A (alleged) copy of the agreement between Trump and Iran has leaked, and it is hard to overstate how bad it is. Some details:

• Includes reference to no fighting in Lebanon, which will mean US will pressure Israel to not respond to attacks from Hezbollah
• A minimum $300 billion rehabilitation fund for Iran!
• All sanctions, both global and US, on Iran to end!
• No deal on nuclear programme beyond kicking it to a working group
• Iran allowed to maintain status quo nuclear programme in absence of a long-term agreement
• US to issue immediate sanctions waiver on Iranian oil
• US to release all frozen funds to Iran

I can only hope this is a clever forgery and bears no relation to the actual agreement!

UPDATE: Sadly it is not a forgery. Bloomberg has confirmed it is the actual deal.

The Post reports:

Immigration officials stand accused by their own minister of misleading her and her predecessors for seven years, engaging in creative accounting to dodge scrutiny and removing people from a $33 million IT project when they raised questions.

And ultimately, they achieved nothing. The entire project is now being written off with nothing to show for it.

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford is “furious” and says she has lost confidence in her officials.

I can’t recall a Minister ever so angry before, and stating she has lost confidence. But it is for good reason.

“The report is very clear that ministers were not given full information, that in cases we were misled, that people were removed from the project when they asked questions about its viability, and that whole-of-life costs were not put to ministers for proper approval,” Stanford told a select committee on Tuesday. …

The project began to unravel in March 2024, when officials sought to push the cost to $40m, which required Cabinet approval.

Advice to the minister at the time said the project was “well progressed”, with an approach that was “sound and robust”, citing a positive quality assurance review in September 2023.

Stanford says she was also not told that her predecessor, Andrew Little, had already declined the same request twice in 2023.

Stanford said she refused the increase and requested the 2023 review, which in fact said: “given the project’s poor delivery history and its inability to meet agreed milestones, we have doubts as to whether the project will in fact deliver at all and we question its continuation”.

“I was, as I’m sure you can appreciate, furious at being provided with advice that was diametrically opposed to the truth on such a critical project,” Stanford said.

So the review concluded the project was off course, missed milestones and doubted it should continue. Yet officials told the Minister that the review was a positive quality assurance review. That isn’t spin – that is deception.

The Post reports:

Health Minister Simeon Brown has removed the leadership of New Zealand’s medical regulator, accusing the Medical Council of pursuing an “ideological agenda” and becoming distracted from its core responsibilities.

Brown has declined to reappoint chairperson Dr Rachelle Love and deputy chairperson Simon Watt, despite both remaining eligible for reappointment under the statutory nine-year term limit.

The decision appears to be unprecedented.

Unprecedented and absolutely necessary. The Medical Council had decided that their job was no longer simply to make sure doctors were competent, but to impose a political and ideological requirement on every doctor in NZ where they would have to agree with a left wing view of the world or face deregistration.

Of course the Minister would take action.

Brown said the regulator was straying into ideological territory, pointing to its recent consultation on two draft statements setting out updated expectations for doctors on cultural competence and safety and Māori health and wellbeing.

These required clinicians to understand how culture affects health outcomes and how bias and systemic factors can contribute to inequities.

“You only need to look at the council’s recent consultation documents, which ask doctors to examine their own ‘privilege’, to challenge the ‘dominant culture’ of the health system, to study the difference between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation, and to help ‘dismantle’ systems,“ Brown said.

“Kiwis expect the Medical Council to be focused on strengthening the medical workforce, not on an ideological agenda.”

They were seeking to impose a political and ideological view of New Zealand on every doctor in NZ. That is not their job, so they got the boot. Great.

The problem is almost every regulator – from real estate to law has caught the woke virus. The only long-term way to stop them is a law change saying regulators can only impose requirements around competence – not around ideology.

An alternative approach would be to allow competing regulators for an industry. I suspect the vast majority of a profession would move to the regulator that simply imposes competence requirements rather than political and ideological requirements.

Politik reports:

But Labour may have got the jump on ACT with its leader announcing that it is highly unlikely to go into coalition with the Greens or Te Paati Maori, but instead will simply do confidence and supply agreements with the two parties.

This will actually make any Government less stable, and actually make Te Pāti Māori more powerful.

In a coalition, you are all around the cabinet table. It involves compromise and negotiation and good faith. It is hard work, but it means that you work together.

If Labour refuses to allow Te Pati Maori into Cabinet (and of the 100+ polls since the election, none show they can govern without them) then Te Pati Maori has no vested interest in compromise (not something they excel at anyway). It means that Labour will have to go to TPM on every single law, every policy, every Budget and plead with them to support it.

