I’m in Ukraine for a few days, attending the Black Sea Security Forum. For reasons of operational security I can’t blog any details of the Forum until it has concluded, but I can blog about why I am here, and my impressions to date.

I’m here because I think what happens in Ukraine matters. It is not a complicated conflict. Ukraine wants to remain a democratic country where its 40 million people determine their own future. Russia wishes to conquer it and turn it into a puppet state, or even use it as the start of reforming the former Soviet Union. It’s probably the most morally unambiguous conflict since World War II.

So what happens is vitally important to 40 million Ukrainians who are fighting for their nation’s survival as an independent democratic country, but it is also important to the world and New Zealand. As one of the smallest and least powerful countries in the world, we benefit the most from a rules based international order, as opposed to a might based international order. A defeat in Ukraine will not just encourage further Russian expansion in Europe, but will embolden other autocratic regimes.

So when I was given the opportunity to attend the Forum, I thought about it for many weeks, only making a final decision to attend a few weeks ago. I feel very strongly my responsibility to my seven and four year old to remain alive many more years for them, and to be more risk adverse than in my youth. But weighing up against that, the actual risk is very low for me – not zero, but very low. Odessa is a fair way from the frontlines. There are missile attacks from Russia, but a very useful phone app warns you of them, and tells you where the closest shelter is. So far the biggest risk was probably the three hour drive from Moldova, where my driver weaved in and out of traffic constantly as he overtook anyone slower than us.

Ukraine being at war is noticeable. There are military vehicles everywhere along the main road.

Ukraine is not a wealthy country, like many former Soviet countries. The GDP per capita is less than 10% of NZ or around 25% on the PPP basis. Around the same as Vietnam and Ecuador. The outskirts of Odessa look very typical Eastern European, but once you get to the city centre, you have remarkable beauty.

The Odessa Opera House which happened to have on a stunning performance of the Don Quixote ballet the evening I arrived.

Every building (and I mean every) in Odessa flies the Ukrainian flag. It is a reminder of how powerful national symbols can be as a unifying force.

The City Gardens, which is surrounded by cafes with outdoor dining, so was my dinner venue last night.

Deribasovskaya Street.

As I said at the beginning, I can’t yet blog details of the speakers and discussion (or venue) of the Forum, but will do so when I can.

Henry Cooke has a fun piece looking at what may have happened if Winston had picked National in 2017. I agree with most of it, as logically argued.

Cooke says that National would have got a 5th term in 2020, but lost in 2023. Both are probable. However I do wonder if an English/Joyce Government would have let monetary policy get as loose, and the cost of living crisis in 2022/23 may have been lessened. But hard to imagine a sixth term unless Labour had totally self destructed.

A guest post by John Stringer:

Some national-wide polls in the US are suggesting a 1% difference between the candidates (Biden v Trump 40.9 v 41.6%). Trump has led Biden by about 0.7% since early March. But, this is a distraction, as the election is determined BY STATE (ie Electoral College votes) which accrue to 270 to get a winner. As at mid-May Trump is at 313 College votes by State polls. In one sense, ‘popularity’ ACROSS AMERICA is electorally irrelevant.

There will be some big poll movers: the verdict in the Trump electoral spending trial (soon); and the two scheduled debates.

But as it sits, Trump is ahead in polling in State poll averages (all polls in those Electoral Colleges by average over time).

State Analysis

There are some key States to watch, the ‘Deciders’ or ‘Flippers’ as they are sometimes called. In the past Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio. But things have changed. A lot!  But first the SAFE States, that went to either candidate by a safe 12+ points (in recent polls).

Safe BIDEN (12%+ lead in averaged State polls)

With Safe TRUMP added in (12%+ lead in averaged State polls).

This puts the Electoral College counter at Biden 191 v Trump 122 with all the blank States still in play.

A number of these blank States historically LEAN TOWARDS a candidate (say with a 6%+ point lead) and these

can be shaded a hue of Red or Blue to intimate a likely winner. So, you could speculatively ‘add’ votes to a candidate.

