The debate over whether Maori Chiefs intended to cede sovereignty when they signed the Treaty of Waitangi is an academic debate, that doesn’t actually impact whether or not the NZ Government today is sovereign.

The US is a sovereign state because it won a war against the former sovereign. Saudi Arabia became a sovereign state in 1932, not through a treaty etc. Sovereignty applies to geography, not races.

In the UK Scotland is semi-autonomous and the Scottish Government governs the territory of Scotland. But it does not govern Scots living in England (but it does govern English living in Scotland).

In the US some Native American tribes have a degree of sovereignty, but only on their tribal lands.

But it is still good to understand our history, so it is useful to try and understand as well as we can, what the intention of the signers was.

Don Brash summarised the view put forward on a recent Working Group podcast:

The argument which Mr Modlik advanced for why Maori chiefs had not ceded sovereignty in 1840 seemed to be based on the notion that it would have been ridiculous to expect some hundreds of chiefs, representing perhaps 100,000 people, to have surrendered ultimate authority to a couple of British officers and a handful of missionaries.  No, they had agreed to allow the British to have authority over the British settlers but Maori were to be free to continue as before.  At most, there was to be shared authority, a partnership between the chiefs on the one hand and British authorities on the other.  And indeed, that argument, taken in isolation, sounds plausible.

I’m always somewhat wary of an argument based on assumption/logic, than the historical record. But it is useful to look at this argument? Why would 100,000 people surrender sovereignty to a smaller number of people?

Is it plausible that the chiefs who heavily outnumbered the British in 1840 would have been willing to surrender to some distant authority?  Yes, when it is recalled that the previous four decades had seen almost unbelievable inter-tribal warfare, with tens of thousands of men, women and children slaughtered – more dead, it is believed, than all the New Zealand deaths in all the wars since 1840, including the First and Second World Wars.  The chiefs would have seen British authority as a way of ending that inter-tribal slaughter (and perhaps protecting them from French forces which some tribes believed, with some justification, were out for revenge of an earlier massacre of the crew of a French vessel). 

 Many of those who signed would also have been aware of how advanced Britain was at that time, and how powerful its naval vessels.

I didn’t realise more died in the musket wars than in WWI and WWII. Sobering.

It is worth reflecting what would have happened if the Treaty had not been signed? How much longer would the musket wars have continued? Would there be one country or multiple countries? Would there be democracy and the rule of law, and if so how much longer would it have taken to eventuate.

When one of the greatest of the Ngapuhi chiefs who signed the Treaty in 1840 died in 1871, his gravestone carried the words “In memory of Tamati Waka Nene, Chief of Ngapuhi, the first to welcome the Queen’s sovereignty in New Zealand”.

Interesting.

The PM announced:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today announced the appointment of Sir Brian Roche as the next Public Service Commissioner. …

This is no surprise, except how long it took. Roche was, to many, the obvious person for the job. He has been a “fixer” for Governments of all stripes. His intensive experience for both private and public sectors has been:

• CEO of NZ Post
• Senior partner, PWC
• Head of successful bid team for 2011 Rugby World Cup
• Chief Crown negotiator for various Treaty settlements
• Chair of Hurricanes Rugby
• Chair of Antartica NZ
• Chair, Tait Electronics
• Chair, City Rail Link
• Inaugural Chair, Auckland Regional Transport Authority
• Inaugural Chair, NZ Transport Agency
• Deputy Commission, HB DHB
• Chair, Wellington Gateway Project (Transmission Gully)

The Government wants a change manager, not a status quo manager., So they didn’t want someone currently in a leadership role in the public service. But putting in an outsider with no public sector experience could be a bad fit. So Roche is ideal – he knows the public sector well but is someone whom the Government can trust to make the service more effective and efficient.

I suspect the reason it took so long to appoint him, is that he was very happy being semi-retired and the PM probably had to be very persuasive to convince him to take it up.

