Kiwiblog

The Herald reports:

The New Zealand Law Society is welcoming a Government review of the defence used in the Waihopai spy base case, where three activists were acquitted of damaging property because their actions were based on a belief that what they did was lawful.

Yesterday Justice Minister Simon Power announced the review of the “claim of right” defence, including looking at whether there needed to be a “reasonableness element” to it. …

The Law Society’s convener of the criminal law subcommittee, Jonathan Krebs, said a review was timely.

“The defence of a ‘claim of right’ certainly has a place, and it’s an important and fundamental defence to have.

“But if the defence allows someone to be acquitted where there was criminal intent, however well-principled they thought it to be, then there is something wrong with the criminal law and it may need to be adjusted slightly.

If the Government does not change the law, I suspect we will have a rash of property vandalism against various government buildings and embassies, with vandals using the same defence.

The Herald reports:

Singer Suzanne Prentice believes her chances of winning the Invercargill mayoralty in October are “very good”.

The entertainer announced yesterday morning that she would run against incumbent Tim Shadbolt, mayor for 15 years.

Ms Prentice said she had always been a “proud Southlander”, but in recent times had become “a concerned resident”.

Ms Prentice said Mr Shadbolt’s December bid to oust long-serving deputy mayor Neil Boniface was “only one of the things” which had led to her running for mayor.

Her main focus was “the loss of focus and direction of our council here and also the division which has been created in council”.

I doubt anyone but Prentice could beat Shadbolt.

Shadbolt is a passionate advocate for Invercargill, who has helped put it on the map. But he does not appear to be a good leader of Council, and this has shown.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key says he was invited to the United States nuclear security summit in Washington because President Barack Obama recognised the importance of New Zealand’s anti-nuclear position.

Irony No 1 is that after 25 years of the anti-nuclear law keeping NZ on the outer in Washington, it is now being seen by the US President as a positive.

Irony No 2 is that the beneficiary of Irony No 1 is not the party that introduced the law, but the party that has spent most of the last 25 years trying to work out ways to amend it.

Politics is full of ironies.

There is a discussion on Scoop about what people would do with fibre to the home, sponsored by Vector’s fibre to the door campaign.

For me there are four major things it would allow me to do:

1. Video Conferencing. I don’t mean through a webcam on Skype. I mean full steroids video conferencing through my TV set.  Just as I have 50 TV channels, I want 50 video conferencing pre-sets. I want it so I can push four buttons and be immediately connected to a five-way video conference. That would allow me to work at home far more, and travel far less.
2. Remote File Access. I can access files on a remote server now. For example I used to be able to remote access the National Party HQ server. But it would take me a couple of minutes to connect, and copying or opening files was deadly slow. What I want with fibre to the home is that files on my office server open as quickly as if I was on the office LAN. Potentially I even want all my files stored on the Internet and I can access them from anywhere almost as quickly as if they were on my laptop.
3. TV and Movies on demand. With fibre speeds to the home, I want to be able to push a button or two and for (hopefully) $1 or so, a movie will start playing in real time, or maybe the series finale of MASH or the 1963 first episode of Dr Who.
4. A LAN in every house. With fibre to the door, the logical thing is to wire up the house. So then one can view your security camera remotely. You can switch on or off the power to any heaters or appliances. You can grab files off your desktop PC while travelling. You can even turn on a light to keep burglars away. Over time, most of your appliances will be IP connected.

So they’re my four things I want to be able to do. I’m sure there are many more.

Dick No 1 is Richard Dawkins, who has joined a campaign to try and get the Pope arrested for crimes against humanity. This is just pathetic and reminds me of why I can’t stand Dawkins.

I’ve been critical of the Catholic Church hierarchy for their failure to address child abuse by priests, and their response to the criticism. But Dawkins is being an offensive dick by suggesting the Pope is somehow guilty of crimes against humanity and should be tried by the International Criminal Court.

Dawkins also makes it much harder for other critics of how the Church has acted, because his rhetoric just makes the Vatican far more defensive. He should shut the fuck up and go back to peddling books.

But the other dick is Bishop Giacomo Babini who is blaming the criticism on the Jews:

A website quoted Giacomo Babini, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism, considering how “powerful and refined” the criticism is.

