The previous Labour Government abolished almost all the health targets, did a distarous mega-merger during a pandemic, and outcomes in the health sector fell across the board. The health sector is still under great strain, but the data shows that there has been considerable improvement in all five target areas. This is the latest data to June 2026.

Those getting cancer treatment within a month fell from 90% to 84% under Labour. It is now halfway back to the 90% target at 87%. In real terms that means 600 more people a year with cancer got to start treatment within a month.

The child immunisation rate dropped to 71%. At the change of government it was 77% and it is now up to 84%. In real terms that is 3,000 more children a year vaccinated.

This has been one of the hardest ones to turn around. It started dropping well before Covid-19. It fell to 67%. It is now at 76%. That is 120,000 more ED patients who got dealt with in under six hours.

Another one that fell away prior to Covid-19. Has been stubborn at around 60% but is now at 67%, In real terms that’s almost 15,000 more people who got to see a specialist within four months.

Around a 15 percentage point increase in those who get elective surgery or treatment within four months. This is around 11,000 more patients who got elective surgery in the last year within four months.

The oldest bureaucratic trick in the world when an agency or council is asked to find savings, is for them to announce they will cut the most popular and liked programs, rather than the much larger wasteful pet projects.

We see this with Wellington City Council:

Funding for Te Papa, opening hours for galleries, the city’s new years’ eve fireworks display, and school swimming subsidies, are on the chopping block as Wellington City Council tries to meet rates caps.

Deputy mayor Ben McNulty said at a Tuesday meeting the council needed to grapple with “nasty decisions” to find $60 million in savings in order to comply with a four percent rates cap ordered by the government.

The staff obviously have the Crs well trained up, if this is where they are focusing on to save money.

Are they going to scrap the Organics Processing Solution, which will see CO2 emissions drop at a cost of $9,375 per tonne, compared to the ETS cost of $57?

We also have the $511 million sludge minimisation plant.

I blogged the following in 2024:

1. $593 million on social housing
2. $400 million for a sludge minimisation facility at Moa Point
3. $330 million on rebuilding the town hall so we have another music venue
4. $240 million on Civic Square 
5. $236 million on food recycling
6. $189 million on Te Matapihi library
7. $180 million on the Takina convention centre
8. $160 million on cycleways
9. $139 million on removing cars and redeveloping the Golden Mile
10. $55 million to “upgrade” Thorndon Quay
11. $42 million on renovating St James Theatre
12. $32 million to Reading Cinemas (attempted but failed)
13. $13 million on a carpark building

Yet they claim the nasty government is going to force them to stop inflicting 20% rates increases on residents, so hence they need to cut subsidies for school swimming!!

One of TOP’s five bottom lines is:

To revive our fish stocks and marine habitats, this bottom line calls for an immediate end to bottom trawling in our most damaged inshore areas (like the Hauraki Gulf/Tīkapa Moana), before phasing out the practice in stages.

This non negotiable policy is to phase out bottom trawling in our entire EEZ over time. This is an extreme proposal. Only two countries out of 200 ban bottom trawling entirely – Belize and Palau. This is ideology, not science.

We already have significant restrictions on bottom trawling. They are:

• Bottom trawling is not allowed in 40% of our deeper waters, and 31% of our EEZ
• Only 1.7% of the EEZ is bottom trawled every year, and most of this is in areas previously trawled.
• In the last year the new territory bottom trawled was only 4.3 square km, which is around 0.0001% of the EEZ

Around 75% of commercial fish catches are caught by trawling. The seafood sector contributes $2.45 billion to GDP and supports 14,500 jobs. TOP’s bottom line is to destroy 75% of that industry, so we can join Belize and Palau.

One can sensibly debate whether there should be more (or less) of the EEZ closed to bottom trawling. But that is vastly different to insisting on a total ban, over time. It would destroy jobs and an entire industry.

