You might have heard ACT leader David Seymour on the Breakfast show this morning. He says there will almost certainly be prosecutions against parents of absent students this year as the Government intensifies its crackdown on school truancy. And it's not even truancy, in my mind truancy are kids doing a bunk, wagging, taking a day off. What this is, is parental neglect. Parents who are failing to ensure that their kids get to school and get to school on time. According to Ministry of Education figures, around 11.3% of students were chronically absent from school and term 4 last year, equating to around 93,000 young people. Chronically absent means a student attends 70% of school or less. The Associate Minister for Education spelled out what's going to happen next to parents who will not send their kids to school.

“Basically, a school will go to the Ministry of Education, say look, we've got someone who they're not a can’t, they’re a won't. We've tried. We've gone out. We've engaged with them. They're basically giving us the middle finger and saying education is not important and you've got no right to demand that my kid enrols and attends a school. And in that case I've been told by the youth aid, police, by the attendance officers, by the deputy principal, we need another sanction, another step we can take. At that point they will go to the Ministry of Education and say, look, this is a potential prosecution case. Ministry of Education will weigh it up and if it stacks up, they'll take the prosecution, ultimately go before the courts. Now you can be fined $30 bucks a day up to $300 initially. For repeat offending the fine on parents can be $3000.”

Which of course many parents won't be able to pay in that category. They're not going to be able to pay it, but the message is clear from the Government. They are quite happy to be the bad guy in getting your kids to school. And principals have said they've already noticed a difference. The expectation is that young people will attend school. Schools have to deliver statistics on the numbers of children who are turning up and they have to deliver those to the Ministry of Education – if their figures are slipping, or if there's no improvement, then action is taken by branches and agencies of the ministry to encourage children to attend school.

So is it going to help the parents who've rung in and told me they cannot get their children to school? These are the older students who cannot and will not get out of bed. That makes it a bit tricky. We have had, on the face of it, perfectly “normal parents” who are trying to do the right thing by their children and by the community who want their kids to get ahead in life, who want their kids to go to school, tell us that they cannot get their teenagers out of bed and into the classroom.

If you can say, well, if I have to pay that fine, then that's going to come out of the money for your wardrobe or the money for your school trip, or the money for your phone plan, will that help? I mean, 11% of kids who are chronically absent, that's quite a lot of children, 93,000 young people, as a lot of young Kiwis who are missing out. And they're not just missing out on learning they're missing out on the structure and the discipline of getting up and going to work.

And what if the parents and grandparents like me, who take the kids out of school for a jolly? I guess there are exceptions to every rule, but should we be fined as well? If you're willingly, wilfully disobeying the edict from the government to get your kids to school should parents and grandparents like me be fined for basically sticking the middle finger, as David Seymour said, to the attendance expectations?

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Construction of New Zealand's first large scale grid battery storage system has finished in Ruakākā, just south of Whangārei.

The Meridian Energy project has storage capacity of 200 megawatt-hours, which is enough to power 60 thousand homes for two hours.

It will provide greater resilience and reduce strain to the Northland power and reduce strain on the wider power supply.

Guy Waipara, Meridian Energy General Manager Development, told Kerre Woodham the batteries are designed to be available at peak periods for the network.

He says it’s only part of the system, but it will play a really important part at the times where energy security is challenged.

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What on Earth do we do with young people who were born in New Zealand, who have lived in New Zealand all of their lives, but who aren't New Zealanders? They've never known any other home, but they can't get healthcare, they can't get a driver's licence, they can't get a job, they can't pay taxes.

In 2006, a law change under the Helen Clark Government removed the right to citizenship by birth for children born in New Zealand. The justification was that it stopped people from country shopping by going from country to country, having a baby in the one they liked and therefore being granted citizenship through their child. That's a fight Donald Trump's having right now with the US Supreme Court, the US being one of 33 countries that grants jus soli – the right of the soil, or the right of citizenship to anyone born within a territory.

We did away with jus soli in 2006, and now young people, it's not known how many, because of course they live in the shadows, are leaving the education system and are locked in limbo. The education system will educate anyone here, even if they're here unlawfully, until the age of 18. After that, all services of the state are denied to them, and they are on their own. Stuff has an excellent story highlighting the plight of New Zealand born overstayers this morning. At the moment, it appears there is no pathway for children born to overstayers after 2006. It's even more cruel to think that siblings born to those same overstaying parents before 2006 have New Zealand citizenship but their brothers and sisters born after don't.

At the moment the only option is to go to the Minister of Immigration and plead individual cases, which is time consuming, lengthy, costly, and takes up a lot of bureaucrats' time.

So what do we do with these 18 and 19 year olds? An immigration lawyer quoted in the Stuff story wants a repeal of the 2006 law change, which removed the right the birthright citizenship. Or, he suggests, we do what the Aussies and the Brits do and that is grant citizenship if you're born here and have lived here for 10 years or more. Surely that seems the most humane way of dealing with these young adults. They're here, they've been here all their lives, they likely have siblings who have New Zealand citizenship – those siblings are working or at university. Should the same rights be granted to those kids who, through no fault of their own were born in this country and now find themselves in effect stateless, without a country, without a place to call home, despite the fact that New Zealand is the only home they've known?

I would do what the Aussies and the Brits do. If you have been born here, if you have lived here for 10 years or more, you're a Kiwi.

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