Kiwiblog

The Dom Post reports:

United States President Barack Obama has written to Prime Minister John Key before a crucial gathering of world leaders in New York next week.

Mr Key revealed he had the letter, but would say only that it was in response to one he had written to Mr Obama “on a couple of things that we’re doing”.

He said the response was about the relationship in general but would not go into further detail. …

But Mr Key revealed that talks are already under way on a White House visit: “It will happen, all the signs are very positive.”

The last trip to the White House by a New Zealand leader was last year, when former prime minister Helen Clark made her second visit.

Mr Key said New Zealand had not been pushing for an earlier visit, and believed it better to wait till there was something positive to report on the trade front. There were high hopes toward the end of the Bush administration that progress would finally be made on the much-coveted free trade deal, after negotiations toward a trans-Pacific partnership were announced.

Positive news on the trade front would be good.

The Press reports:

Senior public servants failed to pick up a payment blunder for more than a year, costing the Ministry of Education more than $20 million.

The mistake occurred when a 4 percent funding boost to about 2000 early-childhood centres was allocated twice in the same round, meaning more than $20 million was over-spent.

An internal report obtained under the Official Information Act said human error involving an inexperienced and overworked ministry staff member led to the original funding mistake.

It was compounded by a poor peer review that meant the error went undetected for 14 months.

My question is, where is the accountability? If you worked for a private company and you made a mistake that cost the company $20 million, you would no longer be working there.

Why do so many people who complain that ACT got five seats in Parliament on only 3.65% of the vote, never complain that the Maori Party got five seats in Parliament on 2.39% of the vote?

People often advocate that a party should not be eligible to gain List MPs if they get under 5%, due to winning an electorate seat. But I would say the overhang issue is a more serious problem.

A good editorial from the Wellingtonian:

We have good news for the principals of the Save the Basin trust.

The Basin Reserve, one of Wellington’s premier sports venues, does not need saving. It is as safe as houses.

So why is there a save the basin campaign?

Therefore, it raises the question of the real agenda of the Save the Basin trustees.

The news section of their website deals only marginally with the Basin Reserve.

However, there are mentions of “a huge concrete flyover”, “the roar of trucks and the howl of boy racers from the flyover”, “clouds of pollution and car exhaust”.

It seems possible that the reason for the formation of the Save the Basin trust has more to do with preventing the building of the flyover than protecting “New Zealand’s oldest dedicated cricket pitch”, as the website describes the Basin.

So it is the usual “we like congestion” campaigners.

A Save the Basin protest gathering last week drew about a dozen protesters.

Their banners were focused almost exclusively on preventing the flyover being built. It was hard to find a mention of the Basin.

If Kent Duston, Iona Pannett and company don’t want the proposed flyover, it’s their right to try to stop it being built. If they want to ban cars, get rid of roads and return us to the horse-and-carriage age, it’s their prerogative to so campaign.

Pannett is of course a Green Party City Councillor. Duston was (he was a list candidate for the Green Party last election.

But the way things stand now, some people might feel they are being dishonest about their intentions, tugging at the emotions with their Save the Basin title, while actually running a separate campaign far removed from either the Basin or cricket.

Perhaps Ban the Flyover would not have quite the appeal of Save the Basin.

But at least it might more accurately reflect the trustees’ ambitions.

Indeed. I remember the decade plus campaign of protests against the motorway extension. And now it has happened, you would never go back. I find traffic down that end of town much faster moving now

The ODT proclaims:

But if Mr Goff talked of this being a time for renewal of Labour, he must be challenged on whether he suitably represents the face of renewal.

He is certainly one of Labour’s “old guard” and usually thought to represent such remnants of traditional Labour as still exist; the presence of a new party president in unionist Andrew Little reinforces the notion.

Stunts like appearing in Rotorua on a motorbike, however, fall into the same farcical category as Don Brash pretending to be a racing car driver.

Younger voters are not fooled or even impressed by such public relations inanity.

Not sure it is just younger voters!

It was perhaps unfortunate – only hindsight will likely prove the point – that Mr Goff compared himself to the All Blacks coach as a man under pressure heading towards 2011.

