Kiwiblog

NZPA report:

Deferring a decision on whether folic acid should be added to bread was “a cheap cop out” in response to lobby group scaremongering, the Labour Party said today. …

Ms Dyson said the previous government considered a great deal of information before deciding to go ahead with the introduction of folic acid to bread.

Labour – the party of mass medication – even if we don’t know whether it causes cancer or not.

Trevor Mallard blogs:

I’ve known Nikki Kaye for about a decade. But not well enough.

On budget night she challenged me to race around Taupo during the Challenge in November.

I do a bit of biking. I’ve done Taupo four times mostly taking between 5.31 and 5.36.   Over 6.20 first attempt. Ok for my age.

I looked at Nikki. She’s young, looks pretty good but didn’t impress me as a finely tuned athlete. I accepted her challenge.

How wrong I was. Nikki did the coast to coast last year. Not as part of a team but as an individual. And she was only one off a top 50 finish.

Experts tell me that it is the equivalent of a 4.45 Taupo. My limit would be around 5.15 if training went well and conditions on the day were great.

Now Trevor is a pretty good cyclist. But he is an even better politician and is doing the old politician trick of reducing expectations.

Trevor did get 5.36 last year. I have no doubt he can make 5.15 with sufficient motivation, and maybe even better that. My spies report he is spending much spare time cycling.

Now Nikki is definitely very fit, has run some marathons, and did complete the Coast to Coast last year. But she is not a regular cyclist and proficiency in one sport does not always translate into proficiency in another. And 160 kms is a tough challenge.

As an example Caroline Evers-Swindell did the race last year slower than Trevor – 5:44.

So quite a compliment that Trevor thinks Nikki can cycle 160 kms one hour faster than an Olympic gold medallist.

A time of 4:45 would out Nikki in the top 15 for her gender and age. It would put her ahead of Shelley Hesson at 4:53 who competed in the 2004 Olympic Games.

It would even be a faster time than Jenny MacPherson (4:51) who has won three consecutive Tour Down Under cycling races.

So when Trevor casually mentions he reckons Nikki is good for 4:45, you should treat this with the normal suspicion of anything Trevor says.

To do a sub five hour race, Trevor (on 2008 results) would need to be be in the top 300 of the 1,300 in his age and gender group. Niiki, to do a sub five hour race, would need to be in basically the top 20 of 250.

Now I’m not saying Nikki won’t win. Obviously I hope she will. But the contest isn’t quite as uneven as Trevor would like people to think.

Cactus Kate commented:

I’m picking a Mallard victory on the basis that you have at least 4 spare hours a day in opposition to train for the event

Trevor has even blogged about some of his recent cycling.

Trevor responded:

Kate – I’ve certainly got a lot more time now that I’m not a Minister. But government backbenchers possibly have even more time. They are tied up in Select Committees a bit more but don’t seem to do the policy development work and caucus group travel that we do.

Heh. The thought of Nikki with spare time is fairly amusing as she is currently on three Select Committees (some MPs have only one) and the Auckland Governance Committee is spending around a month sitting from 9 am to 9 pm five days a week. And that is only select committee hearings – on top of that you have all your other MPs duties.

So I think the Mallard-Kaye contest will be a tightly contested race. Will Nikki’s fitness and youth overcome Trevor’s experience, strength and time?

By coincidence Kiwiblog may just be in Taupo to report on this race

The SST report:

PRINCIPALS ARE dealing with an “exponential growth” in the number of teachers having inappropriate relationships with students and they blame text-messaging, the drop in the drinking age and dating websites.

Really. I blame the fact that some teachers like having sex with their students.

Cases heard this year have not yet been published, but the rise in problem text-messaging is obvious in 2006, none of the 16 cases involved texting, but by 2008, five of the 18 cases did. All the teachers involved were suspended or stripped of their registration. Last month Walsh sent a warning to principals, saying many of these teachers “had little understanding of professional boundaries”.

There is a difference between correlation and causative. I imagine that the increased references to text messages in relationships, is because they are normal for those age groups.

Adding to the minefield facing teachers was the drinking age, which dropped to 18 in 1999, meaning senior students were now bumping into teachers on boozy nights out. This was creating so many problems, Walsh said, that some teachers were being warned to stay out of pubs popular with students.

I think this is a bit of an excuse also. Most students will only turn 18 a few months before they leave school. As far as I recall, few of these teacher-pupil relationships started entirely after the pupil turned 18.

The SST report:

THE YOUNG Helen Clark was once described as “a sex bomb” in black boots, according to a new unauthorised biography of the former Labour prime minister.

Helen Clark, by Wellington journalist Denis Welch, says trade union leader Matt McCarten’s first memory of her was from the early 80s. “She was dressed all in black and had big black boots,” McCarten said.

Fellow unionist Laila Harre, later an Alliance Party cabinet minister in Clark’s first cabinet, recalled a 1985 party where young men were “salivating over Helen Clark and her boots”.

“McCarten: `She was a sex bomb!”‘

“Harre: `She was, actually from a left-wing point of view. We don’t have very high standards!”‘

Funnily enough more people would say Laila used to be the left’s “sex bomb”. Many a Nat staffer used to gaze longingly at her.

