David Taylor writes at The Spinoff:

Since 2007, New Zealand schools have had an excellent curriculum, acknowledged the world over and used successfully in diverse communities throughout the country.

Whether it is excellent or not is of course a subjective view. The objective data is below:

Now this might not be due to the curriculum. It might even be in spite of the curriculum. But when you defend the status quo, it is useful to look at what the outcomes are.

 I have already met with my principal to tell her that I am not prepared to teach, or lead people to teach, this new curriculum

Mr Taylor has every right to say he thinks the new English curriculum is crap. But he does not have the right to refuse to teach it. He suffers from the arrogance all too common where self-proclaimed experts think their views trump democracy.

If he refuses to teach the curriculum in a public school, then he can’t keep his job. Hopefully he can find employment elsewhere.

The Herald reports:

Rotorua woman Santana Tonihi’s criminal record stretches 13 pages, with most of the 129 convictions being for stealing from shops. …

Judge Skellern gave a starting point on the burglary of the television charge of eight months’ jail and added another four months for all other charges. 

She then discounted the 12-month prison sentence by 25% for Tonihi’s guilty pleas but added another two months for her previous convictions and a further month for offending while on intensive supervision.

That gave an end sentence of 12 months’ imprisonment, but given she had already served about five months in custody, it meant she only had one month left.

A mere two month uplift for 129 previous convictions. That is ridiculously light. It is meaningless.

How about this. Say you get one month extra in prison for each previous conviction?

The Herald reports:

Senior Minister Erica Stanford sent official briefings to her personal email account – an action discouraged by Parliament’s Cabinet Manual. 

Stanford says she forwarded the emails so she could print them at home or at her electorate office, often while being away from Wellington for work. 

Her electorate office printer was only connected to the Parliamentary server last month, she said. 

Parliament’s Cabinet Manual – a rulebook for Government ministers – says “as far as possible” ministers should not use their personal email accounts or phone numbers for ministerial business.

Forwarding yourself an e-mail so you can print it out at home, is not using a personal account for ministerial business. That would be if you were e-mailing other people about ministerial business – not e-mailing yourself.

The purpose of the rule is to make sure ministerial correspondence is captured by government systems. It is not to make it hard for a Minister to print out a document.

Sometimes people who knew a Minister before they became an MP may e-mail them on their personal e-mail address. If it relates to official business, then best practice would be to cc any reply to your official address so it is captured by the DIA system.

This is much ado about nothing.

UPDATE: Roger Partridge has a great take here.

In the recent UK local elections, the number of Councillors elected by party was:

1. Reform 677
2. Lib Dems 370
3. Conservatives 319
4. Labour 98
5. Greens 79

In the latest average of the parliamentary polls, the seat projections are:

1. Reform 245
2. Labour 177
3. Conservatives 94
4. Lib Dems 60
5. SNP 43
6. Greens 4

Prime Minister Nigel Farage is a distinct possibility.

As the budget nears National/Act/NZF are at pains to say that they are “pulling every leaver”.

Prior to the election they made significant promises to reduce the size/spend of bureaucracy. So far they have comletely failed.

1. Our government education spend for 2024-25 is $20.5billion (exclusive of tertiary education). Over the last 15 years this is associated with a significant decline in the education achievements of our young people.

2. 31.3% of the public sector work-force is for education (150,800 employees).

3. This is all paid for by taxpayers.

4. The Ministry of Education budget – after excluding property (where they are known to be incompetent) and frontline services for learning support – is $547million.

5. The National and ACT parties promised to reduce the Ministry employment of “full time equivalents” to 2,700 (the number before the recent Labour government). Halfway through their term the Ministry FTE is at 3,949 with a “head-count” of 4,217 employees (which does not include teachers).

There are HUGE saving available here as so much money is wasted on a completely disfunctional Ministry.

