Kiwiblog

I’ve almost lost track of the fake statements made by Trevor on Red Alert. Most I ignore, but this one is worth exposing.

Trevor blogged:

John Key said he helped arrange the meeting between Julia Gillard and Phil Goff.

Nonsense.

Arranged through Labour Party contacts. Some of us have known her since before she was a Minister.

Now one should always be careful when Trevor does supply a reference and a quote. Unlike Trevor, we will go to a reliable source – NZPA. Their report says:

Mr Key said he was relaxed about it.

“I mean he rang me on Sunday to tell me he was going. Normally the leader of the Opposition has to write and I certainly did that when I was the leader of the Opposition, but I also saw John Howard when I was leader of the Opposition and he was prime minister so look, at the end of the day, I’m fine with it. I’ll be seeing Julia Gillard in Vietnam in the weekend.”

Mr Key said he offered the assistance of New Zealand diplomats in Australia and would have offered further support if Mr Goff had written to him earlier.

So Key in no way claimed he he helped arrange it. He offered assistance – as one would hope he would.

“I for one don’t think Phil Goff is going to go to Australia and bag New Zealand. He’s been a long standing foreign minister, he’s a long-standing politician, so I don’t think we should be too bent out of shape about it. I’m not.”

Which is a nice change from a former PM who used to rant about treason when Opposition MPs met overseas leaders, and said things she disagreed with.

Asked if it was appropriate for the Australian administration to see the Labour leader before the Prime Minister Mr Key said it was up to them.

“I don’t care about it either way, I’ll see her at the end of the week.”

He disagreed he had been outmanouevred.

My God if Labour are trying to talk this up as some sort of tactical victory, they really are desperate. Opposition Leaders have more flexible schedules than PMs. Still, it beats talking about the latest polls.

I’m quick to point out stories where I think there is something wrong with them, and generally can be quite critical of aspects of our media.

I am not always so quick to point out great examples of journalism, and I should – as we do still have good stories being broken by good journalists.

The journalist who wins my inaugural Journalist of the Month award is Matt Nippert from NBR. His investigations and reports into South Canterbury Finance have been superb – so good even the SFO seems to have acted on them.

The latest NBR story had me stunned – about how Allan Hubbard signed other people’s name on official documents. Now he had power of attorney for them, but instead of signing his name and stating he was acting for them, he signed their name.

And of course the story about the retired freezing worker who owned the Hilton or Hyatt. So good, you’d almost think it was made up – but it wasn’t.

Many Wellingtonians saw these signs over Labour Weekend. I thought how nice it is that the Police are so proud about meeting their diversity targets

For the first time, 538 are forecasting that the Republicans will pick up more than 50 seats in the mid terms next week.

That is only the mid point of their forecasts. One thing which makes them a good site is they give probabilities for different scenarios. They say there is still a 20% chance the Republicans will win fewer than 39 seats and the Democrats retain a majority.

However there is also a 30% chance the Republicans win 60 or more seats – beating the 54 seat pick-up of 1994.

15 Democrat-held seats are forecast to be at least 90% likely to go Republican, and 1 Republican-held seat to go Democrat for a net gain of 14.

A further 10 seats are forecast to be at least 80% likely to go Republican, and 1 the other way, for a cumulative net gain of 23.

At 70% you add on another another 14 seats for a cumulative gain of 37. And another 9 at over 60% for a cumulative gain of 46. So for the Democrats to keep the majority, at least seven seats deemed 60% or more likely to fall, have to be retained.

At 50% you add 8 more on to take the total to 54. That is not a 50% chance of winning 54 net seats but 54 net seats which have a 50% or greater chance of swapping hands.

If in the final week, it gets even better for the Republicans, how big could the landslide get? Those above 40% are seven seats taking it to 61, a further six above 30% to 67 and a further 9 over 20% to 76. The remaining seats are not thought to be contestable.

This is the first time 538 has forecast House as well as Senate races. It will be interested to see how well they do. I’ll take another look at their model on election eve.

The Dom Post editorial:

That facility – jointly owned by Greater Wellington and Manawatu-Whanganui regional councils – revealed this month that a study it commissioned from economic forecaster Berl shows it contributes close to $2 billion a year to the regional economy.

Of that $2b, the report says, half comes from core port operations or the part of the business that, in 2009-10, included 46 cruise ships tying up alongside 450,000 tonnes of logs for export, the importing of 15,000 vehicles and the handling of the equivalent of 100,000 containers. That side of the business is steady.

I’d like the port to move. Not only is a terrible eyesore compared to the rest of the waterfront, but the land it is on would be terrific for cafes, bars, apartments and even maybe a hotel. Plus of course more public space also.

The port could move to Petone/Seaview which is already an industrial area. It would provide more jobs in the Hutt, and in Wellington.

The rest of the $2b comes from CentrePort’s incursion into property development, a strategy for growth the owners have presumably sanctioned but one that carries real risk, especially in volatile times.

