When Hipkins heard about another minister in trouble . . .

*Leaked footage of Chris Hipkins finding out there is another ministerial drama.*

Thanks to those who requested another Downfall satire this week! https://t.co/WTx3v3GqGD

— Ani O'Brien (@aniobrien) June 30, 2023

You can also see it here.

Word of the day

Argot – language particular to a specific group; the jargon or slang of a particular group or class; words and expressions that are used by small groups of people and that are not easily understood; an often more or less secret vocabulary and idiom peculiar to a particular group; a specialised vocabulary or set of idioms used by a particular social class or group, especially one that functions outside the law, devised for private communication and identification.

Sowell says

It is hard enough to solve our own problems, without trying to solve our ancestors’ problems.

— Thomas Sowell Wisdom (@TheThomasSowell) June 22, 2023

Other side of story

Patrick Gower asks a good question: why can’t we talk about transgender issues without it becoming an ugly, toxic shouting match?

Why can’t we talk transgender without losing our sh*t? It is an ugly, toxic shouting match. Where we don't actually learn anything. Well tonight, we will have a proper conversation. And learn a lot! pic.twitter.com/8SPgOhpOtX

— Patrick Gower (@patrickgowernz) June 28, 2023

A proper conversation on transgender issues would allow people to question what is happening without being labeled transphobic.

A proper conversation would accept that it is possible to be pro-women without being anti-trans and wouldn’t label people standing up for women as transphobic.

A proper conversation would enable people to state biological facts without being labeled transphobic.

Transgender issues have become big issues and covering them should have given both sides of the story.

The Women’s Rights Party puts the other side of the story:

There were so many holes in Paddy Gower’s investigation into transgender issues, you could write a book about it, the Women’s Rights Party says.

“Of course, several have written books outlining the harm that gender identity ideology is doing to our society,” newly elected Women’s Rights Party co-leader Jill Ovens says. “Like, for example, Kathleen Stock’s ‘Material Girls; Why Reality Matters for Feminism’, Helen Joyce’s ‘Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality’, Sheila Jeffreys’ “Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism‘, and Hannah Barnes’ ‘Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children’.“

“Evidently, those working on the TV3 programme, ‘Issues’, have not read any of these books, and nor are they familiar with recognised definitions of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’,” she says.

“A person’s “sex” refers to a person’s biological sex (either male or female). On the other hand, ‘gender’ is an imprecise concept that refers to sex-based stereotypes and social expectations, for example, what is considered feminine and masculine. Gender identity and expression refer to the identification with, and expression of these stereotypes.”

Jill Ovens says feminists reject sex-based stereotypes. “Children who are gender non-conforming or who could grow up to be attracted to the same sex, should be supported in this. It needs to be clear that while you can change your appearance, changing your sex is not biologically possible. You can’t change your DNA for one thing.”

Among other issues with the programme, the Women’s Rights Party says:

• Intersex, or DSD (difference of sexual development), is a rare medical condition affecting 0.018% of the population where the biological sex is indeterminate at birth or there is abnormal development of the sex organs. Intersex is not the same as transgenderism, as Paddy Gower said.
• The Ministry of Health has quietly dropped its statement that puberty blockers are “safe and reversible” in light of overwhelming medical and social evidence to the contrary with many countries restricting or banning their use with gender dysphoric children and teenagers. Paddy Gower reported that 700 New Zealand children are currently on puberty blockers. He didn’t say this was a very high rate internationally. It was telling that no New Zealand doctor was prepared to go on camera to discuss concerns of the medical profession, so they had to go to an Australian doctor.
• The conflation of cultural practices with a so-called “third gender” is highly debateable. For example, “fa’afafine” refers to biological males who are raised as females and is largely based on a person’s role in the family.
• There was no questioning as to why there has been such a huge shift in transgenderism to young women identifying as boys and men, and whether this may be related to social media influencers and social contagion among peer groups.
• The effects of gender reassignment surgery were minimised as “top” surgery (e.g. double mastectomy resulting in inability to breastfeed, or breast augmentation for biological males) and “bottom” surgery where male genitalia (i.e. the penis) is removed and females undergo hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) or removal of the ovaries and fallopian tubes. Since 2020 in New Zealand, such surgeries are publicly funded through the private sector. Paddy Gower emphasised the number of New Zealanders on the waiting list, clearly promoting the need for more accessibility of such procedures, essentially putting money into the pockets of private surgeons.
• There was no mention of those who have undergone puberty blockers, hormone therapy and/or gender reassignment surgery who later have serious regrets. Those who “detransition” often report how their medical treatment destroyed their life physically and mentally.
• Finally there was no mention of the indoctrination of children in gender ideology from Year 1 in our nation’s schools, or the capture of our public institutions through publicly funded charities such as Inside Out.

“The programme glossed over very real concerns of New Zealanders and reinforced the only acceptable media narrative. Whatever happened to journalistic standards of balance and objectivity?” asks Jill Ovens.

Is it any wonder there’s so much distrust of the media when an important issue like this is covered without balance?

Quotes of the week

We don’t just live in Māori things, we suffer the same health stuff as everybody else, we go to the same schools as everybody else.

What electoral roll I’m on didn’t change my Māori blood, didn’t change my Māori genealogy, didn’t change my Māori language, didn’t change my Māori family. None of that changed. What’s changed is my ability to choose more widely who I can potentially vote for. – TeRata Hikairo

New Zealand farmers are in a better position to be able to identify the combination required than anybody in the central city. Allowing them to be innovative to achieve the required outcomes will bring back a sense of worth. And maybe then the next generation of agribusiness professionals and food producers will appear. – Jacqueline Rowarth

We must inject some common sense back into the classroom and society more generally. The classroom is a place where fact should be taught as fact and opinion as opinion. Children should be able to indulge their imagination in the playground, especially when they’re little, but it goes without saying that absolutely no child should be forced to affirm a classmate’s identity as an animal or inanimate object. – Gillian Keegan

pic.twitter.com/yUUBFpsKkk

— Marie Magdalen (@femalemagic) June 24, 2023

Against National’s weekly churn of new policy, we’ve seen basically nothing big from Hipkins since the Budget. At best, Labour has been invisible. At worst, it’s been making headlines for ministerial conflict of interest scandals.

Labour will need to seize back the narrative soon, if it wants to bolster its chances going into campaign season. Otherwise Luxon, armed with his array of policies on all of the key issues, starts to look like the Prime-Minister-in-waiting. – Marc Daalder

There’s absolutely no doubt that Labour has reduced the numbers of people in prison. The prison population has fallen by 20%. And they’re saying it’s going to be really expensive to put more people back in prison. But the cost of crime on society is expensive. I mean, just look at the numbers of security guards having to be employed by just about every retail store.

And criminals have to be punished, otherwise we lose faith in the justice system, and we lose faith in our authorities, and we lose faith in each other. If you do wrong, you have to be seen to be being punished. But at the same time, criminals must be rehabilitated as best they can be. Otherwise, it’s just an expensive money-go-round and a complete and utter waste of human potential. – Kerre Woodham 

A $8000 rebate, as prescribed by Government policy, is a story of rank hypocrisy.

But two planes, one empty, to transport 45 people is somehow not news?

I just can’t work out how it is the media has ended up with such a questionable reputation.

Go figure.- Mike Hosking 

If one in three students fails to finish their degree, who are they delivering to?

Clearly, young people decide university is not for them and they are left with the student loan that still has to be paid off and nothing to show for it. Universities themselves can’t seem to attract enough people to fund themselves.

So what is the taxpayer getting out of it? Do we have to rethink the whole university model, instead of coming up with rescue packages that are just going to prop up a system that seems to be failing. – Kerre Woodham 

So if our health department is a shambles ( says MSM ), education is no better, housing is woeful, law & order is out of control, inflation is rampant, and the cost of living is at crisis level … can someone from the lunatic left help me understand what Labour has achieved

— Leo Molloy (@LeoMolloyNZ) June 28, 2023

Banks have had a big target on their backs because they make big profits, and banks should be making big profits because they’re really big entities. – Cameron Bagrie 

You look at credit card charges… those numbers are pretty eye-watering – up around 20 percent – but, if you want to make a really big difference to what happens across retail banking, one of the big steps we should be pursuing is actually improving financial literacy.

Where the banks make a lot of money out of credit charges is because people don’t know how to manage their credit cards from month to month. – Cameron Bagrie 

Free speech is not the tool of the elite but the marginalised, who have not money nor power to set the agenda, but simply their voice. – Adam Young

EVs are as good as the grid they are charged on…

"The results show that under the current grid mix composition in China, the carbon emissions of electric vehicles of the same vehicle weight class are 24% to 31% higher than that of fuel vehicles." https://t.co/mv1cwINBGE

— 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐅𝐚𝐫𝐪𝐮𝐡𝐚𝐫 (@grant_farquhar) June 25, 2023

Did you see the one about. . . .?

The classist lunacy of Net Zero – Brendan O’Neill :

. . . It feels like the working classes are caught in a pincer movement. On one side, upper-class fanatics punish them on the streets by blocking their journeys by car; on the other, officialdom punishes them with green energy . . 

The political class’s war on the car confirms that XR-style hostility to modern life is now rife in establishment circles. I bow to no one in my opposition to the eco-privileged who clog up the highways to send a stern message to what they view as the low-information polluting masses. But these people are small fry in the Net Zero religion. They’re the back-whipping outliers of the cult, not its priests. Edred and Tilly might stop your car for two hours but it’s officialdom that is erecting bollards, putting up spycams and introducing stiff eco-taxes to discourage ‘unnecessary journeys by car’ in the glorious name of the new god: Net Zero. . . 

Net Zero has been institutionalised by governments across the West. They’ve sworn to achieve the holy state of carbon neutrality by 2050 or 2040. And the impact of their eco-adoration on the lives of working-class people has been disastrous. The Net Zero drive is causing the loss of farming jobs, dents in the pay packets of truckers, rising energy bills, rising fuel costs, the end of cheap flights. As Ross Clark says, the ‘uncosted fantasy’ of severe carbon reduction will leave us ‘poorer, colder and hungrier’. Well, not all of us. Mr Neilson will be okay. And Edred and Tilly.

Net Zero is best seen as the policy expression of the self-loathing of the elites, of late capitalism’s turn against itself. The neo-aristocratic disdain for the gains and wonders of industrial society might enlarge the sense of virtue of those who rule us, who get to pose as saviours of the planet, but it violently shrinks the prospects of working people and the global poor. Alongside the valiant scaffolders ejecting eco-zealots from the roads, we need more people willing to demand the ejection of Net Zero in its entirety from government policymaking. Growth and freedom are what will deliver us from the current crisis, not fear, hysteria and cruel reversals in the fortunes of working people.

The legal foundation  of women’s sports is under fire – David French :

. . . Race segregation in athletic programs is a legal and cultural taboo. There are no legally segregated white and Black football leagues, for example, and if a school decided to create a Black league and a white league, it would face an immediate civil rights complaint. Excluding a football player from a team simply because of his race is unlawful discrimination.

