Kiwiblog

The trial of Donna Awatere-Huata began today in the Auckland District Court. The SFO has said that “Awatere Huata and her husband Wi Huata used funds from the Government-funded Pipi Foundation to pay for Awatere Huata’s stomach stabling operation and school fees for their children” and also “pocketed the cash from cheques made out to the Pipi Foundation account”.

With the Supreme Court also due to rule soon on the attempt by ACT to dismiss her as an MP, one wonders under what section of the Electoral Act will she be thrown out?

Will it be:

a) Section 55(1), Paragraph (d)
b) Section 55A(3), Paragraph (b)
c) Section 54(2), Paragraph (b)

Just in is that five of the seven men charged with sex crimes on Pitcairn Island have been found guilty. The count is:

Steve Christian: guilty of five counts of rape
Randy Christian: guilty of four rapes and four indecent assaults.
Len Brown: guilty of two rapes
Dave Brown: guilty of nine indecent assaults.
Dennis Christian earlier pleaded guilty to three indecent assaults

Jay Warren was found not guilty on all charges.

Gordon McLauchlan will not be happy!

I was about to beat up the NZ media for the fact that it was being reported in Australia first, but I see the NZ Herald now has a story up. The NZ Herald tends to update more often than Stuff during the day.

For many years the Wrights Hill Fortress was one of the best kept treasures of Wellington. Judging by the number of people I know whom I ran into up there today, it is now more well known.

They only open to the public five times a year, which works really well. Most years I will govisit at least once, normally to show someone around who ha snot seen it before. I especially enjoy the irony that the big gun cannon that was installed there, was sold in 1960 to Japan

A few photos of the various views from Wrights Hill are below.
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The Principal Environment Court Judge has lauded the RMA as ideal. No wonder we have such problems, when one of the most resented pieces of legislation is seen as without flaw by the main Judge who interprets it.

Judge Whiting defends the Environment Court’s recent time limit on the diversion of Whanganui River headwaters for electricity saying “that to Maori groups, severing the headwaters of their rivers is a sacrilege” and “that Maori have always believed the spiritual realm interacts with the physical, seeing natural resources as part of themselves.”

I believe spiritual beliefs should not be a basis for legal rights. I don’t care if they are Catholic, Buddhist or Gaia. I will respect people’s beliefs, but I object to those beliefs having the force of law behind them.

And lets be honest how many Maori honestly honestly believe that taking water from a river upsets the spirits?

The 2001 Census showed us that Maori religious affiliations are falling rapidly – from 79% in 1991 to 68% in 2001, and taking into acocunt those who objected we have only 335,000 out of 525,000 (63%) Maori stating a religion.

Now the largest is Anglican with 75,000 and Catholic on 68,000. Neither of these religions say that you piss the Gods off if you take water from a river. Ratana has 45,000 and they might believe that, but they represent less than 10% of Maori.

When you read in the newspaper that Hooters has expanded to Shanghai. China, you know the US domination of the world is complete. Mao would not be amused!

It is good to see an Auckland University MBA being put to such good use as Direction of Operations for Hooters.

Personally, I’m not really able to complain about the trend

John Tamihere should consider the old proverb that one should stop digging when you are already in a hole.

The claim that the $320,000 golden handshake was “koha” and he felt obliged to take it in case he was deemed cultually unsensitive, runs a real risk of drying up remaining public sympathy for him. It is just trying to be too cute by half.

It would be interesting to know what the Trust income for 1999 or 2000 was, to see how big a percentage $320,000 is. If the normal CEO salary was $90,000 it is equal to 3.5 years of salary.

Friday Night was spent at the State Opera House enjoying a couple of good Gilbert and Sullivan operattes and then dinner at the Curry Club afterwards.

I only got into Gilbert and Sillivan a few years ago, when a friend was singing in Mikado. This was my 4th G&S and I am determined to see them all.

