Kiwiblog

This short video of the new kangaroo court that could happen under S92A is very well done, and features actual kangaroos!

This Dylan Horrocks cartoon sums things up wonderfully well.

While this Emmerson cartoon is equally good.

A few people have said they are not sure how to “black out” their website on Monday morning. There are numerous way you can take part.

1. Set your site to redirect to the Creative Freedom Forum Blackout page for a few hours.
2. Stick one of the large banners into a post, and leave that up as the last post for a few hours.
3. Swap your wordpress theme to this black one by Thomas Covell.
4. In wordpress goto “Settings” and then “Reading” and choose the front page to be a static page instead of your latest posts, and make that static page just a page about the Blackout with the banners.

Don’t worry too much if parts of your site are still accessible. The main thing is not to put any fresh content up (except S92A material) on Monday morning, so that anyone checking the blogs out on Monday morning will find nothing but black banners protesting S92A.

I’ll probably also turn off comments during the period of the blackout.

Almost every major newspaper has now called for Barry Matthews to do the decent thing and resign. The latest is the Sunday Star-Times:

LET’S CONCEDE that Barry Matthews has a tough job. His department must look after the human wreckage that society has spurned: the lost, the vicious, the drunk and the addicted, the hopeless and the bent and twisted.

Absolutely. Corrections is as tough as it gets.

Let’s also concede that Corrections, for deep historical reasons, is not well placed to cope. The tough criminal culture has produced a tough culture among the guards. Attempts to change this culture are difficult and take time. One reason for the enthusiastic move to try private prisons all those years ago was the feeling that the state prison system was unreformable: a fresh start was needed.

And Labour’s killing off of this initiative is one of the most ideological stupid things they did. The state prison system does have a culture of corruption (the SST calls it “tough”, and this was a chance to help turn that around.

Does all this mean that Matthews should keep his job? No. The Auditor-General’s report is, in truth, a damning one and there can be no excuses for the trouble it uncovered. A year-long audit showed that despite the department’s spectacular failures in the case of murderers William Bell and Graeme Burton, Corrections continued to fail to do its job. This was not a case simply of not enough workers to carry out the tasks. It was just plain negligence and sloppiness. Dangerous prisoners walked free and no attempt was made to warn their victims. Others went out into the world and did not see a probation officer for weeks or months.

The public, in other words, was at risk because the department wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. Matthews, as the chief executive of the department, must be accountable for these failings. He has been in charge for four years. That is long enough to ensure that those who work in the organisation do the job they are paid to do. These were not isolated shortcomings. They were frequent or systemic.

Traditionally, we have demanded accountability either from the minister or the chief executive of a department; too often, both have declined to accept the blame. Judith Collins has the great good luck to be a new minister, and cannot fairly be blamed. The buck stops, therefore, with Matthews. No doubt he has done his best. No doubt he has worked hard to reform an intractable organisation that has had to bear impossible new loads. But in the end, the democratic system requires accountability. If Matthews will not resign, the State Services Commission must move or sack him.

The Sunday Star-Times says:

GREEN PARTY co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons is about to announce her resignation from the post. She will stand down to allow a new co-leader time to make her mark before the 2011 election.

The veteran Green, co-leader since 1995, is expected to serve out the parliamentary term as a list MP.

No real surprise, but earlier than expected. Seems weird to announce your retirement just weeks after the election. I guess if she had become a Minister, it would have been delayed.

Fitzsimons’ departure will leave a difficult problem for the party. She is a widely liked and admired politician, with appeal across the political spectrum.

Yep. You very very rarely hear a bad word about her.

The SST looks at her possible sucessors:

Neither Bradford nor Turei has similar appeal. Bradford, once a fiery Marxist radical, has softened her image, but her sponsorship of the anti-smacking bill drew much flak.

Turei has the progressive appeal of being a Maori woman, but she may be seen as too radical to have wide appeal.

