An overdue closing of the browser tabs brings these worthies:
- Justin Giovannetti on New Zealand diplomacy and China.
- The New Zealand Principals Federation suggests merging the teacher colleges into the universities might have something to do with declining teacher competence. I was on faculty at Canterbury when the College of Education merged in in 2006. It never made much sense to me on academic grounds. Teacher training was vocational training. Experts in vocational training, of the kind provided at a College of Education, are not necessarily great fits at a university where research expectations matter more than teaching ability. It seemed likely to result in great teacher trainers being exited in favour of those able to get papers into low-grade education journals.
- A Wellington taxicab cartel? The Commerce Commission alleges they were trying to set minimum prices for fares from Wellington airport. I'm still glad I can just grab an Uber to avoid such rorts.
- New Zealand now has a trade union whose purpose is to defend the free-speech rights of those whose outside-of-work statements get them in trouble with their employers.
- It looks like the government will be using procurement rules to try to favour Māori-owned businesses. There's some evidence that these kinds of rules, in the US, increase black business ownership rates while also increasing government contracting costs by something on the order of 3.8% or 5.6% on those contracts.
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