Kiwiblog

Went to see Nitro Circus at the stadium last night, and what a great night it was.

Most of the performance is done on bikes and motorbikes as they jump onto and off ramps. But they also use kids trikes, skateboards, roller blades, skiis and most amazing of all a wheelchair.

Seeing a paraplegic soar down a ramp, and then launch into the air, perform a forward roll in the wheelchair and then land on the next ramp and sail down to the finish is just amazing. I did quip about whether he was a paraplegic before or after he started working for Nitro Circus.

If you have kids, take them along – they’ll love it.

Yes another year has gone by.  Guess the number of stoppers and the percentage or number of stelvins. the count will be on 16 February.

The shareholders of The Rock will want to thank Sue Bradford and Carol Beaumont for promoting their win a bride competition.

NZPA report:

A radio contest to win a Ukrainian mail-order bride has come in for more flak – this time from an MP within Parliament.

Labour’s Women’s Affairs spokeswoman Carol Beaumont this morning said she was ”appalled” by the contest.

In a blog on Labour’s Red Alert site, Beaumont added her criticism to that of the former Green Party MP Sue Bradford for the promotion.

”It is a reminder that there is still an attitude towards women in NZ that is deeply troubling – that they are commodities to buy and to own,” Beaumont said.

”The reality is that there is still a long way to go to achieving genuine equality for women in New Zealand. There are still stereotypes, put downs and discrimination.”

The contest, run by MediaWorks’ The Rock radio station, will see the winner flown to the Ukraine for 12 nights, given $2000 spending money, and offered their choice of a bride from an agency.

”If you’re interested in holy matrimony with a potentially hot foreign chick, fill it out to the best of your abilities,” the competition application form says on the station’s website.

The radio station is promoting the contest on air as ”morally bankrupt”.

This is the same radio station that also married off total strangers to each other in another competition (ironically the marriage is still going well a decade later), so why are people surprised over this competition?

Ben Heather in The Press reports:

A law passed for Canterbury’s earthquake recovery is an “unprecedented” surrender of parliamentary power, allowing the Government to make laws by decree, a group of Auckland lawyers say.

In an opinion from the Auckland District Law Society’s public issues committee, the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act was labelled one of the most “extreme” laws passed in New Zealand history.

“(It) is a virtually unprecedented abdication of power by the legislature in favour of the Crown.” The law surpassed powers given to government after previous quakes, such as Napier’s 1931 quake, despite the quake being less substantial, the committee said.

The act was passed unanimously by Parliament in September and gives the Government the power to change almost any law to aid the earthquake recovery.

As noted, was voted for by Labour and the Greens. I think it is great that the Opposition had such high trust in the integrity of John Key’s Government that they could vote for such a law, knowing that the Key Government would not abuse the powers voted to it.

Personally it would have been more desirable not to leave it all to trust, and to have had the Earthquake Act specify which Acts could be amended by Order in Council (rather than merely stating which ones can not).

So far, 14 changes, called orders of council, have been passed, amending everything from social security to the building code.

None of these decisions required parliamentary consent and they cannot be challenged through the courts.

The committee claims the law could technically be used to exempt police from prosecution or raise GST with only passing reference to the quake.

A more appropriate response would have been to amend legislation when required through Parliament, it said.

Here the ADLS get a bit unrealistic. Certain things had to happen quickly.

However, Canterbury-Westland Law Society branch president Allister Davis said the act was necessary and the committee’s view was “short-sighted”.

The act would expire in April 2012 and so far powers bestowed on the Government had not been abused, he said.

“Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary legislation.”

I guess you get a different view of constitutional proprieties, when your house is in the earthquake zone.

Amanda Fisher in the Dom Post reports:

The principal of a Kapiti Coast primary school is under investigation over teachers’ complaints of sexual harassment and bullying.

But other teachers and parents at Paekakariki School have come out in support of Allan Marsden and say the board of trustees’ four-month investigation has torn the school apart.

