Liberty Scott

So about that party vote?

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 08:31:48 +0000

When looking at party vote, most people think of left/right “blocs” which in my view is leaving aside certain nuances. For a start, anyone who thinks NZ First is securely in the “right” bloc doesn’t know history, as NZ First has gone into coalition with Labour as many times as National. Secondly, the differences between National and Labour are not significant, and perhaps not as significant as their two woeful leaders – the one that failed and is a meek mediocrity, and the other one who acts like he’s succeeded and is a empty vessel.

So following on from my exhaustive review of the electorate candidates, I thought I’d look at your party vote choices, in alphabetical order. I want to look at them from the perspectives of someone who wants to retain and build a high-trust, low crime, property owning open capitalist economy and society where individuals and the families, communities and cross-cutting relationships people have, can thrive. I want there to be progressively less government, more entrepreneurship – both commercial and charitable, I want the state to be razor focused on protecting people from the initiation of force and fraud by others, whether individuals, businesses or government overreach. That ranges from aggression from overseas (more likely through cybercrime than war), through to assault, burglary and fraud.I want a system of law and order, justice and punishment to effectively manage conflicts and disputes. I want the state to judge people’s deeds, not the backgrounds that reflect no choices. I want people judged by government on what they do and say, not other characteristics.

ACT New Zealand: Once the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, ACT is far removed from the party that was set up to campaign for the abolition of income tax in exchange for compulsory health insurance, compulsory superannuation and compulsory education accounts, and then for flat tax and less government. It still has a flavour of less government, less tax, less regulation and belief in free markets, but also embraces being tough on law and order, “one law for all” and a rather random set of popular causes. It’s not conservative, but it isn’t libertarian. ACT is a long way from the social liberalism that saw Jamie Whyte mention in an aside that consensual adult incest should be legal. While there is a commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of the internet, which is laudable, it isn’t a generalised commitment to individual freedom. The list mostly has a familiar series of names as existing ACT MPs, which despite claims from some pundits on the left before 2020, have remained coherent, well-disciplined and not prosecuted for criminal or fraudulent behaviour (unlike ACT’s former party President). It’s the broadest choice for those who want a voice for less government, but it is far from being a consistent or principled one. Perhaps its biggest issue is who replaces David Seymour? It almost certainly isn’t show pony Paul Henry, but it is unclear if he is a asset or a liability either. 2023 was its best ever performance electorally, with two electorates and 8.64% of the vote, with 11 MPs, can 2026 do better? Biggest scapegoats? Public sector unions. Most precious belief? There is too much government.

Alliance Party: Back from the dead, largely because the militant Marxist Maritime Union wants it to be (this was a union which in its previous iterations once had branches affiliated with the Maoist Communist Party of NZ). It isn’t an “alliance” anymore, as the Greens, Mana Motuhake, Democrats for Social Credit and New Labour Party broke away. It’s the People’s Front Against Judea, and the Greens and Labour. They pine for a much more centrally planned and controlled Muldoonism and the policies that took NZ from 2nd to 22nd in the world in per capita income, because they are economically illiterate. It is extraordinary that they think they have the perspicacity to know how to run a complex economy and allocate other people’s resources better than they can. You’d think they’d just join the Greens or even Labour, but it’s a social club for people who think real socialism hasn’t been tried yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary. I’m not going to discourage people from voting for the Alliance if they would otherwise vote Green, but it a social club of ideologues and the lost - blind to history’s verdict on a philosophy that is fundamentally antithetical to humanity. In its original form, it peaked in representation in 1996 with 11 seats, but in vote in 1993 (electorate only vote) with 18.21%. After Jim Anderton broke away from it, it lost all representation in 2002 with only 1.27% of the vote. It seems unlikely to reach 0.1%. Biggest scapegoat? “Neo-liberalism”. Most precious belief? It’s always better when government owns it.

Animal Justice Party Aotearoa New Zealand: A hard-left party that wants to grant animals many of the rights of humans, by and large. I’m all for being kind to animals, but the idea that animals should have the “freedom to express their natural behaviors”, is curious when it also doesn’t apply to humans. Of course, it would end a significant part of the economy (cattle, dairy and sheep farming), with no real clue as to what to do instead. I have some understanding around what it is trying to achieve but granting rights to creatures that have no understanding of those rights and unable to reciprocate, is problematic. At the least it has a unique position politically, but that’s it, and it probably competes with the Greens for these votes. It gained 0.17% of the vote in 2023, its first election. Unlikely to beat that. Biggest scapegoat? Industrialised farming. Most precious belief? Animals are better than humans.

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party: A libertarian one-issue party which is crystal clear about what it exists for. The 2020 referendum put this issue to bed politically for a while, though that isn’t a reason to not campaign for it. As a single-issue party it largely attracts voters who are personally affected by the current legal status of cannabis, although in recent years liberalisation of hemp and medical use of cannabis have diluted its impact. Its dream is to be in Parliament and make a major party dependent on its support to be in government, but unfortunately, I suspect the use of cannabis by its members is its biggest weakness. In short, it isn’t sufficiently well organised to grab the imagination. ALCP peaked in support in 1996 with 1.66% of the vote but had dropped to 0.45% in 2023. This seems likely to be where it will be this time. Biggest scapegoat? Other politicians. Most precious belief? Weed is no more harmful than many legal substances.

Conservative Party NZ: This party, clearly on the conservative right seeks to combine embrace of laissez-faire economics with social conservatism. It’s the latest of many attempts to set up a Christian conservative-oriented party, now led by Helen Houghton, it has been plagued by leaders of various quality to be generous. It has gone through Colin Craig, Leighton Baker and Elliot Ikilei, and survived. However, it seems like NZ First has moved enough into this space to make it difficult to well. It peaked in 2014 with just under 4%, but in 2023 dropped to 0.15%. With Winston bending in this direction on some high profile issues, I’d be surprised if it reached 0.15% this time. Biggest scapegoat? Ultra social liberals. Most precious belief? The nuclear family is the core of a civilised healthy society.

Free Palestine Party: Disgraceful party of Jew hating, terror sympathising racists with a party list led by the geriatric Marxist, John Minto. It is affiliated to the communist terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which have murdered over 150 people since the late 1960s. It is abhorrent it is even allowed to be a registered party. Votes for it are votes for evil, or votes of ignorance. Biggest scapegoat? Jews Most precious belief? A Palestinian state replacing Israel would save the world of the worst injustice in history.

Green Party: Largest hard-left party in the country, led by two women (gender equality really doesn’t matter when one is deemed the oppressor), one of whom isn’t good at maths (and thinks Jews should “lean into discomfort” about slogans that call for destruction of their homeland) and the other thinks straight white men cause all violence. More state, modern monetary theory belief in significantly increased public debt, more tax and more spending. It wants lots of stuff to be free, paid for by taxing future generations and the groups it demonises the most – the “rich”. People who own a lot are automatically deemed to have done so unjustly, so are the scapegoats of the Greens. Antipathy to capitalism, individual freedom, military alliances among liberal democracies, private property rights, Jewish nationalism (but not Maori nationalism), freedom of speech or punishing criminals, it is the party that embraces state power, control and is full of control freaks and mediocrities. 2023 was its best ever electoral result with 11.6% support and 15 MPs. It seems likely to do better this time, largely due to how uninspiring Labour is, but has long been helped by how so much of media and academia are supportive of it. Even when it is so blatantly wrong, the “it means to do well” buys it a lot of clout despite its extremism. Biggest scapegoat? “the rich” or “fossil fuel companies” which make us addicted. Most precious belief? Climate change will make us extinct and anything that cuts emissions is worth any cost.

Labour Party: Soft-left collectivism dominated by the interests of trade unions, primarily in the public sector. The party most closely aligned to public servants, academia and the media, as it balances the desire for more government and more free stuff with the reality that a mixed market economy can’t simply be taxed into paying for everything they want. A diluted version of how the Greens see the world, whereby perceived injustice is fixed by giving people more of other people’s money, regulating those who are deemed to do bad, and by raising the cost of doing “bad things” so they can go around the world and look virtuous. As a party that leads government it is relatively moderate, but Labour has swung from the right to the left from time to time. At the moment it is more centrist than under Ardern, but more left than under Clark. Hipkins is very much of the finger wagging teacher class.There isn’t a lot of “working class” left here, but rather a party dominated by public servants, teachers and unionists, with very few small business owners or actual “working class” people. Biggest scapegoat? The National Party. Most precious belief? Unions give us what is most precious to our lives.

National Party: Soft-right collectivism dominated by the interests of farmers, small businesspeople with twinges of conservativism, liberalism, free markets, paternalistic government and an overwhelming belief it is the natural party of government. Far more devolved and decentralised than Labour, it sees itself as business and economy first, but with a strong belief that a healthy economy can fund continued government provision of health, education and infrastructure. It has prided itself on bending to the winds of public opinion on issues. Christopher Luxon isn’t a typical National leader, in that he came from big business first, and runs Cabinet in a very devolved manner, with little real engagement on policy, and it shows. National traditionally has won government and done little beyond one or two symbolic changes, to overthrow what Labour did before. This time it is different, but this time National has needed coalition partners more than on most occasions it has been in power. Only 1996-1999 saw more compromises, but that was after being in power for six years with radical reforms. It bends to the middle on issues like climate change, education and healthcare, which has seen the more principled and radical arms get tired of its lack of progress to wind back long term leftwing progressivism on many matters. Biggest scapegoat? Labour Party (National exists to keep it out of power). Most precious belief? It is the natural party of government. Principles don’t matter.

New Zealand First Party: Winston First existed as a populist Muldoonist breakaway from National when it was, for once, embracing its founding principles under Ruth Richardson. However it has been adept at bending to the winds of opinion and where other parties have vacated, NZ First fills the gap. Having put Bolger, Clark and Ardern in power, it now puts Luxon. Having gone along with leftwing policies it now goes along with rightwing ones. It’s a brave, naïve or historically ignorant person who fully trusts Winston Peters as to who he will back when elected. In 1996 he said “to vote National out, vote NZ First”, then he put National back in power. Now he is constantly denying backing umpteen policies Ardern put in place from 2017-2020. Still he remains, and is now the voice of conservative NZ and anti-vax NZ, and is keen to be the “anti-woke” candidate of a party that doesn’t give a damn what others think. Central to its focus is opposing high levels of immigration, and the market liberalism of ACT, but also in being sceptical about unilateral action on climate change that generates costs with little benefit and unthinkingly adopting trendy causes. There’s a space for this, even if it attracts mercurial types like Shane Jones and Michael Laws (who can’t be relied on keeping his mouth shut). No other party can tout casual racism like one led by two Maori men originally from the two main political parties, and so NZ First remains the only party where people who feel shut down by “political correctness” can say whatever they like. Far right? Don’t be ridiculous. Populism on steroids? Oh yes. Biggest scapegoat? Immigrants who don’t share NZ First values. Most precious belief? Ordinary people should be listened to regardless of who is offended.

New Zealand Loyal: Most will think of this party as Liz Gunn’s anti-vax conspiracy party, but she isn’t there anymore. It is led by Kelvyn Alp, who was prosecuted for distributing a video of the Christchurch mosque massacre. It is a party pushing strong economic nationalism, social conservatism and withdrawal from international organisations along with neutrality on the world stage. It is big on nationalising a great deal of the economy, but also with a range of highly interventionist measures while at the same time claiming to want very little interference in people’s lives. You can see elements of its policy in multiple parties, but it is very much on the fringe. It gained a surprising 1.2% of the party vote in 2023, mainly due to opposition to Covid restrictions, but wont reach it now. Biggest scapegoat? “Them” (foreigners and traitors to the country). Most precious belief? Being left alone.

NZ Outdoors and Freedoms Party: Competing with NZ Loyal is Sue Grey who has fat Nazi Kim Dotcom’s wife on the list. Blending the old Outdoors and Recreation party, which was primarily a movement to defend gun rights for hunters and shooters, with the Freedom Party, which was Brian Tamaki’s once, is an odd mix. Freedoms NZ got 0.33% of the vote in 2023, it may be lucky to do that well again. It’s big on direct democracy and devolved authority. It also wants to legalise cannabis, promote quack medicine, increasing National Superannuation, wants to end use of plastics and says nearly nothing about economics. You can see a lot from the left here as well as the obvious concerns about Covid, vaccines and the like. Biggest scapegoat? Other politicians. Most precious belief? Direct democracy.

Opportunity Party: Not TOP, not Opportunities, it is, as Helen Clark said, the lanyard party. It might be on the cusp of deciding the next government, is this party of almost entirely Labour and Green supporting ex. public servants, third sector, consultants, scientists and others of our betters who think they know what’s best and how to fix the country. Led by Qiulae Wong who is getting flack for minutiae, when she should get it for being about “businesses with purpose” which is an utterly absurd anticapitalist piece of agitprop. All businesses have purpose, but to Opportunity only businesses that are big and successful, and then can charitably surrender part of that success to highly paid staff to direct them to virtue signal, are ones with REAL purpose (wanting to make money to raise your family and giving them a good life, isn’t a “purpose” Opportunity recognises). Weirdly, their main platform of land tax has largely evaporated from recent coverage, because there isn’t much else here except wanting more money spent on state provided health, education and welfare. Of course they want welfare for all, under a universal basic income, which is very much a policy on the hard-left. “Free money for everyone”. Opportunity is Labour without the trade unions and is called the lanyard party because it is very much made up by people who don’t set up conventional businesses or take risks with their views. They hold the same views as much of academia, most of the media and the civil service “If only the clever people could be in government”. Of course history is replete with this. The German Democratic Republic was government of the “clever people” who knew best how to allocate resources, decide what was made, what was sold and what people were allowed to do and not do. Not that they are tankies, far from it, but they are not free market liberals either. Biggest scapegoat? “Vested interests” (this doesn’t mean civil servants or professional associations. Most precious belief? We’re neither left nor right, truly (though none of us would vote ACT or NZ First, and most of us like the Greens).

Te Pati Maori: John Tamihere’s personal family ambition party, which is now explicitly trying to rort the election for a deliberate overhang of over-representation. It swings from an almost libertarian view of devolving power to “Maori” (though not as individuals it seems) to embracing a big powerful state that uses ethno-nationalism to divide by race and opinion, it is incoherent except for what it sees as defending Maori. Maori who agree with it mind you. Those who don’t are sell outs, and not really Maori. There’s socialism, there’s anti-globalism that some of the other parties would embrace, and neutrality on foreign affairs (except when it comes to Israel, because Palestinian Arabs who descended from invaders who expelled the Jews are more indigenous than the Jews). The party of Pita Sharples has been taken over by a family and radical Marxism, and a hatred of liberal democracy because of the view that it always means Maori are “out-voted”. The idea Maori have views as diverse at the entire spectrum of parties in Parliament is seen as questionable or traitorous. Indeed, TPM agrees with the notion that the coalition government is out to “exterminate Maori”. What’s that if not spreading extremism and hatred? However, there is little about it over the election campaign. In 2023 its party vote peaked at 3.08% but it is engineering to reduce that as much as possible, so all of its MPs are an overhang to stop the parties on the right governing. It's actively anti-democratic gerrymandering, which some campaigners on the right are seeking to pursue too, although not specific parties (although ACT and NZF both benefit from that campaign). It risks the Maori seats being cancelled if it is instrumental in denying the right a majority. TPM is definitely not going to negotiate for power, it’s going to want to hold Labour accountable in power, and demand various bottomlines, none of which are particularly clear. Bear in mind TPM was a breakaway from Labour, and there is no love lost between them Perhaps most disturbing is the tendency by candidates sometimes to feed into a narrative of hatred and division, although expelling Takuta Ferris has shown it does have limits. Paradoxically, a party vote for TPM contributes to reducing its number of MPs relative to other parties. Biggest scapegoat? Pakeha led government. Most precious belief? Maori suffer because Pakeha who don’t like them set up systems to ensure it.

Te Tai Tokerau Party: Breakaway faction of TPM full of more government, more spending, but not a lot about more taxes. It is, of course, the platform for Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. She once said the government had a mission of “exterminating Maori”, which is the sort of rhetoric ultra-nationalists use to spread hate, anger and justify violence. She was in TPM then and TPM agreed. Of course they all fell out over claims about money and what looks like internecine antipathy. A lot of detail in her policies looks like a highly devolved set of policies for Maori – although it’s unclear how much of it is affordable. Sure it’s on the left, and there is not much about economics, nothing about foreign policy, and it is almost entirely about Maori, but it is more coherent and less aggressive than TPM. Biggest scapegoat? Coalition government. Most precious belief? Maori can fix their problems themselves.

Vision New Zealand: The Tamaki Christian grifters keep on, having broken from the Freedom Party, are out to rival the Conservative Party for the social/fiscal conservative vote. The problem is that this is more of a personal family project than TPM. It is in favour of small government (big on tax cuts), although its commitment to freedom of speech is unclear and it wants a Ministry of Families. Oddly it wants only MPs who win electorates to get into Parliament, so presumably doesn’t want your party vote. Biggest scapegoat? Woke politics. Most precious belief? Nuclear families

Women’s Rights Party: Feminist breakaway on the left. Founded by Jill Ovens, formerly from the Alliance. It is mostly a response to trans-activism and the leftwing post-modernist trend to say women include anyone who says they are, regardless of their biology. Although most of its policies are around defending rights for biological women, it also includes pay equity and other feminist oriented policies. It obtained 0.08% of the party vote in 2023. It seems unlikely to do better. Biggest scapegoat? Trans-activists. Most precious belief? Only biological women are women

Any conclusion?

Well it is fairly clear that party votes for maybe seven or even eight parties might pay off, the rest are more a statement of principle. Labour, National, ACT, NZ First, Greens. TPM, Opportunity and maybe Te Tai Tokerau Party (after all, the electorate might be won and then list seats) all are not wasted party votes, although TPM is trying to convince you that it is.

What are you going to get? Well you make a tiny contribution towards one or another side being in power and one set of views, principles (or absence of them), policies and people having power over you and your property. It's fairly clear what six of those parties would support, although NZF has supported both Labour and National at different times, and TPM spent much of its history helping to keep National in power. The biggest clue for me as to where Opportunity heads is to look at and listen to its candidates. Do you think they are more comfortable with a crowd of Green and TPM MPs or ACT and NZF ones? I mean, honestly.

Just have a think about that.

Meaningless election drivel

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 23:00:00 +0000

“I’m going to bring down the cost of living”. No, you’re not. None of you are. At best you might slow down increases. Any quick drop in the cost of living will come from lower oil prices, but nothing politicians are going to do will reduce anything. Pretty much all parties are guilty of this.

“I’m going to create xxx number of jobs”. No, you’re not. You can’t create any jobs. You can make conditions more favourable for business to create jobs. You can tax existing and future jobs, reducing those job numbers to transfer to new state-sector jobs (which is a transfer). So you wont create anything. Even big infrastructure projects don’t “create” jobs unless they result in higher productivity from what is being built. Again pretty much all parties are guilty.

“I’m going to fix healthcare”. No, you’re not. Publicly provided taxpayer funded healthcare is always going to involve rationing. It’s never going to be enough for the medical professional unions. There is always going to be more demand for new pharmaceutical and new procedures than supply of them. It’s a matter of what gets prioritised, unless you want to radically change the system, and none of them do. Fairly ubiquitous as well.

“We’re investing in….” No, you’re not. You’re spending other people’s money. You don’t expect a return on the investment. It wont generate more money than you spend. It’s just a euphemism for subsidising what you think is good for us. Businesses invest. Entrepreneurs invest. Savers invest. Politicians spend, and when their “investments” cost far more and deliver no net benefit, they aren’t accountable and you get the bill. They all think they are investing.

“We’ll save you money by spending it”. No, you wont. It’s smoke and mirrors. You say you’ll give people money after taxing other people, but you’ll never know what those you taxed would have spent or invested their money on. You’ll never know the jobs, the sales, the donations, the wealth generated from it, because it’s not your money. ACT is perhaps the only one explicitly different on this, although NZ First and National slip into it from time to time, and even Labour sometimes has flashes of inspiration.

“We’ll ensure equality of opportunity”. No, you can’t. You can’t possibly ensure everyone has the same upbringing, with similar parents, with similar families, neighbours, friends and teachers. You can’t protect everyone from sickness, disability, disease, accidents or natural disasters. It’s simply existentially impossible. This is less common, but all parties typically say it at some point.

"We're bringing down (or will bring down) the debt". No you're not. To be fair the Greens and TPM don't care about public debt because consciously or not they believe in the voodoo funny money of MMT. MMT brought you the grotesque house price inflation under Ardern and the general inflation as well, but more importantly has been behind the hypergrowth in government debt in multiple Western countries - which of course has done so much. National, in particular Willis and Luxon, are guilty of this claim and it is wrong. Until there are budget surpluses, debt isn't coming down. They use the measure of public debt as a % of GDP to get around that, which isn't a bad measure, but even then it's not right, yet.

"We'll end dependency on fossil fuels" No you wont. Aviation is a long way from moving from fossil fuels and for now, "sustainable aviation fuels" are expensive and in short supply. The effect of forcing their use will inflate airfares considerably, which also affects air freight costs. Do you see anyone saying this? No. Moreover, there is little movement for heavy shipping to be off of fossil fuels, and it's going to be a good decade or so before much heavy trucking is as well. Given the relative poverty of New Zealand compared to other developed countries, it will be some time before most cars are electric, and notwithstanding the enthusiasm of some, much of the rail network will remain diesel because it carries so little freight. Getting off of transport, moving to 100% renewable electricity is expensive and not worth doing, as the Ardern Government's Climate Change Committee found in 2019.

How to vote New Zealand election 2026: Electorate guide

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 13:08:59 +0000

As I usually do, I have painstakingly gone through every electorate and done a rather random set of selections for who I think is worth voting for.

No it isn't strategic, it isn't designed to create an overhang, or maximise support for any party, it is rather a bit of a test as to who I might pick based on what they have said or done to increase individual freedom, reduce the size of the state and turn back past attempts at bigger government, more regulation and more tax. Sometimes it is personal, supporting people who seem like they are good sort, or opposing those who are sociopaths or stupid. It do actively encourage voting against MPs or candidates from the Greens and Te Pati Maori, because of their antagonism to individual freedom, private property rights and their incessant cosplaying on the side of Hamas and Jew hating Palestinian activism. For Te Pati Maori it is also their indifference to the war in Ukraine and fundamental belief that people who don't embrace their ethno-nationalist ideology are outsiders to be treated as lesser citizens.

A lot of what I suggest is, on balance, giving support to those who show a bit of determination to wind things back and reduce power, even a little. However, I also support rejecting the complacency and the utterly milquetoast banality of so many candidates (and MPs), whose statements indicate they stand for no philosophy, no principles, and are unafraid of upsetting anyone. I don't have any time for those people or the parties that put them forward.

You'll see that in most cases I am choosing between National and ACT, and when I pick ACT candidates in most cases, it is because the National candidate is either uninterested in freedom or uninterested in anything beyond slogans and apple pie. Occasionally I pick others, such as for the ALCP, who are at least interested in one piece of liberalisation. Sometimes I pick Labour candidates, usually to defeat the Greens or Te Pati Maori, but not exclusively. I don't pick Opportunity candidates, because nobody needs to. Occasionally I suggest an independent.

Anyway, it's partly a bit of a laugh, but also an exercise is thinking a bit more about this vote. The party vote decides most of the makeup of Parliament, but not all of it. Electorate votes are about endorsing individuals, and you don't need to endorse any if the choices are poor, and a lot of the time they are.

That's why I have rated my choices as high, medium or low. High priority is because the candidate is very good, or the candidate he or she can defeat is particularly bad. Medium indicates the candidate is ok, or the opponent isn't. Low indicates you can not bother at all, and it wont really matter.

So here we go...

Auckland Central

Chloe Swarbrick needs to be defeated here, because her disgraceful appeasement of and touting of Hamas propaganda deserves to be rejected. The best chance to do this is Nationals’ Candace Kinser. There isn’t much the latter has said that indicates a wholehearted commitment to National Party principles. I’d be lukewarm about her if it weren’t about weakening the Greens. Labour candidate Naisi Chen seems far too enamoured with the Chinese Communist Party and appeasing it to deserve your vote, she is arguably worse than Swarbrick.

Candace Kinser, National. High priority.

Banks Peninsula

National’s Vanessa Weenink holds this seat on a slender majority. Labour’s previous MP Tracey McLennan is standing again, and we really don’t need a union organiser back in Parliament. Conventionally, I’d support Weenink, but she was a Labour Party campaigner recently. So she’s not really going to be focused on National Party principles. Vote instead for Zac Wellman of ACT.

Zac Wellman, ACT. Moderate priority.

Botany

You don’t want to vote for Chris Luxon do you now? He’ll almost certainly win, but if you want to give him a bloody nose then vote Ali Dahche of ACT.

Ali Dahche, ACT. High priority.

Christchurch Central

Old anti-Israeli activist Duncan Webb is thankfully retiring, so it is a more open contest, although it seems unlikely National’s Dale Stephens (you might remember him from TV) can win. George Hampton, a diplomat, is the Labour candidate, and seems inoffensive at best. You could try Stephens to knock Labour out, but otherwise you can’t go wrong with Blair Anderson of ALCP.

Blair Anderson, ALCP. Low priority.

Christchurch East

Labour’s Reuben Davidson will likely win, although it isn’t a sure thing, but National’s Alexandra Davids is an experience local body politician, which seems unlikely to be that favourable towards reducing the scale of government. Toni Severin of ACT has a long record of being in favour of less government, so give her your vote.

Toni Severin, ACT. Moderate priority.

Coromandel

National’s Scott Simpson is almost certainly going to win here, he’s a social liberal and was a leader of the Bluegreens, although his maiden speech said good things about not being reliant on the state. Given he is a sure thing, you can think about voting elsewhere. Ignore independent Steven Hart, he’s a nutcase. Mike McCormick of ACT is a better bet to send a message.

Mike McCormick, ACT. Low priority

Dunedin

Rachel Brooking of Labour will win, but she’s hardly in favour of private property rights having worked on Labour’s reform of the RMA. Presidents of university student unions are also not known for their belief in individual freedoms. So you’d be well placed to vote against her. Philippines born Kristine Asuncion is the National candidate and is a business owner. I wont hold her working for HR against her, but if you would rather a surer thing about freedom, then Adrian McDermott from ALCP is another choice.

Kristine Asuncion, National. Low priority.

East Cape

Dana Kirkpatrick took this seat back for National in 2023, but it is far from safe. Kirkpatrick seems alright, but given it is a seat Labour could readily take it is worth seeing who she is up against. Jo Luxton is a Labour list MP, although she did grow up in Gisborne (so is not a total carpetbagger). She set up an early childhood education centre before being an MP. Given she lists Maryan Street as a mentor, I don’t think she’s an improvement on Kirkpatrick, so give Kirkpatrick another go.

Dana Kirkpatrick, National. Medium priority.

East Coast Bays

Erica Stanford will win this by a landslide, so she doesn’t need your vote. She’s also a wet. She thinks the Greens could work with National and once supported students going on the School Strike for Climate, so she is hardly an asset in advancing education towards more choice and freedom. So send her a message, vote Sam Mills, ACT.

Sam Mills, ACT. Medium priority

Epsom

Curious choice here. People thinking strategically might think Seymour is getting in anyway, you might generate a National overhang with Paul Goldsmith being elected. You might, but why would you vote for Goldsmith at all? Seymour is fairly safe here, and he is perhaps the MP who most consistently, some of the time, talks about free markets and individual freedom, although he largely leads a party that panders to populism nowadays, not fundamental reform. Goldsmith has been good on some law reform, such as on stopping hate speech legislation, abolishing the Broadcasting Standards Authority and reducing the legislation that refers to Te Tiriti. So he wouldn’t be a bad choice from a freedom point of view and is one of the better National MPs on that front. He ought to have earned a winnable electorate by now, and given National’s party vote position, he may well be out, so flip a coin. I’d probably pick Seymour myself, but Goldsmith is a reasonable choice in this election as well.

David Seymour, ACT. Medium priority.

Glendene

Carmel Sepuloni is the MP here, for Labour, and is likely to win, so you wont want to endorse her, but are the alternatives any better? Sunil Kumar for National is a business owner with extensive community links, so he would be a better bet.

