It was the best of times, and the worst of times. For National Leader Christopher Luxon at least. Just when the prospect of governing looked brightest, another controversy erupted from the back of his caucus on Monday night.
A 1News/Kantar poll broadcast on Monday night showed National and ACT could govern alone if the poll taken from July 30 and August 3 was replicated in an election due late next year. The poll found support for both Opposition parties combined rose two percentage points to 48%, while support for Labour and Green fell three points to 42%.
Only the Maori Party on 2% would also get into Parliament, leaving the remaining eight percentage points wasted and being shared proportionally among the four parties in Parliament. That would leave National's 37% (down two points from the last 1News/Kantar poll in May) giving it 48 seats and ACT's 11% (up four points) giving it 14 seats. The combined 62 seats would be enough to govern (just) in a 120 seat Parliament. That also assumes that Rawiri Waititi holds the Waiariki electorate seat for The Maori Party, allowing him to bring in two list MPs on his coat-tails.
Labour's support fell two percentage points to 33%, its lowest level in five years. Green support fell one point to 9%.
The popularity of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also continued to wane. Her support as preferred PM fell three points to 30%, although support for Luxon also fell three points to 22%.
No time to enjoy it
But the scheduled poll news popped up in the middle of a media firestorm over revelations reported by Stuff's Kirsty Johnson late on Monday afternoon that new National MP for Tauranga, Sam Uffindell, was kicked out of Kings College private school in Auckland in 1999 as a 16 year old after he viciously beat a fellow student late at night. He completed his schooling at St Paul's Collegiate in Hamilton.
Stuff reported the unnamed victim saying he was beaten with the wooden legs of beds in the school's dorm rooms. Uffindell has admitted the beating, but said he regretted it and had apologised to the victim last year, just months before being selected to be National's candidate in the safe seat of Tauranga. He said he could not recall using the bed legs, but acknowledged he may have.
'We knew about the attack'
A National spokesman said it had known about the attack when deciding to select Uffindell. The voters of Tauranga did not.
"The National Party was proactively informed about this incident by Sam Uffindell during the selection process. It was a significant event reflecting a serious error of judgment by a then 16-year-old for which he has apologised and regrets to this day," a spokesman said via email.
Uffindell released his own statement this evening:
“When I was in fifth form (year 11), I and some other students in my year went into another dorm at the boarding house at the end of term and I punched a younger student in the arm and body multiple times. We were subsequently asked to leave the school.
"I’ve reflected on this incident multiple times over the 20 years since it occurred, and have no recollection of using anything other than my fists. Nevertheless, it’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done and something I deeply regret. I’ve worked hard to be a better person than I was as a teenager and to be a good role model to my children.
"After I came back to New Zealand I called the person and apologised for the harm I’d caused. We had a long conversation and I was grateful that he accepted my apology. My apology was genuine then, and it is genuine now.”
'I got carried away'
Earlier, Uffindell was quoted in Stuff as saying he got carried away.
“I went over to the person and punched them several times in the arm and the body and they were hurt. It was the last day of the year and we were just being silly and playing up … we got carried away and we did what we did," he said.
"I regret it and I was really stupid and I’m apologetic for what happened, and since then I’ve tried to make myself a better person and set an example for my children. I’ve learned a lot from the experience from 20 years ago."
He also told Stuff he wanted to close off the issue by apologising to the victim. He denied apologising to clear a pathway into politics.
"That wasn’t my motivation at all. I called the guy up because I was regretful about what happened and I wanted to close that off," he said.
Victim felt used
The victim told Stuff he felt sick when seeing that Uffindell was running for Parliament a few months later.
“At the time, he said not a day had gone by when he didn’t think about it. He used his family, saying he has daughters and would be sickened if anything happened to them,” the victim said of Uffindell's apology in July last year.
“I believed him. But seeing that (the political announcement) - it made me feel his apology wasn’t genuine, he was just doing it to get his skeletons out of the closet, so he could have a political career. If he really cared he would have at least given me a heads-up that he was planning to enter politics,” he said.