The comments, which have been denied by the bishop, follow a series of statements from Catholic churchmen alleging the existence of plots to weaken the church and Pope Benedict XVI.

Allegedly speaking to the Catholic website Pontifex, Babini, 81, was quoted as saying: “They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers.”

Extremism on both sides is unhelpful.

The Herald reported:

COPENHAGEN – Scores of Carlsberg workers walked off their jobs in protest yesterday after the Danish brewer tightened laid-back rules on workplace drinking and removed beer coolers from work sites, a company spokesman said.

Beer Coolers. Now what work place would not be improved with them.

The warehouse and production workers in Denmark are rebelling against the company’s new alcohol policy, which allows them to drink beer only during lunch hours in the canteen. Previously, they could help themselves to beer throughout the day, from coolers placed around the work sites.

Only drink during lunch time. Barbaric.

The only restriction was “that you could not be drunk at work. It was up to each and everyone to be responsible,” company spokesman Jens Bekke said.

I wonder how they defined drunk?

Trans-Tasman report:

The Trans Tasman Political Letter reports informed sources in
Wellington advise NZ has won a spectacular victory against
Australia in the World Trade Organisation  in the case it  took
to secure free access to the Australian market for apples.

The sources say the WTO panel, which adjudicated the long-running
dispute, comprehensively rejected the Australian defence.
Australia has blocked the import of NZ apples, despite the
existence of a free trade agreement, and scientific support for
the NZ argument there is no risk of the transmission of fire
blight.

This is a huge and long awaited victory.

NZPA provides background:

The trade row has been running since NZ apples were first banned from Australia over 80 years ago after fireblight was found on this side of the Tamsan .

Though New Zealand scientists have found fireblight in Australian ornamental plants and also showed that the bacterial disease is unlikely to be transmitted on mature, clean fruit, efforts to gain access to the potentially-lucrative Australian market in 1986, 1989, and 1995 were rejected.

Further talks over the restrictions also failed when New Zealand was given access with conditions so strict that exports would not be economically viable and so it applied to the WTO for the matter to be resolved in 2007.

If the Australian Government refuses to accept the ruling, them NZ can apply for sanctions. With Rudd, you never now what he might do. He should just accept the ruling.

An interesting idea from MacDoctor:

There is plenty of evidence that lowering the legal Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) reduces accident rates, injuries and fatalities in an almost linear fashion (at least below about 0.1%). Here is a link to the very latest meta-analysis.

The point is that the effect of alcohol is fairly linear. In fact, there is evidence that the largest deterioration in performance occurs at quite low levels of intoxication (0.01-0.03%) but this does not initially translate into increased accidents (One assumes that the deterioration – although large proportionately – is still not enough to cause a noticeable increase in risk). Because the increase in risk is quite linear, it follows that the setting of  a new BAC at 0.05% is entirely arbitrary.

And it about balancing risk to costs. If risk is the only factor we would set the speed limit at 30 km/hr and ban people from driving if they have consumed any alcohol at all.

Indeed, the Japanese have shown that dropping the limit from 0.05% 0.03% produces a significant drop in accident and fatality statistics. It will therefore not be long after a drop to 0.05% that people (particularly ED doctors who bear the brunt of traffic accident injuries) will be calling for a further drop. It is not logical to go to all this trouble to fix the legal BAC at yet another arbitrary limit. There is no “safe” level of drink driving.

Just as there is no “safe” speed to drive at. Again it is balancing risk vs cost.

The point here is that an arbitrary limit for alcohol intoxication is inadequate for determining whether someone is safe to drive. Even at a zero level of alcohol, other drugs may make the driver decidedly dodgy behind a wheel. It is also doubtful that any movement of the BAC limit, even to zero, will make any difference to the kind of people who get behind the wheel of a car with a BAC 0f 0.18%. As I have posted before, the only solution to that kind of fool is to change the current drink driving laws from a minor punishment to a draconian deterrent.

It is reprehensible that you have drivers with 10 or more convictions for being plastered while driving, and they get minor slaps on the hands.