Mr Marsden, who elected to take leave from last October, has denied the substance of all six complaints. …

The complaints include touching a teacher’s thigh in the staff room, making sexually inappropriate comments, and bullying people till they felt ill. …

There was no indication staff were unhappy with his management till the six formal complaints came in, he said.

Six complaints is a lot, as they appear to be from six different people – not just one disaffected teacher.

Marsden was in the news last year, as one of the ring-leaders in the campaign against national standards. Last September he announced that they would refuse to implement national standards (not just refuse to supply targets to the Ministry). The DP story reports:

More than 20 pupils from his year 7 and 8 class last year still have not had school reports. Board of trustees chairwoman Nicki Wrighton said the board was “following that up with some urgency … Parents are concerned and we completely understand that.”

So refusing to implement national standards, and not even producing school reports for all the senior students.

A Paekakariki teacher, who did not want to be named, said Mr Marsden was an educational leader, despite not being politically correct.

“Allan’s from Upper Hutt, likes rugby and drinks Lion Red, but last I heard that wasn’t grounds for dismissal.”

Arguably drinking Lion Red should be grounds for dismissal.

There is a pro-Marsden website here, which blames the Board for being too zealous. There are comments from people on both sides. Who knows what the truth really is – the only thing one can conclude is the school is deeply divided.

1. Rob Salmond at Pundit warns of reading too much into short-term polling trends
2. Whale enjoys the irony of the Greens not making the Botany ballot as they were stuck in traffic
3. Whowuddathort tells the story of two Phil Goff’s with numerous examples
4. No Right Turn exposes the join Australia Movement soliciting foreign donations

A lengthy video interview at 3 News by Patrick Gower with Tariana Turia talking about Hone Harawria. A key line:

“He has no respect for our authority. He has no respect for this environment. He doesn’t have any respect for the coalition agreement that we all signed up to and that we all agreed to. And he has no respect for the party itself,”

If Hone wants to survive in the party, then he is going to have to convince his colleagues that he is capable of respecting them, and not just doing what is best for Hone.

Dave Burgess in the Dom post reports:

Intoducing legislation to reduce or cap the number of taxis in Wellington would be a move back to the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s and will not happen, Transport Minister Steven Joyce says.

The Government’s position goes against that held by Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown, who has said that limiting taxi numbers was an area for lobbying the New Zealand Transport Agency, which issues taxi licences.

The Taxi Federation also supported a cap on the 1237 taxis licensed for Wellington.

“The Taxi Federation regularly is nostalgic for the good old days and periodically says it wants to restrict the number of taxis,” Mr Joyce said. “I notice they never volunteer to reduce the numbers in their own fleets.”

A good point, and nice to see the Minister resisting a step back in time.

The lack of action in cutting cab numbers may disappoint a significant number of Wellingtonians, if a poll on dompost.co.nz is anything to go by. Three- quarters of the 664 respondents said they believed there were too many taxis in the city.

“At different times there can be too many, but I notice that whenever you are looking for a cab you are never too worried about the number of taxis,” Mr Joyce said.

“You get more concerned if you aren’t looking for a cab and you see them around.”

Also often you don’t just want any old cab, but one from a company you trust. Some taxi firms are very much a matter of using only as a last resort.

The SMH reports:

The mother of a 14-year-old girl at the centre of an Australian “sexting” scandal that has seen three boys convicted of underage sex crimes has called for Facebook to be banned for under-18s.

Yeah that will work – try to kick 10 million+ teenagers off Facebook. Good uck with that.

The boys responsible avoided serving jail time after pleading guilty in the Bunbury Children’s Court to raping a girl over 13 and under 16, and are now registered sex offenders despite being aged 15 and 16 themselves.

In court it was revealed the boys had been drinking when they convinced the girl to sneak out on a Friday night, on August 27 last year, and meet them in a local park.

The boys then brought her back to one of the 16-year-olds’ homes where she was plied with vodka and gave the boy oral sex. She then had intercourse with his other two friends in the bedroom. The sexual acts were filmed on a mobile phone and sent to others.

And so we blame Facebook for this? I blame the kids involved – not the Internet or Facebook.

