The Chief Ombudsman has done proactive investigations of seven agencies in regard to how they deal with OIA requests. This isn’t just about data, but also culture. The key findings for each are:

• Treasury was a demonstrably high performer in OIA timeliness performance
• Transpower New Zealand Limited (Transpower) has a culture and practice of responding quickly to official information requests.
• While I did not find evidence of Pharmac misusing the OIA, I did identify a number of concerning issues, which are detailed in this report.
•  I see no evidence of Kāinga Ora misusing the OIA … some opportunities for Kāinga Ora to improve its OIA practices.
• My review of Health NZ’s OIA practices, along with these findings, leave me with concerns about Health NZ’s OIA practices and whether they facilitate consistent adherence with OIA timeliness obligations.
• DPMC is a relatively high performer when it comes to timeliness statistics
• DIA … there were examples of extensions sought for reasons other than those stipulated in the OIA

So Treasury, Transpower, DPMC all come out pretty good. Pharmac, Kainga Ora and DIA are okay while Health NZ is pretty concerning.

Radio NZ reports:

An Otago student has set up a petition to have disgraced Dunedin artist John Middleditch’s sculpture removed from public display at the University of Otago.

The large bronze sculpture created in 1969 sits outside within the Dunedin campus and is currently the subject of a panel enquiry about whether to remove it.

In February RNZ revealed Middleditch was convicted of indecently assaulting young girls and a teenage girl in December 1976.

The convictions came to light after a Dunedin woman complained to Health NZ in January, asking that a 1980s water sculpture of Middleditch’s in Dunedin Hospital be removed. …

Now, a Change.org petition to remove both sculptures has attracted 245 signatures.

The petition, created by Bee Brown on 12 March, calls on fellow Otago University and polytechnic students, families, friends and residents to support the removal of the sculpture entitled Eleven Bronze Rods supporting Albatross Wingspan, as well as the water sculpture.

I have sympathy for his victim/s. However I think we need to be careful about not seeing an artwork as an endorsement of an artist. You can enjoy  Der Ring des Nibelungen but also think Wagner was a pretty awful racist.

His offending should be a factor in whether to promote his artworks. But to say that one must remove a sculpture that has been in public for over 50 years would be an over-reaction.

Erick Erickson writes:

The press and left call the right “culture warriors,” but we were not the ones who put pornographic material in elementary schools. We were not the ones who demanded kids in colleges attend seminars to learn about their inner racism. We were not the ones who demanded boys get into girls sports.

The left and press call us “culture warriors” solely because we said no and fought back against them.

We do have a culture war, but it is one where the left are the aggressors.

We would have accepted neutral institutions. But you foisted DEI on us all. The New York Times declared the country is systemically racist and rewrote the founding history of the nation, which some of you then pushed into public schools for re-education. You used your cultural, institutional, and media clout to chase advertisers and revenue away from right-leaning institutions and voices. You attacked productive industries with media outlets subsidized by progressive environmental groups. You captured the government-funded national radio network and turned it into soft-spoken progressive hacks. You took over academic institutions and started discriminating against Asian kids. You took over public schools and decided learning the colors of the Pride Flag was more important than learning math. When COVID happened, you people shut down schools, kept those schools shut down, and when the inevitable collapse of learning occurred, you lied about keeping schools shut down and tried, with willing accomplices in the left-controlled press, to shift the blame. In Illinois, progressive educators dragged girls into bathrooms and forced them to change in front of boys. You even got the Voice of America to explain white privilege while refusing to call Hamas “terrorists.”

So now you’ll watch the rest of us wipe out those institutions. You could have had neutrality. Instead, you called us culture warriors all while waging war to capture and use neutral institutions against everyone else. You could have chosen to embrace diversity of thought. Now, you can embrace the rubble.

There are lessons for NZ here. As almost every institution has signed up to a leftist agenda of Treaty supremacy and equity over equality, those institutions will lose their previous neutrality.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority has found Stuff in breach of multiple broadcasting standards for a hatchet job on ASH – Action on Smoking and Health.

Basically what it all goes back to is that ASH is more supportive of reduced harm products (vaping, heated tobacco) on the basis of evidence that these are far less harmful, and do see people substitute them for smoking.