However Laila had these steely eyes that looked like they could freeze you at 100 metres, so I don’t think any of the young admirers ever shared their adoration with her

The SST also has a largish extract from the upcoming Welch book on Clark.

Prog Blog has a list of things he claims are gone under National. To many of them we would say Thank God:

Options for only healthy food in school canteens

Such an Orwellian descripton – “options”

Biofuel percentage in petrol

Which even the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment warned about. Hundreds and thousands have died of food shortages due to such mandatory quotas of biofuel as productive food growing land was turned to biofuels.

Legislation to ensure coal and gas generators are not built

Which would have resulted in not enough power supply to meet demand and no heaters in winter.

Research for equal pay for female Social Workers

Oh no, a report got canned.

Security of the Commerce Commission

It’s still there actually!

Parts of Resource Management Act

Thank God again. Evel Labour supported many of the changes.

High level elected public officials

Not even sure what this means, but losing some can’t harm

Plans for early intervention

In what? What a bizarre list. Looks like a cut and paste done without reading.

And then we also have some lies:

Funding for special needs

Actually funding for special needs education was boosted $51 million in the 2009 Budget.

According to the Sunday Star-Times, Cabinet tomorrow will throw out Labour’s decision to introduce mandatory addition of folic acid to bread:

THE BUN-FIGHT is over. Bakers will not be forced by law to add folic acid to our bread, bagels, crumpets and English muffins. The Key government will announce this week that it is throwing out the former government’s policy.

Cabinet is expected to formalise the government’s position when it meets tomorrow, effectively putting the controversial issue on the back burner for three years and, crucially, beyond the next election.

The government is not convinced that making folic acid a compulsory ingredient in all bread is necessary, and wants more time to assess the evidence. Folic acid has been shown to reduce the risk of babies being born with defects such as spina bifida, but bakers say women would need to eat at least 11 slices of bread a day to make a difference to the health of their unborn child.

The Key government favours a voluntary regime. It has been looking for a way to wriggle out of the trans-Tasman agreement, struck by the former Labour government, and due to take effect on September 1.

Community pressure mounted as the deadline approached. Radio talkback shows were last week inundated with indignant callers.

The Star-Times understands that Food Minister Kate Wilkinson on Thursday reached an agreement with the Australian parliamentary secretary for health, Mark Butler, that exempts New Zealand from the new standard.

That is a nice exclusive for the SST, by their political editor Grahame Armstrong.

And the agreement with Australia is much better than unilaterally pulling out. As I have said before, Australian politicians will understand how something can become a major issue.

Under the trans-Tasman agreement, folic acid was to be mandatory in all wheat flour products, including sweet breads and rolls, bagels, foccacia, English muffins and flat breads that contain yeast.

Crumpets, scones, pancakes, pikelets, crepes, yeast donuts, pizza bases and crumbed products were also to be fortified with folic acid.

It was going to be in pizzas also?

Katherine Rich, chief executive of the Food and Grocery Council, said many New Zealanders would breathe a sigh of relief because they did not like the idea of the government tampering with their bread.

There were genuine concerns about the health effects and the prime minister was right to delay any decision until all the facts were known, she said. It was also an issue about freedom of choice.

“It’s quite a scary intervention to dose an entire country,” Rich, a former National MP, said.

“A trip to the baker should not be a trip to the chemist.”

Heh – nice line.

The Herald on Sunday also reveals that Rodney Hide has warned and lobbied fellow Ministers about the issue three months ago.

An excellent Herald on Sunday editorial:

Councillor Sandra Coney, who gushed that “the idea of lots of people going by bike to Eden Park is really great” has possibly not attempted the feat herself. If she had, she would have noticed the long slog up Queen St and the suicidally cycle-hostile wasteland of the uptown interchanges. And once she got to the park, she might have wondered where she could lock up her bike in the throng of arriving fans, who might good-naturedly let her tyres down. Add into the mix roads clogged with buses (never mind Aucklanders going about their business) and the fact that many of the cyclists will be inexperienced and full of the sponsor’s product imbibed at Party Central on Queen’s Wharf and you have enough work to keep the nation’s orthopaedic surgeons busy until 2013.

Maybe ACC could set up claim counters along the way?

Hulls’ claim that it will put Auckland on a par with London, Paris and Melbourne, would be laughable if it were not so frightening. All those cities have working public transport systems; here we are still learning how to compose a sentence that contains the words “train” and “on time”. But if this is the thinking that excites decision-makers at a regional planning level barely two years out from kick-off, we should start praying for the arrival of the Super City. With a bit of luck, somebody in the new council will realise that it’s time to stop mucking around.

Transport is the biggest unresolved issue for the cup I reckon.

Bill Ralston writes:

A NZ First conference is coming up next month and it appears Peters plans staging a comeback at the next election. Party members might wonder where he has been for the past several months. Going into seclusion is hardly the way to rebuild a shattered political party. From the email it seems as if he is targeting the economy, the Supercity, cuts to night classes and ACC physiotherapy and the repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act.

In other words, he plans to attack a variety of disparate issues that have nothing in common, other than they are unpopular moves in some quarters.

