While I’m no longer on the Board of the Taxpayers’ Union, I still speak regularly to Jordan Williams and keep an eye on the organisation we founded together 10 years ago.

Something that we hopped to achieve one day, but it came much sooner than expected, was to see the organisation identify and develop young talent, and perhaps serve as a stepping stone for careers in public policy, political advocacy, and politics.

Jordan and I were recently reminiscing where our alumni have ended up, and counted more than a dozen who currently work in the Parliamentary complex (both in the government and opposition parties) serving from Cabinet Ministers (Casey) to secretarial support in Minister’s offices. We take much pride in being a launchpad for careers in politics, public policy and beyond.

It surprises many to learn that Jordan doesn’t just hire fellow travellers. In fact, when I was on the Board he always use to insist on having a mix of political views in the office (as well as genders) as a safeguard against being too masculine or aggressive in some of the more ‘hard hitting’ Taxpayers’ Union campaigns. 

Jordan has reached out to me as the Government has, yet again, managed to poach a couple of the Taxpayers’ Union’s key staffers. That’s great for New Zealand, but not so good for the Taxpayers’ Union!

In fact a Chief of Staff for one of the Government’s parties recently commented that the Taxpayers’ Union is “their nursery” for identifying and developing talent.  Not the words that Jordan and I would have used, but we’ll take it as a compliment.

While the Taxpayers’ Union is huge in terms of subscribed supporters, it has a small staff of only around a dozen.  It tends young, but I know Jordan invests a lot in professional development and maybe that’s why that staffers are poached for a full range of jobs: Chris Hipkins’ and Ardern’s offices through to Business NZ and the NZ Initiative.

The Taxpayers’ Union has also acted as career spring boards for staffers coming to us from Parliament – usually ‘behind the scenes’ advisers wanting a new role making the campaign decisions and honing their own skills be in front of the camera.

I know they are currently looking for a new Campaigns Manager (details here) but Jordan tells me he’ll consider people for other roles too. So if you are interested in a job at a hungry, creative, comms-led organisation that punches above its weight (and doesn’t just sit at desks in Wellington and Auckland),contact the Taxpayers’ Union.

Nate Silver now has Harris ahead in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and Trump still ahead in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. That would give Harris a very narrow margin of 276 to 262 in the Electoral College.

It would be very risky to make a prediction at this stage. The campaigns will matter. The only prediction I’ll make is that Trump will claim he won regardless of the actual result!

Lindsay Mitchell applies a blowtorch to some nonsense from Chris Hipkins.

• Hipkins: benefit sanctions make people “less likely they are to end up in sustainable long-term employment”
• Mitchell: Under Labour verage estimated future years on a benefit grew from 10.7 to 13.6 years and the number of beneficiaries jumped from 289,788 in Dec 2017 to 378,711 by Dec 2023

• Hipkins: fewer people in emergency housing is because National has “made it harder for them to access” and “made it harder for them to access” and “Where have the families they’ve turfed out gone to?”
• Mitchell: The number of people in emergency housing also fell from in the last two years of the Labour Government (after massive increase) yet no one claimed they were turfing people out

• Hipkins: “the vast majority who go onto a benefit come off a benefit within six months”
• Mitchell: At a given point-in-time (let’s use June 2024) 72 percent of beneficiaries have been dependent for more than a year.

A very good fisking.

The raw data for the above has released a few days and I have just completed the annual process I do that ranks every high school

For every high school the process looks at (including Equity Index Numbers – the decile system replacement).

– NCEA Level 3+ for Leavers

– University Entrance for Leavers

– The gap between L3 and NCEA

– Retention until 17 years of age.

– Progression to Degree Level study.

(NB: The UE statistics include equivalents for Cambridge and IB).

It also includes a range of system wide aggregates.

The data always surprises and many high profile schools are not quite where people think and there are some fabulous quiet achievers.

See exactly how the high schools are doing and the, just released, LEAVERS data is the definitive picture through the inclusion of all students the schools have worked with. Also included are results by EQI tenth (similar to the old decile system) and also a State School only comparison.

