Jonathan Marshall in the SST reports:

Revelations of after-dark communications with Key come as Wood releases on the internet the abusive rants Williams left on his answer phone in October.

Blogger Cameron Slater – who has feuded with Williams in the past – is from today hosting the recordings on behalf of Wood on his website whaleoil.co.nz.

Cameron has made a nice video including the phone recordings. They reveal a highly insecure Mayor who feels the need to leave abusive and threatening messages on the answerphone of his predecessor.

In investigating the messages to George Wood, the SST found even John Key receives the late night missives:

An exasperated John Key has confirmed that Williams, mayor of Auckland’s North Shore City, has on several occasions sent “aggressive” and “obnoxious” texts as late as 3.30am.

Williams has gained a reputation for firing off intemperate emails, text messages and voicemail to adversaries and colleagues until late into the evening.

In October, Williams emailed his mayoral predecessor George Wood at 11.34pm on a Saturday, describing Wood as a “buffoon” and a “disgruntled, failed has-been”. He also left abusive messages on Wood’s voicemail.

Key told the Sunday Star-Times that he had not replied to any of Williams’ messages. He said they had arrived at “anything up to half past three in the morning. It’s certainly nocturnal.

“I never reply to them , they’re never worthy of a reply. The messages were in an aggressive tone… I’m not going to respond to obnoxious messages at this time of the morning.”

Cameron has done well with this front page scoop for the Star-Times, with the recipients of the calls knowing where best to go to get them publicised. I expect he will end up becoming the most visited blog at some stage – even if he does it from D Block

The Dom Post reports:

The School Trustees Association, which supports the standards, is upset about a letter from NZEI and the Principals Federation trying to influence boards.

President Lorraine Kerr has written to the groups, branding the action as irresponsible and unprofessional.

“It is hard to escape the conclusion that the motives behind your letter are in the main political,” she wrote.

“We believe your letter is irresponsible and unprofessional in inciting boards to place themselves at risk by acting simply as the principal’s mouthpiece.

“We have made every attempt to respond to the matters regarding national standards in a thoughtful and pragmatic way. However, by taking the action you have in your letter, you have made it abundantly clear that you have no genuine interest in pursuing an informed and professional discussion of the issues.”

That is a damning letter for one professional group to write about another. Totally deserved though.

Stephen Blair, principal of Tokoroa North School, accuses the Principals Federation of turning the issue into an ideological debate.

“They have accused the Government of basing policy on ideology yet their opposition is based on ill-informed scaremongering,” he said.

And the national standards policy is so mild. It is not about one big standard test. It is just about minimum consistent standards and reporting.

I say bring in bulk funding, performance pay for teachers and vouchers and give the unions something to really complain about!

NZPA report:

The Herald on Sunday (HOS) newspaper was justified in sacking assistant editor Stephen Cook, who was being investigated as part of a police inquiry into drug dealing, the Employment Relations Authority has ruled.

The HOS will be pleased to have won what was a messy battle with one of their former senior staff.

John Armstrong writes:

What is really going on inside the Labour Party caucus? The show of unity following Tuesday’s discussion on the negative fall-out from Phil Goff’s “nationhood” speech did not quite square with some rather odd happenings the next day.

For starters, there was Goff’s opting out of Wednesday’s question time in Parliament. The Labour leader delegated his usual role of questioning the Prime Minister to his deputy, Annette King. That may not seem a big deal. But the ritual nature of parliamentary warfare dictates that party leader take on party leader.

I presume it was because they knew Goff would get so many hassles about delivering a speech neither he nor his Caucus believes in.

Amid all this, Parliament’s finance and expenditure select committee was treated to some extraordinary theatrics from Labour finance spokesman David Cunliffe at its meeting on Wednesday. Cunliffe’s attempted interrogation of Finance Minister Bill English was Perry Mason mixed with Basil Fawlty – cringe-making and hugely embarrassing.

Hmmn had not heard about this. Will be great if the Office of the Clerk can arrange for Parliament TV to also cover select committees.

