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Sanctuary to Sea

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I had wanted to do the Sanctuary to Sea walk for a while, but as it is not a loop needs two cars. As I roped in Stats Girl, Mr Stats Girls and DC Girl, along with their three dogs, we did it on Saturday leaving one car at Zealandia, and drove to Trellisick Park. Despite the name of the walk you finish, not start, at the sanctuary.

Trellisick Park I have done several times, and was as always a pleasant walk next to the stream. I must be getting fitter as the steep climb section seemed less strenuous.

Once you reach Wightwick’s Field, you carry on and eventually emerge on Waikowhai Street. Then you turn left and carry on the main road until you reach the entrance to Wilton Otari Bush. You enter the reserve and just folow the main track until you get to the picnic area. Then follow the blue track uphill, and after a bit of a climb you suddenly have some graves about you.

You then have a walk past hundreds of graves in a part of Karori Cemetery I didn’t even know existed. I liked the area so much that I even said this could be a good backup location for my future grave, if I can’t get into the Bolton Cemetery (which will need some sort of law change).

You then exit the cemetery and then walk down to the park, and back to Zealandia.

Around 7.5 kms, and took just under two hours. A really nice walk, and I was amazed one could spend so much of that distance amongst bush. We are lucky in Wellington.

Went on Friday Night to The Intricate Art of Actually Caring at Downstage. This is a quirky New Zealand play which was a lot of fun. The first thing that strikes you is the three overhead projectors on the stage. It was like being in a timewarp. But the OHPs worked as a great device to not just take up through the chapters of the story, but with hilarious effect when used to show a boss sacking Jack.

The show is about Eli and Jack (played by themselves). The plays start’s in Eli’s room and Jack wonders about how thinsg come to be. He thinks every object has an amazing life story about how it came to be in that flat, with a camel rug especially captivating him. This then moves on to exploring their heritage and wanting to travel to Jerusalem to visit the grave of James K Baxter, Eli’s great uncle. So they do a road trip to Jerusalem.

The road trip is a classic Kiwi experience. You have the possum road kill, the painful parents they stay with, the arguments and the poetry. There are plenty of laughs and good Kiwi black humour.

Having been to Jerusalem myself, I especially enjoyed the descriptions of it, and the final scenes set there.

There is (as usual) a darker side to the play, with the death of their friend on his 21st birthday hanging over Eli and Jack. This is part of the context to their discovery of caring about heritage and where we come from, and what we do.

Probably a play more targeted at a younger audience, especially with a plethora of swear words featuring, but I saw Deputy Mayor Ian McKinnon there enjoying the play, so all ages can appreciate it.

The director was Eleanor Bishop, who also has a production currently at Circa. A rare thing to have two active productions at the same time. She oversaw a good pace to the film, where you never feel things are dragging on. Each chapter is different from the one before, to keep you interested.

Overall an excellent play which makes you laugh and think in equal measures.

Readers may also enjoy the review at the excellent Theatrereview.

news.com.au reports:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard will have her hands full when parliament resumes this week, fending off fresh leadership speculation, facing a potentially heated caucus meeting and bracing for a new opinion poll.

Newspapers said Joel Fitzgibbon, the government’s chief whip, was openly canvassing caucus for votes to return Kevin Rudd to the top job.

When the Chief Whip starts lobbying for change you have real problems. The challenge for Labor is deciding between the leader the public hates and the leader the caucus hates.

Incidentally I was staggered to be listening to Morning Report this morning, and hear an interview between I presume one of the hosts and the RNZ Australian correspondent. The host said something like:

“So Kevin Rudd will just be getting on with the job of Foreign Minister” and the correspondent said “That’s right”.

Rudd resigning as Foreign Minister and challenging Gillard for the leadership earlier this year was a rather major news story.

Claire Trevett at NZ Herald reports:

Conservative Party leader Colin Craig loaned $1.9 million to his party for its election expenses, but this month wrote off $1.6 million of that loan as a donation.

A $1.6 million donation was disclosed to the Electoral Commission on May 18 under the law requiring donations of more than $30,000 to be declared within 20 working days.

The party’s election return was also filed with the Electoral Commission on May 18 – about two months late – and it listed no donations over the disclosure threshold of $15,000 and only $11,791.50 in smaller sums.

There are numerous issues here, which may have some legal consequences. For a start one could dispute whether the loan was even a loan, when there was obviously no capacity to repay. So the first issue is was it a genuine loan, or should it always have been treated and disclosed as a donation.

