Kiwiblog

Audrey Young reports from the Maori Party conference, and mentions that some analysis had been done on how often the Maori Party votes with and against the other parties.  The findings were:

• Greens – 108 with, 55 against
• Labour 89 with, 80 against
• National 55 with, 112 against

I have always advocated that the Maori Party leans more to the left, and that analysis tends to support that.  That is not to say Natiional and the Maori Party can’t work together – of course they can.  But I recall certain bloggers from the left decrying the Maori Party as right wing conservatives etc etc.

What would be really fascinating is for someone to do the same analysis to all eight parties in Parliament.  How often do United Future vote with Labour?  How often do ACT vote with National? How often do Greens vote with National?

My laptop is still without power and likely to be so until Monday at the earliest.  Sigh.

A big thumbs up to ProSouth who e-mailed me last night after seeing my problem on the blog and arranged for me to come in and see them before their business normally opened today.  Now that’s great pro-active service! Sadly the exact cord needed they had just sold out of, and despite their superb efforts trying half a dozen diffferent places for me, there is no HP laptop cord anywhere in Dunedin it seems.

They then arranged the NZ distributor to courier a new one to me at Wellington tomorrow, but now they have had a delay and I won’t get it until next week. Wouldn’t be such a problem if I was at home, as I have spare PCs (and spare laptops!) there.

So once again blogging will be very infrequent.

Had a pleasant evening tonight.  I caught up with Roger Gnome at the good old Captain Cook and had some beer and nachos.  We were then joined by Luke of the Young Greens and by coincidence Bryce Edwards was there also so ended up a nice wee group.  The Cook was a lot less crowded than in my day!

Spent the morning in Dunedin, and had a quick trip to and back from Oamaru in the afternoon.  Due to being off e-mail the phones were going non stop and it was almost comical as I was literally having to place one phone down to answer another phone and swap between them, all while travelling along SH1.

Anyway has been a nice few days in the South – back to Wellington tomorrow.  Won’t be very bloody relaxing though as I have a s**t load of e-mails to wade through when reconnected.

Three well known bloggers have their say on the Mallard affair.  Okay they’re actually press gallery journalists, but I’m quoting from their blogs.  First NZ Herald’s Audrey Young:

There has to be a punishment to fit the crime. He should not do anything rash like quit the cabinet or Parliament. That would be an overreaction. But he can’t do nothing.

He should relinquish his sports portfolio, apologise to the House, and then take a decent break.

Violence on the job is not compatible with fair play or any of the attributes with which good sportsmanship is attributed.

Then Martin Kay from the Dom Post:

As Labour’s bovver boy, senior Cabinet Minister Trevor Mallard is well-known for twisting the knife in the rawest nerves of his political opponents.

It was he, remember, who first alluded in Parliament to rumours that former National leader Don Brash was having an affair – a move which caused deep and continuing resentment among National’s ranks.

Now, it seems Mallard is much less prepared to take the medicine he has so readily dished out over many years as Labour’s main attack man.

He should have expected some mud to be slung in return. Parliament’s debating chamber is, after all, oval: what goes around inevitably comes around.

And finally Colin Espiner from The Press completes the Axis of Bloggers:

Mallard has also been employed as a bovver-boy by Labour with Clark’s full backing, so it could be argued it would be a little hypocritical to sack him for getting carried away. The owner must take some blame when an attack dog goes feral, after all.

Clark will also have to consider the fact that Mallard, like Maharey, has been a stalwart of Labour’s Left, which won’t be best pleased to see the pair replaced with the centre-Right crowd banging on the door for promotion.

One thing is sure. Mallard can kiss goodbye to whatever hopes remained of taking over the leadership of the party. And he’ll get a serious dressing down. It’s another setback to the party’s recovery in the polls and the public won’t be impressed.

Indeed the balance is shifting within Labour.  David B-P, Maharey and Mallard are all from the left faction. Two of the Ministers most likely to be promoted are not with the left faction. The front bench may be quite different in a week.

This is getting to be really funny.  All the well meaning do gooders keep telling the Tokelau people that being a colony is bad and they should vote for independence.  And they were amazed when the vote a year or so ago missed out on the 66% super-majority by 6% or so.

So they held an another vote, because I mean how dare they vote the wrong way. And story after story told us there was absolutely no way this vote would fail. Yet it has, by 2% this time.

Priceless.