MacDoctor has a somewhat radical suggestion. Let us scrap the legal limit for alcohol altogether. Instead, we should substitute a legal requirement to be “fit to drive”. Should you be stopped at a police checkpoint and the cop has any reason to believe you may be impaired in your ability to drive (including checking your breath alcohol), he can insist that you take a “fit to drive” test. Failure (to take or pass the test) will get you arrested. The test could be administered using driving simulators in the back of a police van (basic tests administered by cops – such as walking a straight line – are simply too imprecise).

The advantage of a “fit to drive” test is that it catches all the impaired drivers, not just the ones impaired by excessive alcohol. It also avoids the problem of the margin where the person with the BAC of 0.052% is carted off to jail, despite being only mildly impaired, and the person with the BAC of 0.048% is let go, despite being high on cannabis and a liability on the road. It also standardises the drug tests that the new drug driving laws propose – making them considerably more objective. It will also prevent people from using portable breathalysers so that they can drink “to the limit” regardless of how capable they are of driving.

This is a very worthy idea. It would probably be inefficient to make every driver pulled up randomly undergo such a test, but one could do a screening test for alcohol and drugs, and any non-zero response has to do the impairment test.

I doubt the Government will go this way, as Government like objective tests, not subjective ones. But it could go a long way towards having a less arbitrary system, where people are punished only if they are actually impaired to a level which presents an unacceptable risk.

A very interesting interview of Chris Finlayson on The Nation at the weekend.

DUNCAN Well what is actually wrong with Mr Harawira’s idea of effectively Maori title, inalienable, you can’t sell it, absolute public access to all New Zealanders, what is wrong with it, is it just that it’s not politically viable for you?

CHRIS Well I think we agree on a lot of things, we agree on inalienability, we agree on public access, what I’m simply saying is that public domain provides a useful starting point, if you were to say absolute Maori ownership, I think the question that would inevitably arise Duncan is, well which Maori, which iwi, which hapu, and I think there could be a lot of cross claims, so I think that the proposal that we’ve put forward is a more sensible way of dealing with it, but look I’m out listening to folk and I’ll see what they’ve got to say.

A nice rebuttal pointing out why the idea of outright Maori Title is a bad one. I also think it is bad because there it would also take us massively beyond what the Court of Appeal said.

DUNCAN I just want to drill down into the report which came out last week about customary title, clearly the government wants to award customary title, let the courts have a look at it at least. What is customary title?

CHRIS There is absolutely no law on customary title in New Zealand, it’s a very vague concept, so what we’re saying is it’s a constrained form of property right, it doesn’t inhibit public access, it’s unable to be sold, there could be a title issue but not under the Land Transfer Act which deals with land, and so we’re not talking about that type of title, but a title could be issued under this legislation, and there’ll be rights to develop and so on, so it’s if you like a constrained property right, which will be available to those who can establish that they’re entitled to it.

Again a nice way of describing customary title – a constrained property right.

DUNCAN So would it allow for instance an iwi with a customary title say in the Bay of Plenty to do a partnership deal with if you like the Chinese government who come forward with a 100 million dollars and say we want to build a number of resorts on your land, lease it to us over 100 years, would Maori with customary title and iwi be able to get away with that?

CHRIS Oh yes but they’d be subject to the Resource Management Act and subject to the other if you like general pieces of legislation, it’s not proposed that this would be a sort of a self governing entity once it was established, so any kind of development would be subject to the usual RMA principles.

This part has got a few people talking, but people should note a number of key things. The first is any development could not be done on beaches – only on the foreshore which is the area between high and low tide.

The second is that as there is no right to block access, building a resort would be very very difficult. And thirdly one would still have to pass the RMA hurdle which would be massive if it was proposed for an area of popular frequenting.

The key thing Chris made clear is that Iwi can use customary title for commercial purposes, subject to the RMA. And this is no surprise to those who have followed the issue, as it has always been about commercial development to some degree – back to the original court case.

CHRIS Well there are two classes of minerals I think we have to talk about, because pre 2004 petroleum had been nationalised, in fact was nationalised by the Labour government in 1937, silver and gold and uranium have always been nationalised minerals, so then there are the other minerals, you’re quite right that that is an issue that I imagine folk are going to want to raise with me, and I’m listening to what they say, and I’m also talking with Gerry Brownlee about that issue.

