But Hipkins never noticed

Accidental Prime Minister Chris Hipkins apparently never read history.

"There have been times when China has been more active in its history," said the child leader at the Labour rump's party conference. "But bear in mind," said the historically-challenged infant, "that China has never invaded any other country."

At this point I hand you over to Bob Edlin, who has a little list ...

Tibet attests to that being bollocks, although maybe it did not come into the curriculum at Waterloo Primary School, Hutt Intermediate and Hutt Valley Memorial College (later known as Petone College), where Hipkins was educated before he completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Politics and Criminology at Victoria University,
    In 1950, the newly established Chinese Communist Party launched an invasion of Tibet to incorporate it into the People’s Republic of China. ... 'By seizing Tibet, China gained access to a multitude of rich natural resources and easier access to the strategically significant Indian border.' ....
    'In February 1979, Chinese forces launched a surprise invasion of northern Vietnam ...' '... Diplomatic relations between the two countries were not fully restored until 1991.
    Then there’s tiny Bhutan .... [where] China Is Quietly Expanding Its Land Grabs in the Himalayas.... just its latest move to ... challenge its regional rival India in the Himalayas. ... Constant skirmishing on the border dates back to the Sino-Indian Border War in 1962.
    Then there’s Taiwan, [never ever a part of historical China and] the subject of constant threats from Beijing that it will one day take control of the country ... by force if necessary. ... China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only added to those fears.

One could also mention Korea, in modern times (1950), which China invaded to maintain the hermit kingdom in its tyrannical solitude.  And in olden times (1636), when it invaded to maintain a vassal state.

And Mongolia, invaded in 1919 to crush dissent.

At this point we can see that China has torched, turned over and touched up nearly every single nation on its border. Yet according to Hipkins Junior, "China has never invaded any other country."

Waterloo Primary School, Hutt Intermediate and Hutt Valley Memorial College would all like a refund on their history teachers.

NZ's govt health 'system': "delivering equally awful health-care to everyone"

"Enough is enough. Former PMs Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern should come clean about how they were the Chief Architects of the omni-shambles that has become our health system. ... for the folks who suffer from long waiting lists and declining health-care quality, some of whom didn't make it. 

    "The person who wrote the report [that is] the inspiration behind the disaster that is Health NZ was Heather Simpson, Clark's Chief of Staff for 9 years ... reincarnated by Labour to advise Ardern and Hipkins on health-care. ... The report was the inspiration behind the [disastrous] centralisation of NZ's health system. ...
    "I read the report. No intellectual basis is built for its suggested re-design of health-care delivery. No wonder our system is failing. 

    "It keeps repeating the word 'equity,' seemingly in the hope that by writing that word on paper is enough to deliver it in practice. The report bizarrely repeats 'equity' 219 times (!?) By contrast, the word 'competition,' which is a requirement to ensure quality and efficiency in nearly every economic system, is not mentioned one time. The report thereby seeks to deliver equally awful health-care to everyone."

    "... [The report's] half-baked idea is that the monolithic super-structure it invents ... would create 'economies of scale.' It uses the jargon, 'scaling up.' Health NZ has succeeded only at being a large scale disaster."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'Former Labour PM's Clark and Ardern wrecked NZ's Health System: they should be held accountable for the lives that have been lost'

 

"How did Hipkins, Ardern and Robertson manage to make Kiwis less productive over the six years they were in office?"

 

SOURCE: Productivity figures, NZ Treasury, The blue line comes from

the Treasury's Productivity Slowdown publication released this past

week, which uses updates from the latest Budget Policy Statement 2024.

