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Open Mike 10/09/2026
88 comments on “Open Mike 10/09/2026”
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Ayesha Verrall a "mass murderer". WTF? Anti vaxxers ramp up their cooker delusions……
And an interesting name ..some might be familiar with.
I like and respect Ayeshha, and she is, and will be, a great Health Minister : )
Why is Verrall being accused of "mass murdering people"?
Something, something,something COVID vaccines. I think.
Interesting how the story linked never mentioned why a senior member of the party is being accused of mass murder.
Wouldn't failing to mention it just feed into further distrust of the media?
Further, one would think Labour would have wanted to put the accusation to bed, yet nothing was said in that report in direct response to the accusation.
Do you think it was wise of Labour to let the accusation go unaddressed?
I think before reaching for the tinfoil hats (somewhat ironically) there are some much simpler explanations.
As amplified as the anti-vax narrative may be in some circles, the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders are nowhere near accepting that proposition.
Not every accusation deserves a rebuttal. Sometimes responding merely elevates abuse into a proposition supposedly worthy of debate.
The relevant story here seems to me to be that protesters disrupted a political meeting and accused Verrall of mass murder, not whether Labour has adequately rebutted the proposition that Ayesha Verrall is a mass murderer.
Well..short answer (and I thought quite obvious from my comment ?)… Indeed.
Do you find the following 3 statements below to be true and reasonable?
In the court of public opinion, silence is frequently misinterpreted as an admission of guilt or an inability to defend oneself.
Ludicrous allegations frequently gain undue prominence and credibility when left unaddressed.
Addressing misinformation early, clearly, and with verified facts is often necessary to prevent false narratives from taking root.
The above are the benefits Labour would have gained by addressing it.
You seem to be prescribing the stance taken during covid that didn't end well for Labour, their leader at the time (that still can't come home) and the media.
And that was also said to be coming from a small minority
Quo usque tandem abutere, Chairman, patientia nostra?
Yes, I think all three of your statements can be true and reasonable: in the appropriate circumstances.
What I don't accept is your unstated fourth proposition: therefore every allegation, however ludicrous, must be publicly rebutted lest silence lend it credibility.
That simply doesn't follow.
There is always a judgement to be made about whether responding to misinformation diminishes it or amplifies it. If somebody accuses Ayesha Verrall of being a "mass murderer", Labour could issue a detailed rebuttal. But doing so also elevates the proposition that Ayesha Verrall might be a mass murderer into something apparently worthy of serious political debate.
And frankly, at what point have we addressed this enough?
It is 2026. We have spent six years arguing about the COVID response. We've had elections, endless media scrutiny, public debate and a two-phase Royal Commission. The second phase specifically examined vaccine approval and safety, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and testing and tracing.
It concluded that New Zealand's response was effective, while also identifying areas where it could have been improved.
Of course people still have grievances about COVID. Some are entirely legitimate. Some are arguable. Some are completely batshit insane. People are entitled to continue holding them.
But the rest of society is not obliged to relitigate 2020 indefinitely simply because some people remain dissatisfied with the answers.
And if, in 2026, you're attempting to disrupt political meetings to accuse the former health minister of mass murder, perhaps the problem isn't that Labour and the media haven't taken the argument seriously enough.
Did you even stop to think that the fact this is still coming up now could be due to the stance you prescribe today being taken back then?
Generally, the more ludicrous an accusation the easier it tends to be to shutdown with facts
In this instance, this ludicrous accusation had already been elevated when it was reported by the mainstream in this report.
And further elevated by Hipkins failure to rebut it there and then in the same report.
Surely you have seen how these things can quickly snowball and are further fuelled when not refuted. Moreover, further compounded by the media neglecting to report the relevant reason behind why she is being accused. This is the kind of fuel conspiracies feed off.
Conspiracy theorist couldn't have asked for a better response. Now they will use this to help further spread the accusation online where it will most likely get far more views.
Winston & NZF spent $25 Million on an Enquiry into the Covid Response and I don't think a lot came out of it from what I can gather.
'I suspect most people understand perfectly well…' That sounds like common-sense which is an oxymoron. I suspect that many people will acknowledge that.
We are surrounded and battered with news and frights and so on, some of which will never come to pass we hope, and for funsies some of which relate to the cosmos or the planet in a million years' time. Also an orange fog floats over us from USA, and a purple one from UK made up of the red and blue from the flag which has got wet and soggy and the colours have run.
