vision New Zealand leader Hannah Tamaki has announced she plans to run, however.

Livens it up!

Currently my colleagues and I have the challenging and inspiring task of designing a new school (Year 0 – 10 in central Auckland: in the, still dawning, age of AI.

From the deeply informed educators, health/sport professionals, absolute IT experts, etc, I am engaged with I know we are doing a great job. The three main challengers tabled – in broad terms – are:

– What are the developmental and educational challenges of current children and youth in general, and for every child we will work with?

– What are the traditional and current practices that are deeply worth maintaining and enhancing?

– What are the advantages of new technologies and, how to accurately apply the good ones and avoid the gimmicks?

This was sent to me by one of my team. A long but worthwhile watch from minute one.

Please share.

Alwyn Poole
[email protected]

The Herald reports:

A powerful new report reveals far more women and girls are dying from systemic, preventable violence in New Zealand than previously acknowledged – and the national response still falls short.

I agree that it is terrible so many women and girls are killed by men in New Zealand.

The report found Māori women and girls are significantly overrepresented among family violence homicide victims. “Between 2018 and 2022, had rates been equal across ethnicities, an estimated 25 more Māori women and girls would be alive today.”

“This is not about individual acts,” the report stressed. “It’s about systemic inequities, colonisation, racism, poverty and the failure to respond to community needs.”

You often get reports making this assertion., My question is what is their evidence or proof of this?

The left never seem to regard individuals who do terrible things as being responsible for what they do – it is always the fault of the system or some ism.

Stuff reports:

Wellingtonians have once again been left watching from the sidelines as Lorde’s freshly announced Ultrasound world tour snubs the capital.

The Grammy-winning Kiwi star will perform just two New Zealand shows in February 2026, at Auckland’s Spark Arena and Christchurch’s Wolfbrook Arena. …

Music industry newsletter Boiler Room author Chris Schulz said this wasn’t just a Lorde problem, it’s a Wellington one.

“Wellington is desperately missing a larger venue,” he said.

“They’ve got TSB Arena, which holds about… 4500, and then the next step up from that is Sky Stadium, which is like 35,000. So for artists to fall somewhere in between there… there’s just nowhere really for them to play.”

It would be nice to have a medium sized venue in Wellington, but it is not the role of ratepayers (or taxpayers) to provide one. If there is enough commercial demand for such a venue, then nothing is stopping a private operator from establishing one.

But what we don’t want is another loss making enterprise like Takina.

Stuff reports:

Dame Jacinda Ardern says she will provide evidence to assist the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid-19 response.

This week there was speculation about whether the former prime minister, who is living in the United States, would be called to give evidence at the inquiry, which resumed in Auckland this week.

A spokesperson told The Post she had every intention of providing evidence, if asked to.

They key question I would ask is:

“When did you first become aware that the Pfizer vaccination, while very effective at reducing harm from Covid-19 to the recipient, did not significantly reduce risk of transmission for the Omicron variant?”

This is critical as the vaccine mandates and restrictions were based on numerous statements by the PM that they were necessary not to protect yourself, but to protect you from infecting other people. Traditional childhood vaccinations do indeed prevent you from getting infected and infecting other people, but the Covid-19 vaccine did not. Hence the policy rationale for the mandates and restrictions was very flawed.

It looks likes the impact of being vaccinated reduces Omicron transmission by between 15% and 30% which is not zero, but not much.

Now it was more effective (but now 100%) at preventing transmission for earlier variants, so I think the initial decisions were made in good faith. But my criticism is that as the virus evolved, the policy response did not follow the science.

So this is why I want the RC to look into when the PM and Govt was first aware that the impact off transmission was relatively low, and the time that lapsed between that awareness and what they were saying in public and their policy response.

Radio NZ reports:

The government has decided not to increase a problem gambling tax on the industry following a critical report from the Gambling Commission.

The independent regulator says there’s no evidence from the Ministry of Health the money from the levy is actually reducing gambling harm.

It’s the second time the commission has asked the ministry to front up with evidence of the effectiveness of the programme.

The Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey said it was concerning it had taken the ministry so long to show its strategy was working.

This is both alarming and not surprising.

We often see this in the public health space. For example we often hear people advocate for taxes on fizzy drinks, but not once have I seen evidence that they reduce obesity rates (as opposed to just decreasing consumption of a particular product).

The idea that a warning label on a bottle of wine that you should not drink while pregnant would actually reduce foetal alcohol syndrome is laughable.

