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6:00 am, September 9th, 2026 - 29 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
Luxon plagiarises Joe Biden, who himself had plagiarised Neil Kinnock:
First in the family to go to uni in '5000 years': Off-the-wall ad-libs at Luxon’s final public meeting | Stuff
It is a measure of the incompetence and ignorance of NZ's political journalists that Lloyd Burr and Stuff do not know this. Memory hole as usual.
It’s pretty easy for National Party leaders to lose yourself.
Confusion that never stops, closing walls and ticking clocks …
Cursed missed opportunities
Am I a part of the cure?
Or am I part of the disease?
You are
You are
You are
You are
Labour's AI policy is actually… pretty good?
AI in New Zealand’s Interests – NZ Labour
My main reservation is the proposed Office of AI being housed in DPMC and established from existing resources.
That gives it proximity to cabinet, but risks making AI policy something designed primarily by policy advisers and government Enterprise Architects, with people who actually build, deploy, secure and operate these systems brought in occasionally for "engagement".
If we're going to actively shape how AI develops in New Zealand, practitioners need to be inside the institution making those decisions, not merely people it consults.
But as someone working in the Data and AI sector, I'm struggling to find too much else to complain about.
In a Ministry, if you have someone from DPMC turn up to your meeting, you know your workstream is a material risk to the government and they are going to ride you all hard. Worse if they are there from the inception of the workstream. And even worse if it's a Cabinet reporting line.
Easy to imagine this DPMC lead will evolve into a whip for any big public sector computer project with AI risk that is even starting to go $$ astray – eg NZTA's national integrated ticketing debacle.
Just another signal that under Labour the power will shift from State Services Commission to much more direct political oversight.
I'm not sure I like that very much.
Because AI regulation isn't an IT governance issue.
There's certainly a role for DPMC in setting expectations around how the public service uses AI, particularly where there are significant fiscal, procurement or accountability risks.
But the proposed Office has a much broader remit than that. It's supposed to shape AI policy across the economy: workforce impacts, private-sector adoption, data governance, copyright, infrastructure, safety and regulation.
I'd be pretty wary of that gradually collapsing into "DPMC oversight of big government IT projects involving AI".
That's an important job. It's just not the same job.
It’s also Labour leading on an issue of immense public discomfort.
Add to that climate change, health and pension costs with an aging population, energy security, inflation, the bond markets, factory closures, the housing market, AI curriculum writing, the ABs form, unemployment, social media and a lawless internet and media environment…
Here is Labour leading on an important issue and joining work already being done overseas.
And the reaction from Stuff suggests despite campaign criticisms they are relieved there are some adults in the room looking at the challenges of now and the very near future, not fighting for 19th C race issues in poll tax and ignoring the Treaty like the coalition partners or fighting off hoards of people wanting to ride a bike somewhere like the Transport minister.
Leadership. And some policy to boot.
It certainly reads like something I’d have written. I’m using a lot of AI these days for writing greenfield code, just mining my way through old (and even antique) code-bases to enhance, upgrade, and debug them. Plus it makes hunting for the minutia that is the previous metal in the massive debris piles of log files.
Plus of course the search engines looking for different ways to use existing libraries (almost entirely these days – open source). Or guidelines on ways of approaching classes of problems.
It is also my training tool for new languages, frameworks, and libraries.
Has quirks like all of the innumerable tools I’ve used since I flipped from management to programming in 1990. Leads you into one-way traps sometimes. Generally highly productive even when using it on a relatively small budget. But the art form is, as usual, knowing what to ask for, confining the scope, and generally knowing the field.
It is going to be a problem for entry level because they will over-trust and become automata who never get to learn from their own mistakes, but just repeat the mistakes of others. Doesn’t make them trustworthy. It will bore the crap out of senior engineers, many of whom are going to exit. Employers will want to them to just oversee and check reams of generated code that works, but is essentially write-once slop.
Plus of course it is far wider than just my personal silo. For instance it is going to have enormous similar effects on other areas. I have been expecting this innovation to appear in areas like law, medical, accounting, and god knows what else – ever since I was looking at primitive expert systems in the 80s and 90s. Came in slower than I’d expected then, but has kept getting more and more accessible. I can’t wait for it to dig into the welfare systems to actually implement the actual policies rather than leaving it up to the strange variable ways that seem to prevail within those systems now.