But this is not the case when it comes to sex. The result of Title IX was not the large-scale creation of coed sports leagues, where men and women have an equal opportunity to compete in the same events, where the best man or woman makes the team, and the best man or woman wins the race. Instead, Title IX has resulted in the expansion of women’s sports into an enormous, separate and parallel apparatus, where women by the millions compete against one another, winning women’s titles in women’s leagues.

Why this difference? Why have two statutes with such similar language created such different realities? Because sex is substantially different from race, and treating sex the same as race would be a profound injustice for women in sports. 

Let’s go back to the language of the statute itself, which speaks in terms of both “participation” and “benefits.” If you treat people of different races the same, people of all races can both participate and receive the benefits of participation in athletics. If you treat people of different sexes the same, the reality is very different.

The evidence is overwhelming that there is a significant average difference between male and female athletic performance, including at the most elite levels and even when female athletes receive funding, training and nutrition comparable to that of the best male athletes. In a 2020 article in The Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy, the authors, Doriane Lambelet Coleman, Michael J. Joyner and Donna Lopiano, observed that “depending on the sport and event, the gap between the best male and female performances remains somewhere between 7 to 25 percent; and even the best female is consistently surpassed by many elite and nonelite males, including both boys and men.”. . .

After all, when we survey the performance gap between male and female athletes, is that gap best explained by the differences in gender identity between the competitors or the differences that are inherent in biological sex? And if those differences are best explained by biological sex rather than gender identity, then any rule that wipes out biological sex as the determining factor in eligibility will undermine both the practical and legal basis for women’s sports.

I’m not a catastrophist. I hate rhetoric that declares that women’s sports will be “destroyed” by the inclusion of a small number of trans women in athletic competition. I hate even more any demonization or disparagement of the trans athletes themselves. When they compete according to the rules of the sport, they are doing nothing wrong. But legal definitions do matter, especially when they are rooted in hard facts, such as the systematic, documented performance gap between the sexes.

All people are created equal, and possess equal moral worth, but we are not all created the same. To protect equal opportunity, there are times when the law should recognize differences. And in the realm of athletics, if we want to both secure and continue the remarkable advances women have made in the 51 years since Congress passed Title IX, it’s important to remember that sex still matters, and sex distinctions in the law should remain.     

Tighter tax take points to trouble ahead – Cameron Bagrie :

You can only push so far against the laws of economics before there are consequences.

Inflation siphons money out of people’s pockets and adds to costs.

Higher costs, if not matched by revenue, mean lower profits. Less profit means less tax.

And so, one of the key indicators to turn of late has been government tax revenue.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, tax revenue beat expectations, courtesy of a stronger economy and low unemployment, which boosted income tax. Farmers paid a lot of tax.

That worm has now turned. Tax revenue is still rising in aggregate but coming in below expectations and some tax components are showing major declines.

Tax revenue undershot the Half-Year-Economic and Fiscal Update projections in the fiscal year to January, February and March, with March showing a $2.3 billion gap to forecast after being broadly flat in the six months ended December.

The culprits included lower terminal tax, provisional tax and goods and services tax, which are all barometers of the profit cycle. When firms and farmers make less money, they pay less tax. . . 

Here are some key tax divergences.

Corporate tax revenue for the month of April 2023 came in at $1bn compared to a forecast of $2.7bn (a variance of minus 64%) and this compares to $1.6bn in April 2022.

Corporate tax revenue for the 10 months ended April was 6% ($940 million) below the same period for the prior year (though 2022 was a good year).

Other person’s tax (individual tax outside PAYE) for the 10 months ended April was 6.2% ($535m) below the same period for the prior year, reflecting lower provisional tax estimation.

Other person’s tax was 28.6% lower in the month of April 2023 compared to April 2022.

Less terminal and provisional tax has been a big driver. Businesses or farmers are not doing as well as the Treasury thought they were.

Overall, the tax take is still up in the 10 months ended April 2023 compared with the same period of the prior year, supported by PAYE, reflecting a strong labour market.

However, the turn in some tax components is significant and signifies the brutality of rising costs.

Inflation comments tend to focus on households. The consumer price index peaked at 7.2%.

Producer price inflation for non-labour inputs (the business equivalent of household’s consumer price index) peaked at 9.7%. Farm cost inflation rose to 15% and is currently running at 12%, though that includes interest costs, which are not included in the consumer price index. The cost-of-living index measure, which includes interest costs, peaked at 8.2%.

The rural sector is particularly exposed to rising costs because they are a price-taker on the revenue side. The lower New Zealand dollar has helped but commodity prices are under pressure as global economic conditions deteriorate.

A lot of cost increases have been beyond businesses’ control, including covid, supply chain challenges, Ukraine and energy prices. Some of these have eased and, globally, what we call goods inflation is receding.

The economy still has ample demand with constrained ability to meet it, which has been a recipe for price rises. Firms are still struggling to fill job vacancies, though border reopening has helped.

But inflation can also be put down to a gap between ideology and reality. Pick your example.

Take the consistent ramping up of the minimum wage, which adds to costs. I’m for higher wages and some catchup was needed to put some respectability and fairness into incomes, but the speed has been phenomenal and productivity gains are not matching. Firms have not been able to adjust to the speed.

Or how about the slow re-opening of borders and regulatory impediments to getting much-needed employees into the country?

The extent of the turn in the tax cycle is one reality reset. Costs hit profits, which hits tax.

Some pull-back in profits was to be expected. Profits tend to do well at the top of the cycle and are more sensitive to movements in the cycle so suffer more in tougher economic times.

As profits come under pressure, so too does the inevitably of the next stage of the economic cycle.

Part of restoring economic balance will be a stronger focus on costs and efficiency. Analysing labour inputs/costs will be a major part of it. This is the stage of the economic cycle we are now entering, and it could be a major wake-up call for society. Taming inflation is not friendly for asset prices, spending, profits, or jobs. We have yet to see the impact on jobs.

Who benefits most from he protection of free speech – the haves or the have-nots ? – Arthur Grimes :

Whether it be repression of free speech under authoritarian regimes or instances of “cancel culture” in various countries, the importance of freedom of expression is as hotly contested as ever. But does freedom of speech benefit all groups equally?

In recently published research, we tackled the question of who actually benefits the most from having freedom of speech. Is it people with the most resources – either income or education – who benefit more, or is it people with few resources?

The idea that those with resources benefit most falls in line with the “hierarchy of needs” developed by American psychologist Abraham Maslow. He argued that people would seek to meet their most pressing needs – such as food and shelter – before looking to achieve “luxuries” such as freedom of speech.

But the view that freedom of speech most benefits those with few resources is consistent with the idea that marginalised people have less scope to influence decisions in society through their spending or networks. They require freedom of speech to influence societal decisions. . .

Our research tested whether changes in countries’ restrictions on free speech were associated with rises or falls in the wellbeing of well-resourced people relative to poorly-resourced people in those countries. . . 

The research produced two key findings.

First, people with more resources place greater stated priority on freedom of speech (when asked to rank its importance).

Second, it was actually the people with fewer resources who benefited most from free speech. The results indicated that free speech empowered those with fewer resources, providing a greater lift to the wellbeing of more marginalised people.

The two results are not incompatible: people with fewer resources may need to prioritise basic needs more than “luxuries” such as free speech but, being in marginalised populations, they may still benefit most from having freedom of expression.

We also found that people who said they valued free speech benefited from living in countries with free speech. And, preferences towards free speech varied according to certain characteristics within the population (in addition to income and education).

Groups more likely to prioritise free speech included the young, students, non-religious people and those on the left of the political spectrum. Preferences also reflected country circumstances, with people in the West being more supportive of free speech than people in other regions of the world.

In defence of the marketplace of ideas

In a world in which freedom of speech is increasingly being placed at risk, it may become important to protect the “marketplace for ideas”. As 19th century thinker John Stuart Mill argued, ideas should “compete” in an open marketplace and be tested by the public to determine which ideas will prevail.

Notwithstanding current risks with social media “echo-chambers”, this basic insight still has much to recommend it. People must be able to express their views and receive the views of others openly.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights emphasises this two-way aspect of freedom of expression – that is, people have “the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas”.

Countries’ laws should reflect Hall’s insistence about freedom of expression – at a national level we should defend people’s right to say what they want. At a personal level, we should also respect the importance of being a good listener, even when, to paraphrase Hall, we disapprove of what is being said.

Left envy Titanic – Douglas Murray :

I ADMIRE bravery. I admire adventurers. And I was brought up in a Britain which admired these things too.

But much of our country has changed. Where we used to admire adventure we have become cautious and safety obsessed.

Where we used to admire heroism we now favour moaning and victimhood.

Where we once admired success we have come to elevate failure.

There could hardly be a clearer demonstration of this ugly shift than in certain responses to the submersible tragedy at the site of the Titanic. . .

Ordinarily, the people who talk about “kindness” and “compassion” would be kind and compassionate at such a time.

But no. Because the people on board the vessel were guilty of a terrible crime; they were rich. . . 

Self-confessed “communist” and Guardian writer Ash Sarkar, who can frequently be seen on the BBC, lost no time in trying to politicise the tragedy.

Even as hope remained that the men could still be alive, Sarkar took to social media to say: “If the super-rich can spend £250,000 on vanity jaunts 2.4 miles beneath the ocean then they’re not being taxed enough.”

That’s quite the reaction. As a teenage Pakistani boy and four others were thought to be struggling for their last breath as oxygen supplies dwindled, this “luxury communist” criticised them for not being taxed more highly.

From where I sit, when someone is dead or dying it never occurs to most decent people to have a discussion about tax policy.

But Sarkar and other lefties on social media doubled down on the victim-blaming — something they usually pretend to hate.

“The Titanic submarine is a modern morality tale of what happens when you have too much money, and the grotesque inequality of sympathy, attention and aid for those without it.”

The point of this ghoulish communist seemed to be that if the victims had been poor no one would have taken any notice. . . 

The public’s sympathy has nothing to do with wealth.

It has everything to do with empathy for people in an unimaginable situation.

The idea of running out of oxygen is one of the most basic human fears of all.

But bitter people are able to feel bitterness everywhere.

If the victims had all been white then the bitter Left would have attacked them for being white.

But as it was they have been attacking them for being rich. . . 

If anyone is to blame for the tragedy it is OceanGate, the company in charge of the expedition.

But it is not the fault of the victims.

And in any case, apart from being rich and successful what exactly were they guilty of? Of being curious.

Of wishing to explore the depths of the ocean. Of seeing extraordinary sights and returning to tell people about them.

Of putting their lives in the hands of people who they trusted.

They are people to be admired, not attacked. They should be admired for being successful in their lives.

And they should be admired for continuing one of the things that is greatest about us as a species.

Which is our quest for knowledge and experience, even when it comes at the most terrible price.

A healthy society would admire them.

Polls puzzling

Each time a poll comes out I am convinced I live in a different country from the one where people who respond to them live.

When the trend for whether or not the country is going in the right direction is consistently negative; when there are crises in the cost of living, education, health, infrastructure . . . ; when Labour with a majority is doing so much damage how can anyone think they’d be better with the Greens and/or Maori Party in support?