"How did Hipkins, Ardern and Robertson manage to make Kiwis less productive over the six years they were in office? My suspicion is that they changed our culture. They divided the nation. They turned rich against poor, farmers against environmentalists, pro-vaccinators against anti-vaccinators. Neither of these sides ever deserved to be demonised. Yet that is what the past Labour government did. It took away the largely harmonious nature our society, which was one of NZ's great achievements & which had previously lifted us above the troubles of nearly every other nation. We lost our comparative advantage. Ironically, though 'kindness' was the mantra of the last government, it turned Kiwis mean. It rewarded people who had not put in the effort and did not have the achievements required to make them deserving of high office and top jobs. In doing so, it took away the reward for truly high-achieving NZ children, which made them feel they had to go overseas to be recognised for their talents, or drop-out.
    "My explanation for our currently plummeting productivity lies in a culture shift which has undermined out national unity and taken away the incentives to perform. Ardern, Robertson and Hipkins took away our pride in ourselves."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'Was the Hipkins-Ardern Government the only one in NZ post-World War II history that ended with productivity lower than at the start of its term?'

"What stupendously depressing words, declaring the only way a human can be fulfilled is dependence on politicians."

"Although Ardern tried hard to divide Kiwis along every imaginable line for her own political benefit, an inescapable fact is that a profound cultural factor, way bigger than her, unites us all together. We have our roots in making our way through our own industry. 

    "When people started to migrate to NZ, whether indigenous or not, they had to depend on themselves, friends and family for survival. There was no welfare state back then. Out of this history, an important part of our culture became the 'can-do' attitude — Kiwi ingenuity, the number 8 fencing-wire, practicality —the taking calculated risks that many in the Old World had lost. Cut to modern times however, and this is the current philosophy of the NZ Labour Party, as espoused by its current and former leaders:

Ardern: 'People ... look for light, hope, a fulfilment of their own ambition and they will either find that in political leadership or they will seek out reasons why they have been failed.'

Hipkins: 'Governing is about choices — choosing subsidies ... '

"What stupendously depressing words, declaring the only way a human can be fulfilled - can achieve their dreams & ambitions - is dependence on politicians..."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'A brighter Future for NZ'ers involves the outright rejection of Labour's Make-the-People-Dependent Doctrine' 

Parliamentary entitle-itis is catching

It's not just Christopher Luxon with a bad case of entitle-itis. There is a raft of other MPs and ministers who think taxppayers — you – should help them pay their mortgages on their Wellington homes.

MP expenses came to almost $1.7m and Ministerial expenses came to more than $670,000. ... The National Party - which has the largest caucus in the Parliament - spent the most on expenses in the period, totalling almost $731,000.

Here's a list of the scum currently or recently claiming large "expenses" and accommodation allowances from you (costs are for three months, unless stated):

• Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was the biggest expense of the lot, at a cost of just more than $57,500 - including VIP transport of more than $39,000. The rest was made up of costs of almost $7500 for accommodation, air travel of $9500 and "surface" - ground travel, such as taxis of more than $1300
• The next highest expenses cost in National's caucus was Auckland-based Defence Minister Judith Collins, at a cost of more than $24,200, made up of more than $6000 for accommodation and just over $18,000 on travel. Also giving the trough a decent nudge were West Coast's Maureen Pugh at just over $21.500; Taupo's Louise Upston at $21,000; and Christchurch-based Matt Doocey and Rotorua-based Todd McLay at just under $20,500.
• During the last Government, there were four ministers in the same situation as Luxon, living in their own homes in Wellington and claiming the ministerial accommodation allowance, which is up to $45,000 a year. These were Willy Jackson, Jan Tinetti, Deborah Russell and Duncan Webb. All are likely to claim again this year, but on a lower accommodation allowance.
• In addition, last year four other Labour MPs were living in their own Wellington properties while claiming the allowance. These were: Jenny Salesa, Arena Williams, Jamie Strange and Sarah Pallet.
• And in 2024, there are now 20 MPs (not yet named yet) with second-homes in Wellington who are claiming up to $45,000 so that taxpayers can help pay their mortgages.
• Labour's David Parker and Manurewa MP Arena Williams both claimed around $23,000 on expenses. Ingrid Leary in South Otago and Tangi Utikere in Palmerston North.
• Greens's Manurewa-based co-leader Marama Davidson enjoyed almost $26,000 of largesse in her last two months in the ministry trough. Third-assistant speaker Teanau Tuiono declared almost $25,000 of expenses, while Auckland-based Chloe Swarbrick grabbed $17,500 and former Greenpeace activist Steve Abel claimed just over $17,000. 
• ACT's Mark Cameron, based in rural Northland, declared almost $21,000 in expenses, the highest of any ACT MP. That included almost $10,000 on accommodation and a similar amount on travel. ACT's second-highest grasper is Todd Stephenson, living in Queenstown, claiming just under $19,000.
• NZ First's Jamie Arbuckle, from Marlborough, spent more than $16,000, while Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi - who lives in a remote part of his Waiariki electorate - spent $36,500 of your money, and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer nearly $22,500.
• Other big spenders in the last few months include and Grant Robertson, given $42,369 to go see the rugby, 

