Kiwiblog

Mathew Dearnaley in the NZ Herald reports:

Taxi passengers’ privacy concerns have scotched a plan to add voice recordings to new legally-required cameras in cabs.

Wellington Combined Taxis, the capital’s largest company, has decided against recording conversations after many of its passengers became alarmed at the idea.

Their fears have also prompted Corporate Cabs, with fleets in Auckland and the other main centres, to issue an assurance it will not install microphones.

Just as well. I am a regular and large user of Combined. If they had gone ahead with their plans to audio record conversations in taxis, and keep them for a month, I would have blacklisted them. No way would I take a taxi where a recording is made of what I say.

The only people allowed to listen into my phone calls are the GCSB!

Tom Pullar-Strecker at Stuff reports:

Telecom is likely to split evenly into two parts, with shares in its retail arm and Chorus worth similar amounts, financial analysts believe.

Telecom shareholders will be given a share in Chorus and another in the yet-to-be-named retail business for each Telecom share they own, if they approve the company split, which is a condition of Telecom’s government contract to build the bulk of the ultrafast broadband network.

Really? Equal value?

I am not a financial analyst and this should not be taken as financial advice.

But personally I will be looking to buy lots of shares in Chorus, and no shares in Telecom Retail. I think Chorus has a very good future, managing both the copper and fibre.

I am not at all convinced that Telecom’s culture is well developed enough to compete on the retail level, without the integrated vertical monopoly. I hope they do, but at this stage I wouldn’t invest money on it.

A look at the annual regulatory accounts shows that the profit from Chorus as a percentage of turnover is much much higher than for Telecom Wholesale or Retail.

Very amusing incident this morning. I’m on holiday with one of closest friends, who is German. We’re exes from around 15 years ago but have only caught up twice since then.

This morning she wanted to use my laptop, so she could use some web to cellphone SMS site (to save money). I gave it to her and go back to reading a magazine. She asks what the login password is. I have to think a second as I normally login with my fingerprints, but then spell out the password to her automatically while reading the magazine.

Suddenly the room is quiet with no typing, and I look up to see her giving me a very intense gaze. I suddenly recall that my password is in fact her name!

I blush and confirm that yes she has been my PC password for the last 15 years. Hard to tell from the look whether she regards this as a good or a bad thing

Mind you Destiny deserve to be rubbished when they try stuff like this. Stuff reports:

Destiny Church has launched a hostile take-over battle for control of one of the country’s more respected culture organisations, the Maori Women’s Welfare League.

Hannah Tamaki, wife of bishop and founder of Destiny, Brian Tamaki, is running a slick photo-shopped campaign in a bid to become national president of the league and its nearly 4000 members.

It is causing outrage in the league, whose first patron was the legendary Princess Te Puea Herangi (1884-1952), and was led into political pre-eminence by land rights campaigner Dame Whina Cooper (1895-1994).

Hannah Tamaki says in her campaign material that her husband “is a direct descendent” of Te Puea.

Te Puea had no children.

Doh.

Hone Harawira blogs:

I understand that my going to Destiny Church last week has offended some members of MANA, and that my attendance and speech have been seen as an endorsement of Destiny’s stance on homosexuality.

That is not so.

I value the broad support that MANA has attracted from all sectors of our society, and I owe it to everyone to explain things from my own point of view.

You see … like everyone else I have gay people in my whanau, and like everyone else I also have straight people in my whanau, and like everyone else I love them all.

I would sincerely hope that my attendance at the Destiny hui is not seen as an endorsement by either myself or MANA of the views held by Bishop Brian Tamaki and the Destiny Church, in the same way that I hope my attendance at the Mormon Stake Conference on Saturday is not seen as an endorsement of their more unsavoury racial practices of the recent past, or my attendance at an Anglican church service seen as an endorsement of their practice of stealing Maori land over the centuries.

I broadly agree with Hone on this. A politician accepting a speaking engagement is not an endorsement of everything the host stands for – far from it. MPs should and do attend meetings held by groups they disagree with, and this is a good thing.