It is not known if Catherine Delahunty, elected to parliament at last year’s general election, will be a candidate for the co-leadership. Her lack of parliamentary experience could count against her.

Oh please please please let the Greens select Catherine Delahunty as co-leader. If she stands, I urge all Kiwiblog readers to join the Green Party and vote for her

Sue Bradford is a very competent and hard working MP. She impresses on select committees. But her anti-smacking law has (rightfully) tainted her public image, and she is not from the environmental wing of the party. Bradford would be a risk – a Bradford/Norman leadership coudl look like the Greens had turned into the Alliance.

I think Metira Turei is their best bet. She is very smart, and while she is a radical (former anarchist), she has been pretty restrained as an MP.

Deborah slays some stupidness:

Last week Sir Jonathan said he was “unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate”.

According to this British toff, we should seriously consider contraception and abortion as weapons against climate change. After all, he reckons, every Pommie child in its lifetime will destroy more than two acres of “old-growth oak woodland”.

I suppose in New Zealand the equivalent would be trashing several hectares of native bush.

I look forward to the reaction from our Family First lobby on hearing New Zealand women, pregnant with a third child, can rush to a certified GP seeking an abortion on the grounds that a nice patch of West Coast beech forest is more important than human life.

Climate change as a reason for an abortion – now that would be a debate!

The regular newspaper/magazine readship and circulation stats are out, and of course every publication finds a way to make it sound like good news for them.

Below are the changes in readership (the more important figure for most) over the last year, and where available the changes in circulation (usually over last six months).

1. Herald on Sunday readership up 10.7% (circulation up 0.1%)
2. Waikato Times up 10.5% (up 0.1%)
3. Metro up 3.1% (down 8.2%)
4. Dominion Post up 1.2% (down 2.7%)
5. Sunday Star-Times up 0.7% (down 1.1%)
6. NZ Herald down 0.3% (down 3.3%)
7. North & South down 1.0% (down 0.5%)
8. Investigate down 1.5%
9. Otago Daily Times down 1.9% (down 2.5%)
10. Computerworld down 2.7% (up 0.1%)
11. Net Guide down 2.9%
12. Sunday News down 3.0% (down 4.6%)
13. The Press down 4.7% (down 2.5%)
14. The Listener down 4.7% (down 0.6%)
15. NBR down 22.1% (down 3.1%)

As you can see there are difference between changes in circulation and readership. The NZ Herald and NBR have both had around a 3% drop in circulation but the Herald’s readership is meant to up marginally while NBR’s down significantly. Of course the readership figures are based on a survey, and they have a range of variability.

Australia is deporting back to NZ, Maria Brown and her son Prince Brown.

They are rather nasty thugs, and unless there is some sort of miracle, I suspect they will be offending as regularly here, as in Australia.

What struck me though, is how incredibly stupid they are. Some extracts:

Maria Brown was defended by her partner Nasser Rajab, and the two struggled to keep their stories straight. They had met in New Zealand in 1991, she said. He said they met in Australia in 2001. She said she was unaware of any allegations her partner had supplied drugs – he admitted serving an 18-month prison sentence for such a crime ending just a few months before the tribunal hearing.

She said he had no criminal record – he was shown to have a 25-year string of convictions. She said he was a Kiwi; he said he was not. It was, found the tribunal president, “impossible to treat [Maria Brown] as a reliable witness”.

How dumb do you have to be to not even get your story straight?

Prince Brown’s defence was equally ridiculous. He denied knowing a man police identified as a known drug dealer – and then produced a letter of support from the same man describing the young man as an upstanding member of the community.

And this sets a new level of dumbness.

Bill Ralston writes in the HoS:

Six months ago Labour was constantly telling us that John Key was weak, untrustworthy and devious, while his National Party was little more than a bunch of washed-up hacks, bereft of ideas and vision. “Slippery John”. “It’s all about trust”. Those were Labour’s chants.

It was a strategy aimed at destroying Key’s credibility and it almost worked but, despite their suspicions, enough voters closed their eyes, crossed their fingers and put their ticks on the ballot paper for National.

