Kiwiblog

On Agenda (TV One) this morning, former Labour Party Leader called on Taito Phillip Field to resign. ou can read the transcript here.

Also of interest was UK Labour MP Austin Mitchell who said there is no question in the UK that Labour’s pledge cards are funded by the party, not Parliament.

On Wednesday we drove to the Hoover Dam, which was a nice short trip. We were keen to visit the Grand Canyon but that was going to take too long for a day trip.

You can see the high water mark for the dam.

Shane and Erica had a GPS device with them which had maps of the Western US loaded on it. It was a huge help in driving around as it both shows and tells you what roads to take when, estimated time to get there etc. If you miss a turn off there is no need to panic as it just tells you how to remedy. And it can tell you the nearest petrol station or food outlet. This is definitely going onto my list of desired birthday presents.

Anyway Thursday saw us driving back to LA, and it was scorching weather – 107F or 42C. One is just literally driving through a desert. You really would not want to break down. Anyway in the car we were also sweltering and probably drank 5 litres of water in just a couple of hours. We just figured that the car air conditioning couldn’t cope properly with the weather.

It was after we were more than halfway to LA that someone realized that while the air vents were on and blowing, the actual light to indicate the air conditioning itself was not on. Oh yes, we had been blowing hot air onto us for two hours. You can imagine the vigorous argument debate that ensured in trying to cast blame.

My friend Patrick has a habit of introducing me as someone I am not, at these political conventions. A few years ago in Sydney I was the deposed Prime Minister of an eastern European country, toppled in a neo-communist coup.

This time he told many of the locals that I was a “Prince of New Zealand” and how as New Zealand is only an emerging democracy that I appoint one quarter of the Parliament. It was amusing to see how many believed this and asked me about it. Naturally I played along for at least a while.

Another example of what I call the young naïve American was on one of the buses when I was telling someone about my baseball cap which says “Jesus loves me ….. But everyone else thinks I am a wanker”. The young American asked what a wanker is. I decided to go for a non literal explanation and said it was basically just a term for a jerk. YNA then repeats the term several times and says “Oh I like that term, I think I will start calling people who annoy me, wankers”.

I did tell her that wanker is probably regarded as a more offensive term than jerk, and she should only use it for people who really annoy her, She said she would!

I doubt there is a single fair minded New Zealander who doesn’t think the pledge card wasn’t an election advertisement, but just in case have a look at this assertion:

Labour’s pledge card was an integrated part of the party’s election campaign

Now that isn’t a journalist or National MP making that assertion. No it is Labour’s Party President Mike Williams. Thansk Mike.

Also of interest if WIlliams stating that the campign budget was put together in October 2004. This is as I would expect, but it reinforces the point that when Labour wrote to the Chief Electoral Officer prior to the election agreeing to include the pledge card in their election return, that this was an act of total bad faith. The Labour Party deliberately deceived the Chief Electoral Officer – their budget had been known for a year and they would have been well aware that including the pledge cards at that stage was impossible. But they were desperate so they lied.

On the same issue, read this column by Fran O’Sullivan. She suggests that the Governor-General could refuse to sign any legislation legalising Labour’s theft, unless it has an electoral mandate.

The major portion of O’Sullivan’s column deals with the justice and electoral reform committee which has refused to have former CEO David Henry testify, or to look at the whole issue of the pledge cards.

She suggests Labour and the Greens should agree to this, and also call witnesses over National’s GST error and the Brethren campaign.

For the record I would be absolutely in favour of that – if the Committee investigated one issue, it should investigate all.

I have to say I am impressed with the media for not allowing the Taito Field issue to die. They have done their own investigating and found a Samoan work permit which contradicts the evidence given by Taito Phillip Field.

The Labour Party needs to decide whether or not they condone MPs giving false evidence to official inquiries. Good on Ross Robertson anyway for telling the truth.

The Herald also reports TVNZ have a story tomorrow night, which will shed more light on this sordid affair.

Every day it becomes more apparent that the stories and images from the Middle East are not factual but in many cases hoaxes. The latest is the story about the red cross ambulances bombed by Israel. I was appalled by that one, as a former Red Cross staffer.

But it seems it is highly likely that the whole thing was faked. Read here for details.

