Kiwiblog

The Telegaph reports:

The officer was called to the girl’s home in Ozark, Arkansas, by her mother because she was behaving in an unruly manner and refusing to take a shower. …

In a report on the incident the officer, Dustin Bradshaw, said the mother gave him permission to use the Taser.

When he arrived, the girl was curled up on the floor, screaming, and resisting as her mother tried to get her in the shower before bed.

“Her mother told me to take her if I needed to,” the officer wrote.

The child was “violently kicking and verbally combative” when he tried to take her into custody and she kicked him in the groin.

He then delivered “a very brief drive stun to her back,” the report said.

The officer has been suspended – not for tazering the ten year old, but for not having the mandatory video camera attached to it!

Interestingly one could argue that under Sue Bradford’s law, an officer could tazer a child, if it was deemed reasonable force for purpose of preventing disruption. Unlike the Borrows amendment, Bradford’s law does define limits for reasonable force.

The Herald reports:

Manukau District Court Judge Roy Wade will add an extra year to the starting point for prison sentences for criminals who commit aggravated robberies on small business owners.

From Monday, that will mean five years in jail, instead of the four-year guideline set by the Court of Appeal. …

“Anyone who holds up a retail shop in South Auckland, whether it be a dairy, a liquor store or any other kind of retail premises, is going to go to prison for a very long time,” the judge said.

“That will be the case whether they are young or old, and regardless of their personal circumstances. There will rarely be any question of home detention or community detention, and the only issue will be the length of the sentence.

And Judge Wade gets support from an unlikely source:

Experienced defence lawyer Lorraine Smith, who spends much of her time in the Manukau court, supported Judge Wade’s decision.

“When you consider the maximum penalty for aggravated robbery is 14 years, four years is no deterrent whatsoever,” said Mrs Smith.

“People have no fear. If sentences were higher, they might well think twice. But what’s four years when that time is likely to be sitting in the sun with their mates?”

And when you could get parole after one third of your sentence, due to Phil Goff’s 2001 law change (which they retreated from just before the election)

Counties Manukau district commander Superintendent Mike Bush acknowledged the area had the worst statistics for violent crime in the country.

But police were focused on organised crime, drugs, alcohol and youth, and had short- and long-term plans to tackle the problems.

A stronger presence on the street, made possible by the appointment of more officers under the Government’s plan for an extra 300 police, was already making a difference, said Mr Bush.

Last week, he said, the suburb of Otahuhu went 24 hours without a house burglary being reported, which was “unheard of”.

That just may be both the saddest and the funniest thing I have read today. Not that there were no burglaries, but that a burglary free day had never occurred previously.

Colin Espiner blogs:

Twice in the past week, Goff has played the race card, albeit carefully, by suggesting first that there was one rule for Harawira over his comments about white mo-fos and another rule for other MPs, and then raising the prospect that National’s proposed settlement with iwi over the ETS was based on ethnicity. …

Goff told Parliament he had never indulged “the politics of race” although I think he protested a bit much. He is clearly trying to send a soft dog whistle to Labour supporters who abandoned his party at the last election because they were fed up with precisely the sort of “pandering to Maori” that National could now be accused of.

It will interesting how far Goff is willing to go. I suspect it is considerably more. The irony is it may help them tactically short-term, but it is almost impossible for them to win the next election unless the Maori Party were to support them – they and the Greens would need to win 62, maybe 63 seats.

NZPA reports:

Auckland Mayor John Banks says the city’s new local government structure is “an inspired piece of work” while the Labour Party is committed to opposing it and the boundaries that go with it.

Mr Banks, who is going to stand for mayor of the new super city, said the proposition was coming together well and people would not lose their representation.

Manukau Mayor Len Brown, who is going to stand against Mr Banks, said he was pleased the commission had taken account of concerns about Auckland’s assets.

So Banks and Brown both say they are good boundaries, but why is Phil Twyford complaining:

“The proposed boundaries favour rural and the conservative northern and southern areas of Auckland while disadvantaging the isthmus and West Auckland,” he said.