When people are supplied with good and understandable information they are probably not listening, or before they can absorb and analyse the info some knowledgeable or wealthier person discounts it, or there is an advertisement for new cars with invisible retractable covers, useful when transport police are around. And so it goes…
The accusers are the extreme end of the 'Covid Victim Spectrum'.
For every one of those prepared to get up on their hind legs and protest, there must be at least a dozen that hold deep resentment for Labour. A significant proportion former Labour voters.
This is where the 'price paid' for the response comes in. It wasn't just dollars and cents and the 2023 election result.
It also speaks to Hipkins
unelectabilitylack of popularity, when contrasted with the most unrelatable, greedy, disconnected and a incompetent Prime Minister in living memory.Still gunning for Chippie, I see.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who are now retroactively really angry with Labour over the COVID response. Although some of the reasons for that anger make rather less sense five or six years later than they apparently do in hindsight.
There is also a fairly large gulf between "I think Labour got parts of the COVID response wrong" and "Ayesha Verrall is a mass murderer." I'm not sure treating all of that as a single Covid Victim Spectrum tells us very much.
While I agree with everything else you say, anyone who wants a Labour government SHOULD be gunning for Hipkins, there's still two months before the election, plenty of time to get rid of him, Jacinda wasn't special and it wasnt a fluke, she was charismatic, young and had a high profile by being constantly on tv for years, just like Kieran Mcanulty, always on tv, very well liked, young and a fantastic communicator who would win young men and some regional voters back to Labour, he'd also be the absolute antithesis of Luxon, the good old bogan bloke with the ute who actually worked real jobs vs the CEO who makes us pay for limos and planes to drop him across the road.
Labour has never won government from opposition by being boring and invisible and promising no change, and it never will, Labour always needs to excite people, Hipkins who makes Helen Clark look like Barack Obama in charisma level, is personally polling lower than the labour party, an unpopular national pm will always beat an unpopular labour leader, all national has to say is "tax cuts here"
NZ needs to be wooed, NZ is the only country that when given a choice voted No on Marijuana reform and it won't elect a center left govt just cos the other guy sucks which is labours entire election plan. Labour needs to be front and center everywhere to get elected but everytime they show Hipkins face labour loses votes.
If they don't roll him for Kieran before election, When Hipkins loses his second election, he better retire on election night, no waiting for reviews, no "staying on to avoid a party wide civil war" just goodbye, then an interim leader and a full party leadership primary because we haven't had one in 12 years it's time members had a say, not some caucus stich up due to jacindas rule changes, if we lose the election due to caucus continuing to back a dud then caucus must give members a leadership primary.
Corey you want something you think the Labour Party can't provide, well just go support the Greens or something.
Labour will as it always has, do the heavy lifting of forming and operating a government while the idealists keep talking about their feelings.
If you don't want a change of government, all your party options are available. You go do you.
Otherwise Corey go fuck yourself we have an election to win in 8 weeks and there's no place for more bullshit whinging from the likes of you.
What an unpleasant and hostile thing to say over a difference of political opinion.
Against the kaupapa of the site I would have thought too.
Well said arkie, I concur.
Actually the hostility is to a direct attack on the Labour Party leader 8 weeks before an election.
Anyone not helping on a campaign should at this point just get out of the way.
Ad made pertinent political points. It's not simply a difference of political opinion, it's about how we act or not.
Corey and others have a point about Labour and Hipkins. What I don't see is credible ways present for Labour to replace Hipkins. In the absence of that, will slagging off Labour help the left wing the election?
Honestly pretty disappointed in this response.
I think telling someone to 'go fuck themselves' by name, exceeds 'robust debate'.
Corey also made relevant political points but without including personal abuse towards a fellow commenter.
I would say the unevenness with which the site rules are applied is affecting the diversity of discourse on this site.
https://thestandard.nz/policy/
in the historical context, Ad’s rudeness is not very extreme. Where a mod would step in is if it was a repeated behaviour, was part of ongoing harassment of another commenter, where the rudeness/abuse was gratuitous, or where there was no political point (that’s the ‘pointless’ bit in the policy).
It’s long been allowed to be rude on TS so long as you can make a political argument. One of the reasons for this is to not inhibit robust debate from parts of society that for instance swear. That’s a class issue, and imo particularly important on a blog allied with teh labour movement.
Further, Ad is an author, so the bar is much higher for mod involvement for what I hope are obvious reasons. There are limits on that too.
Once a regular commenter told an author to go fuck themselves (or similar) and Lynn took the side of the commenter, because the author had stepped well over the line. My point here is that sometimes swearing or being rude is warranted, it’s not against the rules. Moderation is about curating the balance between robust and engagement.