Research NZ found:

• Change name to Aotearoa 8% (-5% from 2022)
• Change name to Aotearoa New Zealand 19% (-5%)
• Change name to something else 2% (+2%)
• Do not change name 66% (+7%)
• Unsure 5% (+2%)

So the current name is 8 times more popular than Aotearoa and 3.5 times more popular than Aotearoa NZ.

Never thought I’d by writing this, but Grant Robertson is becoming my favourite Vice-Chancellor.

Critic reports:

The University of Otago’s stance of “institutional neutrality” on Israel’s actions in Palestine has continued to be fiercely criticised by its staff and students. On Wednesday, October 9th, the Otago Students for Justice in Palestine (OSJP) held a peaceful campus protest that spiralled into one student being arrested for wilful damage of a Clocktower reception glass door.

Institutional neutrality means that staff and students can take their own view on highly contested issues, as it should be. All power to Grant Robertson for standing firm on this.

Neave also came for Otago’s stubbornly neutral stance, yelling, “In taking no stance, this university de facto endorses the continuation of the genocide. This should forfeit their claimed role of the conscience and critic of society. If you can’t take a stand against genocide, what the fuck can you take a stand for?” Their words were met with applause and shouts of “shame!” from the crowd.

Genocide is the view of Neave. Disagreeing with him doesn’t;’t mean you support genocide. It means you don;’t agree that what Israel is doing is genocide, or even remotely close to it.

I wonder if Neave thinks you should also take a stand against murder, rape torture and kidnapping of civilians? To quote him, “If you can’t take a stand against murder, rape, torture and kidnapping, what the fuck can you take a stand for?”

Neave wrapped up their speech by calling on protestors to stage a sit-in inside the Clocktower on the stairs. OSJP said this was “a move carefully planned by OSJP harkening back to current Vice-Chancellor Grant Robertson’s very own clocktower [sic] occupation in his university days.” As a group broke off from the crowd to rush inside, Neave warned that doing so would be at their own risk as they “might be trespassed.” 

“The energy changed quickly when students were met with violence,” claimed OSJP. “Campus Watch and Proctor Dave Scott forcefully held the protestors back at the door, shouting and pushing them back through the entrance. A Campus Watch officer grappled a student who had made it past the front doors and was standing in the entranceway. In an attempt to wrestle her backwards, he collided with an interior glass door which shattered.”

“I was appalled to see Campus Watch put guarding the Clocktower above the safety of our students. We are a peaceful group, and that was a totally excessive response,” said an OSJP spokesperson.

The double speak is hilarious. They tried to force their way past security staff, and they claim they are the ones who are peaceful!

A reader e-mailed the Minister of Transport (and me) the following:

7.6c per kilometre (plus a processing fee) as Road User Charges for electric vehicles was not a clever idea.

Why? Simple answer; an EV now pays a lot more in Road User Charges than a petrol vehicle.

It is not unusual for a petrol vehicle to do 50 miles per gallon, even my 1998 Honda Logo does this on a run.

50 mpg is 17.6 kilometres per litre.

As far as I know petrol tax is 70c per litre. Therefore a reasonably efficient petrol engined car will pay 4c a kilometre in Road User Charges.

In fact, 7.6c per k is the equivalent of 26 miles per gallon, or 9 litres per 100 kilometres. Therefore, any petrol engined vehicle that uses less than 9 litres per 100 kilometres is paying less towards the upkeep of the roads than an EV.

The potential situation for plug in hybrids is even worse.

Looking at it the other way. With petrol at $2.40 per litre, a 50mpg car will pay 13.6c per kilometre for fuel.

If an EV does 6k per kWhr and electricity is 30c per kWhr, an EV will pay 12.6c per kilometre. (Fuel cost plus RUC)

What incentive is there for people to convert to an EV? 

Particularly as on a long run with electricity at 85c per kWhr (rapid charger rate), the overall rate per k is now 21.8c for an EV.

Paying 50% more to use the roads on a long run, for the privilege (in an EV) of it also being slower (charge up time) and colder (a heater uses a lot of power), is hardly much of an incentive.

It is abundantly clear that the Road User Charge rate for an EV is grossly excessive. It should be more like 4c a km.

