Kiwiblog

Bill Ralston blogs:

Trotter takes the view that The Listener has rushed out and deliberately “retained a stable of journalists and columnists whose published material places them firmly on the right of the political spectrum”. He fingers as the key culprits writers Jane Clifton, Joanne Black, David Young, myself and Deborah Hill-Cone.

He notes:

The sad fact is when it comes to the political spectrum I tend to sit somewhere in the wishy washy liberal middle.

I’ve never voted National or Act and throw up at the thought of going Green or, worse, Progressive – so I suspect you can guess where my ballot has usually been cast.

So Bill has never ever voted National (or ACT) yet because he dares to sometimes criticise the current Government, people assume he must be a right winger.

This time I might consider National, mainly because I get that “time for a change” feeling and the Nats really are “Labour-lite” – Labour minus the hand-wringing political correctness that annoys the hell out of me.

I don’t know. Like many New Zealanders, I haven’t made my mind up yet.

Clark is certainly the most effective Prime Minister we’ve had in my lifetime, although she and her government appear to have run out of ideas and now cling to power for the sake of being there.

It’s a government that got sidetracked. Because so many in cabinet are academics or teachers the emphasis went on to process rather than delivery. Huge amounts of money have been thrown at social policy areas to little real effect other than stimulating a huge growth in bureaucracy and providing policy analysts with a mother-load of work.

I also think the government let blind ideology get in the way and it should have bought in tax cuts three years ago.

Does that sound right wing? Maybe.

I am not sure voting National once in thirty years qualifies as right wing, let alone membership of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

In identifying a rabid right wing conspiracy in the media Chris is just following the government’s paranoid lead. The fiercely tribal Left are collectivist in nature, it tolerates no deviation, no independent thought and demands all toe the party line at all times.

Sounds like the Borg!

Chris Trotter and the Ninth Floor need to remember it is the media’s job to be critical, look for fault and expose government blunders. That’s our job.

I can proudly say I have infuriated every Prime Minister from Sir Robert Muldoon through to Helen Clark. I’ll put money on it that, if he takes power in November, I will have thoroughly annoyed John Key by Christmas. That’s not very right wing, is it?

I suspect Bill will prove himself right!

Anyway, I have to go now and polish the portrait of Sir Roger Douglas that hangs over the fireplace and get ready for tonight’s meeting of the cabal.

Welcome to the dark side Bill!

Bill Ralston is not a fan of Sarah Palin. However he may be judging her off incorrect media reports:

She’s an aggressively pro-war, gun-loving fundamentalist Christian, a creationist who is strongly anti-abortion and so vigorously opposed to contraception that she preaches abstinence to teenagers like her pregnant 17-year-old daughter.

I’ve never seen her use the term fundamentalist to describe herself. She has stated she is not opposed to contraception. From Anchorage Daily News:

Palin said last month that no woman should have to choose between her career, education and her child. She is pro-contraception and said she’s a member of a pro-woman but anti-abortion group called Feminists for Life.

Also her comments on creationism are often quoted out of context. From WIkipedia:

While running for Governor of Alaska and asked about the teaching of creationism along with evolution in public school science classes, Palin answered: “Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both”; she further clarified that open debate between the two ideas should not be prohibited if it came up in discussion, but that creationism did not specifically need to be part of the curriculum.

So she specifically said she was not pushing for creationism to be part of the curriculum, just that you should allow discussion on the issue if students bring it up.

This woman is Dick Cheney in drag, although rumours of extra-marital sexual adventures in the hitherto surprisingly accurate tabloid National Inquirer might make her a cross-dressing Bill Clinton.

Rumours that appear to be false yet made mainstream media within hours. While the true rumours about John Edwards were not covered by mainstreammedia for months and months. Someone quipped that the best way Palin could have kept her daughter’s pregnancy out of the media, was to have John Edwards as the father!

Kerre Wodham is more favourably inclined:

Whatever you feel about Republican vee-pee nominee Sarah Palin and her politics, surely you can’t help but feel some sympathy for her as the bloggers and rumourmongers pick through her life and the life of anyone who’s been remotely associated with her, looking for dirt.

She’s had some experience of the muckraking associated with the job, having taken on the Alaskan old boy network when heading the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. …

But if she’s a pin-up girl for conservative Americans then surely her husband, the First Dude, is the prototype for the 21st-century man.

Not only is he an alpha male who hunts, shoots, fishes and is the four time champion of the Iron Dog, the world’s longest snowmobile race, but he’s a stay-at-home dad and man enough to be happy about his wife’s lofty political ambitions.

Every girl needs a First Dude. Todd Palin could prove a trump card for the Republicans. Only in the US could an illegitimate child of mixed race parentage be considered elitist and a moose-hunting, snowmobile-racing oil worker in Alaska the ultimate sensitive new age guy.

Almost everyone I know is saying the US election is far more interesting than the NZ one!

Bill Ralston fires at multiple targets, and hard to disagree with him too much:

Ok, you can argue, like Obama, Key is not part of the political establishment but anyone more politically experienced would know you get your staff to run quietly around the gallery comparing you to Obama and then, hopefully, some hack short of a line or two for their column will make the comparison for you.

By doing it yourself you merely look vain and immediately open yourself to ridicule and sneering from Clark and Cullen and, believe me, no-one can curl their upper lip and mock like those two. Which they duly did, in a schoolyard “nah, nah, nan, nah, nah” fashion.

Indeed they did, and Key took the ribbing in good humour in the House today.

There was a big backfire with Clark’s attempted counter-attack on Key’s refusal to work with Winston Peters, Clark first saying he must have been tipped-off about the Serious Fraud Office Inquiry by the SFO then, when the SFO strongly denied it, she said it must be the Police or the Crown Law Office who told him.

So much for her sad attempt to undercut John Key’s long awaited sudden growth of a political spine. He didn’t need a tip-off. I suspect he simply came to the conclusion most of us have already – Winston Peters is completely untrustworthy and a liability to any cabinet he serves in. Three Prime Ministers now have come to that same conclusion (even if Helen had that conclusion forced upon her).

Exactly. The Owen Glenn affair was proof enough.

The Prime Minister just looks desperate, she is guessing (wildly and I believe wrongly), she has just slandered her own public service and she has implied that she is facing some kind of internal revolt by her own top public servants. For someone who has always appeared so in control, so well grounded in maintaining constitutional proprieties, sternly retaining discipline over those who serve her government, Helen Clark has now given us the impression that she is weak, beset by traitors and reactionary forces plotting to bring her down.

Slandered her own public service. Indeed.

By the way, is it only me or are you too immensely amused by Labour aligned commentators and politicians trying to play their violins for Winston Peters?

