Kiwiblog

Tony Abbott has done an open letter to the Independents in all the major newspapers.

I’m of the view that if your method of communication with the three men who will decide Government is through newspaper open letters, rather than face to face, then it is probably all over.

The possibly final issue being negotiated is over parliamentary reform, according to AAP:

The Coalition wanted the Speaker to be “automatically” drawn from the Opposition.

The document Labor has backed allows for the Speaker to come from either party or to be non-aligned.

If the Speaker does comes from a particular party the Deputy Speaker will come from the other side of politics. Pairing arrangements will be in place for both – meaning their vote will be cancelled out rather than lost.

“That will take away the need in the view of a tied vote for whoever’s in the chair to cast a vote,” Albanese said.

Further, both the Speaker and the Deputy will not attend their respective party room meetings.

I’m pretty sure the NZ Speaker does not attend caucus meetings, but the Deputy Speaker and Assistant Speakers do.

If they really need a neutral speaker, maybe we should lend them Lockie for six months, to show them what a good speaker does!

Questions during Question Time will be limited to 30 seconds and answers will be restricted to three minutes. They will have to be “directly relevant”.

I’m amazed there is no time limit on answers at the moment, and the limt they are going for is a whopping three minutes. In NZ the Speaker will cut you off if you go much over a minute I estimate.

A parliamentary budget office will also be established within the parliamentary library.

“It will be able to look at issues including costings, particularly from the Opposition but also individual members,” Labor’s house leadersaid.

Not a bad idea necessarily. However the current system where an opposition parliamentary party can have  Treasury staffer seconded to them works pretty well.

I suspect we will get a decision today, or tomorrow at the latest.

Having the iPad on the flight over was wonderful. I read around 25% of the Man in the Iron Mask. Seen the movies, and always wanted to read the original. The expiry of copyright means all the great classics are available for free to read.

Customs went very quickly. The only mishap was getting the luggage into the taxi. My duty free bag of two 1 litre bottles of rum got knocked onto its side. One bottle smashed and the other rolled onto a drain cover and then dropped into the sewer – unbroken. We could see it floating there. They cost NZ$20 each duty free and the replacement costs A$40 each – and for only 750ml. I was laughing when it happened though – the sight of the bottle floating there will prove too tempting for some homeless person

We went down to Circular Quay in the evening for dinner. The RWC giant rugby ball is very noticeable, from a large distance away.

The Sydney Opera House, with the Opera Bar below it where we drank and ate. Wellington is a great city, but the inability to have mass outdoor dining is something I miss, and love being able to do in other places.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge dominate the landscape.

This is the studio room at the Opera House. We went to see the Late Night Lounge, which was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the Chooky Dancers and Madame Lark with her ability to mimic bird calls was excellent.

Sadly we were all a bit stuffed from being up at 4 am to catch the red eye, so we took off a bit before midnight (which was 2 am NZT) and missed the final segments. But was a good end to the day.

The signs are that Queensland MP Bob Katter will not support Labor. This may be a blessing in disguise for Julia Gillard, as Bob is rather eccentric.

Katter wants the mining tax and any ETS dropped. This makes it very unlikely that he will support a Labor-Green Government.

So it will all come down to Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott. If they stick together they will decide the Government. If they disagree with each other, then the House is tied 75-75 and another election will be needed.

What still tips it Labor’s way in my view is that they are more likely to last three years, as the Greens will control the Senate from July 2011.

However the Independents will be concerned that their electorates may not like the policies of a Labor/Green Government, and if they go for that option they may risk losing their seats next election.

I’m off to Aussie tomorrow for the third time this year. The other two times were for work, but this one is a holiday – even better a free one.

I blogged in February that I had won the Drink Savvy party competition, run by Asia-Pacific Breweries – on the basis of the “drink savvy” party I blogged about on New Years Day.

The prize was $3,000 of travel vouchers, which have been shared with The Chef and the Ginga, as they hosted the party with me. We’re in Sydney from 4 to 8 September and Melbourne from 8 to 12 September. First time overseas for The Chef, so the trip has been much awaited. We will be taking full advantage of the duty free allowances at the airport, but in a “savvy” way

The trip will also be a double birthday celebration – one on the 4th and one on the 11th. Hope the duty free allowance lasts that long!

