Kiwiblog

From their latest newsletter:

The NZPF took the approach of engaging with the Minister to find a solution including a complete review of the National Standards system in partnership with the sector. Our preference remains still to work with the Minister and sector but until there is a commitment to work in a true and meaningful partnership, we can’t, in good faith engage with her. We do however leave the door open if the Minister should ever want to enter a partnership with us and the sector in the future. But we can’t just wait, doing nothing.

This is hilarious. Do you know why? The NZPF is refusing to actually detail their concerns about the standards. They keep saying they are flawed, but have declined every request to detail how exactly they are flawed. They say they will not detail the flaws, unless the Government agrees in advance to suspend the standards.

Their idea of a partnership, seems akin to a bank robber asking the bank manager for a partnership – hand over all your cash and then we will lower our weapon.

During last weekend’s executive meeting it passed a motion in respect of our moral obligation to our children which read NZPF encourages schools to take a principled stance on National Standards until such time as concerns are successfully resolved. By ‘principled stance’ the executive means making decisions and taking actions in the very best interests of the children of New Zealand and these may include moral and ethical considerations.

A principled stand – ha ha ha ha. And “best interests of the children of NZ” – they should write comedy. They are going to disrupt as many schools as possible to prevent parents from knowing how their kids are doing against a national standard, and claim this is to protect the children. My God.

National Standards are the most serious issue that the NZPF has encountered in its 27 year history. From many quarters there are warnings about hurtling down this path.

The most serious issue? Incredible. They are in fact a minor additional requirement, that school reports have an extra page where current reports are moderated so they can be measured against a national benchmark.

Downstage’s The December Brother was an eclectic mix of performances. There were three productions in one, or four if you include the ad at the beginning.

The evening started with an actor driving a car, and then you realise it is two actors – one is a sort of disembodied head. You see the head yawning and blinking and start to think this resembles an LTSA road safety ad. And in fact it turns out it was a road safety ad – a live performance one. Quite a novel approach, and did make an impact.

The first performance was about a woman finding out she was adopted and tracking down her adopted parents, and sort of linked to the third performance which was about finding out your long lost relatives are – well your step-brother is awaiting trial for killing your birth mother.

They were not particularly funny performances (with the exception of the scene with the aunt, which was slapstick funny), but were meant to be more dramatic, than humourous. I found them pretty good, but they went on a bit long. I doubt I would have gone to see them by themselves.

But the middle performance was the part I went for, and it was gold. It was a reconstruction of the Bain family murders, first showing how David would have done it, and then showing how Robin would have done it.

You could hear a pin drop during these scenes, and I found them quite emotional – the reconstruction of the poor kids getting shot, in some cases begging for their lives.

As for who did it, I think Danyl McL sums it up best:

They’re pretty even-handed; they don’t take sides and the actors make great choices to render both David and Robin’s actions believable. But sitting there watching while Robin Bain enters his house, takes off all his clothes, puts David’s clothes on, walks around the house and kills his family then takes David’s clothes off again, puts them in the washing machine, walks back through the house naked, puts his own clothes on and then commits suicide – let’s just say it removes any lingering doubts.

I actually had to stop myself laughing at one part, just at the sheer implausibility of the Robin did it scenario being played out in front of me. But despite that, it does have dramatic tension.

They used the same cast of four throughout, and they all performed well. Nikki McDonnell, as the adopted Rebecca was especially good I thought.

Overall was a good performance. However I never worked out what the hundreds of bottles on the stage for the third production represented. It looked like the world’s largest urine collection.

NZPA report:

Parliament has started digitising journals dating back to the 1860s, with the information to be made available online.

The project, to be launched in Parliament by Speaker Lockwood Smith today, involves 24 volumes of the historic Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (A to J), covering the 1860s and 1870s.

The pilot volumes include 27,219 pages, 1807 reports and 158 foldouts comprising maps, plans and tables, and will be searchable online.

Very very cool. History should be accessible, and this will make it more so.

The journals cover a significant period of history including the land wars and confiscation of land, the discovery of gold and influx of migrants, Premier Sir Julius Vogel’s public works and immigration programme involving a mass government-assisted immigration scheme and the building of railways and roads, and the abolition of the provinces and strengthening of central government.

