Kiwiblog

The Reuters headline is:

Albino MP fears for his life

I read on with great concern, wondering why someone was trying to kill Rotorua MP Todd McClay.

But it turns out Todd is safe, so long as he stays away from Tanzania:

Tanzania’s first elected albino member of parliament fears his life could be in danger in the east African country where albino hunters kill their victims and use their blood and body parts for witchcraft.

Albino hunter would be quite a cool job title to have on your CV – would be a talking point at social functions also.

At least 59 albinos have been killed since 2007 in Tanzania and their body parts sold for use in witchcraft, especially in the remote northwest regions of Mwanza and Shinyanga which are both gold mining regions where superstition is rife.

Finally found a country, where people want to be gingas

Claire Trevett reports in the Herald:

Speaker Lockwood Smith will decide tonight whether to abolish MPs’ travel perks – but a wholesale scrapping is increasingly unlikely as some MPs argue to keep a limited discount for work trips. …

While there is broad consensus over scrapping the perks for holidays, Labour MPs at least are expected to argue in favour of retaining some funding for MPs to go on trips related to their parliamentary work, such as meeting MPs overseas or attending conferences. …

Labour leader Phil Goff has made it clear he sees the use of the rebates for holidays as unjustifiable but legitimate work-related trips were important. Opposition MPs and backbenchers are limited to official parliamentary delegations and there are few opportunities to take trips of their own initiative.

I support MPs being funded for international work related travel, but if you continue with it as an “entitlement” it will get abused, beyond doubt. If there is an entitlement  for say one “work” trip every three years, then I am sure many MPs will manage to put together a trip which will qualify for funding.

The reality is that even some “work” trips have little parliamentary aspects to them, and are mainly party political or recreational. Quite easy to visit three or four European countries to catch up with your political mates, spend a few days being wined and dined at a party conference in the UK and for good measure see the All Blacks play as you just happen to be there at the same time.

That’s at one end of the scale. At the other end you might have say the Shadow Education Spokesperson travelling to a couple of countries to meet with Education Ministers, their officials and perhaps tour around some schools being run under a new model. That is entirely legitimate and should be encouraged (again many of the best policy ideas come from overseas).

Parliamentary Service should not be placed in a position where they have to judge whether a trip has enough “work” in it to qualify for a subsidised airfare.

The answer, as I have said before, is to fund international travel out of the leader’s budget. A party leader is far better positioned to decide whether a trip is worthwhile, and they will have an incentive not to say yes to the more dubious proposals, because the more they approve for travel, the less they have for other purposes (staff, policy, research, propaganda etc).

So it is vital that any money for travel not be ring-fenced. The moment you do that, you encourage people to come up with ways to use it all. It must be part of the “bulk” fund that goes to each parliamentary party.

Now there is an argument that the current allocation of $57,000 per (non-Executive) MP isn’t designed to cover international travel, other than for the Leader. This is a fair enough point, and a consequence of abolishing the travel perk could well be to increase the level of funding to the parliamentary party to allow legitimate overseas travel to be funded.

How much should any increase be? Well my rough calculation would be that on average you would expect an MP to do a trip say every three years. The senior ones will do more, and the junior ones less. The average cost of a business class fare is $9,000 so maybe you look at increasing funding from $57,000 to $60,000 per MP per annum. You could argue one trip every five years, so that would be $1,800 extra per annum.

The one thing that should not be done is to retain a travel subsidy as an “entitlement”. That will just lead to rorting of the system. National has signalled it wants the entitlement abolished. Labour’s position is less clear. I hope they will clearly signal tat they do support abolishing any international travel entitlement, rather than just modifying the criteria for it.

No other business has an “entitlement” for international travel. If there is a good case to travel overseas, you make a proposal to your boss, and they agree to fund it out of their budget – or not. That is how Parliament should work also.

Prince William’s engagement to Kate Middleton will be the major news story of the day. From what one can tell at a distance, she seems very genuine and down to earth and a good choice for William. In fact she has coped superbly with the years of intensive media coverage/harassment.