I did say you were idiots for imposing a 7.6km RUC rate for EVs, I won’t resile from that statement.

As someone who drives an EV and looked at costs before purchasing, this didn’t seem quite right to me. So I calculated the following:

Just so you know the current petrol tax (including ETS) is around 125c a litre. Also 18 kms per litre seems very optimistic. 14 is what NZTA uses.

So a typical car will will do cost $1.25/14 or 8.9 c a litre, which is more than 7.6 for EVs.

At the current price of $2.55 a litre a typical car will pay 18.2c per km for fuel.

The cost of electricity per KWhr (once line charges are excluded) is 21c according to MBIE so an EV will pay 21c/6 or 3.5c/km plus 7.6 RUCs which is 11.1 c per km which is still well under the 18.2 for a petrol car.

So what does a 7.1c a km saving come to on an annual basis? On average we drive 14,000 kms a year so annual savings of $994 a year. Whether an EC makes sense will depend on the price compared to a similar petrol vehicle, available kms travelled and also likely savings from servicing costs due to no internal combustion engine.

Stuff reports:

Wellington Combined Taxis Ltd has gone into voluntary administration.

Sad news. They were the taxi company I always used, before Uber came along.

Sadly they failed to keep up with technology. If they had developed a system where you can order them through your phone with the click of a button, can be notified when they arrive, and don’t have to spend a couple of minutes paying them at the end of the journey, then many more people would use them.

The other factor is pricing. An Uber from my place to the airport is around $55 and a taxi around $110. Unless someone else is paying, you won’t choose the $110 option.

The FSU released:

University of Auckland Senate rightly rejects flawed academic freedom policy after lengthy four-year development process 
 
After more than four years of development, academic staff at the University of Auckland have overwhelmingly rejected the Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom Policy that was presented to Senate in September, says Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive of the Free Speech Union.

 “It is good news that the academics of the University of Auckland pushed back on such a flawed policy. It would have imposed constraints on speech creatinga chilling effect on academic freedom and discourse at the university. 

This is good news. The policy is a trojan horse for censorship. They should simply adopt the excellent Otago University one.

I’ve published at Patreon the results of an exclusive poll on how people would vote in a referendum on a four year term vs three year term.

These exclusive poll results are put on my Patreon because that is how they get funded. It costs money to poll on topical issues, so the Patreon helps fund my ability to poll and publish on issues where there is no client.

Google announced:

As a significant longtime supporter of New Zealand’s news industry, we are deeply concerned about the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. This Bill proposes a “link tax” that would require Google to pay simply for linking to news articles. While Google supports efforts to foster a sustainable future for New Zealand news, this Bill is not the right approach. We have outlined these concerns transparently in public submissions and in ongoing consultation with the Government.

We’ve been transparent with the Government that if the Bill were to proceed on its current trajectory and became law, we would be forced to make significant changes to our products and news investments. Specifically, we’d be forced to stop linking to news content on Google Search, Google News, or Discover surfaces in New Zealand and discontinue our current commercial agreements and ecosystem support with New Zealand news publishers.

This is no surprise. The Government should dump Willie Jackson’s bill to tax news links.

The reality is that news stories are a minute fraction of overall revenue for Google. Of course Google will not accept a law that requires them to pay more money for something than they make from it.

On the other hand, the media gain greatly from people being able find their stories through Google. We know this because they can block their stories from Google with a simple line of code. They choose not to, because the extra traffic brings in revenue.

No states have flipped in the last two days but Arizona and North Carolina have trended a bit more towards Trump and Pennsylvania towards Harris. This marginally helps Harris in my view as Pennsylvania is the critical state at this stage.

But it remains the closest election in term of polls in modern history. Even a tiny polling error either way could deliver all seven swing states to Trump or Harris. As Trump outperformed the polls in 2016 and 2020, I would regard him as favourite at this stage.

The Herald reports:

Wellington’s Bordeaux Bakery is closing all three of its stores, with the owner blaming council road changes outside its Thorndon Quay business for a significant reduction in revenue.

