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The unemployment rate has dropped to 3.9%, the lowest rate in almost a decade. That’s 29,000 more jobs in June…

I went to a meeting yesterday . 26 people – really good hearted people from all walks of life – called together by Barrister Jo Wickliffe to see if we could help solve a problem.

You see, Auckland City doesn’t have a night shelter.

I am very pleased that we now have Ms Scholtens QC’s independent report. Her findings on the process for my appointment answer the matters that have been raised. The IPCA’s report is still to come: but she has already found that the appointment process was correctly carried out.

I’m reading Nicholas Shaxson’s excellent new book The Finance Curse. Here’s part of a paragraph that jumped out at me yesterday:

It comes from the Reserve Bank and if you look at the vertical blue stripes you will see that Household Debt in New Zealand is rising.It’s now about 170% of Nominal Disposable Income – so we are spending a lot more than we are earning.

What troubled me about this was that I had only two choices in terms of alerting someone to the obviously unusual experience of having a stranger come to my door asking for a cigarette: to do nothing or call the Police. It concerns me that there are only “no guns or big guns”, and nothing in between.

It makes no sense to me why a historical act of religious terrorism from Britain should eclipse an historical event far more deeply wedded to us in terms of identity and values.