It is a bit unfortunate that his private choice, is also a matter of public approval – both in the UK and here. Because William’s marriage to a girl from Leeds, means she will in time become the Queen (consort) of New Zealand.

Now I have to say Queen Kate (or more formally Queen Catherine) is a more pleasant future to look forward to, than Queen Camilla, but it would be nice if one day the marriage of someone in England didn’t have any constitutional significance for us in New Zealand.

But regardless I am looking forward to the royal wedding. I actually will be in the UK next July for a mate’s wedding, so if William can set his date for the same month, I could attend both

iPredict has just launched some Mana vote share stocks.

They predict:

• Faafoi 45.0%
• Parata 35.4%
• Others 22.0%

Is the markets are correct, what does that suggest in terms of a result.

In 2008, there were almost 35,000 votes so if turnout is the same, then that is a 3,500 or so majority.

If turnout drops from 83% to 65%, then that would suggest a majority of 2,800 or so.

It will be interesting to see how accurate iPredict is. There have been no public polls at all, so people must be investing on the basis of their sentiment over how the race is going. Obviously people think Labour will lose votes – that Faafoi will get around 8% less than Laban, but they may be wrong.

The Dom Post report:

Terry Serepisos is facing fresh legal action, with the Inland Revenue Department seeking to liquidate five of his companies – including the one which owns the Wellington Phoenix – over $3.58 million in unpaid taxes.

The largest sum – more than $1.5m – is owed by Century City Football, owner of the Phoenix football team, for PAYE tax deductions, GST and KiwiSaver contributions.

I hope Serepisos survives, but if he does I suspect he will not be hosting The Apprentice again anytime soon.

In July I was in Hong Kong and surprised to see very large ads in the local paper there for his new apartment block. My reaction was that sales back home can’t be going too well, if you are needing to advertise in Hong Kong.

A Wellington City Council spokesman, Richard MacLean, said the council was “very concerned” over the future of the Phoenix but was unlikely to contribute ratepayers’ money. “We are not in the business of owning a football club.”

Good.

I’d love the team to survive also, but it is not the role of council to fund sports teams – sports infrastructure is another matter though.

The Herald reports on the sweeping changes to trials in the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill.

The one that will probably attract the most debate is moving the threshold for jury trials from a maximum three months to a maximum three years.

While the list of offences that would be affected is long, officials have advised Mr Power that the most common cases would be theft of between $5oppos00 and $1000; receiving between $500 and $1000; possession of a class A drug; common assault; and assault on a female or child.

I’d be interested in what the stats are for these offences, in terms of how many people convicted of them even receive a jail sentence at all. A maximum is just that – and generally never given out.

The opposition Labour Party’s associate justice spokesman, Charles Chauvel, said that while some change in the threshold for jury trials made sense, Labour would reserve its position until it had heard select committee submissions.

That is a very sensible position to take, and good on Labour for not being opposed just for the sake of it. I’m not 100% convinced myself moving the threshold to three years is the right point – maybe it should be two years – again would be good to see hard data on this.

Some of the charges no longer tried before a jury (with current maximum term):

SIX MONTHS
* Ill treatment or wilful neglect of child
* Possession or use of class A drug

ONE YEAR
* Possession of unauthorised seed or fruit

TWO YEARS
* Driving with excess breath alcohol (3rd offence onwards)
* Driving while disqualified (3rd offence onwards)
* Bigamy
* Infanticide

THREE YEARS
* Assault with intent
* Making intimate visual recording
* Aggravated careless use of vehicle causing injury or death
* Indecency with animal

Oh that is unfortunate. If these changes come through, I’ll never get to be a juror on a donkey sex case. I always thought if one has to be a juror, that would be more interesting that an assault or burglary case etc.

On the other hand these donkey sex cases tend to always be in Nelson or Christchurch, so I guess I would not have got one anyway. And add to that, that in 25 years of availability I have never once been summoned for jury service.