Tom Pullar-Strecker reports:

Consumers could be deluged with spam text messages unless the Commerce Commission has a change of heart and lets mobile phone companies charge other telcos a token amount for routing texts to their customers, Vodafone and the Telecommunications Users Association have warned.

The commission is considering outlawing such charges as part of its long-running investigation into mobile termination fees, which Vodafone said yesterday could slash its pre-tax profits by $69 million next year.

The Telecommunications Users Association said in a submission to the commission that the main reason that up to 90 per cent of all email was spam was that it cost people virtually nothing to send. Text spam was a “small but growing problem” that the commission risked exacerbating, it said.

Oh bullshit (with all respect).

Almost all spam comes from overseas. The regulated mobile termination rate will only apply to texts sent between NZ telcos. And NZ telcos under the law have to kick spammers off their networks.

“The single best weapon in the fight against spam is cost. Remove the cost entirely and New Zealand mobile users will find out just how quickly the world of email spam can be replicated in their SMS inboxes,” it said.

With this viewpoint, Vodafone are saying they’d also like to be able to charge ISPs for receiving e-mail in order to stop spam. Can you imagine having to pay your ISP a per e-mail charge?

The reality is that NZ telcos arrangements with overseas telcos for receiving text messages from overseas are outside the MTR regime. And any locally based spam can be prosecuted.

The Herald reports:

Passengers on Air New Zealand’s new black A320 will be able to make phone calls, send texts and check emails – if they are Vodafone customers.

The plane is one of two A320s which the airline is making “mobile phone capable” in the next month.

Being able to text and e-mail will be useful. Not so sure about the wisdom of voice calls, but to be fair in theory one can already make these on their international flights through the in seat phones.

Passengers will pay roaming costs of $3.50 a minute and 80c for every outbound text. They will also pay $20 per megabyte of data.

Well fuck that. $20,000 per GB of data is insanely high.

Will they also charge for incoming calls and texts?

NZPA report:

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard will make her first visit to New Zealand next week and become the first foreign leader to address New Zealand’s Parliament.

Prime Minister John Key announced today that Ms Gillard would visit on February 15 and 16.

He said a highlight would be her speech in Parliament’s debating chamber on the 16th.

“She will be the first foreign leader to do so – this will be a highlight of the visit and underscores the special and unique relationship that exists between the two countries,” Mr Key said.

I think it is appropriate that the Australian PM is the first leader to do so.

Rudd was scheduled to do so last year but of course got rolled the week before by Gillard. Labor has fallen behind the Coalition in the polls for the first time since the election, so lets hope Julia actually survives the next two weeks, so we don’t have to go for third time lucky!

The full statement is here. Some extracts:

While circumstances may vary for individual New Zealanders, on average wages under this Government have risen considerably faster than prices. According to the official statistics, the price of goods and services has gone up 6 per cent since September 2008. Over this same period, however, the after-tax average wage has gone up 16 per cent. This year we will work to ensure that after-tax wage growth continues to outstrip price increases.

Which is greater than the real after-tax wage increase in the entire 2000 – 2008 period, off memory.

We have signalled that in this year’s Budget our new spending allowance will be reduced to around $800-$900 million. This compares to the average $2.8 billion per annum increase under the previous Labour Government.

Doesn’t sound like a lot, but if fiscal discipline can be maintained, that means $20b less debt over four years.

The government machine still consists of more than 80 Crown Entities each with their own Board, 38 Departments, more than 70 portfolios and more than 60 separate Budget Votes. The costs of running this machinery are still too high.

Clearly, there is more to be done to make the government bureaucracy smaller and better.

Therefore, I have asked for advice on further reforms to streamline and improve the performance of the government bureaucracy.

There is still a huge amount that could be done. I actually think one could reduce the number of departments to around 12 – 15.

We look forward to receiving their advice and anticipate making changes in three main areas.

The first will be changes to better support beneficiaries with children back into paid employment and to ensure they are fulfilling their responsibilities to their children.

The second will be new approaches to better support sickness and invalid beneficiaries back into paid employment.