DUNCAN So are you effectively saying here this morning that you perhaps are willing to compromise around that minerals issue because it’s quite important to Maori, well certainly the Maori I’ve spoken to.

CHRIS Oh I think the socalled traditional reserved ones, Gerry’s already said are off the table, I’m prepared to hear what folk have to say in the course of my hui and public meetings, and then I’ll report back to the Cabinet.

DUNCAN So you’re not ruling out a possible compromise there are you, because right now as we look at your proposal it basically repeals and holds on to that, so you’re not ruling out a compromise with iwi after this series of hui?

CHRIS Oh I’m saying that I can rule out petroleum, uranium, silver and gold, I’m prepared to listen to other people on those other minerals.

Ruling things out in advance of consultation tends to be counter-productive. That does not mean the Government has agreed to them. Also worth noting that this is not about minerals in the entire seabed – only in areas where a claim to customary title is accepted.

What would be interesting is what minerals, outside the four excluded ones, are in the seabed?

I spent most of Saturday at the Public ACTA meeting in Wellington, discussing the text of the leaked draft ACTA treaty, and helping formulate what is now known as the Wellington Declaration.

The funniest part of the meeting was hearing from Michael Geist that in the Canadian Parliament that a Canadian Minister said there was no need to officially release the draft text of the ACTA treaty, as there was a leaked copy on Michael’s blogsite.

One shouldn’t have to rely on leaks, to know what is being negotiated.

Some key parts of the Wellington Declaration:

Consistent with the European Parliament’s Resolution of 10 March 2010 on the Transparency and State of Play of the ACTA Negotiations (P7_TA(2010)0058), ACTA should be limited to an Agreement regarding enforcement against counterfeiting (the large scale commercial production of illicit physical goods).

ACTA should not be a backdoor way to rewrite intellectual policy laws.

We recognise that the Internet has enabled creativity and innovation, the sharing of knowledge, citizen engagement and democracy, and is an engine of economic growth and opportunity. This is the result of certain attributes of the Internet: its open protocols and its generativity; the fact that anyone can connect and anyone can build new applications, and find new uses without discrimination. ACTA should preserve these attributes.

I like this clause. We take for granted too often the open nature of the Internet.

We note that the World Intellectual Property Organisation has public, inclusive and transparent processes for negotiating multilateral agreements on (and a committee dedicated to the enforcement of) copyright, trademark and patent rights, and thus we affirm that WIPO is a preferable forum for the negotiation of substantive provisions affecting these matters.

WIPO is far from perfect, but at least it negotiations are public, and often involve stakeholders.

We declare public scrutiny and accountability to be important aspects of life in a free society. We call for full transparency and public scrutiny of the ACTA process including release of the text after each round of negotiations. Governments have been unwilling to respond to specific concerns raised by the public. Public scrutiny will help to ensure the Agreement has no unintended consequences and has maximum positive benefit.

A number of Governments, including New Zealand, have been pushing for more transparency. However it takes only one country to veto the release of the text.

We declare that ACTA must recognise that intermediaries, such as ISPs, web site hosts, and search engines, are central to enabling people to derive the benefits of the Internet.  Their role must be protected and encouraged.

Intermediaries who do not initiate or direct the content on their systems or networks must have the benefit of safe harbours that are not predicated on enforcement obligations designed to address third-party infringement.

ACTA must not mandate secondary liability standards.

The Internet basically stops working if ISPs have secondary liability for what their users do. An ISPs obligation is to obey the law as directed by a competent authority.

We declare that access to the Internet is increasingly necessary for participation in society.

Disconnection, account suspension, or limitation of service, have disproportionately negative consequences for civil rights. ACTA cannot require or allow that it be an acceptable sanction for copyright or trademark infringement.

And this is what the US is pushing for.

We declare that ACTA must provide a high bar for criminal liability. ACTA must not attempt to reframe personal use and private acts to fit a definition of “commercial” infringement.

One proposal in ACTA is to make it a criminal offence to use a camcorder in a movie theatre.

If you support the Wellington Declaration, you can sign your name to it here. Almost 1,000 people have signed it so far, and it will be presented to the actual ACTA negotiators on Tuesday.