Other anti-smoking groups are basically keen on just prohibition (never mind it never works), and they hate the fact that ASH has a different view. Rather than accept different groups can look at the evidence and come to different conclusions, they are basically suggesting (preposterously) that ASH is in league with or funded by tobacco companies. And they convinced Stuff to do a hatchet job on ASH.

Basically the so called link was that the ASH Director traveled to Australia, and the guy who facilitated his travel works for a group (the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association) which seven years ago got $20,000 from an e-cigarette company. So we’re not talking third or fourth hand connections.

The BSA found Stuff:

• ASH’s position and response to these issues was not, in our view, adequately or fairly presented in the broadcast.
• We also found the programme overall was misleading, and the broadcaster did not make reasonable efforts to ensure it did not mislead.
• In our view, the cumulative effect of the points identified in the complaint was to create an overall misleading impression of ASH, its conduct, including the Australia trip, and its position on vaping generally by omitting an adequate presentation of Youdan’s comments in response. 
• We therefore find the item was materially misleading by omission and had potential to cause harm
• This item demonstrated a continuation of the narrative about ASH that was set up by the 26 July broadcast: favouring facts and perspectives that supported that narrative while omitting a fair presentation of ASH’s defence. It had the potential to cause further damage to the integrity and reputation of ASH, its board, and Youdan, and to undermine public trust in ASH as an organisation working in public health.
• The statement chosen for the broadcast did not reflect ASH’s position adequately and had the effect of suggesting ASH was ‘unconcerned’ about youth vaping. It materially misrepresented ASH’s position on youth vaping as outlined in the statement provided to the reporter. Excluding a fair presentation of ASH’s response to the issues and including one sentence that made ASH look ‘worse’, would have significantly altered viewers’ understanding of the story.
• We consider the likely harm caused by the broadcast was significant enough to warrant our intervention and we uphold the complaint under the accuracy standard.
• The overall effect of the broadcast was that viewers were unable to reach an informed opinion and would have been left with an unfairly negative impression of ASH.

This is a very damning decision. It has been either ignored by most media, or placed in a very non-prominent place. The seriousness is shown by the BSA sanctions:

• broadcast a statement that summarises the upheld aspects of the Authority’s decision in relation to the 26 and 30 July 2024 ThreeNews broadcasts
• liaise with Stuff to publish a statement online, on the 26 July 2024 story on stuff.co.nz and embedded video of the 30 July 2024 story on The Press and The Post online
• pay to the complainant costs in the amount of $1,710.62
• pay to the Crown costs in the amount of $3,000 within one month of the date of this decision. 

It is very rare to have a finding for costs to the Crown. The BSA notes:

Given our clear view these two ThreeNews broadcasts fell short of the standards the public expects of New Zealand broadcasters, with a serious impact on the reputations of ASH and Youdan, we consider the conduct and seriousness of the breaches justify an award of costs to the Crown in this instance. A punitive response is required to hold the broadcaster to account, deter future non-compliance, confirm our expectations around an appropriate level of editorial oversight, and ensure fairness to programme participants. …

As we have discussed in our findings above, these stories appeared intentionally slanted against ASH and the broadcaster persisted with that narrative despite having information to the contrary, causing serious damage to the reputation of a charitable entity and its director.

Nice to see the hatchet job facing consequences.

At a human level, of course no one wants to risks their lives by publishing a cartoon. It is very understandable.

But as a media organisation, it is saying that terrorism works, and we will censor legal material, to avoid violence. This is of course the exact desired response from the terrorists.

ACT announced:

For the first time ever, ACT is looking to stand candidates in local council elections.

Today ACT Leader David Seymour announced the Party is seeking expressions of interest from New Zealanders to stand for their local council under the ACT banner.

“ACT has been focused on tackling the cost of living, wasteful spending, and co-governance in central government. But when I travel the country, I’m constantly told that local councils have failed to address these same concerns at the local level.

“Kiwis voted for real change in 2023, but our councils seem to have missed the memo. It’s time for a clean-out.

This is a good thing. Too often voters don;’t really know if candidates are going to councillors who will vote for or against massive rates increases. ACT candidates will clearly be candidates who will vote against large rates increases, so having candidates stand under their name will be a good guide to voters.