Trial by Jury was very short – only 45 minutes. The chorus singing was not always spot on, but Celia Falchi played the role of Plaintiff Angelina very well, and Chris Whelan was well cast as the towering Judge who ends up marrying the Plaintiff.

The Sorcerer was much longer, but was so funny the time flew by. Kimberly Smith was quite stunning as Aline – her singing was excellent. Lloyd Scott was up to his usual high standards as Wellington Wells, the Sorcerer. I enjoyed the plot of the Sorcerer with a bit of a moral about what goes wrong when people try to interfere in relationships!

Overall a very worthwhile night out, finishing at 9 p.m. which was a good time to pop into the Curry Club for dinner. They do not take bookings so it is always a good choice for a Friday night. The $25 banquet saw us all full up.

Got up this morning to find around 50 blog spams had appeared overnight. Even worse each one was from a different IP address, so I could not remove them in one go, but had to remove each of them manually. This was not a quick job, and put me in a fairly foul mood having to spend a fair bit of the morning hitting delete keys.

Helen Bain in the SST reports on how a doofus registered the domain name maoriparty.co.nz and had it redirect to a KKK site.

I must say tht I am slightly annoyed that after being persuaded by the Maori Internet Society to set up maori.nz as 2 second level domain, major Maori groups ignore it and we have maoritelevision.com and maoriparty.com. Perhaps this will be an incentive to also get the .nz versions of their names before someone else does!

Incidentially I am on a working group exploring whether there should be a process where contested domain names can be adjudicated on, without having to go to court. The issues are fairly complex as you do want to prevent infringement of intellectual property rights, but you also want to protect free speech in the form of criticism and parody sites.

I wonder if the Maori Party have trademarked their name? Merely registering it with the Electoral Commission does not give the same protection.

NZPA has a story on the rallies and violence yesterday.

The Police commander seem to have handled it quite well, saying “I

I popped into Parliament today to look at, and laugh at, the 30 or so losers who make up the National Front. Here they are waving their flags about.

I was surprised that there were quite a few women in the group. One lovely heaving tatooed lass did some Nazi salutes to the protesters. The NF could hardly claim this time they didn’t see it as she was in the middle of them. Here is a photo of her a few seconds afterwards.

The so called “scary fairies” protesters came across as a bunch of idiots also. They looked like a group of wannabee terrorists with their face scarves.

TVNZ reported that later on violence broke out, and as much as I would love to blame it on the National Front, the majority of the blame is on the “scary fairies”.

As blogged on Left and Lefter, a group of people broke off to deliberately confront the NF people at the railway stations. This was incredibly stupid, and in fact the sort of harrassment that people were marching against.

It will just make the NF feel more righteous in their cause, and ended up getting them more attention and even a bit of sympathy. A real own goal, which is a pity for the organisers of the 2,000 who did march peacefully.

Oh and finally we have a photo of the Sunday Star-Times political editor, Helen Bain, reporting on the rally, and caught by surprise

Actually this is about two seperate issues, but both on Peter Matcalf’s blog.

I missed the story during the week, but Peter has alerted me to the fact that the SIS informed a senior civil servant in 1986 that David Lange was having an affair with one of his staff.

This, if correct and I am sure Rod Deane would not make it up, is absolutely outraegous. I don’t have a problem with the SIS knowing, but there is no way they should have been informing anyone but their Minister.

I do recall when I worked in the PMs Office, that the SIS would come in every so often to check for bugs. We used to joke that they were probably just checking their ones were still working

While over at Peter’s, you should also read his excellent summary of the Ahmed Zaoui case.

Gareth Robinson agrees with me that the official results are in a crap format, and he has handily prepared an Excel spreadsheet for all the wards.