Well done to the organisers for a very useful and productive meeting on Saturday.

Some people may think I am anti-copyright, but that is far from the case. I think copyright laws, and other intellectual property laws, are very important to a country and an economy.

However such laws are about a balance between creator and the public. With no such balance, there would be no ability to quote extracts of a written work, to record a TV show off the television, to tape a song off the radio etc.

I do think music companies should be able to take action against people who download music, to avoid paying for it. This is one reason I quite like the new S92A. Under the old Copyright Act, there was no cost effective way to take non-commercial infringers to court. The new S92A allows cases to be heard relatively cheaply by the Copyright Tribunal.

So it is a mistake to portray opponents of the old S92A (or those who scrutinise the ACTA treaty) as opposed to copyright. Sure a few people may fit into that category, but not the vast majority.

The biggest frustration I have is that business models are not changing quickly enough to take account of the Internet, and this is one reason why so many download works for free. I’ll give an example.

At a dinner on Friday night with the organisers of the Public ACTA conference, one of the organisers mentioned to me she had just purchased Leonard Maltin’s “151 Best Movies You Have Never Seen“.

Now most film goers will know who Leonard Maltin is – the God of reviewers. So I thought that sounds like a really good book.

But that then got me thinking about how one would go about seeing those 151 movies. By their nature, they are not top viewing ones, that you could easily pick up at the video store. There is no website in NZ where you could order them from. If you were really dedicated you could spend hours wading through Amazon locating them and pay $6,000 or so to buy them all individually, and wait a month or so for them to arrive. Oh yeah, would also need a cupboard to store them all in.

But in reality, what many people would do if they have that book, is go to a torrent site and search for a torrent of the films listed. Because that is the easiest and quickest  way to do it.

But what if you could buy all 151 movies legally, easily and for an affordable price? Say the books costs you $25, but for an extra $250 you could also buy a 300 GB external hard drive with all 151 moves on it at Whitcoulls or Borders?  Hell, I’d buy that as a xmas present for a loved one, and so would many other people I reckon.

The Herald looks at the UK elections:

Thirteen years of Labour Party rule in Britain has taken its toll. Indisputably, a desire for change is in the air. Yet the outcome of a general election on May 6 is by no means certain. Doubts linger about the capability and substance of the Conservative Party’s 43-year-old leader, David Cameron. Polls show that voters rate the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, more highly on almost all leadership measures. They also suggest that a likely election outcome is that most unwelcome of circumstances, a hung Parliament.

Which is not a big thing in NZ< but still a rare event in the UK.

The Conservatives, however, have been unable to make the most of this most propitious of opportunities. In part, this is because they, like Labour, have been tarred by the ongoing scandal over fraudulent and inflated expenses claims that has encompassed members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The beneficiaries have been minor parties, most notably the Liberal Democrats, led by Nick Clegg. They look most likely to play the kingmaker role in forming the next government if there is a hung Parliament. Part of the price for their support would undoubtedly be moves to terminate the first-past-the-post electoral system in favour of one based on proportional representation.

I believe the Conservatives would look in the first instance to Scottish, Irish and Welsh parties before the Lib Dems.

The Dom Post is cautious on Whanua Ora:

It is hard to be critical of the detail of the Whanau Ora policy. That’s because there is precious little of it, and that is why the scheme should be treated with scepticism.

It is easy to see why the scheme has a superficial appeal. The old saying “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” does not apply to welfare, especially when it comes to Maori. The current system clearly is broken, with a plethora of agencies, a voracious appetite for cash and little sign that it is doing anything to provide long-term cures rather than temporary Band-Aids. Adopting an approach where the needs of the whole family are looked at together makes sense.

However, it is not the concept but the detail which will determine whether Whanau Ora is a success. That detail must focus on accountability and transparency, and on ensuring that Whanau Ora does not become an expensive add-on.

I agree.

The ODT discusses the Catholic Church and child abuse:

It is regrettable that Pope Benedict XVI made no reference in his Easter homily to the sex-abuse scandal that has globally for several decades beset the Roman Catholic Church, for which throughout that period the heirachy has strenuously concealed details from the knowledge of the police, let alone its faithful adherents.