A nice rort, if you can get it.

The lowest spenders [include] new Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds, who is based near Wellington. She spent $521, most of which was $403 on flights. ... and [Labour] Leader Chris Hipkins - who is based in Upper Hutt - declared $1129, all of which was on flights. 

Good for them. On this, if nothing else.

"I don’t want Chris Hipkins to be 'In It For You,' I want him to leave me alone"

"So it’s that time when you get a chance to have a tiny say in what group of politicians pass laws on what you can do, and how to spend a portion of your money, or what to do with your property. ... Fortunately this election comes as a chance to evict the most leftwing Labour Government in decades....
    "This Labour Government in particular deserves to be defeated.... I don’t want a government that believes in constant growth of the state, including the welfare state, to make more and more people dependent on other taxpayers. I don’t want a government that thinks that its role is primarily to take the wealth generated by others to give to other people or businesses.... There is no shortage of failure, but there is a strong pattern seen across almost all of the policies of the Labour Party:

• Obsession with centralising power and control ...
• Distrust of individuals, and individual freedom and property rights ...
• Support for post-modernist identitarianism and the dishonesty about its support ...
• Focus on image and virtue signalling over outcomes ...

    "Most of all though, I am fed up with this meddling government. I don’t want Chris Hipkins to be 'In It For You,' I want him to leave me alone, I want him and his group of mediocre minor achievers to get out of the way."

~ Liberty Scott, from his post 'New Zealand election 2023 - The case against Labour'

Hipkin's five economic priorities: "Run for the hills"

"The odd thing is that there's nothing in [Hipkin's five stated economic] priorities for ordinary men or women. The PM may like to pretend he's on the side of bread-and-butter working-class folk concerned about things being affordable, however, at least in the US, such folks would read his five economic priorities as something concocted by Hollywood producers, Silicon valley weirdos & Prince Harry types, with help from Hilary Clinton. And run for the hills."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'There's not one thing in PM Chippy's "Five Economic Priorities" for Chippies in the Hutt'

"Labour is barking."

"As one of those Ancient Greeks put it: 'Those whom the Gods seek to destroy they first make mad.' And, right now, Labour is barking."

~ Chris Trotter, from his post 'Not In It For Them.'

"...the real problem Kiri Allan shares with many other ministers in Chris Hipkins’ lack-lustre government"

"While sympathetic journalists weep over Kiri Allan’s mental health woes and her manifold romantic troubles, everyone overlooks the real problem she shares with many other ministers in Chris Hipkins’ lack-lustre government – insufficient experience of real life."

~ Michael Bassett, from his post 'Chippy's chickens fly the coop'

Everyone is demeaned when governments hand out money as if it is free. As Bryce Wilkinson explains in this guest post, we are demeaned daily by Labour's endless litany of handouts...

Memo to Hipkins: Taxpayers' Money is Not Free 

buy Bryce Wilkinson

When I was a lad in the 1950s, I absorbed from adults the notion that it was shameful to be reduced to applying for a state handout. Self-reliance was virtuous. It respected others.