I know several blogs have been sniggering at poor old Chris Trotter’s convulsions as he tries to extract some sympathy for the NZ First Leader, accusing the media of “pack raping” Winston. Aside from the ghastly imagery involved in that metaphor, dear old Chris seems to have forgotten Winston spent the last 25 years building his career on getting the media to “pack rape” other individuals and institutions he had targeted with the odd leaked document and claims of impropriety.

Those who live by the allegation, die by the allegation.

Touche.

Every columnist is talking Peters, so I’ll take them all together. First of all Bill Ralston:

Meanwhile, that same morning, Winston was somewhere in Auckland in his ministerial limousine going stratospheric. For a man who has spent weeks dodging questions from the “meerkat” media he did something extraordinary. He rang Radio New Zealand and thundered he would convince Clark to keep him and “she will know these allegations are vile, malevolent, evil and wrong”.

This is again hypocrisy of the highest degree. When National was investigated by the SFO in 2002, for a cheque which passed through a trust account, Peters got up in Parliament and alleged a former Party President had stolen money from the party, and took a “cut” to bail out his company. Now that is a vile, malevolent, evil allegation if I have heard one.So naturally Trevor Mallard also jumped on the bandwagon and repeated it. There was no one at all in the media or public suggesting such a thing – the possibility was invented by Peters and Mallard.

While all Peters has to do at this stage is explain why donations intended for his party are not recorded as having reached it. The $25,000 donation from Bob Jones should have been declared either under his own name, or under the name of the Spencer Trust.

So far the participants he has identified in this “vile conspiracy” against him include me, the NZ Herald, the Dominion Post, TVNZ, TV3, Radio NZ, the Radio Network, the SFO, Act, National, and big business (except for those big businessmen who have funded him).

Hey don’t forget us bloggers. I want to be part of the conspiracy! Is there a joining fee?

Deborah Coddington has a novel definition of the moral high ground:

The Minister of Foreign Affairs could easily have sashayed offshore to some vitally important meeting, and left the Prime Minister to stave off the attacks.

Which she does admirably, I must say, shrugging away the poke, poke, poke from John Key, claiming the moral high ground by conceding a conflict of evidence given to the Privileges Committee by Owen Glenn and Peters.

So admitting that she knew for six months Peters was lying, and admitting it just before Owen Glenn is about to reveal you knew, is claiming the moral high ground? Well I choose the moral low ground then.

Coddington also suggests a deal with Labout to give Rimutaka to NZ First:

But they’ve overlooked a new development. Ron Mark is standing in Rimutaka, Paul Swain’s old electorate.

After Winston, Mark is NZ First’s best-known MP, and has a large following. He’s NZ First through and through – tough on crime, anti-foreign investment, against sale of state assets, working-class hero, bad boy made good. He’s also a bloody nice guy and with a careful campaign, and has a good chance of taking that seat.

Was this pre-arranged all along? It’s just too cute for Labour to stand a young unknown with no prospect of winning in such a safe Labour seat.

I am not sure Labour regard a member of Clark’s personal staff as a no hoper with no chance of winning. And I am also unsure how calling someone a paedophile under parliamentary privilege sits with being a bloody nice guy.

Kerre Woodham opines:

In all cases, Peters has held up his hands and protested, like Sergeant Schultz, that he knows nothing. Bob Jones said Winston asked for some dosh at a party; Winston says that’s not what he remembers.

Owen Glenn says Winston rang him and asked him for a donation towards his fighting fund; Winston says that is not his recollection. At all times, Winston plays the victim card.

Actually Peters is now more like Colonel Klink with Helen Clark better suited for the role of “I know nothing” Schulz, as it turns out she knew all along.

I used to think the world of Winston, but it’s been a long time since I found him principled or amusing. His posturing that New Zealand First is the only party not to sully its hands with trust funds and big money donations can be seen for what it is – bullshit.

And yet it was all so unnecessary. If Peters had been honest and upfront from day one, who would have cared?

Since 1996, NZ First has declared almost no major donors. Doing so would harm their PR crafted image of being anti big business, when the truth is they were majorly funded by big business.

Finally we have the Herald on Sunday editorial:

Regardless of the outcome of the SFO investigation, Peters will remain a man in a political mire of his own creation. The allegations in Parliament by Act leader Rodney Hide that NZ First was paid by Simunovich Fisheries in return for Peters’ backing off claims that the allocation of scampi quota was corrupt have been around for so long that a high-level independent inquiry is called for. But on the matter of the donation by expatriate billionaire Owen Glenn, which is still being investigated by Parliament’s Privileges Committee, Peters continues to be evasive and pedantic. Glenn may have shown himself to be unreliable as to the details of times and places but he did give $100,000 and described it in an email as given “to NZ First”. If Peters did not know that on the day that the email first surfaced, he should have taken steps to discover and divulge all the facts immediately. Instead, he said everyone else was mistaken or a liar.

The HoS overlooks the fact that at a minimum Peters knew Glenn thought he had donated back in February 2008, when Clark told him so.

National leader John Key, plainly sensing that public patience is exhausted, made a bold move this week in saying that Peters would not be a cabinet minister in a National-led Government – by extension ruling out NZ First as a coalition partner.

This is less a challenge to Peters than it is to Prime Minister Helen Clark who, whatever she might say about the need to be fair, has known about the Glenn allegation for six months. In giving Peters enough rope to hang himself, she may have put herself in the noose as well.

Deservedly.

This week, the suggestion emerged that Ron Mark may stand as NZ First’s candidate in Rimutaka. A victory there could get the party two, or even three MPs – one of them the leader. Were Labour to connive at that, urging tactical voting to allow a NZ First victory in the hope of getting the numbers to form a coalition, Clark would confirm the suspicion she is now quite properly under: that she will turn a blind eye to Peters’ shenanigans to hold on to power.

The Rimutaka candidate, Chris Hipkins, works for Clark. Is it possible Clark will instruct him to endorse Ron Mark if they get desperate to ensure Winston’s survival?

She must match Key’s boldness by cutting Peters adrift and naming the election day. A campaign that consigns NZ First and its leader to the pages of history will allow the country to focus on important issues.

More importantly, it will treat Peters’ childish attention-seeking with the derision it deserves.

That would be nice. More likely is Clark will put Peters back into his portfolios as soon as she can.

Quite a bit of discussion regarding the ongoing media stories in the Veitch case. Bill Ralston wants an investigation:

What ever happened to the laws of sub judicae? The weekend’s Sunday Star Times and Herald on Sunday both reported at length on the nature and detail of the charges faced by Tony Veitch.

In theory the sub judicae rule bars any public comment on a matter before the courts that is likely to influence the case. Failure to observe this rule means the publisher and anyone else involved in publicising the material could face contempt of court charges.