These are questions others are asking and Graham Adams at The Common Room writes that: close polls puzzle pundits:

How long can Labour continue to levitate?

Centre-right voters are increasingly wondering how many more disasters it will take to seriously dent the government’s poll numbers. Whether it is repeated instances of bungled policy or a spate of Cabinet ministers in trouble, the received wisdom that “Oppositions don’t win elections — governments lose them” seems to be slow to kick in for this year’s election.

National’s latest internal polls reportedly show it climbing against Labour but in the five months since Hipkins became Prime Minister public polls have featured the parties regularly swapping the lead in the race to October 14, with both sitting in a range from the early to mid-30s. Furthermore, polls also show the left bloc — comprised of Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori — consistently level-pegging with National and Act on the right.

A tweet last week by Zuru toy magnate Nick Mowbray summed up the frustration of those watching the self-styled “Chris Hipkins government” lurch from one debacle to another yet somehow managing to stay roughly even with National in the polls: “I can’t understand these polls. NZ has gone backwards on EVERY single metric badly. Despite huge increases in spending and bureaucracy, mountains of debt, backwards on every productivity metric — woeful management — zero talent or accountability. How can any one vote Labour?…”

When widespread concerns about escalating crime, falling education standards, homelessness, a broken health system, dilapidated roads, and race-based policy (including co-governance) are added to the picture — as well as the fact Hipkins has lost three ministers in the first five months of his tenure as Prime Minister — Labour’s continuing ability to levitate in the polls remains a mystery to many. They calculate that Labour’s dismal record of incompetence in delivering on its promises, coupled with the Cabinet being so obviously in disarray, mean it should be rating in the late-20s at best.

Even if they accept that a chunk of National voters is peeling off to Act and depressing National’s tally, they don’t understand how the left and right blocs are mostly neck and neck.

What also puzzles many people is that the polls don’t correspond with mounting anecdotal evidence. This year, it has been increasingly common to find anonymous commenters on social media declaring they have always voted Labour or Greens but this election they’ll be voting National — and sometimes going straight to Act.

On The Platform on Monday one caller told host Sean Plunket that they thought the polls were “a bit suspect”, adding, “I have friends who have voted for Labour for 30-plus years who aren’t voting Labour. They are all farmers who will be back to National [this election] but none of this is reflected in the polls.”

Former Labour Cabinet minister Michael Bassett told Plunket last week that he too is puzzled. Describing the government as “fairly low-grade” with a “pretty unlovely six years” in office, he believed it is “on its way out”. He said he had “pretty good connections around the traps” and the polling results for Labour do not correspond with what he is hearing. He detected a “significant change taking place… There is movement going on politically and it’s not kind to Labour.

“National is fairly static, but Act is roaring away. Moreover, there are signs that some Labour people are beginning to go to Act — which would scarcely be surprising given that Act came out of Labour.”

Centre-right voters discombobulated by the polls console themselves with the fact that Auckland’s mayoral battle between Wayne Brown and Efeso Collins last October was billed as a tight race by pollsters and journalists but Brown won by 57,000 votes — 45 per cent more than Collins. As Stuff’s Todd Niall put it: “In the end it was a trouncing. Aucklanders had a clear choice between two distinctly different mayoral candidates in Wayne Brown and Efeso Collins, and resoundingly went Brown’s way… So much for a tight race.”

Polls have famously been wrong in elections around the world. The most spectacular was Trump’s victory in 2016 after an overwhelming majority of polls had predicted Hillary Clinton would win the presidency, but they also failed to accurately predict the results of the British general election in 2015, which gave the Conservative Party a slim majority. In 2019, Australian polls over three years put the Labor Party ahead of the more conservative Coalition for the election but Scott Morrison became Prime Minister.

The centre-right in New Zealand hopes a similar phenomenon is occurring undetected here. Such optimism often relies on the supposition there is a large cohort of “silent voters”, sometimes called “shy voters”, in addition to those who are happy to tell others of their shifting allegiances. Silent voters won’t tell pollsters — and possibly not even close friends — who they will ultimately vote for in the privacy of the polling booth. It’s certainly easy to imagine that many long-time Green and Labour voters would avoid broadcasting the fact they intend to vote for Chris Luxon, let alone David Seymour, given supporting either would be the kiss of death in progressive circles.

Hopeful explanations of why a convincing centre-right win might be likely, despite the polls, include the belief that some disaffected Labour-Greens supporters who can’t stomach voting for National or Act will simply not vote at all, even if they are telling pollsters now that they will vote for these parties in October. They may also, of course, seek refuge with NZ First as a notional “halfway house” between left and right while accepting the party will probably side with National, or throw their lot in with a minnow such as TOP.

All this may seem to Labour-Greens supporters to be little more than wishful — if not desperate — thinking by centre-right supporters. However, since mid-June last year, polling has shown the switch from Ardern to Hipkins hasn’t dented the numbers of those who think the country is on the wrong track. Unlike the see-sawing between right and left blocs in recent polls, the government has been consistently on the wrong side of the ledger with regard to the nation’s overall direction — and mostly by a substantial margin of at least 10 percentage points.

Another encouraging sign for the centre-right is that Australia’s largest online bookmaker, Sportsbet, will pay $1.45 for a National win in October but $2.75 for a Labour win (advising “If no majority [is] achieved, [it] will be settled on party of Prime Minister”).

The positive effect of close polling figures is that they prevent complacency taking hold on either side of the political aisle. The belief that the battle is yet to be won acts as a sharp spur for mobilising volunteers and donors. It may also impel lazy voters to make the effort to get to a polling booth.

The negative fallout of the close polling has landed primarily on Chris Luxon, who is regularly criticised for not raising National’s share of the vote well beyond Labour’s. But it also reinforces damaging views — justified or not — of the mainstream media, whose journalists are often seen as favouring the left and effectively putting their thumbs on the scales in an effort to aid a Labour-Greens-Te Pāti Māori victory. Bassett certainly had no doubts, telling Plunket, “The media have been doing their level-best to help save Labour.”

It is certainly very easy to find evidence of bias towards the left in political coverage — which is hardly surprising given the preponderance of left-leaning journalists in New Zealand’s media. (As pollster David Farrar pointed out in a video for the Common Room this week, the ratio of left-leaning journalists to right-leaning journalists is 5:1.)

The segment on 1News’ evening bulletin last weekend devoted to National’s announcement of its law-and-order policy is a case in point. While it gave ample opportunity to Justice Minister Kiri Allan to deride the policy, it didn’t include comment from anyone who might approve of it — such as victims of crimes, including ram-raids.

1News’ approach was epitomised by the vexatious question senior journalist Benedict Collins put to Luxon: “There has been so much talk about lawlessness and the crime wave here at this conference, are you worried that National Party supporters might not feel safe enough to go out and vote on polling day?”

Collins was clearly implying that National’s tough-on-crime policy relies on exaggerating public fearfulness. Yet the results of the Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor released early this month showed crime is now the number-two issue — after the cost of living / inflation — that is worrying voters ahead of the election.

The Ipsos survey, conducted between 23-30 May, also asked people which political party they most trusted to manage particular issues. National was preferred for three of the top five concerns — inflation/cost of living, crime/law and order, and housing (including the price of housing). Labour was selected as the best to manage healthcare and hospitals, and the Greens climate change.

New Zealanders’ rating of the government’s performance since the last Ipsos survey in February showed a decline from 5.4 to 5.0 (on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means “abysmal” and 10 means “outstanding”). That represents an 8 per cent fall in the four months after Hipkins became leader and is the lowest rating since Labour came to power in 2017.

With such results added to the consistent numbers of those who believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction, it’s easy to see why centre-right voters might plausibly suspect the polls of voting intentions so far to be simply wrong.

The trend is more important than individual polls and there is of course only one that counts and we’ll have to wait until October before we know whether or not current polls are a true reflection to voters’ intentions.

Incompetents in charge

Is Mike Hosking right, that the government is imploding?

Do you reckon Chris Hipkins regrets the deal he did with Grant and Jacinda late last year?  

Do you think Jacinda had an inkling that things were spiralling out of control, both economically and internally, and thought “tell you what, a book deal, a King’s Honour and wandering around a few universities waxing lyrical about kindness looks way more fun than this cluster”?

Poor, old Hipkins can’t even leave the country without yet another minister imploding.

We must be careful, of course, in a world where our mental health has taken on new significance, personal tumult is not to be dismissed.

Being on leave for the good of her mental health leave didn’t stop her fronting media at the weekend to criticise National’s law and order policy.

But the Kiri Allen story appears to have two different chapters to it. Her personal leave is for personal issues, but there’s also a group of people seconded to her office that clearly couldn’t stand it and bailed early.

That both she and her leader are being pedantic about there being no formal complaints doesn’t help.

There is a pattern here, given she is not the first minister to face staffing issues. Meka Whaitiri was accused of assaulting one of her staff, Anna Lorck had trouble and who can forget Gaurav Sharma.   . .

That’s not a roll of honour.

Jan Tinetti still awaits her verdict from the Privileges Committee. What must her staff think of her, given they gave her the warning about correcting the mess she created in the house?

She’s not the only one who ignored warning to correct a mess – Michael Wood is another.

Michael Wood, like Allen, is off on personal leave, having imploded under the weight of his hubris.

Stuart Nash got warned and sacked and warned and quit – or whatever the order was.

Now, Hipkins has to rumble his way back to the country via Manila and Darwin to face yet another ministerial crisis.

Here is a thought – could part of it actually be on him?

Wood was a busy minister portfolio-wise. Post sacking all his work got distributed to other already busy ministers.

Why? Because Hipkins, having learned from Tinetti and the Ginny Andersen promotions, knew he had no talent left so he had no choice.

Which brings us back to Ardern. Good leaders, actual bona fide leaders, leave with the place in better shape than they arrived.

You don’t bugger the place up and then bail leaving a trail of destruction.

Yet, here we are.

One question left – how much do you want to bet the carnage ain’t over yet?

Hosking wrote that yesterday morning before the Priveleges Committee’s report on Jan TInetti was made public.

It’s no surprise the committee, dominated by Labour MPs, didn’t find her guilty of contempt but it did find her guilty ot negligence and inattention to detail :

. . . “Although some of us find parts of her evidence unconvincing, all members of the committee accept that there is an appropriately high bar for making a finding of intent to mislead, which is not met in this case.”

While she didn’t deliberately mislead the House, the fact the House was misled and impeded could be considered grounds for contempt, the committee says.

It says the minister did not make sound judgements or appropriate inquiries after giving her answer and being briefed by her staff.

“However, we accept that the minister’s actions reflected a high degree of negligence on her part, rather than any ill intention. It is our view that a finding of contempt should be reserved for the most serious of cases. For these reasons, we do not find she committed a contempt of the House.

“We wish to stress, however, that we consider that the minister’s actions reflect a significant error of judgement. We consider that the minister is deserving of criticism for having failed to correct her misleading statement when she had been informed of the information that later led her to accept her answer was inaccurate. 