But if you do fund or mandate harm reduction measures or programmes, then you should measure the actual impact on the harm you are trying to reduce.

The Herald reports:

Former Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman has taken to social media to call out an Auckland restaurant she alleges subjected her dining group to “gross treatment” and cancelled their booking midway through.

However, the co-owner of Atelier restaurant on Karangahape Rd has claimed Ghahraman’s own behaviour was lacking and the incident has made him question offering the eatery’s bottomless brunch into the future.

“Obviously [Ghahraman] had a little bit too much to drink and didn’t behave appropriately – that’s all I can say,” Atelier’s Matt Gossett claimed. …

“Anyway, the bottomless brunch is not real. Some incredible Māori, Pasifika and queer leaders were totally screwed over mid brunch in the face of a written confirmation. It was sad and shit and not Karangahape kaupapa.

What is more likely – that a restaurant on K Road (the most liberal part of Auckland) hates black and queer people, or that they just don’t like drunk our rowdy patrons?

The ideal vs the NZ situation.

In terms of per capita GDP Singapore leads the world (2023 figures) at US$141,553.

NZ is 43rd at $53,481.

Bruce Cotterill has a very good piece in the NZH last week on the huge encroachment of our government sector across the economy.

“Government spending has gone from $87.3 billion 10 years ago to $162b today. It’s gone from 27% of GDP to 38% of an increased GDP. Today, core public sector employees number 63,000 people, compared with just 41,000 in 2015.”

When I was a school student – NZ was described as a “modern. mixed economy”. The tilt was strongly towards the free market and private ownership. We are now closer to a socialist model by any measure.

In Singapore the government expenditure as a percentage of GDP was approximately 14.51% in 2024.

Organisation in NZ such as the NZ Initiative have completely capitulated on these aspects. Their latest release is to extoll the Netherlands (and there are good aspects) but their government expenditure as a percentage of GDP is above 43%. They are selling themselves out in hoping for marginal gains from the current government and being able to have a coffee with the Ministers on occasions.

Prior to the current coalition Oliver Hartwich stated that the best outcome for the Ministry of Education was a truck-load of TNT. Michael Johnston of the NZ Initiative now defends the Minister/Ministry even though very little has changed (e.g. they still spend massively on 4000 employees and results continue to decline) – and tells me that I am “outside of the tent” as I challenge the Minister and the Ass Minister (Seymour). I do hope he is not a part of the Free Speech Union.

Our government spending as a percent of GDP does not yet have the horse completely on the jockey but the rider is very fat and is in grave danger of completely crushing the private sector that the government depends on for their fiscal revenue.

Are there any free market economists/advocates left in NZ?

Alwyn Poole
[email protected]

Two years after it happened, we finally have a summary of the Police notes about what happened when then Justice Minister Kiri Allan crashed her car under the influence of alcohol. Key aspects are:

• Verbally abused officers who were arresting her
• Grabbed hold of shrubbery” to avoid being moved to a police car at the crash scene.
• Claimed she wrote the law
• Refused to accept a court summons after being detained
• Slated charges against her as a “political stunt”
• Demanded to speak to senior police officers and Police National Headquarters
• Said that she wouldn’t leave the station until the court summons “disappeared”

This is far far worse than what was known at the time. To have Labour’s Justice Minister demand that police make the court summons disappear and demand that she speak to Police National Headquarters is inexcusable – regardless of emotional state. This was an attempt to be above the law.

This post is a warmup for a topic I have been wanting to cover for years, that of Trump Derangement Syndrome or TDS. There are various stages and levels of TDS and various subcategories of people who suffer from it but, in my experience, everyone who suffers from TDS largely still believes the Mainstream Media or MSM. The MSM are often called other names such as legacy media or corporate media but the term also encompasses media sources and commentators that largely take their news or world view from MSM. Sometimes it helps to define the MSM so, given my audience is largely New Zealanders in NZ or kiwi expats in countries like Australia, Canada, the UK and the US, let’s look at specifically who I am talking about (Note: this is a non-exhaustive list):

New Zealand: TVNZ, 3 News, Radio NZ, Stuff (covering metro dailies), NZ Herald, Listener

UK: BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, most Fleet Street daily papers, Economist

Canada: CBC, CTV, Radio Canada, Global News, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Harpers

Australia: ABC, 7, 9 and 10 networks, SBS, SMH, Age, AAP

USA: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NPR, NY Times, WaPost, most metro dailies, AP

Sentiment about Trump at these various global media outlets is universally negative with some reporters and columnists bordering on overtly hostile. Each of them feed off each other creating a narrative that obsesses on anything remotely negative and hides, minimises or distorts anything positive about Trump. Over the years as I have engaged with various sufferers from TDS and even discussions with intelligent, educated, conservative leaning folk who might support some of Trump’s policies but generally personally dislike the man, when I probe as to the reasons for their dislike, or as I drill down to the specifics of what about Trump they oppose and how they came to believe what they believed, in virtually every case the answer was that their negative views about Trump came from negative MSM coverage of him.

