Kiwiblog

The Dom post editorial:

Labour MP Nanaia Mahuta has fired a broadside at Parliament’s rules after she found herself stuck in the debating chamber late at night with her 5-month-old baby.

She was aiming at the wrong target.

Instead of having Parliament’s standing orders in her sights, she should have trained them on her party colleagues.

Labour talks the talk on family-friendly workplaces, but it appears it is not so good at walking the walk when it comes to helping a breastfeeding colleague, even one as senior and respected as Ms Mahuta.

Exactly. They have 9 proxies they can use every day. They have only one MP with an infant. Plus as they are not in Government, they can even vote with reduced numbers without consequence.

If Ms Mahuta felt she should be among those whose presence was not required, then the correct place for her to have directed her complaint was chief whip Chris Hipkins, who organises the roster and should have been alert to the high likelihood of Parliament going into urgency after Thursday’s Budget, and her Labour colleagues.

All it would have taken for her to have the night off would have been for Mr Hipkins to give her priority or for just one of those Labour MPs who was excused to have offered to step in and take her place. Surely, Ms Mahuta would have returned the favour when her circumstances allowed?

To be fair to Hipkins, it has been reported she originally had leave for Friday, but asked to swap it. I’m not sure all the blame is with the Whips. To some degree what we are seeing is a continuation of Labour’s internal warring – it is no coincidence that Mahuta is part of the marginalised Cunliffe faction and she has no love for the party leadership and whips after her demotion.

After Ms Mahuta’s complaint, Speaker David Carter is examining whether even more can be done. In the meantime, Labour, the champion of family-friendly workplaces, can help Ms Mahuta no end by practising what it preaches.

A fair point.

The Dom Post editorial:

There is a good argument for getting tougher with those living overseas who won’t repay their loans. Too many have decided to ignore their obligations.

Now the Government will require them not only to repay more quickly, but it also warns that persistent defaulters may be arrested at the airport.

This is punitive, unpleasant, and likely to be unpopular in a democracy that prefers the carrot to the stick. But nobody can complain.

The Government, after all, has taken a gradual approach. It offered amnesties and a chance to come to an arrangement with the IRD. It has also made it technically easier and cheaper to transfer the money home.

Many have responded reasonably: $64 million in outstanding loans has been repaid. However, some have ignored the offer and refused to repay. That can’t continue.

After all, if the people concerned had a low income and found it genuinely hard to repay, they were free to argue the point and try to make a deal with the tax-gatherer. Others could easily repay their loans but simply ignored the Government’s inquiries.

Those who have refused to do anything now face the threat of the bailiffs and, if they persist, of arrest. It’s hard to know what else the Government could do. Those who refuse to respond are breaking the social contract.

The social contract has responsibilities on both sides.

Students, after all, do not pay the full cost of their tertiary education. Even with the loans, they are being subsidised by the taxpayer. In return for that aid, however, they must make a contribution themselves.

This does not threaten the hallowed institution of OE, as Labour claims, or make it less likely that our high-fliers will return to the nest. Those who do their OE can’t just leave their fiscal obligations behind them. And highly -skilled people who stand to earn big salaries during their lifetimes can expect no sympathy if they default on their loans.

Repaying a loan should not be seen as optional.

The editorial however criticizes students aged over 40 having to get loans, instead of allowances.

The Press editorial:

The new website developed by the Sensible Sentencing Trust inviting the public to “judge the judges” has attracted more alarmed comment than it warrants.

Critics of the site worry about its focus on individual judges and fret that it may encourage contemptuous or defamatory attacks on judges. These concerns are overwrought.

As it is set up at present, the site is relatively innocuous and to the extent that it gives greater publicity to judges’ decisions and sentencing notes may do some good. …

Instead, the site presents a number of criminal cases in which, in the opinion of the site’s organisers, judges have given either particularly lenient or particularly commendable sentences to offenders.

Along with the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s critique of the sentence, the site also presents a link to the Ministry of Justice website so readers can form their own opinions from what the judge has said in his or her judgment and sentencing notes.

Those readers who bother to follow the links and read those documents will gain as good an insight as possible into the many competing, and often irreconcilable, factors that judges must take into account in trying to produce a just result in the cases before them.

I agree that the links to the case notes are a useful service.

While the website itself may be an incentive to redneck, talkback-style instant outcry about the leniency of this or that sentence, by making the official documents more widely available it also provides some antidote to it.

The silliest argument against a site critiquing judges’ decisions is that judges cannot answer back. The response to that is that they do not need to – their judgments speak for themselves, which is why judgments should be promptly available.

If further publicity is needed to protect a judge from unfair criticism, the Ministry of Justice has a large enough PR department to see it is done and in extreme cases there is nothing to inhibit the Attorney-General or Minister of Justice from speaking.

It will be interesting to see how many more cases end up on the site.

The Press editorial:

The suggestion by the Minister of Justice, Judith Collins, that public registers be set up to provide open and easy access to the criminal record of serious offenders is one that will be welcomed by many people. Such information is widely and freely available already from the proliferation in the last decade or so of websites including news and information sites, and by organisations like the Sensible Sentencing Trust. But, because of the limited resources of those news and other organisations, the information those sites contain is inevitably piecemeal and patchy. An authoritative and accurate official record would plainly be of much greater benefit.

I agree. Perhaps the threshold for inclusion could be a strike offence?

Criminal convictions are already a matter of public record. Access to the record, however, is not easy. The police, for instance, in most circumstances cannot, because of rules governing the disclosure of information from police computers and concerns about privacy, reveal them. A properly maintained official register would cut through the thicket of difficulties to provide the information more readily.

It may be argued that a register of convictions, by being forever available on the internet, would make it harder for a criminal to live down his or her past and become rehabilitated. The fact is that that is occurring to a certain extent anyway. The register, as Collins suggests it, would be concerned only with serious offences, the kinds of things already covered by news media and suchlike websites. Those websites are very long-lived and can be searched without much trouble by Google. But the media cannot cover everything, even serious crime. An official register would remove the randomness in them in that it would cover all serious offences, not just those the media deem newsworthy, and it should be less subject to error.