He is promising a return to what he is good at, populist rabble rousing. The Government is to blame for the international recession. We may be broke as a nation but we should still pay for people to go to macrame classes and get a neck rub. Attempts to get rid of inefficiently competing local body warlords in the country’s biggest city must be stopped. And, if all else fails, go Maori bashing because there are enough rednecks to assure him of 5 per cent at the polls.

It will be very interesting to see who Winston gets on his party list. I reckon almost all his former MPs will run a mile, so his line-up will be even weaker than previously.

The HoS proclaims:

The “teenager” who claimed to be selling naked photos of his mother on Trade Me has been exposed as a liar who ran the auction for a design school project.

As a result Michael Chal – the 22-year-old son of former United Future MP Kelly Chal – is set to fail the project and may be banned from the online site.

Calling Chal the son of a former MP is pushing it. Chal was never sworn in as an MP or declared elected as an MP, She was a presumptive United Future List MP for a week or so after the 2002 election – until the Chief Electoral Officer realised she was not a NZ citizen and ineligible to be an MP.

Anyway his crime is:

Chal claimed to be an 18-year-old student who decided to sell raunchy photos of his mother Jennifer after she forced him to clean out the garage of their Auckland home. …

Chal’s antics were reported by dozens of media outlets around the world – including the Herald on Sunday – and extended to him roping in an accomplice to act as his mother.

But it has emerged the stunt was part of his studies at Auckland’s Media Design School. Course leader Kate Humphries said students were set a project to use social media to “get people chattering”. …

Humphries said he was advised to tell official organisations the sale was part of his studies before doing any interviews and was “mortified” he had lied to media and Trade Me. …

She said Chal had told her he had been upfront – but at no time during multiple phone and email communications with the Herald on Sunday did he tell the truth about the project.

Chal also failed to be straight with TVNZ’s Close Up, on which he appeared on Wednesday night. “He’s lied through and through,” said Close Up producer Mike Valintine. “If he’d said that it was a project he wouldn’t have been on TV. It’s pretty despicable behaviour. The guy’s a fool, to be honest.”

Valintine said Chal wanted to appear on Close Up wearing a mask. “We wouldn’t even contemplate that. I have never seen the likes of this in 30 years of television.”

One should never lie to the media to keep a prank going.

Humphries said it was “99.9 per cent certain” his project would not count towards his final grade. The project is worth 20 per cent of his year’s work. She expected Chal in her office tomorrow to discuss the matter.

Well it did get people chattering, but yes I don’t think you can get grades for fibs.

Chal said yesterday he had no regrets about the project, which he worked on with another student, who he would not name.

And he had no concerns about his stunt affecting a future in the advertising industry. “Dishonesty in advertising? I think that might help.”

He doesn’t sound the most repentant person.

The New Zealand Law Society has done a submission on the electoral finance review. I will do extracts below but it very strongly makes the point that the review assumes regulation is needed too oftne, when it has not defined what the problem is. This is a theme several submitters have made – any restriction on the right of citizens to get involved in the political process must be justified by pointing to actual harm done by not restricting those rights. Potential or imagined problems are not enough.

Their primary submission is:

that electoral finance law should not restrict the communication of political views nor engagement in political debate (including the opportunity to persuade others of the merits or otherwise of policy or candidate) unless there is an identified reason to do so; and the first step should be to identify the mischief that gives rise to the need to have electoral finance law. The next step is to design laws, including related structures or institutions, that effectively address the identified mischief. Laws that are ineffective or inappropriate (whether because they are too easily avoided or cast too wide) do not enhance the electoral system or the law.

They criticise the issue paper:

The Society considers that the Issues Paper and the wider debate around electoral finance law suffer from an inadequate definition of the problems or potential problems that the regulation of political activity seeks to remedy. Responses to questions about the content of regulation of political activity should be based on a comprehensive discussion and understanding of what the problems and potential problems of unregulated political activity are. A clear need to regulate should be identified.

They raise issues with the “fairness” principle:

Principle 1 is rather loaded. Fairness and equality are not the same. Some candidates will be better public speakers than others; that does not entitle some to presentation lessons, though they can buy them themselves if they wish. Independent candidates, or single issue parties may not get the same opportunities to explain policies and influence voters. Not every leader may be invited to a televised leaders debate?

This is similiar to the point I made in my submission. My example was it is proven in US presidential elections that shorter candidates do not get elected often. There are dozens of factors that can be regarded as unfair. It is trite to assume that money is the only factor that can cause “unfairness”, let alone that it must be regulated. My suggestion was the threshold for intervention should be “manifestly unfair” rather than just “unfair”.

Unidentified donations up to a total of $10,000 p.a. for each group of related persons or entities should be permitted but disclosure of the fact of them should be very soon after receipt.

They are saying the current disclosure threshold of $10,000 is adequate, but that disclosure should happen faster and related persons or entities be treated as one person. I agree with all of that. I advocate monthly disclosure of donations, and some sort of related persons and entities rule would prevent the scams we saw with NZ First where they got up multiple $10,000 donations from the same donor, but disclosed none of them as they were paid through different companies.

Should there be a prohibition on donations from certain sources (for example, overseas individuals, or corporate, or unincorporated entities)?

No. There are many anomalies at both corporate and individual level and it would be so easy to use local branches of overseas entities that the appropriate course is to allow the donations and publish if over the threshold.