“Her actions and the impact of them on the House’s operations are serious and it is for that reason we consider that the minister should be required to formally apologise to the House.” . . .

Neither negligence nor an error of judgement are conduct becoming a minister.

They’re certainly not the standard a Minister of Education should be setting.

The Education Minister is responsible for the futures of hundreds of thousands of Kiwi kids, but doesn’t understand the most basic rules of Parliament, National’s Shadow Leader of the House Michael Woodhouse says.

“Serious questions need to be asked about the competence of Education Minister Jan Tinetti after the Privileges Committee found her sustained and erroneous judgement caused Parliament to be misled.

“Having to apologise to Parliament is a serious issue for any MP, but it is particularly embarrassing for the Minister responsible for the future of New Zealand’s children.

“This is one of Labour’s most senior ministers, but her inability to understand and follow basic rules begs the question of whether she is fit for the role.

“While she has escaped being found to have committed contempt, the committee found a high degree of negligence on the Minister’s part impeded the functions of Parliament.

“Right now, our kids are not going to school, achievement levels are plummeting, and some schools are choosing to ditch NCEA Level 1 altogether because they have no confidence in the Government’s NCEA change programme. . .

Jan Tinetti is responsible for the educational outcomes of hundreds of thousands of kiwi kids and a $17 billion budget. Today she was found to have acted with a high degree of negligence.

Questions need to be asked if she is up to this task.

— Erica Stanford MP (@EricaStanfordMP) June 29, 2023

What would happen to a teacher or pupil who didn’t understand or follow the rules and was guilty of a serious error of judgement and negligence? Would they be let off with an apology?

What do the error of judgement and negligence say about the Minister’s competence?

Is it unfair to say all of this leads more credence to the view we’ve got a government of incompetents?

Word of the day

Verschlimmbesserung – disimprovement; an attempted improvement that only makes things worse; the act of making something worse while trying to make it better.

Sowell says

What “multiculturalism” boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture—and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

— Thomas Sowell Wisdom (@TheThomasSowell) June 22, 2023

Rural round-up

When regulations push farmers out of farming we need a new approach – Jacqueline Rowarth :

 In a world with food prices escalating, it is difficult to understand why any government would implement regulations that made food less available and, potentially, more expensive.

Yet this is what is happening in many countries, including New Zealand.

The EU is determined on the Farm to Fork strategy, which involves achieving 25% organic production and a 20-50% reduction in use of agrichemicals. The decreased availability of food (10-15% in key products) and economic implications have already been calculated as significant.

For Sri Lanka, the foray into organics is considered one of the significant factors which crashed the economy.

And in New Zealand the regulatory environment, designed to protect humans, animals and the natural environment, is becoming ever more stringent and complex – which makes farming more difficult and hence costly. . . 

Exotic tree crops established for carbon credits ‘morally corrupt’ – David Norton :

There is no evidence exotic tree monocultures will continue to sequester CO2 at high rates beyond the first few decades of their life

Yet another heavy downpour leading to a state-of-emergency in Tairāwhiti this week highlights the existential threat we face from human-induced climate change.

Papatūānuku continues to suffer through our lacklustre response, which is focused more on planting fast-growing exotic trees (estimated at 60,000 ha in the past year alone) than actually reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

The problems with this approach have been clearly highlighted in the Climate Change Commission’s draft advice for the Government’s 2026-2030 emissions reduction plan, which warns against this over-reliance on exotic trees in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). . . 

What a cracker of an afternoon! pic.twitter.com/ZCIOfABvJT

— Micha (@JerseyAngus) June 27, 2023

New Zealand’s three-decade ban on genetic modification explained – Tony Conner :

After years in the scientific wilderness, GM is once again a hot political issue. Dr Tony Conner explains what our current law says, and why removing the ban could transform agricultural science in New Zealand.

So, what does GMO stand for?

GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism. Genetic modification may also be referred to as genetic engineering or transgenics.

And what exactly is that?

Genetic modification involves taking DNA from the genome (the complete set of DNA) of an organism such as a plant or animal and inserting it into the genome of another organism. The purpose is to transfer the ability to make new substances or perform different functions. There are no barriers to where the DNA can come from. DNA from microbes, animals, plants, and even entirely synthetic DNA made in the laboratory can be transferred into other microbes, animals, or plants. GM development needs to be undertaken in carefully controlled conditions in the laboratory. In the case of plants, DNA is inserted into single plants cells that are then be multiplied in cell cultures in the lab and regenerated back into complete plants. . .

Trade policy must evolve – research :

New research suggests New Zealand needs to evolve its trade strategy in order to capture more value from existing markets, especially if the country seeks to increase exports and grow the economy amid rising protectionism and geopolitical tensions.

The Meat Industry Association of New Zealand (MIA) and Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) today published the latest edition of its biennial Barriers to International Trade report.

The report shows that New Zealand’s framework of free trade agreements has reduced the level of red meat tariffs from $366 million in 2010 to $193 million in 2022, a reduction of $173 million.

However, between 2021 and 2022 there was a 22% uptick in red meat tariffs because New Zealand is exporting more products to markets with high tariffs. . . 

Stop lying @GreenpeaceNZ 🤥

NZ dairy is not "mid range"

We may have to report you to the disinformation project 😎 https://t.co/n8tNMXc6xt pic.twitter.com/p7e4BBYvSn

— Federated Farmers (@FedFarmers) June 24, 2023

Competition hots up for Young Farmers tournament national finals :

The competition is heating up for the New Zealand Young Farmers (NZYF) Tournament National Final, to be held in Timaru next month.

Running alongside the FMG Young Farmer of the Year Grand Final, the NZYF Tournament National Final will see 55 NZYF members head to Timaru with their eyes on the Goldpine Fencing, Hunting & Fishing Clay Target, NZ Farmers Livestock Stock Judging and Tavendale & Partners Debating titles.

Earlier in the year, 230 NZYF members competed at the Northern, Waikato Bay of Plenty, East Coast, Taranaki Manawatu, Tasman, Aorangi and Otago Southland regional NZYF Tournaments for a qualifying spot. Qualifying competitors will battle it out on Thursday 6 July at various locations around Timaru.

Advancing from each region are the top two clay shooters, the top fencing team, the top three stock judges and two debating teams, one from each island. The debate competition features two teams facing off in the Tavendale & Partners Debate, to be held at the New Holland NZYF National Awards in Caroline Bay on Thursday evening. . . .

Retirement beckons for stud owners – Shawn McAvinue :

Central Otago sheep and beef farmers Geof  and Joyce Brown and are set to retire, ending a career of more than half a century breeding Hereford cattle. The owners of Locharburn Herefords talk to Shawn McAvinue about their passion for the cattle breed and sticking to sheep and beef as the surrounding landscape was planted in grapevines and cherry trees.

Hereford stud owners Geof and Joyce Brown are set to retire and have been ignoring neighbours’ suggestions to sell out to grapes, so their sheep and beef farm in Central Otago can stay in the family.

The couple have sold their nearly 2000ha farm Locharburn in Queensbury to their daughter and son-in-law Allannah and Duncan McRae, who farm at Alpha Burn Station in Glendhu Bay.

The McRaes take over Locharburn on July 1. . .

Did you see the one about . . .?

Tim Minchin is right: cancel culture is ‘psychopathic’ – Fraser Myers :

It has become fashionable in some circles to pretend that cancel culture doesn’t exist. You’ll often hear, from figures in the media or the arts, that the crisis of free speech in the West is all just a right-wing myth, and that no one is really being silenced, shunned or hounded out of their jobs for straying from elite orthodoxy. The ever-growing list of cancellations never manages to dent this narrative.

Comedian and writer Tim Minchin, the man behind the new Groundhog Day musical, has had enough of this gaslighting. In an interview for Newsnight last week, he had some choice words for the ‘deniers’ of cancel culture. ‘My super-progressive lefty friends say, “There is no such thing as cancel culture. It’s just powerful people getting what they deserve.” I mean, that is gaslightingly naive’, he said. The policing of speech has now become so widespread, Minchin added, that he himself is ‘worried about being cancelled’.

He touched on another crucial point. Namely, that cancel culture harms ordinary people more than it does the powerful – ‘old, rich, pale male dudes’, as Minchin described them, have ways to withstand the pressure. ‘People are hurt by public shaming when they don’t deserve to be all day, every day’, he added. Those who fail to recognise this are ‘not looking at the world’.

Finally, Minchin put his finger on how cruel cancellation can be. ‘It’s grotesque and it’s psychopathic’, he said. As is pretending that people aren’t being subjected to these witch-hunts, even as one is launched every other day. To be blasé about cancel culture ‘requires that you don’t stand in another person’s shoes’, he said. For Minchin, cancel culture – and cancel-culture denialism – amounts to a failure of human empathy.

He’s right. Cancel culture is relentless and cruel – and it is chilling free expression. It has nothing to do with holding the powerful to account. It is a weapon deployed by an intolerant minority to impose their beliefs on the rest of us. . .

The question that is hard to answer without being embarrassed to be a Kiwi – Kate Hawkesby:

I was at my physio yesterday, she’s South African. She moved here to an allegedly ‘safe’ country with her children, they live on Auckland’s North Shore, they’ve eaten at the Albany restaurants where the axe attack took place.

She said it could have been them, her, or her children. She asked me what’s happened to this country and why it’s so violent now.

It’s hard to answer that question without feeing embarrassed as a New Zealander that our little slice of paradise has come to this.

“It’s complex”, I told her, sounding like a Labour politician trying to explain away our many and varied issues.

From being soft on crime and reducing the prison muster and leaving too much crime out on the streets, to an increase in gang memberships and gang notoriety thanks to an apologist media and government who seem enamoured with them instead of appalled by them.

Then to a mental health system in crisis, to the prevalence of drugs in our society, to a broken and divided country which got locked down for three years and has never really come right since then.

I don’t know what the circumstances are around the axe attack, but I’m assuming it will be a combination of one or more of those factors. None of that excuses the act. Just like none of the apologists standing up for gang culture, excuses the way they intimidate and offend. . . 

I was talking to a bunch of high school kids the other day, they’re in their final couple of years at school, I was asking them what they’re doing when they leave, where they’re going for uni.

“ABNZ”, they all replied. Anywhere But New Zealand. They don’t want to stay here, they’re all seeking uni applications offshore.

When I asked them why, they looked at me like I was insane. “Why would we stay here?” they replied. That’s heart-breaking.

‘Where is safe these days for our teenage kids to go?’ my physio asked me. Where can they go that you don’t worry about them ending up a victim of crime?

It’s horrible to even have to ask that question in New Zealand now, it’s even worse that I can’t answer it.