“For example, the changes would give Rodney residents a third more voting power than a central Auckland resident, which is clearly unjust.”

The irony is that the Government actually planned to leave much of Rodney outside the boundaries, despite the fact it would mean more “conservative” voters. Rodney only had it all go back in after an outcry from locals.

But it is interesting that Twyford’s real concern are that Labour may not be able to gain control of the new Council.

Interesting the Chairwoman of the Local Government Commissioner has an active Labour Party backgrounds. Sue Piper was a Labour Wellington City Councillor. It is good to see she has done a professional job, rather than help Mr Twyford with his aim to have Labour control the Council.

I blogged yesterday on the claim of a miner’s wife:

The woman, who declined to be named, was critical of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU).

She said the union should have held a secret ballot on the Stockton strike, but instead asked miners for a show of hands.

I then updated the post to include this response from the EPMU:

The EPMU’s position on this is simple. The core allegation, that no secret ballot was held, is factually, verifiably false. There was a secret ballot at all sites as is union policy, and there are hundreds of miners who can vouch for that.

A West Coaster though has alerted me to this article in the Greymouth Star:

The Westport woman said the union should have held a secret ballot on the Stockton strike, but instead asked miners for a show of hands.

Those who wanted to keep working had been afraid of being victimised if they did not put their hands up, she said.
Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) assistant national secretary Ged O’Connell said he was “absolutely 100% confident” that secret ballots were held nationwide. If they were not, union officials would have been breaching their duties.

“We would view that pretty seriously.”

However, the Greymouth Star has been told the Spring Creek vote was also a show of hands and not a secret ballot.

Mr O’Connell failed to respond to calls about that claim today.

Now I don’t know what happened, as I was not there. But that is two separate claims about two separate ballots in two separate towns. Whether or not there was a secret ballot is a matter of fact, and should be easy to ascertain – one needs miners who were at the meetings to speak on the record to clear it up.

This is amazing. You know how the Greens go on and on about how climate change is real, and anyone sceptical is a crazed anti-science denier.

Well the former co-leader of the Greens, Jeanette Fitzsimons, has joined the ranks of the barking conspiracy theorists who think the US Government actually blew up the Twin Towers with explosives.

Richard Gage is talking in NZ at the moment. From Wikipedia:

The organization is collecting signatures for a petition to the United States Congress that demands a truly independent investigation with subpoena power of the September 11 attacks, and in particular “a full inquiry into the possible use of explosives that might have been the actual cause of the destruction” of the World Trade Center buildings.

His petition has around 5,000 signatures on it, out of 300 million Americians. He has also produced a film called 9/11 Blueprint for Truth and one of his fellow nutters has a book called Crossing the Rubicon.

Ruppert identifies players who were involved, would have had to be involved and may have been involved and clearly points out amazing ommissions by the 9/11 Commission and 9/11 Truth researchers including the FACT that the deputy director of the National Military Command Center [a position required to coordinate NORAD,FAA and JCS in both wargames and real-world events] actually asked on September 10, 2001, to be absent from duty on September 11 between 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. [the exact time of the attacks], that this did occur despite the fact the the hijackings and attacks were already taking place and that no one has ever received an explanation why. [further Ruppert reveals that the Officer who replaced this important defense coordinating position was a long-time Bush Administration friend recently qualified to hold the position as the result of Bush appointment who filed the shortest testimonial in all of the 9/11 Commission's requested written depositions]

Anyway the local NZ truth 911 website has a quote from Jeanette Fitzsimons:

“There is so much that does not make sense about the official version of 911. I have read all 600 plus pages of “Crossing the Rubicon” and it appears to me to be well researched, though I still have an open mind on the matter of what exactly did happen. It is time we knew the truth one way or another, and an independent enquiry is the way to achieve this. If we do not know the truth of our history it will compromise our future.”

I await Jeanette also calling for an independent inquiry into whether the moon landings were real.