“And he wouldn’t have waited until the last minute to apologise until he had something he wanted to do, if he was genuinely apologetic and caring.”
'Accountability and consequences'
Uffindell appeared in a round of media interviews soon after the release of the Stuff article and said his future as a National MP was in the hands of leader Christopher Luxon.
Luxon announced a new policy of getting tough on unemployed youth yesterday, saying there should be consequences for actions.
Uffindell said in his maiden speech to Parliament last week he championed personal responsibility.
68 Comments
I expect he had planned to attempt to become an MP or at least put his name in the pot well before Bridges resigned. I'd be very surprised if that resignation was the thing that sparked his desire to be an MP.
Could still be genuine and I am sure he regrets his actions, but it's a bad look.
Folk don't wake up one day and decide to enter politics,they plan for this...just as Luxon stopped going to the Upper Room Church a few years ago to try and create some distance from the church and not to be seen too aligned to such an evangelical happy clapper outfit...JK was schooling Luxon years ago,probably suggested that it might be an issue,so best to move away from it.
iliketobike,reading the Stuff article,it sounds like the victim has approached someone (rather than a political hatchet job) after feeling as you say that the apology was politically driven,rather than genuine remorse.If Uffindell hadn't said anything to the victim,this probably wouldn't have come up,most boys have a memory of some bullying when younger and move on,but if someone from your past turns up and 're-visits' the episode,he has to go through the trauma all over again.
And then there is the hypocrisy of it,if he was genuinely remorseful,he would be a little more understanding of youth crime and next time a 13yo gets caught ram raiding,he would be compassionate about giving them a 2nd chance and not bringing out the big stick,given he was given a 2nd chance.
I only bash those who deserve it. Start with those in KO houses who are unable to exist with their neighbours. Top up with those who now see it as a right that the state provide subsidised housing LONG TERM. Then finish off with those who are in poverty/not working who bring another kid into this world. With 70,000 +/- state houses and thousands of families in emergency accommodation (motels), I’d suggest there are thousands (tens of thousands?) who need dragging out and made to stand on their own feet. Too many bludgers……Addendum-I’d cut genuine sickness beneficiaries some slack.
I have met Sam, he is a really gentle easy going family man. He was 16 at the time, it was 20 years ago, looks like a political hit job to me. I’m not a fan of National under Luxon, but Sam doesn’t deserve to lose his job over this. Perhaps he could use it as an opportunity to have empathy for other 16 year olds who make poor choices, due to youthful inexperience, poor judgement and peer pressure. Everyone deserves a second chance.
But his whole political platform has been about "law and order". Cracking down on crime.
He has been all about NOT giving people another chance when they do stupid/violent things.
He just stood in parliament and gave a speech all about "Accountability" and about how people need to be held responsible for their criminal actions.
If gangs of 16 year olds in south Auckland were going around and beating 13 year olds with bed legs, then this guy would be all about "locking them up and throwing away the key."
Fair point. So I think you are saying that it is ok to mess up at 16 and that this shouldn’t impact our future careers. But it is not ok to then attack other 16 year olds for doing the same thing.
It is more the charge of hypocrisy that could be his undoing rather than the schoolboy act itself?
I think it sounds like uffindell was a violent bully. Sure he didn't just leave that kid alone all year and then beat the snot out of him on just one night. He sounds like a terrible person at 16.
And a complete hypocrite now. Privileged, with no idea about how the "bottom feeders" live. He won't do anything to help wayward youth... his political platform has been to lock them up. "Crack down on crime", etc.
It's absolutely inexcusable. It was an unwritten rule when I was at school around the same time. 3rd formers were called "turds", nothing more than that. You certainly didn't see a group of 5th or 6th formers giving one of them the bash, unless they wanted the whole First XV after them.
Hell, I'm sure there's a good 1000 or more people out there that weren't like this knucklehead at school, who would do just as good a job if not better as a list MP on $160k+. He doesn't deserve a free pass at all, what a drop kick.
Well said. A belated apology doesn't cut it. That kind of bullying, and indeed much less, can traumatise a child for the rest of their life with significant impacts and effects. Rich kid from a privileged upbringing expecting or knowing their parents would bail them out with stuff all if any consequences. Changing a school isn't much, even if his parents weren't too happy with him.