It should also be noted that the oversight of the MOE by the Minister and State Services has not been able to appoint a new Secretary for Education despite the old one walking out the door in October 2024. Ellen MR has just been re-appointed as the “acting” Secretary for Education for another year. Hardly a decisive desion by Minister Standford who has been playing favourites on her emails. Very little has changed at the higest levels of the Ministry of Education.

6. Funding to improve attendance is: $34,000,000 / 20,500,000,000 -= 0.17% of the education spend. Attendance and the 10,000 children enrolled nowhere are the biggest problems for our system.

7. The failing Charter School roll-out is only $123,000,000 – $30,000,000 on the Charter School Agency – both over four years = 0.12% of the education spend. Not a chance of being “game-changing”.

Justine Mahon – lead of the CS Authorisation Board has finally admitted that a HUGE part if their decisions for new CSs was to be “cost effective” as they only had $10million to spend in the first 18 months. They will have a tiny amount to spend until the end of 2026.

8. In term 4 of 2024 the overall attendance by school students in NZ was 58.1%. This is marginally up on T4 2023 but it was 64.7 in 2021.

For Maori the full attendance figure was 44.1%.

For Pasifika the full attendance figure was 42.4%.

It makes very little difference to improve curriculum if the children who need that the most are not there.

Erice Standford has an education system that is on fire and is pointing the hose at the building next door.

Alwyn Poole
[email protected]

At Patreon (paywalled) I analyse the Trump effect on the Canadian and Australian elections, and whether it means that National in New Zealand could also head down in the polls because of a perceived association with Trump.

A post from PaulL, regular reader and sometime poster.

I regularly read about productive farmland being used for solar farms. I see people questioning why productive farmland would go into solar.

I’m generally a free market kind of guy. I think land should go into it’s most productive use, and we can tell it’s most productive use by how much people are prepared to pay for it. If a solar energy company can afford to pay more for land than a dairy farmer, then by definition the land is more useful in solar panels than it is in dairy farming.

And yet, the market here isn’t actually efficient. So I would suggest that the government could assist to do things better. And I know some of what I’ll suggest smacks a bit of central govt planning, but I’m not totally averse to that where there are legitimate co-ordination problems (or, in fact, where co-ordination may be illegal).

In a relatively short conclave Cardinals have elected Robert Francis Prevost as the 267th successor of Saint Peter as the Bishop of Rome and supreme pontiff.

Ten facts about the new Pope:

• He is the first American Pope. American has the 4th largest number of Catholics in the world after Brazil, Mexico and the Phillipines.
• He is the first Pope from an English speaking country since Adrian IV of England in 1154.
• He grew up in Chicago and was a priest there but was posted to Peru where he became Bishop of Chiclayo
• He was only made a Cardinal in 2023
• He is only 69 years old, considerably younger than the two Popes before him
• He speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, and can read Latin and German
• He has worked as a Maths teacher
• He was head of the influential Vatican Dicastery for Bishops which advised the pope on bishop appointments globally.
• He is an Augustinian friar and was prior general of the worldwide order
• His father was a US Navy veteran of WWII

This is a very very disappointing tweet from Peter Davis, who I normally find to be much more thoughtful.

He is basically saying that Jews in Wellington deserve to have grafitti scrawled against them, because of the actions of the Israeli Government.

Would he excuse graffiti that says they hate Hindus because of the actions of the Indian Government? Or grafitti that says they hate Americans because of the actions of the US Government?

Conflating Jews with the Israeli Government is in itself classic anti-semitism. While the vast majority of Jews support the right of Israel to exist, there is a huge variation of opinion about the current Israeli Government, the war in Gaza, settlements, boundaries etc. Jews have a religion in common, but are very politically diverse.

So for Davis to justify graffiti that spreads hatred towards Jews on the basis of what the Government of Israel does is not at all good.

Benjamin Netanyahu won’t see graffiti in Wellington. It won’t influence him. The people who will see it is Jewish kids and Jewish families who live in Wellington and have to put up with this racism.