No idea of Corey would be offended by what Ad said, but either way I would expect them to carry on the political debate.
From my pov as a mod, Ad was making a very particular political point well beyond normal disagreement because the situation is that serious. Whatever arguments people want to make against Labour’s election campaign, winning the election actually matters a great deal on almost every front we can think of.
No problem with you raising this btw, I think it’s healthy for the commentariat to talk about moderation and how the site is run, and thanks for not stepping over the line into telling us what to do.
You have stirred the mud Ad. I agree that the basic thing to bring us to alert position. is that we haven't much time till the election.
A polite and mannered approach to the problem of our dire situation can result in waffling; repeating the ineffective approaches we have used for 40 years sadly getting nowhere, wasting precious time, thought and column space. I'm reminded of a card I bought in UK decades ago: 'Happy Birthday to a Typical Red-blooded British Guy! – 32% Warm Blood : 68% Hot Tea.
Now is not the time and place for with-drawing to the 'drawing room' and the nice people. We are battling not nice people, so we must up the level of acuity or watch us fail for the last time. We won't have more similar chances after this!!! Events are moving too fast for us and we haven't the tools to match the tech propaganda which is embraced by our government now and has been adopted by past ones.
We can't avoid it, we just have to be smart users and more hard-nosed with people nostalgic for ideal situations and not face the reality. Some projects can still be worked on. but as Aldous Huxley mused –
Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid. Aldous Huxley https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1039988
And he shows his philosophical resigned side here: It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder.'
Aldous Huxley https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/aldous_huxley_392818
I think at this stage we have to be resolute and keep on track yet keep our humanity alive and wise; we older ones might get nostalgic for simpler, local, kindly and practical. With a wee bit of humour – I think that Lyndon B. Johnson exPres. of USA thought you need 'to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time'.
Good point about McAnulty appealing to males and provincial voters. A demographic that has abandoned the left in worrying numbers.
Also the observation that the membership is overdue an influence on the leadership.
Nobody else wants the job. There is automatically a leadership vote after elections, but nobody challenged so Hipkins was retained unopposed.
The problem I have is that tearing down Labour now may cost the left the election. As Ad says, it's 8 weeks, it's time to talk Labour up.
I've been having this conversation on twitter. Some people are so angry at Labour they don't seem to realise that winning matters more than replacing Hipkins.
I like McAnulty. I have no idea if he is leadership material. Being good on TV and well like is necessary but not sufficient.
Little stepped down in a specific context, in part related to Labour and Green polling, but also the whole thing with Turei etc. It's a risk for Hipkins to step aside now, and the gap is much much smaller than it was in 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2017_New_Zealand_general_election#Party_vote_and_key_events
I really hope you are encouraging people to vote on the left, and not talking Labour down so it leads to a no vote.
Without wanting to go as far as Ad, I'd invite you to consider the fact that Chris Hipkins is a professional politician and would quite like to be Prime Minister again.
So maybe we can assume that, even if he isn't exactly energising the base, he's put some thought into how he might go about doing so, is at least minimally competent, and is therefore prosecuting a strategy.
We can argue about whether it's the right strategy. But that's a more interesting argument than assuming he simply hasn't noticed the election happening.
Replacing him at this juncture is a political and logistical non-starter, based largely on daydreaming about a repeat of 2017 under fundamentally different conditions and in a radically different electorate.
So maybe we should wait until he actually loses the election before we start crucifying him?
RP @ 111
Maybe its all the babies wot didn't get born cos of all the vaccinated women of child bearing age who got sterile n' couldn't have babies any more.
Both my wife and I got vaccinated. Our daughter turns three in a couple of days :p
Beauty enjoy it she'll be teen soon you'll need cute memories!!!
I thought the mass murders were the IDF and the US Military…
The just-opened much vaunted $600 million wind farm in Southland will produce 198 MW*.
That is enough to power only 71% of the data centre now being constructed in Southland.
*the wind farm was built in two stages; 43 MW followed by the just finished 155 MW.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/1309788/600-million-southland-wind-farm-officially-opens
Interestingly AI tells me the following:
“Building a 198 MW utility-scale solar farm in New Zealand typically costs between $277 million and $356 million NZD, based on current capital expenditure benchmarks of roughly $1.4 million to $1.8 million per megawatt (MW)”
Clearly solar is now cheaper than wind.
Wind farms. Renewable? Sustainable? IMO Solar and Hydro are better. Anyway the line promulgated..(twice in this link) is how many homes it could power.