Sunil Kumar, National. Medium priority

Hamilton East

Ryan Hamilton is the MP here for National, and it is typically a marginal seat. Is he any better than Georgie Dansey for Labour? Probably. On the downside he was a city councillor, but he did say in his maiden speech “I believe in less government, personal choice, and responsibility—a Government that sets up the right macro policy settings that enables success, and then gets out of the way”. That’s a start. Georgie Dansey is a list MP of barely a few months, but drearily she is a teacher and a unionist. We don’t need more of those, so keep Hamilton there.

Ryan Hamilton, National. Medium priority.

Hamilton West

Tama Potaka is probably fairly safe here as the National MP, but it is a swing seat historically. He is up against Dr Myra Williamson for Labour, a law lecturer. She wrote a piece for The Conversation called “Compulsory voting has boosted turnout in Australia – is it time NZ tried it?”. She supports it. She wants to criminalise you for not voting. She also believes Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and the NZ Superannuation fund should divest from Israel. She’s be a highly malign influence on freedom in any Labour government so deserves to be actively opposed. Vote for Potaka to keep her out of Parliament.

Tama Potaka, National. High priority.

Hauraki-Waikato

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke has been a bit of a star for TPM, and has wisely kept out of the internal fracas about the party’s governance and policies. She seems to be good at hyperbole, having described being “ram raided” before the previous election, before saying her “privacy” was “ram raided”. The BBC and Time Magazine have lauded her, because, of course, nothing is more exciting to them than a leftwing activist. She cosplays as a communist because, well, it’s cool yeah? Much better would be to vote for Kingi Kiriona of Labour, because he has substance to back him up with experience, and it helps thwart TPM’s undemocratic overhang strategy. Brief mention for Neil Denby, standing as an independent, for nothing apparently.

Kingi Kiriona, Labour, High priority.

Henderson

Another new electorate where Phil Twyford is trying to have a shot at keeping. I recall Twyford being booed when he dared to suggest that Hamas be condemned after 7th October, so he gets a little credit for that, but he really ought to retire. He is also behind the controversy about claiming too many people with “Chinese sounding names” were buying houses in Auckland. It’s time he should go, Angee Nicholas for National seems ok, but that’s about it.

Angee Nicholas, National, Low priority

Hutt South

On paper this is probably a loss for Chris Bishop, and if it isn’t it’s because he has done a lot of work to meet people in this traditionally Labour electorate. You’ll want to avoid perennially ultracrepidarian Ginny Andersen (who will get in on the list probably), and he’s one of the few National Cabinet Ministers who show some passion for reform. Advancing congestion pricing and replacing fuel tax with RUC are enormous steps forward, as is wanting a long term approach to infrastructure funding (and for housing prices to be lower in the long run). He deserves to win in this usually Labour seat, as a National MP who actually wants change, rather than tinkering with Labour's policies, but he does have a lot more to do.

Chris Bishop, National, High priority

Ikaroa-Rāwhiti

This is already a Labour seat with Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, so the strategy is to keep it this way to stop TPM from taking it. The Greens have a shot here, but the safest move is to keep it Labour to reduce the TPM overhang.

Cushla Tangaere-Manual, Labour. Medium priority.

Ilam

Hamish Campbell for National holds this seat and amply beat Raf Manji from “Opportunities” in 2023. So this time he’s probably safe. He has a Ph.D in viruses and cancer, and perhaps the most interesting statement he made in his maiden speech was “It has become very easy take offence at someone who may believe something different to ourselves, whether it be on climate change, vaccine science, race, or culture. We have come to think it’s our right to take offence, and if you disagree, you’re not just wrong but amoral. We should not place a high value on our outrage.” He has not said anything else about philosophy at all. A reasonable alternative is Ken Harpur of ACT.

Ken Harpur, ACT. Low priority

Invercargill

National’s Penny Simmonds is pretty much a sure thing here. She’s ok, she’s been dismantling the centralised Polytech Te Pukenga, and is moderately social conservative. Labour’s Janice Lee talks of food sovereignty, which is a red flag for leftie nonsense. Simmonds has been pushing for academic freedom and freedom of speech at universities, so she is a fair choice.

Penny Simmonds, National. Medium priority.

Kaikōura

This is another safe National seat, held by Stuart Smith. He is a social liberal within National. One of his Bills was to liberalise cellar door wine tasting, which is unsurprising given he was chair of the Winegrowers Association. However, he is now advocating more direct local political control of local authorities, which seems odd, and he is a member of the Bluegreens (although he isn’t a fan of Luxon apparently). Now there is another choice worth considering, although he’s far from perfect. Oliver-John Hill-Hughes is an independent candidate who touts himself as a Maori conservative independent, who supports lower taxes, eliminating welfare dependency and leaving the Paris agreement. I’m not with him on redirecting some defence spending to a new Ministry of Works and forcing oil companies to set prices well in advance, but he’s different. I’m not going to say you should vote for him, but he deserves an honourable mention. Tom Spooner is more conventional, with ACT, but really you don’t need to bother.

Tom Spooner, ACT. Low priority

Kaipara ki Mahurangi

Chris Penk had this seat, so National is trying to hold onto it with Jessica Rowe, a former journalist who then became a diplomat. However, I’m not so sure National deserves to hang onto this safe seat and she’s ok if uninspiring. Nine people are standing here including fat Nazi Kim Dotcom’s wife. Simon Court of ACT is a better bet here, just to send the Nats a message.

Simon Court, ACT. Medium priority.

Kapiti

With the Otaki electorate broken up, National MP Tim Costley is trying to win this seat and has a fair chance, although it is no sure thing. Costley is an ex. RNZAF wing commander, and I gather he’s a good sort. He did say in his maiden speech that he believes in limited government and that we (as individuals) hold solutions to the problems we face. His main opponent is a scold called Sophie Handford for Labour. She founded the “School Strike 4 Climate” movement, so of course thinks she knows best for everyone else. Few people are as ill-suited to be legislators than young loud finger-wagging scolds. A shout out to Richard Goode from Not a Party. He’s actually a libertarian and deserves your vote most of all,

Richard Goode, Not a Party. Low priority (he’d appreciate that)

Kenepuru

Mana MP Barbara Edmonds of Labour is standing in this redrawn electorate, which includes some of Mana and some of Ohariu (which has been eliminated). It is likely to be safe for her. Matthew Evetts of National is her biggest challenge, but he wont win. Choose Bob Wessex of Not a Party.

Bob Wessex, Not a Party. Low priority.

Māngere

One of Labour’s safest seats, Lemauga Lydia Sosene is the Labour MP, and yes many wont have even heard of her. She is standing again and was a Samoan church minister. A nice enough person, but you may want to put your vote elsewhere. National’s candidate is Rosemary Bourke, trying for a second time, which must be difficult. This seat, oddly, has a lot of candidates, including the notorious Kelvyn Alp. Manu Singh from ACT has the clearest indication of support for getting government out of the way of people.

Manu Singh, ACT. Low priority.

Manurewa

Manurewa is a safe Labour seat, held by Arena Williams, and has few candidates with only National, NZ First and Animal Justice offering alternatives. Williams was President of AUSA (of course), and has been part of Labour’s campaign to structurally separate the supermarkets, which is, of course, insane. It would be good to oppose Williams here, so Ghouse Majeed of National is your best bet. Not that I have much of an idea of what he believes in.

Ghouse Majeed, National. Low priority

Maungakiekie

National’s Greg Fleming won this seat from Labour, which is fairly marginal, as it tends to be won by whatever party is in government. The Labour MP he defeated, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, became a list MP and she is trying to win it back. Fleming is solidly conservative, having co-founded the conservative thinktank, the Maxim Institute. Having said that Fleming co-sponsored a members bill with Labour MP Camila Belich to fine companies for not reporting modern day slavery in their supply chains, which is quite the exercise in increasing compliance costs primarily for virtue signalling (and the National Party is promoting this on its webpage). So he’s socially conservative but economically moderate. Radhakrishnan has a Masters in “development studies” and was a policy analyst at the Ministry of Womens Affairs so she’s hardly going to want to keep a lid on the state. Given the seat is marginal you may be tempted to vote for Fleming, but I’m not. Pick Juan Alvarez de Lugo of ACT instead as he talks of balancing the books without increasing taxes, and one law for all.

Juan Alvarez de Lugo, ACT. Medium priority.

Mt Albert

Labour’s most marginal seat is held by Helen White, and of course was Jacinda Ardern’s seat. Helen White was a union lawyer who infamously mocked Chloe Swarbrick as “not being serious” in 2020 as a candidate for Auckland Central, then lost. Failing upwards, she thinks employment is a “right” even though she’s never generated a job in her life. National is running Melissa Lee, who has been a list MP for six terms and proved to be useless as Minister for Media and Communications. As odious as White is, Lee isn’t much better and it’s disgraceful that National couldn’t be bothered replacing her as a candidate here. Anyone else might have a better chance, but if you believe in the best and brightest succeeding you need to purge the mediocre. Adding to the mix is Qiulae Wong, the Opportunity Party leader, but you don’t want to vote for someone who doesn’t think businesses have a purpose, unless she and her ilk help with the latest version of “Triple Bottom Line” reporting. So you’re left with Alex Price of ACT, who talks about keeping taxes low and reducing government waste. Tick him to send National a message.

Alex Price, ACT. High priority

Mt Maunganui

This is a new electorate, with Bay of Plenty MP Tom Rutherford standing here. He is likely to win, having had one term in Parliament, and previously having been a communications executive (uh oh). He seems a nice enough chap, his maiden speech includes “At 18, on my first day as a new student here at Victoria University, I was punched and knocked out by an intoxicated stranger when I stood up for an older gentleman who was just trying to get his groceries home safely”. So you could do worse, such as Helen White or Melissa Lee. Labour is punting up Rhieve Grey who is a “Rhodes Scholar with postgraduate degrees from the University of Oxford in Public Policy and Evidence-Based Policy” which begs the question as to why he is in an unwinnable seat, although I’m not sure he’s in the right party. Cameron Luxton is the ACT candidate (and list MP), and far better qualified than either of them, so given Rutherford will win anyway, give Luxton the tick. After all he did say in his maiden speech “My trust in the sanctity of the individual, the rule of law, free speech, property rights, these are what I am here to defend, they are not physical items, they cannot be hoarded away in a quiet place and taken out just to be displayed and looked at. These treasures must be put in the world, defended and lived up to”

Cameron Luxton, ACT. Medium priority

Mt Roskill

This is usually a Labour seat, and Carlos Cheung from National took it from little Michael Wood, the former Transport Minister who presided over Auckland Light Rail and vast inflation in construction costs. He’s a former union organiser who really shouldn’t be placed near power again. Cheung is from Hong Kong and has a Ph.D in biological science. He was less government waste, more housing, toughness on crime and education to teach children resilience. He deserves another term, and it is good to keep Wood out.

Carlos Cheung, National. Medium priority.

Napier

Napier tends to go the way of the government of the day. Stuart Nash was deselected by Labour in 2023 and has joined NZ First, but has been deselected again. Katie Nimon is the National MP now, she having heritage from one of Hawke’s Bay longest running bus companies which was bought out a few years ago. A Bachelor of Design and Executive MBA from Massey might not impress, but she did run the family bus business successfully. She did say in her maiden speech:

Instead of playing political whack-a-mole, I strongly believe in Adam Smith’s theory of the invisible hand. The argument for limited Government is a strong one, which is one of the many reasons why I stand here on this side of the House. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but you can’t spend your way out of every problem, nor can you regulate your way out of it. All you get is debt and dependency.

That’s worth having in the National caucus. Labour is putting up a doctor, an actual doctor, as well as a unionist, who is campaigning on, wait for it, how hard it is to get a GP in Napier. So he should be one, not be an MP. Typical socialists think other people should do the work they want the state to make happen. Vote for Nimon.

Katie Nimon, National. Medium priority.

Nelson

Nelson was unusual as one of the regional cities that didn’t go National in 2023. It shouldn’t surprise, as it was held by leftie Nick Smith under the National brand for so long, although Rachel Boyack held onto it by a tiny margin in 2023, so it arguably up for grabs. Boyack is a unionist whose maiden speech includes the gem that Sonja Davies was right to try to stop closure of the isolated little railway line to Glenhope and believing that the system is “purposely designed” against workers. She also complained about ACT MP Todd Stevenson opposing taxpayer funding of the arts. National’s candidate is Blair Cameron, trying a second time to win the seat. He has worked for the IMF and World Bank. As close as this race is, on balance Cameron is probably better than Boyack, but he isn’t that interesting as there is nothing about his own philosophy or beliefs in any of his material. Former ACT MP Chris Baillie is an alternative, but you could vote for Cameron if you’re doing nothing else.

Blair Cameron, National. Medium priority.

New Plymouth

This seat usually switches with governments, so David Macleod of National won this off Labour in 2023. Macleod was an electrician and an entrepreneur, which wins him points. Again it’s hard to know what his philosophical beliefs are. There are only three other candidates here (Labour, Opportunity and independent). The Labour candidate is Amanda Clinton-Gohdes, who sees climate action as a key local priority. There isn’t much to choose from here. Maybe Macleod’s background is superior to the local councillor, but he’s likely to win anyway, so don’t be too fussed.

David Macleod, National. Low priority.

North Shore

Simon Watts is a shoo-in in this safe National seat. He’s better on climate change than the previous government, but by forcing amalgamations he is taking an overly simplistic view of local government that bigger is better. He is no intellectual heavyweight. You’d be better giving Karen Chhour your vote. She opposed the ban on tobacco sales to adults and memorably got flack from Kelvin Davis because she is Maori and she was accused of looking at the world through “vanilla lens”. Give Watts a shock.

Karen Chhour, ACT. Medium priority.

Northcote

Dan Bidois won this from Labour in 2023. His story isn’t bad, as he dropped out of school for being a delinquent, did a butchery apprentice, survived bone cancer while he was there and later became an economist. He did work for Deloitte, then the NZ Initiative, so that levels out. He is opposed to voluntary euthanasia, but voted to decriminalise abortion. That’s a life story far superior to most. He’ll probably win again. He defeated Labour’s Shanan Halbert who is standing again, and is a shadow of Bidois. Martin Lundqvist is the ACT candidate, but I think Bidois has promise and could do with your support.

Dan Bidois, National. Medium priority.

Northland

Northland, like East Cape, is an electorate where a fair part of the population is actually enrolled in the Maori roll, so it ends up going National. It’s usually National, although Winston Peters held it for two years, and Labour did from 2020-2023. Shane Jones tries to win it as well, but came third in 2023. National’s MP is Grant McCallum who is a farmer and yet another member of the Bluegreens. In his maiden speech he talked about joining the Bluegreens after Simon Upton and Nick Smith founded it. Two National MPs whose legacy with the RMA and defending it against any useful reform has been so damaging, although it isn’t his fault. Labour isn’t proposing Willow-Jean Prime again (she’s standing for Te Tai Tokerau), but rather Ashleigh Latimer who is a community health leader. None of this is particularly inspiring. Who else is there? There is Shane Jones, but you wont want him. Mark Cameron is the ACT candidate who has pulled out of the ACT list because he is very unwell, having had kidney failure and a heart attack (following his son’s untimely death two years ago). He isn’t going to win, and almost certainly doesn’t want to, but give him your vote. He is one of the few MPs to actually say openly that want local authorities do about emissions has no impact on climate change. If it weren’t Cameron, I’d tick Jeffery Lye for ALCP.

Mark Cameron, ACT. Low priority.

Ōtāhuhu

This is a new electorate and is likely to go Labour. Jenny Salesa is the Labour MP for Panmure-Otahuhu who hopes to win this. She shouldn’t. She lost all Ministerial positions after the 2020 election for a reason. To put it politely, she doesn’t work well with others and should be kept well away from power. Just vote for National’s Lalit Arya to get this emotionally incontinent, entitled, angry person out of Parliament.

Lalit Arya, National. High priority.

Pakuranga

This seat is very much a safe seat for Simeon Brown for National. He’s going to win, and he now has a record as a Minister, which has been a difficult one. He started with transport, turning around the war on motoring from Labour, and then to health which is a thankless portfolio. There are a long list of measures from the Labour government that he has stopped that he deserves some credit for, including Three Waters, Maori wards at local government (without local referenda) and has sought to end the politicisation of the Medical Council of NZ. Labour’s candidate, social worker Campbell Matthews, isn’t going to be better, and Parmjeet Parmar from ACT, notwithstanding constant racism she experiences from opponents, isn’t either.

Simeon Brown, National. Medium priority.

Palmerston North

This is a fairly safe Labour seat, with Tangi Utikere as the MP. He’s a nice enough guy qualified to be a teacher and was a local councillor, but there’s little reason to vote for him. His most likely challenger is National’s Ankit Bansal, who has a surprisingly short biography. He stood last time as well, which suggests National isn’t trying hard enough. There’s little reason to vote for him either. Flip a coin really.

Ankit Bansal, National. Low priority.

Papakura

Judith Collins has retired, so National’s Emma Chatterton is standing. It is a fairly safe National seat, so she has a good chance of winning. She is a senior advisor to Erica Stanford which isn’t exactly a background of understanding private enterprise or even a wider range of perspectives. Before then she worked for ImpactLab and for social investment under Bill English. Her press release indicates she has been a teacher as well, but it’s not that clear. Given it is a safe seat, it is quite something for National to pick her as candidate and nothing in her profile is inspiring around what she believes in. You might prefer ACT candidate Malkiat Singh, who is a robotics engineer and founder of Kings Eat Organics, a BioGro-certified organic farm and food business. At least he is more qualified and has taken some risks.

Malkiat Singh, ACT. Low priority

Port Waikato

This safe National seat sees Andrew Bayly retire, and National is proposing Matthew Paul. He’s another Bluegreen and is a “Managing Director of an environmental and landscape consultancy working across residential, infrastructure and local government projects”. All very well, but what does he believe in? Casey Costello is the high profile NZ First candidate, but Sarah Lochead-MacMillan from ACT is a better bet. At least her profile talks about a freer and more prosperous NZ. Matthew Paul doesn’t say that.

Sarah Lochead-MacMillan, ACT. Low priority.

Rangitata

This seat went to Labour in 2020, but appears safe for National now. James Meager is the MP. He’s a lawyer, but his career also includes the incestuous world of working in the offices of four National MPs (which I know impresses other MPs, but doesn’t impress the public). He gets points for his statement in his maiden speech that “Members opposite do not own Māori. Members opposite do not own the poor. Members opposite do not own the workers. No party and no ideology has a right to claim ownership over anything or anyone”. Labour is proposing Sange Malama, a School Attendance Officer, which is an honourable job, but Meager deserves another go.

James Meager, National, Medium priority

Rangitikei

This safe National seat is held by Suze Redmayne, a farmer who describes herself as fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. I gather she is a good sort. Labour’s Karl Severinsen is a social worker and former army officer who recalls Ruth Richardson as a reason he joined Labour. He has no chance of winning anyway. Former Federated Farmers President Andrew Hoggard of ACT came a strong third last time and is a list MP. At least he explicitly believes in free markets. So Redmayne or Hoggard would be ok, although I’d probably back Redmayne rather than split the vote here.

Suze Redmayne, National. Low priority.

Remutaka

Chris Hipkins really should be out of Parliament given what a mediocrity he was as a Minister, and how he desperately tried to copy National in his brief period as PM. This is a pretty safe seat for Labour, but you should try to frighten Hipkins by voting for National candidate Dr Zabeen Lateef. Yes I know she is working in the Strategy, Analytics and Reporting Office of Otago University, and she has a Ph.D in clinical virology and immunology, which seems like a waste, but please put Hipkins and his family out of their misery. Don’t bother with failed former Wellington Mayor Andy Foster for NZ First, or ACT’s Nigel Elder.

Zabeen Lateef, National. Medium priority.

Rotorua

Todd McClay is the National MP in this fairly safe seat. He’s uninspiring and he’s been there since 2008. He gets a little credit for voting against the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act 2022, against the tide, but otherwise there’s no great reason to be enthused about voting for him. Fisher Wang for Labour looks like a schoolkid, and is on the District Council which counts against him. People who want to get into local government are rarely fit to be there. There is no ACT candidate here. Billy Brown is standing for NZ First and believes in the great replacement theory, which is unfortunate, as it would have been nice to give McClay a fright (and Brown has some sound views otherwise).

Todd McClay, National. Low priority.

Selwyn

Nicola Grigg is the (National) MP for this safe seat. She is Minister for Women and as such launched a “Gender Pay Gap toolkit” which is, of course, a monumental waste of money and is a fundamentally collectivist piece of nonsense. You could tick Iain Murray of ACT to send her a message, but so would Zoran Rakovic – an independent who bothered to create a website stating his position, which is practical, but not ideological. Murray would

Iain Murray, ACT. High priority

Southland

Joseph Mooney is the MP, for National and this is a very safe seat. He’s not going anywhere. Nor should he. His story about being 11 years old and the family going without food, and him travelling to Wellington from Hawke’s Bay with his younger brother, to try to reach Central Otago to pan for gold for money is quite something. Todd Stevenson of ACT gets credit for saying he doesn’t believe in taxpayer funding of the arts (which upset Nelson MP Rachel Boyack). Maybe give him a tick if you don’t think Mooney’s story is enough to show he has grit to be in Parliament.

Todd Stevenson, ACT. Low priority.

Taieri

Taieri was marginal for Labour in 2023, electing Ingrid Leary. To her credit she is a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (which is critical of China), but she also has supported a wealth tax in the past. Matthew French is the National candidate and he has a plausible chance of winning, although he isn’t exactly inspirational either. Still, I’d take a chance to oust Leary so.

Matthew French, National. Medium priority.

Takanini

Rima Nakhle is the incumbent Natuonal MP, but she isn’t a sure thing. She’s tough on drugs, and tough on crime, proposing 10 year prison sentences for drink driving, which just seems over the top. Unfortunately, no other candidates are really worth supporting. The most likely to unseat her is Labour’s Kharag Singh, and while he seems a decent enough chap, I think you could abstain reasonably here.

Don’t bother….

Tāmaki

Brooke van Velden is the outgoing ACT MP, so you have a real choice between National and ACT here. Max Harris is standing for Labour. He’s an odious former staffer for tankie British Labour MP and Corbynite, John McDonnell, who has previously glorified the IRA. James Christmas is standing for ACT, but he was a previous National list candidate. Mahesh Muralidhar is standing for National. In the Spinoff it was said that: “Christmas is “not a co-governance guy,” but a “treaty settlements guy”. He’s a “very big fan of charter schools”, a “big property rights guy” and reckons there’s unfinished business in proposals made by Seymour’s controversial Treaty principles bill”. Muralidhar was National’s Auckland Central candidate last election, and before I said although he has a MBA, don’t hold it against him. My hunch is Christmas has a battle on his hands, but I’d pick him over Muralidhar.

James Christmas, ACT. Medium priority

Taranaki-King Country

Barbara Kuriger is the National MP, and it’s a safe seat. She’s Deputy Speaker, which is fine, and benign. Ivana Jovivic from ACT is a better bet though.

Ivana Jovivic, ACT. Low priority

Taupō

Louise Upston is the National MP and it’s a safe seat. Chris Flatt is a unionist standing for Labour, so you can’t vote for him. Upston’s record on individual freedoms is very mixed. She opposed voluntary euthanasia, gay marriage and abortion legalisation, but ended up supporting bans on conversion therapy. Take from that what you will, she’s conservative, to a point. Nobody else here is really worth voting for, so don’t bother.

Don’t bother…

Tauranga

I’m old enough to think of this as the heartland of Winston Peters, but that ended some time ago. Sam Uffindell is the MP, and we all know about what haunts his political career. Jan Tinetti is the Labour candidate, and has been a list MP for nine years and is just another ex.teacher/unionist. Uffindell is going to win, so you don’t need to taint yourself by endorsing the ex. bully. Vote for Dr Tim Maltby, independent. He put his late cat on his website as a team member, so he deserves something for that. Bryan Norton for ACT is a fair alternative, given we haven’t a clue what Maltby stands for, other than he seems practically minded. Give the little guy a go.

Tim Maltby, Independent. High priority

Tukituki

The seat for Hastings and much of rural Hawke’s Bay is held by Catherine Wedd of National. Her background is typical National, but she’s an idiot. She introduced legislation to ban social media for under 16yos, despite the utter failure of such laws in Australia. The next step would be to require age ID for all internet access, which means personal ID and the end of internet anonymity. So she deserves to lose. There are few alternatives. The independents are nutters, Rob Douglas of ACT seems ok, and you can’t go wrong with Romana Manning of ALCP on one issue at least. However, I think Wedd needs a clearer message and that comes from losing. Dan Scott of Labour is a meteorologist and 22 years old. Hold your nose, and back him. Labour held this seat before, and can again.

Dan Scott, Labour. Medium priority.

Upper Harbour

National’s Cameron Brewer is the MP here, and he is probably fairly safe. He was a City Councillor for six years, which is not a reason to completely rule him out. He is a Minister for Commerce and Consumer Affairs, and Small Business and Manufacturing (the later roles are unnecessary), and is unremarkable at best. Panos Patros from ACT is a better bet, given Labour has little chance of taking this seat.

Panos Patros, ACT. Low priority

Waikato

Tim van de Molen is the National MP here, and he is a huge majority. He is a farmer, and was notable for allegedly being aggressive to a Labour MP. He’s probably not going to be a Minister, in part because of his personality. Unfortunately, none of the other candidates are inspirational as an alternative. Maybe give Ash Parmar of ACT your vote in the hope that Tim improves his performance in his next term

Ash Parmar, ACT. Low priority.

Waimakariri

National’s Matt Doocey, is the MP. He’s pretty safe here. As Tourism Minister he increased the International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy, so he’s not exactly a low tax man. His big focus is mental health. His maiden speech gave credit to Gerry Brownlee for the Christchurch recovery, which doesn’t wash. He seems a nice enough guy, but in a safe seat you can look for a better candidate. Labour list MP Dan Rosewarne is standing here, he is ex. Army, and is clearly not antagonistic to Western liberal democracies, which is rare enough in Labour, and honestly he could sit in the National Party without too much effort. He is too far down the list to get elected, so I’d give him the tick (the ACT candidate wont want it).

Dan Rosewarne, Labour. Medium priority.

Wairarapa

Mike Butterick is the MP for National, and while it is usually a National seat, it isn’t a fait accompli, as Kieran McAnulty, Labour list MP, is trying to win it back. Now we all know McAnulty is constantly named as a future Labour leader (as he well knows), so him winning Wairarapa is part of his career move to advance himself. Butterick is, a farmer. Ron Mark is the other high profile candidate, for NZ First, but he has little chance. The worst candidate is probably Lauren Craig for the Greens, who Co-founded “Students for Climate Solutions” and tried to stop new oil and gas exploration. Butterick’s maiden speech suggests he is a good egg:

Less government, not more. Our role is to solve problems, not create them; get the settings right, back up the bus, and leave people to get on with their lives. Personal responsibility: everyone has rights, but they also come with responsibility. Celebrating success, rewarding hard work: this country’s been built on the backs off those that have sold, made, fixed, and grown stuff, and we need to remember that and to encourage ambition and celebrate success. I think about those past and present that have and do contribute, and I’d make the point that we have a responsibility to be extremely focused on outcomes and fiscal discipline, as they have been and are in their own lives. We spend their money—it’s not Government money; it’s theirs, and it needs to be respected.

Mike Butterick, National. High priority.

Waitākere

Waitakere is a new electorate carved out of three others. Labour’s Vanushi Walters, list MP, is standing and the boundary changes means she may win. She’s an Oxford educated human rights lawyer. National is punting up Agnes Loheni, former list MP, who is a small business owner. They are quite different, being Sri Lankan background vs. Samoan, and Loheni being a social conservative. The worst candidate is Green list MP Steve Abel. The more interesting candidate is Bianca O’Keefe, who is an independent who has bothered to put together a website about herself and her views. That deserves credit in itself, and the detail she has included is admirable, even if some of her ideas are questionable. Her ideas are philosophically inconsistent, but she is thinking. That’s more than most of the other candidates. The issue here is that it’s a highly marginal seat. Walters may get in on the list, and she’s not particularly keen on individual freedom and free markets. Loheni on the other hand does have a good sense of individual responsibility, according to her 2017 maiden speech:

I’m the product of the compassion and gratitude my mother taught me and the resilience and hard work ethic my father instilled in me. I grew up very lucky, in stark contrast to many of my Pasefika community today, because growing up, there was no one telling us that the system was against us because we were Samoan kids. There was no one telling us we were impoverished migrant Samoan families living in destitute conditions. There was no one telling us that we needed to be taught differently from all other kids because of our culture. We were not subject to the soft bigotry of low expectation that exists today—the soft bigotry of low expectation that rips hope from our children, destroys faith in their ability to overcome life’s obstacles, creates jealousy and envy in our kids, and leaves them dependent on the whims of the State that says it knows better than their own families.