Trevor Mallard, Labour’s education spokesman, may find Education Minister Anne Tolley easy meat. But the end-game here should be the huge segment of middle-of-the-road voters worried about what kind of education their children are getting – not the teacher unions whose opposition to national testing is driven by self-interest.

The unions’ supposed concern that schools in poor areas will be stigmatised by failing to meet standards is a cynical cover for their real worry – that teachers’ inadequacies will be exposed by league tables which will show exactly which schools in richer areas are failing to deliver for their pupils.

The smart, though admittedly brave, move for Goff would have been to endorse national standards and even raise the benchmarks for satisfactory performance. In one swoop, that would have outflanked National and nullified Labour’s image of political correctness.

Mallard’s onslaught on Tolley means that opportunity has passed.

I think education could be a real battleground issues next election, and that parents will overwhelmingly be on the side of the party wanting them to know how their kids are doing.

Labour this year has only caused National any grief on three issues – emissions trading, ACC and cutbacks to night-class education.

I don’t quite agree here.

National has taken some hits on emissions trading I believe – but from its own supporters for doing anything at all, rather than from the left for not doing more.

There has been some grief around ACC relating to specific stuff like motorcyclists, but Labour has totally lost the argument over the unsustainable nature of the status quo. In 2011 I think ACC will be a negative for Labour as people will be reminded of the mess they left.

And on night-class education, those protesting have been the providers and a few others. I think the vast majority of NZers have been appalled to find out that they had been paying taxes to subsidise silk scarf painting courses and the like.

National’s Tony Ryall summed it up on Wednesday when he said Labour was suffering from RDS – “relevance deprivation syndrome”.

The term may have been coined by Australia’s former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, but the Health Minister’s diagnosis was spot-on.

In short, Labour is desperately hunting for relevance and hurting badly in not finding it.

To be fair to Labour, most parties in opposition can struggle with that for some time.

All the talk around the city is speculation on who is the real author of the Sean Plunket blog. After much detective work Kiwiblog can reveal the shortlist of suspects.

Noelle McCarthy
Peter Cavangh, Radio NZ CEO
The new Mrs Plunket
Matthew Hooton
Mark Unsworth
Peter Cavangh’s lawyer
Geoff Robinson
Lynne Snowden
Beven Rapson, Metro Editor

UPDATE; We now have a prime suspect and unlike the others this one has strong circumstantial evidence pointing to Mikey Havoc.

Most readers will know that NZ’s emissions target for 2020 is between 10% and 20% below 1990 levels. Greenpeace and others have run a campaign demanding it be at least 40%, despite the fact it would mean shooting (or killing off by some means) at least 20% of our dairy herd.

Most analysis of targets for a country are facile, and do not take account of the conditions in each country such as the profile of the emissions, how possible is it to reduce them, what has happened since 1990, population growth etc etc.

A great example of the superficial approach is the Climate Action Network zealots who have today declared that NZ given NZ a third place for “fossil of the day” because the Government refuses to unilaterally agree to a higher reduction target. The media will report this was huge column cms and broadcast time.

What they will not report to the same degree is the work of the Climate Action Tracker that has done detailed assessments of each developed country, based on multiple factors. The Greenhouse Policy Coalition drew attention to their work earlier this week.

They rate 49 countries (27 EU countries are rated as a group), and NZ is actually rated 10th highest in terms of the commitment made. I’ve put in brackets what their share of global CO2 emissions is. The top ten are

1. Costa Rica (0.3%)
2. Maldives (<0.1%)
3. Brazil (1.2%)
4. Japan (4.6%)
5. Norway (0.2%)
6. Iceland (<0.1%)
7. India (5.3%)
8. Indonesia (1.2%)
9. Mexico (1.6%)
10. New Zealand (0.1%)

The bottom ten are:

1. United States (20.2%)
2. Ukraine (1.1%)
3. South Africa (1.5%)
4. Russia (5.5%)
5. EU27 (13.8%)
6. Croatia (0.1%)
7. China (21.5%)
8. Canada (1.9%)
9. Belarus (0.2%)
10. Australia (1.3%)

Now I believe New Zealand (being one of the smallest countries) does have to make a reasonable commitment. It would be economic suicide to tell the rest of the world to fuck off, and declare we will do nothing.