And again I remind people this is one of their five non negotiable policies as the price of government. And this is why the thought they could be part of a centre-right government is farcical.

The Herald reports:

Tauranga City Council chief executive Marty Grenfell has resigned after councillors held an emergency closed-door meeting this afternoon over the Davison report.

The council-commissioned review into the fatal Mount Maunganui landslide, conducted by retired High Court judge Paul Davison, KC, revealed a litany of council failures leading up to the “preventable” disaster.

A council statement said Grenfell resigned today and would finish on October 2. It did not say whether his departure was related to the review.

Grenfell had faced public calls to resign following the review’s publication last month.

This is the right outcome. It’s not that Grenfell was personally responsible. In fact he didn’t even know about the risks. But he has been the CE for the last eight years, during which time his staff were aware that there was serious risks, including death, from the location of the camping ground, and those risks were never considered by the Council, and entered on the Council’s risk register so they could be mitigated. It was a system failure, and the CE is responsible for ensuring good systems.

Simon Bridges writes:

This came to mind recently when EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen got cosy with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at her 2026 state of the union address over Canada becoming an “associate member” of the European Union. If it’s good enough for them, why not us Kiwis?

Von der Leyen said she wanted to work with Carney “on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU”. Carney is keen too, with officials saying both sides want the closest possible relationship short of full membership. …

European Parliament president Roberta Metsola later confirmed that, after Canada, Australia and New Zealand could also become associate members. Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has left the door open, echoing Carney’s call for middle powers to build coalitions in a UN General Assembly speech days ago.

A few years ago, the idea of NZ becoming a (associate) member of the EU would have filled me with horror. It would mean losing our ability to set our own laws, regulations and trade agreements. The reasons the UK left the EU are also good reasons for us not to join it.

But the world has changed. We are in a new era of might is right instead of a rules based order. Earlier this year I advocated NZ becoming the seventh state of Australia, as a way for us to survive in this new world order.

An alternative to merging with Australia could be to join the EU as an Associate Member (NB there is no such thing at the moment – it would have to be defined and created). If Associate Membership included free trade of goods and services, and free movement of citizens (not residents), then those benefits could well outweigh the loss of sovereignty involved in joining the EU.

I’d love to see a future focused debate on how NZ survives and even prospers in this new might is right era. Is it through Australia, is it through the EU, or is it some other alternative? The only thing I am sure of is that the status quo is a very unhealthy position for New Zealand to be in.

I have now profiled 62 of the 71 seats being contested, and made predictions for 60 of them. Just nine seats to go.

The running total is:

So I have 36 seats so far as safe, 11 which are likely for a party, 13 which lean towards a party and two that are too close to call.

I’ve only got the nine seats north of the Auckland Harbour Bridge to go.

The Press reports:

Christchurch City Council staff are confident rate increases can be held to 6%, 5% and 4% over the next three years without cutting services or staff.

But they warned councillors the tighter financial position will leave less flexibility and require tough choices.

Councillors were presented with the first full draft of the 2027-37 long-term plan (LTP) on Thursday, showing average rate increase of 6% in 2027/28, 5% in 2028/29 and 4% in 2029/30.

Good to see Christchurch City Council trying to get their rates increases down to a more sustainable level. Auckland and Wellington take note!

On current average of the polls, NZ First would get 12 List MPs. A few people surprised by Ron Mark being relatively low and Harete Hipango-Brownlie being so high.

The left claim that the Government is anti-Maori, and that NZ First is anti-Maori. It is worth noting that six of their top 10 candidate are Māori and a seventh is Cook Islands Māori. I guess they are the wrong sort of Māori!

Nick Mowbray writes:

I’m aware of the criticism we receive for donating to National and ACT. I’m also aware of the false narrative that we lobby the government and expect something in return.

So let me be clear: we have never lobbied the government. Less than 1% of ZURU’s revenue is in New Zealand.

We donate because we care about this country’s future and believe National and ACT have the right talent and strategy to move it forward.