The bottom line is it doesn’t matter whether TPM is in Cabinet, outside Cabinet or not in the Executive at all. The maths remains the same – Labour can’t govern without them.

A vote for Labour will mean a Government that is dependent on the whims of Te Pati Maori.

Some people think that the scrutiny of Superintendent Naidoo is because he is standing for Labour. It isn’t. It is simply because he didn’t follow the rules laid out in the Police Manual. If he had, none of this would have happened.

Consider what would have occurred if he had approached his boss four months ago when Labour first talked to him about standing. I imagine it would have been something like this.

“Hey, I need to let you know that the Labour Leader has asked me to consider standing for them at the election. I’m tempted to say yes if am likely to have a high enough place on their list, but I won’t know until June if that looks likely”

“That’s great you’ve been asked. Would be very good to have more MPs with Police experience in Parliament. I really appreciate being given an early heads up. We need to work out a plan to protect you and the Police, while you decide. Let me chat to the Commissioner, and we’ll touch base next week”

“Okay I’ve talked to the Commissioner, and what we thinks will work well is if we put you into a special role for three months while you are deciding. You can head up the Taskforce on xxxx, and your deputy will act in your role. This means you are not having to interact with the Minister while you are deciding, and won’t be party to any discussions around government policy in this space. If you decide not to stand, then you can just go back into your old role and carry on. No one apart from us will know you were thinking about standing. If you do decide to stand, then you can carry on heading up the Taskforce until you take leave”

This is all he had to do. He is not the first person in the public service to decide to stand. These sort of discussions occur often,. and mitigation strategies are worked on.

What is unusual is when you only tell your boss you are standing, four days before the public announcement. What is unusual is when the party puts in place a special process, explicitly so you can avoid telling your bosses you are thinking of standing.

In the March Quarter the Public Service workforce grew from 63,657 FTEs to 64,535. A quarterly increase of 1.4% and 12 month increase of 2.1%.

Ironically the Ministry for Regulation FTEs grew 11.6%.

The Ministry of Education grew by a whopping 341 FTEs up 8.9%. That total now stands at 4,176 and is approaching the June 2024 total of 4,387. That is in complete contrast to the pre-election promise to bring the Ministry of Education FTEs down to the pre-Hipkins total of 2,700. An estimate of the cost of employing a FTE in the Ministry would be at least $200,000. That means there is currently a broken promise of $295,200,000 per annum with the 1,476 extra staff. Money that would have plenty of better uses in education as, after 35 years in the sector, I have no idea what most of the education bureaucrats do.

[email protected]

The Post announced:

In a bombshell move, former National Party strategist-turned consultant Matthew Hooton has been chosen as the new editor of The Post, replacing outgoing Editor in Chief Tracy Watkins. He hopes NZ’s powerful institutions are ‘a little unsettled’ by his appointment, and has big plans to accelerate the brand to become Kiwis’ primary news source.

It is fair to call this a bombshell move.

I think it is a very smart, albeit somewhat risky, move.

Matthew did not seek out this role. He was headhunted for it. He has been exceedingly happy as a Visiting Associate Professor at the National University of Mongolia. He doesn’t need the job – he is doing it for the challenge.

First of all Matthew is a brilliant writer. He got hired as a 19 year old speech writer because he was that good. His columns for the NBR and now the Herald were major attractions for their paywalled products. His Friday columns reverberate around Wellington and New Zealand. I can’t think of a more impactful columnist.

Assuming editors do actually still edit, Matthew will be a great asset to the journalists at The Post and SST. He knows how to write, and write well.

The Post and SST are (for now) part of the Stuff Group and are generally perceived as left of centre. Matthew’s appointment will neutralise that (at least in the short-term) as Matthew is of course a centre-right classical liberal. This will expand the potential readership and subscription base.

This does not mean Matthew will turn The Post into a more sympathetic paper for the National-led Government. Off memory Matthew has been at war at, or strongly critical, of every single National Party leader since Jim Bolger, except possibly Todd Muller. Matthew has written more mean column centimetres about National leaders than even The Standard.

What are the risks?

The first is that the existing readers and subscribers may leave, if they don’t like the newspapers under Matthew. I think this is unlikely though. I think there will be curiosity over what it will look like.

The second is there may be some staff resistance. Matthew has managed staff before but here he will have 100 to 200 and managers and unions etc.