Conversely, when you examine Trump’s rise to power and his remarkable comeback, when you examine the political phenomenon simply known as MAGA (from Trump’s famous campaign slogan Make America Great Again), it is a story of voters migrating away from the MSM and seeking their news from more right leaning media, podcasters, commentators and social media influencers, the change of ownership of Twitter (X) combined with Trump’s relentless attacks on the MSM. The MAGA movement is populated with a broad coalition from traditional Republican voters, Independents, disgruntled former Democrats and first time or infrequent voters. At the heart of MAGA and the new foot soldiers of Trump’s power are the so-called Patriot community sometimes called the freedom community indeed the most conservative part of the Republican House members coalesce as the Freedom Caucus. A disproportionate number of the most influential new media commentators align with these communities and the restrictions and censorship during Covid became a common rallying point. New terms are used to define the political landscape with those who largely still follow and believe the MSM called “normies” and the process by which people who were once normies but now embrace Trump and his agenda is described as “red pilling”, a reference to the 2000 movie “The Matrix” where the central character Neo is offer a blue pill to remain in normal society or “the matrix” or a red pill to dive down the rabbit hole and learn about what is REALLY happening. When it comes to the so-called “rabbit hole”, again a reference to Lewis Carroll’s famous children’s novel “Alice in Wonderland”, the rabbit hole can be used to describe the fairly innocuous process of a former liberal discovering the conservative world is not as described by the MSM all the way to pursuing and believing a raft of conspiracy theories that span the gambit from 9/11 Truthers, anti vaxers, chem trails, who shot JFK’s to so-called Q-Anon and flat earthers.

I’m going to be blunt and not beat about the bush. The following list is by no means exhaustive, but it covers some of the biggest howlers the media has perpetrated. I am going to call what many media outlets, who followed each other like lemmings, published as lies. They were not spin, or biased interpretations or liberal slated commentary, in almost all cases, they peddled outright falsehoods, calculated lies deliberately designed to inflict maximum damage on Trump and his (and his closest supporters) electoral prospects. I will break my examples into two Parts and in this Part I will cover less consequential lies and in Part 2 I will cover some of the very consequential lies.

LESS CONSEQUENTIAL LIES

1 – Brent Kavanagh was a rapist

False media narrative

During the Senate confirmation hearings for Trump’s 2^nd Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanagh, no less that 4 women made accusations of sexually inappropriate behaviour some of actual assault, mostly from his high school and college years. The claims were breathlessly reported by all MSM to the point of being shouted from the veritable rooftops and any attempt by Kavanagh, the Trump team and conservative media to attack and cross examine the claims were attempted to be shouted down by a MSM mantra, “women accusers must always be believed.”

Truth

Gradually over time, each of the four women’s stories began to fall apart under more intense scrutiny. Whilst the more fanciful outrageous claims were quite quickly refuted, the MSM clung to Christine Blazy Ford’s claim for as long as they could and were far less vociferous and prominent in publishing the eventually true claims of Kavanagh’s defenders.

2 – Jesse Smollett hate crime

False media narrative

Jesse Smollett was a prominent black actor who made his name in the Empire series and in January 2019 made a complaint to the Chicago Police Department claiming he had been threatened and subjected to racially motivated harassment one night as he was working home by supposed white supremacists who left a noose and said “this was MAGA country”. The MSM widely reported his claim with very little if any investigation happy to contribute to a narrative that Trump was racist as evidenced by his racist white supporters.

Truth

Smollett not only fabricated the whole story but served a one-year jail sentence after being tried and prosecuted for lying to police and wasting police time.

3 – Hands Up Don’t Shoot

False media narrative

In August 2014 an 18 year old black man Michael Brown robbed a convenience store in Ferguson, Missouri  (a poor mostly black suburb of St Louis) and was pursued by local police where a confrontation ensued and Brown was shot and killed resisting arrest. Aggressive black activists, uncritically reported by sympathetic MSM, alleged that Brown was shot in the back in cold blood with his hands in the air in an act of surrender. The chant “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” became a mantra repeated at many marches and demonstrations across the US and was enthusiastically intoned by many media figures in sync with the narrative of racist white cops killing black men.