The third will be new approaches for ensuring young people have the skills and support needed to escape the benefit system and, ideally, to prevent them from joining it in the first place.

The days of not having to look for a single job while on the DPB until your child is well into their teenage years, is soon going to end.

Not a lot of detail in the speech, but that I suspect is because details will be laid out on a regular basis during the year.

A fortnight agon Phil Goff ruled out talking to Hone Harawira. TVNZ reported:

He said Labour would talk to the Maori Party if it was “in the interests of New Zealanders to do so”.

Goff would not, however, talk to Hone Harawira, saying there were “lots of things I fundamentally disagree with him on”.

He said Labour would also work with Winston Peters, though New Zealand First is currently out of government.

So two weeks ago Goff said he would not talk to Harawira, but he would deal with Winston or the Maori Party.

Today the Herald reports:

Labour leader Phil Goff this morning refused to rule out Hone Harawira as a somewhat unlikely potential coalition partner following this year’s election.

So that’s a flip-flop in just two weeks.

Labour have had five different positions on the Foreshore & Seabed. Will they also get to five different positions on Hone Harawira?

Derek Cheng in the Herald reports:

John Key says the Government has done as much as possible for the poor after the mother of a family he championed said he was a political “arsehole”.

In Opposition in 2007, the Prime Minister singled out McGehan Close, Mt Albert, as typical of the “growing underclass” that would be a priority for National.

He visited the Nathan family and invited Joan Nathan’s 12-year-old daughter, Aroha, to Waitangi.

But now Mrs Nathan says although she still likes Mr Key personally, as a politician he is an “arsehole” and has done little to help the poor.

“He’s just making everything better for high earners and not the low-income ones,” she told Campbell Live.

Mrs Nathan, who recently had her sixth child, said her life was no better under Mr Key’s Government. …

She was still on a domestic purposes benefit, though she did some work for National MP Jackie Blue.

I don’t want to beat up on Mrs Nathan, as all her circumstances are not in the public domain. I would just make the comment that it is reported she just had her sixth child on the DPB – and that this is not the fault of the Government. It is not unreasonable to stop having children if you are already struggling to make ends meet.

I estimate that the gross level of income support from the Government for six children is around $850 a week – not luxury, but not insignificant. On top of that highly likely there is accomodation supplement or a state house.

“Bread, milk, everything that we need that is a basic necessity for us is going to be more expensive. It’s going to be harder for us to feed our kids.”

 Those two examples are interesting, as the monthly Food Price Index allows us to track their price movements.

Milk has gone up 10% in the last two years under National, but it increased 22% in the two years before that under Labour. Now neither Government sets the price of milk, but it does put things in perspective.

Bread is a more extreme comparison. Under two years of National it has gone up 1.4%. In the previous two years under Labour it went up 30.7%.

First of all, we have the Labour candidate conceding the by-election a month before the vote. Brian Rudman writes:

But a week later he pops up in a local newspaper across town to assure his supporters in Mt Roskill that his adventures in Botany are just a temporary folly and would not affect his role as a member of Puketapapa Local Board.

He told Central Leader readers that “Botany is a strong National seat that I’m not going to be able to win as a Labour candidate. It’s not going to be something that pulls me away from Mt Roskill.”

Reassuring for Roskillites, perhaps, but if I were a voter in Botany I’d be thinking, “If that guy has already decided he’s a loser, with nothing by way of policy in his back pocket that he thinks will change my mind, then why should I waste my vote and prove him wrong?”

I am surprised Michael’s concession of the by-election has not attracted as much publicity, as when Melissa Lee did much the same for Mt Albert. Arguably Wood’s actions are worse – Botany has a smaller majority than Mt Albert for one. But more importantly Lee’s statement was made under pressure on live radio. Wood has conceded defeat in a written column.

Of course it is highly unlikely Labour will win Botany – I don’t expect them to do so. But a major party candidate should never ever say they will not win – it is a kick in the guts for their volunteers. Experienced politicians (and Wood has stood twice before) know that you downplay expectations, but never outright concede until the vote is counted.