It also surely carries political risk: how does Wellington City Council feel about a supposedly complementary local body attracting commercial tenants – until recently, reasonably happy in the capital’s Golden Mile – to its 70 hectares of waterfront?

More fundamentally, is property development a proper business for a ratepayer-owned company? Isn’t it generally so speculative a business that it is best left to entrepreneurs, who put their own – and their banks’ – cash at risk?

I’d have the port company concentrate on port operations in Petone, and have the existing Wellington land managed by the existing waterfront agency.

Britton Brown at the Dom Post reports:

An MP on patrol with police spent almost 40 minutes trying to keep a shot camper alive, then stayed through the night to support the woman’s distraught partner.

Louise Upston, National MP for Taupo, was with police in Turangi on Friday night to see at first hand the harm caused by alcohol when they were called to the shooting of Lower Hutt teacher Rosemary Ives, 25, about 11pm.

Ms Ives was standing next to her partner, Adam Hyndman, brushing her teeth at the Kaimanawa campsite south of Turangi when she was killed. A 25-year-old Hamilton hunter has been charged with careless use of a firearm in relation to her death.

Mrs Upston said that, when she arrived with police, they found Mr Hyndman giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while a female camper did chest compressions.

Mrs Upston took over the compressions so the other woman could rest, sharing the work until paramedics arrived about 40 minutes later.

“You don’t think, `Will I or won’t I?’, you just get in there and do what needs to be done,” she said. “You become desperate, basically. All of us wanted to do our absolute best to pull [Ms Ives] through. Unfortunately, her injuries were substantial and what we did do was probably never going to be enough.”

She kept thinking about how Mr Hyndman must be feeling, staying by his side after Ms Ives was confirmed dead. She remained with him at Taupo police station until 8am.

About 20 years ago she witnessed her mother’s death while her brother tried CPR, which helped her relate to Mr Hyndman.

“He was devastated … they had just gone to clean their teeth. They’d gone a couple of metres into the bush so you wouldn’t spit out in the area you are going to be sleeping in.”

As an MP, out on patrol with the Police (a quite common occurrence as Police like MPs seeing first hand what they have to cope with), you’re probably thinking the worst you will see is some drunk teens – instead you end up in the middle of this tragic shooting.

Everyone who knows Rosemary Ives will be in mourning, but you do have to feel extra sympathy for Adam Hyndman – to see your girlfriend shot down in front of you must be horrifying, let alone working so hard and for so long to try and keep her alive.

The Greenhouse Policy Coalition have published a fact sheet on the ETS. Specifically they compare it with the European ETS and the ETS proposed for Australia.

This is very useful as in 2011, our ETS will be up for review. Labour and the Greens both say that our ETS is far too weak, and far greater costs should be imposed on businesses and consumers. So it is very useful to be able to compare it with the European scheme especially. First they not the different profiles:

New Zealand’s emissions (2008 figures) primarily come from agricultural gases (46.6%) and energy (45.3%) while the EU’s emissions are largely from energy (79.1%), with agriculture just 9.6%. There are few internationally recognised mitigation options currently available for agricultural emissions, while renewable energy generation is a proven industry.

That is a key aspect – 47% agriculture compared with 10% for Europe.

New Zealand generates much more electricity from renewable sources – 73% in 2009, with a 90 percent target for 2025, as against a European target of 20% of total energy coming from renewables by 2020 (15% in the UK). Europe therefore has much more scope than New Zealand for increasing renewable generation.

This is also key background. Europe can fairly easily reduce emissions by replacing non-renewable power plants with renewable ones. We already have four times the proportion of renewable energy.

The combination of these two factors means it is much harder (ie expensive) for NZ to reduce emissions.

Emissions coverage

The EU: Covers 43% of emissions, rising to 50% from 2013. There are no plans to cover methane from farm animals or agricultural nitrous oxide from fertilisers or global warming synthetic gases like sulphur hexafluoride.

New Zealand: From 1 January 2015 the NZETS will cover nearly all emissions, including all six gases identified by the United Nations.

So 100% coverage vs 50%. This means that even if one left agricultural gases out such as methane, we would still be covering more than the Europe scheme.

Sector coverage

The EU: Combustion and most industrial sectors are currently covered, with aviation due to enter in 2012. From 2013, petrochemicals, aluminium and ammonia will be included. Agriculture will not be covered.

New Zealand: Virtually the entire economy will be covered by 2015. Currently, the scheme covers forestry, industrial processes (includes iron and steel, aluminium, cement, glass and gold), stationary energy (includes coal, natural gas and refining petroleum) and liquid fossil fuels.

If no other country in the word is including agriculture by 2011, then the logical thing to do in the review is to suspend its inclusion into the scheme.

Allocation of free emission units

The EU: Historically, free units have been allocated to many companies at levels well above 100% of their emissions. Average allocation across EU countries in 2009 varied between 92% and 152%. Allocation also covers more sectors than in New Zealand. The scheme will feature more auctioning of units (ie companies having to pay for them) from 2013, with a sinking cap, but 100% allocation is still on the cards for significantly trade-exposed sectors, including those the NZETS covers.

