Kiwiblog

Treasury has just released a mound of documents on Solid Energy. There’s over 100 documents so I’m not going to try and read them all.

I am looking at some around the proposed Natural Resources Ltd. if any readers are bored, feel free to read a few docs, and comment below any interesting aspects of them.

Beau Murrah blogs:

Callum Fredric has received a substantial payout, apparently near a years wages, from OUSA in agreement to avoid a legal battle. However, Callum will not be returning as editor of Critic.  Apparently OUSA decided on the economic rationale that even if they won a legal dispute it would be about as expensive.

I’d say they didn’t have a leg to stand on. Their actions looked to be a massively over the top reaction to a couple of minor issues.

OUSA is now funded by the University of Otago. What a pity Otago students are the ones who have to fund the employment mishaps of OUSA.

Salient has more info:

Under the terms of the agreement the sum of the settlement is confidential, and when spoken to by Salient, Fredric refused to confirm any figures. However, sources close to the organisation have said that the settlement was around $35,000, which is slightly less than a year’s salary for the Critic Editor.

That is a huge payout, which shows how legally flawed OUSA’s actions were. I understand their legal fees would be in the arena of $15,000 so that is $50,000 they’ve wasted.

Will students hold the executive accountable for such a waste of money? If OUSA had to actually earn its own money, instead of having the university gift it to them, then I’m sure they’d be fare more careful around how they treat their staff.

The GCSB has said:

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has completed an inquiry into potential breaches of the Government Communications Security Bureau Act (2003).

The GCSB Director, Ian Fletcher says, “The Inspector-General formed a view that there have been no breaches, although the law is unclear and the Inspector-General recommends amending it.”

The Inspector-General is Paul Neazor. He is a former New Zealand Solicitor-General and former Hgigh Court Judge who was appointed Inspector-General by Helen Clark.

The Kitteridge report never concluded the GCSB had broken the law. It reported that they may have broken the law, because the law is unclear. Crown Law had said they were uncertain whether the section on not intercepting communications of NZers over-rode the section on assisting other agencies when they had legal interception warrants.

The Inspector-General has said that basically on balance of probabilities he does not believe their actions have been  outside the law – but again, that it is not absolutely clear.

A recent review of compliance at the GCSB by Rebecca Kitteridge found difficulties of interpretation in the GCSB Act. Following the Prime Minister receiving that report, cases involving 88 New Zealanders were referred to the Inspector-General. All were cases where the GCSB had been asked to help another agency.

Mr Fletcher says the Inspector-General found that all of the cases were based on serious issues including potential weapons of mass destruction development, people smuggling, foreign espionage in New Zealand and drug smuggling.

Nothing to worry about then!

• 15 cases involving 22 individuals did not have any information intercepted by GCSB. 
• another four cases involving five individuals were the subjects of a New Zealand Security Intelligence Service warrant and the GCSB assisted in the execution of the warrants. The Inspector-General is of the view that there were arguably no breaches and the law is unclear.
• the Bureau only provided technical assistance which did not involve interception of communications, involving three of the individuals, so no breach occurred.
• the remaining cases involved the collection of metadata, and the Inspector-General formed the view that there had arguably been no breach, noting once again that the law is unclear.

It is worth noting that this is over around a 10 – 12 year period, so we are not talking a huge amount of activity.

Mr Fletcher says the Inspector-General is of the view that the interpretation of “communication of a person” is one of the issues where there are uncertainties in the interpretation of the GCSB Act, when it comes to metadata.

An example of metadata is the information on a telephone bill such as the time and duration of a phone call, but not the content of the conversation or identification of the people using the phone.

Now it is not good enough that interceptions happened when there was uncertainty over the law. The operations of the spy agencies must be beyond doubt legally. Hence the major changes being made to GCSB to ensure no repeat. But it is worth putting this into context, especially compared to the current scandals in the US with Associated Press and Fox news journalists having their communications intercepted to try and find out their sources on security issues.

As previously stated, Police have conducted a thorough check of all their systems. Police advise that no arrest, prosecution or any other legal processes have occurred as a result of the information supplied to NZSIS by the GCSB.

Which means no appeal against a conviction.

Stuff reports:

Poor participation in food programmes at low-decile schools is an issue that needs sorting before the Government launches Food in Schools, says Prime Minister John Key.

The programme, which was left out of last week’s Budget, would serve breakfast and lunch to needy children.

It was expected to involve extensive partnership with companies and community groups already involved in providing food to hungry students.

But the Government was still working through some issues with current free-food schemes, Key told TVNZ’s Breakfast show this morning.

“For the lowest decile schools in the country, Fonterra and Sanitarium currently run a programme – they offer it to every school that wants it – 566 take it,” he said.

“Only 15 per cent of the children who actually go to those schools, even though all of them are offered it, actually take it. So that gives you a sense of the scale of the issue.”

So there is already a programme offering food to every low decile school in NZ. And 15% of pupils at those schools take it up.

So what is the point of a law requiring the Govt to fund a programme at every school in NZ?