Parliament’s historian Dr John Martin said the volumes were “hidden treasures”. In all, 600 volumes will eventually be digitised, with progress dependent on funding availability.

Just get rid of a couple of MPs to pay for it

The Dom Post reports:

Thousands of secondary school teachers are preparing to strike after rejecting the Government’s pay offer.

Schools will close for half a day next week to allow more than 18,000 teachers to attend special meetings to vote on strike action. …

The PPTA is seeking a 4 per cent pay rise. It also wants an extra 1 per cent KiwiSaver employer contribution, laptops, immunisation against contagious diseases, and wants class sizes capped at 30 pupils, or 24 in classes with hazards such as woodwork, and some science classes.

Why stop there? Why not also demand company cars?

The sad thing is that good teachers are underpaid. Top teachers should be getting paid around $100,000 or more – and they are worth it.

But the PPTA refuses to consider performance pay, so the best teachers can be paid what they are worth. They insist that the worst teachers are paid the same as the best.

I am curious as to why the media think it is their job to try and help Winston Peters back into Parliament, just because it means that they get more interesting stories.

What I mean, is the media overkill that reports almost every utterance from Winston. Every speech to a room of oldies or students results in stories. An off the cuff comment about how he is not ruling out Helensville gets reported breathlessly on TV as a major story. Hello – what is news worthy about a guy who had a 30 year old beat him by 10,000 votes in his own former seat, speculate he may stand in a seat where the majority is 20,000 and he would be lucky to get his deposit back.

I do not advocate that the media should never report Winston. Of course not. If there is genuine judgement that something significant is said, they should consider it on the merits. But they give Winston free publicity massively in excess of what they give any other politician in his situation. I suspect they give him more publicity for one of his speeches to Grey Power, than they do to the Leaders of parties in Parliament such as the Maori Party.

On the average of the last polls by the three main public pollsters, NZ First is at 1.9% average. So he leads a party that is polling at under 2%, and got 4% at the last election.

I’ve tried to think of other party leaders in such situations, to compare the massively publicity Peters gets, against what they got. Perhaps a comparison could be the Alliance post 2002. But to be fair they only got 1.3% in the 2002 election.

The best comparison is the Christian Coalition post 1996. In 1996 they got 4.3% – a bit more than Winston’s 4.1% in 2008. So one would expect Winston to get as much coverage as they gave Graham Capill when he made a speech or press release, in 1997.

The only good thing about the leak of the 80 page “note” by Heather Roy is it has made people in the party realise how dire their situation is, and has prompted Heather to pledge to remain an ACT MP, and work towards rebuilding a relationship with Rodney Hide – and vice-versa.

I doubt I am the only person who is saddened by the considerable enmity that has built up between two MPs I have liked and respected.

The release of the “note” is very damaging to ACT, and at a time when they should be well above 5% due to National’s centrist agenda, they will remain down in the polls, as voters won’t support a party that is so caught up in infighting. Voters rightly think why should we trust a party to run the country, when they can’t even run their own party.

The number of people who had access to Heather’s “note” must be incredibly limited, and Heather may wish to consider the motivations of the person who leaked it. At a minimum it is someone who puts their own interests about that of their party’s.

There is also the issue of the defence report, as covered by NZPA:

In Parliament, Labour MP Trevor Mallard said Mr Hide gave the report to Mr Kearney, possibly through a staff member.

“Nick Kearney, who until last night was a member of the ACT board, has now resigned from the ACT board because he has been caught trying to give New Zealand defence assessment papers to a blogger,” he said. …

Mr Kearney told NZPA he was not given a copy of the report, had never seen it and did not know what it contained.

The allegation he was given the report was made by a fellow board member who was a supporter of Mrs Roy, he said.

The allegation was made during a confidential board meeting discussion, he said.

“It staggered me, it was jaw-dropping, and I said ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’,” Mr Kearney said.

I don’t have first hand knowledge on this allegation, but I will say this – I trust the word of Nick Kearney, and would be amazed if he has had a copy of the report, when he says he has never seen it.

While on the other hand, if Trevor told me about gravity, I’d still want to throw a ball up in the air to verify what he said.