While encouraging Bianca O’Keefe is not dishonourable, she does need to have a bit of a peer review of her extensive thinking before she deserves support. Back Agnes Loheni for promoting individual responsibility.

Agnes Loheni, National. Medium priority

Waitaki

This is safe National country, with Miles Anderson the incumbent MP. Standard farming stock is Miles and he just had his first term. Bizarrely, Damien O’Connor, former West Coast-Tasman MP is standing in Waitaki. He’s been in Parliament since 1993, and most recently disgraced himself by being a patsy for the Chinese Communist Party, when he said Australia should follow NZ and be respectful to China. I wouldn’t be worried about O’Connor, he has no chance. One measure of an MP is his maiden speech and Anderson did say:

The (Clyde) dam was completed 30 years ago, and since then, we have collectively hidden behind a curtain of regulation when opportunity has knocked at our door. We have gone from a nation that undertook projects like the Waitaki hydro scheme to a nation that kowtows to activist pressure groups and gives up.

Finally, I want to talk about free speech and democracy. New Zealand has a proud history of championing free speech and democracy. I believe that tradition has been subverted in recent years. It seems that any opinion that isn’t supported by activists and/or so-called progressives is deemed extremist. Why is it that supposed liberals are so illiberal when it comes to hearing opposing views? As I stated earlier in this speech, a sense of fair play and respect for another’s point of view is the hallmark of democracy in New Zealand. We must not lose this bedrock principle of our democratic society in a rush to either extreme wokeness or due to intolerance. We should all be able to agree to disagree in a mature and tolerant manner, and that includes in this House.

He seems like a good egg. Michael Laws is notable as the NZ First candidate, and he is a loose cannon. Other independents offer nothing better, so vote for Anderson.

Miles Anderson, National. Medium priority

Wellington Bays

Lucky me being in the most leftwing non-Maori seat in the country. Julie-Anne Genter took it from Labour in 2023, as Fleur Fitzsimons was that unappealing. Now it’s time to see if the natural order can be restored. Although Genter isn’t the most ignorant and rabid Green MP, as in Auckland Central, having an electorate seat increases funding and outreach for her narrow views, and she like the rest, have all joined in on platforming extremist pro-Palestinian views and cosplay. She was also responsible for the kneecapping of a 2nd Mt Victoria Tunnel in the first term of the Ardern government, and the morphing of Let’s Get Wellington Moving into an expensive waste of time and money, to push a single tram line instead. More recently she was noted for angrily approaching Matt Doocey, because she thinks she is evidence based in her analysis. Defeating her will help slow down her Parliamentary career, although she will be elected as a list MP. Craig Renney is Labour’s candidate, and as much as I’d never endorse a CTU economist (and he is low on the list), he’s better than Genter. National’s Karuna Muthu doesn’t deserve your support this time. He was the candidate in 2023 and his main achievement in 2026 has been to leave a candidate’s meeting because he didn’t like too many “leftwing questions”. Harden up buttercup, try being a libertarian standing anywhere? National should have picked someone new to go through the baptism of fire of standing in a seat where there is little chance. If you can’t cope with Renney, you could vote for Nicole McKee of ACT, but she wouldn’t want you to do that either. Oddities include Bruce Welsh, formerly of the New Conservatives, now standing as an independent. Liam Anderson of the Money Free Party, and Don McDonald, who is known for having utterly cryptic policy statements. If you don’t know him, this is his blog https://rgdsm.wordpress.com/

Craig Renney, Labour. Low priority.

Wellington North

Tamatha Paul won the then Wellington Central electorate in a paroxysm of insanity in 2023, and she deserves to be defeated. She’s not very bright, she doesn’t play well with people who disagree with her and she buys into the bien pensant list of far-left views, and probably thinks people who oppose her are racist and sexist. I know two of the other candidates, but I don’t think you should vote for them unless you think you might vote for Paul instead, in which case feel free. Ayesha Verrall has the best chance of ousting Paul, and yes I can think of a long list of reasons why she isn’t a good choice and if it were most other seats, I’d be voting against her. However, there isn’t a better choice. Jonathan Pitts is standing for National, and although the new electorate boundaries are much better for National (as it has shed leftie Brooklyn in favour of more middling Ngaio and Khandallah), he’s not going to win or come second, bless him for trying though. As for the rest, you could always vote Michael Appleby for the ALCP, who has stood for almost every election since 1996, and his stance is pro-freedom, so if you can’t cope with Verrall, he deserves your vote for his indefatigability. Jessica Hammond is standing for the fourth time for Opportunity, and bless her for trying, but it’s getting dangerous now and it’s important to stop the lanyard party’s momentum. A shout out to Josh Harford standing for quasi-Muldoonist socialism, although I’m still unsure that the former candidate for the Silly Hat Party for Mayor isn’t engaging in a grand act of comedy by stringing along a bunch of insane old tankies from the Maritime Union. Hard lefties should give him support for being many times smarter than Tamatha Paul. Yes, I know Tamatha Paul will get in on the list, but not having an electorate reduces funding and outreach for her toxic opinions. Yes, I know Ayeesha Verrell is high on the Labour list, but she isn’t guaranteed to get in on current polling either.

Ayeesha Verrell, Labour. High priority.

West Coast-Tasman

What was once a Labour heartland seat is not anymore. The mercurial Maureen Pugh is retiring as the National MP, so this seat is very much up for grabs, given she did great work defeating the odious Damien O’Connor in 2023. Now National is punting Katie Milne, former Federated Farmers President, as its candidate. Dairy farmer and volunteer firefighter, she seems competent and there is nothing to say she wouldn’t be. Rory Paterson is standing for Labour, although he doesn’t appear to live in the electorate and he is, of course, a teacher. As usual, it’s hard to tell if he would do less harm in Parliament than being a leftie teacher, but I think Milne is a safer bet in a seat that could swing to Labour. There are eleven candidates here, which indicates a high level of craziness. Money Free, the Alliance, Sue Grey (yes that one) from Outdoors and Freedom, NZ Loyal and “Progressive Aotearoa New Zealand” all have candidates, so the funny money conspiracists have lots of choices, including of course Opportunity and the Greens.

Katie Milne, National. Medium priority.

Whanganui

Whanganui is held by National’s Carl Bates (who?), and while it is probably safe for him, it does swing to Labour from time to time. He’s been given some grief for property investment, and has a business background. He seems benign enough. Former Labour list MP Angela Roberts is standing. She was a President of the PPTA, one of the most pernicious protectors of poorly performing teachers in the country, so that is a sound reason to stop her getting elected. Out of curiosity is Juan Coffey, a founder of a party called Balance NZ, which is not registered. A lot of effort has been put into its policies, which are actually fairly centrist. No, don’t vote for him, but it’s actually more thorough than say, Opportunity. Harete Hipango-Brownlie, former National MP in Whanganui from 2017-2020 (and then list MP till 2023), is standing for NZ First. Conservatives might vote for her, given her stances on abortion and euthanasia, but she has no chance and reports of how well she works with others are mixed. I’d hold my nose and stick with stopping Angela Robert by voting for Bates.

Carl Bates, National. Medium priority.

Whangaparāoa

This seat is very safe for Mark Mitchell, hence why there are so few candidates. He has had quite the career with plenty of bravery and heroism, and is sometimes seen as a future leader, but that would be a mistake. I don’t think former cops should lead countries, as their instincts are not likely to be towards protecting freedom and limiting the power of the state. He has most of the views you would think a former cop would have, so I’d be thinking about who else you could vote for with good conscience. It wont be environmental educator Estefania Muller-Pallarès from Labour, as much as I like the idea of her not doing her job. Brenton Faithfull, funeral director standing for NZ Loyal seems a nice guy, but it’s NZ Loyal which is crazy and obsessive. I’d be ticking entrepreneur Helena Roza for ACT, just to send Mitchell a message that his seat shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Helena Roza, ACT. Low priority.

Whangārei

Whangarei is usually a National seat, but this time Shane Reti is retiring, so Lloyd Budd is National’s candidate. On the downside he’s a real estate agent and is bigging up having completed the “a leadership course through Harvard University Executive Education”. His profile is typical National candidate, but there isn’t that much depth there. The awful Dr Gary Payinda is standing for Labour, who has purged his lengthy social media profile of pejorative attacks and agitprop to look like he’s worthy of actually being in power. This statement from him says it all about the standards he has in facts vs. rhetoric “This government has given billions of our tax dollars to oil companies, tobacco companies and property speculators but have made life harder for our teachers, nurses and firefighters”. It’s a tough call, activist GP or real estate agent. On balance it is better for Whangarei to have one fewer real estate agent than one fewer GP, so hold your nose and help reduce housing prices by voting in Lloyd Budd. Payinda can go back to patching up bodies and sounding off ignorantly about public policy on social media. The worst candidate is not clear, as there are a few independent who don’t say much, but I’m going to pick Luke Beharrell of the Money Free NZ Party. The name of the party says it all really.

Lloyd Budd, National. High priority.

Wigram

Megan Woods is the outgoing incumbent here although she remains a list candidate oddly, she is now Labour, but once was with Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party. Although it is probably safe for Labour’s Dominik Yanzick (who rarely for Labour, works in the private sector), National won the party vote here handsomely in 2023 with around 45% to Labour on 31%, so it is far from assured. On the one hand, Yanzick’s experience and background is probably an asset to the Labour Party, but on the other hand National’s Tracy Summerfield is an entrepreneur which is fairly solid (although I mark down most people with an MBA) and a teacher which also makes her rare to not be a rabid lefty. ACT MP Laura McClure is standing, but she’ll likely be elected on the list anyway. By far the worst candidate is William Alexander for the Hamas Free Palestine Party, a former thespian who the Socialist Spinoff gave attention for wimping out on finishing his hunger strike for an Islamist theocracy.

Tracy Summerfield, National. Medium priority

Te Tai Hauāuru

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, who classifies the entire population of the country into Tangata Whenua, Tangata Tiriti and “everyone else” (who don’t matter as they are dying out), and thinks Jews aren’t indigenous to Israel deserves to be sent into electoral oblivion. Labour’s Te Puoho Katene has the best chance of doing so, but Ngarewa-Packer has such a lead, you could pick National’s Coral Raukawa to give her credit for bothering to stand in the first place.

Te Puoho Katene, Labour. Medium priority.

Te Tai Tokerau

This seat is a mess, because the current MP is ex. TPM Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. She is standing again under her own party banner, which would create an overhang as she is unlikely to get enough party votes to justify the seat. So it’s a four- way race, as TPM has a candidate, the Greens are trying with Huhana Lyndon, and Labour is putting the mediocre Willow-Jean Prime as the candidate. To avoid the overhang either Lyndon or Prime would make sense, but if you are watching the polls, pick the one most likely to defeat Kapa-Kingi that doesn’t include TPM

Willow-Jean Prime, Labour. Low priority.

Te Tai Tonga

Takuta Ferris, who doesn’t like Asian people campaigning for Labour candidates in Maori seats, is an independent having been ex. TPM. He also would be an overhang if he won. TPM is proposing Lisa Marie Murch who should be rejected for her radicalism. Lisa Te Morenga of the Greens is a better candidate as she is smarter than most of them, but Mananui Ramsden for Labour is the obvious choice here.

Mananui Ramsden, Labour. High priority.

Tāmaki Makaurau

This is now a bit of a mess. Oriini Kaipara is the TPM MP, but Labour’s candidate Kerrin Leoni is no longer the Labour candidate, but she remains on the list. It is better to vote for Kerrin Leoni, as she will take an overhang seat from TPM, and will still be counted from the Labour list, as her withdrawal as a Labour candidate happened after the deadline for submitting candidates.

Kerrin Leoni, “Labour”, High priority.

Waiariki

Rawiri Waititi, who thinks Maori are genetically superior to others and that almost every government policy is racist and fascist, is a buffoon who deserves to be voted out. He is also backing the anti-democratic attempt to create a TPM overhang. Waititi’s most likely to lose against Labour’s Toni Boynton, so you should vote for her.

Toni Boynton, Labour. High priority.

A disappointed libertarian votes

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 04:30:08 +0000

Libertarians rarely like the advance auction of stolen goods that are general elections. Politicians mindlessly throw around promises to spend money that isn't theirs, on projects they wont be accountable for (really), to give to people who didn't earn it, or to control people's property, or to tell them what to do, and send some people to prison for not doing what they say. It is a bidding war on borrowed money from future taxpayers by and large, and it is fundamentally banal.

The NZ 2026 election has been particularly woeful. However, there are choices

Keep the National-led coalition government in power;

Replace it with a left-wing variant led by Labour, but also with the Greens, Opportunity and maybe Te Pati Maori;

Opt out of giving any of them your endorsement.

I'm tempted by Peter Cresswell's support of the last, but I think it is ill founded, because there really is a choice between a ragtag mob of people who sometimes do good, and a ragtag mob of people who rarely do good. The right to not vote is important though, Australians don't have it, because it is a much more rules based country than NZ. You don't need to vote, you can curse them all, noting your impact is miniscule although not zero. However, I think you should consider voting for a party at least (electorates are a different matter, which I will follow up on tomorrow).

There are nuances to these three choices of course, some think you can have the first with Opportunity, some think you can have the last without, but for a country with an electoral system now offering seven parties that are highly likely to be elected, it seems fairly binary. It’s not though, it’s a sliding scale as to the degree you want government to have power, control and your money to spend, what you want it to have power, control and to spend money on, and the philosophical underpinnings for doing that. You can make choices for options 1 and 2 that are variants on what matters to you. You can be moderate with the two main parties, or be more aggressive in various directions. There is only one direction I want to go in, which is a bit less government.

What about ACT?

Despite commentary by some of the shallow of thinking, there is no libertarian option on the ballot, so I should first address that elephant in the commentary. ACT is not a libertarian party. It isn’t even the party of Roger Douglas’s Unfinished Business – which was a manifesto in itself. ACT is neither radical nor bold, indeed where it lies today is perhaps where the National Party was in the late 1990s, with occasional flashes of inspiration on a handful of matters.

A libertarian party would be calling for significant cuts in state spending, not simply taking it down to levels proportionate when John Key was in power.

A libertarian party would be calling for decriminalising adult ingestion of any substances, as long as there is adult responsibility for the resulting behaviour.

A libertarian party would be calling for getting the state progressively out of the supply of most goods and services, fundamental reform of education and healthcare, and individualising national superannuation, ACC and social welfare.

ACT sometimes lights up on parts of these, from time to time, but it is mostly a party of the conscience of the National Party. It’s single greatest achievement is charter schools, even those these are somewhat hogtied by a National Party terrified of the teachers’ unions. Starting a more fundamental debate on the Treaty was useful, at the very least as a way of venting frustration and discussing what could not have been discussed for years – the role of the Treaty and what its application meant. On a side point, it is a disgrace, to the other parties, that ACT is the only party that doesn’t want to wage war on supermarkets. However, it is also extremely disappointing that Paul Henry will be in Parliament. Yes I've read his book, it didn't take long.

NZ First?

Beyond ACT, occasionally NZ First will emerge with something that is consistent with individual freedom, free market capitalism and supporting core defence/law and order roles of the state, but it is fundamentally a party of opportunism. NZ First is reverting to a mix of soft-nationalism, casual bigotry towards migrants and conservativism, even if it history in power has been largely to be happy with symbols and spending on baubles (railways seem to be one of the latest ones). It’s conservative-nationalism without the anti-semitism, white supremacy and militarism. While I admire NZ First’s rejection of critical theory, and baiting of the ethno-nationalists on the hard left, a party that calls variously for nationalisation, vast state projects and incoherent regulation on an ad hoc basis is not one I can support. I'm heartened though that it might hoover up lots of votes that might go to smaller loony parties.

Though I will give Winston Peters credit for ending funding of the Hamas infested UNRWA.

National?

National this past term has been more impressive than under the Key-English era, not least because it actually repealed laws passed by Labour. That’s no small achievement, as National usually just continues what Labour did, with a handful of exceptions. Most notable was repealing Labour’s Natural and Built Environments Act and Spatial Planning Act, which would have continued the nationalisation of land, although the replacement is a long way from being what many of us hoped for. Also notable is:

• Scrapping Three Waters which would have indirectly shared control of water infrastructure with Iwi.

• Scrapping the Maori Health Authority

• Scrapping the creeping ban on (legal) tobacco sales for adults

• Scrapping the virtue signalling ban new offshore oil and gas exploration

• Scrapping the grossly inefficient Lake Onslow Pumped Hydro boondoggle

• Scrapping the Auckland Light Rail project

• Scrapped the compulsory national Social Insurance programme

• Unwinding the centralisation of polytechs

• Scrapping legislation to impose industry-wide collective bargaining

• Scrapping the “ute tax” subsidy for new EV buyers

• Scrapping the Reserve Bank’s dual mandate

• Reintroducing applying the same tax deductibility on interest bills for residential property investment as with other investments

There is plenty of disappointment too. Reform of local government has been mixed, with semi-forced amalgamations, rather than stripping the power of general competence. The rates cap is a significant win, although it is much later than it should have been.

On education, the reinstatement of charter schools is a good step, as have been some reforms of the curriculum, but the fundamentals are still antagonistic to choice and diversity in education, and little has been done to strip out the significant leftwing/critical theory bias in curriculum, teacher training and recruitment. Nothing matters more than getting this right because education profoundly affects the futures of young people, as well as national culture, identity and philosophy. For many years it has been dominated by a philosophy and people whose views on this do not align with the government, let alone a free, open liberal democracy with capitalism, private property rights and individual responsibility.

That wont change while so much power is centralised in Wellington, and while a central focus of the system is preventing industrial action by teaching unions that openly back leftwing parties and oppose performance based pay, and opening up teaching beyond the heavily post-modernist oriented teacher training system. National has shown little interest in tackling these issues. What a disaster the free school meals policy has been as a distraction, set up by Labour in its endless effort to give people something paid for by future generations.

On healthcare, it is all tinkering. Beyond some arguments around centralised vs. devolved power, or having a specialist cancer hospital, almost all debates on healthcare are around how much money and where does it go. While the left debates bans and taxes on products that it disapproves of for being unhealthy (tobacco, alcohol, gambling, sugar, fat, salt), the “right” says little beyond enabling more private provision of healthcare. Nobody talks about how the current system, fundamentally, has little link between user demand and supply, nor how the rationing of public healthcare inevitably means people wait for services, and some are delayed, and they suffer and some die as a result. Talk of reform onto a partial insurance model, as seen in Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, France, Germany and others will inevitably see shrieks of unhinged hysteria about “Americanisation”, which nobody advocates. Politicians who don’t advocate more socialism in healthcare (i.e. free dentistry supplied by whom?) are fearful of even starting a debate about how healthcare is structured and funded. So, nothing new is coming there. Don’t expect anything about ACC either, that lumbering state monopoly isn’t being challenged by anyone.

On welfare, it is tinkering as well. Sure, eligibility is somewhat tighter, and there is talk about drug testing (which is somewhat performative), but there is little about stripping back the scale of the middle class welfare state that Helen Clark and Michael Cullen set up to trap the National Party, successfully. Indeed, Nicola Willis has thrown more money at it with her Family Boost package subsidising (heavily regulated) childcare. Nobody has answers about addressing structural welfare dependency, and indeed the Opportunity Party wants everyone on welfare, and the hard-left parties want much more.

On the size of the state and freedom more generally, besides a few surprises (abolition of the Broadcasting Standards Authority), there’s little sign of any progress. Nicola Willis wont cut the public sector to the level to 2017 levels (adjusted for today’s population) because apparently that would be “too tough”. However, she’s and Luxon are keen to consider breaking up the largest NZ franchisee owned supermarket chain, to show off a commitment to lowering grocery prices. It’s only slightly more sensible than Labour’s policy of structural separation, which is economic lunacy and unprecedented anywhere in the world. Moreover, Luxon is also keen on following Australia’s unsuccessful ban on under 16yos accessing social media, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it led to compulsory ID for internet access because, well, the instincts towards individual freedom are difficult to see.

Finally, on the economy, the age of riding off the back of the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s is well and truly gone. Clark did that, as did Key, but the gains from those reforms have ebbed away as regulation has creeped in, and the role of the state has grown bit by bit. It has become more and more difficult to set up business, hire people, open bank accounts and trade, and the competitiveness of NZ compared to other economies has waned as a result. Again, four of the parties vying for Parliament are keen to make that significantly worse, of course always with the best of intentions. Genuine interest in reforms that improve productivity exist in some. Addressing housing supply, reforming the planning system, even allowing road pricing all make small and useful differences, but none are fundamental. David Seymour’s Ministry of Regulation has surprisingly, made some small differences, but there needs to be a much more direct commitment to making starting and sustaining businesses and hiring people easier. The leftwing parties don’t believe in that.

Perhaps, by far, the most disappointing element of the Luxon Government is Luxon himself. He is one of the most uselessly uninspiring and awkward Prime Ministers in recent history. He lacks authenticity and seriousness. He is so unconvincing it is painful. He laughs awkwardly at questions or things he said, and nobody really knows what matters to him, beyond his family. To his credit he has largely let Ministers take charge of their portfolios, like CEOs do to sectoral managers, but he is not a CEO. He is expected to provide leadership, gravitas, philosophical and “national” authority as he represents NZ globally and presents a vision that is convincing, not always popular, but grounded in something, anything.

The fact that few opinion polls put National at 30% or above is a testament to his failure. It remains quite the paradox that on the one hand so many in the country think Luxon is a poor Prime Minister (but even more think Hipkins could be worse), but a majority of National’s caucus don’t think so (or merely dislike the alternatives). It’s obvious that, short of a remarkable turnaround in the next week, Luxon will not be Prime Minister at the 2029 election. Even if he can manage to retain power this time, he will have lost authority, especially if he has also lost Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop because the party vote has fled elsewhere out of sheer frustration and fear.

Overall?

A great government? No. A good government? In snippets. A better one than Hipkins had? Yes, but what a low bar that was.

Could it be better? Of course. It could cut spending, it could liberalise education from the bureaucracy, the unions and the stultifying ideology that cauterises real critical thinking. It could embrace private property rights as so many of them want to. It could focus relentlessly on productivity, and on an outward looking mindset, and a belief that individual freedom and responsibility are to be cherished and encouraged, and for people to be judged not on their background, but on their deeds. It could believe in retaining internet anonymity and freedom, and promote parental and business responsibility in changing the online culture of bullying and harassment.

A party vote for ACT might inch that a little closer. I doubt one for NZ First will. I’m unsure one for National really would.

What is clear is that the other four parties turn away from this. Their main driver is how to take more money from people and businesses, and to funnel it through Wellington to pay for more public sector employees or more welfare, and more spending. They want to control and regulate more, they want to more judge people based on their background, than on their deeds. They want more state. They talk of freeing people from burdens, but they want to take charge, be our parents, and to divide people into those who must be taken from, and those who should receive. Moreover, they have become more radical, more militant, more strident. Some want wealth taxes – taxes on what you own, after paying taxes on the income in the first instance, all want to sacrifice your standard of living to reduce emissions for zero measurable gain, all default to more spending, more regulation and more control.

So yes, vote for one of the three coalition parties. I’ll be party voting ACT, with many reservations, but it’s not like 2008, when the choice between Clark and Key was largely one of style, not substance. This government has many weaknesses, the biggest one is at the head of it, but it’s much less dangerous than the side led by activists, unionists, race supremacists and haters of capitalism, liberal democracy and private property.

New Zealand election - a dud on foreign policy

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:23:34 +0000

What would Luxon or Hipkins do if China invaded Taiwan?

What would Luxon or Hipkins do if it was found that (as in Australia) Iran had been inciting terrorism or attacks against Jewish targets in NZ?

What would Luxon or Hipkins do if the war in Ukraine expanded, with indirect support from China?

What would Luxon or Hipkins do if the US withdrew from south Korea without the latter's support?

I don't expect there to be simple answers to any of this, but I do expect a foreign policy philosophy to be expounded by the two men vying to be Prime Minister.

It's hardly surprising that foreign policy isn't a big issue in the New Zealand election, and to some extent it is a relief, but on the other hand it should matter - mainly because the international environment has not been this febrile, dangerous or uncertain since the Cold War. It is easy for New Zealanders to feel far away from the rest of the world and its problems, and it is also easy to want to pontificate to the world about how it "should be", when the chances of suffering direct military attack or even terror attack ranges from remote to very low.

However, NZ is vulnerable, not least because supply lines for everything from mechanical parts to fossil fuels to pharmaceutical, as well as export revenues, are dependent on safe shipping lanes and there being an international environment of peace and relatively open trade in goods and services.

So let's separate two elements of foreign policy:

New Zealand's direct foreign policy interests;
Indirect foreign policy interests around the international order and conditions within other states.

NZ's interests are closely aligned to Australia, in relation to trade and security, but there are also close interests in the South Pacific, alongside smaller island states, protecting the Exclusive Economic Zone from illegal exploitation, and protecting the high seas from military incursion and destructive levels of extraction and pollution.

As a small country, NZ's preference traditionally has been for an international order, based on respecting the territorial integrity of nation states, and their sovereignty, to be maintained. That is increasingly difficult, as the alliances of liberal democracies have been challenged by an increasingly isolationist and febrile United States on the one hand, and the increasing aggressiveness of the People's Republic of China, primarily in the South China Sea (which it asserts as its own, despite a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling invalidated China’s "nine-dash line" claims in the South China Sea), but also in sabre rattling over the free open liberal democracy of Taiwan.

In the former category, the USA's unilateral and failing action against Iran has made the Middle East more dangerous, without overthrowing one of the most brutal terrorist exporting nations on the planet. It's worth noting Iran has already been found to be behind multiple terror incidents in Australia. The US's actions against Venezuela have not been for full-scale regime change, but to extract resources from the formerly socialist authoritarian state, meanwhile Ukraine continues to suffer from the bloodiest conflict in Europe since 1945. The US is at best, an unpredictable ally, and at worst an antagonist, although that may well change after the end of the Trump Administration. What it does mean is that NZ cannot continue to free ride off of the US or Australia in regional defence. NZ should be looking to expand its defence capability and its relationship with Australia.

Meanwhile, although NZ has been largely immune from Islamist terror attacks, it has not been immune from psychopathic levels of support for Hamas, the Iranian Islamist regime and growing Jew hatred aligned to Palestinian activism. NZ has relatively little interest in the conflict, beyond seeking a peaceful long term solution to the conflict, which means both opposing Israeli settler violence in the West Bank and rejecting the sadistic genocidal terror of Hamas, and the corruption and Jew hatred fostered by the Palestinian Authority (which has further delayed elections). The current government has taken a more measured stance than the likes of Australia, which rewarded Hamas's sadistic pogrom against Israel with recognition of the non-existent Palestinian state (by contrast, Taiwan is, by every factual indicator, a sovereign state, but is blanked out because of fear of...)

China. NZ is not immune from aggression from Beijing, which continues to wage cyber attacks globally (along with its friends in Russia, DPRK, Myanmar and Cambodia), and stealing IP. China happily exploits NZ's openness around trade, investment, migration and even media, with it dominating the NZ Chinese language media (the fact Qatar, Hamas's biggest ally, has the rights to a free to air TV news network in New Zealand is another issue as well).

NZ is in a difficult position, with China as its number one trading partner, but a partner that, as seen by all of its trading relationships, is very much extractive and highly mercantilist. China seeks relationships so it can promote economic dependency on its exports, while building its own capability domestically to produce goods and services. China has already stolen cuttings from kiwifruit to boost its own production. There are no easy answers here, but Australia has the same issue.

Among the political leaders, there isn't much between Hipkins and Luxon on foreign policy, except Hipkins is closer to leftwing government democracies on the Israel-Palestine dispute. In short, he's bought into rewarding the Palestinian Authority and indirectly Hamas, for their pogrom on 7th October, and bought into the propaganda that Israel has performed "genocide" against a population that is growing in Gaza - a claim that isn't born out by either evidence or legal decisions, but is an activist assertion that doesn't bear up under close scrutiny.