Next time someone from the Greens puts down someone who is sceptical of climate science “projections”, then remind them of how Jeanette is unsure whether or not hundreds and thousands of people in the US Government actually blew up the Twin Towers themselves, hijacked the planes themselves and buried them all in the Nevada desert after shooting all the passengers (or whatever their exact theory is)

Just three quick ones:

1. Grant Robertson blogs that State Services Commissioner Iain Rennie has told the Dept of Labour they were wrong to advise staff not to take part in a rally on pay equity. This is why Rennie is so well respected – he is not scared to get offside with Ministers. A pity he wasn’t Commissioner when Labour were getting Madeline Setchell sacked over her boyfriend’s job, and smearing Erin Leigh for resisting a political appointment.  I’m still waiting for Grant to show the same energy in deploring those events.
2. The Standard blogs on a petition to Parliament to “make public displays of nudity and profanity illegal in our nation”. Fuck that I say. The only place profanity and nudity should be banned is in the Debating Chamber
3. Eric Crampton fisks Alcohol Action NZ.

It has been interesting seeing the different “dress codes” in the countries so far. In Turkey the vast majority of people are in western dress – suits or casual clothes. A lot of women didn’t wear hijabs at all, or combined them with western clothes – think leather boots, tight jeans an a hijab! Of course Turkey is a secular country.  Almost no one in a burqa.

In Egypt, almost all women wore a hijab, and you started to notice the occassional full burqa.

Kuwait shows off its arabic heritage. Well over 20% of local men wear robes with a keffiyeh. There were very few dressed like that in Egypt.

This is where we had lunch. While Kuwait in places is very dirty and dusty, it does also have some beautiful areas.

These are the Kuwait Towers. Certain expats have given them an unofficial nickname of the Kuwait a**l beads

The towers are primarily water towers, but the large one (187 metres tall) has a viewing platform also.

They have photos up of the damage done to the towers by the Iraqi invaders in 1990. Yep, they even smashed the toilets up.

And they are labelled barbarians for attacking the air conditioning! I would have thought they were barbarians for beatings, electric shocks, burns, mock executions and sexual torture including rape that some locals were put through by the Iraqis.

Most of the photos from the tower are crap, due to the dirty windows. But this one of the water theme park below is ok. I so would have gone, if I had more time.

I had earlier on noted how funny it was that Police cars had the URL of the Police on their sides. And then noticed this car with an e-mail address on the boot. I asked ehy would you do that, and Emily explained quite a few guys do it as a way of picking girls up! The idea is the impressed girls will e-mail them!

On Wednesday night, had dinner and drinks with the netball team.Now alcohol is banned in Kuwait – no sales and no importing, but as this photos shows you can smuggle it in in small packets.

That got me thinking that selling those outside the Wellington Sevens could be a great money making opportunity!

Incidentally pork is also illegal in Kuwait. If you have it with you, it gets confiscated on arrival.

Good to see National MPs starting to get their private members bills in the ballot, with the result being two of them got drawn this week.

The first is the Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill by Selwyn MP Amy Adams. The notes explain what it will do:

The Bill requires professional third party collectors to disclose to potential donators that a portion of the donation will be retained by the collector.

This only applies if the proportion retained is more than 20 percent.

If the proportion retained is between 20 and 50 percent of the total donation then the collector must simply disclose that a portion is being withheld by them, but does not have to disclose the amount.

If the proportion retained is more than 50 percent then the collector must disclose the percentage being retained, to the nearest percentage point.

Transparency is a good thing. There have been a lot of horror stories about people donating money to what they think is a charity but finding out less than half gets to the charity. I can’t imagine anyone will vote against this bill going to select committee. WIll be interesting to hear what the charities say about it.

Rotorua MP Todd McClay had his Shop Trading Hours Act 1990 Repeal (Easter Sunday Local Choice) Amendment Bill also drawn. I can’t find a copy of it online, so this is based on reports.

This is a minor liberalisation, which will allow each local Council to decide whether or not shops are allowed to open on Easter Sunday.

This will be lots of fun because you get the unholy coalition of the union left and religious right joining forces to stop even the remotest sanity occurring over Easter Trading. Hopefully Todd’s bill will make it to select committee – the challenge will be getting it back out.

