Kiwiblog

Stuff reports:

Lax company laws expose New Zealand to money laundering and terrorist financing and may need to be tightened, says Parliament’s commerce select committee chairwoman, Lianne Dalziel.

Her comments follow revelations that Auckland-registered SP Trading Ltd, of 369 Queen St, was used in an attempt to ship arms from North Korea to Iran.

An international enforcement source warned yesterday the reputation of “New Zealand Inc” was now at risk.

SP director Lu Zhang cannot be found but inquiries now reveal that a woman called Lulu Zhang lived at an Auckland address linked to SP. SP is owned, through several layers of companies, by accountant Geoffrey Taylor’s GT Holdings of Vanuatu.

New Zealand’s company registration system was exposed when Thai authorities seized a plane from North Korea last month carrying 35 tonnes of explosives and anti-aircraft missiles bound for Iran. The Georgia-registered plane was hired by SP.

New Zealand agencies, the US Justice Department and US Treasury Department are investigating. The controversy comes at an embarrassing time, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton due to visit on Friday.

Ms Dalziel said the select committee examined company registration and directorships in the wake of recent finance company collapses. The SP case raised questions about how to verify directors’ names and company registration without imposing compliance costs on normal businesses.

“The question is have we got the balance right, does it expose New Zealand to a greater degree of risk than we ought to be?”

She said New Zealand was proud to be at the top of World Bank “ease of doing business” tables, and would not want to be disadvantaged if it adopted extra verification measures to address money-laundering fears.

Singapore and Hong Kong also rate highly. but they both require photo identification for company registration. New Zealand requires only a signature.

I would be very reluctant to add complexity to our company registration system. Our system does rank amongst the best in the world for ease of settign up a business as a company. You can basically do it all online – with the exception of the signatures which you can fax in (but are automatically scanned and added to your electronic file).

People do good things and bad things with companies. Making it more difficult to set up a company will probably not change that. Takin the specific issue of requiring a photo ID, I don’t think that would have changed anything about this set of companies – they were not using false identities as far as I know.

Michael Littlewood argues in this paper that neither ACC nor Superannuation should be pre-funded.

He argues that pre-funding of ACC should not just be delayed until 2019 (instead of 2014), but is inappropriate for a Government entity.

I suggest people read the full paper, bus his points in summary are:

• The ultimate owner of the provider, the government, will never disappear. Also, the government has the power to tax to meet future liabilities, expected or unexpected. The ACC has therefore no apparent need to maintain a pool of invested assets to pre-fund its expected, contingent future obligations.
• By maintaining the ACC Fund the government is effectively in the business of portfolio investing.. That is because, when the accounts for the ACC are consolidated as shown in Chart 1, the ACC’s investments become the government’s. The ACC does not itself
  need to address the issue (whether or not to be a portfolio investor) but the government should.
• Borrowing to buy portfolio investments (shares, bonds etc) is speculation – again, not necessarily a bad thing in itself. The borrower takes on the risk that the returns from those investments will be at least as great as the cost of the debt used to acquire them.
  Borrowing to invest magnifies the yields and the losses. It turns a good return into an excellent return; and a bad return into a potential disaster.

Interestingly both Labour and National support pre-funding of ACC.

The first quote is:

A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee

The second quote is:

a “light-skinned” black man “with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.”

So was this Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin? Dick Cheney and Bill O’Reilly?

No, according to a new book called Game Change, the first quote was made by Bill Clinton to Ted Kennedy, and the second by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Clinton’s quote is of course incorrect. If it involved serving himself and Ted Kennedy, there is no way they would have been getting served coffee – whiskey is far more likely.

Newmarket Retailers Assn CEO Cameron Brewer writes:

Increasing the goods and services tax would hurt the country’s retailers just as they’re getting back on their feet. Christmas trade was an improvement on the previous year, but retail is still not out of the woods.

It would impact retailers, but the issue is what tax cuts would we get to compensate, and what would be the impact on the overall economy.

I’d be against GST going up, with no reductions in other taxes. But there is an argument to be made for slightly more taxation on consumption and less on income.

My wife tells me that before GST came into effect nearly 24 years ago, she remembers her mother rushing off to buy a vacuum cleaner. So yes, leading up to an increase taking effect, there would be a rush on consumption.

However the shops would then go quiet as people’s cost of living went up overnight.

Yep, but an increase from 12.5% to 15% is a lot less of an impact than bringing in a 10% GST. On an item that did cost $100 a 10% GST increased the cost by well 10%. That same $100 item now already costs $112.50 and would go to $115. That extra $2.50 is an 2.2% increase in total price – less than the annual inflation rate of late.