Reading the Prime Minister’s speech to his party faithful last week was a salutary lesson in how attitudes have changed. Today, making handouts more freely available is virtuous, self-reliance is in the past.

Hipkins’ speech extolled Labour’s litany of handouts. He mentioned paid parental leave, free school lunches, increased benefits, free subscriptions, free public transport, free early childhood education and much other spending and a raft of subsidies for this and that.

I counted over a dozen such spending items. Each might make sense if taxpayers’ money is free, but it is not free and the speech ignored the question of overall value-for-money.

When it comes to government handouts, what is free to the user invites waste.

To pick up a prescription medicine is one thing, to follow the prescribed treatment is another. Expect more unused pills in households’ medicine shelves.

As the late Milton Friedman famously quipped, “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. Price is one thing and cost is another. Someone must pay for the lunch because food is scarce.

When the ancient Romans subsidised bread, some fed it to pigs because the price was so low. Some of the wheat from conquered Egypt was wasted.

Taxpayers work long and hard to earn the income that is taxed. They go without worthwhile things to pay their taxes.

All governments should hold themselves responsible for ensuring that their spending provides commensurate value for taxpayers. Taxpayers are not geese to be plucked with a minimum amount of hissing.

Taxpayers are already paying vastly more in taxes than Labour told them to expect back in 2017. Under its electioneering fiscal plan, it proclaimed that its policies would only increase Total Crown tax revenue for the five years ended June 2022 by $10.2 billion. We now know the actual increase. It is $29.3 billion.

The full cost is much greater. That is because Labour’s planned five-year spending increase of $11.7 billion was much greater at $65.3 billion. The extra borrowing represents deferred taxation.

Take a bow Mr Hipkins.

Everyone is demeaned when governments hand out money as if it is free.

* * * * 

Bryce Wilkinson is a Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative, and also the Director of the Wellington-based economic consultancy firm Capital Economics. Prior to setting this up in 1997 he was a Director of, and shareholder in, First NZ Capital. Before moving into investment banking in 1985, he worked in the New Zealand Treasury, reaching the position of Director. Bryce holds a PhD in economics from the University of Canterbury and was a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the Law and Economics Association of New Zealand.

His post first appeared at the NZ Initiative Opinion page.

"PM Hipkins’ romanticisation is of a provincial New Zealand outlook and expectation. We can’t even call it cultural nationalism; rather it is provincial populism."

"[Prime Minister Chris] Hipkins’ romanticisation* is of a provincial New Zealand outlook and expectation. Hipkins’ ‘New Zealand’ is really one of the small town, small minded New Zealand of the 1950s. It’s food, focus and values that are increasingly out of step with most urban, educated, ambitious , entrepreneurial New Zealanders living in a multicultural society.
    "It’s as if the past 40 years never happened.
    "We can’t even call it cultural nationalism; rather it is provincial populism. Hipkins’ sausage roll scoffing small town social democracy is one many New Zealanders increasingly want to leave behind, figuratively, societally and increasingly, literally.
    "As such this provides a problematic correction to Muldoon’s claim [in the 1980s that 'NZers who leave for Australia raise the IQ of both countries.'] Those who choose to stay in this country for Hipkins’ reasons probably lower the IQ of New Zealand – while we lose the best and brightest, the entrepreneurial, the innovators, the trained and talented, the ambitious, to Australia."

~ Mike Grimshaw from his post 'Lowering the IQ of One Country'

* HIPKINS: "I’m absolutely confident that New Zealanders living and making a life in New Zealand want to continue to stay with the home of the All Blacks, the true home of the pavlova and the lamington. There’s plenty of reasons for them to stay back home in New Zealand.”

"Labour can probably get away with this spectacularly abrupt change of heart."