Boy did I pick a bad time to lose my power supply.  Even wrose it arrived by courier today, and seems to have been damaged in transit.  So my laptop is still dead.  Am going to try and get a cord for it tomorrow but not sure chances of an HP laptop power cord is great in Dunedin.  It is possible I will be powerless until Monday, so blogging may be near zero, except for cyber cafe visits such as this one (McCafe in George Street).

Anyway onto Trevor.  I’m sure everyone has read the headlines. The real question now is what will Helen Clark do. And to answer that, we should ask this question.

What would Helen Clark be saying if a National MP had punched in the face/head a Labour MP?

I think we could all imagine.

What is surprisingly is how fragile Mallard is.  It is a classic case of being able to dish it out, but not take it.  I don’t know exactly what Tau Henare said but I think everyone understands it was very similar to what Trevor Mallard said when he taunted Don Brash about Diane Foreman. And here’s the moral of the story.  If Mallard had never broken the “rules” and said what he said about Brash, I am almost certain he would not have had similar stuff said to him.  But if you break the “rules” yourself, you can’t expect to suddenly be protected by them.

The timing with the reshuffle is bad for Mallard.  Generally reshuffles get positive news for a Government.  Fresh blood etc. But now the focus will partly be on what happens to Trevor.  And if she doesn’t demote him (at a minimum) then the media focus will be on her lack of standards, and a good news story becomes a bad news story.

The significance of what has happened is quite profound though.  And again by coincidence of timing.

In just one week Phil Goff has gone from being an outside chance of the next Labour Leader, to the near undisputed Leader in Waiting.

Maharey, Mallard and Goff have always been the three heavyweight contenders. Other possibilities like Gosche and Benson-Pope have fallen by the wayside.  And others like Jones are far too new.  So amazingly in one week Maharey is out, and so effectively is Mallard.  Phil Goff can’t believe his luck.  And even better for Goff he genuinely had nothing to do with it.

Have fun. 

Flew into Invercargill last night.  Great timing as the wind power last night make Wellington look calm.

Anyway, more to the point I discover during the stop over in Christchurch that I left the power cord to the laptop at home.

I hope to be reunited with it today, or buy a new one, but it is probably no blogging today.  I’m just doing this on the hotel business centre. And later today I am driving to Gore and eventually Dunedin, and for some reason the Police don’t like it if I try to blog and drive at the same time.

Some good stuff on Rodney’s blog re the Electoral Finance Bill.

Firstly he notes the Bill is so restrictive that even the movie “We’re here to help” would potentially be banned under the Bill if it passed into law.

Also Rodney has stated that

The Human Rights Commission gave a powerful submission to the Justice an Electoral Committee last week.

The Commission stated the Electoral Finance Bill could have a “chilling effect on the expression of political opinion”, and then went on to say:

“The Bill in its current form represents a dramatic assault on two fundamental human rights that New Zealanders cherish; freedom of expression, and the right of informed citizens to participate in the election process. It requires radical change.”

Quite.

I have put the motion down that the Committee simply discharge the Bill. It’s that bad. That vote will be this week.

Failing that I have put the motion that officials redraft the Bill with the Commission’s help and we can the Commission back with the officials to reconsider the Bill.

I can’t imagine MPs will reject the Commission’s offer of help. It will be an interesting test of the government’s true motive.

Indeed it will. Incidentially I was asked on ZB this morning whether You Tube campaigning was a way around the Electoral Finance Bill, and I think they were surprised when I said the Bill casts it net so widely it will be illegal for someone to upload to You Tube a political video they have created at home for say $1, unless they go off to a JP and sign a solemn declaration about the limits of their activities, and then sends a copy of that affadavit to You Tube.

Also people should note that the NZ Institute of Chartered Accounts also submitted that the entire audit section of the Bill was unworkable and unenforceable – Whale Oil has the NBR articles on this.

So just consider how vastly different any amended Bill is going to be, if it will even be workable.   And also consider how the Government doesn’t want to give us a chance to have any input into the amended Bill.

Grant Robertson, on his campaign blog (and kudos to him for having one), says he was asked at one meeting what is a view he holds that would not be popular.

Now that’s a great question to ask candidates.  I hate popularists who only say what people want to hear, rather than what they believe.  Anyone on a National Party pre-selection or selection committee should think about asking that as a question.

Speaking personally, I have heaps of unpopular ideas.  Wide scale privatisation.  Abolishing PAYE. Means testing super etc.