I agree. Transparency is the key.

in addition to the rule that Parliamentary Service funding cannot be used for electioneering, funding for all communication services could be suspended during a period before an election. This period could begin the day after
the day that Parliament sits for the last time before polling day. Arguably, MPs do not need communication services funding during this time because almost all of their communication will be electioneering, paid for from their own campaign funds.

This is also in line with what I advocate. I actually think you suspend funding of communication services for the entire regulated period, but if that is too long, then at least for the period after the House last sits.

Moreover, this suspension of funding would better accord with the principle of equity by not giving incumbent MPs an advantage over other candidates for election. Incumbent MPs have an advantage as they can use public funding to communicate with their constituents. Even communication that is not electioneering helps to raise a candidate’s profile. Levelling the playing field for all candidates in the period immediately before polling day is desirable.

Agreed. But will the MPs? It is up to us to pressure them to do so.

If campaign broadcasting continues to be regulated in a similar way to how it is currently regulated, then parties who receive an allocation of time and money should be able to spend their own money on campaign broadcasting. The State should not determine a party’s ability to campaign using broadcasting through a government decision on how much time and money the party can use for broadcasting.

Absolutely. It is sad Labour is backing a regime that prevents smaller parties from using their own funds to get as much airtime as the larger parties get from the taxpayer.

The focus of electoral finance law should be on regulating the conduct of politicians (which is a reason why reform should be initiated by an inquiry that is independent of the political process), not the conduct of voters.

Excellent way of putting it.

There should not be regulation of negative or attack advertising, other than the requirement that advertising material disclose the identity of the person disseminating it and the law that regulates all forms of expression, such as the law of defamation. The law of defamation will often be able to deal with the spreading of false information.

However, there is still the potential for false information about candidates for election to be disseminated. False information in political debate can be damaging as it may adversely affect voters’ choice. Knowing the identity of the person disseminating material containing false information will allow candidates for election to deal with situations where false information is spread about them (Issues Paper, para 4.26). It can also be argued that the best test of truth is to allow different claims to be circulated in the free market place of ideas. Transparency is a necessary and sufficient requirement on negative or attack advertising.

The free market of idea is one I like.

One of the Standard authors whined:

Business New Zealand and other assorted tossers. Stop calling our country ‘New Zealand Inc’. This is our home. This is where we live our lives and raise our families. It’s not some profit-maximising engine for your shareholders.

Personally I think anyone who gets worked up over such trivialities need to relax more, but he or she is entitled to their view that anyone who refers to New Zealand Inc is a tosser.

The commenters then have a field day finding Phil Goff having used the term three times and Helen Clark four times, making them officially tossers according to that Standard author.

Hat Tip: Whale Oil

The Herald editorial:

With money granted in this year’s Budget, it plans to provide internet providers with Swedish-devised software that matches site requests to a “banned” list and reroutes the requests to a government computer. The internet companies would have to volunteer to take part, unlike in other countries where compulsory filtering of paedophilic sites is proposed. Consumers would, then, be able to avoid filtering if they object on principle to such restrictions.

Technology commentators have raised concerns that this scheme could be the thin end of a wedge by which the state seeks to “filter” other internet material or sites that it, later, deems unwelcome. They are right to be concerned. The public’s freedom to “seek, receive and impart information and opinion of any kind and in any form” is protected by section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act.

Yet even that law recognises there can be reasons to over-ride that freedom. Reducing the demand for, and profits from, material depicting child sexual abuse would surely qualify in the public mind as one of them.

A tightly targeted, voluntary scheme including most internet providers is better than a compulsory regime. Those deciding what cannot be accessed must themselves be regularly reviewed to ensure the scheme stays strictly on track.

As I previously blogged, I would look to have the Auditor-General’s Office regularly vet the scheme against its publicly stated mandate.

On balance, because of the gravity of the offences against children, and the prevalence of the problem, with 26 convictions in this country in the past six months for collecting or distributing child sex abuse images, some restriction seems justifiable. Limited censorship is the lesser of two evils.

The expert advice I have is that the filtering scheme will not stop the hard core offenders. They trade in chat rooms, Usenet groups etc and will use overseas ISPs if necessary to get around any filters.

What the scheme *may* do is help prevent those “curious” about child porn from acting on their curiosity and end up breaking the law. Some of those go on to get “addicted” to  such images and become professional traders etc.

So no one should think the filtering scheme will make a massive difference to the demand for illegal material. However that is not to say it won’t make some difference – and as the Herald says you have to weigh that up.

National Business Review Owner Barry Colman has announced a subscriber only content service, and caused a big stir online with the comments he made in his letter announcing it.

Now I write for NBR online (today’s column is here – on the shape of Auckland) so Barry is my eventual overlord, so I risk biting the hand that feeds with my comments, but hope it will be a useful contribution. Barry said:

I expect about 20 per cent of our web news to be Subscriber Only Content. The exact ratio will vary as we will be using the category for only the best news stories, scoops and commentary pieces that we post on any one day. Besides the serious issues of the moment the content will include large doses of satire and goings on uncovered by our nosey Private Bin reporters.

