Lindsay Mitchell writes:

There were 17,028 Maori babies born in 2024.

According to an official information response from the Ministry of Social Development, 5,997 were dependent on welfare by the end of the year. That’s 35.2 percent.

Most would have been born onto a benefit.

Of the 17,397 born in 2023, 7,737 were on a benefit by age two. That’s 44.5 percent.

The equivalent percentages for non-Maori babies are respectively 11.4 and 14.8 percent

These extraordinarily high Maori numbers aren’t due to unemployment – just one in ten of the Maori babies born last year became dependent on a Job Seeker benefit. Eighty percent have sole parents.

The future expected time on a benefit for sole parents is 17 years.

Growing up in homes where nobody works is bad for children. They are more exposed to transience, abuse and neglect, violence, poor educational outcomes, poor health outcomes and substance abuse.

Reducing the number of Maori babies born into households with no working adults would do 100 times more to reduce inequities in health, education, incomes and life expectancy than anything related to the Treaty of Waitangi.

So the world leaders most seen as enemies of the UK are:

1. Vladimir Putin 70%
2. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei 54%
3. Xi Jinping 36%
4. Donald Trump 30%

What is interesting is the difference between the leader and the country. They difference for each is:

1. Vladimir Putin – same as Russia
2. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – 4% less than Iran
3. Xi Jinping 36% – 2% less than China
4. Donald Trump 15% more than the US

Pleased to see NZ and Luxon seen as enemies by only 2%.

Pope Francis has died aged 88. He was Pope for 12 years, a Cardinal for 24 years, Archbishop for 27 years and a Bishop for 32 years. He was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio and was the first Jesuit Pope. He was also the first non European Pope in 1300 years.

The 115th papal conclave to elect the 267th pope will convene in the next few days with 135 cardinal electors, so 90 votes needed to elect the new Pope. The first papal conclave was in 1276.

The Dean of the College of Cardinals would normally preside over the papal conclave but Cardinal Re is 91 years and Cardinal Sandri the vice Dean is 81 years old so the presiding Cardinal may be Cardinal Prevost from Chicago.

Liam Hehir writes:

There is, in New Zealand, a certain powerful, tightly controlled organisation. It has secretive membership numbers, opaque finances and a history of safeguarding and other scandals. It boasts strong connections at the highest levels of New Zealand public life. 

Its followers, who include a number of former government ministers and current opposition figures, meet regularly. They are expected to adhere to internal discipline. Dissent is discouraged and an exclusive loyalty enforced.

We know there are at least 500 members, but there’s no way to know how many more. It’s probably in the thousands. We just don’t know. It’s a closely guarded secret.

To become one of the group’s elect, members must first submit to a formal pledge ceremony. This isn’t symbolic. The individual must sign a formal document to uphold the group’s principles, in front of two verified insiders. Only then can they be considered for advancement. Upon elevation, they are required to strictly adhere to the organisation’s programme in public, regardless of conscience or private concerns.1

Its members are known to go door-to-door in pairs, engaging strangers with a pre-prepared message. They keep record of these encounters. They return if you don’t give a firm answer. If they’ve ever knocked on your door, there is a good chance they have notes about you. 

Cults of personality abound. Former leaders are sometimes revered figures whose very images are sometimes displayed as sacred icons. On occasion, this even extends to the current leader. Merchandise bearing the visage of the leader may be available.2

When leaders fall from grace, of course, history is quietly revised. 

Despite its stated values of fairness and inclusion, the organisation has been repeatedly implicated in scandal:

• A senior figure in the group was convicted on bribery and corruption charges, including exploiting vulnerable migrants for personal gain.3
• A member was convicted of using forged documents during the 2010 local government elections.4
• In one case, young foreign volunteers were brought to New Zealand and housed in what they described as overcrowded, makeshift accommodation while being used for unpaid work.5
• In another, teenagers attending a group camp were exposed to harm in a night that included drinking. Parents were not promptly informed. Neither were the police. An investigation was conducted by the organisation did not release the full report.6
• The organisation then went on to mishandle accusations of misconduct in and around the offices of its highest leaders. Under public pressure, a review occurred but, again, without full and complete public disclosure.7

Time and time again, we have seen the organisation exhibit a culture of investigations being handled internally or outsourced under tight conditions. 

