Education Minister Erica Stanford is my politician of the day for announcing that the Government isn't going to be building any more of those terrible open-plan classrooms.

But she’ll be my politician of the year if she goes further than that and finds money to put some walls and doors in the modern learning environment monstrosities that already exist.

In fact, I think the Government is morally obliged to help any state school that wants to get rid of their open-plan classrooms. It’s morally obliged because this disastrous experiment was forced on the schools.

And it will cost a truckload of money but it’s the only option, in my mind.

Unless, of course, there are schools that are perfectly happy teaching kids in barns. They can fill their boots.

But I bet there are a truckload of schools looking at this announcement and thinking “what about us?”

The way Erica Stanford puts it is that she’s had overwhelming feedback that open-plan classrooms aren’t meeting the needs of students.

She says: “While open-plan designs were originally intended to foster collaboration, they have often created challenges for schools, particularly around noise and managing student behaviour.”

Which is a polite way of saying that it was a hair-brained idea that shouldn’t have seen the light of day. And to Erica Stanford and the Government’s credit, they’re not building any more.

Which Rangiora High School principal Bruce Kearney says is great, but he wants to know about all the schools that have already been lumbered with open-plan classrooms.

Some of which have had a gutsful and have spent a lot of their own money turning the barns into old-school classrooms.

Rangiora High School is one of them. They spent $1.5 million. Shirley Boys’ High School in Christchurch spent $800,00. And Avonside Girls' spent $60,000 on screens and acoustic panels because a full fit-out was going to be too expensive for the school to pay for on its own.

Avonside principal Catherine Law says she is “thrilled” to see the move away from open-plan because it’s done nothing for students having a sense of belonging, and it had a really detrimental effect on teaching and learning.

She says year 9 and year 10 kids —the old third formers and fourth formers— are the ones who seem to struggle the most, because they’re the ones getting used to high school.

She says those years especially are the worst times for kids to be expected to try and work in open-plan areas. She says there’s a lot of anxiety with the kids not knowing where they sit and where they belong.

And she thinks that any school that wants to get rid of the open-plan set-up should get funding to do it.

If the experience at Rangiora High is anything to go by, why wouldn't the Government spend some money fixing up this shambles?

Since Rangiora put in the walls and doors, attendance is up by 12%. Which principal Bruce Kearney puts down to “happier teachers, happier kids, and a happier school”.

And he is in no doubt that the Government needs to stump up with the money so all schools that want to benefit from this brilliant move by Erica Stanford, can.

I’m going further than that though.

I think the government is morally obliged to do it. Because even though it wasn't this particular government that forced modern learning environments on schools, it was still the government-of-the-day.

The current administration is now admitting that the experiment has failed. So there is no way it can say that but still expect kids already being taught in these battery farms to put up with it.

And there’s no way it can admit it was a cock-up and expect teachers to keep teaching in these places.

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Associate Energy Minister Shane Jones says we live in uncertain times and, because of that, we need to crank up the Marsden Point oil refinery again.

I agree that we live in uncertain times, but I certainly don’t agree that we should pour time and money into something which has had its day.

Shane Jones isn’t the only person talking about it though. The Prime Minister has said too that the Government is considering reopening Marsden Point as part of its plan to strengthen the country’s fuel and energy security.

Because, since it was closed in April 2022, we’ve been importing all our refined fuel.

We’ve also been importing all the bitumen we need for roads as well since the refinery closed. Before then, 70% of the bitumen used in New Zealand for roads was produced at Marsden Point, with 30% imported. Now 100% is imported.

But let’s not forget some of the nonsense that gets trotted-out about the old refinery. Which, once you cut through and dismiss, shows just how crazy it would be to try and get it up and running again.

First up: it wasn’t the previous Labour government that shut it down – the Associate Energy Minister was trotting out that line again this morning.

It was actually shut down by the private company which owned it back in 2022. The company was known as Refining NZ, these days it’s known as Channel Infrastructure.

I think the Government needs to drop this idea of looking into reopening it. Because if the people who know a thing-or-two about running a refinery think it’s a stupid idea, then who am I going to listen to? The people who know what they’re on about?

Of course I am. We all should, including the Government.

Because all this is, is another one of those desperado elements of the coalition agreement between National and NZ First.

Shane Jones is from the north and he’s just doing what any MP would do for their region.

And, before he continues with all this bluster about geopolitical clouds casting doubt on our future fuel supply, he should listen to what Refinery NZ said a year after shutting down the refinery.

They said it would cost billions to reinstate and take at least a couple of years to do it. So why would you? Especially, when you consider who might run the thing.

Because if the private outfit that used to run it wanted out, I don't see anyone else putting their hand up to take over.

What’s more, generating electricity is the future. Refining oil isn’t.