Once you add in the LEANING States (historically: 6%+ lead) to the SOLIDS (historically 12%+ lead) you are left with only 

10 States in play, offering 180 Electoral College votes. Without the 10 factored in, it looks like 226 Biden v Trump 132.

We might call these the ’Top 10 that will decide the Election’. 

1.FLORIDA  (30 Electoral Votes) no longer a swing state as it has historically been.

2.TEXAS  (40)

3.Pennsylvan (19)

4.OHIO (17)

5.GEORGIA  (16)

6.N. Carolina (16)

7.MICHIGAN (15)

8.ARIZONA (11)

9.WISCON. (10)

10.NEVADA (06)

Elect. Votes (180)

But only 7 of these are true ‘battleground States’ in 2024 as 3 of the Top10 have large point leads to one candidate, more like an historic SOLID State as a change this time. So, they can speculatively be coloured Red or Blue based on all av polls.

~Stringer preceded DPF as a parliamentary staffer (Beehive press secretary) and political party professional (Nats) and has served on political boards. He has been involved in campaigns in NZ and the UK and was himself a parliamentary candidate.

Shane Jones announced:

Removing the ban on petroleum exploration beyond onshore Taranaki is part of a suite of proposed amendments to the Crown Minerals Act to deal with the energy security challenges posed by rapidly declining natural gas reserves, Resources Minister Shane Jones says.

“Natural gas is critical to keeping our lights on and our economy running, especially during peak electricity demand and when generation dips because of more intermittent sources like wind, solar and hydro,” Mr Jones says.

“When the exploration ban was introduced by the previous government in 2018, it not only halted the exploration needed to identify new sources, but it also shrank investment in further development of our known gas fields which sustain our current levels of use.

“Without this investment, we are now in a situation where our annual natural gas production is expected to peak this year and undergo a sustained decline, meaning we have a security of supply issue barrelling towards us.”

Having the lights go out is not a sensible energy policy!

Rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s petroleum sector will require more than removing the ban. The Coalition Government is proposing further changes, agreed by Cabinet, to re-establish New Zealand as an attractive and secure destination for international investment. These changes were agreed in the New Zealand First and Act coalition agreements with the National Party.

Basically some sort of long-term contracts are needed, otherwise companies won’t commit to investments that a future Labour/Greens/TPM Government could make worthless.

VUW has decided it is morally obliged to refuse a $500 Embassy of Israel Prize scholarship intended for the student who published the best essay on the topic of Israel or the Holocaust.

However it accepts $360,000 a year from the Chinese Government.

I guess they don’t care about Uyghurs.

No comment needed from me … from Newshub today.

“In the year to March, 12.4 per cent of people aged 15 to 24 were not in employment, education or training (NEET), and 14.2 percent of women. That was up from 10.9 percent in total in March 2023, and 11.5 percent for women.

For those aged 20 to 24, the rate was higher – more than 18 percent of women in this age bracket were NEET, up 27 percent year-on-year.

Northland had the highest NEET rate, at 16.3 percent of people aged 15 to 24, followed by Bay of Plenty, at 16.2 percent.”

Alwyn Poole
Innovative Education Consultants
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

The Herald reports:

A Treasury analysis of the Government’s tax cuts has found that the 20 per cent of households with the lowest incomes will see their weekly incomes increase by just $13 a week on average, which is just a third of the increase that the top 20 per cent of households will receive.

Any change to tax brackets or rates will always refund more money to those who pay more tax. They are the ones who have had the largest tax increases over the last 14 years.

What is the useful comparison is how the reduction in tax compares to their overall income. Here’s what they are as a proportion of average income for each quintile:

• 1: 3.1%
• 2: 3.4%
• 3: 3.3%
• 4: 3.0%
• 5: 1.8%

So the bottom three quintiles (low to middle) get the biggest boost in relative income and the top quintile the smallest.