Quite simply his use of the word "genocide" against one side, while never noting that Hamas committing the greatest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, and which preaches genocidal intent constantly (and promotes it in schools it runs), is intellectually lazy, morally bankrupt and racist. The evidence for Hamas, part of the Palestinian Authority, and much of the pro-Palestine movement having genocidal intent is clear, since Hamas wants Israel wiped off the map, as do many pro-Palestine activists. While there remains a mainstream position of wanting a two-state solution, and resisting attempts by Israeli ultranationalists to fully takeover the occupied territories, it should be balanced by defending Israel's right to exist in peace, with defensible borders and for Jewish people to not face a renewal of the Jew hatred that sought to wipe them out.

Hipkins has now slammed the admission of Israel as a development partner to the Pacific Islands Forum, which is odd given the tinge of "anti-colonialism" that flows from Labour, but it seems treating Israel as uniquely special and wrong, is de rigueur for Labour.

There aren't a lot of vote from Jews in NZ though.

The hard-left parties (Greens and TPM) are worse of course. Both would push NZ away from more defence spending, its alliance with Australia (and the US), and treat China, Russia and the US as essentially being morally equals, which is abhorrent. In particular, the cosplaying by the Greens and TPM and almost constant parroting of Hamas propaganda shows how morally bankrupt they both are on foreign affairs. TPM wants NZ to be neutral, which means being neutral between Russia and Ukraine (closer to the US position ironically), neutral if China invades Taiwan, but not neutral against Israel which it essentially campaigns for its abolition. The Greens are not quite so despicable, but I can never forget the response after 7th October by Chloe Swarbrick which was to be more concerned about Israel's response to Hamas, than what Hamas did, and for Swarbrick to pick the "good Jews" to listen to on the conflict, rather than the mainstream. For both the Greens and TPM to treat Jews as not indigenous to Israel smacks of far-left racism, that somehow regards the colonisers of the 7th century to be indigenous, but not the people they evicted.

As despicable as that is, the wider foreign policy concern is that there is just an absence of understanding that the international environment is not favourable to multilateralism anymore. The world has become much less about a largely unified block of liberal democracies dragging developing countries and tyrannies into some international rule of law, and much more about neo-realist power politics. The US has decided to abandon Europe's defence by and large, and to appease Russia - a nuclear power with an economy the size of Spain. It has also decided to leave the UN and other multilateral agencies to the power and influence of China and others filling the vacuum, and to treat personal relationships as a substitute for principle and rule of law. Whether that lasts is uncertain, but what does matter is NZ looking after itself, remaining with allies that share its values, and being able to respond to rapidly changing challenges internationally, particularly when they affect supply chains and security.

The international trade environment has seen the WTO be gutted by both the Trump Administration, and the likes of China, the EU and India, all of which are responding unilaterally. NZ has to pursue more free trade agreements, although not ones that sacrifice its own economic wellbeing as a fig leaf to retain protectionism. That is what the EU-NZ Free Trade Agreement does by enabling EU activists to sue NZ for not maintaining economically destructive policies under the auspices of fighting climate change. You can be sure the EU doesn't get similar agreements with larger powers like China, but the Ardern/Hipkins Government was very keen on virtue signalling.

So where do the political leader see NZ going in defence? Who knows?

How would they respond if China attacked Taiwan? Who knows?

What's their view on the USA as an ally? Not clear.

Do they think NZ should contribute more to the collective defence of the South Pacific? Maybe.

Do they think Israel's right to exist is worth defending loudly? Maybe.

Do they fully support Ukraine remaining within its internationally recognised boundaries? Probably

Do they think that the main meaning of the "independent foreign policy" is being antagonistic to other liberal democracies, including our allies? Who knows?

I suspect Hipkins and Luxon don't know or care very much about foreign policy, except (in Labour's case) where it grabs votes from more radical rivals.

but then given NZ is not directly exposed to the consequences of the breaking world order, not many care either.

Navi Pillay is a disgraceful choice for the Nobel Peace Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 04:29:57 +0000

Some say that the Nobel Peace Prize lost credibility when it was won by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973, given neither men were great at anything beyond blood thirsty realpolitik.

Anjeze Bojaxhui (known as Mother Teresa of Calcutta) in 1979 was another one, given the succour she gave to the likes of the Duvaliers.

In 1992, Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala was chosen, although there are considerable doubts about parts of her claimed biography.

In 2007 selecting Al Gore for promoting climate change was quite the stretch, only beaten by Barack Obama winning the prize in 2009 despite having done next to nothing (and later being President when Russia invaded Crimea, and Syria's government starting barrel bombing and using chemical weapons, and doing next to nothing about either).

The European Union winning the prize in 2012 meant the Nobel committee was entering the abstract (bearing in mind how it did nothing to stop the genocide in the Balkans), followed by the UN World Food Programme in 2020 - although its responsibility for increasing world food supply is not significant.

Liu Xiaobo, Chinese dissident won the prize in 2010, deservedly so. Note that for a moment.

For 2026, selecting Navi Pillay, South African lawyer, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and judge for the International Criminal Court, falls into the bracket of being disgraceful.

The only thing more disgraceful is the hagiographical coverage of her in some much media, and the list of usual suspects willing to whitewash her mixed record.

She isn't without some merit, seen in her earlier career. Albeit that the ending of apartheid in South Africa saw the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize given to Mandela and De Klerk. Her role in ending apartheid is but a footnote compared to them.

However, the Wall Street Journal editorial commenting on her winning the prize is telling, and the background as to why speaks volumes as to how unsuited this appeaser of tyrannies is for the prize:

Of course you wouldn't know that if you relied on New Zealand's state media for the news. RNZ reported it without controversy (except for repeating a CNN report of Trump saying he should have won it, which is absord). TVNZ was almost the same, except noting Israeli PM Netanyahu's criticism of it. without elaborating.

Hamas celebrated her winning the prize, which for some should be enough to condemn her. Surely she said something in her history to condemn a fanatical theocratic terrorist group that engaged in a sadistic slaughter of innocent civilians? Well, no.

A short version of her record is here:

On the People's Republic of China, she is in obeisance. Remember Liu Xiaobo who won the prize in 2010? Pillay didn't attend the ceremony for him being granted the prize. Xiaobo had four terms in prison for criticising the regime in Beijing, and died from cancer after being granted "medical parole". This is one of Xiaobo's brave publications pushing for liberal democracy in China. Pillay ignored it, presumably she thinks Chinese people aren't capable of being allowed to decide for themselves who their government should be.

Ignoring China is one thing, but turning in names of dissidents to the most murderous regime in history is quite another. Campaigners for the rights of China's Uyghur minority have long faced threats, violence and imprisonment. Dolkun Isa is a Uyghur activist who lives in Germany, and he claims Pillay shared personal information about activists with the Beijing regime, without their consent, putting them at risk.

In fact it caused a human rights lawyer, Emma Reilly, who worked for her to resign because of how outraged she was at this behaviour.

Even Ken Roth, former Executive Director of Human Rights watch says she kowtowed to China.

Of course when it came to the Charlie Hebdo murders and the violence against Danish publishers for the cartoons of Mohammed, she basically said the victims had it coming for insulting Islam. She called for censorship against insulting a religion.

She said Charlie Hebdo was "irresponsible", and of course by implication inferred that any Muslims who threatened or applied violence against anyone upsetting them because of depiction of their religion, were not to blame, but were provoked.

When Russia invading Ukraine the first time, in 2014, she didn't want to call out Russian aggression, but talked about restraint on "both sides".

Pillay, like so much of the self-styled "human rights" establishment gives a free pass to Cuba's long standing one-party state, which has zero tolerance for political dissent or freedom of the press. If you can't be critical of any government that outlaws expressions of opposition to the ruling party, then you're no champion of human rights.

I didn't mention Israel because, of course, she claims there is a "genocide", doesn't say Hamas committed a genocidal attack, and if you think her language has done anything to encourage peace in that conflict, I can sell you a bridge.

There's no shortage of international affairs experts who regard her as odious with views incompatible with a liberal free society.

Of course former PM Helen Clark applauds her, presumably because Pillay is part of the international order of moral relativists with whom Clark spent her UN career working with. Her treatment of dissidents in China is blanked out.

Not sure that "work on the death penalty" has paid off much for opponents of Hamas, China, Cuba or Russia.

I'll leave the last word to Richard Haas, former US diplomat and for nearly 20 years President of the US Council on Foreign Relations.

Hopefully there is a mass boycott of her being granted the prize.

She is so unworthy, and it is embarrassing and a disgrace for anyone to support her, or to whitewash her record. It is particularly disgraceful that so much of the media has just accepted the prize without question or comment as to the controversy over it. Media who could never operate in the countries she kowtows to.

Remembering 7th October

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 03:57:53 +0000

It felt like the end of a golden era.

For decades after the Holocaust, mainstream discourse across the Western world treated Jew-hatred as the morally debased evil that underpinned the vow of “never again.” In the Islamic world, of course, antisemitism remained commonplace. Islamists—especially Wahhabists and Salafists—have long harboured genocidal intent toward Jews (and toward anyone who blasphemes the Prophet). Even mainstream opinion there often echoed the attitudes that once prevailed in the West until the industrialised genocide was fully revealed. Jews never expected much from that quarter, nor from the anti-Western axis of tyranny centred on Russia, the People’s Republic of China and their satellites.

But at least the world’s liberal democracies still knew evil when they saw it. Islamist and tankie cranks could be safely ignored.

Then came 7 October 2023. Everything changed.

The hatred that had been contained erupted and has festered ever since—day by day, week by week. We have watched it surface again and again: the storming of Makhachkala Airport in Dagestan by mobs hunting Jews off flights from Israel; the Manchester synagogue attack on 2 October 2025; Bondi on 14 December 2025; Golders Green on 23 March 2026 and again on 29 April 2026.

What some call the world’s oldest hatred is still very much with us. It has been fuelled by radical imams given platforms in Western countries. The baying crowds in Sydney shouting “Where’s the Jews?” or “Gas the Jews” (the former being the official, scarcely less chilling version) just two days after the Hamas attack were an early warning.

More chilling still are the Western academics only too eager to justify Hamas’s actions, and the politicians and activists who dismiss the sadism and brutality because of “context.” Context for the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

That context is not that Gaza was under full Egyptian control from 1948 to 1967 and was never turned into a Palestinian state. It is not that Israel demolished every settlement and deported every settler from Gaza in 2005 to grant full autonomy. It is not the repeated Israeli offers of land-for-peace and a Palestinian state alongside Israel—offers rejected time and again by Fatah. And it is certainly not that Hamas’s founding documents explicitly call for the eradication of Israel and death to the Jews.

Palestinians in Gaza have lived under Hamas tyranny since mid-2007: no freedom of speech, no elections, no free press. Yet Western media, academics and politicians have swallowed every report from Hamas-approved sources as objective reality. Compare this with Israel, which permits protests, maintains a free press, holds elections and tolerates constant criticism of its governments. Stupidity or hatred—or both—has chosen to ignore the difference.

I have lost count of the vile statements by politicians, academics, celebrities and others who justify or even deny the slaughter. Jews are accustomed to haters denying what is done to them. Holocaust denial and minimisation have returned as standard features of “pro-Palestinian” discourse—a discourse that never demands elections, a free press or the right to protest for Palestinians themselves, but one scripted by Hamas, whose leaders sit safely in Qatar enjoying the martyrdom of their own people.

The UK’s 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report (PDF) is an excellent summary of what happened. What remains particularly astonishing is that the perpetrators recorded and broadcast their crimes in real time. Even the Nazis were ashamed enough to try to cover up the Holocaust. Not Hamas:

The perpetrators documented their actions on the day, through GoPro body cameras and mobile phones. They live-streamed and recorded their actions, uploading them to social media sites like Telegram. Many attackers used GoPro body cameras, mobile phones, and even the phones of their victims to livestream their actions. Videos and images were uploaded in real-time by Hamas and other groups to platforms like Telegram and sometimes directly to victims’ accounts. This footage showcased graphic killings, abductions, and desecration of bodies, often accompanied by celebratory captions. Footage depicted hostages being mistreated, corpses desecrated, and victims in their final moments. (pg.10)

...

Civilians were targeted with calculated and unreserved precision. Victims, spanning all ages from infants to the elderly, were often shot at point-blank range, burned alive, or killed by grenades. The systematic destruction included the deliberate annihilation of entire families in Kibbutzim. Elsewhere, children were
orphaned as their parents were killed in front of them as they hid.

The attackers abducted 251 hostages, including civilians, soldiers, and corpses from various locations. Hostages endured abuse during this process including binding and beatings. Children as young as 9 months and elderly people were forcibly removed from their families.

Women and girls were particularly vulnerable during the attacks. Reports detailed gang rapes, sexual
mutilation, and assaults on both living and deceased victims. There was a pattern across various locations
attacked on 7 October of “fully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down [that] were recovered – mostly women – with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head.” This was particularly prevalent at the Nova Festival.

The attackers looted homes, destroyed property, and set buildings ablaze, compounding the suffering of survivors. Kibbutzim and neighbourhoods were left in ruins, with fires burning for days. Forensic evidence highlighted the widespread use of incendiary weapons and flame accelerants, leaving many homes unrecognisable and further hindering the identification of the dead.

In Kibbutz Holit, Hamas gunmen broke into the home of Adi Vital-Kaploun who was looking after her 4-year old son and 3 month old baby. After killing Kaploun, the gunmen filmed themselves putting shoes on
the infant boy and rocking the baby in its crib, later posted online by Hamas. They then took the children
hostage and booby-trapped their mother’s body.

In audio captured during an attack on the Mefalsim Bend, a Hamas militant used the phone of a dead women to contact his father and tell him how many Jews he had killed. He says: “Hello Baba, I am speaking with you from Mefalsim. Open your WhatsApp, tell Wiam. Look at all the dead bodies. See how many I killed myself, Baba. Your son killed Jews! Here, I’m inside Mefalsim, Baba. I am speaking to you from a Jewish lady’s phone. I killed her and I killed her husband. I killed ten myself, Baba. Ten!. Ten with my owns hands. Baba, open your WhatsApp and see how many I killed”. Footage captured throughout the day frequently showed Hamas militants and other attacking groups celebrating the killings.

There is much more in that report and here.

It's hard to understate the vileness of this.

Hamas had—and still has—genocidal intent. It killed Jews because of what they are, not who they are. It glorified the death of Jews. Far more were murdered than taken hostage; many hostages were later killed or died in captivity.These are not the actions of “liberators” or the “oppressed,” except in the warped minds of those who embrace critical theory and radical post-modern structuralism. It is closer to the Khmer Rouge, who murdered teachers, business owners and the educated as “oppressors,” grooming young illiterate peasants to become the killers.

Yet the whole narrative was skewed, even before Israel responded.

It was, ironically, to use a term by communications academic, ~~mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda~~, Mohan Dutta, a communicative inversion. The genocidal terrorist group that seeks to wipe out an entire people, wipe out a nation-state and implement an intolerant tyranny theocracy is suddenly the victim, and it is a "liberation" movement backed by people who declare themselves for peace, tolerance, diversity and against racism, misogyny and homophobia (despite that very group being more fascist and intolerant than almost any other on earth).

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) group led by veteran hard-left activist John Minto has been at the forefront of providing succour for Hamas and its actions through double-speak that would make Orwell blush. It opposed Hamas being designated as a terrorist group claiming "it is for Palestinians to decide the groups they support for the liberation of Palestine". This is like saying it is for Germans to decide who they support for the liberation of the German people, to appease the Nazis. It being particularly precious to claim Palestinians in Gaza have any genuine means of expressing support or opposition to Hamas. Of course PSNA likes bringing up the Nazis...

Furthermore, PSNA said "It’s important to point out that under international law Palestinian resistance groups have the right to take up arms against their colonial occupier, Israel, in the same way the French resistance had the right to take up arms against the Nazi occupiers of their country during WWII"

In short, PSNA justified the attack, furthermore equating Hamas to the "French resistance". France, having been an independent republic, attacked unprovoked by Nazi Germany is somehow akin to Gaza under the rule of an Islamist eliminationist terror group. Hamas having been allowed to take control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority, which itself was handed control from Israel.

Of course equating Israel to Nazi Germany is quite the exercise in Jew hatred.

PSNA of course opposes the very existence of Israel in saying "Today Israel is responsible for the longest military occupation in modern history – 76 years so far and counting". In short, Israel shouldn't exist. Gaza was under Egyptian control for 19 of those years, and the West Bank under Jordanian control, so PSNA doesn't want a two-state solution, it wants a one-state solution and it is "for Palestinians to decide" who runs it. If you think either Hamas, which openly spreads Jew hatred, or Fatah, which is led by a Holocaust denier is going to led Jews live peacefully under a state either leads, you're an idiot or hiding what you really think. PSNA goes on to quote from the Hamas Charter (which of course it is at pains to say it doesn't support) which says it "Hamas rejects the persecution of people or the undermining of their rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian ground".

If you believe that then you probably also believe the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, Article 37, "The personal freedom of citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall not be violated."

Jew haters do deny facts (except of course when live streaming their murders to their families). They deny the Holocaust happened because it hurts Jews more to pretend that those who were slaughtered never existed in the first place. Now they deny that Jews would be harmed by Palestinian militant groups if Israel were abolished, because it hurts Jews more to deny them indigenous status or a homeland.

Both the Green Party and TPM have fully embraced PSNA, so take from that what you will.

Even former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins talked of "genocide" in Gaza to describe Israel's military response. Nor can we forget how many have said attacks against Jews are "their own fault" for not opposing Israel, including Helen Clark's husband. There's no shortage of Australian artists and commentators who have said the same about the Bondi attack.

Think for a moment how you'd feel if your community had been attacked by blood-thirsty sadists who were gleefully proud of murdering unarmed civilians, ranging from babies to the elderly, and celebrated it with their family.

This isn't just the periodic rocket attacks Hamas lobbed into Israel proper. It isn't attacks on IDF soldiers in the West Bank, or confronted Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The "resistance" was a pogrom, by attacking a music festival and a kibbutz.

The aftermath of this evil is now a much smaller world for Jews. The Green Party of England and Wales only days ago passed a resolution saying "Zionism is Racism" (the UN General Assembly in the 1970s, when dominated by tinpot Marxist dictatorships did the same), with a motion calling for protection of Jews who attend "Zionist synagogues" defeated.

Imagine if a mainstream political party in Parliament passed a resolution saying "Palestinianism is racism" and was nonchalant about Muslims being unsafe attending Mosques deemed to be Islamist.

So today, think of those who were murdered for doing nothing wrong. For attending a music festival, for living in Israel - not occupied territory - not settlements in the territories - but Israel.

You may debate about the scale and nature of Israel's response, but the mere idea that one should be neutral about Hamas, that one should lie explicitly about the state of the conflict, that one should side with those who want Israel wiped off the map ("from the river to the sea") and just use talking points from one side is both stupid and evil.

The evil Hamas embodies is palpable, and there will only be peace in this part of the world when Hamas is no more.

However, what is most distressing is not so much the boiler-plate, tankie, Soviet-style support for Hamas and unique hatred of Israel (no other country receives protests or gets called for its destruction by the self-styled "peace" movement), but how this has all percolated into generalised hatred for Jews. You can see it here in the PSNA. Jews across the world are fearing violence. Jewish schoolchildren in the UK are being told to cover up signs of their "Jewishness" because they risk being attacked.

The irony being that politicians who claim to be "anti-racist" are only too willing to give a free pass to Jew hatred. The latest incarnation of pro-Palestinian terror is the Palestine Forum which chooses today to magnify its cause. That's not just bad taste, it is deliberately designed to blank out the Hamas attacks, minimise and ignore the victims and discredit the facts of the Hamas attack instigating the current round of conflict.

So today just take a breath, pause to reflect on the victims and the horror they faced by sadistic men wanted them dead, wanted them tortured and mutilated their bodies, even the bodies of their pets. Reflect on how you might have coped had you faced anyone who videoed the slaughter of your loved ones - much like the Christchurch mosque murderer videod his slaughter. Reflect on how you would want to treat the survivors and the grieving, and how much you would want the organisation and the ideology behind them to be wiped off the face of the earth.

The odds of peace in Israel are not great at present, and part of that is the fault of Israel. Yet it is difficult to imagine a peace and mutual co-existence when the cancer of sadistic Jew hatred remains at the heart of part of Palestinian politics. A hatred fed by men who live luxurious lives in another country, and frankly whose power and authority would evaporate if there was peaceful co-existence.

Most of all, if you know a Jew, give them your support. Reject the snide comments made by so many, that they are somehow powerful and money-grabbing. The language that talks of rats, that talks of "going on" about the world's only industrialised genocide, and being suspicious of a people that, mostly, just want to live in peace in the land of their ancestors, or the lands their ancestors settled in.

Maybe also think twice about voting for parties and candidates who reject this, who throw about propaganda about genocide and give succour to groups that seek to blank out what happened on 7th October and use it as a rallying point for what they want - which is the abolition of the state of Israel and expulsion of its non-Arab population.

Also think twice about those who think Jews are "white supremacists", when the world's most aggressive white supremacist did his best to wipe them out. That's the ideological source for the current trend on the far-left to dismiss racism against Jews. Even though around a third of Jews are not ethnically European.

After all, find another ethnicity which united hatred from white-supremacists on the far-right, Islamic fascists and far-left critical theory proponents?

The world used to be pretty safe for Jews, especially in liberal democracies. It's about time that we returned to that.

(Footnote: I was going to write more about Mohan Dutta, but he's not worth it. He's ignorant about the history of Israel, and engages in Orwellian doublespeak to slither out of accountability for his own solidarity towards Hamas and the entire Palestinian movement, including parroting its propaganda. It is the lives of those sacrificed by the sadistic monsters on this day that deserve to be in lights).

The two Chris's have failed to inspire most voters

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 05:34:27 +0000

Although it’s always tempting to take a line from the late Jim Bolger and say “bugger the pollsters,” it’s hard to ignore them. They do more than observe what might happen in the upcoming election—they influence it.

Political polls are presented as reflections of voter sentiment, yet they also drive it. Most voters are reluctant to back parties that look unlikely to clear the 5% party-vote threshold or win an electorate seat. When media coverage of polls suggests a party has a realistic chance, it can encourage support.

The contest is shaping up poorly for the two main Chrises—Luxon and Hipkins—both of whom are increasingly toxic to their parties’ hopes of dominating the election. This says a great deal about the men themselves and about the caucuses that selected them.Neither National nor Labour has managed to choose a leader with anything approaching the “X” factors voters want in a prime minister: charisma, connection, conviction and communication.

Luxon is a busted flush. Claims that rolling a first-term prime minister would be unprecedented miss the larger point: this election itself is unprecedented. Never has mainstream media influence been weaker, support for the two major parties lower, or a sitting prime minister so unpopular after a single term. New Zealand has not defeated a one-term prime minister since Walter Nash in 1960 under first-past-the-post, when Labour still won just over 43% of the vote. The parallels are limited.

Luxon’s failures as a convincing, conviction politician are obvious enough in the polls. National voters are drifting to ACT and NZ First in search of something more authentic—whether small government and free enterprise or conservatism with economic nationalism. Neither minor party is perfectly consistent, but Seymour and Peters at least say what they think with little concern for upsetting the bien pensant commentariat. Luxon and Willis sound and look as if they respond to focus groups. The supermarket policy is a case in point. It's desperate stuff.

On the other side sits former prime minister Chris Hipkins, still carrying the baggage of six years of Ardern government. He is unconvincing as someone who will achieve much when his own record is poor: a housing bubble inflated and then burst, sharply higher public spending with little to show for it, an economy fuelled by similar largesse, and a string of virtue-signalling measures paired with intolerance of accountability. The last time Labour recycled a failed prime minister was Mike Moore in 1993; he lost under first-past-the-post when National’s opponents were split between the Alliance and NZ First. Hipkins offers little beyond recycled handouts and criticism of National for failing to fix everything. Outside Labour’s base, few are buying it.

The Greens, having put away their keffiyehs and Palestinian flags, are pushing a full-throated socialist vision of a large, all-embracing state and directing anger at “the rich” in a bid to pull Labour voters. They are also attracting young radical Māori voters who hear Te Pāti Māori’s call to create an overhang by prioritising electorate seats over the party vote (a similar right-wing effort is less likely to succeed but may still cost National a couple of points). The result could be an ethnic-socialist alliance that gives the Greens a larger boost than before. Te Pāti Māori is recovering from recent splits and hopes to hold at least three seats; it usually struggles when National is in power because Labour can campaign simply to change the government.Opportunity’s emergence is partly a reaction to Labour’s lack of inspiration and to the distaste some Green supporters feel for that party’s sharp leftward shift, especially its one-sided stance on Palestine. Though it brands itself centrist, Opportunity’s policy positions are close to Labour’s without the union movement’s dominance. It is the centre-left home for bureaucrats and moderate activists. By emphasising economic fairness and tax reform it is attracting voters who think Labour is offering nothing new. Unhappy swing voters may prefer it to Labour, though what they really expect in return remains unclear.

A four-party government is a real possibility—Labour-Greens-Opportunity-Te Pāti Māori or National-ACT-NZ First-Opportunity—with the former looking more likely.It could still change, though that now seems improbable. Labour could have replaced Hipkins, but it is unclear who would have wanted the job. A new leader would almost certainly lift Labour’s vote, mainly at Opportunity’s and National’s expense, making a three-party arrangement (Labour-Greens with Te Pāti Māori confidence and supply) more plausible.

National could have replaced Luxon and might have fared better against Labour. If either major party had chosen a leader capable of inspiring people as a fresh prime minister who believes in something beyond keeping the other side out, the picture might look different. Instead both National and Labour appear to take their status for granted, as if their role is simply to exclude the other lot rather than offer a vision.

Vision and conviction are more visible in ACT, the Greens, NZ First, Te Pāti Māori and even Opportunity (saccharine though it is). If neither major party reaches 30% of the party vote, it will be because neither has convinced voters that what it offers is worth the effort.

Notable also is the growing divide among younger voters. Roy Morgan’s latest poll showed women aged 18–49 supporting Labour at 36% and the Greens at 20%, with National on 14.5%, NZ First on 10.5% and ACT on 3.5%. Men in the same age group were almost the reverse: National 34.5%, Labour 18%, Greens 14%, ACT 11.5% and NZ First 4.5%. Apart from NZ First (which draws more young women than men), the pattern is a clear left-right split. Younger men lean towards the government; younger women do not, and they are far more open to left-wing radicalism than young men are to the right.Among those over 50, National leads—more strongly among men than women—and support for smaller parties is roughly even between the sexes. What does this imply for a future divided by politics, philosophy and outlook?

At the very least it should encourage people, especially those with strong views, to speak to opponents with a measure of respect and to listen. The prevailing trend appears to be the opposite.

Meanwhile, the window for National or Labour to change leaders is almost shut—not impossible, merely improbable. National has made its choice and is sticking with it. Labour’s next generation of leaders seems content to wait for defeat so they can contest the subsequent election with a clearer run.

It is not hard to see why neither party is inspiring voters.

Stupid policy ad nauseum

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 06:57:27 +0000

What MPs do you think could actually run a supermarket as the general manager? I don't mean run into the ground either.

There was an age in New Zealand when there was not something called Supermarket Policy, because, by and large, mature capitalist liberal democracies don't need a command and control approach to a sector that typically does attract a wide range of entrants.

Not anymore. Elections are a silly season, and silly it is.

I don't expect much from the Greens around sane economics, because it is a party antithetical to capitalism, which is suspicious of all of the elements of markets. Whether it be prices (how these are reached is a mystery), profits (too high, of course), salaries (too low, of course), choices of goods (lots are disapproved of, some are supported but mysteriously something stops them being sold) or customers (who generally don't know what's good for them or "the planet"), the Greens find the idea that millions of people buy and sell goods and services without public servants and politicians "regulating" them, to be terrifying. So, of course, they want their Kiwimart. If it were December 1989 and the Greens had been dropped into the recently liberated German Democratic Republic, they probably wouldn't have privatised a thing.

I expect better from the National Party, after all, you'd think it would have learned from its past. Well you'd think that if you thought that being a member of the National Party was about being committed to principles such as "Promoting a competitive market economy and providing rewards for achievement and hard work". However, in reality, most of the party's history since the late 1950s has been about winning and holding onto power, which is largely has done. The results have been fairly woeful.

