Kiwiblog

Late last year the Sunday Star-Times started running polls by Horizon Research. I commented on them in September and again in December. I had concerns over the results they were coming up with. Unlike all the other public parliamentary pollsters, they use an Internet panel for their polling, rather than randomly selected phone numbers.

There is of course no sure fire way to know whether a poll is accurate or not, except when measure against an actual election. The only election they have previously publicly polled is the Auckland Council. Horizon predicted Len Brown would win the Auckland Mayoralty with a 31%  margin, and in fact the actual margin was just under 14%.

I deliberately have not blogged again on them, because I think you should not rush to judgement off just one or two polls. No pollster is 100% reliable. Even with a margin of error, that is only to 95% confidence. That means that around 1 in 20 polls will be outside the sampling margin of error.

The katest Horizon poll is here. They helpfully include their results for the last six months, so I have done a comparison of the results for the Horizon polls with the average of the polls for the four other companies which do public parliamentary polls. They are Colmar Brunton, Reid Research, TV3 and Digipoll. Rob Salmond found that the average of the polls for the four public pollsters was highly accurate at the 2008 election.

In doing the comparison, I compare percentages of decided voters, as that is what is commonly reported and is comparable to an actual election result.

As one can see the Horizon Poll has National around 10% lower than the average of the four other pollsters. I’ve also included the lowest and highest poll score for National in each month, and Horizon poll tends to have National 5% to 10% below anoy other individual poll.

This is difficult to reconcile. It is possible that Colmar Brunton, Reid Research, Digipoll and Roy Morgan (who have long established track records) are all getting it wrong, and that this brand new company by using Internet Panels is getting it right. But I know where I would put my money.

With Labour, there is less of a gap. They tend to have Labour 2% to 3% lower than the average of the other polls, but pretty close to the lowest scores each for the other polls.

Horizon has had the Greens significantly higher than the average of the other polls for five out of six months. On average by about 3%.

With NZ First, Horizon have had a huge gap, often being more than double the average of the other polls. Around a 5% gap on average which is huge. Also worth pointing out there is a certain self-fulling aspect to polls. The increase in January in the other polls was probably partially due to publicity over them being at 9% in the Horizon poll.

The latest (May 2011) poll has ACT at over 5%. This isn’t as extraordinary as the fact their April 2011 poll had ACT at over 4%. In fact the Horizon poll says ACT gained more support in March and April under Rodney Hide (a 2% gain) than they gained in May under Brash.

I would not be unhapy with ACT at 5%, but to believe ACT are at 5% in May, you need to believe that they were at 4% in April prior to the leadership change.

The discrepancies between the Horizon polls and the other four pollsters are huge. I do not see a way to reconcile them. Now this is not to say Horizon are necessairly wrong. It is possible the other four pollsters are all wrong. Now the average of the other four pollsters got the 2008 election close to spot on, and Horizon were out on the Brown-Banks margin by around 17%. But despite that, it is possible that the other four companies have just fluked their results over the last few years, and only Horizon is applying an accurate methodoogy to their sampling.

Roger Kerr blogs:

I have spent much of this week in Houston, Texas. Texas is the go-ahead large state in the United States today, and Houston is the oil and gas capital, America’s second largest port and home to a huge medical complex.

With it’s business-friendly environment, Texas is attracting firms and people from other states, notably over-taxed and over-regulated California, in large numbers. It has no state income tax. The state legislature only meets for 8 weeks every two years – and without air-conditioning so that politicians do not get too attracted to the place.

Heh. Amusing but not the part I suggest we emulate.

Houston is famous for having no zoning (land regulation). Yet it looks pretty much like many other US cities. Without controls you do not find an oil refinery next to prime residential real estate and the expected collection of businesses cluster around the port. But there are many neighborhood associations that set their own rules about things like how close to a boundary you can build or what colour you can paint your house.

The absence of land supply restrictions makes housing (and much else in Houston) incredibly cheap. You can get a very nice two-garage, four-bedroom house for as little as US $200,000. Some 500,000 ‘refugees’ from New Orleans moved to Houston after Hurricane Katrina without putting any significant pressure on house prices or the land market.

If ever the government gets around to a fundamental review of our dysfunctional Resource Management Act, there would be many lessons to be learned from Houston.

What I find most interesting is that the absence of zoning hasn’t resulted in the city being vastly different to other cities – just cheaper.