Labour leader David Shearer said providing breakfast to children was ultimately a parent’s responsibility and any programme must be targeted.

I agree with David Shearer. I presume this means Labour will vote against Hone Harawira’s bill.

A guest post by David Garrett:

Still plenty of crime about

This weeks HoS featured a  story on falling crime. The gist of it was that crime was at its lowest since 1982;  we are all victims of manufactured anxiety about crime , and in fact we have never had it so good. The story featured a neat little graph which showed that  “recorded offences” were about the same – actually a little lower – than  they were in 1982. Sadly neither the story nor the graph tells the whole story.

For example, if the graph covered the period back to 1972, it would show a dramatic explosion in crime between then and 1982, when the reassuring line on the graph in the story  begins. If the graph went still further back, it would show violent crime – including  homicide – pretty much as a flat line from the beginning of last century until about 1972, when violent crime began to grow exponentially.

The story uses the “crimes per 10,000 of population” measure, which allows us to compare New York with New Plymouth – the rates are comparable and meaningful   whatever the populations compared. For most of the 20^th century, our homicide rate was about 0.5 per 100,000 per year. It is now about three times that – substantially less than 20 years ago it is true, but still three times higher than it was fifty or sixty years ago.

The graph in Sunday’s story  showed total offences, and does indeed show an encouraging fall since 2010 – but more about that in a moment. If the graph had shown violent  crimes only, the picture would not have been anything like as rosy; violent crime has declined much less since its peak in the early 90’s than “recorded crime” generally,  a notoriously unreliable stat, since to be “recorded”, someone has to bother reporting it.

The most interesting thing about the story for me was the sharp drop in crime since 2009 – about the time the National led government moved, albeit rather timidly, away from the “criminals are victims too” policies we had been following for the past 40 years or more. 2009-10 saw  small changes in bail laws, more recalls for breaches of parole, and of course “three strikes”, the effects of which are only now really beginning to be felt.

The liberal academics – something of a tautology since with very few exceptions we have no other kind – will of course ascribe the sharp drop in crime from 2009 to something other  than the factors I have cited. Anything will do for them, so long as it’s not  more punative measures. The current theory is  that removing lead in petrol twenty years ago has caused crime to drop now.

To those who say that to aim for the kind of safe society we once had is a reactionary pipedream, I say this: read up on the precipitate drop in crime in New York since a much more dramatic policy change  in the early 90’s than we have seen began. Back then, there were about 4000 homicides in New York City every year, and the city was widely regarded as “ungovernable”.

Mayor Guiliani refused to accept that, and the New York Police Department were directed to “take back the city”, block by block.  Now, homicides in NYC number in the hundreds annually – about the same level as in the 1960’s – rather than the thousands.  The population hasn’t changed.

We can do the same. Smarter and more comprehensive policing – “broken windows” New Zealand style if you like – has caused crime to plummet in South Auckland,  long our most crime ridden district. I look forward to the day when some fresh faced reporter can show a graph extending back to 1972, or even 1952, and say we now have the same rate of violent crime as we did then. It can be done. We just need the will to continue down the path we tentatively embarked on three years ago.

The point David makes about violent crime being a better indicator than overall crime is one I have often made also.

Kate Chapman at Stuff reports:

Labour MP Nanaia Mahuta wants better provisions for breastfeeding mothers after she was forced to stay in Parliament with her young daughter until midnight on Friday.

The Business Committee, which oversees the running of Parliament, is set to consider the situation at its next meeting.

Parliament sat under urgency until midnight Friday and late on Saturday as the Government rushed through a raft of Budget-related legislation.

Mahuta was given leave on Thursday night and most of the day on Friday, but she was required to be in Parliament from 9pm until midnight on Friday.

Labour whip Chris Hipkins said Mahuta didn’t have to be in the debating chamber, just the parliamentary buildings.

That is a key revelation. Mahuta could have remained in her office with her baby. There was no requirement at all for her to be in the chamber. So the question has to be asked, did she go down in the chamber with her baby just as a publicity stunt to protest having to be in Parliament at all at that time?

I’m all for MPs being able to take babies into the House, but it is important to note that MPs are not required to be in the House for votes. They merely have to be in the parliamentary precinct.

But Mahuta said it was “silly” she had to take her five-month-old daughter Niua-Cybele to work that late just to make up numbers.

She had raised the matter with Speaker David Carter and Hipkins and expected something to be done.

“I was concerned that provisions weren’t made for nursing mums during urgency in terms of leave numbers … no child should be in the workplace from nine till midnight,” she said.

I understand (my source may be wrong) that Mahuta in fact offered to do the Friday shift. That she was originally rostered on for Thursday, and wanted to swap. So again I am not sure that Mahuta was forced to be there on Friday night.

Now don’t get me wrong. being a working mum is damn hard, and a working MP mum harder than most. I would expect that party whips would do everything possible to give one of their 25% proxies to an MP who is caring for an infant for late night sessions. But we do not know the full details of why Mahuta was rostered on for Friday night. As I said, I understand she was originally rostered on for Thursday, and did a swap.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key does not believe Parliament’s hours should be reduced to make it more “family friendly”, saying having children while in Parliament was “challenging but do-able” and it was up to each party to ensure nursing mothers had the support and time out needed.

