1 News reported:

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says New Zealand is “freeloading” off the American military because of its low level of military spending.

Multiple media have reported along these lines, but the truth is that Hegseth did not target New Zealand. It only came up because of a question by a journalist that was designed to generate a headline.

It is true that the US wants all friendly countries to increase defence spending, and has said they think 3.5% of GDP should be the minimum. Wanting allies and friends to spend more has been US policy for many decades. Trump has been much more muscular (and successful) in promoting this.

The speech to an Asia-Pacific conference did not mention New Zealand. In fact it was a plaudit to South Korea:

If you want to see what burden sharing looks like, consider the Republic of Korea. South Korea has invested consistently in its own defense, not because, because it does not have the luxury of treating war like an academic exercise. They live on the front lines, and so they build real combat power. President Lee’s decision to increase defense spending to the new global standard of 3.5% and to assume greater responsibility for its conventional defense reflects simply a clear-eyed understanding of the threat environment. It won’t be easy, but it’s necessary for the security and prosperity of his country. This was a hard-nosed decision, because they see the world as it actually is. We applaud the pragmatism and leadership demonstrated by Seoul. The region will be far more stable and more secure when other allies and partners follow that path.

Hegseth also went on to praise increased spending by Philippines, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan. His speech wasn’t chiding, it was in fact praising allies for doing more.

He then did the stick to go with the carrot:

President Trump is setting the gold standard. We demand 3.5% from our allies and partners, and we are going well beyond that number. We expect every single ally and partner to match that kind of resolve. For those nations that rise to this challenge that embrace responsibility as true partners, the benefits will be clear. As our strategy states, we will prioritize working with model allies those nations who are most capable, clear-eyed and ready to defend their national interests. For those nations, we are moving them to the front of the line, expedited arms sales, deep industrial base collaboration, expanded intelligence sharing, the list goes on that benefits many.

But for those who believe they can continue to free ride on the generosity of the American taxpayer, hear us now. Those days are over. Allies who refuse to step up and carry their own weight for our collective defense will face a clear shift in how we do business. 

So this was aimed at every ally and partner in the world. No mention of NZ.

Afterwards journalist Anna Fifield asked a question:

I couldn’t help but notice that New Zealand was missing from your list of countries. There, they have recently outlined a plan to get from 1 percent to 2 percent of GDP, a long way from 3.5. Would you consider New Zealand to be a free rider?

Now this was a legitimate question, but it was also one in which there could only be one answer. Hegseth has just done a speech saying we want everyone to be at 3.5%, so he is hardly going to then say “Oh except New Zealand”. His answer was:

I appreciate the question. I listen, I mean, if I’m being honest, 2 percent is not enough, and so 2 percent is free loading, but I don’t have anything against New Zealand. I want partners to step up. I didn’t intentionally leave it off my list. I look forward to working with the new Defence Minister there and enhancing those capabilities. I think that relationship has been a very fruitful one for a very long time, but I think, as my friends [Australia’s] Richard Marles and [the UK’s] John Healey know, I’m probably the most blunt with our closest friends about what our capabilities are, and where they need to be to ensure that we’re locking arms and shields, considering the threats of the world.

So he simply answered the question by saying 2% is not enough, but went out of his way to say he has nothing against NZ.

The way other media (not Fifield) have framed this as some sort of public rebuke of NZ is rather silly. He simply answered a question.

Stuff reports:

The world is watching New Zealand’s housing crash — and asking what went wrong

This headline has it entirely wrong. House prices were unaffordable in New Zealand. They have fallen to more affordable levels. This is not a crash. This is the impact if policy designed to lower prices, so that more people can afford to buy a home.

This is not to say that falling house prices have not had some negative consequences. I suspect that the subdued economic growth is partially because households feel poorer because their house is on paper worth less than three years ago. We don’t take into account that our next house is also cheaper – we just focus on our current house.

But all policies and pros and cons, and the massive increase in house prices wasn’t sustainable. The correction is painful for some people, but still necessary.

Radio NZ reports:

Jasmine Hanham filmed herself harassing her neighbours and then posted it to social media platform TikTok.

Now her landlord Kāinga Ora has taken her to the Tenancy Tribunal to get her evicted for her antisocial behaviour.

That behaviour included covering her neighbour’s work car with stickers accusing him of “s*** parking” and filming herself verbally harassing her neighbours and posting the videos to TikTok.

The Christchurch woman told the tribunal she was struggling with parenting her high-needs children, which led to the outbursts, and that her tenancy shouldn’t be terminated.

But tribunal adjudicator Rebecca Morgan said in a recently released decision that while parenting can be overwhelming, the three antisocial incidents cannot be justified by stressful parenting.

