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.

Helen Clark posted on Twitter:

So here Helen says there was absolutely no attack on Don Brash or Tim Groser. Liam Hehir then does some detective work:

So Clark actually called for Groser to be removed as a WTO Chair.

And as for Don:

Clark called Don Brash a loser. She further said “decision was “right on the border of ethics” and discredited the office of the Reserve Bank Governor…”

And here Clark is saying they will inform the WTO that they have no confidence in Groser any more:

It’s not the hypocrisy which is the issue here. It is the brazen bare faced deception and rewriting of history.

The Post reports:

An independent review will be held into the procurement of Wellington City Council’s sleek new $600,000 library website, as new questions are raised about why a link to a commercial business based in the Bay of Islands – now removed – was being promoted on the homepage.

The Post revealed the true cost of the $595,801 spend on Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui – a separate marketing site for Wellington’s central library and cultural hub – in May.

Mayor Andrew Little confirmed an investigation would be held into “not just the service provider” – but also the decision-making around it, including who got to sign it off, who didn’t, and how it got “out of control”. The terms of reference are still being finalised.

Critics labelled the site a “gold-plated” promotional stunt, a “glorified brochure” and an “atrocious” waste of ratepayer money because it provides little information for users wanting to book rooms, search catalogues, or join up it, instead redirecting people to the council’s actual library website.

Most reviews don’t actually end up with anyone being held accountable, but this waste of money is so bad, that I have a little hope that this review may actually lead to change.

I suspect part of the problem is simply a culture of not wanting to save money. A budget probably represents a target, rather than a cap. Actually for WCC a budget is often not even a cap!

Questions that should be asked are:

• Who set the budget for the website? Was it set before or after a tender?
• Who set the specifications for the website? What were they? Were they met?
• Was it a competitive tender?
• What was the difference between the highest and lowest bid?
• Did anyone at WCC ask if $600k is a good use of money for a website?

The Post reports:

In an address hosted in Wellington by the Electricity Retailers and Generators Association on Friday, Liebreich said the world was now “almost in the middle third” of the transition to green energy.

Wind and solar energy accounted for about 90% of all new generation worldwide, while deliveries of cars and light trucks powered by internal combustion engines were falling, after peaking in 2017, he noted.

The Middle East conflict was providing “another turn of the screw” on fossil fuels, he said.

You hear stuff like this a lot, and hey I’m all for more green energy. But cherry picking some stats is not the same as the hard data.

The International Energy Agency lists energy by type, since 1990. The share of global energy from coal, gas or oil was 81.8% in 1990. In 2023 it was 80.7%. Yes fossil fuels are a greater percentage today than in 1990. There has been a big growth in renewables but they remain

Here’s the percentage of each type of energy in 1990 and 2023:

• Oil 37% to 30%
• Coal 26% to 28%
• Gas 19% to 23%
• Biofuels/Waste 10% to 9%
• Nuclear 6% to 5%
• Hydro 2.1% to 2.4%
• Solar/Wind 0.4% to 3.3%

Henry Cooke writes:

Lawrence Xu-Nan is not a native English speaker. But he speaks it a lot.

The first-term Green MP has spoken more in Parliament than any other MP this term. Not by a little either – Xu-Nan has said 420,000 words, over four times the 102,000 words the average MP has managed.

Xu-Nan has made 1,302 speeches in the House. This is part of the job of an MP – to debate and scrutinise legislation. He has done it six times more than one of the TPM co-leaders. This is a duty many backbench MPs are less than keen on (it can be rather boring!) but it is important.

I reported back in March that Francisco Hernandez has asked three times as many written questions as any other MP. This is also part of the job – gathering information in your portfolios. It takes a lot of time to not just ask the questions (of course staff help), but to read through all the answers and work out what information is useful.

You don’t have to agree with an MP on policy issues, to want then to be diligent and hard working. We should praise Xu-Nan and Hernandez for taking their roles seriously. Some MPs seem to think their job is to get social media likes only.

Stuff reports:

A social media faux pas while en route to a tangi caught Green Party Co-Leader Marama Davidson out as she was “snapped” by her colleague driving over the speed limit on Sunday.

Davidson was travelling to the tangi of former Te Pāti Māori president Whatarangi Winiata when she was exposed by fellow Green MP Hūhana Lyndon, who shared a video of Davidson behind the wheel on Instagram as part of a series showcasing the pair’s journey.

What Lyndon did not account for, however, was the speedometer appearing in full view of the camera, and on it, evidence of what Davidson would later say was a self-proclaimed “error”.

In what can only be described as an inadvertent oversight by Lyndon, the said video showed Davidson was driving at 121kph, 11kph over the designated speed limit on the Kāpiti Expressway.

Having your own colleague pout your speeding is rather hilarious.

The Greens have previously been vocal opponents to speed limit increases, and a party press release last year said the government was “playing politics with people’s lives” when it moved to raise the limits on rural undivided roads.

Do as I say, not as I do!

Jamie Tahana at The Spinoff writes:

Rawiri and his co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, often speak in terms of broad manifesto. They now want to change the system, not achieve change within the system. They don’t want a seat at the table, they want to smash it.

This is indeed a very insightful way to think about it.

I remind people that there have been over 100 public polls since the election and all of them have said Labour can’t for a Government without Te Pāti Māori.