All PMs are flawed but I think if you have no coherent vision, no ability to make decisions quickly, no humour or charisma when addressing the public, no strong roots in your party, no talent for charming MPs and no control over your own office, then you are unlikely to be able to turn it around

Did anyone else get an email from Meridan this week saying they are deploying a new IT system and that it is going to be an absolute mess: ignore all the errors, but don't forget to update your payment details? Like wot!

Hey so “underage girls” are…children. The word you’re looking for is children. They’re not like, women-in-waiting or women-lite or whatever. They’re children. I think some of you are very uncomfortable with what that means for you but it is still true.

Something absolutely perfect about Larry Summers riffing about the scourge of woke cancel culture being unfair to predatory men in a friendly email to his pal JEFFREY EPSTEIN.

These are the five senior officers who come in for the most criticism in the IPCA report on the McSkimming scandal.

Ngā skeet wā-poto. 😆

A forensic, humane piece of work that surfaces system failures without losing sight of people; as always ngā mihi nui Paula. To add, I read the report early this morning: the IPCA did a good job too: they balanced rigour and care, and located responsibility at the various failure points.

Tell me your empire is over, without telling me it is over. An economy fuelled by AI bubbles, shake-downs and theft. I have not had enough coffee yet to include the incitements to genocide, endorsement of crimes against humanity, or the enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions.

Good.

Nanna Møller Mortensen, @caitlinmcmullin.bsky.social and Jacob Brix develop a model of organizational learning and co-production mainstreaming, which considers how co-production can be institutionalized and then mainstreamed through co-production culture www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Open access: Margit Ernst uses ethnographic methods to explore the impact of stewardship management on policy-practice alignment, finding that when stewardship management facilitates street-level accountability practices, it can enhance alignment www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Open access: Martin Kitchener & Rachel Ashworth extend the recent practice turn in public management strategy scholarship, providing a detailed explanation of who (practitioners), how (praxis), & what (practices) of public value strategizing in public service orgs www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Maria Cucciniello, Daniela Cristofoli, Marta Micacchi, Benedetta Trivellato & Giovanni Valotti show how robust solutions for addressing turbulence can arise from the combination of seemingly opposing paradigms, such as the pragmatist and rational approaches www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Using institutional theory, Jorge Fleta-Asín, Alfredo Jiménez and @fermunozsanchez.bsky.social examine delays in the initiation of international public–private partnership projects www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Human rights complaint filed to United Nations over treatment of Māori

"Universities teach us to ask questions without tidy answers. They train us to look for truths we didn’t know existed and to challenge assumptions we didn’t realise we held. At their best, they remind us that intellect isn’t about having opinions, it’s about earning them."

Monday morning thought: the tide is going out on Trump; countries and leaders who cosied up will pay in a post-Trump world.

“Not caring anymore doesn’t mean the problem is no longer there. Especially in the Pacific, where climate change isn’t a distant threat but a present-day catastrophe already uprooting communities, unravelling the fine tapestry of culture, and upending entire ways of life.” — Jamie Tahana.

“authors & publishers who filed a lawsuit against the Sam Altman-led firm have secured access to internal Slack messages… discussing the mass deletion of a pirated books dataset… A NY district court ordered OpenAI to hand over the communications regarding data deletion” futurism.com/artificial-i...

Inshallah

Just because the kāwantanga does not implement Treaty clauses does not mean they are a virtue signal.

Constitutional guardrails depend on politicians & others adhering to settled standards of behaviour & other norms. These guardrails seem weaker these days. So would public law help c/servants restrain an anti-democratic government? Ben Yong thinks not: ukcivilservant.substack.com/p/could-the-...

An opportunity to contribute to a Global South focussed book on Honourable kawanatanga, relationships between "the Crown" and Indigenous peoples, and decolonisation. More details below.

Meanwhile our actual veterans are still fighting for compensation. FFS.