And…
However (as you comment..)
Our Alternative (to Dino fuel) Power for Homes : Yes. Data centres…Nah !
You can always, always rely on the Greens to stop a new industry because of their feels.
The Tasman Data Network that forms the data network essentially allows New Zealand to "export" its renewable energy in the South Island to international customers by letting them run their most energy-intensive processes on New Zealand's zero-emissions network.
Imagine if a country had an enormous oil reserve but no way of exporting it. Then someone built a pipeline connecting it to the world. And unlike most oil reserves, this one will never run out. That’s what this project could mean for New Zealand’s renewable energy industry.
New Zealand already produces about 92% of its power through renewable sources as of this year. There is almost unlimited capacity to build more dams, solar farms and wind turbines but it has been held back by a lack of demand in the domestic market. No major power plant has been built since the Clyde Dam in 1992. No one wants to spend millions of dollars producing energy they won’t be able to sell.
Contact Energy’s Te Huka Unit 3 geothermal power station near Taupō was built because of backing from Microsoft for its Auckland data centre region. Mercury’s Turitea South wind farm was supported by a contract from Amazon Web Services. The current buildout is adding new generation capacity around 25% faster than the Think Big era of the 1970s and 1980s.
And no, solar doesn't cut it.
And before you say they are going to steal the water worse than dairy farms, the Makarewa facility will use only its own harvested rainwater for cooling.
So what we don't do to a massive low-impact export industry in the middle of a long term recession is kill it off with a moratorium based on feels.
Probably what we need is a senior-level regulator with high Cabinet access. Something like the Labour approach from yesterday:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics_election-2026/1309382/labour-promises-to-set-up-ai-regulator-copyright-rules-if-elected
"New Zealand already produces about 92% of its power through renewable sources as of this year. There is almost unlimited capacity to build more dams, solar farms and wind turbines but it has been held back by a lack of demand in the domestic market. No major power plant has been built since the Clyde Dam in 1992. No one wants to spend millions of dollars producing energy they won’t be able to sell."
Aye, there's the rub. They can produce it, just won't be able to make such a juicy profit. Reduce the profit motive being the be all and end all of their existence, and there could be a sea change.
If anyone wants to have a go at turning the State Owned Enterprises Act 1986 into a charitable purpose only, well that would make everyone except the state that needs the income very happy. You want to propose it as electoral policy, sounds great to me.
Exporting our power via data centers would be OK, if it wasn't p
Keeping prices up to consumers, you know the citizens of this country!
Feels? Yawn. Did I expect anything different from you? Next you'll be throwing the greeny woke slur…..
I have tried to engage with a Labour and Green positivity….but, meh.
And as for
About that. You probably dont look past the sales pitch. I myself, do.
And of course this is notwithstanding Climate Change, Our Earths ever increasing heat, and very soon, an extreme El Nino event.
Ah well.
Well actually what they will do is harvest their rainwater and hold it in massive tanks under their site.
So no, there's no water draw drama either.
https://www.es.govt.nz/repository/libraries/id:26gi9ayo517q9stt81sd/hierarchy/environment/consents/documents/Datagrid%20resource%20consents/Application%20documents/Bonisch%20Civils%20Servicing%20Report.%20Rev.D.pdf
But sure, complain about El Nino if you like.
Rainwater, annually on average, will be just under 1000l for every sq m of roof space (average rainfall just under 1000mm/yr)
That's a one off, and in a dry year much less. I don't know the building roof area but it would make the comparison with consented water draw interesting.
All of that is complete bollocks Ad. NZ does NOT have excess renewable power to throw away on noisy ugly power-hungry data centres that create only 80 jobs.
From my numbers above, a DC of 280 MW, like the one being built in Southland, would need a dedicated $448 million dollar solar farm to power it.
Nearly HALF A BILLION DOLLARS. Building this to be ready to supply the power for the DC should have been a condition of consent. Because it was not, the public of NZ will be paying higher prices for its power.
The Greens have this right with their one-year moratorium while legally binding rules stipulating this are hammered out.
This is a cost of living issue. Labour’s waffly AI/DC policy launched yesterday does not cut the mustard.
Under the current settings we will be importing LNG to power DC’s which is a sick joke.
The Southland datacentre will get its electricity from Mercury Energy, from wind farms it has built and are now operating such as Kaiwera Downs, and the big Slopedown one is also in train. So no, there's no cost of living issue for our power bills from generators.
It's the lines company charges from Transpower you might want to check, but they are very tightly regulated in their proces.