Thomas Beagle blogs on the first year of operations for Tech Liberty. In the last year they have:

• Written 70 articles for our website and published two guest editorials (security risks of internet filtering, copyright).
• Received 15,000 visitors who looked at 27,000 pages and left 134 comments.
• Made two written (Copyright, Search and Surveillance) and one oral submission (Search & Surveillance) to Parliamentary Select Committees.
• Established an @TechLiberty Twitter presence with 287 followers and 469 updates.
• Assisted people in their legal issues with Customs and Sky TV.
• Written a guest editorial about internet filtering for the National Business Review.
• Been quoted in a variety of online and print media and been interviewed on TV and radio.

Next year looks as busy. Their plans:

As part of this we’re also looking at changing how we do things:

• We are investigating what is involved with becoming a mass-membership organisation.
• We intend to establish a fund to help finance our work.
• Improving our internal communications so we can better support contributors all over the country.

And they want more people involved:

What we do need is more people to help us with this work.

We are currently a Wellington-based collective but we’re looking for people across the country who can help us with one or more of the following roles:

• Join the core collective and work with us to develop Tech Liberty.
• Providing professional legal assistance to help us in interpreting current and proposed laws and helping people who face legal problems.
• Adopt an issue and become our internal expert, writing articles and submissions about it.
• Assist us with advice about becoming a membership organisation.

Or, if you’ve just got a bee in your bonnet about a particular issue, write us a guest editorial.

Read about our principles and then send us an email, we’d love to hear from you.

Tech Liberty do some great work. Touch base with them if you can help them out.

The Herald reports:

An increase to MPs’ salaries is almost inevitable if the Prime Minister’s bid to get rid of their foreign-travel perks is successful.

It is. As people now all know (and something I was the first to highlight over a year ago as it was obscurely buried in the Remuneration Authority’s 2003 determination, and had not been explicitly listed since) the value of the perk (as calculated by IRD) is deducted from their salary effectively.

If the Speaker just abolished it unilaterally, then MPs would have their base salary increase by $9,500 by the Remuneration Authority.

Although the demise of the perk seems certain, the taxpayer is likely to have to make up for it by an increase in MPs’ salaries.

Mr Key said he expected any rise to be “very modest” and putting salaries up by the full $9800 value of the perk was “unacceptable to me”. A significant increase would only expose MPs to more criticism, even though they had no say in their pay, he said.

Mr Key has urged the Speaker to ask the Remuneration Authority to decide how to abolish the perk and whether changes should be made to salaries as a result.

This is where the PM has been quite cunning. He is basically asking the Remuneration Authority to say in advance how much they would increase salaries, if the perk is abolished – with a rather unsubtle note that an increase to the full value is “unacceptable”.

So the Remuneration Authority now has to decide what to do, which is challenging as the most logical would just be to stop deducting the $9,800 from the base salary.

Annual totals for international travel perks for existing MPs:

1992-93 – $263,567
1995-96 – $387,950
2008-09 – $600,000
2009-10 – $432,989

Here’s what I would do. Divide $433,000 by 120 MPs and that is $3,500 per MP. Add that to the base salary and you can claim the exercise is revenue neutral. It’s not the principled way to do it (that would be the $9,800 option) but it is a pragmatic solution.

Labour leader Phil Goff agreed with Mr Key’s request for the perk to be reviewed independently, but said it was essential to retain some entitlement to international travel to allow MPs to go overseas on parliamentary business.

He had used his rebate for his recent trip to Australia to meet Prime Minister Julia Gillard and senior Cabinet ministers. “That enables me to do my job properly and is a legitimate use. Trying to justify the use of it for holidays will never be regarded by the public as a legitimate use.” …

Act leader Rodney Hide said he agreed with the Prime Minister that the perk should go and although it was for the Remuneration Authority to decide on salary increases in lieu of the perk, “you’d hope they’d be a wee bit judicious”.

He disputed Mr Goff’s call for some provision for work travel, saying there was already enough discretionary funding for it in party leaders’ budgets – a bulk sum they get to run their offices.

I’m actually more in agreement with Phil Goff on this point. I do think MPs should be able to travel internationally when it is work related. Many of the best policy ideas come from initiatives in other countries etc.