The reason for the rule is simple: pre-trial publicity can potentially sway a jury.

The Sunday papers had far more information than was made public in Veitch’s first and only court appearance. They detailed the nature of the alleged assaults and the context in which they supposedly occurred.

Steven Price is less concerned:

Some defence lawyers have been getting their knickers in a knot about reporting on the Veitch case in yesterday’s Sunday Star-Times and Herald on Sunday.

Can’t say I share their concerns. Certainly, now that charges have been laid, publishing material that tends to create a real risk of prejudice to Veitch’s trial will be a contempt of court. But there doesn’t seem to be much in these stories to create such a risk.

They essentially summarise the police allegations. It looks like they came from the police summary of facts. The papers reported them as allegations. They note that Veitch denies them. They don’t get into assessing the evidence. They have reported no more than is almost certain to come out in depositions. Any trial is a good long way away, so any possible effect on jurors is almost sure to dissipate.

Russell Brown also thinks the leaks are getting too much:

That’s three weeks by my count. Three weeks of stories being placed with the Sunday newspapers by persons unknown, but — at the least in the case of the last lot — very likely to be playing for Team Tony Veitch. Because, frankly, there aren’t many other people it could be. …

Perhaps I’m being unfair to all three reporters. Perhaps they all came up with the same information through their own initiative and contacts. Maybe both sides are working them (and it may well be that the first media outreach in this sorry business came from the Dunne-Powell side). But it looks a lot more like they’re now allowing themselves to be used in a methodical public relations campaign by one side: that of the celebrity accused. And they, and their editors, should think about that.

I do wonder if this court case will see higher bills from the lawyers or the PR teams

Some people have suggested I am too cynical in thinking the Greens consultation is a charade, and it is a PR stunt for a decision already made. However Bill Ralston points out an interesting aspect:

I suspect it is largely a stunt to gain them more publicity because they are languishing in the polls and urgently need to galvanise some voter support.

This suspicion was reinforced when Jeanette Fitzsimons was asked if her caucus was split on how the party should vote.

She replied she would not know until next Tuesday’s caucus because she had not spoken to her MPs.

Good grief. There are only half a dozen of them and the carbon footprint from six phone calls to find out what they thought would not be too great, surely?

Fitzsimons and her cunning co-leader Russel Norman are trying to drag out the issue with this bit of theatre to gain maximum media coverage in the run-up to the election.

Can there be any credibility around the statement that the six Greens MPs have not even discussed what their position should be? I mean seriously? So who decided to ask the public for consultation? Wouldn’t that have been a Caucus decision?

I am so convinced they have already decided to back the scheme, despite their failure to get any meaningful concessions, that I was planning to offer $1,000 to someone willing to bet that they would decide not to back the ETS Bill.

I was going to let the market decide the odds, by letting people state how much they would be willing to pay me if the Greens announce they are backing the ETS Bill, and the highest bidder wins. So if someone was willing to give me $100 (and that was the highest bid) if the Greens back the scheme I’d give them $1,000 if the Greens do not back the scheme. I suspect no one would be willing to go much over $100, or 10:1 odds as they near certain to lose.

Sadly however such a harmless little bet would land me in breach of the Gambling Act 2003, so I can’t do it. However people are welcome to post how much they would have been willing to bid as a bet for a chance to get $1,000.  But you would have lost that money to me should the Greens announce on Tuesday they will be backing the ETS Bill despite gaining no significant concessions.

A wide range of reactions to National’s Benefits Policy. Taking them in no particular order.

Bll Ralston displys his outraged liberal roots and agrees with Helen Clark that it is beating up on single parents:

Frankly, less than 4000 adhering to the government breast on a more or less permanent basis is extremely few. In an effort to eradicate these last few bludgers, as it sees them, National will spend many millions of dollars in bureaucratic terms policing its new “back to work” system, counselling the DPB recipients and ensuring they really are making a buck for themselves.

Colin Espiner blogged yesterday and calls it Don-lite – watered down from Don Brash, but still different from Labour. He concludes:

There will be the usual objections from beneficiary advocates but National’s welfare policy won’t lose it any votes and may even pick up a few. It will be interesting to see how Labour responds. My pick is it won’t have too much to say.

Simon Collins has a useful look at the party differences:

It [Labour] believes the welfare state exists to empower those who would be powerless without it. For sole parents, the domestic purposes benefit gives them the power to leave unhappy or abusive relationships, and to balance paid work and unpaid parenting in the ratio that suits them and their children.

In contrast National, as John Key put it yesterday, believes in “a genuine safety net in times of need”. It thinks people should be moved on as quickly as possible.

I don’t think National in beliefs or policy encourages people to stay in abusive relationships. The DPB still exists. The difference is, having once moved out, whether or not one is forced to seek work at some stage, or can you stay on it for a decade without ever seeking a part-time job? But Collins is right the views are seen as “empowerment” vs “safety net”.

As his [Key's] policy pointed out, New Zealand’s refusal to work-test sole parents is now out of line with all Western countries except Australia, Britain and Ireland, all of which have signalled moves to start work-testing.

Yes, as with the 90 day trial period policy, this is standard practice in the developed world.

Collins also has quotes from various advocacy groups:

Family First director Bob McCoskrie, an invited guest at the policy launch, said making parents work part-time made sense, but only if implemented with discretion.

“We’d want to make sure that the work requirements are within school hours and not within the school holidays. Otherwise we are going to have a lot of unsupervised kids.”

Case Managers will need some discretion.

Another guest, Mercy Mission founder Barbara Stone, said she agreed with the work requirement “as long as it’s in school time and there is someone at home for the children for the rest of the time”. She said it was hard to get jobs for sole parents, who often had low self-esteem.

The focus should be on work during school hours only. But a part-time initial job may boost the self-esteem and confidence so that a full or near full-time job is easier to obtain once the kid or kids are older. Having a total break from the workforce for 10 years makes it much harder.

Housing Lobby spokeswoman Sue Henry said she was upset that John Key had “regurgitated” the work requirement policy that National implemented in the 1990s. “Quite frankly, latch-key kids and youth gangs and transience are a direct byproduct of taking the stick to beneficiary families [in the 1990s],” she said.

Yes there were no gangs before the 1990s. What a sensible contribution.

But Parenting Council chairwoman Lesley Max said the requirement for sole parents to work 15 hours a week was “consistent with the norm that exists across society as a whole”.

And who would argue with Lesley?

John Armstrong looks at the policy also:

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue – a much paler blue in the case of National’s bits-and-pieces patchwork welfare policy.

Heh that could apply to many National policies!

The latest policy is archetypal John Key. It promises things Labour would happily do itself – such as making the annual inflation-related adjustment of benefit rates a legal obligation on governments, rather than just convention.