AS you say, I can’t see the DPMC being a particularly great place to lodge oversight. It is the right level, but definitely not where you’re going to attract the practised skills that’d make it work.
Certainly far more of a policy than I have seen from anyone else. I wonder who wrote it…
It seems depressingly like it was someone with at least a rough idea of what they were doing. Which I must admit I found vaguely surprising coming from Labour.
I'm using AI a lot for writing boilerplate code, unit tests, learning new technologies (I've recently moved from an AWS shop to Azure) and just giving me a second pair of eyes over architecture and design decisions.
I've found much the same thing, though. It's enormously productive if you already have enough domain knowledge to constrain the problem, ask sensible questions, and recognise when it's confidently leading you down a blind alley.
That's probably my biggest concern about how organisations adopt it. AI is a capability multiplier, but what it multiplies depends quite a lot on the capability that's already there. Giving someone Copilot doesn't magically give them the judgement of a senior engineer.
Which comes back to my concern about DPMC. I think it's probably the right level for coordination, but I'd want practitioners embedded in the Office itself rather than periodically consulted by policy people.
If you're going to write rules about how this stuff gets built and used, some of the people writing them should have actually built and used it.
And most importantly tripped over a few issues and face planted. That assists in the learning process immensely. I love programming because it always teaches me humility. Using AI for coding feels the same way.
Now it isn't doing the code work – because with a adequate AI's in the team it probably will do that well after they write tests and actively try to make it fall over, correct, and keep iterating until they run out of imagination to write new tests. I have to read the code, sometimes forcing a restructure, especially in c++ where the multiplicity of design choices seems to make the AI get very conservative. It often wants to write C code even when I’m using std-23. It is better in C# and php. Has the same conservatism in the javascript sphere (I’m mostly using vue there). But over all something like GPT-5.6 Luna writes solid code.
What I find is that I'm using far more of my management brain, something that I largely discarded a few jobs after the MBA (got blindside dumped by my fiancee and that wasn't good for the stressful job or the employees where I was employed) which was when and why I became a programmer by profession.
Managing AIs and AI teams for coding is just like the good managers who worry about edge effects, risks, and down-stream consequences – but compressed into real time without building whole systems. I find I rather enjoy it when there aren't people at risk, you have spinnable test environments (maintained by AI), and a good git trail to fall back on.
But is certainly takes time and persistence to figure out how to use it effectively.
The BBC reports 'The UK has announced sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, accusing Israel's government of turning a blind eye to the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians by settlers.'
'…[the BBC] just laid out exactly what the settlements are, why they’re illegal, graphically shown how the settlers behave, that they are terrorists, why the government is imposing sanctions and that a long list of European nations will follow suit. '
https://bsky.app/profile/flyingrodent.bsky.social/post/3muzwjck2fk2p
It seems Burnham's government is taking a strong position regarding the West Bank atrocities, while skirting round the Gaza genocide and current UK military support.
A step in the correct direction, possibly a testing of the waters for greater sanctions. It's clearly also in coordination with the EU, and ignoring Trump's threats against the UK if it takes an independent policy stance on Israel.
It also suggests that Starmer, with Jewish inlaws and children being raised within the Jewish faith, rigidly controlled the government's pro-Netanyahu position.
Independently, (or perhaps coordinated, in order to spike Netanyahu in upcoming Oct elections) UAE released info that he was personally informed of a big op planned by Hamas in the weeks before the 7th Oct attack. Egypt also warned him beforehand. It is not making him popular at home.
'…a former top general who is seen as Netanyahu’s main opponent in election, accused the prime minister of ignoring dozens of warnings ahead of the attack.'
https://apnews.com/article/israel-netanyahu-hamas-war-gaza-warning-935c2cd82d3204d6dc859d296fc866e3
The implication is that Netanyahu wanted such an attack to go ahead, to have justification for a viscious response by the Israeli state.
Oh, come on.
I am no defender of Israel's conduct in Gaza, and there is plenty about the former Starmer government's policy towards Israel that deserves serious criticism.
But attributing Starmer's position to the fact that his wife is Jewish and his children are being raised in the Jewish faith is disgusting.