And yet, despite these red flags, this shadowy organisation has wielded significant influence over the machinery of government, with its members having held senior roles across public life, including in education, health and the justice system.

The secretive group is known variously as “The Party,” and “The Broad Church.” But its formal name is “The New Zealand Labour Party.”

DPF: I await the breathless media articles on this cult.

Paul Goldsmith announced some changes to electoral law. The more useful ones are:

• Consider removing the requirement for a street address in promoter statements in light of personal safety and security concerns of people participating in the election.
• Consider amending the cut-off date for enrolments and updates to enrolment details to be prior to polling day.
• Consider whether electoral law should move towards a single voting period. 

All sensible stuff. A big focus needs to be on getting final results as soon as possible after election day. Ridiculous to wait three weeks for final results when you have also had advance voting for three weeks. Cut off enrolments a week before election day (which is still two weeks after advance voting starts and require all ballots to be received by election day, so we can get results within 48 hours.

Following the news that two reserve Bank managers had resigned, I checked out their management structure.

They have six Assistant Governors and a massive 27 directors or third level managers. Just looking at the job titles shows that there is obvious reductions that can be made. This is no reflection on the individuals doing those roles (who could be very good) – it is just based on what the Reserve Bank Act says the Reserve Bak should be doing. In short it is:

1. Monetary policy
2. Prudential regulation and supervision
3. Manage deposited compensation scheme
4. Financial system monitoring
5. Bank notes and coins

Now let’s look at the 27 directors. You have:

• Prudential Policy
• Financial Markets
• Enforcement and Resolution
• Financial Stability Assessment and Strategy
• Specialist Supervision
• Prudential Supervision

You could clearly combine those six roles (which are all around prudential regulation/supervision and financial markets) to two or three directors.

• Talent and People Operations
• Organisational Capability and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Physical and Personnel Security

These three are all HR related. You could make a case for the security role to be seperate so reduce to one or two directors.

• Programme and Strategy Delivery
• Strategy and Business Performance
• Strategic Adviser

You don’t need three strategy directors.

• Digital Solutions / Chief Technology Officer
• Data, Statistics and Analytics
• Knowledge and Information Management
• Information Security (CISO)

These are all in the IT area. Now this doesn’t mean they should all be merged as CTO, CIO, CISO etc can all be need valuable roles. But it depends on the size and complexity of an organisation.

• Risk and Compliance
• Money and Cash
• Legal Services/General Counsel
• Economics/Chief Economist
• Audit Services
• Payments and Settlements
• Communications and Stakeholder Engagement
• Commercial Operations

These eight all seem uncontroversial for a Reserve Bank.

• Sustainability and Financial Inclusion

Bye bye.

Radio NZ reports:

Māori activist and former MP Hone Harawira has criticised a recent Te Pāti Māori candidate for confronting Cabinet Minister Casey Costello at a food court on Tuesday evening. …

Former Māori Party and Mana MP Hone Harawira has come to Costello’s defence – criticising Huriwai-Seger in a Facebook comment, saying he stepped over the line.

“I’m not the biggest fan of Casey Costello but I don’t like you pushing youself into a woman’s space and I don’t like you telling her she’s ‘gonna get it’,” Harawira said.

“Pat youself on the back if you think that makes you a big man, but don’t try that on me or my wife,” Harawira wrote.

Not often I agree with Hone, but good on him for stating what the TPM candidate did was clearly wrong.

The NZ Herald reports:

According to a Cabinet paper released by Willis, the bank’s operational spending shot up from $158m in 2023/24 to $200m in 2024/25 – an astonishing increase of $42m, a sum of money that as recently as 2019 would have equated to more than 80% of the bank’s entire annual funding.