Labour jumps from cow pat to cow pat – Michael Bassett :

How can it be that everything this Labour government touches crumbles? Chris Hipkins and his team score zero on any competence rating. A recent crash is the Early Childhood Education free 20 hour promise in the budget. Spokespeople for the industry say there was no consultation before the budget announcement. Hipkins says it was not possible to consult first because of mandatory budget secrecy. Bullswool! Labour boasts of having more women in its caucus than men, for the first time in its history. Many are of child-bearing age. Allowing for a huge proportion of LGBTQ amongst them, surely there is at least one with childcare experience who could have been trusted to make inquiries? The industry would have talked to an MP with childcare experience and alerted her to the fact that centres wouldn’t be able to operate if those mothers getting the 20 free hours per week couldn’t be charged for any more hours they left their toddlers at the centre. The MP could then have reported back to the Minister of Finance, and the policy he was formulating could have been tweaked accordingly without the MP knowing what, precisely, lay behind the inquiry. But, no. Common sense is in very short supply in this ministry.

It’s the same with the various conflict of interest problems. Michael Wood suffers from delusions of grandeur. Twelve warnings that he should divest himself of shares relevant to his portfolio. Not one registered with him. He’s the greatest, and he’d ride out any storm. In the end he did, and only because his boss lacked a replacement Minister of Transport in the present caucus. Several of this government’s appointments have been so foolish they were bound to cause trouble. Think Rob Campbell who was trusted with the job of heading the new health authority. Made money in business, yes, but a check with any previous Labour minister would have been met with a warning that Campbell has always lacked political judgement. Meng Foon too. A modestly competent mayor of Gisborne, but nearly every observation he made as Race Relations Conciliator showed that he had read little, especially about New Zealand’s race relations history, which was vital to his role. His remarks after he resigned/was sacked, showed good sense was in short supply as well. He’d been appointed way above his ability.

And how on earth was anyone so silly as to put in writing what everyone has known for years: that Maori, and to a lesser extent, Pasifika, have been getting extra help accessing health care, by adding surgery? For more than 40 years ministers and health boards throughout the country have bent over backwards to encourage Maori to take a greater interest in their personal health. Eat more carefully; give up smoking; be less promiscuous with their sexual partners; see their GPs at regular intervals; take their prescribed medicines; keep hospital appointments when they are made for them, rather than top the list of “Did Not Shows”…. Short of hand-on-hand frog-marching by a care-giver, fecklessness has always won out. We’ve all known that this was the case. Why someone added faster access to surgery to the list when people of all ethnicities waiting for it are at record levels, and an election is nigh, beggars belief.

As if to highlight his ministry’s foolish two-faced conduct, today the Prime Minister has condemned “racism of any sort” in reference to a taunt at a Kiwi football player in Qatar. All he has done is draw attention to his own government’s racism. I’ve got news for him. Racially dividing the public by favouring some, while reducing others’ expectations that they’ll be treated in line with Article Three of the Treaty of Waitangi that guarantees Maori “the same rights and duties of citizenship” as everyone else, not more, won’t be an election winner.

Every explanation for this ministry’s stumbles comes back to the paucity of talent within the current Labour Party caucus. Candidate selections declined rapidly in quality from the beginning of the new millennium. For nine years between 2008 and 2017 Labour MPs failed to work on policy development, and had to establish more than 200 committees to devise policies when they were surprised to find themselves in office. Scarcely a one of their MPs has ever worked at a real job or demonstrated any administrative skill. They can move their feet, however, as they skip deftly from cow pat to cow pat, splattering us and themselves as they do so.

It’s lamentable. Our history shows that meaningful advances in social policy are more likely to come from Labour than from National. But if the voters are wise enough this election to consign the Labour Party to six to nine years in opposition, maybe sufficient quality candidates will eventually come to the party’s, and the country’s, rescue? 

Rules can’t restore personal integrity – Jacqui Van Der Kaay :

. . . The fundamental issue with having rules is that they need to be followed. The rules around conflict of interest are already outlined in the Cabinet Manual and they’re clear. And, in the case of former Minister Michael Wood, even being asked 16 times by the Cabinet office didn’t help him to abide by them.

While strengthening them may go some way to helping the integrity issues that are beleaguering this Government, questions remain about why elected representatives, and in particular Ministers, can’t take personal accountability for their integrity. . . 

Research undertaken after the 2009 scandal, found that codes of conduct and other institutional guidance did not have any impact on either the level of transgressions or on the public’s view of politicians. In fact, the levels of trust in politicians continued to decline despite this. More recently, it’s clear that the rules, guidance, and independent oversight did nothing to stop the raft of scandals in British politics including former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s party gate saga.

Citizens’ views of ethics and integrity

Of even more concern, is that the same research found that politicians’ views of what is considered ethically acceptable differed from that of citizens.  Elected representatives tend to take a more minimalist view, whereas the public considers it in a wider context even as far as including the words politicians use and keeping the promises they make.

One of the starkest findings was that when citizens are forced to choose, most people would rather have politicians who were honest, even if they were less successful and hard-working. At a time when citizens’ engagement in politics is waning with declining levels of voter participation, Ministers would do well to remember that the public holds them to higher standards than they do. And, further, that “the health of any democracy is in part dependent on citizens having confidence and trust in those who rule them”^.2

Faced with tertiary sector challenge government should learn health lessons  – Vernon Small :

 Chris Hipkins must surely be wondering when the Gods of Politics will give him an even break.

In normal times you might apply Helen Clark’s first amendment to the Popularity Act: “No prime minister ever lost votes by sacking an errant minister (or bagging the Aussies).”

But three ministers overboard is at least one jettisoned minister too many, even for Clark’s caveat.

Damage has been done to Labour and Prime Minister Hipkins, despite his decisive response.

That’s before you remember he carries an extra responsibility because the two fallen ministers were promoted by Hipkins, as was Education Minister Jan Tinetti​, who is still awaiting the result of her appearance before the privileges committee. . . 

After weeks of bad news, it may be tempting for Hipkins and his Cabinet to convince themselves that all might be well again with a bit more ministerial discipline, and a return to spreading the butter on the bread.

If only it were that easy.

The secondary teachers’ strike may have been averted, but in Tinetti’s education portfolio huge challenges continue to emerge following the poor planning for the Budget funding increase for early childhood education.

Tinetti is lucky National’s best performer, education spokeswoman Erica Stanford​, does not have responsibility for the tertiary sector, where the university funding crisis is an unfolding debacle.

It is just nuts, not to mention a false economy, to annually underfund peak academia, causing staff cuts based on an uncertain ebb and flow of students.

What is the Government thinking?

New Zealand must preserve the expertise in these institutions, to train the next generation of experts.

But it won’t happen without more money and, arguably, without swingeing reform of the sector model. It is frankly busted as well as broke.

A good place to start would be a national strategy that coordinated courses and minimised staff reductions, where unavoidable, to ensure we continue to compete as a country.

Cuts are crying out to be made to advertising and brand-building budgets that feed on the need to compete for students’ bums-on-seats.

Lessons are there for the learning, just by looking across at the health sector and the reasons behind the radical reform of DHBs.

How hard will it be to recruit staff again, or reopen subject areas if hundreds of teachers are lost?

The student data from recent years are not a sound baseline for cost-cutting.

Student numbers fall when unemployment is low, as many opt for paid work over training. The reverse is true when the labour market contracts.

Unemployment is forecast to rise from 3.4% now to more than 5% over the next year or three.

It is not as if the Government faces a huge bill to stabilise our universities. The combined deficit of Victoria and Otago is around $100 million, which is relatively small in the broader scheme of the Government’s finances. Hundreds of well-paid tax-paying jobs are at stake.

If the Tertiary Education Commission is right, and it is not its role to mandate significant changes, then the buck stops at the door of ministers Jan Tinetti and Grant Robertson.

It is urgent they open the door and take a hard look, before the Gods of Politics decide to have some more sport with them.

Making bad worse

The government had almost universal support for reforming the RMA and has almost universal condemnation for making the proposed replacement even worse.

Federated Farmers says the replacement is  RMA reform gone wrong :

The Government’s proposed RMA replacement is fatally flawed needs to be immediately withdrawn and started from scratch, says Federated Farmers spokesperson for RMA reform Mark Hooper.

“The Environment Committee’s 1,377-page report on the Natural and Built Environment Bill is of real concern for farmers and raises serious red flags when it comes to cost, clarity, and complexity.

“Instead of making improvements to the proposed legislation, it seems to have only made things worse. It’s not worth the paper it’s written on. This is RMA reform gone wrong.

“Given the number of changes that are being proposed, it’s unfathomable to think the Government are going to try to rush this legislation through before the election without further consultation.

“I don’t believe there’s enough time for politicians, let alone the public, to read and properly understand the implications of the changes before the Bill is passed into law next month”.

Federated Farmers have repeatedly raised concerns that the proposed Natural and Built Environment Bill will lead to more drawn-out resource consenting processes, expensive and time-consuming court cases, higher costs for farmers, and less local democracy.

“The Select Committee process has done absolutely nothing to address the serious concerns that Federated Farmers have raised about the unnecessary cost and complexity farmers will face.

“New, vague, and undefined concepts will create huge uncertainty for landowners, slow down progress, and likely lead to time and money wasted with legal challenges through the courts.

“Disappointingly, there have been no substantive changes to proposals to shift local authority away from democratic councils and to new appointed Regional Planning Committees who will sit at arm’s length from voters and alongside iwi representatives.

“This sort of framework will fundamentally dampen the ability for local communities to shape their own future, and is no way to make inherently political decisions the use of land and resources.

“We didn’t think it was possible, but somehow the Government have managed to deliver a piece of legislation that will be more complex and expensive to navigate than the much-maligned RMA.

“This Bill should be withdrawn immediately and replaced with a simple plain language law that will reduce red tape, uncertainty, and costs,” Hooper concluded.

National has pledged to repeal the Bill :

The next National government will repeal Labour’s RMA replacement Bills by Christmas 2023, National’s RMA Reform and Urban Development spokesperson Chris Bishop says.

“The RMA is broken, but any reform of the RMA must actually improve things and be worth the considerable cost of change.

“The Natural and Built Environment and the Spatial Planning Bills were reported back from Parliament’s Environment Committee today.

“The clear feedback on the Government’s bills is that they will make it harder to get things done, will not improve the environment and will actually be worse than what we have got now.

“Environment Minister David Parker sees RMA reform as his legacy, but after five and a half years, it is deeply depressing that this is the best he can come up with.

“The new bills will increase bureaucracy, significantly increase legal complexity and litigation, remove local decision-making, and put our decarbonisation goals at risk. New Zealand simply cannot afford the extensive litigation that the bills will inevitably produce.

“The Government should have heeded the calls from the many submitters to the select committee to slow down and start again, but they have refused to listen.

“It looks like the Government will try and ram these massive bills through Parliament before the election. National is committing today to repealing them as soon as possible after the election, to wipe them from the statute books so the next National-led government can make a fresh start on substantive RMA Reform.

“National will campaign on our own changes to the RMA, some of which we have already announced, including one year consenting for major infrastructure and renewable energy projects, alongside our ‘Going for Housing Growth’ plan. If elected, we will legislate for these in our first term in government.

“We will also begin work on a longer-term programme to repeal and replace the RMA.”

The RMA has so many flaws it must have been extremely difficult to make it worse, but that is what the government has done.

The Taxpayers’ Union has just finished a nationwide tour campaigning against the proposed changes and had a four-page lift out in the NZ Herald pointing out just how bad the proposed changes are.