The Greens are of course wading into a whole industry which has been operating for years and so far hasn't caused anyone any bother.
So sure regulate it.
meanwhile, this week individuals from the AI development sector have been pointing out that AI is moving so fast the developers can't guarantee safety. It's the same shit as climate, only instead of taking half a century to realise we fucked up very very badly, this is set to play out in a handful or two of years.
The precautionary principle matters.
https://x.com/taylorpopielarz/status/2097710620187455954
This one talks about how Google DeepMind originally prohibited developers from discussing safety issues publicly.
https://x.com/v_maini/status/2097863067690475727
As I have said to you several times Ad, the existing DC's currently only use about 140 MW of power which (as you say) has taken many years to develop,
Just the first two DC's now proposed for AI require 530 MW of power. This is on a scale of many times previous power demands-there is no comparison.
From someone who works in Data and AI inside the Electricity industry: It was actually pretty good.
are you following the AI/human extinction comms coming from individual AI developers this week?
Yes, I am. And I don't think those concerns should be dismissed.
I'm probably less alarmed than you are, but that's not because I think AI is inherently benign. It's an extraordinarily powerful technology, and powerful technologies create risks as well as opportunities. Some of the people building frontier models are genuinely worried about where this could go, and I think we should listen to them.
Where I probably differ is in what I think follows from that.
I don't think we get to decide whether AI happens. It already has. The models exist, they're being deployed globally, and New Zealand opting out wouldn't make them disappear. We can decide what we're prepared to use it for, what we're not prepared to use it for, and under what conditions.
So for me the important question is what we do about it.
That means regulation, accountability, transparency, limits on particular uses, protecting people whose work or rights are affected, and making sure governments retain enough technical capability to understand what they're regulating. It also means taking genuinely catastrophic risks seriously and working internationally where those risks can't meaningfully be addressed by New Zealand alone.
Because AI is ultimately just a technology. A very powerful one, and potentially a dangerous one, but still a technology. We've spent most of human history inventing things capable of changing society in ways we couldn't entirely predict. The answer has generally been to understand them, govern them, regulate their harms and decide collectively what uses we're prepared to accept.
And that's actually part of why I liked Labour's policy. I didn't read it as "AI is wonderful, let's have more of it." I read it as an attempt to build some state capacity around a technology that is going to affect us whether we like it or not.
I don't know exactly where AI takes us. I don't think anyone does. But that uncertainty makes competent governance more important to me, not less.
This short 07/26 report identifies those countries/blocs that have/are putting ai regulation in place. The EU is most advanced, with China second.
https://axis-intelligence.com/ai-regulation-by-country/
China is moving to consolidate an international regulatory framework, and 26 countries have already signed an ai cooperation treaty where China provides training positions, helps develop infrastructure, and gives access to resources such as its ai meterological model.
'Pointing to one area of strategic priority for Beijing, Xi also used his speech to reiterate China’s support for open-source AI development. Open-source is often presented as a means of democratizing AI, but it also serves a strategic purpose by encouraging the widespread adoption of Chinese models and tools.'
https://thediplomat.com/2026/07/with-new-ai-governance-organization-china-seeks-to-formalize-its-global-ai-influence/
This article adds analysis.
https://ceias.eu/ceias-considers-chinas-world-ai-cooperation-organization-and-the-future-of-ai-governance/
'If WAICO [the ai treaty] encourages more rigorous safety testing and the wider adoption of robust safety standards across Chinese (and other) models, it could contribute to a safer global AI ecosystem as their international use continues to expand.' But it's also China setting up its own lower-cost open ai products against the high-cost propriety models being sold by US companies.
https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/10/how-china-views-ai-risks-and-what-to-do-about-them
And this final article unpacks China’s evaluation of potential bad-actors hijacking open-ai systems, the societal costs with job loss caused by ai, and an assessment of ai escape risks. Seems much broader risk assessment than individual US companies have bothered to brainstorm.
Of course it is.
China has an obvious strategic interest in promoting a regulatory framework that favours its own AI ecosystem: cheaper, increasingly capable, heavily open-source models that it can export alongside infrastructure, training and technical assistance.
If, at the same time, that framework raises the cost of developing and deploying the large proprietary models dominated by US companies, so much the better from Beijing’s point of view.
That doesn’t mean the safety concerns are insincere. China can be genuinely concerned about model misuse, labour-market disruption and loss of control over advanced systems while also recognising that AI governance is an arena of geopolitical and commercial competition.