New Zealand: Trade-exposed companies are to be allocated units at a 60% or 90% level on an intensity basis, ie emissions relative to output.

So again NZ is “more pure” than Europe.

Phasing out of allocation

The EU: The number of units allocated to companies will be cut by 1.74% each year from 2013.

New Zealand: Unit allocation will be cut by 1.3% each year from 2013.

The phase out rate is one of the few areas where Europe is moving faster. But considering the lack of movement from the US and China and India, this is fairly prudent.

Carbon pricing

The EU: Has no price caps, but from 2013 member states will be allowed to influence carbon prices by bringing forward auctioning of units within the overall cap.

New Zealand: Has an optional price cap for carbon until the end of 2012, set at $25 per unit (one unit = one tonne of CO₂-e), with companies until then required to surrender one unit for every two tonnes of emissions, an effective halving of the $25 price.

This is the major difference. It halves the cost for businesses (and consumers) by way of effectively a subsidy from the taxpayer.  Unless a change is made this will end in 2013.

Now of course some say there should be no ETS at all, but that is as likely as NZ implementing a flat tax. The real debate next year will be over what changes are made to the ETS – the National Government will review the ETS and decide on some changes. Labour and the Greens will also draw up policy on what changes they want. It will be very interesting to compare the policies after the review is done.

My position is pretty simple. China, India and the US are essential to any meaningful reduction in emissions. Unless those three countries have announced concrete plans to reduce emissions, then there is little point in NZ self-flagellating itself by having the purest ETS in the world. Having no ETS and no emissions reduction target at all is not politically viable as doing nothing would invite trade and reputation repercussions. We need to be doing enough so that we are not seen as the problem, but not so much that we end up exporting jobs to other countries.

Tapu Misa writes in the Herald:

So multiculturalism has “failed, absolutely failed”, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It is dead, declared another German politician. Did I hear “I told you so” from the xenophobes who claimed all along that multiculturalism was doomed to failure?

The crowing may be a little premature. The trouble with multiculturalism is that it seems to mean different things to different people.

In many parts of Europe, it has failed. In some countries it has been a disaster. Yet in other countries it has worked well – the US is an excellent example of that. As is NZ.

For Merkel, “multikulti” is the idea that “we are living side by side, and are happy about it”. (Which implies, I think, that multicultural nirvana was meant to happen naturally.)

For others, multiculturalism is that ill-defined policy which holds that a single country can accommodate new and disparate cultures peacefully and equitably, even when certain aspects of those cultures clash fundamentally with its own cherished traditions and values.

The former seems an increasingly distant liberal fantasy, and the latter a recipe for resentment and discord.

I agree with Tapu Misa. I think a blending or integration of cultures is a good thing, but if the cultures fundamentally clash on core values, then you get the problem – resentment and discord.

Disenchantment with multiculturalism isn’t new. In 2006, the then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, told immigrants they should “conform … or don’t come here”.

Conform isn’t the word I would use. But there does have to be a general acceptance of the way of life of the country you move to. For example, if the sight of females in bikinis terribly upsets you, then don’t move to Bondi Beach – or Australia generally.

There is a key difference between integration and assimilation. The former is about adopting or not resisting the core values of a country. The latter implies to me abandoning your previous culture entirely.

Blair said that the July 2005 suicide bombings in London, carried out by British Muslims, had thrown the concept of a multicultural Britain into “sharp relief”. While multiculturalism should be celebrated, it had to be accompanied by a duty to share “essential values – belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage”. “Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain Britain,” Blair said.

“So conform to it, or don’t come here. We don’t want the hate-mongers, whatever their race, religion or creed. The right to be different. The duty to integrate. That is what being British means.”

Tolerance is almost the most important aspect. And that includes tolerance of those who do not share your religious beliefs – and in fact even criticise them.

I was chatting at the rally yesterday to a Jewish friend (who gently scolded me for the joke I blogged a couple of days ago, before admitting it was very funny) and talked about Sarah Silverman. Silverman is a Jewish comedian, probably best known for her hilarious “I f**ked Matt Damon” video to her boyfriend. In her TV series she has offended almost all religions by not just having sex with God, but dumping him afterwards. A reporter asked her if she would ever play a part where she had sex with Mohammed. Her reply was no she would not, as she did not wish to be killed. A very sad reflection on the world we live in.

Anyone who wants to kill someone because they are disrespectful to your religion fails my tolerance test. In fact even wanting to change the law, so it is illegal to disrespect your religion, fails my tolerance test.

Where does that leave us? I’d like to think our version of the multicultural society is just as respectful of difference, and inclusive, without being overweeningly deferential.

What does being a New Zealander mean? We’re still working it out. But if a shared sense of identity and citizenship is a sign of multicultural health, then we can take heart.

NZ I think has managed the challenge pretty damn well. But this may have been by as much good luck as good management. I do think our immigration system needs a “tolerance” test and also we need to make sure prospective immigrants are well informed on what are the “essential values” of New Zealanders, and that as aspiring NZers, they share them.