By looking at how every high school is doing it allows a greater understanding of the system as a whole. Many schools/organisations/researchers use this data process for exactly that reason.

It also allows Principals and Boards to set progression goals for each of these important metrics (as well as attendance) into the future. It is an opportunity to plan for measurable improvements that can be communicated broadly.

(there are 15 Excel sheets)..

So please email alwyn.poole@gmail.com if you would like this important data process. If it is for school or professional use then I can invoice for $350. For personal use I can provide on a donation basis.

Best

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

The Herald reports:

The Government is planning to scrap the requirement for company directors to make their home addresses public on the Companies Register.

It’s proposing to allow directors to put another service address online, like an address for their business or lawyer.

The aim is to better protect directors’ safety and privacy while still ensuring an address is provided for accountability, including from those owed money by the company.

Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly is pledging to make the change as a part of a wider revamp of the Companies Act 1993.

This is a great and overdue move, one that has in the past also had several members’ bills propose.

People who have concern for their safety at home should still be able to be company directors, without having to choose between safety and being a director.

A post at Liam Hehir’s blog called Alan Smithee writes:

In contrast to Act’s claims, their proposed treaty principles are not fully faithful to either the text or intent of the original Treaty of Waitangi. They’re revisionist. When Act says “the intention of the Treaty Principles Bill is to establish in law that the principles of the Treaty are what the three articles of the Treaty actually say”, it’s outright political theatre.

What Act’s critics appear to be unaware of is that their preferred treaty principles – the “status quo” principles – are equally revisionist. When Toitū Te Tiriti says their opposition to the proposed principles referendum is to affirm “the mana of Te Tiriti o Waitangi as enduring and everlasting”, it’s also political theatre.

How so? Well, no treaty principles exist that are not revisionist. The very idea that we need to say things that the treaty does not actually say to make the treaty more faithful to itself is illogical. 

This is a very important point – all principles that people claim are Treaty principles are revisionist.

For a nation to have principles to live by requires ongoing, good faith debate and consent to live by outcomes fairly reached. That’ll never happen so long as all sides do not deign to acknowledge that there is a debate at all and instead of claim to be the sole champions and interpreters of a perfect truth set in stone in 1840.

Act’s three proposed treaty principles are that the government has the right to govern, that the authority and ownership of land and property of all of us is protected, and that all of us are equal under the law.

The real question is not whether that’s what our tīpuna established in 1840, it’s whether that’s what we want for Aotearoa New Zealand now.

I like ACT’s three principles. However I don’t think they are principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. I think they are principles of liberal democracy and would support them being in an entrenched Bill of Rights.

The Taxpayers’ Union has highlighted some of the grants from the Royal Society’s Marsden Fund (funded by taxpayers) which is meant to be for the best science and humanities in NZ. They include:

• $360,000 to study Big Things such as the Ohakune Carrot, with a focus on “a critical gaze to the privileging of Pākehā-centred narratives in current research on roadside “Big Things” and “Weaving together feminist, participatory, and filmic geographies, this project seeks to re-centre alternative stories currently hidden in the Big Things’ shadows“
• $360,000 to collect disabled indigenous stories about climate change with “establishing how such stories resist ableist narratives and theorise and advance disability-centred ways of creating sustainable and just environmental futures.“
• $861,000 to explore dark nudges and sludge on social media in relation to advertising alcohol.
• $861,000 to help decolonise ocean worlds from imperial borders
• $861,000 to link celestial spheres to end-of-life experiences to “create opportunities to rekindle the ancient connection to the stars and re-imagine the meaning of death, while also advancing understandings about the practical application of Māori astronomy in contemporary times.“

Funnily enough I have just been looking at what sort of areas the Marsden Fund supported in 2008. They were:

What would you rather have your taxpayer dollars spent on?

The Post reports:

There are cyclists, keen cyclists, then there is Richard Martin but even he is aghast at Wellington City Council spending $84,000 on a bike rack that is barely used.

The bike rack in question is beside Freyberg Pool in Oriental Bay. Martin took photos of the rack twice a day, for five days last week.

Six times there were no bikes, three times there was one, and once – and this was the most he had ever seen – there were two.