Now Rodney is right that such travel can be funded from the leader’s office budget. And that is where it should be funded from – rather than a separate dedicated fund. If you have a fund for travel – then people will make sure it gets fully used. If it comes from the bulk fund, then the leader (or their COS) has to decide whether the value of that travel is greater than the value they would get from spending it on more staff, or policy research, or a pamphlet etc etc.

But what I think Goff wants, and I agree with him, is a review of the level of funding for the Leader’s Office to ensure it is adequate to be able to fund legitimate work related international travel by MPs, now they can not use the perk to fund it.

Whale Oil blogs:

Some time ago I sent an OIA request to the Auditor-General for all of their credit card expenses. They ini­tially refused because the Auditor-General is not sub­ject to the OIA.

They have now recon­sid­ered and accord­ingly pro­vided the infor­ma­tion that I requested.

Voluntary compliance with a request, when there is no statutory obligation to do so is great leadership.

Every instance of expense is detailed with who was there and what it was about. Even park­ing dock­ets are fully explained. Com­pare that to Len Brown’s still secret Volare dinner.

Talking of which, has the Ombudsman made a decision yet?

Lyn Provost is the epit­ome of fis­cal rec­ti­tude. She flew Pacific Blue to Port Moresby which is pig of a flight at the best of times and one that no one would be-grudge a busi­ness class fare and/or a Groser/McCully style truck load of piss to soothe the nerves for that flight. But our cheap and fru­gal Auditor-General flew Pacific Blue and bought two sets of sand­wiches, cook­ies and an iced tea for a total of $28.20. That’s a bar­gain no mat­ter how much they charge for an iced tea on Pacific Blue. She even stayed in a dive of a hotel. That’s tak­ing one for the team in any­ones book. …

On the 26^th of March 2010 there is an amount of $3 for short term park­ing, this was when her fam­ily came to pick her up at the air­port instead of billing it to Cor­po­rate Cabs for a hundy. She fre­quently gets peo­ple to pick her up from air­ports instead of bill the tax­payer for cab fares.

She is tighter than a fish’s arse and that’s water­proof. Lyn Provost, civil ser­vant, I dub thee The Queen of Mean.

Most recipients of a nickname from Whale Oil are not that happy about it, but in this case I think the Auditor-General will be happy with it.

More seriously, it is great to see the AG aware of the moral leadership role of her office. It is a million years removed from the days of Jeff Chapman, who was actually convicted for fraud.

Patrick Gower at TV3 reports:

Labour’s pursuit of the Pacific Islander vote in the Mana by-election has been dealt a blow, with a member of candidate Kris Faafoi’s campaign team forced to apologise for calling a National Party rival a “dumb-ass coconut”.

Litea Ah Hoi is a hardcore Labour supporter out fighting for votes in the by-election – so hardcore her Facebook page carried a message calling a rival a “dumb-ass coconut”.

“It’s Pacific humour,” she says. “Whether you put it together with dumb-ass, and then the coconut… if she took offence to it, then like…” Ms Ah Hoi pulls a surprised face.

But the target didn’t laugh – she found it abusive.

Liz Tanielu says Labour doesn’t like losing the Pacific vote to Hekia Parata – and bullies anyone who gets out of line.

Indeed, they don’t like it when “their people” dare to endorse someone not from Labour. Just like the principals who get bullied for daring to disagree.

“If this was a non-Pacific person who said that, they would have been sacked,” she says. “There would have been severe consequences.

“Well the same thing should apply to Litea and her flunkies.”

But 3 News found Ms Ah Hoi working in Mr Faafoi’s campaign headquarters today. She will be staying on, even though Mr Faafoi himself doesn’t like the term.

“In some senses it can be funny,” says Mr Faafoi, “in a context when it’s comedy. But in this context, it’s wrong.”

It is comedy, when done in humour. It isn’t comedy when done as a way to slag some one off because they said good things about Hekia on television.

Stuff has just tweeted:

BREAKING: Prime Minister tells speaker to abolish MPs perks.

Excellent. Amazing how quickly things can change in a couple of years, once you have transparency. No details yet.

It’s been a playful week, as I also was at the theatre on Saturday night also – this time seeing Robin Hood the Pantomime, in Circa 1.