The second issue is the interest on the loan. Let’s start with what the Electoral Act says on interest free loans. S207 defines a party donation as including:

where credit is provided to a party on terms and conditions substantially more favourable than the commercial terms and conditions prevailing at the time for the same or similar credit, the value to the party of those more favourable terms and conditions

So how big is the value of a $1.9m interest free loan?

Mr Craig said his company, Centurion Management, had paid the bills for the Conservatives’ campaign totalling $1.55 million during 2011, and subsequently billed the party for the amount.

We’ll come back to the legality of having a company pay bill on behalf of a political party.

The auditor’s report with the donation return said it was possible that Mr Craig’s $1.6 million should be listed in the donation return for election year – rather than now – if it was deemed to be a donation on the date the bills were originally paid by way of a loan, rather than the date the debt was forgiven.

And if it was a donation at the time the bills were paid, it was not disclosed when it was meant to.

Mr Craig said the party had treated the bill payments by Centurion on its behalf as credit on favourable grounds and declared interest on that at a rate of 12 per cent, which totalled a $10,590.50 donation in its return.

This is where the numbers do not add up. An annual interest rate of 12% is equal to a daily rate of 0.033%. Which means from the day the $1.6m bills were paid, daily interest of $526 is accrued.

Now if over $15,000 of interest was accrued before 31 December 2011, then a donation should have been disclosed in their donation return. This means that if the bills were paid before 3 December 2011, then the Conservatives have failed to disclose the donation in their annual return. The Electoral Commission needs to determine when bills were actually paid, to determine this.

However the larger problem may be the requirement to immediately disclose any donation over $30,000. Once that $1.6m had been paid for more than 57 days, then it needed to be disclosed. Now the overall donation was disclosed on 17 May 2012. S210C(6) states:

A return must be filed under subsection (1) or (2) within 10 working days of the donation being received by the party secretary.

This means that if the value of the foregone interest exceeded $30,000 by 03 May 2012, then it should have been disclosed before 17 May 2012. Now when is the latest the expenses should have been paid. S206E states:

A claim that is sent to the party secretary in accordance with subsection (1) must be paid within 40 working days after the day on which the declaration required by section 193(5) is made.

The declaration referred to is the declaration of election results. This was on 17 December 2012. So the bills must be paid within 40 working days. But a working day excludes any days between 25 December and 15 January. So 40 working days after 17 December is the 5th of March. This is the last possible day the advertising bills were paid. Personally I would be surprised if they were not paid in December, as people get grumpy if not paid.

The interest that would accrue between the 5th of March and the 3rd of May is $31,000 approx. So even under the most favourable legal timings I would say they also breached the continuous disclosure rule.

But on top of this we have the murky fact that the bills were paid by Centurion Management. One can either treat Centurion as an agent of the party, or as an outside entity. If it was an outside entity, then Centurion should have billed the Conservatives by the 5th of February and been paid by the 5th of March. It appears they were not paid until the mid May, when Craig repaid them. So that arrangement is also legally suspect.

If they were acting as an agent of the Conservatives (like an ad agency would), well was this documented. Of importance is that Centurion is not the private company of Colin Craig. He owns 55% and his wife 40%, but 5% is owned by a Stephen and Sarah Plummer.  Mr Plummer is a director. Did the Board formally approve the use of Centurion to act on behalf of the Conservatives and pay all their bills for them?

So I’d say there are a huge number of issues for the Electoral Commission to gets its head around. At a minimum they need details of when actual bills were paid, and then calculate foregone interest from those dates.

It is worth noting that Craig was open about the fact he was bankrolling the campaign for the party he leads. However that doesn’t mean one can ignore the rules. What Colin Craig should have done is set up a bank account for the Conservatives from the moment it was registered, donated the money to them upfront, and then have the party pays bill directly and disclose his donation within 10 working days. The way he has gone about it, has not been clean. Private companies should not be paying bills on behalf a registered political parties, and the loan should have been treated as a donation from the start as there was never any possibility of significant repayment.

It will be interesting to see what the Electoral Commission determines.

Audrey Young in the NZ Herald reports:

Two MPs from opposing parties, National’s Nikki Kaye and the Greens’ Kevin Hague, have joined forces to develop a bill that would legalise adoption by gay couples.

The National Party’s northern regional conference in Auckland at the weekend passed a remit in closed session supporting adoption by couples in a civil union.

I blogged this over the weekend. A very welcome move, and also good to see MPs working across party lines on an issue that impacts a lot of New Zealanders – I don’t mean just same sex adoption, but updating the adoption and surrogacy laws generally. They are woefully out of date.

Prime Minister John Key told the Herald yesterday the passage of the remit reflected the changing face of the National Party.

“The party is modernising. You can see by the number of young people. It’s ethnically a lot more diverse than in was. It’s more representative of modern day New Zealand. It’s a very positive and healthy thing.”