It is interesting to compare the order in each race according to first preferences, and the order in which people were elected. For each ward I list the first preference order, followed by the order in which they were elected (or reverse order of elimination)

Mayoralty

Prendergast – 1st and 1st
Pepperell – 2nd and 2nd
Goulden – 3rd and 3rd
Ruben – 4th and 5th
O’Brien 5th and 4th
Hay – 6th and 6th
Burke – withdrew

So Ruben started off with more votes than O’Brien but as O’Brien picked up more preferences, Ruben was knocked out first.
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A UK reality TV show is in trouble after it showed Rebecca Loos (David Beckham ex) ummm collecting a sample from a pig!

Animal rights groups have complained on behalf of the pig. The pig has not been asked for his view.

The funniest aspect is the Channel Five spokesperson who stated that Loos had been chosen to do it for titilation, but because “she was the most competent person to do it”. Heh heh that is very funny when you think about it – subtle but bitchy.

In the best traditions of scandal mongering, new details come out every day, and today it is that John Tamihere signed off the payments on fake invoices for $95,000.

Personally I don’t think Tamihere was at all aware that the invoices were fake, and the cheques cashed, but nevertheless as Chief Executive he did allow this to happen. I am a cheque signatory and an expenditure approver for two organisations, and I take those responsibilities damn seriously. I’ll normally have half a dozen questions on various invoices in each batch of 30 or so.

This is not because I din’t trust the staff (I do totally) but because I have to be able to defend my judgement as to why I thought that was legitimate expenditure. Thus you ask about invoices to companies you have never heard of before.

Incidentially, the ASB Bank has a great anti fraud program where they actually phone signatories like myself to check we actually signed certain cheques. I get phoned most weeks, which is good.

So back to Tamihere – I don’t think he was at all involved in the alleged fraud (but we must find out who was) but it did happen on his watch, and as the then CEO he bears some responsibility, especially if he signed off the payments.

Once again Gordon McLauchlan is defending the (alleged) rapists of Pitcairn Island. This time he suggests the problem is that the women who were abused and raped ever came to New Zealand. You see the problem is our culture of victimhood persuaded them they have been seriously wronged.

I’ve blogged previously on McLauchlan trivialisation of what is alleged to have happened.

As I said then, there is a big difference between consensual underage sex, and between gang rapes of twelve year olds.

WCC has now put up the full STV results for the Mayoralty.

They are about as user unfriendly as you can get, so I’ve calculated below the situation at each step, and how votes were transferred. This is what it would be good for the local authorities to display.
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And a really big happy zeroeth birthday yesterday afternoon to Finlay Campbell Babbage! Well done Megs and Tim.

The BBC reports on an excellent initiative in the US to get more people voting. Sex!

People can pledge at Votergasm to either:

* withhold sex from non-voters for a week after election night

* have sex with another voter on election night as well as withholding sex from non-voters for a week

* commit themselves to having sex with another 2004 voter as well as turning down all non-voters until the 2008 vote.

The action pictorials on the site are very amusing.

Almost makes me want to apply for a green card so I can vote!

So whom is going to set up a NZ branch?

The Wairarapa selection for National lats night was a great evening.

A fairly quick drive up, where the company and driving was of equal quality!

The Masterton Town Hall was packed with 185 voting delegates and a fair few observers up from Wellington. I reflected how great it is to have 185 local members voting to select their candidate, with not a single vote beign cast by people outside the electorate. This is a big contrast to the Labour selection earlier in the week which had only five or six people voting on the selection panel.

One of the nominees, Richard Townley (only 24 and already an experienced candidate who stood against Mallard in 2002), is a mate of mine and another John Hayes, is the father of Emily who is also a friend (and an employee) so I was quite glad I didn’t get a vote!

Each candidate spoke for ten minutes and answered a question from the Leader and the President, and then onto the vote.

There was a huge air of ecitement when the scrutineers came back and announced that there would be a second ballot, as no candidate had got over 50%, and so the lowest polling candidate, Keyvn Harris, dropped out. People like close elections!

This meant it was between Richard and John.

We had another round of voting, and then as we had run out of guest speakers, several jokes from the Chairman while the votes were counted.