There's also no way "I don't recall" cuts it either. You'd know if you used a weapon when assaulting someone.
He was effectively expelled. Schools do't take that step lightly. This was clearly more than a high-spirited, end-of-term hazing.
He's not fit to be an MP if he continues to diminish his responsibility.
Those private boys schools are extremely vicious environments, anyone who has been a boarder in them for a decent period knows what they are like.
They are a reproduction of the british system for producing tough officers and administrators to run the Empire long ago.
He took the wrong approach, which is you go tough on crime but reformist by saying you can always come back from that to achieve great things. Lots of kids are violent, drunken shitheads in their teens who sort themselves out after a few years.
`Gosh I so wish Luxton hadn't come out swinging at unemployed youth.
Seem to me to be a very unchristianly thing to do, really.
But hey, he did bring tattoos out of the shadows on ANZ - so I'll give him another chance.
But just one.
https://simpleflying.com/air-new-zealand-tattoos/
How is that relevant. Like no one else did something stupid when they where 16 years old. Just more tabloid rubbish from the usual MSM fluff. Absolutely no need for this to be splashed all over the paper after how many years?
An ouch those polls... Get ready for a flood of Chinese immigrants next year NZ.
Cant decide what a dislike more. Bumbling socialists, or an army of Chinese buying up our land?
Horrible, but don't fret one of those year 11 boys will some day become an MP on a minimum 3 x the median salary all thanks to the taxpayer. They'll have to send out a token apology to your son in an attempt to sweep it under the rug first though, but it's okay we were all kids once right? I hear Jon Venables is going to apologize for what he did, and become a British MP too.
In my last year of school, I was threatened with expulsion for putting a third former inside a fridge against his will.
Thing was, I had nothing to do with it, didn't even know it had happened. I got very righteous with the Principal.
Boarding schools were (maybe still are) definitely lord of the flies...
And the new PM, C Luxon. Play the game right, and he'll have a second term. Following in the footsteps of Sir JK, become chairman of a large NZ corp. Once in a while comment on how bad a US speaker was.
And holiday in Hawaii during winters.
J Ardern has done much for Maori, but not enough for some. Her appeal in the world media will be hard to emulate. Unlike in rural NZ.
In NZ, and maybe everywhere else, its impossible to please everyone.
Has Ardern served foreigners who share her worldview above the shared interests of New Zealanders? Did John Key do the same?
There are two points here:
Do they serve their social caste or the public at large?
Do they seek to enrich their friends and impoverish their enemies, or do they seek to heal divisions?
What a brilliant interview with Cameron Bagrie on tv3 am show. It's all about education and if National pick that up as a cornerstone policy they will romp home.
We need to become a nation with a world class education system. Then everything else falls in behind that. Thats it.
I'm not Yvil but I'm jumping in...
- Pay for teachers
- Loading kids with debt (University obv.)
- Our focus on testing and rote learning instead of teaching kids how to learn.
- Student to teacher ratio
- Environment for learning (hard to focus on learning when you have no food in the belly)
Fixing those things would be a good start.
Kids from middle class families are doing fine.
It's at the pre-school and even pre-birth stage that all the harm is done for those that lag behind - children exposed to alcohol and drugs in utero, raised with poor nutrition and housing leading to ill-health, traumatised by exposure to violence, held back by undiagnosed hearing and vision deficits or untreated learning disabilities. All leading to poor progress and kids looking for alternative ways to fill their time.
Without addressing childhood poverty and the housing crisis measures like reducing student loans are just middle class welfare.
PISA Scores showing scores from 2000 - 2018:
Reading was 529, now 506
Maths 523 now 494
Science 530 now 508
I'd love to see the data but I would suggest that it is declining as a whole for a large variety of reasons. I would be surprised if "middle class" kids scores have remained consistent and "lower class" kids have dragged the average down.
I would suggest all the issues you have mentioned have not changed dramatically over the last 20 years.
Ideology.