The third is Matthew is what I call an idiot savant. Not in the literal sense. What I mean is with around half his columns I think Matthew is a genius, and with around half I think he is crazy. He has the ability to say outrageous things with total conviction. Sometimes he goes too far, and lawyers get involved. I recall working with Matthew once on a campaign by 2 degrees against outrageous mobile termination rates charged by (then) Telecom and (then) Vodafone. The way Matthew referred to the two big telcos was incredibly amusing and defamatory 🙂

Matthew will not be a status quo editor. This doesn’t mean it will be revolutionary change as in fact The Post is quite successful already. But I expect it will become harder hitting.

I’m looking forward to seeing The Post and SST under his stewardship.

In case it isn’t obvious, I have known Matthew for around 35 years.

At Patreon I write:

Now that Labour and Greens have published their party lists, we can look at who might be in Parliament based on the latest polls.

The analysis used my previous data on which party is ahead on paper in each electorate, so one can project hope many List MPs they might get, and who they would be.

Nicola Willis’ gnomes have crunched the numbers on Labour policies to date. Now they haven’t actually released that many policies, but already the ones they have add up to $21.0b over the next four years. Their proposed CGT will bring in only $2.8b, which leave an $18 billion hole which they have to fund either through huge take hikes, or more borrowing.

Labour have responded complaining about their policies being put under scrutiny, but noticeably not disputing that the calculations are in any way wrong.

In both Australia and the UK, labour parties have got elected promising one things on taxes, and then quickly breaking their word and hiking taxes they promised not to. NZ will be no different.

There is one Jewish majority state – Israel. There are 1.85 million Muslims living in Israel. This is an over 1,000% increase from the 150,000 who remained within Israel’s borders when it was founded.

Muslims in Israel have been in Cabinet, been Ambassadors, Generals in the IDF, Police commanders, make up over 14% of Parliament, 6% of the public service and all state owned companies have at least one Muslim or Arab Israeli on their Boards.

By contrast there are 49 Muslim majority countries with a total population of 1.9 billion people. Today there are just 27,000 Jews living in them. So there are around 70 times more Muslims living in Israel than there are Jews living in the 49 Muslim majority countries.

While the number of Muslims living in Israel has gone from 150,000 when it was founded to 1.85 million today, the number of Jews in Muslim countries has gone from 1 million in 1948 to 27,000 today.

News.com.au reports:

NSW Premier Chris Minns has weighed in on calls to lower the tobacco tax, claiming the eyewatering-high excise was fueling crime in the state.

The announcement piles even more pressure on the Albanese government to slash the extortionate tax, which is believed to be behind a spate of firebombings and shootings in Sydney and Melbourne.

The Australian tax is A$1.49 per cigarette, more than NZ which is NZ$0.83 per cigarette.

Relying on information from the police, the Labor premier said he believed the recent crime wave was being driven by gangs fighting to control the lucrative illicit tobacco market.

It comes as damning data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates 80 per cent of tobacco and nicotine products in Australia are illegal.

The evidence is very strong that the high excise rate has led to a huge crime wave and massive black market surge.

The Post reports:

Nearly a third of the Callaghan Innovation’s $149 million Covid-era research and development loan book is in arrears, including $21.5m linked to 63 failed or insolvent businesses, as the agency enters its final months before disestablishment.

Callaghan Innovation – a government entity set up to make businesses around the country more innovative and provide grants – is now being disestablished as part of wider science system reforms.

Pretty clear why it is being disestablished. A third of the loan book in areas would cause any other lender to go bankrupt. The Government is not good at this stuff, and should leave it alone.

Labour’s science, technology, and innovation spokesperson, Reuben Davidson, said these were emergency research and development loans during Covid, which “helped companies keep their researchers employed and their programmes running when private funding dried up”.

Labour should be apologising, not defending the indefensible.

Save Science Coalition spokesperson Ben Wylie-van Eerd, also a candidate for The Opportunity Party, was made redundant from Callaghan Innovation as part of the Government’s science reforms.

He said there was a “broad acknowledgement” within the science system that Callaghan’s model hadn’t been as successful as hoped.

But he said having just a third of the short-term research and development loanbook in arrears “honestly sounds more positive than I was expecting”.

“If an angel investor had only a third of their companies that they invested in fail, they’d be jumping for joy.”

Really? Well I invested in a venture capital fund (Punakaiki) in 2013 and it has not had a third of companies it invested in failing.

The Post reports:

The Government is doubling the “offender levy” all convicted criminals pay to $100 – far higher than the rate of inflation.