The Electoral Commission has published the donation returns for 2024. The level of overall donations is:

1. National $4.89 million
2. Labour $1.63 million
3. Greens $1.59 million
4. ACT $1.46 million
5. NZ First $758k
6. TPM $54k

The breakdown by size is interesting.

Only 33% of National’s donations come from those who donated over 5,000. 43% came from small dollar donors and 24% from medium level donors.

NZ First and the Greens are in fact the two parties that are most reliant on large donors.

Winston Peters announced:

New Zealand First has today introduced a Member’s Bill that would ensure the biological definition of a woman and man are defined in law.  

The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill will provide clarity and consistency in New Zealand law by defining “woman” as “an adult human biological female” and “man” as “an adult human biological male” in the Legislation Act 2019.  

I think this bill would have unfortunate unintended consequences. But, a simple amendment, could improve it.

I’m all for having the law allowing sporting events, facilities to restrict entry to those who are biologically women. But I’m also for allowing facilities to have entry based on gender identity, if that is what they want to do.

Trans NZers should be able to have their gender identity recognised in law. But the law should also recognise that this doesn’t replace biological sex. The health system, for example, needs to know your biological sex, but I’m not sure the Department of Conservation does.

So what I would do is have the law define both sex and gender. It could be along the lines of.

When referring to sex:

• a “woman” is “an adult human biological female”
• a “man” is “an adult human biological male”

When referring to gender:

• a “woman” is “an adult who identifies as a female”
• a “man” is “an adult who identified as a male”

When laws are passed, the laws could refer to either sex or gender, as is appropriate. In the absence of a specific reference, the assumption would be it is biological sex that is being referred to.

It is clear Te Pati Maori holds Parliament in contempt. I don’t just mean in the technical sense of breaching the rules of the House, but in the more general sense of behaving with contempt.

To publish the draft Privileges Committee report on the actions of three of their MPs on their social media feed is a provocation that should result in consequences.

Radio NZ reported:

Te Pāti Māori has apologised for posting a draft report from the privileges committee on Instagram, which breaches the rules of privilege.

It comes ahead of the committees meeting tonight to discuss complaints against three of the party’s MPs who conducted a haka in the House in November.

Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the Instagram post was a mistake made “internally”, and the party was reviewing it.

“We were aware that an Instagram put up last night created a little bit of tension for the chair of the Privileges Committee.”

She said no MP, including the co-leaders, were responsible for that.

This is just mendacious bullshit. There is no way a staffer would publish a confidential privileged draft report from the Privileges Committee, without authorisation from an MP and/or the leadership. In fact no staff should even have had access to the report.

Te Pati Maori think the rules don’t apply to them. No matter what decision the Privileges Committee makes, they will claim it is racist and unfair.

The only thing that will result in a change of attitude, is serious consequences. They should not be rewarded for treating this as a giant joke and PR exercise.

I have no idea what the Privileges Committee has or will decide, but I hope it along the lines of a 28 day suspension for the three MPs involved.

The Herald reports:

National MP Catherine Wedd is introducing a new member’s bill aiming to ban children under 16 from accessing social media platforms in New Zealand.

Wedd, MP for Tukituki in Hawke’s Bay, said the My Social Media Age-Appropriate Users Bill is about protecting the “most vulnerable young teenagers and children from the online harms of social media”. 

Wedd said social media was an “extraordinary resource” but it came with risks.

“Right now, we aren’t managing the risks for our young people well.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the move was intended to protect young people from bullying, inappropriate content and social media addiction.

This addresses a genuine and serious problem. Social media use by young people has had some terrible outcomes in terms of bullying and also peer pressure around body size and shape.

This chart, via Maddy, shows a massive correlation (and no doubt causation).

So yes absolutely, having kids not able to use social media until they are 16 would be a good thing.

The challenge though is unintended consequences and definition.

A ban may make it more attractive to young NZers. They may be able to get around it easily. Parental supervision and involvement is preferable to legislation – however they are not an either/or choice.

And how do you define it. Would text messaging be captured? Group chats? Youtube? Do you name specific platforms?

