Kiwiblog

Lest we forget

The Dom Post reports:

The Apprentice star Terry Serepisos is being chased by creditors and is struggling to pay about $2 million in unpaid rates and ground rents to Wellington City Council.

A Dominion Post investigation has learnt that the council has met regularly with Mr Serepisos – but he has yet to settle the substantial debt.

It is understood Mr Serepisos has told the council he is struggling to pay – and if the council takes action to recover the money it could jeopardise the Wellington Phoenix football franchise he owns. Mr Serepisos said yesterday that he had pumped a total of $5 million into the football club, which this week received a five-year extension to continue in the A-League.

I have to say that one shouldn’t make sponsorship commitments, if you can’t provide the support promised. Not paying rates, so one can continue the sponsorship is not an enduring solution.

Mr Serepisos said he had spent vast sums promoting Wellington, bankrolling the Phoenix and working with several charities and the community.

“I’m pouring in millions and millions of dollars to promote this city and doing all these things I do. And I feel a little disheartened that a handful of people are taking pot shots at me.”

Which is all great, and I think the Phoenix are great. But the obligation is to meet your legal and contractual obligations first. If you are unable to pay your rates, because of the Phoenix sponsorship, then you are not sponsoring the Phoenix – I am – along with all the other ratepayers who do pay our rates.

And it goes without saying how bad a look it is for The Apprentice TV show, to have the boss in the media for being unable to pay his bills. Maybe the winner should make sure they get the $200,000 in advance!

Another Dom Post story also has details of other creditors claiming they have not been paid.

Now that was a good sleep in!

Great release from Rodney and Heather:

“The Law Commission’s reported proposals on alcohol are frankly ludicrous”, ACT Deputy Leader Heather Roy said today.

“They cannot possibly pass the government’s tests for good regulatory and tax policy.”

“It seems the Commission wants to take New Zealand back to the days of punitive excise taxation and nanny state regulation of shop trading hours, closing times for bars and the purchase age.

“We have been there and done that with alcohol policy and it didn’t work,” Mrs Roy said.

Since liberalisation that commenced in 1989, consumption per head has declined significantly and there has been no increase in hazardous drinking. The vast majority of New Zealanders have a responsible attitude to alcohol.

“The tourism, hospitality and entertainment industries, and New Zealanders at large, have hugely benefited from less repressive policies on alcohol over the past 20 years. Imagine overseas visitors coming to New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup and finding it closed.”

Any law changes will be passed before the RWC. It will be interesting to see how that contrasts with plans for the RWC to be hosted by 4 million kiwis, and venues like party central.

ACT Leader Rodney Hide said “The Government needs strategies that target the small percentage of drinkers who cause the problems. This could include better enforcement of existing laws, greater penalties for drunken and disorderly behaviour, banning orders and public naming and shaming of serious offenders, stricter welfare policies for alcohol and drug abusers and less access to services such as ACC.”

This is the key. I’ll support measures that target problem drinkers, rather than those that target everyone who likes to have a drink.

As one example, I think introducing a drinking age of 18 (with an exception for direct parental supervision) would do far more in targeting the problem, than raising the purchase age to 20, making it illegal for a 19 year odl to buy a bottle of wine.

At present it is totally legal for 14 year olds to get pissed on spirits, if done on private property.

Vodafone have sent a response to my recent post on their pricing change:

Got a prepay mobile with Vodafone? Give up your landline

Last week we released a new add-on called Talk that lets Vodafone Prepay customers talk for up to 200 minutes a month to landlines or to Vodafone mobiles for $12.  We want to encourage our mobile customers to use their voices rather than their fingers, and their mobiles rather than their home phones.

Certainly Talk has got a reaction.  A range of parties have expressed a view, including the Minister, the Commerce Commission, TUANZ, 2degrees, and the blogosphere.  Even DPF himself has weighed in.

I want to make three points.  First, why we are launching Talk.  Second, why it is good for competition.  And third, what the implications are for the Minister’s decision on mobile termination rates.

Why Talk

Talk is a great deal.  In particular, you should buy Talk and give up using your landline.  You pay too much for it anyway.

We all know that New Zealand mobile users are very keen on text messaging.  New Zealand has amongst the lowest prices and highest usage for text in the world. But the same enthusiasm doesn’t extend to talking.

Our research tells us that three quarters of customers wait till they get home to make a call longer than five minutes.  Talk is part of our response, letting customers get on with what they want to do with their mobiles.

