Professor John Raine notes:

As regards STEM subjects, when European colonists arrived in the late 18th and into the 19th century, Māori scientific/technical knowledge was approximately at the stage of other developing societies at or pre-3,000 BC, acknowledging that the spiritual/vitalist/animist parts of matauranga Māori would have been differentiated form those of other societies by the names for, and qualities ascribed to, flora, fauna and inanimate objects, and also to gods such as Ranginui/sky father.  This was a society without the wheel, and without mathematics, physics, chemistry or biology, but which had extensive phenomenological understandings of food sources, that fire cooks and can cause burns, that clean water is necessary for life, that some plants have medicinal properties, weather patterns, and navigation by the sun and stars, etc. Such knowledge is of very considerable interest from a historical point of view, clearly desirable to preserve for cultural reasons, but of current relevance to STEM courses only if it complements modern science in a functional way, as unpalatable as that is to those who would include it.

Hard to disagree – well for me anyway.

Bill Barr writes:

Last week, a federal judge in Massachusetts sent an unmistakable message to campus administrators in the United States: when it comes to combating antisemitism, talk is cheap. Judge Richard Stearns greenlighted a student organization’s case against Harvard that alleges the university failed to protect the civil rights of Jewish students even as they were harassed, intimidated, and violently attacked by their peers. “The facts as pled show that Harvard failed its Jewish students,” Stearns wrote in his 25-page decision.

Harvard urged the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that campus administrators had done enough to combat antisemitism by issuing condemnations of it, holding listening sessions about it, pulling together a task force on it, and pledging to take action against it. But Judge Stearns refused. He rightly observed that federal civil rights law demands more than denunciations—it requires meaningful action. Dismissal of the case, he reasoned, “would reward Harvard for virtuous public declarations that for the most part, according to the [Plaintiffs], proved hollow.”

Wow, a Judge that said you need to do more than just issue a press release. Excellent.

The Herald reports:

Kāinga Ora sold 167 state houses between 2019 and the beginning of 2024 – bringing in more than $80 million in sales.

“Selling vacant, older homes on under-utilised, high-value land that is not suitable for redevelopment is good asset management practice and part of our housing renewal strategy.

“Revenue generated is reinvested back into the portfolio.”

What they did was absolutely sensible. But no doubt when the same occurs under this Government, Labour and allies will claim it is privatisation, evil etc. It will be hypocritical nonsense, because they did exactly the same.

NewstalkZB reports:

A former Labour leader’s broken ranks with his Party, in supporting AUKUS pillar two.

Former Defence Minister Andrew Little has claimed the current Government is right to investigate the military intelligence-sharing agreement with the US, the UK, and Australia.

Little says the nation needs to update its defence technology to address possible threats.

“There are threats in our region that are new, and are real – and we have to equip our Defence Force. Where we get that technology to equip them is the question, and in that respect, AUKUS is probably relevant.”

Absolutely right. AUKUS is not a mutua defence pact. It is a technology sharing pact. We need it.

Ben Strong writes:

The Olympic Games should be the pinnacle of the sport. This is in two ways. Winning an Olympic gold medal should be the absolute pinnacle of that sport, and in the spirit of its amateur traditions, sports that are professional behemoths shouldn’t really be involved.

That’s why the axe should swing firmly in the direction of the massive team and professional sports.

Football is the world’s largest team sport and the pinnacle is to win the World Cup, followed by the likes of the Champions League in the club game. In the men’s Olympic tournament, it’s basically acknowledged that there’s a problem by making a bizarre rule that players must be under the age of 23.

I totally agree. Would you rather win Wimbledon or get an Olympic medal in Tennis? It is Wimbledon. Same with golf, football etc. If winning an Olympic gold isn’t the most sought after achievement in the sport, then it shouldn’t be an Olympic sport.

The best thing about the majority of Olympic sports is their simplicity.

Who is the fastest runner in the world? Who is the highest, or the longest, jumper in the world? Who is able to lift the biggest weight? Who can throw a spear, or a rock the furthest? Who can climb this wall the fastest?

Simple, right?

So why do we have a massive number of swimming events, half of which are dedicated to ways for people to swim slower than they might another way?

Does athletics also include backwards running, or a skipping race, or the wrong armed shot put, or the underarm javelin?

The swimming is great, but it should simplify and only include various distances and team events, not prescribed strokes for each event.