Yet in forcing part-time work obligations on some sickness beneficiaries the policy has enough to be identifiably National in origin. But not so much that it frightens centre-ground voters.

Labour and the Greens ritually slammed the policy as an attack on beneficiaries. Some in National’s ranks must think “if only”.

As I said, a sensible combination of carrot and stick.

The Herald editorial is reasonably negative on the policy:

It [solo mothers breeding to get the DPB] is probably as much a myth as the Labour Party’s idea of the average employer. That is to say, there are instances of benefit abuse just as there are rogue employers, but to treat the whole beneficiary class as though they are avoiding paid work would be as foolish as legislating labour arrangements for all. Nevertheless, that is what National proposes to do with sole parents, invalids and sickness beneficiaries.

It is an interesting analogy, but somewhat flawed. Not all sole parents, invalids or sickness beneficiaries are being work tested. Only those DPB recipients whose children are aged over six, and only that small minority of invalids or sickness beneficiaries who have been medically assessed as capable of part-time work. The editorial concedes this later down, so the rhetoric of “treat the whole beneficiary class as though they are avoiding paid work” is somewhat hyperbolic.

For sickness beneficiaries the policy seems fair enough. As the economy has strengthened and the unemployed have faced more stringent job-seeking requirements, the numbers on sickness and invalids benefits have risen suspiciously high. They have needed only a doctor’s note, and even if the doctor assesses them to be capable of part-time work, they have been under no obligation to seek it. National intends to change that.

Some praise amongst the grumpiness.

But there will be cases where the time and cost of taking a low-paid job put added stress on a sole-parent family for little if any financial gain. It is doubtful that society gains from that stress, or that it is worth the trouble the ministry might take to enforce it.

Single mothers with good earning capacity are normally anxious to return to paid work as soon as child care allows. National’s efforts will be felt mainly by those with few skills and poor earning capacity and, frankly, Mr Key ought to have more important things to do. This policy does more to stroke the shibboleths of party supporters than meet any pressing social need. He should return to topics that count.

The policy is pretty standard in the developed world. And having an extra 30,000 or so people in the workforce will help close the gap with Australia.

Fairfax have out together a good mixture of bloggers at their Business Day site. They have Nick Stride and Nick Smith from the Independent. Shareholder activist Bruce Shepherd, professional protester John Minto, Vernon Small from the Dom Post and the pugnacious Bill Ralston. Most of these blogs are now added to the blogroll.

Bill blogged yesterday on Winston’s latest allegations:

He claims he is being persecuted by a media conspiracy. In the House, referring to the time when I headed news and current affairs, he alleged: “TVNZ have had two private investigators, detectives, sniffing around since they were sued for defamation some years ago, an action which is still alive today.”

This is completely untrue. In my time at TVNZ we never hired any private detectives to investigate him. Winston is fond of calling people ‘liars”. I will simply call him “mistaken”.

Winston has repeated this ridicolous claim several times now. Journalists should call him on it, and to use his own language ask for substantiation? Apart from his fevered imagination, does he had a shred of proof that TVNZ has hired private investigators against him?

If Helen Clark or John Key made an allegation like that, and could not back it up, they would be hounded out of their jobs.

Ralston then turns if TVNZ hiring of Phil Kitchin a few years back:

Winston might want to pause here and think hard about the multiple Qantas Award winning Kitchin’s track record. I hired Phil after a story he wrote broke open the Pipi Trust and exposed then MP Donna Awatere Huata’s fraudulent activity. Donna and her husband went to jail as a result.

Kitchin came to work at TVNZ and broke the Louise Nicholas story (simultaneously published in the Dom Post).  A couple of former police officers and other sexual offenders are still doing time as a result of that investigation.

In fact Kitchin’s investigations in various TV and print stories have put several people behind bars, including the murderer of a small baby, and sparked those things Winston once loved – police investigations and Commissions of Inquiry.

Yes Winston has called for such things in the past. And there is one thing Winston has called for which I think is a good idea. Winston would agree it is also, as it is one of NZ First’s 15 fundamental principles:

An independent anti-corruption commission will be established to enable New Zealanders to have confidence that their institutions are working properly.

I think that is one NZ First policy which is well overdue for implementation!

Winston has just spoken in the general debate. If the allegations were not so serious, it would be comical. He did not address a single issue of substance, but of course just attacked everyone. He basically said:

• Informed Speaker in May 2005 of allegations now appearing in Dominion Post (I think this is re the scampi issue back then)
• Said TVNZ has two investigators trying to dig up dirt on him.
• Talked of how Bill Ralston at TVNZ hired Phil Kitchin, as is this is somehow sinister
• Alleged that Phil Kitchin has misled Bob Jones in order to get a story
• Said that he sacked Rex W in 1996 and Rex not credible as he chats to teenage girls online
• Said that he was told at his mother’s funeral that there is a “pot of money” on offer for anyone who can dig up dirt on him
• Referred to the media as brainless meerkats
• Said that when he refuses to answer a stupid question, that is not a denial!

Remember how he said last week he would address the conflicts between what Bob Jones (and Professor Wright) said and what he has said. He hasn’t even attempted to do this.If this was meant to be a fuller explanation, I would hate to see a less full explanation.

In related news, Rodney Hide has laid a complaint with the Serious Fraud Office. It will be interesting to see if they decide to investigate. Considering they invesigated a similiar allegation against National in 2002, I can’t see how they can credibly not invesigate. That is not to say they will necessairly find illegal behaviour. Unless one actually knows what the Spencer Trust spends its money on, you can’t conclude on issues of legality.

There is now no doubt the e-mail published by the NZ Herald was not a forgery. And few would doubt that the publishing of that led to the revelation that Winston Peters had personally benefited by a $100,000 donation from Owen Glenn to his legal costs.

Anyone with has campaigned on transparency would say that the NZ Herald has done nothing wrong in publishing a true e-mail which resulted in the public gaining knowledge about a secret donation.

So I, and others, was wondering about whether Winston Peters would be man enough to apologise to Audrey Young for calling her a liar, and maybe even to her editor Tim Murphy for calling for them both to be sacked.

Alas the Herald on Sunday reports:

Yesterday Peters renewed calls for Murphy and Young to “do their duty and resign”.

Isn’t that incredible? The man literally has no shame.

Anyway NZ First is now officially the party in favour of large secret donations to top up MPs pay. No, seriously. This is what Brian Henry said:

He said politicians were “poorly paid” and needed donations, and he would continue to fundraise.

“They’ve got a temporary job, and they can’t afford litigation. They just don’t have the money.”

Yes Winston is very poorly paid on $200,000 or so a year. And his poor temporary job has only lasted 27 weeks. I’m sorry I mean 27 years (out of the last 30).

