• Your opponents will remind voters that your Government promised to fix the economy, but spent its capital rearranging the order of te reo and English on passports.

• You promised to bring down the cost of living, but voters had to remortgage the house to buy butter.

• You promised strong, competent government but... well, you get the picture.

• Introduce workplace insurance for health care,
• Increase the superannuation age in line with life expectancy and increase contributions to Kiwisaver,
• Put infrastructure spending through an independent bank that can introduce private capital without privatising and directors spending to the highest value projects.

Democracts need to learn, and start by telling Joe Biden the sad truth: he is in no condition to do another four years. One Democratic operative described the Biden situation as “the hardest case of taking the keys away from dad — ever”.It’s not just Biden who needs to hand over his keys. It’s the spin doctors and surrogates who think they are defeating Trump by telling us we didn’t see what we saw on debate night.

I chaired a panel last year with Keir Starmer and the Labour prime minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Store. I witnessed an ambitious, disciplined Starmer, refining a workable plan to transform the UK.The single thing everyone knows about the Labour leader’s family is that his dad was a toolmaker. That's the way Starmer wants it. Pride in work. Love of country. Respect for a job well done.Sneer at prosaic values if you want. It's the reason working class people will vote Labour in their hopeful millions on the Fourth of July. Keir Starmer is a beacon for the world in a darkening night.

Labour's law and order week ended with, first, a shooting from a character on home detention who plainly should not have been on home detention. And then, well. Then the justice minister was arrested. Let’s hope they don’t do an economy week next week. Chris Hipkins has looked like the adult son in a suit enduring his mother's third wedding.

They have ruled out anything big on tax. There have been kittenish evasions about removing the GST from fruit and vegetables. That would help families, but they need to say what would be cut to pay for it, or else it just looks like an election bribe. How about free or cheap dental care?The obstacle in the way of free or cheap dental care is paying for it. No policy is credible unless you say how to pay for it. Apply this rule to all new policies until the election. The point of politics is to make tough choices. If we want free dental care, then we have to identify something lower priority that we can go without to pay for it.Labour could fund free or heavily subsidised dental care for everyone by increasing the age of eligibility for NZ Super by one year. That would replace one universal entitlement with another.

• Good managers attract the right talent, come up with new products, and can make tough choices. Using this data, Chad showed that half a dozen highly productive countries also have the most competent business managers. We don't have either.
• The importance of competition. We're used to thinking about competition affecting the price of products, but it also affects our national income. In competitive markets, innovative businesses sweep away less productive ones, which is tough for the business that closes, but overall leads to resources being switched to doing things that create more with the same inputs. Competition causes innovation, boosts our wealth, and our wages. Now think about most of the businesses you deal with everyday: Supermarkets, banks, phones, power, even parking companies. When was the last time you can remember one of them being put out of business by an innovative upstart? Outside of the retail sector and some agile sectors like retirement care, most of our largest firms supplying the local market are comfortable oligopolies.

• Voter dissatisfaction with National and Labour is high, so expect ACT, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and NZ First all to have a successful year by their standards.
• NZ First is likely to return because if Shane Jones wins Northland, it’s hard for Labour to win as NZ First has ruled out Labour
• Labour's strategy will be to make the election about the future, not the past. It will cast bread-and-butter policies as the alternative to risk. Chippie's familiar leadership versus fear of cuts.
• Both parties will try to put themselves on the side of the many, and cast their opponent as a tool of special interests or privilege.
• National is casting Labour as a coalition of chaos.
• If Labour wants to be re-elected it could do worse than borrow the slogan of my mate Edi Rama, prime minister of Albania, who borrowed it from Tony Blair’s Labour: “Lots done. Lots to do. Lots to lose.”

Next up at #NZEF2023 is the panel on governance and democracy, featuring speakers Prof. Al Gillespie (Waikato Uni), Josie Pagani, Ben Guerin and Patrick Crewdson (Stuff). Topics discussed included Ukraine, the rise of populism and the impact of social media. pic.twitter.com/rLZFYKm5lE

— The University of Waikato 🎓 (@waikato) March 2, 2023

Josie Pagani: “I think liberal democracy is in real trouble; the last couple of years we’ve seen the worst drop and the lowest levels of democracy seen in 30 years ...it’s collapse could be the defining trend of the 21st century. Of course I’m suggesting we fight back.”

— The University of Waikato 🎓 (@waikato) March 2, 2023

I was worried that AI’s turgid prose was mimicking me. Then I realised, AI was not learning from what I have actually written. Instead, it identified me by the description “progressive, political commentator from the left”. Then read the internet, and regurgitated content it thinks someone on the left would produce. Boy, does the internet's idea of the progressive Left sound lifeless.

A poll taken just before she announced her resignation showed that for the first time more New Zealanders (41 percent) had an unfavorable opinion of her than a favorable one (40 percent). Another poll showed 64 percent believed the country has become more divided in the past few years. Many in the Labour Party, and others, cite misogyny as a factor driving Ms. Ardern from office. Misogynists are loud and probably wore her down, but they are not the reason her popularity at home tumbled.