This is not the only change we are bringing to prepay this year.  Recently we introduced cheap international calling rates for our top destinations, but it began in 2006 with Best Mate TXT2000, $2 for 2 hours off-peak, and the introduction of Family in 2008. There is much more to come.

Competition

2degrees has argued for years that it cannot compete without a laundry list of regulatory concessions.  2degrees has not deviated from this line despite the numerous changes that have been made to accommodate it. But with several hundred thousand customers after just over six months, 2degrees is already one of the most successful new entrants in the world.  I see the Commission this morning reported 2degrees’ market share at 4% as at 31 December.  Five percent market share in a year would be very good performance.  So 4% percent in around six months is remarkable.

The real question is not what our competitors think, but whether they can match or better Talk.  Clearly they can, and they will if they think that doing so will gain them an advantage in the market.

Comparison between headline retail rates and mobile termination rates is not helpful.  Operators offer lots of different products, some are higher priced, others are lower priced.  All three mobile network operators offer products that are cheaper than MTRs.  Some examples:

•             Telecom offers calls from a Telecom fixed line to a Telecom mobile for sixty minutes for no more than a dollar.  If calls are long this could easily generate a very low average price (hat tip: Steve Biddle).

•             Vodafone allows unlimited calling between all connections on one business account in return for a monthly fee per connection.   Clearly this also generates a very low average price if usage is high.

•             2degrees offers its customers text messaging to any other 2degrees’ customer for 2 cents a text.  Under our agreement with 2degrees, we are required to pay more than four times that amount to text a 2degrees customer.

The Commission does have a cross-check between mobile termination rates and retail prices in its final report.  It’s not based on the level of any particular retail plan; instead it compares industry average retail on-net mobile prices with mobile termination rates.  Talk shouldn’t affect that average.

Decision

The Minister needs to decide what to do with the Commission’s termination rate recommendation.  He can send it back to the Commission for more work or accept the undertakings as recommended by the Commission.

Accepting the undertakings means lower mobile prices from October.  Voice termination rates would fall from 14.4 cents (already lower than the UK) to just under 10 cents, and then again to just over 8 cents on 1 January with more falls over time.  The undertakings cut text prices to zero.

Sending the report back to the Commission for more work means termination rates stay where they are for a longer period.

The Minister’s decision is quite straightforward.  His best choice is to take the money on the table now, accept the undertakings and reduce mobile prices from October.  If the Commission wants to look further at retail pricing and the relationship with mobile termination rates there is nothing to stop it doing so.

Hayden Glass
Public Policy
Vodafone NZ

We all await the Minister’s decision with interest. In the meantime, the debate will continue!

Many readers will have seen various Downfall parodies. They have become an Internet cult. Hundreds of people have inserted their own subtitles over a four minute clip where Hitler goes beserk at his generals.

I especially enjoyed three of the parodies – Clark, Peters and Tizard in the final weeks of the 2008 campaign. Thankfully they are still up, but many other parodies have been removed due to a copyright complaint by Constantin films.

The clip above is a parody of the fact You Tube is removing the parodies.

AP report:

On Tuesday, the clips on YouTube, many of which had been watched by hundreds of thousands, even millions, began disappearing from the site. Constantin Films, the company that owns the rights to the film, asked for them to be removed, and YouTube complied.

Martin Moszkowicz, head of film and TV at Constantin films in Munich, said the company had been fighting copyright infringement for years. Jewish organisations have also complained about the tastefulness of the clips, he said.

“When does parody stop? It is a very complicated issue,” Moszkowicz said. “So we are taking a simple approach: Take them all down. We’ve been doing it for years now. The important thing is to protect our copyright. We are very proud of the film.”

The clips were in no way a commercial threat to the film. Not a single person would have not purchased the film, because of a four minute parody extract. On the contrary, it has exposed parts of the film to millions.

There is a real debate about whether the parodies would be allowable under the US fair use laws. However the DMCA can make You Tube liable if they do not err on the side of caution and remove them. It is a pity that this doesn’t go to a Judge. It does highlight the danger of adopting US style notice and takedown laws.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the league was “delighted.”

“We find them offensive,” said Foxman of the videos. “We feel that they trivialise not only the Holocaust but World War II. Hitler is not a cartoon character.”

On this issue I respectfully disagree. The parodies do not disrespect the Holocaust in my opinion.

For years, the meme has held an unusually steadfast position in internet culture. While most online parodies come and go overnight, new Downfall spoofs have been continually created for years.