The NZ Open Source Awards 2010 have opened for nominations, They can be for:

• the contributions of New Zealanders to free and open source projects and free and open source philosophy
• exemplary use of free and open source by New Zealand organisations.

Categories include:

1. Open Source Use in Government
2. Open Source Use in Business
3. Open Source Use in Education
4. Open Source Use in the Arts
5. Open Source Software Project
6. Open Source Contributor
7. Open Source Advocate
8. Open Source People’s Choice Award

Nominations close on 15 September 2010.

I am a big fan of open source software – not because of the often lower cost, but because it leads to such great innovation when people from all over the world are free to take existing software and modify it.

I’m proud to be one of the judges for the 2010 awards, so am looking forward to seeing the entries come in.

The Dom Post reports:

The Government is about to be hit by an advertising campaign modelled on the iwi/Kiwi National Party billboards that stirred racial tensions in the 2005 election.

Now Prime Minister John Key and the National Party are the butt of the campaign being mounted by the Coastal Coalition, a group formed out of concern the Government’s move to change the Foreshore and Seabed Act may give control of beaches to Maori.

Coalition organiser Hugh Barr, secretary of the Outdoor Recreation Association, said the campaign was set to be launched with its first six-metre-wide billboard going up in Wellington today.

The association was going to put up as many billboards as it could afford with money raised from the 8000 people who had signed up to the coalition’s website, he said. Supporters included former ACT deputy leader Muriel Newman and former National Party members, chambers of commerce and boating, fishing and marine charter groups..

The signs were designed by advertising executive John Ansell, who produced the hard-hitting billboards for National Party leader Don Brash in the 2005 election campaign.

Somehow I suspect these billboards will not be condemned by most of the left, as the Iwi/Kiwi ones were.

I’m not sure which billboard designs they finally went with, but John Ansell blogged the designs under consideration, such as:

They will certainly be noticed.

Would have been 15 but for Craig Foss and his bloody pets! Quiz is here. 52 seconds.

The Herald reports:

Labour MP David Shearer, who ran against Boscawen in Mt Albert, said he had a reputation for “relentless, single-minded determination”.

“He’s a genuinely straight up guy, a hard worker, and he’s bloody relentless and stays on message.

“He has a slight eccentric side to him, not in a bad way.”

Labour’s Lianne Dalziel, who sits with him on the commerce select committee, said he was a good fit for his new roles as Consumer Affairs Minister and Associate Commerce Minister.

“He will put his heart and soul into it, and doesn’t kowtow to the party line on a lot of issues. He knows we need regulation in financial circles to protect people, so he is not [an Act] purist.

“He’s been a tireless advocate for consumers who has really championed causes around victims of finance company failures.”

Good on David and Lianne for being willing to praise an opponent.

The Herald reports:

Relations between former Act deputy Heather Roy and leader Rodney Hide had become so bad that she complained to Ministerial Services that he breached security when he took a piece of paper relating to her defence portfolio from her office.

What the hell was Heather thinking, if this story is true. If you have an issue with something your party leader has done, you talk to them about it – you have to be mad to complain to Ministerial Services about your leader and think you can possibly maintain a working relationship.

Also worth reading is John Armstrong’s column, where to put it mildly John is unimpressed that ACT won’t say why Roy got sacked. An extract:

The press conference held at Parliament early this afternoon featuring Act leader Rodney Hide, the party’s new deputy leader, John Boscawen, and party president Michael Crozier was little short of a disgrace. …

Act is the one party which bases its sales pitch on the notion of accountability. Not a skerrick of that concept was apparent during the 20 minutes or so that Rodney Hide and then Boscawen repeatedly refused to utter one word which might have added up to an explanation as to why Heather Roy had been dumped as the party’s deputy.

If the reasons is simply that the relationship with the Leader was too strained to be effective, then they should be upfront on that.

If you thought the Electoral Finance Act was bad enough, it is even worse in Brazil:

Brazilian TV and radio broadcasters are legally forbidden from making fun of candidates ahead of the nation’s October 3 election.

With the first wave of on-air political adverts starting today, Brazil’s comedians and satirists are planning to fight for their right to ridicule with protests in Rio de Janeiro and other cities next Monday.