An apology for trivial matters goes no way towards explaining why the Clark government took its eye off the economic ball in its third term; why Labour thought itself justified in having the taxpayers – those “workers” Mr Goff mentioned – unknowingly help fund its election campaign in 2005; why it did nothing effective about the charlatans in the finance industry; acted so slowly over the “leaky homes” disaster; and failed to intervene in electricity industry profiteering.

And why it took nine years to get a tax cut.

But – like Mr Goff – that is looking into the past: voters want leaders who embrace the future.

Come the next election, Labour’s present leadership will not represent a fresh young face to an electorate of which more than half will be under 50.

The chief problem Mr Goff faces is the one of personal relevance.

The public does not care about either him or his party at the moment, to judge by the polls, and Labour’s 14 new MPs and the revitalising of its younger membership – along with the appearance of an ancient Labour ghost, Jim Anderton, offering alms – are unlikely to be sufficient to turn that widely held opinion around by 2011.

And again this is the hardest part for Labour. How do you convince the voters that someone who entered Parliament when Muldoon was Prime Minister is the relevant fresh face to lead them forward.

Today’s Dispatch from St Johnnysburg talks about how ‘It was within the rules’ are dangerous words for MPs to rely on.

Feedback and comments can be left at NBR.

Many Wellingtonians will be saddened:

Veteran broadcaster Garry Ward passed away at his Kapiti Coast home this morning (Thursday).

Ward, 68, worked in broadcasting for 50 years.

He covered several Commonwealth and Olympic games.

He was the host of The Great Weekender show on NewstalkZB.

I was a regular listener to Ward at the weekend. Never met him, but felt I knew him. A sad loss.

The Dominion Post reports Mary-Anne has agreed there is a case to answer at depositions:

A who’s who of Wellington bureaucrats is lined up to give evidence at the trial of former Immigration chief Mary Anne Thompson for fraudulently claiming she had a doctorate.

Among them will be Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard and chairman Arthur Grimes, former State Services commissioners Michael Wintringham and Mark Prebble, Victoria University emeritus professor Sir Frank Holmes and New Zealand’s High Commissioner to Malaysia, David Kersey.

The media are going to love this trial.

Dr Bollard said Thompson worked for him as a research economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research.

He said he met her in 1987 and was aware she was in the process of completing her PhD thesis for the LSE.

He said he would have believed she had her PhD because she would have told him she had. He said he would feel let down and deceived by her.

Dr Prebble said he would not have appointed Thompson as the manager of the policy advisory group in his department if he had known she did not have the qualification she claimed.

Interestingly Mary-Anne (in my experience) was exceptionally good at that role. If she had never claimed the PhD, she might still have got the job.

The Dom Post reports:

Ratepayers in the Wellington region will be asked whether there should be a single council after Auckland was transformed into a super-city of 1.4 million people.

Wellington mayors say it is now inevitable that local government in the region will have to change, but are promising to consult widely before deciding whether to take the same route as Auckland.

I am very much in favour of Wellington going down a similar path. Five Councils on this side of the Rimutakas, three on the other side plus a Regional Council is far too much.

Like Auckland we have failed to make progress on issues like Transmission Gully because the nine Mayors could never agree.

I also think it would be great to get a range of local boards, smaller than the current Councils. An inner city local board that would include the CBD, Thorndon and Mt Victoria would, for example, be much more in tune with our issues.

Fears have been raised that the Wellington region which has a combined population of about 450,000 spread across eight local authorities and other centres will be swamped by Auckland and left behind.

Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast said governance changes in the Wellington region were now inevitable, though they would develop more slowly than in Auckland.

“We would rather have the consultation with our community and then take a proposal to the prime minister and say, `This is what our community wants, would you enact legislation and make it happen?”‘

Any changes could take effect at the 2013 local body elections, she said.

It will probably be an issue for Mayoral candidates at the next election. Could be worth setting up a ticket across the region of people who will push for amalgamation.

From iPredict:

Personally I don’t care very much whether the city is called Wanganui as it is currently, or Whanganui as the river and electorate are named.

No matter how you spell it, my advice is to avoid it

But the simple fact of the matter is, 77% of Wanganui voters, voted in a referendum that they did not want the name to change.

I really think it is silly to force a change against such opposition.

The backlash against stuff like forced name changes, tends to build opposition to stuff which is important – such as settling historic claims.