Anyway Grant’s “unpopular” idea is having Te Reo Maori compulsory in schools.  While I don’t agree with Grant on having it compulsory (I think the act of compulsion makes it counter productive) I actually agree with him on some of what he says about settling grievances and having greater understanding.  Also nice to see some pragmatism on decolonisation and Treaty workshops (“not that helpful”).

The issue of redistribution is one more politically charged.  I would advocate that once historical grievances are settled, then any redistribution of income should be done regardless of race, but based on need.

Usual rules.

I doubt anyone is surprised that the IRD reports that total student loan borrowings increased a massive 14% in the last financial year.  Oh and the numbers repaying their loans dropped around 30%.

Had four phone calls today from media – on three different subjects. When it rains, it pours!

Anyway I’m on Newstalk ZB tomorrow morning with Paul Holmes to discuss the launch of the NZ You Tube site.  Will be on sometime between 7.30 am and 8.00 am.  Sound like we’ll be focusing both on the the technical aspects (faster downloads) and the wider impact of You Tube on politics.  Never been interviewed by Paul before, so looking forward to it.

I had nothing really planned in advance for Labour Weekend, and was quite looking forard to doing nothing, but in the end managed to have quite a bit of fun.

Friday night was Southpark DVDs.  We’re now up to Season Three.  Also watched Constantine on Cork King’s new amplified stereo system and 50″ flat screen.  It’s a great movie, with some great plot twists.  Tilda Swinton makes a wonderfully insane Gabriel. But was especially good viewing and listening to it with speakers that vibrated so powerfully the bookshelf almost fell down.

On Saturday had a party at Ginga’s place.  Now I had a bit of work to do Sunday so I resolved to be a good boy and leave by midnight.  Still I managed to get through with Auckland Girl the best part of a bottle of Vodka, and then headed home. But as I was walking through Manners Mall ran into a couple of mates who persuaded me I should come join them at Mollys for just one drink.  Having no willpower I agreed.

Sunday did not start well with me sleeping in until 11 am.  This would not be a problem except I had agreed to brunch at 11 with Boat Girl. Luckily when she rung me, and I answered the phone, she immediately detected my state as hungus overus and agreed to postpone.  Still second time I have stood her up which is most ungentlemanly. Will need to make it up.

Sunday night was a real treat.  I had dinner with Milo and Fausta, whom I had not seen for the best part of 20 years.  Milo and Fausta were final year at Otago Uni when I was first year and were the departing hierarchy of the Young Nats.  Fausta now describes herself as left wing (but not economically!) and Milo for his sins ended up on the Alliance Council briefly.  So as one can imagine it made for excellent dinner conversation which went on until midnight. Als, as they reminded me, my views had mellowed somewhat also.
Without trying to sound snobbish, it was great fun to have such an intellectual dinner conversation.  Now don’t get me wrong – I’m happy 95% of the time debating who killed who on Shortland Street and the day to day thrust of politics.  But it’s nice to have the more ethereal conversations and we all had fairly in depth knowledge of Roman Republicanism, political philosophers, etc, so it was a pretty high brow evening.  I really need to have more of these – I think the intellect stagnates if you don’t use it enough.  Milo and Fausta were also both former top level debaters so that helped the fun.

Monday saw me go from high brow to very low brow, going to see The Devil Dared Me To with Ginga and Cook Girl.   I barely stopped laughing non stop.  It’s a great NZ production and I’ve wanted to see the film since I saw a preview back in February.

After the movie then had some drinks with Ratty, Ratty’s immigrant girl and some others at the Courtenay Arms.  A very relaxing end to what turned out to be a reasonably full Labour Weekend.

Steve Maharey has said he will not resign, until he can avoid a by-election. What does this mean in practice. We look at S131 of the Electoral Act:

Notwithstanding anything in section 129 of this Act, no writ shall be issued for a by-election to supply a vacancy in the House of Representatives if—

a) The vacancy arises in the period of 6 months ending with the date of the expiration of the Parliament and a resolution that a writ not be issued to supply the vacancy is passed by a majority of 75 percent of all the members of the House of Representatives; or

(b) Following the tabling in the House of Representatives by the Prime Minister of a document informing the House that a general election is to be held within 6 months of the occurrence of the vacancy, a resolution is passed by a majority of 75 percent of all the members of the House of Representatives to the effect that a writ is not to be issued to supply the vacancy.