The Herald reports on this ODT story:

Hamish Chang has revenge on his mind, after returning home to his student flat in Dunedin to find his every worldly possession tightly wrapped in tinfoil.

The prank was sprung by Mr Chang’s flatmates when he arrived home on Sunday to his George St flat from a week in Christchurch and pushed open the door to his bedroom.

Inside was the gleaming, shiny handiwork that had taken his five flatmates – and another friend – more than a week, 600m of foil and 30 hours of labour to complete.

No matter how big or small, hardly a single item of Mr Chang’s property had escaped the tinfoil treatment – from the walls and ceiling to his desk, bed and pillows, and even the individual pins holding up the posters on his walls.

That is true dedication to a prank. In my days at Otago we just uses newspaper, but thinking about it, tin foil is easier and looks better!

A reader managed to locate the You Tube. Worth a watch.

Well this was the best Labour Day rally I have been to. No angry people with angry placards. No scores of paid organisers busing in thousands of people during a paid. Just thousands of Kiwis coming into town and giving up a couple of hours on a public holiday to celebrate the NZ film industry and send a clear message that regardless of what has happened, Kiwis wants The Hobbit filmed in NZ.

This was my favourite placard – Gollum wanting his precious home saved.

I’m sure I should know this person is. She didn’t speak, but she sung beautifully.

First speaker up was Wellington Mayor, Celia Wade-Brown. Celia got a good reception and applause, but the cheers for the next speaker were almost deafening.

Sir Richard Taylor was as modest as usual, but the star of the show. He spoke with passion about what they do, and why they want The Hobbit to stay here. He also read out a letter from Peter Jackson who expressed similar sentiments. Jackson also, in his letter, warned that we do not want to become a state of Australia, and that the NZ film industry should work together with its own guilds, rather than bring in outsiders who care nothing for the NZ film industry. This got loud cheers.

This young lady was one of the highlights. She is a young film-maker who came here from the US, and just raved about how wonderful it is here, and that she owes so much to NZ.

The casting director for The Hobbit also spoke and told some lovely stories of how they had to delay filming one scene for a week because all the Elves in Otago had exams, and another delay was when the warriors could not make any battles as it was muster week. She said in the US she’s get screamed at by the producer but here Jackson just smiled and said he was glad the elves would be less stressed etc.

There were heaps of kids there, and you could see them engrossed as one guy from Weta spoke about how at the age of three he wanted to be involved in movies and especially a Spielberg. He talked about how Richard Taylor hired him and kept trusting him and giving him more and more jobs and how his last job was as head of design for the Tintin movie, produced by Spielberg – his message was in NZ, your dreams can come true.

All the speakers got across that the NZ style of is quite critical to the sucess of our industry – the relaxed style, the willing to work to get the job done, the team-work, the passion, and the flexibility. I reflected how different this approach was to the inflexibility that MEAA seem to want. Note this was just my interpretation – no one actually mentioned MEAA.

The kids let go of their balloons at the end after Richard Taylor spoke again. He told a wonderful story of how he was helping fit armour to a rider of Rohan, and he looked up to notice she was a fairly elderly lady. They were filming in Twizel. They got talking and she mentioned how sadly her horse yesterday had twisted a leg. Taylor asked her if she was going to be a foot solider then, and she replied that no – she went up the high country yesterday, roped herself a new horse, broke it in overnight – so she could stay play her part as an extra. He says that is his favourite memory of the filming.

As I said it was a lovely occasion, and hopefully Warners will see the coverage on the news tonight, and it may help just a little bit with their decision.

I’ve reflected before on the economic damage that would occur, if NZ lost The Hobbit. But after that rally, I’ve actually decided the job losses and economic losses would not be the biggest price we pay. I think we would lose a certain amount of our collective self-esteem or soul as a nation. All those stories about how much better the Kiwi film-making industry is that in Hollywood etc would become just legends from the past, rather than tales of our future.

Hopefully the back-down from the MEAA did not occur too late, for the film to remain here. And even more importantly, perhaps some lessons will be learnt about not resorting to global boycotts unless you can justify it.

Congratulations to the organisers of the rally.

The Herald reports:

Arthur Allan Thomas will petition the Prime Minister to reopen the investigation into the Crewe murders.

“It’s going to the Prime Minister. The police are just cover-uppers and the Prime Minister is the only man who can do something about it.”

No the Prime Minister can not re-open a Police investigation. Only the Police can. If the PM could re-open a Police investigation, then he would have re-opened the one into Labour’s electoral over-spending in 2005.

The PM also can not close down an SFO investigation.

The Herald reports:

Labour wants to stop local board members sitting on more than one board in the Super City.

The party has responded to the case of pharmacist Warren Flaunty, who was elected to three Auckland Council local boards – Rodney, Henderson-Massey and Upper Harbour.

As well, he was re-elected to the Waitemata District Health Board and the Waitakere Licensing Trust. …

Yesterday, Labour’s Auckland issues spokesman, Phil Twyford, said the loophole that allowed Mr Flaunty to win five seats should be closed.