Chris Trotter has written eloquently on how names change over time – even mistakes become legitimate names. Caesar became Kaiser (and Czar) for example.

For all that, now that the New Zealand Geographic Board has made a decision, I think it should be implemented. There is effectively a Ministerial veto but I don’t think it is a great precedent for Ministers to over-rule the expert boards, unless not to do so would lead to a something very bad happening. And at the end of the day, it is only a name.

The Dom Post reports:

Local government rate rises are a cause for deep concern, according to Business New Zealand, with an “astonishing” 7.9 per cent annual rise in the national rates bill.

Local Government Minister Rodney Hide said last night that local authority spending was out of control and a 7.9 per cent rate rise was not acceptable.

“We need to do much better to get rates under control,” he said.

Statistics New Zealand figures made public yesterday showed general rates rose $242.6 million in the year to June 2008, a rise of almost 8 per cent.

Estimates from Statistics NZ showed the national rates bill rose another $195.8m this year, up about 5.4 per cent.

In five years, the national rates bill has risen by $1.1 billion, about $700m more than if rates had stayed in line with inflation.

I note Len Brown has said he wants the new Auckland Council to battle poverty and get rid of inequality in Auckland. I shudder to think of how many tens of millions will be added to the rates bill to fund this.

I love a farmer who calls it as they see it. The Dom Post reports:

Federated Farmers president Don Nicolson called the protest “economic treason”. “It’s a despicable new tactic that has Greenpeace’s loathing of farming written all over that ship.

“I fully respect the freedom of Greenpeace to protest legally but they have crossed the line by interfering with legal commerce and free navigation on the high seas.

“That’s why the police need to take this act of piracy, or sea-robbery, very seriously and prosecute those activists to the full extent of the law.”

Piracy is in fact still a crime in New Zealand. It carries a maximum sentence of 14 years. Attempted piracy is 10 years and accessory to piracy seven years.

John Armstrong reports:

Opposition MPs were aghast and Government members agog in Parliament yesterday after Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee broke with convention and refused to respond to a question from Greens co-leader Metiria Turei.

Brownlee had simply had enough. He had already answered five questions from Turei on National’s intended “stocktake” of mineral resources on Conservation land. He had repeatedly told her the Government had no intention of plundering or pillaging national parks or other valued parts of the Department of Conservation estate.

But Turei’s questions – which might more accurately be described as political statements masquerading as questions – just kept on coming.

So what was the actual question Gerry refused to answer:

Metiria Turei: When the Minister said in his speech that “… New Zealanders need to know that this country is also well endowed with natural resources.”, is it not the case that Kiwis already know how blessed we are, already know that our magnificent conservation places are like gold to the New Zealand economy, and are aghast at his attempts to plunder those areas for fool’s gold and dirty coal?

As Armstrong said, it is a political statement more than a question. But so are many questions. Brownlee explained later:

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: In answering questions this afternoon I have made it clear that the Government has no intention of mining high-value conservation land. From the member’s question, she does not seem to want to accept the answers given. It is no wonder that she gets no answers to her questions.

However I think it is a bad look not to answer, even the most stupid loaded questions. If the Greens want to waste all their supplementaries getting more and more hysterical over a stocktake of minerals, then let them and swat their questions back at them, rather than refuse to answer them.

There is a precedent it seems though:

However, Parker was trumped by United Future’s Peter Dunne, who had found another ruling which stated a minister was not even obliged to seek the call when asked a question.

In Dunne’s view, such a practice was unusual, and even undesirable. But there was a clear precedent for Brownlee’s refusal.

And words of wisdom from the Speaker:

Saying he was not about to turn these past rulings on their heads, the Speaker still had something to say about Turei and Brownlee.

The former would be “well advised” to reflect on the wording of her questions. She promptly ignored him and asked another highly loaded question which went down the same track as its predecessors

As for Brownlee, the public would make its judgment. “Ministers would be very unwise to refuse to answer them, because in the court of public opinion a minister would be condemned for refusing to do so,” Smith said.

In other words, Brownlee should not make a habit of it.

Indeed.

Parent: How was the Harry Potter film

10 year old: It was fun but a bit unrealistic

Parent: What do you mean? Was it the magic?

10 year old: Nah, who has ever heard of a ginger kid, with two friends?