John Howard it seems does not agree with Helen that we live in a benign strategic environment.

He has just announced a massive increase in the Australian Army from six to eight battalions.

The Australian Defence Force will increase to 55,000 and have a budget of A$20 billion.

Howard has also announced funding for an extra 422 Police to work overseas, bringing that total to 1,200.

Sure seems to be a lot of work to be done in such a strategic benign neighbourhood.

Around a year ago there was the incident when Pete Hodgson manhandled Madeleine Flannagan to prevent her from having her placard criticising the PM from getting in camera shot. Hodgson claimed he thought Flannagan was a threat to the PM.

Now The Press ran with the Hodgson spin and further claimed Flannagan boffed the reporter on the head with her billboard (which was in fact a piece of paper).

The Press soon ran a retraction, but I understand this week they have just paid out to settle a threatened defamation suit. Such settlement details are confidential as to amount, and of course does not admit liability, but a payment was made to settle.

The lesson here should be not to repeat Pete Hodgson’s claims and not to embellish them further. Regardless of the fact Madeleine is a controversial character she had the same right as every other person to protest against the Govt, and when a senior Cabinet Minister physically intervenes to deprive her of that right, she is not the one who should be copping flak from the media – Hodgson should have been.

A new parliamentary website is going to be made publicly available on Monday. It will be at the domain www.parliament.nz (will link when live).

I had a preview of the new site around a month ago, and it has some real significant enhancements over the existing site. Each bill now has its own page with links to the version of it at every stage, select committee reports and hansard debates on it.

Contacting MPs is also a lot easier with the ability to get a list by portfolio for all parties, so you can select say Conservation and it will show the Conservation Spokepersons for every party.

I’ll do a fuller review on Monday. For people like me who often want to look up parliamentary information, it’s going to be a great improvement.

In Vegas we stayed at the Luxor. I was amazed the price was so cheap – around US$90 a night but I guess they make their money elsewhere. As it happens though the amount I made from gambling exceeded by a small margin the total cost of the four nights accommodation, meals and drinks.

I am not normally a gambler. I have probably purchased less lotto tickets than any other person in NZ. But when in Vegas, hey you gamble. I proved quite adept at blackjack (it is pretty easy mathematically to decide whether to hit or not) and quite lucky at both the slots and roulette. I developed a routine where once I had made my target for the session I stopped playing, so each night left ahead.

Anyway the Luxor is the pyramid casino, and was pretty huge (but not the biggest). The lifts actually move sideways as well as upwards! It has almost 4,500 rooms and the spotlight that shines from it can be seen miles away.

They had four swimming pools, and spent a few hours a day in the pool or on the deckchairs. Las Vegas is in the middle of a desert and the temperatures were high 30s and early 40s. Even at 11 pm it would be very hot.

The theme of course was all Egyptian, due to the pyramid.

Just down the road was New York New York.

And the magnificent MGM Grand.

On the last night there we went to Stratosphere. The photo is of Vegas from the top of the tower. If you love adventure rides, then they have three rides you can do at the top of the tower, dangling 350 metres above the city. Not one to do on a full stomach.

Overall I loved my stay. I had never wanted to go to Vegas, but friends had suggested it. It’s an fun fun city. It’s really not that expensive and I am keen to return.

A “Hollywood” encounter just now. I’m in the Club Lounge at LAX and I heard one of the staff asking if anyone knew how to connect to the wireless as a someone is having trouble.

I said I was happy to help and it turned out to be Corey Feldman, the actor. Spent around 20 minutes with him and his girlfriend trying to get their wireless to work. Eventually as I couldn’t get him on the LAN or wireless, concluded the problem was his laptop, so let him use mine to check e-mail etc.

He was a very nice unassuming guy. Girlfriend was a world class beauty and also very lovely.

Once you have done something twice, it really becomes a tradition, and I feel obliged to keep it up. So after Jacksonville and Barrie we have Las Vegas.

You just can’t beat those Buffalo Wings. Superb.

US TV stations are still covering basicoally only one story – the confession of John Mark Karr, and whether or not he really did murder JonBenét Ramsey.

There have been so many facts about his past coming out, it has been hard keeping track of them all. Luckily though Wikipedia has it all together.