There had existed a reasonable expectation the Pope would make some comment – even apologise for the church’s incompatible behaviour or at least accept personal responsibility as head of the church- but none was forthcoming. …

At Easter, his personal preacher likened the criticism to the “more shameful aspects of antisemitism” – a ludicrous claim for which he later apologised; and the dean of the College of Cardinals asserted that the controversy amounted to petty gossip; others have suggested or implied the whole business is a media “beat-up”, a charge so removed from the truth as to be delusion: it was in fact the print media that exposed the hideous crimes of the past 20 years.

More acceptable might be a public instruction to all bishops to refer allegations of abuse to the secular authorities, such as the police, as soon as they are made.

That would be a very good policy. The Police are the competent authorities to deal with such allegations.

The Dom Post reports:

“Unreasonably” high charges for using mobile phones and mobile broadband overseas could face the regulators’ axe under an OECD proposal.

Mobile network owners pay hefty rates so their customers can use the networks of overseas carriers while travelling, and these fees are usually passed on to the customer.

A report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development proposes several ways to reduce global roaming charges – including regulation of wholesale access charges by governments around the world.

The report urges telcos to better educate customers about roaming charges so as to avoid “bill-shock”.

Wellington businesswoman Liz Price says she was horrified to discover she had been charged $3500 for two hours of internet use while on holiday in Australia.

The charges of $30 a MB are highway robbery, and represent massive profit margins.

Let’s say the cost of international bandwidth is US$1,500 a month for 1 Mb/second. That means it takes 8 seconds to get 1 MB of data, which is then charged to the customer at NZ$30.

US$1,500 a month is US$50 a day. That is a cost of US$2 an hour or NZ$3 an hour.

The cost per minute is 5c so the cost for that 8 seconds of bandwidth is basically NZ1c and you pay NZ$30 for it.

Now of course a pipe is not perfectly used at 100% capacity the entire time, but you get some idea of the massive over-charging in place for international roaming.

TVNZ wants people to to mark on a map where they lost their virginity, and what it was like.

The site is a promo for Go Girls.

I wonder if one could demand under the Official Information Act (which applies to TVNZ) the IP addresses of all those who map their virginity loss!

The Dom Post reports:

Prime Minister John Key will make a surprise visit to the White House on his first official visit to Washington.

Mr Key has been unexpectedly shoe-horned in for a meeting with American Vice-President Joe Biden at the White House tonight New Zealand time.

We must have offended someone.

From the US:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s take-no-prisoners demand for education cuts got him a whole lot more than he bargained for — a death wish.

It was in a controversial e-mail sent by the Bergen County Teachers Union to its members asking that Christie be “taken” by the Lord.

In seven years as the Garden State’s pugnacious U.S. Attorney, Christie got only two death threats — from the bloods and the crips.

It took only three months as governor for an adversary to wish him six feet under.

This makes the NZEI look moderate by comparison!

Now to be fair to the Bergen Union, the reference they made was in the form of a joke, rather than a serious death wish:

The e-mail in question was sent by Bergen County Education Association president Joseph Coppola in the form of a prayer, which said:

“Dear lord,’ this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman, Billy Mays. I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor.”

Now I actually think it is a pretty funny joke, and can relate to it. But I almost never get offended by humour.

However humour is about audience. A joke like that is fine told verbally between mates, or even on a jokes website or a blog.

Deciding to put it in a union newsletter, when you are involved in a bitter dispute with the butt of the joke, is stupid. It turns the humour into perceived malice.

John Tamihere writes in the Sunday News:

There are over 700,000 New Zealanders who have been convicted of drink driving. This is a huge number and while drinking habits and driving habits have changed considerably in the past 30 years we must move to ensure not just the safety of our young, predominantly male drivers, who drink but more particularly we must also protect the innocent driver who often gets caught up in accidents created by young drink drivers. …

It does not matter whether we lower the breath alcohol level, any drink before driving must be met with a severe penalty.

As a consequence, it is pointless having any benchmark that one might risk endeavouring to reach.

It’s better to put all risk out of the way and make it a general rule that any consumption of alcohol means it is illegal to drive a vehicle.