I agree. I think you should be able to stand for one board only. I would even go so far as to stop people staying for Council and DHB – people do it just to gain extra money from their name recognition.

“Power is already too concentrated in the hands of too few people running the Super City.”

A bit ironic, as Labour’s policy was to have fewer local boards.

“I will put up an amendment when Rodney Hide’s Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill comes back to the House in a few weeks,” Mr Twyford said.

Local Government Minister Rodney Hide, the author of the Super City council structure, said Mr Twyford was looking to change the wrong law.

The way to address the issue and other concerns, such as postal voting, was through the regular review of the local body elections by the justice and electoral law select committee. That could lead to changes to the Local Electoral Act, he said.

Mr Hide said that personally, he did not think it was right for anyone to sit on more than one local board – “MPs can’t represent three electorates.

“But I will be guided by Parliament and the proper place to consider it is the select committee,” he said.

I agree with Twyford’s intent but Rodney is right that you should submit to the review of the elections – I certainly intend to.

My thoughts for improvement at the moment are:

• Ban multiple candidacies or at least multiple roles if elected
• Encourage councils to have more one person wards – you get more informed decision making from people having to select say one preferred person from half a dozen locals, than try and select three to five people from a list of 20 – 30
• Either stop having DHB elections on the grounds there is miniscule informed voting, or change them from STV and/or introduce smaller wards for DHBs so voters don’t face 30+ names to rank.
• The issue of STV and FPP is challenging. FPP is much more user friendly for multiple vacancy elections (tick three people instead of rank 30 people) but STV can work quite nicely in single vacancy elections (rank from 1 to 7 these mayoral candidates). It would be good to have DIA or LGNZ or someone do some research amongst voters about how they find the different systems. I’m not worried about outcomes under either system – my interest is how do we lift turnout, and get more informed voting.
• I will also advocate for term limits for Mayors at least. I think term limits remove some of the advantages of incumbency, especially when a lot of voting is based on name recognition alone.

Phil Heatley outlined on Q+A some quite radical changes to Housing NZ, but they are changes that would help those most in need – and in fact are long overdue changes necessary to make the model of state housing reinstituted by Labour workable.

Some on the left will try and whip up hysterical opposition to them, but people should be aware the group that recommended them includes the Auckland City Mission Diane Robertson and Major Campbell Roberts from the Salvation Army. And also to her credit Sue Bradford, who was a panelist, seemed quite supportive. So I suggest people resist knee-jerk reactions.

National introduced market rentals in the 1990s. This was highly controversial and unpopular, ans was reversed by Labour who campaigned on a change back. I don’t want to defend the market rentals but explain why they were done.

The idea behind market rentals was that an income based accommodation supplement was a fairer way to assist low income people into housing. It could take into account your exact level of income, the average rental price in your area etc and most of all applied to every New Zealander on a low income.

The idea was that if two families lived next door to each other on identical incomes and identical family sizes and in identical houses, they would both get the same level of support. Up until then the person in the state house got huge assistance, and the person in private accommodation got very little. Unless the number of state houses was so large as to cover every low income New Zealander, then some families unfairly were getting much better assistance than others. And in fact (as this report shows) it was not always the family with the greatest need who was in the state house.

However the market rentals policy was hugely unpopular, for a number of reasons. One reason was the Government failed to sell it well. People thought it was about increasing rental payments from poor families, and there was almost no focus on the fact that the Government would be helping many more low income families than previously.

It also had the problem in that it created a large number of people (around 300,000) who were modest “winners” and a smaller number of people (around 70,000) who were quite large “losers”, and those who are disadvantaged by a policy change will fight against it, while those advantaged by it not so much.

To be fair there were also some unforeseen consequences also, such as private sector landlords pushing prices up, due to state houses doing the same. That was genuinely undesirable, and possible one reason National has not returned to that policy even though it is clearly less discriminatory.

So we’re left with Labour’s policy which is that if you live in a state house, you get a much higher subsidy from the taxpayer – the SHAG calculates it as worth $8,000 a year compared to $4,000 a year from the Accommodation Supplement. There are a limited number of state houses, and one can not change the number of houses in stock dramatically or quickly. So you want those state houses to go those most in need. But I have always said to do that you need to evict people from their state houses if a more needy family is on the waiting list, and you also need to move tenants from larger to smaller homes as their kids leave home.

The SHAG has recommended pretty much exactly that, but in a gentle way. Their recommendations are what you need to make Labour’s policy better for low income families. It means the greatest assistance goes to those with the greatest need.

SHAG’s report is here. Here are extracts from Q+A:

PHIL HEATLEY – Housing Minister.
Well, that’s certainly a recommendation in the report is that any new tenants coming on from now on would be under the understanding that they may just have the house for three years, five years or 10 years, and then we review that tenancy. So the tenancy wouldn’t necessarily end in that time, but we’d review the tenancy and see if their circumstances have changed.

