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6:00 am, June 17th, 2026 - 74 comments
Categories: open mike -
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
Good Talbot Mills poll today:
Lab 34.0 Gre 13.0 TPM 2.6=49.6
Nat 29.0 NZF 12.0 ACT 6.0=47.0
On these numbers the Left could form a government. Of note the Greens are more than twice ACT, who are slipping towards the 5% threshold. IMO TPM will again win most of the Maori seats which may mean an overhang further helping the Left.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/election-2026-green-party-surge-in-new-poll-puts-left-bloc-ahead-of-coalition/JG6D25ESWRBAXBGCYWOGY77BPI/
As Luxon says, there's only one poll that matters!
(and it's this one 🙂
RNZ (my preferred : ) Link.
Go Green. Onya Chloe, Marama, …Lan Pham, and all!
: )
Interested to know what you base your belief on, that "TPM will again win most of the Maori seats"
Given the much publicised rift, and sitting MPs standing as independents, as well as Labour having a strong slate of candidates – it seems to be at least questionable.
I don't believe that any of the current polling companies are measuring the Maori electorates effectively.
I'll have a pint on it with you Bella.
1. I think Maori will be loyal to their TPM candidates.
2.I think Maori will realise that to vote for a TPM candidate but then tactically party vote for Labour or Green will give the Left a better chance of removing these anti-treaty numpties.
I'll take you for that virtual pint, BG. 🙂
My pick is that Labour will flip, and or retain a higher percentage of seats.
I think that Maori in the breakaway electorates are highly likely to be split. With a very strong level of support for Ferris and Kapa-Kingi. Whether that's enough to get them over the line – remains to be seen. But it may also result in the Labour candidate winning.
*If* the independent Maori candidate wins over the TPM one – then that doesn't change the electorate overhang (i.e. it doesn't matter if it's TPM, or independent, the overhang remains).
*But* if electors split their vote: electorate Independent and party vote TPM – then that is much more likely to change the overhang scenario.
And, if Labour wins the electorate, then that removes the overhang completely.
I don't have any visibility of how Kapa-Kingi and Ferris are encouraging voters to place their party vote….. Or, how TPM are doing the same.
From the perspective of maximizing any overhang, they should absolutely be encouraging a Labour or Green party vote; and not a TPM one.
You are on
-and all that comment makes sense.
Finally an encouraging sign thanks BG.
If you're a public servant and multiple red flags get waved at you, do nothing.
Now those officials may feel somewhat spooked by being investigated by an entitled public official, but hey, if you ripped off the govt for $30 million, why worry? You weren't alone in that, and who knows the relative shares grabbed by each grabber??
As a neolib she ought to know better: market rules apply. The dept bought a product &/or service. The contract in such situations is never reported in the media. The devil, appointed by god to administer the details, ensures confidentiality. So what if the package didn't work? That just means public servants responsible for implementing it couldn't figure out how. Caveat emptor. Apparently the minister in charge in 20128 was a feller called Hipkins; a public apology from him is forthcoming. Or not…
If incompetent public servants deliberately mislead their minister over the progress and cost of a major programme, leading to a huge waste of public funds, does that dishonesty amount to fraud?
Or do we just get the usual "lessons can be learned from this" and no improvement?
Typo: minister in charge in 2018 when the project was launched. He probably doesn't really need to apologise since success is an operational matter. Oh, it wasn’t Hipkins – sorry about that error!
This bit seems to be key to the thing:
Did govt rules require ministerial approval or not?? So the anonymous decision-maker in charge realised after 2 years that the project was unworkable and ditched it in favour of a standard model, without telling the govt. Naughty!
No, it was Lees-Galloway 2017-2020.
Not exactly a shining star.
The story is about Ministers not being informed.
Immigration management.
The General Manager of INZ, Nigel Bickle, left in 2017
Then it was placed within MBIE
The 2018-2021 era of origin
Between 2018 and 2021, the operational branch was overseen by senior MBIE officials, including Greg Caradus (acting in the position) and Stephen Crombie.
It was stopped in 2025.
Alison McDonald OBE served as the head of Immigration New Zealand (INZ) from July 2021 through May 2026, holding the title of Deputy Secretary of Immigration within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).