Andrew Wilkie has declared he will back Labor. This is no surprise. I wonder how many of his massive 26 point policy wishlist did they agree to. While no surprise, it gives Gillard momentum coming on the back of Treasury disagreeing with the coalition on the costs of their plans.

On the vote count, the coalition now has a 11,000 vote lead on the TPP vote.

I expect Gillard will do a deal with the three Independents in the next few days.

Day 12 and no result. The latest stories suggest there is pressure from within the electorates of the three Independents to go with the Coalition, but who knows. Their list of demands seems to grow by the day.

The latest two party preferred count has the Coalition ahead by 893 votes of almost 11 million. As a percentage it means they lead 50.004% to 49.996%. Truly a nation divided.

The Dom Post reports:

She could well be Australia’s next first lady – and she hails from Wellington’s “nappy valley”.

Margie Abbott has fond memories of trudging off to school in Wainuiomata in her galoshes with her slippers tucked in her school bag – and says her Aussie children can do the haka.

The wife of Liberal Party leader and hopeful prime minister Tony Abbott was born in Hutt Hospital and grew up in Wainuiomata before moving to Australia in 1983. She attended Fernlea School in the 1960s and then Wainuiomata High School.

“I can just remember things like every weekend I went down to Richard Prouse Park and I was very much involved in athletics,” she told The Dominion Post last night. “I played soccer for the Wainuiomata club for years and loved that.”

Former classmates remembered Margie Aitken as a quiet, academic girl. “She was a good student,” said one. They are now watching avidly to see if she becomes Australia’s first lady.

Ms Abbott trained as a teacher in Wellington and taught in Wainuiomata and Upper Hutt. She moved to Sydney in 1983 and met her future husband in a pub. They have now been married for more than 20 years.

I had never picked up that Mrs Abbott was from NZ. And not just for a few years as a kid, but well into her 20s.

If Abbott does become Prime Minister, that will be a useful link – he may be less inclined to stick it to us, as Paul Keating did.

Bill English’s office has put out a comparison of real (CPI adjusted) net (after tax) wage growth for a full-time worker on the average (mean) wage.

The Australian data only goes back to 1994, so the first time period compared is Sep 1994 to Sep 1999 – the final quarter before Labour took office.

During those five years the real net income for a FT worker on the average wage rose 13.2% in New Zealand and 6.2% in Australia.

Then over the next nine years from September 1999 to September 2008, the increase in New Zealand was 3.0% and in Australia it was 19.3%. Yep six times greater in Australia. They had high wages, low inflation and tax cuts. We had no tax cuts, higher inflation and lower wage increases.

From Since September 2008, to June 2010, the increase in New Zealand has been 8.7% vs 4.8% in Australia.

If one translates this to average annual increases, then the comparison would be:

• Sep 94 – Sep 99 – 2.6% NZ vs 1.2% Aust
• Sep 99 – Sep 08 – 0.3% NZ vs 2.1% Aust
• Sep 08 – Jun 10 – 5.0% NZ vs 2.7% Aust

Now the time periods used are slightly cheery picked, in that the latest period includes both the April 2009 tax cuts and the October 2008 tax cuts – so they do not correspond exactly to Government terms. But on the other hand Labour did the Oct 2008 tax cuts most grudgingly, because of the election, and probably would ave cancelled them if they had retained office.

The stat that stands out to me is that during those nine years from Sep 99 to Sep 08, the average after tax income only grew 0.3% a year. Fiscal drag mean someone on the average wage paid more and more tax as their salary increased.

Great humour, as usual, from The Chaser.

It is now 73 seats each as Labor have won a seat back off Andrew Wilkie – a former Green candidate. WIlkie was very likely to back Labor over the coalition anyway, so in one sense doesn’t change the overall dynamic.

However it does help perceptions, with Labor and Coalition now having the same number of seats. The Green MP will back Labor, so Labor can govern with at least two of three three Independents, while the Coalition needs all three.