But the current target of 10% to 20% is at the upper limit of what is achievable by 2020, and those calling for it to be higher are ignoring the evidence that it compares pretty favourably to most of the rest of the world.

Alex Swney and Greg McKeown write in the Herald:

The commissioners have suggested that communities are better represented by two councillors rather than one, so they have gone for huge wards, more than twice the size of general electorates, with two councillors each.

If that is such a good idea, why don’t we double the size of general electorates and have two MPs per electorate? At the centre of this is a debate about parochialism – somehow two councillors will be less parochial than one. Strong local representation at all levels of local government, including the new Auckland Council, is healthy and required.

I tend to favour smaller wards with just one Councillor each. I think you get better informed decision making when voters have to select just one representative than multiple.

There’s a lot of talk about representation for communities of interest. But under the commissioners’ draft plan, the people of Paritai Drive, Orakei, and Princes St, Otahuhu, have been lumped together in a ward with 161,400 voters and two councillors.

How awful for the good people of Otahuhu.

1. Enjoy the Sean Plunket blog. Sadly it is not actually Sean’s blog, but a parody. Still it should be enjoyable.
2. Jeanette Fitzsimons blogs “The Government’s moves to make the power retail market more competitive are good” which makes me start to doubt them!SHe goes on to say that energy conservation is more important. I do not regard them as being mutually exclusive.
3. Judy Callingham blogs that the TVNZ charter was a toothless tiger and is best put out of its misery.
4. Chris Keall solves the mystery of Air NZ cracker-gate, as raised by Roar Prawn.
5. 12,230 people have joined the Facebook group “I’ve slept with Tiger Woods”
6. Roar Prawn wonders why Trevor Mallard has taken to yelling out Cactus Kate’s name in Parliament, leading Cactus to declare “I have not had sexual relations with Trevor Mallard“. My view is that is only because Trevor is not married
7. Whale Oil blogs on the sad case of Labour’s leper.

As expected, the increase in ACC levies is less than proposed, but are enough to stop the unfunded liabilities increasing.

What I find interesting is that the average worker now pays $1,300 a year in ACC levies. That is a huge amount of money. If workers paid it directly, I suspect there would be far far more support for reducing the costs of ACC. But workers pay it in three ways – through the employee PAYE levy, petrol tax and vehicle registration levels.

On top of that is the employer levy. Ultimately workers pay for this also, through lower wage levels. Employers factor the total cost of employment into decisions on staffing and wage levels. This is another $700 a year

So the average worker has $2,000 paid to ACC. The average after tax income is around $40,000 so ACC consumes around 5% of take home pay.

Over a worker’s life, they pay a huge amount of money into ACC. Are they getting value for money? I have my doubts. Of course it is the nature of accidents that some will be injured more than others, and need more support. But I suspect for 95% of levy payers, the benefits they get from ACC are miniscule compared to their lifetime contributions.

The Government has started off in the right direction by trimming some of Labour’s expansions to the scheme. I hope they continue to trim.I’m all in favour of families not being left starving when an income earner is unable to work due to an accident. I am more sceptical about ACC funding the myriad of providers of different medical services from counselling to physio. I’d rather we fund them through Vote Health for low income families rather than have someone on $100,000 get free phsyiotherapy for their skiing injury.

My Dispatch from St Johnnysburg is titled The rise and rise of Andrew Little. An extract:

Now under the leadership of Helen Clark, the parliamentary leader was the supreme leader. There was no question of the party president questioning her in public, or some decision being made she did not agree with. Clark’s great legacy to Labour was the unity it had under her rule.

But Phil Goff is no Helen Clark, and the power of Andrew Little is on the rise.

Comments and feedback can be made at NBR.

This is a great move. The Clerk of the House has commissioned a website where Parliament TV segments are viewable. So rather than have to watch entire debates, you can see individual speeches and questions.

The site in In the House. It uses blog technology such as tags, so rather than have to do keyword searches, you can just click on tags etc.

The creators think this is a world first, and it could well be. I’m very impressed.

One request I would have is that they consider adding on the ability to embed videos. They will be far more successful in having people view segments if blogs can embed the videos.

