Radio NZ reports:

The country’s natural gas supply is running out faster than previously thought.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said previous forecasts showed annual gas production falling below 100 petajoules (PJ) by 2029, but revised forecasts indicated that level would be reached by next year.

A petajoule or PJ is a unit measurement of energy use commonly used for large-scale energy use, with one petajoule equal to one million billion joules.

MBIE also said as of January this year, natural gas reserves were down 27 percent compared to last year – also falling faster than previously estimated.

“In 2024, natural gas proven plus probable (2P) reserves reduced from 1300 PJ to 948 PJ,” MBIE head of data service delivery,” Karlene Tipler said.

Wow, so banning future gas exploration was such a genius idea. If we don’t get more renewables consented (possible now due to fast track), we’ll be importing a lots more coal.

The Herald reports:

Wellington City Council is being called on to review its rating system over fears high costs are driving investment out of the capital and dragging down an already struggling local economy.

Newly released figures show Wellington’s average commercial rates bill is $47,881. That compares to $20,716 in Auckland, $18,059 in Christchurch, $24,768 in Hamilton, and $25,670 in Tauranga.

That’s an astonishing difference. Almost two and a half times of Auckland and Christchurch.

Arcus said the Chamber’s analysis shows Wellington businesses are paying about 48% of the city’s rates burden, compared with Auckland and Canterbury where that number is closer to 30%.

No wonder so many businesses are closing in Wellington, with the joint burden of fewer carparks and massive rates.

On average, Auckland council rates for commercial land use are 0.72% of the building’s Capital Value. In Wellington, this is 1.5% for both city and regional council rates.

Those 20% rates increases add up, plus the massive business:residential differential.

In 2023, Wellington City Council officers agreed the city’s commercial rates differential was too high, recommending it be brought down from 3.7:1 to 3.25:1.

That proposal was voted down by councillors.

And Councillors wonder why businesses are closing.

The Herald reports:

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) has confirmed Adrian Orr resigned as Governor as he wanted more funding for the central bank than the Government was willing to provide. 

The bank said in a statement released under the Official Information Act that its board – chaired by Neil Quigley – conceded a lesser amount of funding was fine. 

“This led to Mr Orr’s personal decision that he had achieved all he could as Governor of the Reserve Bank and could not continue in that role with significantly less funding than he thought was viable for the organisation,” the RBNZ said. 

“Mr Orr and Professor Quigley entered discussions which led to Mr Orr’s decision to resign. The matter was distressing for Mr Orr.

Distressing? Distressing for taxpayers maybe. The Reserve Bank had unprecedented growth in staff numbers and expenses under Orr, and he found it distressing that the Government wouldn’t;t give him even more money?

From 250 staff to 660, and he says it wasn’t enough to do the job. Incredible. And when his own Board backed the Government, he got in a huff and quit.

The headline (note journalists do not write the headlines) makes you think DPMC is sacking one third of their staff.

The actual story further down is:

A broad restructure of the 247-strong Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) is under way, a spokesperson has confirmed, and it is proposed that 77 existing jobs ‒ 57 occupied, 20 vacant ‒ be disestablished, but 65 new roles created.

The organisation’s total headcount will therefore drop by 12 people.

So 12 out of 247 is a 5% reduction in staff numbers, and with 20 vacancies in fact not a single person may lose their job.

Very different to the vibe from the headline.

Radio NZ reported:

Whanganui District Council is sticking to an average rates increase of 2.2 percent following deliberations on its draft Annual Plan.

Mayor Andrew Tripe believes it’s the lowest rise in the country for the year ahead.

Tripe said the council has focused on doing the basics well, investing in core infrastructure, and involving the community in decision-making.

If Whanganui can do it, so could other councils. It just requires focusing on the basics.

I was pleased to see the Government announce the speed limit for Transmission Gully would be consulted on increasing to 110 km/hr. New motorways are built to safety standards where this is a safe speed.

I was puzzled though as to why NZTA said that a 10 km/hr increase for a 27 km motorway would only save 18 seconds. The answer is they assume the actual average speed limit would only increase by 2 km/hr. This seems to suggest that the actual posted speed limit has little impact on how fast people drove, and they just drive to the conditions.

Also of interest is that they predict the number of serious crashes would not change, and the number of minor crashes would change from just 18 over five years to 19 over five years.