For my money I think he did actually do it, and for the same reasons as I think David Bain is a murderer – both had nutty mothers who drove them to it.

In David Bain’s case, his mother kept breast-feeding the children until they were thirteen. Hideous yes. And that is just one symption of how dysfunctional their childhood must have been.

Now turning to Karr, what did his mother do? Well she believed Karr was possessed with demons and placed him on a pyre of kindling and tried to burn him alive. Well that’s going to stuff you up I’d say.

The whole Wikipedia article is fsacinating. They have old Usenet posts from him etc which all add to the evidence that he is certainly a pedophile. His first wife was 13, he used to trawl for young girls online etc. Now this is not proof for the Ramsey murder, but they do list all the alleged evidence which seems fairly compelling.

UPDATE: All bets are off. See this post for reasons.

CURRENT BETS:

Illegal $265
Legal: $30

As of latest comment

At present a $10 bet on Labour’s pledge card being legal, would pay almost 9:1 odds. Come on Dr Cullen? Helen? Trevor?, you must be willing to bet at least $10 on the legality of the pledge card.

—-

Here’s a chance for true believers of Helen to make some money from the evil right.

Place a bet here on the outcome of the court case that seeks a declaration from the High Court that the expenditure on the production and distribution of the “Pledge Card” and related brochure from money allocated by Parliament as funding for the Labour parliamentary party was in breach of the Constitution Act 1986 s.22(c), the Public Finance Act 1989 sections 4, 5 and 9, and Article 4 of the Bill of Rights 1688..

Now here is how the betting works. You can bet either that the spending will be found to be legal (the plaintiffs lose on all grounds) or that the spending will be found to be illegal (the plaintiffs succeed in having the expenditure found to be in breach of one of the cited Acts). All bets are off if the lawsuit does not proceed to judgement for any reasons (including Labour retrospectively changing the law).

Now I will make no money out of this. All money bet, will be distributed to those on the winning side in proportion to each person’s bet. Here’s an example of how it works.

Say $5,000 is bet that the spending is found illegal and $250 is bet that the spending is legal. If it is found to be legal, then those who bet it is legal will get $20 for every $1 they bet.

People should place bets by publicly pledging their bet below in the comments, and also sending an e-mail to dpf@ihug.co.nz confirming they placed the bet, and their contact details so I can verify them.

I will update this page with the running total of bets for and against, and the payout odds for each.

I suggest $10 should be the minimum bet. Again this is a great chance for all those people who argue that Labour have not broken the law to put their money where their mouth is. And also a great chance for those of the other view to do the same.

Let the betting begin.

Don Brash made the point yesterday that four agencies have now concluded (all indpendently) that the pledge cards were election spending. They are:

* the Auditor-General
* the Chief Electoral Officer
* the Electoral Commission
* the Solicitor-General

A refusal to pay the money back, is quite simply theft and corruption. No ifs and no buts. The party in Government can not be allowed to be above the law.

People should also remember that two of the agencies warned Labour prior to the election. The Chief Electoral Officer gave a specific explicit opinion on the pledge cards and the Auditor-General in June gave a general warning to all parties to make sure their spending over the next three months was not electioneering.

The issue of taxpayer funding for parties is a red herring. If Labour and others want to introduce such a regime, then at the next general election they should explicitly campaign for it. In fact I would welcome Labour campaigning at a general election on their desire to have the taxpayer prop up their party.

Steve Crow will be sending some free erotica to Dick Hubbard this morning. Thanks to the Mayor’s stupidity in trying to close down a legal parade, there were record numbers in Queen Street – 100,000 or more. An own goal of historic proportions.

The NZ Herald has a story on the parade, Whale Oil has photos here and here.

We ended the Freedom Forum with a dinner out on the Santa Barbara pier. This is the view from the pier.

A mixed table of Kiwis, Canadians (Paul without his yellow suit!), and Americans.

A gender balanced table!

Jess on the right, has worked in the White House for the media team as in intern. She is now work with the Young America’s Foundation.

The very jovial Taiwanese.

Donald Simpson, from Scotland, on the right is the current IYDU Chairman. Nicole and Eric Hopman (from Minnesota) at the end of the table were the two main organisers and hosts.