Think how much time and money would be saved, and lawyers dispensed with, if there was no district plan for a city!

The first thing you notice upon entering Circa Theatre One is its remarkable transformation. The stage, being a cottage with no walls, is in the middle of the theatre, and the seating is on both sides of it. This has the unusual effect of being able to see half the audience beyond the stage. It gave an intimate feel to the performance.

The Lead Wait is not a comedy, even though there are a number of humourous scenes in it. It is hard to stick it into a category, but I’d classify it as a dramatic mystery. The mystery traveller obviously has some past history with the other characters, but you don’t know what. The plot is quite captivating, as your mind runs through the possibilities of how it all stitches together.

Leon is the wise-cracking and relaxed head of the house. He welcomes the mystery man back and even lets him use the bath. In fact all four characters have a bath on stage, and this is a source of most of the humourous aspects. Especially when Leon teases young Ian that his bladder got relaxed in the bath. All four characters have full frontal nudity in front of each other, plus of course the audience. This reinforces the atmosphere that in the past, there has been intimacy between some of them.

Juliet I took to be Leon’s wife initially. She was very upset to have the mystery man return, and didn’t want him to even stay for dinner. I was assuming she cheated on Leon with him, but in fact it transpires Juliet is Leon’s sister and she is sleeping wih the young and naive Ian.

Leon has a mania for digging holes in their property, and uses canaries to detect where the air is bad. This greatly , Ian, who is teased for being too sensitive by Leon. Actual live canaries are used in the play, but I presume not killed!

The play is around 90 minutes long and the mystery starts to get solved as time goes on. It then turns from a mystery into a powerful drama. The final ten minutes can only be described as powerful and shocking, with one scene even having me shudder in my seat.

So this play is not a barrel of laughs comedy. Don’t go to it if you are wanting to just be entertained. However if you are looking for a play which captivates you, which grips your emotions, which shocks you and leave you feeling somewhat raw afterwards - then go see it.

The plot is expertly constructed, and the four cast members brought their characters to life. The stage was excellent, and captured that feel of a remote country house so very well.

Neil Reid in the SST reports:

HONE HARAWIRA has confirmed veteran activist John Minto will be invited to stand for his new political movement, the Mana Party, in the general election.

In an exclusive interview, the nation’s most polarising MP described Minto – formerly the leader of anti-apartheid group Halt All Racist Tours – as “a great New Zealander”.

And Minto – who has rejected three previous offers to stand for other political parties at previous elections – has confirmed if his family backs him, he “would be delighted” to accept the offer.

It’s 20 years since the UUSR ditched communism and around a decade since the Chinese effectively did the same. But in NZ, we may get to put another Marxist into Parliament.

Belinda McCammon in the SST reports:

A TRANS-TASMAN alcohol blitz has left police disappointed at the number of liquor outlets that continue to break the law despite an extensive campaign warning retailers not to sell alcohol to minors.

Operation Unite, which started throughout Australia and New Zealand on Friday night, is the fourth time the nations’ police have worked together in a weekend of action targeting alcohol harm.

I’m all in favour of Police operations where they crack down on outlets selling liquor to under 18 year olds. In fact I think they should be doing it far far more often.

But why is it a Trans-Tasman operation? The issues are a purely local one. Is there some belief that we should only crack down, if Australia is also? Trans-tasman operations make sense for crimes which involve our borders, or criminals working together from both countries. But why for a simple under-age drinking sting?

The New Zealand side of the operation, which lasted from 6pm on Friday and finished at 6am yesterday, involved 1069 police officers.

Sales practices were tested by controlled purchase operations at 208 off-licence liquor outlets, and there were 46 incidents of alcohol being sold to minors. …

121 controlled purchase operations were run at licensed liquor outlets to test whether minors were being sold alcohol.

46 incidents when alcohol was sold to minors on these occasions.

It seems around 35% of outlets sold liquor to an under 18 year old. That is a massively high figure and to me suggests the Police should be doing these crackdowns monthly or even fortnightly. It also reinforces my belief that better enforcement of the current law is preferable to changing the law.

Neil Reid at Sunday News reports:

RAISING the minimum wage would boost the economy and Government’s piggy bank, plus keep Kiwis from moving across the Tasman.

That’s the message Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei has for Finance Minister Bill English ahead of Thursday’s 2011-12 Budget.

Turei wants the minimum wage lifted by $2 an hour from the current $13.

“Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would not only significantly improve their lives at a time when living costs are soaring, it would also generate up to $173 million per year for the Government at a time when the fiscal deficit is ballooning,” Turei told Sunday News.

The rise would immediately generate an extra $101m a year in increased PAYE taxes, she said. It would give 300,000 workers increased spending power, leading to a gain of about $72m annually from GST.

This argument is so economically illiterate, I don’t know where to start.

First of all if PAYE taxes  go up $101m a year, then the company tax will drop by more than that. Let’s say those 300,000 workers are around 150,000 full time equivalents. If their pay goes up from $13/hr to $15/hr, they will gain $4,160 each before tax, or $624m in total.

At 17.5%, this will lead to an increased PAYE tax take of $109m – close to the $101m quoted.

But the employers will have had their profits drop by $624m, and they pay 30% tax on that. So that is $187m less tax paid in company tax.

So Turei’s argument is just nonsense. She has deliberately ignored the impact on company tax.

Beyond the direct fiscal costs, there are also flow on effects such as job losses. Youth unemployment would continue to skyrocket if you made it illegal to hire a 16 year old for less than $15 an hour.

Kathryn Powley in the HoS reports:

They say anything can happen in an election year but threatening to kill your favourite candidate for Prime Minister seems unlikely to help get him voted in.

However, a Palmerston North man charged with threatening to kill John Key said yesterday he would still vote for him in November.

He threatened to kill him, but still plans to vote for him? Why?

Incidentially if he gets sent to prison, then he now won’t be able to vote.

He’d joked that he knew Key ate dinner at a Lower Hutt steakhouse on Thursdays.

“I said to him I was thinking of going and seeing if he was there and blowing him up. It was not like I was actually going to do it,” he said.

In fact, he would vote for Key. “John Key is doing a pretty good job at the moment, better than Labour.”

Poor Labour. They can’t even get the votes of those trying to kill John Key.

Herald Politics quiz is here. 9/10 in 1 min 6 secs.

David Hold was a regular commenter on Kiwiblog, and other blogs. He was an owner and managing director of Barrons Recreational Vehciles in Taupo.

David was a generous guy. He donated a brand new Winnebago to Whale and myself for two months for the 2008 election campaign as the blogmobile, and also arranged one for the Mt Albert by-election. David was from the United Kingdom, but had a great love for New Zealand.

Sadly David killed himself last Tuesday. There is always a complex set of issues around any self-inflicted death, and I’m not privy to these. I will miss David, and his humour. He would often text or e-mail outraegous jokes – few of which are printable. My thoughts go out to his family and closest friends.

Charlie Gates at Stuff reports:

The first New Zealand cinema census of 4000 people found 62 per cent went to the cinema once a month, with 27 per cent seeing as many as three films a month.

It also found 51 per cent regularly downloaded movies, but 87 per cent of those did not pay for them.

Only 40 per cent of respondents were opposed to illegal downloads. The survey was conducted by movie website flicks.co.nz, and 48 Hours and Incredibly Strange film festivals creator Ant Timpson.

Flicks managing director Paul Scantlebury said he was surprised by the number of people illegally downloading films.

He said people turned to the internet because movies were shown in New Zealand much later than the rest of the world.

“Everyone is online and knows a movie is out and is good, but often it will be out on DVD in the US before it is out in the cinema here,” he said. “iTunes is not really much better. The legal way of doing this is not very good.

“If there was a viable, legal and local option, people would use it. It is sad because people are forming habits and learning new ways to access movies.”

Exactly. If you do not make movies available legally, this means that the only way to see a movie in a timely manner is to access it illegally. Isn’t that sort of dumb?

However, Motion Picture Distributors’ Association chairman Robert Crockett said illegal downloads could damage an industry that sustained 22,000 New Zealand jobs. “This highlights the issue that there is illegal downloading and we need to do something about it as a creative industry,” he said.

“I think most people want to do the right thing if they know that what they are doing is illegal and has a cost locally.

“I’m sure they will choose to do the right thing if they are given a viable and legal option to do so.”

Exactly.

Danyl at Dim-Post has found a second letter from Don Brash to John Key:

It is with a heavy heart that I withdraw my membership, not only of the National Party, as I explained in my previous letter, but also from the National Party Social Bowling Club of which I have been a proud member for twenty-three years.

I do not take this decision lightly and I have made it after observing, with mounting alarm, your lack of commitment to the activity of bowling.