For many years the majority of delegates at conferences were old and white. This has changed, especially in Auckland. I recall being a Young National myself and TVNZ asking me up until what age you are considered a Young National, and replying “Oh, around 60″

Ms Kaye, the MP for Auckland Central, said she had worked for 18 months on the issue with Mr Hague, a West Coast gay MP.

She said many couples had fertility issues and more were considering surrogacy.

It made sense to consider adoption and surrogacy together, as they reflected the more modern arrangements New Zealanders were choosing to structure their families.

When the MPs started at looking at the Adoption Act 1955, they decided it would be best to approach it from a perspective in which the welfare of the child was paramount.

This is the sensible focus. Legislative prohibitions against certain types of relationships may result in outcomes where the child’s welfare is not paramount. It is far better for the totality of the circumstances of a prospective parent or parents is taken into account.

The two MPs are drafting legislation to amend the Care of Children Bill 2004 based on a previous Law Commission report that looked at guardianship and adoption.

The measure should be ready in a few months, Ms Kaye said, and would be a private member’s bill in her name or Mr Hague’s.

It was a complex piece of work and there would be about 40 policy decisions. Some would be controversial, including the age of adoption, adoption by same-sex couples, adoption by single people, Maori adoption practices and issues relating to surrogacy.

It is a hugely complex area, especially as what actually happens today is so far removed from the old law which was all about “closed” adoptions where a birth parent gives their child up to the state who gives it to adoptive parents. Such adoptions are almost extinct in New Zealand. The majority of adoptions involve arrangements between birth and adoptive parents directly, or through surrogacy.

At 9.32 am Trevor Mallard tweeted:

Naenae office clinics ‪#inplainview‬

Then just 11 minutes later he tweeted:

This is the woman who gave false name and address when making an appointment at my office she served Collins papers.

Now that was efficient service!

The photo is of a fairly elderly woman, hardly the thugs we were promised.

As for using a false name and address, well that is presumably because Trevor had made very clear that he would run out the back door if someone turned up saying they are here to serve the legal papers on him. When you refuse to co-operate with having legal documents served on you – then of course they have to respond in kind.

Would have been much easier if Andrew and Trevor had just supplied an address for service, as 99% of people do in court proceedings.

Anyway we look forward to seeing their statement of defence filed within 30 days.

The ODT report:

The generation gap is now a gulf – a gulf of dismay.

Local Grey Power president Jo Millar has been told the Otago University Students’ Association (OUSA) would not march with senior citizens protesting government asset sales.

Good. OUSA should get involved on issues of tertiary education and student welfare. They should not just join in to every Labour Party campaign there is.

But, when contacted by The Star, Mr Edgar said he had ‘‘no interest whatsoever” in the protest.

OUSA would look to invest in shares when the assets were put up for sale, Mr Edgar said.

‘‘We’d do it to keep some lights on for studying students and to keep them [the energy companies] New Zealand-owned,” he said.

Mr Edgar said he and other OUSA members were meeting bank advisers today to discuss investment options. He did not know how much money OUSA had available to invest.

Heh. No wonder Grey Power are upset. I do recall when Contact Energy was sold, many of those interviewed who purchased shares were students. I recall this as I was with the Minister of Education as he watched them talk of how they used their student loans to purchase shares. I don’t think he saw them as essential living costs!

Talking of OUSA, I should point out that the Cumberland ghost story which I blogged about, was actually a story in Critic, which got reported without attribution by the ODT. I don’t know why media are so reluctant to attribute where a story comes from. I can understand it if they are commercial competitors, but otherwise it should be a regular practice.

The Press reports on a poll of local residents, on how they rate the performance of various people. in order the approval ratings are:

• SVA founder Sam Johnson 98%
• CERA CEO Roger Sutton 81%
• PM John Key 74%
• Labour Spokeswoman Lianne Dalziel 73%
• CCC Mayor Bob Parker 63%
• Chch Central Development Unit Director Warwick Isaacs 62%
• CERA Minister Gerry Brownlee 52%
• Anglican Bishop Victoria Matthews 45%
• EQC CEO Ian Simpson 36%
• CCC CEO Tony Marryatt 24%

Sam Johnson’s rating is phenomenal. Not just for a 98% approval rating, but the breakdown is 58% extremely good, 33% very good and 7% good. If Sam mounted a military coup with the SVA, he’d probably be acclaimed dictator for life

Stephen Franks blogs:

It’s a good day for New Zealand.  Justice Hansen sentencing the Urewera four was having none of  what he called their “utterly implausible” excuses.  Well done, police and prosecutors.