If the Coalition loses a seat on specials, then Labor will retain power. The most marginal seat is Hasluck, where the current margin to the Coalition is 382 votes. It was 363 on election night so to date they are doing okay on specials.

Incidentally the coalition candidate is Ken Wyatt, who if confirmed will be the first indigenous Australia to be elected to the Federal House. I was staggered when I heard this.

NZ has had indigenous MPs since 1868. We currently have 20 MPs who are of Maori descent. As of 2004, NZ has had 79 Maori MPs (probably now over 90), so hard to comprehend how Australia is just about to have their first indigenous Federal MP.

Bob Katter is a hard fit for a Labor Government. Here is what he said on climate change:

“I mean, if you could imagine 20 or 30 crocodiles up there on the roof, and if all that roof was illumination, and saying that we wouldn’t see anything in this room because of a few croco-roaches up there,” he continued stating that “Are you telling me seriously that the world is going to warm because there’s 400 parts per million of CO2 up there?”

Yes he seriously argued that because crocodiles don’t totally block out all light, then carbon dioxide can’t be keeping heat in.

The other two Independents are more friendly to Labor, and there are reports they may split from Katter.

1. Labor ran an awful campaign. Almost policy-free, and all about demonising Tony Abbott.
2. Tony Abbott ran a very good campaign, and really only stuffed up once on the campaign trail.
3. Gillard’s climate change policy of referring the issue to a citizen’s assembly was their biggest mistake as it alienated both sides on that issue and was seen as utterly cynical.
4. Rudd’s leaks against Gillard did damage Labor, and the anger over his rolling was a factor.
5. Even if Labor retain government, Gillard may face an unhappy caucus as the Rudd faction will point out she blew his majority.
6. The truth is Rudd probably would have lost by a bigger margin, but this will fade from memory.
7. While the three Independents can put Abbott into power, he will not have a Senate majority, so don’t assume it is a done deal for Abbott.
8. It is possible Labor and Greens could do a coalition deal, with some Green Senators becoming Ministers. They need Wilkie (likely) and at least one Independent to support them in the House, unless they pick up an extra seat on special votes.
9. The two election parties were such a contrast – Labor half empty and dejected, and Liberals cheering their hero Tony.
10. Whatever happens, a three year term for the next Government looks unlikely.

1253 Latest from ABC is Coal 73 and Lab 72. I still think Gillard will hang on but it will be claimed she has lost moral mandate to govern by coming second.

11:26 Wow it is getting tight, and a hung Parliament now more likely. Labor and Coalition both have 68 seats. Greens 1 and Independents 4. That leaves nine seats to decide it.  At present five have Labor in front and four Libs, so that would be 73 Labor 72 Coalition. Gillard will need not just the Green MP but at least one of the four Independents. Abbott is now down and out yet if this eventuates. He could govern with all four Independents. Greens will hold balance of power in Senate.

11:20 Abbott will not be PM, but will (like Don Brash) be revered as the opposition leader who almost won the unwinnable election. A difference is Abbott did it after one term, meaning Labor will have to work very hard to get a third term.

10:50 Sky TV now saying hung Parliament a strong possibility if Labor lose seats in WA or SA.

10:35 In the event of a hung Parliament, Julia Gillard will remain Prime Minister I predict. The one or two Green MPs will back her, and the three Independents are more likely to – despite being former Nats.

10:30: Not at the bar as my internal clock is still not adjusted from Europe and I fell asleep at 6 pm and just woke back up at 10.30 pm!

At the moment it is looking like the Coalition picks up 15 and loses 3, which would leave Labor with exactly 76 seats – the bare minimum needed to govern alone.

While any victory is a victory, to come so close to being the only first term Government to almost lose power since the 1930s will be a nasty wakeup call.

My God. One News had a segment yesterday in the 6 pm bulletin on the Australian election, and they decided to explain how the system worked. What a pity they got it so wrong. Simon Dallow, who fronted it, should send an angry-gram to whomever produced that item.

They correctly described the House of Representatives as having 150 seats, and you need 76 to form a Government.

