Kiwiblog

While I was not happy with the price increases for my business with Powershop, it is interesting that the latest Consumer survey shows a massive 97% satisfaction rating for Powershop customers. Those paying a lot for winter electricity may wish to check out Powerswitch, to see what company is cheapest for you.

The Electoral Commission have stated that the unauthorised “prices are rising faster than wages” flyer is an election advertisement, and in their view is in breach of the Electoral Act. Labour has been referred to the Police again also.

Whale shows the importance of actually filing complaints over illegal material.

David Beatson blogs at Pundit:

I welcome the proposal that John Barnett from South Pacific Pictures has pitched to the board of Radio New Zealand for “radio with pictures”. …

Barnett told us he had been given a positive reception by the RNZ board and outlined some of the arsenal of new media technology that he proposed using to add the necessary visual enrichment required by the television audience.

He saw scope for including original productions currently provided to TVNZ 7 by independent producers – and was confident that he could deliver 18 hours of programming a day on a public broadcasting channel at a cost that is considerably less than the $13 million a year TVNZ was paid to produce TVNZ 6 and 7. My own analysis of the concept indicates that he is right.

That is not an unreasonable sum.

I have blogged previously several times that the Government should sell TVNZ, which is a fully commercial broadcaster, and put the proceeds from the sale into a trust to fund a full public service broadcaster, such as Radio New Zealand with pictures.

The Herald editorial:

The Act Party has taken a desperate step by declaring at this early stage that it will give National another confidence and supply agreement after the election. This is the first time the party has committed itself to such an agreement before the ballot rather than waiting to see what it might do with the votes it receives. It is a decision Act will not have taken lightly.

It weakens the party’s ability to bargain for any particular policies or cabinet positions after the election, as leader Don Brash concedes. The decision was made, he says, to give voters an assurance of stability. Act wants to give them no reason to fear it would cause any complications for National in a second term.

First of all, the editorial is wrong on a salient fact. In 2008 ACT did pledge supply and confidence to National prior to the election. It was done by Rodney Hide after the cup of coffee with John Key.

I don’t think it weakens their bargaining ability significantly. It was unthinkable that ACT would support a Labour-led Government (well one with its current policies anyway) or cause a new election.

ACT’s bargaining power will come down to how many seats they get, and whether National needs extra votes to pass laws or procedural motions.

Also Key has made it quite clear he will offer confidence and supply agreements with ministerial posts to ACT, United Future and Maori Party, even if he does not need their votes. And also a co-operation agreement again with the Greens.

John Armstrong writes in NZ Herald:

The policy has “winner” stamped all over it – at least in electoral terms. It will find favour with many middle-ground voters turned off by Labour’s capital gains tax.

It is the kind of policy that a lateral-thinking Labour Party should have been promoting to confound its critics and shed once and for all its lingering image of political correctness in order to recapture some of the huge number of male voters who have switched to National.

John Key has been smart in picking “disengaged youth” as the first target of National’s intended shake-up of the welfare system. Few will quibble with the policy’s carrot-and-stick approach to trying to prevent young lives being blighted by years on the unemployment scrapheap.

It is that mixture of carrot and stick which I approve of most. Left wing parties tend to rely too much on carrots only when it comes to welfare, and right wing parties tend to overly focus on “the stick”. A sensible mixture of both will generally lead to the best results.

The policy, which includes greater obligation to participate in job training programmes, has many more innovative components than just turning a portion of benefit payments into food stamps.

With intensive case management planned for young unemployed, greater access to childcare so teen parents can go back to school, plus adults undertaking mentoring roles, the policy does not come cheap.

The so called “food stamps” is not the major part of the policy. The commitment to pay childcare so teen parents can continue their education gets a big plus from me.

Also feedback in this article from Derek Cheng:

Otorohanga mayor Dale Williams, who chairs the Mayors’ Taskforce for Jobs and is involved with Youth Transitions to support school leavers, said the policies were a very positive step.

But he said performance-based incentives might tempt providers to focus on easier cases to pocket the cash bonus, at the risk of neglecting the more vulnerable. “It’s possible, and a little bit of that happens now.”

He said it was frightening that there was a dearth of information about school leavers.

“Nobody really knows the number, nobody really knows where they are, and if you don’t know that, how on earth can you help them?”

Rick Boven, director of think-tank the New Zealand Institute, also welcomed the measures but suggested involving employers directly with school leavers.

“You really want to get employers engaging more closely with students and schools, so if you put another agency in between, you can create a little bit of a barrier to that communication.”

And Labour say:

Labour’s employment spokeswoman Jacinda Ardern called the intervention food stamps for youth, and questioned what evidence there was for a need to restrict beneficiary spending.