Do we think John Key endorses all the CTU policies when he addresses their national conference?

Only the most extreme groups should be considered out of bounds for an MP to speak to – basically neo-nazis and others that preach hatred.

Now I am no fan of Destiny. To my mind they come closer to the “should not address under any circumstance” group than many others. They are cult-like.

But they do actually do some good with their social services, and now that they are not also running a parallel political wing, they are not as big a threat as they once were.

Matt Nippert at NBR writes:

Part of left-wing polit­i­cal Machi­avelli Matt McCarten’s Unite union empire has gone under owing money to the taxman.

The Auck­land High Court con­firmed Unite Social Ser­vices was placed into liq­ui­da­tion this morn­ing at the request of the Com­mis­sioner of Inland Rev­enue at 10.56am.

The Offi­cial Assignee was appointed as liquidator.

Unite Social Ser­vices is sep­a­rate from the union Unite Incor­po­rated, but finan­cial accounts filed with the Com­pa­nies Office show the two enti­ties are linked.

The 2008/09 accounts for UNITE showed a huge debt to the IRD, including shamefully unpaid PAYE tax which they hold in trust for their employees.

Their 2009/10 accounts are yet to surface, even though it is 15 months since balance date. Their AGM is officially October, so they should have been approved eight months ago. They have until this October to file them, before the Registrar of Incorporated Societies will take action.

I admire some of what UNITE union has done – effective advocacy for low paid workers. I also like the fact they are more about their principles than just being a wing of a political party – mind you that has got blurred recently with the Mana party.

Hat Tip: Whale

My Herald column is on the political impact of the third earthquake on Monday. An extract:

So it is no surprise that the Government is wanting to take the time to get it right, and be able to do the above. But there is a wonderful quote by François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire. He is credited as saying in 1772 “The perfect is the enemy of the good”.

Voltaire was warning that if you keep delaying to get a perfect solution, you may end up not achieving anything at all. That sometimes it is better to go forward with what you have, rather than “improving” it further.

Comments and feedback can be left at the Herald.

The Herald reports:

Clayton Weatherston has had his appeal against his conviction for the murder of Otago University graduate Sophie Elliott dismissed.

Yay. Now we can forget all about him for at least 18 years.

All grounds of appeal were dismissed.

This photo from Waikato University is of Phil Goff doing “virtual pig shooting”. Captions to be funny, not nasty.

Stuff reports:

Stranded passengers are holding their breath as a giant ash cloud in New Zealand’s airspace begins to move away, with hopes all flights could resume by today.

The ash cloud – made up of two plumes – was shifting to the east, away from New Zealand, the Wellington Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre said.

Good. I am due to fly to Auckland, and then Heathrow via Hong Kong this evening. I have been moderately anxious.

One of my oldest mates is getting married in England, so I am heading over for the wedding (and stag do). Not cost effective to fly over just for a weekend, so going for around a fortnight. A friend from Germany and I are holidaying around- one week in England and Wales and one week in Scotland before the wedding at Lytham St Annes, which is on the coast in Lancashire.

By coincidence I’ll be in London the same night as Rotorua MP Todd McClay – Saturday 25 June. We’ll be hosting a pub meeting for Kiwis and anyone else interested for an update and chat on NZ politics. I’ll blog details of the pub ext next week.

Blogging will be lighter for the next fortnight or so – especially when I am on a plane!

AP report:

Embattled US politician Anthony Weiner is resigning from Congress, saying he cannot continue in office amid the intense controversy surrounding sexually explicit messages he sent online to several women.

The 46-year-old Democrat made the announcement in his home district in New York after two weeks of fighting off pressure to step aside. Weiner apologised again for “the embarrassment that I have caused” and said he hoped to continue to fight for the causes dear to his constituents.

His wife, Huma Abedin, was not with him for the announcement.

Weiner has been on leave from the House and at a treatment facility at an undisclosed location since last weekend. He has not been seen in public since telling reporters on Saturday morning (local time) he intended to return to work.

Was inevitable, and only surprise was how long it took.

What has caused much amusement is this treatment he is meant to be receiving. How do they treat the urge to send hot women photos of your penis?