Swiss and Finns.

Sagi on the left is a Sri Lankan MP. Patrick got elected in January to the Canadian Parliament.

A real mongrel table of Australians, Canadians and Finns.

Was a very enjoyable dinner and evening – a great end to the conference.

The Maori Party have confirmed that will vote against the 90 day employment probation period bill.

This is about as surprising as the fact that the sun rose in the East today.

Still a pity. As much the the unions hysterically demonise this with scenarios of psychotic employers sacking their entire workforces every 90 days, it is absolutely common and uncontroversial overseas.

The more I look into the case, the more obvious it is becoming that an outrageous spin attack has taken place on the Auditor-General. The fact we can not read his report for ourselves makes the spinning even worse. Here’s some key dates people should know:

2003 – Parliamentary Service spending rules updated and changed

mid 2005 – Auditor-General asks to meet with party leaders to discuss rules for parliamentary spending. Helen Clark refuses to meet with him.

July 2005 – Auditor-General reviews all major expenditure for previous 04/05 year and finds no major issues with it.

July 2005 – Auditor-General publicly wanrs parliamentary parties not to use taxpayer funds for electioneering.

August 2005 – Chief Electoral Officer tells Labour he regards their pledge card as election advertising

September 2005 – Labour agree to include pledge card in their election return

October 2005 – Labour renege on promise to Chief Electoral Officer

August 2006 – Auditor-General finds that at least the $445,000 pledge cards and maybe as much as $900,000 of taxpayer expenditure for Labour was illegal.

As Richard Long points out in the Dominion Post, Labour have introduced state funding of political parties – but just for themselves!! And they have done this “without bothering with parliamentary approval, or, for that matter, with Audit Office, Crown Law Office or Electoral Office approval.”

A Professor of Economics at Harvard University, Greg Mankiw, has blogged a letter he received from Milton Friedman, the world famous Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics winner.

Mankiwi, himself no economic slouch having served as chairman of the presidential council of economic advisors, describes getting the e-mail as “For a classically liberal, applied macroeconomist like me, getting an email from Milton Friedman makes one appreciate what Moses must have felt when God tapped him on the shoulder to deliver wisdom to the masses.”

Anyway in the e-mail Friedman states:

My aphorism, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” was converted from an object of derision to a near truism. This experience was of course strongly reinforced by the leadership shown by Alan Greenspan in the United States, but also I believe by the leadership shown by Donald Brash in New Zealand.

New Zealand was the first country to introduce inflation targeting and it arose out of the contract which Donald Brash arranged with the central government under which he committed himself to keeping inflation between I believe it was one and 3 percent. The arrangement was that if he did not do that he could and presumably would be fired. Volcker and Greenspan in the United States brought down inflation without stating any numerical targets. Brash introduced the term “inflation targeting” and succeeded in keeping his position by achieving his targets. The example was followed as you know by Australia, Britain and many other countries.

Because Brash is now a politician, Labourites have been very revisionist with Brash’s career as Reserve Bank Governor. It’s a nice reminder that Dr Brash was literally a world leader in monetary policy and central bank management.

Hat Tip: Tyler Cowen

Rodney Hide deserves much credit for Parliament now turning its attention to rates. Even if his bill fails tonight, it has been the catalyst for action.

Also well done to the Greens and National who agreed on terms for a select committee inquiry.

I for one intend to put a submission in on the issue. In summary I intend to push for:

* Rates to be abolished and replaced with a mixture of local income taxes (for public good services) and user pay charges (for private good services)
* A requirement for binding three year financial plans, matching electoral cycles.
* More effective consultation on changes to rates/charges/local taxes.

Very amusing tos and fros between Sideswipe and my old colleague Cameron Brewer of the Newmarket Business Association.