“I’ve seen no evidence to date that the 1600 people on an independent youth benefit aren’t receiving the kind of support that’s required.”

I would have thought the fact that 90% go onto an adult benefit speaks for itself.

Jacinda also said that the Government needs to provide more jobs for young people. Well the Government doesn’t create jobs, the private sector does. But the Government can make the environment better for hiring young people, so it would have been nice if they also announced that the minimum wage will only apply to those aged 18 and older.

The only non politician it seems the media could find to attack the Government’s youth benefit proposals is a Felicity Perry:

A former youth beneficiary says she is horrified by the National Party’s welfare clampdown.

Aucklander Felicity Perry said it was highly patronising to take away a young person’s financial independence.

“They aren’t going to be learning how to pay their bills or have the opportunity to gain budgeting experience.”

Perry, now 27 and studying for a PhD, left an unsafe home environment at age 16 and was on the independent youth benefit for two years.

When Perry was on the benefit, she had had to leave an unstable flat in a hurry. “If I had had to go through a bureaucratic process to get my rent changed over in that situation, it would have made things so much worse.

Is that the best one can do? That changing a rent payment might be a hassle? God forbid, she has ever had to change an automatic payment.

But the name rang a bell. What else is Perry an expert on?

• Organised a march in support of the Urerewa 17
• Also a spokesperson for the Peoples Moratorium Enforcement Agency who protested against GE pine trees
• Doing a thesis on “An Analysis of the Normative Subject Positions Offered by Fashion Discourse”
• Spokesperson for the Wellington group that has formed to challenge ACC’s proposed guidelines
• organiser the 2008 women’s “Take Back the Night” rally
• spokesperson for Peace Action Wellington, against the War on terror
• Wellington Anti-GE Action spokesperson, who invaded ERMA

So I’m shocked, absolutely shocked, that Ms Perry does not support the Government’s youth benefit changes.

Bronwyn Torrie at the Dom Post reports:

A Wellington man has been fined $50 for a “frivolous and trivial” complaint that alleged TVNZ inaccurately reported the distance of a supernova star from Earth.

An item on One News, broadcast in January, reported that a supernova discovered by a 10-year-old Canadian girl was in a galaxy 240 light years away. The correct distance is 240 million light years. …

It dismissed his “frivolous and trivial” complaint and ordered him to pay TVNZ costs of $50 as a deterrent.

“He has now been warned numerous times about lodging complaints of this nature, and it is evident that his complaints expend a significant amount of both TVNZ’s and the authority’s time and resources.”

The man, who receives the invalids benefit and pension, generated about 5 per cent of complaints received about TV One in 2009 and 2010.

I don’t know why they do not name him.

I would like the BSA, ASA and Press Council to all publish their top 10 complainants, and what proportion of complaints those top 10 are responsible for.

The Dom Post reports:

The Cabinet will today issue an instruction to government departments that they should make all data they hold available for free or at a reasonable-price in accessible file formats for reuse by businesses, unless there are good reasons not to.

The Government will recommend they do so under a “Creative Commons” licence that means they could not usually be held liable for any errors or omissions.

Finance Minister Bill English said the policy would spawn new business opportunities and services, increase government accountability and allow greater scrutiny of policy decisions.

“It is the Government’s expectation that agencies should release all non-personal and unclassified data with high potential value for re-use.”

Internal Affairs Minister Nathan Guy said departments had been opening up over the past 10 years, but the steps they had taken had been “ad hoc” and there were no clear expectations. About 1400 data sets are available free online through the website data.govt.nz.

Great to see the Government using Creative Commons, and also making a tangible commitment to opening up Government data.

Well I have to say there are some advantages to being able to work from home. I do not plan to leave, and remarkably I have no appointments scheduled in town for the next three days except to the gym, so with that expectation will be hibernating at home this week.

Try this week’s Herald’s quiz.

Snow in Wellington is very rare, and snow of this intensity even rarer. Had a great view from the apartment and could see huge lumps of snow. Snapped a few photos:

Only lasted around 15 minutes but was very cool. The temperature noticeably dropped also. Heater is now working overtime.

This story really angers me.

A female police officer has a broken jaw after being assaulted while attending a family violence incident in Taupo this morning.

The officer and two male officers were called to an incident of a male assaulting a female in front of an eight-year-old at a Taupo View Rd address at 3.45am.

The female victim tried to physically intervene as the two male officers attempted to arrest the male, Taupo police area commander, inspector Steve Bullock said.

”The female officer was verbally and physically assaulted as she attempted to hold her back, receiving a kick to her face in the process.

”Despite having sustained a serious injury, the female officer still managed to apprehend and arrest the female offender.”

The female officer has been treated for a broken jaw and bruising but will not require surgery, Bullock said.