If the Government does not set up a register, then those run by groups such as the SST will become more and more authoritative in the absence of anything else.

It may also help deter offending. Contrary to popular opinion, criminals respond to incentives as much as anyone else. Offenders, once they come to know that it will not be so easy to conceal their past crimes, will be less inclined to commit them in the first place.

Fewer crimes and fewer victims would be a good thing.

The Dom Post editorial:

By any stretch of the imagination, the nearly $66,000 base salary paid to Wellington City councillors is not a pittance, especially when most have top-ups of $14,000 or more. For that sort of money, Wellington ratepayers have a right to expect their elected representatives would at least stay awake around the council table, make firm decisions on matters of vital importance to the city and keep informed about what is going on within the organisation they govern.

What Wellington has got is councillors who are unable to work together on key issues, and who at times appear to be woefully ignorant of vital aspects of the council’s operations. Ratepayers should be asking themselves whether this crop are worth their present salaries, let alone the $76,600, plus top-ups of up to 50 per cent that will kick in after the next election under changes announced by the Remuneration Authority.

There are some good Councillors, but there are also som who have been there far too long, and need to go.

Already this year, Mayor Celia Wade-Brown has revealed she had no idea that up to $350,000 had been budgeted to house her in temporary offices while the council chambers were earthquake-proofed. How did she and other councillors find out? They read about it on the front page of this newspaper.

That was a damning admission.

With this level of competence from a Green Mayor, imagine what fun we may have with six Green Cabinet Ministers?

Then there was the months of dithering over whether to support the proposed flyover for the Basin Reserve, a project some councillors still cannot bring themselves to accept as the best option for fixing the city’s transport problems, despite voting to pay $40,000 for a report that clearly stated just that.

Yes, they rejected the very advice they commissioned!

One of the rationales for paying councillors above-average salaries is to entice talented candidates who can offer something of real substance to local government. It is hoped that proves to be the case when ballot papers for October’s local-body elections are delivered to households later this year.

It is about time Wellington started getting value for money from its elected representatives.

Hear, hear.

The Herald must be very worried by the thought of Maurice winning, to devote an editorial to trying to scare him off. They say:

The policies and planks of Mayor Len Brown should be subjected to the challenge of a worthy rival in October. Only then will the advancement and assessment of alternative ideas, part of the fabric of a healthy democracy, take place. Unfortunately, such an opponent has not emerged. It is not John Minto, the Mana Party candidate for Manukau East at the last general election, who announced his bid yesterday. Nor is it the National Party’s long-standing Pakuranga MP, Maurice Williamson, who is considering running. In both cases, these are the wrong men wishing to be the mayor for the wrong reason.

I guess we know who the Herald is backing.

The Dom Post editorial:

What is known is that each year about 200,000 workers – one out of every 10 – make an ACC claim for a work-related injury or illness. Given that not all workers injured on the job make claims, the actual number of injuries will be even higher.

The total cost to New Zealand of this sorry state of affairs is estimated to be $3.5 billion a year. It is, as the task force notes, a price that is “appalling, unacceptable and unsustainable”.

Several factors are to blame for this intolerable situation. They include regulations that fail to make clear who is responsible for what, weak monitoring, enforcement and penalties and a lack of worker involvement.

The task force has proposed a series of sensible measures to address these issues. They include a recommendation, already accepted by the Government, that a stand-alone agency should be created to oversee safety in workplaces, provide information to workers and employers and collect data on accident, injury and death rates.

The task force has also proposed tougher legislation and penalties and a carrot-and-stick approach that will give incentives, such as lower ACC levies, to employers who reduce injury rates while punishing those who fail to act.

I am a big fan of ACC levies and premiums reflecting your accident record. I say this as an employer that (to the best of my knowledge) has never had a work related injury in nine years – yet pays a significant amount in premiums.

You need both carrot and stick when it comes to workplace safety. It is important that the focus go on the stick only.

The Herald editorial:

The first of the group’s two recommended solutions to plug a $10 billion to $15 billion funding gap in the council’s 30-year integrated transport programme fails to meet that criterion. This option suggests that from 2021, the money should come from hefty increases in rates, a regional fuel tax, tolls on major new roads, further government contributions and small public transport fare increases. The financial burden would, in effect, be widely spread. An advantage of this approach is that it would be reasonably simple to implement. But that does not outweigh the fact that much of the funding would be drawn from homeowners.

Neither home owners or taxpayers should be primarily funding roads and public transport. The users of roads and public transport should fund them.

The second option is better targeted. It envisages the introduction of road pricing supplemented by smaller increases in rates and fuel tax, further government contributions and small public transport fare increases. Motorists would be levied to use existing roads through motorway tolls, or charged to pass through cordons on other congested arterial routes. This would be more expensive to implement but the approach has several benefits, as well as drawing most of the funding from the major beneficiaries.

Most importantly, it would prompt immediate behavioural change by drivers, a feature not associated with the other option. Virtually overnight, there would be less road congestion.

Claiming overnight cures to congestion is silly, but the point about behavioural change is important.

The Super City was established ostensibly to provide the people of Auckland with strategic direction and leadership. If the council can convince them to supply the bulk of the funding on the basis that there will be a dramatic improvement in traffic movement, the Government should get out of the road.

The best way of achieving that outcome would be through a referendum run as part of October’s local-body elections. It cannot be a yes or no vote on the public paying more for transport. Such a vote would always see higher charges rejected. The question would have to be carefully tailored so as not to simply provide a chance for the venting of spleen. In essence, it should be boiled down to a vote on what is preferable – increased rates or road pricing.

I agree with a referendum, but disagree that you only ask people how they want to pay, and not how much they want to pay?