The TU has details on what the changes would mean here.

Word of the day

Coggle – to shake, rock, totter or wobble; to move or walk unsteadily;  be unsteady; in ceramics, a decorating wheel of wood or iron, usually grooved, designed to be run around the edges of pie-plates, to form the notches or indentations.

Sowell says

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

― Thomas Sowell pic.twitter.com/XEiFbtihor

— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) April 26, 2023

Wokeness has gone too far

The Oxford Union debated the proposition: This House Believes Woke Culture Has Gone Too Far.

In the last several years, Universities have become a hotbed for debates over free speech with concerns over censorship and stifling of open discourse. 

The Oxford Union has been a focal point of this, with controversy over invitations of speakers such as Sex Researcher Debra Soh or Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely. But despite this, the Union voted last night 89-60 in favour of the motion “This House believes woke culture has gone too far.”

Speaking on proposition was Founder of the Free Speech Union (FSU) and Associate Editor of the Spectator Toby Young.

Young argued that “Wanting to reduce prejudice and discrimination and improve outcomes for historically disadvanged groups is an admirable goal…the objection to woke culture is not the end but the means used to achieve it.”

In his speech Young cited examples of legitimate free speech crises around the world from the Uyghurs in China to women in Iran to Kathleen Stock who in his eyes “was essentially hounded off the Sussex University campus”.

Students who spoke in favour also argued that woke culture “prioritises performative display over real social justice” and “allows little room for nuance”

On the opposition, Yasmin Benoit, a model and asexual activist, reflected on how the term had evolved in recent years. “Woke has gone from something aspirational for Black people to a pejorative that is used to beat communities down for trying to be informed and helpful,” Benoit remarked. She argued that cultural evolution can only take place when we are accepting of ideas around social justice.

Cultural critic James Lindsay extended this argument, saying, “It’s not just that wokeness has not gone too far…it cannot go too far.” 

However, Young refuted these points and ultimately ended, “These tactics are self-defeating. The woke don’t succeed in persuading people of the rightness of their point of view any more than their totalitarian methods of communist party states during the Cold War persuaded their populations to embrace Marxist-Leninism…I’d go as far as saying the tyrant tactics of the woke movement actively harm the disadvantaged groups they’re seeking to help.”

Prior to the debate, Union President Ahmad Nawaz had already received internal criticism that this ‘motion pandered to a right-wing ideology’. Nonetheless, the debating chamber was entirely packed with 400+ people attending and hundreds turned away at the door, making it one of the most successful debates of the term.

A similar motion at Cambridge Union, “This house believes in the right to offend”, was also carried this week with an even larger margin of 247 in favour to 72 against.

 

There is hope for a better future – the affirmative won.

Did you see the one about . . .?

Feeling negative about the economy? You’re not the only one – Richard Prebble :

We have three of the four horsemen of the economic apocalypse: inflation, high interest rates and recession. Soon the fourth horseman, unemployment, will join them.

The Prime Minister says the recession “is part of a global economic downturn”. His Finance Minister blames the weather.

The problem with spin is that the spinners believe their own spin. They avoid hearing anything that contradicts their claims.

At Fieldays, Chris Hipkins said he had not met anyone who was negative. How could that be? The May Roy Morgan poll revealed that 54.5 per cent of us believe the country is “heading in the wrong direction” compared with about a third, 34.5 per cent, who think it is going the right way.

Advisers learn not to contradict the spin.  . . 

Now the spin is that this is a “technical” recession. It is not a real recession because employment is strong. But Stats NZ tells it as it is. There is double-digit food-price inflation. “Total retail card spending fell $113 million (1.7 per cent) in May 2023 compared with April 2023, when adjusted for seasonal effects.”

There is an even better indicator of a recession – the purchase of Road User Charges. The ANZ Bank Truckometer states: “Traffic flows are a real-time and real-world proxy for economic activity … The ANZ Heavy Traffic Index shows a strong contemporaneous relationship to GDP, while the ANZ Light Traffic Index has a six-month lead on activity as measured by GDP.”

The Light Traffic Index fell 2.8 per cent month-on-month in April, while the Heavy Traffic Index fell 2.2 per cent.

That ANZ index shows we are in a recession, and it is deepening.

The year-on-year 16 per cent drop in job advertisements on the Seek website in April shows the labour market is rapidly weakening. The Government that reduced immigration when labour was in short supply has begun mass immigration. Earlier this year, it was predicted that net immigration could reach 100,000 in 2023. Mass immigration plus a weakening job market will ensure unemployment increases.

The Government is not responsible for the weather or the Ukraine war. But the Government is responsible for not fixing what only it can fix. . . 

But here is why I am feeling negative. Last week I tried to open a bank account for my 8-year-old grandson. Today you need an appointment to open an account. After two days of trying to ring the bank for an appointment, I went into the bank and queued for half an hour to see a teller. I now have an appointment for next month and a list of documents I must bring.

Despite having banked with the same bank for 50 years and being greeted by name, I must bring ID. If my grandson did not have a passport, I am not sure we could open an account. I have lost count of the number of times I have had to present my passport to establish my identity to tellers who already know who I am.

I have also tried to assist a beneficiary to get a bank account. We thought he could go contracting. He could not produce ID or a utility bill acceptable to the bank. He was living in a sleepout with no power. He was so discouraged that he gave up his plan to go contracting and decided to stay on the benefit.

Researchers from consultancy ThinkPlace say 16,000 beneficiaries have their benefit paid into others’ accounts. ThinkPlace says tens of thousands of people have become unbanked and forced into dangerous work-arounds. They are shut out of the economy.

The bank is not responsible. It is government red tape. Bureaucrats are concerned that the Russian mafia might open a bank account and register a business. The Russian mafia use Swiss bank accounts. The Swiss do not de-bank thousands of their citizens to stop a few Russians.

New Zealand must trade our way out of this recession, and ministers must not keep on spinning. Repealing the over-the-top red tape that has de-banked tens of thousands of people would be a good start.

I am sick and tired of the government using us as an ATM – Kerre Woodham :

Basically, I’m going to let Nicola Willis do the opener for me this morning.

After the discussion we had earlier this week about the absolutely callous disregard with which local and central government treat our money, how timely was this report from the Auditor General’s office?

They were charged with deciding whether the $640 million spent on projects during Covid, left over from the Provincial Growth fund, whether that was money well spent.

Fair question. Money was allocated. Was it well spent?

Auditor General’s office can’t tell us. “We have no position on whether the PGF does or does not represent good value for money. At the moment, we can’t see how it’s tracking.”

Funding was approved for several projects, including in the rail ports, construction, renovation and workforce training sectors but there was little to no evidence of record keeping or note taking.  

It’s just the way they cannot account for where any of it goes!

If I was paying that wack of taxes, as I have been for most of my working life, and knew it was going to pay nurses more, improve resources for schools, that it was going to create an infrastructure that would see New Zealand into the future – fine!

Even some of these half-asked Mickey Mouse policies that Labour has come up with, if they were working OK, fine. But there is no evidence there is there is. No evidence of where half of the money they’ve spent has gone.

And that is not money from a money tree. That is money that you and I have gone out and earned.

Some of you have to get up and the early hours of the morning and work through the day. Some have to get up in the middle of the night, some have to go out in weather like this. And the Government takes that money and doesn’t give a damn about how you’ve earned it.

About how hard you’ve had to work. Because we are, we’re just warm ATMs. I am so sick and tired of it and it just doesn’t seem to stop.

The economy is on a precipice and every choice available to us is hard – Josie Pagani :

Our deficits in New Zealand tell a bleak story. They are going to change our politics. Here’s why.

The economy is on a precipice and every choice available to us is hard.

It did not use to be like this. We should hold a national golden jubilee for the half century that has passed since the last time we received more from overseas than we spent: 1973. Same year the Watergate hearings began in the US, Norm Kirk was prime minister and colour TV arrived in New Zealand.

We’ve been losing ground for a long time.

Our current account deficit, the shortfall between our international spending and earning, has been sitting at around 9% of GDP, far more than the economy is growing. It makes our economy risky. If countries like us don’t change early, then eventually change is forced, the impact is always unfair, and the politics become unstable.

What happens when we keep spending more than we earn is that our national debt keeps growing. We can pay off this debt by earning more, which takes time, or by cutting our living standard so that we buy less from overseas, we could sell assets, or we could borrow anew and effectively use the overdraft to pay down the Visa.

We have mainly been doing the last two. This is why our runways are maintained for private jets bringing in buyers to pick off choice land, profitable companies – and airports. . . 

The budget deficit is high, which is partly a hangover from the Covid recovery, but it’s also the result of some exceptionally bad decisions, like subsidising the importing of electric cars. Subsidising imports when we have a massive international deficit is a dreadful cost-benefit tradeoff.

The IMF says the Government’s ‘’expansionary fiscal policy’’ (its budget deficit) is partly responsible for the current account deficit, along with supply constraints and strong demand. It says the deficit will be fixed by the economy slowing down.

But we’re already in a recession. If we go any slower, Bob the Builder becomes just ‘Bob’. Slowing an economy that is already not growing is not a strategy to build our way out of 40 years of decline.

The slowing economy will widen our social deficit. It will mean the Government has less to spend on hospital waiting lists that have grown so long that racial selection for treatment has been introduced. 

The problem with selling things and borrowing to pay your bills, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. . . 

Small countries like New Zealand – and Tonga – are particularly vulnerable as the world becomes more inward, and less open to trade. We are finding ourselves more exposed, in tougher markets, and facing more economic pressure, with growing debts and irresistible pressure to sell more of the furniture to make ends meet. . . 

We are not well positioned for this moment. As these big powers change, we will have to change too, but we have fewer options.

We will need to do our own ‘’friend-shoring’’, and open up new markets in places like Indonesia, India, Mexico. Manage our risk of exposure to just a few markets.

If Tonga can do an independent analysis of where best to spend its government funds, and discipline itself not to spend on the low-quality stuff, New Zealand should do the same. We can learn a lot from how the Pacific is managing volatile geo-politics.

We have put off change for 50 years. The bill will arrive.

Three reasons why Wood’s departure is cause for celebration –  Heath du Plessis-Allan :

There are many reasons Chris Hipkins should be pleased to see the back of Michael Wood. But we don’t have forever, so for brevity, here are three.

The first is light rail. Now that the project’s chief cheerleader is out of the picture, Hipkins can send it where it belongs. The dump.

It sounds like hardly anyone else around the Cabinet table is all that keen on blowing $29 billion on a single line. Neither are the public. Light rail is an extravagance when the Government apparently doesn’t have enough money to lift the pay of secondary school teachers at the rate of inflation. . . 

The second reason is that Hipkins now doesn’t have the worst Transport Minister in the history of the country in his Cabinet.

Wood hasn’t earned that accolade because of the multitude of failures on his watch: the potholes, the Cook Strait ferry breakdowns, the Wellington bus network shambles, the 1000 daily Auckland bus cancellations, the track maintenance shutting down chunks of the Auckland train network for years. No, he doesn’t deserve to bear the blame for that alone. It took decades of underfunding and negligence for things to get that bad.

