Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time - 9 August 2025

NCEA is on the way out

The Government has proposed the most significant overhaul of New Zealand’s secondary school qualification system in two decades, replacing the beleaguered NCEA Levels 1–3 with a simpler, more traditional structure. Under the plan, Year 11 students will work towards a compulsory Foundational Skills Award in English and Mathematics, Year 12 will culminate in the New Zealand Certificate of Education (NZCE), and Year 13 in the New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education (NZACE). Achievement will be reported as marks out of 100 with letter grades from A to E, moving away from the current credit-based model. The reforms aim to improve literacy and numeracy, reduce complexity, and restore academic rigour, while still providing clear vocational pathways. Public consultation runs 4 August – 15 September 2025.

Labour rejected multiple offers to be involved in education reform

Having only weeks ago extolled the virtue of his cross-party work while in Government and pointedly urged the current coalition must do the same, Hipkins has been left with egg on his face. Labour’s Education Spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime ignored messages from Education Minister Erica Stanford “on multiple occasions over several months inviting her to be briefed on the NCEA work programme and meet with officials”.1 Eventually, after receiving no response, the minister went over Prime’s head to Chris Hipkins who told his MP she needed to respond. So she did… declining the offers.

The Government has no obligation to involve the Opposition in their reforms, but it can help preserve them if there is some bipartisan involvement. Chris Bishop has involved Kieran McAnulty in some of his infrastructure work, for example. It is difficult to imagine a reasonable justification for an Opposition MP to decline access and influence as Prime did.

Hipkins struggled to explain Willow-Jean Prime’s actions to media

Treasury report: Ardern’s Government spent like it was going out of fashion

The Treasury’s latest Long-Term Insights Briefing has put the total fiscal cost of New Zealand’s COVID-19 pandemic response at $66 billion or around 20.4% of GDP. This makes it one of the largest responses among advanced economies. Treasury noted that significant amounts went to programmes not strictly tied to pandemic relief, including infrastructure, welfare expansions, school lunches, training schemes, and housing initiatives. These, Treasury argued, were expensive to maintain and politically difficult to wind down once the immediate crisis had passed. This appears to support the outcry from the current Government when they discovered the many “fiscal cliffs” left behind by Labour.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis called the findings “damning” for the previous Labour government, saying they confirmed the need for much stricter fiscal restraint. This is a fair call, however it is somewhat confusing given her own spending has been far from restrained.

Nicola’s spending has Taxpayer’s Union worried

Willis has talked a lot about reining in spending and being the adults-back-in-charge. But that talk isn’t quite bearing out in reality nor in the numbers. She is certainly no Ruth Richardson who was the National Party Finance Minister willing to make the hard decisions to turn New Zealand’s economy around in the early 90s. Ruth is now the Chair of the New Zealand Taxpayer’s Union which has been sounding the alarm about Willis’ spending.

In a press release, the Taxpayers’ Union said:

“Minister Willis blames [Covid spending] for fuelling inflation, eroding our debt position, and driving the cost-of-living crisis. But core Crown expenditure under her watch is higher than under Labour – and still rising.

"Any savings are simply redeployed, so overall spending never falls. Claims of this Government reaching debt targets are nonsense until Willis presents credible plans to reach a surplus and get out of the structural deficit.

“Willis needs to get a grip on the numbers now and stop hiding behind cooked-up statistics like OBEGALx. It’s time for the Minister to match her words with real spending cuts.”

Goodbye Petrol Tax, hello universal RUC

The Government has announced plans to phase out the traditional petrol tax (fuel excise duty) and replace it with electronic road user charges (RUCs) for all light vehicles: petrol, hybrid, diesel, and electric. This will shift from taxing fuel consumption to charging drivers based on distance travelled and vehicle weight. At present, petrol vehicles pay fuel tax at the pump, while diesel, electric, and heavy vehicles already pay RUCs by distance. The reform will unify these systems under a digital billing model with the aim of being fully operational by 2027.

Transporting New Zealand have welcomed the move, noting that current fuel-based funding disproportionately burdens older, less fuel-efficient vehicles while lighter, modern vehicles wear roads more yet contribute less. The Automobile Association (AA) also backs the shift but has queried “If they’re going to electronically monitor every vehicle, it’s the privacy issues around it… Who wants to know where you are and when?”