I’m very very happy with today’s announcement from Steven Joyce:

Communications and Information Technology Minister Hon Steven Joyce today released the details of the government’s $1.5 billion ultra-fast broadband investment initiative. …

Key highlights of the proposal include:

• An open, transparent partner selection process, which will be initiated in the next month.




• Government investment directed to an open access, wholesale-only, passive fibre network infrastructure.




• A new Crown-owned investment company (“Crown Fibre Holdings”), which will be operational by October, to carry out the government’s partner selection process and manage the government’s investment in fibre networks.




• Crown Fibre Holdings and each partner establishing a commercial vehicle, a “Local Fibre Company” (LFC), to deploy fibre network infrastructure and provide access to dark fibre products and, optionally, certain active wholesale Layer 2 services.




• Provision for national and regionally-focused proposals, as well as consortium and proposals aggregating any combination of LFC regions.




• Independence, equivalence and transparency requirements for LFCs.




• Expansion to 33 candidate coverage areas based on the largest urban areas (by population in 2021).

What is really good is the commitment to open access to dark fibre, and the regional approach to the issue. The Government has held firm to most of their draft proposal, with the main change being an increase in the number of coverage areas to 33.

Computerworld reports on positive reaction:

“This ushers in the biggest and most fundamental change to telecommunications in New Zealand since the privatisation of Telecom 20 years ago,” TUANZ CEO Ernie Newman said in reaction to the news.

“The paper builds very constructively on the work done previously,” Newman says. “It takes into account most of the key issues raised in submissions, and sets a timetable with milestones. It is an excellent blueprint on which to build.” …

InternetNZ also welcomed the plan, saying it is “delighted” with today’s announcement of a regionally-based approach to investment.

“This is a world-leading programme that can be expected to deliver the infrastructure New Zealand needs,” spokesperson Jordan Carter says.

“Steven Joyce and the Government have put in place a framework that over time can deliver a widespread fibre rollout across urban New Zealand.”

Those unsure about the benefits of ultra-fast broadband, might want to read the guest post from Rod Drury earlier this week.

Chris Keall (and Kelly Gregor) at NBR cover the proposal in detail. Keall highlights a new focus:

In the proposal document released today, the minister also flags that “The capacity and reliability of New Zealand’s international data connectivity will become increasingly important as LFCs’ [local fibre companies'] networks are deployed over the course of the UFB Initiative.”

The Commerce Commission recently identified slow international data as a roadblock to better domestic broadband performance, with testings showing that overseas pages take twice as long to load as those hosted locally – even with our current copper-dominated networks.

International bandwidth and data costs are often cited as a big issue also.

In a fit of good timing, Juha Saarinen has an article in Computeworld on dark fibre, and how you basically can not get it from Telecom or TelstraClear. Have a look at this price comparison and weep:

James Watts, who runs Palmerston North-based ISP Inspire Net, says the reason dark fibre is attractive to his customers is because they can “do whatever the hell they want with it.” Inspire currently charges $595 and $995 for intra-town dark fibre pair leases, depending on contract terms, and double that for inter-town unlit circuits.

To light the circuits, Watts says his company sells Gigabit Ethernet transceivers for $140 each.

A similar 1Gbit/s circuit from Telecom apparently costs $7000 a month, plus installation charges.It’s $69k a year according to Telecom’s pricing book.

Finally a focus on the issue of fibre providers being discouraged from also operating retail telecommunication services, both here and in Australia. Steven Joyce said in a Q&A:

Will Telecom have to structurally separate its network business to participate?

Any such decisions are up to Telecom.  The Government has made it clear that it will only invest money into fibre companies that are not controlled by shareholders who also operate retail telecommunication businesses.  The Government is also clear that potential partners who already own fibre assets can table options that involve those fibre assets being vended into any new fibre companies.

Preventing vertically integrated monopolies is crucial. This basically means Telecom can not be a majority shareholder in any regional fibre company unless they structurally separate (ie sell off Chorus). They can have a minority stake however.

In Australia, the Government has done similiar:

The government could also deny Telstra access to new spectrum for advanced wireless broadband unless the telco sells off its cable network and 50 per cent stake in Foxtel (25 per cent owned by News Corporation, owner of The Australian)

If you want to be part of the future, you need to be separated.

