Kiwiblog

1. We investigate the debacle last Friday on Auckland’s rail system. We go back two years and count down the series of failures that culminated in last Friday’s chaos.
2. Gerry Brownlee is live with Sean on his return from meeting the reinsurance industry in Monte Carlo and what the outlook is for insurance premiums.
3. Danielle Ross investigates the background to this week’s decision to build the national velodrome in Cambridge and asks whether the huge amount of money we have spent on sporting facilities will make any economic return.
4. Sean interviews the President of the Irish Rugby Union, John Hussey, on why so many Irish rugby supporters have followed their team to NZ for the World Cup.
5. The Sunday Edition Media Panel is Matt Nippert (NBR) and Dennis Shanahan (Political Editor, The Australian).

Saturday 17 /09/11 at 10.30, repeated on Sunday 18/09/11 at 8.30 am on TV3
0830 — TV3

The latest Roy Morgan poll (for the fortnight to 11 September) has National up 5% to 57% and Labour down 3.5% to 26%.

This 31% gap is the biggest in the history of the Roy Morgan poll. The closest was March 2009 when it was 30%.

71 days to go.

Very funny. Radio Waatea reports:

Meanwhile, Labour Party leader Phil Goff says it’s time for a younger man to represent Tamaki Makaurau.

On the weekend Mr Goff launched Shane Jones’ campaign to take the Auckland-based Maori electorate from Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples.

He says voters are ready for someone fresh.

Yes voters are. Radio Waatea goes on to report:

I think it’s’ time for a younger man and a younger generation to come forward and I think Shane Jones is that man,”

Shane would agree, and not just for Tamaki Makarau

says Mr Goff, who was first elected to parliament 30 years ago.

Can you recall what you were doing in 1981? I was in Form 3/Year 9 and was a member of the stamp collecting club. Phil Goff was a Member of Parliament.

And if you can recall 1981, how about 1969? I don’t recall 1969 as I was two years old. However that was the year Phil Goff joined the Labour Party.

This looks potentially very good. Anyone know if any NZ broadcaster will be showing it?

Hat Tip: Red Alert

Kate Chapman at Stuff reports:

The woman who accused Labour MP Trevor Mallard and a top public servant of destroying her reputation has won an appeal to the Supreme Court.

In 2007, whistleblower Erin Leigh accused Mallard, then Environment Minister, of defamation.

This was after she raised questions about political interference and alleged former minister David Parker pushed for Clare Curran to be appointed to a communications role with the Ministry.

All three Labour members involved are currently sitting Members of Parliament.

At the time Mallard was asked an oral question on the matter in Parliament and spoke negatively about Leigh.

He told the House she had “repeated competence issues” and said Curran had been appointed to “fix up the mess”.

The Ministry’s then Deputy Secretary Lindsay Gow had been appointed to provide Mallard with written and oral briefings before he answered the question.

Unable to sue Mallard, who was protected by parliamentary privilege, Leigh subsequently sued Gow for defamation.

Gow contended that his written and oral communications to the minister were also covered by absolute privilege and that the claims should therefore be struck out.

But the High Court, Court of Appeal, and now Supreme Court ruled that it was a matter of qualified, not absolute, privilege.

It will be very interesting if this now proceeds to a substantive hearing. Maybe Trevor, David and Clare will have to give evidence?

My David Farrar on Politics column in the Herald is of course on the Rugby World Cup, as it has been the issue of the week.

From the House:

Amy Adams: What progress has been made on Environment Canterbury’s appalling record of resource consent processing, which saw it rated as the worst council in the country in the 2007-08 year?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: In that year Environment Canterbury processed only 29 percent of consents within the statutory time frames. The latest report shows that there has been a dramatic improvement. Within the last year 92 percent of resource consents have been processed on time. This improvement from 29 percent, when Labour was in Government, to 92 percent now is a real credit to the work of the commissioners and their staff. It is a relief for the thousands of homeowners, businesses, and farmers who have previously been held up by poor processes. With the rebuild of Canterbury it is particularly important that we have efficient resource consent processing, so that we can rebuild Canterbury.

Idiot/Savant blogs at No Right Turn:

Or, to put it another way, turning Canterbury into a dictatorship made the trains (or rather the RMA) run on time. A certain short Italian used the same “justification” for taking over Italy; it wasn’t acceptable then, and its not acceptable now. Government is not about efficiency; it is about control. And one thing is clear: the people of Canterbury now no longer control their regional council.

I disagree. The failures of Environment Canterbury were far more than the trains not running on time. A train operator is not required by law to have the trains run on time.

