Kiwiblog

By coincidence I got back to my room last night and was going to switch the TV onto a radio station but Kill Bill Vol I had just started. Ended up watching both that and then Vol II until well after 2 am. I’d forgotten how absolutely great those films are. I don’t think I could ever get sick of watching them. The fight scenes, the black and white, the blood, the corny music, and most of all the look in Uma Thurman’s eyes as she gets pissed off – it is all magnificent.

As I reported yesterday, the Outdoor Recreation Party has left United Future.

And they were absolutely explicit about why they were leaving. They said they had problems with the religious elements of United Future.

Now Peter Dunne has said that the reason Outdoor Recreation left has nothing to do with Christian evangelism, and was always going to happen after the election.

Well these two statements are mutually exclusive. Either Outdoor Recreation is lying and they have just invented an excuse for why they are leaving, or United Future is lying. And personally I can’t see how Peter Dunne can possibly claim to speak on behalf of Outdoor Recreation as to why they are leaving.

As I have said many times I regard Peter Dunne as a good MP, good Minister and a good guy. However he is in denial about the people he has gone into bed with when he joined with Christian Democrats. How many people have to leave United Future citing the Christian evangelism before he stops pretending it isn’t an issue.

The farmers are justifiablly pissed off that they will have to pay millions of dollars to micro-chip their farm dogs, due to problems with dog attacks in cities.

I just love the statement from Taranaki Federated Farmers. They have said:

* Farmers will take their dogs to Parliament to protest
* The dogs will piss on the steps of Parliament
* They won’t clean it up afterwards!

Oh this will be priceless if they go ahead (the national body is less keen). And will the Police arrest the dogs as they once arrested Shane Ardern for doings things on the steps of Parliament you shouldn’t?

After a brief spell of doing the right thing and acting properly in having David Parker resign, just a few days later incredibly the PM is backtracking and saying he could be back in Cabinet, even as Attorney-General within a week.

Now as the NZ Herald reports, there was absolutely no suggestion when he resigned that this was just a stand-down while an investigation occured. In fact she said she would have sacked him if he had not resigned. So this is a massive flip-flop.

Parker had admitted he broke the law, as an MP, numerous times. Regardless of whether the Companies Office prosecutes this is grounds for resignation. Now no-one ever said he could never return to Cabinet but hell to change a resignation to a stand-down is just shabby and unethical desperation.

And Clark has now greatly increased the significance of the decision of the Companies Office with regard to prosecution. If they now decide not to prosecute, which leads to an immediate return for Parker, the sense of Labour Ministers being above the law will be reinforced.

Oh politics is much more fun in Italy. If you have bandwidth have a look at this short video of the Italian PM who sees a traffic cop leaning over a car writing a ticket.

David Hayward has blogged at Public Address on why the NZ Bill of Rights should be entrenched as supreme law.

The major problem I have traditionally had with doing this, is that it will elevate the Supreme Court to the final arbiters of law, and by doing so it is inevitable tha appointment of such Judges will become far far more political with more weight given to their political views than their legal ability. We see this in the United States. Do we want confirmation hearings for judges?

However I greatly value my rights, especially my right to free speech. And the Muhammed cartoon controversy made it very clear that when push comes to shove most politicans will not protect my rights to free speech against other pressures. Instead they pressured the media greatly to self-censor.

That one episode has been enough to move from from mildly against to mildly in favour of an entrenched bill of rights.

However as a safeguard I do quite like what Canada has done which is to have a notwithstanding clause. Basically it allows Parliament in special cases to over-ride a judicial striking down of a law for up to five years.

Oh dear. The Outdoor Recreation Party has split from United Future citing “difficulties with the evangelism of Christian members”.

A certain former party president of UFNZ has been known to say the same thing – Peter Dunne is a good guy, but some of the others are extreme.

The fact that Outdoor Recreation feels the need to say “we also affirm the separation of church and state” suggests some of the UFNZ board members do not affirm that separation.

Hat Tip: No Right Turn

In the 100+ hours a week of National Radio broadcasts, there was only 15 minutes a week in which someone consistently and regularly criticised the Government.