Hayden Donnell at The Spinoff writes:

About half an hour into Auckland Council’s debate on upzoning the city centre last week, mayor Wayne Brown looked up with a puzzled look on his face. He didn’t get why planners were telling his councillors they should vote to limit building heights on Karangahape Road. The area, he noted, was right next to a new train station on the rail line his council and the government have just spent $5.5 billion upgrading. “The whole point of this, as I understand, is to get more jobs and residents near this expensive railway, the City Rail Link. It doesn’t go far enough,” he said. …

Not satisfied with just voting to stop some construction around the City Rail Link, they wanted more stringent limits in place. Albany councillor Wayne Walker led the charge, moving an amendment to add heritage protections to an empty gravel pit down the end of Karangahape Road. He won the backing of Waitematā councillor Mike Lee, who speechified incomprehensibly about short-term parking and “standing up to vested interests”. 

At this point, something seemed to break inside Brown. He proposed an exchange: if Walker and Lee were successful in putting heritage protections on an empty site 600 metres from a new rail station, he would move to enable unlimited density near their homes in Whangaparāoa and on Waiheke Island. Councillors laughed nervously. Deputy mayor Desley Simpson started patting his shoulder and urgently making a cutting motion near her neck. But Brown wasn’t done. “To vote to have an empty site turned into a historic building is to demean the value of historic buildings, so you are actively working against preservation,” he said. “This is stupidity.”

Heh, you can imagine the reaction when Brown threatened a vote on unlimited density on Waiheke!

The threats paid off. Brown won the battle. Walker and Lee were voted down, 20 to 2.

Excellent.

Nicola Willis announced:

The Government is amending the Public Finance Act to prevent future governments concealing the extent of fiscal risks in government accounts, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says.

The change is included in legislation introduced to Parliament on Saturday evening to enhance the transparency and accountability of the public finance system.

“The Public Finance Act requires that fiscal forecasts, which are prepared by the Treasury, include a statement of specific fiscal risks.

“But, when I became Finance Minister I was alerted to a number of risks that were not clear in the statements I had read previously.

“I found that the statement of fiscal risks could be somewhat opaque. That did not support public understanding of risks that have the potential to impact the government’s books or the provision of public services.

“Since then, the Treasury has done a good job of categorising and transparently describing fiscal risks. This includes explicitly identifying time-limited funding and capital cost escalations.

“The Public Finance Amendment Bill makes such categorisation a requirement.”

This is a good move. The fiscal risks should be as explicit as possible, so that we know if a projected surplus is genuine or realistic.

The bill also dispenses with the requirement for governments to articulate the wellbeing objectives that guide Budget decisions and for the Treasury to produce a Wellbeing Report every four years.

“The previous government thought it was the first government ever to consider the wellbeing of its citizens. And that it was the first government to realise that people’s wellbeing was the ultimate purpose of the Budget.

“That is not the case. The purpose of building a stronger economy and delivering better public services is to improve the long-term social, economic, environmental and cultural wellbeing of people

Labour’s so called unique focus on wellbeing was a PR con. Every budget is about wellbeing. Every dollar spent on the health and education systems is about increasing people’s wellbeing. This wasn’t just invented in 2019.

A guest post by a reader:

As powerless ratepayers face the ongoing tyranny of marxist councils over rates bills and the local  government minister’s  repeated demands for sensible spending fall on deaf ears, the Prime Minister continues to ignore the obvious solution.

Requests by Simon Watts imploring Tauranga and other councils to rein in the wasteful spending are ignored as renegade mayors like Mahe Drysdale go crazy (like kids in a sweet shop) giving away taxpayer owned land to Maori and other corrupt, wasteful spending.

Reversing ‘the power of general competence’ legislated by socialist Helen in the early 2000s, would force attention back on delivery of essential services, rein in rates rises and improve the standard of living of long suffering rate payers.

Unlike Trump who goes in like a bull-at-a-gate and changes things, our PM and  ministers stand by wringing their hands timidly asking marxist councillors and staff to do the right thing. This is like so much virtue signalling on an issue Simeon Brown was threatening to address before he was promptly moved to the health ministry early this year…. curiouser and curiouser.

Instead a deflecting Willis now turns our attention to a task akin to pushing back the tide: lowering supermarket prices; admirable, but probably impossible.

Luxon showed that he is quite capable of some slick sleight of hand when it suits his purposes. (to get a budget over the line)

Consider the pay parity bill.

Now you see Labour’s old version, then, faster than Dynamo, the new improved bill produced out of Brook van Veldon’s hat, was passed into law under urgency.

If the government genuinely wanted to help struggling New Zealanders they would  have begun enacting the bill reversal in 2023. However it suits them to virtue signal and let councils carry out race based policies they profess to be against and can blame them for.