The medley could be an outlier, where one athlete has to master four different swimming strokes.

That is a fair point also.

Louise Upston announced:

Cabinet has also agreed to progress a suite of new initiatives that will increase obligations and consequences for job seekers from early next year, including:

• Extending the period over which an obligation failure counts against a beneficiary from 12 months to two years
• Requiring Jobseeker Support recipients to reapply every six months
• Making it mandatory for all beneficiaries with work obligations to have a jobseeker profile before their benefit is granted
• A new money management sanction that will see half a person’s benefit go onto a payment card that can only be used for a limited range of essential products and services (fulfilling a National-ACT coalition commitment)
• A new community work experience sanction that will require beneficiaries to build their skills and confidence to help them get a job

“These changes come with increased support in the form of a new phone-based case management service for 4000 job seekers aged 18 to 24, and 2100 extra places for young people to get community job coaching,” Louise Upston says.

The vast majority of NZers would see these minimal responsibilities as quite reasonable.

A guest post by Spartacus Oblivious:

On Sunday we were in mourning because the All Blacks had lost, we were happy because our Olympic medal haul was looking good and the rest of the world was bubbling away with the usual conflict and mayhem. Plenty of opportunity amongst that lot for a good headline then.

So what does the Herald on Sunday lead with?

Well, turns out a big District Commander had been mean to some of his staff. 

Queue the outrage

“Bruce has been found by the “Independent Police Conduct Authority” to have bullied a senior officer by yelling at them in two senior management meeting leaving the staffer feeling belittled and disrespected”

Shit, If a day went by where I wasn’t belittled and disrespected at work, I would think I wasn’t having any sort of impact.

How is it possible for senior officers to be so emotionally fragile that they go running to some sort of mummy organisation to say that they have been picked on.

And what is this signalling to the crims, If they toss a few insults at pursuing cops insults like  ooh I don’t know .. “If we gave you an enema we could bury you in a match box” then they know the cops would sculk off and cry in a corner.

This is the inevitable outcome when we feminise everything, want safe spaces, want hate speech banned, and are always looking to others to protect us from everything. Including now emotional slights.

Man up I say, even if you are a woman

The first and second commandments for all of us should be 

1                    Don’t be a wuss

2                    Really I mean it, don’t be a wuss

Salient reports:

In VUWSA’s statement on August 1st, they indicated that the presidents of Aotearoa’s students associations had met and decided to institute a national body to replace NZUSA. Salient sat down with VUWSA President, Supreme Leader, First of Her Name, Marcail Parkinson. …

According to Parkinson, NZUSA had become structurally unstable, and corrupt. “The role of the President effectively became a power grab… people were using fees to attend conferences overseas rather than helping students”. At the start of 2024, the President of NZUSA resigned with no plans for another election, bringing to light a range of issues within the organisation—including the fact that it hadn’t been financially audited in over seven years. 

Not audited in seven years is amazing. And labelling NZUSA as corrupt is strong language.

At a July meeting in Christchurch, the respective student association Presidents of all eight universities convened to launch a new alternative student body—the National Presidents’ Council, which is able to appoint a nationwide spokesperson for students. The body also includes the New Zealand Disabled Students’ Association, the New Zealand International Student’s Association, and Te Mana Ākonga. 

I’ve remarked in the past that students would get a better return from each paying say $10,000 to Saunders Unsworth to advocate for them on tertiary policy issues, than they got from NZUSA.

I’d like to see a credible national student body. What I would do is:

• A board made up of all the campus presidents and sector presidents
• The board elect one of their own as President. This is not a seperate FT role. They would remain a campus president also, and are a Chair of the Board not a CEO.
• A staff of two – an executive director and a comms/policy person
• A focus solely on student education and welfare issues

I hope they manage to set up a credible new body.

The Guardian reports:

A 55-year-old woman has been arrested in relation to a social media post containing inaccurate information about the identity of the suspect in the Southport murders.

The woman, from near Chester, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred and false communications. She is being held in custody by Cheshire police.

This has generated a lot of heat in the UK. If someone knowingly states something false along the lines of “The killer is an asylum seeker” or “The killer is Muslim” then that is false and inciting. Someone tried to burn down a hotel of asylum seekers.

But if someone else has tweeted this, and you simply retweet it because you honestly thought it was true, that is not a good use of criminal law.