Marty G at The Standard shows off his expert knowledge of Arctic polar bears, and declares this photo shows how climate change has turned polar bears into cannibals. He says:

This is climate change. This is just the beginning.

I have a terrible feeling that this picture is an omen of things to come.

Oh yes, next there will be cannibal geckos, cannibal crabs and worse.

Or one could talk to someone who actually lives in the area, as the Daily Mail did:

But this theory is disputed by Inuit leaders in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, who claim it is wrong to connect the bears’ behaviour with starvation.

Kivalliqu Inuit Association president Jose Kusugak said: ‘It makes the south – southern people – look so ignorant.

Ignorant indeed. Unless you prefer Marty’s knowledge of polar bears to the local Unuit leader.

‘A male polar bear eating a cub becomes a big story and they try to marry it with climate change and so on, it becomes absurd when it’s a normal, normal occurrence.’

What a shame – it could have made a great film – revenage of the cannibal polar bears.

The Nats Caucus Party is tonight. It would be optimistic to expect any blogging from me until Friday afternoon!

The parties used to be every six months, but this is the first one since June 2008. They didn’t even have a post-election bash last year because of the recession. So this is well overdue.

As with all social functions, what happens on tour stays on tour. So don’t expect any good stories tomorrow – I save all those for my book

Anyway in the meantime, read this e-mail conversation, and you will not be able to stop smiling. It involves the author of the spider drawing e-mails. Check his whole site out if you have the time.

Grant Robertson blogs those who voted for letting communities decide, and those who voted against.

The breakdown by party was:

• National 49-9
• Labour 1-43 (incl Anderton)
• Green 0-9
• Maori 3-1 (1 not vote)
• ACT 5-0
• United Future 1-0
• Total 59-62

The only good thing about the bill being defeated is it means the issue won’t go away.  If it has passed, allowing each community to decide their own policy for Easter Sunday (a day not even a public holiday), then the law would not be so broken, and people would stop agitating for change.

There is a reason there have been 11 bills seeking to change the law, and there will be more attempts. The religious conservatives and big unions were against late night shopping, Saturday shopping and Sunday shopping. They lost all those battles and will eventually lose this one. And it isn’t about the right to shop. I never shop on Sundays anyway – that is a day for drinking and the bars are all open. It is about who should decide what days and hours shops should open and close.

Transtasman puts its tongue in its cheek for its 2010 projections. Extracts:

Despite the recession, Phil Goff ’s poll ratings decline further. He has a long lunch with Ian Wishart and criticises the dominance of scheming, childless “front bums” in the Labour Party.

After two weeks of internal muttering Labour MPs say they are right behind Goff and anyone interpreting his criticisms of “front bums” as anti-women don’t know what they are talking about.

Ouch – so cutting.

Jim Anderton retires. It is nearly a month before anyone notices.

He’s a party leader you know.

1. Andrew Campbell (unionist who gives left viewpoint on Nine to Noon Politics) has done a guest post n The Standard decrying Labour for backing Goff’s speech.
2. Whale Oil is not happy with the Dr of Laws degree from Otago University to Michael Cullen. I just hope this doesn’t mean Chris Finlayson will now make Cullen a QC!
3. Eddie at The Standard joins the criticism of the Family Commission Chair for saying she can’t give a definition of Whanau Ora as she is a middle class white woman. He correctly labels this utter crap. Really isn’t it just time we get rid of the Families Commission as a nice idea but one that doesn’t deliver enough for the amount it costs.
4. Chris Keall gives a good round-up of what is happening on copyright issues.
5. Amy Adams is pleased with the unanimous vote to send to select committee her  Fair Trading (Soliciting on behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill which requires those soliciting on behalf of charities to be transparent about where the money goes.
6. Stephen Franks is happy that the Wanganui District Council (Port and Harbour) Bill doesn’t appear to have the numbers and has been deferred. The bill, promoted by Wanganui District Council, basically confiscates the local port from the company that has a perpetually renewable lease for it.