But then Simon went on to say Australia uses the Single Transferable Vote, or STV, electoral system. No, they don’t – well not for the House of Representatives which the item was on.

They use the preferential voting (often called Alternative Vote) system.

Even worse Simon went on to say they get two votes, and showed a mock ballot paper.

That has no resemblance to an Australian ballot paper.

This sample ballot, taken from Wikipedia, shows that you rank the candidates in order. You do not tick them, there is no second column.

This is basic stuff. Someone at TVNZ should have checked the story.

Peter McCaffrey has found a location for those in Wellington who want to watch the Aussie election over a few drinks. We will be at CQ Bar, Ground Floor, Comfort And Quality Hotel, 223 Cuba Street from 7.30 pm.

There is an inevitable Facebook event for it, which you can RSVP to. Should be a fun night – I’ll be blogging from there.

Have left it rather late, but how many people in Wellington would be keen to watch the aussie election results in a bar somewhere? Polls close at 6pm, which is 8 pm NZT. So starting say 7.30 pm?

Let me know if you are interested, and if enough are, I’ll try a couple of places.

I reckon if Peter Costello had decided to take the Liberal Party leadership, he would have been almost certain to become Prime Minister by the end of the month.

Gillard is in trouble. And it is not Tony Abbott doing the damage, but almost certainly Kevin Rudd.

A poll has the coalition ahead 52% to 48%, and on radio John Pagani said that he had heard that Labor’s polling was not looking good in the all important marginal seats. So how has it happened?

Well first there was the leak to Laurie Oakes about the deal with Rudd for him to stay on until October, which Gillard walked away from. As only three people witnessed it, not hard to guess who put that out there.

Then came the leak that in Cabinet Gillard fought against Labor’s paid parental leave scheme. This has damaged her amongst “babyland”. Gillard also tried to limit pension increases – hell I am liking her more and more. But the public are not. And again no prizes for guessing the likely leaker.

And the latest leak also has Rudd all over it – a revelation that Gillard sometimes sent her bodyguard to meetings of the Cabinet national security committee. That one may be especially damaging.

And in case there is much doubt it is Rudd, Alexander Downer reveals that the former Liberal Government used to feed info to Rudd when he was a junior Labor MP, knowing Rudd would use it to undermine the Labor Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, as Rudd wanted his job.

Is it just me, or do Rudd and Chris Carter seem somewhat alike – both try and rat-fuck their leaders, because they had their travel perks and status taken away?

Oh a wonderful story from news.com.au:

CONSERVATIVE “family values” party Family First has approached the Australian Sex Party – which advocates gay marriage, prostitution and abortion – for a preference deal in the federal election.

A match made in heaven.

Launching the Australian Sex Party’s South Australian campaign in Adelaide yesterday, president Fiona Patten said she was stunned when an adviser to Family First’s leader, Senator Steve Fielding, phoned her and made the proposal.

Ms Patten said her party was not interested in dealing with Family First, which she said represented the worst aspects of conservative Australia.

Founded by South Australian Pentecostal minister Andrew Evans, Family First touts itself as a pro-family party.

It is opposed to gay marriage and gay civil unions as well as abortion, prostitution and pornography.

It also supported the Government’s controversial internet-filtering policy.

The Australian Sex Party is at the other end of the political spectrum, supporting gay marriage, euthanasia and abortion. It also wants to remove religion from Australian politics.

Claire Trevett reports:

A war of statistical tables in Parliament left National red-faced after even its own figures showed the gap in earnings between New Zealanders and Australians had increased since it took office in November 2008.

Economic Development Minister Gerry Brownlee had said in Parliament on Tuesday that the gap was less than it was when Labour was in power  but yesterday the statistics proved him wrong no matter how they were presented.

Prime Minister John Key produced a table which he said most accurately compared average earnings because it took into account purchasing power parity.

But his own figures showed the gap had increased by $22 in the two years since National took over in 2008. Instead, he said it showed the gap was less than it was at the “maximum point” of Labour’s reign  when the gap peaked at $187.60 in 2005.