So the details in this case matter.

A number of people have claimed that the Hobson’s Pledge advertisement should have been rejected because it calls for the foreshore and seabed to be restored to public ownership. They say it it misleading as they argue it has never been in public ownership.

I don’t see how you can dispute that it used to be in public ownership, because this was set out in statute under the Foreshore and Seabed Act that was passed by the Helen Clark Government in 2004. I quote from it:

The Act gives effect to the object stated in section 3 by vesting the full legal and beneficial ownership of the public foreshore and seabed in the Crown.

We live a democracy with parliamentary supremacy. Parliament in 2004 passed a law vesting the foreshore and seabed in public (crown) ownership. Now you might, like me, think it was a bad law because it undermined property rights of Iwi and hapu, but it was the law of the land.

In 2011 the John Key Government passed the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 which repealed the Helen Clark Act and instead stated:

Neither the Crown nor any other person owns, or is capable of owning, the common marine and coastal area, as in existence from time to time after the commencement of this Act.

So from 2004 to 2011 it was beyond dispute that the foreshore and seabed was in public ownership.

Hobson’s Pledge has a belief that the 2004 Helen Clark law was superior to the 2011 John Key/Chris Finlayson law. I disagree with them, but it is preposterous that their support of the Helen Clark law should be deemed something so abhorrent that media won’t even accept an advertisement allowing them to advocate for a return to the Helen Clark law.

The Herald reports:

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has signed Kim Dotcom’s extradition order, meaning New Zealand will almost certainly deport him to the United States.

German-born Dotcom moved to New Zealand in 2010. He has been facing potential extradition since 2012 when he was arrested as part of a global sting. The US Justice Department pressed charges against Dotcom, including criminal copyright infringement, money laundering, racketeering and wire fraud.

I’ve lost track of how many court cases there has been, but am not surprised with the decision. It doesn’t mean Dotcom is guilty, it means he will face trial. He does have a defence which is plausible, but it will come down to the facts and intent.

It was in November 2020 that the Supreme Court ruled he could be extradited. I’m surprised it took so long for a Minister to sign an extradition order. Maybe previous Ministers didn’t want to do it.

Simeon Brown announced:

The Government will introduce legislation this year to enable time of use schemes to be developed to reduce travel times on our busiest roads and boost economic growth, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.

“Congestion is a tax on time and productivity. It means that we are away from home for longer, sitting in gridlock. It results in fewer jobs being done, fewer goods being moved, and delays to services across the city.

Very pleased to see this. It is a more sophisticated form of user pays.

“Schemes will be focused on increasing productivity and improving the efficiency of traffic flow in our cities. Local councils will propose schemes in their region, with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) leading the design of the schemes in partnership with councils to provide strong oversight and to ensure motorists benefit from these schemes. All schemes will require approval from the Government.

“Time of use schemes will need to consider the impacts on motorists and businesses that use the roads that fall within the charging areas, as well as the impacts on the wider network.

“Any money collected through time of use charging will also be required to be invested back into transport infrastructure that benefits Kiwis and businesses living and working in the region where the money was raised. Councils will not be able to spend this money on other priorities or pet projects.”

This is important, and why the Government needs to sign off on any charging schemes, otherwise Councils would just use them as revenue raisers for pet projects.

The Herald reports:

Vigilantes posing as underage teenagers online are luring men to meet-up spots in Tauranga before forcing them to strip naked and bashing them.

The vigilantes, who are filming their attacks and posting footage online, say they are providing a community service.

But police say their actions are “appalling” and have launched an investigation after receiving a complaint.

The motivation may be good but the actions are not. If you really want to make this your hobby then just record all their online conversations and send it to the Police to follow up.

The group targets gay men by posing as underage boys online and arranging to meet at night, then confronting them.

So they’re not worried about straight men who are pedophiles, just gay ones?

An excellent article in the NZ Herald on the review of the End of Life Choice Act:

She met most of the criteria, Johns said. The requirements include having a terminal illness, being in an advanced state of irreversible decline, experiencing unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved to a tolerable level, and being competent enough to give informed consent. There are also extra safeguards in the law: patients cannot apply purely on the basis of a mental illness, disability, or age.

But Smith failed a key test. Her two assessing doctors could not say with confidence that she was likely to die within six months. Her application was declined.