It held power for twelve years from 1960 to 1972 doing virtually nothing to prepare the country for the inevitable exit of the UK from its role as the primary buyer of all of the average unprocessed primary produce that could be exported. Nothing. The Muldoon years were an exercise in vote bribes with National Superannuation, a gamble of billions on energy self-sufficiency and then performing like an ostrich, with bureaucratic control of prices, wages and interest rates. The Richardson years were an exception (and the RMA was an exception then too), and even the Birch years until 1999 saw some glacial reform, at least in the right direction. However, little was achieved in the Key/English years.

Now, after nearly three years. Christopher Luxon, possibly the least popular National Party Prime Minister in history, is desperate as is his brainfarting Finance Minister and Deputy, Nicola Willis, in dreaming up the supermarket policy. It is not a policy to achieve anything other than re-election. It is, no doubt, carefully been tested among "swing voters" who have been groomed to think, in no small part by Nicola Willis, that New Zealand has a particularly egregiously predatory supermarket sector which is reaping enormous profits off of "hard-working New Zealanders" (though quite how it doesn't target lazy bludging New Zealanders is a mystery, but the Greens and Opportunity tout for their votes).

Let's be very clear here, as Damien Grant says in Stuff, there isn't much of a problem in regards to supermarket profits, certainly not enough to justify trying to split the largest chain, of largely franchise holders, into two groups.

"We know from published accounts these profits do not exist other than in the bureaucratic imagination. Woolworths, an Australian company with close to a third of the NZ market, wrote down the value of its Kiwi holdings by $1.6 billion in 2024 on the back of rising cost of sales and weak profitability, just $108 million before taxes and interest on a whopping $8 billion in revenue."

Super-profitable businesses don't write down the value of their businesses, and such sectors do seem to attract new entrants. Note that Nicola Willis's bizarre attempt to generate international interest in entering a market that was - already open - through a Request for Information from prospective entrants, was an abject failure. There are steps that could be taken to enable more competition to emerge, largely from scrapping the ability of local government to use the RMA to control competition , but replacement of the RMA has been slowed for reasons that are far from clear. My suspicion is that both local government and the bureaucracy aren't keen on it so much, but it falls to Luxon and Willis that they haven't advanced what ought to have been the most significant reform of their government.

It's worth noting that not a single developed country has ever forced the split of a supermarket chain. None. That includes countries smaller than New Zealand's population, geography and economy. What that tells you is that it is an intervention that probably is worth being cautious about, at best, but it also tells you that a party that is ostensibly about business, encouraging investment (especially from overseas) and free markets, that touts this nonsense is simply pandering to a narrative that it is too incompetent to confront - that is that too many NZers think supermarkets are ripping them off.

It is rare for Labour to follow the National Party on policy, it is usually the other way around, but it is a worthy footnote to see Christopher Hipkins propose an even more stupid policy on supermarkets - separating retail and wholesale arms. This actually makes Chloe Swarbrick's state supermarket chain idea seem reasonable.

No other developed country has forced such a change, and it makes little sense from the point of economies of scale, ensuring reliability of supply chains or placing competitive pressure on wholesale prices. It's as if Labour looked at the electricity reforms of the 1990s (under National) which separated generating/retail, distribution and national grid functions by force (mostly of state/local quango monopoly entities) and of telecommunications (separating Telecom into Spark and Chorus) and think it is exactly the same. Supermarkets are not vertically integrated natural monopoly network industries, but Labour is jumping on the gravy train of making them scapegoats for the quasi-Marxist hate of grocery prices.

I expect a little better from Labour, I hoped for a lot better from National, but both are absolutely braindead.

If you think ANY of these three policies will save you money, I should sell you a bridge, and you should think again. Yes there are problems, and these are mostly the result of local government making it difficult, expensive or impossible to get approval to build new supermarkets or open them in existing premises. However, the Marxists in the Greens, Labour and National think their clunking fists can take other people's property and re-organise a sector absolutely none of them could manage effectively (though you think Luxon ought to know better!), and save you money.

The Greens of course know no better. Labour thinks it might know something, but what's particularly gruesome is that it is obvious many National MPs know this is nonsense and they can't stand up because they are stuck with Mr. Unprincipled, Unconvincing and Unpopular as leader, who is peddling snakeoil to trick you into thinking he is looking out for you.

Don't give any of that lot a chance (of course, you might grant your Electorate Vote to an MP or candidate who candidly tells you that he or she thinks all of this is nonsense, if you can find them).

Who needs a Kiwimart, now here's the tricky part...

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 01:16:14 +0000

It's always quite something to see two politicians who have never risked any significant capital on a business in their lives, in this case Chloe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson, deciding that it's a great idea to borrow from the next generation (and tax the current one more) so they can set up a business, bankrolled by the wealth and income of others, to compete with businesses that pay those taxes now.

They obviously think the rhetoric that existing supermarkets are making "obscene" profits is true.

Of course if it is true then there are profits to be made in entering the sector. Those profits would come by offering cheaper prices, but also being more efficient, with fewer staff, more productivity and a lower cost base overall.

What is really remarkable is that the world is awash with competing supermarket chains in many countries. Aldi is the obvious one, as the main third player in Australia, although there are smaller ones as well like IGA and Supabarn. None of them have decided to enter the New Zealand market, which indicates one (or both) of two things:

There aren't obscene profits being made;
Barriers to entry are too high to make it worthwhile to enter.

If these aren't true, you'd think Swarbrick and Davidson and part of the around 10% of the population supportive of their socialist principles, might club together and risk their own capital (something Swarbrick and Davidson are never too keen to do), to set up a rival and expect to get a lot of support from their supporters, if it were that easy.

Of course it's not.

What we DO know is that the RMA, working alongside territorial authorities, embracing the dominant philosophy of urban planners, gets in the way of new supermarkets by making it remarkably difficult to find land and sites to build them. It seems a lot of local councillors don't like stuff being built, and on top of that, they listen to encumbent supermarkets whenever a new one is proposed somewhere. They also listen to arguments about how a new supermarket would "undermine" existing ones, or other shops.

On top of that many councillors, espousing the policies of the Green Party, aren't keen on cars and carparks, so don't really want supermarkets built which encourage so-called "car dependence" (a term used by planners to describe when too many people make choices they disapprove of, by making it akin to a chemical-biological addiction).

Supermarkets can take up a lot of land, to succeed in most parts of NZ they need carparking, and space for trucks to unload goods. They need big signs to let people know where they are. Cue the NIMBYs and the legions of local councillors only too keen to say "no not here", to those who might open a new supermarket near them.

Of course you never hear Swarbrick and Davidson talk about that, because the RMA is, at its core, legislation they philosophically support. The nationalisation of land use at a local level, where anything built new is subject to "grassroots democratic control" - code for whoever shouts the loudest stops getting things done.

So instead, they want to "buy" a bunch of supermarkets. Nothing said about what happens if the owners just say no - either they will offer more of your money to buy them, generating a genuine obscene profit, or they will use state violence to coerce a sale - that's the party of kindness and peace.

Once buying them, magically they will offer cheaper food, they will thrive and the government owned supermarkets will always be full of cheap, high quality goods, with such variety and great prices, hitherto unknown absolutely everywhere that has government owned supermarkets.

And like their ideological brethren in NYC, to hell with any of those petty capitalists that get in the way

Peter Drennan has written a good piece on LinkedIn about the effects on investment, noting that the claimed $1m a day in "excess profits" amounts to $68 per person across the country. The question being whether $2.8b is worth it to save $68 per person per year, and the effects of compulsory acquisition on investment more generally.

UPDATE: This did make me laugh, because it's so deranged. The chief socialist blogger (i.e. not the most hate filled one) wants his cake cheap and more expensive too... Imagine having a brain that can reconcile...

"(Nationalisation)... gives us control, allowing us to set policy direction (not just on competing on price, but also on employment standards)."

So goods are going to be cheaper, but it is going to cost more to run the supermarket...

"Meanwhile the government buying an asset doesn't cost anything in a budget sense - it simply moves money from one column (cash) to another (assets), with no change in the overall balance"

Forgetting that it is YOUR cash, to an asset you have zero effective control over, but that "doesn't cost anything" because, of course, when you own an asset, its value can't fall at all. It holds onto its value, not at all influenced by who is willing to buy it when there is a confiscatory state.

So the magic Marxist wand is going to make stuff cheaper, raise the cost of providing it, not cost you anything because.... taxes are nothing... and will not at all affect the state's capacity to borrow.

MMT is quite the drug.

Fuel tax increases delayed.... but the central planning isn't going away

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 02:26:45 +0000

As many of you will know, I could write a lot about this, but I want to make two related points....

The land transport funding system as it stands is largely dependent on motorised road users being charged a mix of taxes and fees, for using the roads and owning vehicles. From that state highways are funded, local roads are around half funded (rates contributes the rest) and public transport is subsidies (with around half of the subsidies coming from rates). Because the fees charged for road use and vehicle ownership are collected nationally, everyone pays the same per litre of fuel, kilometres driven regardless of where they are. What varies is how much based on vehicle fuel consumption or vehicle class/weight (for road user charges).

What this means is that although money is collected from all over, the money is distributed on the basis of need and on the basis of government priorities. This means cross-subsidies all over the place. Regions that are poor with high costs (think Tairawhiti) get their roads subsidised by motorists in regions with lower costs (think Canterbury). Some regions get very little new capital spending (think Southland) but have high costs of maintenance because a lot of roads have to be paid for by a low population. Some get a lot of new capital spending (think Auckland), but pay a lot as well.

What this means is as costs go up, and political demands to spend more (driven by people voting for politicians who promise new roads, new railway lines, new busways), the main way this is paid for is taxing motorists more. ALL motorists more.

So the first point is simple, any government has three choices, without reforming the system:

Don't raise taxes/fees to respond to those demands including inflation, and cut capital spending. It would be entirely possible to fund maintenance and existing commitments without increasing fees, but spending on capital improvements for any modes would start to dry up and over time maintenance ;
Raise taxes/fees, and face backlash from people in regions who arguably get nothing more for their money, and see those who benefit the most from new spending contributing little towards it;
Pour in money from general taxation (money that otherwise might be spent on health, education, law and order, defence, welfare, or returned to taxpayers in tax cuts), creating the obvious opportunity cost of increasing land transport subsidies.

Bear in mind that the debate around this isn't so much about what it is spent on. Labour and the Greens rarely talk about how almost all land transport spending is dependent on people driving and freight going by road, because if that dropped significantly, then so would available funding. Despite some ludicrous claims, especially from the anti-car Green left, if people drove 20% fewer kilometres by car, it would make virtually no difference to road maintenance costs. Cars create very little road wear per kilometre driven. The two big impacts are the weather (roads deteriorate due to exposure to sun, rain, snow, temperature changes) and heavy vehicle axle loads. Fewer heavy truck movements slows down road maintenance, but it also reduces road user charges revenue, so it's not much of a net saving (although few trucks on local roads will save ratepayers). Furthermore, unless fewer movements are due to more productivity, less road freight is generally a result of economic recession.

So when anyone is debating this point, if they don't want the system reformed, then either they want ever decreasing spending on road and public transport improvements, higher fuel tax and road user charges, or (on average) higher general taxes.

The second point is more fundamental, there is a choice of deeper reform. Such a reform would stop treating roads as a political football, or indeed public transport. It would see people paying more directly for the roads they use, based on the costs of providing them in the region they are in. It would see direct feedback loop between what is paid and what is spent. It might see road providers responsible for footpaths as well, but treated as regulated utilities rather than political footballs. Big new roads would be justified only as long-term investments in corridors, but with better pricing the demand for these may ease. Likewise, better pricing of road use would see public transport needing fewer subsidies until it could stand on its own, as it does in multiple jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and Japan, with specific subsidies only to support those who can't afford it.

No longer should the ute driver in Gore pay for the public servant in Wellington to walk from his $1.5m house in Khandallah to a train for a $200k p.a. job, because the public servant would pay more driving on a heavily constrained road. Likewise, no longer should the ratepayer in suburban Gisborne pay for the forestry company to get its road sealed, because road user charges only pay part of the costs of local road renewal.

The politician promising a four-lane highway from Piarere to Taupo would have to assert that it was going to be funded from general taxes to support the Highway 1 road provider, because the Highway provider wont get enough money from motorists to pay for such extravagance. However, so would the politician promising a tram line to Auckland's North Shore through a tunnel, having to justify to small business people in Henderson why their taxes should pay to give Takapuna homeowners a massive uplift in their property values - although an entrepreneur might decide it is worthwhile to do so, if her company invested in properties along the route on the basis of that uplift.

Whether or not speed limits went up or down, or cycle lanes were installed, or parking remains, or a lane, or space for outdoor dining, would depend on the road provider deciding on tradeoffs between land owners, transport users and property owners along the corridor who contribute towards the infrastructure outside their businesses or homes. It wouldn't be driven by an ideology of banning cars, vs. an ideology of hating cyclists, but rather one of value, determined more or less, by market conditions - the choices of millions.

It wouldn't please those who want to build lots of big new roads at anyone's expense, but it also wouldn't please those who call motorists "car fascists" (like the MP for Rongotai, soon to be Wellington Bays), those who think railways have been cheated out of their prime position as the mover of millions of people and more freight, in other words central planners of all stripes.

It ought to be time to stop paying obeisance to the fraternity of transport planners, town planners, environmental activists, public health experts and other busybodies who think how people choose to move about is something that needs "correcting". This trend has only been fuelled by universities who nurture central planning.

Consider this. There are few transport planners who work for airlines nowadays, since that entire sector has effectively become a largely open market in most developed countries. There are even fewer who work for shipping firms. Virtually no transport planners anticipated what would happen with the rise of the internet, the smartphone and the effects on logistics including disruptors like Uber. Uber destroyed central planning of taxis in those jurisdictions who have it. No transport planners would have advocated for it.

That's not to say there isn't a role for planning, designing and engineering in land transport infrastructure, but it should be led by market disciplines - what users want, and what they are prepared to pay for, compared to the cost of providing it. Consider that virtually nobody involved in transport planning knows a thing about how modern freight logistics companies work, and indeed most never even think about freight. Virtually nobody involved in transport planning thinks about aviation or shipping, and how those businesses price, supply, inform the suppliers of their VERY expensive vehicles, and how airport planning is focused on what airlines want and how to make that infrastructure profitable and attractive.

So maybe it's time to take a pause and think long and hard about whether the traditional thinking around land transport should move on. I'm not sure the political incentives are quite there for it though.

The real tragedy of the Jason Arday story

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:05:51 +0000

It's a well worn cliche that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the tragic death of Jason Arday has highlighted the signposts to that hell.

Barry Wall, who writes the Substack "The Court of the EDIJester" writes:

If cases like this are not one-offs, and I suspect strongly they are not, then the real Tragedy is larger than one individual, or institution.

Indeed not. There is evidence a-plenty of dubious academia.

Wall makes a far more critical point about the value of universities and the pursuit of excellence:

Meritocracy, intelligence, talent and excellence, the application of rigorous principles that identify, create and fund those who are the best of us; in whatever field, has given us an extraordinary life, luxurious in fact by any historical standard.

Cognitive ability is one of the strongest predictors of who reaches that level of achievement, and the only one that matters in the long run.

This is the engine that drives the machine in the creation of our wonderful civilisation.

It is through this that sees women, men, of all backgrounds discover, invent and create in ways that uplift themselves and others, thousands, millions. Whether it be in medicine, engineering, chemistry, computing, design or creativity, the nurturing of minds applying reason, thought, research, enquiry and philosophy to humanity, the world and the universe.

Wall says what's far worse than the Arday tragedy is the philosophical state of higher education that erodes all of this.

Diversity statements at recruitment stage become ideological screens that filter out wrong think, and competence then barely gets a look in.

This is the tragedy, there are after all only a few who could be brain surgeons or engineering geniuses and those high-ability people who notice that identity and political conformity outweigh results leave or never enter precisely because they excel cognitively...

The result is a thinner pipeline of the people most likely to generate the breakthroughs that later become miraculous treatments, ideas or inventions that enrich the world for us all.

Not only is competence devalued as being not of primary importance, but the ideological compliance that critical theory demands (because the term is essentially Orwellian - you cannot be critical of critical theory or you will be accused of being "x"ist (bigoted against an oppressed class, because critical theory is for "liberation" of the "oppressed")).

China is not growing its technical capacity and capability by embracing a philosophy that degrades and diminishes individual achievement, decries science as "Western" or an oppressive tool that might be called "yellowness". It's absurd to imagine that the strategic rivals of liberal democracies would kneecap their cleverest people, unless it was to protect their own power.

Yet the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are all subordinate to this malign philosophy that resembles the intellectual sclerosis of education in north Korea, which has spent decades being subordinate to a manufactured pseudo philosophy called "Juche".

Juche is used to be manifestly reductive of all history, economics, politics and public policy to the utterances attributed to the Kim family, with blame for everything lying at the United States, followed by Japan and allies of the United States. Note, of course, that Pyongyang abandons this nonsense altogether for its research into military technology including nuclear weaponry, including cyberwarfare and its extensive involvement in transnational crime and smuggling. Reason is important when your objective is to achieve.

Wall points out that at worst, making science less attractive and denying the advancement of some because of identity could be costly by taking talent away from its potential:

In the worst case scenario tens of millions still die each year from diseases that are, in principle, a matter of better science.

Perverting the rate at which high-ability talent reaches the positions where that science is done has a body count.

The same EDI machinery that elevated an unstable personal narrative at Cambridge is the machinery that makes the next generation of geniuses and innovators harder to find.

The wider cost is paid by society atrophied in identity creation, virtue signalling, therapeutic twaddle and the desire of a fetid lanyard class hell bent on enforcing equity through the application of power.

Consider for a moment how someone who is clever, talented and motivated, and who either doesn't belong to one of the declared "oppressed" identities, or who doesn't want others thinking their recognition comes from being one of the "oppressed" identities. Who, with any esteem, really wants to be thought of as a DEI hire, someone advanced not because of their abilities, but to tick a box?

Furthermore, if you don't embrace the stifling binary world of critical theory, you'll be cancelled and hounded out of being heard and out of careers, forever blighted by the cardinal sin of being deemed Xist or Xphobic. You may be accused of simply being in the pay of the claimed conspiracy of global capitalism through the Atlas Network, or even worse just being a white supremacist/fascist/hate monger/Zionist or one of the many other monikers thrown about rabidly.

You might even find your career stifled because you haven't paid appropriate fealty to critical theory concepts - whether it be not taking into account the views of enough people of an oppressed identity, not reflecting an oppressed culture in your research about - say - Ancient Greece

On the Arday story ended sadly by his own hand, I thought Barry Wall's comment is a good place to end:

The story of Jason Arday is tragic, hubristic and sad, but it is also a metaphor for our society as a whole, living a constructed delusion, predicated on identity, shored up by approved emotional responses and maintained by a state apparatus so steeped in its love of all things EDI that what was once insane is now becoming sane.

The real tragedy is that the machine that creates, maintains, elevates and lauds the processes and ideas that allows an Arday to thrive and succeed is profoundly anti-civilisation and we must eradicate it in all its forms.

The Cambridge debacle is more than a case of academic misbehaviour, it is a portent, an omen if you will, and we would do well to heed it.

Perhaps the very worst element of all of this is how impotent, incompetent and ignorant so many politicians are of this philosophical cancer. Of course maybe half embrace it and are subordinate to it, because it fits within their own philosophy, of those who maybe would not embrace it, perhaps another half are too frightened to do anything but leave it alone, whereas most who confront it do so in a blundering blunt and counterproductive way.

The answer to this is not a counter-identitarianism, switching oppressed and oppressive roles, the answer is to return to enlightenment values, modernism and reason.

Vale Tony Randle

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 03:35:24 +0000

I'm not someone known for having much time for local government and especially councillors, but I did have time for Tony Randle. Tony was a Wellington City Councillor for the Takapu/Northern Ward. He came second in his ward in the 2025 Council elections (and was one of the three elected to Takapu/Northern Ward) as he did when first elected in 2022. He passed away rather suddenly in the weekend, which was a shock for me, but not least for his family, closest friends and all those who worked with him. Some fine words have been said by Councillors with a wide range of views, and the Mayor, and Tony deserves them all.

Tony Randle - Wellington City Councillor

I met Tony and and we had exchanged multiple emails over the years, mainly because he was passionate about transport policy, particularly making public transport better.

He was an increasingly rare individual in politics in that he wasn't really in politics. He didn't care much for labels or ideologies over outcomes, although I am sure plenty saw him on the "right", he just believed in policy that delivered results, in a Council that was fiscally prudent and didn't take more than it needed to deliver core infrastructure.

What he was passionate about was evidence and results, and he didn't go along with the views of others just to look good. He needed convincing. He was a quiet, polite and thoughtful man. For him Council was actually about service, to do better, and not a stepping stone to a national political career or to give favours to any supporters.

He came to my attention from articles he wrote some years ago, and then when he used to write to the Minister of Transport. He was the bête noire of light rail enthusiasts or rail enthusiasts generally, being highly sceptical of whether the cost (and the lack of flexibility) of such modes were worth it, especially for Wellington. He was a fan of buses and busways, and making public transport better so more people wanted to use it. He was not a fan of making driving harder, more difficult, slower or less convenient to push people onto public transport. Perhaps he would be well described as believing in abundance, but it's far better for him to describe himself (as I have included at the bottom of this post).

Although he loved robust debate, he never played the person rather than the ball. I never knew him to be rude, or use pejoratives of people he disagreed with. It was only a difference of opinion after all.

He was a fan of spreadsheets and digging into detailed analysis, and didn't accept on face value what others said were "benefits" or "results". His greatest achievement in my book was in stopping Wellington City Council's attempt to introduce a blanket, city-wide, speed limit of 30km/h based on shoddy analysis.

Randle went through Council officials' analysis and found an error in the spreadsheet, which meant the alleged benefits of lowering speed limits were overstated by a NPV of over $250k. It was the double counting of a factor used to assess under-reporting of road crashes (crashes without injury or worse aren't legally required to be reported), which meant the alleged benefits of slowing virtually all of Wellington streets down were exaggerated. It was so significant, the consultation being carried out by WCC for the proposal was suspended and the policy hasn't seen the light of day since.

One only has to wonder what other policies get pushed through following substandard analysis by local bureaucrats (let alone national ones) without the scrutiny of the likes of Tony. It seems unlikely anyone else on Council can come close to either the interest or willingness to replicate his passion for such detail.

He was rare and will be missed. I only wish he had stood in my ward, as unlike almost all other candidates for local government (anywhere I have lived), I would have voted for him positively.

I'll finish with his statement for the previous Council election from Policy.nz:

Why I'm standing

I believe council investment priorities should be core infrastructure and essential services to our community. But due to party-aligned agendas, I believe our council has lost focus on ratepayer affordability, cost-effectiveness and doing the basics well. To fix this, the council must become more democratic and take the community with it when it plans for better housing, transport and environment. I'll champion a council focused on the key needs of our city and suburbs.

About me

I am an independent sitting city councillor and have been actively engaged in community service for the last 25 years. I was a senior business analyst and bring extensive experience in projects and finance. As your councillor, I have brought some sense to council such as stopping the speed management plan that was going to make most of our roads 30 km/h. I am a full-time, active and accessible councillor to everyone from Tawa to Johnsonville.

My priorities

Prioritise council funding towards core infrastructure and essential services, meaning lower rates.
Ensure that the northern ward, as a growth area, gets improved transport and infrastructure.
Advocate for evidence-based, transparent use of rates to make Wellington a better place to live.

Beyond being a City Councillor, he was the highly valued Wellington City Council representative on the Greater Wellington Regional Transport Committee, Deputy Chair of two WCC Committees and member of five other Council Committees.

He was interviewed by Michael Laws about the speed limit scandal on The Platform in 2025. He was a regular on The Platform.

What to do about Roads of National Significance?

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:26:32 +0000

The most significant recent development in transport policy is the Government’s decision to reschedule the Roads of National Significance (RoNS) programme. The sheer scale of the proposed projects makes them neither affordable nor practical to build within the next three to five years.

The funding gap was already clear from the Infrastructure Commission’s analysis. Delivering the full package of proposed land transport spending would require fuel tax and road user charges to rise by around 70% (and then continue rising with inflation). A petrol tax increase of nearly 57 cents per litre (including GST) is politically toxic — no government could expect to survive it. Something had to give.

Even if road users nationwide could somehow be forced to pay more, there is simply not enough construction capacity to simultaneously deliver multiple large highway projects across several regions.

Deficit between user fees and planned land transport spending

From the late 1970s through to the 1990s, New Zealand typically had one — or at most two — major road projects underway in its most populous regions at any one time. In the late 1990s, for example, Auckland’s biggest project was the Northern Motorway extension from Albany (Greville Road) through to Silverdale/Orewa. This steady, measured approach kept skilled people and equipment reasonably utilised and helped control costs.

Spending increases at the time were carefully managed so they did not overwhelm the sector’s ability to recruit staff and secure plant. That disciplined approach stands in stark contrast to today’s stop-start political cycles.

Construction capacity is not just a national numbers game. It is highly regional and specialised. Every region needs a baseline level of capacity for routine maintenance, renewals, and emergency response (clearing slips, rebuilding after storms, etc.). For large projects, it makes sense to sequence them so that one flows into the next, preserving expertise and minimising mobilisation/demobilisation costs. Certain skills and equipment — particularly tunnelling — are especially scarce in New Zealand. Running multiple major tunnelling projects concurrently would be inefficient, but so would long gaps between them. The current major tunnel project, Auckland’s City Rail Link, is now largely complete. The next significant one is likely to be the 850-metre Dome Valley tunnel on the Warkworth to Te Hana motorway — the largest road tunnel since Waterview. It is prudent to avoid starting another large tunnelling project in the upper North Island until this one is well advanced.

So what has the Government done?

It has rescheduled the RoNS programme, which was really the only realistic option politically. Raising national fuel tax and Road User Charges so that drivers in Southland subsidise roads in Auckland and Wellington is neither fair nor efficient. Tolling can help at the margins, but it typically recovers only 10–15% of construction costs. While useful, tolling is nowhere near enough to fund these projects — and it can divert some traffic back onto older routes, diluting the intended benefits.

The infographic below summarises the outcome of that rescheduling. The first page shows projects now under construction, including Roads of Regional Significance and other priority works.

There is a solid spread of projects across Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Hawke’s Bay, Manawatū, Wellington, Canterbury, and Otago. These are the schemes we know will proceed. By far the largest is the Warkworth to Te Hana section of SH1, which alone accounts for 26% of the distance from Warkworth to Whangarei.

The remainder of the RoNS programme remains unfunded for now. This includes the extension north of the Christchurch Northern Motorway, the Hope Bypass near Nelson, upgrades to SH1 in Wellington, and the balance of the Northland expressway — including the long-awaited bypass of the Brynderwyn Hills (which is already in pre-implementation and likely to follow Warkworth to Te Hana).

This situation is the predictable result of excessive political ambition, ongoing budgetary indiscipline in other areas of government spending, and a funding system that lacks rigorous discipline on costs and project scope.

It would be optimistic to expect the politics around these projects to disappear with a change of government. The other side of politics has shown little concern about cost blowouts on the City Rail Link, and appears relaxed about the $1 billion earmarked for a new rail branch line to the Port of Marsden Point.

That Marsden Point branch line stands out as a genuine boondoggle — right up there with the worst of any RoNS project. Its Benefit-Cost Ratio was massaged from a dire 0.32 to a more politically acceptable 1.19 under the Ardern Government through heroic assumptions about massive freight transfers to rail. Making the project even remotely credible would require another $1.3 billion to upgrade the North Auckland Line. Some might call this economic alchemy; most would simply call it a government-commissioned business case. Notably, it was Winston Peters who helped create these circumstances — one of the more expensive “costs” of that coalition agreement to the taxpayer.

It would be refreshing to see a consistent willingness across the political spectrum to reject boondoggles, regardless of mode. However, that currently seems unlikely.

Background

I understand why the Key Government launched the Roads of National Significance (RoNS) programme. For the previous two decades, the land transport funding system had struggled to deliver large, transformative road projects.