Martin describes himself as a “biker of old”. Until a decade ago he was riding about 300km a week and now regularly takes 30km rides around Miramar Peninsula.

But it was the unnecessary cost that irked him at a time Wellington pipes were falling apart. Last summer, Wellington was under strict water restrictions and faced the chance of water outages with excessive leaks in the system of ageing pipes blamed.

We have rates going up 20%, failing water infrastructure and WCC spends $84,000 on a bike rack!

Tama Potaka writes:

To deliver on the Government’s plan to accelerate Māori development, it is clarifying the respective functions of Te Arawhiti and Te Puni Kōkiri to ensure each organisation has a clear focus on the important, but separate, roles they play in delivering for and with Māori.

“Te Arawhiti will remain a departmental agency and continue its core role of progressing long standing Treaty of Waitangi settlements and Takutai Moana applications.

“Te Puni Kōkiri will advise on policy to support the acceleration of Māori economic development, continue to support the revitalisation of Māori language and culture, and support Māori social development including through a social investment lens,” Mr Potaka says.

Labour expanded the remit of the Office of Treaty Settlements (which had a clearly defined tasl) to be responsible for all Crown/Iwi relations. During that time, race relations got massively worse incidentially.

No doubt TPM will label this move as genocide also, but the reality is that all this Government is doing is generally turning the clock back to 2017. And the reason for this is Labour embarked on a series of radical changes to policies without any electoral mandate, or even much public discussion. When people tried to engage with them, they would gaslight you on it. So all this Government has done is reverse some extremely recent policy changes.

CNN reports:

Team GB runner Rose Harvey completed the women’s marathon at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games despite having a broken leg, she said on social media.

In an Instagram post, which shows Harvey on crutches in St. Pancras International train station in London, the 31-year-old explained that a few weeks before the August 11 race, she had felt some “tightness in her hip.”

“My incredible team and I put in so much work to make the start line fit and healthy and we were all optimistic that with a bit of race day adrenaline, I would be able to run the race I knew I had in me,” Harvey wrote.

However, after a couple of miles, Harvey “quickly realized that wasn’t going to happen.” She describes the next 24 miles as a “painful battle.”

The British runner eventually finished the race 78th overall with a time of 2:51:03, just over 28 minutes behind gold medalist Sifan Hassan.

She had a broken leg, and she still ran a marathon more than an hour faster than I could manage!

Harvey only seriously took up running during the Covid-19 lockdown after being made redundant from her job as a corporate lawyer in the music industry. She was spotted running in Battersea Park in London in 2020 by coach Phil Kissi and quickly saw rapid improvements.

She had been selected to run for Team GB at the Paris Games after completing the 2023 Chicago Marathon in a time of 2:23:21, just 26 seconds off Hassan’s Olympic record time in Paris.

She only took it up four years ago, and she got to within 26 seconds of the Olympic record. Amazing.

Radio NZ reports:

The Reserve Bank’s decision to cut the official cash rate by 25 basis points makes it hard to figure out what to trust of what it says, one senior economist says.

The bank cut the rate to 5.25 percent on Wednesday.

While that was predicted by some economists, it is a significant change from the last full update from the bank in May, when it said its monetary policy committee had discussed the prospect of another interest rate increase – and it did not expect to cut until this time next year.

Infometrics chief economist Brad Olsen previously said “heads should roll” if a cut happened this week, given the economy had progressed much as the Reserve Bank was expecting it to when it forecast no cut until 2025.

I thought the Reserve Bank should wait as non-tradable inflation was still high and also the Australian inflation rate increased in Q2. Hopefully the Reserve Bank is right in cutting now, and despite this inflation will track down to 2% (or lower).

This is the speech by Oliver Jull that won him a spot in the speech competition finals, but then his school canceled as it was worried it may offend some people.

You don’t have to agree with it, to think he should be allowed to express his beliefs.

Labour made an attack ad on Simeon Brown that is so bad, Simeon is republishing it himself. Basically they promote that he is concerned with motorists.

As there are 4.6 million cars registered in New Zealand, 92% of households have a motor vehicle. It is great Labour is telling 92% of households that National is focused on making things better for them.