The bakery and cafes in Thorndon Quay, Featherston St, and Lambton Quay are all closing on Sunday, and the wholesale bakery operation too.

Owner Tony Bates told the Herald he was devastated to have to shut up shop, and primarily blames the council’s “ongoing removal of car parks”.

“Everyone keeps telling us how hard it is to get to us”, he said.

I know the TQ Bordeaux Baker well. I lived opposite it for 14 years and my office has been within 50 metres of it for over 20 years. Great food and great service. It is very sad to see them go.

As someone who has lived and worked there for 20 years, I have first hand experience of what it is like to access it, Since 2015 when I moved away, I need to find a park when popping into my office which is almost next door.

It used to be easy. There was always a park within 50 metres or so. Now it is is near impossible. You circle around and around until one comes free, or you give up.

I find it interesting that certain supporters of the current Council leadership always rush in and claim they know better than the actual business owners why they have closed. In this case we have seen them claim that the food was rubbish since a change of ownership many years ago, and that the fact another cafe on another road around a km away hasn’t closed, that it is the fault of the business. This mob are so good at victim blaming, they could be defence lawyers for Harvey Weinstein. Oh they also blame the Government’s public service cuts.,

“We’ve lost between 60-70% of our turnover because of the works outside.”

Business owners monitor sales and patronage on a weekly or daily basis. They know when things change.

Council documents from 2021 outline plans to reduce the total number of car parks on the stretch from 333 to 202, which it said was “expected to be sufficient based on average occupancy”.

Someone should explain the difference between average and peak to the Council.

A reader writes in:

I was surprised to receive the below email today regarding new prosecution guidelines which will apply to the Police Prosecution Service and Crown Solicitors from 1 January 2025.

The press release for the new guidelines (attached) states:

“Research over many years has consistently found that Māori are significantly overrepresented in the criminal justice system at every stage, including as victims, and we recognised at the start of the project that the discretion to prosecute may contribute to that. The Guidelines expressly reference these disproportionate impacts and assist prosecutors by providing guidance about the matters to factor into their decisions. I am grateful to the kaitiaki and kaimahi of Ināia Tonu Nei for their wisdom, generosity and commitment. These Guidelines are much better for their input” says Ms Jagose.”

The new guidelines themselves (attached) state:

The guidelines ask prosecutors to think carefully about particular decisions where a person (whether the victim or the defendant) is Māori, or a member of any other group that is disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system. This does not promote different treatment based on ethnicity or membership of a particular group; it instead alerts prosecutors to situations and factors that may deliver inequitable outcomes for some people in those groups.

I have not read the full document as it is 208 pages but doubtless there will be much more of the same.

Essentially the new guidelines require prosecutors to take into account race when deciding whether to prosecute someone, or withdraw charges against them. Despite the claim that “this does not promote different treatment based on ethnicity”, it is clearly designed to do exactly that.

As a defence lawyer, when advocating for my clients it will now be logical for me to include in my emails to the prosecution something like “I note that my client is Maori and therefore consideration must be given to the new Solicitor-General’s guidelines when deciding whether it is appropriate to continue with this prosecution.”

The email was sent to lawyers at 2pm on 3 October 2024 and as yet the new prosecution guidelines don’t seem to have been covered by the media.

DPF: I wonder if these new prosecution guidelines were done with the knowledge of Government Ministers? We have the Government saying public services should be based on need, not ethnicity – and Crown Law is saying prosecution decisions must take ethnicity into account.

From the New Zealand Herald focused on the growth of Auckland schools and some that are bursting at the seams (i.e. these are not my numbers).

1. Mt Albert Grammar Principal Patrick Drumm is thankful for the school being allocated $30million to establish 22 new classrooms and accommodate 600 extra students.
   
   So … an establishment cost of $50,000 per student.
   
2. Drumm notes that a new State school establishment for 600 students would cost $250million.
   
   So … an establish cost of $416,666 per student.
   
3. If the new Charitable Company I am involved with is awarded the four wonderful Charter schools we have proposed that establish cost would be well under $9million (at a rough, but experienced, guess) for 1,160 students.
   