I feel for the wife – she is pregnant with their first child.

An apple a day…

Click for larger, high res image

No need for any explanation I guess for what this bird is and what its doing.
Hope everyone has a good Friday.

This advertisement appeared in a Grey Power magazine. In scanning it the e-mail address phil.goff@parliament.govt.nz got obscured, after the phone number.

Now we know from the minutes Whale published, that Labur have been instructed to use parliamentary service resources to benefit Labour, and this ad is funded by Parliament.

Now up until the regulated period starts on 26 August, this ad can be funded form Labour’s parliamentary budget as it does not explicitly call for votes, money or members. However my recollection is the rules are the party logo must be the same size as the parliamentary crest, and clearly in this ad it is way way larger, and appears twice.

So Labour may have broken PS rules (unless they have amended the rule about logo size) in this advertisement. However it could be worse. They may have broken the Electoral Act because there is no authorised by promoter statement.

The Electoral Commission has just this month published a booklet with guidance for MPs. They stress that even taxpayer funded advertisements need an authorisation statement if they can be “reasonably regarded as encouraging or persuading voters to vote or not vote for a party”.

In their official guide, the Commission notes a factor that may indicate if an advertisement is an election advertisement is “references to a party’s election policy or what they will do if re-elected”.

Look at the ad and the part that says “Under Labour there will be no asset sales”. Bingo.

The ad is very clearly designed to encourage people to vote Labour. That means it should have an authorisation statement with a name and address.

Phil Quin writes in the Business Spectator:

Key, who returned from a successful career on Wall St to enter parliament in 2002, seems mostly untroubled by ego or ambition. In this respect, he reminds me of former Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, in that both wear authority lightly and make a virtue out of a rough-hewn rhetorical style. A one-time adviser told me over lunch how Key is quick to tell colleagues and staff that he is “the Prime Minister of New Zealand, not the Prime Minister of the National Party,” a corny talking point that ought to induce groans, but somehow doesn’t coming from Key.

All this makes him the most popular NZ Prime Minister on record, but the outcome of the election is not as certain as his double-digit lead over Labour would suggest.

David Farrar, founder and editor of Kiwiblog, New Zealand’s top conservative-leaning politics website, painted a scenario for me whereby National attracts as much as 46 per cent of the vote – and loses. Under the Mixed-Member Proportional electoral system, Farrar explains that Labour could conceivably cobble together a narrow majority together with the Greens and an unseemly concoction of Winston Peters’ populist New Zealand First perhaps and the Maori Party. This appears unlikely unless Labour, the Greens and NZ First significantly outperform expectations without cannibalising each other’s vote (according to the most recent Colmar-Brunton One News poll, Labour is at 34 per cent, the Greens 6 per cent and NZ First 2 per cent).

 An interesting over-view of where things are at.

Ars Technica reports:

Earlier this month we covered a UN report that argued that “three strikes” laws that deprive alleged copyright infringers of Internet access violate human rights. The report was delivered by an independent UN investigator, and so didn’t represent the view of any UN member governments.

Michael Geist notes that on Friday, Sweden made remarks at the UN Human Rights Council that endorsed many of the report’s findings, including the criticism of “three strikes” rules. The statement was signed by 40 other nations, including the United States and Canada. The United Kingdom and France, two nations that have enacted “three strikes” regimes, did not sign the statement.

“All users should have greatest possible access to Internet-based content, applications and services,” the statement said, adding that “cutting off users from access to the Internet is generally not a proportionate sanction.” It also called network neutrality and Internet openness “important objectives.”

Interestingly, the report is signed by New Zealand, which enacted legislation in April that sets up a special Copyright Tribunal for expediting file-sharing cases. The penalties available to the New Zealand government include Internet disconnections of up to six months.

Very interesting. The Swedish statement which NZ endorsed said:

All users, including persons with disabilities, should have greatest possible access to Internet-based content, applications and services, whether or not they are offered free of charge. In this context, network neutrality and openness are important objectives. Cutting off users from access to the Internet is generally not a proportionate sanction.