By-election in the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate

Election day is September 6th for the people of the Māori electorate in Auckland and the candidates are locked in. It is a two-horse race between Labour’s Peeni Henare and Te Pāti Māori’s Oriini Kaipara, but Hannah Tamaki from Vision NZ will hope to snatch up some votes too. Sherry-Lee Matene is an independent candidate and Counterspin’s Kelvyn Alp is representing the unregistered NZ Loyal party.

Given the razor-thin margin the late Takutai Tarsh Kemp won the electorate by in 2023, it is likely to be a close race. If Te Pāti Māori win it is a simple replacement, but if Peeni Henare takes it out he will move from List MP to Electorate MP and the next person on Labour’s list will enter Parliament. It appears that person is Georgie Dansey.

Te Pāti Māori set the mob on sign cleaner

Due to the by-election, hoardings are up around Auckland and, as tends to happen, they are being vandalised. President of Te Pāti Māori John Tamihere took to social media to track down the identity of the person vandalising Te Pāti Māori signage. He posted an image of his suspect and details of his suspect’s business. Swiftly the mob condemned him as a racist and set about destroying his reputation, threatening him, and posting photos of kids. The problem is that the man was not a vandal. He had been cleaning the sign next to the Te Pāti Māori one as it advertised his business and had also been damaged when a passerby jumped to conclusions and took a photo of him. Tamihere eventually took the post down, but did not apologise. In the meantime the mistaken vandal told the Herald he was afraid he was going to lose everything.

Billboards and stock images

Despite being incensed about the defacing of their own signage, Te Pāti Māori supporters were quick to suggest destroying digital billboards after the party posted about Hobson’s Pledge billboards. The billboards urged people to vote “no” to Māori Wards in upcoming referenda and one design showed a stock image of a Māori woman. The woman pictured spoke to Māori media expressing distress at being featured in the campaign and Hobson’s Pledge immediately asked LUMO (billboard company) to take down the display. It still isn’t clear if the woman had given permission to the photographer, but Hobson’s Pledge obtained the image from stock image website iStock.

Te Pāti Māori posted about the incident and mobilised their supporters telling them to call and email LUMO. But they didn’t just give the number for the company, they listed the emails and mobile phone numbers of several staff members from the company. Eventually the addresses of LUMO’s directors and Don Brash (Hobson’s Pledge) were posted online and the rhetoric was violent and abusive. Just like the would-be vandal post, Te Pāti Māori have now taken down their LUMO post, but again the damage has been done.

There is a rumour that the woman from the ‘vote “no”’ billboard is now been featuring in a “yes” billboard in central Auckland. I hope this is true as it would be a much preferable response to the mass aggression instigated by Te Pāti Māori.

Labour’s next (probably) Finance Minister master of spin already

It is widely known that Director of Policy and Economist at the Council of Trade Unions Craig Renney will at some point in the near future run for Parliament as a Labour candidate. It is also widely accepted that he will be given a cosy list ranking that ensures he will get in and whenever they next win the Government benches he will be the Finance Minister. It is no surprise then to see that he is already spinning a highly Labour-favourable narrative as Union boss. Liam Hehir spotted that the economist’s reaction to unemployment projections changed markedly once Labour was no longer in charge. In 2023, under Labour, Mr Renney was optimistic about the fact that unemployment was projected to reach 5.4% by June 2025. By the next year when National had led the Government for 9 or so months, Renney’s reaction to the same projection (unemployment at 5.4% by June 2025) was markedly less chipper. By 2025, under National, our unemployment rate hit 5.2%… notice this is lower than the projection Renney called “better than many had feared” in 2023. One can only imagine the celebration that the CTU would have led had Red Chris been in power, but with Blue Chris at the helm Renney was very pessimistic indeed. Politics, innit.

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Government will pass amendments to the Marine and Coastal Area Act

First there was Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act, but under a National/Māori Party Government in 2011 the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act (MACA) was passed to enable Māori to make claims to customary titles. At the time the Government made it clear that they expected the threshold for awarding such claims to be very high and for just a very small portion of the New Zealand coast to be claimed. Instead, by the 2017 deadline, nearly 600 overlapping applications were lodged, covering virtually the entire coastline.