All in all it is a bad look for Labour that their candidate is more concerned about reassuring the residents of Mt Roskill that he won’t be gone for long, rather than giving Botany voters a reason to vote for him.

Also weird if this description from the ACT candidate: (H/T: Not PC)

Business lecturer Lyn Murphy has won the party’s candidate nomination and she intends to win. …

Politically, she puts herself to the left of Mr Ross and to the right of Labour’s Michael Wood.

“I am the person for the central voter,” she says.

Has ACT transformed into United Future? Is Lyn Murphy saying that Ross stands for less spending and lower taxes than her? If not, on what basis does she say he is to the right of her?

So we have a Labour candidate who has already conceded defeat, and an ACT candidate who effectively has said ACT supporters should vote for Jami-Lee. Maybe the New Citizens Party will do quite well after all!

Don Brash’s speech to the Auckland Rotary Club is here. He rightly makes the point about the abolition of youth rates hurting youth employment:

I was dismayed that the government had taken no action to reinstate youth minimum wages.

This despite National knowing that after Labour abolished youth rates, youth unemployment shot up by 12,000.¹ 

Thanks to Labour’s action and National’s failure to reverse it, thousands and thousands of young people now leave school or training and quickly become demoralized.

These young people don’t have the skills to earn the minimum adult wage – but they’d be quite happy to take a job for a couple of dollars an hour less.

Maybe you can remember doing the same thing – you were thrilled to get a foot on the bottom rung of the job ladder, and it wasn’t long before you worked your way up.

But the Government says these teenagers have to find a boss who’s prepared to pay them an adult wage for no relevant experience and few skills.

Otherwise they have to go on the dole.

If they can’t get a job for $12.75 an hour, they’re not allowed to accept one for, say, $10. They have to go home and lie on the couch for $4.50!

16 year olds with no work experience and skills struggle to find jobs when they have to be paid $13 an hour.

And on the economy generally:

New Zealand’s economic decline over the last half century is one of the steepest on record anywhere. 

Reversing that decline won’t be easy.

To use a phrase sometimes used in another context, we dare not settle for the soft bigotry of low expectations that says “ah yes, but New Zealand is a nice place to live”. 

Of course it is. 

But we need to transform our economic destiny too.

We need to give our people a reason to believe that we can once again offer a standard of living similar to that in other developed countries – as we had only 50 years ago. 

In 1975, another National leader, Rob Muldoon, campaigned on “restoring New Zealand’s shattered economy”. 

Sadly, he didn’t.  By the time he’d finished with it, it was almost totally shattered. 

This generation of political leaders must do better.

A challenge indeed.

The Dom Post reports:

A trio of gang-linked women who have fought for two years against eviction from their state houses are expecting to be forcibly removed today after being given 24 hours to leave.

Housing New Zealand informed the three residents of Farmer Cres in Pomare, Lower Hutt, at 12.30pm yesterday of its intention to evict them.

The move follows two years of legal action since Huia Tamaka, Robyn Winther and Billy Taylor were issued 90-day eviction notices after an incident involving the Mongrel Mob in Pomare in February 2009. …

Last night Ms Tamaka, who has four of her six children in the Farmer Cres house, said she was devastated by the news.

“I wasn’t expecting that, there’s no way I can get my kids out of here in that time. I just hope something can be done.”

What? Two years is not enough notice? That is around eight times longer than most people get.

Three gang members allegedly terrorised a woman and her two children in their home, leading to a police swoop on gang homes in the area and the arrest of 10 people. …

Housing NZ chief executive Lesley McTurk said she reconsidered ending the tenancies and decided to proceed because there were some actions so severe and disruptive to a community that their impact could not be undone.

“The Pomare area has a history of violence and intimidation. The incident which led to these 90-day notices was not an isolated event.

Off memory, Housing NZ has been unable to find tenants for any of the other nearby properties because of the violence and intimidation. They’ve turned it into a no mans land.

Housing NZ had consistently offered the trio advice in finding new accommodation and that help remained available, she said.

Instead, we’ve had two years of court battles.