New Zealand has long funded roads on a fundamentally different basis from energy, telecommunications, aviation, and port infrastructure. While those sectors moved toward commercial models in the 1990s, land transport has continued to rely almost entirely on the cashflow from motoring taxes. With few exceptions (mainly legacy toll roads such as the Auckland Harbour Bridge and Lyttelton Tunnel), the system operates on a pure Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) basis.

Under PAYGO, new capital projects are funded from existing road users — whether or not those users will ever benefit from the new infrastructure. Future users pay the same charges, but their contributions are spread across further new projects and ongoing maintenance of the existing network. PAYGO works reasonably well for maintenance, renewals, and smaller-to-medium projects, but it is poorly suited to large capital investments. Funding capacity is limited by annual cashflow, making it difficult to finance major projects that take many years to build.

While there has been some increase in borrowing (via PPPs or Crown loans) against future revenue, it remains the exception rather than the rule. Roads are still managed as a government function rather than a commercial business.

The RoNS programme was a pragmatic workaround. It directed a significant portion of available cashflow toward a small number of big projects, bypassing a system that was otherwise well-tuned for maintenance, renewals, and high-value projects under $100 million. Large projects only proceeded if they offered exceptional benefits. Many of the successful ones — such as much of Auckland’s SH20 and SH18, the Albany to Puhoi extension of SH1, and large sections of the Waikato Expressway — clearly met that test.

By explicitly listing specific mega-projects, the National Land Transport Programme was reoriented to prioritise them. However, this approach came with real risks.

The two big issues with the RoNS are:

Displacement of higher-value projects: Lower-profile but collectively more beneficial initiatives were deferred or cancelled. The Melling Interchange, for example, should have been built 10–15 years earlier.
Weaker cost control: Politically prominent projects often faced greater cost escalation. Officials and contractors, wary of cancellation, tended to apply less rigour to commercial risk management and scope control.

That said, few people today would argue against key RoNS projects such as Transmission Gully. Even the Puhoi to Warkworth section — once derided as the “Holiday Highway” — is now widely seen as worthwhile.

Completing the Waikato Expressway has saved lives and dramatically improved connectivity from the Waikato and Bay of Plenty to Auckland. Importantly, the RoNS programme would never have been necessary had the Clark Government not dismantled two critical elements of the more independent, professional funding system established by the previous National and Labour governments.

Why did it go wrong?

From 1996, Transfund operated as an independent Crown entity responsible for land transport funding. It was financed entirely from what is now the National Land Transport Fund — revenue raised directly from motoring taxes. Its job was to spend that money in ways that maximised value for the road users who had paid it. In effect, it functioned as a proxy user-pays system.

The Transfund Board was required to deliver a safe and efficient roading network. This naturally led it to prioritise maintenance, renewals, and resilience first, then fund only the highest-value improvements. It was never intended as the final destination of transport funding reform, but rather as a stepping stone toward a more complete user-pays model.

Transfund’s main constraint was the level of motoring taxes set by Parliament (in practice, the Government of the day). It advised Ministers on what could realistically be delivered at different tax rates. When first established, the revenue from those taxes was sufficient to cover maintenance and renewals while still allowing new capital projects with a minimum benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of 4:1.

That was a deliberately high threshold, yet at the time there was no shortage of projects that comfortably cleared it.

Merge funder and provider

This arm’s-length funding model was dismantled in two stages. First, Transfund was merged with the Land Transport Safety Authority, which had responsibility for the motor vehicle and driver licensing registers, commercial vehicle operator licensing, and land transport safety programmes.

Second, the resulting entity — Land Transport New Zealand — was merged with Transit New Zealand, the state highway manager. The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) was born: an organisation that was simultaneously the primary funder of land transport, its largest single recipient (as state highway owner and operator), a safety regulator, and the administrator of key licensing systems. “Chinese walls” were established in an attempt to preserve the independence of funding decisions. In practice, it was always going to be difficult for an agency whose board and chief executive were also responsible for building and managing the state highway network to avoid favouring its own projects over those of local authorities.

I remember Transport Minister Maurice Williamson in the mid-to-late 1990s openly welcoming the separation. He was “glad” when people lobbied him to build a particular road, because he could reply: “It’s not up to me — it’s up to Transfund to decide how best to spend the money on the roads.” The principle was simple and sound: professional, evidence-based funding decisions would deliver better outcomes for road users than politicians picking high-profile winners.

Enabling political direction of funding

One of the more damaging changes in New Zealand’s transport funding framework was the introduction of the Government Policy Statement (GPS). Setting aside the clumsy decision to appropriate a widely understood acronym, the Clark Government effectively dismantled Transfund’s operational independence. In its place, Ministers gained the power to direct spending: defining funding categories, setting allocation levels, and leaving NZTA to manage delivery. This structure inherently allows Ministers to prioritise politically favoured projects, including Roads of National Significance.

The results have been underwhelming. Successive governments of both major parties have channelled funds into large, high-profile projects while maintenance and smaller, high-value capital works have been squeezed. Under National, this meant big motorway projects. Under Labour, it meant heavy emphasis on rail, public transport, and cycleways — often accompanied by years of expensive planning and design work on schemes such as Auckland Light Rail and Let’s Get Wellington Moving, with little to show for the expenditure.

Politicians are rarely effective at picking infrastructure winners. We saw this clearly in the 1990s when decisions on airport terminal developments were taken out of political hands, finally delivering Wellington an airport terminal fit for purpose rather than a leaky 1920s relic. No one would suggest politicians should dictate the location of mobile phone towers, yet the trend toward greater political interference in infrastructure has re-emerged strongly in recent years.

The long-running saga over replacement of the Cook Strait rail ferries is a textbook example. A commercial operator has been prevented from making a straightforward business decision (i.e. not having rail enabled ferries) because politicians insist on vessels that users are unwilling to pay for at the price required — hence the need for taxpayer subsidies. That's a different argument though.

So what should happen?

While a more fundamental reform of New Zealand’s land transport funding is ultimately needed, a practical interim step would be to restore genuine transparency around the merits of individual projects. This would allow genuinely high-value initiatives to be advanced on their own terms. Once the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) is exhausted on its core priorities, any additional Crown funding from general taxation could then be directed transparently to whatever other projects Ministers deem worthwhile.

The next Government Policy Statement (GPS 2027–2030) should be the last. It should focus squarely on delivering an efficient, productive, and safer land transport system. Clear targets and funding criteria should be set for improving network productivity, reducing congestion, enhancing trip reliability (including resilience to disruptions), and cutting serious deaths and injuries on our roads.Any Roads of National Significance (RoNS) or other major projects that sit above this baseline should be funded separately through Crown grants or loans raised specifically for those purposes. Some, such as the Hawke’s Bay Expressway upgrade, already stack up as relatively strong value-for-money investments on their own merits.

To support this approach, NZTA (and its successor state highway manager) should develop corridor plans for all State Highways. Similarly, local road controlling authorities should prepare plans for their major arterial corridors. These plans would identify the key challenges on each corridor — whether safety black spots, capacity constraints, or resilience gaps — and set out a prioritised pipeline of interventions across short, medium, and long-term horizons.Longer-term projects would provide the justification for early land acquisition, consenting, and design work. Shorter-term fixes could be advanced quickly to deliver immediate user benefits. The result would be greater certainty for the construction sector, better cost control through a steady pipeline of work, and more disciplined prioritisation overall. Some corridors would require little beyond routine maintenance and renewals; others would need substantial, staged upgrades.

For example, a corridor plan for SH1 from Auckland through Northland would sequence improvements to the Whangarei area based on actual user demand, safety data, and network performance. The solution might not be a full expressway the entire way, but a series of targeted, high-return interventions. Investment decisions would flow from evidence rather than political whim. If a future government wanted to accelerate large-scale upgrades, it could do so — but it would need to top up funding transparently from general taxation, without cannibalising the core NLTF programme. This model would also create a much clearer picture of future spending needs, borrowing requirements, and the balance between road user revenue and expenditure on the network.

Wouldn’t this be more honest, more transparent, and ultimately more effective? It would deliver a steadier flow of work for the sector, ensure road users receive the benefits of continuous renewal and improvement, and create a far closer link between the people who pay for roads and the roads they actually receive.

Next up: What about the choices made for rescheduling projects?

Has Brexit been a disaster?

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 08:57:34 +0000

It's not surprising that a decade since the UK's vote on leaving the European Union that the pro-EU media is crowing. RNZ has republished a CNN piece called "Ten years on, Britain counts the cost of Brexit" as if there is some grand consensus in the UK that it was a mistake. Given that the leading party in opinion polls is Reform (which is essentially a reconstituted Brexit Party/UKIP) that would seem like the same foolish arrogance that saw the bureaucratic/media/academic establishment, and most politicians (although some Conservatives and a handful of Labour politicians promoted Leave) be gobsmacked when the UK voted "Leave".

They couldn't believe that a majority of voters disagreed with them, and now of course they think most people regret it. No doubt leaving has imposed costs on businesses that trade with the EU, and no doubt both major parties in Government have barely touched the sides in setting Britain free but Michael Gove, whose career highlight, as far as I am concerned, was as Secretary of State for Education under David Cameron (when he pioneered free schools and enabled high rating state schools to become independent Academy schools), has written persuasively in the Spectator that it HAS been worth it:

The reality has been different: Britain is growing at least as fast as our major European partners (the countries growing fastest in recent years have been those which imposed the most savage austerity in the early 2010s). We took the lead among European nations in the fight against Russia when it invaded Ukraine. The City is flourishing: Britain remains the world’s largest net exporter of financial services, according to TheCityUK, an industry-led body representing UK-based financial and related professional services. Net exports were £84 billion last year, 12 per cent higher (in real terms) than in 2015. And however many masters there are in the universe, they still seem to be flocking to London. There were 162,000 people working in finance and insurance in the City of London in 2015, pre-Brexit, and 223,000 in 2024.

Could that growth have been more impressive? Of course. Is there still a long regulatory tail of EU legislation holding us back? Absolutely. But the choice to go further, faster is there – and can be exercised in a manner impossible while still in the EU.

Gove has identified policies both good and not so good, that leaving the EU has enabled.

• Cut tariffs on over 100 foodstuffs to counter inflation (EU Membership put the UK's entire trade policy in the hands of Brussels)

• Preferential trade agreements with the US and India (and Australia and New Zealand)

• Being outside the EU Digital Markets Act enabling the UK to outstrip investment in AI and technology compared to EU Member States

• Enabling gene-editing of crops (the EU effectively prohibits genetic engineering outside the lab)

• Turing student exchange scheme (globally focused) replacing the EU’s Erasmus (focused only on the EU)

• Liberalisation of agricultural subsidies and reduction of production restrictions (compared to the sclerotic Common Agricultural Policy)

• Increasing the UK share of the fisheries sector and reforming the sector (which was previously fully open to EU fishing fleets, many of which were subsidised).

• Potential of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (which has been used to insist on illegal migrants being granted refugee status in the UK, even if they have committed violent offences because of fear they would be mistreated if deported).

• Measures to protect the remaining British steel industry including tariffs (up to 50%), subsidies and state ownership.

• VAT imposed on private school fees.

He noted on immigration, Brexit didn’t deliver what people assumed:

Taking back control of our borders was accompanied with the implementation of a points-based immigration system which enabled the inflow of many more workers, students and, crucially, dependents than the country ever envisaged or wanted. The higher-education, health and care sectors were already addicted to importing foreigners before Brexit – boosting vice-chancellors’ balance sheets and keeping labour costs low.

What Gove doesn’t say is that the UK political appetite to shut-down access to its welfare state including the NHS and social housing has been low. For that is a big part of the issue people have with immigration – people turning up to get something for nothing. If that tap were turned off, as is the case in plenty of EU Member States (some of which have language and national insurance contribution requirements to access healthcare, education and welfare), it would likely have a significant impact on demand.

For Gove the most important success is that it is now UK politicians fully accountable for UK laws. No more can they blame Brussels for requiring this or banning that, or taxing this or subsidising that. Sovereignty in law making is no longer subservient to a higher level of government. As always that's a mixed bag, in some cases it was good for the EU to stop British protectionist politicians, but more often than not the EU was an expression of the stultifying "dirigisme" political economics embodied by France, which prefers protecting sunset industries and jobs, over allowing new ones. I recall when France fined Google Maps for the audacity of offering a free map service, undermining the business of French map makers. The idea that the public benefited from Google Maps more than it lost is alien to the political culture of France, and that is also central to too much EU thinking on economics.

Gove concludes:

Brexit was a vote for a faster feedback loop between politicians and the people, the ability to yank the chain harder when ministers do not live up to their promises. That chain was yanked with great, cleansing, propulsive force in 2024 and I felt the spray. But that vote was not a repudiation of Brexit, it was its vindication. The failure I charted above to control migration, and indeed to go further, faster in re-building and re-balancing our economy, saw the Tories punished. Now it is proving Labour’s turn. The message from ten years ago – the demand that politicians change our society – has not diminished in force or fervour. That there is unfinished business is clear. But it is clearer still that Brexit alone makes that change possible.

Those who voted Leave knew it. They braved condescension and endured years of frustration to have it delivered. They must not be let down.

I’d conclude that this is the problem. The opportunity to set the UK free from hoards of regulatory instruments imposed from Brussels has barely been touched. The fundamental problems around immigration haven’t been confronted – such as the attractions of the welfare state and the inability to deport violent criminals because it would deprive them “of a family life”. Of course prospects for any useful reform under the current Labour Government are remote, but the chances of another referendum on EU membership soon are as well.

Either a future UK Government tries to take advantage of this opportunity fully, or it may as well rejoin and decline in concert with the rest of the western European EU Member States.

Burnham will be another hopeless UK Prime Minister

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 11:31:39 +0000

From Ian Leslie in the Spectator:

For the most part, failed prime ministers do not fail because they’re socialists or neo-liberals or conservatives, but because they are situationists. I don’t mean in the sexy French sense, but in the sense that they are captives of whatever situation they find themselves in. Bad prime ministers don’t make things happen; things happen to them. They stand outside No. 10, say some fine words, then go inside and kneel down before the real boss: events. (By which I mean not just unforeseen events, but all the economic, political and institutional forces that constrain and batter you from day one).

Why do these leaders submit so meekly to this master? Because they cannot execute on the fundamentals of the job. The first of these fundamentals is a strong sense of purpose or mission. What everyone in this bad run has had in common is that they didn’t know what they wanted to do with power (and I mean across the board, from the economy to foreign policy to immigration and welfare). Either that, or they ‘knew’ but only in the vaguest sense, Liz Truss being the obvious example. Having a clear direction without having a sensible plan can be nearly as bad as having no direction at all, and maybe worse, especially when you are short on necessary leadership abilities. Johnson knew what he wanted to do at first – get Brexit done – but after it got done, he was clueless. Yes, he had to deal with the pandemic, but he dealt with it in his hapless, myopic style, which would have revealed itself under any circumstance.

So yes, bad Prime Ministers are often bad because they are clueless about where they are heading and how to get there... but Burnham is particularly vapid says Leslie...

We all know the remark about not wanting to be ‘in hock’ to the bond markets, without seeming to understand what bond markets are or why we are in hock to them, but it was hardly an anomaly. He mouths the phrase ‘fiscal rules’ without ever giving the impression that he knows what they are or why they matter. Here’s how he answered a question about the EU, during Labour’s conference last September:

Journalist: ‘Rejoin the EU or stay out?’

Andy Burnham: ‘I want to rejoin. I hope in my lifetime, I want to rejoin the European Union. I believe in the unions of all kinds. The union of the UK. The EU benefitted this country. Trade unions. People prosper more when they’re part of unions.’

I’m sorry to break the flow of my Flaubertian prose, but – fuck me. I believe in the unions of all kinds. It’s like something from an essay by a primary school pupil. That’s the extent of his thinking, on one of the most important geopolitical questions of the age? I’m just not sure how you get from there to prime minister-level within a year, or ever. (I need hardly add that as soon as the by-election campaign started, he said he didn’t actually want to rejoin at all.)

You see Burnham's main achievement is .... advancement in the Labour Party...

I am sceptical that Burnham has the intellectual capacity to ‘learn on the job’ and certainly not at the speed he would need to do so if the job is not to overwhelm him. It’s not the hardware that’s the problem – as a young man, Burnham was clever and diligent enough to scale the British establishment from the outside. It’s the software he’s been running for the last 30 years, narrowly designed for advancement within the Labour party. His instinct has always been to please the party, and you don’t do that by challenging its worldview or assumptions. But unless you do, your intellect and curiosity will atrophy.

Leslie says he has a deficit of capability, although he cares what others think of them.... but..

I find it unbelievable that Andy Burnham is the person that Britain, a great country, is installing as prime minister, amidst war in Europe, major technological disruption, violent unrest across the country, and a public sector coming apart at the seams. Is this really the best we can do? Apparently it is.

It's time to reform land transport funding and management

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:29:01 +0000

I'm not usually a supporter of new bureaucracies, but I'll give the Infrastructure Commission its due, it's done quite a good job at summarising the main strategic problem in land transport funding. That being that political ambitions, which match a lot of public ambitions, for spending on roads, railways and public transport, exceed the political willingness to tax the public to pay for them.

More precisely, it seems to exceed the willingness of the public to pay more fuel tax and road user charges, or rates, or for public transport, fares. I say this because I think it is a fair bet that Luxon and Ministers Willis and Bishop don't think the public would swallow double digit increases in fuel tax or percentage increases in road user charges largely to pay for big highway projects, mostly in the North Island and mostly near Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington.

The Infrastructure Commission notes that:

Since the late 2010s, spending on roads and rail has far exceeded user revenues, requiring large top-ups from general taxes. In the 2024–2027 funding period, Crown grants and loans totalled $12.8 billion, or nearly 40% of the $32.9 billion in planned expenditure.

Source: Infrastructure Commission

The Commission continues:

New Zealand spends more on land transport than any other type of infrastructure. Mature road and rail networks connect most parts of the country, supporting the smooth movement of people and freight that underpins a well-functioning economy. While these networks perform reasonably well against peer countries, some important gaps remain. Land transport infrastructure providers face limited external oversight and no economic regulation to protect consumers – which is unusual compared with network sectors where consumers can’t choose between multiple providers. Transport faces several challenges, such as rising congestion on urban road networks, rising carbon emissions, and high health impacts from air pollution and road crashes

What's new

So this gives the impression that there are problems, today in 2026, with congestion, emissions and safety. You might think that this isn't exactly new, and you'd be right. Let's turn the clock back over 27 years...

Maurice Williamson, Minister of Transport, 18 November 1998

For years we have seen steady growth in traffic volumes. Currently, the traffic on our roads is increasing by about 4 percent each year. Also, the way we use our roads has changed. Expanding industries like forestry, dairying and tourism have increased road use in many rural areas beyond their capacity. Population growth in areas such as Auckland, the Bay of Plenty and parts of Waikato has meant that road use in these places is growing more quickly than in other parts of the country.

Some roads are less safe than they could be because they were not designed to carry either the volume of traffic or the amount of heavy vehicles they do. We can improve the safety of our roads, and reduce the human and financial costs that crashes create. The increasing use of our roads also puts greater emphasis on the environment - the environmental impacts of road use can be reduced.

Traffic growth is causing increasing congestion problems in many, particularly urban, areas. It is also increasing maintenance costs and the demand for new roads. We are struggling to meet these new financial demands.

Simply spending more money on the problems would add costs to our total economy, which we would all have to bear. What we need is a system that is smarter at informing road users of the costs they are creating, and smarter at deciding where new investments should go.

A system that results in our road resources being used very wisely. If we wait the problems will get worse and the costs of changing will be greater. If we act now, the changes can be managed in a gradual process with minimal upheaval.

That press release was in the context of announcing a major reform of the land transport funding system, that didn't proceed.

What did happen was three things. One of them is the most obvious, politicians threw money at the problem, and as happens so often when government spending increases exponentially, it doesn't deliver the value for money that it used to.

Spending spree

If we compare 1998 in real terms (using CPI inflation to bring 1998 prices to 2025 dollars), spending on road infrastructure and public transport alone (there was little government spending on rail infrastructure in 1998), has increased by around 350%. That's 3.5x increase over and above inflation in spending on roads and public transport.

As you see above, 40% of current land transport spending isn't coming from motoring taxes (let alone charging rail users even a quarter of the costs of maintaining their infrastructure), it's coming from general taxes.

Taxpayers are literally subsidising the movement of goods and people by rail and by road, or to be more precise, subsidising those engaging in the construction and maintenance of the network. In 2025, $4.211b was collected from motoring taxes (fuel tax, road user charges and motor vehicle registration/licensing fees). User fees are sufficient to cover road maintenance and a little more, but not to cover road maintenance and all spending on public transport, or road maintenance and all spending on road improvements.

This table below outlines that increase, using the budgeted spending in 1998 (it being harder to access reported spending online) compared to reported spending in 2025.

Comparison of 1998 and 2025 land transport spending: New Zealand

Where has the money gone?

Public Transport

Despite what you might think if you pay attention to the likes of Julie Anne Genter, or some environmental lobbyists, by far the biggest increase in spending over this period has been on public transport subsidies and infrastructure. That's money to subsidise the operation of trains and buses, and money to subsidise renewing or improving infrastructure, such as railway stations, busways, the City Rail Link in Auckland and the National Ticketing Solution.

This has been over a twelve-fold increase in spending on public transport. 159 million trips were taken on public transport in the 2025 financial year. It was around 60 million trips in 1998. With a 40% increase in population during that period, that's an 89% increase in patronage, but I'll leave it to others to judge whether that increase in land transport spending by central government has been good value for money.

Then roads

Also notable has been a big increase in maintenance for local roads and state highways. While some of that may be attributable to increased heavy vehicle traffic, it also shows a remarkable drop in productivity and inflation in costs. The system has not incentivised or encouraged much in the way of efficiency in managing existing assets.

While much is rightly made of the increase in spending on state highway construction (and much more is planned), but what hasn't happened is that local road construction has not grown anywhere near as much. The demands for local road improvements are, on average, likely to be lower than the state highway network, as most local roads are either suburban streets or lightly used rural access roads, but there is little real indicator as to whether this split in spending is appropriate or not.

What does seem clear is that highway construction and maintenance costs have grown exponentially, especially in maintenance which, in real terms, should not have increased that much above inflation.

Warnings about risking poor quality spending.

However, this was exactly what was forecast in the late 1990s if there had been no substantial reform. When spending on land transport infrastructure was increased then, there was concern about the capacity of the contracting sector to efficiently accommodate growth without inflating the cost of capital works. After 1996, the Government increased spending gradually. Lowering the threshold for funding from a BCR of 5:1 to 4.5:1 in one year, then down to 4:1 in the following year, and at that point there were ample projects to advance. It was, at the time, thought that spending might be increased further, alongside increases in motoring taxes and reducing the diversion of part of fuel tax to the Consolidated Fund (this diversion ended completely in 2008). However, the view from Treasury at the time was that the threshold of spending should be a BCR threshold of 2.5:1.

(Footnote: Be cautious about comparing BCRs of projects in the 1990s and 2000s to today, because today's BCRs include a lot of additional benefits, the evaluation period is longer and the discount rate is much lower than it used to be, but that's another story).

The main conclusion in the late 1990s was that just pouring more money into the system was far from optimal. Big reasons why the system was not ideal were identified:

The PAYGO method of funding capital from cashflow could not support large scale capital spending that has transformative impacts
The artificial distinction between new capital and renewing capital/maintenance, with short term funding cycles for the latter generates poor incentives to optimise spending on maintenance across the asset life of roads
Without better pricing of road use, some roads would be overused at certain times, with some road users not paying enough, and some paying too much to the use the roads. Far better to enable pricing to reflect demand, capacity and the costs of supply on a more refined scale than the national average across all roads across the country.
Little relationship between road users and road providers, with very limited feedback from road users to road managers and poor incentives on road managers to respond to the needs of the former.

Quite simply the incentives for innovation, especially for efficiencies was not good enough. This is particularly an issue for territorial authorities, which are more reluctant to engage in long-term contracting for road maintenance, or to consolidate contracting across multiple councils. While it is possible to have political direction around some of these matters, none of this matches having financial and institutional incentives to optimise maintenance and performance,

On new projects there are five big factors that have influenced inflation in project costs:

Contractors do not think there is sufficient risk that large projects, once committed, will be cancelled or scaled down, so price accordingly. This is because the projects are explicitly politically identified, and contractors know that the risk of a politician cancelling a project because of cost, especially after a project has started, are low. Look at City Rail Link and Transmission Gully. Nobody was going to pull the plug on projects already underway because costs went up, and the New Zealand contracting market is too small to fear someone else being brought in to finish it. That's what happens when it is a politically-driven, not commercially-driven model of managing assets. By contrast, look at the M6 project in Sydney, which may be abandoned because the contractor is unwilling to complete the project under the current budget, following an unexpected collapse of part of the tunnel.
Gold-plating of projects to meet either institutional or political aspirations. The Northern Gateway toll road north of Auckland had its design speed increased and a tunnel included in its scope specifically because the agency involved wanted to "show off" what a great toll road the first new generation toll road would look like in New Zealand (the original design had a gully instead of a tunnel, and 80 km/h design speeds). Whether that was justified or not, the reasoning for doing it was nothing to do with economics, it was driven by a belief that the money would be spent anyway and for a Crown Agency to "show off" to the public. Likewise, insisting that the Northland Expressway is four lanes throughout with grade-separated interchanges its full length, amplifies costs with insufficient economic benefit to justify the cost. There are very sound reasons to rescope (and indeed this used to happen in New Zealand from time to time).
The start-stop-start cycle of project development. The infrastructure sector advances this as the main reason, which is false, but it is an important factor. Long term strategies for corridors would help plan both the resourcing, sequencing and encourage competition in project delivery, so that equipment and skilled professionals could be guaranteed being occupied for a decade or longer. Starting and stopping projects is wasteful, unless of course, the projects were poor value in the first place (like Auckland Light Rail). The presence of a long-term pipeline of economically viable project would be a good thing to help build a competitive industry and build capability. A sector which sees commitments to projects appear and disappear depending on who is in power will charge more to manage that business risk.
Incremental growth in the costs of doing business. Part of it can be blamed on local government through the RMA, but it can be seen in the significantly higher amounts of planning, consultation and investigation work needed today compared to the 1990s. The process has become more complex, time consuming and seen a vast increase in the numbers of people involved in these projects. Some of this reflects increases in the cost of doing business, contracting and employment in the sector, due to incremental measures implemented by successive governments. However, the effects of this have been insufficiently appreciated (though this is also seen in construction more generally)
Rent-seeking behaviour by professional organisations in the sector. Competition has simply been insufficient. While there have been increased in construction costs, part of this has been opportunism for extracting greater profits from a sector that has been flush with money for some years. It has also been outrageous that the professionals involved in investigation and design work have increased their scope and fees at the same level, even though they don't face the increased input costs for construction. On average it was always assumed that the pre-construction phases for major road projects were around 15% of the construction costs. Quite why these costs should increase at the same rate is unclear.
Higher labour costs for a shortage in professionals. There aren't enough technical experts to go around, and they are working in a global market for their experience. This is expensive for a country with a relatively low exchange rate, low GDP per capita, that is far away and has relatively high housing costs compared with say the United States. However, having a steady stream of work for projects should help that over time.

The Infrastructure Commission notes:

The RoNS projects are expected to cost significantly more per kilometre than earlier New Zealand motorway and expressway projects, and significantly more than the OECD average. Indicative target cost ranges published by NZTA suggest costs should ideally be much lower. The Northwestern Busway is expected to cost much more than previous New Zealand busways, potentially exceeding the per-kilometre cost of many underground rail projects overseas. These cost increases constrain what can be delivered without displacing other needs.

The thing is, NZTA seems unable to fully understand why this is the case, let alone be able to contain these costs.

Politicians have made the system worse

The entire system is not particularly well set up to challenge these, and since 1998 two major reforms have made it much worse:

Creation of the New Zealand Transport Agency
Almost complete politicisation of the National Land Transport Programme

In 1998, funding was decided by an arms-length independent funding agency called Transfund. It was small, nimble and focused on essentially buying the best value for money for maintenance and improvements to roads and public transport for motorists, who fully funded it through road user charges, fuel tax and motor vehicle registration and licensing fees. There was no Crown money from general taxation. The 1998 National Roading Programme was fully funded by road users, and money was allocated first to road maintenance, public transport subsidies and then whatever was left was available for capital improvements.