Wood earned that accolade for failing to do a single material thing to make our country move more easily from one place to another. He might’ve promised to build some roads destroyed by the cyclone but whoop-dee-doo. No politician keen on re-election wouldn’t. . . 

He was a bike-mad, car-hating ideologue. Good riddance. . . 

The final reason is that Wood was a liability. Who knows what else is lurking in the J.M. Fairey Family Trust that Wood doesn’t know about and therefore hasn’t declared? This trust is like Mary Poppins’ magic bag. It keeps producing more goodies than you can possibly have imagined was being stashed away by a couple of – we all assumed – comfortable-but-not-wealthy battlers for the working man.

Finding out that there is more in the magic trust is better 15 weeks out from an election than two or three weeks out from the election, or whenever Sir Maarten Weevers’ register of pecuniary interests investigation reported back.

Wood is a loss to the Labour Party because he was clever and capable and didn’t look uncomfortable in a business suit. But he’s no great loss to New Zealand as a minister because he was a blocker rather not an enabler. We haven’t even touched on the crimes he inflicted on the economy by keeping out migrants during a labour crisis, because that’s a column of its own.

His resignation and the appearance of a party in crisis won’t hurt Labour at the election. Voters have already baked in the fact that it’s a shambles behind the scenes. . . 

‘Gender-affirming surgery’ puts a feel-good phrase on child butchery – Douglas Murray :

A decision by a Federal judge in Arkansas isn’t always a matter of great importance. But this week one was. The judge in question struck down Arkansas’ ban on “gender-affirming care” for minors. . . 

 President Biden has called such bans “outrageous” and “immoral.”

White House Spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre added: “These are our kids. They belong to all of us.”

Which is an interesting formulation. Until the day before yesterday, it was believed that children belong to their parents. Who knew that American parents are in a joint custody arrangement with the White House?

Perhaps you can drop them off there after school whenever you’re in the area?

But what all this points to is not a normal political disagreement. It gets to the root of one of the most wicked things going on in our day. Something that future generations will look back on with amazement and horror. I guarantee that within even just a few years people will say of this era “What were they thinking?”

Let’s start with that innocent-sounding phrase “gender-affirming care.” It sounds so nice doesn’t it? Who doesn’t want to “affirm” people? Especially minors.

I’ll tell you who. Any responsible adult.

Because let’s remind ourselves what this “gender-affirming care” actually consists of. It consists of telling confused and often deeply unhappy children that their problems can all be sorted out if they decide that they were born in the wrong body and that this is fixable.

How is it fixable? First by easy little things like “puberty blockers” and “hormonal treatment.”

Do people realize what these things — also designed to sound simple and innocuous — actually are? They are drugs whose long-term effects we have almost no studies on.

Because they haven’t been used for long enough. Usually if you are going to drug thousands of American children there is some interest in the long-term effects before steaming ahead and handing out such drugs out like candy.

What we do know is that among children given these drugs there seem to be an uncommonly high number of cases of osteoporosis and early-onset cancers. Oh — and the children given these “puberty-blockers” are also highly likely to be made infertile by them. The criminal so-called “medical professionals,” pharmaceutical companies and profiteering insurance companies who package all this up and sell it to children and their parents pretend that it’s easy.

They pretend that you can “delay” puberty with zero consequences.

They pretend you can come off these drugs and go straight back to normal. But since everyone is meant to “affirm” most kids stick on the drugs.

And I can tell you from people I have spoken to who’ve gone through this that there are plenty of consequences. Many of the young men end up with breast tissue. They have also been chemically castrated. Many were simply gay.

Chemically castrating gay men used to be seen as a torture from the intolerant past. Today it is seen as progressive and tolerant.

And that is before you even get onto “gender-affirming surgery.”

Something which Arkansas also tried to ban and which has now been un-banned. Again, it sounds so innocent doesn’t it? As though we should all take it as fact that people who are unhappy in their bodies were born in the wrong bodies and that with a little nip of the knife all will be well.

Well it won’t. If you are a girl being given “gender-affirming surgery” you will start by being given a “medically necessary” double-mastectomy.

Any woman who has actually had to go through that surgery for serious health reasons will know it is not the fun little procedure the trans lobby call “top surgery.” But it is positively breezy compared to the equally cutesy-named “bottom surgery.”

I’m sorry for what follows, but people have to know this.

For a girl “bottom surgery” will consist of flaying a young girl’s leg or arm to the veins, leaving her with an ugly, unhealable wound on her body while attempting to make something approximating a penis out of it. This skin graft will often not take. When it does the result will neither resemble nor operate like a penis.

That’s just the girls. For the boys “gender-affirming bottom surgery” actually means their penis will be cut in half, flayed and partially inverted into their body. This attempt at creating a vagina will cause complications for life. The wound will keep trying to heal up. Urination will almost never be straightforward. Infections will be commonplace, as will painful internal hair growth.

None of this is about a one-off visit to the hospital. Every child put through “gender-affirming surgery” will be in and out of hospital for the rest of their life. They will have an ongoing relationship with multiple doctors to continue doing the most basic things in life. . . 

So let me take up some language — that of the White House. What I have described above is going on across this country and it is deeply, deeply immoral.

If Karine Jean-Pierre is right and “our kids belong to all of us” then we are encouraging and allowing child abuse. On a nationwide, historic, shameful, industrial scale.

It isn’t the bans that are the problem. It is the fact that this cutesy-titled butchery was ever allowed in the first place. . . 

Saying no to school transition – Miriam Cates :

With astonishing speed and an almost religious zeal, gender ideology has swept through British educational establishments so extensively that thousands of children now “identify as” a different gender to their birth sex, and have changed their name, pronouns and dress to reflect this. Recent reports estimate that at least 80% of teachers now have “trans” or “non-binary” -identifying children in their classrooms, and a significant proportion of schools have a policy of ‘gender self-ID’, compel children to use preferred pronouns, don’t routinely tell parents about a child’s ‘change of gender’ and do not maintain single sex facilities and sports. 

Quite apart from the scandal of children being indoctrinated with this contested ideology, the rapid rise of children requesting “gender changes” has created a practical nightmare for schools. Whilst some teachers are deliberately pushing this agenda, many others find themselves in a deeply unenviable position, caught between the requests of children, the rights of parents, the demands of activists and the ambiguity of the law. Does the Equality Act mean that children who are “trans” have the right to use opposite sex toilets? Is it “harassment” for pupils to “misgender” a peer?

The need for guidance is indisputable, but anything other than a total ban on schools socially transitioning children will exacerbate these tensions. Not only is a ban the right ethical solution, it is also the only way to protect head teachers from being forced to make high stakes decisions for which they are unqualified.

The principles underpinning the guidance should be that sex is binary and immutable, and that it is probably the single most consequential human characteristic. To tell a child that they can be anything other than male or female is a psychological intervention with unknown consequences for their welfare. Whilst some claim social transition is the only “kind” or “neutral” response to a child with gender distress, Dr Hilary Cass has stated that social transition is not a neutral act, but an intervention with potentially permanent consequences. Of course it is. What confused adolescent, after being celebrated publicly by their teachers and peers for being brave and coming out as “trans”, is going to wake up one morning and tell their new friends that they made a mistake? A far more likely outcome is that the transition is “locked in”, and the child continues along an irreversible route that can end in infertility, pain and broken family relationships. 

Psychological interventions should only be made by qualified clinicians, and then only when there is good evidence that the intervention will be beneficial. This is particularly the case when so many of the children presenting with gender distress are autistic, same-sex attracted, or suffering from mental health conditions in addition to dysphoria. There is no clinical evidence that social transition improves the mental health of gender distressed children and studies suggest 80% of children with these feelings grow out of them. There is no way of knowing which children may emerge as the other 20% so it’s hard to see how transitioning any child can be justified. Social transition is therefore an experimental intervention and we do not allow experiments on children except by qualified clinicians within the strict regulations of scientific studies. Obviously schools do not meet these requirements.

There are also ethical considerations for the classmates of “transitioned” pupils. What are the long-term consequences of pressuring children to deny what they know to be reality, to pretend that Olivia has become Oliver and face sanctions if they don’t comply? Again, this constitutes a psychological experiment on our children with unknown outcomes; only an outright moratorium on social transitioning in schools can suffice.

Some argue that social transition should be allowed, but only with parental consent. But this is to confuse the right of parents to be fully involved in the life of their child — which I wholeheartedly support — and the request of a parent for their child to be given something to which they are not entitled. For example, a well-meaning parent could insist that a GP prescribe antibiotics for their child; but if the doctor’s diagnosis is a viral infection, they would not be expected to — and indeed shouldn’t — prescribe a medication that they do not believe is safe, effective or necessary just because a parent demands it. Similarly, parents are legally allowed to let their children drink alcohol at home. But any parent who requested for their child to bring alcohol onto the school premises would be met with a firm “no”. Except in rare instances where there are pre-recorded safeguarding concerns, parents should always be informed by schools when their child expressed gender distress, or of any other serious welfare concern. But it does not follow, ethically or legally, that parents can insist on their child being socially transitioned, a “treatment” in which the whole school has to take part.  . . 

 To expect schools to have to decide who can change pronouns and who can’t is unfair and will only create further chaos and distress. The reality on the ground is that parents come under unbearable pressure from children, who have often been groomed online to say that they will be suicidal if forbidden to transition. And headteachers come under unbearable pressure from children, parents and activists. The only ethical, fair and workable solution is to end all social transitioning in schools. 

We cannot duck the issue by hiding behind the (misplaced) shield of parental consent: if socially transitioning children does not meet accepted ethical standards then it should not be done. To many this may sound harsh; it is certainly firm. I have been accused of being “unloving”. But the root cause of this tragedy is that, as a society, we have lost sight of what it really means to love a child. Giving a child whatever they think they want is not love. Love is wanting what is best for a child and telling them the truth even if it’s hard to hear. Love is setting boundaries that keep children safe, and then patiently and kindly enforcing them. Love is defending children against ideologies that mean them harm, even when as adults we may pay a price for doing so. 

I look forward to seeing the new guidance, which must be made statutory. I hope it has our children’s best interests at heart.

We know what a man is – Victoria Smith :

I’ve never been especially interested in sports. There are certain events – last year’s Women’s Euros, for instance – that have grabbed me, but most of the time I don’t notice. 

When it comes to the trans debate in sports, on the other hand, the whole thing fascinates me. It’s not the science, nor the history of it. It’s not because I think losing out on a record is the most pressing feminist issue of our time (though I don’t think it’s as trivial as some would imply). It’s because so much of it isn’t about sport or transness. It cuts to the heart of feminism itself. 

This is an issue that has laid bare the truth about gender: what it is, how it functions, who is required to give what to whom. All too often, these questions lurk beneath the surface. We’re so used to women giving, men taking, and the whole thing looking natural. It’s only when the give-take scenario is reformulated – not men vs women, but women (1) vs women (2) – that you notice how stark and unchanging the giver vs taker designations remain. Only then do you see gender isn’t about what you’re called, but about who is deemed to owe what to whom. 