Having now discovered those fears were groundless we seem to be giving National the longest honeymoon any government has enjoyed.

I predict that in 2011 Labour’s campaign will not be the same as their 2008 one.

This surge in goodwill is driven by three things. The first is sheer relief. Relief that, despite Labour’s Chicken Little predictions, the sky did not fall when National came to power.

The second is that Key appears to be the ideal personification of the Government he leads. Yes, he can be a bit goofy at times.

If you don’t believe me check out the shot of him dancing with two transvestites at the Big Gay Out. That is definitely goofy. But if Helen Clark was cold and aloof, Key seems warm, natural and approachable.

Key seems that way because he is.

Daily we see news stories detailing some minister taking strong action on some problem that has long affected the country.

Amazingly, most of these actions are based on National’s election promises and they are being fulfilled. Even if you don’t agree with them all, it is somehow reassuring to see them doing what they promised to do.

The Government is very focused on keeping its promises. Hence calls for National to break its word and (for example) cancel tax cuts, or abolish the ETS are pretty futile.

Thanks to Nick Smith, once his changes to the RMA go through, I will never again have to apply for a Resource Consent to trim my garden, the council will not have to spend many hours pondering my botanical behaviour and the ratepayers of Auckland will not be wasting hundreds of dollars every time someone in this city wants to do some gardening.

Soumds like a win-win.

The ODT Editorial says:

The vote was 112-9 in favour of repeal, with only the Green Party arguing for retention.

A clearer admission by the Labour Party, which controversially and determinedly pushed the legislation through against vociferous opposition inside and outside Parliament, that it got wrong one of the most important pieces of law sponsored during its nine-year parliamentary tenure would be hard to come by.

Yep. I was not planning to get actively involved in politics or campaigning (beyond offering opinions on my blog) but the EFB/EFA motivated me to devote hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on fighting this reprehensible law.

With justification, opponents complained that the EFA stymied political debate and freedom of expression. But equally, it was the Labour-led government’s determination to push ahead, with little consultation and without achieving a greater degree of cross-party consensus, that outraged many.

And to make it worse, the cross-party consensus was ready and waiting. National had agreed in principle to greater donation transparency and some restrictions on third party campaigns. The way Labour blew away any sort of moral high ground on these issues was a near unparalleled act of stupidity.

The Herald editorial is to the point:

From the moment on Tuesday that the Auditor General delivered a report on the administration of parole, it has been obvious that the head of the Corrections Department must resign. Obvious, it seems, to everyone but him. Barry Matthews’ stated determination to stay at his post is untenable.

It does him no credit to insist he is staying to put things right. If he was capable of doing that he surely would have done so after the murder committed by a parolee, Graeme Burton, two years ago. That was not the first time the monitoring of parole has let the country down; it was just the last straw.

It is obvious he has had his chances and failed. But our employment law doesn’t allow you to sack a CEO just because they have failed at their job. The SSC will have to be careful.

If a departmental head does not know how to do the decent thing in these circumstances, public service standards are at a low ebb. The State Services Commission should not take any more of the 10 days given it to find who is responsible. It knows where the buck stops. So does Mr Matthews. He must go.

A very strong editorial that Matthews should reflect on.

A lengthy interview with John Key in the NZ Herald. Some extracts:

You personally met the main bankers to talk about liquidity; you pick up the phone to call F & P when business looks bad. Is this the behaviour of a Prime Minister or a chief executive?

In my opinion it is the behaviour of a Prime Minister but one that reflects that we are in very difficult economic conditions and the Government will be, rightfully so, judged on its ability to show leadership and try and combat the global recession. It is not the behaviour that will always be necessary but these are not normal times.

I think that there is an element of chief executive behaviour in the approach John brings to the job. That is not actually a bad thing. In fact I find it pretty reassuring that we have a Prime Minister who absolutely understands how business works.