Morgan ultimately terminated Hanham’s tenancy giving her two weeks to find new accommodation.

This would never have happened under the last Government. Their policy was to basically protect the abusers.

An academic has labelled the 10% increase in health funding as “austerity”. This made me realises that this was another word which once had a specific meaning, basically a cut in the level of spending, to a meaningless “spending did not increase as much as I think it should have”.

I asked on Twitter for examples of other words that once had a useful specific meaning, but now were meaningless. Some of the contributions were:

1. Neoliberal – any non-socialist economic policy
2. Austerity – not increasing spending as much as we want
3. Racist – has a different view to me on the Treaty
4. Far right – not left
5. Nazi – see far right
6. Disinformation – information I disagree with
7. Hate speech – speech I dislike
8. Unsafe – speech or views I dislike
9. Genocide – death of more than 1 person
10. Cut – lower increase in spending of taxpayer funds than demanded by self-appointed advocates
11. Anti-fascist: Anarchist
12. Diversity – Homogenous opinion
13. Science – knowledge
14. Unprecedented – not occurred recently
15. Gaslighting- saying things I don’t like to hear
16. Privileged – wrong race or gender

News.com.au reports:

A high-profile tech CEO has sparked debate after revealing he quietly axed his entire human resources department earlier this year.

Ryan Breslow, CEO of Bolt Financial, claims the HR team at the fintech firm was “creating problems that didn’t exist” and fostering a culture of complaining rather than productivity.

“The problems disappeared when I let [the team] go,” the Stanford University graduate, 32, claimed, according to The New York Post.

He is not the only CE to do this or discover this. I recall chatting some years ago to a very very successful CEO and he said that his first step in every new company he took over was to scrap the entire HR department, tell managers they are responsible for managing their own staff teams, and that there is an external law firm they can access for legal advice on employment issues. This CEO said that without fail the improvement in happiness in the company was huge.

Sally Clarke, a burnout and wellbeing consultant, told news.com.au that erasing HR is a “fickle” move that is “bound to backfire”.

A burnout consultant!!

Labou appear to have decided on a strategy of releasing as little policy as possible, making it difficult to assess the impact on us of a Labour-led Government.

Fortunately the Greens are not shy in releasing policy, so in the absence of Labour policy I am going to look at Greens policy to get some idea of what the costs will be of a change in government.

I will go through their policies in alphabetical order. My brain could not cope with reading too much Green policy in one sitting, so these will be spaced out over a few weeks.

Their first policy is ACC. They key aspects are:

• Extending the ACC scheme to include income support and treatment for injuries, disability, and illnesses, regardless of origin.
• Revoking requirements for co-payments to treatment providers

So what would this cost, and who would pay for it?

A 2013 Treasury estimate put the cost of extending the ACC scheme at $1.5 billion, which would be $2.1 billion in 2026 dollars. Add in 21% population growth and you get $2.5 billion minimum cost.

Revoking co-payments just for physio is estimated to cost $65 million and physio is 25% of treatments so a conservative cost estimate (in reality number of treatments would increase massively) is $250 million.

So total annual cost of just this one policy is at least $2.75 billion a year. Thus would need the following tax changes to fund it:

• Top tax rate on income over $180k from 39% to 61%; or
• Tax rate of 41% on all income over $70k; or
• Increase GST from 15% to 16.5%

Again this is just the cost of their ACC policy, not all their policies.

NBC reports:

Top House Democrats are condemning a Texas Democratic candidate days after she took to social media to say she’d turn an immigration detention center into a “prison for American Zionists” if she won.

Galindo, a therapist, finished with the most votes in the March primary in the Democratic primary for Texas’ 35th Congressional District, a new district that state Republican lawmakers drew to be friendlier to the GOP this fall. She’s running in a runoff against Johnny Garcia, who previously worked in the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office. 

Galindo has made a string of controversial comments during her campaign. She wrote last week on Instagram that she’d turn an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center “into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking,” going on to claim that many Zionists are “pedophiles.”

95% of jews are Zionists so what she is really saying is that she wants to lock up all the Jews. Like a flash back to the 1930s.

Henry Nowak was an 18 year old student in Southampton, who was cut and stabbed five times by Vickrum Digwa. The Police were called and despite the fact Nowak was the one stabbed and wounded, they handcuffed and arrested him simply on the say so of Digwa who claimed Nowak had racially abused him and assaulted him.

The Police did not investigate. They did not take statements from witnesses. They arrested him because Digwa claimed he had been racist and assaulted him.

Nowak told Police he had been stabbed and he couldn’t breathe. They refused to believe him. They handcuffed the dying man.

This is what destroys trust in institutions.