 But a wider dividend goes well past the four.  So called “peace activists” will not rest easier tonight. Their cover is permanently blown by the terrorism evidence even though it could not be used. They know the police know who they are and what they mean by “peace”.  

Yes, I personally look forward to the next time Valerie Morse goes on about peace. She may not have been convicted of anything, but the sheer hypocrisy of preaching peace, and running around the bush practicing how to shoot people and use molotov cocktails means she’ll never be taken seriously again.

Even if our “terrorists” were more “Dad’s Army” than Baader Meinhof or Red Brigades,  some at least could have become more dangerous. Training camps sift out a hard core from the wannabes. Standard terrorist modus operandi is to process lots of amiable recruits and naive fellow travellers, searching for that nugget – the person willing to kill and be killed for the cause.  Being inept is not being innocuous.  

Yes, they were the equivalent of Dad’s Army.

There is no moral victory for the offenders and their dupes.  Refusing to account for yourself, whilst having your lawyers put forward hilarious explanations of innocence  and fighting strenuously to suppress contrary evidence is not a heroic stance. 

If the best argument was that they were training to be security guards in Iraq, I’d hate to see the even more implausible arguments they rejected as a defence.

And race had nothing to do with it. Dozens of armed police stormed Dotcom’s castle. Sobered by the Jan Molenaar police killing and siege, it is time to drop the nonsense about Tuhoe being singled out for overbearing treatment. 

And worth remembering a total of 18 firearms were found on the raids – far more than Mr Dotcom had.

It was good to see the media cover the Jones/Liu issue in detail over the weekend. Now the court case is over, one can look at where this should end up. First it is useful to consider all the background on Liu, when remembering how two separate Labour Ministers refused official advice to rescind his residency and to refuse him citizenship.

• Born Yongming Yan on 15 June 1969
• He was Chairman of Tonghua Jinma Pharmaceutical which collapsed after a loss of around NZ$100m and he fled China in 2001. It is alleged they were manufacturing placebos.
• As he fled he gained identity documents in the name of Yang Liu, with a DOB of 20 October 1972. In total it appears he had four passports with three different dates of births, and two or three different names.
• We charged in China with fraud and embezzlement. The alleged fraud totalled not $2.5m as reported by some media, but between $170m and $250m.
• CCTV in China reported in 2007 that Australian authorities there confiscated and repatriated A$3.4m  to China. This was per a decision by the NSW Supreme Court.
• Yan moved to New Zealand and purchased two properties worth $7.4m. He paid cash for them.
• Yan claims to be a member of Falun Gong, and cites this as why he left China. However Falun Gong prohibit gambling, and Yan was the largest customer of the Sky City casino.
• Paid Labour Party fund-raiser Shane Te Pou $5,000 to help his citizenship application. Te Pou (whom Clark had banned from the Beehive over ethical concerns) introduced him to Internal Affairs Minister Rick Barker. Te Pou was also campaign manager to Dover Samuels, whom his brother had also worked for.
• Samuels received a $5,000 donation from a Tamaki Wu who appears to be a fictitious person, and whose listed address is owned by Daniel Philips, brother of Shane Te Pou.
• Yan also donated $5,000 to Chris Carter and to Pansy Wong. Rick Barker also received an “anonymous” $5,000 donation the same year.  It is also a matter of record that Labour held several fundraising dinners at the Jade Terrace restaurant, attended by Yan. At these dinners the “bucket” is literally passed around and no one knows how much any one individual contributed. They are reputed to sometimes raise a six figure sum in one evening.
• Barker did not recuse himself immediately on the basis of his friendship With Yan. In fact he stayed involved until quite late in the piece when he delegated the decision to Shane Jones (Jones was not the Associate DIA Minister, and any Minister could have been chosen) – the one Minister whose most senior office staffer was the brother of Shane Te Pou who was being paid to help him get citizenship.
• Jones was strongly advised not to grant citizenship, on the multiple grounds of the Interpol warrants, the criminal charges in China, the multiple identities and the ongoing investigation by Immigration NZ over whether he was even entitled to residency. Jones granted citizenship.
• Yan given citizenship by Dover Samuels in the Maori Affairs Select Committee Room on 11 August 2008, five days after the decision.

As people can see this is not just an issue about one Minister, Shane Jones. It is about the combined decisions and advocacy of Shane Te Pou, Dover Samuels, Rick Barker, David Cunliffe and Shane Jones.

The Serious Fraud Office has told the Auditor-General they have an interest in this case, and may investigate also. I think it is appropriate to state in my opinion Shane Jones has not broken any law, and there is nothing to indicate that he received any personal financial benefit from making the decision he did. This makes this case different to Taito Philip Field, who did receive considerable benefits from his activities as an MP and was charged with corruption and bribery.