If an increase in GST is to lead to a fall in consumption, a tightening of business margins and a Government being hurt politically, it is hard to imagine theFinance Minister announcing it in his second Budget.

There are political risks around any GST increase. However it occurs to me that the overall economy as a whole would grow faster with less tax on income and capital and savings and a bit more tax on consumption. The target is a 30% top tax rate for individuals, trusts and companies. Now before the recession and Cullen’s last budget, one might have been able to do that by reducing surpluses. However unless one is politically suicidal, it will take several years of spending restraint to get back into surplus.

The Herald reports:

A tidal power station on the Kaipara Harbour seafloor could be providing power to a quarter of a million homes by the end of the decade.

The Environment Court has made a positive recommendation to Conservation Minister Tim Groser on a plan to generate electricity from the harbour’s swift tidal flow.

I think using renewable energy is the way of the future. That doesn’t mean I think we can or should transition there overnight, as if you suddenly switch off Huntly, there will be blackouts.

A nice initiative in Canada:

Twenty imams have issued a “fatwa” against any Muslim who would attempt to commit an act of terrorism in Canada or the United States.

Syed Soharwardy, an imam at the Al-Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre, who organized the initiative, said yesterday that any attack by foreign elements should also be considered a direct affront to the 10 million Muslims who call either Canada or the United States home.

“We want Muslims around the world who would dare to commit terrorism on our soil to know that we stand together with all Canadians and Americans.

Since the threats against Salman Rushdie several years ago, most people think of fatwas as death threats. But in fact, the imam notes, the vast majority of fatwas are condemnations or even non-binding directives that are meant to teach fellow Muslims the proper religious response to a given situation.

He said many Muslims he has spoken to say their lives have grown miserable and have suffered societal backlash because of the perceived association between violence and Islam.

But since 9/11, he added, it has become imperative for Muslims to vocally condemn violence — even though they have no personal responsibility for those acts.

Muslims who live in this country should also stop fighting the battles that they left behind when they came to live here, he added.

“We are Canadian now. This is where our energy should be directed.”

Again what refreshing common sense.

The Dom Post reports:

One of New Zealand’s most notorious killers has died in prison, bringing relief to those who knew his victims.

Double murderer Rufus Junior Marsh, 53, died in Wanganui Prison last week, the Corrections Department said yesterday. The cause of death is unknown but is not thought to be suspicious.

A career criminal, Marsh was serving a life sentence for killing Justice Department clerk Diane Miller in 1986.

It was his second killing – 12 years earlier, Marsh, then 18, and 16-year-old accomplice Dennis Luke kicked Joseph “Taffy” Williamson to death in Hopper St, Wellington.

We have very few double killers. Marsh, if he was ever let out, would have been highly likely to offend again.

The families of his victims can npow relax and not have to go through the annual submission to the Parole Board asking for him to be kept locked up.

Mind you in this case, it looks like the Parole Board saw no release for him:

At a hearing in 2008, the board said he was unlikely to be freed until he was too old to pose a risk.

“It may be a more humane and realistic outcome to allow Mr Marsh to accept that he is very unlikely to be ready for release until he has been made frail with age.”

I wonder how many people are in this category – basically have had an indication they will never get parole while they are able bodied?

DOC Director-General writes in the Herald:

Without commercial activities, nobody would get the chance to enjoy our unique outdoor spaces says Al Morrison.

The Department of Conservation’s decision this summer to allow a discreetly placed stall selling sandwiches and hiring out snorkels at Cathedral Cove on the Coromandel has attracted strong debate.

Our critics claim it is “opening the floodgates to hawkers on the beach” and setting the stage for “icecream stalls in paradise”.

In fact, the stall is simply part of a long-standing and important relationship between conservation and commerce. It recognises that conservation and business can, and do, co-exist. Conservation is good for the economy and DoC is focused on activity that is good for both.

Hooray. So nice to have someone make the case that commerce and conservation can work together.

Cathedral Cove is an example of how we go about ensuring that business and conservation can support each other. The operator has a short-term permit to erect a small tent set back from the sand in a popular recreation reserve. He is offering sandwiches, cold drinks, sunblock and snorkelling gear (note: no icecreams) to some of the 120,000 people who visit the cove each year.

One of the conditions of the permit is that he cleans up the rubbish others leave on the beach each day. Feedback is being gathered from both locals and visitors, and the permit will be reviewed at the end of the summer.