Judith Collins announced:

The Government’s move to cut public sector spending on consultants and contractors is on track to save $800 million over two years – double the initial target, Public Service Minister Judith Collins says.

“We set a two-year target to cut $400 million in spending on consultants and contractors across the public sector by 2024/25,” Ms Collins says.

“The latest update anticipates savings will come in at more than $800 million by the end of June.

“That’s $800 million that can be spent on delivering core services to taxpayers, in areas such as healthcare, law enforcement and education.

This is great news. This is a huge amount of savings. It shows how out of control it got under Labour.

In 2022, spending on contractors and consultants was 14.5% of workforce expenditure. It has now dropped to 4.8%. Again, a huge reduction.

1. Claimed that James Shaw asked her to run for Wellington Central (He didn’t)
2. Claimed that she was paying over half her Councillor salary in rent for one out of five bedrooms in Aro Valley (She wasn’t)
3. Claimed that the “vast majority” of people in prison are there for non-violent offences (They’re not)
4. Claimed that Downtown Community Mission has complained to the Police about police officers throwing away possessions of homeless people (They hadn’t)
5. Claimed that someone was in prison for shoplifting a $12 item (This is basically impossible as under $500 is maximum three months which would get home detention)

This is of course all the work of the Green Party Police and Corrections Spokesperson, Tamatha Paul. I think it is fair to conclude that there is a pattern.

Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell has a simple proposed members’ bill to amend the Bill of Rights Act to have equal suffrage extend to local government.

Equal suffrage is a fundamental human right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says:

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also states:

To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors

So equal suffrage is a fundamental human right, included in both major global human rights declarations. It is also in the NZ Bill of Rights Act:

has the right to vote in genuine periodic elections of members of the House of Representatives, which elections shall be by equal suffrage and by secret ballot

So our law already states that equal suffrage applies to national elections. Uffindell’s bill would change NZ BORA so it reads:

Every New Zealand citizen who is of or over the age of 18 years has the right to vote in genuine periodic elections by equal suffrage and secret ballot of members of the House of Representatives; and members of local authorities.

So a very simple law change that enhances human rights in New Zealand. So how does Radio NZ report on this proposed bill. Well in this article they quote two opponents of the bill as a “backward step”, and doesn’t go to a single person (about from the MP proposing it) supporting it for comment.

Radio NZ reports:

Green MP Tamatha Paul is doubling down on her comments that a “visible police presence” makes people feel “more on edge.” …

The Wellington Central MP said she’d received “nothing but complaints” about police beat patrols.

Paul told the event people in Wellington didn’t want to see police officers everywhere, and “for a lot of people, it makes them feel less safe”.

This is a great example of how out of touch the Greens are with average New Zealanders. I’m sure all her friends do dislike seeing the Police, but the vast majority of NZers do not.

In fact the latest Crime and Victims Survey found only 2% of NZers had no trust and confidence in the Police and 83% believe the Police conduct themselves professionally.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Paul’s comments were “outrageous and insane”, and police were out there doing an “incredible job.”

Insane is a good description of her advocacy to defund police and abolish prisons.

Hipkins said her comments were “ill-informed, were unwise, in fact were stupid”.

“I don’t think responsible members of parliament should be undermining the police in that way, I think the New Zealand public have huge confidence in the New Zealand police and they should have.”

Nice to see Luxon and Hipkins agree that the Greens are barmy.

Mitchell pointed to Wellington Central as an example of the success of beat policing.

“We’ve seen a 5.5% decrease in violent crime in the area that the Beat Team is deployed, compared to a 2% drop nationally,” the minister said.

He said the Greens “don’t believe in our police or prisons”.

I think the Greens believe in hugs.

In what could be a attempt to join the Keystone Cops, we have learnt that Trump’s National Security principals set up a private chat channel to discuss a US strike on Yemen, and accidentally added a journalist to it.

This is exactly why you are not meant to use commercial apps for national security discussions. Secure channels don’t allow you to accidentally add on external people such as journalists. They also can be set up to only allow access if you are on a secure connection, or dedicated IP addresses etc.