Unless there was a huge explosion in the number of MPs with infants, the 25% proxy allocation to each party should be more than adequate to allow parents with infants to have flexibility with their hours.

Speaker David Carter is considering introducing special leave provisions for nursing mothers after Labour MP Nanaia Mahuta was in Parliament with her baby until midnight on Friday because of urgency. She told the Speaker it was unfair to expect nursing mothers to be in Parliament late into the night.

Mr Key said it was up to the Speaker to decide on any new rules, but it was possible for parties to arrange leave to give priority to those who most needed it, such as nursing mothers. Parties can have one quarter of their MPs away at any time without losing votes in Parliament.

He said it was up to the Speaker to decide whether to formally allow women to take babies into the House.

It isn’t just up to the Speaker. He can not unilaterally change standing orders. The standing orders committee would need to recommend a change to standing orders to change the proxy rules, and the House would need to agree to it – probably by way of a sessional order.

In terms of whether infants are allowed in the House, the rules seem unclear. I can’t find a Speaker’s Ruling on this issue. The preferred approach would be to amend standing orders to make it clear this is allowed, but in the absence of an explicit change I think the Speaker can show some common sense discretion. However let’s be very clear – ultimately the rules of Parliament are not decided by the Speaker, but by the House. He is the House’s servant, not its master.

Labour whip Chris Hipkins said Ms Mahuta had been given significant amounts of leave but there was extra pressure on leave during urgency. Ms Mahuta had agreed to work on Friday night after she was given leave for Thursday.

Oh I should have read this article first. This backs up the point I was making above. Mahuta chose to work Friday night instead of Thursday.

He had taken her off the speaking roster after she told him she had to bring the baby to Parliament.

So again, her decision to go down to the House with her baby was a voluntary one – presumably to gain publicity.

The Herald reports:

TVNZ’s Shane Taurima has confirmed he will seek Labour’s selection for the Ikaroa-Rawhiti by-election, saying the late Parekura Horomia had approached him about standing in the past and he was now ready to “return home.”

Mr Taurima, who is the head of Maori and Pacific Programming at TVNZ, will go up against at least two others to contest the seat for Labour including district councillor Henare O’Keefe and Ngati Kahungunu chief executive Meka Whaitiri. It is expected to select the candidate this weekend.

At this rate, TVNZ will run out of staff as they all migrate to the Labour Party!

The Dom Post reports:

The Beehive may soon be producing honey – if a plan for more urban honey production goes ahead.

Andrew Robinson, managing director of Love Honey, is gaining support for a plan to put functioning beehives on top of the Beehive.

“We came up with a great idea to have parliamentary honey because beehives on the Beehive sounds really good.” …

The project has received the support of the Green Party and Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown.

Green Party MP Steffan Browning is confident the project will take off because people recognised the importance of bees in our environment.

“They’re charismatic creatures and people identify with them. Clearly no-one likes to be stung but we all do love … seeing them on our flowers, on our flowering plants.

Nice to see the Green MPs and our Green Mayor focusing on the big issues.

Never heard of bees described as charismatic before.

But rather than place some beehives above the Cabinet Office, why not place them in the Greens offices in Bowen House, if they identify so strongly with these charismatic creatures?

HUHA have announced:

We would love it if those of you who are able could join us and stand up for the animals as the “Leave Animals out of Legal High Testing” Petition is handed over at parliament. HUHA supporters will be congregating at the war memorial on the corner of Bowen and Lambton Quay from 12.30 today Tues 21st May, then proceeding up to Parliament for the handover of the petition at 1pm (We will have HUHA tee’s to buy of to borrow available). If you are in the Auckland region please join our wonderful HUHA supporters and some of the rescued VARC Beagles at 12.30pm at Pohutukawa Drive, Cornwall Park, Auckland. Please bring your family, friends, colleagues and if you are able your dogs……lets show parliament we must not just be heard, but listened too!!!

I don’t have a problem with using animals for medical research, but that is rather different to using them to test the safety recreational drugs.

The Government’s review of the Teacher’s Council has released a draft proposal which represents radical change for the much criticised Council. The Council was found to be not be effective in its current structure and operations. Some key aspects:

• Current membership is four appointed by Minister, two by unions, one by NZ School Trustees and four elected by teachers.
• Proposal that Minister appoint all members, based on open nomination process – as with the Medical Council
• Separate out registration of teachers with a more regular practising certificate (again like Doctors)
• Allow the Council to authorise people who are not teachers to have “Authority to Educate” if they have proven expertise or disposition deemed important for student learning

This debate is tomorrow (Tuesday) night.

James Sleep from the Campaign for a Living Wage (and the SWFU) is the guest speaker for the affirmative and Luke Malpass from the NZ Initiative is the guest speaker on the negative. Members of the debating society will also be speaking.

