Kiwiblog

The White Report into John Tamihere is out, but what is interesting is what it does not answer.

As expected it said the Trust was responsible of rpaying tax on his $300,000+ goldenh handshake, anbd also on an earlier $22,000 bonus in 1998. For the earlier bonus, the then CEO was of course Mr Tamihere who had overall responsibility for making sure the Trust complied with the law

Mr White noted that Tamihere never declared the payouts to the taxman, but said it was up to Inland Revenue to decide whether this is a problem. Now what we don’t know is whether he simply did not file a tax return for the year (which possibly he was not required to do) or if he did file a tax return and did not include the payments, which would be a serious offence. Did White ask him which situation it was, and what was the answer? Did he get the IRD to confirm whether a tax return was filed or not?

The report also said Tamihere broke regulations by not declaring on the ministerial register that he received a car from Westland.

Labour is spinning all allegations have been dealt with, but it is not at all that clear cut.

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Over the break I am going to experiment with the blog design a bit, especially the features on the side bars.

Feedback from readers as to which features they find most useful, use a lot, would be helpful as I’ll probably have them higher up on the side bar (or have two side bars).

The main features are:

* Calendar
* Search Engine
* Recent Comments
* Blogmail Update
* Archives
* Recent Entries
* Links

How often, if at all, do people use the archives, the calendar?

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Ackbar at NZ Pundit has handed out his political awards. Can’t disagree with too many of them.

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John Tamihere found out through the media, that he will not be back in Cabinet before the election, regardless of the outcomes of various reports.

Silly him to think the PM would not change her mind. Didn’t he learn anything from Dover.

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An exam system where more than one in three employers say the results are of no use to them, and over half of all parents feel the exams are less challenging.

First start Mr Benson-Pope should do is to bring back actual marks, not just credits and distinctions.

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Congratulations to Katrina Shanks who has won National’s nomination for Ohariu-Belmont.

Katrina is the 6th female candidate selected to date with Jacqui Dean in Otago, Jo Goodhew in Aoraki, Nicky Wagner in Chch Central, Kate Wilkinson in Waimakariri and former MP Anne Tolley in East Coast.

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Okay now we have the details, let’s go through and see how sensible the changes are:

1. Michael Cullen will become Attorney-General in February

They have no lawyers left who are not political novices, disgraced liars, or being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, so Cullen gets the job as he gets on even worse with the Chief Justice than anyone else.

2. Jim Anderton adds the Forestry portfolio to his responsibilities

Means little, just will allow Jim to bleat on about development but not actually do anything like reverse the Government policy on confiscating Kyoto carbon credits from firest owners.

3. Steve Maharey becomes Minister for Research, Science and Technology, Minister for Crown Research Institutes, and Minister for Youth Affairs. He drops his responsibilities as an associate education minister.

A big dissapointment for Maharey who must have been hoping for a change such as picking up all of Education. he has lost the major portfolio of tertiary education and picked up three which are very lightweight.

4. Jim Sutton relinquishes the portfolios of Forestry and Rural Affairs

Sutton has been overseas a lot with Trade, so losing a couple of small portfolios.

5. Trevor Mallard is the Vote Minister for Education, with direct responsibility for tertiary, international and early childhood education. He also becomes Minister of Energy

Mallard keeps overall education but has been sent in to fix tertiary especially after Maharey has made such a mess of it with scams appearing every week. Also keeps him away from terrorising school children and parents so much. Pretty sensible.

6. Pete Hodgson becomes Minister of Commerce, Minister for Land Information and Minister of Statistics. plus Associate Minister of Health.

Nothing controversial for a non controversial Minister.

7. Mark Burton becomes the Minister in Charge of Treaty Negotiations in February, and is an associate in the meantime

I am very surprised they did not give this to Cullen. Time will tell.

8. Paul Swain takes over the State Owned Enterprises portfolio from Mark Burton

Fine.

9. Marian Hobbs relinquishes her responsibilities in education and takes on the associate justice. She also becomes the Minister responsible for the Law Commission

Helen must be kidding. Marian in charge of the *Law* Commission? They really are running out of lawyers.

10. Ruth Dyson relinquishes her Associate Health responsibilities

Bit strange as she had an interest in that area.

11. Chris Carter becomes the Minister of Building Issues

Sensible.

12. Rick Barker becomes the Minister for Small Business

They couldn’t find anyone who had ever actually run one since Tamihere left so they have given it to an ex unionist. Oh joy.

13. David Benson-Pope becomes the Minister responsible for the Education Review Office, an Associate Minister of Education, with responsibility for the compulsory sector and special education.

Hmmn this is a major promotion. He has picked up much of Education. The long standing rumour that Helen sees him as her sucessor may be coming true!

14. Damien O

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As expected there were no new Ministers created (technically the Labour Caucus would have had to rubberstamp the PM’s Cabinet nominations anyway) but the big surprise is how little she has changed portfolios. What was touted as a major reshuffle becomes merely a minor tidy up.

Nothing online yet but I am told Deputy PM Michael Cullen will become Attorney General next year, Mark Burton will pick up Treaty Negotiations, and Pete Hodgson Commerce.

Steve Maharey takes over Research, Science and Technology and Crown Research Institutes and Paul Swain becomes Minister for State-Owned Enterprises.

UPDATE: Scoop has more changes

UPDATE2: The PM’s press release is now online. Despite what it claims about only four Ministers have not had changes, this is one of the smallest changes a reshuffle has had. Absolutely none of the major portfolios such as Finance, Health, Education, Justice, Foreign Affairs, Police, Defence have changed.