The higher fee will generate about $2.6 million extra for the Government, all of it to be spent on victim services.

This levy sits outside any fine or other penalty imposed as part of conviction.

It was introduced in 2011 at $50 and intended to fund victim entitlements such as the victim assistance scheme, the homicide caseworker service, and the national home safety service.

Excellent. Shift more money from criminals to victims.

The Herald reports:

The war in Ukraine has often been compared to World War I for its brutal infantry assaults and heavy casualties. Yet the idea that it could, by any measure, surpass a conflict so long and bloody that French soldiers hoped it would be “the last of the last” once seemed unthinkable.

That is just what happened on Thursday. The war in Ukraine – which reached 1569 days, or more than four years and three months – has now outlasted World War I.

When President Vladimir Putin of Russia sent his troops into Ukraine in February 2022, he believed the country would fall within days. After Ukraine pushed the Russians back and the conflict settled into a war of attrition, even many of those fighting could not imagine it would last this long.

It is incredible that the war has gone on for so long – and a huge tribute to the brave Ukranians who are fighting to stop their country becoming a slave state of Russia.

It has also lasted longer than the Korean War and the American Civil War.

Incidentally the two shortest known wars were the US invasion of Venezuela which lasted 148 minutes and the 1896 war between the UK and Zanzibar which lasted 38 minutes and saw 500 casualties to Zanzibar and 1 to the UK.

Nick Mowbray reminds us of where our tax dollars went under Labour:

OU’RE WEEKLY REMINDER OF WHERE YOUR MONEY WENT UNDER THE LAST GOV. ( a few of thousands of examples)

1. Wallaby eradication — $2.7 million to kill 18 wallabies. $153,000 per wallaby and 26,000 labour hours. Cheaper to fly them home business class.
2. Virtual job expos — $835,000. 126 people attended. $6,626 per Zoom attendee.
3. Global health recruitment campaign — $514,000. Result: 3 interviews. $171,000 per interview.
4. Let’s Get Wellington Moving — $35m on consultants. Just $250k on actual construction. You read that right.
5. Auckland Light Rail — $229 million. Six years. Not one metre of track. Burning $1.2m/week on consultants at peak.
6. Three Waters — ~$1.2 billion torched on a policy nobody wanted, scrapped before delivering a single pipe. Included $14,500 to write a job description for a CEO who never existed.
7. iReX ferries — $500m+ sunk. Ballooned from $551m to a projected $3 billion+ before cancellation. (NZ First also had fingerprints on the original deal — worth being upfront about.)
8. RAT tests — $531 million sitting in warehouses. Storage at $100,000/day. Approved over a year late.
9. Mongrel Mob meth rehab — $2.75 million. $239k catering. $157k marae hire. $100k hiring a van.
10. Shorter shower campaign — $2.8 million. Printed in 7 languages. To tell you to take shorter showers.
11. Auckland Harbour cycle/walking bridge — $51 million on planning before scrapped. No bridge.
12. Lake Onslow pumped hydro — ~$100 million on feasibility studies. Not a shovel in the ground.
13. Workforce Development Councils — $65 million/year for bodies critics said delivered little tangible value. Disestablished.
14. RNZ/TVNZ merger — $20 million. Abandoned by Labour themselves.
15. Ethnic women in politics research — $842,000. A university grant could’ve done it for a fraction.
16. “Ulu Cavu Wig Tour” — $73,000 in taxpayer funding for the Arts Minister’s husband’s tour.
17. Abandoned China immigration office — ~$3 million in rent on an office closed for over a year.
18. Promoting Australian citizenship to Kiwis already in Australia — $10,000. Funding the brain drain with our money.

…and we could keep going.

We should never FORGET Labour. Just a small fraction of their wasteful ways.

A guest post by Rohan Pike:

The latest Australian Budget reveals a simple and uncomfortable truth: the black market for cigarettes is growing faster than anyone in Canberra predicted. This is a stark warning for New Zealand.

In just one year, the Australian Government has received 46% less tobacco excise and a massive $12.5 billion dollar drop ($16.5 to $4.1) in the last 6 years. Revenue has fallen off a cliff. It is a clear signal that policy interventions are being outpaced by criminal activity, and that the illicit tobacco market is accelerating.

The same dynamics that have fuelled this crisis in Australia exist in New Zealand as well: high excise, limited enforcement, and fragmented responses. These are precisely the conditions that allow illicit markets to take hold and scale quickly.