Great explainer about nonconsensual sexualised deepfakes with some comments (ie rants) from me. Criminalising the most egregious behaviour will not stop deepfakes. We need regulation too. #nzpol www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Being a bit lazy: anyone got a full pdf of the New Zealand Public Service Act 1912, the State Services Act 1962 or the first ever Cabinet Office Manual? Thanks in advance x

Watching the anti-private sector healthcare crowd at the moment. Once again, you are erasing the reality that kaupapa Māori and hauora/pae ora provision is often non-state, and sometimes for-profit, that is reinvested in the community.

In the year to March 539 #children - some younger than 12 months - were harmed in state care (the highest number in 5 yrs). Meanwhile the coalition govt introduces legislation to further shield itself from responsibility. My Stuff #cartoon today #OrangaTamariki #StateCare

Te Kāhui Raraunga Lead Technician Kirikowhai Mikaere (Tūhourangi, Ngāti Whakaue) said there needed to be greater transparency in New Zealand’s adoption of AI.

The stuff I don't know is bottomless. But what I do know, I know, and I know it because I've read it for myself. I've thought about it. I've attempted to articulate my ideas to others, have received feedback from other human intelligences on these ideas and then engaged in more academic conversation

The slave trade was a state-sponsored, govt-backed, federally insured FREE LABOR market protected & regulated by the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT A handful of rich white landowners COULD NOT turn 4M ppl into slaves; the government did 4M slaves turned landless, inept white ppl into rich landowners Welfare.

I'll be making myself available this winter to participate in Zooms with book clubs and reading groups that are discussing Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis. You can reach out through my website to arrange a convo with your group.

'Not good enough': Petition calls for urgent government action on youth mental health

Opinion: A Royal Commission report said law and attitude changes were needed to avoid similar tragedies; a new movie offers that hope, argues Lianne Dalziel.

"A country is not just what it does - it is also what it tolerates' Kurt Ticholsky

📣 Early View What constitutes an ideal-type #MicroLevel #Learning process during a #crisis ❓ And what challenges might undermine this ideal ❓ Neil Mortimer & @nicholasbromfi1.bsky.social study #Australia's #COVID19 crisis learning as an exemplar case 👇 doi.org/10.1111/1467...

1/9 the video of my UCL current legal problems lecture is now up: "Bureaucracy and Distrust: The Civil Service in the Constitution". It looks at the civil service’s constitutional foundations, and how it might respond to a populist govt. @sirjjkc.bsky.social  chairs. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx3P...

Quick tangent. But .... 👀 www.comcom.govt.nz/news-and-med...

First things first: come and get your flowers @newsroom.co.nz ... Always giving us the news that matters. Wee thread below.

No notes. He rangatira. In the proper sense of the word. www.weall.org.nz/resources/bo...

🚨 New working paper! 🚨 @grattonecon.bsky.social and I just completed the first draft of "The Rise and Fall of Technocratic Democracies". Excited to present it in Munich this week—thanks to Laura Seelkopf, Christoph Knill & others for hosting us! 🧵👇 ▶️ Motivation Many democracies have undergone a

The Truth About Empire. Foreword by Sathnam Sanghera, essays by expert colonial historians. BBC History Magazine Book of the Year choice. Now available for pre-order in paperback: www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-tru...

Striking over workload, safety, pay, staffing and the coherence and sequence of change is industrial, not “party-political”. In Aotearoa the legal test is the purpose of the action, not whether the government’s policy settings form the backdrop.

Am planning whānau summer holidays. Re: the AI bubble and crypto. Anyone got a forecast for which week they’re scheduled to implode/collapse?

Two families are suing AI companies after they say chatbots contributed to their children's suicides.

A thread about why this is a vital survey: www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Vincent O’Malley has received a 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award from Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. 🎥 Highlights incl. kōrero with Carol Hirschfeld: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub18... 📚 His new book The Meeting Place is out now — join us tonight at The Royal Society, Wellington!