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Nick Venter has done his 2004 political awards.

People can read the full list for themselves but I did have to highlight:

The King Canute Award for defying the inevitable

The otherwise excellent Michael Cullen for continuing to argue that tax cuts are unaffordable despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

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Clark has just confirmed on midday TV that there will be no new Ministers with this reshuffle. This is not news, as it had been signalled for some time, but what was interesting is that there may not even be new appointments after Wilson becomes Speaker and the SFO report on Tamihere comes out.

Clark said that after the election, they may need to have a coalition partner who wants seats in Cabinet, so it is useful to have a couple of seats empty so they can be accommodated without sacking existing Ministers.

Obvious reference to the Greens wanting Cabinet seats next time. So Keith Locke for Minister of Defence, Nandor as Minister of Justice, Sue Bradford for Social Welfare and Jeannte Fitzsimons in charge of transport!

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Just as I was posting about domain name disputes, I come across an e-mail telling me to check out www.maoritv.com which someone has registered and redirected (note that the site it redirects to has no ability to prevent this).

In fact I recall when InternetNZ a few years ago removed the ban on the seven dirty words being used as third level domain names that someone grabbed two of the more offensives ones and redirected them to the Land Transport Safety Authority and Telecom respectively. They were very (understandably) unamused that typing in www.c**t.co.nz would bring up their website.

For this domain I note it has been registered since September 2001, with the current registrant being a Damien Sampat in Glen Eden. The domain record is locked by the Registrar which suggests Maori Television have started action to get the domain.

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I can’t believe that people are worked up about the fact that Chris Carter, ethnic affairs minister, sent out a Christmas Card that actually mentioned Christmas.

While Christmas is of course of Christian origin to celebrate the birth of Jesus, it has become pretty secular and suggesting one should have Christmas Cards which do not mention Christmas is to be blunt daft.

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Well we got through all three LOTR extended version DVDs on Saturday and it worked really well seeing them all in a row.

I can highly recommend LOTR fans view the extended version for The Return of the King. There is heaps of extra footage and they make the movie match the books so much better (still no scouring of the shire though).

Oh and the official count of the number of “more than friends” scenes was:
TFOTR: 36
TTT: 17
TROTK: 25

For a grand total of 78. And those getting the DVDs must look for the easter egg which is an interview of Elijiah Wood by one way video conference with Dominic Monaghan (Merry) pretending to be a German reporter. Hilarious.

Tags: Reviews

From NZPA:

Auckland police were seeing red on Saturday when they witnessed 30 drunken Santas fighting each other in a local car park.

The large group of people were heavily intoxicated, and believed to have been drinking since morning, police said in a statement.

A male and female Santa Claus were arrested and charged with disorderly behaviour.

The male was also charged with resisting arrest and threatening behaviour.

When I first saw this story I thought it was an urban legend from overseas, but delighted to see it is real and happened in Auckland. Must have been a great sight.

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I blogged in November my criticism of the decision to waive $43,000 of fines on a teenager in exchange for 300 hours community service. He was not paying his fines because he hates the Police.

Inevitably he has also refused to do community service and has now been given two months jail, on top of the 300 hours community service.

Judge Weir (not the original judge) shows a much better understanding of what to do when he says “Be absolutely certain, Mr Dixon, if you continue to breach [community work] and you come back before me I

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In numerous areas such as education, health and corrections the Government has almost been on a jihad against the private sector, freezing or eliminating their eligibility for funding no matter how good a job they are doing.

In tertiary education we have seen the amount available for private tertiary providers frozen for many years and only one third of available funds allocated.

While in the last couple of years public sector polytechnics have ripped off the taxpayer with the up to $120 million of community education rorts such as CDs, cell phones and radio sing alongs.

Personally I wish the Government would focus on the quality of the courses, when deciding funding, not who owns the buikldings.

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A friend’s wife, based in Wellington, has just completed her diploma of software engineering and is looking for an entry level IT job – perferrably as a C++ or Java programmer, but would consider anything related, such as analyst, tester, programming in other languages.

Oh her 16 papers, she got 14 As, one B and one C which put her very much at the top end of the class.

If anyone out there has a job which may be suitable, just drop me a note (david at farrar dot com) and I can send you a copy of her CV.

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The Old Friends website, designed by the very smart cookies who also do Trade Me, is worth registering on, if you haven’t already.

You can select all the former workplaces, schools, clubs etc you have been involved in, and it lets you know who else from the time you were there is registered. I have used it to touch base with quite a few old friends whom I had lost touch with.

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For those interested, InternetNZ is consulting on establishing a dispute resolution process for .nz domains.

The usual benefits of such a system is to allow persons whose intellectual property, such as trademarks, is being infringed or cybersquatted to quickly get the issue resolved, rather than a lengthy court battle.

The flipside can be that some people can try and use a system to bully someone else out of a name which is being legitimately used. The most infamous case was the NZ Government being found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking for trying to claim newzealand.com. They eventually paid almost a million dollars for it (which was incredibly stupid also).

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Russell Brown has images of three pro-speedway (or in fact anti-anti-speedway) ads on his site. They are very funny. Go look.

Tags: Local Body Politics (up until June 2005)

It’s one thing to be a poodle, as the world need poodles, but United Future managed to be a dumb poodle by voting for a Government closure motion, after the Government had rejected their request to speak on a motion.

They actually voted to deny themselves a speaking slot!

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