Simon Watts announced:

Only elected councillors will be able to vote on council committees, in a move that strengthens democratic accountability, Local Government Minister Simon Watts announced today.

“Councillors are directly accountable to voters for their decisions. We are amending the Local Government Act 2002 so only elected members hold voting rights at council committee meetings,” Mr Watts says.

“Councils and the public nationwide have raised concerns about individuals holding voting rights on council committees, undermining decision-making and diluting the influence of democratically elected members.

“We’ve seen examples in the Far North, in Tauranga and in Hastings where individuals, such as iwi representatives and young people aged under 18, have been appointed to council committees and given voting rights without being elected by the community.

“That’s not democratic, so we’re fixing it.

An excellent move by the Government. Some may argue that unelected members on committees is okay, as decisions have to be ratified by the full Council. But that ignores the reality that getting the full Council to overturn a decision by a committee can take a huge amount of work and effort, and inertia often wins.

“While it is useful and appropriate that councils are able to make appointments that bolster the skills, attributes and knowledge of elected members, those individuals are not elected by ratepayers and therefore have no democratic accountability.

“Councils can still appoint non-elected members to offer professional advice and represent communities but those appointments will not come with voting rights or count towards a quorum.”

So you can still have an external accountant or lawyer on Audit & Risk. The benefit from them is their advice and knowledge, not their vote.

The Post reports:

A glitzy website launched to celebrate the opening of Wellington’s refurbished central library building Te Matapihi cost nearly $600,000, pushing the costs associated with the library opening to more than $800,000.

It was also developed and built by an Auckland company and has been denounced by one councillor as “gold-plated promotional spending”.

The Post was told, in an official information response that the production cost for the dedicated Te Matapihi website was $13,961.

However, it has since been discovered the full cost of designing and building it (the end-to-end delivery) was actually $595,801.

This is obscene. That wasn’t $600,000 on the library website where you borrow and reserve books. This was $600,000 on a website just to celebrate the new library building.

Think what this indicates about the contempt for ratepayers who fund WCC. Think what this indicates about why project after project blows out massively in cost. It is a culture problem. How did no in management not say “Hey no effing way are we spending $600,000 on a website for a building?”

The NZ Initiative released:

“Our cities have been meeting their housing targets for years while house prices kept climbing,” said Dr Benno Blaschke, Research Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative. “The housing targets gave politicians and communities a number to fight over while ignoring everything underneath.”

New research from The New Zealand Initiative, Beyond Targets, proposes a better way to hold councils to account: replace housing targets with price indicators. They tell planners whether people have real and affordable choices about where to live and build, or whether rules are forcing people and businesses into bidding wars over scarce permissions, jacking up prices.

This seems sensible to me. An outcome (where practical) is the better target, than an output.

The Post reports:

Labour’s Dr Ayesha Verrall is adamant that her fees-free GP policy will not overwhelm clinics, despite featuring no commitment to fund the training of more doctors.

The policy has faced sustained criticism from Health Minister Simeon Brown, who says the free visits would increase demand on GP clinics without any plan to increase the number of doctors.

“Right now, the biggest challenge facing patients is simply being able to get an appointment in the first place,” he said.

This is correct, I’ve just checked with my GP clinic, and no appointments for two weeks for my GP.

In a sit-down with The Post, Verrall said cutting paperwork for doctors through AI and her plans to introduce a triaging system would free up 4.5 million appointments overall.

This is magical thinking. There is no actual specific plan, just a belief akin to we will build 100,000 homes.

Labour’s modelling anticipated two million more appointments a year once the scheme was fully rolled out after Budget 2028 ‒ increasing the number of appointments from 24 million to 26 million.

We have 5,600 GPs so two million more appointments would need an extra 430 GPs by Labour’s own numbers.

Instead of patients booking their appointments through a first come, first serve system, a nationwide triage system would see patients assessed over the phone to determine the level of care they need and when.

Sounds like centralised rationing. Rather than being able to decide for yourself if you see a GP, you will need to go through the Ministry of Health!!

Verrall said this system meant many patients would not need to see the doctor at all, and instead be referred to a pharmacist or online resources on the Healthify website to manage symptoms

So the phone operator will decide whether or not you can see a GP, and may just tell you to go read a website instead!!

I am a fan of agencies having both English and te reo names. I am not a fan of agencies only using their te reo name as happened under the last Government.

If an agency (or their website) uses both English and te reo, which should be the primary language? Well, let’s look at the census data:

• 95.7% of NZers speak English, but not te reo
• 4.1% of NZers speak English and te reo
• 0.2% of NZers speak te reo but not English

If your job is to serve the public, you shouldn’t need a ministerial directive to work out which language you use first.

The BBC reports:

Former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell has admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the party.