We grew up with that Kiwi number 8 wire mentality. Work hard figure things out and believe you can build something from nothing.

These photos show our second small factory on my parents’ dairy farm in Tokoroa, my brother winning the NZ science fair and our first factory in China. We used fibreglass matting from the Kinleith paper mill as flooring because we had no money. We sprayed weeds and milked cows on weekends to help pay the rent.

Then we moved to China and lived on US$1 a day for many years. No exaggeration. My brother spent close to a decade living in a tiny room inside our first factory. For a decade we worked almost every day from morning until late at night sacrificing pretty much every comfort to keep building.

Today, we compete globally with some of the biggest companies in the world. We employ thousands of people globally including hundreds of Kiwis, and aim to employ thousands more in New Zealand over the next five years. We will surpass NZ$10 billion in revenue next year and are investing heavily back into New Zealand.

That’s the future we want more Kiwis to have the opportunity to build. A New Zealand that rewards hard work and sacrifice backs people willing to take a chance and encourages them to compete globally and bring that success home. A country ambitious about becoming better and more prosperous.

New Zealand gave us a lot. We care deeply about its future. We expect nothing personally in return from any party. We simply want the next generation to have the opportunities we had and the chance to take them even further.

We want NZ to WIN ! build a country of makers not takers 💪

An incredible success story.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins vowed to scrap the requirement for primary schools to spend at least an hour a day teaching reading, writing and maths.

Opportunity have published their five bottom lines for any coalition, and they confirm that they are a party of the left. Their five bottom lines would fit perfectly in a Green Party manifesto.

Jeffrey Archer has died aged 86. He was one of my all time favourite authors. I literally purchased every one of his novels, and all his short stories collections.

Kane and Abel is probably my favourite of his novels. So gripping. Closely followed by First Among Equals and The Prodigal Daughter.

He was also a very talented politician, and a flawed human being. But only Archer could use his prison time to write more best sellers. He has sold more than 275 million books, which would make hime one of the top 30 authors of all time (Shakespeare is first and Agatha Christie 2nd).

Some books you don’t reread, but I find his books so great I will often go back to them after a few years.

He always has a twist at the end of his stories, and it reminds me once when I was flying to Zurich and reading one of his novels. I had around 10 pages to go and I let out a fairly loud yell on the plane. The stewardess came over and asked me what the problem was. I showed her the book, and how there was a misprint with the final 10 pages being a copy of the first 10 pages. This meant I was stuck in the air for a further 10 hours, unable to find out how the book ended. Fortunately I managed to find an English language edition in Switzerland, where I finished the book.

NZ has had a purely online passport application process for (off memory) well over a decade. I’ve often raved about how good it is, and also how quick it is. I got my latest passport three working days after I applied – and that was a non-urgent application.

The Herald reports:

Since the 1880s, a 37-acre site in the leafy Auckland suburb of Epsom was used to train teachers. 

Now Epsom MP and Act Leader David Seymour wants the site, empty since the last of the University of Auckland students left in 2024, to be the new location of an unzoned, co-educational public school.

And not just any school – one jointly operated by two of the country’s top state facilities – the neighbouring Auckland Grammar and Epsom Girls Grammar.

“They would like to co-sponsor a co-educational high school in the ethos of those two excellent schools,” Seymour told the Herald while walking through the empty university grounds.

“The motivation is that if this land becomes housing, it will put huge pressure on their rolls. On the other hand, if they can add a new high-quality school to Auckland, then that’s got to be a good thing for everybody.”

This is an incredible visionary plan. There are so many parents in Auckland who would love to send their kids to a school in the ethos of AGS or EGGS, but can’t afford the median $3.2 million house price.

37 acres is a huge site, so the school could be as large as needed by demand. I suspect it would soon become the largest school in NZ.