However Environment Canterbury were required by law to process consents within a statutory time-frame. They failed miserably. Not for one year or two years but for  a decade. Even after ten years they could not produce a water plan.

NZ is a nation of laws. The Government is bound by the law. So are Councils. If a Council year after year is so incompetent it can not meet statutory deadlines, then it is entirely appropriate that the Government sack it for incompetence. This has happened for various School Boards and even territorial authorities in the past.

I support local government being required to obey the law. And I support the sacking of local government bodies when they fail year after year after year in meeting their legal obligations, or even coming close.

Danya Levy at Stuff reports:

Former Greens MP Sue Bradford today confirmed she will stand for the Mana Party in the Auckland electorate of Waitakere against Social Development Minister and sitting National MP Paula Bennett.

That is great news for Paula, as Bradford will split the left vote with Carmel Sepuloni.

Meanwhile, Maori broadcaster Willie Jackson has decided not to stand for Mana in Tamaki Makaurau against Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples.

And that is good news for Sharples. I think the risk of him losing was much greater if Jackson stood as Jackson would be competing with Sharples for votes.

He was also concerned he would split the vote in Tamaki Makaurau and enable Labour candidate Shane Jones to win the Maori seat.

And Willie knows Shane is the most right wing Maori MP in Parliament (after Jami-Lee Ross).

I blogged yesterday on how Labour’s policy appears to be keep National Standards, but rename them and don’t give the Government the data. I suspect their policy has not matched their rhetoric as they realise there are so many parents who really appreciate getting a plain language assessment of whether their child is achieving to the level needed to have adequate literacy and numeracy.

A reader has made a useful observation:

Mallard’s big attack has been on moderation. How do you know that school A is judging a child against say the Year 1 Nat Std in the same way as school B is judging a child against the Year 1 Nat Std.

If you accept that is a valid criticism (and Moroney has continued to run it) then Labour does nothing about it.

Labour has said they will “Determine the New Zealand Curriculum level a child is achieving.” But how do they know that two schools will make the same call without moderation. You’ll have to train and trust teachers – as National has suggested we do.

The Union’s support of Labour’s policy only shows that they don’t actually care about the issue of moderation – they just care who is fronting the policy.

So this confirms the moderation argument was always a red herring.

There is a National Standard in reading, writing and maths for each year – Years 1-8.

There are 8 curriculum levels covering children from ages 5 through to the end of high school.

That means there are approximately 4 curriculum levels covering children from Years 1-8.

It means the information is going to be meaningless. If you have a 5 year old child they will be judged against the curriculum level 1. They’ll continue to be judged against that when they’re ages 6 and 7 basically. That means for 2-3 years you’ll get bugger all meaningful information because you are being assessed against the same standard for 2-3 years.

So its national standards lite, with less meaningful standards. What a great triumph for parents and pupils.

Labour seem to almost be embarrassed by the policy. Only two Labour MPs have tweeted about it.  Their website has just a single page on it, there is no post on Red Alert about it and no questions in the House on national standards.

For those who want to follow them, this is the schedule of valedictories:

Tuesday 27 September

5:45pm            Sue Kedgley

Wednesday 28 September

5:30pm            Hon. Mita Ririnui

5:45pm            Keith Locke

Thursday 29 September

5:00pm            Dr Ashraf Choudhary

5:15pm            Hon. Heather Roy

5:30pm            Hon. Sir Roger Douglas

5:45pm            Hon. George Hawkins

Tuesday 4 October

5:15pm            Lynne Pillay

5:30pm            Hon. Pete Hodgson

5:45pm            Hon. Jim Anderton

Wednesday 5 October

5:00pm            Sandra Goudie

5:15pm            Hon. Georgina te Heuheu

5:30pm            Hon. Dr Wayne Mapp

5:45pm            Hon. Simon Power

Hat Tip: Homepaddock

I doubt I’ll attend in person for all of them, but hope to view them all on Sky.

iPredict says:

* Forecast National Party vote slips following World Cup wobbles
* Simon Bridges expected to increase majority in Tauranga while Gerry Brownlee’s majority in Ilam expected to fall
* Gap narrows in Tamaki-Makaurau
* Mana predicted to have just one MP
* Unemployment and growth figures worsen
* Fonterra payout forecasts up

Commentary:

World Cup wobbles appear to have had an effect on John Key’s Government, with National’s forecast party vote share down from 48.0% to 46.5% and the probability Mr Key will be re-elected down from 94% to 93%, this week’s snapshot from New Zealand’s prediction market, iPredict, suggests. Labour’s Shane Jones is still expected to win Tamaki-Makaurau, although the gap to Maori Party Co-Leader Dr Pita Sharples has narrowed, while the Mana Party is now expected to only have one MP elected. In economics, short term forecasts for growth and unemployment have both worsened, while inflation and current account deficit forecasts remain largely unchanged. There has been an increase in Fonterra’s forecast payouts.