Looks like the Titanic model of governance: officials are like deck-chairs. An array will have a good look while the ship steams toward the iceberg. Trouble is, they keep moving themselves around, in accord with neolib ethos – as soon as folks start to believe you are responsible, switch to a different job. The buck is always passing…
The larger the ministry, the more likely there will be silos not reporting everything.
Now that government has chosen to go all in with the MBIE way, all while AI is being adopted in place of staff that know stuff – one suspects those left or the ones hired to interface with AI (eager to co-operate) will craft a narrative of functionality.
This is what happens when you outsource judgement as well as expertise.
An organisation that lacks the internal capability to challenge assumptions, interrogate advice, and recognise emerging failure modes eventually mistakes governance activity for governance effectiveness.
At that point, governance becomes theatre.
One of the simplest ways to reduce the risk of these failures is to maintain sufficient, and sufficiently senior, internal IT capability. Experienced architects, technical leads, and programme managers can often spot unrealistic timelines, weak business cases, uncontrolled scope growth, and overly optimistic delivery claims long before they become visible in project reports.
External expertise has its place. But organisations still need enough internal expertise to act as intelligent clients, ask difficult questions, challenge assumptions, and know when a programme is drifting off course.
Well, the view from Deep Green equates organisation to organism: adapting to failure builds resilience. It's why gung ho market cheerleaders of US capitalism cite Trump's bankruptcies as clever career moves, right? The test of effect is if they work or not, which spectators judge as time passes.
Money down the drain, in this view, is history. We move on. The old notion of accountability becomes too irritating to take seriously. Postmodernism told us all morality depends where you stand. Coulda cited relativity for that, at the risk of baffling sheeple. Yet some import of meaning trickles down to younger generations despite their perpetual screen-scanning evasion method. Morality ain't dead yet!
Talking about accountability, $31mi is a drop in the $2bi bucket of cancelled ferry costs. This is “Look over there” spin.
And what minister doesn’t bother reading the background material on a project? Little clearly did.
When I first heard this story – the $30M INZ project getting dumped, my first reaction was that it would be fodder for the neo-libs.
'The state shouldn't be involved, leave it to the market' type braying.
Now that more is coming out, coupled with the relative silence from Seymour, Willis et al, the more it looks like the the consequences of the gutting of the Public Service is being made apparent.
The internal expertise that you talk of doesn't sound like the 'frontline' that Willis would have you believe is untouched. The competence that appears to be lacking at INZ, seems to be from the back office, the area Willis likes to cite as where savings can be made when insisting on the culls.
"consequences of the gutting of the Public Service is being made apparent."
This appears to have been going on for something like 8 years.
What gutting of the Public Service took place in the 2017 – 2020 time frame? And what then took place from 2020 to 2023?
I think there is a deeper issue here than simply staffing levels.
Over the past couple of decades, the convention of "no surprises" has gradually expanded from "keep Ministers informed" to something that can, in some organisations, resemble "avoid giving Ministers bad news until you have no choice".
At the same time, the idea of a responsible Minister has increasingly blurred into a perception that the Minister is effectively the organisation's ultimate boss rather than simply the person accountable to Parliament for its performance.
The result is an environment where there can be strong incentives to downplay problems, delay difficult conversations, and present optimistic progress reports long after concerns should have been escalated.
If anything, recent years may have strengthened those incentives. Where agencies believe that poor performance, adverse publicity, or ministerial dissatisfaction can result in significant funding cuts, restructures, or functions being abolished, the pressure to avoid delivering unwelcome news only increases.
That doesn't excuse failures of governance or management. But it may help explain why major project failures can persist across multiple governments and multiple administrations before finally becoming impossible to ignore.
Therein lies one of the main flaws in the logic behind many public-sector cuts.
From the outside, reducing the number of architects, project managers, analysts, and technical specialists can look like a straightforward way to trim administrative costs. The savings are visible immediately. The costs are not.
The people in these roles are often the ones responsible for managing risk, challenging assumptions, identifying emerging problems, and ensuring that complex programmes remain grounded in reality. When that capability disappears, organisations become less able to recognise failure until it is already expensive.
The result is often a false economy. Initial savings are eventually offset by project overruns, failed implementations, operational disruption, expensive remediation work, or a growing dependence on external consultants and vendors.
As a Data Lead and Principal Engineer, I've spent much of my career working around large technology and transformation programmes. They are difficult, complex, and expensive even when they are well governed. Removing the people responsible for architecture, oversight, and delivery assurance rarely improves outcomes.