This seems very sensible. Exiting tenants entered under a policy where their expectation is they can remain in the house for life so long as they are good tenants. I like the idea in future that you set at the beginning an expectation of review at a certain date. If their circumstances have improved and there are much needier families on the waiting list, then logically one would allocate to the family with the greater need.

MR HEATLEY So what would happen is& Well, a good example actually is someone’s in a state house – you know, they’ve had it for 10 years. When they first moved in, they had three kids, they were married, it was a four-bedroom. Now they’re alone or there’s just two of them. They just need one bedroom.

This is one of the real problems. The kids have left and now tenants are in a house with lots of spare rooms, while a family on the waiting list with three kids can’t get a house.

Some people will say the answer is just to build more state houses, but there is no way the state housing stock will increase from 70,000 to over 300,000 (the numbers on the accom supplement).

GUYON OK, the other big mismatch you’ve got is the type of houses that you’ve actually got. You’ve got far too many two- and three-bedroom houses. You’ve got a lot of people rattling around in houses that are too big for them. I think that you said there were 2700 houses with spare bedrooms, and about a similar number with crowded bedrooms. Are you going to have to engage in a large-scale selling and buying programme, in terms of selling houses you don’t need and buying ones that are fit for purpose?

MR HEATLEY That’s correct. In fact, we’ve got two types of mismatch, as you describe. The first one is that we’ve too many three-bedroom houses – in fact, 10,000 too many – and we haven’t got enough one-bedroom houses for very small families – obviously people living on their own – and certainly not enough four- or five-bedroom houses. So what we’re going to do is send a very clear signal that we want to realign all that, so we’re going to need to dispose of all our three-bedroom houses and buy smaller and larger ones.

No doubt some will call this privatisation! This does show the difficulties with the current policy – it is very hard to match the demand with supply.

GUYON Will the numbers stay essentially the same at roughly 70,000? Or will you increase it or decrease it?

MR HEATLEY What we’ve said quite clearly, and we certainly said to the people that drew up the report for us, is that we’re committed to state housing, we’re committed to Housing New Zealand&

GUYON On what numbers?

MR HEATLEY  &we’re committed to income-related rents.

GUYON Yeah, we’ll talk about that in a second. What numbers?

MR HEATLEY In terms of numbers of state houses, what we’ve said is we want to house more people in social housing. We want it to be a combination of state housing and combination of houses provided by others in the community-housing sector. So we are going to move away from counting the number of state houses we own or manage. …

GUYON That’s fascinating. So at the moment, there’s a ministerial directive that says you have to own just over 70,000 state houses by the middle of next year.

MR HEATLEY Um, no, the ministerial directive that’s happened over a number of decades under National and Labour, and it’s continued as they’ve gone in and out of government, is to increase the number of state houses.

GUYON OK, but roughly it’s 70,000.

MR HEATLEY That’s correct. And we’re saying&

GUYON So you’re abandoning that target? You’re abandoning any target or minimum number of houses that you need to own?

MR HEATLEY Yes, what we’re doing&

GUYON That’s a massive change.

MR HEATLEY It is, but what we’re saying now is that we want to increase the number of people housed, and we want to increase the amount of social housing in New Zealand, but we can’t do it alone. The government’s in no position to keep buying state houses the way we have been, so we’re going to slow down and probably stop and go to the community-housing sector, who have put up their hand, and they say this in their report, and say, ‘Look, we want to get into housing the most vulnerable.’ In fact, many housing organisations are specialist in their area – disabled, mentally ill, elderly.  ‘And we actually need capital, cash or houses for you as the government to inject into us to grow.’ And we’re prepared to look at that.

This is quite an important exchange. Shifting the focus from whether HSNZ has 70,000 or 70,500 or 71,000 state houses to a focus on how many people are in social housing, which includes the Salvation Army, some local authorities etc.

MR HEATLEY Well, no. What the panel says& And, you know, we had someone on the panel from Auckland City Mission, someone from the Salvation Army, someone from the New Zealand Housing Foundation. They’ve come back and they’ve said, ‘No, what we would like you to do is transfer a whole lot of housing stock or cash or land into our community-housing organisations, which are not-for-profit organisations&’

GUYON On that sort of level? 20%?

MR HEATLEY They’re suggesting moving very fast. If the ministers make a decision, we’re going to have to consider our tenants, not upsetting people’s lives. But the important thing I’d like to pick up on is this is not privatisation. This would mean a state house was transferred to a not-for-profit community-housing organisation who would have to retain the house. They couldn’t sell it, otherwise it would have to come back to us. And they would have to house the most vulnerable. They couldn’t just get, you know, anyone in that house.

As I said at the beginning, the members of SHAG who recommended this include reps from City Mission, Salvation Army etc. I think they have done an excellent job at analysing the problems with the current policy and proposing some changes which will provide better assistance to those most in need.

The death of Rosemary Ives, whom a hunter mistook for a deer, is tragic and heartbreaking – but it is not an accident.

If the hunter had been legally hunting, and was in the middle of the bush where deer out number humans, and Miss Ives had been wearing a fake pair of antlers then maybe you can call it an accident.