This was the nine to noon politics segment with Matthew Hooton and Peter Harris. Harris, a former (and I think also does some current work for Labour) staffer for Cullen, and Hooton, who worked for National in the 90s, would debate politics for 15 minutes with Linda Clark. Both men were partisan, but it meant one actually got to hear the arguments from each side. It was informative and entertaining.

I understand from well placed media sources in Wellington that both Heather Simpson and Tony Timms have complained to Radio NZ about the show in the past – especially Hooton’s attacks on the Government. And today the show has been canned.

Now let’s look at the regular voices on National Radio:

* John Pagani
* Anita McNaught
* Phil Wallington
* Rod Oram
* David Slack
* Eva Radich
* Kim Hill
* Chris Laidlaw
* Gael Woods
* Russell Brown
* Tom Frewen (formerly)

Now I’m not saying all these fine people should not be on Radio NZ. But what I am very very unhappy about is the *sole* regular centre-right critic of the Government has been canned a few days after the Government had been vigorously criticised with regard to the Police letting Labour off. I mean how does this measure against their charter of “Comprehensive, independent, impartial, and balanced national news services and current affairs”

Hooton, while from the right, is not just a shill for National. He has often turned the blowtorch on National and MPs such as McCully and Brownlee (who despite this has done a release asking why RNZ has axed the Hooton/Harris segment).

I want Radio NZ to front up and explain why they axed this segment, and the extent of any contact with the 9th floor in the last fortnight and previously to this. If for example one of the participants was no longer available, surely the answer is to replace him not to axe the segment.

Helen can have the other 167 and three quarter hours a week on National Radio. But I want my politics segment back!!

Talking of adult websites, I’m quoted in the Dom Post “rubbishing” the proposal from the Australian Labor Party to force ISPs to filter violent and R18 websites.

I enjoyed the interview as I did literally rubbish the proposal. You see if it had been a NZ MP who had proposed it I would have been far more diplomatic and talk about empathising with what they want to achieve but how this will not work as intended. But as it was a foreign politician and party I was quite happy to say it was a stupid nonsensical idea.

The reasons I think it is so stupid I blogged last week. I actually said good things about NZ MPs and how all but probably one or two are well informed enough that they wouldn’t support such a silly idea.

The Dom Post has an article on the US Government’s latest opposition to the proposed .xxx TLD. Their motivation is being fuelled by the religious lobby groups in the US who think this will somehow legitimise porn on the Internet. As if you know there isn’t much of it already!

But what is interesting is who else is against the proposal. I had lunch yesterday with the Communications Director of the trade association of the adult entertainment industry. And they are not in favour of .xxx but very much against it.

Their fears are the opposite of the US Government. They fear .xxx TLD may end up becoming compulsory for adult entertainment websites, with governments then legislating to make it mandatory for such sites to be in .xxx TLD. They also believe credit card companies might refuse to provide services to adult sites which are not in the .xxx TLD which will give the sponros of that TLD de facto control over the entire industry.

So a real case of strange bedfellows with the religious lobby groups and some of the adult enterainment lobby groups in bed together, so to speak

Personally I still tend to favour the proposed TLD as generally favour almost all new TLDs which have enough market demand for them, but I don’t get a vote.

I’m in at the official opening which is being done by David Cunliffe. One of the features of ICANN meetings is a real-time transcript is displayed on a huge screen for both those at the meeting and for those watching over the Internet. The staff are incredibly fast and accurate and deal with a lot of hard to spell technical terms.

I was amused that when David Cunliffe spoke briefly in Maori at the beginning, the transcript stopped and said “Speaking in Maori”. Only time I’ve seen them stumped

Cunliffe has given an excellent speech on the growth of the Internet in NZ, the importance of broadband, and the role of Governments in the Internet (involved but not controlling).

Also some great stuff on avoiding a two-tier constrained Internet (which has been at the heart of its growth to date). And some very strongs hints that there will be significant change to the telecommunications regulatory environment.

The transcribers made a valiant effort with the Maori words at the end and almost got it right with Tana Koto instead of Tena Koto. They do an amazing job managing to do a typed transcript in real-time at the speed of someone speaking. Well well over 100 words a minute I would say.

New Vice-President of ACT Trevor Loudon has a nice photo of the new ACT Board up. Must be the youngest looking board of a political party ever.