My God, it was great fun. I had forgotten how hilarious a good pantomime is – and one by Roger Hall especially. Hall remains our king of the theatre.

The pantomime is great viewing for all ages. The kids love it, and they even get to go up on stage for a bit. But adults, parents and grand parents can all equally enjoy it, as it works into the script mounds of adult humour.

Wellingtonians will love how Robin Hood has been localised – Sherwood Forest has become Zealandia, and the town square is Civic Square.

There is a cast of eight. The star for me was Gavin Rutherford who plays Robin Hood’s mother – Mrs Hood – pictured above. Mrs Hood acts as the effective narrator and keeps you in non stop laughter with her antics.

Kali Kopae played a petite and immaculate Maid Marion. She had a wonderful singing voice (I later found out she was a finalist in NZ Idol), and was almost as good an archer as Robin.

I have to also mention John Wraight for his Little John character. Wraight has a wonderfully expressive face which lights up the stage as he sings. He also triples as the Abbott and King John.

There were lots of political and current affairs references. The husband of one character had been sent off to fight for the Crusaders. The wife remarked she was disappointed it wasn’t the Crusades, as then he would have got more air points than Chris Carter.

I was amused that evil Prince John turned out to be John Key, and the Sheriff of Nottingham Rodney Hyde (with a y). I texted Rodney at half time to tell him of his fortune. The peasants were unhappy with the Greedy Sheriff Tax increase. The play wasn’t party political – I think whoever was in Government would have ended up as the Sheriff.

The blue creature is Thor the Viking. He doesn’t appear in the classical version, but does a good job as Rodney’s rather dim bodyguard.

I must make mention of the talented musical director Michael Nicholas Williams. He provided great music and singing throughout the show, and was instrumental to is success.

I almost forgot the three Crows. The play actually starts with two Crows, and much laughter as we hear one is called Russell and one called Martin. Later they are joined by a female crow – Sheryl Crow. It’s all very silly yet funny.

I didn’t think Robin Hood would work well as a pantomime, but it worked brilliantly. I had a smile on my face for the entire two hours, and was disappointed when it finally ended.

If you have young kids, take them to see this – they’ll love it. But again, this is not just for the kids – most of the audience were adults there by themselves, and I suspect we actually got more laughs out of it than the kids. The only requirement is that you have to be prepared to “Kaw Kaw” when a baddie appears on stage (to warn Robin) and have fun.

It is on at Circa 1 until the 23rd of December. I rate it a must see.

On Thursday evening went off to Circa to see Me and Robert McKee.

It’s a black comedy which is the tale of two mates – Billy the scruffy script-writer and teacher, and Mac his best mate, who is a producer.

The Robert McKee referred to in the title is the author of the biblical “Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting”. To say he is successful is under-stating it. His former students include 26 Academy Awards winners and 125 Emmy Awards winners.

Billy could not be more different. He is washed up, and his income comes from teaching screenwriting at a local institute. His big hope is to write the screenplay for his mate Mac. The play consists of quite intense scenes between them, as Billy wants to use Mac’s childhood memories as the basis of his script.

The two actors are very skilled at bringing their characters to life. Christopher Brougham plays Billy in a hugely engaging and entertaining way – in fact at times he almost seemed like a leprechaun.

Having said that, this is probably more a play for dedicated theatre patrons, rather than those who just go occasionally. The first 45 minutes were a bit slow with the major plot developments happening later on. There are a couple of great twists towards the end.

Money is a theme throughout the show – to attract the wealthy doctors to invest in the film, the cashflow requirements, and the line that writing is about “telling lies for money”. And at the end of the show you may learn whether money is the root of all evil.

The show is on at Circa 2 until 4 December.

The SMH reports:

New research suggests that reducing class sizes fails to improve student performance at school and the government would do better to focus on improving teacher quality.

It found mandated class-size reductions of two to three students – costing $1500 a student or $1 million a school each year – resulted in no significant improvement in academic outcomes for students in Florida.

Yet this is what the PPTA is striking over – class sizes.