If the recession is deep and prolonged will you go higher?

Some of the very long-term predictions, those in the 2025 forecasts at the moment, where a case for the debt to GDP is very, very high … is totally unacceptable. But I think you need to put those forecasts into a bit of context which is to say that beyond the three-year forecast period, into the projected period, there are an enormous number of assumptions built into the models, and I don’t think those assumptions actually all reflect actuality – in the same way that if you looked at the very same models a year ago, they would have predicted that New Zealand had no debt in about 10 years. So they are highly volatile and we need to take them with a grain of salt.

This is very true about the long-term forecasts. However the more time that goes on, the harder it is to change them. A reduction in spending now, will have better flow on effects, than doing it in five years time.

Why doesn’t the Government cut its overall spending, as Sir Roger Douglas and Roger Kerr are arguing?

In effect, at one level we are – cutting the increase in Government expenditure. If we live to a $1.75 billion new budget spend then the relative overall size of the Government compared to the economy reduces and certainly that’s a much slower spending track than has been in place in the last at least six years. So in essence we are doing that. But also there is a danger that if we really take an axe to Government expenditure we are also a significant part of the economy and we will slow things down. In fact that [cutting expenditure] runs counter to the view that even the rating agencies have been saying, that this is a time that Governments should be reasonably fiscally expansionary a.k.a. spending more money.

Not even ACT asks for an absolute reduction in Government spending. ACT advocated it should only increase by the rate of inflation and population growth, which currently is around 6%.

The NZ Herald has an exclusive preview of a report being released at 10 am today, that was commissioned by Telecom, Telstra-Clear and Vodafone.

As readers will know, National was elected on a major promise of spending $1.5 billion to help ensure ultra high speed broadband to 75% of NZ homes.

The three telcos have released a report which basically says the Government should not spend $1.5 billion in this area, because all their existing offerings are adequate. I’ll try not to laugh.

Now you have to consider how unusual it is for the major players in a sector to try and stop the Government spending $1.5 billion in subsidies, rather than try and get some of the $1.5 billion.

So why would the big three be fighting against a huge investment in their sector? Because they are scared shitless that it won’t go to them. They are very worried that electricity lines companies may get to provide most of the infrastructure for fibre to the home. And this means the telcos would have to compete in offering services over that fibre network, plus offer complementary services over mobile and wireless.

Labour have been running what is basically a blatant lie for nine months, about National’s policy. They have been scare mongering that National is just going to give the $1.5 billion to Telecom, which would help perpetuate Telecom’s market dominance. Now ask yourself, would Telecom be partnering up with its two biggest rivals, to fund a report that argues the $1.5 billion should not happen – if Telecom thought there was any liklihood that $1.5 billion would be coming their way?

Now I don’t know what the Government is going to do. I’m not even sure if they have made decisions yet. But I think Liam Dann has it somewhat wrong in this article:

Bill English and John Key will already be having serious doubts about their ability to commit $1.5 billion.

The world has changed dramatically since Maurice Williamson – then opposition spokesman on telecommunications – made the $1.5 billion promise.

It was John Key, not Maurice Williamson, that made the promise. I was there at the speech. John was taking, and Maurice was sitting next to me clapping furiously – like all of us. Now this is not to say that Maurice was not a passionate advocate of the policy – he was, and he helped make it happen. But anyone who suggests John Key is not committed to this policy is wrong (in my opinion). It is no secret that John was a very strong advocate for it.

And while the credit crisis is an issue, the Government has made clear that they are looking to bring forward infrastructure spending, not reduce it.

Dann says the benefits of fibre to the home must be jobs, not just movies on demand. I agree. I think fibre to the home will allow many businesses to reduce costs as staff can work from home, which provides both economic and environmental costs. Dann says:

And cost-benefit debate needs to focus on jobs not, unfortunately, speed for the home user.

Last month a report by the Economist noted two studies which found some evidence of increased broadband spending equating to increased employment.