Truth

Obama’s own Department of Justice fully examined all of the evidence and all witness testimony in the case and supported the truth: that Brown was a large and aggressive petty criminal who not only resisted arrest but had wrestled and manhandled the diminutive Officer Darren Wilson to the ground when he was shot by the officer in desperate self-defense. At no stage was Brown ever holding his hands up in a fake act of peaceful surrender. It was an entirely fabricated narrative.

4 – Trump encouraging bleach consumption

False media narrative

At the height of the Covid lockdowns, in a press conference Trump mused on possible alternative treatment modalities as there were limited treatment options prior to the launch of the C 19 vaccines. One experimental treatment Trump mentioned was using a laser UV light treatment that supposedly had the effect of disinfecting germs. MSM mashed up various comments and rushed to mockingly claim that Trump had told Americans that one way to treat Covid was to drink bleach.  MSM reporting on this falsehood reached a fever pitch when a woman in Tucson fed bleach to her unwell husband and he died from ingesting the bleach.

Truth

Trump never said that anyone should drink bleach or anything close to it. He was describing the possible outcome of an experimental treatment protocol involving using laser UV light beams directed to infected areas. Trump hating liberals in the media repeated the falsehood for many months long after the truth was made clear.

5 – Trump overfeeding Japanese koi fish

False media narrative

When Trump was on an official visit to Japan in November 2017, the then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took Trump to a famous koi fishpond. Koi fish are the world’s most valuable fish combining exotic colours with longevity with some of them living for decades and some worth $10,000’s. The media claimed that Trump breached Japanese koi fish feeding protocol by over feeding the fish when he was shown in edited media clips throwing into the pond the remainder of the feed in the wooden box he was given. Trump was portrayed as lazy and culturally insensitive.

Truth

Trump was merely following the lead of PM Abe who also threw the remainder of HIS fish feed from the same type of wooden box into the pond moments before. Media edited out the footage of Abe preceding Trump in throwing in the remainder of the feed he had creating the impression of Trump impulsiveness when he was merely following the lead of his host.

6 – Trump tear gas use for photo op

False media narrative

When the BLM riots were occurring in Washington DC in June 2020, Trump was scheduled to visit a church in DC called St John’s Church. In that visit Trump held up a bible in a defiant fashion to the media and spoke about his faith commitment. The MSM claimed that Trump had specifically asked the National Guard to clear away protestors from Lafayette Square just so he could get the bible holding photo op to appeal to his Christian base. The inference was that Trump was abusing his power as Commander in Chief of the military for a purely partisan photo op.

Truth

The Department of the Interior Inspector General Mark Lee Greenblatt determined in an independent inquiry that the decision to use the National Guard to clear Lafayette Square was made to enable the installation of anti-riot fencing due to riots of a few days earlier overwhelming law enforcement. The decision to clear the Square was made BEFORE any National Guard hierarchy knew of Trump’s plans to attend St John’s Church.

7 – Trump grabbing Beast steering wheel

False media narrative

During the January 6^th House Hearings, a former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson alleged when testifying that Trump tried to commandeer the steering wheel of the so-called “Beast”, the nickname given to the special Cadillac limousine that has been armoured and strengthened for the transporting of the President. It was part of the narrative of Trump’s reckless behaviour in DC on January 6^th, 2021.  The media went with anything however fanciful that made Trump look bad on Jan 6.

Truth

It was soon proven that Hutchinson lied under oath. Firstly, logistically it would’ve been next to impossible due to the bulletproof glass barrier between the passenger section of the limousine and the driver. Secondly, the two Secret Service agents who accompanied Trump in the Beast testified that Hutchinson was lying and, more sinister, the House Committee deliberately sat on this exculpatory evidence that would’ve quickly proven the story was fake.

8 – Border Patrol agents whipping migrants at the border

False media narrative

Media published footage of Border Patrol agents on horseback cracking whips to supposedly coral Haitian migrants trying to cross the border. The intention was to paint Trump’s border enforcement as overly harsh and draconian.

Truth

Close examination of the footage showed the Border Patrol Agents on horseback were using the whips to control the horses, a standard operating procedure but the media ran with the hoax because it made Trump look bad.