For those who think separation is not a big issue, think what it would be like if Air New Zealand owned the airports and could set access terms for other airlines. Or if Ford owned the roads and set the rules for what other cars could drive on them, and for how much.

So as I said, very pleased with the announcements today, and now working my way through the details.

Labour List MP Damien O’Connor blogs:

The rest of the country subsidises Auckland and provides it with the wealth to exist.

This is not a view unique to Damien. Michael Cullen once said:

Auckland now sits atop the nation like a great crushing weight

I think it is commendable Damien shares his views with us. he is obviously positioning to become Finance Minister.

Incidentally a report in 2006 concluded Auckland sends $3.8 billion more tax to Wellington than it receives back in spending.

Phil Heatley announced yesterday:

From today those state house tenants in a position to buy the house they live in can do so, says Housing Minister Phil Heatley.

Over the next week, Housing New Zealand will be approaching about 3,800 state tenants who pay market rent and live in a home that is available for purchase, to make them aware of the opportunity.

Letting a family who may have lived in a state house for years and years, maybe even decades, buy the house is such common sense, you have to wonder if anyone could possibly think it is a bad idea. Well Labour do of course/

Marty G at The Standard has said he is not oppossed automatically to state house sales, and proposes four conditions:

Housing NZ must use all revenue from sales to buy new houses – we don’t want the amount of housing available for the most needy decreasing.

I’m surprised he does not realise that is Government policy – that the money from sales will go to purchase new housing.

It must not sell all the houses in wealthy areas only to construct state house only neighbourhoods - the poor and the wealthy should not be physically separated by government policy.

Now having just argued for the importance of not decreasing the amount of state housing available, Marty then argues for a measure that will decrease the number of available houses.

The median house price in Manurewa is $250,000. In Mt Eden is is $600,000. If you sell 10 houses in Manurewa and replace them with houses in Mt Eden you can only afford four houses.

I’d rather have ten families in state houses, than four, for the same investment.

There are more than enough modestly priced areas to have state houses, without creating state house only neighbourhoods.

The houses must only be bought by their current tenants – we don’t want them claimed by wealthy investors, locking out the poor.

That also happens to be Government policy. I note Marty makes a classic mistake by assuming that people living in state houses are poor. They certainly were poor when they first moved in, but the 3,800 paying market rents are no longer poor. You could argue that their houses should be sold to anyone, with them just given first option.

This is the problem of providing housing assistance through having lower rentals for state houses, as opposed to income assistance regardless of who your landlord is.  To provide maximum equity, you really should evict tenants from their state houses once their income rises so they no longer are “poor”, But no one does that because of the fuss it would create. But what this means is that you have people on a waiting list for a state house who are far worse off income wise than the current tenants.

Likewise when the number of people living in a state house reduces (as kids leave home), you should ideally shift them to a smaller house. Not doing so again leaves more needy tenants on the waiting list (and there will always be a waiting list). This is one reason why I think income assistance rather than lower rentals is a better policy approach.

There must be a caveat on the titles to the properties preventing them being rented out by a private landlord - that way they can’t be bought out by property investors as happened in the 1990s.

Now this is just bizarre. If for example an elderly couple need to more into a retirement home, they can’t rent out the house they own. Blaise Drinkwater responds to this point on his blog:

What Marty G wants to do is sell the house to the tenant—because the tenant is Needy and home-ownership is A Good Thing—, but then dictate who this buyer may sell the asset to at a future date. This kneecaps the value of the house: to restrict the pool of potential buyers is to decrease demand artificially. The needy tenant is disadvantaged by this.

There is envy implicit in Marty G’s calculus: property investors must not be allowed to own ex-state houses because they’re rich and that’s bad. This leads him to a policy preference designed to restrict the wealth of the wealthy by diminishing their economic opportunities, but has as a side-effect: it also restricts the wealth of the needy by diminishing their economic opportunity. It turns out you can’t have one without the other.

Repeat after me: if you outlaw a voluntary transaction, you’re hurting all the parties that would benefit from that transaction, and not just the ones you’re trying to hurt.

Blaise sums it up well.

I’m not a woman, or rural, but am attending a breakfast meeting of Rural Women New Zealand to hear Fran O’Sullivan talk on “An Accidental Empire: The Rise of Political Blogging and its Effect on Conventional Media.”