They lie.

The force working in government, so Luxon doesn’t have to, is opportunist Tama Potaka, winning Hamilton West in the 2022 by-election, knowing Labour were heading for the wilderness. Luxon, forgetting his election promises and intent on taking his own path (like Ardern) once in power, has given full rein to Potaka, his Maori spokesperson, a new star.

Speaking out on issues, referring to New Zealand as Aoteroa New Zealand in the House and else where without a murmur of dissent from so called tough commentators like Mike Hosking, who has coined the late Bob Jones’ ‘Maorification of NZ’ as his own.

When questioned Luxon defers from knowning or owning that nasty term. He mostly leaves that unpalatable stuff to his activist Maori spokesperson.

 Tut tutting on Twitter (X) when Seymour spoke of ‘racist’ media questions and of Maori targetted spending as ‘racist’. (Seen as the ultimate taboo by the radical media ideologues.) Potaka is all business

Tony Vaughn on Breaking Views opines:

‘Tama Potaka is not a moderate. He is the acceptable face of racial separatism. A handsome cipher in a navy-blue suit, offering respectable cover for policies that are, in effect, apartheid with PR spin.’

I couldn’t have put it better.

No doubt Potaka had a say in forcing the vote forward on Maori wards to this year’s election so even those councils who voted against; their Maori wards have another term before they cease. Seymour folded like a wet umbrella on that one (not being the master of the behind -the-scenes tantrum like Winston)

I know our city voted against Maori wards back in 2019 during the year, so come the election that year, there were none. Easy peasy.

Luxon fires on all cylinders, speaking with authority, when he is one step removed from the decision. Consider the punishment doled out to to the Maori MPs for their ‘Haka of Victimhood’ (to quote Shane Jones) with 3 weeks ban and removal of pay.

I wouldn’t like his chances arguing the point against fiery Collins and Peters. However he can quite rightly say that the powerful privileges committee decision is final. And never waver. In the end they are carrying the can, not him and that is just the way he likes it. He lacks the courage of his convictions, necssary for real leadership.

This decision will count in the government’s favour, with a public sick of the Maori Party’s antics.

And it is a just decision considering the baptism of fire Seymour had gone through, from the shonky running of the Treaty Principles Bill’s select committee; the ungracious behaviour of ‘activists’ Luxon and Potaka; with official records which will conceal corrupt counting methods and processes; culminating in a dramatic intimidating adult tantrum gaining global attention for all the wrong reasons.

Also given the Maori Party leaders’ sketchy attendance record in the House where they get paid whether there or not, losing three weeks pay might just about even it up!

The Maori Party, unused to accountability, are finally finding their actions have consequences.

Hard of hearing Speaker, Mr Brownlee who could have stopped the clown show before it got underway (by cutting the live feed for a start) will be most unpopular if he, in his quest to incorporate  all things Maori into parliament, thinks rude imbecilic behaviour like this counts as ‘Te Kanga’ (behavioural guidelines for living with others)

And here was I under the impression that mythical ‘obligations to the treaty’ were to be REMOVED not added, as part of the Coalition Agreement.

If you are to get your point across you will have to brush up on your tantrum technique, David!

I’ve just published on Patreon (paywalled) the May 2025 summary of the polls in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US.

The Australian and Canadian Governments are having honeymoons for their leaders, while in the United Kingdom the Conservatives are facing extinction as Reform surges to twice their support, and an 8% lead over the governing Labor Party.

I got sent this chart, and found it interesting. The high level of Maori offending is well known. What I hadn’t known previously was the vast difference between Asian and Indian offending. Often these are lumped together, but in this case I presume Asian has been defined to exclude Indian.

The Asian crime rate is under one third of the European crime rate, while the Indian rate is almost twice as high as the European rate, and five times higher than the Asian rate.

Of course the vast majority of all ethnic groups are law abiding. But the differences between Asian and Indian rates are worthy of analysis and explanation. In the category of sexual assaults and related offences, the rates per 100,000 are:

• Maori 59
• Indian 57
• Pasifika 44
• European 22
• Asian 8

I would not have thought, prior to being sent these charts, that the Indian sexual offending rate was almost the same as Maori, and higher than Pasifika. Now again 57 out of 100,000 means 99,943 are not. So the data isn’t a reason to stigmatise, but it is worth asking what can be done to lower these rates.