But it subsequently shrank to $137.89 by Labour’s final year in 2008 and had since increased again to $160.25 under National.

Of course the wage gap has increased. We went into recession, and Australia did not. In a recession you have little wage growth.

I am surprised that a Minister would claim the gap has not increased. Rather than try to push dodgy comparisons, they would be better to outline policies which will help reduce the gap.

The Age has a 13 part quiz on policies to help you decide which Australian Party you most agree with.

I got 50% Liberals, 50 Labor and 0% Greens.

The reason I did not score more with the Libs, is because of stupid policies such as an extra tax on large businesses.

In some areas such as immigration, the parties now have near identical policies it seems.

The Herald reports:

An embarrassing leak to Australian media of a high-level New Zealand diplomatic cable has jeopardised future discussions between the two countries, Labour leader Phil Goff says.

The Government is investigating how the report, which details the takeover of the Australian prime ministership by Julia Gillard, fell into the hands of the Australian newspaper, which published parts of it yesterday.

Yeah this is almost as bad as that leak, where notes of confidential discussions with US Senators was leaked – jeopardising MFAT being allowed to sit in on any future discussions.

Now who leaked those again? Oh, yes, a Mt P Goff.

Mr Goff, a former Foreign Minister, called it a serious breach of protocol that undermined the integrity and credibility of the foreign service.

“It’s extraordinary that a confidential diplomatic cable could have found its way into the hands of the news media, and that could be potentially damaging to the relationship between New Zealand and Australia.

“Any confidential briefing likely to be given to New Zealand diplomats in Canberra is now likely to be withheld.”

Maybe the diplomats thought they were following the lead of that other P Goff?

Incidentally I agree it is a bad thing that confidential memo got leaked.

Julia Gillard has gone to the Australian Governor-General to dissolve Parliament and call the election.

The date is now thought to be 21 August, so it will e a short sharp campaign, trying to pit it as a leadership choice between Gillard and Abbott.

The election will be for all 150 MPs and 38 out of 76 senators.

I rate Gillard as the favourite to win, but campaigns generally can and do matter, and we’ll see what happens. The Coalition needs to win 11 seats.

Her fix to the boat people issues is coming a bit unravelled, and it is also becoming clear the compromise with the miners was in fact a $7.5 billion backdown.

news.com.au reports:

THE Government will lose $1.5 billion in revenue after agreeing to cut the resource super profit tax from 40 per cent to 30 per cent.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has also agreed to water down other key aspects of the tax, which will apply to just 320 companies involved in mining iron ore, coal, oil and gas. More than 2450 companies were originally flagged in the deal. …

In another major concession, the tax will apply from a much higher rate than originally planned 10-year Commonwealth bond yield.

The new cut-in rate has been adjusted to the long-term bond rate plus seven per cent – an approximate rate of about 12 per cent.

The original proposal to tax any profits above the risk free rate of return (long-term Govt bonds) was the most outrageous part of the proposal. It would have been an awful precedent that making a higher profit than sticking your money in the bank was undesirable.

To offset the lost revenue from the new mining tax agreement, the Government will cut the company tax rate to 29 per cent from 2013/14.

Small companies will still benefit from an early cut to the company tax rate to 29 per cent from 2012/13.

The Press examines the smoking ban in prisons:

From the middle of next year New Zealand’s prisons are set to emulate Australia’s and become smokefree.

It is a long overdue move. It was an anomaly that prisoners could still smoke in their cells as the rest of New Zealand moved increasingly towards a no-smoking regime.

School grounds, hospitals, and other government departments have gone smokefree, as have bars, restaurants and businesses, and, in Christchurch, there is even a smokefree policy in parks.

For many prisoners – two-thirds of inmates – an enforced cold turkey regime will seem a hardship or even a civil rights breach. But those who have committed crimes against society should not expect the right to smoke, just as they cannot legally have alcohol and drugs.

What amuses me is the policy dilemma for Labour. They instinctively are in favour of anything that is anti-smoking but against anything that they see as punitive to prisoners.