Why not do a referendum on the City Rail Loop, with funding options for it? Tell Aucklanders the cost of it, and get them to vote on say one of say these options:

1. Fund $2.9b CBD rail loop by rates impost of $250 a year for 10 years
2. Fund $2.9b CBD rail loop by a petrol tax of 25c a litre for 10 years
3. Fund $2.9b CBd rail loop by road charges of $4 a day (assume 300,000 vehicles charged)
4. Not build CBD rail loop

Not quite as simple as that, but Aucklanders should get to vote on how they pay for the CBD rail loop, if they want it.

The Herald editorial:

Air New Zealand’s soaring fortunes were confirmed last week when it flagged that its annual earnings would more than double this year. Normalised pre-tax earnings would be between $235 million and $260 million if current market conditions and the trading environment persisted, it said. Air New Zealand’s share price immediately shot up 8c to $1.52, signifying a 10 per cent rise this year. …

As it is, Air New Zealand may well hold more appeal, especially for the mum-and-dad investors the Government aims to attract. The airline industry has always had an allure despite the vast sums of money that have been lost in it, and the national flag carrier has a special place in the hearts of New Zealanders.

It has faced a multitude of problems in the past few years, including high fuel prices, landing fee increases, earthquakes in Christchurch and Japan, and discount competition. Yet it has managed to not only survive but to achieve a profitability more commonly associated with budget operators while maintaining a high standard of customer service.

A strong management team, headed by new chief executive Christopher Luxton, provides reason for confidence in the future, including a strong response to the challenge that will arise from the transtasman alliance between Qantas and Emirates, which awaits only the Transport Minister’s go-ahead. Jetstar is also talking of expanding its domestic network to regional centres, flying routes that it says are a “big profit play” by Air New Zealand. Balancing these threats to some extent is the benefit that the national carrier will undoubtedly gain from the Government’s $158 million boost for promoting tourism.

There are also practical reasons to encourage the Government to promote Air New Zealand. It is already listed on the stock exchange, so a prospectus will not be required. The selldown of the Government’s 73.4 per cent stake to 51 per cent will be more straightforward than those of the power companies. There will be no repeat of the late rewriting of Mighty River’s documentation.

If ever there is a time to sell shares in Air New Zealand, this appears to be it. Investors wary of the unpredictability of the airline industry may not touch it, but there is considerable appeal for mum-and-dad investors. It could offer succour as the Government licks its wounds.

I agree. The Government doesn’t even have to do it in one go. They can just release parcels of shares when the price is high.

I look forward to hearing intelligent arguments from opponents as to why the Government should own exactly 73.4% of Air New Zealand – not a share less or a share more. Tell us why it should not be 51% or why it shouldn’t be 95%?

The Press editorial:

The United States and the international community have to respond to a suspected nerve gas attack by Syrian government forces on civilians in Aleppo.

If the attack is confirmed – and it seems likely that it has happened – President Bashar al-Assad’s regime cannot be allowed to get away with this atrocity.

The trouble is there are no good solutions, just a variety of different intensity bad ones.

The difficulty for the West is that any imaginable military response is dangerously complicated. Even a no-fly zone over Syria, which would work to the obviously military advantage of the rebels battling Assad’s forces, cannot be easily enforced.

Assad is believed to have 600 fixed surface-to-air missile sites and about 300 mobile units, some of which would survive any first strike by US cruise missiles or planes flying from the Royal Air Force base in Cyprus. Putting Assad’s anti-aircraft capability out of action could be difficult and costly.

Most can be destroyed easily enough, but enough would survive to take down some aircraft. However if drones are used, the loss of life to US or NATO forces could be minimised.

If the chemical attack is confirmed, Assad has to go. Any regime which carries out nerve gas attacks on its own civilian population has lost all pretence of legitimacy.

The trouble is the alternatives are not overly appealing.

The Dom Post urges caution:

Barack Obama warned Syria that if it used nerve gas against its people it would “cross a red line”. The president meant that if the Assad regime was guilty of such a war crime, the United States would have to do something.

And now the evidence is mounting that Assad might have used sarin. And so now the president is in a difficult position, largely of his own making.

It would be easy to scorn Mr Obama over this. It would be easy to interpret his hyper-caution as shillyshallying and even cowardice. It would be easy to demand he stick to his word and start bombing. Predictably, some senior American politicians are now urging him to do so.

I don’t think he should bomb, but I think he was stupid to talk about a red line, and not be prepared for what to do if it is crossed.

The Dom Post editorial:

If Conservative Party leader Colin Craig wants to pursue a career in politics, he needs to harden up. His threat this week to sue a satirical website that ran a spoof story which attributed fictional quotes to him suggests he is not yet ready to cope with the rough and tumble of Parliament’s debating chamber.

Politics is the contest of ideas, and those who practise it have to be prepared for the reality that not only will their policies be challenged and derided by their opponents, from time to time, they will be mocked.

There is nothing wrong with that, as long as it is not done in a nasty way, and the purpose is to make a political point rather than an outright personal attack. Satire has been around almost as long as politics itself, and, done well, is an entertaining and humorous medium for social and political commentary.

Absolutely. The satirical piece was extremely mild, and only a moron could have thought the purported quote was genuine.

The last thing we need is MPs and wannabee MPs firing off defamation threats at anyone who takes the mickey out of them.

The Herald has a profile on Ben Uffindell, creator of The Civilian. Thanks to the publicity from Colin Craig, he now plans to turn the site into a business. Excellent.

The Herald editorial:

The Green Party is upset that Trade Minister Tim Groser’s international travel costs soared to almost $250,000 in the first three months of this year as he lobbied for support for his bid to be the director-general of the World Trade Organisation.

As far as I can tell the Greens don’t support there being a WTO, or in fact trade. The logic seems to be:

1. Trade requires transport
2. Transport requires power and fuel
3. Power and fuel cause greenhouse gas emissions
4. Greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming
5. Global warming will destroy the planet
6. Hence trade is evil and must be stopped

True, that sum is more than the combined totals of the Cabinet’s other frequent flyers – the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the Defence Minister.

