Two central banks

• Michael Reddell writes – 

I got curious yesterday about how the Australia/New Zealand real exchange rate had changed over the last decade, and so dug out the data on the changes in the two countries’ CPIs. Over the 10 years from March 2014 to March 2024, New Zealand’s CPI had risen by 30.3 per cent and Australia’s CPI had risen by 30.4 per cent.

And that piqued my interest because the two countries have different inflation targets: New Zealand’s centred on 2 per cent per annum and Australia’s centred on 2.5 per cent.

So I drew myself this chart – 

TVNZ hīkoi documentary needs a sequel

Graham Adams writes that 20 years after the land march, judges are quietly awarding a swathe of coastal rights to iwi.

Early this month, an hour-long documentary was released by TVNZ to mark the 20th anniversary of the land-rights march to oppose Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act. The account of 2004’s hīkoi from Cape Reinga to Wellington — narrated by Tāmati Rimene-Sprout, who marched as a 10-year-old — is undeniably atmospheric and will certainly be rousing for those who support Māori nationalism.

For others, Hīkoi: Speaking Our Truth will look like the opening salvo in a propaganda campaign to head off attempts by the government to amend the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011, which repealed Clark’s legislation.

The missing Green MP

• David Farrar writes – 

The Herald reports:

Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has passed an unpleasant milestone: she has now been absent for as many parliamentary sitting days as she has been present for this year.

Tana is on full pay while she is suspended, and will benefit from a backdated pay increase recommended by the Remuneration Authority, like all other MPs.

Tana has been suspended from the party since March 14, pending an investigation into allegations made about her husband’s e-bike business.

The contest for the future heart and soul of the Labour Party

• Peter Dunne writes – 

It is no coincidence that two Labour should-have-been MPs are making the most noise about public sector cuts. As assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, Fleur Fitzsimons has been at the forefront of revealing where the next round of state sector job cuts is occurring, and in his role with the E Tu union Michael Wood has fronted the campaign for redress for TVNZ staff laid off in the recent programme cancellations.

 

Fitzsimons will be remembered as the Labour candidate who unexpectedly lost the hitherto safe seat of Rongotai to the Greens’ Julie-Anne Genter at the last election. At the same election, after a series of self-inflicted mishaps that led earlier to his Ministerial resignation, Wood was tossed out of the Labour stronghold of Mount Roskill by National’s Dr Carlos Cheung. This was only the second time since 1957 that Labour had failed to win the Mount Roskill electorate.   

This Unreasonable Government.

One can only speculate about what has persuaded the Coalition Government that it will pay no electoral price for unreasonably pushing ahead with policies that are so clearly against the national interest. They seem quite oblivious to the risk that by doing so they will convince an increasing number of voters that they are extremists.

 

• Chris Trotter writes – 

 

ONE OF THE MOST PERPLEXING ASPECTS of the National-Act-NZ First coalition government is its perverse unreasonableness. Perverse, because in almost every instance the unreasonable nature of the Coalition’s policies generate reactions that can only be politically counterproductive to its chances of re-election.

Politicians can be radical, or reactionary, it matters little, just so long as they can a make a reasonable case for their intended course of action. A reasonable policy not only stands a good chance of being implemented, it is also likely to be well received by the electorate. If, over the course of its three year term, a government’s actions strike most voters as consistently unreasonable, then its chances of being re-elected will lessen considerably.

Lobbying for Waikato’s Medical School causing problems for the Govt

• Bryce Edwards writes – 

It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a third medical school in New Zealand, and Joyce’s firm has convinced his former colleagues to hand over the money.

But there’s an increasing number of voices raising problems with the medical school deal, and it could yet become an issue of severe contention within the Beehive.

Rishi’s relaunch

With an election due in less than nine months, Britain’s embattled PM, Rishi Sunak, gave a useful speech earlier this week. He made a substantial case for his government, perhaps as compelling as is possible in the current environment. Quite an achievement.

Take that, Vladimir – and be warned: we have plenty more sanctions (at least, we hope so) in our armoury

Buzz from the Beehive

One day – hopefully – we will push that Russian rascal, Vladimir Putin, beyond breaking point.  Perhaps it will happen today, when he learns that Foreign Minister Winston Peters is again tightening the thumbscrews.

Peters announced further sanctions, this time on 28 individuals and 14 entities providing military and strategic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

With this announcement, New Zealand has imposed sanctions on more than 1,700 individuals and entities since the Russia Sanctions Act entered into force in March 2022, along with a range of trade measures.

Universities offer course in self-serving cowardice

• Henry Ergas writes – 

When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge could possibly arise: to be a hypocrite one has to know right from wrong.  

Today, as our universities’ leaders vacillate between equivocating and cowering, that lack of principle, which was once the exception, has become the rule.   

The teacher trainee challenge

• David Farrar writes – 

Radio NZ reports:

The Education Review Office says too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs.

In a report published on Monday, the review office said 60 percent of the principals it interviewed said their new teachers were not ready.