Those things aren’t contradictory. In fact, I’d be rather surprised if China wasn’t trying to write the international rules in a way that advantaged Chinese firms and Chinese technology.
China also uses AI to run an extensive internal surveillance program.
https://henryjacksonsociety.org/publications/chinas-use-of-ai-and-its-negative-impact-on-the-world/
And what surveillance system is the US ICE immigrant swoop using? Including profiling citizens involved in monitoring IC.
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/04/nx-s1-5717031/ice-dhs-immigrants-surveillance-confrontation-deportation-mobile-fortify
Or the IDF monitoring and targetting of Palestinians?
Or of facial recognition in NZ shops?
It’s just a question of scale.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/19/idf-facial-recognition-surveillance-palestinians
The same film producers who made the film about West Bank settler violence have just come out with one interviewing IDF staff involved in ai targetting and assassination in the Gazan attacks.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/sep/10/naza-review-israel-gaza
‘rather, Israel’s intelligence services have subcontracted their attack recon to AI. A computer program reportedly analyses the call pattern on phones belonging to known Hamas terrorists and finds which of the other tens of thousands of phones they have under surveillance exhibit the same tendencies – and then attack the owner, invariably at night, in the apartments whose whereabouts are already minutely documented by the state’
where are you getting the idea that the argument is “we get to decide whether AI happens”?
"There is almost unlimited capacity to build more dams" I wish that were true but the Greenies hate dams and try and stop them. Mental.
it's possibly the most stupid statement I have ever seen on TS.
We live on a finite set of islands, there are only so many rivers. We could fill nature with industrialisation (Ad likes wind, others like solar), but the land isn't an empty vessel waiting to be used.
A statement that pretends this isn't true is worthless and makes me question the value of the overall comment.
+100 weka.
it's like the climate an ecological crisis isn't real, and humans can all live in domes if it comes down to it.
I think humans' ability to understand how completely dependent we are on nature, and physics, is declining.
it's odd seeing it from someone whose career has presumably been in infrastructure. But tbf to Ad, most of the left pays lip service to the polycrisis.
It's the old Labour Leftism. They prefer jobs and growth, however tiny, instead of environmental protection.
For instance Burnham will probably start production from new oil and gas fields in the North Sea. (Rosebank and Jackdaw fields)
This article resonates strongly.
The term not used is a moral injury, where time and time again the system fails the workers. Either a lack of staff, time or resources these professionals have to watch vulnerable people suffer.
This is deliberate. Net 54 nurses employed in two years. A hiring freeze while recent graduates go unemployed.
A great example for a citizen's arrest. Simeon Brown for causing this nurse's moral injury.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361031191/systems-just-broken-me-why-emergency-department-nurse-walked-away
Ministry of Social Development payment errors topped $2.5m, thousands affected – review
From RNZ
”More than 30,000 benefits and other payments were wrongly suspended with concerns continually raised for three months before being appropriately escalated, a government review has found.”
Shouldn’t the Minister resign over this. At least be hounded mercilessly by the press /sarc
Operational, so not Minister's responsibility.
The CEO has already declined to resign – says its her job to fix the issue (which it is).
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/1324932/ministry-of-social-development-payment-errors-topped-2-point-5m-thousands-affected-review
The law change under urgency was absolutely the Minister's decision and responsibility. As widely and correctly reported, e.g,
MSD review: Ministry says botched law and workloads caused thousands to miss payments | The Post
Job of MSD to implement the change, measure the workload, and staff appropriately. As the CEO acknowledged.
Can’t read your linked article, as it’s behind a paywall.
the article doesn't explain the exact issues, just a lot of numbers of people affected, how much money, and the general problem of which staffing was only one.
The Ministers is absolutely responsible for passing a law that her department couldn't implement properly.
Hard to accept the argument that the CE should have staffed properly when the government was cutting the civil service. Looks like MSD fucked up, but so did the Minister and Cabinet.
I don't think people realise just how dysfunctional WINZ is now. This is also on the Minister. MSD can rightfully be accused of failing to recognise the pattern of missed payments, but the Minister has teh responsibility for making sure that MSD and WINZ can function properly.
The article I linked explained the issues:
None of those are things that the Minister is responsible for. They are operational matters for the CEO. And a competent management team would have spotted the issue early on. [I do workglows for a living – I can see at least three intervention points that management should have been watching for in the workflow metrics.]
The only point the Upton is responsible for is putting the bill through under urgency. And, it's doubtful that the select committee process would have made any difference. The CEO said that no one had considered the winter energy payment in this process. That means that it had not even occurred to the professionals.