   So an establishment cost of $7,758 per student.
   

The ongoing interest (or opportunity) costs, at 5%, for 5 years are:

MAGS: $1.5m per annum (600 students) i.e. $2,500 per student – 5 year total $7.5m

New State School: $12.5m per annum (600 students) i.e. $20,833 per student – 5 year total $62.5m

Education 710+: $450,00 per annum (1160 students) i.e. $387 per student – 5 year $2.25m

Just on establishment and the first 5 years these Charter Schools (for equal numbers) would save the taxpayer:

$32,623,000 against the MAGS situation.

$307,613,000 against the State new school situation (i.e. over twice the cost of the 15 proposed new Charter Schools over four years).

The Charter schools then operate at the same per student cost for similar sized and demographics State Schools – and have actual performance targets to meet.

You will probably not hear this from the teacher unions or the Labour Party.

I knew my Economics degree would be useful at some point.

Alwyn Poole
alwyn.poole@gmail.com
Innovative Education Consultants Ltd
Education 710+ Ltd
(both sites currently being re-done)
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

Stuff reports:

A self-described Nazi on Tuesday became the first person convicted in the Australian state of Victoria of performing an outlawed Nazi salute.

Jacob Hersant, 25, gave the salute and praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in front of news media cameras outside the Victoria County Court on October 27, 2023, after he had appeared on a unrelated charge. It was six days after the Victoria state government had made the salute illegal.

The Federal Parliament passed legislation in December that outlawed nationwide performing the Nazi salute in public or to publicly display, or trade in, Nazi hate symbols.

Anyone who does a Nazi salute should face severe reputational damage. However they should not face criminal sanctions for it.

The only exception to this is arguably countries where the Nazis came to power such as Germany and Austria.

The BBC reports:

A plan to restrict the opening hours of fast food outlets near schools has failed to curb childhood obesity, with rates instead rising.

In 2014 Medway Council put rules in place which limited takeaways if they were located within 400m (1,312ft) of a school.

Public health activists seem to love these bans of anything within x metres of a school. As I have pointed out many times these are as the crow flies, so a 400 metre radius ban zone will cover an area of 50 hectares. In most cities it would ban them basically everywhere.

Public Health England data showed that 21.9% of reception children and 32.8% of year six children measured were either overweight or obese in Medway in 2013/14 – but 10 years on the rates have risen with 22.3% of Medway’s reception children and 37.4% of year six children being overweight or obese.

I am not surprised. The answer to child obesity is almost always parenting.

Councillor Teresa Murray, the authority’s deputy leader and chairwoman of the health and wellbeing board, said the council’s decision had been “the right one” but that “no single policy” could tackle the ever-growing epidemic of childhood obesity.

This means you can claim anything you do is the right decision, on the basis that no single policy works.

The table above shows the polling averages from the six leading forecast sites in the US.

It is as close as you can get. Three have Trump winning, and three have Harris winning. The most common forecast is Harris wins by 276 to 262 which means just one of three states going the other way, would give victory to Trump.

I’ll update this table every couple of days.

Readers will know I am a supporter of the End of Life Choice Act. In fact I was an active campaigner for it. I think it has provided much needed choice to many New Zealanders who were terminally ill.

But this story from the Herald is a concern:

Two members of a committee tasked with ensuring assisted deaths complied with the law say the oversight process was so inadequate they would not have known if someone had died wrongly.

The former End of Life Review Committee members said they were “extremely concerned” about how little information they received about patients’ deaths and raised it repeatedly with the Ministry of Health and successive Health Ministers.

When they complained about receiving assisted death reports with blank sections they were told by the ministry to assume nothing was wrong – a response which led one of the members to step down from the role. Another member described it as a “tick-box” exercise.

As I said I am a big supporter of the Act, but it is essential that the safeguards are rigorous and not seen as a tick-box exercise.

The two committee members occasionally attempted to raise what they felt were important issues but were told that this was not within the scope of their role.