NZ has huge budget deficits. The entire public sector is trying to reduce costs and staff counts. But the Reserve Bank was so arrogant that it thought increasing spending by over 25% was fine. And then apparently the Governor had a hissy fit and resigned when the Government wouldn’t grant him even more money.

I have managed to find the one (other) person in New Zealand that thinks the Reserve Bank should get a 25% funding increase while the rest of NZ is paying off government debt. It’s the PSA’s Fleur Fitzsimons:

At a time of turmoil in the international economic landscape, it doesn’t make sense to kneecap one of the key agencies dedicated to helping New Zealand meet its challenges.

Kneecap. How hilarious. The Reserve Bank will still have a level of funding two and a half times greater than a decade ago. But Fleur thinks anything less than $1 billion is kneecapping.

Stuff reports:

The Security Intelligence Service (SIS) launched its own investigation into concerns that RNZ had been used for foreign interference.

The SIS became involved in 2023 over a scandal at the state broadcaster when it was revealed stories about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were being edited to reflect a more “pro-Kremlin” perspective.

The SIS concluded that foreign interference was not a concern when the journalist, Michael Hall, edited “wire copy” from Reuters. Its findings were shared with “interested parties”, and released to the public on Thursday.

The SIS were right to investigate, as the deliberate alteration of numerous stories to reflect Russian propaganda was a huge concern.

But it turned out that Hall was in no way a Russian mole. He was just a anti-western journalist inserting his viewpoint into RNZ stories.

The Post reports:

After almost a year and a half, in which time the party has managed to go to court, use the rarely used waka jumping law and deal with another candidate selection headache, the Green Party has finally updated its candidate selection process.

It has tightened up the framework to enable greater scrutiny and strengthened its ability to decline or remove candidates. 

I was amazed to read that the Green Party had told Benjamin Doyle before the election that he should delete his bussy social media account and he refused. In most parties you would not be a candidate if you put your own ego and sense of worth above the party.

The party is automatically ranking the Māori co-leader in first on the party list with the other co-leader in the second spot. It is also asking Green members who participate in the ranking process to consider a rainbow section, adding to the criteria of women, Māori, Pasifika, disabled, region (South Island) and age.

They hardly need a rainbow quota, as LGBTQ MPs are four times over-represented in the Green caucus as they are in the NZ population as a whole. If anything, they may need a straight white male quota!

In 2014 I was involved in beginning South Auckland Middle School in Manurewa. We had 120 students to start and quickly grew to 180 and with a waiting list of over 100. The students were over 85% Maori and Pasifika. When they left us, at the end of Year 10, we tracked their progress and in the years when I was involved 88% were achieving Level 1 NCEA – and developing from there.

It was a similar story with the opening of Middle School West Auckland in 2015.

In 2018, with some huff and puff from ACT, Labour turned those schools into Designated Character Schools.

During the 2023 election campaign ACT promised to re-introduce Charter Schools and early in 2024 David Seymour (as Ass Minister of Education) promised to go big.

The Associate Education Minister told Q+A there is enough funding for “up to 15” charter schools to be operational by Term 1 next year.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/09/29/how-many-charter-schools-david-seymour-on-his-big-ambitions

Seymour, who has been a vocal supporter of charter schools for many years, said there was “overwhelming demand” for the schools.

Opening new ones [charter schools] at least initially does cost a little bit more money, so we’ve rationed it at 15 new ones,” Seymour added.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/charter-school-provider-suggests-govt-not-looking-for-the-best-applications/TPG3KC4BQBCGBHT2R6TIBV5WYA/

“Seymour says he’s learnt much from his previous attempt to establish the charter model here, although most of the lessons were political rather than pedagogical. This time, he’s going big and going fast.

“There’s probably going to be a couple of hundred of these schools by the time Labour gets back into power. And it’s going to be big, powerful communities with lots of capital and lots of lawyers.