NBR reports:

Telecom’s IT services unit, Gen-i has sold Davanti Consulting in a management buyout.

The deal involves 80 staff. Telecom won’t reveal the price but a spokeswoman told NBR Onliine it is “not material.”

Telecom has signed a conditional agreement to transfer ownership of Davanti Consulting’s New Zealand operations to Davanti principal consultants Justin Hamilton, Matt Farrar and Robert Carter.

The transaction is expected to settle on 31 May.

After the deal closes, Gen-i and Davanti will continue to partner, with Davanti staff working from Gen-i’s premises in Auckland and Wellington.

Davanti was founded in 2007 as a division of Gen-i. It works with organisations across private and public sectors, providing strategic advice, business transformation, industry knowledge, and the design and delivery of cloud-based applications. Its website lists the Ministry of Justice, TVNZ, Fulton Hogan and ACC among its clients.

Matt and his partners set Davanti up six years ago within Gen-i. They’ve grown it from what was just the four of them, to an 80 person trans-Tasman business. And now they get to own it also.  There’s an incredible feeling (and responsibility) of owning your own business. Welcome to the club brother

Most of the time, most polls accurately predict elections outcomes within the margin of error. The polls of polls predicted all 50 states in the recent US presidential election.

But sometimes you get an election result which was contrary to not just some or even most of the polls – but all of them.

These are always fascinating to pollsters, as they provide great learning experiences. Some of the more well known poll disasters was not picking the defeat of Jeff Kennett in Victoria and one of the Obama v Clinton primary battles.

We can now add to that the recent British Columbia elections. Huff Post reports:

It was a historic, completely unexpected comeback.

After trailing in the polls for more than a year, often with a deficit of more than 15 points, the B.C. Liberals under Christy Clark managed to win re-election last night. And they did so easily, with 44.4 per cent of the vote against 39.5 per cent for the NDP (a wider margin than the one that elected Gordon Campbell in 2009) and 50 seats, more than the 45 seats her party occupied when the legislature was dissolved and the campaign got under way.

Put simply, the polls got it spectacularly wrong.

How wrong? Another story states:

A May 10 Angus Reid poll showed that 45 per cent of 803 voters surveyed intended to support the NDP, while 36 per cent said they would vote for the Liberals. That was a nine-point overall lead over the Liberals. An earlier Ipsos Reid poll, which surveyed 800 adult British Columbians, found that 43 per cent of surveyed voters were supporting the NDP.

An Ekos poll, with robocall technology, on Monday gave the NDP 40.5 per cent of voter support. …

But almost two hours after polls have closed, the Liberals have 44.7 per cent of the vote, the NDP with 39.1 per cent and the Liberals leading or elected in 52 ridings, with 43 needed for a majority.

19 polls in April and May showed the NDP ahead and the most recent gave them a 9% lead. They lost by 5%. What went wrong? Was it that most of them were online polls?

A further story:

That every polling firm in the field, using a mix of methodologies, was unable to get a good result (and they mostly showed consistency even at the regional levels) suggests that something systemically wrong was taking place in their sampling methods. Are pollsters not building a sample that is reflective of the broader population anymore? Are they not polling those who actually vote? Are people no longer responding to polls truthfully? Do the now ubiquitous online panels and automated telephone polls have intrinsic limitations that can be amplified under certain circumstances (both have had success, and failure, in the past)?

These questions will need to be answered. An almost literal last-minute swing in voting intentions worth about 13 points does not seem to be plausible. The effect of low turnout, and the inherent discrepancies it can cause in polling, may be a place to start.

So why were the polls all wrong? It seems it was turnout? The Globe and Mail report:

Polls gave the NDP a two-to-one lead over the Liberals among voters 18 to 34 years of age, Mr. Canseco said.

“If that young vote decides not to show up, you’re kissing goodbye to a third of your base, and that’s exactly what happened,” he said, noting that the overall turnout was “abysmal” (52 per cent). “When you have a party at 45 per cent, and they end up with 39, that means there was a difficulty getting their voters out.”

Polls are based on stated preferences of the general population, not those who actually show up to vote, Mr. Canseco said. “The electorate did not resemble the electorate we were polling.”

I don’t know the methodology of the Canadian pollsters but one should always try to determine how likely a respondent is to actually vote, and eliminate those unlikely to vote.

Ipsos Canada comments:

In British Columbia, we interviewed 1,400 voters on Election Day and, as you’ll see, the numbers virtually matched the real outcome in terms of voter preference.

So the exit poll was accurate.

But it also tells a story as to why this happened right down to the last minute. The reality is that one in 10 (11%) BC voters decided in the voting booth on election day to mark their ballot for their candidate—and with one of the lowest turnouts in provincial voting ever (52%) it was motivated voters, Liberals, who bested the NDP in the voting booth.

The long and the short of it was that NDP voters did not get out and fulfill their promise to vote for the party of their choice – they stayed home while Liberal voters showed up. As such, a small number of voters were able to influence the greater outcome.