External expertise has an important role to play. But organisations still need sufficient internal capability to act as intelligent clients, ask difficult questions, challenge optimistic assumptions, and recognise when a programme is drifting off course before the damage is done.
Unless you regard the changes made by the previous Labour government as "gutting the public service" – this doesn't appear to be the case, here.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2606/S00116/immigration-officials-deliberately-withheld-information-on-failed-technology-upgrade.htm
It looks as though the INZ were lying, impartially, to both governments.
It could be difficult if INZ were working to unheard or unpublished requirements. There have been matters publicised about agencies' lack of probity etc etc. This has been going on for some time and govt not worried it seems. Maybe it got known as a 'dirty' department where you just had to suck it up and operate within unspoken guidelines.
Reminds me of Yes Minister and the Need to Know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX45hc0aZt0 4.34m
(If you push the text CC button on the bottom line and get the spoken and text words – AI delivers sometimes some strange translations – you will gain the full benefit of Sir Humphrey's wily wisdom.)
I think that it's very difficult to characterize any of the governments between 2018 and now as "unworried". There was a concerted effort to conceal this project from all of the ministers, in all of the governments.
I'm thoroughly familiar with Yes, Minister – and regard it as an excellent satire on the professional civil service.
However, quoting it doesn't support an argument that this is the result of the "gutting of the Public Service". But rather that more gutting, to eliminate an unelected bureaucratic dictatorship, is required.
Makes sense – and it might be an argument in favour of larger MBIE-style ministries, because internal expertise and judgment are expensive and you can't afford to duplicate it. Or maybe some 'all of government' programme office that puts projects into a competent governance process that is appropriate for the project scale would be preferable Though it might all be decried as just more 'red tape'.
It went wrong for INZ, after they became part of MBIE.
Well after. MBIE was implemented in 2012.
No, they joined MBIE in 2017.
This fiasco began in 2018.
Immigration management.
The last General Manager of INZ, Nigel Bickle in 2017
Then it was placed within MBIE
The 2018-2021 era of origin
Between 2018 and 2021, the operational branch was overseen by senior MBIE officials, including Greg Caradus (acting in the position) and Stephen Crombie.
As someone who used to work for Immigration NZ, Immigration NZ was part of the Department of Labour (was merged into DoL in 1954) and amalgamated into MBIE with the rest of DoL. While Nigel was the Head of Immigration NZ at the time, his other formal MBIE job title was Deputy Chief Executive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_New_Zealand
I'd hesitate to argue that larger ministries are necessarily the answer.
The ingredients of a successful digital project are actually fairly well understood. The challenge is that they are much harder to achieve in practice than they are to describe.
You need sufficient technical expertise to understand the risks and challenge assumptions. You need people from the business domain who understand the operational reality and whose input is genuinely listened to. And you need clear, unambiguous accountability and oversight.
Making organisations larger can sometimes help by creating deeper pools of expertise. But it can also create new problems: greater distance between decision-makers and frontline operations, more layers of management, and a tendency for governance processes to become ends in themselves.
The real question is less about organisational size and more about whether an organisation can maintain the right balance between technical capability, domain knowledge, and effective oversight. Once any one of those starts to dominate the others, projects tend to get into trouble.
That's part of it, but there's also something rotten in the water there. There is a longstanding management culture/desire to do more with less. Hoping to replace jobs with IT solutions which then don't deliver is one consequence of that. Vision 2015/2020 (bringing applications online – was meant to save 10s of millions in staff and office reductions, saved nowhere near it) was another example of overblown savings leading to a giant hole in the accounts – Labour had to bail that out.
Other classic examples are Operation Crusade (approve visas that were waiting on police certificates with the plan to go back and cancel any visas where crimes were disclosed later) and dairy farming visa scams.
Just like the rail ferry Cockups, then!
I think that is the real analogy for everything these days. If it doesn't work, who is going to suffer really. Just go to Oz at the worst. The peeps can't do anything; the ones who could, get chocolate on their hooves which they lick off.
The whole business economy is now built around the idea of doing something cheaper with a shorter life than in the past. Then there is repeat business, double profit; they stick it to the suckers, us, and run off with bags of money to store up overseas. But good luck, we can draw on those reserves, at interest, to build the replacement edifices.
