Mike Butler: The kura and the mushroom farm

A town planning error in Hastings provided a convenient exit for the Ministry of Education in unpopular plans for a kura for the suburb of Havelock North but has caused a substantial risk for a log-established mushroom farm, and regular unpleasant smells for 600 home owners.

A stoush between a retired principal and the government sparked by plans to prefer a Maori-immersion kura over a new primary school for the Hastings suburb of Havelock North (see http://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.co.nz/2016/04/mike-butler-two-ministers-and-kura.html) led to a public meeting in May.

Mike Butler: Two Ministers and a kura

A stoush between a retired principal and the government over the provision of a new primary school for the Hastings suburb of Havelock North stepped up a notch at the weekend with the National Party MP for Tukituki blaming the Labour Party.

Frustrated by a continued lack of response from both Tukituki MP Craig Foss and Education Minister Hekia Parata, the retired principal, Malcolm Dixon, yesterday launched a website www.schoolforhavelocknorth.co.nz to fight for the new primary school that was promised in 2010.

Mike Butler: Kura proceeds as schools struggle

A very public stoush is going on in Hastings over a plan to build a new Maori immersion school in the predominantly non-Maori suburb of Havelock North while primary schools there are bursting at the seams.

Education Minister Hekia Parata is pushing the plan while a recently retired long-time primary school principal and first-term Hastings district councilor Malcolm Dixon is leading the opposition.

Mike Butler: Joblessness-crime link weak

Recorded crime on the East Coast increased over the past year, unlike everywhere else in New Zealand, prompting the area’s politicians to offer their solutions. But what are the actual causes of crime? The cause of crime is a major research area in criminology, with a large number of correlates proposed -- bearing in mind that correlation does not imply causation. But first, what did the politicians say?

Labour MP Meka Whaitiri (Ikaroa-Eawhiti) said in this week's edition of The Hastings Mail that the answer is employment. Labour’s Tukituki candidate Anna Lorck cited new jobs and adequate pay. Labour’s Napier hopeful Stuart Nash cited poverty and unemployment. National MP Craig Foss (Tukituki) said “crime problems were ingrained in some families who saw belonging to criminal gangs and violence as nothing out of the ordinary”.