The Greens have this issue also in NZ. Their voters tend to be younger and tend not to turnout, hence why their results tend to be below their poll ratings.

In fact, nearly one-quarter (23%) of voters said they decided who they were going to vote for in the last week of the campaign. So the trend had continued from the week previously and these late deciders chose to vote BC Liberal by a 7 point margin over the NDP (41% BC Lib vs. 34% NDP).

Possibly the late deciders were fearful of change.

It’s clear that the negative-advertising campaign of the Liberals waged against the NDP had a slaughtering effect. If ever there was a case to behold that negative advertising campaigns work, it is here where the Liberals were able to take the NDP lead at the outset of the campaign of 20+ points in some of the polls and put it in the hole. The following show the changes in what happened in the final days of the campaign:

The NDP are quite like the Greens (hard left). Imagine what a good election campaign can do with the thought of a Green/Labour Government!

The Dom Post editorial:

There is a good argument for getting tougher with those living overseas who won’t repay their loans. Too many have decided to ignore their obligations.

Now the Government will require them not only to repay more quickly, but it also warns that persistent defaulters may be arrested at the airport.

This is punitive, unpleasant, and likely to be unpopular in a democracy that prefers the carrot to the stick. But nobody can complain.

The Government, after all, has taken a gradual approach. It offered amnesties and a chance to come to an arrangement with the IRD. It has also made it technically easier and cheaper to transfer the money home.

Many have responded reasonably: $64 million in outstanding loans has been repaid. However, some have ignored the offer and refused to repay. That can’t continue.

After all, if the people concerned had a low income and found it genuinely hard to repay, they were free to argue the point and try to make a deal with the tax-gatherer. Others could easily repay their loans but simply ignored the Government’s inquiries.

Those who have refused to do anything now face the threat of the bailiffs and, if they persist, of arrest. It’s hard to know what else the Government could do. Those who refuse to respond are breaking the social contract.

The social contract has responsibilities on both sides.

Students, after all, do not pay the full cost of their tertiary education. Even with the loans, they are being subsidised by the taxpayer. In return for that aid, however, they must make a contribution themselves.

This does not threaten the hallowed institution of OE, as Labour claims, or make it less likely that our high-fliers will return to the nest. Those who do their OE can’t just leave their fiscal obligations behind them. And highly -skilled people who stand to earn big salaries during their lifetimes can expect no sympathy if they default on their loans.

Repaying a loan should not be seen as optional.

The editorial however criticizes students aged over 40 having to get loans, instead of allowances.

James Ihaka at NZ Herald reports:

New research from Oxford University shows the rate of global warming has been lower over the past decade than it was previously.

The paper, “Energy budget constraints on climate response”, to be published online by Nature Geoscience, shows the estimated average climate sensitivity – or how much the globe will warm if carbon dioxide concentrations are doubled – is almost the same as the estimates based on data up to the year 2000.

The two estimates of the average are only 0.1C different.

The study, which uses data from the past decade, also shows the most extreme rates of warming simulated by climate models over 50- to 100-year timescales are looking less likely.

The Financial Times has more info:

The most recent global assessment of scientific understanding on the topic of climate sensitivity was carried out by the UN body charged with producing regular evaluations of the state of climate knowledge, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2007.

It estimated then that if carbon dioxide concentrations eventually doubled from their pre-industrial levels of around 280 ppm to 560 ppm, the long-term temperature rise, hundreds of years in the future, was likely to be between 2°C and 4.5°C, with a best estimate of about 3°C.

In the short term, over the next 50 to 100 years, it suggested likely rises within a range of 1°C and 3°C.

Dr Otto and his colleagues have come up with similar estimates to the IPCC’s long-term projections, but their short-term figures (for what is technically known as the transient climate response) suggest temperatures might only rise by between 0.9 °C and 2°C in coming decades.

So the worst case scenario is now deemed unlikely. Why?

The difference comes about because the researchers have taken account of the most recent decade of flatter temperature rises – which many scientists believe are due to the oceans’ absorption of heat – and other factors.

This makes sense. Despite what some say, there is no scientific doubt that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have a warming effect as they keep heat in.

But what we have an imprecise knowledge of is how the rest of the climate ecosystem reacts to the warming generated by greenhouse gases. That is why there is legitimate debate about the extent of any warming (but not over the fact there is warming over the long-term).

The uncertainty makes policy responses more difficult, especially the key issue of whether money is better spent on mitigation or adaptation. The key policy challenge with mitigation is getting the big three emitters to agree. Any mitigation efforts that do not include them are useless in an environmental sense (but may have some use in a political sense).

Stuff reports:

A screaming baby in the debating chamber late at night has prompted Parliament to discuss how to become a more family-friendly workplace.

Labour MP Nanaia Mahuta says she was forced to attend a debate with her 5-month-old daughter on Friday, as far as she understood it, “simply to make up numbers”.

If she was forced to attend a debate, that was a decision made by the Labour Party Whips. MPs do not need to be in the debating chamber to vote.