It’s not known exactly how many have existed but estimates run in the hundreds.

I’ve seen a dozen myself. If done well, they never get boring.

Sideswipe reveals:

“According to Nigel Bannister, a scientist at the University of Leicester, sending a text message can be up to four times more expensive than downloading the same amount of data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Sadly it is true.

A text message can be 160 characters, equalling 160 bytes (actually 140 bytes – 160 7-bit characters, so the figures that follow are conservative). Given that a text message costs roughly 20c to send, some simple arithmetic can be used to work out how much it costs per megabyte:

$0.20 / 160 = $0.00125 per byte

$0.00125 x 1024 = $1.28 per kilobyte

$1.28 x 1024 = $1311 per megabyte

If we had to pay text message bandwidth rates for home or office internet connections: downloading a 4Mb song would cost $5244.00, a 500Mb TV episode would cost $655,500 and downloading a 1Gb movie, $1,342,464.”

One nice thing about Blackberries is you can PIN people instead of SMS them, and it costs you nothing. But you need to know their Blackberry PIN.

Paddy Gower (or Patrick as he uses on air) has joined the blogosphere with Gower on Politics, which is on the Three News site.

His first blog is on the Urerewas treaty negotiations with Tuhoe.

He says:

There is no doubt Tuhoe suffered at the hands of the Crown, who unleashed a “scorched earth campaign” against them in the 1800s; their homes were destroyed, their people jailed and killed. They were run off their land and have spent the time since trying to get it back.

Now they are close; very close.

For those who are not aware of the extent of the wrongs done, Te Ara says:

The government waged a bitter campaign in Te Urewera in its search for Te Kooti and his followers. Old enemies of Tūhoe fought on the side of the government; they carried out most of the raids into Te Urewera during a prolonged and destructive search between 1869 and 1872. In a policy aimed at turning the tribe away from Te Kooti, a scorched earth campaign was unleashed against Tūhoe; people were imprisoned and killed, their cultivations and homes destroyed, and stock killed or run off. Through starvation, deprivation and atrocities at the hands of the government’s Māori forces, Tūhoe submitted to the Crown.

Gower continues:

Negotiations are incredibly delicate, involving issues like the ownership and control of the Urewera National Park and Tuhoe’s desire for self-rule. It’s a combustible combination, especially when thrown on the race relations fire that is always burning away in the background of middle New Zealand. Put simply, this is about the weight of history coming up hard against the pressure of day-to-day politics.

And the details:

Mana Motuhake means self-rule or self-government. This is Tuhoe’s dream. It had it once before and never signed the Treaty of Waitangi. Now the Government has quite predictably ruled out Tuhoe becoming a separate nation – or as Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson put it the ridiculous notion of “a Liechtenstein in the Ureweras”.

But Finlayson has also referred to “complexities” in the negotiations. Enter, Mana Motuhake. Mana Motuhake is on the table on the form of some devolution of public functions.

Plus there is more on the quantum of compensation and management of the Ureweras. Gower obviously has good sources and it will be very interesting to see, if a deal is done, the details.

Of all the historic grievances (and anyone who thinks there is no justified grievance should read history books on what happened) this is probably the most complex and difficult. If they manage this one, then the aim of settling them all by 2014 may be achievable after all.

In my weekly Dispatch from St Johnnysburg at NBR 24/7 I write:

The anti-alcohol industry (and it is an industry – mainly taxpayer funded) will be delighted by the Law Commission’s report when it is released on Tuesday. They have succeeded in convincing the Law Commission that alcohol should be treated in the same way as tobacco – an evil to be heavily discouraged, if not prevented.

I focus on how the role of the Law Commission has changed from quiet diligent updating of laws to:

Sir Geoffrey Palmer has morphed back into his former role of a crusading politician, and has spent months talking about the evils of alcohol. He even went out to Courtenay Place with a Police escort, and said he saw scenes that “no civilized society can relish”.

I end up at Courtenay Place around once a month on average. Often until well past 2 am. Sometimes there to dance and party with friends, but often just to carry on chatting politics and life over a few drinks. I’ve never seen these scenes “no civilised society can relish”.

The crusading was not restricted to New Zealand. Sir Geoffrey even went to Australia, and spoke at an Australian Drug Foundation conference. Not the Minister., ot the Director-General of Health, but the Law Commission President. The 68 year old Sir Geoffrey decried the fact that people put photos from parties up on Facebook. He wants an end to people getting drunk – an endeavour that would be as likely to succeed as prohibition succeeded in the 1930s.