If there is evidence that he personally constrained British policy for some improper reason, present it. His family's Jewishness is not evidence.
We can condemn Israeli war crimes, criticise British complicity where it existed, and argue for sanctions without reaching for insinuations about the divided loyalties of politicians with Jewish families.
That particular trope has a rather unpleasant history, and in 2026 we should know better.
Don't see how my opinion is unjustified. I have direct family here with Jewish roots who strongly identify with the Israeli State response, and refuse to see the genocide. Not a topic up for discussion. And they're not practising Jews. If it can happen in my family, it can certainly happen to Starmer.
Wes Streeting met with UK surgeons volunteering in Gaza in the last six months to hear their horrific stories of deliberate injuries to children, and was obviously shaken. Streeting reported that Starmer refused to look at their photographic evidence. Why would he do that, if not to deny the reality in Gaza?
https://www.thejewishnews.com/news/uk-s-new-prime-minister-keir-starmer-observes-shabbat-supports-israel-and-vows-to-fight/article_f94f4a6c-3d1d-11ef-96bf-8faafd2f7dd4.html
Not a trope if based in fact.
Hey, if that's the standard of evidence and causation we're using, then I'm sure you'll accept that your attack on Starmer's Jewish family is evidence that you're a fascist, an idiot, and an antisemite.
Or perhaps neither inference is justified merely because I can point to some other people with vaguely similar characteristics and beliefs.
Your relatives' views about Israel are really only evidence of your relatives' views about Israel. Much like my opinions on the Catholic Church are evidence only of my opinions about the Catholic Church.
They aren't evidence of Victoria Starmer's views, and certainly aren't evidence that her Jewishness determined UK foreign policy.
If your standard of evidence isn't substantially better than the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, perhaps it's time to reconsider the argument.
Where did I attack Starmer's family? I have an opinion, which I'm entitled to have, based on my personal experience, but mostly from Starmer's rigid character, his unwillingness to look at hard evidence of Gazan atrocities by the IDF, and his government's completely OTT response to peaceful Palestine Action protesters.
I believe it very, very likely that his family circumstances here contributed to Starmer's pro-Israel policy. In fact, there was a well-documented plot by Mandelson and a rw Labour faction called Labour Together to bring down Corbyn on charges of anti-semitism and to pop in Starmer as more sympathetic to Israel. Illegal funding was used in the anti-Corbyn coup, from a hedge-fund manager, and 'from 'Trevor Chinn, “a multi-millionaire Jewish philanthropist” who “had great concerns about the election of an outspoken opponent of the Jewish state as Labour leader. " '. So Starmer got his job essentially because of his pro-Israel stance.
I am not anti-semitic, I am against the UK government's active support to date of Israel's actions. I can point to Polanski, an actual Jew leading a UK political party, who opposes the actions of the Israeli State.
It's critical that the international community push back, because in the last week Ben-Gvir, a minister in this Israeli government, unveiled the plan to exile all Palestinians from their home over three years. This horrible man has also in the last month or so posted vids of gallows to hang Palestinian 'terrorists' (just made legal, not for Jewish terrorists though), and an ai slop vid showing fat Palestinians conveyored into blank walled prison (commentated copy here, as he took the original down). The brazen gloating and dehumanisation by the Israeli government has gone too far for the international community to ignore.
We shall have to see if Israeli voters double down on Netanyahu and the Israeli far right, as exemplified by Ben-Gvir.
So, you aren't antisemitic, you're just peddling Jewish conspiracy and divided-loyalty tropes?
Criticising Israel is not antisemitic. I have absolutely no difficulty describing the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza as war crimes.
The problem is that you've gone from criticising Israel and Starmer's policies to speculating that Starmer's Jewish family connections explain his position on Israel, and then woven that into a story about wealthy Jewish donors and political influence.
You don't get out of that by saying "I'm not antisemitic", or by pointing to a Jewish person who agrees with you about Israel. The problem isn't your criticism of Israel. It's your apparent inability to distinguish the actions of the Israeli state from Jews, and your willingness to reach for some very old antisemitic tropes to bridge the gap.
Perhaps, if you wish to criticise Israel's dehumanisation of Palestinians, you should take rather more care not to dehumanise Jews yourself.
Jews are individual human beings with individual political beliefs, loyalties and motivations. They are not extensions of the Israeli state.