David French notes:

I’m a former Army JAG officer (an Army lawyer). I’ve helped investigate numerous alleged spillages of classified information, and I’ve never even heard of anything this egregious — a secretary of defense intentionally using a civilian messaging app to share sensitive war plans, without even apparently noticing a journalist was in the chat.

There is not an officer alive whose career would survive a security breach like that. It would normally result in instant consequences (relief from command, for example) followed by a comprehensive investigation and potential criminal charges.

This is the most interesting aspect of what happened. The total lack of acceptance that anything wrong was done at all. Sure you might not expect resignations, but in any normal government you would have an admission that what happened was wrong, was a stuff up, should not have happened, and they will make sure never happens again. But we now have a culture of never ever admitting fault, so instead they just attack the journalist (who did a better job of protecting classified information than the NSA and SecDef).

The other very interesting aspect was the purely transactional view of J D Vance. He said the US should not be bombing the Houthi, as only 3% of US trade goes through the Suez Canal and 47% of European trade. So he saw Trump’s decision as allowing the Europeans to freeload, and wanted them to somehow pay for it.

First of all, it shows a lack of knowledge (or disinterest) in the fact that having extra costs on European trade, will cost US consumers as US companies then trade with those European businesses. There is a lot of data about how the Houthi attacks have contributed significantly to global inflation.

The second segment is that Vance doesn’t see any value in stopping terrorists from controlling a major sea, just because it is the right thing to do. You gain the impression that in WWII he would have been arguing the US shouldn’t get involved in WWII unless someone paid them to do so.

Vance is even more isolationist than Trump, which suggests that if he wins in 2028 (as is likely), the US foreign policy is unlikely to swing back to traditional allies and values.

The latest CNN/SRSS poll has the Democrats historically unfavourable.

That is an awful trend. So in Bush’s second term, they were very popular. Then they fell away in Obama’s first term, rebounded, but then went negative. But they were marginally favourable in Trump’s term, however the Biden administration was a disaster for them going from +5% to -25% today. And they are showing no signs of rebounding.

The breakdown by demographics are:

• Men -32%
• Women -18%
• Whites -37%
• People of colour -5%
• Under 34s -14%
• 35 – 49 -21%
• 50 – 64 -38%
• 65+ -28%
• Independents -34%
• Moderates -14%

J D Vance will be feeling pretty confident right now.

Good to see the Greens focusing on the issues that really matter to NZers, such as abolishing the Police!

Some useful recommendations from the LGNZ working group on local elections.

Move to a nationally consistent system of in-person voting for all local elections that is as similar as possible to parliamentary elections over a two-week timeframe in which to vote, with polling booths in venues where people frequently visit. Preferably by the 2028 local elections or the 2031 local elections at the latest.

If you really want to boost turnout, then I would allow all three methods of voting – postal, in booths and online. Postal is dying, and in booths did not do well in the days before postal.

If we do not shift away from postal voting in 2028, then the Local Electoral Act should be amended to enable overseas voters to use the same electronic voting approach as central government elections, and make it easier for voters to have voting papers reissued if they do not arrive.

Not just for overseas voters. Everyone should be able to access this.

The Government should amend the Electoral Act and Local Electoral Act to put the Electoral Commission in charge of administering and promoting local elections.

Strongly agree, and well overdue.

Local government and central government should move to a four-year term with elections spaced two years apart.

Also a strong agree. If in 2026 people vote for a four year term, then presumably central government elections would be 2029, 2033, 2037 etc. You could then have local elections in 2025, 2028, 2031, 2035, 2039.

The Local Government Act should be amended to strengthen the Code of Conduct process by Empowering the Local Government Commission to investigate complaints relating to significant breaches

I disagree with this one. It would change the nature of the LGC dramatically and politicise it.

Overall some good food for thought, and hopefully the Government adopts many of them.

I noticed a few weeks ago that WCC rubbish bags were now $4 each at the supermarket. I could recall when they were $2.50 each and was interested in when they increased so much. I asked WCC.

In 2020 the RRP was $2.38 and today they are $3.60. That is a 51% increase in just five years. Has the cost of rubbish collection gone up 51%? General inflation was only 22% so that is a 29% increase in real terms.