I await the proposal to ban photos from Facebook which show alcohol.

The full article is subscriber content at NBR.

Brian Rudman writes:

The glass tower lawyers who dine off the battles between Auckland local bodies might soon find themselves short of spare cash for restocking their wine cellars.

As the day of the great forced marriage between the reluctant eight councils looms, the unthinkable is happening. The councils are trying to resolve all outstanding disputes between one another before they plight their troth on November 1.

For however acrimonious the fight has been, the combatants accept how ridiculous it’s going to look in the Environment Court on November 2 if the QC for the Auckland Council has to stand up and tell the judge he’s now acting for both sides in Auckland Regional Council versus Auckland City Council on, for example, wastewater discharge from “party central” on Queens Wharf.

That’s certainly a benefit to have less lawsuits where ratepayers fund both sides. So how many are there? One ? Three? Five?

Last September, in recognition of the revolution to come, the eight chief executives agreed to “accelerate the resolution of appeals between councils”.

At the time there were 287 outstanding appeals and related actions either between councils alone, or involving a third party.

By November the number of disputes had risen to 355, though it rapidly settled back to a figure of 311, where it now stands.

The good news, I guess, is that as of April 6, 35 actions had been settled and another 194 had reached the stage of officer agreement.

355!!!

Some law firms are going to go into receivership.

That left 47 cases where the officers cannot agree – down from a peak of 122 in November – and another 35 where further investigation is required.

Officers are now considering which appeals are too hard to resolve and should be rushed to the Environment Court before November 1.

All heart, the Environment Court has offered to schedule additional appeals to help speed the process.

Of course from the ratepayers’ point of view, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the unresolved issues were just carried over to the new Super City organisation to be resolved in-house. The savings in legal bills would be substantial. Just how big, I haven’t been able to track down, though one insider says the ARC legal bill alone for such cases is hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

At least I would say.

The Herald supports discounts for late consents:

The Government has now provided details of the stick intended to “incentivise prompt processing” of consents. If the process exceeds statutory timeframes, a council must apply a discount of 1 per cent per working day, up to a maximum of 50 per cent.

The initiative is highly welcome. Figures released by the Environment Minister, Nick Smith, illustrate how the problem has become progressively worse over the past decade.

During that period, late consents increased from 18 to 31 per cent, despite a ninefold increase from 3 to 28 per cent in consents where councils allowed themselves a 20-day extension. …

Before these regulations, councils had no incentive to process resource consents on time. Given that, it is probably unsurprising that almost a third of applications are being dealt with outside the statutory time limits.

Discounts may not deliver total satisfaction to ratepayers but, at the very least, they are a substantial step in the right direction.

I am confident the incentives to process on time will have an impact.

The Press talks volcanic gloom:

The nightmare the international aviation industry has feared for years has come to pass with the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull.

Iceland’s apparent isolation from the busiest air corridors in the world counted for little once upper-level winds conspired to blow the volcano’s massive plume of potentially damaging ash directly across much of the British Isles and on to parts of mainland Europe.

It seems preposterous for the whole world to be held to ransom by what, in geological terms, is a pipsqueak volcano.

The Dom Post looks at the UK election:

On May 6, they must decide if they want another five years under Labour, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, or to throw in their lot with his rivals, the Tories’ David Cameron or the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg. Until last week, opinion polls showed the Conservatives at or about 38 per cent, Labour about 31 per cent and the Lib Dems on about 20 per cent. Things changed markedly, however, last Friday.

That was when party leaders engaged in the first of three live TV debates, a first in Britain. Opinion polls since show a remarkable shift. This week, a Populus poll for The Times, for example, showed Mr Clegg’s party had risen 10 points in a week to 31 per cent, Labour down five on 28 per cent, and the Tories down four on 32 per cent.

The latest daily YouGov poll has Conservative 34%, Lab 29%, Lib Dems 28%. This would give Labour the most seats.

Even if the Lib Dems do not do major damage to the Tories on May 6, Mr Cameron’s party reportedly needs a national swing greater than any modern leader has achieved, in order to win even a single-seat majority.

It will be tough for them to get a majority, rather than just a plurality.

The ODT fights for Dunedin Hospital:

The threats to Dunedin Hospital and consequently to Dunedin itself, the Dunedin School of Medicine and the people of the South keep recurring.