"Labour can probably get away with this spectacularly abrupt change of heart. After all, its campaign slogan in the wake of Hipkins’ baptism as leader in January could well be the biblical promise: 'Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.' Sometimes, it seems, within the space of a few hours."

~ Graham Adams, on transport minister Michael Woods's abrupt U-turn on transport policy earlier this week, from his post 'How Cyclone Gabrielle mugged the Greens and Labour'

 

The team of $55 million

"Prime Minister Chris Hipkins insists that many voters are suspicious of co-governance only because politicians haven’t explained the concept clearly — but that failure also falls squarely on the shoulders of journalists.
    "As [one former politician] put it: 'One might have expected journalists to delve into what, precisely, the government meant when ministers incorporated this 'misunderstood' concept into lots of Acts of Parliament over recent years'....
    "There can never be a definitive answer to the question of exactly how much the Public Interest Journalism Fund has helped shut down criticism of the Treaty at a crucial time in our political history. But by accepting its conditions, it is undeniable that the media has inflicted a terrible wound on itself by being seen to have compromised its principal assets — trust, credibility and independence....
    "The widespread disdain for the recipients of the Fund’s cash was summed up by the epithet 'The team of $55 million' — a play on 'The team of five million,' which Jacinda Ardern used to rally the country behind her Covid management strategies....
    "The first of the general eligibility criteria [for the Fund] requires all applicants to show a 'commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner' — alongside a commitment to te reo Māori. The section describing the fund’s goals includes “actively promoting the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi [and this despite Te Tiriti's own three principles being Sovereignty, Property Rights, and Citizenship] ...
    "The lesson to media organisations seems clear: if the government ever comes calling with a bag of money that requires editorial prescriptions to be followed, take the advice of the advertising campaign that ran in the early 1990s to discourage children from experimenting with illegal drugs — and just say no."

~ Graham Adams, from his essay 'Has Government Money Corrupted Journalism?'

"National governments don’t actually oppose Labour policies… They just want to manage them" [updated]

"It simply isn’t good enough to paint a red Government blue, and then pretend it’s all fixed by endlessly promising to just ‘get things done’....
    "Every time I hear Chris Luxon say that the Labour ‘doesn’t get things done’, it terrifies me… Could he seriously want them to do more? ... We don’t need a Government that gets things done, we need a Government that does a lot less so that you can get things done....
    "The truth is, Labour won’t dump their own policy agenda.... A more likely scenario is that another Prime Minister Chris gets the chance to dump Labour’s destructive policies, in just 249 days’ time.
    "But even then, let’s be absolutely clear: A reversal is not guaranteed. If you doubt that, let history be your guide.
    "Five times National has vigorously opposed Labour’s policies from opposition and five times it has come to office and bedded them in.
    "That’s part of the reason we’re in this mess - National governments don’t actually oppose Labour policies… They just want to manage them..."

~ David Seymour from his speech 'The Road to Real Change'

UPDATE:

Tom Hunter points you to these three related posts on No Minister:

The Precious Midpoint
National is not going to be rewarded by simply saying that it will do the same as Labour but with better management.... That approach just won’t cut it anymore with Centre-Right parties.  Real, practical solutions based around giving incentives to individuals – in education, healthcare and other areas – are what is required. Certainly not something that “‘we’, the clever ones, are going to impose upon ‘them’, the Lower Orders“, from the hearts of wealthy suburbs sporting myriad electric cars.
    The midpoint is there to be moved, not just accommodated while others move it.

Advice from the Peanut Gallery
One of the classic quotes from Thatcher on "ratchet socialism", plus all the twits in the GOP circa 1980 screaming about how Reagan's "extremism" would doom them.

This Sounds Familiar
When it matters, Republicans look around and say, “Oh no we can’t do that, we’d lose a man. The Democrats would take seats.” They are virtually a majority for the sake of being a majority. They just want to polish it up, put it on the shelf, and look at it....
    To put it simply, Republicans approach politics like America fights wars: They don’t want to lose a single man. Democrats, on the other hand? They look at politics like the Russians looked at Stalingrad: The congressman in front votes now; when they fall the next man gets elected and he will vote too.