I don’t think any reasonable person could dispute that the decision by Jones was wrong. His claim that an official told him Yan would be executed in China has no basis in reality. Not only does DIA have no record of this advice being given, this was an issue over citizenship not deportation. Also Yan’s claims of being Falun Gong are also contradicted by the evidence. In fact he has no evidence to back up his claims, while the DIA concerns were all fully documented. Also as reported here, Jones deported a 25 year old resident back to Iran, despite her claims that she faced a death penalty for converting to Christianity.

Now as I said Jones is not the only player here. Many Labour people have acted wrongly in my opinion. Dover Samuels’ advocacy on behalf of his good friend was totally inappropriate, and bordering on the threatening. As we saw in the Nick Smith case MPs should generally not get involved in advocacy for their friends.

Rick Barker was wrong to not have immediately recused himself from the case, and wrong to delegate the decision to Shane Jones – the Minister whose SPS was the brother of Shane Te Pou who was helping Yan with the application. Barker would have known this as Te Pou introduced Yan to Barker.

David Cunliffe was wrong to have also gone against the advice of his immigration officials, and not rescind Yan’s residency (a move which was cited as a reason to make Yan a citizen).

Shane Te Pou was wrong to take $5,000 to help Yan with his citizenship application. That is an activity incompatible with being a political party fundraiser.

Shane Jones was wrong to grant citizenship, and to (presumably) authorise the special ceremony at Parliament.

As I have said previously, I do not believe Jones received any personal financial benefit from approving the citizenship. I do not believe Jones broke any law. But how you judge his actions can vary between a worst and a best case scenario.

The best case scenario for Jones is that he just gave Yan citizenship because Samuels asked him to. He trusted Dover’s judgement, and decided pleasing Dover was more important than the good character test in the Citizenship Act. Now this is not illegal, and Ministers do have discretion. However I believe such a failure of judgement means Jones is not fit to be a Minister again. If Nick Smith is removed as a Minister for a mere letter of advocacy, then Jones for granting citizenship to someone obviously not qualified has offended far worse.

Also, even putting aside the decision itself, Jones has shown incompetence in not documenting his decision. If I was a Minister of the Crown and I was making a decision that goes against official advice, I would absolutely ensure my reasons for doing so were documented, signed and dated and that this be added to the official file. It is because Jones failed to do such a basic thing, that there is enhanced speculation over what his motives were.  The fact that the decision was one where he had been lobbied by his political colleagues should have made it even clearer that he should have documented his decision.

That is the best case scenario. That is based on an assumption that no one ever told Shane Jones that Yan was a very wealthy man who had already donated to Labour, and presumably would donate more in future. This means that Dover Samuels never mentioned it, Rick Barker never mentioned it, Chris Carter never mentioned it, Shane Te Pou never mentioned it, and Shane’s brother Daniel never mentioned it despite being the most senior official and advisor in Jones’ office.

You see if any of those people did tell Jones that he had donated to Labour, and implied Labour would do well out of Yan in future if he was made a citizen, then it literally becomes a case of selling citizenships to donors. Now again this is not illegal, as far as I can tell. Only if a specific donation was promised for a donation, would it be illegal – and I am unaware of any evidence that this was the case. It was about buying influence, not buying a decision.

Now I don’t know of anyway we can resolve if it is the best case scenario or the worst case scenario. The SFO have said they have an interest in the case. However as I have said, there do not appear to be any laws broken. So I don’t see a role for the SFO, unless there is more to emerge than is currently in the public domain.

Now we have the letter from David Shearer to the Auditor-General. His PR says:

“Based on my discussions with Shane Jones, I believe that he followed a proper process. But given the differing statements made in and outside of court and the questions that have been raised publicly, I believe that an independent agency should review the case.

“I’ve asked for the Auditor-General to look into all the departmental as well as ministerial processes involved in this case.

The trouble is here that the issue is not generally about process. The process is that DIA provides a background paper and a recommendation and the Minister makes a decision. The only process issue I can think of is Jones failing to document his decision, but the wider issue is that Jones has made a decision which runs contrary to all the evidence (as opposed to unsupported allegations) in this case.

Now the Auditor-General is in no way bound by the terms of reference proposed by David Shearer. She has the authority and power to set a much wider terms of reference. If she does investigate, she should set as wide a terms of reference as possible.