Dunedin regularly has to staff the ramparts and fight for its hospital’s advanced status and that battle might soon begin again. Neurosurgery services, so often threatened in the past, are under fire with proposals that all six South Island neurosurgeons be based in Christchurch. …

As Dunedin School of Medicine dean Dr John Adams said this month, the loss of neurology has the potential to affect the whole teaching environment.

The service deals with about 350 patients a year, including scheduled surgery and, most significantly, emergency treatment. In accident situations, for example, it is a very long way from Te Anau or Invercargill to Christchurch, even by helicopter, when half an hour can be crucial to survival.

The seven Ecan Commissioners have now been put into place. Before we review who they are, it is worth remembering why the ECan Council was sacked

1. The only Region in the country to have failed to produce a water allocation plan, despite 19 years to do so
2. An out of control staff, who all but refused to accept the authority of Independent Planning Commissioners
3. A totally divided and dysfunctional Council
4. Rock bottom relations with the ten local territorial authorities, whose democratically elected Mayors had been lobbying the Government for years to do something

So they were sacked, just as Labour once sacked the Rodney District Council and Auckland Area Health Board. It is what happens when your incompetence continues on unchecked.

The major decisions before ECan are to do with water allocation. This is because ECan had failed to devise a plan, despite 19 years to do so. So who are the seven Commissioners? Are they ex National politicians (which ironically the sacked ECan Chair was). They are:

1. Dame Margaret Bazley, arguably NZ’s most respected public servant and problem solver
2. David Caygill, who was Helen Clark’s first Deputy Leader, and respected by all sides in politics. A former Christchurch Councillor who knows the region well.
3. David Bedford, Chair of Enterprise North Canterbury
4. Donald Couch, Lincoln Uni Pro-Chancellor with a long history in resource management and local govt, plus Ngai Tahu links
5. Tom Lambie,Chancellor of Lincoln University. Very experienced in water management issues. Former President of Fed Farmers. An organic farmer that produces organic milk
6. Peter Skelton, Environment Court Judge for 20 years, Associate Professor of Resource Management Law at Lincoln University
7. Rex Williams, Chancellor, Canterbury University, founder of environmental lobby group Water Rights Trust

So all up we have:

• four Commissioners with expert knowledge of water and resource management issues
• Two local university chancellors and a pro-chancellor
• A former labour party politician
• An environmentalist
• A organic farmer
• A business rep
• A Ngai Tahu link
• Dame Margaret as Chair

I look forward to them achieving in a couple of years what the Council failed to do in 19. And I doubt anyone can say that group is slanted politically.

Some will not want them to succeed. Certain urban fundamentalist environmentalists don’t want there to be a water allocation plan. They don’t want anyone taking any water. They don’t want farming or irrigation – to them it is all just pollution.

He’s not the first, but his is perhaps the best – Foreign Policy’s article on Tahir ul-Qadri introduces you to the Pakistani Islamic Scholar who has issued a fatwa condemning terrorism as un-Islamic. Not only does he label terrorism as “haram”, or forbidden under Islam, he goes so far as to describe acts of terrorism as acts of disbelief. To put this in context, for a practising muslim, an act of disbelief is pretty much the worst offence he or she can commit against Islam.

I came accross a new website here the other day, called Kuwait Exposed , where people can anonymously post their “confessions”. While most of the posts are pretty lame and rather whiny, I was disgusted to read a confession of rape .  I’m inclined to believe it as genuine following the poster’s further comment in response to some of the other comments (where he was stupid enough to use his own name – not that that’ll assist in any legal action, which is highly unlikely to eventuate in any case).

It’s surprisingly easy enough to live in a place like this and let the dichotomy of an expat vs Kuwaiti view on the world pass you by, and many people do, despite experiencing the differences on a daily basis.

What struck me most about this “confession” was the reaction in the comments. This creature says he loves this poor girl, whom he has raped.  He seems to realise on some level that what he has done is wrong, but he still sees her as the future wife and mother of his children.

And many of the commenters seem to as well! For example:

” Telling ur mother idf the best thing to do even taking her with u wen u are going to Apologize, the virginity thing could be fixed only if she have an adult helping her. Then if u truly wanna show her that u love her ask ur mam to call hers and engage her to u !” [sic]

“If you really love her and want to make it up, there is a way you could do it. if I were in your place, I would go and ask for her hand in marriage.”