“It won’t be a small group of poor brown kids that Labour can shamefully and disgracefully ignore like they did last time. And the contract is going to be much tighter and harder to buy. They’re going to be 10 by 10 by 10. Thirty years, with break points every 10 years.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-listener/new-zealand/schools-shake-up-what-some-find-terrifying-about-govt-plans-for-charter-schools/GDXNRNNWXVAJJLASBNXOPD4EXE/

(Please actually read those quotes KBers. This is not me picking on DS. It is comparing his word to his outcomes).

A disclaimer from me is that a new company I formed took Seymour at his word and applied for four new schools, to begin this year, that I am confident would have a total of 900 students by now. There were other, very high-quality, applicants also looking to challenge NZ’s failing education system through significant provisions.

What have we got?

OIAs have confirmed that:

– Seymour was talking porkies about having enough funding to begin 15 new schools. Charter Schools were allocated just $10million from 2024 until June 30, 2025. Until the end of 2026 the total funding is $123m but $30m of that is being spent on the Charter School Bureaucracy (in theory – anathema to the Accociation of Consumers and Taxpayers).

– For the $10m spent, so far, the seven new schools, at March 31, have just 215 students between them (an average of 30 students). That is costing over $46,000 per student and these boutique schools are offering no challenge to the NZ system at all – which is why the teacher unions are giving the whole thing a great deal of – not bothering to oppose them. This is not the “overwhelming demand” Seymour likes to acclaim.

– The two new schools recently announced, to be opened in July, will also be fringe and tiny.

While Seymour is trying to remain positive and supportive of a truly inept Charter School Agency, I have no doubt that in the 2026 election campaign he will blame National for the debacle and say that there was simply not enough funding, and also turn on the public servants as he did last time. He will then promise big things if he gets another go at it.

The deep loss is for the thousands of students that could have been helped by this policy.

Alwyn Poole
[email protected]
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

The Herald reports:

Double murderer Mark Lundy will be released from prison next month, despite holding firm to the position that he never killed his wife and daughter. 

Lundy has spent more than 23 years behind bars for the murder of his wife Christine and his 7-year-old daughter Amber, who were found hacked to death in their Palmerston North home 25 years ago with what is believed to have been an axe or tomahawk.

If their heads hadn’t been split open with an axe, Amber would today be 32 years old and her mother Christine would be 63 years old.

Stats NZ reports:

Local authority rates and payments increased 12.2 percent in the 12 months to the March 2025 quarter (14 percent contribution to the 2.5 percent increase). Rates are captured once a year in the September quarter, as this is when ratepayers see price changes set by councils.

That level of increase is obscene.

Tradeable inflation is a very low 0.3% annually. But non-traceable is at 4.0% and too high. To be fair this is the lowest it has been since June 2021 but again still too high.

The Herald reports:

A teen who took part in a violent and unprovoked street attack, king hitting one of his victims, has narrowly avoided jail after a judge ruled it would not be the “just” outcome.

Just? Just for who? The victim?

Hunia did the following:

• King hit the victim to the ground – a stranger in an unprovoked assault
• Continued the attack, punching and kicking him to the head while he lay on the ground
• turned around and headed back to continue assaulting both men
• One of the men suffered a swollen face, memory loss; the other had cuts to his eyeball and cheek, two broken teeth, a cut tongue, and memory loss among his injuries.

So this was not a moment of madness, or a situation with provocation. He just viciously assaulted a total stranger for no reason and kept kicking and punching him while on the ground.

The Crown sought a starting point of five years’ imprisonment.

Both the Crown and defence agreed a discount of 20% for Hunia’s guilty plea was appropriate, and the judge adopted a starting point of four years’ and nine months’ imprisonment.

The judge said there needed to be a clear message sent, particularly when efforts were being made to revitalise Tauranga’s CBD, that those who came looking for trouble, could expect “an appropriate response”.

