Kiwiblog

It is at 5.30 pm today. You can view on TV or online. I’m out tonight, so won’t cover it but may blog something tomorrow.

Up until her speech to the Tea Party Convention, I was certain Sarah Palin would not run for President. Almost without exception, the senior Republicans I talk to dismiss her chances. She has little support from the Republican hierarchy.

But a friend viewed live (via TV) her speech to the convention, and their conclusion half way through was that she will probably run for President. Her speech dominated the headlines that day.

Palin in 2008 was not ready to be President. Her lack of both domestic and foreign policy knowledge showed. If she had become VP, and McCain had died, it would have ratehr interesting. Of course if Obama died, and Biden became President that same arguably applies – Biden may have experience, but my God he far exceeds Quayle for gaffes. Even Obama has joked about it.

The story that Palin had some notes written on her hand will not harm her. People prefer notes on a hand to a teleprompter.

I still can’t see Palin as the Republican nominee. She does deliver some good speeches, and is talented at mocking the left. But I’ve yet to see any independent policy agenda of her own.She also have no experienced political staff.

However even if she does not stand for President, she may become the kingmaker. Her endorsement will be highly sought.

Paul Quinn won the ballot so his Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill will be introduced and go to a first reading.

I’ve asked for a copy of the bill. Presumably it bans all prisoners from voting, not just some of them as is the case presently.

If you do a crime bad enough to go to prison, I think it is repugnant that you still vote. I even think there is a debate to be had about whether there is a period of non voting for those released from prison, if they were convicted of very serious offences.

UPDATE: The bill is here – Electoral _Disqualification of convicted prisoners_ Amen. At present only prisoners serving a term of three or more years are disqualified, and this would extend the disqualification to enrol to anyone currently in prison.

Not sure how this will look as have cut and paste from an e-mail, but here are the bills in the ballot for midday today.

Two of the above bills are substantially the same in substance. A preliminary ballot will therefore be held to determine which of them is to be entered into the main ballot.

These two bills are:

The Alliance has just won a court case against the Electoral Commission. The judgement is here – CA6392008.

The Court of Appeal has ruled that the Electoral Commission must give political parties time for both an opening and a closing address. In 2008 the Commission gave the Alliance (which got 0.07% of the vote in 2005 and 0.08% in 2008) and ten other minor non-parliamentary parties one minute for an opening address and no time for a closing address, out of the total 72 minutes made available from broadcasters for opening addresses and 30minutes for closing addresses.

Now s73(1) of the Broadcasting Act says:

In respect of each election period, the Electoral Commission must allocate to political parties, in such proportions as the Electoral Commission considers appropriate, the time that TVNZ and RNZ have made available for opening addresses and closing addresses in accordance with section 71A.

The question was whether the Commission must give each party both an opening and closing address.

The High Court found it would be wrong under the Bill of Rights Act to give a political party no time at all for either opening or closing, but that s73 refers to a single allocation of time, and some components of that allocation may be zero, so long as the total allocation is not zero.

The Court of Appeal has sided with the Alliance and ruled that the Act requires each party to get time for both an opening and closing address, despite the fact they had only 30 minutes of closing time for 18 parties.

What is interesting is that the Court of Appeal suggests TVNZ breached the ACT by only providing 30 minutes for closing addresses, as this is not enough time to divide up between 18 parties, considering the parties on 40% in the polls are meant to get more time than those at 0.07%. TVNZ may face problems if they do not increase the allocation next election.

The Court also deals with the issue of whether the Electoral Commission should have given more than $10,000 to non-parliamentary parties for their broadcast advertising. The Commission escapes a formal ruling from the Court, but it notes that their reference to the amount being enough for a radio campaign was in error, as it suggests they knew the amount was not enough for a television campaign.

So the Electoral Commission gets pretty battered by this decision. But the good thing is, the law is now clearer. And hopefully the law will also be changed so parties can spend their own money purchasing broadcast advertising, rather than only be allowed to use taxpayer money.

The Herald reports:

Kevin Rudd would like to see the drinking age in Australia raised from 18 to 21 years.

The Prime Minister said he would prefer an increase, given a recent series of tragic accidents involving P-plate drivers.

Since the start of the year 12 teenagers have been killed in cars driven by P-plate drivers in New South Wales and Victoria.