Even one of the union people who fought against the closure thinks we’d be flogging a dead horse trying to reopen it.

Justin Wallace is First Union’s oil and gas co-ordinator and he’s on record as saying that it would be unrealistic to expect the refinery to be cranked into action again.

He has said that although the footprint of the refinery is still there, the company that shut it down dismantled its key components as soon as they were able, and 80-90% of the staff who had worked at the refinery have left.

He says: “They've gone overseas, taken redundancy, or retired. Unless the Government is willing to tax more people to find more money to rebuild it, I think it's a pipe dream.”

Can someone please pass that on to Shane Jones?

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How about this for an idea?

Instead of the tax people pay on the first $60,000 of their income going to the government, what if it went into a savings account to pay for healthcare and put food on the table when they retire?

It’s an idea being pushed by former finance minister Sir Roger Douglas and University of Auckland economics professor Robert MacCulloch which, they say, is needed because of the ageing population.

They reckon people could save as much as $21,000 a year, with some of the money going into a health account, some going into a superannuation account, and the rest going into a “rainy day” account.

There are some bits about this that really I like, and I’m not so sure about other aspects.

The thing I like most is that —for pretty much the first-time ever— we would have tax money ringfenced for specific things.

Whether we can describe it as tax money I’m not sure, because it would be money not going to the government but going into these individual bank accounts instead. But we’ll call it tax money.

Sir Roger and Professor MacCulloch have done the numbers and they reckon that —if the government didn’t get its hands on the tax money from the first $60,000 of everyone’s income— on average, people would end up with just over $20,000 in their account each year.

Breaking that down, they say we’d have about $9,500 going into the health bucket, just under $7,400 going into the superannuation bucket, and $4,200 going into the “rainy day” bucket. That’s each year – providing you’re working, of course.

So I like it for the ring-fencing and how we would know exactly how much we have up our sleeve.

And if you do the numbers over the course of someone’s total working life —that’s assuming that they start work at 20 and stop working at 65— the average person that Sir Roger is basing his numbers on could have about $950,000 in their account.

That’s without interest being factored in. So they could retire with more than $1 million in the bank to pay for healthcare and to live off.

And if you’re thinking we’ve got KiwiSaver, so why would we need this extra savings account? If you’re thinking that, chances are you’re well-off enough to afford KiwiSaver.

Because Professor MacCulloch is saying today that many low-income earners just can’t afford KiwiSaver and they would benefit big-time if most of their tax actually went into a savings account. Which makes sense to me.

Dig a little deeper though and Sir Roger Douglas’ old ACT Party ideals start to come through, with him saying today that this approach would give people the freedom to choose whether they get medical treatment, for example, in the public sector or the private sector.

But what if every Tom, Dick, and Harry had all this money and decided to get their hips done privately? That would be boom times for the private hospitals, but what would it mean for the public hospitals?

Possibly less government investment.

And what if a model like this was adopted and we had politicians down the track letting people use the money in these dedicated accounts to pay for first-home deposits and all that carry-on? Which has happened with KiwiSaver.

Sir Roger says he’s been banging on for ages about what he and Professor MacCulloch are calling an “economic car crash”.

They say governments over the years have chosen to ignore the looming health and welfare crisis that we’re heading into, if we haven’t reached that point already.

At the root of it is the ageing population. And they’re saying today that we just can’t keep on keeping on the way we have and the way we are.

And I agree with them. Which is why —even though I’ve got some misgivings about the impact this could have on things like government investment in the healthcare system— overall, I think it’s a brilliant idea.

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We can safely say that someone who rides their motorbike at 110 kph in a 50 kph area is a threat.

We can also safely say that someone who rides their motorbike at 110 kph in a 50 kph area and runs a red light is a danger.

We can also safely say that someone who rides their motorbike at 110 kph in a 50 kph area, runs a red light and kills two pedestrians is a menace.

This is a real-life story. And, upfront, I’m going to say that the person responsible is someone who should never be allowed to ride a motorbike or drive a car again. But under current laws, he can. And he is going to be allowed to.

The person I’m talking about is Mark Kimber. And, in July 2022, he was doing exactly what I’ve just described. On Friday, he was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for the manslaughter of Karen and Geoffrey Boucher. And when he gets out of prison, his licence will be taken off him for three years.

The Bouchers had been out for dinner at a restaurant in Bethlehem, about 8 kilometres from Tauranga, and were crossing the road when they were killed by this guy. Both of them died at the scene.

But here’s where it gets worse. If it could.

Before the crash, he had 11 prior convictions for bad driving. These included careless driving, speeding, drink-driving, dangerous driving, failing to stop and driving while suspended. He also had 70 driving infringements on his record.

What’s more, in the time between the fatal crash and his appearance in court, he was done for speeding twice.