As has been the case with almost every poll since the election there has not been much movement with the major parties. I don’t expect to see any for a while either. Around 40% backed Labour, around 40% National and 20% other parties and no-one is changing their vote at this stage with National at 45% and Labour 42%.

However there is some interesting movements with the minor parties. Greens are up at 7% and Maori Party at 3%. Both happy.

NZ First remains at one third of its election support and at 2%. United Future and ACT both scored so low that TVNZ have not reported the results. I’d be surprised if they got 0.0% but don’t have the full results yet to hand. But bad news for both.

Mai Chen suggests in a column that the Supreme Court might be prepared to recognise the Treaty of Waitangi as some sort of supreme law, even without a statute from Parliament to this effect.

This is a very dangerous suggestion and could lead to a constitutional crisis of massive proportions. And I’d be lining up behind Attorney-General Michael Cullen in shooting down this one.

Judges interpret law – they should not make it.

Mai Chen talks with fervour of how “the enhancement of the Treaty’s constitutional status would allow Maori to assert rights to preferential treatment based on race, and depending on the degree of enhancement, the judiciary may be able to strike down legislation and Government actions for inconsistency with the Treaty.”

I think I know what questions I’d be asking to Michael Cullen on Tuesday in Parliament.

If there was a Nobel Prize for Economics then Michael Ellis may have just won it. Economists the world over ponder what causes a recession and how do you stop it. Well Michael has initial research showing a link between Winston Peters being a Minister and NZ going into recession.

I’ve pulled out my own GDP tables and looked at the periods Peters was a Minister:

Oct 90 – Oct 91
Dec 96 – Aug 98
Oct 05 –

In his first period as a Minister real GDP shrunk 1.9% in 1991. Then after Peters left the economy grew by 20.6% in real terms over the next five years.

Then Peters is back in power for seven quarters and growth over those seven quarters is a terrible cumulative 2.4% with a recession occurring during that period.

Then the moment he is gone, growth booms and in real terms GDP grows by 27.0% from Sep 98 to Sep 05.

Then he’s back and GDP starts to decline.

Surely this correlation is worthy of a massive grant from the Government to investigate?

Labour’s Mike Williams has a predictable solution to Labour’s illegal raid on the taxpayer for $400,000 of their election campaign. That is to legalise it!!

Yes he wants official state funding of political parties.

I favour going the other way. My solution would be to abolish the state contribution to election broadcasting expenses and restrict the parliamentary budgets during the last 90 days so they can not be spent on publications etc. Also to have slightly higher spending limits as the current limits are ridiculously low.

Mike Williams is also incorrect when he says that if the Auditor-General finds the pledge cards should not have been paid for by the Labour Leader’s budget, that the repayment comes from the very same budget the next year. Totally wrong. If it is found to have been outside the lawful purposes agreed to by the Parliamentary Service Commission, then either the party has to pay the costs of the pledge cards or the Leader would have to personally make reimbursement (as has happened in the past for some minor items) as they were the one who agreed to the expenditure.

My reaction yesterday when I heard Tariana Turia had accepted an invitation to speak at the ACT Party conference was that it was a very smart mopve for both parties.

It makes ACT seem co-operative and open-minded in having Tariana speak, and the Maori Party will be seen by its constituents as doing a good job by working with all parties in order to advance the interests of Maori. A win-win.

John Armstrong also rates the act as inspired.

Less inspired was having Sir Roger Douglas speak where once again he attacked the direction and leadership of ACT. I mean why do they keep inviting him to say the same thing. ACT really need to get over their hero worship of Douglas and move on.

Michael Laws (whom one must acknowledge as an expert in this area) writes in the SST that:

An element of sleaze has started to surround this administration. Losing one cabinet minister is understandable and losing two may have been bad luck. Losing 10 since 2000 suggests something is awry in the Beehive.

He also deals with the accusations that the Opposition are dirt digging:

It is hysterical nonsense to claim that the Opposition is on some sort of trash vendetta, that it is turning over MPs’ private lives for political gain. It did not drive drunk like former ACC minister Ruth Dyson. It did not hide past criminal offending, it did not mislead parliament, it did not lie about immigration matters – all acts which have led to Labour ministers being sacked during this administration’s term.

And then the SST Editorial talks about Helen Clark and Tony Blair as Sleazy strife for two mates.