In one crash that killed five teenagers in Melbourne the 19-year-old driver had a blood alcohol level almost four times the legal limit.

I love the logic here. Because some young Australians break the very serious laws about drink driving, Kevin Rudd thinks the solution is to lower the drinking age, as if that would make a difference.

The sort of people who drive pissed, are not going to change their behaviour because it is technically illegal to purchase the alcohol, as well as drive after drinking it. It won’t affect the problem drink drivers, but will criminalise a million or so young Australians.

The EU had a reception at the Backbencher last night, so lots of MPs and journalists there to chat to.  The typical opening line from a National MP was “So about that B grade” while from Labour MPs it was “Unlike Annette we won’t use Farrar and respect in the same sentence unless there are some other words in between”

Phil Goff was there also, so I said I looked forward to him quoting me more often in future . Actually had an interesting chat generally on economic stuff, such as land tax. If Labour are bold they could consider proposing a land tax (tied to income tax reductions) for 2011. That could attract some support from economic reformers.

General consensus I got from pundits there was that there was definitely some good stuff in the Government’s work plan – in fact more detailed plans that most Governments announce in the PMs statement.

But what may trip the Government up is they misplayed the expectations game. Building the statement up as the “most important” one ever was a mistake, as was talking about it being a “step change”. Again, there is some good stuff there that certainly will help lift economic growth. But will the announcements alone close the gap with Australia? Of course not. But the rhetoric leading up to it, got expectations artificially high.

With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better to have positioned the statement as a typical PMs statement – a general overview of the Government’s achievements and workplan, and then surprise the media and opposition when it turns out to have close to 30 specific initiatives in it.

As I said yesterday, I welcome the focus on growing the economic cake, not just how to split it up, and look forward to more details in the budget.

Reaction from others:

• John Armstrong – 4/10 for economic boldness
• Fran O’Sullivan – John Key deserves an A- for intent. But a mere D for the dreadful prime ministerial statement that buried a coherent economic agenda in a mass of confusion.
• Tax Working Group members seem happy
• NZ Herald editorial calls it a stutter not a step-change
• Bernard Hickey hits new levels of hyperbole
• Canterbury Employers call the package welcome but light
• Solid Energy is excited
• Colin Espiner gives it a pass, but with much more to do
• Tracy Watkins looks at the risks
• The Press editorial says it was lacking boldness
• The Dom Post editorial says it was a welcome focus on growth, not slogans

A couple of people have commented to me that they are finding the daily general debate threads are being dominated by religious debates, which of course tend to never get resolved.

Their suggestion was that we have two general debate posts a day. One “General Religious Debate” and one “General Debate”, with the latter out of bounds for religious comments and debates.

I don’t spend a lot of time in General Debates myself, so unsure how much of an issue this is, and whether the proposed solution is necessary or preferred. On the face of it, it seems sensible and in fact it mirrors what we did on Usenet many years ago – set up a nz.soc.religion alongside nz.general.

Overall pretty encouraging that the Government is going to pursue some economic reform that will increase the size of the national cake, rather than merely get obsessed with how to divide it up as the left do. If we grow the cake, then everyone benefits in time.

Major points by subject:

Economic

1. GST increase to 15% under careful consideration – this is code for will be announced in May. This is good, as it will allow taxes on income, savings and investment to reduce, encouraging savings and investment instead of consumption
2. If GST is increased (and they really have to after not ruling it out) there will be across-the-board reductions in personal taxes, and higher levels of payments for beneficiaries and WFF recipients.
3. No capital gains tax – good too complex
4. No RFRM for taxing residential property – also good as could cause real cashflow problems
5. No land tax – a shame, as I think the one off whack it would cause to land owners would be worth it for the efficiency gains, and also the fact it would bring foreign land owners into the tax base
6. There will be changes in the Budget around how property is taxed – almost certainly to include getting rid of claiming depreciation on appreciating buildings.
7. Most government agencies to have no additional funding for several years – hear the PSA squeal.
8. Changes planned for the way the Crown invests in CRIs
9. Science and innovation a priority for new spending in 2010 budget – very good.
10. Holidays Act to be amended as per Advisory Group
11. Review of personal grievance decisions, and possible amending legislation to give more certainty in this area
12. Govt to propose through a discussion document that some land in Section 4 be removed from it, and replaced with some land not currently in Section 4, to allow mining in areas with high mineral wealth but lower environmental value. This is probably the most ballsy move.
13. Govt will establish a Conservation Fund from royalty revenue from mining on crown lands to invest in conservation projects, so more mining means more money for conservation. I like it!
14. Law changes to remove regulatory roadblocks to water storage and irrigation in Canterbury, and also for the aquaculture industry
15. Possible law change for capital restructuring of Fonterra
16. Response to Capital Market Development Taskforce to be delivered in the next week or so
17. $24 billion of spending in the next five years on capital expenditure