But there is still a big problem. The Auditor-General’s scope is generally the Government. Would the Auditor-General be comfortable determining how much money Yan donated to the Labour Party. Could she determine whether Yan was the “Tamaki Wu” who donated to Dover Samuels (from the address of a house owned by Daniel Phillips, brother of Shane Te Pou). Can the Auditor-General find out how much Yan donated at the Fundraising dinners. Testimony would ne requited from Te Pou, Phillips, Samuels and Yan himself.  Maybe though this mystery DIA official whom Shane Jones can’t even name,whom he insists told him Yan would be executed, can be identified!

So overall, upon reflection, I am unsure if an inquiry by the Auditor-General will resolve issues. As I said, the issues are not just about Shane Jones, but about numerous Labour Party people – many no longer in Government. The Auditor-General may not have the scope to fully investigate, and at the end of the day it is impossible to prove whether or not Jones was or was not influenced by the fact Yan was a donor to Labour.

What I, and others, have advocated in the past is for an Independent Commission against Corruption, with powers like the SFO has. The NSW have one, which works well. An ICAC could investigate not just breaches of the Crimes Act, but abuses of power in the wider sense – such as Government decisions favouring donors and mates of MPs. They do not have the ability to prosecute but have the standing powers of a royal commission to investigate, report and recommend charges if warranted.

Ultimately this issue is likely to be resolved as a political question, not a legal one. David Shearer needs to consider whether he regards the following as appropriate:

• Labour Party fundraisers acting as agents for people wanting a favourable Ministerial decision
• Labour MPs advocating in the strongest possible terms on behalf of their friends and known Labour donors
• Labour Ministers refusing the rescinding of residency and granting citizenship to donors, against the advice of officials
• Labour Ministers not documenting any reasons at all for why they overturned a recommendation, and allowed citizenship to someone whose identity wasn’t even known, had an Interpol arrest warrant out for them, and was under investigation by multiple agencies
• Labour MPs declaring donations by seemingly fictitious people, allegedly living at a residence owned by a senior Ministerial advisor

If David Shearer wants to say that is all fine, and is business as normal – well that is his call. But I suspect he knows in his heart of hearts that things were not kosher, and that Yan would never have been made a citizen if it were not for the fact he donated to and befriended multiple Labour MPs, through the efforts of Labour fundraiser Shane Te Pou.

A very funny video on what is the ideal class size.

Stuff reports:

Several thousand people have gathered in Christchurch this afternoon to protest the demolition of the city’s Anglican cathedral.

The protest rally began in Cranmer Square and saw past and present civic leaders, MPs and other high profile Christchurch residents calling on the Anglican Church to immediately halt demolition work on the quake-damaged Cathedral.

The rally came on the day an opinion poll showed the fate of the Anglican cathedral has divided the region, with 54 per cent of those polled favouring demolition and 42 per cent calling for it to be saved.

Former MP Jim Anderton told the crowd that 100 engineers had confirmed the Cathedral could be saved and restoration should go ahead regardless of the cost. If the city could afford to spend money on a new rugby stadium it could afford to restore the city’s most iconic building.

Jim must have missed a key word. It is a “new” stadium. That is very different to trying to restore a building that is dangerous and unsafe. But hey, if Jim has some engineers who think it is fine, I’m all for sending Jim in with a hard hat.

But Jim doesn’t just want to risk other people’s lives restoring the cathedral, he also says that it must be restored regardless of the cost.

Well if each of the 5,000 people who marched contribute $20,000 each they can buy the Cathedral and do what they want with it.

I presume Saint Jim has set up a trust fund which he has made a large donation to, encouraging others to do the same, to pay for the Cathedral’s restoration. I mean, surely he isn’t saying he just wants other people to pay for it, and not him.

Ian Steward in the SST reports:

Inmates are breathing easy following the prison smoking ban with scientists finding a greater than 50 per cent rise in air quality and – to everyone’s surprise – no major incidents since the big stub out.

Smoking was banned in New Zealand prisons on June 1 last year with stark warnings from prisoners, prison advocates, and guards of riots and disorder.

However, there were no riots and Corrections staff report a number of unforeseen benefits.

Prison services assistant general manager Rachel Leota said prisons had reported a “calmer” environment with fewer “standover” incidents now that tobacco has been taken out of circulation.

Inmates had been heard on the prison telephone monitoring system telling family they appreciated living in a smoke-free environment and encouraging family to give up.

I recall the predictions of riots and violence. I really should look up who was making those predictions, so that when they opine in future on prison policy, we can take this into account.

A team of scientists from Auckland University studying the amount of “fine particulate” in the air of prisons has found the rate halved after smoking was banned.

Dr Simon Thornley and colleagues set up an air quality monitor in Auckland Prison, at Paremoremo, and measured fine particulate concentrations for 15 days before and 15 days after the ban.

Readings were already low as the detector had to be set up in a staff area for safety concerns.