I’m glad to see the NZ Government says that cutting off Inernet access is generally not a proportionate response. From that I assume the Government will never activate the power for a Judge to cut off Internet access as a response to copyright infringement.

If the postition of the Government is such an act is not a proportionate sanction, then it would have been nice if they had removed it entirely from the Copyright Act. Otherwise there can be the appearance of saying one thing at the UN, and doing another thing back home.

An anonymous staffer at The Standard has blogged on how some National MPs websites have been registered by parliamentary staffers.

Doh, of course they have been. An MPs website  is a legitimate parliamentary expense, so long as it does not solicit money, members or votes.

The issue with Labour is that they had a parliamentary staffer processing credit card transactions.

But even putting that aside, the anonymous staffer has also mixed up two seperate Kates. He has mixed up the former IT staffer and manager Kate Pullar with the former Secretary to Chester Borrows Kate Pullar. It is no surprise than an IT staffer would be the registrant for domain names. Having two Kate Pullars was a bit of a challenge, but to solve it I referred to the first Kate P as “Bob” of course

I was a registrant for dozens of MPs and parliamentary sites when I worked in Parliament. I registered them using my parliamentary e-mail address. Nothing wrong with that.

I sometimes helped the party people out (this was in the 1990s when this Internet thing was quite new to people) by registering some party sites for them – but I did so using my national.org.nz address from home, so it was clearly not in my capacity as a parliamentary staffer.

Ironically after the 1999 election, the PMs Office did not update the registration details for over a year. It was a source of amusement to be that I was the admin contact for both the PM’s Office and the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. I could have gone in any redirected all the Clark Government websites, but didn’t do so of course!

John Armstrong writes in the NZ Herald:

So Power opted for an oblique, but potentially hugely effective means of undermining a political opponent in the eyes of colleagues. Having made obligatory remarks about the plight of Cantabrians, he launched into a vigorous promotion of Mallard’s leadership credentials.

Power’s lampooning of the long-serving Labour stalwart was the funnier for everyone knowing that while there is precious little chance of Mallard becoming Labour leader, it is not wholly impossible in an unforeseen emergency.

Such was Power’s blitzkrieg-like precision and timing that it was obvious he had devoted considerable effort to writing and rehearsing yesterday’s speech, delivered during the Wednesday afternoon free-for-all general debate in the House.

Power began by naming potential aspirants lining up to take over from Phil Goff. That list included Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson, who was being compared to David Lange – “mainly by himself”.

Power then pondered the “mystery” of why Mallard had been leapfrogged over more highly ranked colleagues and given the tricky task of fronting for the party at last week’s press conference on the police decision not to charge Darren Hughes.

“‘Dare I say it, he [Mallard] looked authoritative and authentic. I have to say he is starting to look just a little bit like a future Leader of the Opposition.”

Power speculated that Mallard’s serious cycling accident earlier in the year had “liberated” the MP from “the important business of pushbikes so he could focus on his hobby of politics”.

I think Trevor’s priorities in order are cycling, blogging and then Parliament.

“He is looking in control, energetic … not doing too much too soon, playing the long game. A very long game,” Power added to the amusement of surrounding colleagues.

The lampooning continued without mercy. “This man knows if he can just wait Phil Goff out, the opportunities to take the reins are there for him … I think Trevor Mallard has found his mojo in recent weeks. I think Trevor Mallard knows it is only a matter of time before that long ambition he has held comes to realisation.”

The victim was well and truly skewered by now. Mallard’s only defence was an increasingly broad smile which suggested that as someone who can dish it out, he can also take it when it comes flying back. Even so, he was nervously jiggling up and down in his seat like a fish out of water.

The video is very funny, which is of course embedded above.

A final reminder about the NetHui 2011 from 29 June to 1 July.

The programme is here. I’m gutted I will be missing it as I will be overseas.

Three Ministers are participating – Deputy PM Bill English, ICT Minister Steven Joyce and Attorney-General Chris Finlayson. Also MPs David Cunliffe, Clare Curran and Gareth Hughes are on panel discussions.