 

"So what’s changed? The words have."

"Labour has a new leader which has given the country a new Prime Minister.
    "There’s also a new deputy and today we’ve got some new ministers.
    "But it’s not a new government.
    "Most of the new cabinet have been part of the team that’s been governing since 2017, and the rest of them are now into their third year in the current government.
    "So what’s changed?
    "The words have."

~ Eli Ludemann, from her post 'What’s changed?'

 

Watch out for his woggle

"Chris Hipkins is copping the standard new PM honeymoon treatment from the media, albeit somewhat muted. It won’t last and [his] government will be thrashed in October. The only thing which can save it is World War 3 breaking out. Chris massively fails an all-important test I originated in the highly politicised mid 1970s, this after Bill Rowling inherited the office following Kirk’s death, namely no-one could ever be elected as PM if one could imagine him in a scout master’s uniform."

~ Bob Jones, from his post 'Political Imagery'

He's New Zealand's new Prime Minister, by the way.

Being a professional political blogger and all (and by 'professional' here I mean simply 'one who professes to be or do a thing to some degree of efficacy'), and since every other professional commentator is currently going through the 'H' section of their filing cabinets to pad out stories introducing Chris Hipkins to their readers, I thought I'd better examine what I've already written here about the profoundly unexciting young fellow. (He's New Zealand's new Prime Minister, by the way.)

Searching the scrolls here reveals he's caught this blog's eye only five times, which probably says something already.

Oddly, the first time he's mentioned is with a recommendation to vote for the fresh-faced new candidate in his first election. Yes, true story. And yes, there is a catch. (It's down near the end of the post, if you're really interested.)

The next time he catches this blog's attention is 8 years ago as minister of education, defending the teachers' unions. Our Dr McGrath describes the "boyish Labour MP and teacher's pet Chris Hipkins" who "seems convinced that if teachers in charter schools aren't registered, children will be at risk and the sky will fall." The good doctor's recitation of many registered teachers peccadilloes still suggests otherwise. 

As minister of education he also oversaw the introduction in the government's factory schools of new dumbed-down curricula, of course, including in science. Sorry, I mean in climate change, in which New Zealand children are now indoctrinated taught. ("As the post reminds us, "What happens in our schools is a very big part of shaping the future of New Zealand,"as Helen Clark herself crowed back in her day.)

Hipkins first emerged to prominent notice in his role as Minister in charge of Responding to Covid Headlines. As it happens, our own post's headline describes his work well, as compared to that of his colleagues: 'Even 'pretty inept' looks good compared to 'not at all.'

And with our last and most recent reference to this emerging talent, we're going to have to claim some kind of prescience in saying "it seems pretty clear: the most dangerous ministers in the current cabinet are the young and eager Wood and Hipkins, and the older, wiser and more devious Parker, Little, Faafoi and Robertson." (Okay, maybe not Faafoi.)

To be fair, it's not truly insightful analysis. And there is more about him we might have said, including about his time most recently as Minister Oveseeing Ram Raids (a suitable bench-mate then for his deputy, in her role as Minister for Social Mayhem), but he really is so dreadfully unexciting it's hard to say anything much at all. 

How his handlers decide to brighten him up for the electorate will be about the only interesting thing to observe about him in his last few months as Prime Minister -- playing as Geoffrey Palmer to Jacinda's David Lange.

My favourite Govt ministers, ranked

Given that they're more meddlers than they are emancipators, here's my list of my favourite current  Government ministers -- based entirely on the Taxpayers Union's list of "how many cabinet papers each Minister had submitted to Cabinet or a Cabinet Committee since they were sworn in." The more papers submitted, the more they reveal themselves as those who most want to push and shove you around. (The number of times  their papers were ever read seriously is not recorded.)