In 2023, New Zealand First included the amending of the MACA in their coalition agreement with National. Their purpose is to fix the act so that it better communicates the intentions of the Government. The changes will ensure that claimants must prove continuous use and occupation of an area since 1840 without substantial interruption. This week the Government announced the bill is set to pass in October 2025.

For some this still doesn’t go far enough. Ironically, these people would rather return to Helen Clark’s 2004 legislation whereas Clark’s own party oppose even the MACA amendments.

This week in drama because blokes are demanding to be ladies 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇦🇺

Two court cases this week (one in Scotland and one in Australia) show exactly how far women’s rights have been pushed backwards by entitled men in frocks and their blue-haired allies. In Scotland, nurse Sandie Peggie fought in the employment tribunal after being suspended for the apparent crime of saying she didn’t want to share a women’s changing room with a male colleague who identifies as a woman. Peggie raised her concerns about Dr. Beth Upton, a trans-identifying male, and was promptly treated like a workplace pariah. But this week, the tribunal heard that other female staff shared her discomfort but kept quiet out of fear.

In Australia, Sall Grover (and her women-only app Giggle) is in the appellate court after being sued by a perpetually-sweaty, seriously-stubbled, hockey-playing trans-identifying male who took umbrage at being barred from the app. He calls himself Roxy Tickle. Grover appealed the Federal Court decision that this was “indirect discrimination” under the Sex Discrimination Act and awarded him $10,000 plus costs. Tickle’s legal team complained he was treated like a “hostile invader” which, frankly, he is.

In both cases, women created and defended female-only spaces, and in both cases, men demanded access with the full force of law on their side. This isn’t “progress”; it’s the systematic dismantling of women’s boundaries. That either woman has to set foot in court over these dramatics is misogyny writ large.


In short - other stuff that happened:

• New Zealand and Indonesia have signed a new agricultural trade agreement.

• Winston Peters declined to wear a hi-vis jacket while checking out the new City Rail Link and apparently this is news.

• A 27 year-old woman has been charged with ill‑treatment and neglect of a child after a 2‑year‑old girl was discovered alive inside a closed suitcase in the luggage compartment of an InterCity bus during a stop in Kaiwaka, north of Auckland.

• The New Zealand Media Council has upheld a complaint against The Press over its coverage of the Government’s school lunch programme, citing breaches of journalistic principles around fairness, balance, and conflict of interest.

• The Electoral Commission has rejected a social media panic driven by Te Pāti Māori alleging mass changes to enrolment details without consent. Some might call it a disinformation campaign.

• American Eagle’s ad featuring Sydney Sweeney outraged the woke who declared to be ‘Nazi dog-whistling’. The campaign reportedly boosted the company's stock by 30% in two weeks.

• The Royal New Zealand Air Force airlifted three individuals (one critically ill) from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, to Christchurch. The nearly 20‑hour mission has been hailed as one of the most challenging in recent times.

• Rongotai MP Julie Anne Genter is very unhappy that the electorate will be renamed when the boundaries change at the next election to ‘Wellington Bays’. Imagine a name being changed without consultation…

• Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has entered our capital into a “historic partnership” with the defacto capital of Palestine, signing a friendly city agreement with Ramallah Mayor Issa Kassis over video-call.

• Trump signed an executive order against debanking for political reasons.

• David Seymour was quoted saying “Chris Hipkins, the recidivist country-destroyer, has retreated to his lair, presumably to stockpile fresh petrol for the economic fire he was stoking just 18 months ago. He moans about people leaving New Zealand, even while proposing to tax the ones who stay harder.”

• A Brazilian woman facing 25 years in prison for “misgendering” a politician has just been granted refugee status in Europe.

• I would tell you if I knew what Labour’s position is on reinstating the oil and gas ban, but they keep changing their minds.

Stuff I found interesting this week:

Graham was on Joe Rogan! Someone who has got drunk in my back garden was on JRE!


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1 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/ncea-changes-labours-chris-hipkins-told-willow-jean-prime-she-should-have-responded-to-briefing-offers/JNCQHXW7BVFRFDTO5XMWZ7RIUE/

Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.