Some don’t even see a need to confess: “what’s left is between you and God”

The comments about the need/ability to “fix” a loss of virginity have got to stop you in your tracks also.

Compare that to comments from those with Western names.

Grant Robertson just started his speech on the S92A bill by saying he will join in the Simon Power lovefest. And Grant is right, the House has been having a Simon Power lovefest for the last four hours – a but a justified one.

The House unanimously passed the MMP referenda bill, and speaker after speaker praised Simon for the process. While some advocated for spending restrictions on campaigners, the fact the bill was passed without dissent spoke for itself.

Then we had the S92A copyright file sharing bill, and again every speaker said that the proposal developed by Simon was a huge improvement over the status quo, and was reasonably balanced.

Having been involved in this issue myself, I have to say that I agree – it is a very complex area, and the Government has done well to come up with a workable model. I still think the Internet suspension provision should go, but we’ll have that debate at select committee. Pleased to see the House unamiously pass the bill.

Fairly rare for a Minister to get two bills in a row passed unanimously, and to praise from all parties. Also good to have constructive speeches from all parties.

Back to the MMP referendum, two questions for people.

1. Should the voting at the first referendum for an electoral system to go up against MMP in the second referendum be a simple plurality option (tick one option, most ticks wins) or a ranked preferential option (ranks the four systems 1 to 4, and none get over 50%, drop off least popular option and redistribute preferences)?
2. Should the second referendum be held at the 2014 election, or held before 2014 as advocated by this petition?

I generally regard a preferential voting system as superior, but it can make things a bit more complex and put people off. However if we are asking us to pick a preferred option out of four, then is it too much to think they should be able to rank them?

The timing of the 2nd referendum is finely balanced. One wants a very high turnout for a binding constitutional change. However I think as it is a binding vote on a binary choice, we would have a high turnout even if held outside a general election. The first referendum would suffer from a low turnout if done stand alone as it is not a final vote, but the second one less so.

It occurs to me that one would get a better debate on the second referendum, if it was not held at the same time as a general election. The contest for Government will dominate the media.

So I think there is merit in looking at whether the 2014 referendum (if there is one) can be held in late 2012 or early 2013.

Just found this website that records last words from role playing characters.  There are thousands. Some of my favourites are:

• “I stab the dragon and tell it to get off me.”
• “I drink the bottle marked POISON on the off-chance that it’s the extra-healing potion.”
• “Whaddya mean, a pentagram only has FIVE sides?”
• “Don’t worry, wyvern don’t attack unless they’re provoked.”
• “They need a twenty to hit me, I’m invincible”
• “I cast a fireball” (into a 10′x10′x10′ room)
• “OK! I moon the Balrog!”
• “Don’t be silly. If this was really the ship’s “Self-Destruct Button”, do you think they’d leave it lying around where anyone could press it?”

I also like this quote, from a local Wellington group:

Character staring down the well at the 300 foot long ancient red dragon calling out: “Hah, you can’t get me up here.”

Heh.

Congratulations to 122 Youth MPs, who have been selected for the Youth Parliament. They are:

Having done a quick tally there appear to be 66 girls and 56 guys, which is quite a difference from the main Parliament. However this is based on some educated guesses using christian names, and it may vary a bit from my calculation.

The Dominion Post praises Nick Smith:

Machiavellian, arrogant, hot-headed. ACC Minister Nick Smith has been called all those things and more. And by his friends. He has a reputation for throwing tantrums and flying off the handle when things don’t go his way.

Don’t worry – the praise is coming.

But Dr Smith is also a passionate advocate of his constituents’ interests and a minister who takes his responsibilities seriously. For that, taxpayers have reason to be grateful. It is because he keeps his ear to the ground and takes an active interest in his portfolios that a potential fraud has been uncovered within ACC. The corporation said this week that it had sacked a staff member – known to be its property manager Malcolm Mason – and referred “matters of concern” to the Serious Fraud Office.

Those matters relate to property transactions involving ACC in several different parts of the country and that appear to go back some time. However, it was not until Dr Smith queried the rent ACC was paying for its new offices in Nelson that anyone within the corporation thought to compare the prices it was paying for office space with the going rates. Dr Smith did so because local retailers were worried that the $346,320 a year ACC was paying to rent its Nelson premises set too high a benchmark and because other locals feared ACC was not getting value for money.

The advantage of a Minister also being a well connected local MP.