Colin James writes:

Several one-off factors will conspire to make this year feel OK, if there is no new international shock. But getting the economy solidly based will take a decade.

This is not an argument about the budget, though it shows up there. It is about how to earn our way. For 40 years we did not, culminating in a bubble economy from 2002 – what Bill English has taken to calling “pinko- economics”. We still don’t.

Getting to equilibrium requires a massive shift from consumption to exports: start with a $5 billion lift in savings just to hold net liabilities at 85 per cent. That requires both a mindset shift and an interlocking set of policies: tax (more to do yet), savings (some initial ideas from the working group), more rigorous asset funding and management (the December investment statement and the SOE selldowns), tighter management and trimming of welfare rolls (the working group reports in two weeks) and maybe a bit more support for innovation.

I think James is right on the time–frame – it probably will take a decade.

AT LEAST that is the Government’s current strategic mix. A major challenge will land soon in the form of the much-delayed report by Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Peter Gluckman’s group of social scientists, fresh off the back of high-level international academic backing for the Dunedin longitudinal study’s findings that much teenage failure and crime stems from fixable bad starts to life.

The Gluckman report will make 10 or 12 major and many detailed recommendations: an expensive programme but ultimately a strategic economic investment.

That report will be fascinating.

Mr Key can’t stretch that far yet. But that he, with Mr English pushing, has taken on the SOE selldown bogey to get a longer- term return suggests he intends his second term to have purpose and he figures that purpose requires strategy, not ad hoc tactics, and longer-sighted policy, not myopic poll-watching. In fact, to look purposeful, strategic and a capable economic manager is shaping as his election campaign theme.

It is too early to tell if Mr Key really has gone strategic. But the past few months look like a turning point. Look again this time next year.

Key steps on the way will be what gets announced today by the PM, the 2011 budget and then finally the election manfesto.

Shane Cowlishaw in the Dom Post reports:

Terry Serepisos is flying to Zurich in a bid to save the Phoenix football team and four of his other companies – but Inland Revenue is pushing ahead with plans to liquidate them.

The IRD says it is owed more than $3.5 million in outstanding tax and penalties and wants to advertise its plans to liquidate the companies. Mr Serepisos applied to the High Court at Wellington to stop the advertisements, but a judge refused and the adverts are due to run in The Dominion Post tomorrow.

Justice Forrie Miller was told at an urgently arranged hearing on Friday that Mr Serepisos was going to Zurich this week to sign loan documents that would allow IRD and other creditors to be paid within three weeks, assuming various conditions were met.

However, Inland Revenue doubted Mr Serepisos would be able to meet the conditions.

A draft of the loan documents that it had seen contained a condition that the companies wanting the bailout be solvent at present.

If the companies are not solvent, then the issue of liability of directors for trading while insolvent may arise.

The five companies owe around $3.5m to the IRD, being approx:

• PAYE $1.6m
• GST $1.9m
• Kiwisaver $0.1m
• Income Tax $150

Even worse, almost all the money owed is not money from the companies, but money collected from employees and customers in trust for the IRD.

The 6th of February is not just Waitangi Day, but 100 years ago also saw the birth of Ronald Wilson Reagan.

I republish this story from General Debate, in tribute:

The inestimable Powerline blog in the US paid tribute to Reagan’s famous “Tear Down this Wall” speech by quoting from the memoirs of one of Reagan’s speechwriters Peter Robinson http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/02/028298.php

The story behind this speech is fascinating and I quote portions of it verbatim from Robinson’s book “How Ronald Reagan changed my life”:

“In April 1987, when I was assigned to write the Brandenburg Gate address, I spent a day in Berlin with the White House advance team, the logistical experts, Secret Service agents, and press officials who went to the site of every presidential visit to make arrangements. In the evening, I broke away from the advance team to join a dozen Berliners for dinner. Our hosts were Dieter and Ingeborg Elz, who, after Dieter completed his career at the World Bank in Washington, had retired to Berlin. Although we had never met, we had friends in common, and the Elzes had offered to put on this dinner party to give me a feel for their city. They had invited Berliners of different walks of life and political outlooks–businessmen, academics, students, homemakers.