Wensley became concerned about the unequal distribution of assisted deaths, noting that more of them were occurring in small, rural areas than anticipated. When she sought more data to “check her sense”, it was denied by the Assisted Dying Secretariat, she said in a letter to former Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall.

A Ministry of Health spokesperson said Wensley had raised an important equity question and officials had taken it seriously. But the relatively new service lacked enough data to draw conclusions about equity and access, and this would be investigated when a more robust dataset was available – likely to be several years.

The spokesperson also said that such an investigation was not within the committee’s responsibilities and that Wensley’s question had been passed to the ministry’s research team.

Maybe the review should look at changing the law so that such issues are within the committee’s responsibilities.

The Herald reports:

A pharmacist and transgender refugee who was convicted last month for pouring tomato juice over the head of anti-transgender rights activist Posie Parker – prompting the controversial British speaker to promptly leave New Zealand over safety fears – returned to a courtroom today as her lawyer asked to have the conviction rescinded. …

He acknowledged there was a degree of premeditation to the confrontation, but he said Rubashkyn now regrets her actions – feeling remorse for both the victims and also for the backlash experienced by the transgender community as a result of her actions.

Oh, what absolute nonsense. She feels zero remorse for her victims. We know this because she boasted on TV about how proud she was. The only remorse is for the consequences of her actions on her. A useful take is here.

If the conviction is rescinded, then it will signal that violence is acceptable to silence speech you disagree with.

Joel McManus writes:

There are three options being considered, but the one that has garnered the most interest is the long tunnel, running all the way underneath the Wellington city centre.

The investigation has cost $1.6 million so far, which is not an unreasonable amount of money to spend during the early stages of a multibillion-dollar city-building project. But this is a transport minister who has been happy to attack other projects as “a gravy train for consultants”, which does make it seem a bit more hypocritical. 

Not really. Auckland Light Rail had $230 million of spending which resulted in nothing. The cycle bridge had $560 million that resulted in nothing. They were planning to spend $100 million just one a business case for Wellington rapid transit. LGWM spent $83 million on consultants that resulted in an unpopular pedestrian crossing.

By contrast $1.6 million to get some idea of how much Wellington’s largest ever transport project would cost, is in a different galaxy for spending.

The city council and regional council both hate the long tunnel. 

That is almost proof it is a good idea.

There is no natural constituency clamouring for it other than Simeon Brown himself and some late-career Marks and Johns at Waka Kotahi NZTA. 

This is, respectfully, nonsense. To claim there is no natural constituency for a tunnel that would knock 15 minutes each way off travel times is a bizarre view.

But the long tunnel isn’t stupid. It’s expensive and high-risk, but if it were viable, it would be a fundamentally good idea.

Here we agree. It is fundamentally a good idea. The two major negatives are:

• Cost. At $5 billion you’d do it without banking. at $10 billion you’d be blinking a lot.
• Time: Perfect can be the enemy of good. A second Mt Vic tunnel has less benefits but can be done quicker than the mega-tunnel. Do you do something that could reduce congestion in less than 10 years or something that might not be completed for say 15 years?

The long tunnel would solve real problems. It would speed up trips through Wellington and, more importantly, free up space in the city centre. Right now, State Highway 1 empties out onto Vivian Street, which would be a much more popular retail area if it wasn’t a car sewer. It cuts straight across Cuba Street, causing a noticeable drop in foot traffic south of the intersection.

Not having SH1 cut the city in two would be a good thing.

Then, there’s the Basin Reserve, which has been an awkward issue for transport. It sits right in the middle of a complex intersection, with traffic going east/west between SH1 and the airport and traffic going north/south toward the city. 

The NS and EW traffic must be separated. This tunnel is not the only way to do it, but certainly would achieve that.

It’s not a question of whether the long tunnel would be good for Wellington – it would. The question is whether it is the best use of money. Is $4 billion (or whatever the final cost ends up being) worth it for a slightly quicker drive from the Hutt to the airport, a few apartments in Te Aro, and a slightly better service on the Number 1 bus?

Not slightly quicker. Potentially half an hour quicker for a return trip.

But the opportunity cost is very real. The more it costs, the harder the case for it is.