Thanks to Ruth Richardson, Governments can no longer hide the state of the accounts from the electorate, The pre-election fiscal and economic update is mandatory. The 2026 one is here. And for the first time in many years it looks positive. Key details:

• Unemployment forecast to drop from 5.6% to 4.3%
• Cumulative nominal GDP to be $18b higher than forecast in the Budget
• The OBEGALx balance is forecast to almost reach surplus in 2027/28 and grow to a surplus of $12b by 2030/31
• Core crown expenses to reduce to 29.8% of GDP by 2030/31 (30% is the level that Labour and Greens in 2017 said is the maximum NZ should have)
• Net core Crown debt is expected to peak at 43.9% of GDP in 2027/28 before gradually declining to 39.5% by the end of the forecast period

It is critical we get back into surplus and start reducing debt (before the next global economic shock). A change of government will doom this prospect.

Here’s how much extra spending the four parties of the left are promising:

1. Labour $50.5b
2. Opportunity $219.4b
3. Greens $236.7b
4. TPM – incalculable

The higher our debt goes, the more money that we have to spend on interest on the debt, rather than on education and health etc.

A couple of weeks ago, six parents launched The Parents Alliance, a new group to be a voice for parents in the education system.

We already have over 3,300 supporters signed up, which is amazing. But our aim is to have over 100,000 parents, grandparents and supporters signed up. Our ability to influence education policy for the positive benefit of families and kids will be proportional to how many people support us.

We have an amazing board chaired by former ANZ Chief Economist Cameron Bagrie. Cameron correctly says the economic performance of NZ in 30 years time will be dependent on the education system of today.

Some quick links for those interested are:

• Our initial policies, which polling has shown are overwhelmingly supported by National, Labour, Green, Act and NZ First voters (and Maori). Parents are parents, and are united in what they want.
• FAQs
• Donate page
• Our first newsletter

I’ve been involved in this initiative for around three years now. The impetus was when the “experts” produced a draft science curriculum that did not mention physics, biology or chemistry. This is when I realised that parents needed to speak up. Few things are more important to us than the education our kids receive.

Please sign up. Feel free to share with your friends who are parents or grandparents. Our kids’ education is too important for parents not to have an assertive and effective voice.

Labour’s so called fiscal plan is a fraud. First here is what Barbara Edmonds said on Newstalk ZB:

Well, for example, a choice that we would not make is $300 million for a tobacco excise tax cut. Okay. That means there is $300 million more that is a choice. So only $12.7 billion more to find? 

This is a lie. The actual cost of a 50% reduction in excise tax on heated tobacco products has been $2.25 million, not $300 million. That is actual hard data. So Labour’s Finance Spokesperson is out by a factor of 100, in her finances.

This is beyond dishonest.

Their fiscal plan shows $365 million of revenue from removing the 50% discount on heated tobacco products. The actual revenue it will bring in is $2.25 million a year.

On top of that whopper, Nicola Willis has also found $16 billion of other spending they have forgotten to include.

Paul Goldsmith announced:

Legislation which disestablishes the Broadcasting Standards Authority has been introduced to Parliament today, Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith says.

“Our Government promised to get this legislation into the House before we rise. Today we’re delivering.

“New Zealand’s media landscape has changed dramatically, but our regulatory settings have not kept up. For some time now audiences have moved seamlessly between traditional broadcasting, on‑demand services, podcasts and online platforms – yet only a small portion of that content is subject to the BSA’s oversight. It doesn’t make sense, and can create inconsistencies and unfair outcomes for media providers.

“The reality is, the BSA regime was designed for a broadcasting environment that is rapidly disappearing.

“I’m confident greater industry self-regulation is the most practical way to level the playing field across platforms, and can provide an appropriate level of oversight to maintain ethical journalistic standards and audience trust.

“Print media already self regulates through the New Zealand Media Council, and some broadcasters have opted to be part of it. Our expectation is the Media Council will become the primary regulator for journalism. 

Good to see the bill introduced.