Danyl at Dim-Post does his own rankings. Superb. Extracts:

Nick Smith: 8/10. Environment Minister has done excellent work crafting an Emissions Trading Scheme that doesn’t handicap decent, struggling Kiwi businesses like The DimPost’s parent company Lanthanide, Nitrogen Tetrafloride & Heavy Metals Disposal.com (Inc  Chongjin, North Korea).

Paula Bennett: 8/10. Feisty westie MP has attracted controversy but is a vital weapon in National’s battle against Labour for the hearts of the strategic white trash demographic. …

Murray McCully: Shook my hand at a public meeting a few weeks ago and now it burns when I pee. 3.5/10.

The McCully one especially just cracks me up everytime I read it.

David Garret: Not his fault supermarkets are allowed to bulk sell discounted alcohol at 8 AM. 5/10.

Harsh but bloody funny.

Colin Espiner reports on the new US Ambassador. I like what I hear:

America’s new ambassador loves New Zealand already because it has most of his favourite vices.

David Huebner held a press conference at his new home in Lower Hutt shortly after his arrival in Wellington yesterday, and immediately established his credentials as a Kiwiphile.

The Flight of the Conchords, wine, cheese, beer and rugby are just a few of his favourite things.

Previously a Shanghai-based lawyer, Mr Huebner followed the rugby sevens in Hong Kong, eschewing American football as too effete.

“I respect the fact that even at the highest levels you don’t wear all that armour plating.”

Superb. He basically says the Super Bowl is for wimps. And he is possibly being mischievous being a gay lawyer labeling American Football as “too effete”.  That’s just superb.

But his anecdotes and one-liners may give his staff the odd grey hair.

Mr Huebner, “just the right side of 50″ (he’s 49), said he had used up his State Department shipping allowance freighting his wine collection but had since discovered the quality of New Zealand viticulture.

“I’m looking forward to drinking from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the Mainland.”

Now that sounds my sort of Ambassador. His Excellency will be an early invite to The American Politics Appreciation Society in 2010, especially as we meet in a bar.

The first openly gay envoy appointed by President Barack Obama, he joked with one reporter who asked if he would dress up for the Wellington Sevens. “Would you ask a straight ambassador that question?“

And even better he has a sense of humour about himself.

Stuff reports:

The Government has intensified a developing standoff with teacher unions.

After The Dominion Post revealed yesterday early plans by the primary teachers union to strike over the national standards policy, Education Minister Anne Tolley hit back, telling Parliament she was “disappointed” by the unions.

“I find it really disappointing that the unions want to stop parents getting information about how their kids are doing,” Mrs Tolley said.

“This Government is on the side of parents and we’re on the side of kids.”

Now that is not a typo. The unions are not going to strike over more pay, or smaller class sizes. They are going to strike to refuse to implement the policy of the Government, despite an explicit election mandate for it.

As far as I can tell, Anne has bent over backwards to work with the unions. She even said she’d work with them to try and stop the media publishing league tables. But they seem implacably opposed to giving parents nationally consistent and relevant information.

I say bring it on. Let this be Mrs Thatcher’s miners. The unions plans to pressure school boards to refuse to implement the standards. My response would be no standards, no funding.

All power to the union when they are trying to get payrises for their members. That is their legitimate role. But the unions seek to determine the education policy of New Zealand. They think the voters and the parents are unqualified. This is a battle over who is in charge of the education system and who does it exist for – is it the unions – or is it pupils and parents.

If you think the national standards is crap policy, then you’ll get a chance at the next election to get them thrown out. Elections should determine policy, not unions.

BUY OF THE WEEK

OBAMA.DISAP.1MAR pays out $1 if at 1 March 2010, President Obama has a net negative approval rating, according to Real Clear Politics. His rating has fallen from +12% in September to +5% in November and now sits at just +4%. The price has gone up from 22c in early November to 34c over the weekend.

I was short on this stock, but have just purchased stock to cover myself, as I think this stock will increase in value.

SELL OF THE WEEK

UK2010.CON.ABS pays out $1 if the Conservatives win an absolute majority of seats in the 2010 general election. The stock is trading at 67c but pundits may not know that the Conservatives probably have to beat Labour by at least 10% to win an absolute majority and several polls in November had them dip under a 10% lead.