Social Sector

1. National Standards will be supported by reform to ensure taxpayer funds make it through to schools and students who need the extra support
2. Changes to early childhood funding to get better support to children currently missing out on ECE
3. A policy on use of information collected through National Standards to be announced in 2010. Not sure what this means, but so long as they do not amend the OIA, not sure what impact it will have, and will be ropable if they amend the OIA.
4. Funding changes for secondary schools to modernise, and ensure they can provide more practical and trades skills.
5. Focus in tertiary education is programmes with over 50% drop-out rates
6. Whanau Ora to continue to be developed as a new way to fund and co-ordinate social service contracts
7. Hint that there will be restrictions on funding for tertiary students who keep failing and/or never leave university – presumably meaning the eternal under-graduate.
8. Benefit reforms that focus on helping people get back to work, while supporting those who can not.
9. Sickness Benefit criteria and testing to be adjusted
10. Reapplication requirements for those on the dole for an extended period
11. Work and training requirements for those on the DPB
12. A change to the benefit abatement regime to improve incentives to take up part-time work
13. Legislation to be introduced to reduce harm from binge drinking by stopping excessive proliferation of liquor outlets. That’s just government by slogans, as there is no proof that it is the number of liquor outlets that cause the binge drinking
14. Two prisons to be opened up to private management

There is a nice stat about how moving 100 DPB recipients off their benefit and into work will save close to $10 million over their lifetime. And moving 5% of DPB recipients whose children are aged over six into work will save $200 million over 10 years.

Overall I give the package a solid B. If the GST was 100% confirmed (I judge it 90% confirmed) and they had gone for land tax also, I would have gone for a B+. And if they left out the nonsense about the number of liquor outlets being a problem I may have even gone for an A- after a few rum and cokes

UPDATE: Phil Goff liked my analysis so much he quoted my “B” grade as almost the first thing in his speech!

Keeping Stock blogs:

This is of course the man convicted of possession of some 300,000 images, some of which were of child pornography. We believe that his sentence of four months’ home detention is woefully inadequate, and the name suppression order is, as we blogged yesterday, just plain wrong.

We have been made aware of the identity of the Prominent Palmerstonian- from several independant andunrelated sources. We were also made aware of something yesterday which, working in the ECE sector, we found rather chilling. After much internal debate between me, myself and I, we decided that this needed to be put in the public domain, but in a manner which would not breach the Court-ordered suppression.

So we ask this question; did Judge Grant Fraser know that the Prominent Palmerstonian’s business premises share the same street address as a pre-school? We believe that this is a very important question in the context of Judge Fraser’s decision to allow name suppression. This is indeed a case of public interest.

Ponder this; do the parents who send their children to the pre-school involved have a right to know that its neighbour had an unhealthy interest in children? For us, that’s a no-brainer; we can’t think of a clearer case where publication of the defendant’s name IS in the public interest.

I can only agree with Keeping Stock’s concerns. I would add to that, that the person’s occupation also adds to concerns over public safety that the granting of name suppression has caused.

Just watch it – first played during the Super Bowl.

Kiwi Poll Guy blogs:

One of the major goals of this site is to try and predict election results based on recent relevant political polling. This is intended to include not just the total number of seats won by each party, but also viable coalition possibilities and electorate level results.

Today I present the simulation results at the candidate level, including probabilities for each major or minor party candidate to be elected to parliament by either winning an electorate or being selected off their party list.

So what are the odds he calculates? Note that these are based purely on probability calculations based on poll data, and don’t take into account local circumstances such as popularity of a local MP. And the probabilities below are of them holding their electorate seats – not whether or not they would also come in on the list.