Red alert to all goldsmiths, send memo to Paul! https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/6/15/the-slow-death-of-goldsmiths-is-a-warning-to-british-universities
There was a time when goldsmiths were ace players in the capitalist game. No more!Neolib funding models causing market failure seem to be a trend.
Floating the view of universities as hotbeds of radicalism looks like nostalgia. The notion that govts ought not to make war seems an attempt to hippify the 21st century.
Gee, I dunno. You could try invading those key spaces to issue a critique of govt warfare but campus cops would likely take you away. Disorderly behaviour.
For every 1 UK Pound spent on universities, the UK economy gets a return of about 14 UK Pounds. That is a very, very strong return rate for public funding. Overall the sector adds about 265 Billion Pounds into the UK economy.
4 of the top 20 universities are in the UK, which is a remarkable achievement that they have sustained for over a century.
It is one of the few sectors left which isn't a variant on tiring cultural recycling or sickly nostalgia.
Both Conservatives and Labor are reasonably accused of underfunding this critical part of the economy over many, many Parliamentary terms.
Tertiary education has been a critical part of class mobility, but now it's about 9,000 Pounds a year for a course.
This should be a gimme for a party that wants a stronger middle class.
"4 of the top 20 universities are in the UK".
What are you using as the source for this statement. Could it be the Times (of London) evaluation?
The QS world rankings include 4 UK ones in the top 10
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QS_World_University_Rankings
I wonder what a ranking list prepared by the Chinese would say?
I will say for QS they get the number 1 place right. Not that I am biased.
The Shanghai ranking (Chinese methodology, different to the QS one) is here:
https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2025
Only 2 UK ones in the top 10 – with Imperial College dropped down to 26.
Sorry, MIT only gets to no. 3…..
The first Chinese one, Tsinghua, is at no. 18 – vs. 17 equal in QS – so virtually no difference.
Really, in that top 20 listing, it's a matter of which elements you prefer, to formulate the ranking – regardless of source.
However, ATM, even graduating with a good degree from Oxford – isn't necessarily going to get you a job.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/11/young-ambitious-out-of-work-unemployment
The disruption effect of AI is real – even with prestige degrees.
Did you actually read the article? AI is only one of many obstacles facing young unemployed (in the UK) and by no means the main one.
Yes, I did actually read the article. Did you?
The element which was specifically identified as significantly affecting the ability of university graduates to get jobs was AI. Specifically AI taking away the entry level 'office' jobs.
Of course, there are other obstacles which affect people who are *not* university graduates. But those aren't, specifically, relevant under a post citing university degrees as a critical element in class mobility and support for elite universities as a gimmie for gaining middle class support.
I think that it's now arguable whether university degrees (in general) are a significant element in class mobility. Certainly many graduates are becoming trapped in an economy where they can't get work (certainly not work in their field) – and have the burden of their course costs to pay back.
There are still some areas where a degree – especially one with competitive entry, in an area of high demand – is going to pay off. You're not going to find many NZ dentist graduates begging for work (for example). But they also tend to be the degrees that only the elite typically get into.
Thrice repeating the word “specifically” for emphasis doesn’t make it any truer. If you want to single out AI, specifically, that’s your prerogative, but that’s not what the article conveyed to me.
Your third and fourth paragraphs are a separate story.
Guess that we all read through our own filters.
Good guess, imho
Not all ‘filters’ are equal, sometimes they are funnels.
Not all 'funnels' are equal either; haven't used a Büchner funnel in ages.
Increased pressure resulting from material passing through a smaller aperture (i.e. a funnel).
Pressure is the measure of how concentrated a force is over a specific surface area.
Seems to be torturing the metaphor past intelligible limits.
A filter selectively passes material through. A funnel just concentrates it.
However, if the cap fits…..
Reading through my own (experiential) filter, I'm puzzled as to how a standard funnel could be used to concentrate something. A mystery!
I think it specifically fits you perfectly.
Now I have a lovely vision of you as a funnel-head. Thanks for brightening my day.
Must have been quite gloomy over at yours – do you live on Stewart Island?
That's funny, I just had a lovely vision of you as a conehead.
Fun fact: An upside-down road cone can be used as a funnel
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360993991/winston-peters-says-government-officials-who-mislead-ministers-should-be-put-prison
If that's the case elected officials (yes you peters) that misled , lost and deluded soles into voting for them should be in jail to.