Dr Smith signalled his unhappiness by refusing to open the building. Contrast his attitude with that of Labour’s former internal affairs minister, George Hawkins, who ignored newspaper reports and industry concerns about the leaky building crisis for more than 12 months about 10 years ago because officials had not formally advised him there was a problem.

“One would expect that, if there was a problem, the people set up to deal with that would inform their minister,” he said at the time. “They did not.”

If Dr Smith had taken the same approach, ACC would still be unaware it was paying twice the going rate for office accommodation in Nelson and would not have uncovered irregularities in other parts of the country.

Irascible? Yes. Economical with the truth? Sometimes. But also an example to other ministers of what the public expects. The job of ministers is not simply to sign pieces of paper put in front of them by officials, open new buildings, bandy unpleasantries across the floor of the House and enjoy their generous salaries and perks. It is to actively represent the interests of voters.

Dr Smith has done so. He deserves to be congratulated.

On this issue, few would disagree.

The ODT focuses on the UN declaration:

The latest manifestation is the sudden – it has been described as “secret” – accession on Tuesday to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples with a statement delivered by Maori Party co-leader and Maori Affairs Minister Dr Pita Sharples to the United Nations in New York.

It has been met with tension, and what might be described as a tantrum, by the third party in the coalition Government’s bed: Act New Zealand.

Leader Rodney Hide has responded to the news with a display seldom seen even within the somewhat elastic emotional parameters of coalition politics. …

Mr Key and senior National Party figures will be gambling that this gesture towards the Maori Party will further enhance the mana of the latter, cement more tightly the political allegiance between the two parties, and deflate the more demanding ambitions of radical Maori – personified in Parliament in the character and rhetoric of Hone Harawira – while, in practice, giving nothing at all away.

They appear to have decided that the subtlety of principle should be subjugated to the symbolic glue of pragmatism.

It may make political sense, but while National retreats to the safety of descriptors such as “aspirational” and “non-binding”, it is hard to escape the conclusion that, on this matter, it speaks with a forked tongue.

Bill English has just announced:

In the Budget last year, we identified $2 billion of lower quality spending over the subsequent four years to redirect into higher priority areas.

In this year’s Budget, we will find another $1.8 billion of low quality spending between now and 2014 for reprioritising into higher priority initiatives.

$3.8 billion of savings is not bad. That is around $3.799 billion more than what would have happened under Labour.

I said in last year’s Budget that most Government agencies will receive no budget increases over the next few years. And in this Budget, I will say the same thing again.

Not because they don’t deliver worthwhile services, but simply because we cannot allow debt to escalate further.

And the private sector has had to cope with falling revenue. Staying constant is relatively a better position to be in.

And in the release:

“The Government will continue to weed out low quality spending. We will live within the $1.1 billion annual operating allowance for new spending we have set ourselves, and restrict annual increases in this figure to 2 per cent from 2011/12.”

Mr English repeated that most Government agencies would receive no budget increases over the next three or four years, as the Government moved to get back to Budget surplus as soon as possible.

This fiscal discipline is necessary so we can stop borrowing, and start paying off debt. Borrowing $240 million a week is not sustainable.

“I want to get the Government back into budget surplus as quickly as possible, because surpluses give us choices.

“For example, surpluses give us choices to invest more in public services; to pay down public debt; to resume contributions to the New Zealand Super Fund – or to do any number of other things.

“As long as we run deficits, we don’t have those choices,”

Exactly.

Labour seem to have multiple spokespersons and policies on engagement with Burma.

The Dom Post reports:

Three government officials from Myanmar’s repressive military regime are studying English in New Zealand, funded by the taxpayer.

Why, we wonder?

Mr McCully said he had allowed the officials to study here after a review of Myanmar’s involvement in the English Language Training for Officials scheme. That was in line with an international move – led by United States President Barack Obama – to increase engagement with Myanmar in preparation for what were hoped to be democratic elections this year. …

In 2008, Mr McCully – then in opposition – criticised Labour for allowing government-owned company Kordia, formerly BCL, to work in a joint venture doing engineering work on cellphone tower installations in Myanmar. He called the Myanmar government the “Butchers of Burma”. Asked to justify his apparent change of heart, Mr McCully would only say it was “consistent with the international community”.

He said the three studying in New Zealand worked in the civil service in Myanmar. “We don’t do it for people who hold controversial roles.”

Okay – makes sense.  So what does Labour say on it. First their foreign affairs spokesperson:

Labour foreign affairs spokesman Chris Carter said it was important to show the Myanmar officials how democracy should work. “It’s about political education in a way.”