But it pales into insignificance when viewed alongside the potential gains for this country, and for global trade, if Mr Groser were to succeed Pascal Lamy at the end of August.

The main advantage for New Zealand, if Groser wins, is that he is the best person for the job. This means he represents the best chance of getting a global trade agreement to conclude the Doha round. Such an agreement would be worth billions.

The knowledge and experience gained from these ventures into areas of huge complexity make him the candidate most likely to achieve a successful conclusion to the Doha round talks.

It may well be that the fact that no director-general has ever come from Latin America will thwart his bid. That, however, is no excuse for pettiness.

Well said.

The NZ Herald editorial:

When the Marriage Equality Bill passes its final vote in Parliament, possibly tonight, it will signify a marked social change. Less than a decade ago Helen Clark’s Government dared not extend the definition of marriage to same-sex couples, offering them a legal equivalent called civil union. Since then, public opinion has undergone a sea change.

It has happened not only in New Zealand but in Australia, the United States and Europe. Quite suddenly, most people have come around to the view that homosexual commitments deserve equal recognition.

It is a change primarily linked to age. Younger people have grown up with gay and lesbian friends, class-mates and colleagues and see no reason not to allow their friends to marry.

In the US in 2004 opposition to same sex marriage was an electoral winner for the Republicans. In 2012 it was an electoral loser. And a poll in the US had just revealed that a majority of Republicans under 30 favour allowing same sex marriage with 51% in favour and 46% opposed.

The same poll also looks at views based on religion.

• White evangelical Christians: 24% support/73% oppose
• White non-evangelical Protestants: 54% support/43% oppose
• White Catholics: 53% support/43% oppose
• Hispanic Catholics: 54% support/35% oppose
• African-American non-evangelical: 65% support/31% oppose
• Jewish: 78% support/21% oppose

So a majority of (white) American Catholics support same sex marriage.

Thoughtful contributions to our opinion pages have argued that marriage between a man and a woman is too important to social cohesion for its heterosexual definition to be lost. Marriage, they said, is not simply a declaration of love and commitment, it is the legitimation of procreation and the formation of families.

If its definition is to be detached from that purpose and marriage is to mean any form of human bond, what next, they asked. Might a commitment of more than two people have a right to the same recognition? Polygamy is permitted in some cultures. Why restrict the recognition to sexual relationships? One woman who lived with her sister wrote about their enduring non-sexual life together and wondered whether, in the name of equality, they too should be allowed to marry.

Marriage, as a professor of law pointed out on our pages yesterday, has been instituted in every culture, tribe and race since antiquity as the union of a man and a woman. It has never, until now, included a category of relationships that have no reproductive capacity and cannot provide a child with the care of two biological parents.

A fair summary of the better arguments against.

Those who worry that something of value will be lost can probably relax. Laws cannot change the ordinary meaning of words such as marriage, bride, groom, husband, wife, mother and father. Marriages for heterosexuals, including the blessings that believers obtain from churches, will not be diminished.

It remains to be seen whether same-sex couples marry in large numbers but their right to do so will be a significant achievement, another legal statement of equality. The gay community’s fight for the right to marry pays tribute, in its way, to the inherent value of the institution.

I agree. Couple aspiring to marry is a good thing.

The debate will be over tonight, thank goodness. It’s been great to be part of a team working for this change. I respect that some are opposed to the change, but the opposition to civil unions proved misplaced – and I think this will prove the same.

While there has been some passionate views on both sides, I think it reflects well on New Zealand that we can have this debates generally without the nastiness and rancour you see in some countries.

A Herald story also has a useful breakdown by party for the second reading:

FOR

* National: 44 per cent of MPs
* Maori: 100 per cent
* United Future: 100 per cent
* Act: 100 per cent
* Labour: 91 per cent
* Green: 100 per cent
* Mana: 100 per cent.

AGAINST

* National: 56 per cent of MPs
* Labour: 9 per cent
* New Zealand First: 100 per cent
* Independent (Brendan Horan): 100 per cent.

From my point of view, it would have been nice to have the majority of National MPs voting in favour. But even if only 10 out of 59 National MPs were in favour, this law change would have occurred.

The Dom Post editorial:

There are good reasons to be cynical about Labour leader David Shearer’s vague promise to rein in power prices if he becomes prime minister next year.

It’s like King Canute claiming he can stop the tide – except King Canute knew he couldn’t.

First, it will have escaped nobody’s attention that Labour had plenty of time to ease the burden of electricity costs for households and businesses during the nine years it was in government from 1999 to 2008. But instead of putting in place measures to achieve that, it presided over a nearly 70 per cent rise in prices and happily raked in more than $3 billion in dividends from the state-owned power companies.

And this was a time of record surpluses.

Clearly, Labour had no problem with families and small businesses being hit with unnecessarily inflated electricity bills when the cash was helping to fund its big spending policies. That only appears to have become a concern once it was turfed out of office.

Exactly.

Mr Shearer says the policy has arisen from the prospect of power prices soaring further once 49 per cent of Mighty River Power, Genesis and Meridian are sold into private hands. However, as the price gouging by the three companies between 2001 and 2007 showed, vesting full public ownership in a power company does not necessarily guarantee lower prices. Indeed, figures issued by Energy Minister Simon Bridges in February showed that, at that time, private companies were offering the lowest rates in 15 of the 21 regions on the Powerswitch website, which allows consumers to compare prices.

What matters is having choice and competition, not ownership.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Mr Shearer’s main aim in announcing the policy the day before the first shares in the part privatisation of MRP were offered to New Zealand retail investors was to dampen down interest in the sale. The woeful lack of detail only supports the view that it has been made up on the hoof and rushed out as a last-minute sabotage tactic.

Sabotage is a good word for it, but it was such a pitiful attempt at sabotage, with no details, that it was more like a damp fire-cracker.