When I had the privilege to serve as President of the Social Bowling Club and you were my treasurer, I railed against the inefficiency of the sport as I saw it. Despite repeated attempts to destroy the little pins at the end of the lane with our heavy balls, there was never any reduction in the total amount of pins. We spent many hours knocking them down but the next time the Club met there they all were again, standing upright just as before, presumably placed there by some malign, unseen state agency.

I gave many speeches, John – which you endorsed – calling for the cessation of bowling using balls, arguing for the deployment of hand grenades and fragile crystal globes filled with acid. Have you forgotten those plans?

And he continues:

The things I discovered shocked me. I learned, and reported back to you, that the pins we knocked down during each game were the SAME PINS EVERY TIME. Concealed at the back of the lane was a large, complicated mechanical apparatus that picked them up and set them standing again! I was literally sick with terror and disgust! All our previous efforts had been for naught!

I appraised you of these facts, John, but your response to them staggers me. You have not disconnected this equipment, as I advised. You have not smashed the pins with heavy mallets, even though, as we now know to our terrible cost, their total number is small, no more than a few dozen at best, and they could easily be annihilated. Instead I have looked on with uncomprehending horror as, under your leadership, National MPs now bowl from the start of the lane instead of standing directly above the pins and hurling the balls at them as was practise during my presidency.

Superb satire.

My nzherald.co.nz column this week is called “A battered budget“

Stuff reports:

A German court has convicted John Demjanjuk for his role in the killing of 28,000 Jews in the Sobibor Nazi death camp, then set the 91-year-old free because of his age.

Holocaust survivors at first welcomed the Munich court’s verdict that Demjanjuk, who was exonerated in another war crimes case in Israel two decades ago, was an accessory to mass murder as a guard at Sobibor camp in Poland during World War Two.

But they then expressed dismay at Judge Ralph Alt’s decision to free Demjanjuk despite handing down a five-year sentence.

“At the end he threw everyone in the courtroom a curveball and destroyed the hopes of the survivors of Sobibor,” Martin Mendelsohn, counsel for the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center and the lawyer of two co-plaintiffs in the case, told Reuters.

I’m glad Demjanjuk was found guilty, but I don’t think there is merit in sending him to jail at 91 years of age. he has already spent ten years in jail in Israel and Germany.

Jimmy Ellingham writes in the Manawatu Standard:

Student Christine Te Rangimarie Makaore now lives in Palmerston North, but in 2008 she was in Alexandra, working in the hospitality industry.

About 2am on November 16, 2008, Makaore returned from a night’s drinking to the backpackers hotel she was staying at.

Rather than stagger to her own bed, she entered somebody else’s room and started kissing a man that she didn’t know.

It’s not clear if the man was awake or not, or if she just jumped on top of him and started work.

Another man staying in the same room fled to the backpackers’ lounge.

As would be sensible if certain activities are happening in your room.

Makaore disengaged her tongue and followed him, hurling abuse.

She asked for a fight, but the man said no.

Undeterred, Makaore punched him in the chest repeatedly for about a minute.

The man curled up to try to protect himself and managed to get up and run off, but Makaore followed, still throwing punches.

I’m not sure why she was so offended the room-mate left the room.

At 9.30am the man went outside to get some food from his car.

Unfortunately for him, Makaore followed him and started kicking him in the legs.

She then grabbed his backpack, pulled out his iPod and threw it to the ground.

She then threw the man’s cellphone against his car and hurled other items on to a nearby garage roof.

The man under attack managed to scoop his iPod off the ground and take shelter in his car, locking Makaore out.

That didn’t please her, so she smashed the car windscreen with her fist.

The man drove off to safety but suffered from a sore wrist, a bruised head and grazes to his legs.

Ouch. Having someone punch their way through your windscreen would be somewhat alarming.

The judge noted Makaore’s lengthy list of driving offences, saying she was probably the North Island champion at notching up driving-while-disqualified convictions.

He said it was unfair for Makaore to “use her width” and “throw her weight around” against people likely to have been smaller.

On two assault charges, two of wilful damage and two sentence breach charges, Makaore was sentenced to 225 hours’ community work and six hours’ supervision.

Okay, so imagine this now. Imagine Makaore was a man and the victims were women.

If a man jumped on a sleeping woman and started kissing her, and then chased another woman, hitting her in the chest multiple times, then the next day saw her again, kicked her multile times, grabbed her gear and smashed it, and then smashed the windscreen of her car, well what sort of penalty do you think he would get? Is there anyway it would not be jail time?