Looks to be a win-win.

Far from putting the environment at risk, such commercial activity on public conservation land strengthens the protection of conservation values in practical ways. By enabling responsible local businesses to flourish we encourage more people to experience our unique public spaces. And that makes conservation more relevant and increases the value that people see in it. …

Conservation is not about shutting the gate and throwing away the key – it is about getting people, including business, engaged with the natural environment that is so critical to their prosperity.

Enabling people to enjoy a cool drink and a snorkelling trip at Cathedral Cove – at the same time as the beach gets cleaned – is just another small way of doing that.

Indeed.

Trevor Mallard blogs at Red Alert:

Kerre Woodham’s column in the HoS today promotes letting or even encouraging kids to take some risks.

Too often risk averse parents and schools wrap kids in cotton wool to the point where they don’t develop the power to judge risk and make their own decisions.

I agree, but find such a stance hilarious from the party that set out to remove choice in so many areas, especially around risk. I commented:

Hell next Trevor will be advocating that a kid should be allowed to decide for him/her self whether or not to buy a pie from the school tuckshop after a sports game.

Hard to see that the party that doesn’t even trust a kid to decide on whether or not to have a pie, is about to roll back nanny state,

The HoS reports:

The national figure who has appeared in court accused of indecently assaulting a 13-year-old girl can be revealed as a former MP.

The man, who has interim name suppression to protect the girl’s identity, was remanded on bail without plea during a brief appearance in Nelson District Court on Thursday.

He is charged with indecently assaulting a girl aged between 12 and 16.

His bail conditions include living at an address away from his home town, avoiding contact with his partner and the alleged victim, and not possessing or obtaining firearms.

While understanding the need to protect the alleged victim, I think it is incredibly unfair to have name suppression, as the occupation is so rare, it means innocent people get assumed to be the person charged. Much the same as with the ex All Black in Fiji (now named as Robin Brooke).

There are only three to five ex MPs I know of in Nelson. One of them I can rule out due to details in the story.  It really is unfair on those ex MPs that the innocent ones will have to endure dozens of people speculating or even asking if they are the person charged

The SST reports:

A RELUCTANT young New Zealand bride has allegedly been punched, abducted and held against her will by her mother to force her to honour her marriage vows and have sex with her groom.

That is rape, married or not.

The teenager’s family was given dowry of a large pig and expensive mats to marry her husband, who is understood to be almost twice her age.

Her mother and a man understood to be her stepfather have been charged with unlawfully detaining her over the course of two days, allegedly to force her to be the groom’s wife and to force her to have sex with him.

The girl, of Tongan descent, is understood to be about 17 years old, but the family cannot be named for legal reasons.

Bad enough to be traded like property, for a dowry, but I’d be pretty pissed off is all I was worth was a large pig and some mats.

The girl’s mother has also been charged with assaulting her on two separate occasions over the marriage matter. It is claimed that the mother punched her daughter with a closed fist, but the girl managed to deflect most of the blows.

Guess she hasn’t read Section 59.

A source close to the family said the girl did not want to marry the man, but an agreement was reached between the two families and she was obliged to honour it.

No she isn’t. Maybe in Tonga, but not in New Zealand.

On her wedding night last year she ran away to her boyfriend, understood to be the groom’s son.

Oh dear, that just makes it worse. Here’s a novel idea – let a 17 year old date whomever she wants, and marry whomever she wants once she is ready and wants to. Don’t treat a daughter as a chattel.

The Sunday Star-Times was told by a community source that when a young woman is married, it is customary for the family to inspect the sheets the day after the wedding to establish her virginity has been taken.

Good God – that was done 2,000 years ago also. Time to join the modern world. Plus it is a crap test. If a girl has ridden horses (for example) her hymen may well have gone even though she is a virgin.

It is understood the young bride ran away to avoid having sex with the man. Police were alerted to the case when she went to court to seek a restraining order against her mother.

Good on her. Thank God she knows her rights.

I grew up in Island Bay. Katie Chapman at the Dom Post profiles the suburb:

The sun beats down on Island Bay, the water lapping gently on the shore as fishing boats bob in the harbour.

The water is central to Island Bay life, says local fixture Carlo Muollo, 68.

He should know. His family has been fishing the local waters since 1902, and sitting in the kitchen of the house he’s lived in for the past 44 years, he rattles off tales of family fishing life.

Everyone knows the Muollos – or at least some of them. I went to school with a few of them.