And as for being able to afford litigation. Well I’m sympathethic to MPs who get sued doing their job and need help with the costs of defending a lawsuit. But it is worth nothing that of Winston’s 14 law suits – almost all are him suing other people – not getting sued.

Audrey Young blogs yesterday:

Here at the party convention at Alexander Park he has held perhaps the most graceless press conference he has ever held, and that takes some beating.

And No, to the dozens of inquiries: Peters has not apologised for the personal abuse levelled at me last Monday when he employed the bazooka strategy – fire so many missiles at somebody else that people forget what you are supposed to have done. Though I did receive one from a very decent member of the caucus.

There are some decent MPs in NZ First and I suspect they are very distressed to find out that all their railing against secret donations in politics only applies to everyone but their Leader.

I wonder why he was able to find the answer to the Glenn donation question in July when in February after apparently exhaustive questions were asked about the $100,000 Dail Jones thought he had seen in the party’s accounts, no answers were turned up.

This is one of those big unanswered questions. Is the $100,000 donated to Peters’ legal fund in 2006 the same close to $100,000 sum that went into a NZ First account in late 2007. If the money has even temporarily gone through an official NZ First bank account, then there are serious implications.

Bill Ralston has his say:

Winston Peters’ embarrassing admission, despite months of blustering denials, that he had received a $100,000 donation from businessman Owen Glenn poses some real risks, not only for himself but for several other political players. …

Instead, he will be wriggling under reporters’ questions about his party’s murky funding structure and what exactly Glenn may have wanted in return for his generosity.

It is obvious from a leaked letter from Glenn published in the Weekend Herald last week that Glenn clearly believes he is still in the running for the honorary consul-general role in Monaco, a position Peters, as Foreign Minister, has the power to grant.

Peters has said they have not yet decided if they even need a Consul in Monaco. However the Government in 2004 clearly  decided they do not. So why is the Government reviewing a very recent decision, apart from the fact a wealthy donor has said he wants the job?

A good question is what role did Williams play in backing the expensive Tauranga electoral petition after the last election?

It was that legal action, along with 13 cases since 1991, that ran up the legal bill that Glenn helped pay off.

It is understood Williams did a lot of the calculations on election spending by National’s Bob Clarkson that Peters’ lawyers used to try to challenge his election.

There was indeed talk of Williams helping with the unsuccessful petition. Was Mike Williams the person who arranged for Owen Glenn to donate to Winston’s legal expenses?

And finally the Herald on Sunday Editorial:

The trouble with occupying the moral high ground is that the only way out is down. New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has spent the weekend of his party’s 15th-anniversary conference trying to finesse his late, lame admission that expatriate billionaire Owen Glenn did, in fact, make a $100,000 payment, the existence of which Peters has so vehemently denied.

But what is plain is that he did not tell the whole truth about the matter.

Indeed it is only due to the NZ Herald, and other media, that the truth has come out. And Winston’s position is they they should be sacked for having got the truth out of him.

They then post a very valid question:

But why should he know nothing of contributors to funds that assist his personal legal battles? If a Chinese wall is to be erected at all, it would be much more logical that it be around the party accounts, with which Peters appears to have been more familiar than his erstwhile president. And in any case, Glenn’s email makes it plain that he thought he had contributed “to NZ First”.

Yes party leaders should be kept away from the party’s accounts, but it is arguable he actually needs to know who donated to benefit him personally. And make no mistake paying off his legal bills has the same effect as giving him cash directly – a bigger bank balance for Peters.

There are around 20 stories and columns on Veitch today, and frankly it is getting overkill. I’m not even going to attempt to summarise them, except I do want to quote from Ralston a bit:

A hosed-off One News reporter covering the story appeared in a “live cross” in the 6pm bulletin, denouncing Flannery for failing to respond to her questions and dismissing Rick Ellis’ short press statement on the affair as “bland”. In a wonderfully timed act of rebellion the newsroom then served its TVNZ masters with an Official Information Act request for details of the company’s involvement in the matter and comment from Flannery and Ellis.

This was Lisa Owen and if there is a journalism award for sheer guts, she should get it.  Filing an OIA on your own employer and dissing your own Head of News and Current Affairs plus the CEO is just priceless. In one sense Owen is just treating TVNZ no different to any other organisation – as she should – but still there were ways in which she could be more subtle and she chose not to.

The story has got murkier today. We now know that now only did TVNZ and Radio Sport know for over a year, so have the Police. And also the $170,000 or so wasn’t negotiated at the time but asked for some months later.

Bill Ralston covers several issues today:

There are now more media communications and public relations staff working for the Ministry of Social Development than there are journalists working in individual newsrooms for media organisations across the country.

The MSD apparently employs 61.5 media staff. Quite what the half person does is not clear but the rest appear to be trying to put a positive spin on everything the department does. All appear to be failing spectacularly.

It may be more than that. For example spies in the Education Ministry tell me the under-report their media/comms personnel by only counting those who work in the central comms unit, but that every operating section also has it owns comms person.

Actually, I suspect the 350 policy advisers are too busy with the 61.5 media people working out how to spend your money telling you that they are working hard for you. Last year, the MSD budgeted 15 million taxpayer dollars to promote, for example, the Working for Families scheme this election year. The Government is anxious to remind you that it is looking after you – even if you don’t want to be looked after.

I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you!

With this in mind, the Government last year published, at your expense, a brochure subtly called We’re Making a Difference. It is designed to tell you how good the Labour Government has been for you and, not surprisingly, the courts and Electoral Office came to the conclusion it was campaign advertising for the Labour Party under the Government’s stunningly stupid Electoral Finance Act.

However, last week the Government started ducking and diving in Parliament about whether the brochure would be counted against Labour’s spending cap for the election. Labour Party secretary Mike Smith has been telling the Electoral Office that the breach of the act wasn’t committed by the Labour Party, it was committed by the Labour Government, or more precisely, the Prime Minister’s Office, which is entirely different, says Mr Smith.

Quite how the Labour Party’s Prime Minister and the Labour Government is divorced from the Labour Party is not clear, but members of the Labour Party must be wondering if this is final confirmation of what they have felt for years, the party’s parliamentary wing is a law unto itself and no longer has any connection with its rank and file.

The arrogance of the parliamentary wign as they pushed through the EFA was staggering, only matched by their refusal to concede they overspent by $800,000 last time.

What she is saying is that the Government rammed through an act of Parliament, put the Electoral Office to enormous expense, tied up endless amounts of police time investigating alleged breaches of the act, and further troubled the overburdened court system with litigation about the meaning of the act because Labour was worried National might put up billboards attacking the Government this election year.

Yep, this could not be allowed.