Matt Nippert has looked at this previously and Philip Crump has done some more digging. TPM received $120,000 from the Aotearoa Te Kahu Partnership, which it failed to disclose. The purpose of electoral law is that we know the identify of major donors. So who is this very very generous donor?

I blogged in 2021:

The real mystery is AOTEAROA TE KAHU LIMITED PARTNERSHIP. Go to the register of limited partnerships and you find they act on behalf of AOTEAROA TE KAHU GP LIMITED.

Their shareholder is ATK NOMINEES LIMITED. And their shareholder is MORRISON KENT LIMITED. It is fair to assume Morrison Kent are not the actual shareholders but are acting for someone.

So this leaves the question who actually controls and funds Aotearoa Te Kahu and made the decision to donate $120,000 to the Maori Party?

Well the company has now closed down but the contact address was for a Greymouth Holdings which is registered to Mark Dunphy, the CEO of Greymouth Petroleum and former Fay Richwhite banker. The name may be a reference to the Kahu exploration well near Taranaki.

And former co-leader Tariana Turia praised the company in 2009.

Now I’m all for companies, including oil and gas companies, donating to political parties. But why was this hidden behind multiple entities, especially when the law requires the actual donor to be identified, if the donation is on behalf of someone else.

Questions that should be asked:

• Is the donation actually from Greymouth Petroleum?
• If so, did TPM know it was?
• Why was it hidden behind three other corporate entities?
• What was the rationale for the donation?

The Post reports:

In what will likely prove a controversial speech by Infrastructure minister Chris Bishop to Local Government New Zealand at the Public Trust Hall in Wellington last night, Bishop outlined a significant shake up of how infrastructure is paid for in New Zealand.

And it isn’t just in a speech. In a paper that went to Cabinet on “Improving Infrastructure and Financing”, obtained by The Post, Bishop spelled out the failures of the current financing arrangements and the Government’s new approach.

Between the cabinet paper and the speech, toll roads, congestion charging, public-private partnerships, water meters and GST-sharing for pro-housing councils could all be on the cards for the Government as part of a suite of changes to the way infrastructure is procured and paid for.

“Decades of underinvestment have left us with significant infrastructure needs that we cannot buy our way out of,” the cabinet paper said.

The cabinet paper paints a picture of underinvestment in a system where the life of assets is short because money that should have been spent on maintenance has effectively been siphoned off by councils and the Crown to spend on competing political priorities.

This is great stuff. The current funding system had led to an infrastructure deficit. We should have user pays for infrastructure such as roads and water. Great to see the Government unafraid of changing the status quo, as this is such a critical area to get right.

Radio NZ reports:

The Education Ministry spent nearly $3 million on one course that enrolled just 42 students and had 29 graduates over two years.

Annual funding of $4.5m for the Te Kawa Matakura course was axed in last month’s Budget, with the government citing consistent underspends and low enrolments.

The level 5 diploma in the knowledge and customs of indidual iwi had just two intakes of students in Te Tai Tokerau in 2020 and 2021.

This is staggering. They spent $100,000 per graduate for a level 5 diploma course!

A great graph from Eric Crampton and Bryce Wilkinson:

So the light blue line is the situation just before the 2017 election. Spending at 27% of GDP and forecast to stay between 26% and 28% until 2031. Labour and Greens promised to keep spending to under 30% of GDP.

Then came Grant Robertson’s well being budget. It saw spending rising to 29% of GDP and forecast to be between 28% and 29% until 2033. This is the reasonable sort of difference you might expect – a centre left government spend 1% to 2% more of GDP than a CR government.

Then Covid-19 hit. Spending rose to 33% of GDP, which was justified as a temporary measure with wage subsidies etc. But two years later it is at 34% of GDP, rather than back down to say 30%. This is where the Government just threw money at anything that moved.

The 2023 PREFU forecast spending still being 31.5% of GDP this year.