Yesterday Sideswipe reported:

This guy makes attention-seeking Lisa Lewis look like a wallflower: Cameron Brewer – former press secretary to former Auckland mayor John Banks, current general manager of the Newmarket Business Association and frequent emailer to the Herald – yesterday sent this spam: “You’ve got your hands full today but here’s an interesting observation for you from Auckland’s number one shopping precinct. It would be fair to say Dame Te Ata’s burial has had a definite impact around Auckland today. Foot traffic numbers were down dramatically around midday Monday, and I suspect it was because people were at home watching Dame Te Ata’s burial. Those who took a spot of shopping around midday could be seen engrossed in the moving coverage on shop TVs in the likes of Noel Leeming. I know for a fact that plenty of our commercial offices had their staffroom televisions on, and plenty of desktops were tuning in and out of the live coverage streamed through the TVNZ website. One could feel it in the air that this day was somehow special. I suspect many New Zealanders will always remember where they were at in their lives the day Dame Te Ata was buried.”

Please remember this when he tries to run for mayor.

And today Sideswipe has Cameron’s response:

It’s not attention-seeking, it’s a public service, says publicity-seeker and Newmarket shops cheerleader Cameron Brewer. “My lawyer and I take deep offence at me being compared to streaker Lisa Lewis. In fact, we are considering taking a defamation case against Sideswipe. Apart from making Green MP Keith Locke walk down Broadway naked, hosting an Undie 500 running race and overseeing a Bendon brief sprint in Newmarket, I have never been involved in attention-seeking streaking activities. Further, while Sideswipe may describe my emails to the Herald as spam, my lawyer would strongly argue that they are valuable public service announcements. Yesterday’s swipe at my good reputation implied that I would use any opportunity to get Newmarket publicity. That is simply a misrepresentation. Given all the clutter and bias in today’s media, I see my role as head of the Newmarket Business Association as to simply get the truth out into the public arena.”

Anyway I think I have the perfect solution. Cameron should set up a Newmarket Business Association blog. WIth his sense of humour and flair for publicity, it will become a hit I am sure!

On Day III we travelled by bus to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Now this is open to the public, unlike the ranch.

Every US President since Calvin Coolidge has had a presidential library and they are invaluable to historians and the public. There are 16 libraries in total.

We travelled up by bus – around a 5 minute trip. There’s something about bus charters which sets people off singing and had a very amusing time listening to Finnish and other chants.

This is a section of the Berlin Wall which was gifted to the Reagan Library. It only has grafitti on one side, because of course on the eastern side you would be shot dead if you approached the wall.

The view from the back of the Library, where Reagan is buried. I joked that I would like to be buried with such a view one day. Someone suggested they don’t even have to wait for me to die to arrange that

The memorial to Reagan on top of his crypt. Nancy Regan will be buried there also when she dies.

The Library includes a full-scale replice Oval Office. They don’t let you sit in the chair though!

We got to go on an old Air Force One. No photos allowed inside, but got to see the rooms the President and senior staff had etc.

An old Marine One.

Afterwards we finished up the Forum with talks from the Heritage Foundation (a highly influential DC thinktank) and a Canadian pollster. Afterwards walked back to the hotel along the beach.

Santa Barabara is a beautiful place. Sunny, spacious and hot.

A third former Labour MP, Mark Peck, has called for Taito Phillip Field to “fess up and start the clean-up”.

Field still maintains he did nothing wrong, and was exonerated. His evidence was found by the inquiry to be unreliable, his associates were found to have lied, and many witnesses refused to testify. We still to this day do not know the truth.

The Auditor-General has spoken out to correct the many inaccurate things being put out over his report,

It has frankly been a disgrace as certain MPs and parties have attacked his judgement, suggesting he has invented some new unfair rule.

He has made crystal clear that only expenditure for the last three months are covered. The reason for this is he did a previous report in June 2005 covering issues up until that point. In that report he explicitly warned MPs to watch their election spending and ensure it is appropriate.

So what we have is not Labour accidentally breaking some new rules with their $445,000 pledge cards. They ignored the advice of not only the Chief Electoral Officer, explicitly given before the election, but also the advice of the Auditor-General that he would be specifically scrutinising the election period.

The Labour spin about how National could be up for huge amounts for previous periods is also demolished. The AG says he investigated all advertising in the year to June 2005 and “nothing in that period” caused concern.

Also of significance is the AG formed his views on the illegality of the advertising before he consulted the Solicitor-General. The SG independently came to the same conclusion.

The excuses for Labour to retrospectively legislate their illegal spending are drying up. If they do so, they will be acting corruptly. No ifs, no buts.