9 – Trump sends nuke codes after Mar-a-Lago

False media narrative

When then Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump for supposedly illegally removing classified documents when he left office and returned to Mar-a-Lago, media repeated breathlessly false rumours that Trump disclosed nuclear codes in a fundraising email he sent out after the the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago.

Truth

The email supposedly containing nuclear codes was judged to be a fake and sent out in a Trump hating social media post but was, for a short period of time, reported on by MSM.

10 – Trump mocked a disabled reporter

False media narrative

During the 2016 campaign Trump was alleged to have made a dismissive gesture when answering a question from a disabled reported called Serge Kovaleski.

Truth

The media coverage failed to mention, or show examples of, Trump making the exact same dismissive gesture of exasperation to a bunch of people he disagreed with who were all able bodied. Trump did not single out Kovaleski because of his disability.

11 – Colin Powell’s name removed at Arlington

False media narrative

Media claimed that Trump had General Colin Powell’s name removed from the list of famous Generals honoured at Arlington National Cemetery because Powell was a RINO and a big part of the Bush/Cheney era, two Republicans that Trump has publicly expressed dislike for. This painted a picture of Trump’s supposed venal and vindictive nature.

Truth

The claim was a pure fabrication. Powell’s name is still there and was never removed. Once again, the media ran with a falsehood designed to make Trump look bad.

12 – More plane crashes under Trump 47

False media narrative

Soon after Trump’s second inauguration there was a spate of plane crashes that the media tried to blame on Trump’s restructuring and funding re-prioritization at the Department of Transportation. The claim was made that, in the midst of the DOGE inspired aggressive paring down of the numbers of Federal employees, that Trump had fired Air Traffic Controllers thus contributing to an unsafe flying environment resulting in this spate of plane crashes.

Truth

Another media fiction. First, there were more crashes in the same early period of Biden’s Presidency in 2021 (55) than the same period under Trump’s in 2025 (36). Second, whilst there were some rationalisations at the DOT, the numbers of ATCs have INCREASED since Trump took office in an attempt to alleviate a huge shortage of ATCs. Third, how could Trump’s fake firings be the reason why a plane crashed at a CANADIAN airport! Once again, anything to make Trump look bad.

13 – ICE raided an Elementary school

False media narrative

Activist pro illegal Trump hating teachers in Chicago alleged to media that ICE performed a raid at an elementary school.

Truth

The media ran with this juicy tidbit without doing any rudimentary fact checking. First, not only did senior ICE and Homeland Security officials deny it but second, there was no evidence ever presented of this fact and if there was, you can guarantee the media would’ve run it.

14 – Astronauts not stranded

False media narrative

When Elon Musk used one of his Space X rockets to rescue US astronauts stranded for months in the orbiting space station, told by the Biden era NASA that they didn’t have the resources to run a rescue mission, in order to try and protect former Biden Admin staff from the negative optics of a then pro-Trump businessman finally rescuing these astronauts after the Trump admin approved the mission compared to when Musk’s offer to Biden to rescue the astronauts was not authorised, media tried to gaslight and say that the astronauts never really needed rescuing.

Truth

NPR described them as stranded in 2024 under Biden. Musk released his correspondence about the plight of the astronauts with Biden Admin’s NASA people confirming his version of events and making a mockery of pathetic media attempts at trying to pretend there was no crisis.

15 – Physicians group opposed RFK nomination.

False media narrative

A “Physicians Advocacy Group” was widely cited by MSM as opposing Trump’s nomination of Robert Kennedy Jr as Health and Human Services Secretary.

Truth

The “advocacy” group was a partisan astroturf group recently formed by accepting fake signatories and funded by prominent Trump hating left wing donors like Bill Gates

16 – Trump disrespects Pope at funeral

False media narrative

Many media outlets panned Trump for supposedly disrespecting Papal and Catholic Church tradition by not wearing a black suit at the funeral of Pope Francis being the customary colour for mourning and reinforced this narrative by showing footage/shots of Trump in his blue suit surrounded by male dignitaries in black suits

Truth

The Trump hating media failed to show more panoramic footage/shots that revealed a good number of prominent male dignitaries also in blue suits including none other than Prince William.

There are 100 examples of similar media hoaxes of the less consequential type. In Part 2 I will cover some of the big and most consequential lies the MSM have told about Trump.

So the solar farm operator has to arrange mandatory prayers for any native trees they remove, to provide solar power to 7,500 homes.

On the assumption that this is mandated because native trees have souls, and you need to pray for the tree souls as they are felled, why is this not extended to exotic trees also? Do immigrant trees not also have souls?