The 2024 Budget shows spending just 0.6% lower than PREFU for 2025. This is mainly because GDP is now forecast to be much lower. We won’t get back under 30% until 2027 (if fiscal discipline holds). So the only real way to fund extra spending will be findings savings elsewhere, or having the economy grow faster than projected. It won’t be until 2031 that we are at the level Grant Robertson projected in 2019.

Radio NZ reports:

A science fair hot air balloon kit made by Mat from a coke can and a plastic bag is part of Zuru lore.

It was the first of their constructions, and they began making and selling more of them, eventually getting them into local shops.

In the early 2000s, Mat and Nick – dropping out of university where he was doing a law degree – decided to go all-in and moved to a remote part of Guangzhou, China, where they began manufacturing toys.

Anna followed a few years later. The siblings tell the story of doing it tough for several years – including sleeping under a table in the Hong Kong showroom – before they managed to get a break when Walmart took an interest.

100 years ago almost all the wealthy inherited their wealth. Today most billionaires become one through being entrepreneurs. They create something of value.

They now employ 5,000 staff and are trying to create an automated property construction factory for houses. I don’t begrudge them that they are worth $20 billion, I celebrate it. Their wealth is not at the expense of others – it is by providing things of value.

The left parties want to introduce an asset or wealth tax on anyone who gets too successful. Not content with taxing income, they want to redistribute assets also. But what do you think will happen if they ever succeed in NZ? I can tell you what – the Mowbrays will probably relocate somewhere and take all the income tax, company tax etc they pay with them.

The provisional election results for the European Parliament are:

• EPP, centre-right 184 (-3) seats
• S&D, centre-left 139 (-9) seats
• Renew Europe, centre 80 (-17) seats
• ECR, right 73 (+11) seats
• ID, far right 58 (-18) seats
• Greens, left 52 (-15) seats
• The Left, far left 36 (-4) seats
• Independents 45 seats
• Others 53 seats

You need 361 seats for a majority. The right had 301 and the left 227.

Overall the right groupings lost 10 seats and the left groupings 28 seats (total number fell with UK out).

The Herald reports:

The Government will stop funding the controversial Mongrel Mob-led drug rehabilitation programme Kahukura.

Police Minister Mark Mitchell confirmed funding would not continue under the coalition Government, describing initial decisions by Labour to support the programme as “perverse”.

“We are not going to fund the Mongrel Mob to deliver programmes around meth when they are some of the biggest dealers in methamphetamine. It’s just perverse.”

Good. A reminder that it was Jacinda Ardern’s personal decision to fund the programme.

Brooke van Velden writes:

“Workplaces that rely on part-time workers are particularly vulnerable to unexpected staffing shortages. To explore this issue further, the exposure draft set for consultation will include a proposed approach to pro-rating sick leave, to better reflect how much an employee works,” says Ms van Velden.

This is just common sense. Someone who works one day a week shouldn’t get the same sick leave entitlement as someone who works five days a week.

For example, the exposure draft will now include a change in how annual leave is provided, moving from an entitlement system to an accrual system.

“Shifting to an accrual system for annual leave entitlements is just common sense. While workers might not notice any change in their entitlements, from a payroll perspective this should make a huge difference. An accrual system should help avoid the complex calculations that regularly stump payroll software and should therefore reduce compliance costs for employers.

An accrual system is exactly the right way to do this. The current law requires calculations so difficult that no payroll system in NZ can actually calculate it correctly.

I presume the accrual system will be something along the lines of you get 8% of your earnings for a fortnight accrued to your annual leave account, and that can be used for future leave. Nice and simple.

This is incredibly depressing. The problems with UNRWA have been documented over at least a decade. Their schools promote hatred. Around 10% of their staff are Hamas. Numerous staff have taken part in terrorism. The so called independent inquiry was commissioned by UNRWA and was done by someone who was a former board member and champion of them.

HDPA writes:

A big inquiry needs to be called into the allegations about the Māori Party misusing private data.