Hat tip for the list goes to Dave Farrar who, for some reason, calls the most meddling ministers "productive"! Clearly, he and I operate on a very different standard of judgement.

So, here they, ranked in order, the laziest ministers in the current cabinet -- which, given what they could be doing if they were motivated, makes them my favourites (the number in brackets refers to the number of cabinet papers they've submitted). The top ten confirm themselves* as eminently re-electable:

1. Marama Davidson (0)
2. Phil Twyford (0)
3. Willie Jackson (1)
4. Priyanca Radhakrishnan (1)
5. Kiri Allan (1)
6. Aupito William Sio (2)
7. Kelvin Davis (3)
8. Jan Tinetti (5)
9. Dr Ayesha Verrall (6)
10. Jacinda Ardern (7)
11. Peeni Henare (7)
12. James Shaw (7)
13. Poto Williams (8)
14. Damien O'Connor (9)
15. Meka Whaitiri (10)
16. Stuart Nash (11)
17. Megan Woods (12)
18. Nanaia Mahuta (13)
19. Carmel Sepuloni (14)
20. David Clark (15)
21. Kris Faafoi (17)
22. Grant Robertson (20)
23. Michael Wood (23)
24. Andrew Little (23)
25. David Parker (31)
26. Chris Hipkins (41)

So it seems pretty clear: the most dangerous ministers in the current cabinet are the young and eager Wood and Hipkins, and the older, wiser and more devious Parker, Little, Faafoi and Robertson.

Whereas the ones doing what we want most, i.e., nothing, are heroes like Marama Davidson, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, Apuito William Sio, Kelvin Davis and Willie Jackson. Galt save them all.

* Please note that the virtue of all the top ten can't be completely confirmed. True, Phil Twyford has apparently been granted leave to care for his sick wife, but his previous bumbling and inertia does confirms him as one with a ministerial career to savour. Whereas, before her own illness, Kiri Allen was beginning to look like a small bundle of focussed energy, which was concerning. That said, as the only one in cabinet medically qualified to consult on Covid, Dr Ayesha Verrall's six papers on the subject suggest more measures should be considered about their employability than simply the number of papers they've written. But it's a start, right?

Even 'pretty inept' looks good compared to 'not at all' [updated]

"I wonder if even sensible regulation skeptics like Tyler Cowen realise just how bad things are. In a recent post, he suggests we should praise the UK’s efforts in distribution the vaccine. But the UK has done a horrendous job of distributing the vaccine; indeed Israel is doing the job 5 times faster.
    "So why does Tyler praise the UK? Because almost every country in the world is screwing up even worse than the UK. Regulation has made things so bad that even 'pretty inept' starts to look good on a comparative scale."

          ~ Scott Sumner from his post 'Regulation: It's Worse Than You Think'

UPDATE: As late as last November, Covid-Response Minister Chris Hipkins told TVNZ that New Zealand was "very well placed" to get its hands on successful vaccines for the virus. "Without going into detail I think we're in a very good place to ensure that as vaccines start to come to market New Zealand will be at the front of the queue to be getting vaccines," he said.

Front of the queue.

Yet now,  the New Zealand government officially only  plans to begin vaccination here in "the second quarter of 2021," beginning with border workers -- and then, all going well, vaccination of the general public is only planned to begin in "the second half of the year"...

[Hat tip HomePaddock]

Knowledge v "Climate Activism": How Dare They!

"What happens in our schools is a very big part of shaping the future of New Zealand," Helen Clark crowed back in her day. This remains true. The state's factory schools have a captive audience. A new generation of impressionable children is served up every day, by law, to be indoctrinated in the state's chosen values. "Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination."

Some argue that the chief problem with the state's school system is that it is "inefficient." Not true. The problem is it is all too efficient: that is, it is ruthlessly efficient at delivering the government’s chosen values. And so it has – we now have several generations who are culturally safe, politically correct and unable to read a newspaper, a bus timetable or operate a simple appliance -- ‘good citizens’ of whom more than half are ‘functionally illiterate.’