The Economist writes:

Consider the economics of the restaurant industry. Alcohol offers higher profit margins than food as it requires less labour to prepare. Indeed, using official American data, your columnist estimates that booze accounts for all the profits of the restaurant industry. Drinkers subsidise non-drinkers. Those who order sparkling water can feel sanctimonious in the short run. But if no one orders a bottle of Bordeaux, many restaurants will go under.

Be interesting if this data is the same for New Zealand.

Second, abstinence makes people lonelier. For centuries alcohol has served a social function. It helps people relax. Taking a drink also signals to others that you are happy to be slower and more vulnerable—that you have left your weapon at the door—which puts them at ease. A study from 2012 in Psychological Science found that alcohol increases social bonding. Robin Dunbar of Oxford University and colleagues find that frequenting a pub improves how engaged people feel with their community, in turn raising life satisfaction. It is not a stretch to say that alcohol has played a big evolutionary role in fostering human connection.

Many couples credit alcohol, at least in part, for bringing them together. So it may not be a coincidence that the alcohol-shunning young are lonely. 

People do drink to relax and socialise.

For centuries creative folk, from Aeschylus to Coleridge to Dickens, have relied on alcohol for inspiration. In the 1960s, when productivity was soaring, everyone was drunk all the time. No other drug has played such a consistent role in human innovation. Being intoxicated opens up the possibility of accidents of insight. Purely rational, linear minds have fewer of the flashes of brilliance that can turn an art form or an industry upside-down. It allows brains to disconnect. A study of American painters in 1946 by Ann Roe of Yale University noted that “a nightly cocktail before dinner may contribute to the avoidance of a state of chronic tension, especially…when creative activity is at its height.”

Studies suggest that alcohol, deployed judiciously, can aid the creative process. Andrew Jarosz of Mississippi State University and colleagues have found that intoxicated people solved problems faster and “were more likely to perceive their solutions as the result of a sudden insight”.

Fascinating.

SCOTUS Blog reports:

The Supreme Court on Thursday sent the case of an Ohio woman who contends that she was the victim of reverse discrimination back to the lower courts. In a unanimous ruling by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justices agreed that a federal appeals court in Cincinnati was wrong to impose a higher bar for the case brought by Marlean Ames to move forward than if Ames had been a member of a minority group. 

Note this was a 9-0 decision, and written by one of the liberal Justices.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit threw out Ames’s sexual orientation claim. Because Ames is straight, the court of appeals explained, her claim could not go forward unless she could show “background circumstances” to support her allegations of reverse discrimination – for example, evidence that a member of a minority group made the allegedly discriminatory decision or showing a pattern of discrimination against members of a majority group.

The Court of Appeals had effectively said that there is a higher bar for claims of “reverse” discrimination, where the plaintiff is in a majority group, not a minority group. The Supreme Court has said it is illegal to treat discrimination against members of a majority group, differently than discriminations against minorities.

A great ruling, and again this was a 9-0 decision. Hopefully NZ authorities might take note of this.

Radio NZ reports:

The government has issued its final decision on Christchurch City Council’s bid to carve its own path out of national housing intensification rules.

Minister Chris Bishop rejected 14 of the council’s 20 recommendations and deferred his decision on three more, after the council refused to accept all of the recommendations of an independent panel.

The minister’s decision will mean some parts of the city will be zoned higher-density housing, and the council won’t be allowed to refuse consents based on sunlight access.

The Council got captured by NIMBYism. When the independent panel and Council disagree, the Minister makes the final call.

In both Wellington and Christchurch, Bish has consistently come down on the side of making it easier for housing to be built, relieving pressure on house prices.

Stuff reports:

Tomlinson, who is a former paramedic, had only been in Countdown for a few minutes when he heard yelling and screaming. Initially he thought it was children yelling or a domestic.

A young man ran across the back of the store and said a man was stabbing people. Tomlinson then ran towards where Samsudeen was.

“Just to see if I could help,” Tomlinson said.

To be told that someone is stabbing people, and then run towards the incident takes real courage.

The Economist reports:

This june may be the most harried for the Supreme Court’s justices in some time. On top of 30-odd rulings due by Independence Day, the court faces a steady stream of emergency pleas. Over 16 years, George W. Bush and Barack Obama filed a total of eight emergency applications in the Supreme Court (scotus). In the past 20 weeks, as many of his executive orders have been blocked by lower courts, Donald Trump has filed 18.

Into this maelstrom, The Economist is introducing a tool to help analyse how the high court is acquitting itself under pressure. A year ago Adam Unikowsky, a regular litigator before the justices, enlisted Claude, Anthropic’s large language model (llm), to decide 37 Supreme Court cases. Claude’s decision matched the court’s 27 times. Inspired by this example, we tested several models of our own and settled on o3, Openai’s best reasoning engine for Chatgpt. We fed our scotusbot the main briefs and oral-argument transcripts for ten of the court’s biggest pending cases—plus three cases that have already been decided—and asked it to predict how each justice would vote and why.