There's no pursuit of excellence in our education system, it's all about padding NCEA credits with "soft" subjects to enhance pass rates, especially of priority demographics. There's a focus on a "Maori lens" for every topic, even in hard sciences where it makes no sense. Finally, a rabidly left wing nationwide teacher body who inculcates a shame/victim dual paradigm onto students. It really is a shitshow.
"What do you see as the impediments to having a world class education system Yvil?"
For a start, I would pay teachers (and nurses) better, significantly better.
We need to better assess the students performance and reinstate proper grades, there's too much "wokeness" about not offending the struggling student. Life is not woke, if we don't perform we don't succeed, school is a preparation for life, today's students are too "cocooned" in cotton wool.
About the "world class" bit, well I don't know how to say this without offending my fellow Kiwis… I'm from Switzerland my wife is originally from Korea, there is a much stronger work ethic at all levels. Hey, I like living in NZ because life is more easy going, but if you really want world class… then a top work ethic across all the population, teachers, parents, students, government is a must. This is incredibly hard to change
Yvil the country had it - the work ethic - as it was built by people with a strong work ethic
We just need to get it back - as you have said - but we have more and more made NZ into a country where life is provided for from cradle to grave, where the govt will provide rather than the attitude that if you want to achieve something then get out there and do so
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/national-mp-sam-uffindell-kept-quiet-over…
It appears the ACT candidate may have been more genuine regarding his 'biggest mistake'...lost opportunity for Sam there it appears. Excerpt;
Asked whether it would have been responsible to release it given the development it had caused in him, Uffindell said: "We're doing it now, I don't have a response to you on that".
In a Bay of Plenty Times question and answer article in June in which candidates were asked, among other questions, what were their biggest mistakes, Uffindell replied: "Not coming home to New Zealand sooner. There's nowhere we'd rather raise our kids".
Asked whether he would change this, Uffindell said a question and answer forum wasn't an appropriate platform to discuss such an incident.
Act byelection candidate Cameron Luxton, who revealed his drink-driving as a teenager while answering that question, believed Uffindell wasn't being honest to voters.
"I was upfront at the time ... I was drink-driving as a teenager and it's been my biggest regret and it's something I thought that you should be honest about.
"I disclosed it to Act and they agreed that voters deserved to know before they cast their vote."
What I find amazing is the effort of the Media to throw Labour aside and to get the Nats in. There seems to have been a switch, sometime around the anti-mask protests, in which the media realised there is widespread hatred of Labour.
They can't stop trying their hardest to spin Luxon into something (I struggle to take him seriously because he has one of those egg shaped heads which look terrible bald). They did the same thing in 2017 when they just span jacinda under the obviously astroturfed "Jacindamania".
The media giveth and the media taketh away.
If National can make it to the elections without scandals then they should walk into power, not for any policy reason, just simply for the fact that they aren't Labour.
Here's hoping a new party arrives with some decent policies before next election. I don't think I have it in me to hold my nose and vote for the least worst option again.
The headline used for this article (revelations new MP beat up a kid cloud the news) is a perfect example of subtle media manipulation. For a start, it implies that the perpetrator was an adult when a crime was committed against a minor, and/or that it was recent. Both serve to ramp up the possibility of reader outrage.
A more just accurate segment for that headline would be "historical childhood assault allegations cloud the news".
Interest.co.nz should be doing better than this tabloid muck.
Hopefully this incompetent, illiberal, woke and spendthrift government gets kicked out next year (while better than Labour, National are not all that great either, as the lack of imagination of their policies is quite sobering - moreover, their tax cuts will prove inflationary and as such a guarantee that the OCR will have to stay at a peak of 4-5% for the foreseeable future).
I hope that the same applies to Orr and Andy Coster - the sooner these muppets get kicked out, the better for the respective organizations and for NZ in general.
Time to change direction.
... I'm picking that Ardern will bail out around 6 months before the next election ... at 30 % her approval rate is woefully low for an incumbent PM ...
Luckily for us all , the Gnat's coalition partner ACT does have some good ideas , and Dave Seymour does talk like a regular person ... no Jacinda fluff & waffle ... ACT up , team !
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