Washington-based Brookings Institution concluded that for every percentage point increase of broadband penetration, employment increases by 0.2 per cent to 0.3 per cent per year. But that is not huge growth.

Not huge? So if we get 10% more broadband penetration we will have extra employment growth of 2% to 3% a year. That is an extra 40,000 to 60,000 jobs a year.

I look forward to reading the full report. There certainly are difficult issues for the Government to deal with. For example if most of the funding does go to electricity lines companies, it would be desirable for this not to hinder current investment plans by the Telcos. I am sure the Castalia report will be a useful piece of research, as they had access to the telco’s commercial data.

Some bastard just triggered the building fire alarm. 2.30 am on a Saturday is an especially bad time to get up and stagger down stairs to stand in the cold waiting for fire engines to turn up.

I think the proposed three strikes and you are out law should be amended to include people setting off false fire alarms. Grrrrrr.

This press release has gone out on Scoop:

NZ Political Bloggers To Blackout Websites 23 Feb. In S92a Protest

“On Monday morning bloggers from across the political spectrum will be taking their blogs down in a “blog out” to protest the coming into force on the 28th of S92A of the Copyright Act.

Scores and scores of bloggers will be taking part, including Public Address, Scoop, Kiwiblog, The Standard, No Right Turn, Frog Blog, Whale Oil, Not PC, No Minister, Just Left, The Hand Mirror, Roar Prawn, Policy Net, Kiwi Politico etc etc. Supporters of almost every political party are taking part – National, Labour, Greens, ACT, Alliance, and Libertarianz, as well as non political blogs like the popular Television blog Throng, and the Scoop news site and NZ’s leading technology news community Geekzone.

To say we represent a diverse range of views is putting it mildly. Normally we disagree on everything. Even e=mc^2 can be regarded as a highly debatable proposition on our blogs.

So for us to all unite together, from across the political spectrum, to condemn S92A of the Copyright Act should send a signal as to how bad the law is. A law which can see people lose their Internet access on the basis of unproven allegations should have no place in the New Zealand statute books.

We don’t care who voted for the law in the first place. We just want it stopped. We call on either Parliament to repeal that section or for the Government to delay it from coming into force on 28 February.

The normal content on our blogs will be made inaccessible on Monday morning, and our blogs will refer people to the online petition organized by the Creative Freedom Foundation. “

ENDS

Details on how to blackout your website are here. We’ll have some further info on how to make the rest of your site inaccessible, if you wish to, over the weekend.

If your blog will be joining the blackout on Monday, go to this page and register.

The NZ Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation at Victoria University has published this paper on property rights as human rights.

They find that in the OECD, we are one of the very few countries that don’t have some sort of constitutional protection of our property rights. In fact only Australia and NZ do not.

I certainly support that at a minimum property rights should be included in the Bill of Rights Act 1990. Ideally I want to see a constitution one day where a number of basic rights are enshrined, and this would be one of them. The right is not absolute – sometimes property has to be taken to allow SH1 to be built for example – but there should always be fair compensation.

I had lots of fun on iPredict in 2008. I made over $1,000 (more tahn doubling my money) by investing in stocks on various events. The best return was $400 on Winston Peters not being an MP. Second best was $350 that CLark would not sack Peters. I only lost money off Benson-Pope not contesting the election and under-estimating how far the OCR would drop.

Now so far in 2009, it is off to a good start. I made around $160 on the Labour Party leadership (that it would be Goff not Cunliffe) and around $50 on the EFA being repealed by end of May.

