It turns out we should just systematically under pay women to fix the budget. Hell, why not cut even more from salaries in traditionally underpaid sectors like teaching and nursing? Think of the savings!

Popping up to say that the Min of Education have open for consultation the new draft framework for relationships and sex education in schools. They've cut out almost every mention of gender and gender diversity. Inside Out have a great guide to submitting here: insideout.org.nz/make-an-urge...

Pretty clear that Prebble joining the Waitangi Tribunal was always just a cheap stunt, setting him up to resign dramatically and claim that the Tribunal is corrupt. Fortunately it looks like he's shouting into the wind, the racist historical revisionism of ACT and Hobson's Pledge is losing.

David Seymour: "Sure, some of the kids have been eating melted plastic. But what about all the kids who haven't been fed melted plastic? Why isn't the media talking about them?" (I'm paraphrasing but barely) www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Whether parents can afford to make their kids a Marmite sandwich is irrelevant. Lunches were introduced because kids didn't have food, the reason doesn't matter. Do we accept responsibility as a society for making sure our kids have kai? That should be a pretty simple question for us to answer.

Tax cut calculator is here: budget.govt.nz/taxcalculato... You can compare to what they campaigned on here: x.com/coughlthom/s...

"Labour don't have a plan" says the guy who didn't even check the weather forecast. Very frustrating to watch UK Labour sleepwalk into government without any kind of ambition or transformational goals though. Basically just tory-light.

This aligns with my anecdotal experience of an attitude shift that happened after the lockdowns. It varies, but the perception that "a few days here and there don't matter", viewing start time as flexible, etc, seem much more widespread now.

The $153m is just to set up and administer the schools, doesnt include the per-student funding. We know from previous charter schools here that they use this startup funding to provide levels of service (salaries, pastoral care etc) that their business model can't actually sustain. Cooks the books.

How long can David Seymour keep branding as "activists" all these institutions established to defend people's rights? Surely before it will start to become obvious that the problem is his policy strips people of rights.

All of this and also… a major reason for the importance of school lunches is being missed in discussions… to compensate for any potential nutritional deficiency poor kids might have in their diet at home.

This is an EXACT repeat of the situation that cost Clare Curren her job as minister for broadcasting in 2018. Failure to add something to a diary, lying that it was because it was an ad-hoc meeting, and then it being revealed as a pre-arranged meeting. Totally different standards nowadays it seems.

I wrote about David Seymour's pet charter school project in The Post. Sets out the evidence that charter schools just don't work; any benefits they provide (higher pay, better pastoral care) can and should be delivered through the public system. www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/3502...

Charter schools want to have their cake and eat it too. Things like bulk funding and ability to employ unregistered teachers only offer benefits because the rest of the sector holds the line on funding, pay, standards etc. It's just privatisation, not even by stealth.

ACT voters: It's their own fault that the poors have health problems. They waste their money eating junk food instead of a healthy diet. Also ACT voters: Why are we wasting money on giving poor kids the sort of healthy diet that affluent people eat? Junk food is good enough for them!

ACT has decided that sushi is woke now folks.

"Schools that offered hot lunches as opposed to cold lunches also saw little to no leftover meals. Sandwiches and cold lunches were frequently mentioned as being wasted."

One of the huge benefits of school lunches (per the review) was that kids were eating healthier. Seymour is looking to take that away, and replace it with cheaper, processed food. The reason many parents just pack sandwiches (as he says) is because they're time-poor and sandwiches are convenient.

This will lead to reporting of "% of kids at school" data, which is good imo. But be alert for sleight of hand: they can easily say "Under Labour only 53.6% of students were attending school regularly. Now on average we have 84% of kids at school each day" without any actual change in attendance.

This government is defunding social services and using the money to refund prisons. Not only is this more expensive in the long run, it also creates more crime and more harm. This money needs to be spent addressing the drivers of harm, not on throwing people into cages.

"Fiscal cliffs" remains the dumbest bit of spin from this government, invented to justify the fact that Nicola Willis didn't read the budget closely enough or didn't understand standard budget practices. It sucks that school lunches are hanging on by tenterhooks.