Dr Jensen said a student with a teacher in the top 10 per cent of the profession can achieve in six months what a student with a poor teacher can achieve in a year.

The PPTA, if i truly wanted to lift educational standards, should demand performance pay. They should go on strike unless the Government agrees to pay the best teachers more money.

He said Australia needed to improve the effectiveness of all teachers by 10 per cent or improve the poorest teachers by 14 per cent.

This would help students learn 5 per cent more each year and improve Australia’s declining performance in world rankings of student performance.

And what a difference it can make:

”Improving teacher effectiveness would have a greater impact on economic growth than any other reform before Australian governments,” Dr Jensen said in his report.

”The improvement in student learning could lift Australian students to the top of international performance tables.”

He argues that this in turn would lift productivity, increasing growth by $90 billion by 2050, making Australians 12 per cent richer by the turn of the century.

Dr Jensen said to achieve this, governments would need to take their focus off reducing class sizes. ”The vast majority of studies around the world have shown that class-size reductions do not significantly improve schooling and student outcomes,” he said.

”Initiatives to improve teacher effectiveness not only help students more, they cost much less.”

Of course the unions don’t even want teacher effectiveness measured.

Andrea Vance at Stuff reports:

Labour leader Phil Goff has admitted National’s Hekia Parata could win the Mana by-election if turnout is low.

His press secretary, Kris Faafoi, is standing for the seat, traditionally seen as a Labour stronghold. But yesterday Mr Goff said a low turnout would “jeopardise Labour’s hold on the seat”.

Goff is trying to do two things here. The first is to motivate Labour supporters to turn out and vote. He is right – turnout is important.

The second is he is trying to make the seat sound marginal, so that if Labour’s majority is slashed, it does not reflect so badly on them.

Mana is one of their safest seats. It (and its predecessors) have never been held by National. Mana has a larger majority than Lianne Dalziel in Christchurch East, Trevor Mallard in Hutt South and Jim Anderton in Wigram.

A few people point to the party vote margin at 2,500 and say this means it is not safe for Labour. But they make a fatal mistake. The releveant comparison with the party vote is between right and left, as both right and left voters will vote tactically on the electorate candidate (many green voters vote for a labour candidate and many ACT voters vote for a National candidate).

So what was the party vote for the right in 2008 in Mana? 39%. And the left vote? 53%.

In the median electorates, the right is 8% ahead of the left on the 2008 party vote. In Mana the right is 14% behind the left on the party vote.

Now this does not mean Hekia can not win. She has been winning endorsements from some non traditional National voters. Even Willie Jackson and John Tamihere have come out and said people should vote for her or Matt McCarten (partly because they fronted up onto their radio show).

But the reality is that no Government has ever won a seat off an Opposition in a by-election. I’ve checked back over 90 years. If Hekia wins, or even comes close, it will be a seismic event.

Andrea Vance at Stuff reports:

MPs across the political spectrum are calling for their private travel perks to be scrapped after the resignation of Cabinet minister Pansy Wong.

Prime Minister John Key said yesterday there was “a time and a place” for looking at the travel perks.

Speaking from Japan, where he was attending the Apec summit, he said: “It’s possible there may need to be some change but today’s not the day to make those comments.

“It’s tripped up a number of MPs and that’s very unfortunate. It looks somewhat like a relic of the past but in the end that’s not solely my decision. That’s something we need to discuss [and] in due course we will.”

Raising MPs’ salary in place of the perks was contentious.

“It’s not so much getting rid of it, the question is would there be any salary adjustment.”

That sounds like a move towards scrapping it.

The issue though, is that it will mean an increase in the salaries for MPs, as the Remuneration Authority currently deducts it from the level at which it judges their remuneration should be, to set base salary.

This increase would basically be automatic – it would not be requested by MPs. You would probably have to change the law, to stop there being an increase if the travel perk is removed.

But that is what should happen. The international travel perk should go, as I have blogged previously. And MPs should get paid what the RA determines is appropriate.

A reader e-mailed in asking why are some Ministerial portfolios “of” and some “for”, as in the Minister of Health and the Minister for Economic Development.