His probabilities are:

100% chance of retaining seats

• National – Key, English, Brownlee, Power, Smith N, Ryall, Collins, Williamson, Tolley, McCully, Smith L, Mapp, Guy, Tisch, Wong, Carter J, Heatley, Hutchison, Ardern, Goudie, Roy, Coleman, Tremain, Borrows, Foss, Peachey, Goodhew, Dean, Auchinvole, Bennett D, King, Hayes, Bridges, Upston, McClay, Macindoe, Kaye
• Labour – King, Sio, Shearer, Hawkins
• Maori – Turia, Sharples, Harawira, Flavell

90% to 99% chance of retaining seats

• National – Bennett P 98%, Young 96%
• Labour – Goff 95%, Carter C 97%, Dalziel 97%, Anderton 98%, Robertson R 97%, Curran 93%
• ACT – Hide 95%

50% to 89% chance of retaining seats

• National – Lotu-Iiga 87%,
• Labour – Horomira 76%, Hodgson 86%, Cunliffe 65%, Mahuta 62%, Laban 74%,
• United Future – Dunne 73%
• Maori – Katene 60%

Under 50% chance of retaining seats

• Labour – Dyson 19%, Mallard 37%, Cosgrove 4%, Hipkins 24%, Burns 25%, Robertson G 9%, Lees-Galloway 10%,

Now as I said, this is a straight probability calculation based on current polls showing National more than 20% ahead of Labour on the party vote, and applying that to the electorate vote. Kiwi Poll Guy also works out the probability of each MP and Candidate coming in as a List MP, based on teh 2008 lists.

The probabilities are not predictions. For example I would give Grant Robertson a far higher chance than 9% of retaining his seat – but that is based not on a uniform swing to National, but local knowledge of the Wellington Central seat.

As we get closer to the election, and we also get electorate polling data into the mix, I’ll be checking Kiwi Poll Guy’s numbers more and more often.

I’ve previously blogged on my belief that the massive rise in youth unemployment is due to Labour’s decision in 2008 to abolish youth rates for the minimum wage.

Eric Crampton has gone better than mere belief, and analysed the relationship between overall unemployment and youth unemployment.

The graph has (thanks Stephen Hickson!) the unemployment rate for those aged 15-19 and the unemployment rate for everyone else (aged 19 and up). It looks to me like the proper relationship is a combination of a level shift and a multiplicative effect. When the adult rate is very low – below four percent or so – the youth rate bounces around at a point about 10 to 12 points higher than the adult rate. When the adult rate is high, the youth rate exceeds that constant by a multiple of the adult rate. …

Both the constant and the adult rate come up highly significant. So, over the period 1986 to present, we can expect the youth rate to be 1.44 times the adult rate (the multiplicative effect – about 44% above the adult rate) plus a constant of 9 percentage points. So if the adult rate is 5, the youth rate should be 16.2. We’ve ruled out the “it’s just ratios” argument – there is a constant term in there; we’ve also ruled out that it’s just a level shift because the coefficient is significantly greater than 1.

So Eric has calculated the best fit of the data is that the youth unemployment rate will 9% higher than 1.44 times the adult unemployment rate.

He then plots the “residuals”, which is how much greater or smaller the youth unemployment rate has been, compared to what the formula predicts.

So that formula looks pretty good up until, umm well 2008. Eric continues:

If we look at the top graph, we see youth unemployment rates went up a lot during the recession of the early 1990s. But over that period, youth unemployment rates were never more than a couple of points above what the very simple model predicted (residuals graph, above). In recessions, it does look like the youth rate gets hit harder than the adult rate. But look at what happens starting around fourth quarter 2008. We now have residuals that blow up the model. Something really weird starts happening to the youth unemployment rate at the end of 2008. Youth unemployment is now about 10 points higher than we’d expect using the simple model.

And if one goes for different formulas:

I tried a few different variations allowing the constant and the slope to shift for high and for low levels of adult unemployment.  But none of that made any substantial difference.

So the conclusion:

The econometrics here are very simplistic and do nothing to account for differences in labour force participation rates or the obvious problem of serial correlation in the time series data.  But the simple model is still pretty telling.  If we allow youth unemployment rates to vary both as a level shift above the adult rate and as a multiple of the adult rate, which is what we’re doing when we run the simple regression with a constant term, we still have a jump in the current youth unemployment rate that is well above that seen in prior recessions.