Case in point: a series of tools announced by the Ministers of Education and Climate Change for students to "process their feelings of 'eco-anxiety' over climate change and to "plan their own activism." For which they will receive credits. "The new resource – Climate Change: Prepare Today, Live Well Tomorrow – is from the Ministry of Education and is aimed at Level 4 teachers teaching children aged 7-10 about climate." Part of a worldwide "mission to create an army of Greta Thunbergs" angry about "climate change" before they even have the tools firmly in their own minds to understand how climate even changes, or what is at stake for all humans on this planet if their activism were successful.

Materials created for teachers that were provided to the Guardian suggest students keep a “feelings thermometer” to track their emotions, learn how to change defeatist self-talk, and consider how their feelings could generate action and response...
    Another tool in the curriculum helps students create and carry out an action plan on a particular environmental issue – such as creating an edible garden.
    The curriculum included text, video, and advice for teachers, the education minister Chris Hipkins said in a statement.
    “It explains the role science plays in understanding climate change, aids understanding of both the response to it and its impacts – globally, nationally and locally – and explores opportunities to contribute to reducing and adapting to it impact on everyday life,” he added.

The term “climate change” is deliberately vague.

Everyone agrees with the literal meaning of the words climate and change which means some kind of religious belief that humans have a convenient dial to control storms, clouds, rain, heatwaves and the sea, that they know what exact temperature “earth” should be, that we can also measure that accurately, and that all countries agree on that level of storms and heat and sea level.

Teaching this is teaching a delusion. And yet, that's not the worst thing about this climate indoctrination. The very worst thing is that "today's schools teach students to be comfortable bandying about abstractions they don't understand and opinions they can't validate" while denying them the means of thinking through these issues for themselves when they're ready for it. It teaches them to form conclusions without understanding, and take action without real knowledge.

Climate science is complex. Incredibly so: oceanic, atmospheric, biologic, geologic and thermodynamic processes interacting to drive a complex climate system with still unknown feedback systems and tremendous regional differences across the planet. To even begin to understand those interactions takes a firm grounding in not just the basic sciences, but in all the more advanced sciences that grow out of these. And this is not even to mention assessing the likely outcomes of the solutions they are being taught (without thought) to demand.

In other words: all knowledge has a hierarchy. Inversion of this hierarchy turns children who were ready to begin learning "into passive parrots able to recite - and unable to think." Teaching conclusions about complex processes without the platform of knowledge to understand or assess how those conclusions were derived violates that hierarchy, rendering students able to repeat the propaganda those conclusions, but not able to understand how they were arrived at. They become simply Pavlovian puppets.

Educator Lisa van Damme reiterates the point:

“To say that knowledge is hierarchical means that there is a necessary order to its acquisition. Before you can learn calculus, you must learn algebra; before you can learn algebra, you must know arithmetic. This fact, that knowledge—to be real, meaningful knowledge—must be gained in a specific order is generally understood in the subject of math, but is woefully neglected in many other areas. The most abstract principles of science are taught as bolts from the blue to be memorized, with no presentation of the observations and intermediate principles that led to their discovery and that render them meaningful. Controversial political events are discussed and analysed when students do not have the knowledge of history that would make an informed, intelligent judgment possible. These rampant inversions of the hierarchy of knowledge are turning children into passive parrots able to recite abstract formulas—and unable to think. If we want our children to be truly educated, to have a vast store of crucial knowledge that they grasp deeply and independently, then education must be radically reconceived with respect for the hierarchy of knowledge.”

It's not enough in any subject to give students conclusions without the means to validate those for themselves.  But the government will be terrorising schoolchildren about imminent death and destruction from “climate change” while denied them the means to understand why, or how, or to validate those conclusions for themselves.

How dare they.

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