I find it hilarious that the actual public holiday is Easter Monday while the day retail shops can’t open is Easter Sunday. And that Easter Saturday has no significance at all, so people can’t even get a guaranteed long weekend off. The current law really is a dogs breakfast.

The credibility of Auckland University is seeping away, with their refusal to even use a wet bust ticket against faculty member Witi Ihimaera. It has been revealed he also had at least one case of plagiarism in The Matriach:

His comments follow further claims by Professor Keith Sorrenson, a University of Auckland emeritus history professor, that Ihimaera plagiarised his work in the award-winning novel The Matriarch and later apologised to him.

Professor Sorrenson says the latest plagiarism row – in which Professor Ihimaera has admitted using unattributed material from 16 other authors in his latest book, The Trowenna Sea – showed he had “learnt nothing” from the earlier incident.

I hope someone somewhere is running all his books through a checker. The defence we keep hearing is:

He has apologised for the “errors” but said the unacknowledged work in The Trowenna Sea was only 0.4 per cent of the 528-page book.

But that stat is ir-relevant. What is more important is that in the latest book he did it on at least 16 occasions from 16 authors. That is not an error.

On top of that we have the previous plagiarism, and it has been reported The Listener is going to reveal even more plagiarism in his latest book.

And none of this is enough to warrant even a wet bus ticket from Auckland University. They keep maintaining there is no evidence it was deliberate.

I would have thought the burden of proof would be to prove any plagiarism was an “error”. Certainly that is what students would have to do.

The Local Government Commission has proposed 12 wards and 19 local boards for Auckland, plus it ahs tweaked the southern boundary.

The proposed wards are:

1. a Rodney Ward, electing one councillor, covering most of the present Rodney District but excluding the Hibiscus Coast and an area south of Muriwai Beach which will be included in the Waitakere Ward (in order to keep the Waitakere Ranges heritage area in one ward)
2. a Hibiscus-Albany-East Coast Bays Ward electing two councillors
3. a North Shore Ward, electing two councillors, covering Glenfield,
   Birkenhead, Takapuna and Devonport
4. a Waitakere Ward, electing two councillors, covering all of the existing Waitakere City excluding New Lynn, Green Bay and Kelston plus a small area of Rodney District
5. a Whau Ward (New Lynn-Avondale), electing one councillor, covering New Lynn, Green Bay, Kelston, Avondale, Rosebank, Waterview, Blockhouse Bay
6. a Mt Albert-Mt Roskill Ward, electing two councillors
7. a Maungawhau-Hauraki Gulf Ward (Auckland Central), electing one
   councillor, covering the central/CBD area and the Hauraki Gulf islands
8. an Orakei-Maungakiekie Ward, electing two councillors
9. a Franklin Ward, electing one councillor, comprising all the area of
   Franklin District remaining in Auckland together with the Clevedon
   community and the majority of the rural area of Papakura District
10. a Papakura-Manurewa Ward electing two councillors
11. a Howick-Pakuranga-Botany Ward electing two councillors
12. a Manukau Ward, electing two councillors, covering Mangere,
    Papatoetoe and Otara

The wards are meant to have approximately the same amount of population per councillor as each other. The average is 70,810 pop per Councillor and the extremes are Rodney with only 53,590 pop for 1 Cr and Maungawhau-Hauraki Gulf (Auckland Central) with 88,000 for 1 Cr.

The 19 proposed local boards are:

1. Rodney (7 members)
2. Hibiscus-Albany-East Coast Bays (9)
3. Glenfield-Birkenhead (6)
4. Takapuna-Devonport (5)
5. Waitakere (9)
6. Whau (7)
7. Mt Albert (7)
8. Mt Roskill (6)
9. Maungawhau (5)
10. Waiheke (5)
11. Great Barrier (5)
12. Orakei (7)
13. Maungakiekie-Tamaki (6)
14. Mangere (5)
15. Otara-Papatoetoe (7)
16. Howick-Pakuranga-Botany (9)
17. Papakura (5)
18. Manurewa (7)
19. Franklin (9)

Submissions are open until mid December. From my outside perspective the proposals look pretty sound, but I defer to local knowledge.