The debate, on Crown minerals, stretched until midnight. However, Mahuta said when her daughter started crying before it ended, she was faced with little choice but to leave – missing the vote. The Hauraki-Waikato MP said it was “silly” that she found herself having to be there at that hour in the first place, breaking her baby’s routine.

“This is specific to my responsibility as a breastfeeding mother,” Mahuta said. “This is practically silly, if I’m just being in the building to make up numbers at that time of night.”

Parliament requires that 75 per cent of MPs are in the complex while the House is sitting.

No it does not. There is no requirement for any number of MPs to be in the complex while the House is sitting. The requirement is that a party can only cast proxy votes for up to 25% of its MPs. But a party can choose to vote with fewer than its normal number of votes. Labour did this on Saturday when they were casting (I think) 19 votes. They have 33 MPs so are allowed nine MPs away so to be voting with 19 means 23 of their 33 MPs were away from Parliament.

The point is that it is up to a party how it manages who is at Parliament, and whether or not they vote with their full numbers. Obviously the Government has less flexibility as they can not afford to be votes down.

The Herald reports:

Parliament’s Speaker is considering a rule change for MPs with babies after Labour MP Nanaia Mahuta was required to be in Parliament with her 5-month-old baby until midnight last week because Labour needed her there so it could cast its full tally of votes during urgency.

Parties need at least 75 per cent of their MPs in Parliament to cast all of their votes, and Ms Mahuta’s usual care arrangements did not extend to Friday so she took her baby daughter with her, including going to the Debating Chamber at one point, but left when the baby started crying.

Again this is an issue for the Labour Party Whips. They required Manuta to be in the parliamentary buildings and even if they needed her there for her vote, there is no standing order that required her to actually be in the debating chamber – unless the whips rostered her on for house duty.

She has asked the Speaker to consider new rules for nursing mothers, saying they should not have to be at Parliament later than 9pm without affecting the party’s voting numbers or taking leave off other MPs.

I am not convinced this is an issue for standing orders. The whips have flexibility to allow 25% of MPs to be absent. The Labour Whips could have done one of three things:

1. Not required Mahuta to be there, and required another Labour MP to be there so they keep their 33 votes
2. Not required Mahuta to be there and casted 32 votes instead of 33
3. Asked the Government for a pair (yes you can still effectively do that) and have both a National and Labour MP leave the precincts so both parties are a vote down, keeping the relative balance

Standing orders should allow an MP who is caring for an infant to bring the baby into the House, as has happened in the European Parliament. But I don’t see why standing orders need to exempt mothers from being there after 9 pm when the whips already have more than enough flexibility to avoid this. Mahuta’s issue should be with the Labour Whips.

Take a comparison. If an MP is seriously ill, or worse, standing orders don’t give them an exemption from being at Parliament for he purpose of proxy votes. Instead the whips just allocate them one of the 25% quota. The entire reason we have the allowance for 255 not to be present is to avoid having to have standing orders try and be prescriptive as to why an MP can or can not be away from Parliament.

Even the PM doesn’t get a special leave pass to be away from Parliament when doing official duties around the country. He or she has to be one of the 25%.

She also believed it was time Parliament developed more formal, wider guidelines for mothers of young children, including rules on taking a baby into the House.

Speaker David Carter said he would talk to the business committee about allowing mothers of young babies to be away on occasion without affecting their party’s leave quota.

I’m all for mothers being able to take a baby into the House. I think the precedent is that they can, but this is not explicit.

But I see no reason to start defining explicit categories of people who can be away from the parliamentary precinct, as it defeats the entire rationale of giving each party flexibility to decide for itself.

The question should be why the Labour Whips required Mahuta to be present late on a Friday night.

Labour whip Chris Hipkins said the party would support a change to give nursing mothers leave on top of the usual allocation.

Every effort had been made to give Ms Mahuta as much leave as possible, but sometimes that was impossible because other MPs also had commitments outside Parliament.

As I blogged above, Labour could simply vote with less than their full entitlement - as they did on Saturday. Or they could ask the Government for a pair.

Also as I blogged above, the requirement is to be in the grounds of Parliament, not to be in the debating chamber. Any requirement for Mahuta to be in the chamber was a requirement by Labour Whips, not by Standing Orders. The only people who have to be in the House are a presiding officer, a Minister and a whip for any party with more than five MPs.

Stuff reports:

While parts of the rest of the world are still wallowing in recession, New Zealand in recent months has had a significant number of economic bright spots that could see the country reach “rock star status” within the next four years.

That was the view of ANZ bank chief economist Cameron Bagrie speaking at a post Budget luncheon briefing in Christchurch yesterday.

We’re modest people and don’t like to talk ourselves up, but when you look at the mess Europe, US, Japan is in – we’re doing pretty well. Standard and Poors put us in the top 10 most stable economies.

“I’m progressively getting a lot more upbeat about New Zealand’s economic prospects,” he said.

Through recent changes as a result of the global financial crisis, New Zealand had stolen a “three year march” on Australia, which had not “changed a thing” as a result of the crisis.