My first cut explanation remains the abolition of the youth minimum wage.

Now this does not prove beyond doubt it was the abolition of youth rates that pushed youth unemployment up an extra 10%. But it is the most likely explanation.

The challenge for those who think abolishing youth rates did not contribute to the increase in youth unemployment, is to put up their own data and credible explanations to explain the massive gap between youth and adult unemployment.

North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams writes in the Herald:

A former Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, was asked for his views on the re-election chances of the incumbent Republican President. He smiled and said: “Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me.”

That summed up what so many people were thinking over a myriad issues affecting the political future of the President. Cuomo delivered a powerful call to action to the millions disaffected with the Administration’s policies and performance.

Oh dear, Andrew wants this to be a story about how upset he is that his job has been abolished. But he should think about his political history better.

The Republican President Cuomo was commenting on was almost certainly Ronald Reagan in 1984. Reagan went on to win the election in the biggest landslide for many decades. In fact he was the second President since George Washington to win all but one state or better (Nixon did the same in 1972).

Fascinating history in the NZ Herald of how Canada chose its flag:

One day historian George Stanley was walking with John Matheson, a Liberal MP on the committee, when he looked up and saw the Royal Military College flag and its vertical panels of red-white-red, with the college crest of a fist in the middle.

“There, John, is your flag,” he said.

Mr Matheson recalls the moment: “I remarked that Canadians would not accept a mailed fist symbol. He said, ‘No, I mean with a red maple leaf in the place of the college crest’.”

Mr Matheson was immediately taken with it, but had to sneak it into the committee room to add it to the wall alongside the other proposals.

The committee firstly rejected the red ensign 10 votes to four.

They then had to vote on Pearson’s Pennant, the red maple leaf ensign and the Union Jack or fleur-de-lis. When the latter was voted out, it was clear that the new flag would not have a Union Jack.

The Conservatives assumed the Liberals would vote for the Prime Minister’s design, and they wanted the vote to be as inconclusive as possible, so they voted for the red maple leaf ensign which, to their horror, was the unanimous choice.

The quirks of history.

TVNZ have just put out a PR saying:

Prime Minister, John Key was asked to draw his version of an alternative NZ Flag by TVNZ’s Pippa Wetzell on Breakfast at 7:15am this morning.

By the time the programme went off-air at 9am, TVNZ had received many pledges of money for the A4 sized doodle, the highest being $1000.  Mr Key gave his consent for the drawing to be auctioned for charity and it has been listed on Trade Me this afternoon with all proceeds going to the children’s charity, Cure Kids.

Mr Key described his drawing as a “silver fern”.  Pippa Wetzell described it, perhaps more accurately, as a “lop-sided Christmas tree”.

I have to say Pippa has the more accurate description. But at least John drew it himself!

The interview Breakfast interview is above. Will be nice if bit of fun during a TV interview can raise some money for charity.

I’m not a fan of posting details of Judges who issue suppression orders, as Cameron has threatened to do. Likewise I would not personally breach suppression orders as I am more an advocate of lobbying against stupid laws, rather than breaking them.

I do strongly support the Law Commission’s recommendation to make suppression orders much more difficult to achieve for those convicted of a crime.

But hell when I read about the recent case in Palmerston North, my blood boils and I am half tempted to join Whale in direct action. If you don’t know the case I am talking about, this is the Manawatu Standard on it:

If there were any lingering doubts that the guidelines for suppressing names in this country needed strengthening, the case detailed in today’s Manawatu Standard should shatter them.

The creeping secrecy pervading our justice system has long since passed what the public should accept as a reasonable restriction on their freedom of expression in order to safeguard the administration of justice.

The decision to suppress the name of a prominent Manawatu man convicted of downloading pornographic images of children is a salient example of how the principle of open justice has been reduced to little more than a passing mention before a judge abdicates his or her duty to ensure our public court system belongs to the people.

What if this man does not just download child pornography, but seeks to create some of his own? Parents are blocked from being able to protect their kids..

For Judge Fraser to say publication of the man’s identity was not required because none of the thousands of children pictured were New Zealanders is logically outrageous. Such an argument requires one to believe this man investigated the background of each of his young victims to determine they were not from this country. Does Judge Fraser believe that had the man known the children were New Zealanders he would have not downloaded the images?