The Clark Government merged it with the Land Transport Safety Authority in 2004 (then responsible for regulating drivers, vehicles and commercial vehicle operators, and managing the motor vehicle register and collecting road user charges). Making the new agency - Land Transport New Zealand - a regulatory and funding agency. However it was in 2008 that it was merged with Transit New Zealand - the state highway manager - to make a land transport agency monolith - the NZTA. The National Land Transport Fund was now being allocated by the same agency which also is the largest spender of those funds. No longer would the state highway manager have to be worried about convincing Transfund about what funding it needed, or on its performance, to justify funding it wanted. NZTA funds itself.

That mistake would not have been quite so bad had the Clark Government not also all but destroyed the independence of NZTA through the Government Policy Statement (GPS) process of directing land transport funding. The GPS essentially politicised land transport funding, with the Minister of Transport able to simply direct how much money would go into whatever funding categories the Minister wanted.

That meant that three-yearly National Land Transport Programmes were politically directed. From a system that rationed maintenance and focused on optimising maintenance so that capital spending could be maximised without degrading the road network, to a system whereby the whims of Ministers could redirect money where they saw fit. Roads of National Significance, public transport subsidies, rail projects, cycleways, whatever was wanted, could be funded. Furthermore, when Ministers or Governments changed, the whole programme was up for grabs. Projects might be cancelled and new ones started, with Ministers demanding to know "how soon" a project could be "shovel ready" to show progress, because once it started, it was hard to stop.

Imagine the incentives that puts on the contracting sector, both to please NZTA by getting work started, and to not be concerned about cost inflation once a project has commenced. It also sent a signal about investment in capital and professional staff through a political cycle.

The Infrastructure Commission puts it politely:

NZTA acts as both funder and deliverer of projects – combining functions previously kept separate. Between 1997 and 2008, one Crown entity (Transfund, renamed Land Transport NZ in 2004) was charged with administering transport funding and making investment decisions. Transit New Zealand was responsible for state highways and had to bid for funding alongside local road controlling authorities. Maintenance took precedence over new capital works, and only the highest-value projects were funded.

The Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS-LT) directs spending in the sector. Unlike other network providers that invest to meet demand, land transport investment is heavily influenced by the Government of the day’s objectives. The Minister of Transport determines funding ranges for expenditure categories through the GPS-LT, based on advice from the Ministry of Transport but without independent oversight. In recent years, Governments have also directed specific projects for delivery, leading providers to spend more than user revenues allow.

That was destroyed by the Clark Government, and the Key/English and Ardern/Hipkins Government did nothing to change this, but rather all doubled-down on growing the NZTA's role and functions, and demanding ever more money be spent on their "objectives".

So what next?

The 1998 warning was part of an announcement to radically reform how roads would be funded and managed. They would become businesses, like state owned enterprises. They would be paid by users, directly. They could borrow against that money for new projects. They would be subject to regulatory oversight, and it would have removed ratepayer funding for roads. There would have been maybe eight local road companies, and they would have been expected to make a profit and pay company tax.

Obviously that didn't happen, and there is little sign of it being revived, but there does need to be a change... more on that to come...

UPDATE: Corrected earlier PT figure estimate which was too high.

Is racism worse than murder?

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:24:17 +0000

Ayn Rand described racism as “the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism”. However, she wouldn’t and neither would most people with any measure of morality would describe a verbal expression of racism as being worse than murdering another.

A radical comedy today might parody modern “anti-racism” to a ridiculous absurdity, defending people from claims of racism over defending people from murder.

Reality is not funny though.

British journalist Ed West wrote a few weeks ago on his Substack an article called “Moloch must be Fed”.

He recalls the following instances…

Salman Abedi

“One evening in May 2017 a security guard in Manchester was alerted to something that didn’t look right: a man of Middle Eastern appearance with a rucksack was seen by a member of the public approaching a pop concert filled with teenage girls. The man looked ‘dodgy’, in the words of the 18-year-old guard, who later recalled his moment of agonising: ‘I felt unsure about what to do. It’s very difficult to define a terrorist. For all I knew he might well be an innocent Asian male. I did not want people to think I am stereotyping him because of his race. Concerned that he would be accused of racism, the young man went with his doubts and let the British-born Libyan Salman Abedi walk on. The rucksack was packed with homemade explosives, mixed with nuts and bolts to maximise the suffering they would inflict on human flesh, and fifteen minutes later Abedi pressed the detonator, killing 22 people, ten of them under 20 and the youngest aged just eight.”

Valdo Calocane

“had attacked his flatmate on one occasion, and assaulted strangers on others. He was clearly very dangerous, and while mental health professionals had been ‘leaning towards’ sectioning him, he was released after they ‘considered the research evidence that shows over-representation of young black males in detention’. Calocane went on to butcher three people in broad daylight, including two 19-year-old students from the same university”

Axel Rudakubana

“At the Acorns School in Ormskirk, headteacher Joanne Hodson said she felt a ‘visceral sense of dread.”.. about him, as he “had been caught bringing a knife into class in his previous school, and when Hodson asked him why, had replied coldly: ‘to use it’. When she raised the risk posed by the dread-inducing young male, mental health workers accused her of ‘racially stereotyping’ him as ‘a black boy with a knife’.”

Rudakubana went on to murder three girls, aged nine, seven and six at a dance workshop for girls aged six to eleven in Southport.

The story about Henry Nowak is giving cause for concern among many in the UK about the priorities of policing. The criminal justice system’s first priority should be to protect the public from violence. The Daily Telegraph has published the sentencing notes for Nowak's murderer and the background to the case.

Nowak called out to Vikrum Digwa, and asked if he was a “bad man”, and filmed Digwa on his phone. Digwa, a Sikh, alleges his turban was knocked off by Nowak. Digwa stabbed Nowak four times and his face was slashed. One of the stabbings proved fatal. Digwa and his brother filmed Nowak escaping, scaling a fence before landing on a car and falling to the ground, where he bled to death. By then the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary had arrived. Digwa’s father was helping keep Nowak upright, but Digwa had told the police that Nowak had racially abused him.

The teenager is then heard shouting in a hoarse voice “I’ve been stabbed, I can’t breathe, call an ambulance”.

Officers can then be heard asking Digwa for his version of events, before dragging Henry across the gravel while saying: “Let’s get you out of there, shall we?”

When the university student again told them he had been stabbed, the officer responded: “I don’t think you have, mate.”

Henry is then placed in handcuffs while repeatedly telling officers: “I can’t breathe.”

With the teenager in handcuffs, a female officer asks Henry, “where do you think you’ve been stabbed?” before saying to her colleague, “we have to check, don’t we”.

The near-three-minute footage ends with the arresting officer asking for Henry’s name, before reading him his rights.

At this point, the female officer seems to realise his deteriorating condition and calls an ambulance, noting that “his pupils aren’t even reacting”.

Nowak bled to death in handcuffs, because police were more concerned about Digwa’s claim of racism, than Nowak actually having been stabbed.

Nowak calling “I can’t breathe” has shades of another event we all know, although there are multiple differences in the contexts, the primary point remained – the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary prioritised “anti-racism” over a murder.

Of course, the police were, in fact racist. It prioritised the feelings of one man who was hardly scratched over another bleeding to death, because of racism.

Many on the left in particular wonder why politicians they deem “far right” are getting popular appeal. I can’t imagine how blind they might be when these instances are happening, time and time again. The people who want to protect others, like the security guard, the teacher and most police, mean to do well. They are undermined by a philosophy, which is advanced by academia, accepted by much of the media, absorbed by gateway professional associations and implemented by “professionals” and it is all facilitated by politicians.

It’s a repeat story that could be a parody of a lunatic political philosophy if put into practice, if it weren’t a parody and hadn’t been put into practice. It is the application of today’s melding of various post-modernist philosophical movements into politics and into law and social/cultural practice. It combines Constructivism (which posits that there is no such thing as “objective truth” but rather reality is constructed by people as part of social processes, interests and beliefs), Structuralism (which posits that human behaviour can be understood through structures and systems within which they operate, rather than the specific behaviour itself and Critical Theory (which posits that injustice exists in current power structures which exist primarily to benefit and sustain those with power, who are deemed to be members of groups that created or succeed the most in those structures).

As with most philosophical movements, there is some truth in all of them in different contexts. However, the culmination of all of this applied consistently is that identical behaviour by two separate people is interpreted differently according to each person’s background and deemed level of privilege or disadvantage within the “system” they are living. Critical theory has little time for Common Law justice systems which treat individuals as free agents (unless proven otherwise) who, if they act to infringe upon the basic rights of other free agents, should be subject to judgment and punishment according to what they did and the harm they caused. For example, while there may be mitigating circumstances in specific situations (e.g. self-defence), murder is murder.

Objectivists, rationalists, classical liberals and other modernists regard racism as a pre-modernist view of humanity. The idea that human beings should be judged based on their inherited characteristics rather than their behaviour, is a legacy of pre-modernity. Race or ethnicity is not determinative of unjust behaviour, and especially not determinative of justifying injustice against that person. Awareness of this grew enormously in the aftermath of World War Two, the Holocaust, the legacy of Japanese militarism and subsequently decolonisation of much of the world, and the Civil Rights movement in the USA have made people aware of the need to treat people as they are, not for what they are.

In almost all societies deliberately killing another person, especially a child, is seen as the most morally depraved and injust act that can be committed. Yet in the UK today, there is a growing number of incidents whereby people, when judging whether to act to protect others from murder, have chosen to act based on another concern – is my action going to be seen as racist?

I'm reluctant to grant any politicians in the UK a shade of belief in their ability to confront this philosophical cancer. Keir Starmer or those willing to replace him in the Labour Party have no remote interest in confronting this - for they are the ones who have facilitated this ideology. The Liberal Democrats and the Islamist adjacent Greens are even worse. Nigel Farage is an opportunist, and in calling for a "cold rage" he is showing his irresponsibility, and the emptiness of his thinking. However, it is unsurprising he has popularity when for so long the Conservatives held no principle other than to retain power (when they were in power for a wasted 14 years).

There is a chance, just a chance, that Conservative leader and Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch, could, if only because she is the only party leader who can confront the issue of racism with a background that befuddles the "anti-racist" racists. She has said:

What Nigel Farage is doing is reinforcing the difference. I have said that we need to find what we have in common, not what separates us. I don’t want to hear about Black Lives Matter. I don’t want to hear about White Lives Matter. We all matter.

“Enough of this nonsense, where we keep separating everybody and splitting people into different groups. We are descending into tribalism. I do not want that. It is why I say that we should be a multiracial country, not a multicultural country. Let’s have one shared culture, British culture. How the police treat everyone should not matter, depending on the colour of their skin, and we shouldn’t pretend that racism is something that only happens to ethnic minorities, it happens to everybody, black or white"

I hope it is not too little, too late, to avoid the anger and violence which comes from people who think, not only is there a fundamental problem with the philosophy behind how so much of the state and the institutions of power function, but who think it is all fundamentally antagonistic to them, their family and their community - and are willing to burn the whole lot down, by handing power to those who literally have no coherent answers.

UPDATE: Spiked's Brendon O'Neill puts it perfectly following the publication of the bodycam footage of Nowak's death:

For me, the most chilling thing in the bodycam footage of Henry Nowak’s last moments of life is the cops’ cruel presumption that he is lying. As he writhes in terror and agony and cries out ‘I’ve been stabbed!’, a voice in the background – presumably that of the lowlife who murdered him, Vickrum Digwa – says: ‘He hasn’t been stabbed.’

A female officer responds. ‘I know’, she says. ‘But we have to check, don’t we?’

I know. It is delivered with dry, bureaucratic indifference. Henry is heard moaning, begging, ‘I can’t breathe’, yet here is a representative of the state seeming to agree with his knife-wielding tormentor that he is making it up. That cold, cavalier utterance – I know – will have cemented dying Henry’s great dread: that the police were taking the side of his killer rather than him....

... Try to take in the Kafkaesque moral madness on display here. They learn the lessons of a black man killed while saying ‘I can’t breathe’, only to see their own cops horribly mistreat a white boy who said ‘I can’t breathe’. The very ‘anti-racism’ they imbibed in response to an African-American man dying with a cop’s knee on his neck leads to a situation where their officers drag and cuff a dying white kid. It is undeniable now: the state’s overcompensation for past acts of racism has unleashed new horrors. It is now official ‘anti-racism’ that nurtures injustice, unequal treatment and barbaric state behaviour. It is now ‘anti-racism’ that dehumanises the citizenry, dividing us into ‘the oppressed’ and ‘the oppressors’, and gifting or denying us moral worth accordingly. The horror on that driveway was more than a police screw-up – it was the metaphorical boot of wokeness on the neck of a young man, and a whole nation.

Our political class is in for the mother of all awakenings if it fails to recognise the anger this case has caused. Keir Starmer’s belated statement on the Nowak horror was horrendously perfunctory, yapping on about the ‘cycle of tragedy’ caused by ‘knife crime’. All the knee-bending passion he felt after George Floyd’s death seems to have evaporated into the cursory, fleeting angst of the impassive lawyer. Millions are clocking this. That he doesn’t know that is a tragedy – for him.

The next Mega-Ministry is coming and it is going to disappoint

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Thu, 28 May 2026 12:29:34 +0000

Notwithstanding the histrionics from the Greens and other hard-left activists, the Ministry for the Environment isn't being shut-down, it's being merged with two other Ministries and part of a Department to create the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT).

I opposed this when it was floated nearly a year ago, and I still oppose it. Not because of the claims that it will risk MfE's work programme (if only!), but because bigger bureaucracies are NOT more cost efficient, and they are certainly not more dynamic, nor do they result in integrated and co-ordinated thinking.

I've worked in both large and small government agencies, but it's not just that experience that informs my opinion, it's the experience seen elsewhere. The views on savings are largely from the perspective of accountants, who typically measure "X-efficiency" which is about minimising wasted resources. In the context of government it is really around the number of managers vs. output, which given the outputs are highly subjective, is hard to assess without a close understanding of the detail of those outputs. It's not goods sold or customers satisfied. It might consider productive efficiency based on numbers of people relative to outputs, although the "productivity" of policy agencies ought to reflect the quality of output, which I'd be astonished if the Public Service Commission could identify at more than a rudimentary level.

What definitely isn't measured is dynamic efficiency (how responsive organisations are to innovations and technology), nor do they measure allocative efficiency (allocating resources to meet most specifically what is desired - in this case by Ministers).

From experience, large Ministries can be awfully inefficient and slow to be responsive. For example, I half wonder if I still have a live "on demand" employment contract with MBIE, even though I left its predecessor permanently 26 years ago, although I did work casually for it for a subsequent 2 years. I never received any communications terminating it. However I digress.

One of my favourite administrative failures of MBIE's predecessor - MED - was how it spent three years developing an all of Ministry centralised Document Management System, which was designed primarily for "security". There were full time staff dedicated to this project, who were bewildered when one senior advisor pointed out that every single document created in this system was copied onto individual PC hard drives, which were accessible to anyone who logged onto the PCs. It took another year for the system to be implemented, by which time it was already obsolete.

As much as there are efforts to try to bring together people in a single Ministry to be co-ordinated across sectors, the record of doing so successfully, without bringing other activities to a snail's pace is not particularly inspiring. By and large, MED and its predecessor the Ministry of Commerce, largely operated in silos. The idea there was some commonality between how energy, telecommunications, land planning (RMA) and industrial/trade policy was fanciful. Electricity was heavily regulated and resulted in structural separation, telecommunications was very lightly regulated, land use planning was largely about tinkering with the RMA (and monitoring the impacts of its implementation), industrial/trade policy focused on tariff removal and supporting MFAT on trade negotiations. Throughout the five years I had there, the proportion of effort of the Secretary/Chief Executive in telecommunications, broadcasting, postal and IT policy as a share of activity was <5%. In other words, mega-Ministries struggle to get their senior management across everything they do. Small ones don't have that problem. Of course that can be an advantage for divisions/directorates/units led by managers who want to get on with their jobs without micro-management at a more senior level, but it is hardly amenable to accountability. Of course what it does mean is that there are multiple Ministers for the Ministry to report to, over the head of the Secretary/Chief Executive (otherwise the Secretary would spent all of her/his time at every Minister's office).

What mega-Ministries DO implement is a rather significant in-house administrative function, which inevitably justifies more staff to perform functions across IT, HR, finance and information management.

I've pointed out that MBIE and DIA, both large Ministries have not displayed much capability in delivering innovative reforms over recent years. MfE of course delivered an abject disaster with Labour's proposed RMA replacement with two pieces of legislation imposing greater costs on property owners and more complication through centralisation of power. This is primarily because MfE's culture is antithetical to economic growth, development and private property rights (you can still see in the new Planning Bill which is far more diluted and modest than what is needed to address the sclerosis in development). This was so apparent when in 2023, Vicky Robertson departed as MfE Chief Executive and stated:

In her presentation she pointed to the programmes that will have a profound and lasting positive impact on our environment.

She spoke about how reforming the resource management system has been the Ministry’s key priority and remains our single biggest deliverable for a system that is future-focused, adaptable, and encourages decisions that are good for our long-term wellbeing.

I'm not sure whose wellbeing she meant, certainly not taxpayers...

“People still say what they love about the Ministry is how people care about each other. They still say that now, as they did when I started. It’s pretty incredible how we’ve gone from 320 people to 1200 and held onto our culture. I’m proud we’ve been able to do that,” she says"

Being proud of more than trebling staff numbers says all you need to know about bureaucratic culture. Now that is being merged with the local government arm of DIA (which spent decades responsible for the statis of water policy), the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (which was established in 2018 and presided over the country's most rapid increase in housing prices) and Transport (which itself has seen a more than doubling of staff numbers over 25 years).

Another example.

In 2004, Transfund New Zealand was merged with the Land Transport Safety Authority to become Land Transport New Zealand. That entity was merged with Transit New Zealand in 2008 to form the NZ Transport Agency. The end result has been to create a bureaucratic monster. In 2004, the three separate agencices had a combined total of around 700 staff. In the 2023/24 financial year, NZTA had 2,769 permanent employees.

In 2007 announcing the merger, then Transport Minister Annette King said:

“Combining the functions of Land Transport New Zealand and Transit New Zealand will create one organisation accountable to one board, ensuring improved focus on value for money for land transport activities and an appropriate balance of land transport activities".

Value for money?

In Australia, a mega-Department I've previously done work for had a total of six project leads for a single project I was involved in as a contractor, over five years. Each time the new lead had to be brought up to speed and learn again. The reason why was because the mega-Department kept poaching anyone talented to work on other projects in other areas. One comment I heard from a different agency was "this is the Department you send projects to so they die". That's a bit unfair, but isn't entirely untrue. Quite simply there are five layers of management on top of each project or activity, so it is easy for them to get lost.

So I'm not optimistic. I'm not sure a single entity co-ordinates better than separate entities, because the bigger the organisation the more sluggish it is to work as an integrated whole. Moreover, so much of what these agencies do is not across other portfolios. I doubt aviation policy has ever paid much regard to housing policy, local government or the environment, but I am sure there are people in a couple of those who would keen to get involved - which would slow it down. A mega-Ministry has great potential for sclerosis.

I hope I'm wrong, but I've seen multiple mega-agencies in several countries over 30 years. I'd love to see the example that, by an objective external measure, has delivered serious innovative reforms that have released productivity, growth and dare I say "wellbeing" for taxpayers and the public.

Is New Zealand a capitalist command economy?

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sun, 10 May 2026 06:06:15 +0000

Head of Lifestyle Economics at the UK's Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a free-market thinktank, has written an excellent piece at The Critic called "On Britain as a capitalist command economy".

The central hypothesis is that the UK is both far removed from being a free-market economy with a small state and light-handed regulation, and from being a state-owned economy run by bureaucratic, politically driven trading departments. It is worth reading in whole!

He describes the conundrum of how to describe the UK economy...

The left call it neoliberal but neoliberals have had no meaningful influence on British governments for thirty years. The right call it socialist but neither the Tories nor Labour have shown much interest in seizing the means of production. Keir Starmer’s government is more left-wing than he wants you to believe, but even if he renationalises the rail and water companies, it will be a nostalgic gesture rather than a heartfelt effort to control the heights of industry. Only on the fringes of the left is there any desire to return to the days when British Airways, Jaguar and Thomas Cook were under “democratic control”.

Arguably New Zealand isn't much different. Of course the Greens, TPM and parts of Labour will say the country is under the oppressive yoke of neo-liberalism, their latest scapegoat "billionaires" and "foreign capital", and of course people like me will rail against the "commie kids" on the left in Parliament, and in local government, but there's little real evidence of NZ embarking on Douglas/Richardson Mk. 2 or becoming the DDR under the last government.

Jim Bolger put the brakes on free-market liberalisation and shrinking of government after the 1993 election, although the direction of travel largely remained the same until 1999 when the Clark Government starting turning things back - notably by passing legislation to cancel the contracts of private ACC employer account providers to return ACC to a state monopoly insurer. Clark followed by renationalising Air NZ and the Railways, setting up a state retail bank (Kiwibank) raising income taxes and vastly expanding the welfare state with "Working for Families". The Key Government did little to change this trajectory, and the Ardern/Hipkins Government doubled down, with significant spending increases (even leaving aside the Covid response), and increasing both the size of the public sector and scale of regulatory intervention in the private sector.

On the face of it, the post-Thatcher settlement has held, but there is nothing Thatcherite about this government, nor the ones that preceded it.

Likewise in NZ. It's not to say the Douglas/Richardson (note it isn't the PMs noted for these reforms) reforms have been unwound. New Zealand isn't returning to rampant protectionism, nor has Labour embarked on vast renationalisation (the Government isn't going to get a national bus company, shipping company, hotel network or life insurance company), but what has happened is an accretion of central command and control. The UK of course has long had it with the Town and Country Planning Act, the single biggest act constraining housing supply and enabling local government to be the greatest NIMBYs in the UK's history. It was passed in 1947! New Zealand has only had the Resource Management Act since 1991 (passed during the height of Ruth Richardson's reforms, but inherited from Labour led by Geoffrey Palmer - which speaks volumes), but it too had kneecapped housing supply, inflated the cost of infrastructure and is only now with a chance of being replaced with something a bit less worse.

Snowdon writes about price caps introduced in the UK on energy, the Starmer Government's ban on "no-fault evictions" of tenants and enabling legal challenges on rent increases.

He highlights the nonsense of the Equality Act in the UK, which is being used to impose "pay equity" claims of the sort Brooke Van Velden has put a stop to, much to the chagrin of retired former politicians.

the Equality Act ... stipulates that men and women should be paid the same salary if they do work of “equal value”. Grotesquely over-interpreted by activist judges, this led to the bankruptcy of Birmingham City Council and 16 months of strikes after it was ruled illegal for (mostly male) dustmen and gravediggers to be awarded bonuses when (mostly female) cleaners and carers were not. ..

In the Next case, it was revealed that the company offered its 25,000 retail staff a chance to work in the warehouse but only seven took up the offer (three of whom walked out within a year). Despite one of the claimants admitting that she didn’t find the prospect of working in a noisy warehouse appealing but would have considered it if she was offered a lot more money, the company still lost.

The process used to determine what was "equal value" is what Snowdon describes as "that looks like something from a Marxist professor’s fever dream to decide the value of an employee’s labour." This diagram is the basis for a bureaucratic central planner's view of how people's pay should be set, which bears zero reference at all to how many people want to do the job for the pay offered. Have you seen a single politician or journalist in New Zealand outline how ridiculous this is? This is exactly the outcome of the philosophy of the capitalist command economy.

Snowdon describes it as essentially the application of activist state seeking to remould capitalism to meet centrally determined goals:

An activist state is systematically coercing the private sector in the pursuit of a range of social engineering goals, all of which are implicitly assumed to be more important than the economy. It is a form of central planning, albeit with a patchwork of different plans rather than one overarching goal.

Following on from my previous post, this is exactly what you can see from the Opportunity Party, whose leader "stepped into the world of... purpose-driven business". The purpose you can be sure is not why people and other businesses risked capital in the business, it's a purpose that is mostly about signalling virtue, and just chips away at its competitiveness, its resources to respond to consumers and competitors (especially in economies that don't have this sort of regulatory impost).

It's commonplace for people to refer to the People's Republic of China as a "communist" country. While it is led by the Communist Party, and has a great deal of central command and control, in many aspects it lets private enterprise run rip and be competitive, especially when exporting and seeking to win against foreign rivals. While it has plenty of state owned enterprises it directs and controls, it is less interventionist in the private sector. You see China actually cares about economic growth and development, because it works.

In the UK and across much of the developed world, governments are far more concerned about social engineering goals. Snowdon notes Net Zero (regardless of cost) which in the UK sees car retailers fined for selling too many cars that people want (petrol or diesel powered) relative to cars fewer people want (EVs). The market doesn't price goods the politicians want people to buy cheaply enough, and the public don't want to pay more for them, so the politicians penalise companies selling people what they want. The Ardern Government did this more softly by taxing the cars people wanted to subsidise the ones the government wanted people to buy. It did it by implementing US style government procurement rules to preference responses to tenders that included Maori enterprises, just because of their ownership, regardless of the value the enterprises offered to taxpayers relative to others.

Snowdon notes how far the public health lobby has gone in the UK (and it's obvious the same lobby in NZ wants similar steps):

Supermarkets have already been banned from offering multi-buy price discounts on “less healthy” food and are prohibited from displaying these products in certain parts of their shops. Wes Streeting plans to go even further and start fining supermarkets for selling too many calories.

I don't think New Zealand is quite so bad. A cursory look at economic statistics indicates:

- State spending as a proportion of GDP is 41% in NZ, 44% in the UK

- Tax as a proportion of GDP is 27% in NZ, 35% in the UK

- Public debt as a proportion of GDP is 41% in NZ, 98% in the UK.

It's notable that many of the command and control steps in the UK haven't been followed in NZ, although some of these were stopped with the removal of the Hipkins Government.

However, the approach of regulatory control of the private sector remains at the heart of what the Wellington bureaucracy advances to meet social goals, and it has widespread support in academia. Some elements of the capitalist command economy remain very much in place.

Even with its replacement, the Resource Management Act will still not put private property rights first, and will still mean local government very much is in command.

The electricity industry remains a weird blend of a market economy, with significant state investment, constrained by the planning system, which neither resembles a free market (given how difficult it is to build new generating capacity, and the state majority owning three quarters of the sector), nor a socialist system (as there is not a monopoly state provider). The previous ban on new oil and gas production (which in the current environment seems absurd) was purely an exercise in social engineering and virtue signalling, to show off a commitment to "Net Zero" even though it made virtually no impact on such targets (and no impact on climate change). However it certainly scared off new investment in the sector, fearing a change in government could ban its industry once again.

While supermarket competition is not what some would wish, this is largely due to the planning system, although there remain calls to split up the industry in ways unheard of in other countries, with even the Finance Minister having floated it, and it still being a "live" policy with some political parties. The fact this was even considered by a purportedly centre-right government indicates how far from the 1980s and 1990s NZ has gone.

New Zealand lacks the compulsory centralised pay bargaining seen in Australia, which bears the cost of it because the wealth generated from mining is so significant, the loss in productivity is diluted. However, it was only a change in government in 2023 that stopped it being implemented in NZ.

So I'd say New Zealand isn't quite as far down the path of regulatory sclerosis as the UK, but that is not because of a lack of will to continue down that path. You can see it in Labour, the Greens and the Opportunity Party, as well as within the glance of part of the National Party and NZ First to seek to add "just another" regulation to make business have "purpose" to meet the politicians' goals.

The fascists of the 1930s (actual fascists, not David Seymour) didn't advance communist style nationalisation of the economy because they preferred to use regulation and state control over business and industry to meet their goals. The word is vastly overused by the far-left, but its approach philosophically is not a million miles away from the bureaucratic command and control state regulating capitalism to meet the lofty ambitions of politicians.

One thing is for sure, it sure isn't a free-market capitalist economy.

The Opportunity Party is clearly on the left

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Fri, 08 May 2026 07:06:23 +0000

What was TOP and founded by the eclectic Gareth Morgan has been through a few leaders, and is into its latest one, and instead of using the acronym, has gone from the “Opportunities” party to just Opportunity. Just one opportunity, presumably for its candidates to get a handle on power.

I last wrote about it in 2020 when I said:

The centre-left policy wonks' party. For clever people that would usually vote Labour, and think they can solve many solutions if only the tax system were tinkered with. There are a couple of clever people here, but it just the intellectual wing of the Labour-Green parties, and takes its support from there. Long may it do that.