Audrey Young reports on part of a speech from Steven Joyce:

One of Mr Key’s closest advisers, Transport Minister and first-term MP Stephen Joyce, also spoke to Federated Farmers, telling them how hard it had been getting used to the public service when he took office a year ago.

He would hold meetings with officials sitting around the large table in his office, with reserve officials standing around the walls. When one official left the table, another would slide into his place and even finish his sentences. The officials, he said, held further meetings after their meetings with ministers in order to establish what they thought the minister had been trying to say. Sometimes Mr Joyce had come across those meetings outside his office and added his own contribution as to what he thought he had been trying to say.

Heh.  I can just see Steven doing that.

First the Herald reports on views from Justice Minister Simon Power:

Justice Minister Simon Power wants to stop the emerging “special class” of high-profile people using their status to get name suppression.

Mr Power strongly signalled he would change the law to stop cases such as the one this month in which a “prominent entertainer” who admitted forcing a teenage girl’s face into his genitals was granted permanent suppression because publicity would have a detrimental effect on his career and his record and ticket sales.

Very pleased to see Simon take a strong principled stand on this.

Incidentally I’ve been doing a bit of a case study into that case, and plan to present the findings at the R v The Internet seminar on 3 December. I’ve been looking at the various sites which tell or hint at the name, and also how hard or easy it is to find out via searching.

The Herald editorial:

At a first glance, the Law Commission report Suppressing Names and Evidence appears a document of much promise. Encouragingly, it talks of the need for court proceedings to be more open and for rules governing the suppression of names to be tighter and more transparent.

But on closer inspection, there are grounds for reservation about its prescription for reducing the level of secrecy in our courtrooms. This detracts somewhat from the major pluses of a principled approach and a well-observed appreciation of the justice system’s current failings. …

Some of the Law Commission’s other suggestions are most welcome. It supports the development of a national register of suppression orders as a matter of high priority. This would eradicate the confusion that arises when different courts impose suppression orders at different stages of cases, thereby heightening the potential for breaches.

A register of suppression orders is well overdue.  People may be surprised by how hard it can be for even media to find out what exactly is supressed.

But the report is on less-secure ground when it seeks to control the internet, most notably the increasing trend of suppressed material being circulated. Because this is often hosted on overseas-based websites that are not subject to New Zealand law, there is a strong element of futility in much of what it suggests.

As I said a few days ago, if the intent is simply that an ISP removes supressed material actually hosted on its network, upon request from a Judge or Crown Law, I don’t see that as unreasonable. If however it is intended to require ISPs to block overseas based material, that will be futile and inappropriate.

The Press editorial:

A fundamental principle in the operation of the courts in New Zealand is that they should conduct trials in public and that it should be possible to freely report on those trials. …

It is heartening therefore the Government has indicated it will look favourably on a report this week by the Law Commission aimed at refocusing the courts’ attention on the basic principle of open justice, bringing greater clarity to the rules on suppression and ultimately making it harder to get. The commission has sensibly proposed that the grounds for suppression should be set down in statute. The reports suggests seven grounds, of which the most significant would probably be that suppression should be granted only where it would prevent extreme hardship to the accused and/or those connected to the accused.

The challenge will be to stop “extreme hardship” being watered down.

The Dom Post:

The commission recommends that the grounds on which suppression may be granted be clarified and tightened so they become “transparent, explicit and consistently applied”. It suggests, too, that judges must give reasons for granting or declining a suppression order and that temporary orders granted at an accused’s first appearance have an expiry date.

Sir Geoffrey and crew have also been bold. In recommending that the maximum penalties for breaching suppression orders be bumped up to six months’ jail or a $100,000 fine for a media outlet, they have also accepted the argument that the corollary must be that suppression orders are easier to track down. They say “the case for a reliable and up-to-date register of suppression orders to allow journalists to confirm the terms and duration of the order becomes even more compelling”. Hallelujah.

The mainstream media, who attend courts as the public’s surrogates, will largely applaud these recommendations – they almost never deliberately flout a court order. But it is hard to abide by the rules when it is hard to ascertain just what orders are in place.