So definitely worth supporting at first reading, but select committee would have a lot of work to do to see if it can be made workable, and that the benefits will be greater than the costs and unintended consequences.

The Herald reports:

NZME’s likely new chairman Steven Joyce says he hopes to unify the media company’s shareholders as much as possible, following two months of sometimes heated debate over the company’s performance and editorial endeavour.

Joyce, a National Party Cabinet minister for three terms from 2008 and an experienced commercial media businessman, was today confirmed as a board nominee for NZME. 

NZME’s existing chair Barbara Chapman – who has been the focus of criticism from activist shareholders who are keen to overthrow her and other directors – says she will step aside if Joyce is appointed to the board at NZME’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 3, and becomes chair himself.

Joyce appears to be gathering decent early support from various quarters of NZME’s shareholding register, including – it is understood – its biggest shareholder, Australian fund Spheria Asset Management, which holds just under 20%.

This is a very canny choice by the outgoing NZME Board. Joyce appeals to both the rebels and the Empire 🙂

Joyce knows media. He built Mediaworks up from basically one radio station to a major network. He also knows media from the other side as an MP and Minister. It is no surprise that he appeals to both the incumbent Board and many of those wanting change.

I don’t think anyone should think that Joyce as NZME Chair will mean a change in Herald editorial direction towards the right. If anything, Joyce as a former Minister will be careful not to be seen to be getting involved in editorial issues.

But that does not mean he will be a status quo governor. Far from it. I’ve had the pleasure and challenge of working for and with Steven, and he is a change agent. He will not see his role as just charing the board. He will be driving strategy but also be into the details of significant operations. Michael Boggs will find him very different to the outgoing Chair, I suspect.

Legacy media faces a very difficult business environment as technology has upended their traditional business model. I’m unsure if many of them will be around in 20 years time. But if I was a shareholder in NZME, I’d be very pleased with the likely appointment of Joyce as Chair, and would expect to see a change in profitability and dividends. Steven is always interested in the bottom line.

This is the net approval rating for each US President at the 100 day mark of their administration.

1. Kennedy +78%
2. Eisenhower +63%
3. Nixon +47%
4. Reagan +47%
5. Carter +45%
6. Obama +36%
7. Bush GHW +34%
8. Bush GW +33%
9. Clinton +18%
10. Biden +17%
11. Trump II -9%
12. Trump I -13%

You can argue that as Trump is not running again, his approval rating doesn’t matter. But it will impact the mid-terms and control of Congress.

The Herald reported:

Te Pāti Māori has for some time believed eligibility should be race-based. It explained in statement:

“Te Pāti Māori is clear – our people should be able to access superannuation seven to 10 years earlier than the rest of the population.

“Māori life expectancy is significantly lower, and many of our people work in physically demanding jobs that take a toll well before retirement age.

“It is unacceptable that Māori contribute to the system their whole lives but die before they can benefit from it in the same way as others. 

Maori don’t die earlier because they are Maori, and that there is something in their genetic code than makes them die early.

They die earlier because of health and socio-economic factors. The focus should be on reducing the prevalence of those factors.

As there is no significant genetic link to dying early, giving NZ Super to anyone who has a fraction of Maori DNA would be a very bad policy. Why should David Seymour get NZ Super at 60 because of his ancestry?

Judith Collins announced:

The Defence Force’s ageing maritime helicopters will be replaced to increase the defensive and offensive capability and surveillance range of New Zealand’s frigates, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today.

“The replacement of the Seasprite helicopters will also extend the Navy’s ability to support non-combat tasks such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,” Ms Collins says. 

“Together with a $957 million investment in Defence Force activities, personnel and estate, the $2 billion plus budgeted to replace the helicopters represents the first tranche of the Government’s $12 billion of planned commitments to upgrade the Defence Force over the next four years.

This is good to see. We only purchased the helicopters in 2015, but they were second hand. They were originally manufactured in the 1990s, and the airframes may even be from the 1970s or 1980s. So definitely time to replace them.