Other interested people are welcome to attend:

Speaker: Fran O’Sullivan

Topic:        An Accidental Empire: The Rise of Political Blogging and its Effect on Conventional Media.

RWNZ is delighted to have special guest Fran O’Sullivan – a columnist for the New Zealand Herald – speaking at this month’s breakfast meeting on the rise of political blogging. Fran’s expertise is in politics and business. She was labelled a “right-wing blogger” by Helen Clark – but has yet to launch her own blog.

Date: Tuesday 29 September

Time:        7.15am – 8.15 a.m.

Venue: D4 on Featherston Street
Level 1, 143 Featherston St
Wellington

Breakfast:  There is no charge for attending RWNZ breakfast meetings. A D4 Breakfast Special costing $12 has been arranged for this occasion. The Special includes bacon, a choice of eggs on toast, and tea or coffee and juice. Or, you can order a continental breakfast with jam and marmalade served with juice, tea or coffee for $12. If you have a little more time, you may wish to order from any of the full range of dishes available on D4’s superb breakfast menu which can be viewed at www.d4.co.nz/menu

Please RSVP to Noeline Holt: noeline.holt@ruralwomen.org.nz

or Tracy Galland: tracygalland@xtra.co.nz

A month or so back I did a satirical post about the Green Party promoting abortion as a way to combat climate change. It provoked howls ou outrage.

Just to show how satire can sometimes come close to the truth, Brian Rudman writes today:

Luckily for Mr Goff, the conference was over before party activists had a chance to catch up with research from the London School of Economics arguing contraception was almost five times cheaper as a means of preventing climate change, than conventional green technologies. The principle being it’s much cheaper to hand out condoms to prevent the emitter being born, than it is to cleanse the atmosphere of the carbon he or she will emit, once born, for the next 80-odd years.

If the new leader is uncomfortable backing the case for energy-efficient lightbulbs, how much more embarrassing for him if the party latched on to the idea of free condoms as a way to stop global warming.

So will the Green Party jump at this opportunity to promote condoms to reduce carbon emissions?

Their population policy already says:S

The population cannot be increased beyond its capacity to offset its greenhouse gas emissions. says:

The LSE report called Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost is here.

So who will be first to endorse condoms to fight climate change – the Greens or Young Labour?

The Press Editorial:

After spending years waiting in the wings, Phil Goff finally had the chance last weekend to deliver his first leader’s speech to a Labour Party annual conference.

Yet instead of headlines dealing with Goff’s vision of the way forward for Labour, news media coverage focused squarely on his apologies for the errors of the past and the fact that his party had not listened to the electorate. It was a curious strategy for a new leader anxious to put his stamp on Labour’s top job and it is by no means clear that it will be positive for his party.

It may not be immediately positive, but it is a necessary step along the road back. Of course the apologies were Clayton’s apologies, about as sincere as the actual Clayton in the news, as they were apologies about the perception.

Goff’s apology was issued for a surprisingly large number of issues, including the Winston Peters funding saga, the Electoral Finance Act, smacking, light bulbs, shower heads and high electricity prices. These were, according to him, the sort of sideshows which had cost Labour last year’s election.

But Goff is only partly correct. The issues which he highlighted certainly did disenchant many people, and National will no doubt be delighted that Goff helpfully reminded voters of the unpopular policies. But National also prevailed last year because it offered a fresher alternative and because voters determined that it, rather than Labour, would be the better economic steward in difficult times.

Yep.

And Goff’s comments also begged the question of how vigorously he, as a very senior minister before the last election, attempted to moderate his party’s contentious policies. The conference speech also confirmed the impression that the jury is still out on Goff’s leadership. Although Goff was regarded as an able foreign affairs, then trade, minister with a safe pair of hands, his judgment has let him down several times since he replaced Helen Clark as leader.

In July, for example, he was forced to backtrack after initially and unwisely saying that anyone laid off during the recession should get the unemployment benefit, no matter how wealthy their partner was.

Welfare for everyone!

But what must be queried is whether Goff himself represents the fresh face of renewal, as his arrival at the conference riding a Triumph motorcycle cannot disguise the fact that he first entered Parliament 28 years ago.

And that is probably his biggest challenge – convincing voters to replace a fresh new Prime Minister with someone who entered Parliament when Muldoon was Prime Minister.