But when you are hunting at night illegally, and firing at the first thing you can see from a moving car, then that is negligence, not an accident.

The police have charged the hunter with careless use of a firearm causing death.I hope this is a holding charge, and they consider manslaughter. Unless there is more to the story than reported (always possible) the behaviour involved was reckless.

Sympathies to the family and friend of Rosemary Ives.

Had a brilliant day today. Myself and a couple of friends did a nice two hour commute to rural Wairarapa this morning. Went to Busted Blonde’s 10 hectare section near Mauriceville.

Once we got out of Wellington the weather was brilliant. Nothing like a good road trip with some mates on a fine day.

Thought we would be out there for just a couple of hours, but ended up spending five hours drinking and chatting in the sun, in a superb rural retreat.  Lots of good conversation, and a superb lunch which included whitebait fritters and venison. Yum.

Reflected on the drive back how lucky we are to be in a country with such great scenery. Am determined the next time we head to the Wairarapa to stay overnight so we can explore the many great backroads.

Two Jews are walking down the road when a stunningly attractive woman walks past them. They both turn their heads to look at her walking away from then and the first Jew says to the other Jew “Man, I’d love to lend her one”

Call Me Senator from RightChange on Vimeo.

Barbara Boxer became infamous for insisting a General call her Senator not Ma’am. This ad plays it up wonderfully.

If The Hobbit moves overseas, there will be a massive loss of jobs in NZ. The 2,500 for the Hobbit itself is only the start. All the other productions will stop coming here, and I imagine Weta would have a limited future.

But add onto that the lost tourism jobs and earnings. 1 in 10 tourists say the LOTR connection was a factor in choosing to come here. If Middle Earth moves to Ireland, we will lose much of that tourism.

The Herald on Sunday reports on the rallies you can go along to, to show your support for the film staying here. These are not anti-anyone rallies, but pro-Hobbit in NZ rallies.

12.30pm-2pm Monday

• Auckland: Queen Elizabeth II Square (opposite Britomart)
• Wellington: Civic Square
• Christchurch: Cathedral Square
• Hamilton: Garden Place
• Matamata: The Gollum statue
• Queenstown: The Village Green

I’m certainly attending the Wellington one. If you plan to attend, you can join the event on Facebook.

The HOS also covers the latest:

President of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Helen Kelly told the Herald on Sunday she was not sorry for the dispute as it began as a simple request to negotiate conditions.

“I personally regret calling Peter Jackson a brat. That was not helpful,” said Kelly. “I shouldn’t have said that, because he is not a brat. He is clearly deeply hurt … and it’s not my style to usually get so personal.”

However, she believed most New Zealanders supported the right to collectively bargain.

God this Orewellian double-speak is getting annoying.A global boycott is not a simple request to negotiate. It is the last resort in such a negotiation – it is where you say we would rather this film never gets made at all, because the conditions on it are so bad. The irony being that the conditions are the best ever offered to NZ actors.

And secondly those actors who are members of the MEAA could always try and negotiate a collective contract on behalf of those members only.  What they were not allowed to do is negotiate on behalf of all the non members, and force them into becoming union members.

Back at the Armageddon Expo, Stargate Atlantis actor Torri Higginson told the crowd it would be “insane” if The Hobbit was not filmed in New Zealand. “If anyone knows him [Peter Jackson] tell him I’ll work for free,” said Higginson. “F*** the unions.”

I suspect many actors would work for free on the film. But Jackson will not only be paying good weekly rates, he is the first Producer to offer residuals to NZ actors. How the fuck the CTU ever decided to make him public enemy number one I don’t know.

The Herald on Sunday has launched its drink driving campaign. It is primarily focused on persuading individual NZers to pledge two drinks max, with the objective of a law change less prominent.

I have no problems with people pledging not to drive after a certain amount of alcohol. I would note that a flat limit which takes no account of time period seems rather simplistic. Sometimes I may go to the Backbencher at 6 pm and stay on for Backbenches, and after that head into town until 2 am. Over those eight hours I might have four standard drinks (and a lot of non alcohol drinks and food), but would be well under 0.05 BAC.

I do take issue with one part of their story:

Science, too, is on our side. Last year, 129 people died on New Zealand roads as a result of alcohol-related crashes. Many – the transport ministry projects 150-33 lives a year – could be saved if the drink-drive limit was lowered from 80mg to 50mg.

I presume the 150 is a type, and it is meant to be 15-33. I point out again what the official stats tell us:

The only data we have at the moment is the stats on blood alcohol level amongst deceased drivers. They show over the last five years that 18 deceased drivers had a BAC between 0.05 and 0.08.

But that number is misleading as it includes those aged under 20, for whom it is already illegal to drive with a BAC over 0.03. That knocks it down to 12. That is 12 out of 1,168 deceased drivers or 1% of the total.

12 over five years is 2.4 a year. The number of dead drivers is over half the number of total dead on the roads, so I would say 4 – 5 people a year would be “saved” by a law change – that is if assuming those drivers would not have driven if the law changed.