The Dom Post editorial:

Of all the millions of words that will be written about Margaret Thatcher in the coming days none will more succinctly sum up the impact of the late British prime minister than those uttered by her former press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham: “She knew what she wanted to do, and did it.”

So true.

What Baroness Thatcher will be remembered for is breaking the power of the unions, privatising British Telecom, British Gas and dozens of other publicly owned companies, going to war over the Falkland Islands and resisting Soviet expansionism.

Not a bad list.

She changed the world, too. In the 1980s, building more missile bases and condemning Soviet totalitarianism at every opportunity was viewed as dangerously provocative. But, with the benefit of hindsight, Baroness Thatcher and her closest political ally, then United States president Ronald Reagan, were indisputably right.

People forget this. Tens of millions demanded that the West basically unilaterally disarm and appease the Soviet Union.

The NZ Herald editorial:

Margaret Thatcher’s social views stemmed from her Christianity and a belief in the importance of individual rights. If there was nothing novel in this, nor did she invent a new economic policy. Rather, she and Ronald Reagan brought monetarism into the mainstream, with their advocacy of reduced state intervention, free markets, entrepreneurialism, less taxation, and the privatisation of state assets. The implementation of this programme was made the easier by Britain’s dire state when she claimed power. The country was commonly described as the sick man of Europe. A postwar decline had been exacerbated by the power wielded by trade unions and a general sense of despondency.

Margaret Thatcher proposed to change all of this, and she did. From 1982, Britain provided a ready canvas as it started to pull out of its worst post-World War II slump. Spurred on by her leadership and a sharp curbing of inflation and interest rates, people soon had the confidence to start their own businesses and buy shares. This sparked a high level of social mobility – and the yuppie.

With time, I think people forget how morbid the UK was in the 1970s. It was sick beyond belief.

Her uncompromising style allowed her to be outstanding in foreign as well as domestic policy, an achievement rare among politicians. In the midst of her first term, Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands provided the opportunity to establish her credentials. If Britain’s recapture of the islands was a close-run thing, it, nevertheless, occasioned a wave of patriotism, and applause for her decisiveness. In President Reagan, she found a leader who shared her view of the world. Transatlantic co-operation blossomed, especially with the taking of a sterner approach to the Soviet Union. Ultimately, this played a part in the end of the Cold War and the downfall of communism.

In 100 years time, Thatcher will be the only UK Prime Minister still talked about, post WWII. She was a force of nature.

The Herald editorial:

On Sunday at last, Food Safety Minister Nikki Kaye signed an agreed standard that will hold food manufacturers to account for more than 200 common health claims such as “rich in calcium”, “low in fat”.

The standard will take effect in a month and manufacturers will have three years to ensure their products comply with it.

I think it is a good thing to require health claims to be accurate.

It will be a task of the Ministry for Primary Industries to approve such claims for New Zealand products before they are put on sale. Manufacturers have welcomed the regulation and it is to be hoped they see it not as a restriction but as a golden marketing opportunity. Their products should boast their ability to meet the standard and let it underline the health benefits printed on the package.

It is good that the food industry has been supportive of these rules. They have an interest in being able to say their claims are verified.

All parties in politics have something positive to offer and on this subject the country owes much to the Greens, particularly their former MP Sue Kedgley. She made food standards her mission in politics and health-conscious consumers will be grateful to her.

It is a pity her party was equivocal in its support for the standard yesterday. Its new food safety spokeswoman, Mojo Mathers, said the regulations should not just check health claims, they should require warnings of unhealthy contents. They should not. People know the food that is not good for them and they indulge in it because they like it. They do not need warnings on the carton.

I agree. Factual information is good, but warnings are silly because no food is bad or unhealthy in moderation. A Big Mac every couple of months is fine – having them three times a day is not.

When they go looking for healthy food, however, they need and deserve to be able to trust the manufacturer’s claims.

Yep.

The Dom Post editorial:

Many Kiwis will question whether the engagement in a conflict 13,000 kilometres away was worth such a high cost. Others will question whether now is the right time for the PRT to pull out, given the Taliban remains strong in the northeast of Bamiyan, and Afghanistan’s future remains uncertain.

However, there is no denying that New Zealand was right to join the international efforts to confront al Qaeda and weaken it to the point where it no longer posed a grave threat to innocent people all around the world. The horrific September 11 attacks on the United States showed the terrorist organisation’s intent and capabilities. It had to be crippled. That mission, at least, has been accomplished.

It was also right to send the PRT to help sow the seeds of democracy and stability in Bamiyan. Likewise, now is the right time to come home.

The PRT has done everything that could have been reasonably expected of it given the harsh and dangerous conditions in which our troops were asked to operate. They have improved medical facilities, built roads and bridges and created the conditions for some semblance of what Kiwis would regard as a normal life to flourish.

Its presence has resulted in the opening of hundreds of schools, seen a rise in the number of girls getting an education and laid the foundations for improved infrastructure and a big improvement in health outcomes. Perhaps most importantly, the deployment has given the people of Bamiyan the confidence to believe they can be masters of their own destiny.

It is difficult to see what more could be achieved by the PRT remaining, and the reality is that the looming withdrawal of the rest of the international community in 2014 makes it impossible for it to stay in any case.

What annoys me most about Afghanistan is it was Labour who sent in the SAS (which was the right decision), and renewed their mission several times. Then the moment they are in Opposition they attack the Government for keeping the SAS there.

The Dom Post editorial:

Confusion has seized Wellington City councillors, and the spectacle is not pretty. While many of them were asleep, it seems,150 council jobs have been axed. “How did that happen? Why were our hands not on the steering wheel?’ asks Mayor Celia Wade-Brown.

This is a damaging question for any politician to ask, at least out loud. If the mayor did not know how the jobs went west, she should have. If her hands were not on the steering wheel, they should have been. It is no excuse to plead ignorance. It is the mayor’s job to know such things.