Newsweek reports:

Argentina’s recent repeal of rent control by libertarian President Javier Milei has led to a surge in housing supply, with the freedom to negotiate contracts, previously restricted, directly causing a drop in rental prices.

So prices have dropped and supply has increased!

The law aimed to provide tenants with more financial security, but by the end of last year, an estimated one in seven homes in Buenos Aires was sitting empty as landlords chose not to rent them out in Argentine pesos.

Another success of socialism.

Since Millei’s repeal of rent control laws took effect on December 29, the supply of rental housing in Buenos Aires has jumped by 195.23%, according to the Statistical Observatory of the Real Estate Market of the Real Estate College (CI).

That’s amazing.

Sadly in the US, The Democrats are now campaigning on further rent controls.

Paul Goldsmith released:

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is appointing Dr Stephen Rainbow as the new Chief Human Rights Commissioner as part of three major leadership changes. 

“Dr Rainbow’s career has encompassed a range of roles including managing government relations for the largest infrastructure project in New Zealand, lecturing at Victoria University, as Director of Urban Strategy at Wellington City Council, and National Manager of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust,” Mr Goldsmith says.

“He served as a Wellington City Councillor from 1989 to 1998, and has been active in promoting LBGT rights and is a former board member of the Burnett Foundation Aotearoa.

This is a great appointment. Stephen actually believes that free speech is an important human right, and he will focus the Commission more on human rights and less on Corbynista politics. Stephen started his politics with the Labour, then the Greens, then Progressive Greens and finally National.

“I am also appointing Dr Gail Pacheco as the next Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner.

“Dr Pacheco is a Professor of Economics and Director of the NZ Policy Research Institute at Auckland University of Technology. 

I don’t know her personally, but she is a well respected economics professional who has specialised in areas such as family incomes and gender pay. This strongly suggests she will take an empirical research based approach to her role which is absolutely what you want. She has won economics prizes and served as President of the NZ Association of Economists.

“Finally, Dr Melissa Derby will become the new Race Relations Commissioner.

“Dr Derby is a senior lecturer at Waikato University, teaching early literacy and human development. Her primary area of research is early literacy, and in particular, exploring the role of whānau in fostering foundational preliteracy skills. 

“Her work has been recognised through a range of awards, including a Fulbright-Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Graduate Award.

Melissa was on the board of the Free Speech Union, and is a champion of free speech as a core human right. Despite being the largest civil liberties/human rights groups in NZ, the former Commissioners wouldn’t even meet with the FSU and now one of their former board members is a Commissioner. It shows what a difference a change of government can make.

The ABC reports:

For the first time since World War II, Russian territory is under occupation.

Last week, Kyiv’s troops poured into the Kursk region from several directions in a surprise attack.

Now seven days into the incursion, Russia still has not been able to push them back.

Ukraine had advanced about 30 kilometres into the region, and was now in control of 28 settlements, Russian authorities said.

It is Kyiv’s largest cross-border assault since the start of the full-scale conflict, forcing more than 100,000 locals to flee. 

The operation has been described as “bold”, “ambitious”, and “significant”, and an embarrassment for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It also shows that after almost 900 days of war, surprise is still possible.

If you invade another country and try and topple their democratically elected Government, they are under no obligation to only fight you on their territory. There is a price for aggression.

Although they have slowed, Ukrainian forces appeared to still be gaining ground.

Ukraine’s top military commander said on Monday, local time, his forces now controlled 1,000 square kilometres of territory. 

Acting Kursk Governor Alexei Smirnov reported to Mr Putin that Ukrainian forces had pushed 12km into the region across a 40km front and currently control 28 Russian settlements.

Earlier Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had engaged Ukrainian troops near the villages of Tolpino and Obshchy Kolodez, about 25km and 30km from the Russia-Ukraine border.

In comparison, the Russian advance into Kharkiv this year penetrated about 8km into Ukraine.

Ukrainian armed forces will not stay for long in Russia I suspect. That is not their objective. They have no wish to occupy Russia. They wish to force Russia to send in troops from other areas, and encourage Putin to agree to a reasonable ceasefire or peace settlement.

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.