As I said yesterday, I am willing to be persuaded that a change is desirable – but to do that we need to collect better data and not have nonsense claims about 33 lives a year, hen only 1.4 deceased drivers a year test between 0.05 and 0.08.

While I think the two drink max limit is a bit simplistic, I understand the need for simplisticity in mass media campaigns. If the HoS campaign helps reduce the road toll voluntarily – then good on them. I suspect though that it will mainly affect the low risk drivers, and have little impact on the recividist drunk drivers who cause so much of the damage.

Actually, that would be an interesting stat – and one I am do not know of. How many of those drivers who die in fatal car crashes have a conviction for driving over the limit?

This ad was produced by Citizens Against Government Waste. The chinese language with english sub-titles makes it very effective, as you really tune into it.

Also they mention no politician by name, yet you know whom it is effectively blaming.

The CAGW also produce an annual “Congressional Pig Book” which details all the pork-barrel spending.

No transcript yet but a really fascinating interview with Hone Harawira on The Nation on Tv3. Hone sometimes often gives an impression that he mouths off without thinking, but the interview showed that a lot of what he does is more calculated. He talks about his role being to push the limits, and how the MP needs to differentiate itself from National rather than abandon them.

He also showed some political deftness at not giving straight answers (at one point Duncan had to remind him that it is his role to ask the questions), but he did make one thing very clear. He said that if Pita Sharples retires as co-leader, then he has recommended that Te Ururoa Flavell become the new co-leader. Flavell is gaining a growing reputation as an effective MP, and I agree he is the natural successor to Sharples.

Harawira also showed some quite good insight into how a leader needs to be diplomatic and able to compromise, and that those are not his skills.

This was shown by him talking about his comments on how he would be uncomfortable with his daughters dating Pakeha, and he went on to say that one of them is dating a Maori boy at the moment, and how he doesn’t approve of that. I don’t recall the exact words but Duncan asked him if he thought his daughter’s boyfriend was no good, and Hone replied “Yeah that’s right”. Can’t imagine his daughter will be thrilled to have Dad diss the boyfriend on TV!

For  those who missed it today, would be worth watching it tomorrow.

I received this message on Facebook:

This weekend the Herald on Sunday are launching a major campaign to persuade the Government to lower the drink driving limit from 0.08mg to 0.05mg (of alcohol per 100 ml of blood), the same as Australia, Japan and most of Europe.

Drink driving has devastated the lives of many Kiwis at the hands of drink drivers and they are looking for Kiwis to sign up to a pledge of “two drinks max”.

The aim is to gather thousands of signatures to add weight to their message to Government that the blood/alcohol limit needs to be lowered before more lives are wrecked.

The Herald on Sunday have asked to interview people who are passionate about the cause. If you are interested, please drop me a note via Facebook with your contact details that I may pass onto reporter xxxxxx xxxxxxxx or contact her directly as follows:

I was somewhat amused to also get a call from an HoS staffer today asking if I would join the list of prominent NZers who are endorsing their campaign. I remarked that they must not have read my blog posts on the issue, because in fact I have been somewhat vocal about the lack of evidence for there to be a change.

I am not adamantly against a change. If the research stacks up, then a change from 0.08 to 0.05 might well be justifiable. But we are lacking even the most basic data. The Government has said it is changing the law so this data can be collected, and that is a good thing – then a decision can be made on evidence, not emotion.

The two pieces of data I want are:

1. How many deaths and injuries are caused by drivers who currently legally drive with a BAC between 0.05 and 0.08
2. How many people drive with a BAC between 0.05 and 0.08

With that data we can work out the costs and benefits of a law change – how many NZers currently drive safely at 0.05 to 0.08 and how many cause accidents at that level.

The only data we have at the moment is the stats on blood alcohol level amongst deceased drivers. They show over the last five years that 18 deceased drivers had a BAC between 0.05 and 0.08.

But that number is misleading as it includes those aged under 20, for whom it is already illegal to drive with a BAC over 0.03. That knocks it down to 12. That is 12 out of 1,168 deceased drivers or 1% of the total.

Now a lot of research has shown that it is drivers below the age of 25 who cause the most crashes. We used to have different testing requirements for below and over 25 year olds. I would be pretty comfortable with having the current limits for under 20s extend to under 25s.

So I then ask how many drivers aged over 25 were killed with a BAC of 0.05 to 0.08? Just seven? Around 1.4 drivers a year.

Now if we get better data, then I could be persuaded of the desirability of change.  What we need is for blood alcohol samples to be collected from all drivers involved in a fatal accident, and also record how many others died in those crashes. Ideally we would also differentiate those cases where a driver may be over 0.05 but is not at fault – ie they get rammed side on by another driver.

We should constantly look at ways to reduce the road toll, but they should be based on good research which includes looking at what inconvenience or damage is done to current law abiding drivers. Unless you take a balanced approach, then you end up with an end point where say no car is physically able to go at over 30 km/hr. This would reduce the road toll by around 95% – but would greatly reduce the benefits most NZers get from motor vehicles.