Bill Ralston sees an end:

You can never write off Winston Peters. That well worn cliche is trotted out by commentators at every election. Except, this election, I believe at last we can write off Peters. I suspect even he is no longer confident of ever again being “happy as the MP for Tauranga” and at age 63, he is wistfully eyeing the prospect of retirement from politics in October.

I would just make the point that not winning Tauranga does not mean retirement for Peters if his party makes 5%.

National has just selected its candidate for Tauranga, Simon Bridges, the party’s electorate chairman and a Crown prosecutor. He is half Peters’ age.

Bridges’ youth neatly underlines the fact that Peters is a political dinosaur, a throw-back to the era of his mentor and role model, Rob Muldoon. Bridges was barely born when Muldoon was Prime Minister and Winston was first on the hustings.

That National is willing to put up someone more than just a lame stooge means it is serious about winning the electorate and it is confident Peters and New Zealand First are dog tucker.

National certainly is serious about winning the electorate. The outcome is of course up to the voters.

There is an air of desperation about the New Zealand First leader these days, as if he senses his old magic is no longer working. He and his party have repeatedly tried to pull the race card, particularly on immigration, but for once have found little response from the electorate.

However, it does not stop Peters having a knee-jerk reaction any time anyone mentions foreigners in a positive way.

Indeed.

Peters seems unable to comprehend the statistics that show migrants have a higher rate of employment, higher incomes, pay more tax and are less likely to go to prison or get a social services benefit than the average Kiwi.

His anti-Asian rhetoric, which was so politically advantageous in the 1990s, is increasingly falling on deaf ears. Over the past couple of decades, New Zealanders have come into much greater contact with their Asian neighbours and no longer fear them.

This is true, but remember unlike the big parties Peters is not worried by how much he offends 90% of NZ. He is targeting just 10% and needs half of them.

Just go read the column.

Bill Ralston reports on speculation that the election date will be 18 October 2008.

My consistent position has been that the last date is the default date and no other date has been decided on, but that any time after the budget, Clark could tactically go early if the polls close enough or the Government gets some momentum.

The last five election dates are recorded as:

September 17, 2005
July 27, 2002
November 27, 1999
October 12, 1996
November 6, 1993

These are a bit misleading though. November is the traditional date, and I believe the date should be fixed for the last Saturday in November. Anyway we had November in 1993. The reason 1996 was early was because Michael Laws was forced to resign from Parliament in early 1996 and Bolger had to either allow a by-election or name a date within six months. If not for that, would probably have been November also.

1999 was November. Then there was a snap election in 2002 when Helen Clark used the preposterous excuse that Parliament was unmanageable because of points of order over the status of the Alliance. This was revealed to be around 11 minutes a day on average, so Clark has a history of going early purely for tactical reasons, with the flimsiest if excuses.

2005 was held on the last possible day, or close to it. Each election can be three years and 50 days or so after the previous one, so we have the chance this time to get it back to the traditional November date.

Bill Ralston writes:

For the next couple of years, expect to see higher unemployment, longer queues for food banks and more mortgagee sales – in short all the usual side-effects of a depressed economy. For Gen X and Gen Y, who have never experienced those conditions, there will be real anger, politically. Even if Labour survives the election it will experience a savage backlash among younger voters.

Cullen’s budget is still to come and he may move swiftly to ease the burden people face, but there has been little evidence of joined-up thinking in Labour’s approach in recent months.

Yes, there is the prospect at some point of some modest tax cuts aimed, according to Cullen, at low income earners. Yes, Helen Clark did decide to delay the implementation of some of the punitive taxes on petrol for a couple more years.

But the majority of mortgage-belt New Zealanders, who languish largely ignored in the hard-pressed middle-income bracket, have little hope of relief. The Government’s ill-conceived emissions trading scheme is set to soak billions of dollars out of households and small businesses and large corporations and agriculture will get a free ride for many years.

This has been a brilliant fair-weather Government, cruising through calm economic times. Conditions have changed yet it seems incapable of changing course. Batten down the hatches, guys, it can only get worse.

Bill forgot to mention that billions of extra taxes the Government will collect through the ETS. It may be the biggest tax hike of all times!

The lovely folks at the Herald on Sunday invited me to join them at their table for the Qantas Awards in Auckland last night (as I have done a couple of pieces for them), and it was definitely the place to be as they went on to win not just Best Weekly Newspaper but the coveted Best Newspaper.

Earlier in the night briefly popped into some blogger drinks and caught up with some of the old regulars, and met a few new people which was fun. Also failed to recognise Phil U due to his new look

Back to the Qantas, and as I said it was a great night for the Herald on Sunday. On top of the two main newspaper awards, they also won Best General Columnist and Best All Round Columnist (Paul Holmes) and Best Portrait or Object Portfolio Photographer (Janna Dixon).

The Herald on Sunday is less than four years old, and when you start with no subscribers, it is swim or sink, and I think it shows the power of hunger and competition that such a new newspaper has done so well. The Sunday newspapers are almost the only ones which still have direct competition in the print media.

Most people didn’t give speeches, but Paul Holmes gave a hilarious speech which Bill Ralston (one of the MCs along with Mary Lambie) tried to cut short. Paul just retorted “Knock it off Bill or I’ll fucking thump you” which had the desired effect. Ralston and Lambie were both very good as MCs, with Ralston making many jokes at the expense of his former bosses at TVNZ.

The winner of the most significant individual award – the Qantas Fellow to Wolfson College in Cambridge went to Phil Kitchin of the Dominion Post which was indisputably deserved. Kitchin and his editor Tim Pankhurst also got an Outstanding Achievement award for the Louise Nicholas story. Few stories have ever had such an impact on a country, and as Pankhurst pointed out it was their most defamatory story ever – except for the defence of truth – so deciding to run it was pretty ballsy.

Peter Griffin picked up Best Information & Comms Technology Feature Writer and Carroll du Chateau, Best Government, Diplomacy and Foreign Affairs Feature Writer. The Herald also had a very good night winning the Best Daily Newspaper with over 25,000 circulation. I understand their major stories on the Electoral Finance Act were submitted as their portfolio.

The best IT Columnist was Jillian Allison-Aitken from the Southland Times. I have to confess I have not read her stuff,so will have to look out for it in future. Colin Espiner was Best Politics Columnist.

Oh yes the best newspaper section went to the ODT for their world focus section. A few people joked they didn’t know the ODT had a world focus section – I have to admit when I lived in Dunedin my memories were that the Oamaru fair day would received twice as much space as the Berlin Wall coming down Obviously things have improved!

The Listener won Best Newsstand Magazine which editor Pamela Stirling appreciated greatly as vindication for her decisions to make changes to The Listener. We know this, because she said so in her acceptance speech!