Which tells me that this guy has proven that he will never change and he should never be allowed to have a driver’s licence again.

Tell that to the sentencing judge, though. Who seemed to think that this guy's childhood needed to be taken into account when she was sentencing him for the manslaughter of this innocent couple.

I’m not going to get too bogged down on that side of it. Because it’s the fact that this judge thinks losing his licence for three years is a tough enough penalty.

At the moment, someone in New Zealand can lose their licence indefinitely and can only get it back if they've proved that they've done something about their drinking or drug-taking.

But I don‘t think this guy should ever be allowed to drive again. Because he has shown time and time again that he doesn't give a stuff about anyone else on the road.

If anything, it’s the two speeding offences he committed between the time of the crash and his day in court that ram it home for me.

When someone kills two people like this guy did, you would think that they might be a bit more cautious on the road.

Especially, knowing that're going to be hauled through the court for it.

But Mark Kimber didn’t take his foot of the pedal. And it’s my view that people like him need to be kept off our roads for good. And, instead of “indefinite disqualification” being the strongest punishment we hand out to repeat offenders like him, we should be taking their driver’s licences off them for good.

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Not as straightforward as it sounds.

That’s pretty much the message coming through loud and clear in this new report which says importing liquified natural gas to make up for our dwindling local supplies is do-able. But.

You’ll remember how, last year, when we had factories closing and people paying through the nose for their electricity, talk turned to what could be done, especially given we are at-risk of not having the gas needed to generate power.

So the Government brought up the idea of importing liquified natural gas.

Fast-forward a few months and four of the big companies have put their heads together, looking into the practicalities of importing gas. The outcome is this report out today effectively saying we could do it, but there are a few things to think about.

The main ones being the price tag and how long it would take to get it happening.

First up, the cost. Up to $1 billion. That’s to get the infrastructure needed so that we can bring the gas in and store it.

It could be done cheaper, but the gas would be 25% more expensive.

Secondly, if we’re up for that kind of spend, it wouldn’t be an overnight fix. It would be about four years before we started to see the benefits.

Another main point in this report is that we could spend the money and wait for it all to come online, but there could be years when we don’t even need the extra gas.

That’s because power generation in New Zealand uses a combination of hydro, gas, and wind.

And in the years when we have plenty of rain and the hydro lakes are full, for example, we might not need to import gas.

So we could go down the route of spending all this money over the next four years —setting ourselves up— and the demand for gas that we might have now not being the same down the track.

But that’s a bit like pouring money into a fire alarm and sprinkler system and not using it, you know it's there and give it gives you security.

That’s how I see this gas importation business – it would be a back-up. And so-what if it wasn’t needed all the time?

The question facing us now is what do we do now that we have a better idea about the complexities and the cost?

Paul Goodeve, chief executive of the Clarus energy company, thinks we need to ask ourselves whether it’s worth doing without getting obsessed about the cost.

Because as I said earlier, it could be done cheaper —at around $200 million— but that would mean the gas would be 25% more expensive.

I’m no doubt that we have to bite the bullet and press go, and press go on the expensive option.

Because if you or I, or the Greens or whoever, think that this is nuts and we shouldn’t be importing gas and we should all have solar panels on the roof, that’s la-la land.

If you listen to the likes of Greenpeace, they’ll say that importing gas shouldn’t even be an option and we should be going full-bore with solar and wind power generation.

Again, la-la land. Because the reality is, we need a mix of generation options.

And even though it looks like importing liquified gas might not be as straightforward as we might have thought when the government started talking about it last year, what are the alternatives?

Crossing our fingers and hoping for the best? No thanks.

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Do you think the Government and councils would be “morally bankrupt” if they stopped paying people out when their properties are so flood-damaged that they can’t live there anymore?

And would you feel the same about people living in areas at risk of flooding being forced to pay more for flood schemes and sea walls because they’re the ones who benefit most?

That’s what a panel of experts is recommending to the Government. But a climate policy expert is saying that would be, you guessed it, “morally bankrupt”. And I agree.

What’s more, I think this approach would let councils off the hook for allowing places to be built in crazy, at-risk locations.

What’s happened, is an independent reference group set up by the Ministry for the Environment has come up with a list of recommendations to help the Government work on some climate adaptation legislation.

Adaptation being what you do when something like climate change and sea-level rise threatens to take-out an area.

This group is made up of economists, people from the banking and insurance sectors, local government and iwi. So a wide range of people. And if I there’s an overarching theme to their advice, it would be this: “You’re on your own buddy.”

And instead of looking to the councils and governments for hand-outs and direction, people should have to decide for themselves if they’re going to stay living where they are.

And if their properties get flooded and there’s no way they can keep on living there, then they shouldn't expect their local council or Wellington to buy them out.