(more…)

Over at Stuff in my “By the numbers” blog I look at the lack of volatility in the polls currently compared to the previous 12 years. Lots of graphs from a presentation I did this morning.

The ETS Review Panel reported back today. It’s a fair read at 98 pages.

The panel was chaired by David Caygill, who was Labour Party Deputy Leader to Helen Clark. Another members was David Russell, the former head of the Consumer’s Institute. Their mandate was to look at the ETS, to look at what has been happening globally, and to recommend changes to it. And no before you ask, their mandate wasn’t to look at the science.

The ETS was passed into law by Labour in 2008 and it was amended by National in 2009. The major event since then was the collapse of the Copenhagen talks and the growing probability that there will be no binding post-2012 Kyoto type agreement.

The dates sectors have or will enter the ETS is currently:

• Jan 2008 – forestry
• Jul 2010 – liquid fossil fuels, stationary energy, industrial processes
• Jan 2013 – waste, synthetic greenhouse gas sectors
• Jan 2015 – agriculture

At present there is a 2:1 subsidy so that a business can buy two carbon credits for the price of one. This was a temporary measure to reduce the immediate impact on petrol prices and power prices. The panel recommends that this phase out by 2015. This would mean petrol would rise over four years by around 3c/litre and power would go up around 3% over the next four years (beyond any other price increases), Note that AFAIK Labour’s policy is to stop the subsidy immediately which would have those price increases occur all at once next year.

There is also a price cap carbon credits of $25. The price cap gives price certainty to businesses and consumers but if set too low doesn’t provide enough of an incentive to reduce emissions. They recommend the cap increase by $5/year. That does not mean the market price will be that high. I think the current price is around NZ$19.

I thought the panel might advise that agriculture not enter in as scheduled in 2015, however they say it should still enter. Their reports says:

For agriculture, the Panel has noted submitters’ concerns that the sector lacks abatement options. However, based on evidence it has heard from stakeholders, the Panel believes the options available to the sector are sufficient to enable surrender obligations to begin in 2015, as currently legislated. Under the current allocation regime, the obligation on agriculture’s biological emissions will essentially be intensity based (emissions per unit of product), and the sector has shown an ability to decrease emissions intensity year‐on‐year. The ETS will increase incentives for emissions‐intensity improvements.

However they do recommend two changes for the agricultural sector:

The Panel strongly believes the point of obligation for agriculture should be at the farmer level, rather than the processor level as currently legislated, as this will ensure those who are best able to reduce their emissions are motivated to do so. The Panel supports the work of the Agricultural ETS Advisory Committee as it explores the practicality of doing this.

Makes sense to have the costs and incentives apply to individual farms, but very hard to manage in a practical sense.

Given that agriculture’s entry into the ETS will mean it will not be able to benefit from the one-for‐two obligation as it phases out, the Panel recommends the sector benefits from a one‐for-two obligation for the first two years after it enters the ETS (i.e. 2015 and 2016). This surrender obligation should then be phased out over the subsequent three years, consistent with those sectors already in the ETS.

This will give the agriculture sector more time to adjust to a carbon price and to take up abatement options. The Panel notes that, combined with free allocation of NZUs, the agriculture sector would face an obligation equivalent to only 5 per cent of biological emissions for the first two years after entering the ETS.

So basically soften the impact for the first five years.

I predict Labour and the Greens will decry the report as watering down the ETS and how we will be seen as evil polluters if we adopt the review’s recommendations.

And likewise I am sure ACT will campaign against agriculture even entering the ETS. There is some potential for ACT to gain votes with Don Nicolson campaigning on this issue.

Yesterday:

• Scotland 15 v Georgia 6. I thought Georgia did really well and its great to see the minnows playing so far above their normal levels.
• Canada 25 v Tonga 20. An upset but worth noting their world rankings are 14 and 12 respectively so not a huge upset.
• Samoa 49 v Namibia 12. Samoa shaping up very nicely

Today

• USA v Russia at 7.30 pm. Relive the cold war!

Tomorrow

• NZ v Japan in Hamilton at 8.00 pm.

Dean Knight at Laws179 blogs on the legal situation around the waterfront:

Much has been made of Murray McCully’s so-called “nationalisation” of the waterfront for RWC party central, through the exercise of reserve powers under the special legislation for the Rugby World Cup. 