This can’t be left to a series of government departments to conduct small investigations into themselves.

I agree. As it is those very same agencies who made the decision to contract the organisations involved, the incentives are not good.

TPM has called for everything to be referred to the Police, but that is not the answer as what is alleged here doesn’t just involve potential crimes, but is far wider.

The possible options are:

• The Privacy Commissioner launches an inquiry (but that limits it to privacy issues)
• The Auditor-General launches an inquiry (but that limits it to the actions of agencies, and may not be able to look at data sharing by private organisations)
• A Government inquiry. However this requires a Minister to initiate it, and as it involves another political party should only be done with their consent
• A PSC inquiry. This can be launched by the Commissioner, and has some of the powers of a government inquiry (such as compelling witnesses) but can really only focus on the state actors.

The Government has now announced a PSC inquiry. This is good, but not sufficient. The Privacy Commissioner really needs to also do an inquiry, as only they can look into whether there is unauthorised data sharing between all the various entities in the Tamihere empire.

The Post reports:

For [Robyn] Malcolm, yesterday’s stand “wasn’t all about the environment” – a phrase she assures supporters isn’t one she would use often – it was as much about protecting democracy.

“There’s a reason [consents] take time, it’s because it’s important and the hoops need to be jumped, and all the people who are involved to need to be consulted. The other way leads to fascism, and that’s terrifying to me,” she said.

The hysteria is amusing – speeding up consents is fascism.

Yet when Labour did the same thing in 2021, it was not fascism.

It took eight years for a wind farm in Wellington to be consented. That is just crazy.

But here we have an so called environmentalist arguing that it is more important to have hoops to be jumped, that consenting renewable energy projects.

I discovered through an article in The Post, that Family First has rated major NZ businesses on how woke they are.

Their ratings are:

Extreme Woke

• Air NZ
• ANZ
• ASB
• BNZ
• Kiwibank
• One.nz
• Spark
• Starbucks
• The Warehouse

Woke

• Cotton:on
• Foodstuffs
• Genesis
• Kathmandu
• McDonalds
• Vector
• Westpac
• Woolworths
• Z Energy

Woke Lite

• 2Degrees
• BP
• Bunnings
• Burger King
• Coca Cola
• Contact Energy
• Jetstar
• K Mart
• Mercury
• Meridian
• Restaurant Brands
• Rip Curl

Not Woke

• Briscoes
• Farmers
• Gull NZ
• Hellenstein Glasson
• Harvey Norman
• Just Jeans
• Mitre 10
• Mobil
• SBS Bank
• Stirling Sports

Seems to me the list can be useful to everyone – those who want to only shop at woke stores, and those who don’t want to! It may even help sales.

Personally I care about reliability, price and service far more. For example my speaking terms of engagement forbid customers from booking me to fly Jetstar. I’ll take woke Air NZ that arrives on time anyday!

I also bank with BNZ. Their mortgage offset facility has saved me tens of thousands of dollars, so sorry SBS Bank but not swapping.

Stuff reports:

The Electoral Commission has referred New Plymouth MP David MacLeod to the police over his failure to report $178,394 of candidate donations.

The National MP’s original candidate return for the 2023 General Election was filed on February 13, 2024.

The total donations disclosed were $29,268 from seven separate donors.

On May 20, the Commission received an amended return, with the total donations disclosed in the amended return coming to $207,662 from 24 separate donors.

MacLeod said the error came about because he didn’t know he was meant to have filed his 2022 donations, thinking the returns only needed to include 2023 donations.

The MP said he had “never, ever” tried to hide donations and was “extremely disappointed” in himself for making the error.

It is no surprise this has been referred to the Police. In fact I would have been stunned if they had not.

I also expect that the Police will lay charges, as the return was clearly significantly incorrect.

However, unless there is evidence to contradict the statement that it was a genuine interpretation error, I would not expect the charges to be a corrupt practice (which requires intent), but merely an illegal practice.