Last week I saw a twitter thread that featured the following tweets:

“What is the social value of mildly rejiggering who wins competitions in particular women’s sports that makes it more important than affirming trans women’s legitimacy? […] While I understand why some cis female athletes might be unhappy with it, frankly their interest in being 3rd instead of 4th place are not remotely important as a policy matter.”

Not for the first time, it struck me how funny it was, to see a man making such fundamentally patriarchal demands, all in the name of smashing the gender binary. Female people being told they must set aside their own interests – so petty, so trivial! – to prioritise the needs of male people – so  fundamental, so human! A male person’s very legitimacy depending on being able to take things from female people! Female inner lives getting in the way of males feeling valid! And yes, the funniest thing of all is how passionately certain men make this case – not for themselves, you understand, but for vulnerable trans women. It’s nothing to do with their rights. It’s pure altruism that prompts them to tell female athletes to STFU and know their place.  . . 

It’s a thing I notice again and again. The trans debate allows familiar arguments against women’s rights to be made without the speaker having to resort to the indignity – the sheer obviousness – of using the words “men” and “women”. It allows a principle to be restated while pretending it’s not a principle – it’s just about this one issue, just this tiny minority. Only it isn’t. What is a stake here, whether the tweeter in question admits it or not, isn’t whether trans women feel left out; it’s whether male people in general, himself included, must suffer the slight of female self-sufficiency. What’s at stake is the right to restate, as a principle, that female feelings are less important than male ones. . .

As a feminist, I am not “just” concerned about sport and toilets. I am concerned about the dismantling of feminist theory and protest in their entirety via the pretence that we don’t know what male and femaleness are. It staggers me that there are people who seem to think that “no one can tell who’s a man anyways” isn’t an argument that hands entitlements back to all men, whether or not all men choose to use it. It is not something you can trot out for a newspaper column on the basis that this is just part of “the trans issue”, as though life itself can be controlled by topic tags. 

So many deeply misogynistic, anti-feminist arguments have been given new life via the “no one knows who the men are” excuse. . . . 

I am not afraid of trans people. I am afraid of losing the principle – within feminism, of all places – that female lives matter as much as male ones. That our desires are not trivial, selfish, frivolous, whereas those of male people are a matter of life and death. That our perceptions of reality are as valid as male ones. That we do not deserve to be bullied and gaslighted into pandering to male egos in the name of “being kind“. That we are not privileged airheads who should say yes to everything because hey, what does it cost us? What do we know about pain? What even are we?  

It is pointless to lecture women on men being “the real threat” while supporting ideas which lead back to men – all men – being able to take whatever they want without women being able to protest. Yes, women do have more things to worry about than men masquerading as women to access single-sex spaces. Why, then, deny us the language and concepts to deal with them? 

World gone cuckoo – Theodore Dalrymple :

Sigmund Freud’s notion of a death instinct always seemed preposterous to me, but now I am not so sure. At any rate, there seems to exist a death wish, and in the Western world it has become almost a matter of mass hysteria. It takes various forms, each with its own rationalization. Man, after all, is not the rational animal, but the rationalizing animal.

One of the most obvious forms of the death wish is the belief that it is morally wrong to have children. This supposed wrongness is not conditional, for example, on a person’s ability or otherwise to support a child or children economically, or because conditions are now simply too difficult for parents, what with both of them having to go out to work to make ends meet, the price of child care, and so forth. No; even if conditions were optimal, with no financial or other obstacles, it would be wrong to bring children into the world because they would consume resources and make it even more difficult for the birds and the bees.

I do not wish by this to deny that there are great environmental problems. . . 

It seems to me, then, that there is a genuine and serious problem here, and not merely an aesthetic one, given the importance to human life of pollinating insects.

This is not quite the same, however, as saying that one must do one’s bit for the extinction of humanity in order to save the cuckoo or the pollinating insects. Maybe it is unduly anthropocentric of me, but I don’t care very much about the survival of cuckoos in a world in which there would be no humans to hear them.

Of course, those who think it is immoral for them to have any children because that is the only way they can think of saving the insects might reply that they do not demand that everyone should have no children, that is to say that no one should have any children. In fact, they are aware that some people will continue to have children whatever they say or do. They might even say that their children, were they ever to have them, would consume a disproportionate share of the world’s resources and therefore add more to the pollution of the world than, say, a baby, or many babies, born in Southern Sudan.

This seems to me a very dismal attitude, and underlying it is a dislike of human life as he who holds this attitude has lived it. He has been born into a civilization, he thinks, in which he sees nothing good, worth continuing, or contributing toward. For him, it would have been better if it had never existed. And this amounts to a death wish, not merely personal but civilizational.

Is this a sincere belief, or is it rationalization for something else, perhaps an egocentric obsession with his own life, pleasures, and activities, that he sees a child as an unwelcome obstacle to its continuation, a child being to him like an irritatingly prolonged telephone call while he is trying to concentrate on something else?

It scarcely matters whether it is a sincerely held belief or moral exhibitionism. If it is acted upon, the result will be the same.

There are other manifestations of the civilizational death wish, indeed there are hundreds of them, large and small. The pulling down of statues, the revamping or even destruction of museums, the rewriting of history (not in the sense that it is always rewritten in the light of new research, but in the desire to reach and impose a politically useful conclusion), the censoring of literature, the denigration of cultural achievements, and so forth, are all signs of a death wish. No civilization can long survive a complete loss of confidence, all the less so if there are external enemies and real dangers threatening it.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make Woke. We have countries facing severe economic and other problems, several of them conceivably catastrophic in outcome, whose intelligentsia and an increasing proportion of whose political class concern themselves with pseudo-questions such as whether—to put it graphically—it is right for a male boxer to claim to change his sex to female and subsequently beat the living daylights out of a woman. Only people who hate civilization in general, and their own in particular, could possibly think this a real question, or answer in the affirmative.

Mr. Charles Norman, of this august publication, kindly drew my attention to a case in France (usually somewhat in the rear guard of Anglo-American stupidity), in which a school’s teaching staff decided that, henceforth, there would be no Mother’s or Father’s Day—bogus celebrations, actually—but only Loved Ones’ Day, in essence because one, or at least teachers, can’t tell these days how babies are made. The staff must have known that they were stirring up a hornets’ nest, I think to distract from the fact that education standards have fallen drastically in the past few decades, itself due to the death wish of Western civilization.

Who’s better at health?

People generally credit National as being a better economic manager but unfortunately don’t always join the dots between that and better social services.

However, David Farrar shows the impact of  Labour’s increased spending for worse outcomes is showing up in Curia’s polls:

. . . A year after the last election, Labour had a huge 36% lead over National as the party which had the right approach to the health system. Only 14% of respondents picked National, and 50% Labour.

In my latest poll in June 2023, Labour were down 16% to 34% and National up 16% to 30%. The 36% gap is now only 4%.

Based purely on spending, you would expect Labour to remain way ahead of National. In the 2017 Budget, Steven Joyce announced $16.7 billion for the public health service. In the 2023 Budget Grant Robertson announced $26.5 billion. That is a massive 60% increase over six years.

The problem is that despite this 60% increase, health outcomes for New Zealanders have worsened across the board under the current Government.

The money has all been spent, but outcomes for sick Kiwis have declined.

More spending isn’t always more effective.

Multi-millions of dollars have been wasted on restructuring the health system and too much has been spent on the bureaucracy at the expensive of services.

I presume there are many more bureaucrats and consultants in the health system today, because the growth in doctors has been slower than in the past.

Between 2008 and 2017, under the Key/English government, the number of full-time equivalent doctors employed within the public health system increased from just below 6000 to just over 8400. This represented an increase of 42% over nine years.

Despite massive spending increases under the Ardern/Hipkins government, the number of FTE doctors has increased by just 16% in five years.

Data I recently received from Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand) following an Official Information Act request shows we are suffering a disastrous fall in our childhood immunisation rates. The Key/English Government lifted the 24 month immunisation rate from under 80% to 93%. More impressively the rate for Māori 2-year-olds went from 73% to 92%.

From March 2017 to March 2023, the overall rate has fallen from 93% to 83%, and the rate for Māori 2-year-olds from 92% to 69%.

A far better way of improving health outcomes for Māori would be lifting that immunisation rate for Māori back to over 90%, rather than introducing an ethnic weighting for surgery.

Prevention is not only better, but also less expensive than the treatment needed to cure illnesses against which immunization gives protection.

At the time of Labour’s 2018 budget, where they promised $1.9 billion extra funding for mental health, there were 746 adult inpatient mental health beds.

Four years later this had dropped to 723. $1.9 billion more funding and fewer beds could almost be a script for a Yes Minister episode.

Youth mental health waiting times have also not got better, despite the $1.9 billion. Seventy-three per cent of under-25-year-old mental health patients were seen within three weeks in 2017. In 2022 it was 71%.

The proportion of emergency department patients who were dealt with within six hours was 92% in the last year of the Key/English government. The new health agency can’t even tell us how bad it is in 2023, but the latest data for June 2022 had just 76% of ED patients dealt with within six hours.

More than 1 million people a year go to the emergency department, so that 16% decline represents at least 160,000 additional people who had to spend more than six hours waiting to be dealt with.

Elective surgery has also plunged. It increased to just under 150,000 elective surgeries in 2017/18 and last year was down to under 125,000.

Covid-19 has had an impact, but the number of surgeries dropped in both 2018/19 and 2019/20 also.

More shocking has been the increase in the number of New Zealanders who have had to wait more than 12 months for elective surgery. In 2017, only 59 New Zealanders had to wait over 12 months. In 2022 it was 4862.

Another health metric is waiting time for CT scans. In 2017 only 567 people had to wait longer than 42 days. In 2022 it was 2679.

Another health metric is access to primary health care.

GPs and their nurses are overworked. People are waiting longer to see GPs, and far too many are unable to enrol in a GP practice at all.

This is part of the fence at the top of the ill-health cliff. People who can’t get ready access to primary health care become sicker and more will require secondary or tertiary services.

When you consider all this data, it is no surprise that Labour’s lead over National on the health system has fallen from 36% to 4%. The only surprise is that they still have a lead at all.

If there is a change of government, I almost pity the likely Minister of Health, Shane Reti. There is so much work to be done to improve outcomes for sick and injured New Zealanders, that his job could be likened to King Sisyphus.

Good governments have both head and heart.

That poll result suggests more people are beginning to realise that and understand not only that National has both but also that both are necessary for better eocnomic and social outcomes.

Word of the day

Adnubilated – clouded; obscured; entirely darkened by clouds.

A sky that is ADNUBILATED is entirely darkened by clouds. pic.twitter.com/eCdAObwYM1

— Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology (@HaggardHawks) June 25, 2023

Smith says

A free market is the great unifier and equaliser.

Sex, race and class don’t matter.

What matters is doing business, serving customers, forming partnerships, making a profit.

The rest is insignificant.

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) June 23, 2023

A free market is the great unifier and equaliser.

Sex, race and class don’t matter.

What matters is doing business, serving customers, forming partnerships, making a profit.

The rest is insignificant.

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) June 23, 2023