Goodness I am agreeing with Chris. Training up civil servants on how to do a good job, seems worthwhile.

But Labour MP Maryan Street disagrees:

Burma Cross-Party Parliamentary Group chairwoman Maryan Street, a Labour MP, said: “We should not be doing anything to prop up that administration.”

She said the officials – studying in Wellington, Napier, and Nelson – could spy on refugees in this country, leading to possible persecution of families in Burma.

“This is not the same as providing humanitarian support and assistance and training for people who are going back to help develop their country.”

So who speaks for Labour on this issue, and what is their policy?

Finally I wonder if this is a new initiative:

Mr McCully said each participant in the English Language Training for Officials scheme cost about $35,000 to educate over six months – paid for by the New Zealand Government. About 35 officials had visited from Myanmar since 1998.

Guess not.

An e-mail from the US Democratic Leadership Council highlights that 25 years ago Israel and the US signed a free trade agreement.

The change in aid and trade in that time has been massive

1. Aid has reduced from $3.7b to $2.3b
2. Services trade has gone from $1.0b to $7.5b
3. Goods trade has gone from $2.4b to $44.2b

The US used to supply more in aid, than trade to Israel. Now their trade is more than 20 times greater than their aid.

Europe and the US should drop their trade barriers so that we have more trade, and less need for aid.

There are three vacancies on the order paper, so three of these 3 bills will be drawn in the ballot at midday today.

UPDATE: Sir Roger does it again. His bill to abolish tariffs got drawn. So did Metiria Turei’s on mining and Rahui Katene’s to abolish GST on “healthy food”.

The now infamous Curran death stare [Clare herself says the correct term is the Clare Glare ], directed at Gerry Brownlee during his general debate speech on Labour’s branding document.

The best story on the branding comes from Fran Mold on One News.

As they ask whether Labour’s brand is more futuristic, they stick up footage of George Hawkins, Trevor Mallard, Parekura Horomia and Pete Hodgson.

Then best of all, when asking whether the brand should be more reliable and honest, they show footage of Taito Philip Field being asked to plead in court. A nice reminder that Labour have never ever apologised for his corruption, let alone their defence of his corruption.

And they also show the Hodgson and Mallard dance moves, when asking if they should go for more funky.

Finally as a backdrop to them being more cool, they show the Caucus singing along on a bus. Wonderful.

A very very funny piece.

The Government is releasing a 500 page report next Tuesday from the Law Commission which makes scores of recommendations of changes to alcohol laws and policy.

The report was commissioned by the former Labour Government, and the primary author is former Labour Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer – who is also the Law Commission President.

Details of the report have leaked out, and I can exclusively reveal some of these. They represent a nanny state mindset which I doubt even the last Government would have ever gone along with. It stops short of prohibition and six o’clock closing, but represents a huge step backwards. Fundamentally the report fails to propose measures that target the minority of people who cause problems of crime and violence when under the influence of alcohol, and instead it has gone for a one size fits all approach which punishes millions of responsible drinkers, and especially 130,000 18 and 19 year olds.

I understand the Palmer Report proposes:

1. A massive 50% increase in the excise tax on alcohol. This would result in an extra $500 million of revenue to the Crown at the expense of everyone who drinks.
2. Banning the sale of liquor at off licenses after 10 pm. So if you pop into New World at 10.30 pm to do your shopping (which I often do), you won’t be able to buy a bottle of wine.
3. Forcing bars and nightclubs to refuse to allow people to enter after 2 am.
4. A nationwide closing time for all outlets, probably at 4 am.
5. An increase in the purchase age for alcohol from 18 to 20, criminalising 130,000 18 and 19 year olds if they buy alcohol.

As I said, this is nanny state unleashed. What is most disappointing is the failure to come up with measures that might actually target those causing the problems such as a drinking age (instead of a purchase age), increased penalties for alcohol related crime, and a one size fit all approach.

I would not necessarily be against allowing local communities through local Government able to (for example) set a closing time for their local neighbourhood.  But a nationwide closing time that treats Ponsonby and Courtney Place as the same as (say) Wainuiomata is a bad thing.

I am sure there are some useful recommendations in the Palmer Report, but its main recommendations represent the worst excesses of nanny state and punishes all New Zealanders, rather than targeting problem drinkers and the associated violence and crime they cause.

I hope the Government, and in fact all parties in Parliament, reject any wholesale adoption of the report’s recommendations.