I agree absolutely.

However, fairness demands that any penalties facing editors equally face bloggers who sound off about those before the courts in the anarchy of the blogosphere before and during a trial. If the powers-that-be determine that that is just too hard, they need to ask themselves about the value of suppression law in the internet age.

The editorial here is mixing up issues of suppression orders and contempt of court. They also talk about the blogosphere when many of the problems occur on Trade Me forums, Facebook, Twitter, message boards, Usenet etc etc.

Now I’m the last one to say bloggers should not obey the law, and in fact have gone to considerable lengths to try and obey the law. But there will be interesting issues if you take the editorial position of wanting bloggers to face the same penalties as editors (despite not having giant multinationals standing behind you to pay the bills). Presumably the editorial writer would then support bloggers, not just media, being able to access the proposed register of suppression orders – and also to be able to get accredited in courts to report on trials.

Given we guest bloggers were bought back to help provide content when Mr Farrar was on holiday, has anyone noticed a reduction in his blogging frequency?

If Inga is really thinking about becoming a National MP, has he remembered to join the National Party?  (A surprising number of prospective National MPs leave this crucial step quite late…)

Given the University of Auckland “will not tolerate cheating” and that plagiarism is explicitly listed on their website as the main type of cheating, what action will it take in relation to a staff member who has admitted not acknowledging a number of passages in a new book?

Was Thierry Henry’s blatant handball even worse than Diego Maradona’s infamous ‘Hand of God’?

What do Sir Bob Jones and Hon Rodney Hide talk about when they meet at night in Jones’ office on Waring Taylor Street?

Is Shoaib Akhtar the first cricketer ever to miss cricket series’ because of genital warts and liposuction?

How can Will Ferrell, the man who bought us the genius of “More Cowbell”, now be (deservedly) ranked Hollywood’s most over-paid star?

Todd McLay’s members’ bill about Easter Trading Hours should sort this issue out once and for all, right?

Have you really invented a new chant about Rory Fallon being big and bad and better than his dad when you’ve just changed the name in the chant the Barmy Army have been singing at Stuart Broad for two years?

Has Tau Henare really bought a scooter or is Craig Foss fomenting his own happy mischief?

If Australia needs a cricket coach, why wouldn’t we?

How long can Roarprawn possibly hold to her pledge not to blog about Ngai Tahu politics?

Will the Libertarianz ever take Oswald’s advice to ‘softly, softly catchy monkey’?

The Herald reports:

A West Coast miner’s wife has blasted union organisers, saying they failed to hold a secret ballot on striking, failed to keep members informed, and continued to collect their own pay while workers’ families struggle.

The woman, who declined to be named, was critical of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU).

She said the union should have held a secret ballot on the Stockton strike, but instead asked miners for a show of hands.

Those who wanted to keep working had been afraid of being victimised if they didn’t put their hands up, she said.

The union had also failed to keep members well informed.

“My husband is only hearing things second-hand. They want you to go up to the picket line all the time to get information, but you’ve got to use petrol to get there.”

She also criticised the timing of the strike so close to Christmas. Her family would be unable to meet mortgage and rate commitments, let alone buy Christmas presents.

The union had also never told them they could claim a hardship allowance.

The woman said EPMU organisers should be refusing their own pay while coal miners were on strike, as they did in the old days.

Now that is a good idea. Solidarity with the comrades.

UPDATE: EPMU have e-mailed me a response:

The EPMU’s position on this is simple. The core allegation, that no secret ballot was held, is factually, verifiably false. There was a secret ballot at all sites as is union policy, and there are hundreds of miners who can vouch for that. Given the allegation is from an anonymous person who is not a member and would not have been entitled to vote in the meeting, people will have to judge the accuracy of her claims for themselves.

The other allegations are more easily dealt with:

• Poor communication is a subjective issue, but I can tell you that I have personally sent out regular email updates to miners and there has been information at the picket line at all times. We don’t include miners’ wives on our email distribution lists.
• Union officials are paid during industrial disputes because that is their job. Paid officials don’t vote on industrial action and they do not share in any gains that result from it. Union officials do not stop their other duties when one site goes on strike. They are professionals hired by the membership to represent and advocate for them including during industrial disputes. They do, however, regularly donate to industrial hardship funds.
• The union hardship allowance is provided at the discretion of the national executive. This was opened to members last week.