An appalling lack of logic.

The Maori Party have attacked the decision:

Maori Party MPs have joined the chorus of condemnation at the permanent name suppression given to a prominent Manawatu man who downloaded more than 300,000 pornographic images, many of them picturing children.

“The decision to permanently suppress this man’s name is outrageous as is the decision to give him a few months home detention,” Maori Party justice spokeswoman Rahui Katene said.

“We urge the prosecution to appeal the sentence so this man can never ever again be allowed to continue his sick actions in a veil of secrecy.”

I hope it is appealed. But I also hope the Government puts a law change on the fast track.

I’ve often said in the debate about league tables that the solution is not to ban the media from obtaining school achievement data under the Official Information Act, or even more ridiculously not having the Government even collate the data itself.

The solution is to provide good and useful information, to counter any league tables done in a simplistic fashion by the media. You fight bad information with good information 0- not by banning all information about primary school achievement.

The Herald reported at the weekend:

The education expert who first advised the Government on school standards is about to start work on plans for a national league table system, which he hopes will satisfy parents and teachers.

Professor John Hattie, who was called to Wellington last month by Prime Minister John Key to explain his concerns about national standards in primary schools, said the Government’s “wait and see” approach to league tables wasn’t good enough.

He did not support league tables, but the introduction of national standards in reading, writing and maths made them inevitable, so it was important to work out a fair solution.

He planned to work with other researchers to produce an independent paper on school league tables this year, suggesting what information parents could reasonably expect.

Professor Hattie, of Auckland University, said results could be shown in context, such as how a school compared with others in its decile. For instance, he helped Metro magazine devise fairer comparisons between NCEA results in its annual survey of Auckland secondary schools.

Superb. This is exactly the right answer. What I would do is plug all the data into a database that will allow people to get decile comparisons and the like.

Last year, the top school on test results alone was the $16,000-a-year private girls’ college St Cuthbert’s, but the best school on improved student achievement was decile 4 Mt Roskill Grammar.

And that is the data which would be really interesting. We’ll see what level pupils are at when they first enter primary school. What I want to know is which schools start with a majority of kids below the national standards for their age, but by the time they leave that school they are above the national standards. Because they are the schools who make the biggest difference.

Principals Federation president Ernie Buutveld said Professor Hattie’s idea was worth exploring and he believed many teachers and principals would like to be involved.

Much better attitude than trying to ban publication or refuse to even let the Government have data on how schools are doing.

I blogged on the 27th of January about how comments on a blog referring to the PM as “John the Jew” were made by someone seeking the Vice-Presidency of ACT. I said:

Now ACT can not control which of its members stand for office and the comments of one member is no reflection on them. But this may help their members with their voting decisions …

But a reader has emailed me to say that Mr Campbell has resigned his membership of ACT, which automatically means he has withdrawn from the contest for the Vice-Presidency.

I don’t think he needed to resign from the party, but I do think it is a good outcome that he has withdrawn from the Vice-Presidential contest. If you seek senior office within a political party, you need to be aware that what you say can reflect on your party, and not just you.

UPDATE: Murray has more details on this.

I always like to work out what a personalised plate is an abbreviation for. I’m not always that good at it though. When I lived in Island Bay, our neighbours had a number plate of 1CYRMU 1CYMRU. I spent literally several years wondering what it stood for. I could work out it was I See Why “M” Are You, but the M made no sense and almost every day as I walked past it, I wondered what the M meant.

Finally I discovered that CYRMU CYMRU is the Welsh word for Wales, and as the family was Welsh, it suddenly made sense!

Now the Dom Post today reports:

Threatening the police, insulting ACC and advertising drugs are out. But labelling yourself a killer, railing against the IRD and calling yourself “one badass” are still OK on the roads.

Personalised number plates pulled off cars for being too offensive include DRGDLR, QUICKE and RNUDWN, according to Transport Agency records provided under the Official Information Act.

If the Dom Post did not mention drugs, I am not sure I would have caught on to DRGDLR.

Potentially offensive plates have become more of an issue since 2001. when number plates began including three letters.

Since then, the NZTA has banned at least 25 three-letter combinations, including plates beginning with ARS, BUM, CUN, DUM, FAK, FAT and FUZ.

These were chosen “because they are considered as either likely offensive or undesirable by a large number of vehicle owners”, said NZTA transport registry centre manager Brett Dooley.