As you know, there has been endless discussion for a number of years about the crazy model adopted by newspapers in most parts of the free world in which they pay the enormous costs of running professional newsrooms only to give their content away free – while at the same time slashing newsroom numbers to save money as circulation and advertising revenues fall.

I’m not sure they see it as giving it away free, as some make considerable money from the advertising on their sites. But it is a choice for each media outlet as to whether or not they provide 0%, 80% or 100% of their content online.

And to add to the madness it has been the aggregators that have profited the most from the supply of that free news copy. Worse still the model has spawned a huge band of amateur, untrained, unqualified bloggers who have swarmed over the internet pouring out columns of unsubstantiated “facts” and hysterical opinion.

Most of these “citizen journalists” don’t have access to decision makers and are infamous for their biased and inaccurate reporting on almost any subject under the sun (while invariably criticising professional news coverage whose original material they depend on to base their diatribes).

Now I have a healthy enough ego that I take no offence from the above, as I automatically assume Barry is speaking about everyone else, but not me

But I do think Barry is overstating the case. Of course there are many many blogs that are rubbish. But they accordingly have littler readership and little influence.

There are however many blogs that provide analysis that can be as good as that you find anywhere.  Paul Walker provides a list of blogs that feature some of the most respected and influential economists in the world as a counter example.

I think the climate for traditional media is very tough, and there is no easy answer. There has been and continues to be a massive change in the role of the traditional media.

Historically, people read newspapers for two reasons – for information/news and for analysis. Th first of those reasons is fading.

15 years ago if you wanted to know what was happening in US politics, your only easy way to know was to read the local newspaper, and browse whatever story they have run in world news from AP. The entire world almost relied on what AP said about US politics. Today you can get information on US political news from hundreds or thousands of sites online.

You used to get a newspaper for the weather. Not I get hourly updates through my browser and/or blackberry – all for free.

I used to get newspapers for cartoons. Now I get Dilbert every day direct.

We used to read what happened in the House the next morning. Now you can read a transcript online by 5.30 pm. If you invest in shares, you no longer need a newspaper to find out the share prices.

We still rely on newspapers for crime reporting, but within a few years we may have live Internet streaming of every courthouse, and may get better information from a few dedicated court bloggers who spend their days and nights following trials.

So as a provider of information, the media monopoly is seriously weakened.

This leaves the other side – the analysis. Now I do think people will pay for good analysis, but in certain areas there is significant competition from online sources.

I rarely buy newspapers any more. The exception is Monday’s Dominion Post. I primarily buy this to see how the Dom Post political team scored the previous week. I value their analysis enough to do so. Hence Barry Colman is not necessarily wrong – some people will pay for good analysis.

But as Paul Walker pointed out, there is some remarkably good free analysis already out there. The best economic debates are now found online. Bernard Hickey and interest.co.nz provide some very good financial analysis. Some bloggers (not all) have as good access to decision makers as journalists.

In my view quality analysis is what people will pay for – either in hard copy, or electronically. Over the next few years fewer and fewer people will pay just for reporting information.

Trans-tasman is a good example of a subscription model that works. People don’t get it for their reporting, but for their analysis and insights.

Cactus Kate blogs at length on the Colman e-mail and concludes:

Colman is charging $89 for the content or “The cost is a little more than 80c a day and I promise you it will be one investment you won’t regret”. Well I wouldn’t if NBR updated it’s content on a daily basis with real content but it doesn’t. So good luck on that, but to blame bloggers for contributing to the model that is forcing him to have to go pay-per-view? A tad silly. For the pay-per-view am I to be reading low paid first-jobbed twenty-something children repeating the news, or will I read serious senior business journos actually breaking stories that matter?

Fortunately Colman has one of the better entrepreneurial brains in the country and is well equipped to come up with something more original and “out there” than this email whinge to justify making 20% of online content “locked” to make his publication profitable and more widely read. After all he’s really, really rich so has proven he knows more about business and turning profits than all bloggers do combined.

We look forward to it.

And that is what it will come down to. People will pay for good analysis, for original breaking of stories, but not for merely repeating of information from primary sources – now that others have access to those primary sources.

At the end of the month, National will elect a new President – indirectly. With Judy Kirk retiring this is the first vacancy under the new rules, where the members elect seven Directors to the National Board, and the Directors (including the Leader and a Caucus Rep) elect one of their own as President.

This has made predicting who will win much harder, as you have to get elected to the Board first, before you even get a chance to convince your peers to make you President. And to make it harder, many of the Board nominees are of sufficient calibre to be a viable President.

Two of the seven elected Directors are part way through their term, so are guaranteed to stay on the Board. They are Roger Bridge, the Canterbury-Westland Chair, and Peter Goodfellow from Auckland – a long time party activist. Both Bridge and Goodfellow are potential Presidents, regardless of formal declarations. They would serve if asked/elected.

Leader John Key and Chief Whip Nathan Guy also get a vote. Presuming they vote as a bloc, they will be influential. Key, Guy and whomever becomes President makes three votes out of nine. They only need two more.

Incumbent Director Scott Simpson is standing again. A former Auckland Regional Chairman, he is also a Presidental candidate. Fellow incumbent Grant McCallum from Northland is also standing again and as far as I know not seeking the Presidency.