They call the political anti-joking law – which prohibits ridiculing candidates in the three months before elections – a draconian relic of Brazil’s dictatorship era that threatens free speech and is a blight on the reputation of Latin America’s largest nation.

But believe it or not some politicians defend it:

Proponents of the restrictions say they keep candidates from being portrayed unfairly, help ensure a level playing field and encourage candour by candidates.

Which party in New Zealand would be most likely to support such a law I wonder?

The effects of such a law in New Zealand would be fascinating I suspect Jane Clifton and Claire Trevett would end up sharing a jail cell

Danyl at the Dim Post would be in solitary confinement.

Whale Oil blogs:

Ok it is time for all those out there who sup­port my stance on name sup­pres­sion to assist with the legal bills. I appre­ci­ate the months of loyal sup­port as I await the slow wheels of our Jus­tice sys­tem to turn. Now I need your cash sup­port, no mat­ter the size, every bit helps, to help with the fight.

It is time to ban the Burqa of our Legal Sys­tem – Stop Pedos and Sex Offend­ers from hid­ing under the burqa.

In just 8 days (25 August) I appear in the Auck­land Dis­trict Court to defend these charges.

I need help to pay the legal bills. The next few days are hec­tic as I pre­pare my defence with my lawyer Gre­gory Thwaite.

My Kiwibank account num­ber, opened this morn­ing for dona­tions is 38–9010-0764240–01, you can also use the online Chipin wid­get below or on the side bar.

Any sur­plus funds raised will be donated equally between the RSA Wel­fare Fund and the Ex-Vietnam Ser­vices Asso­ci­a­tion, in hon­our of those who fought for our rights to free­dom of speech.

I thank you all in advance for your sup­port. Hope­fully I will see you in court as well.

It would be great if someone in the media applied to live webcast the court proceedings. I think a lot of people will be interested in the case.

Saunders Unsworth had their annual bash last night. I timed my holiday so I would be back in time for it!

Was arguably the most well attended to date. I think I counted around 70 MPs there at one stage or another, and well over 400 all up. As always met a few new interesting people, had some interesting chats (which always remain off the blog) across the political spectrum, and ended up out until rather late.

Not sure exactly when but a bit before midnight around 15 or so of us headed to Motel to carry on the conversation and the hospitality. Was a good choice of venue and we carried on there until the last of us left at around 3 am. A quick purchase of some food on Courtney Place and finally got home around 3.30 am.

For once jet lag was my friend, and I wasn’t sleepy at 3.30 am, so ended up writing up a couple of client reports from 4 am to 7 am! Then some blogging. Am starting to get tired now so hope to have a snooze this afternoon, before I head out to dinner and Downstage this afternoon.

The Herald reports:

Georgina Beyer says she is ‘left with nothing’ after death of campaign funder …

“There’s not a lot of well-paid employment around in Wairarapa, and I would want more than the 500 bucks a week I was on at Michael Hill.

“It’s an awful feeling that the only thing you’re skilled at doing is politics and other than that arena, it’s not really required anywhere else.”

Indeed. This is why it is good to develop some private sector skills before entering Parliament.

Ms Beyer was a Labour MP from 1999 to 2007 after serving as Mayor of Carterton for seven years.

“I should never have left local government in the first place. I like local government very, very much. Parliament was really an interruption.”

She was disappointed to leave Parliament without a political appointment, and at times had felt disillusioned during her three-year hiatus.

The sense of entitlement is staggering.

The Herald reports:

MPs given a conscience vote on the legal drinking age would probably allow 18-year-olds into bars and pubs but return the off-licence purchase age to 20. …

Asked how they intended to vote on the alcohol purchase age, many MPs, including Mr Key and Opposition leader Phil Goff, said they were likely to vote for a split age which would keep the purchase age on licensed premises at 18, but raise the purchase age at liquor stores, supermarkets and other off-licence premises to 20.

This would be a better outcome that having the age for both at 20, but it would still be a flawed decision which will be not just ineffective, but possibly counter-productive.

Mr Goff also said it would be up to each Labour MP how they voted on the drinking age, but he supported a split age because it was better to have 18 and 19-year-olds drinking under supervision rather “than out of the back of a car in a reserve somewhere”.