In the online categories the Herald won best news website, NBR won best single report on a news website and the globally popular Read Write Web won Best Blog. Congrats to No Right Turn for being a finalist.

As I mentioned the Herald on Sunday won Best Newspaper and Best Weekly Newspaper, and NZ Herald Best Large Daily. The Manawatu Standard won Best Small Daily, the Aucklander (West) Best Community Newspaper, and the NZ Herald Best Front Page (for their Democracy Under Attack  story)

The full awards list is here.

Was a very enjoyable night, meeting new people and catching up with others. Having a quiet recovery day today and then off to a play in Auckland tonight.

Despite Helen Clark’s rhetoric of carbon neutrality, her Government looks poised to do a u-turn and delay aspects of the proposed emissions trading scheme, as political reality starts to bite that you can’t refuse to give tax cuts for nine years and just keep loading cost increases on.

So how should NZ proceed? A few views starting with the Dominion Post:

There is little doubt that the way to reduce carbon emissions is to make them costly, and the emissions trading scheme will achieve that. The question is how far New Zealand should go and whether, for example, it makes sense for it to be the only country to include agricultural emissions.

The need for caution is only underlined by the reality of the New Zealand contribution to global warming. New Zealanders may be large producers of emissions on a per capita basis, but overall contribute about 0.2 per cent of the world’s total. …

Against that background, rushing to lock in New Zealand’s policy is foolish. A more measured approach, with targets linked to what others do, rather than stand-alone statements of ecological purity, is more sensible.

The Hive puts forward a proposed consensus:

• that a modest greenhouse gas tax be introduced across all sectors as an interim action (there would be an immediate incentive to individuals and business to change behavior – the greater the amount of behavior change the less tax paid)




• that personal and business taxes be cut by exactly the same amount as the amount that the greenhouse gas tax is expected to raise (thus removing the “cost” of the tax to the overall economy)




• that Government agree that all revenues raised by the greenhouse gas tax be used to invest in greenhouse gas reduction technologies




• that New Zealand seek a plurilateral approach to greenhouse gas reduction involving Australia, Japan, EU and the US (ie we all introduce the same policy thus reducing the scope for leakage to occur




• that we increase the resource devoted to negotiating the replacement for Kyoto I.

I have considerable sympathy for this views, especially Points 1 and 4. The price of carbon is so uncertain that in the short term a tax may be preferable. If carbon reaches $50 a tonne, then reports suggest our farming industry may become unviable. What is especially important though is that any ETS we devise should not be stand alone, but at a minimum ih harmony with Australia, and preferably other major trading partners.

Bill Ralston looks at an inconvenient truth:

New Zealand produces 0.4 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions. This move will reduce our national emissions by 0.1 per cent. So, we are going through all this pain to reduce the world’s pollution by 0.1 per cent of 0.4 per cent. Meanwhile the planet’s greatest polluters, not tied by the Kyoto Protocol because they never signed it, continue to pump increasing amounts of crud into the atmosphere and reap the financial rewards of doing so. So much for New Zealand’s international competitiveness.

This is of course not a reason to do nothing, but the NZIER report points out if we act unilaterally then “carbon leakage” may mean that we suffer economic pain without the environmental gain.

Bill Ralston writes in the HOS:

Communications Minister David Cunliffe had an instant knee-jerk lame response to Key, claiming the plan lacked detail and credibility and “smacks of opportunism”. As most politicians are opportunists (and Cunliffe is certainly no exception) his cries that the scheme would reinforce Telecom’s monopoly position lacked credibility.

I am one of those who regard Cunliffe as generally having done a very good job in the portfolio. But his response to the plan has almost universally been seen as unwise, and making it harder for Labour to come out with its own response.

Quite how he arrived at the conclusion Telecom would be the big beneficiary of the plan is beyond me as Key had said in the speech that one of the principles guiding his government’s investment would be that there would be open access to the fibre network and none of the current players would be able to line their pockets at the public’s expense.

Indeed, they were critical principles.

New Zealand First blindly followed the anti-Telecom line and Act retreated into some doctrinal babble about how governments should not spend money.

Peter Dunne justifiably spat the dummy at the critics’ “Think Small” approach, saying “Surely the point is that widespread, superfast broadband is a good thing for the New Zealand economy and the only question is how do we get there?”

He went on to wish, without much hope: “It’d be excellent if politicians spent more time working out the answer to that question and not simply whacking each other over the head and feeling they’ve accomplished something”. Fat chance.

It is election year. One party could announce it had found a cure for cancer and the rest of the parties would argue against it.

Oh yes, John Key would then be accused of ignoring AIDS

Bill Ralston writes that he seems to have offended she who rules:

The Prime Minister has gone off me. I keep hearing from colleagues that she has been complaining loudly about these columns and my work on Radio Live’s drive show in the afternoons, when I often interview politicians. Apparently she believes I have “gone Tory”.

We’ve known each other since university days and I’ve always been moderately liberal in outlook, so she is puzzled by my criticism of the Government.

I have not had a road to Damascus experience and decided National is the way, the truth and the light.

It is simply that this Government has been in power for nine years and after that length of time it is inevitable it will have done things that provoke criticism.

Bill, Bill, Bill. If you criticise the Government, then of course you are a golf playing Tory. Either that or a chinless scarf wearer. You can’t be a friendly critic – friendly criticism is seen in the same light as friendly fire – a target to be fired back at.

Ralston then goes on to state all the current economic problems, and then observes:

Some of these factors are outside the control of the Government but it would be nice to see it concentrating on the issues that concern us.

Instead, Labour whinges about John Key. The National Party leader had a point last week when he accused the Government of fiddling while the economy burned. He asked what was the cost of the Government using countless bureaucrats to endlessly scour records in an attempt to discover inconsistencies in any utterance he made.

Helen Clark’s response was to yell “Diddums”, and Michael Cullen told Key to “get used to the fact he is playing with the big boys now”.

Displaying a sad and pathetic chip on his shoulder, Cullen went on to sneer that Key was the “MP for King’s College”. As a child, Cullen attended Christ’s College on a scholarship, an experience that obviously scarred him and left him with some kind of weird class hatred of those he terms “rich pricks”.

Hence his envy tax in 1999 to take an extra 6% off those earning more than $60,000. There was and is no fiscal need for it.

Can I suggest to Dr Cullen that the rest of us “poor pricks” would prefer he concentrated on delivering a budget that took the pressure off our diminishing disposable incomes rather than making infantile personal attacks?

Labour has become obsessed by John Key. The Government launched a campaign of ridicule to try to dent his credibility and at every opportunity it seeks to portray him as some kind of evil mastermind plotting to sell the family silver and deliver us into some kind of globalised bondage.

For many of us these attacks don’t ring true. Key is a quietly spoken, thoughtful sort of guy, obviously bright but somewhat colourless.