This is not a small increase. This comes on top of the 20% rates increases. They are addicted to spending.

At Patreon (paywalled) I analyse the proposed new boundaries for the 2026 general election, the likely impact on each seat for each MP, and which seats flip on paper – plus which MP is out of a job.

My prediction last year that Ohariu would disappear has been proven correct, while all those who insisted Epsom would disappear seem to have been guilty of wishful thinking.

Jerry Coyne has found a wonderful new research paper. The abstract is:

This article offers a queer lesbian feminist analysis attuned to lesbian-queer-trans-canine relationalities.

Specifically, the article places queer and lesbian ecofeminism in conversation with Donna Haraway’s work on the cyborg and companion species to theorize the interconnected queer becomings of people, nature, animals, and machines amidst ecologies of love and violence in the 2020s.

It takes two key case studies as the focus for analysis: first, the state instrumentalization of dogs and robot dogs for racialized and imperial violence, and second, quotidian queer and lesbian-dog relationalities and becomings. In the first, the article traces how dogs are weaponized as tools of state violence and proposes a queer lesbian feminist critique of white supremacy and militarization that can also extend to a critique of the violence committed through and toward the dogs. In the second, the article analyzes how, within lesbian, non-binary, and trans-dog intimacies, dogs help articulate queer gender, sexuality, and kinship formations, and as such, queer worlds for gender, sexual, and kin becomings.

The entanglements of violence and love in these queer dog relationalities provide insights into the complexities of queer and lesbian feminist worldbuilding. Lesbian and queer feminist cyborg politics can help theorize the potentials and challenges of these interspecies entanglements.

Sadly it is from a New York academic, so the Royal Society of NZ wasn’t able to fund it!

The NZ version of the deep state appears to be the NZ Public Health Service. They regards themselves as having a divine right to opine on every issue of the day from capitalism to building design. They have been allowed to do this for far too long, and it is great to see the Minister pushing back.

Simeon gives just a few examples of what the Public Health Service has been spending scare heath dollars on, instead of say childhood immunisations.

1. Submitting against a fast food outlet going resource consent on the grounds of planetary health, landscape values, traffic and Te Tiriti
2. opposed raffle tickets for local schools, Surf Life Saving, and Coastguard on the grounds it may encourage gambling habits
3. suggested that coffee carts should be mandated to display signs urging customers to bring reusable cups
4. advocating for the removal of sandwich boards from public spaces claiming they are “hazardous.”
5. told Aucklanders that their ratepayers’ and taxpayers’ money should be prioritised towards walking and cycling infrastructure, and other projects that shift people “away from cars.”

Nelson Mayor Nick Smith also says on Facebook:

So they are advising NCC on road bypasses, on forest conversion, on draining playing fields and lowering bus fares. And in every case reflecting their personal opinion, not the policy of the elected Government.

All this is not just grossly inappropriate, but it comes at a cost. Every dollars spent by the Public Heath Service on their political lobbying is a dollar not being spent on activities such as vaccinations.

The proportion of non-immunised kids in NZ has exploded from 1 in 20 to 1 in 4. This is a public health disaster, At this level we lose herd immunity and kids gets whooping cough which last year was officially at epidemic levels. You can’t rule out diphtheria re-emerging either if we don’t lift vaccination rates.

The Daily Mail reports:

Thousands of jobs faced the axe last night after Sir Keir Starmer announced NHSEngland will be scrapped in a bid to slash red tape.

He hopes that ditching the ‘world’s largest quango’ will save hundreds of millions of pounds a year that can be spent on patients instead.

This is the exact opposite of what NZ Labour did. NZ Labour merged all the DHBs into one huge entity, while UK Labour is saying let the Regional NHSs run themselves without a centralised quango.

Half the 18,600 office staff employed by the two organisations will be lost, with the funds redirected to doctors, nurses and frontline services. This will help to cut waiting lists and improve care, Sir Keir claimed yesterday.

Sounds similar to what the Government is NZ is trying to do – cuts back office staff to redirect to doctors and nurses.

One of the areas where big savings could be made is in the number of equality schemes in the NHS. While ministers view some as important, they say there are far too many that are well-meaning but misguided.

UK Labour seem much more rational than NZ Labour.