Just as hopeless medical cases have a no not resuscitate note placed on their files, maybe hopeless domestic violence cases should have a do not intervene note placed on their files.

If your response to the Police arresting the guy who was just beating you up is to attack the Police, and break a policewoman’s jaw, then why should the Police have to respond in future?

As they say, you can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink.

I just hope the eight year old receives proper care, so he or she is not in a violence laden household.

Matt McCarten writes in the HoS:

In three months the World Cup will be over and all focus will be on the other competition this year – the general election.

A mate of mine was confidently predicting to me that if the All Blacks lost, Prime Minister John Key was toast. I’ve heard this sort of crystal ball gazing in every election.

Labour will need a lot more than an All Black loss to dent Key’s chances of re-election.

They’d need our rugby team knocked out in the first round; followed by mayhem on a scale of this week’s English riots; unemployment to soar past 10 per cent; and interest rates to go through the roof.

Even then I suspect none of it would stick to Key.

So before the World Cup drowns out politics, I thought it might be interesting to analyse the chances of each of the political teams.

National: The only question is whether they can rule alone or will need a coalition partner.

Anything less than 46 per cent of the vote will be seen as a defeat for Key. If he gets more than 50 per cent he’s the new Keith Holyoake and will remain Prime Minister for as long as he likes.

John Key said:

I’ve often said that you measure a society by how it looks after its most vulnerable.

But you also measure a society by how many vulnerable people it creates.

At the moment it is creating too many, so we are going to make changes.

Good.

Over the past year, there were between 8,500 and 13,500 young people aged 16 or 17 who were not in education, training or work.

What we know is that when these young people turn 18, 90 per cent of them will go onto a fully-fledged adult benefit, unless we do something to intervene.

I wonder how long on average they stay on a benefit for?

The first change is to find out who all these young people are.

At the moment we simply don’t know, because we lose track of them when they leave school.

That has to change.

The Government is going to amend the Privacy Act and the Education Act to allow two things to happen:

• schools will be required to tell us when 16- and 17-year-olds leave during the year
• and information on these young people can be shared between the Ministries of Education and Social Development.

 For the first time, we will be able to find out who all these disengaged 16- and 17-year-olds are; what circumstances they are in; what problems they have had at school; and what their risk of long-term welfare dependency is.

It staggers me that up until now, the Government was unable to even identify who these 16 and 17 year olds are.

We are then going to fund community and other organisations to provide a transitions service, similar in some ways to the current service, but one which:

• much more closely targets the young people most at risk of long-term welfare dependency
• and has a greater range of tools available, such as being able to arrange access to social services like drug and alcohol or counselling services
• and, most importantly, is focused on results.

For the first time, a considerable part of the government’s funding of transitions services will depend on something actually changing.

That could include goals like the young person successfully completing a training programme, or not being on a benefit at age 18.

Put simply, we are going to make it worth someone’s while to get these young people back on track.

Incentives tend to work.

At the same time, the government will provide a lot more training places.

Next year there will be 7,500 places available under the Government’s Youth Guarantee policy, which provides free study towards school-level qualifications in places like polytechnics and wananga.

And in two years’ time we will have built up the number of Trades Academies so that 4,500 places in free, work-focused trades and technology training are being offered.

I imagine this will cost the taxpayer more money in the short to medium term. But I’m happy for my taxes to be spent on stuff like this, if it really does lead to fewer young people spending years or longer on benefits.

The second part concerns those young people who are receiving benefits in their own right.

I need to make it clear that today’s announcements will not affect the Invalids Benefit, which can be received by people as young as 16.

But there will be changes for young people who receive other sorts of benefits.

At the moment these young people are largely left to their own devices.

But I believe this hands-off approach has failed this group of young people.

We can do a lot better.

So the policy on benefits for young people is going change.

These changes will apply to all young people who get the special 16- and 17-year-olds’ benefits, and also to 18-year-old teen parents.

This has three elements.

And they are:

1. first is that we are going to fund community and other organisations to provide comprehensive and concentrated support to these teen beneficiaries
2. we are not going to simply hand over benefit money every fortnight. Instead, we will have a much more managed system of payments, with the young person’s support provider, or MSD in some cases, paying bills on their behalf and helping them manage within their budget
3. Young people who are receiving these payments will have clear obligations, for example; to attend budgeting or parenting programmes. Most importantly, each of these young people will have to be in education, training or work-based learning

The details of (2) are likely to be:

• some essential costs, like rent and power, will be paid directly on the young person’s behalf
• money for basic living costs like food and groceries will be loaded onto a payment card that can only be used to buy certain types of goods and cannot be used to buy things like alcohol or cigarettes
• and that a certain, limited amount will be available for the young person to spend at their own discretion.

And details of (3) are:

We have carefully considered the interests of the children here.