My thoughts on reading Peters’, Willis' and Stanfords’ over-heated tosh also, bwaghorn.
The bare-faced cheek of it; displacement on steroids!
Indeed, they’re war criminals and the open war between the Coalition and the Public Service is escalating. Which one controls the Strait?
"Bottom feeding", "demonic eggbeater – green banshees" – "dropkicks" even.
A(t)las, "I chose the wrong words, what I meant was…" – Deputy PM David Seymour
"I reached for the wrong metaphor" in deed – a "magic money tree" for me, not thee.
Now is your time for wealth.
In the above graphic, is that AO/NZ at 1.7K next to Aussie?
The Resisting the Rule of the Rich, says the obvious, but with a lot of evidence, that the greater the inequality in a country, the bigger the erosion of democracy and increased movement to oligarchy.
I think it must be – 1,700 ultra-high-net-
worthwealth individuals live in our small land-locked cyan triangle. The nACTf CoC might argue that NZ is not punching above its weight compared to Aussie, although the CoC does do a 'fair' bit of punching down.This article link contains a slightly larger image of the graphic.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-countries-most-ultra-rich-residents-2026/
Burnham fronting voters with Hitler moustache: https://unherd.com/2026/06/makerfield-crucible-of-resentment/
So the Hitler look was created by someone being ironic? Culture wars seem to have gotten sheeple thoroughly baffled:
Many have found that drinking alleviates anxiety (political or not). Perhaps media will report how much Gazans like replacing the climate in Green thought, but I doubt it…
And something from the other side of this rw opinion piece. The Greens candidate, Sarah Wakefield, a current Manchester councillor. She is actively campaigning door-to door in the electorate.
https://bsky.app/profile/greenparty.org.uk/post/3mns3f6jeyc2u
The flood protection approach she mentions is a great example of core Green policy.
And here's Wakefield on BBC Question Time putting in a good performance against other candidates.
https://bsky.app/profile/greenparty.org.uk/post/3mnjpihz7i52z
The Greens are unlikely to beat Burnham, who is a 4/1 bookie favourite, but they are building credibility at national level.
Here she charmingly puts the boot in to Reform's pro-family legislation looking to overturn UK pay equity legislation, which has delivered real wage increases for women workers.
https://bsky.app/profile/greenparty.org.uk/post/3mnilqc7x5d2q
Plus Polanski has said that Chloe Swarbrick is one of his political heroes. There is deep strategic positioning in all this Green activity in the UK.
Short-term simplistic thinking is often supported by dodgy arguments, false economy, and dubious accounting. Such terms become especially crass when it involves human lives.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/17-06-2026/simeon-brown-deemed-speed-limit-cuts-anti-car-ideology-a-new-analysis-shows-they-saved-lives
Has Dr Timothy Welch been ‘captured’ by life-saving commie pinko liberal ideology?
Simeon says ‘slow’ won't fix our awful (for the many) cost-of-living crisis – honk honk!
Simeon Brown and his Coalition colleagues are obviously having trouble connecting the dots, perhaps AI can help.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2606/S00124/injuries-cost-new-zealands-economy-87-billion.htm
Roads, did it say roads?
https://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/2606/Injuries_in_New_Zealand_Report.pdf [pg. 7]
Too much ‘ideology’ for you, Mr Brown? Sack them forthwith!
Again I'm highlighting Public Interest NZ, a platform for powerful discussions on progressive politics in New Zealand, a podcast that deserves a wider following.
In this interview Max Harris eloquently states his case for supporting Labour, and the effort he is putting into winning the Tamaki electorate.
All power to him – good luck Max.
https://youtu.be/hZLb_JKRPkc?si=ubR0fPyMJMGpKwcd
aj : thanks for your Public Service announcement about Public Interest NZ. I have many reads…but didnt know that particular one. Keeping more informed is so important !
Cheers
https://www.publicinterest.nz/
And all the best Max !
)
Thanks for the link aj. Harris does look like a promising figure.
I would like for him to be pushed a little more on reversing the harm of neo liberalism and pivoting to an alternative.
Forest & Bird have been battling wilding pines for years and years, yet the Feds regard them as Public (Rural) Enemy No. 1 Go figure.
Forest and Bird and/or wilding pines? I think I know this one…
: )