I am surprised John wrote that column without mentioning he has four convictions for drink driving. Now the last one was in 1995, and I don’t mention this to beat up on him. But his column could have been far more powerful if he had mentioned his own past, and how he has learnt the hard way that you shouldn’t drink and drive.

Matt McCarten in the HoS:

The arguments for Whanau Ora are compelling. A one-stop shop to help struggling families from an array of social services is hard to argue against.

Having a family advocate to liaise between all the players is a creative idea.

The Act Party came up with a similar idea several years ago but it was widely attacked by those of us on the left as a Trojan horse for privatisation. Which it was.

Turia’s version is softer and gentler, but the intention to contract out the management of social services to private providers will ring alarm bells for the left.

The right knows that once the precedent is set, it could be extended to education, justice and other services that private contractors can make a good living from.

Although it’s a Maori programme for Maori families, potentially it will be a help to every family, whatever their ethnicity.

It is difficult for Labour to argue against a Maori initiative given that, after 75 years of a welfare state, Maori still rank at the bottom of nearly every single social statistic. Whoever’s fault it is, something new must be tried.

That last paragraph is a strong one.

Never thought one would see McCarten argue for greater private sector involvement!

The HoS reports:

Blondes are stereotyped as attractive airheads, but latest research shows they are also wealthier than other women.

Even when variables such as education and height were considered, the results remained the same – light-haired women earned 7 per cent more and married richer men than their darker-haired counterparts.

No surprise that blondes marry richer, but interesting they earn more money in jobs.

The Queensland University study, which surveyed 13,000 women, concluded no other hair colour had this effect.

At least Red Heads are not paid less!

President of the International Blondes Association, Olga Uskova, says blondes are more successful because they take better care of their looks.

“Also, when a blonde makes a mistake at work she just has to say, ‘oh, I’m such a blonde’ and everyone forgives her.”

There is an International Blondes Association?

So there is – website here.

And this is the President Olga Uskova, quoted above.

TV3 reports:

A man has been tasered and arrested after setting fire to a house and throwing accelerant over police in the Auckland suburb of Glenfield today.

Police were called to the house about midday after reports of the man, a family member, damaging the building and vehicles with a pole. When they arrived, they saw him assaulting family members, having set fires inside the house and in the backyard, senior sergeant Mark Fergus said.

“When police staff approached the male, he began spreading accelerant around the home and threw accelerant over police. He then ran back inside the house.”

Other family members were taken from the house and a police cordon set up with the man inside.

Shortly after, the man came out of the house with a lighter in his hand which he refused to put down. He was tasered when he moved away from the accelerant, and arrested.

Think of how this would have ended without a taser.

Could well have had one or more people set alight.

Or the man shot dead.

The availability of the taser helped resolve the situation with no loss of life.

Yet the Greens still oppose them.

John Roughan writes in the Herald:

Peter Bethune mortgaged his house to build himself the boat of his imagination, a weird biofuelled motor trimaran, and set out to race around the world in it a few years ago. That adventure ended when his craft collided with a fishing skiff of Guatemala and a fisherman was killed. He was detained by Guatemalan authorities but not charged and was allowed to leave after paying compensation to the dead man’s family.

So Bethune has had a collision before, and was liable for a man’s death to the extent he was obliged to pay compensation for the death.

If someone wants to hurtle around a working ship with the expressed intention of getting in the way of its operations I don’t have much difficulty deciding where fault lies.

Sea Shepherd have had eight collisions with other boats. As far as i know the Japanenese whalers have never ever collided with another boat – except Sea Shepherd ones.

Sea Shepherd has done stuff like stick 100 tonnes of concrete on their bow to enable it to ran and disable other ships. They have even laid mines three times on ships to sink them. They throw acid at crew members.They have fired guns at police.

Even Greenpeace regard them as violent nutters. Before he became their biggest fan in Opposition, even Chris Carter denounced them:

New Zealand Conservation Minister Chris Carter criticized Sea Shepherd as irresponsible for using tactics such as running into the other vessel with a “can opener” device, a seven-foot steel blade on the starboard bow designed to damage the hull of an enemy ship

While today Carter says:

He has a few sympathisers in this country. Labour MPs like Chris Carter call him a “great New Zealander”

Such consistency.