The suburb’s name itself is one of the more straightforward around Wellington – simply reflecting Taputeranga Island that sits in the middle of the bay, while nearby Houghton Bay is named for Robert Houghton, the first signalman at the station above Newtown. …

A group of us once spent the night on Taputeranga Island. In hindsight not that fun

In 1908, Island Bay became home to one of New Zealand’s most revered women, when the Home of Compassion for the terminally ill was founded by Mother Mary Joseph Aubert. The hospital remained open until 2002.

I know the Home of Compassion well. My father worked there (not exclusively) for around 35 years, and since I was a infant we would go up there for Christmas Day. We still know several of the nuns, and have a coupel come around for Christmas every year.

The spire of St Francis de Sales Church was built to resemble the prow of a ship, in acknowledgement of the history of Island Bay as a safe harbour for fishermen and their families.

Heh I’ve climbed the spire and rung the bell. It is very loud when you are up inside it!

Erskine College was called The Convent of the Sacred Heart until the late 1960s when it was renamed in honour of former Superior General of the Society of the Sacred Heart, Mother Janet Erskine Stuart. The school closed in 1985 and today the building is privately owned.

I twice got chased off the property or Erskine late at night, when I was ahem visiting a friend

Chris Trotter writes:

How many times during the holiday period have you seen those irritating notices posted on the doors and windows of restaurants and cafes, informing you that a 15 per cent to 20 per cent “surcharge” will be added to your purchases because of the Holidays Act?

I don’t know about you, but whenever I see such a notice, I turn on my heel and go in search of an alternative eatery. According to the vast majority of restaurateurs and cafe owners who don’t impose these surcharges, it’s what most people do.

I’d like to know Chris’ source for the allegation most cafes don’t charge a surcharge on public holidays. To the contrary I think the overwhelming majority do.

Does the surcharge cover the cost of your lost trade? Probably not.

That is a decision best made by individual owners. Some might advertise no surcharge as an advertising plot, others might need the surcharge to make it worthwhile opening.

The intelligent – and economically rational – course of action for any proprietor in the hospitality industry is obvious. The entirely predictable cost of hiring workers to run a business on statutory holidays can be simply factored into its overall cost structure, and recovered during the course of the financial year.

With no disrespect to Chris, but statements like the above are made by people who I swear have never employed people or tried to run a low margin business like hospitality. They think making a profit is just as simple as factor in overall costs and hey presto.

They just have no idea. Business goes up and down. Staff are rostered on as demand is predicted, but often it can be a mismatch. Your cost of supplies goes up. You need to hire and train more staff. Your cashflow is negative due to tax requirements. so need to borrow.

Only in Neverneverland is it as simple as oh just recover your loss later in the year.

The bottom line is that there is no point in opening a cafe on a public holiday if the marginal cost of doing so is greater than the income for that day. And a 50% hike in staff costs can be the difference between making and losing money. Why would you as a cafe owner spend the day working, to lose money?

I own a polling company. We do not poll on public holidays unless the client will pay the cost of the extra wages. Otherwise I will lose money on the polling done that day, and if I was a cafe owner instead of a pollster, I don’t need Chris Trotter telling me I should just have made more money earlier in the year. It does not work like that.

Now people are quite free to refuse to dine at a cafe with a surcharge on a public holiday – good on them. But you have no right to expect them not to impose a surcharge, if that is the only way they will make a profit from opening that day.

Muslim integration in Europe has been pretty much a disaster in many countries, but in New Zealand we are doing well:

Muslim teenagers in New Zealand adapt well to life in New Zealand, a Victoria University study has found.

The study, carried out on 180 Muslim teens, by the Centre for Applied Cross-Cultural Research, measured their psychological and social well-being by examining life satisfaction, psychological conditions, school adjustment and behavioural issues, Professor Colleen Ward said.

The study, carried out as part of a 13-country survey of well-being and identity, drew on data from previous studies carried out in New Zealand, on other groups of teens, as comparison.

The findings revealed Muslim youth demonstrated more positive outcomes on all indicators than their Maori and Pakeha peers, Prof Ward said.

The combination of strong family support, religion and New Zealand’s relatively tolerant atmosphere helped the Muslim 13- to 19-year-olds keep well, she said.

Though the students identified themselves as New Zealanders and the ethnic group they were from, their strongest identification was with being a Muslim, the researchers found. …

The cultural environment of New Zealand allowed people to integrate, keeping their culture and ethnic groups, rather than assimilating them and forcing them to abandon the culture they came from, as in some other countries, she said.