We chatted for awhile. Then I explained that, earlier in the day, the ranking American diplomat in West Berlin had told me that over the years Berliners had made a kind of accommodation with the wall. “Is it true?” I asked. “Have you gotten used to it?”

The Elzes and their guests glanced at each other uneasily. Then one man raised an arm and pointed. “My sister lives twenty miles in that direction,” he said. “I haven’t seen her in more than two decades. Do you think I can get used to that?” Another man spoke. As he walked to work each morning, he explained, a soldier in a guard tower peered down at him through binoculars. “That soldier and I speak the same language. We share the same history. But one of us is a zookeeper and the other is an animal, and I am never certain which is which.”

Our hostess broke in. A gracious woman, Ingeborg Elz had suddenly grown angry. Her face was red. She made a fist with one hand and pounded it into the palm of the other. “If this man Gorbachev is serious with his talk of glasnost and perestroika,” she said, “he can prove it. He can get rid of this wall.”

Back at the White House I adapted her comment, making “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” the central line in my draft. On Friday, May 15, the speeches for the President’s trip–he would be traveling to Rome and Venice before reaching Berlin–were forwarded to the President, and on Monday, May 18, the speechwriters joined him in the Oval Office. My speech was the last we discussed. “Mr. President,” I said, “I learned on the advance trip that this speech will be heard not only in West Berlin but throughout East Germany. Is there anything you’d like to say to people on the other side of the Berlin Wall?”

The President cocked his head and thought. “Well,” he replied, “there’s that passage about tearing down the wall. That wall has to come down. That’s what I’d like to say to them.”

With three weeks to go before it was delivered, the speech was circulated to the State Department and the National Security Council. Both attempted to suppress it. The draft was naive. It would raise false hopes. It was clumsy. It was needlessly provocative. State and the NSC submitted their own alternate drafts–my journal records that there were no fewer than seven. In each, the call to tear down the wall was missing.

When in early June the President and his party reached Italy (I remained in Washington), Ken Duberstein, the deputy chief of staff, sat the President down in the garden of the palazzo in which he was staying, then briefed him on the objections to my draft. Reagan asked Duberstein’s advice. Duberstein replied that he thought the line about tearing down the wall sounded good. “But I told him, ‘You’re President, so you get to decide.’” And then, Duberstein recalls, “he got that wonderful, knowing smile on his face, and he said, ‘Let’s leave it in.’”

The day the President arrived in Berlin, State and NSC submitted yet another alternate draft. Yet in the limousine on the way to the Berlin Wall, the President told Duberstein he was determined to deliver the controversial line. Reagan smiled. “The boys at State are going to kill me,” he said, “but it’s the right thing to do.”

I like this story, partly because I have heard it first hand from Peter Robinson.

NZPA report:

Maverick MP Hone Harawira has been suspended from the Maori Party caucus.

In a statement today, Maori Party co-leaders Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia announced the suspension, saying that it was a result of Mr Harawira’s behaviour in the party for the past five years.

That is an interesting time-frame to refer to. It looks like it has been building for a long time, and has reached the near inevitable conclusion.

“We have always respected the right, and made provision for caucus colleagues to speak out on issues which their constituency presents. We do this, however, always guided by the principle of unity of purpose and direction (kotahitanga).”

No political movement could survive divided within itself, they said.

“We have made this decision with heavy hearts. We are especially mindful of the position of Maori Party supporters in Te Tai Tokerau, who will obviously feel loyal to Mr Harawira; but who are also supportive of our kaupapa Maori and the achievements of the Maori Party in Parliament.

“We want them to know that we have huge respect for the people of Te Tai Tokerau and our commitment to our people remains unwavering.”

The suspension would remain in force until further notice.

It will be interesting to see if Harawira now gives his proxy vote to the Opposition. It won’t affect things a lot as you need 62 votes to pass a law and Nat + ACT = 63 and NAT + Maori = 62 so National can still go either way – plus have Peter Dunne.