The reality is this is not the choice for 18 and 19 year olds. The ones who drink in the backs of cars are the 16 and 17 year old, or even younger.

What 18 and 19 year olds do is they have a few drinks at home, before heading into the bars around midnight. And it is naive to think that they will not access alcohol to drink at home, and only drink when out in bars.

Even worse, a split age may actually work against engendering the culture change we need to change drinking habits amongst under 18 year olds.

Culture change is difficult, but not impossible. An example of a successful one is around youth drink driving. 30 years ago people would boast about driving smashed. Today the response from most young people to a revelation that a mate drove while pissed is to abuse the crap out of them for being a moron and risking lives. Drink driving has largely become uncool.

Now what we need is to make it uncool to supply alcohol to minors uner the age of 18. At present this is not even illegal. We need to both make it an offence to supply alcohol to under 18 year olds, but also make it very uncool to do so – to point out all the deaths that have occured from 16 and 17 year olds etc who drink themselves to death.

But this is where the problem occurs if you have a split age, with an age of 20 needed for off licenses. You see while I think you can get a culture change to make it uncool to supply alcohol to 16 and 17 year olds, there is no way NZers will buy into a culture of not allowing a 19 year old to buy a bottle of wine or a sixpack of beer. There is no way 20 year olds will feel some sort of moral obligation not to pass on alcohol to a 19 year old who has been voting, working etc for a couple of years.

However if you keep the age at 18, I think one can work towards a culture where 18, 19 and 20 year olds can be taught it is wrong to allow 16 and 17 year olds alcohol, and start to make it “uncool” as has happened with drink driving.

So I would urge those MPs who think 18/20 split age is a smart compromise, to consider what messages it will be sending out to young people.

No Right Turn decides to lie and smear:

In September 2008, John Boscawen donated $100,000 to the ACT Party. In exchange, he got a high list ranking, leading to an MP’s salary of $131,000 a year plus expenses. And now with the overthrow of Deputy Leader Heather Roy, he looks likely to turn that into a Ministerial position paying $204,300.

Looks like Boscawen made a pretty good investment.

What a disgusting post, which he won’t even allow comments on.

First of all, it is well known that John Boscawen has had a successful career in business. His dad was a school teacher and he went to Otahuhu College, so we are not talking inherited wealth. But John is now a multi-millionaire, and to suggest he entered politics to gain a salary of $131,000 or even $204,000 a year is ridicolous – I doubt that is even close to the interest he makes on his investments. Actually it is just a nasty malicious smear.

Secondly John’s donation was made on 26 September 2008. The ACT party list was announced on 20 August 2008, so Idiot/Savant is just telling lies to support his smear when he claims he got his high list ranking in exchange for his donation.

The reality is that Idiot/Savant reveals more about himself, than John Boscawen, with his blog post.He can’t imagine someone not motivated by money – which reflects on him more than he realises. In his world, you can’t donate a large amount of money to something just because you believe in a cause.

I’ve been reading a book called The Spirit Level Delusion: Fact-checking the Left’s New Theory of Everything, and have been meaning to blog its wonderful comprehensive fisking of The Spirit Level.

But Not PC has done most of this for me in this post:

The authors of the British book The Spirit Level have a political agenda, and they’ve got it talked about everywhere. Even here. The NZ Labour MPs’ blog Red Alert for example is so excited it even has a ‘Spirit Level’ “tag”, and breathless comments from the likes of Grant Robertson that “These people’s work can not be dismissed.” And Colin James, the commentator on the tired and the bleeding obvious, wonders if the 300-page tome might not become  “a sort of guidebook for the next Labour ministry,” should there be one.

So what’s their work, and why are Grant Robertson and his comrades so excited about it? It’s a “revolutionary” thesis overturning all previous research: that societies with more “equal” incomes do better than those that don’t.

So how did they do what no other researchers before them have managed to do? Simple, They fudged the figures.

First we get the official graph to prove their thesis:

Looks compelling doesn’t it.

But they left off countries that don’t fit their thesis such as Hong Kong, South Korea and the Czech Republic. Add them in and use the official stats from the UN and:

A remarkable change.

The Eagle’s Nest, or Kehlsteinhaus, is a chalet on a mountain peak near Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. Only 30 kms or so from Salzburg. You don’t even realise you have crossed into another country unless you see the discrete sign.