And we absolutely believe that a child’s interests are best served if their parent continues with her own education, and if the child is in good-quality childcare.

So we will be insisting that teen parents continue with education or training, and we will cover the costs of the childcare involved. …

However, we envisage that by the time their child is one year old, most teen parents will be in some form of education or training.

The cost of the package is estimated to be $25 million a year. I think that is an investment worth making if it produces results.

Being a parent can be bloody tough, even for professional couples in their 30s. Our current system of just paying a benefit to a couple of 17 year olds, and hoping they’ll be okay as parents has been benign neglect. I welcome these changes, and think they’ll be good for both the teenagers, and for their kids.

A Q&A on the policy is below:

WelfarePolicy_QA_3

David Fisher reports in the HoS:

One of the country’s richest men has emerged as a white knight investor with a $105 million bid for big dairy farms that could otherwise be sold to China.

Sir Michael Fay has declared his interest in buying nine of the 16 farms once owned by Reporoa’s Alan Crafar.

This amuses me, as the sort of people who passionately don’t want Chinese interests buying the farms, tend to also passionately hate Sir Michael. If he turns out to be their white knight, it will be a bitter medicine for them.

Sir Paul Reeves has died aged 78. His appointment as Governor-General was somewhat controversial, but he performed the role with warmth and dignity.

My condolences go out to his family.

The Herald has a series of 31 photos of Phil Goff. There’s some I really like.

That’s a very cute photo.

How many people in that photo can you name without checking?

An early photo of Phil with his future wife. Technically Phil was breaking the “Half plus seven” rule

Audrey Young at NZ Herald reports:

That year, Mr Robertson fought New York auditors who claimed he owed US$26.7 million in city tax for the year 2000 because he had crossed the 183-day threshold as a resident. He won.

Less money spent on taxes means more for charity, and Mr Robertson has joined Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in The Giving Pledge – billionaires who pledge to give away half their wealth to philanthropic causes.

Mr Robertson has given $5 million to the Christchurch earthquake recovery effort, according to New Zealand sources.

His next foray into charitable causes in New Zealand promises to be a little more controversial.

His charitable vehicle, the Robertson Foundation, is planning to set up a version of Teach for America in New Zealand – Teach for All – a programme that encourages bright university graduates to attach themselves to a school for two years.

John Hood, the former vice chancellor of the University of Auckland and Oxford University, now heads the Robertson Foundation.

Sounds excellent. Wikipedia reports on TFA:

Teach For America recruits recent college graduates and professionals to teach for two years in urban and rural communities throughout the United States. The goal of Teach For America is for its corps members not only to make a short-term impact on their students, but also to become lifelong leaders in pursuing educational equality. Corps members do not have to be certified teachers, although certified teachers may apply.

I sense some opposition from unions. If you can’t have less than 100% qualified for playschool. how can you for primary and secondary school?

Since the founding of the organization, several independent studies have been conducted to gauge the effectiveness of Teach For America corps members relative to teachers who entered the teaching profession via other channels. Recent teacher pathway studies in three states — Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee — suggest that Teach For America corps members have a greater impact on student achievement than new teachers from more traditional certification programs.

This means there will definitely be entrenched opposition!

The founder, Wendy Kopp, was only 22 when she proposed the creation in her thesis at Princeton University, and went on to make it a reality. Someone who has really made a difference.

The Weekend Herald publishes the first of a two part profile of Phil Goff. It’s a very nice profile, that gets to the man behind the politician. While I disagree with his politics and policies, and think he managed the SIS briefing issue badly, the profile is a useful reminder that Goff is a decent man, who if he was made Prime Minister would strive to do the best he can for the country.

His father Bruce comes across as quite a character also.

Stuff reports:

Convicted killer John Hone Haerewa assaulted two women he had relationships with before he battered Allison McPhee to death.

Before Haerewa’s trial, which ended in a verdict of guilty of murder on Thursday, prosecutors had asked for the jury to hear evidence of his “propensity” for violence against women.

However, a judge in the High Court at Wellington ruled that the two earlier incidents – in March 1994 and January 2006 – did not have enough similarity with the attack on Ms McPhee, 42, to be a kind of “trademark” that would help the jury decide if he was the killer. …

In the two previous incidents he had also targeted the victims’ heads using what was to hand as weapons.

In the first case he broke the plastic handle of a spade on a woman. She was said to have suffered extensive injuries.

The second woman was injured when he slapped her repeatedly and attacked her with a trowel.

This strikes me as the kind of case the three strikes law would be good for. If the two previous convictions counted as strikes, he would now be facing his third strike of life without parole.

And while one can’t be definite, it is possible that if his 2006 conviction was a second strike then he may not have been released from jail by 2010 when he killed McPhee.