In this case Bethune is probably content to stay where he is for a while, drawing continuing attention for his cause. Back here, his family may be missing him but they are accustomed to long absences. When he got himself taken by the whaler his wife Sharyn said: “Nothing really surprises us these days.” She estimated that over the past five years he had been home for a total of one.

Puts into context the newspaper stories about how upset his family were that he would not be there for a child’s birthday.

Hat Tip: Keeping Stock

The Herald welcomes the legal aid changes:

Criminal defence lawyers have escaped remarkably unscathed by the damning report they received from a ministerial inquiry into legal aid last year. Decisions announced by the Justice Minister, Simon Power, this week will impose requirements on publicly financed lawyers that are no more than reasonable and long overdue. …

It will be interesting to see how well a full-fledged Public Defender Service competes with the car-boot brigade. Mr Power has been advised that the costs of setting up the service can be recovered in lower operating costs. It is hard to believe lawyers working in public service conditions can match the efficiencies of those who work with low overheads and greater mobility, but we may see.

The difference may be in the remuneration lawyers at the PDS get, compared to the income a car boot lawyer can make from legal aid.

The Press is concerned over the proposed Fijian media controls:

The freedom of the media clearly remains a totally alien and undesirable concept for Fiji’s self-appointed leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama. …

The decree, to be enforced by a media authority appointed by the regime, would provide for fines of NZ$344,000 for news organisations that failed to comply with it.

Individual journalists whose work was deemed to be critical of Bainimarama’s regime would face fines of up to NZ$69,000, which would be crippling in Fiji, and a possible five-year prison term. To ensure the authorities knew who had written a story, it would also be an offence not to identify the journalist concerned.

And

The regime claims its decree is intended to encourage responsible journalism, but nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, it aims to ensure the news media cannot perform its democratic role of holding Bainimarama’s unsavoury government to account and promoting free and frank debate on issues of public interest.

Absolutely. I want to believe that the Commodore has a plan to put in place a non race based constitution, and return to democratic elections in 2014. But his actions point towards an ongoing dictatorship.

The Dom Post focuses on the Princess Ashika ferry tragedy:

The report of the Tongan royal commission of inquiry into the sinking of the ferry Princess Ashika has laid bare a system of government as riddled with flaws as the ship was with rust – and just as dangerous. …

However, it is up to the king to deal with the systemic ones that allowed people such as Lord Dalgety QC (the title is Tongan), now resigned transport minister Paul Karalus and Prime Minister Feleti Sevele into pivotal roles in his kingdom. The report notes that Lord Dalgety, the Shipping Corporation of Polynesia company secretary, “clearly lacks integrity and honesty, even when giving evidence before a royal commission” and that “he was not a fit and proper person to be a company secretary of any company in Tonga”.

I have some friends who have lived in Tonga. They alerted me to the vileness of Lord Dalgety some time ago, and what I have seen of him on television reinforces their view that he is a deeply corrupt and racist individual. His arrest was a very good thing. While I don’t condone Wikipedia vandalism, I did have to laugh at the edit done to his Wikipedia profile which said:

On February 26 Lord Dalgety, the Secretary of the Shipping Corporation of Polynesia Ltd, gained an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s lowest form of life

Back to the editorial:

What must not be forgotten in all this is that 74 people drowned. No women or children survived. The impact in a country the size of Tonga is, as commentator Josephine Latu has pointed out, the equivalent of 3200 New Zealanders dying. The Princess Ashika tragedy was a scandal that cannot be repeated.

Absolutely. And may the tragedy bring about some democratic reform.

The ODT talks foreshore & seabed:

Just let us pause for a moment: if the legal status of the foreshore and seabed is to be “public domain”, then who owns it, and therefore can claim the rights and benefits of ownership?

Will Maori?

Will Mr and Mrs Joe Bloggs?

Will the Crown – the obvious choice?

On the basis of the options paper published by the Government last week, in which “public domain” is the Government’s preferred choice, the issue of ownership most likely will be determined in the long term by the courts, piece by piece, over time.

Well yes courts do determine rights. The ODT editorial writer (whom I suspect is the former Labour Government Press Secretary) presumably prefers the status quo where the right to test your rights in court was extinguished.