Industrial action can be a highly emotional time, particularly for the families of striking workers. It’s understandable that a person might get the wrong end of the stick and lash out at the union. It’s just disappointing that during the journey of this story from the Westport News through NZPA, into the Herald and then onto your blog, no one decided to actually verify any of the claims before publishing them.

I’m always happy to provide a right of response. Well except for he who shall not be named

Matt Nolan translates what Labour is proposing:

Labour goals were:

1. a stable and competitive exchange rate;
2. reduced interest rates for businesses and home owners;
3. continued priorities of price stability and low inflation;
4. to guard against expectations of price rises.

So, with goal 1 they want to reduce the flexibility of NZ$ prices, which will lead to higher unemployment and a worse allocation of resources.  Furthermore, they want to keep the dollar low which implies subsidising exporters to the cost of households in the short-term.

With 2 they want to punish savers.

And with 3 and 4 they want to contradict themselves – as by limiting price flexibility and holding the exchange rate and interest rates down they WILL drive an increase in inflation expectations, dump price stability, and remove any chance of a low inflation environment.

My Dispatch from St Johnnysburg is about the Emissions Trading Scheme. AN extract:

So it is not a matter of choosing the right option, and not choosing the wrong option. All options around the ETS will lead to a decrease in living standards for New Zealanders. And that means that regardless of what happens, the Government is likely to end up getting blamed.

Comments and feedback can be left at NBR.

Kiwi Poll Guy applies his maths to the current poll ratings, to project how many electorate seats each party could expect – based on overall poll ratings.

Currently National has 41 seats, Labour 21, Maori 5 and one each to ACT, United and Progressive.

KPG projects:

• National 50
• Labour 12
• ACT 1
• Maori 5 – 6
• Progressive 1
• United 1 (58% chance of retaining Ohariu)

Now these are of course mathematical calculations, and do not take into account individual issues and people in each seat.

I recommend people subscribe to KPG, if you are a devoted poll watcher.

This week’s Dom Post quiz is here. Easier this week – got 10/10. I see some colleagues have upped the stakes by posting how long it took them, so I trump their times with my 31 seconds

Bob Jones writes in the Dom Post:

First, it is not the cars that are the main concern. In fact very few cars traverse the Golden Mile during the day, a response to the Wellington City Council’s wise initiatives intended to deter them.

They have worked. Rather, it is the abrasive buses which are the principal problem. Buses and pedestrians are a terrible mix. The present council’s policy seems geared to making the city friendly towards buses rather than to its citizens and it’s both wrong and unnecessary. …

Mr Finny also argues that parts of the Golden Mile are so wide that the danger exists of a “dead look”.

In fact the wide sections, notably the end of Lambton Quay and Courtenay Place, will provide opportunity to pay for the proposal. In the case of Lambton Quay, exactly as with all the pedestrianised cities, the spacious parts can be used for (partially) outdoor cafes, florists, newsagents and the like.

With Courtenay Place, apartment building sites with ground-level retail can be created in a plaza setting. Other options include a skating rink, fountains and other visual and recreational features.

As for goods delivery, in fact all of the office buildings along the route are serviced from the rear, off streets such as The Terrace etc. …

We will additionally detail our proposal to establish a Saturday Lambton Quay street market, as exists in all European cities and which, without exception, draws thousands of folk, regardless of the weather. Our proposal is not new. Consultants engaged by the council from Europe and America have recommended exactly this to previous councils but they have lacked the initiative to act.

People like a man and a team with vision, even if they don’t agree with it 100%.

I think there is a reasonable chance that a ticket standing on the issue of creating a vehicle free golden mile, as advocated by Sir Bob, could win most if not all the spots on Council.

This could be the most exciting Council elections since 1995.