New Zealand has seen a 21% reduction in tobacco excise takings in the last three years and if that fall had been accompanied by a drop in smoking rates that would be welcome. Unfortunately, excise takings are falling but smoking rates are not (nor is the average daily consumption). This is clear evidence of a growing illicit market.

The criminal actors fuelling that market are undermining New Zealand’s commendable tobacco control efforts established over the last 20 years and putting your smokefree ambitions at serious risk. In short, the market is being flooded by cheap cigarettes.

The rise in violence in Australia has been the inevitable consequence of a criminal market out of control. But we also now see a rise in smoking rates across the country due to the widespread availability of cheap tobacco. If a similar pattern were to be repeated in New Zealand it would, at best, delay, or at worst, end your “smokefree” goals and reverse years of effective tobacco control. 

New Zealand is now approaching the tipping point when tobacco control becomes uncontrolled. While the creation of a new Action Group and the recent increase to funding for Customs are both welcome developments to combat the illicit trade, now is the time to turn these policy announcements into focussed, coordinated and sustained action.   

New Zealand still has time to get ahead of this. But the window is closing.

By Rohan Pike, former Australian detective

About Rohan Pike: 

Rohan Pike is a former Australian detective with decades of experience investigating serious and organised crime. During his career with the Australian Federal Police and Australian Border Force, he led and advised on major operations targeting transnational crime, including the illicit tobacco trade.

Rohan is now an independent consultant and commentator on organised crime and illicit markets.

He regularly provides expert analysis to media, policymakers and industry on border security, criminal networks and emerging illicit trade threats.

For more information, visit www.pikeconsulting.com.au

Labour’s $65 million costing for its $20 cap on public transport fares is looking beyond dodgy. We have three seperate scrutinies which all say it doesn’t add up. First Macroeconomics Professor Robert MacCulloch:

The Labour Party’s announcement that its newly proposed $20 weekly public transport fare cap will cost $65 million is out by a factor of at least three times. The Opposition Leader’s Transport Press Conference and Labour’s webpage (https://www.labour.org.nz/farecap) state, “On average, people will save around $25 a week” from the cap, some more, some less, and “hundreds of thousands of people would benefit”.

Census data from 2023 says 135,000 people use public buses, trains or ferries as their “main means of travel to work” (https://figure.nz/chart/x72mUPCCIJtePP5B). A weekly average saving of $25 per person for 52 weeks would cost the government $175 million. Should prices be slashed, demand for trips rises, increasing the subsidy to nearly $200 million. This estimate is conservative, since many people use public transport not associated with a commute to work.

Declaring that “hundreds of thousands of people” benefit and the saving is “on average $25 a week” does not add up to $65 million. It adds to at least three times that figure.

So MacCulloch says by Labour’s own claims, the cost would be at least triple what they say.

Then the TU breaks it down by region:

Using publicly available 2024/25 data from New Zealand’s three largest public transport-using regions, the Taxpayers’ Union estimates the annual cost to be: 

• Auckland: $118,061,733 to $141,051,370
• Wellington: $23,249,363 to $38,094,684
• Canterbury: $394,877 to $3,383,523

That puts the cost for just these three regions at $141,705,972 to $182,529,576 a year, potentially up to nearly three times higher than Labour claims for the entire country.

Unlike Labour, the TU has provided their workings.

And finally Simeon Brown points out:

Labour claims its fare cap policy will:

• Cost $65 million per year
• Save the average person more than $1,200 per year
• Benefit around 1.36 million New Zealanders who use public transport every year. 

“These three claims cannot all be true. 

“If 1.36 million people are each saving more than $1,200 a year, the cost of delivering those savings would exceed $1.6 billion annually – not $65 million.

Labour must release their own detailed costings and assumptions, for their budgeted cost estimate to have any credibility.

The Taxpayers’ Union released:

Labour’s plan to cap public transport fares would pour another $65 million into a system which is already 87 percent subsidised, up from 61 percent in 2015/16.

Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson Tory Relf said:

“Taxpayers are already picking up almost 90 cents in every dollar spent on public transport, which the average subsidy last year of $17.65 per boarding. Households already subsidise public transport to the tune of $1,373 a year, and Hipkins wants to slap another $65 million down for them to pay.”

“This is dressed up as a cost-of-living policy, but it does nothing for the vast majority of households. Only 6 percent of Kiwis are regular public transport users, and nearly 90 percent of rides are in Wellington, Auckland, and Christchurch.”

Public transport is already 87% subsidised by the taxpayer and Labour thinks that is not enough. And they come up with a policy that will do zero for the vast majority of Kiwis.