Talk about hardcore. Talk about morally bankrupt.

This group of experts isn’t stopping there, either. It’s also saying that, if you live in an area where there is a risk of flooding and things like sea walls and flood schemes are needed, then you and your neighbours should pay more for those things because you’re the ones who benefit the most.

So, if we apply that to some of the things that have happened here in Canterbury, that would mean people in the Flockton Basin area in Christchurch, paying more for the privilege of living somewhere that used to flood at the drop of a hat.

Remember that? And how the council poured truckloads of money into a pumping system that stopped the water overflowing in the Dudley Creek area and flooding the streets and houses?

The Christchurch City Council spent $49 million on a flood mitigation scheme in Flockton Basin. Elsewhere in town, it spent about $70 million to deal with flooding issues along the Heathcote River. That included buying-out people's houses. Some friends of mine had their place bought out as part of that scheme.

But under these recommendations to the Government, the people in Flockton Basin would be expected to pay more than the rest of us because they’re the ones who are benefiting directly from their streets and houses not flooding anymore.

Also under these recommendations, my mates wouldn’t have their house bought out by the council – even though they can’t live there anymore because it keeps flooding

I would hate to see us take this approach. Which is why agree with climate policy expert, Emeritus Professor Jonathan Boston from Victoria University, who is saying today that leaving people high and not necessarily dry like this would be “morally bankrupt”.

He says: "One of the core responsibilities of any government is to protect its citizens and to deal with natural disasters and so on. That is above almost anything else."

He’s also criticising this group’s recommendation that any changes be phased-in within the next 20 years, saying that the risks and impacts of climate change are going to continue evolving beyond this 20-year deadline.

He says to put an end-date on it is "Morally bankrupt and highly undesirable".

And, as I say, it would let councils off-the-hook. Because for me, if a council gives consent for something to built somewhere, then that same council needs to carry the can if it turns out that that something is somewhere it shouldn’t be.

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Labour leader and former Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins thinks phase two of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid-19 response is a platform for conspiracy theorists, and he is non-committal about turning-up to give evidence.

The most committed I’ve heard him so far is saying that he’s working on some written responses. But if that turns out to be the extent of his involvement, then he can forget about being prime minister again.

Because let me remind you of a couple of things.

While it was the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who, generally, fronted the Government’s Covid response. It was Hipkins —as Covid Minister— who drove it behind the scenes.

Secondly, if it was good enough for former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to front up in person to the UK’s Covid inquiry, then it is more than good enough for Chris Hipkins to front up in person to our inquiry.

In December 2023, Boris Johnson spent two days being grilled by the committee of MPs, which had the job of looking into how his government handled the pandemic.

This is the guy who told people they had to isolate at home and then had parties at 10 Downing Street.

This is the guy who disappeared to his country house when Covid was running rampant.

This is the guy who, somehow, lost 5,000 WhatsApp messages from his phone, which couldn’t be used as evidence at the inquiry.

This is the same guy who told the UK inquiry that he was the victim of not being properly informed about the seriousness of Covid.

Boris Johnson is the guy who is widely considered to have cocked-up the response in Britain but who, despite all that, fronted-up to take questions and take the heat over two days.

And it wasn’t pleasant for him. He was grilled. But say what you like about Boris Johnson, at least he fronted up.

From what I’ve seen, at no point did Boris Johnson dismiss the inquiry in Britain as a platform for conspiracy theorists.

At no point did Boris Johnson bang-on about the Covid inquiry in Britain creating an opportunity for theatrics from conspiracy theorists.

And, at no point, did Boris Johnson hide behind written responses and weasel words.

But that is exactly what Chris Hipkins is doing.

He says he wants to be “cooperative” but “I don’t want to see a whole lot of theatrics. I’m very interested in engaging with them on how we can capture the lessons”.

To be fair, Hipkins probably does have a point about the time period covered by phase two of the inquiry and how it, conveniently, leaves out the time NZ First was in coalition with Labour, but he needs to get over that.

Just like he needs to get over the fact that, yes, there will be no shortage of conspiracy theorists turning up at the inquiry.

But so what? It’s a free world. And we can decide for ourselves how much credence we want to give them.

But Chris Hipkins shouldn’t be free to decide for himself whether he fronts up in person at the Covid inquiry, or not.

He was Covid Minister and he has to front.

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Chris Hipkins is doubling down on saying the Covid Response Inquiry's terms seems to provide a platform for conspiracy views.

The Labour leader also said the second phase —that began this week— excludes looking at any decisions made when NZ First was in Government.

Hipkins told John MacDonald opinions from the likes of Brian Tamaki and Liz Gunn deserve to be heard but shouldn't overshadow submission on other experiences.

He says if the Government's genuine in wanting all voices heard, it's important for it not to be dominated by a few people.

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