So how does Labour solve this dilemma? They run a blog poll to decide their policy

The Dom Post looks at the trans-Tasman relationship:

When Julia Gillard became prime minister of Australia, Prime Minister John Key was the first foreign leader to phone in his congratulations.

He needs to hope his fast dialling finger will deliver a better result than his predecessor, Helen Clark, achieved with her swift flight over for a cup of tea with Kevin Rudd when he got the job – in his time as prime minister Mr Rudd never quite made it to New Zealand for an official visit.

Mr Key, like Miss Clark before him, is smart enough to realise the onus is on Wellington to keep reminding Canberra what the “NZ” stands for in Anzac. The reality, however unpalatable it might be to some, is that New Zealand is simply not as important to Australia as Australia is to New Zealand.

Australia is New Zealand’s most important trading partner and its most important security relationship. …

Talk about whether New Zealand and Australia should take their relationship to the next level and look at issues such as a common border can wait until the Australian election is over.

Mr Key’s job is to ensure New Zealand’s interests are not damaged in the meantime.

Miss Clark and John Howard reportedly enjoyed a warm relationship despite their different political ideologies. The hope must be that the state-house son of a refugee and the daughter of a 10 immigrant from Wales can do the same.

The irony is that PM from opposite parties seem to have got on better than PMs from the same side of the spectrum.

The ODT looks at OSH:

It is one of our cultural stereotypes: the rugged, versatile, no-nonsense farmer – the sort of person for whom most regulations are made by townies for townies who have no real understanding of the demands and constraints of a working life in the country; and, further, how the red tape that such people unhesitatingly impose on the rural sector can seriously impact on proven working methods and productivity.

In no other sphere is this more pronounced, or more irritating to some, than on-farm safety: the rules and regulations promulgated by the Department of Labour, Occupational Safety and Health and ACC are frequently seen as at best a brake on freedom and individual responsibility and, at worst, the interfering actions of bureaucrats and the “politically correct”.

Sadly, the reality is that such organisations have reason to be concerned.

According to the latest figures released by ACC, farmers are killing themselves in work-related accidents at the rate of one every 28 days.

Last year, 13 farmers died in accidents on New Zealand farms.

There were 18,600 injuries on farms, with quad bikes, farm machinery and poor animal handling featuring as the most common causes.

Raw figures by themselves mean little. What would be more useful is the injury rate per employee.

Being in Aussie has meant I’ve been able to see pretty much non stop coverage of the Gillard coup, which is much better than just seeing the highlights at 6 pm.

I was especially interested in Gillard’s press conference. Her performance can only be described as stellar. I’m one of those people who is always critically appraising speakers – often thinking to myself (or saying so to people with me) how an answer could have been made better.

I could not find a single fault with Gillard. Her answers, her tone, were all near perfect. She communicated her values and made it about Australia, not about her. I’ll give a couple of examples.

She was asked how did it feel to be Australia’s first female Prime Minister. Now Helen Clark (whom Gillard has some qualities in common with) had a burning life long ambition to be NZ’s first female Prime Minister. Everyone knew this. And she hated the fact Jenny Shipley bet her to it, so settled for New Zealand’s first “elected” female Prime Minister.

Gillard’s first response was a great joke – how she was also the first redhead to be Prime Minister and people can decide for themselves which was more unlikely.

But then she said that she didn’t enter politics to hit her head on any glass ceilings, but instead wants to keep her feet firmly on the ground.

Now that was superb. Cynically I wondered how many times and for how many months had she practised it. For she communicated that it wasn’t about her, it wasn’t about identity politics, it was about Australia.

Andrew Bolt also reviewed her press conference, and gives it a 9/10.

Gillard will be a far more formidable opponent to Tony Abbott, than Kevin Rudd was. That does not mean of course that she will automatically win.

There does appear to be some resentment over the method of her succession. Overnight online polls all showed people preferred Abbott over Gillard. However they are online polls and you can’t place reliance on them.

In a few days we’ll get the 1st set of phone polls. I’d ignore them also. What I will be looking at is the second set of polls in around three or four weeks time. That will give a better indication of what the change means to how people may vote.