Before the ban the mean concentration was 6.58 micrograms per cubic metre of air.

This dropped to 5.17mcg once a ban on sale of cigarettes was introduced and fell further to 2.44mcg once the total ban was implemented. Thornley said despite the dramatic increase in air quality, the thing that surprised people the most was how well-behaved prisoners were while the ban was introduced.

Excellent.

The HoS reports:

The country’s unemployment rate is the highest it has been since 1999, but some employers are struggling to find people willing to take on manual work.

Several employers desperately seeking reliable workers say it is as if people are unprepared for the workforce and don’t want to prove themselves.

The unemployment rate for the March quarter was 7.1 per cent, the highest it has been since June 1999, and the youth rate was 23.4 per cent.

Hayden Bootton, of HSB Builders in Northland, said finding unskilled workers was difficult, despite offering apprenticeships.

He was offering $16 an hour for temporary workers and the minimum wage for permanent work, pay rises every six months and the prospect of a full builder’s wage of about $20 an hour at the end of training. …

Northland’s unemployment rate is almost 9 per cent, one of the country’s highest.

Brenda, who does not want her surname used, said it was not only a Northland problem. Her Waikato business hires labourers. She said people had worked a couple of days before quitting, and others had walked out when faced with a drug test.

I recall after I left university deciding not to apply for a job because it paid only $11 an hour, and was for four months only while someone took a long overseas trip. Later that day I reconsidered and recovered the advert from the bin and applied for it. My rationale was better to be in work on not great wages for even four months, than not working at all.

Four years later I left the employer earning close to double what I started on. I was so glad I took that initial relatively low paid job with no job security.

I bombed this week. Just 6/10. Quiz is here.

Whale Oil blogs that a remit was put to the National Party’s Northern Regional Conference by the Young Nationals:

That the National Party legalise adoption for those who have entered into a civil union partnership.

The remit was passed by the conference and will now be considered for debate at the overall party conference in July.

I’m really pleased that the delegates at the Northern Conference voted in favour of the remit. The outcome reflects well on them and the party.

Jared Savage in the NZ Herald reports:

The public servant who handled the citizenship application of a millionaire Chinese businessman with multiple identities was told by his boss to “stop asking questions”, a transcript of court evidence shows.

Nothing to see here, just move on.

Mr Gambo wanted to make further inquiries with immigration authorities in Australia.

“I had a phone call that I was told not to ask any more questions because there was a lot of political pressure to send the file to Wellington.

“I was told to just process the file, send it to Wellington, don’t worry about asking any more questions.

“I have been working there for seven years and that was the first time I have had my boss phone me about an application.”

This is what is at the heart of the case. That a man with friends in the Labour Party, got special treatment.

Shane Jones has previously said he granted Mr Yan citizenship on humanitarian grounds because an Internal Affairs official told him Mr Yan risked execution if he returned to China.

Yesterday, an Internal Affairs spokesman said the files on the case had now been checked and there was no record of a departmental official discussing that issue with Mr Jones.

“We are not saying absolutely that didn’t happen, but we don’t have any [record of it].”

The execution in China angle was pushed by Yan, and his lawyer (who also happens to be Dover Samuels’ lawyer). As far as I am aware they have never provided a shred of proof. Anyone can assert something. What a competent Minister does is ask for proof, or at least consider the plausibility of the claims, such as will being a citizen rather than a permament resident in any impact whether or not he goes to China, and how consistent is it to claim to be Falun Gong, which bans gambling, and spent millions at Sky City casino.

The Herald reports:

The Government could scrap the need for a Warrant of Fitness on new cars under changes to the vehicle licensing regime.

New cars would first be checked two years after being sold, followed by inspections at four and six years. Thereafter, they would need a yearly Warrant of Fitness. The current six-monthly WoF on cars over six years old could be moved out to 12 months.

The changes are part of government proposals to lower the annual compliance costs of the WoF, vehicle registrations and the certificate of fitness and transport services licensing systems.

This seems pretty sensible for me. The timing of WOF checks should be based on the probability of there having been faults develop during that period which make the car less safe to drive. I don’t know what the data is, but this should be an evidence based decsion.

Opponents say changes would put people out of work, affecting Vehicle Inspection NZ, Vehicle Testing NZ stations and small garages.

“The neighbourhood corner garage relies on six-monthly WoFs for its bread and butter,” said one man. “Switching to a year on older cars and two years on new ones would force many of the smaller garages to close.”

Sigh. Arguments like this depress me. This is effectively arguing that the reason we require WOF checks, is to create jobs in garages. Well why stop there, let’s require monthly checks and that will be a huge boost for jobs in garages.