It is famous for having been gifted to Hitler as a 50th birthday present. After the war there was a big debate about whether it should be destroyed, as happened to most buildings associated with the regime. They decided in the end not to destroy it, partly because in fact Hitler almost never went there.

It is important to stress that the facility is in no way a monument to the Nazis. On the contrary, all the books about the site talk about the 12 years of Nazi rule as a blight on Germany’s reputation etc.

The building and road were constructed in 1938. The 4 metre wide road was blasted out of nothing and is basically one lane, so you can only go up in special buses. They take you to the tunnel you can see above. You then go 100 metres or so into the tunnel, and a lift takes you up 124 metres into the chalet, which is now a restaurant.

There are spectacular views from the location. With the lack of public access, it would have been very secluded. One a fine day you can see up to 200 kms away.

A couple enjoying the breath taking views.

The chalet, as seen from the lookout just above it.

Up on the lookout peak.

I’m only a couple of metres away from sheer cliff.

Another view from the chalet.

I discovered that rather than that the lift back down, you could walk back to the carpark. Was a lovely walk, except for the fact I brushed my arm against some stinging nettle.

National has just announced:

As a caucus they agreed to:

• A party vote on the alcohol law reform package, which is due for its first reading before the end of the year.
• A conscience vote on the alcohol purchase age.
• A party vote on all transport legislation designed to reduce the impact of drink driving on our roads.

I am glad National will allow MPs to debate and vote on the issue of the purchase age based on their genuine views of what will be best for New Zealand.

The Speaker has ruled that for parliamentary purposes, Chris Carter is now an independent MP.

Once he returns to Parliament, it will be interesting to see if he offers his proxy vote to the Labour Whips or not – and will they accept if he does.

John Drinnan writes:

Radio New Zealand faces a big makeover next year with the Government expected to merge the public radio operation with non-commercial TVNZ 7.

The plan is to create a new public broadcasting institution. Labour is understood to be broadly behind the merger.

Such a move is being challenged by TVNZ, which wants to keep government funding within its otherwise commercial focus. But surprisingly the biggest sceptics are within RNZ management.

A merger would mean a revamp of RNZ which has been caught in the cross-fire with Government demands that it works within existing budgets.

It would require the transfer of some TVNZ staff, and possible pay rises for some at RNZ, sources say. The new body would provide both radio and TV, though it is understood the Government is not yet convinced TVNZ should not be allowed to continue to provide some TVNZ 7 content.

A combined radio and TV operation makes sense, removing public service from the increasingly commercial focus of TVNZ while injecting fresh energy into RNZ.

I have been advocating this for well over a year. It is good to see both the Government, and Labour, looking favourably on doing this.

We spend a fairly large amount of money on public broadcasting – RNZ, NZ on Air, Maori TV, TVNZ 7. If you combine it all together you have the ability to have a pretty good budget for a combined public broadcaster. I recognize Maori TV won’t merge in at this stage, but no reason they can’t become a semi-autonomous channel within say the NZ Broadcasting Service?

Once the public broadcaster is established, I’d look favourably at floating some or all of TVNZ. It is effectively a fully commercial company and is not a public broadcaster. Radio NZ is. TVNZ 7 is. TVNZ as a whole is not.

Colin Espiner blogs:

I reckon we should have a mini general election later this year.

Just think, why wait for next year? And why should those Aussie have all the fun? With the decision by Winnie Laban to head for a nice safe post in academia, the way is open for Chris Carter and Jim Anderton to call by-elections in their own electorates, too.

We could have a Super Tuesday-style tri-series, with three by-elections all on the same day. That would save the taxpayer money, and spark a lot of interest in politics leading up to the general election. It’d also be a sort of dry run for Phil Goff, too, and would allow his colleagues a better chance to assess his chances of winning – or in the immortal words of Don Brash, to lose less badly – the general election.

There’s other advantages to a Super Saturday. With Carter being an Auckland MP, Laban a Wellingtonian and Anderton from Christchurch, we’ve got the majority of the country covered, so there’d be interest from national media across the board.

Add on George Hawkins also, for four by-elections in one day.

I think Labour should go for it.