Hunia’s lawyer Nephi Pukepuke advocated that this sentencing principle could be achieved by a sentence of home detention.

Judge Coyle reached an end sentence, after applying discounts for guilty plea, youth, and remorse, of two years and 10 months imprisonment.

So the sentence went from 57 months to 34 months – a reduction of 43%.

But even after that he should have had a custodial sentence.

The judge decided that despite it falling outside the two-year window where home detention can be imposed, he would exercise his discretion.

There had been authority given by the higher courts for judges to take a step back and consider what the “just” outcome is.

He said if he sent him to prison he had no doubt he would be surrounded by people who would tear him down and support him in making “bad choices”, convincing him violence and criminal activity were normal.

“I’m not going to do that, Mr Hunia,” Judge Coyle said.

The judge urged him to not become the sort of person who would just “beat the crap” out of someone, but rather would put this mistake behind him and never repeat it.

He already is the sport of people who would just beat the crap out of someone. He did it. The notion that he doesn’t already see violence as normal is bizarre.

The judge sentenced him to 12 months home detention, and told him it would be hard for him.

To those who thought of home detention as a “weak sentence”, the judge referred to Covid-19, and the reality of lockdowns.

While people had been able to go out for walks, or to the supermarket, that wouldn’t be the case for Hunia.

“You cannot go out for a walk, you cannot go to the dairy down the road, you cannot go outside of your property.

Oh he can’t go to the dairy. Instead he just has his mates or family go to the dairy for him. How tough.

“That will relax over time, but for you as a young person used to getting out and socialising with your mates, this will be a hard sentence, and it should be.”

Yes such a hard sentence. The parties will just be held at his place instead.

This chart from Robert Macculloch tells quite a story. It shows government consumption per capital, adjusted for inflation.

The Clark Government over nine years increased spending by around $450. Then none years of Key/English Government saw it stay basically constant (and greatly improved performance of public services). Then Ardern saw it increase by $600 in just six years, and most public services deteriorate.

Regardless of your views on whether tariffs are good or bad (by the way, they are bad) almost everyone would agree that the level of tariffs should be signalled well in advance. Businesses need time to adjust, and if necessary change markets. Customs needs time to implement them (in NZ I believe 60 days is required for new tariffs to be implemented).

But what we have happening in the US is almost literally you wake up in the morning to discover what new or changed tariffs have been announced. This makes it near impossible for businesses to plan or have confidence. Imagine if your landlord could every few days change your rent without notice!

So here is the history of tariff announcements since 20 January.

1. 1 Feb: 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, 10% on China
2. 3 Feb: 30 day pause on Mexico and Canada tariffs
3. 10 Feb: 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports
4. 4 March: China tariff goes up to 20%, 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico resumes
5. 26 March: 25% tariff on automobiles from 3 April and automobile parts from 3 May
6. 2 April: Tariffs from 10% to 49% on entire world.
7. 7 April: Tariffs on China go to 104%
8. 9 April: Tariffs on China go to 145%, other new tariffs set to 10% for 90 days
9. 12 April: Imports from China of smartphones, laptops and semiconductors excused from 145% tariff for 90 days

The real loser in all of this will be business and consumer confidence. When major policies change every few days, it is hard to be confident about the future.

And it isn’t over. Now special pharmaceutical and semiconductor tariffs are planned, and the automobile tariff may be suspended 90 days. Just so Mickey Mouse.

This is the billboard released by the Sensible Sentencing Trust, highlighting how a Green MP has been advocating abolishing the Police (and prisons!). The Greens complained that the billboard was a breach of copyright.

So the SST replaced the copyrighted photo with this one, to comply.

But what I wanted to highlight is the hypocrisy.

The Greens have a bill before Parliament that explicitly seeks to legalise the use of copyrighted material if it is for “the purpose of parody or satire”.

So the Greens want people to be able to use copyrighted material for the purposes of parody (a stance I agree with), but the moment they are the subjects of the parody, they wail and say it shouldn’t be allowed.