If the Left want to jump up and down, and yell Gotcha! I can't stop you. But you need a better hill to die on.
I think you're collapsing two different kinds of responsibility.
Yes, technically, most of what you've described is operational responsibility. Ministers aren't supposed to personally manage MSD's workflows, call-centre capacity or IT systems. That's what the Chief Executive and her management team are there to do.
But you can't use the constitutional separation between governance and management to launder the political consequences of a serious failure.
The Minister is still accountable for the department politically, including for her confidence in its leadership and what she does when that leadership fails. In this case, the CE has accepted responsibility and declined to resign. The Minister, in turn, has declined to sack her.
Which leaves us in the slightly peculiar position where the failure is too operational for the Minister to be responsible, but apparently not serious enough for the person who is responsible to suffer any consequence either.
So what, precisely, does ministerial accountability amount to here?
I'm not arguing that Upston should have been personally checking workflow metrics. I'm saying she doesn't get to point downwards at operational responsibility and then, having decided to retain the person responsible for those operations, point to the constitutional separation and declare the matter nothing to do with her.
At some point someone has to be accountable. And in our system that accountability starts with the Minister and only then works its way down through the department.
Delegation determines who is responsible for doing the work. It doesn't make political accountability disappear when the work goes badly wrong.
There are apparently no circumstances under which the operational failure of a Ministry will cause the CEO to lose their job. Even egregious failures involving outright lies to Ministers in successive governments (Immigration fiasco). There is, apparently so accountability for failure in the public service.
It appears that Upston has taken the word of the CEO that the issues have been resolved. And, really, Upton shouldn't have been over the implementation detail – that is absolutely the job of the CEO and the leadership team. Yes, if they report issues with delivering on the time frame or with the wording of the legislation to her, and she ignores this – then that is on her. But, that doesn't appear to be the issue in this case.
As an aside, I think that it sounds as though the senior leadership team are dysfunctional – and I believe that that would be Roche's job to intervene and provide support to remedy that situation.
I don't disagree that Upston shouldn't have been across the implementation detail. That's the CE's job.
My point is about what happens after a serious operational failure. The CE accepts responsibility; the Minister decides she retains confidence in the CE. That latter decision is necessarily political, not operational.
And in a world where, as Minister, she has a veritable myriad of options available to her, why she has apparently chosen to do nothing is itself worthy of scrutiny.
What options do you think that she has available to her?
Sidenote: as an IT professional, I'm always slightly wary of descriptions like "IT failure".
It's all well and good to blame sytems, because that's often where the failure becomes visible. But in my experience, supposedly technical failures are very often downstream consequences of poor governance, bad decisions, unrealistic implementation constraints, inadequate resourcing, or expert advice being ignored.
An IT system faithfully doing something stupid because somebody designed, commissioned or governed the process badly isn't really an IT failure.
it's absolutely a consequence of bad governance and decisions, and those are a consequence of ideology. You can't gut the civil service and expect it to function competently.
It's also possible that National don't care, either directly and indirectly. If WINZ becomes so dysfunctional that it's a leading news story, and NACT get a second term, the set up for privatising welfare is underway. Not saying the mistakes are intentional, just that the ideology is and if it leads to privatisation, bonus! Or maybe it is intentional, just not at the detail level. Fuck with the system and let other people take responsiblity when it falls apart.
As an example, someone tweeted the other day that people get a date their benefit will be suspended from if they don't do x, but the benefit actually stops earlier in the week. It used to be the beneficiary was told a date for doing x, and there was a second date for when payments into the bank account would change.
Hard to see that as being intentional, but it's a known issue and I don't see anyone at WINZ sorting it out (although I'm not that happen with MSM reporting either).
In my opinion, the IT failure appears to have been tangential to the issue. Which was poor planning, abysmal escalation processes when it was clear there was an issue, and poor internal communications. None of that is IT.
Sweet, so we know that the Minister, the CE and the select committee all have responsibility.
The legislation change is the start of it. It's not only about the WEP, it's about passing a law that requires every beneficiary to update their circumstances yearly and not making sure your department can manage that. Or do you think the CE can magic up staff and funding?
Even if it had gone through the select committee process (which I believe in BTW) the MSD would still have had to do the implementation.
Staffing is always an issue. That’s where a competent CEO goes back and offers the Minister alternatives: Slower implementation; diversion of resources from other projects; increased staffing.
None of which happened, because the CEO apparently didn’t even know there was a problem. Total failure of risk management and escalation processes.