Now the short answer is the Prime Minister can call his or her Ministers whatever they like, subject to statutory references. Of course even then, you can change the law such as when we had a Treasurer as well as Minister of Finance.

But I figured there are probably some guidelines for the PM, and that if anyone knew the Cabinet Office would so I asked them and they were kind enough to reply:

You have asked why some ministerial titles use “of” and some use “for” – such as “Minister of Health” and “Minister for Economic Development”.

As you suggest in your email to Rebecca, the current set of portfolio titles is a combination of tradition and the preferences of Prime Ministers at the time the portfolios were created.  Many of the older titles use the “of” style (e.g., Health, Education, Finance, Defence), while a number of newer titles use the “for” style (e.g., Infrastructure, Regulatory Reform, Ethnic Affairs, Climate Change Issues).  Paragraph 2.8 of the Cabinet Manual  states “The Prime Minister determines the title and scope of each portfolio.”

So primarily PM preference, but also a factor of time. As far as I can tell, under Muldoon all portfolios were “of”.

There are a few other factors that guide the use of “of” and “for”:

- it is very much the case that when new appointments are made to established portfolios, the portfolio titles remain the same – whether “of” or “for” – especially if the title is used in legislation;

- “of” is often used where the portfolio relates directly to a ministry or department (e.g., Minister of Health, Minister of Justice, Minister of Corrections);

-  “for” is often used where the portfolio description is more “generic”; that is, where the Minister is responsible for a particular topic or area (e.g., Minister for Infrastructure, Minister for Biosecurity, Minister for Regulatory Reform);

– there are occasions when, for reasons of sense or style, it makes sense to use “of” or “for”.

What interested me was which exceptions there are to this. Key is the Minister of Tourism and you could argue that is a more generic description. However it is an old title, probably dating back to when we had a Tourism Department.

Gerry is Minister for Economic Development and that is the name of the Ministry.

Police is titled Minister of Police, but I recall people would joke that John Banks was better described as the Minister for the Police, as he was such a champion of them.

David Carter is Minister of Forestry and Minister for Biosecurity. But that is probably explained by Forestry being an older title.

Anyway I hope this answers the question, for the inquiring reader. Thanks again to Cabinet Office for the info.

John Armstrong reports:

The President of Russia carries an iPad, and pretty nifty he is at using it – as John Key found out during the Apec leaders’ dinner on Saturday night.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister was seated next to Dmitry Medvedev and spotted the iPad, so Mr Medvedev pulled up the Kremlin’s website.

Up came a photo of Mr Key and Mr Medvedev shaking hands just hours earlier after the pair announced New Zealand and Russia would start negotiating a free trade agreement.

Apple will be pleased. You can’t buy better marketing than the President of Russia showing off an iPad.

I’ve had an iPad for around three months now and I have to say I find it absolutely invaluable. Cunningly, they have invented a device which will not replace either your phone or your laptop, but complements them both.

What do I find so great about the iPad? In no particular order:

1. Web browsing. A phone screen is uncomfortable size and a laptop can take ages to boot up, login, open the browser etc. On the iPad you can have the web browser open and working within three seconds. It’s great for web browsing.
2. Portability. Can travel and use it anywhere – on buses, in taxis, on planes. Great for filling in the moments.
3. Business meetings. Can use it as your note pad. Easy to take notes on, and you can keep them on the iPad or e-mail them to your laptop.
4. Applications Store. This is the best marketing channel in the world. You can buy almost anything, and lots of free stuff also. The future of newspapers is likely to be through special premium versions for the iPad.
5. Battery. 10 hours. Yes.
6. Books. I would never read a book on my laptop. But am reading several on the iPad. The flicking movement to turn a page makes it very close to the real thing, and the ability to set font size is great. What is especially great is all the free books which are out of copyright.
7. Movies. HD movies look awesome. Also does You Tube etc
8. Games. Far far too addictive. The average price is around $2 so how can one resist.
9. E-mail. While one can access it on the phone, it’s great for read.ing attachments, and doing responses.
10. Education. I’d seriously recommend parents consider getting the kid an iPad when they turn around three. There are great interactive learning tools which will make reading and maths lots of fun.