Now looking at (a) the writs were returned in 2005 on Thursday 6 October 2005.  That means Parliament expires on Monday 6 October 2008.  Six months prior to that is Sunday 6 April 2008.  So Maharey can resign anytime from 6 April onwards and avoid a by-election.

He can resign safely before that date, but that will then require the PM to name the election date, or at least the latest date she will hold the election.  For example if he resigned on Thursday 20 March 2008, then Clark could table a document saying the latest date for an election would be Saturday 20 September 2008.  This last happened in 1996 when did such a declaration to avoid a by-election in Hawke’s Bay following the resignation of Michael Laws.

Russell Brown blogs over at humans.org.nz about autism support and the Australian election campaign.

Both Kevin Rudd and John Howard announced significant (read massive) funding packages for supporting families with autistic children.  This got into the usual argument over who is leading and who is following.  But then a useful suggestion:

Amid the bickering about who was cribbing from whom, Rudd made a sensible suggestion: whichever party won the election, both should unite on policy. I think the job for those of us who want to see greater attention to autism and education support here should be look for such a political consensus.

Not a bad idea.  While it is necessary to have policy differences in key areas – to give the public choice, it is sensible to not politicise every single area of policy.  That would be a nice challenge for the major parties in New Zealand – a bipartisan policy on support for families with autistic children.

Anything topical, not covered elsewhere.

NZPA reports that David Benson-Pope is refusing to bow out of politics, despite his Cabinet sacking for lying, and has filed a nomination for his current seat of Dunedin South.

Can I say that all of us here at Kiwiblog are fully supportive of Mr Benson Pope’s desire to remain a Labour Party MP.   You go David – don’t let Helen bully you out.  She is reported as saying:

Prime Minister Helen Clark said nominations were open to early November and it remained to be seen whether someone would seek to challenge him.

Just because Helen wants you gone is no reason to go.  Hang out for Phil.  Yeah.

Today officially celebrates the 40 hour working week.  This is somewhat ironic as studies show 20% of employees now work over 50 hours a week.  But how much is this a problem and are more laws the answer?

I’m one of those who has never worked a 40 hour week, since finishing study. Even when I was an unqualified temporary administrative assistant at age 21, earning only a bit over $10 an hour, I would work longer than 9 – 5.  I saw my job as getting the work done.  I suspect it is partly because of that attitude I got five promotions in four years and I went from a temporary admin assistant to an acting departmental manager.

Not only have I never been paid penal rates for overtime (since uni), I’ve never been paid any rates.   And I suspect most of those who work over 50 hours a week are similiar – they are not getting paid hourly rates at all – but are on a salary.

Now sometimes the situation gets ridicolous.  Certainly at Parliament the hours could be gruesome.  I’ve never minded the odd 60 hour week, but when you are working extended hours like that week in, week out – it does piss you off.  A fairly major reason as to why I left Parliament is the desire for a better work/life balance.  But it wasn’t that anyone was forcing me to work such long hours – I just had the personality type where I would always try and take on extra work, and do more stuff.  No law is going to change that.

Incidentially my record for longest consecutive period of work is 63 hours without a sleep or break (apart from showers) when I was at the final phase of rolling out a major project.  My weekly maximum is 113 hours.  Again not healthy, but was a result of necessity.

Like most people I think those in lower level jobs should get paid per hour, and not to do so is exploitative. But at what level should hourly wages become an annual salary?  At the extreme end, the CEO of Telecom is expected to work more than a 40 hour week and he doesn’t get penal rates if there after 5 pm.

Even if people are on an annual salary, it is unhealthy to be constantly working 50 – 60+ hour weeks.  Sure, every so often for a major issue is fine, but your employer is under resourced if every evening and weekend you have to be in the office.  But again, I don’t think a law is the answer.  You can’t legislate for such different circumstances. I think the best thing is employees themselves being assertive, and making it clear that they will quit and go elsewhere unless their employer hires more staff. You can always threaten them under OSH also, as a safe workplace does include not having an unreasonable level of stress.

Despite being picked as the best system by a Citizen’s Jury (which would be a preferable way to draft electoral law in NZ than have Pete Hodgson do it) the voters of Ontario rejected MMP.  It got only 36.9% support and a majority in just 5/107 ridings.

Don Brash writes at the Centre for Political Research, that 11 years on it is time for another referendum on MMP.  I agree that the electoral system is smething which should be decided by the public, not by MPs. And that at the 2011 election, that will have been 15 years – more than long enough to have the public make an informed decision.