I’m not sure what other countries they are talking about, but in most of Europe the problem hasn’t been assimilation, but an unwillingness to integrate at all. However in the US, they are much better with integration.

Sir Douglas Myers has it right:

Sir Douglas says he is not advocating the opening up of conservation land to miners, “but I would like to know what was there and then you can make a decision whether you want to utilise it or not”.

“Go and have a good look at what is there, then have a debate.” Then, if New Zealanders preferred the outdoors and would rather be poorer with virgin lands everywhere, that would be their decision.

“But if they end up broke without having that debate, that is probably not very helpful.”

And vested interests don’t want us to have that informed debate. I think it is great we are having a stock-take done so New Zealanders can have a say – with all the information.

The Herald editorial:

Surely Transport Minister Steven Joyce is not serious when he suggests the Government is reconsidering the introduction of compulsory third-party vehicle insurance because most people have it. Officials have given him a survey in which only 7.6 per cent of respondents admitted to having no car insurance or were unaware whether they did.

Leaving aside the reliability of the survey, the results say nothing about the need for a law. Third-party insurance covers damage the insurer might cause to another vehicle. It is, or should be, a minimum obligation every road-user owes to all others. The fact that most people recognise this without compulsion is no reason not to make it so.

Yes it is. It means there is no particular problem to be solved, and more to the point compulsion is unlikely to increase the coverage from 92.4% (higher than many countries where it is compulsory) so why would you impose on taxpayers the cost of a law and bureaucracy that won’t actually achieve anything.

On that principle, there would be no reason to legislate against all sorts of offences that the vast majority of people by nature would not commit.

Here the Herald loses it. How is bashing someone up, or other various crimes, comparable to a decision not to have third party vehicle insurance?

Audrey Young writes:

The United States is poised to drop its ban on military exercises with New Zealand.

The move will be a significant step in a thaw in the NZ-US relationship that has accelerated since Barack Obama became President a little over a year ago.

The Weekend Herald understands it is likely to be announced next week when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, Kurt Campbell, visit New Zealand.

That is basically the end of the “hostilities” which has existed since 1985. It took 25 years, but common sense has prevailed. It has been silly to ban exercises between our military forces, yet have them fighting together in places like Afghanistan.

Presumably this means we are allies again, and not just very very very good friends

Mrs Clinton announced last year that intelligence-sharing co-operation between the two countries had also resumed.

In a further sign of the fast-track thaw, it is understood that President Obama has twice informally invited Prime Minister John Key to Washington.

The visit is likely to take place within six months.

Add on the progress on the free trade front, and you have to say very successful diplomacy from New Zealand.

The Herald reports:

TOP TEN

1. France
2. Australia
3. Switzerland
4. Germany
5. New Zealand
6. Luxembourg
7. United States
8. Belgium
9. Canada
10. Italy

Pleased NZ is No 5 but Luxembourg at 6? Sure they have high wages but it is such a boring place. Maybe it gets marks for being so small you can walk into France for a picnic.

This is an election year for the US. Well technically every year is an election year, but 2010 sees all 436 House seats and 37 Senate seats up for election. Today is an early look at the Senate.

The Senate currently has 58 Democrats, 40 Republicans and 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats. One is hard left and one is moderate.60 votes allows you to end filibusters and pass laws and confirm nominees.

19 of the 37 seats are held by Democrats. Of those 19, five are retiring and 14 seeking re-election. Incumbency is very powerful in the US so a seat where the incumbent retires is often more likely to fall to the other party. The exception to this is when the incumbent has made themselves so unpopular they are a liability – as was the case with Senator Dodd from Connecticut.

The five states where a Democrat is retiring are Illinois, Connecticut, North Dakota, Delaware and Massachusetts. Massachusetts is considered safe. Illinois leans Democrat, Connecticut is likely Democrat hold. Delaware and North Dakota are leaning Republican though.

Of the 14 Democrat incumbents, the marginal states are Colorado, Nevada, Arkansas and Pennsylvania.

So likely Democrat losses are from two to six seats. No chance of losing the majority (at this stage) but may lose their 60 votes. But how about Republican held seats:

The other 18 seats are held by Republicans, and they have six retirements in the states of Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Florida and Ohio.

Kansas is safe, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio and Kentucky are marginal. Florida is likely Republican hold.

Of the other 12 Republican seats, none are marginal – at this stage.

So Republicans could lose four seats. This means at this stage the likely Democrat majority in the Senate post 2010 ranges from 54 to 62 (including Independents).

This will change no doubt as candidates are chosen in primaries.