Transparency International has effectively ranked New Zealand as the least corrupt country on Earth. That’s obviously a good thing. But to some degree they can be self fulfilling prophecies as much of the data is based on perceptions of corruption.

So to be absolutely precise NZ was perceived as having the lowest level of corruption in the public sector of the 180 countries surveyed

The top five countries are:

1. New Zealand 9.4
2. Denmark 9.3
3. Singapore 9.2
4. Sweden 9.2
5. Switzerland 9.2

The bottom five are:

1. Somalia 1.1
2. Afghanistan 1.3
3. Myanmar 1.4
4. Sudan 15
5. Iraq 1.5

Countries I have been in recently:

1. USA 7.5
2. Turkey 4.4
3. Kuwait 4.1
4. Thailand 3.4
5. Egypt 2.8

As I said above, this doesn’t mean we are corruption free. Taito Philip Field is an example of how that is not true. It is more than any corruption is not systemic.

Tracy Watkins reports:

Labour leader Phil Goff is calling an end to the 20-year consensus on monetary policy.

Mr Goff is expected to use a hard-hitting speech to Federated Farmers in Wellington today to declare that the Reserve Bank’s policy targets – which influence interest rates and the dollar – are no longer working.

Labour came under pressure while in office to change monetary policy and signalled a rethink toward the end of its term but did not indicate what might replace the current regime. Mr Goff is not expected to spell out the alternatives in his speech today but will call for more work on the options.

This looks rather desperate.

First of all, it is of course correct that monetary policy is not perfect.

But I am reminded of the words of Winston Churchill about democracy – how it was the worst form of Government – apart from all the others that have been tried.

While there are some enhancements that can be made (and Dr Bollard has been doing some work on these), you can’t really make significant changes without allowing inflation to get out of control – and that just lowers the country’s standard of living – everyone gets poorer.

So to some degree Goff is just posturing to, unless he starts specifying what changes he would make. But declaring monetary policy is no longer working is silly, because of course it is. You can’t blame the high NZ dollar on monetary policy considering we have the official cash rate at a very low 2.5%.

Did you know?

• The number of ACC claims for motorcycle injuries has increased 637% since 1999 – from 684 to 5044
• The number of claims per annum per 100 motorcycles has increased 352% from 1.2 to 5.2. Yes there is an ACC claim for 1 in 19 motorcycles.
• In 2008 1314 motorcycle drivers were injured and 48 died.
• The injury rate per 1000 motorcyclists is 14.4 and fatality rate is 0.52
• For all vehicles (incl motorcyclists) the injury rate is 4.7 and fatality rate 0.11.
• Motorcycle riders (and a small no of passengers) account for around 13% of all fatalities and 9% of injuries, despite making up just 3% of the vehicle fleet
• That of the 211 drivers killed in 2008, almost 25% or 48 were motorcycle drivers.
• In 2008 there were 1,237 motorcycle drivers hospitalised with injuries for 8,571 days and only 2,764 car drivers hospitalised for 13,795 days.
• There are 2.63 million passenger cars and vans registered in NZ and only 71,648 motorcycles (plus 25,304 mopeds).

It amazes me that the same people who support banning pies from tuckshops on the basis it may extend someone’s life by a few months in 60 years years time, don’t think incentives to reduce the number of motorcycle accidents are justified.

Now don’t get me wrong. If people want to ride motorcycles, good on them. Unlike Labour/Greens, I don’t believe in banning things just because they may be bad for you.

But if you choose to drive a motorcycle, then you should at least cover the costs of the greater accident risk. At the moment car drivers massively subsidise the cost of ACC for people who choose to drive a far more risky form of transport.

We already have the rationale with employers levies. You don’t make employers with clerical staff pay the same ACC levy as employers in dangerous occupations like construction.

Now as I have said before, the exact levies proposed by ACC are open to legitimate scrutiny and criticism. You don’t want to ping owners of multiple motorcycles (or multiple vehicles of any sort). But the principle of motorcyclists paying more than car owners is sound. Not to do so, actually subsidises motorcyclists and means we end up with more people dead and injured, because safer modes of transport were subsidising the more dangerous modes.