He is not Hannibal Lecter and all attempts to convince us that he is are doomed to fail.

That’s a visual association I could do without!

Ralston exclaims:

Indeed, the whole attack on the FTA is part of a carefully conceived ploy by a desperate Winston Peters to raise the popularity of the party in an election year.

It is no accident that last week New Zealand First deputy leader Peter Brown came out with his bumbling racist attack on Asian migrants.

It is no accident that Peters should then launch into his crusade against the trade agreement with China.

New Zealand First is so low in the polls it faces oblivion at the next election unless it can rally enough redneck support with its campaign against the Yellow Peril.

Indeed, while Labour focused on the Canadian peril to our already privately owned airport.

Bill Ralston’s column is titled “Wage gap more a tax chasm”.

Actually, Mallard is telling the truth. Those are the wage-gap figures. Gross wages. But what he ignores are the figures that matter most to you and me: our take-home pay.

Because of tax cuts and higher tax thresholds across the Tasman, the gap in tax-paid, take-home pay has widened rapidly under Labour.

Ralston has caught on to the key point – gross wages are misleading in comparisons between countries. You will hear Labour Ministers and supporters talk endlessly about gross salaries.

What you will hear far less from them is actual cash in hand, or after tax income.

And if one is comparing over a number of years, one should adjust for inflation. If after tax income in both countries has gone up 20%, but inflation in one country was 15% and in the other 8%, then it is better to be in the latter country.

So the best measure for comparing between countries is inflation adjusted after tax income.

Bill Ralston and Fran O’Sullivan both write in the HoS on the Hawke’s Bay DHB. We’ll let ladies go first, and quote Fran first:

Atkinson believes the inquiry should have addressed other issues that the former board recently uncovered. These include the secret emails between Hausmann and the executive, which Ryall told Parliament showed Hausmann changed tender documents to his advantage. Ryall said both parties withheld these and they came to light only after independent forensic analysis of the back-up tapes.

This also highlights why independent external inquiries with powers to compel evidence are preferable, to inquiries like Ingram and this one which are limited in what they can do.

And now Bill speaks:

When neither you nor your spouse is having an affair it is probably best that you do not write letters and make public statements denying any shagging is going on.

This is political common sense 101, yet former Health Minister Annette King has done exactly that in a breathtaking act of stupidity, neatly adding the missing ingredient of sex to the scandal surrounding the Hawkes Bay District Health Board.

I said much the same. An MP or spouse having or not having affairs is not a matter for the media, but by having written the letter (while Minister of Health), it has meant the issue does hit the public domain.

After the board was controversially sacked by new Health Minister David Cunliffe, King went public, alerting media to the sex rumours. Now, when confronted by reporters with questions about the letter, she accuses the media of being part of a “dirty tricks campaign” and refuses to confirm the letter exists, saying she cannot find it on the ministerial database, avoiding the question of whether she wrote it privately to the board employee.

Heh, I am trying to imagine the look on the face of the Ministerial Secretary if it had been done through the office and entered into the database. First of all how do you classify a letter which threatens someone over alleged affairs by the Minister’s spouse. I doubt it would fit in any of the standard categories!

The report is more interesting for what is not in it than what is. It doesn’t cover whether King should have appointed Hausman; it doesn’t comment on the fact that board staff gave Hausman tender documents ahead of rival bidders; it doesn’t look at Lind’s involvement with the whistleblower or Hausman’s company.

Yes, once again anything like the above was ruled out of the terms of reference.

Perhaps most of all, the report failed to acknowledge that the DHB became a “culture of mistrust and dysfunctional” only after King appointed Hausman.

And it was all predictable.  Appointing a board member against the advice of the Chair flies in the face of good governance. If you are going to do that, you should replace the Chair.

Meanwhile, Cunliffe continues to threaten the sacked board with further investigations of what it may have been up to, King burbles on about a dirty tricks campaign against her and the combined local bodies, and the sacked board prepares for legal action against the Government.

It is a mess that won’t go away until there is a full, transparent, independent inquiry into what happened.

Indeed. And if we don’t get one in 2008, maybe a new Government can order one in 2009?

The HoS has come out in support of the Public Health Bill, and says people should not refer to it as nanny state.

I disagree.

Health authorities already have widespread powers – including the power to detain people and require them to take medication – to contain the spread of communicable disease. The cheap argument against extending it to non-communicable disease is that it is not the business of the state to protect people from themselves.

I despair at such an attitude. An inability to see a significance difference between a communicable disease and something which isn’t even a disease at all. Communicable disease management requires regulation and management because it can travel from person to person. That is massively different to issues such as obesity which is caused as much by lack of exercise as by food.

The Government says relax, no codes will be binding – well until three years are up. After that you may have a legion of inspectors going from dairy to dairy. Oh sorry Madam,  you are within 500 metres of a school so you can’t sell that. Sorry Sir, but you need to hide those items and put your healthier items up the front.

You think it won’t happen? Look at the explosion in health bureaucrats in the last few years?

Rather than try to regulate unhealthy foods out of existence, why not have an extra hours PE every day at school, or have DHBs provide free or subsidised gym memberships.  Because if they really think making shop keepers move certain foods to the back of the store will have any effect, they are dreaming.

Bill Ralston writes on the same issue:

The Public Health Bill is the latest example. … considering giving the Government power to control where and how supermarkets display unhealthy food.

It is a small clause in the bill and the Greens’ healthy food campaigner Sue Kedgley is adamant it would be unlikely to be used. Much.

In my experience, however, if you give Governments an inch they tend to take a mile.

Absolutely, and all our experience of Government backs this up.

People know the ugly truth of what unhealthy foods can do but some choose to gobble that Moro bar anyway. They have made a reasonably informed choice. It may not be the right choice or one that Matron Kedgley would advocate, but it is their choice.

The Government can try to control the sale of foods it dislikes but people will go on eating it. All this bill will do is create still more bureaucrats to administer it.

Yep, watch for a massive increase in public health officials.

A great quote from Bill Ralston which gets to the heart of the matter:

Am I the only person who finds it slightly hypocritical that we move to stymie the Canadian Pension Plan buying one of our “strategic assets” when Dr Cullen’s New Zealand Superannuation Fund is prowling the planet, merrily buying up other people’s strategic assets?

The NZ Super Fund already has assets of $13.2 billion – making it larger than almost any NZ company. And in just another 15 years it will be a staggering $100 billion in size and will own strategic assets in dozens of countries I suggest.

It already own assets in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada (that nasty country which can’t be trusted to own 30% of an airport), Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic,  Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany,Greece, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Netherlands Antilles, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UK, and the USA.

And amongst those investments in around 50 different countries are a couple of airports!