Son, I love you. I am hurt by how obviously you are in pain. I am sorry that I could not be the father who could prevent your pain. I’m sorry I did not know how badly you were hurt and made mistakes when you tried to tell me. I’m sorry that the way you were raised re-traumatised you again and again. It’s true that the Household learned some bad behaviour when your Mum and I parted. That must stop. I don’t know if I can fix things. But I do know I am ready to listen and to do what is best for my sons. You are not a spare to me. You are my son.

• Divide public sector policy advice more clearly from implementation. People who do stuff should not be the same people who tell us how it is going.
• Power up select committees with their own permanent, substantial, policy and research capability carved out of existing ministries. MPs would decide whether to make their careers as legislators who write laws as select committee chairs, or executives who run ministries.
• Power up, don’t power down, the advocacy ministries. The ambition for those ministries is research, policy voice and scrutiny on behalf of diverse parts of our community. Make them more independent, like the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment or the Commerce Commission – heavyweight agencies whose analysis and advice is not dependent on ministerial approval. They could think the unthinkable and be free to persuade.
• Run it all with a much smaller Cabinet: five or six individuals who focus on strategy, more like a board of directors. Most MPs would never be in Cabinet, so there would be real competition, and fewer anonymous seat-fillers.

Critics routinely fail to present a better idea to solve the problem, or even acknowledge a problem exists. The problem a wealth tax is meant to solve is that the gap between the richest and poorest New Zealander has increased. According to author Max Rashbrooke, the richest 1% of us, as few as 38,000 people, are worth nearly 70 times more than the typical New Zealander. Reflect on that figure for a moment, and before you criticise a wealth tax, tell us how you would close that gap, or even acknowledge its existence. Only tax policy will meaningfully reduce inequality.

It sets no-one apart to tell voters that you want them to thrive and prosper, that you value success. No-one disagrees. Jacinda Ardern has made a career out of political values no-one can disagree with (“be kind”), but the purpose of politics is to choose between alternative ideas. ​If you aspire to lead New Zealand, you must lead for all New Zealanders, not just the privileged.

The best way to increase wages is to ... increase wages. The price of labour isn't the same as the price of a tomato. If tomatoes cost more, I buy less of them. If wages go up, businesses invest in higher productivity and the economy as a whole earns more. The question is who gets the benefit of those productivity gains. Whatever the merits of Fair Pay Agreements, if you think they are bad because wages will go up, then you have to believe that we are worse off if we are paid more and better off if we are paid less.

Our politics are often about "being good" instead of "doing good". Last week we saw the tribes divide - albeit politely - into pro-or anti-barbecues. And yet when politics is truly about the personal, we have so much in common: getting kids through school. Having enough money to pay bills, buy a home, and retire. Having our health and time to spend with family and friends. What we need now is the right kind of personal politics - a politics of this ordinary stuff.

The poor seldom come out of a crisis better off. Imagine if in 1938, when Michael Joseph Savage increased his majority, instead of creating the welfare state he promised a new holiday. That's where we are now.

• Food security and water (support for primary producers to get food to markets, and to open up supply chains).
• Strengthen the health system (some countries have only a few ICU beds and little PPE equipment).
• Make the borders safe (support to have temperature checks and systems in place).
• Digital connectivity (so that health professionals for example can ‘sit in’ on operations and clinics while still in New Zealand).
• “Now more than ever we have to get smarter at spending New Zealand’s aid dollars. It’s not just about increased funding. It’s about a new way of working, including greater collaboration amongst our charities, and with New Zealand businesses working in the Pacific, and government departments,” says Josie Pagani.

Working-class people in the North, Wales and the North East, in seats that have been Labour for 80 years, walked away from a party that chose the university common room over the smoko room. Purity over power. Labour was created to win government to represent the values and interests of people who work for a living. Instead Jeremy Corbyn and his comrades purged the party of electable MPs who voiced electorally popular concerns about the unelectable Marxist cult. In doing so, he delivered a storming fourth consecutive election win to a hapless, divided, promise-breaking Tory government. The Conservatives breached Labour's red wall in the North by speaking to the values of working people in those community.

Two members of Boris Johnson's cabinet have resigned, one of them his brother. As political commentator John McTernan said, Joe Johnson is the first MP to resign 'to spend less time with his family'.

The number has fallen from 40% of the world's population in the 1980s to 11% now, although this decline is attributable to such factors as reduced debt, increasing fair trade and better understanding of the real causes of poverty as much as it is to aid.To fix the remaining 11%, says Pagani, there is a job to do in convincing the public. “It is not just about wanting to fund media-friendly tragedies – but that people are interested in what we are going to do about this long term.”

• The prospect of a merger between Wellington and Porirua.
• Porirua mayor Nick Legget considers standing for the Wellington mayoralty.
• Police handling of a siege near Kawerau.
• Should the police be armed, and Judith Collins' comments about a gun register.
• Have you voted in the flag referendum yet?
• VW pulls its harmless ad, in which a character slips over.