Now if it was a choice between going back to FPP or staying with MMP, I would vote to stay with MMP.  The fact I support the public having a say, doesn’t mean I back change. Don Brash also says he would not vote to go back to FPP.

The major advantages of MMP has been that every vote counts to some degree (if they make threshold) and that the use of List MPs has allowed for a far more balanced and diverse Parliament.   I would not surrender those lightly.

The downside has been the disproportionate power given to parties like NZ First who effectively choose the Government as often as not.

If there was another referendum,  it need not be MMP vs FPP.  I assume it would be a two stage process like in 92/93 where one would select a contender in one vote, and then have a direct face off.  I’d love to see say an STV vs MMP choice or even a SM vs MMP choice.

STV is not very well suited to choosing a health board or local authority members.  But it can work well with national elections, and with Mayoral elections.

The Dom Post reports that it looks likely that GPS will be installed on Wellington buses and trains, so that passengers can see how far away they are from their stop.

This is very common overseas and even in other NZ cities.  It is a good idea.

I’m a fairly regular bus user, and the standard timetables are not hugely reliable.  But being able to get an accurate prediction on how far away the next bus is, would I am sure encourage greater use of the buses.

Would be great if they also allow one to see the GPS info from a website.  Then you don’t have to get to the bus stop, to see how far away the bus is.  You can look it up and time your departure to coincide.

Once upon a time it was the big corporate multinationals that would brazenly use attractive half naked women to sell unrelated products.

Now the environmental groups are into it also, meaning it is of course okay for everyone to do it.

So courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald, here is Sophie Monk promoting the virtues of  vegetarianism.

Peter Lyons is a teacher of economics. He writes in the NZ Herald how Dr Cullen’s surpluses are more to do with being miserly than about wise management:

But the sheer size of this surplus represents an economic distortion largely due to over-taxation of the private sector.

A Budget surplus of about $8 billion equates to $4000 for every worker in the New Zealand economy.

A key implication of Dr Cullen’s Budget surplus can be illustrated using the analogy of a household.

In this household the wife (tax-paying public) is the primary income earner and the husband (Government) is a miserly hoarder.

The husband permits the wife a minimal amount for running the household each week.

Some weeks she is forced to borrow from the local loan shark just to make ends meet. The more she borrows the more interest she has to pay.

As she slides further into debt she de-velops a debtor mentality of living for the moment. She continues to borrow and spend.

Meanwhile her husband gleefully counts his hoardings acquired mainly from her income. He is reluctant to increase her allowance in case she becomes more extravagant in her spending.

A great analogy.  Dr Cullen is the abusive controlling husband.  He isgnores the fact that we earn the mone, not him.  He treats it all as his, and will only give back to us the amount he thinks we should have.

Some health and education professionals are now eligible for Working for Families assistance if they are not too proud to receive Government welfare.

There is something disturbing about middle-income-earners being reliant on Government assistance to be able to raise a family, particularly during a period of economic prosperity.

Indeed.  But this is what the Government wants – over 50% of all NZ families reliant on the state, to create a permanent majority in favour of ever increasing state welfare.

Dr Cullen need not be proud of his huge Budget surplus. It does not indicate prudent economic management. It represents economic distortion in the form of over-taxation.

It is also a contributing factor to the huge debt mountain the New Zealand public has accumulated over recent years.

It’s a sound point, not often made.  The Government goes on abotu the high level of private sector debt, but contributes to the problem by refusing to give the private sector (you and me) their over-taxation back.

I’m not one of those people who think being a police officer is just like any other job.  It’s one of the rare professions where getting assaulted, and risking serious harm, is a regular part of the job.

The Police annual report notes attacks on police officers are at a ten year high and there are now an average six assaults a day.

And Greg O’Connor is probably right that the increase in substance abuse is why so many people now try to bash the Police, rather than accept arrest etc.

I’ve got a hell of a lot of respect for any frontline Officer.  Knowing you will get assaulted 10 – 20 times in your career is not exactly an incentive.

Conservative Home covers the latest meeting between John Key and David Cameron.

David Cameron has had a fairly rough period since Gordon Brown took over, but he has weathered it well, and Brown is now the subject of intense criticism for his flip-flop on holding an early election.  He has also just agreed to cede more powers to the EU, despite having promised a referendum on such issues. So the next round of polls in the UK will be interesting. The last one has the Tories 7% ahead.