According to Whale Oil (I have not had time to check directly with HQ), there are six other canddate for the Board. They are:

• Alastair Bell, current Northern Regional Chair
• Dennis Catchpole from the CNI Region
• Sir Harawira (Wira) Gardiner, former Maori Vice-President
• Kate Hazlett, Southern Region Chair from Southland
• Bruce Mills, Rangitikei Electorate Chair and long-time LNI Regional presence
• Pat Seymour, East Coast Electorate Chair for many years

Of the six non incumbents, only Wira Gardiner is also a Presidential candidate Alastair is a potential candidate also but I think isn’t seeking it at this stage.

Whale Oil makes his preferences quite clear, not being a Wira fan.

However Matthew Hooton in the NBR this morning wrote:

All candidates have been thoroughly vetted, with Mr Key’s preference said to be party stalwart Wira Gardiner. Mr Key judges, correctly, that Mr Gardiner – a businessman, former senior public servant, soldier and Mr Fixit for both National and Labour governments – has the administrative backbone to prepare National to take the fight to Labour. Moreover, Mr Key sees Mr Gardiner as important to securing a third term, given the Maori Party will hold the balance of power in 2014, if not 2011.

I’m not sure whether or not Matthew is correct as to John Key’s preference. I suspect John is keeping his opinion fairly tight as he has to work with whomever gets elected.

I know reasonably well all the Board candidates (except Dennis Catchpole) and have warm friendships with many of them. I think National is fortunate to have a good range of talent to choose from.

I won’t be blogging my preferences, as I’m not a voting delegate. But also because I designed the voting software they use to count the vote, so it is generally inadvisable for me to enter the fray in case anyone suspects I have a secret sub-routine in there that will favour my preferred canddiates

Both the Press and the Dom Post discuss “Yesterday’s Man”. First The Press:

After election night last year, New Zealanders would have been entitled to think that they had seen the last of Winston Peters and the sour, rancid style he brought to New Zealand politics.

Peters had been overwhelmingly buried in his supposedly loyal Tauranga electorate, and voters around the country, finally exhausted by his chicanery and egotism, sent his party into oblivion with him. For those who care about decent politics and the welfare of the country it was a welcome deliverance. It is horrible, therefore, to have to consider the thought that Peters may be intending to try to make some kind of political comeback. It can only be hoped that voters’ memories are not so short that they give him any kind of hearing.

I think as big an issue, is NZ First will be very short of candidates and money and every winter they lose more and more voters.

Thankfully, Peters’ former deputy, Peter Brown, has provided an insight into just how disastrous Peters’ leadership of the party was and how the election calamity it faced came about.

It was not a democratic party, but a personality cult. I mean to have the Party President kept ignorant of funding issues is outraegous.

Peters has made comebacks before. But he is now in his mid-60s and out of Parliament, without a political infrastructure to support him. He is emphatically yest

Personally I hope Peters does stand again. We’ve still got the billboard skins from last time and be a shame not to use them. And it will be such fun getting people to needle him at public meetings.

The Dom Post says:

Rarely in politics does the souffle rise twice.

Winston Peters should not become one of those rare exceptions. …

One of Mr Peters’ lasting achievements was the introduction of the Gold Card, giving older citizens access to services, including free travel. Mr Peters will be 66 by the time the next election rolls round, and eligible for his own card. What he should be thinking about now is how to use it, rather than how to get himself back to Parliament.

I don’t regard the Gold Card as an achievement. There is nothing smart about taking money from taxpayers and giving it to mainly non taxpayers so they may be bribed to vote for you. Anyway the biggest beneficiary of the Gold Card has been bus and transport owners who are raking it in.

The Herald reports:

Internet service providers will soon begin blocking access to hundreds of websites that are on a secret blacklist compiled by the Department of Internal Affairs, but critics say the system lacks transparency.

Some ISPs – those that choose to use the service.

There are two sorts of views about the desirability of a voluntary filtering scheme to block child pron sites. Both have some validity.

One view is that any sort of filtering sets a bad precedent. That if you accept a filter for child porn sites, then someone may propose a filter for copyright infringing sites, or sites that advocate crime, or sites that are defamatory of someone. The concern is that this is the thin end of the wedge. The argument is you don’t block sites to stop people breaking the law, you prosecute them afterwards for doing so.

The other view is that if ISPs do not act to voluntarily block access to child porn sites, then it will give ammunition to those who want compulsory filtering such as in Australia, and that such compulsory filters may be far wider than just child pornography. It is better for most ISPs to have input into a voluntary filtering scheme, than have a compulsory one implemented on them.

The department this week announced its new Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System, which it said would help fight child sex abuse. The $150,000 software will be provided free of charge to ISPs in a couple of months and will reroute all site requests to Government-owned servers. The software, called Whitebox, compares users’ site requests with a list of banned links. If a match is found, the request is denied. It will not cover email, file sharing or borderline material.

The best info on the proposed scheme comes from Thomas Beagle who has an FAQ on it.

Critics say the system has been introduced by stealth and lacks accountability. The department will not disclose the 7000 objectionable websites for fear “inevitably some people would visit them in the interim”, effectively facilitating further offending and making the department party to the further exploitation of children.