For now this stick is over-priced.

MMP

MMP.RETAIN is at 57c. Every poll out in the last month has shown retaining MMP to have a significant lead, and it is hard to see this changing greatly before the election – at least while we have a relatively stable MMP Government. So I think this stock is a but under priced.

AN EASY RETURN

SNAP.ELECTION.10 pays out $1 if there is a snap election next year. I think there is no realistic chance of this happening and the current price of 11c means a 12% return over a year.

NO WAY BACK

MP.TIZARD has fallen to 17c, presumably on the back of Lynne Pillay announcing she will retire but not until 2011. MP.POWELL remains high at 57c.

IS GOFF A GONER?

DEP.GOFF.2010 pays out $1 if Goff loses the Labour Party leadership in 2010. The price was 19c on 28 November and has risen to 32c on Monday.

MOST TRADED STOCK

AUS.TURNBULL topped the trades at $7,500. Next was the Reserve Bank of Australia stocks on $3,500.

Cheers,

David

Disclosure

David’s current iPredict positions are:

BROWN.RESIGN Short, DEP.GOFF.2010 Short, DEP.KING.2010 Short, DL.KING.09 Short, FASA04.REPEAL Short, GST.UP.JULY10 Short, LEAD.GOFF.09 Short, MAYOR.BROWN Long, MIN.DEPART2.09 Short, MP.ANDERTON Short, MP.PETERS.2011 Short, NAT.JAN10.VLOW Short, NAT.MAORI.09 Short, OCR.INCR.APR10 Short, OCR.INCR.JAN10 Short, OCR.INCR.JUL10 Short, PETERS.LEADER Long, PM.2011.NATIONAL Long, UK2010.CON.ABS Long, UK2010.CON.MAJ Short, ZIM.MUGABE Short

Links to stocks in this commentary: OBAMA.DISAP.1MAR, UK2010.CON.ABS, MMP.RETAIN, SNAP.ELECTION.10, MP.TIZARD, MP.POWELL, DEP.GOFF.2010 , AUS.TURNBULL

Todd McClay’s private members bill was as unthreatening as you can get. It didn’t repeal all those nonsense shop trading hour laws, as I would advocate.

It didn’t affect a single public holiday. It did not affect Good Friday. It only affected Easter Sunday (not a public holiday) and merely said that rather than accept the bizarre status quo of some “tourist” regions able to open and some can not, it would be a decision for each local authority – ie let the local community decide.

Todd, as MP for Rotorua, had huge local support for the bill as the bizarre status quo means Taupo shops can open, but Rotorua shops can not.

So this bill was as mild as you can get. It did not mean the whole country would change – it was about allowing local communities to decide – instead of Wellington.

You would have thought it deserved to at least get to select committee, so local communities could have their say on the bill.

An Easter bill last Parliament by Jacqui Dean passed the first reading 73-41. 15 Labour MPs voted for it – including Clark, Cullen and Goff.

And another previous Easter Bill by Labour MP Steve Chadwick had 27 Labour MPs vote for it at first reading and 14 Labour MPs vote for it at second reading. It was a true conscience vote.

This time Labour block voted against it, with the sole exception of Steve Chadwick. Why would Labour MPs who previously allowed more far reaching bills go to select committee, block vote against such a mild bill?

The answer is simple. Two major groups are against any change to the status quo. The first is the churches and religious right. Hence nine National MPs (almost all of religious conviction) voted not to allow NZers a chance to have their say on the law. Shame.

But the other major group that opposes any change, are the unions.

So why did this mean Labour MPs block voted? Simple. The national secretary of NZ’s largest union is the chair of Labour’s list ranking committee.

Again this was not a bill to change all of NZ. It was about allowing a process of letting local communities decide whether or not they should be an exempted area due to tourism etc. The status quo has Queenstown open and Wanaka shut. Taupo open and Rotorua shut etc etc.

The SMH reports:

“God bless Tiger,” Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz told a conference this week, adding that all of the main Yahoo news sections got a “huge uplift” from the story.

“It is better than Michael Jackson dying; it is kind of hard to put an ad next to a funeral.”

Now that is an unfortunate quote.