It was a damning thing to say.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the council has blundered about in confusion and ignorance. It is only a few weeks ago that Ms Wade-Brown was astonished to learn that the renovations for her temporary office were going to cost $350,000. When this newspaper revealed the fact, Ms Wade-Brown said it was unacceptable and would be scaled back.

It is beyond belief that the Mayor was not previously aware of the cost of her own office renovations.

The Herald editorial:

Rio Tinto is doubtless more than happy that the Government has stepped in to try to broker a deal over the electricity supply contract for the Tiwai Pt aluminium smelter. The global company’s bargaining position has always been strong. Now, the concerns that have brought the Government to the negotiating table make it even stronger. Nonetheless, there remains no reason to bow to the mining giant’s every demand.

I am unconvinced they should be given any special treatment, beyond a commercial volume based discount for electricity which is up to Meridian to negotiate.

As much was confirmed by Contact Energy’s share price dropping 3 per cent in early trading after Meridian announced the negotiation deadlock.

A 3% drop is not the end of the world.

There are other factors for the Government to consider, not least the threat to 750 jobs at the smelter and a further 3000 indirectly in the Southland region.

But will those jobs endure just because the Government comes to the party? I am doubtful. If the smelter is not a going concern, then its closure is inevitable. If the smelter is a going concern, I’m not too keen to subsidise it.

Some people will make comparisons to Sky City and The Hobbit. But I view those two as quite different. Sky City is not threatening anyone. It is not saying that it will pack up shop, if it does not get its way. That negotiation is about Auckland needing a world class convention centre and negotiating some regulatory changes that would allow Sky City to  build it.

And The Hobbit stuff happened because of the malign interference of the Australian union. They instigated a global boycott that led to a possible shift overseas. Their influence had to be negated.

Rio Tinto are just trying to use the asset sales to renegotiate a contract they had already agreed to. Now that is fine for them to try – but the negotiation should be with Meridian.

Rio Tinto’s position is the stronger in that it has made it clear that it wants to sell the smelter. If that is not possible, closure is an alternative response to the sagging world price for aluminium. Even so, there is no reason for the Government to start genuflecting. This country has already given successive Tiwai Pt operators very good deals since it built the Manapouri hydro station to power the smelter more than 40 years ago. The Government’s approach to these negotiations should, therefore, not be markedly different from that of Meridian. If a deal that makes commercial sense cannot be struck, it will not be fatal to the asset-sales programme, the country’s electricity framework, or, in the long term, the Southland economy. On no account should the Government throw in the towel.

I agree. Any concessions should be minor, if at all.

The Dom Post reports:

An important social contract underpins New Zealand’s welfare system. At its heart is the principle that society will provide for individuals who are unable to support themselves on the understanding that those who are able to work will make an honest effort to look for employment.

Yep, and support for the former is undermined when the latter does not occur.

Sadly, however, some beneficiaries see it as their God-given right to remain on welfare for life and not only make no effort to improve their lot, but add to the burden on taxpayers.

They include women on the domestic purposes benefit who seem to believe they can have as many children as they want while remaining dependent on the state, and that workers will be happy to pay for them to have that privilege.

It is a minority, but it is not an insignificant minority. We should be full of compassion for parents who suddenly find themselves without a partner because they die, flee, turn abusive. But that is a different situation to having multiple babies to multiple partners over many years, and hence never being in employment.

The number of women who have had additional children while on the DPB is undeniably cause for concern. Between 1993 and 2011, almost a third of women who drew the benefit had at least one more child. In 2010 alone, 4800 children were born to solo mothers already on the DPB – 7.5 per cent of the total live births that year.

A third is far too high. Mistakes will and can occur, but at a third that suggests many of them are deliberate decisions to have further children despite being unable to even provide for existing children.

That is not fair on working parents who would dearly love more children, but who have put off increasing the size of their families because of economic pressures.

Exactly.

It is also not fair to the children of those beneficiaries.

It has long been established that children in working families have far better health, education and social outcomes. That is true for children with one parent as well as those with two.

Not only do children in sole-parent families benefit from their mother or father having a higher income than they would get from welfare payments, they also benefit enormously from seeing their parents go out to work every day.

This is the part that I think is most important. A child who grows up in a household where no adult ever works in paid employment is going to probably start life very disadvantaged.

The Press editorial:

For as long as many people can remember, the open-road speed limit for driving in this country has not changed. It has not increased significantly since the late 1960s when it was raised, under the old imperial system, from 55 miles per hour to 60mph – the equivalent of 96kmh, so not significantly different than the 100kmh that applies today on highways and motorways.

Umm, that is missing out a big chunk of history. The open road limit may have been 60 miles per hours, but in 1973 due to oil shocks, it dropped to 80 km/hr or 50 miles/hr.

It was only in 1986 it went to 100 km/hr.

So far from the open road limit rarely changing, the changes have been:

• 1962 – from 50 mph to 55 mph
• 1969 – from 55 mph to 60 mph
• 1973 – from 60 mph to 50 mph or 80 kmh
• 1986 – from 80 kmh to 100 kmh

Consider the cars that Kiwis were driving when the speed limit was last raised.

There is a world of difference between the engineering and safety standards of 21st-century cars and the likes of the Morris Minor, the original Mini, the Ford Cortina, the Holden Kingswood, the Rover 2000 and the Hillman Imp. Road engineering, too, has improved during those decades. Seen in this context, a proposal to raise the limit by only 10kmh on a relatively small number of top roads can be seen as very modest.

The difference in car safety and engineering is massive.

The speed limit is a maximum, not a target, and the rules – so often observed mainly in the breach – state that people should drive at a speed under the limit that is appropriate to the road, traffic, weather and other conditions.

If the speed limit is increased on engineered motorways, this should not be taken as an indication to drive at 110km on the open road or rural highways, where a 110kmh speed limit would not be appropriate.

Yep – drive the the conditions. Sometimes that will be 110 km/h and sometimes 70 km/h.