Sustainable jobs are those based on their being a legitimate demand for the associated services or goods.

Stuff reports:

It is against the law in New Zealand to flash a car’s headlights to warn other motorists of a speed camera, but a Florida court has ruled it is okay.

United States judge Alan Dickey has ruled that using car lights to communicate to other road users is engaging in behaviour protected by the US Constitution.

Superb. I love the First Amendment.

In New Zealand, a motorist is not allowed to flash car lights `dazzling, confusing or distracting other motorists’.

The fine for an offence of this kind is $150.

I think most motorists find that having car lights flashed at them is not dazzling, confusing or distracting. To the contrary it focuses them on ensuring they are driving safely and at a legal speed – so is a good and welcome thing.

We will have Bill English, David Parker, Brian Fallow, Colin James and Pattrick Smellie we will also have the following on the programme:

• Jo Doolan (Ernst and Young) and Chris Money (PwC) on getting growth in the economy.
• And the Sunday media panel (Ralston and Edwards) will talk to Andrew Holden, Editor of The Press on how his newspaper survived an earthquake and won a newspaper award.

The programme will be hosted by Simon Shepherd

Saturday 930 — repeated on Sunday 0800 — TV3

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My Herald column is on National’s Super problem:

One of the reasons National got re-elected is they were seen as more fiscally credible than the alternatives. As European governments crumble under the burden of excessive government spending, deficits and debt, voters at home place great stock on fiscal sanity.

However the stance on superannuation is the chink in National’s armour. Labour will try and use this issue to portray National as going for the easy spending targets but unwilling to target the largest item of spending.

Labour’s pledge to increase the age of entitlement from 65 to 67 is a tactical policy to try and position National as fiscally irresponsible, and National is locked into a five year old policy pledge that leaves it incapable of responding. …

The lesson for both the current Prime Minister, and any future Prime Ministers, is to never ever make any pledge beyond the next term of Parliament. Doing so is both short-sighted and anti-democratic. Elections should be about choices. Policies should change as circumstances change. Our three year electoral cycle allows policies to gain mandates in a fairly timely manner.

The Prime Minister’s pledge to never allow any changes to superannuation during his tenure will continue to grow as a problem for National. They are fortunate that at the last election the fiscal credibility of their opponents was weak, and a debate stumble by Phil Goff fatally crippled them. In 2014 David Shearer may have succeeded in portraying Labour as fiscally credible, and then the superannuation pledge could become a critical issue. It would be ironic is a pledge which helped National win the 2008 election became the reason they lost the 2014 election.

This is probably the last post for today as I’m in meetings the rest of the day. Enjoy the weekend!

I’m start to get seriously annoyed at media who run story after story on how various families have to survive on $x, and hence need a payrise – without detailing their actual total income including government support. They do their readers a gross disservice by hiding relevant facts from them.

Today’s story is:

Solo mother Kelly Belcher is trying to raise her two young children on around $240 a week, a wage she says is not enough to provide her family with a decent quality of life.

Ms Belcher was speaking at the launch of the Living Wage Aotearoa NZ campaign in Auckland today, which aims to combat poverty and inequality by advocating for better wages for low-paid workers.

She works as a cleaner in Auckland and is also studying for a degree.

“I would earn more on the DPB (domestic purposes benefit) but I’m trying to do the right thing and be productive and work, but I get slapped down for it. That’s how it feels. There’s no quality of life. I look at my two little kids and there’s no activities, there’s no soccer, there’s no swimming, there’s no life,” she said.

Now good on Ms Belcher for working and studying. I am not disputing that life is tough for her. What I am saying is that media have a responsibility to provide complete information on income.

At a minimum there is a family tax credit of $157 a week. The weekly no of work hours appears to be 17.  If Belcher increases her number of work hours to 20, then she would gain an extra $279 through the in-work tax credit and minimum family tax credit. So an extra three hours a week of work would see an extra $14,500 a year.

By contrast an increase in pay from $13.50 an hour to $17 an hour would bring in only $60 (gross) a week or around $50 net.

We also do not know if there is any income from student allowance, or accommodation supplement, let alone child support from the father.

There should be a guideline in place for reporters who do stories which include claims about family income. It should tell the reporter to ask the following:

• How many hours of paid work, at what rate
• Do they receive welfare and/or WFF credits
• Do they get the accommodation supplement and/or live in a state house
• If a sole parent, is there any contribution from the other parent
• Do their expenses include anything irregular (such as debt repayment)

I’m not saying that after all that, there will not be a story that shows times are tough for that family. But that the public deserve the have enough information for them to be able to form an independent judgement. Merely repeating claims in a press release is not serving readers.