Please provide the evidence for these claims. Evidence is a credible link, quoting the relevant parts.
I have a number of key words around Israel/Palestine muted on twitter, precisely because I don't want to be shaken by images of dead or injured children. Yet I don't deny the reality in Gaza. Your logic is faulty.
Setting up a question, expressing doubt, and then putting one's own proposition for the answer. That is slanted opinion. One might say 'it worries me that….' which raises the problematic point and what would be the reasoned approach. Isn't it?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/02/wes-streeting-gaza-concerns-government-hitting-brick-wall
I did link to an original interview here with the three surgeons previously, where they explained that Starmer refused to meet with them, and that they had been informed he would not examine their dossier. This article is adequate corroboration of Starmer’s denial of evidence.
And you do not run the UK government, as Starmer did. Neither do you arm Israel, provide intelligence for Gazan targets and suppress lcal organisations opposing genocide.
it doesn't matter what you linked to previously, because people reading your comment above can't see that.
It's fine to make an argument without a link (assuming no quotes are used), but it's better to support one's arguments in real time, especially when they are controversial or a hot topic.
When you provide a link but no quotes etc, you are expecting other people to read the article to fact check you, and to parse what in the article supports what you are saying. The onus is actually on you to support the argument you are making.
Agree with RP.
Starmer was weak and incompetent and morally wrong on a whole range of issues. His approach to Israel/Gaza was consistent with that behaviour. As was his courting of Trump, for no gain.
No further motivation needs to be imagined beyond that.
Yes the changed policy under the new Labour Party leadership is telling.
The Labour Together group grew out of the remove Corbyn (which involved aspersion that the left was antisemitic) and install Starmer project.
Everyone sort of new Starmer would be the man for that job, for some reason.
They were unlucky this coincided with the Gaza war crimes (BN and DT era).
The new leader has some licence to make left wing changes to the Starmer leadership paradigm where this reflects the party membership and or caucus
How he deals with Palestine Action legal matter is pertinent as to where this all now leads on the related foreign policy question (UNSC Res 2334).
Israeli intelligence services are reputedly able to hear a pin drop in Wellington but they didn't know Sinwar was up to something. Arse!.
/
In September '23, UAE President bin Zayed called Netanyahu to deliver a harsh warning. Netanyahu did nothing. An extensive investigation, conducted for a new book, reveals the PM's failures surrounding Oct. 7. Netanyahu: 'This is an absolute lie'
https://archive.li/ICu8k
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-09-08/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/netanyahu-got-an-explicit-warning-before-oct-7-he-didnt-brief-security-chiefs/000001a0-7a3b-d7d5-a9fc-7eff3d0f0000
The implication is Netanyahu was happy to let the Hamas attack happen. That way he had a free hand to destroy Gaza.
IMO…yes. I have commented on this before , with links. How, with all of the Israeli Intelligence Networks vast operational reach…could the Hamas attack have happened? Here again, if of interest…
And NYT article (free, but need to sign in if not already )
Also more now from both the Guardian and BBC…
Bibi calls it "totally fake news". ? Now where have I heard that phrase before?
"The implication is Netanyahu was happy to let the Hamas attack happen. That way he had a free hand to destroy Gaza."
That's the intent of this propaganda, yes. There are multiple problems with it:
1. The obvious one: there's no evidence this call took place.
2. Hindsight. There are constant warnings about possible terror attacks. After an attack, it's always possible to fish one out and say "They were warned but they did nothing."
3. The ludicrous conspiracy theory that Netanyahu was happy for Hamas to invade because it would allow him to destroy Gaza has the obvious problem that Netanyahu was likely to be and very much was blamed by Israelis for any Hamas invasion of Israel.
HERE'S HOW WE CAN HELP…
I was wondering how to complain about the lies National is telling, and this article shows how.
There's likely to be billboards and so on we can call out, to help right any wrongs during the campaign.
ASA partly upholds complaint against 'misleading' National attack ad https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics_election-2026/1311337/asa-partly-upholds-complaint-against-misleading-national-attack-ad
I've got my own opinion about why the broadcasting standards authority had to go, just before campaign time, so I'm going to do what I can, not for any political party, but for democracy's sake
Yes National would not look good if they were caught out several more times.