The mining boom across the Tasman had peaked and the Australians were seeing a distinct lack of economic and political leadership, with the country looking “a pretty dire place”.

Bagrie said New Zealand was being re-rated by the world.

“New Zealand has made some massive inroads in that game in the past three or four years. [If] we continue to do so, we are going to have rock star status in the growth space internationally at some stage in the next four years.

Unless we make the great leap backwards to the 1970s with printing money and nationalisation of companies.

The Dom Post reports:

A man with more than 100 convictions – and described as a danger to the public – has escaped being locked up for life after he committed an armed robbery of a Kapiti supermarket.

So how long did he get?

It was the latest in a long list of robberies, and it happened while he was on parole.

However, on Friday a judge accepted that treatment, including medication for depression, might yet reduce the risk that Lawson posed.

Lawson was sentenced to eight years’ jail on charges of aggravated robbery and kidnapping, and has to serve at least four years and nine months before he can be considered for parole.

The fact he was on parole when he did this armed robbery suggests parole is not that great an idea for him. But the good thing is under three strikes, he will not be eligible for parole the next time he does an armed robbery.

Lawson had been out of prison for almost seven weeks when he robbed the Paraparaumu Countdown.

In 2001 he had been sentenced to 10 years’ jail for four robberies. He was said to like expensive and showy items, and after the robberies he bought a Jaguar car and a boat.

Paroled in 2008, his freedom had ended after a “sophisticated” burglary targeting the safe at an Ohakune supermarket in July 2009.

It not only earned him a recall to serve out the rest of his long sentence but also added another 18 months’ jail time.

If three strikes had been implemented earlier he would now be on at least his third strike and away for a much longer time.

The first robbery on Lawson’s list of more than 100 convictions had been for stealing the car that two associates used in an armed holdup of a jewellers in the Wellington suburb of Kelburn in 1994. He pleaded guilty to being a party to the crime and was jailed for 4 years.

He’s been offending with weapons non stop for around 20 years. Call me a pessimist, but I’m not sure he is about to see the error of his ways.

Andrew Geddis at Pundit blogs:

You might need a moment to let the implications of this sink in. By passing this law, Parliament is telling the judicial branch that it is not allowed to look at a Government policy (not, note, an Act of Parliament) in order to decide whether it is in breach of another piece of legislation enacted by Parliament (the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990). In other words, the judiciary’s primary function – to declare the meaning of law and its application in particular cases – has been nullified. Furthermore, the judiciary’s role as protector of individual citizens in terms of ensuring that they are being treated in accordance with the laws of the land has been removed. While the stakes may be small in the immediate case, this is about as big a deal as it gets in terms of our constitution.

Now, I sort of get why Tony Ryall (the Minister in charge of this bill) wanted to do this. Trying to come up with a policy on who does and doesn’t get money here is probably pretty complicated. And health dollars are a finite resource – everything that is paid over to family caregivers means less services somewhere else. So having the threat of the judiciary coming into this mix and upsetting whatever compromises he comes up with over the next few months when he finalises the family care policies would be a real pain in the backside. You can even argue, as does Attorney General Chris Finlayson in his New Zealand Bill of Rights Act assessment (which I’ll get to in a moment) that the courts were wrong to intervene in the first place.

After the court decisions, the Government decided not to appeal to the Supreme Court  and pay family members who care for disabled members of their own family. The Budget provided funding to do this.

I am one of those who have some disquiet that we have introduced a precedent of paying people to care for their own family members, but the courts ruled that if you can pay someone else to be the carer, then the parents should get paid also.

So as Geddis said, working out who qualifies in caring for a family member is complex. How do you define what level of diability etc. But is the Govt’s response appropriate? The Attorney-General said:

Every person whose rights, obligations, or interests protected or recognised by law have been affected by a determination of any tribunal or other public authority has the right to apply, in accordance with law, for judicial review of that determination.

Geddis concludes:

And yet this declaration itself was not enough to stop the National Government using its numbers in the House to rush this Bill through all stages of lawmaking and onto the statute books in a single day.

So there you have it – another day in the life of the Government of the nation and the laws made by the Parliament it commands.

I think we could have a good debate about whether this policy should or should not be reviewable by the courts. But the point is we are not getting to have that debate. By passing the bill through all three stages under urgency, it means the debate never got held.

The bill should have gone to select committee, so submissions could be held on whether the law change was reasonable, in exchange for the funding now granted by the Government and Parliament.

National’s use of urgency has been very restrained for the last two years. In fact they have not gone into urgency at all since August 2011, until this month. That is a probably a record. Of course the provision for extending sitting hours helps.

The urgency for the GCSB bill was fine with me, as the urgency applied to the first reading only. It has been referred to a select committee.

Some of the bills passed through all three stages after the Budget were appropriate to do so, such as the petrol tax hike which was announced a long time ago, and excise tax increases never go to select committee (I think). The fix to the Crown Minerals Bill was also arguably okay, as it was just fixing a drafting error.