Clark’s problem with electoral funding is less flagrant, but still serious. Nobody really believes that the $440,000 from her leader’s budget spent on pledge cards was anything but electioneering. The police found there was a prima facie case that this was an offence. Astonishingly, they decided not to prosecute. The impression left is that the police didn’t want to offend their political masters.

Lockwood Smith has said that he regrets the tough parental means testing that came in with the student loans scheme.

I’m glad to see this, as the concept of means testing 24 year olds on their parents’ income is something I have never supported.

The loans scheme itself is exceedingly generous with its interest write-offs. But the parental means testing of allowances has always been the sore point for me.

Personally I would love to see National adopt a policy of lowering (or abolishing) the age of parental means testing, and in return having a more sensible loans scheme where people are discouraged from unnecessary borrowing.

Boy those rescued are not going to win any awards for gratitude. They are refusing to co-operate and give over information on their kidnappers to the military intelligence unit.

This lack of co-operation may hamper the ability of the military to rescue other hostages. Hey never mind if they are tortured and killed by the terrorists. So long as you don’t help those nasty imperialist western forces whom also rescured you.

The SST also has an article on the Christian Peacekeepers and how in Colombia they were helping transport the body of a rebel leader and got expelled.

Hat Tip: Silent Running

How the UN really works – Marginal Revolution talks about a study showing that US foreign aid dramatically increases to countries which get elected to the UN security council and decreases once they leave the Council.

The study also found that dictatorships get bigger increases in aid that democracies – presumably because they can guarantee their vote more easily being you know a dictatorship.

We should stand for membership of the Security Council again – we might be able to get a free trade agreement with the US out of it

French President Jacques Chirac and his entire delegation stormed out of an EU summit. Why? Had they voted to invade Iran? Had they slashed agricultural subsidies? No. A Frenchman spoke in English.

No this is not a hoax. What precious little people they are.

Reading this now puts into context something which happened at an OECD meeting (on spam) I attended in Brussels in 2004. They had half a dozen interpreters and all that technology with headphones and channels so you could listen in the language of your choice. However everyone there spoke in English except the govt official from France. Now fair enough that he might not know English.

But then the interpreters took a union coffee break or something and were away for an hour. So the French official then just started speaking in English as there were no interpreters. At the time I reflected how much money was wasted on having translations done when every single person in the room spoke fluent English. But now I realise the poor French official probably would have been sacked, hung, drawn and quartered if it had leaked out he had spoken English at a meeting. And he worked for the French PM also!

Hat Tip: Dave Bryant

UPDATE: Also read this article in The Times. It’s hilarious as you read how Chirac pretened not to understand questions in English and made Tony Blair act as his interpreter! Also the French are now claiming there was not a walkout – they just all decided to go the the bathroom at the same time!!

Oh dear Action Hobson decided not to renew their website after the local body elections, so Citizens & Ratepayers Now have registered it and set up a site critiquing Action Hobson against the promises they made on their old website.

UPDATE: The story makes the Herald.

John Armstrong as usual makes a valuable contribution:

Something is rotten in the state of Parliament. But the rot is not confined to throwing dirt and raking muck.

The slow suffocation of question-time does not make headlines, but it is as insidious and as destructive of the institution of Parliament as personal attacks.

I also find amusing as John writes on Labour threatening to release dirt on National. You see National didn’t really criticise David Parker at all, yet why the threats? Well it seems Labour wants National to pressure Rodney Hide to back off!!

This is hilarious. Apart from the idiocy behind the thought that National (or anyone) could pressure Rodney to lay off Labour, isn’t it rather creepy to have Labour threatening National so National in turn threatens ACT??

Oh dear. Bad enough Lianne Dalziel had to resign for lying about the deportation of a 16 year old Sri Lankan teenager, but it has just emerged that she was sufficiently molested or threatened once she returned to have been granted refugee status by the UN.

I strongly favour a hard-line approach to fake refugees who often are queue jumping and just want a better standard of living. But genuine refugees who have legitimate fears for their safety (and are not convicted terrorists!) are an entirely different matter and NZ has a serious obligation to look after any that reach here or come through the UN system.

It is shameful that this 16 year old girl was drugged, handcuffed and deported back to a situation where her safety was imperilled.