Lawrence Lessig is the key speaker on the third day, which is MC’d by Sean Plunket. The panels are on digitial citizenship, the Internet and the law, Open Government and Access & Diversity.

The first two days have four work-stream running through them, with a huge diversity of sessions and topics.

Audrey Young at the NZ Herald reports:

A win in Te Tai Tokerau byelection by Labour list MP Kelvin Davis could free up a spot on Labour’s list but ex-MP Judith Tizard, who is next in line, is not likely to take it.

In fact, under the electoral law, Labour would have the choice between getting a new list MP or not.

If Mr Davis won the constituency seat, he could resign from the list and create another list vacancy.

This would allow Labour – which got 43 MPs elected in 2008 but has since lost Chris Carter – to return to having 43.

But Mr Davis would not be required to resign, as chief electoral officer Robert Peden told the Herald.

“There is no statutory obligation on a list member who wins a byelection to resign his or her list seat. However, by not resigning their list seat, the list member would be preventing their parliamentary party from benefiting from the byelection win through gaining an additional member in the House from the party’s list,” he said.

This confirms a point that Graeme Edgeler has often made – that a List MP does not have to resign as a List MP, if they win a by-election and become a constituency MP. They would not however get two votes in the House.

The person next in line after those five is veteran Labour candidate and former MP Lesley Soper, who is contesting the Invercargill seat.

She is not on Labour’s list and party sources have suggested she would not be inclined to take up a list seat and disrupt her campaigning in Invercargill.

Ha ha ha. Soper is hated by many in caucus as she is pro-life. They’d rather have Tizard back than Soper.

Statements by the Labour leadership suggest the party is leaning towards having no new list MP in the event of Mr Davis winning the constituency.

Deputy Labour leader Annette King said on Tuesday the party was seeking advice on the matter.

There are two ways they can do this. One is to have Kelvin not resign his list seat. The other is to have the House by 75% majority resolve not to fill a list vacancy as within six months of the general election.

Bronwyn Torrie at Dom Post reports:

An old Wellington prison which has been called a disgrace could be closed following a drop in the prison population.

Corrections Minister Judith Collins signalled the closure of Mt Crawford Prison near Miramar at a Law and Order Select Committee meeting on Wednesday.

The prison, which was built in 1927, holds about 120 prisoners and was temporarily closed from June 2008 until July 2009.

Enterprise Miramar Peninsula chair Allan Probert told Radio New Zealand he had been waiting a long time for the prison to be shut permanently.

”There are much better uses that that land can be put to in order to benefit Wellington. It’s just wrong to have a prison in the city like this.”

I’ve been to the prison a few times, and also on the greater prison lands many times. The views from those locations are amongst the most stunning in Wellington, and it is such a shame that they are wasted on a prison. If the prison goes, the land will be highly coveted.

Dave Burgess at the Dom Post reports:

Not content with its title as the coolest little capital in the world, Wellington is now hatching plans to ensure it offers the thrilling experience of a much bigger city over the next 30 years.

The Wellington 2040 City Strategy proposes using four goals to reshape the capital into a smart green city – which includes creating a “dynamic” downtown zone through a Central City Framework – over that time.

Mayor Celia Wade-Brown said the city council’s visionary document was multifaceted, and required buy-in from the community, otherwise it would never “capture Wellingtonians’ imagination or lead to success”.

There was a big focus on the central city because it provided the economic impetus for the region, was easily accessible, and was the capital’s collective playground. “It is the heart of Wellington and it’s about keeping that heart pumping.”

Among the plans for opening up a downtown zone was to revamp alleyways such as the Opera House Lane so they could be lined with cafes and bars. “It would be a much nicer use of space that is currently used by people to pee,” Ms Wade-Brown said.

That’s a good idea. The new Chews Lane has become well frequented.

New lanes could be created alongside existing buildings or built into new developments. The Oaks complex might be demolished to make way for a grassed area that would merge with Te Aro Park and Cuba Mall.

I remember when the Oaks was a happening place. Now it is a isolated ghetto.

I haven’t read the plan in detail, but I like what I see so far.