Through my work with InternetNZ, I got briefed on the proposed scheme some months ago.To be honest I did not realise until recently that info on the proposed scheme wasn’t in the public domain. As DIA had been talking to various ISPs, I just assumed it wasn’t a big secret. I actually suggested the DIA be invited to make a presentation to the InternetNZ AGM, which is a public forum, and they seemed relaxed at that. I suspect it has been “secret” more by neglect rather than design.

InternetNZ has had a healthy constructive relationship with DIA for some years. Around four years ago we supplied a technical expert to test the UK filtering scheme, and to check for stuff like false positives – ie does the filter block sites that are not hosting child pornography.

In terms of listing the websites that will be blocked, I have some sympathy for the notion that this is undesirable as it is like publishing a guide to find all the child porn sites. But I also understand that many people could be nervous with a regime of “Just trust the DIA”. A suggestion I made was that maybe one could have the Office of the Auditor-General empowered to audit the filter list every six months or so, to certify it has not been expanded beyond its mandate. Mind you I feel sorry for the poor staffer who would have to check some of the sites out to do such verificiation.

Internal Affairs censorship compliance head Steve O’Brien said the blacklist would be personally reviewed by staff each month and would be restricted to paedophilic content only.

This was a key area I quizzed the DIA staffer on. I am very much oppossed to filters that work on keywords, assumptions etc as these inevitable have false positives – they block sites they should not. A manually reviewed list is the only way to go.

Also essential (to me) is that the filter will be directed towards child porn sites only, and not all sites with “objectionable” content. While most prosecutions in NZ for “objectionable” content relate to child porn, the definition of objectionable is wider. It includes (for example) sex involving urine or faeces. It is somewhat strange that it is not actually illegal to perform or receive a golden shower, but it is illegal to view an imagine of a golden shower!

Now just so no one gets the wrong idea, I find the idea of sex involving wees or poos as bloody disgusting, and am not a champion for such practises. Yuck. But they are not like child porn, in that child porn has actual real victims – the abused kids. So to my mind it is important a filer targets child porn only, and not the wider definition of all objectionable or illegal material. DIA agree, which is good. I imagine the fear of some people is that the definition could be widened in future. For my part I don’t detect any desire on behalf of DIA to grow it in future. They have a pretty nasty job to do, and generally do it pretty well. That is not to say I agree with everything they do.

Filtering systems in Australia, Denmark and Britain have been accused of serious flaws, with unexplained blacklistings of straight and gay pornography, Wikipedia articles and small businesses.

Yep errors do get made. However there is a system to get a decision reviewed if you get told a site is blocked, and you think it should not be.

Mr Beagle said he favoured providing optional clean feeds for users, but believed Governments would be tempted to expand the blacklist in reaction to events.

I am against any filter being compulsory for ISPs. And I agree user level decisions are best. But personally I am pretty relaxed about individual ISPs making a decision about whether or not they would use the DIA filter – so long as they do so transparently and inform customers they have done so. Some ISPs may even use it as a marketing tool that they provide a slightly “safer” environment, while other ISPs may choose not to take part, and use the fact they are unfiltered as a marketing tool.

What would I do if my ISP, choose to use the DIA filter? So long as it was restricted to child porn sites only, and so long as there was some sort of external review (such as the Office of the Auditor-General), I would stay with that ISP.

Some ISPs could even choose to provide it as an option for customers to select as a preference, but I understand that require a bit more than just a line of code.

That is the theme song Bill English and Peter Dunne are probably humming to themselves, after the IRD won a court case with the BNZ, resulting in a judgement for the Crown of $645 million, and a potential precedent for the total $2.4 billion in dispute.

The decision will of course be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, so Bill and Peter shouldn’t rush to the mailbox to look for a cheque.

With credit rating agency Fitch placing NZ on negative outlook, the Government will want all the money it can get. The potential downgrade reinforces how vital it is to keep the pressure on low quality spending to prevent a downgrade that will cost consumers, businesses and taxpayers. This shows how reckless Labour’s contnual demands for more spending are.

Bryce Edwards has the latest publication paid for by taxpayers.

No Right Turn blogs:

The UK government has just announced an ambitious plan to meet its 34% by 2020 climate change target. The details look like nothing less than a green revolution:

Now you may look at this and think hey the UK is going for a 34% by 2020 target, so why not have NZ go for a 40% by 2020 target.

But here is the key difference. This is about how much below 1990 levels you can get. Now as of 2007 NZ was around 20% to 25% above 1990 levels. So in fact we would be having to go from 120% of 1990 to 60% of 1990 – in other words cut our emissions in half in just a decade. It simply can not be done without shooting a hell of a lot of cows.

The UK in 2006 was already 20% below its 1990 level. So the UK has to just go from 80% to 66% (a 14% reduction on 1990 levels), while NZ would have to go from 120% to 60% (a 60% reduction on 1990 levels).

This is why I call a 40% target by 2002 madness. It ignores where we are at today. It would lead to a huge number of jobs destroyed, and could well lead to increased emissions from other countries as they would take up our drop in agricultural production.

a massive investment by electricity companies in home insulation – £3.2 billion over four years to insulate 7.5 million homes.