As an illustration. Yesterday I spotted an issue with a service to a major client. Identified the solution (putting an additional check step in place), gathered the team managers responsible (it fell in the handover space between two areas) – neither of them wanted to staff the additional check step. So I pulled the GM downstairs to make the call, and assign the responsibility.
you seem to think I don't think the CE has responsibility. I do.
I suspect you don't understand how bad WINZ is functionally prior to 2023. Then civil service cuts, a stupid and bad law, and whatever the hell is happening with the CE and her senior managers.
Your example makes sense at the small scale. With WINZ are talking about major fuckery of system since the 90s alongside massive ideological imposition of punitive welfare and thus a culture that makes it very hard to care about beneficiaries institutionally (there are still good people working there).
The blind spots happened at multiple levels, CE, management and also in Caucus and the Minister's office. If you care about people it's easier to design systems that look after people. If you treat welfare as a punitive system for forcing people off dependency, then you will get a system that treats people badly.
I'm not talking at all about the relationship that MSD have with their customers/clients (whatever the buzzword de jour is). I'm perfectly prepared to believe that it's hostile (it certainly was 18 years ago, when I was dealing with them)
I'm talking about the internal functioning of a major organization. Where you absolutely need to have the delegated authority for managers to make decisions, and clear escalation pathways when the implications require it. And a culture of excellent communications (which, BTW, does not mean endless buck-shoving meetings). And a senior management team who work together effectively. There are things that I'm sorry about leaving the public service for – but a well-functioning operational management environment is not one of them.
well quite. The problem is that those things don’t appear to exist at the standard you are talking about. My point was that the cause of the dysfunction is NACT ideology, and long term messing with the systems. I’d say Labour ideology is also a problem, because they don’t appear particularly motivated to fix it.
Not sure if a government department can have good internal function and operate hostilely, but I guess that is possible too.
Would love to see the turnover/retention rate of WINZ/MSD managers.
As I said, widely reported. If you don't want to find the reports across various media because they provide evidence that contradicts your already made-up mind, that's up to you.
Another example:
Minister's job 'untenable' after review of MSD payment errors – Greens
Ignore the Greens' comments, read on.
"The review identified two main faults which led to payment problems.
One was a drafting error in the Government's legislation to institute the new check for welfare recipients (etc)"
The Minister is responsible for legislation before the House – to repeat, under urgency and therefore not subject to proper scrutiny. An entirely political decision.
Nope. I'm not responsible for finding sources to prove your point.
If the only one you choose to provide is behind a paywall and you don't also choose to provide an archived access point – expect push back.
Is the Minister responsible or not?
For operations within the Ministry, no.
If you want a breakdown over the different responsibilities of the Minister and CEO – see above.
You, however, are responsible for the quality of your argument and the resources which support it.
I think that's a slightly too absolute account of ministerial responsibility.
For the operational failure itself? Sure. Upston isn't responsible for managing MSD's workflows, staffing, communications or IT systems. That's the CE's job.
But that doesn't mean ministerial accountability simply stops wherever operational responsibility begins.
The CE has accepted responsibility for the failure and declined to resign. Upston has, in turn, declined to dismiss her and continues to express confidence in her.
That's a perfectly legitimate decision for a Minister to make. But it is also her decision, for which she is politically accountable.
She could have demanded a further review, formally rebuked the CE, required changes to governance or oversight, or ultimately withdrawn her confidence. She has chosen her response, and Parliament and the public are entitled to judge whether that response is adequate.
So, TL;DR: Upston is not responsible for the operational failure. But she is accountable for what she chooses to do about it.
Graeme Edgeler (well known as a constitutional law expert) has no doubt. Straight answer: "Both, quite clearly."
MSD apologises after 30,000 benefits wrongly suspended
Early Edition with Ryan Bridge
Apparently its not that easy to get rid of senior civil servants. No one in the Ministry has been held accountable for the blatant lying to the select committee carried out by Immigration officials.
What part of the response by the Ministry is inadequate – and therefore requiring further action by the Minister?
Owning negative outcomes (for some) isn't the CoC's modus operandi
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebekkamalster_executivecoaching-leadership-accountability-activity-7503704339476049920-WK1p
This CoC is a govt for the SORTED by the sorted. Their concept of an "economy" is one where those with substantial wealth are finding their wealth increase. If that is the case, then the economy is in good shape, and they are getting back to basics – ie the wealth is flowing to the top. They have no concerns for the unsorted – so why worry?!!
https://thestandard.nz/why-does-national-despise-the-poor/
https://natlib.govt.nz/records/33820727