“She was clearly disappointed,” Johns said. “And what happened after that was totally predictable – she had a terrible time.” Smith became more agitated and afraid. Her memory faded, she struggled to digest food, and she had to wear nappies for incontinence. She needed 24-hour nursing care and was placed in the Te Hopai care facility in Newtown. Her pain was unrelenting.

Smith died in Wellington Regional Hospital in October 2022. It was almost exactly six months since her assisted dying application was turned down.

I was quite involved in the campaign to get the law passed. The six month rule was a compromise to get the numbers to pass it. It would have failed without it. The Greens were bound by a policy pushed by some of their disabled members who thought the bill was devaluing disabled lives and could be used to pressure disabled people to end their lives. This was not the case as you actually had to be suffering from an irremediable condition and in grievous suffering. But better a law that allowed choice for some, than no law that allowed choice for none. And the compromise got the bill through (along with another compromise with NZ First for a referendum to get them on board).

A future law change (presumably a conscience vote in Parliament) would at a minimum need the Greens to change their policy. But even if that happens the current Parliament is more conservative than the 2017 – 2020 Parliament so I wouldn’t rate the chances of a law change as high.

When a doctor says a patient is going to die in two weeks, they are almost always right. Similarly, doctors can accurately predict that a person will die in 12 months around 70% of the time.

Between those two points is a window of uncertainty, where predicting time of death is much more difficult.

“Our law falls right in the middle of that range,” said Dr Gary Payinda, an emergency medicine specialist in Whangarei who provides assisted dying services on his days off.

Payinda said in his experience, a large number of applicants who failed the six-month test reapplied one or two months later when their health had deteriorated further. At this point, they were usually “gravely disabled” and unlikely to live for long enough to go through the application process again.

“So it’s a Goldilocks problem,” Payinda said. “These poor patients are either too healthy or too sick to qualify for assisted dying. And I’ve seen this play out time and time again.”

He is pushing for the requirement to be extended to 12 months.

I’d personally favour having no time limit at all (it should just be based on if it is incurable and the level of suffering), but even extending the time limit from six to 12 months would be beneficial.

Stuff reports:

A speech which ordinarily would have failed to raise attention outside the walls of New Plymouth Boys’ High School has grabbed national attention after a student was banned from delivering it.

Oliver Jull’s speech – The Decline of Western Civilization – was scratched from the school’s speech finals last week out of concerns it could cause offence.

An official reason for the ban has not been forthcoming after Boys’ High headmaster Sam Moore did not respond to questions from the Taranaki Daily News.

Jull, 15, said he was told by a teacher he could not deliver what he had written because it could upset those in a 100-strong audience.

The speech covered Jull’s opinion on the decline of western civilization through the erosion of traditional values, the decline of religion and the impacts of multi-culturalism.

Very sad but not very surprising.

I got sent this graph and was actually quite stunned by it.

As you can see private and public sector labour costs have followed each other quite closely for most of the last 20 years.

But in the last year or two, the increase in the public sector has shot up, while for the private sector it has reduced.

And of course all those public sector costs are funded by taxes on the private sector.

Politico reports:

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) was defeated in a primary Tuesday, becoming the second member of the progressive Squad to be ousted this year after massive spending by pro-Israel groups.

Wesley Bell, the elected lead prosecutor in St. Louis County, Missouri, beat Bush in what became the second most-expensive House primary in history, thanks largely to the over $8 million in spending from the United Democracy Project, the super PAC arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Although the Israel-Hamas conflict had barely factored into the primary — United Democracy Project’s ads were about other topics — the wave of outside spending in the St. Louis-based district had amplified Bush’s vulnerabilities. She’d faced a federal investigation this year into her campaign spending on security services and had alienated some local allies with her voting record.

It wasn’t about Gaza. It was about the fact she is extreme and scandal ridden.

Stuff reports:

A gun has been fired at the distinctive orange ute of a controversial New Plymouth councillor, leaving it pock-marked, as the Māori wards debate begins to heat up in the city again.

Murray Chong campaigned against the introduction of a Māori ward and on Tuesday abstained on a vote on whether or not the council should retain its Te Purutanga Mauri Pūmanawa Māori Ward.

Fighting back tears, Chong told a two-thirds full council chamber “don’t shoot the messenger” before saying that he would not be fronting any resistance to a Māori ward next year because he feared for his safety.