The legal position is, however, very different.  While some regulatory approvals for standard event-based activities may be fast-tracked through a special process under the RWC 2011 (Empowering) Act, the RWC Act does not give the Minister the ability to “take control” of the waterfront.  The Minister’s statutory role is reactive only, namely, considering applications made to and assessed by the independent RWC Authority. Any ability for the government to “take the lead” on the party central activities must have been garnered collaboratively, and does not come from the exercise of power under the RWC Act.

In any event, the applications presently being made urgently are conjoint applications from the Ministry of Economic Development and the Auckland Council’s events team.  These applications were, I understand, in the process of being prepared collaboratively before the Minister’s announcement. And the fast-tracked approvals currently being sort are largely mundane. …

The legislation also provided for an even more expedited process “in circumstances of urgency that, for good reason, were not foreseen”.  A higher threshold was required (necessary to “secure public safety”, to “avoid seriously compromising” the RWC, or to “provide support for” RWC organisers). 

A different, and more expedited, process was provided for. Rather than being determined by the RWC Authority, the RWC Authority only assesses the application and makes an recommendation to the Minister for the RWC.  There is no obligation to subject the application to a participatory process.

The decision about whether the approval should be granted then falls to the Minister for the RWC.  He must consult the Minister for Economic Development and other relevant Ministers.  He must take account of (but is not bound by) the recommendation of the RWC Authority.  His decision is final.

That’s all.  They are the only “special” powers under the RWC Act.  The Act does not provide any power to assume control over or nationalise events.  The Minister’s role is reactive, as ultimate decision-maker, once an urgent application is made. And then only after the independent RWC Authority has scrutinised it.

A great op ed in the Australian by Mark Steyn:

TO be honest, I didn’t really think much about “freedom of speech” until I found myself the subject of three “hate speech” complaints in Canada in 2007.

I mean I was philosophically in favour of it, and I’d been consistently opposed to the Dominion’s ghastly “human rights” commissions and their equivalents elsewhere my entire adult life, and from time to time when an especially choice example of politically correct enforcement came up I’d whack it around for a column or two.

But I don’t think I really understood how advanced the Left’s assault on this core Western liberty actually was. In 2008, shortly before my writing was put on trial for “flagrant Islamophobia” in British Columbia, several National Review readers e-mailed from the US to query what the big deal was. C’mon, lighten up, what could some “human rights” pseudo-court do? And I replied that the statutory penalty under the British Columbia “Human Rights” Code was that Maclean’s, Canada’s biggest-selling news weekly, and by extension any other publication, would be forbidden henceforth to publish anything by me about Islam, Europe, terrorism, demography, welfare, multiculturalism, and various related subjects. And that this prohibition would last forever, and was deemed to have the force of a supreme-court decision. I would in effect be rendered unpublishable in the land of my birth.

This is why we must resist any so called hate speech laws in New Zealand. The threshold for intervention against speech should and must be very high – such as directly advocating violence.

Fourteen-year-old Codie Stott asked her teacher at Harrop Fold High School whether she could sit with another group to do her science project as in hers the other five pupils spoke Urdu and she didn’t understand what they were saying. The teacher called the police, who took her to the station, photographed her, fingerprinted her, took DNA samples, removed her jewelry and shoelaces, put her in a cell for three and a half hours, and questioned her on suspicion of committing a Section Five “racial public-order offence.” “An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark,” declared the headmaster, Antony Edkins. The school would “not stand for racism in any form.” In a statement, Greater Manchester Police said they took “hate crime” very seriously, and their treatment of Miss Stott was in line with “normal procedure.”

I thought this must be made up. But sadly it is true.

The head of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal was interviewed on the BBC and expressed the view that homosexuality was “immoral,” was “not acceptable,” “spreads disease,” and “damaged the very foundations of society.” A gay group complained and Sir Iqbal was investigated by Scotland Yard’s “community safety unit” for “hate crimes” and “homophobia.”

Independently but simultaneously, the magazine of GALHA (the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association) called Islam a “barmy doctrine” growing “like a canker” and deeply “homophobic.” In return, the London Race Hate Crime Forum asked Scotland Yard to investigate GALHA for “Islamophobia.”

Got that? If a Muslim says that Islam is opposed to homosexuality, Scotland Yard will investigate him for homophobia; but if a gay says that Islam is opposed to homosexuality, Scotland Yard will investigate him for Islamophobia.

Two men say exactly the same thing and they’re investigated for different hate crimes.