So what are my current investments:

1. Petrol price at end of February – I have 100 shares I got for 36c that it will be more than 156c/l – current price is 95c, so looking good
2. Clark to leave Parliament this year – 100 shares I got for 80c, and currently sitting at 90c
3. Cullen to leave Parliament this year – 100 shares I got for 49c, and currently sitting at 81c. These have gone up around 20c in the last few days, so maybe someone knows something?
4. I have short sold (basically it means I am saying the event will not happen) 300 shares that Annette King will not be Deputy Leader of Labour at the end of the year. I think she will be, so sold this stock at 26c and hope to buy it for 0c when it doesn’t happen. Currently at 24c which is over priced in my book. I would put her chances of going this year as under 10% so worth selling while price is over 10c.
5. Also sold 400 shares that Commodore Bainimarama will step down as Interim PM of Fiji this year – that means I think he will not step down. I think there is no chance he will step down from power, but there is some risk he will give himself a new job title. I sold 400 shares at 27c and they are currently 31c.
6. Sold 350 shares that Goff will be rolled by year end, meaning I think he will not be rolled. I sold for 13c, and they are now up to 16c. I think he may come under pressure in 2010, but not 2009.
7. Sold 50 shares that Anderton would announce his retirement this year. I think he will announce it, but in 2010. Sold for 28c and currently 23c.
8. Sold 200 shares that the Maori-National coalition will be terminated in 2009. Sold for 19c and they are currently 20c. I think they are over priced.

I’ve yet to buy or sell any of the 2011 election stocks, as too early for me.

It is interesting to look at analysis of why National is on 60%. Of course there is a honeymoon factor in there, but let me tell you National in Feb 1991 was not on 60%!

Steve Pierson at The Standard thinks it is because John Key smiles a lot, and it is all because National has such a super smart PR team, that National is at 60%. I mean, hey they even turned his broken arm into a plus.

I think it is because John Key is Labour’s worst nightmare. He is a genuine unpredictable centrist. Now he is a centre-right centrist, but they can’t pigeonhole him as the typical “new right neo-liberal”.

Labour spent over a million dollars on ads last year telling NZers they can not trust John Key. It was the most personally targeted negative campaign we had seen. Why were they so desperate to have people think Key was not a centrist? Because they knew deep down he was, and that that is where elections are won.

Look at what the Gallery are saying. Tracy Watkins blogs:

It’s a new world order. But some people don’t seem to get it yet.

Trying to interpret comments by John Key about Fisher & Paykel in the context of the old arguments about Left and Right is about as useful as comparing a Toyota Camry with an ocean-going liner.

And Colin Espiner also blogs:

John Key just continues to surprise – and I imagine he’s surprising his own party and its backers as much as the public.

Generally when Roger Kerr from the dry-Right Business Roundtable starts writing articles criticising you just a few months into your first term in government, it’s because you’re a centre-Left government.

But in National’s case, it’s because they’ve got a leader and a Prime Minister who has pretty much torn up the rule book governing the political spectrum.

If Helen Clark shifted the paradigm of New Zealand politics during her nine years in power, Key seems to be intent on exploding it altogether.

Espiner also looks at how hands on Key is:

When Key caught wind that banks might be being a little stingy with their credit to businesses, he got on the blower to their chief executives and had a little chat. Imagine Helen Clark or Michael Cullen doing that?

And after Fisher and Paykel Appliances saw its share price plummet 40 percent in a single day yesterday, Key again reached for the telephone and called up chief executive John Bongard.

This is why I semi-jokingly refer to John’s Muldoonist tendencies!

Colin also notes:

Just one other example of Key’s newfound interventionist streak – the impending cricket tour of Zimbabwe by the Black Caps. Remember 2005, when the Labour government refused to intervene to stop NZ Cricket touring? It did stop the return series by declining visas for the Zimbabwe players, and I accept there were few stronger critics of the Mugabwe regime than Clark.

But Labour’s view was that to prevent the cricketers heading to Africa it would have had to revoke their passports, and that was a bridge too far.

Key doesn’t seem to have any such qualms. He pretty much said yesterday, and again on his way into caucus this morning, that the tour wouldn’t be proceeding. Asked if that meant revoking passports, he shrugged and said he was looking at all the options.

There’s a gutsy determination about him at the moment that reminds me very much of Clark in her earlier years, before she became worn down by the endless decision-making and sheer plethora of issues and controversies that enveloped her government.