The Press editorial:

By Winston Peters’ admittedly not very high standards the questions he raised in Parliament this week about alleged fraud and corruption in the earthquake recovery were terribly thin stuff.

If they were intended to embarrass the Minister for Earthquake Recovery, Gerry Brownlee, they were so lacking in specifics the minister easily brushed them off.

Even if, as is more likely, they were intended for no more elevated purpose than to get Peters’ name into the news and along the way to make a casual smear and raise vague conspiratorial suggestions of corruption, they were not up to much.

They never are, but I agree these allegations were even lamer than most.

The Herald editorial:

It is always useful to get a global perspective on issues that are the subject of local political wrangling. Light is generally shed on areas that may be clouded by the heat generated by debate. In that context, the International Monetary Fund’s annual report on the New Zealand economy is timely. It casts an especially valuable eye over the two questions of most current angst and anxiety, the significantly overvalued dollar and the overheated Auckland housing market. Its conclusions should put an end to much of the irrational comment on how these issues should be addressed.

The IMF says there should be no “messing with” the monetary policy framework just because the dollar is temporarily overvalued. Indeed, that framework, including a flexible exchange rate, was one of the reasons New Zealand had been relatively resilient in the face of the global downturn. “Do you want to mess [with] the framework because the exchange rate at the moment is overvalued, and do potentially long-term damage? I would be very reluctant to go down that path,” said Bruce Aitken, the head of the IMF team.

We are a minnow. To think we can unilaterally change our exchange rate is silly. You can do it by printing more money of course, which is a great way of making the entire country poorer.

That represents a strong riposte to politicians who have sought to reap advantage from manufacturers’ grievances over the high dollar. It confirms the dangers inherent in, for example, the Greens’ call for the exchange rate to be part of the Reserve Bank’s mandate. The lower interest rates that flowed from this would, as the IMF notes, remove an advantage held by New Zealand’s central bank. Unlike its counterparts in several nations, it still has the scope to cut interest rates if the country were hit by another major shock. Greens co-leader Russel Norman has accused the Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler of complacency and being stuck in the 1980s. This report confirms that Dr Norman’s credibility is under far greater threat.

The Greens are almost the only party in the western world calling for printing money, when the official cash rate is still well above zero. Quantitative easing is the last resort, not the first resort. They just want to print money to pay for their promises.

The problem is not so much the NZ dollar is too high. The US dollar and Euro are tanking because a generation of borrow and spend policies are crippling them. By contrast we are historically low against the Australian dollar.

Some useful analysis by Chalkie at Business Day:

Meanwhile, in April 2009, Finance Minister Bill English and then SOE minister Simon Power summoned SOE bosses to a meeting and told them to sharpen up.

“We’ve got a recession and we’ve got a government that wants value for the taxpayers’ dollar,” English told reporters after the meeting. “They need to get better returns than they’ve got.”

Solid Energy was not singled out for dividend extraction and a dose of debt, but you can see why it might have felt the rebuke more keenly than others.

Chalkie has run the numbers on debt and dividend levels for a bunch of SOEs going back to 2005 and it’s clear that Solid Energy was slacking a bit. From 2005 to 2008 its annual dividends were zero, $20 million, zero and zero.

Such paltry returns are not what you want from a business deploying shareholders’ funds of $400m or so. No wonder English and Power wanted more.

If the state has to own commercial trading companies, it is not unreasonable to expect them to pay a dividend. Otherwise we’d be far better off selling them, and investing the money elsewhere.

We’ll come back to what Solid Energy did with its money in a mo, but it’s worth noting that the Government’s rev-up didn’t make a difference to all SOEs.

Comparing the four years from 2009 to 2012 with the previous four years, average dividends actually declined at Meridian and TVNZ, stayed roughly the same at Genesis Energy, while big dividend lifts were apparent at Mighty River Power and Landcorp.

Debt levels were also not universally increased after English and Power’s crackdown. Landcorp’s borrowing stayed in the same ballpark while TVNZ’s fell considerably.

The point here is not that debt and dividends at those companies should have been different, only that the outcomes support the view that decisions on these matters were ultimately made by individual SOE boards.

Of course. In fact it is a decision not just for the boards collectively, but individual directors. A Director has to sign a certificate or resolution they they are personally satisfied that the company can pay the dividend – and there are serious legal implications for a Director who gets it wrong.

Chalkie reckons the Government’s position in 2009 was only what you’d expect from a shareholder and how boards responded to that pressure, rightly or wrongly, was down to their judgment of what was best for the business.

Solid Energy’s judgment was that debt could be substantially increased, from $33m in 2008, to $62m in 2009, to $212m in 2010.

By June 2012 debt was $295m, which sounds like a lot but on a crude measure of gearing – debt/total assets – at 25 per cent it was well within the bounds of normal, around 50 per cent.

A better measure may be interest payments, which were also no obvious grounds for alarm. In the year to June 2012, Solid Energy had operating cashflow of $142m – a measure of basic business profitability – representing considerable headroom for its interest bill that year of $14.8m.

So the interest was around 10% of the operating cashflow surplus – reasonably conservative. The problem is that the surplus disappeared as the coal price dropped.

With 90 per cent of the world just starting up the prosperity ladder, the company said, there was only one way oil prices – and therefore coal prices, which are strongly correlated – would go.

In its best-case scenario Solid Energy saw coking coal prices at US$400 a tonne by 2020 and US$600 by 2030.

So what should an energy business do if it sees soaring demand and high prices into the future?

If you believed prices were going sky high, you might invest in more coal production, you might invest in coal seam gas and underground coal gasification.

If you believed in world energy hunger, you might invest in alternative energy sources such as wood pellets, biodiesel and lignite briquettes.

If you believed in ever-tighter oil markets and you were an ambitious, patriotic Kiwi energy company, you might want to secure big chunks of oil exploration real estate.

So in a sense, Solid Energy’s strategy in pouring so many millions into these projects had a sort of logic to it.

But only if you believed the price projection.