I’ve yet to meet an iPad owner who isn’t a big fan of it.

Audrey Young reports:

Auckland Mayor Len Brown has given an undertaking to the influential Iwi Leadership Group to talk to the new Auckland Council about dedicated Maori seats on the council. But no quick decisions are expected to be taken.

Mr Brown attended the group’s hui at Takapuwahia Marae in Porirua on Saturday as a guest.

Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples asked Mr Brown to attend the hui with him.

The request to discuss Maori representation on the council was put by Tainui leader Tukoroirangi Morgan and Ngati Whatua leader Naida Glavish.

Mr Morgan said last night that Mr Brown gave an undertaking to discuss the issue with his new council which has only just been sworn in.

He had said it was a serious issue and it would be discussed comprehensively.

I have two objections to Maori seats on the Auckland Council – one principled and one pragmatic.

The principled argument is that race based seats are a bad thing, and over time will lead NZ to a Fiji type situation.

The pragmatic argument is that there is no problem to solve.

In the Auckland region, Maori make up just under 10% of the population (and only 8.3% of the adult population). On the Auckland Council, 3 out of 20 Councillors or 15% have Maori descent.

Mr Morgan and Dr Sharples said there was no support for getting the issue tested through a referendum.

It would be a brave Council that introduced race based seats on its own initiative, without letting the people have a say.

Oh dear. Phil Goff was interviewed by Susan Wood on Friday night at around 6.25 pm, and they were talking about Kris Faafoi’s campaign in Mana.

Susan asserted that no one in Mana knew what the Labour candidate looked like, and Phil responded that he had been in Mana with Kris the day before, and that everyone had recognised Kris, that in fact they were wondering who the other bloke was.

Classic.

Jonathan Marshall in the SST reports:

THE CRIMINAL barrister who took on more legal aid cases than any other – 599 last year, earning him $431,000 – has lost a last-ditch bid to stop changes that will end his ability to take on as many cases as he likes.

After four years in the business, 30-year-old Tudor Clee said he would “most likely” have to quit, with projections his caseload would drop 91%. From November 29, those who want legal fees paid by the taxpayer will be unable to nominate which lawyer represents them. Instead lawyers will be put on a roster and be awarded an equal number of cases.

Not bad to be earning $431,000 from the taxpayer by age 30. And I suspect his expenses only consist of a car boot.

With 250 work days a year, it means he was doing two cases a day. One can only wonder about the quality.

Clee told the Star-Times he currently handled “twice as many legal aid files as any other lawyer in New Zealand” but under the new scheme would be lucky to be given 51 files a year – one a week.

He said the average payment would be $700, but could be as low as $220 for some minor charges.

My advice for Mr Clee is to consider the novel prospect of trying to obtain clients who use their own money. If he is really good at his job (and one would hope so if he had 600 legal aid clients a year) he should have clients beating down his door wanting him to represent him, and willing to pay for it.

Tracy Watkins reports:

EVIDENCE HAS emerged that 72% of all alcohol-related deaths on the roads are caused by drivers who are either blind-drunk or repeat offenders.

The research comes during debate over whether the drink-driving limit should be lowered, and ahead of the release of a report investigating drivers who cause the most mayhem.

And remember to be a repeat offender, you have probably driven drunk 50+ times, as at best you only get checked 1 in 50 times you are driving.

The Transport Ministry research shows that in 2009 88 deaths – 72% of all alcohol-related deaths – were caused by 73 drivers who were either at least 50% over the current limit, or who already had a previous conviction.

Of those 88 deaths, 34 people were killed in crashes where the driver at fault had a previous conviction and 57% – or 50 out of 88 deaths – were caused by drivers with twice the legal alcohol limit.

In 2008, 108 people were killed in alcohol-related crashes and 28 of those – 26% were caused by drivers with a previous drink-driving conviction, while 77 deaths – 62% – were caused by drivers who had consumed more than twice the legal alcohol limit.

This is where the focus should go, and it is. Compulsory alcohol interlocks on vehicles owned by a convicted drunk driver are well overdue.