I think it’s refreshing, as long as it lasts.

And this is why National is at 60%. Not because everyone loves National, but because they do love John Key. Only 4% of NZers thought he was doing a poor or weak job. That is incredibly low.

Labour and its allies need to realise they are dealing with a very different politician with John Key. He is an instinctive rather than ideological politician. Now his instincts are centre-right, but he operates by trusting his instincts and his skills to get good outcomes.

If people think National is at 60% just because John Key smiles a lot, then they are dramatically under-estimating him. Just as they did last year when they all said he would get whipped by Helen in the debates.

Now sure market purists like myself are wincing from time to time, as John does one of his interventions. But the battle for most of the public lies in the centre.

The challenge for Labour is how do they respond?

Sadly it looks like things will get worse in the Middle East:

The anti-Arab politician who emerged as a kingmaker after Israel’s election endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu, virtually ensuring he will once again become prime minister.

The big question is whether the hawkish Netanyahu will be able to build the broad coalition he will likely need to stay in power and avoid clashing with the Obama administration and much of the world.

With his top rival, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, signalling on Thursday that she would enter the opposition, Netanyahu’s prospects do not look good.

He will probably have little choice but to forge a coalition with nationalist and religious parties opposed to peacemaking with the Palestinians and Israel’s other Arab neighbours.

Sad, but possibly inevitable.

John Drinnan writes:

Movie and music industry bosses have pulled back from a hardline approach and are belatedly considering a plan for an independent mediator to oversee protracted complaints between them and telcos.

The idea is that a mediator will be a go-between in protracted internet piracy complaints where copyright holders claim an illegal download, but it is denied by ISP customers.

The mediator plan might ease the tense relationship between the hard-nosed Hollywood-led approach and telcos disgruntled about policing copyright holders’ property rights.

This would go a very long way towards meeting concerns. It would take a few months to set up, so the Government should delay the enactment of S92A until it is. Normally it would take more than a few months, but there is an existing dispute resolution service for alleged online intellectual property infringements, and that could serve as a template for resolving alleged copyright infringements.

Hopefully the Auckland Regional Council has learnt a lesson with its $1.79m loss on David Beckham’s LA Galaxy team, playing at Mt Smart.

Only around 1% of Aucklanders paid to go see the game.

The NZ Herald calculates that is a loss of $22,375 for every minute of the game.

My weekly Dispatch from St Johnnysberg column at NBR looks at the honeymoon for the Government, as shown in the polls. But despite that Labour gets best play of the week, and National worst play of the week.

Feedback and comments can be left at NBR.

NZPA have just reported:

Labour MP Clare Curran has drafted a member’s bill overturning the section and will attempt to get Parliament to consider it.

Well done Clare. That is great news. Generally MPs need the permission of their Caucus to introduce a private members bill, so I read this as Labour reversing their previous support for S92A. It is a very welcome u-turn.

This now has S92A opposed by Labour, ACT, Greens,United Future and presumably Progressive.

The ball is firmly with the Government now.

Once again big ups to Labour for their change of position. I’m delighted.

The Russell McVeagh New Zealand Schools’ Debating Team has won the World Schools’ Debating Championships after defeating England in the Grand Final, in Athens.

The Kiwis beat England by a 6-1 margin, proposing the motion “That all illegal immigrants should receive amnesty”.

New Zealand were runners-up at the 2008 Championships, losing on a 4-5 decision to England, so this is great utu!

It is the first time since 1995 that New Zealand has won the Championships, and the fourth time since 1988, making New Zealand the second most successful country ever to compete in the tournament.

The team comprised Maria English (Captain, Samuel Marsden Collegiate), Holly Jenkins (Sacred Heart College), Jennifer Savage (Wanganui Collegiate), Tom Chen (Hillcrest High School) and Ben Kornfeld (King’s College).

Maria English was also ranked as the world’s second best student debater – a great achievement as she has only just finished Year 12/6th form.