The current coal price is US$101 a tonne.

The Treasury’s assessment of the NRC scheme advised: “It is not clear why the Crown would wish to take such an exposure in commodity price movements based on price path analysis not shared by other experts.” The NRC idea got the brush-off from the Government, quite rightly.

But Solid Energy isn’t struggling today because it thought about getting into oil exploration. It is in trouble because a lot of the money it did invest turned out to be wasted when energy prices didn’t behave as it thought they would.

The Government was smart enough to see the implausibility of Solid Energy’s forecasts when it came to the NRC, but not when it came to wood pellets, underground coal gasification, lignite, Spring Creek, biodiesel and all the other things soaking up the company’s resources.

While all that was going on, the Government shareholder was busy getting Solid Energy to fill in its boiler-plate questionnaires seeking answers about how many credit cards it gives employees, how many staff have mobile devices and what it spent on office refurbishments.

If we wondered why state-owned businesses tend to under-deliver, just think about committees of MPs and bureaucrats poring earnestly over executive mobile phone bills. For all the good it does they might as well flag it and and go to the pub.

Chalkie reckons the Government is well aware its lack of oversight helped Solid Energy get out of hand and is doing its best to make Elder the fall guy.

There is a degree of truth to this, but this is part of the problems of the SOE model. The select committee is focused on how many credit cards a company has and shareholding Ministers are responsible for scores of companies – as well as all their portfolio responsibilities.

Of course you also have Treasury staff, and they did warn against some of the plans, but with no disrespect to Treasury, a 25 year old analyst can’t compare to the role played by professional company analysts.

If Solid Energy was listed on the stock exchange, then there would be a number of commercial funds that would have invested in it. And those funds would have an analyst whose job it would be to know everything possible about that company. They would live, breathe and eat that company. They would read every report, every statement, attend every AGM, and be constantly analysing the company’s strategy, worth and risks. The reason for this is because their job depends on it. If they get it wrong, their employer (and them) stands to lose millions or tens of millions of dollars. When it is your money at risk, you take much more of an interest in a company’s performance.

And you would have a share price that would deliver real-time daily feedback on how investors thought the company was doing.

That’s not to say Elder shouldn’t have gone – he should. But to Chalkie the main responsibility lies with Solid Energy’s board, which reviewed and endorsed the company’s strategy year after year.

I agree – the board sets and agrees to the strategy.

The Government, meanwhile, was well aware of Solid Energy’s approach but didn’t pay it much attention – complaining about it now is just hypocritical.

I think it is unrealistic to expect the Government to be second guessing the board.

Overall, Chalkie see this as another example of why SOEs are a bad business model. It’s just a shame the debacle means Solid Energy will remain 100 per cent state-owned for even longer.

I agree – the model is flawed, to say the least.

The Herald editorial agrees:

In 2010, when the Government was still forming the mixed ownership model it took to the 2011 election, this was too much to contemplate. It rejected the notion of the national resources company, encouraged Solid Energy to develop its existing resources, including lignite and “unconventional” gas extraction, but offered no additional investment.

Within two years, China’s steel production had slowed, coal prices slumped, Solid Energy’s investments were not paying off and a share float is no longer in prospect. The board’s plans might have been “off the bullish end of the charts” but private investors ought to be invited to make that judgment.

When global energy demand recovers, the Government should sell whatever stake it takes to make the most of the country’s untapped wealth.

It is indeed a pity that private shareholders were unable to invest in Solid Energy earlier.  They should be the ones making the judgement on whether the bullish plans to become a global resources company were worth investing in.

The Press editorial:

On the face of it, the attack last week by the Minister for Earthquake Recovery, Gerry Brownlee, appears to be amply justified.

While there may be room for quibbling about the exact numbers, the pace with which the Christchurch City Council has repaired and replaced the social housing damaged by the earthquakes has been slow.

Quoting from the council’s own latest report, the council has closed 327 social housing units but has managed, in a programme that is supposed to be urgent, to repair and relet only six of them.

Astonishing.

Brownlee is quite right to draw attention to it and to try to set a fire under councillors to get something done about it.

His singling out of Cr Yani Johanson for criticism was, however, misdirected. It is possible to understand the minister’s temptation to target Johanson. In the political spectrum of the council, Johanson sits on the gadfly Left wing.

After some years in office, he still has the slightly bumptious and irritating air of the student politician about him. He is also not slow to criticise the performance of others.

Indeed.

So when the council fails in a serious responsibility he appears to be in charge of, one can see how taking a swipe at him would be hard to resist.

It is, nonetheless, unfair.

For one thing, while Johanson is chairman of the committee that is in charge of the social housing stock, he is only one councillor among the others. He is not like a minister of the Crown. Any failure with repairs to social housing lies not with Johanson alone but with the other councillors on his committee and with the whole council.

I agree, Johanson is not solely responsible. However his share of responsibility must be greater than other Councillors as he chairs the committee in charge.

Taking the opportunity provided by Brownlee’s broadside to have a dig of his own at Johanson, Cr Aaron Keown suggested there were tensions between Johanson’s committee and council staff that were impeding progress on repair work.

If that is correct, the remedy is not, as Keown suggested, to transfer the work to the committee on which Keown sits, but for any difficulties to be identified and fixed. Council staff must provide councillors with prompt, accurate, complete information, and councillors must provide staff with clear and precise directions.

It is hard to say what the solution is, until we know what the problem is. The Council needs to clarify why it has only been able to fix six houses in two years and what changes are necessary to speed this up.

It was almost exactly a year ago that Brownlee lit a rocket under the Housing Corporation for its apparent lethargy on getting state houses repaired and replaced. More action quickly followed.

Beleaguered city council tenants will be hoping his latest blast will be as effective.

That would be good.

Personally this reinforces my belief that Councils should not be landlords. They tend to be very bad at it, and providing community housing is better done by Housing NZ and community groups. If the Council was not the owner, I suspect many more of those houses or apartments would be repaired by now.