This sounds a lot. But the UK economy is 20 times the size of the NZ economy. So in NZ terms that is the equivalent of spending 160 million pounds over four years or NZ$409 million.

And National’s 2009  budget announced $320 million over four years for home insulation. So in fact the UK commitment is only 25% greater.

In response to the suggestion by Chief Justice Elias that the Government reduce prison populations through a mass early release amnesty, Simon Power gave an excellent response:

Justice Minister Simon Power said inmates would not get amnesties.

He also made a pointed remark about the role of the judiciary versus Parliament.

“This is not government policy. The Government was elected to set sentencing policy, judges are appointed to apply it.”

Indeed that is how it works. And it is not as if any prisoners server their full sentences anyway. Almost everyone gets out at two thirds of their sentence, and some even get out at one third. They already have lots out on early release.

The Press reports:

Prime Minister John Key is used to the cut and thrust of politics, but he had to draw on his full range of diplomatic skills with warring Christchurch preschool brothers yesterday.

Key was caught in the crossfire during a visit to the Canterbury Plunket Centre in Addington when three-year-old Dominic Knill took aim at his younger brother, Callum, using colouring pens as projectiles.

Key defused the situation after a toy truck was sent flying in his direction.

I’m not sure where this story was placed in the actual newspaper, but photos and stories like this probably do more for poll ratings, than anything else.  Well not quite, but the right photo and story can be very powerful.

Both Peter Brown and Ron Mark have spoken out on New Zealand First. The Dom Post quotes Peter Brown:

One of Winston Peters’ most loyal lieutenants has lifted the lid on the final days in the NZ First bunker before the election, revealing that abusive phone calls from the public forced some branch offices to leave their phones off the hook and admitting that Mr Peters’ judgment became clouded.

Clouded. A nice way of putting it.

Mr Peters appears to be on the comeback trail, writing in an email to party faithful that saying “sorry” for events leading up to the last election will clear the way for a “new beginning”. The email comes as the party prepares for its annual gathering on August 29 demoralised by an election loss and a bruising year in which Mr Peters faced controversy over donations to the secretive Spencer Trust and was embarrassed by revelations of a $100,000 donation from billionaire businessman Owen Glenn.

The email states: “Before we make a new beginning, we want to use the hardest word in the English language SORRY. We acknowledge that we made mistakes … we allowed our opponents to create a perception of wrongdoing when, in fact, no offences were committed.”

A perception of wrongdoing?

NZ First filed false donation returns in 2005, 2006 and 2007. They got off prosecution because the then law had a time limit for prosecution. And Peters was exposed by the Privileges Committee as having known about the Glenn donation, despite denying any knowledge dozens of times.

Mr Peters could not be contacted yesterday. But former NZ First deputy Peter Brown, who remains a party loyalist, suggested the sorry was overdue.

“They’re all very fine words. But some of us knew we were on the wrong track. Some of us knew we’d lost sight of the big picture. But much as we tried to steer the horse back on track, he went out like the Lone Ranger.”

I have heard from a few people that none of his MPs could get through to Peters.

But during the 2008 campaign “something clouded his judgment. I think he could have handled things differently and we could have got there. I genuinely believe that.”

If Peters had admitted he knew about the Glenn donation when asked, NZ First may well still be in Parliament. And for all his apologies about “perception” of wrong-doing, Peters still will not apologise for lying over the Glenn donation.

Of course all the Labour MPs voted to believe him also, so I suppose he thinks he was telling the truth. It is interesting Labour never cites their defence of Winston as a factor in their loss. I think it was quite a significant factor.

There had been tensions over legislation that Mr Peters demanded his caucus support, including the Electoral Finance Act, but the bolt from the blue was the Spencer Trust.

There were revelations that money had been secretly paid into the trust, including donations from wealthy business donors.

“Nobody knew anything about that. Deputy leader, the president, we knew nothing. What the dickens?” Mr Brown said.

Ironic that those who supported the EFA were practising exactly what they were denouncing. And as Peter Brown says, this was a trust so secretive not even the Deputy Leader or President knew of it. Winston wan the party as a personal fiefdom.

Things went from bad to worse when NZ First launched a web campaign attacking the media and John Key in an open letter, and 150,000 personalised letters were sent out to voters.

Only Mr Peters knew about it, Mr Brown said. “The place went mad. We got abusive phone calls left, right and centre. This was two days before the election. I couldn’t believe it.

“I rang Wellington and said somebody is up there playing dirty tricks on us … I thought it was our political opponents.’.

Yes, the letter with the personalised domain name was a disaster.

And the Herald talks to Ron Mark:

Ron Mark was NZ First’s highest-profile MP after Mr Peters himself – and yesterday said that after 12 years with the party, he was no longer active and would not rule out returning to politics with another party.

Ron was widely regarded as the successor to Peters.

The Newsroom website revealed yesterday that Mr Peters has written to party members and apologising for “mistakes” made in the election campaign.

When asked if Mr Peters’ apology was warranted, Mr Mark paused for a lengthy period before answering:

“I think it’s always important to acknowledge mistakes you have made.

“To me it’s irrelevant right now. I’m out.”

Peters will be 66 (and have his gold card) at the next election. Who is going to become the new Deputy Leader (Brown has or is stepping down)?