Murrell, the estranged husband of the former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, pleaded guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh and has been remanded in custody. 

The 61-year-old used party funds to illicitly purchase luxury goods, jewellery, cosmetics, two cars and a motorhome.

He admitted to embezzling a total of £400,310.65 between 12 August 2010 and 19 October 2022.

Maybe SNP really stands for Sneak, Nick & Pillage!

Sturgeon has said she had no idea he stole the equivalent of NZ$900k on household items. She never noticed the following:

1. A 125k pound motorhome
2. £2,618 high end salt and pepper grinders
3. £3,500 on a silver wine coaster
4. a Starwalker fountain pen costing £4,225
5. a £3,232 Jura GIGA 5 coffee machine

She must have been very distracted!

The full list is here. Titular honours are:

DNZM

To be Dames Companion of the said Order:

Mrs Susan Jean Hassall, ONZM, JP, of Cambridge. For services to education.

Professor Elizabeth Mary Rata, of Auckland. For services to education.

KNZM

To be Knights Companion of the said Order:

Dr Paul Andrew Baker, of Auckland. For services to health.

Mr Peter Francis Boshier, of Wellington. For services to the State and the judiciary.

Professor Emeritus James William Chapman, of Palmerston North. For services to literacy education.

Mr David Charles Ellis, CNZM, of Ngaruawahia. For services to the thoroughbred industry and philanthropy.

Nice to see so many in education get honoured.

Radio NZ reports:

New Zealand First will campaign on establishing a Special Economic Zone at Marsden Point to “provide relief” from planning regulations and the RMA in the area. …

He explained the proposed party policy, saying a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) can have varied policies, but include tax breaks, wage subsidies, reduced regulation, and investment in physical, transport or communications infrastructure. …

Industries in that economic zone would not have to deal with local/ regional councils, DOC or other agencies, he said.

Instead, Peters said, planning rules and RMA consents would be “determined quickly by a government panel”.

“This expert panel would make decisions based on whether the changes will grow the economy and achieve the aims of the zone.”

Other “relief options” the party was considering were changes to the Overseas Investment Act to “make it easier for quality foreign investment in the zone to occur while at the same time protecting our national interest and ownership.”

So an SEZ would have lower taxes, reduced regulation, no local government restrictions, and easier foreign investment.

I propose two SEZs. One for the North Island and one for the South Island!

Dr Ruth Bonita writes:

How worried should we be about reports of a growing illicit tobacco market in Aotearoa New Zealand? We don’t yet know the extent of this market but it’s estimated to be 5-10 percent of the tobacco market, and we should take it seriously enough to avoid ending up like Australia, where it’s estimated that more than half of the total tobacco market and more than 90 percent of vapes come from illicit sources.

Australia is a disaster in terms of the black market.

Recent research showed that almost two thirds of 18-24 year olds who smoke report using illicit tobacco.

Getting them into the criminal system young!

This distribution points to how illicit markets develop; illicit tobacco is driven primarily by price. When legal cigarettes become expensive, the black-market grows. The growth of illegal cigarette sales is a rational, although unwelcome, response to rising prices. 

Many New Zealand smokers are switching to vaping – a smoke-free nicotine product – which are widely available, well-regulated and relatively affordable. Readers don’t need reminding, but I’ll say it anyway: it’s the smoke from burning tobacco at very high temperatures that kills people, not – as far as we know – the nicotine. These smoke-free alternatives to cigarettes provide a legal substitute for those who would otherwise continue to smoke. 

The direct implications for illicit trade are obvious. Where there are affordable and safer alternatives there will be less demand for illicit tobacco.  

A legal less lethal alternative is much preferable to the illegal lethal black market in tobacco.

This matters. A 2026 paper published in the Society for the Study of Addiction suggests that Australia has in effect lost control of its tobacco and nicotine market. The combination of very high tobacco taxes and highly restricted access to vaping has contributed to a large and growing illicit market. 

The authors conclude: “Punitive taxes on cigarettes and restricted access to lower-risk nicotine products have diverted Australians who use nicotine into illicit markets and may also have increased cigarette smoking among young people.”

By contrast, they note that New Zealand has seen faster declines in smoking alongside a smaller illicit market under a more permissive and controlled regulatory approach to vaping. 

NZ is doing it right. Australis is not.

The Free Press reports:

A new report out today accuses both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) of spending tens of millions of dollars on electing Democratic political candidates, and prioritizing politicking over the needs and interests of their union members.

The report, conducted by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), Gevura Fund, and Rutgers University, among others, found that of the NEA’s $450 million annual disbursement budget from fiscal year 2025, less than $46 million, or 10 percent, was spent on activities directly representing the union’s constituents.

Public sector unions in the US are basically a branch of the Democratic Party.