This is appalling that a Councillor feels they can’t safely speak on an issue.

“I’m now scared. I’ve had my life threatened several times in letters. I now can’t walk by myself at night because I’ve been told I will be king-hit and I’ll wake up in a hospital. I’ve had people say they will grab my dog, chop it up into quarters and leave it on my doorstep. I’ve had my daughter hassled.”

Chong said he was used to people yelling obscenities at his house as they drove past, but last week “something even more disgusting [happened]”.

“I don’t even want to say it. It’s a whole other level and now I’m really worried,” he said without elaborating .

So this is more than a few anonymous posters on social media. I hope he has gone to the Police.

During a break, he told RNZ his ute had been hit by a single shot fired at it while parked outside his house on Thursday night.

“It was just a drive-by on my property and the police are looking at that, but it’s another level. I get abused by people driving by. Most people know where I am on a main road. I’m quite used to that but this is a whole other level.

“It was only a slug gun, but it’s still a firearm and it definitely left marks.”

Mayor Neil Holdom said he had seen evidence the Chong’s vehicle had been shot at.

This is the inevitable outcome of an issue becoming so inflamed that rather than having a debate on the pros and cons on race based seats, you have cries of genocide.

Haimona Gray writes:

So what does panic on the streets of England mean for New Zealand? Not a damn thing. 

The West is over, arguably it’s been dead since the end of the Cold War. 

While England has gone through a period of significant political instability and failed leaders over the past 20 years, locally we have reached high levels of stability and cultural harmony. 

Yes, people protested our strict lock-down protocols, but they were a peaceful and ethnically diverse group who only ruined some grass and a slide. 

We, Aotearoa New Zealand, are better than the UK. 

We’re better than The West, too. 

We’re better than any nation on earth when it comes to not being dragged into hatred and division. 

In a joint effort, the U.S. News and World Report, the BAV Group, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed people across 36 countries about racial tolerance. 

New Zealand ranked first, a position it holds in numerous other global studies of peace, societal stability, and freedom.

Far from perfect but better than everyone else. Yet we have a political party that is trying to spark a race war by claims of genocide as a cynical ploy for publicity to increase their vote.

The survey rankings are here.

It is sad and deeply problematic that the only times we seem to engage on the important issue of racism it is a trojan horse for partisan hackery or other interests. 

A Maori bully is still a bully, and some of the most racist people I’ve ever met are fellow Maori. 

We need to check ourselves too sometimes. 

I recently worked for an organisation that was founded a year before I was born. After a few weeks I was talking to the big boss about the history of the company and he informed me that I was the first Maori staff member they have ever had. 

It felt weird. Not ‘bad’ entirely, and certainly not racist, just weird. 

After some time weighing up whether this was a slight or just an earnest statement of a company coming of age, I realised that it was a well intentioned statement meant to highlight that Maori are taking on more prominent roles and breaking into industries that were once the sole domain of pakeha men who attended private schools. 

Like a grisly wound, it can be hard to always see from the outside the healing going on underneath. 

We are going through some growing pains, that’s because we are still growing, but we’re getting to a place as a society where someone can be judged solely for that actions. 

That should be celebrated. 

We should be proud to challenge all people’s bad behaviour equally, we’re judging people for their bad character and not the colour of their skin. 

It’s great we accept refugees and even better that one can go on to be an MP. 

It’s wrong when that person steals thousands of dollars of clothes from local businesses – clothes they could afford given their salary and earning potential as a lawyer – but it is great that a politician can’t just use their influence or play the race card to avoid prosecution.

Can’t agree more.

Racism is real, and should be stomped out anytime it appears, but the seriousness of racism also means it deserves better than being used as a lazy retort when your ‘fave’ gets called out or a half-arsed column idea. 

There is no perfect model nation we can copy from, sadly we’re closer to that status than anyone else. 

Our most Trumpian politicians are indigenous – which is quite wild, America couldn’t imagine such scenes – and our most vocal opponents of these politicians are also indigenous people. 

We’re different. 

We’re a bit special, but we shouldn’t be satisfied just yet, and we certainly shouldn’t be copying off or comparing ourselves to lesser nations such as those of the old Western Civilisation. 

There are still those growing pains, but we’ve evolved beyond West vs East, and we’ll continue to improve with sufficient effort and maturity.

An optimistic but good take.