Then just as the jokes were heading south, we had the scrutineers and candidates return, to be told John Hayes had won. Lots of applause, very gracious concession speeches from the Richard and Keyvn, and a lot of work ahead for John to win the seat.

All in all a great political event. I love selections.

The final WCC results are out. Turnout was only 42%.

I am somewhat frustrated that the so called final results only gives the order of election and exclusioon, and doesn’t give a full count showing first preferences, and then transfer quotas etc. Without this information we have no idea how close the various candidates were, and that is important to know.

I have phoned the WCC and asked them to stick these up. They are phoning me back.

UPDATE: WCC has phoned back to say they will put the detailed results up, but in a couple of days.

The NZ Herald reports how the new Mayor of Auckland overcharged his biggest customer for two years.

All Aucklanders should check their rates bills very closely, in case his new organisation starts to emulate his existing one and add a wee bit extra on, hoping you won’t compare.

Popped into National Party HQ at Willbank House and found someone has nicked one of the National Car Parks, so I parked in the next door park, as was only in for 30 minutes for a couple of catchups.

Quickly did my business, and asked about the extra car, with staff confirming it was not meant to be there, but they were just going to give it a warning note. I was due to grab some tickets from Ticketek, but luckily decided to first go back down to the basement first to find a tow truck has just arrived and heading for my car. I beat them to it.

They tried to extort $40 out of me. I explained that I did have a legal park in the Car Park, and only parked where I did because the normal park was taken illegally, and I had to park somewhere while I went upstairs to invstigate. But they insisted I pay a $40 callout fee. I excplained I did not call them out and most certainly would not pay. As they had not yet connected to my car, I owed them nothing and was going to drive away.

They then got bolshie and said they would hook it up and tow me regardless. I said I would resist them doing that, and formally requested them not to block my exit. They refused and I had just pulled out my cellphone to call the Police.

At that exact moment one of the Party Officers came out of the lift, with a warning notice for the car which was illegally in the NZNP park. I used this to show said tow truck operators (there were two of them) that I was not bullshitting, as they obviously thought I was.

I suggested that the scavengers (sorry tow truck operators) could still get their 30 pieces of silver by towing away the car which was just going to get a warning, and the party officer happily concurred in this and gave authority. Even those who have a 65 IQ can work out a hassle free $145 is better than a contested $40 and several hours of arguments with Police.

So I went away happy I avoided having to try and physically stop the towies from touching my car, and calling the Police. The towies were happy they got their $145 (doctiors charge less!) and the guy (or gal) who was responsible for the problem (who had been there all day) will be most unhappy!

The moral of the story – never ever appease the bastards, but do seize an opportunity when it comes along!

Okay you have two main candidates you need to decide between.

Candidate A is the mayor of the largest town in the electorate. He has been Mayor for 17 years, winning seven elections. The seat is rural and provincial and rugy mad, Candidate A also happens to be the convenor of the NZRFU Referee Selection Panel and a former IRB World Cup Referee, with a large personal following in every local rugby club.

Candidate B is a union activist and a teacher. She failed to even be elected to the local Community Board in 2003.

So whom did the Labour Party select for Wairarapa? Candidate B of course.

On behalf of the NZ National Party, can I say thank you, thank you, thank you.

On Saturday Aaron Bhatnagar blogged a parody of the infamous 419 Nigerian scam e-mail. It had John Tamihere as trying to divert funds overseas, and was clearly a parody.

Yesterday Aaron received an e-mail (purportedly) from John Tamihere asking him to remove the parody from his blog.

Now if the e-mail is from Tamihere, it shows a lack of judgement. I would have thought the serious allegations of non payment of tax, electoral fraud, non disclosure of interests would be his concern, not a parody e-mail. Also by asking for a posting to be removed, this inevitably will gain publicity for it, because people will notice if it suddenly disappears.

UPDATE: I am informed by reliable sources that the message was not sent by John Tamihere or his staff, which is good to know. It is a pity the Google blogger feedback system does not include an originating IP address, so the person who did send it can be traced.