Thinking of all the kids who catch the bus home each day from my school. An extra $20-40/week cost for those families, which will take up any tax cut they get and then some.

" 'Formby High School said we haven’t had a single case of cyberbullying since the ban was put in place,' [Erica Stanford] said. " The ban that came into place today? Or is she just taking credit for stuff that schools were already doing?

It's worth reading this post about the Cass report. It covers everything pretty well, from the clear ideological stance of the report, to the questionable methodology, to the bits that have since been walked back.

Know nothing about a subject but willing to write about it, that’s Damien Grant on gender affirming healthcare. It’s disappointing that Stuff sees misinfo as just an opinion when in reality Stuff are contributing to making the world unsafe for trans youth. #kikorangi

The woman who got a dodgy drug testing company to make misleading claims about meth use so that she could kick people out of state houses is now in charge of Pharmac. We are fucked.

NZHerald have now run four op-eds and one regular piece about how the high profile failures of government ministers is apparently a good thing. This is the NZ media platform that a recent Curia poll found to be perceived as the most balanced.

The Act party prefers an economy, or city ( post-quake Christchurch in this cartoon ), or country - all pared back, flattened and bare of governmental assistance. Hands off, leave to the market, bc we have no other ideas except tax cuts. #nzpol

But still claiming there will be no frontline service cuts?

Media council upholds only the barest standards of accuracy in our media landscape. "[T]he Council agreed with Dr Ali that the statement: “The worst intentional crime committed by Israel is to buy land off West Bank farmers and build houses” was inaccurate." www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3502...

As always, when a headline asks a question, the answer of course is "no". Shane Jones will say anything to justify tearing up conservation land so that his mining cronies can turn a quick buck.

There was never the possibility that the fast track legislation would be free from huge conflicts of interest. It's terrible legislation, and an inherently corrupt way of doing government. We have due process for a reason.

'.. Gibson should have been "on notice" of the deficient safety culture following four previous health and safety prosecutions during his decade-long tenure as chief executive.' 🇳🇿

Whether it's a hiring freeze is irrelevant to the fact that this puts even more pressure on already-strained services. The purpose is to manufacture crisis. To erode public trust in the state's ability to deliver these services. To create the case for privatisation. It's by design.

Never mind National inviting it's donors to submit fast tracked projects, what about National and NZF putting their donors onto the advisory board? Who are they accountable to for their "recommendations"? Just an inherently corrupt bit if legislation.

How are people like Joyce so confident in their ignorance? We have one of the most decentralised education systems in the world. Our whole system was designed around competition and local control and it has failed to deliver the innovation he thinks we need.

Oop it's me

Hoggard shouldn’t be anywhere near government. He’s one of the key perpetrators of the dairy industry’s long-running predatory delay of climate action - a strategy that’s left NZ far behind where we should be in tackling emissions from our worst polluter.

BREAKING New data from cameras on boats reveals massive under-reporting of dolphin and seabird killing by the fishing industry: www.thepost.co.nz/politics/350... They cannot be trusted. We now need cameras on ALL their boats and the data managed independently. #nzpol #NZOverFishing

Causing landlords to "exit the rental market" is a good thing. This means more people are able to own their own home. The number of rental properties decreases proportional to the demand for rental properties. Landlords don't provide housing. They hoard it.

This framing of "soft" vs "tough" is cooked. More like "evidence-based" vs "harmful" or "restorative" vs "traumatising". Still can't believe that in the year 2024 we have a government planning to send kids to prison camps, and claiming that it's for their own good.

Yet another kickback to big donors. Yet another bit of deregulation that will shift the costs of extractive industry onto the public, instead of those costs being worn by the private operators making the profit. Privatise profits, socialise costs.

Students petition Parliament to keep free school lunches funding #Kikorangi Nice article except for the tail end, usual uncritical reporting of ACT leader reckons which are the usual Ideological rubbish masquerading as facts. www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Rather than people who can make balanced judgements around the human and environmental impact of fast-tracked projects, the govt has appointed six representatives from big corporate extractive industries who will decide which of their mates' projects get to skip the RMA process.