Below is the letter Don Brash sent to John Key recently and has just released publicly. No great surprises in it, but it indicates to me that ACT plan to target National voters pretty aggressively.

Don Brash’s Dear John Letter to the PM

With no dis-respect to Martyn Dunne, but his decision to turn down the CERA job may have been the best thing to happen for Christchurch, as the praise for Roger Sutton’s appointment has been phenonomal.

On Twitter there have been hundreds of comments of praise. You can see a cloud of the most common terms here.

The Greens and Labour praised the appointment.

And William Mace at The Press has local reactions:

Former Christchurch mayor Garry Moore, who had called for Sutton to head the recovery effort, said the announcement was good news for the city.

“Roger Sutton is a guy who walks in ordinary people’s shoes. He understands the city, understands the people,” he said. “He’s got a good family and good networks. These are all the attributes we need to rebuild the city.”

Wigram MP and former mayoral candidate Jim Anderton said the appointment was “the best news I’ve had since the earthquake”.

“He is an incredibly good communicator. He tells it as it is. When he said the Orion cables were buggered, everyone understood it.”

Anderton praised Sutton’s management skills at “one of the best-managed corporations in the country”.

He said Sutton was a “quintessential Cantabrian”.

“We deserve someone who understands the ethos of the city – the anguish, the aspirations, the whole works,” Anderton said.

Christchurch Central Labour MP Brendon Burns said Sutton was an “excellent appointment”.

“He brings together shown leadership skills, a command of structural issues, a real capacity to engage with community leaders – I couldn’t think of a better choice,” he said.

Port Hills Labour MP Ruth Dyson gave Sutton “a 12 out of 10″, saying he had a “good strategic brain”.

“In his job as CEO of Orion he’s shown an amazing ability to keep people informed … Given what we need to do to recover strongly, he’s just perfectly positioned,” she said.

12/10 isn’t bad. I look forward to seeing Roger walk accross the Cook Strait.

And back to the world of feathers. Probably our most attractive native shag species- the Pied Shag.

Click for larger, higher res image

It has an impressive diving ability (up to 20m). Shot was taken near Goat island at the Leigh Marine Reserve.

Kate Chapman at Stuff reports:

Te Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira may have to return to Parliament as an independent if he wins the by-election in his electorate, because his new Mana Party has only just applied to be registered.

He announced his resignation on Wednesday, to be effective from May 20, and is walking a fine line to get his party registered in time to qualify for extra parliamentary funding and to be recognised as a party leader in the House. Registration takes six to eight weeks and Mana lodged its application at 5pm yesterday. The by-election is set for June 25.

The more important date is actually Tues 31 May, when nominations close.

However things could get murky. If the Mana Party is not registered by 31 May, he can not be a candidate for it. But he arguably could still list Mana Party on the ballot paper as an unregisterd party or affiliations, just like a candidate can label themselves “Communist League” even though that is not a registered party.

Now if Harawira is allowed to list Mana Party on the ballot paper as an unregistered affiliation, then I doubt that will qualify as being elected as an MP for that party – even if the Mana Party does get registered between 31 May and 25 June.

Vernon Small reports in Stuff:

MPs’ generous superannuation schemes will not be cut, despite Government plans to slash the subsidies paid to KiwiSaver accounts. …

Since 1992, MPs have been entitled to a subsidy of up to 20 per cent of their salary, receiving $2.50 for every dollar they put in. Those elected before 1992 receive a subsidy equal to 23 per cent of their gross salary.

Asked why taxpayers should subsidise MPs up to 20 per cent when he was winding back KiwiSaver subsidies, Mr English said they were different schemes.

“The MPs’ scheme has been wound down over the last 20 years to something that is pretty similar to what everyone has available to them. In fact, I think a number of MPs are probably members of KiwiSaver.”

There is a vital fact missing from this article. The Remuneration Authority operates on a “total remuneration” basis and the value of that 20% superannuation subsidy is effectively deducted from their salary. If the subsidy increases 5%, then their salary drops around 5%. If the subsidy is decreased, then the salary increases.

Personally I would just pay MPs the full remuneration for their jobs (which would see their pay increase 20%) and leave it up to them to decide whether they put some of it into a savings scheme or not.

Hat Tip: Not PC

I think this could be a very interesting interview.