It will be fascinating to see how well the bot does in predicting the Supreme Court decisions.

It is possible it might even end up influencing Court decisions. If you’re a Supreme Court Justice, you might not like being predictable, and could even end up varying what you decide or write, just so the AI isn’t correct!

The Herald reports:

Auckland Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson says she will support Mayor Wayne Brown at the upcoming election. …

She said while sometimes Brown used some colourful language, his substance and vision were good for Auckland.

This is a good decision – both for Desley and Auckland. Having two non-left candidates could split the vote.

Brown confirmed that if re-elected, it would be his last term as mayor and that he would serve the whole term.

He also told media he and Simpson had never had a row or an “unpleasant conversation”.

Brown said he and Simpson had complementary approaches to Auckland Council governance.

This sets Desley up as the presumptive front-runner in 2028.

The Whitehouse recently released a document titled: Make America Healthy Again.

The health trends listed are stark – and the needed solutions are clear (even if is going to be like doing an Aircraft Carrier doing a u-turn in the Suez Canal).

In many of the crisis stats NZ is not far behind.

These are the crisis stats for young people in the USA. The themes should be familiar.

For reasons and suggested solutions, the full document is here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/MAHA-Report-The-White-House.pdf

“The health of American children is in crisis. Despite outspending peer nations by more than double per capita on healthcare, the United States ranks last in life expectancy among high-income countries – and suffers higher rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Today’s children are the sickest generation in American history in terms of chronic disease and these preventable trends continue to worsen each year.”

America’s children are facing an unprecedented health crisis. Over 40% of the roughly 73 million children (aged 0-17) in the United States have at least one chronic health condition, according to the CDC, such as asthma, allergies, obesity, autoimmune diseases, or behavioral disorders. Although estimates vary depending on the conditions included, all studies show an alarming increase over time.

Childhood Obesity is a Worsening Health Crisis

● Today in the U.S. more than 1 in 5 children over 6 years old are obese. This is a more than 270% increase compared to the 1970s, when less than one in twenty children over 6 were obese. Rates of severe obesity increased by over 500% in the same period.

● The U.S. obesity rate is, on average, more than double that of its G7 peers.

● Approximately 80% of obese teens will be obese into adulthood.

● Around 70% of youth with obesity already have at least one risk factor for heart disease.

Rates of Neurodevelopmental Disorders are Increasing

● Autism spectrum disorder impacts 1 in 31 children by age 8 and is estimated to be 3.4 times more common in boys than girls, according to the CDC. Rates also vary significantly by state – from 9.7 per 1,000 in Texas (Laredo) to 53 per 1,000 in California. In 1960, autism occurred in less than 1 in 10,000 children. In the 1980s, autism occurred at rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children.

● Over 10% of children have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), with approximately 1 million more children diagnosed in 2022 compared to 2016.

● Rates of other neurodevelopmental disorders and learning impairments are also increasing. Over 7.5 million K-12 students received special education services in 2023-24.

Childhood Cancer Incidence Has Risen Dramatically

● Childhood cancer incidence has risen over 40% since 1975.

American Youth face a Mental Health Crisis

● Teenage depression rates nearly doubled from 2009 to 2019, with more than 1 in 4 teenage girls in 2022 reporting a major depressive episode in the past year.

● Three million high school students seriously considered suicide in 2023.

● Suicide deaths among 10- to 24-year-olds increased by 62% from 2007 to 2021, and suicide is now the second leading cause of death in teens aged 15-19.

● The prevalence of diagnosed anxiety increased by 61% among adolescents between 2016 and 2023.

● Over 57% of girls report feelings of sadness and hopelessness, while suicidal ideation in teen girls has surged by 60% since 2010.

Allergies are Widespread, and Autoimmune Disorders are Rising

● Today, over 1 in 4 American children suffers from allergies, including seasonal allergies, eczema, and food allergies. Eczema (atopic dermatitis) and skin allergies increased from 7.4% of children under 18 from 1997-1999 to 12.7% from 2016-2018.

● Between 1997 and 2018, childhood food‑allergy prevalence rose 88%.

● Celiac disease rates have increased 5-fold in American children since the 1980s.

● Rates of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), including Crohn’s, have increased by 25% over the last decade.

Alwyn Poole
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