But I can’t see any reason for this bill not to have gone to select committee. Urgency should not have been used to pass it through all its stages. The clauses to remove the ability of the courts to review the policy should be submitted on and debated – even if it delayed the implementation of the payments to parents as caregivers.

News.com.au reports:

And stronger men are more likely to protect their resources while weaker males favour more socialist views such as wealth distribution, researchers claim.

Maybe a weak body and a weak mind go hand in hand

Measuring bicep size and socio-economic status, researchers collected data from hundreds of men from the US, Denmark and Argentina which all have different welfare systems.

They found that irrespective of where the men came from, those with strong upper body strength were less likely to support a welfare system.

Interestingly, the researchers found no link with upper body strength and political persuasion among women.

Someone should apply for a grant to replicate this research in New Zealand and see it if applies here also.

Marnie Hallahan at Stuff reports:

Rethink the plan or rethink the council. This was the unanimous message from 500 Aucklanders gathered tonight at Takapuna Grammar School to discuss Auckland Council’s intensification plans.

The number of people attending these meetings is growing.

Founders, Richard Burton, a resource management consultant, and Guy Haddleton, argued that contrary to what the council was claiming, 56 per cent of the residential area in Auckland would be zoned to allow apartments.

That’s intensification alright.

Following a city-wide resident revolt over the last fortnight, Mayor Len Brown has already announced that four areas of the plan would be revised.

But those present at the meeting were unanimous in calling for the entire plan to be revisited and looked at ‘‘from the ground up”.

Any revisions would be the minimum they can get away with. Starting again with a new Council would be the best way to make sure the plan reflects what Aucklanders want.

The lone voice in support of the plan, councillor Ann Hartley, was shut down by angry residents who booed her claims that the council was willing and ready to listen to public feedback.

Not sure her chances of re-election are looking too good.

The Herald reports:

After nine weeks of telling Aucklanders the maximum height of “small-scale apartments” in neighbourhoods was two storeys, the council admitted to the Herald on Friday the height limit was three storeys.

And they wonder why people no longer trust them?

A presentation from Mr Burton said three-storey apartments would appear in 49 per cent of residential Auckland and four, five and six-storey apartments in a further 7 per cent.

“We accept there has to be intensification in Auckland.

“The real issue is how and where,” he said.

The meeting unanimously passed a resolution to rethink the Unitary Plan in order to balance intensification with infrastructure capability and urban character.

I wonder of the Council is still insisting the Government fast-track the plan into law?

The Character Coalition – an umbrella group of 58 heritage and community groups – announced at the meeting it was joining forces with Auckland 2040.

Spokeswoman Sally Hughes said it shared the same concerns about the future of the city’s neighbourhoods.

That’s a lot of groups!

April saw four political polls published in New Zealand – a Colmar Brunton, a Reid Research and two Roy Morgan polls.

The average of the public polls has National 12% ahead of Labour – 1% more than in March. The seat projection is centre-right 59 seats, centre-left 59.

Australia has Labor 10% behind the Coalition with four months to go until the election.

In the United States Obama’s ratings have changed little while Hillary Clinton enjoys high favourability ratings.

In the UK the UK Independence Party is now polling well ahead of the Liberal Democrats.

In Canada the Liberals have shot to the lead for the first time in many years, under the new leadership of Justin Trudeau.

The normal two tables are provided comparing the country direction sentiment and head of government approval sentiment for the five countries. New Zealand continues to top both by considerable margins.

We also carry details of polls in New Zealand on the GCSB, Kim Dotcom, asset sales, constitutional issues, public holidays, support for farmers plus the normal business and consumer confidence polls.

This newsletter is normally only available by e-mail.  If you would like to receive future issues, please go to http://listserver.actrix.co.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/polling-newsletter to subscribe yourself.

I ran a quiz night at the CNI National Party conference in Rotorua last night. The local MPs wrote the questions, and there were a few interesting trivia ones in them which I thought I would share. The answers are written in white and are after the break, so you can highlight them to see the answers.

1. The woman in Jack Marshall’s 1956 remodel of the NZ coat of arms is based on which movie star? 
2. Which politician is quoted as saying “I was in politics for a purpose – my very life was politics. I suppose this was because I was more manly than most women; that’s why I never married”
3. What Parliamentary event failed to occur in October 1946?
4. What event took place at the beginning of each Parliament between 1896 and the early 1960s?
5. What was the first Bill passed by the first Parliament in Wellington in 1856?
6. Who was the first Deputy Prime Minister of NZ?
7. There have been 17 Deputy Prime Ministers. How many also became Prime Minister, and who?
8. Who was the first MP from the CNI Region to become Prime Minister or Premier of NZ?
9. How many power stations rely on the Waikato River?
10. How many escalators are there in the Coromandel electorate?
11. Who served longest as Prime Minister of New Zealand? Jack Marshall, Norman Kirk, Bill Rowling, Geoffrey Palmer or Jenny Shipley?
    
12. How many electorate contests has Sue Moroney MP lost to National candidates in New Zealand’s General Elections?

See how many you know, before looking at the answers

Read the rest of this entry »