This remains largely the case. While it avoids the Hamas-adjacent one-eyed view of Israel of the Greens, and the self-interested grifting of unions seen in Labour, it is essentially a party of left-wing activists combining those who have made careers in corporate virtue signalling and productivity sapping, or in the public sector. You need only look at the profiles of the leader, deputy-leader and some candidates to get a clear picture that this isn’t a party of free-wheeling entrepreneurs, advocates for freedom of expression and competition and choice in public services.

Leader Qiulae Wong profile states “After studying law and politics, she stepped into the world of human rights, disability inclusion, ethical fashion, climate and purpose-driven business”

Now that fits right into the standard box-ticking of left-wing virtue supporting. Human rights, inclusion, ethical and then the weirdest... "purpose-driven business"

If you think “purpose-driven business” is different from other businesses, then you don’t understand business. The purpose of business is to make a return on capital. However, she presumably thinks that isn’t enough, and business should seek to show off some noble intent beyond providing goods and services at a quality and price that customers are willing to pay for.

She led the “B Corp” movement in NZ which is a corporate grift that seeks to extract money from businesses to get a virtue signal stamp to:

“Be part of a growing global movement working to create an economy that benefits people and the planet”

This is largely vacuous nonsense. The economy exists because people produce goods and services that benefit people.

However, if you want to be part of a movement that is about putting productivity and wealth creation secondary to sacrificing shareholder value to identitarian and zero net impact climate change goals, then good for you, but let’s not pretend this is “centrist”. I am sure they will think I am some awful mean nasty capitalist individualist who thinks it's ok to run people over and kill pandas and whales to make a buck, but this sort of language and empty concepts are largely conceived by small groups of people who are very much the same as each other. They are all trying to prove to one another that despite their considerable wealth, education and relative luxury level of living, they are actually altruistic and generous people who care about something beyond themselves and their family, and this is proven by showing off credentials that are popular amongst themselves.

You can be sure probably none of them donate to Iranian's fighting the Islamic Republic, North Koreans trying to defect to the free world, Mauritanians fleeing slavery or Ukrainians repelling Russia. It's far more glorious to save a few tonnes of emissions from installing a solar panel or getting equal numbers of highly paid women on the local board of a major accounting multinational.

It could be right from the Green Party. You see these movements are great for big companies that can afford to waste money hiring people or consultants to do zero-value research, publicity and branding to look good to airhead consumers, finger-wagging politicians and activist NGOs. However, they are deadly for small entrepreneurs just trying to break even, minimise costs and maximise consumers in taking on competitors like this.

Deputy Leader Daniel Eb is cut from the same cloth. “Dan works to transition Aotearoa New Zealand to a just, regenerative food system”. Wait, what? How is it unjust now? How is not regenerative? Well he might tell you because…

“Dan founded a communications agency to help tell stories about rural innovation, community building and nature-positive farming”

Again, this could be right from the Green Party. Marketing and spin oriented.

Dr Kayla Kingdon-Beb (Wellington Bays candidate - where she is up against Julie Anne Genter) is “a well-known environmental policy leader and advocate. She believes Aotearoa’s most crucial (and undervalued) asset is nature”. She is Chief Executive of WWF-NZ and before that was Director of Policy at the Department of Conservation. Again, could be right from the Green Party, and probably a good candidate to win votes from the far too frequently angry Julie Anne Genter.

I wont go through all the candidates, although this image of them tells a story that shows how it isn’t like the Green Party. The Green Party isn’t keen on white males as candidates anymore, whereas the Opportunity Party is. Indeed a majority of candidates are male. Maybe it's centrist to not just select people on identitarian grounds nowadays?

Yet it is policies that tell you how leftwing the Opportunity Party is:

Universal Basic Income: Welfare for all. Paying people to be idle (of course it’s not characterised as that), by taxing some people more is a distinctively leftwing policy. It is directly redistributive, taking from some to give to all, and it is distinctively uninterested in productivity or wealth creation. $370 a week to everyone isn’t enough for some to live on but is a nice handout to the daughters and sons of lawyers, doctors and policy wonks at university. Note it doesn’t replace all benefits. The proposal is that solo parents get extra money, there are extra payments for people with children, housing support. So “admin” savings on this aren’t going to be total. With labour shortages in some sectors, the idea that people should receive other people’s money unhindered by any obligation to do anything is fundamentally socialist.

Fully subsidised Public Transport: This is another transfer from taxpayers to a small number of people, which has been proven elsewhere to achieve little. It is a blunt tool to help the poor (many of whom don’t live in places with much or any public transport, or certainly not public transport that goes to where they need) but is a big hand out to middle income taxpayers who work downtown in major cities like Auckland and Wellington. Overseas experience indicates it does little to relieve traffic congestion but does a lot to attract people from walking and cycling. Making the supply of a service free at the point of use is a fundamentally socialist concept. Imagining it is “just” for a six-figure sum public servant in Wellington to get a free trip into work, but for the shift-worker in Naenae who starts at the airport at 4am to not do so (because she drives) is quite something. Of course the party also wants to pour more money into public transport, regardless of net benefits (because well… socialism).

Land Value Tax: New Zealand already has this in rates, but this extends it to central government. The premise being that it could replace some income tax, but the proposal is that there would be three income tax brackets – 28%, 34% and 39%. Lower income tax rates are abolished because of the welfare to everyone payments. The point of the Land Value Tax is to encourage more intensive use of land, except in rural areas (the party is keen on zoning of course). There would be lots of exceptions as well including Māori land, conservation land, land owned by NGOs, government and social housing. Woe betide government be taxed the same as the great unwashed “speculating land bankers”. Now I don’t think Land Value Tax is necessarily left wing, if done simply and lowers income tax equally, but this isn’t it.

Citizens’ Assemblies: Heaven help us all if this comes in so that the curtain twitching finger-wagging brigade of semi-retired activists get to dictate public policy. This sort of direct-democracy will inherently exclude business-owners and people with multiple jobs (who won’t have the time to participate), but be perfect for lobbyists, activists and retirees who are just aching to get involved in running other people’s lives. It’s exactly this sort of approach to planning that has caused NIMBYism, and which ultimately gets hijacked by people who want to interfere, who want to tax and spend other people’s money and run any policy area like a village. It’s the atmosphere that has no place for radical individuals, doing something different in business, community, society, art or even just in their own lives that doesn’t harm anyone else. The Greens would love it.

There’s other stuff like creating a “circular plastics economy” presumably regardless of cost or impact. Implementing Labour’s previous ban on smoking for adults as they age (helping grow the black-market in tobacco for organised crime). Raising youth court jurisdiction to 25 (soft-pedalling on repeat offenders who cause untold harm to victims).

It’s interesting it has dropped capital gains tax because it wouldn’t have the same impact as a land value tax, but let’s not pretend the Opportunity Party cares much about economic growth and productivity as much as it cares about redistribution and being virtuous.

It talks about bringing left and right together. Well it brings left for sure, I’m not sure what it brings on the right.

For example, what does it say about fiscal prudence? There is little about saving on government spending, the main emphasis appears to be to let the economy “grow” to surplus (although that seems a bit like Nicola Willis to be fair).

What does it say about foreign affairs? Nothing

What does it say about greater choice in health and education provision? Nothing

What does it say about improving New Zealand’s competitiveness internationally? Nothing. Just keep sliding down below the per capita GDP of Italy (and well below Australia)

I’m very happy for the Opportunity Party to attract some voters from the Greens or Labour, but let’s not pretend this is some haven for disaffected National voters who think there is a chance for any principles of smaller government, personal responsibility and individual freedom to be respected. This is still a party of policy wonks, now led by a grifter of “corporate social responsibility”.

It's a victory!

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 11:45:00 +0000

In July 1953, then Premier of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Il Sung, declared victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War (the "Korean War" to the rest of us). This was a war he started in 1950 (although he claimed the US started it), and had a clear purpose, which was to obliterate the Republic of Korea (south Korea) and unify the country under his communist rule.

This was after over 200,000 military deaths and the death of over 1 million north Korean civilians (and likely over 200,000 Chinese deaths, as Mao intervened to deter the US attacking China), and the net loss of 3,900 square km territory. However, Kim Il Sung treated it as a victory and the Kim dynasty has done ever since.

Sure it lied about why the war started, and it is logically impossible to think that the war was any sort of victory for the north, but at least the Kims have an excuse - they are part of a psychopathic totalitarian dynasty clinging to power.

Trump doesn't have that.

Sure, 90% of the Iranian Navy has been destroyed, but it is clearly fully capable of attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz, using small boats, coastal based cruise missiles and drones. The US and Israel have obviously not destroyed that capability.

Sure, most of the Iranian airforce has been destroyed, and its ballistic missile capability has been badly damaged, but it isn't over. Perhaps its nuclear programme is completely, or mostly destroyed, but its motivation to have a nuclear programme will not have abated, indeed quite the opposite.

After all, Kim Il Sung himself also knew that once the Soviet Union collapsed, the only security guarantee the regime in Pyongyang could rely upon is having its own nuclear weapons. That has been proven, as there is little real chance of the US engaging in a first strike against north Korea, because the risk of nuclear retaliation, whether to the south or to Japan or beyond, is very real.

The Iranian regime has been weakened, it has lost leaders, but it has not loss control of the borders, the mass media or the instruments of domestic repression. It has not been destroyed, but it has been battle hardened and has - rightfully - claimed victory. Victory against the United States is defined as survival. It is not a victory Saddam Hussein could claim, as the Iraqi Government fell completely. It is not a victory Muammar Gaddafi could claim either (although the regime of Nicholas Maduro is - largely - intact without him).

Trump's claim of victory isn't quite as hollow as Kim Il Sung's, but at best he has diminished and deferred the ability of the Islamist regime to project its terror abroad, and only moderately diminished its capability to project terror domestically.

If the regime remains, it will be more hardline, more focused on advancing terror abroad, including targeting the US, Israel and liberal democracies globally.

I bet the Cuban regime isn't that worried anymore.

TACO indeed.

What's the role of government in an energy crisis?

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 07:35:00 +0000

For all of the fatuous claims of those who think fossil fuel use should be ended "as soon as possible", we can all see that the world values them, not just to power transport, and provide base-load energy generation in many countries, but to provide the essential materials for a vast range of industrial and consumer goods. Notwithstanding the nonsensical claims by the likes of Greta Thunberg and de-growth multinationals like Greenpeace, oil use continues to grow worldwide according to the International Energy Agency. Half of that growth comes from aviation and chemical feedstocks - in other words the use of oil as an input into the manufacturing of everything from pharmaceuticals to pipes to electrical insulation to asphalt and paint.

Yes there is some substitutability around energy in some sectors. Most obviously in electricity generation, although no single alternative to oil or coal is "ideal". Hydro-electricity is geographically dependent, nuclear is difficult primarily due to extremely high capital costs and public opposition, and solar/wind power is intermittent (and storage remains expensive).

In transport there have been huge leaps ahead in technology for light road vehicle, and medium weight trucks and buses doing short to medium haul trips are increasingly electric as well. However, it is going to be some years before long haul heavy trucks (and coaches) will go electric.

Aviation isn't moving from petroleum for some time, although hope it being seen in biofuels, that has its own issues. Shipping likewise, which mostly uses heavy fuel oil, is also not moving away from petroleum. What many activists ignore is that most transport, certainly commercially provided transport, is only too aware of the importance of minimising fuel costs. Conventional engines have never been more fuel efficient, and that is driven by market factors more than anything. Airlines, shipping companies, trucking companies all want to save on costs, because most of what they do is motivated by profit.

Private individuals less so because they trade off high capital expenditure vs. lower operating costs, and many don't have much capital to spend on cars, but the incentives are there. As someone once said, the stone age didn't end because of a lack of stones. Similarly railways did not move from steam locomotives because coal (and fuel oil) were scarce, but because technology made diesel and electric traction more cost effective.

Outside transport, and outside the wishes of planners hoping people will trade off time and comfort to use public transport and active modes more (which will happen anyway due to cost), the big consumers of fossil fuels are in agriculture, industry and manufacturing, and much of that isn't changing soon.

So what SHOULD government do when petroleum gets more scarce and more expensive?

1. Not meddle with prices. Higher prices ensure more supply and encourage more supply. When people face the real price of energy they will take steps to conserve or change energy sources, and trade off whether they think it is a short or a long term saving they get from switching. The idea that politicians or bureaucrats have any clue as to what best meets the needs of everyone using petroleum products now is simply absurd. High prices are already encouraging people to shift modes of transport, to drive less and consider what their next vehicle's fuel consumption is. Let that work, and don't listen to the excitable planners who think more needs to be done. A majority of the costs of urban public transport are already predominantly paid for through motoring taxes and rates, as it is already "being encouraged" with fares well below cost. It doesn't need to be more.

2. Don't get in the way of exploring for more energy. The Ardern Government's ban on new oil and gas exploration was always an act of virtue signalling to fly a vacuous flag around climate change to the world, even though the impact of no more exploration on climate change is nil. The even more preposterous argument that "there isn't any more to discover" makes it more ridiculous, because there is no need to ban something that wouldn't happen anyway. Norway has the world's highest takeup of electric vehicles (96% of new light vehicle sales are EVs) and it is the world's seventh largest exporter of petroleum and gas (and there is bipartisan consensus about expanding it).

3. That means all energy. Whether it be wind power, solar power, nuclear power, tidal or coal, government should get out of the way. There are negative externalities with some options, but these should be treated as property rights issues. Pollution is an escape over property boundaries and permission should be obtained from owners of such property if pollution represents anything from nuisance level onwards. There should be minimal restrictions on installing solar panels, wind turbines or damning waterways if you own them, and the replacement of the RMA should enable this. It also means that electricity generators should also be able to plan for future supply.

4. Maintain constructive foreign and defence relations with allies: Freedom of navigation is critical to survival for New Zealand. That means defence matters, including the alliance with Australia in particular, but also other like-minded liberal democracies. Yes that includes the United States, Japan, south Korea and Singapore. It means that there should be a blue water navy and an air force that is a credible contribution to collective defence of sea lanes. It doesn't mean having to go along with every military action by allies, but it does mean contributing to the defence of allies, and having clear lines about what matters in the national interest.

5. Maintain a minimum critical reserve of supply: The International Energy Agency recommends member states keep reserves worth 90 days of supply. This isn't "free" to do, but should be considered a core part of national defence. Without such supply, significant parts of the economy and the public would be in danger.

6. Sell off your ownership in gentailers: As clever as it seemed for the Key Government to sell 49% of three electricity gentailers, it doesn't go far enough. For these generators to build more supply they need more capital, and it shouldn't be constrained by governments having to put their own capital into the three SOEs. Government should state that, at the very least, it is relaxed about becoming a minority shareholder, or better yet just hand over the shares to the general public for it to do with as it pleases. They can sell them or hold onto them. Before that happens, it should break them up. Generation and wholesaling electricity should be separated from retail, so the retail market can thrive. I don't mean the private gentailers like Contact, just the majority state owned ones. That will stir up the market and encourage investment in capacity, which is just what is needed as more choose electricity over gas and petrol.

I'm old enough to remember how the National Party's greatest conservative socialist, Muldoon, tried to centrally plan New Zealand away from the volatility of oil prices, and lumbered the country with billions in debt for inefficient pet projects. From the Motunui gas to gasoline plant, to the North Island Main Trunk electrification, many Think Big projects were an economic disaster because officials assumed oil prices would remain high perpetually, which was not to be the case.

The Muldoon government subsidised CNG and LPG conversions for vehicles, and subsidised the roll out of CNG and LPG refuelling at service stations across the country, and by the mid 1980s the growth in demand in CNG and LPG had collapsed. It also indirectly subsidised road use by such vehicles, as fuel duty on CNG and LPG was (and still is!) significantly lower than that for petrol.

In a few months, the US-Iran war will be over and the crisis in fuel prices will have ameliorated, and despite the eager calls by central planners, the best government can do is to

The climaxes of those who absolutely love expensive and scarce oil

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 11:43:00 +0000

There are people absolutely loving the price of fuel going up and eager for there to be fossil fuel shortages. It’s getting them terribly agitated, in a quasi-sadistic scolding way. “Told them so” said one, “those car fascists are going to pay” said one politician, “if only there were cycleways, the teachers and nurses would use them to get to work” said an earnest unionist. “It’s ironic that the white supremacist genocidal Zionists are helping up” said keffiyeh wearing angry woman.

It started online of course, chatting together getting all excited. “Shortages will show them we were right all along, public transport is better, that’s why we need to tax people more to make it free” said the urban planner. “The people, well I mean they aren’t really human are they, that own Ford Rangers or RAM are going to feel it bad, and they’ll realise how uncool and hate filled such vehicles are” shouted the Greenpeace staffer. “Child murderers!” cried out the neurodiverse kindness campaigners. “They’re not all ACT or Winston supporting straight white men who don’t have degrees though right?” said the elder gentleman who once marched against apartheid”. “No, but 90% of them are” said the suspicious purple haired non-binary student. The university lecturer noted “Look this will expose the far-right white supremacist Zionist Trumpist terror supporters to the mass of good people who support a powerful exemplar of decolonising resistance”, before the photographer yawned and said “steady on now, we need to be practical if we are to free people from the car addiction they don’t want.

A failed list candidate said “Great, even though the climate destroying far-right scum are in power, it’s election year and can get The People on our side. We can finally show people how wonderful it is to share journeys with others on public transport, or enjoy being with nature in a cycleway”. A sick, sniffing one said “and it doesn’t matter about the Nazi Ranger drivers, all we need is for the Greens to give Labour enough of a boost to kick out Peters and Seymour”.

I might jest, but they really are almost tumescent in their excitement.

This is the chance, the central planners can take more taxes, they can impose new rules, they can spend more of your money and direct the poor “addicted” car users to the more enlightened future of more public transport use, more cycling, more walking and of course freight should go by rail. Not having convinced enough people that abandoning driving was necessary to save the planet, they think they can convince people that it is for their own good to abandon their transport choices.

What do they want? You don’t even need to ask it’s all pretty clear:

• Make driving less attractive. Slower speed limits, remove general traffic lanes, remove parking, tax cars more.

• Tax you more (now or later) to subsidise public transport even more with cheaper fares, despite demand being up and the cost of providing services going up as well.

• Tax you more to subsidise rail freight, because businesses that use it already need a helping hand from… you.

• Tax you more to subsidise people who can afford to buy new cars to buy EVs, and for other people to buy e-bikes.

Lunatic fringe academic Timothy Welch is one of these people . He’s a senior lecturer in urban planning, which of course is something we need much less of. He gets republished by leftwing media because he plays to its unconscious bias, as he really knows little about the commercial side of the transport sector and is keen to selectively quote data as facts to support his own point of view. His claims are mostly value judgment nonsense.

His latest piece of polemic sees him supporting taxing buyers of petrol vehicles to subsidise buyers of EVs (it wasn't long ago he was bemoaning EVs saying "EVs require the same amount of road space and, due to their increased weight, potentially cause more road damage. But EV owners don’t buy petrol, which means they don’t pay excise tax – the same tax that pays for expanding roads". EV's don't cause more road damage, but then after the Government put EVs onto road user charges he bemoans it making EVs "less competitive". More generally he supports making new vehicles more expensive (through the “Clean Car Standard”) which helps ensure the vehicle fleet stays older for longer, but Welch doesn’t like cars at all. He loved that fewer utes and SUVs sold under the Clean Car Standard. He bemoans the car ownership rate of 815 cars per 1000 people “one of the highest in the world”. This should be celebrated that so many can afford a car and have the freedom it provides (urban planners aren't big on this), but he ignores that NZ is larger than the UK with 8% of the population. He claims that every decade there is an oil shock, which isn't really true, but even when it happens that all dies down (remember people like him warned us of Peak Oil? That was until fracking discovered more). The 1979 oil shock one provoked Rob Muldoon to advance Think Big, and every single one of those projects turned out to be a net drain on the economy, because in a few years oil prices dropped right back. Welch doesn’t let that stop his excitement for reducing car ownership. He finishes with this absurdity:

Every bus electrified, every cycleway built, every train funded is a direct reduction in exposure to the next crisis. The question now is whether New Zealanders begin to treat their car dependence not as a lifestyle choice but as a strategic liability.

What utter rot. Unless the bus is taking people out of cars, and unless a cycleway takes enough people out of driving cars to offset its cost of construction, it does nothing to reduce exposure. He advocates fully taxpayer funded public transport, which has been shown in multiple examples (e.g. Tallinn, Estonia) to largely replace walking instead of driving (in Tallinn car use dropped 5%, but walking dropped 40%, and car mode share climbed back up because public transport was overcrowded with people riding it for short trips).

There’s photographer Patrick Reynolds made a name for himself as an urbanist, and has for some years been an activist for the Green-left’s war on private motoring. This is why he was appointed to be board of NZTA in the first term of the Ardern Government, as the Greens strongly advocated for him. He’s positively excited about the crisis on the ~~Green Party~~ Greater Auckland blog. He says we should think strategically (i.e. don’t just react to the crisis, but think of the “long term”). His next step is to “rapidly reduce demand” and to “ensure an equitable path”. He said we are “structurally addicted” to driving. Curiously he floats the idea of lower speed limits for everyone but EV drivers, which is nonsense of course. Of course he doesn’t talk about aviation or shipping because These are blind spots because, by and large, governments don’t tax you to pay for their infrastructure, vehicles or services, because you’re willing to pay for them yourself (directly or indirectly through freight).

Of course it is now rounded off by the Greens. Chloe Swarbrick has, finally, taken time out shouting for the destruction of Israel and touting Hamas propaganda to demand "free" public transport and a new tax.

This wont excite the car hating mob though. Nothing gets them over the top quite as much as penalising car driving. Cars, the epitome of individual freedom, expensive capital assets that exist purely to sit idle for the owner to use when wanted, to go when and where they want to go. So unlike public transport which is planned (!) and scheduled and directed to be a sharing experience, not so fast, not so direct and not so "selfish".

And No. Unlike the control freaks, I really don't care how you get around, or how goods get around, as long as people pay for it themselves. No modes of transport are "bad" or "good", they just are well suited for different purposes. For as long as this fuel crisis continues, people will respond to the price signals in the ways they want. Some will drive a bit less, some may buy vehicles that use less or no fuel, some will ride public transport, some will bike and some will walk. Most people are quite happy buying their own cars, fares, bikes and shoes, and the way it SHOULD work, is the more people buy of one mode, the more that can be provided.

Funny how the planners don't really think that should be the way isn't it?

UPDATE: Oh look another one, this time from Professor Alistair Woodward, from the University of Auckland's Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, who RNZ conveniently cited without counter-argument that there should be regulations on people buying vehicles he thinks are bad. The public health lobby's appetite for micro-managing what everyone does, because a small handful engage in bad behaviour has no end.

Whether your agree with it or not, the US has to win in Iran

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 04:48:00 +0000

Morally it was entirely justifiable to attack the Islamic Republic of Iran. Many will disagree honourably because of concern that the international order, represented by sovereign states with recognised borders respecting each others territorial integrity, is fundamental to international peace and security. They believe that this order protects peace and supports negotiation and diplomacy as the path to dispute resolution. However, it is a defensible position that the Islamic Republic of Iran (distinct from Iran the nation) is not deserving of that protection or recognition, because it does not afford that to some other sovereign states.

It is a regime that has spent its entire history calling for death to the USA and Israel, and used terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Israel and Yemen to spread its evil poisonous misanthropic ideology of ultra-conservative Islamist theocracy. Besides calling for "death to Israel" it has actively spread anti-semitism globally, including hosting conferences questioning the Holocaust. It has the world's highest per capita rate of executions, killing over 972 in 2024 alone, and most recently reportedly slaughtering tens of thousands of protestors across the country. Its theocracy includes a morality police dedicated to policing what women wear and how people interact in public, and it uses rape as a punishment of dissident women.

Given its long standing global sponsorship of terrorism (which included the IRA back in the Troubles), its pursuit of uranium enrichment and lack of transparency, it is easy to justify military action to stop it obtaining nuclear weapons.

Whether or not it was tactically correct for the US and Israel to take on Iran only history will tell. As much as those against the war will be wanting Trump to lose, to embarrass him, this is a very narrow and suicidal position. The very last thing anyone who supports liberal democracy, rule of law, individual freedom, human rights and civilisation should want is for the Islamic Republic of Iran to defeat the US, Israel and by proxy, the Gulf states as well.

Overthrowing the regime would be a success, weakening it so it fails due to domestic pressure (including from the Kurdish north) would be a partial success, but emboldening it even if its ability to project abroad is significantly weakened, would be seen as a victory for the regime, and a victory for its proxies.

For it would embolden Iran and its proxies to attack not just in the Middle East, but beyond, endangering Americans, Jews (don't even think Iran separates Zionists from Jews). This would make us all less safe, it would embolden Islamists across the world to promote their ideology, and for a few to be willing to use force to terrify us all.

If the Islamic Republic survives, it will embolden Putin and Xi to give it succour, money, arms and to push on. Putin already knows Trump wont stop him in Ukraine, Xi already knows the US will do little in the South China Sea, and wonders if he can attack Taiwan with little more than sanctions.

At this stage the biggest risk is that Trump chickens out, and wants a "deal". There is no "deal" with those who want you dead, who want your country dead and another dead. As much as the international law purists want pontification from the Western world about the legality of the war on Iran (they think it isn't legal), that horse has bolted.

While it's entirely possible (and probable) the Iranian regime could be replaced by one that is far from ideal (see Iraq, Libya and Syria), it is also likely it could be better. Better is not wanting to destroy other countries, better is not wanting to fund, train and arm multiple terrorist proxies across the Middle East, and across the world to "globalise the intifada" against the infidels.

Better is not expounding an ideology that is a fundamentalist misanthropic dark-ages view of humanity, as serving a supreme religious leader who sends people to their deaths for the sake of Allah, who restricts music, literature, art, apparel, human relationships and human expression, for the sake of blasphemy. Humanity, and in particular Europe and the Western world have been spending centuries unshackling themselves from the tyranny of theology.

The end of the Islamic Republic of Iran wont remove this, as there are plenty of others expounding such a view, including some it is attacking, but it will remove the most toxic, virulent and violent example embodied in a outwardly aggressive state. For it to "win", survive and double down on militarising itself and securing weapons of mass destruction would be dangerous to us all.

Allister Heath in the Daily Telegraph:

Either Donald Trump holds his nerve, crushes the Iranian regime, rides out the oil shock and reopens the Strait of Hormuz, or he and America are finished, exposed as unserious, fickle and incapable of forward planning, a superpower manquée felled by drone-wielding barbarians.

The challenge is Trump’s character, his willingness to accept short-term economic and electoral pain, not America or Israel’s exceptional military capacities. Does the US president, a hawk on Iran for 47 years, have it in him to finish the job, going down in history as the saviour of civilisation from nuclear Islamism, or is he merely the unidimensional man child his critics believe him to be?..

The great danger is that Trump snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. A loss would involve the Iranians shutting the Strait for an extended period, the Americans panicking at elevated oil prices and the US president walking away with a premature declaration of victory. Iran would be bloodied, but unbowed.

This would be a calamity from which neither Trump nor the West would recover. It would be interpreted by our enemies, chiefly China, North Korea and Islamists, as proof that their stereotype of the average Westerner is correct, that we are coddled, narcissistic consumers who cannot handle even the smallest discomfort.

It would also embolden the West’s defeatist class. Their “analysis” relentlessly asserts that the US cannot possibly win, and dismisses any contrary evidence. Everything to them is a miscalculation; killing Ali Khamenei will backfire, we are told, but not killing him would have been criticised just as harshly.

There is nothing wrong with caution, but some of these people sound as if they want Iran to win. These same experts rightly loathe Putin, correctly seeing him as a fascist monster, who is willing to kidnap children and ethnically cleanse civilians. They rightly support Ukraine, emphasise its victories and urge it not to give up when Russia strikes a blow.

Yet they are not as passionately opposed to the Iranian regime, even though it is just as fascistic as Putin’s. They loathe Trump and Israel. They were willing to suffer high energy prices to help defeat Putin, but cannot tolerate dearer petrol to take out the Iranian regime. Their double standards and hypocrisy are vile.

This is a civilisational struggle, a battle between good and evil. The West must win, or all bets are off...