I wonder if one is allowed FRACK?

No surprise there has been another collision as the stated aim of the Sea Shepherd Society is to sink the opposition. I am amazed that the media breathlessly report on each clash with doubt over who is responsible.

Wikipedia states on Paul Watson:

As of 2009, Paul Watson has said that the organization has sunk ten whaling ships while also destroying millions of dollars worth of equipment.

Their aim is to destroy and sink whaling ships. So who do you think causes the crashes.

Of course every time there is a crash, the Sea Shepherd people claim they were not at fault. Anotehr quote from Wikipedia may help the media:

Watson’s public relations savvy is shown in an episode of Whale Wars when he creates an international media “storm” after two crewmembers are detained on a Japanese whaling vessel.^[18] In his book, Earthforce!, Watson advises readers to make up facts and figures when they need to, and to deliver them to reporters confidently.^[9] He also states that the “truth is irrelevant” due the nature of mass media.[19

So Watson has written a book telling his followers to lie to the media in a confident way, and the media still fall for it and report the claims without scepticism.

The Dom Post reports:

The Taser is saving lives, and many criminals are simply surrendering at the sight of it, police say.

Nine people were shot with a Taser in its first year of use and some incidents were so violent, the offender could have been shot with a firearm, if the stun gun had not been available. …

Police incident reports issued to The Dominion Post reveal the extreme violence faced by police during the Taser incidents last year.

One man had just allegedly killed a man and was raging at neighbours with an axe. Another had stabbed himself with a samurai sword and was brandishing it at officers, a third attacked officers with a wheel brace and screwdriver, and another had stabbed a taxi driver in the head and fled in his stolen taxi.

In the Johnsonville case, a mentally ill man was tasered as he lunged at police with a hunting knife after a two-hour standoff.

Wellington area commander Inspector Pete Cowan said: “Potentially it was a case where a person could have been shot. It was a very, very good example of where … the Taser saved the offender’s life and potentially other members of the public and police.”

If the opponents of the taser had their way, then there would probably be some additional corpses. Offenders who are brandishing axes and swords would probably have been shot in the past.

But the opponents have done some good:

Police Association president Greg O’Connor said: “Perversely, the misinformation given out by the anti-Taser group has probably worked in the police and the public’s favour. People think the consequences of the Taser are worse than in reality they’re likely to be.”

Bring on the national roll-out.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key has vowed to stick with his goal of closing the income gap with Australia, despite an embarrassing dismissal by the Reserve Bank Governor who said there was no chance of it happening.

Speaking on TVNZ’s Q+A programme yesterday, Alan Bollard said Australia had been “blessed by God sprinkling minerals” and had handled its economy well. He said New Zealand would do better to make the most of the “crumbs that come off the Australian table”.

He said it was up to the Government what its own goals were, but he did not believe catching up with Australia was possible.

However, Australia’s success was good news for New Zealand and the real challenge was in working out how to capitalise on it.

The Governor is quite right that it is not practical to think we can close the gap with Australia by 2025 – quite simply the gap is just far too large.

However I think we can aspire to something more ambitious than making the most of the crumbs that come our way from Australia.

Even if the gap is not closed by 2025, we do want a very strong focus on higher levels of economic growth so the gap gets smaller, or at least doesn’t grow as quickly.

There are effectively six scenarios going forward, from worst to best:

1. NZ growth rate in next 15 years is even lower than for last 15 years, meaning gap between Australia grows even faster than previously.
2. NZ growth rate in next 15 years is the same as last 15 years, so the gap grows as fast as previously.
3. NZ growth rate in next 15 years is higher than the last 15 years, but still not as fast as Australia, so the gap continues to grow – but slower than before.
4. NZ growth rate rate in next 15 years matches that of Australia, so the gap remains relatively constant.
5. NZ growth rate in next 15 years is higher than that of Australia, but not high enough to close the gap by 2025, so the gap closes but is not gone by 2025.
6. NZ growth rate in next 15 years is so much higher than Australia’s that the gap is closed by 2025.

Now like the Governor, I don’t think No 6 is realistic. We are starting too far behind. But personally I’d be pretty delighted with either No 5 or No 4 – both would be absolutely major achievements. Even No 3 would be better than the status quo.