I encourage people to ask candidates and parties where they stand on introducing hate crimes legislation in New Zealand. Don’t think there are not groups lobbying for them, because there are.

Sue Moroney announced for Labour:

Labour will require schools to use recognised assessment tools and teacher judgement to:

1. Determine the New Zealand Curriculum level a child is achieving.

Sounds like saying will determine how a child is doing against a national standard.

2. Show a child’s rate of progress between reports over the course of a year.

Sounds like the current requirement to report to parents against a national standard

3. Identify children not achieving within the curriculum level appropriate to their year at school.

Oh my God, that’s labelling them failures.

4. Decide and report the next learning steps.

5. Report this information in plain language to parents at least twice a year.

Wow almost identical to the current requirement to report progress against a national standard for their year twice a year to parents.

So what is the major difference between Labour and National’s policies?

Basically it is just that Labour will not have schools send their assessment data into the Government, hence preventing the media from being able to report on the number of students at a school who are meeting the national standard. That way those evil league tables are prevented.

And that is what this whole fuss has always been about. Opponents of national standards have been intellectually dishonest because the unions have always made clear that if the Government changed the law to remove school assessment data from the Official Information Act, then opposition to national standards would cease.

So Labour’s policy is effectively to keep national standards but to not have the Government have any idea of how well a school is doing, in case that information got made public. God forbid prospective parents know how well a school is doing.

I understand that for the first time ever, the Crown has filed a Treaty of Waitangi claim against an Iwi.

The Government is claiming that Ngai Tahu sold them dud land in Christchurch and they want Ngai Tahu to buy the land back

Heh. Someone has done a Downfall mashup about the Rugby World Cup organisation. Not the best Downfall parody out there but still pretty funny in parts, and topical.

Wonders will never cease. The NYT has run a column praising Sarah Palin. Why? Read on:

Let us begin by confessing that, if Sarah Palin surfaced to say something intelligent and wise and fresh about the present American condition, many of us would fail to hear it.

That is not how we’re primed to see Ms. Palin. A pugnacious Tea Partyer? Sure. A woman of the people? Yup. A Mama Grizzly? You betcha.

But something curious happened when Ms. Palin strode onto the stage last weekend at a Tea Party event in Indianola, Iowa. Along with her familiar and predictable swipes at President Barack Obama and the “far left,” she delivered a devastating indictment of the entire U.S. political establishment — left, right and center — and pointed toward a way of transcending the presently unbridgeable political divide.

Really? What did she say?

The next day, the “lamestream” media, as she calls it, played into her fantasy of it by ignoring the ideas she unfurled and dwelling almost entirely on the will-she-won’t-she question of her presidential ambitions.

This is a problem in NZ also. Too much reporting focuses on “process” stories rather than “policy” stories.

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

Funnily enough, I’ve sometimes made a similar point to her last point. Very large corporates sometimes start to resemble Government Departments as they become entirely process-driven, and lose their innovation.

In supporting her first point, about the permanent political class, she attacked both parties’ tendency to talk of spending cuts while spending more and more; to stoke public anxiety about a credit downgrade, but take a vacation anyway; to arrive in Washington of modest means and then somehow ride the gravy train to fabulous wealth. She observed that 7 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the United States happen to be suburbs of the nation’s capital.

The recent spending cuts agreed to, will not in fact reduce the deficit. They will just stop it growing as fast.

Ms. Palin’s third point was more striking still: in contrast to the sweeping paeans to capitalism and the free market delivered by the Republican presidential candidates whose ranks she has yet to join, she sought to make a distinction between good capitalists and bad ones. The good ones, in her telling, are those small businesses that take risks and sink and swim in the churning market; the bad ones are well-connected megacorporations that live off bailouts, dodge taxes and profit terrifically while creating no jobs.

Strangely, she was saying things that liberals might like, if not for Ms. Palin’s having said them.

“This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk,” she said of the crony variety. She added: “It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners — the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70 percent of the jobs in America.”

Is there a hint of a political breakthrough hiding in there?

That is a fascinating message she is pushing, and more nuanced that I thought Palin was capable of. I still think she is more likely to not run than run. To run and get the nomination, she needs to give Perry supporters a reason to choose Palin over Perry. As polls show Perry could beat Obama but Obama would thrash Palin, that is a tough job – but she is starting to mark off a niche area.

The Listener has done a a big five page article on Phil Goff’s leadership, and the problems around it. This is not anything out of the ordinary.

What is unusual is they have profiled the five pretenders to the throne (Cunliffe, Parker, Little, Jones and Shearer) and the five pretenders have all posed for photos for the article.

Boy talk about having your eyes firmly focused on the future.