Kiwiblog

Fran O’Sullivan writes in the Herald:

The ghost of Hugo Chavez is alive and thriving within the Labour Party as it turns its back on its free-market past to buy itself back into power courtesy of the taxpayers’ chequebook.

And not just nationalisation, but free electricity!

If David Shearer and Russel Norman muster enough votes to win the next election, they say they will toss us all the equivalent of a free 300KW block of electricity

Just as the Greens think you can print money, they and Labour also think you can just give electricity away for free, and somehow new generation will be built.

We are asked to believe this policy will also produce 5000 new jobs and generate $450 million worth of new economic activity because two pages of bare analysis on Berl’s equilibrium model tells us so.

I don’t think so. No one with any residue of grey matter left will believe Shearer’s protestations that the timing of this joint announcement has nothing to do with the pending Mighty River Power IPO.

This policy has all the signs of being rushed out with one aim in mind: To spook the private investors (including the many smaller shareholders who are being enticed back into a New Zealand sharemarket, which was on the verge of its own demise a few years back) who are lining up to buy shares in the forthcoming float.

Indeed.

But the decision to insert a state-owned monopsony – or monopoly buyer – called New Zealand Power between the supply and demand sides of the electricity industry without first undertaking any stringent analysis and submissions from existing privately listed companies like Contact Energy, TrustPower, Infratil and the privately owned Todd Energy really amounts to nothing more than effective renationalisation of the competitive sector.

And why are they nationalising them? Because they hope it will gain votes?

But what is really instructive from the BusinessDesk report (a good scoop, by the way) is Jones’ admission that not only do asset owners need dividends but “politicians need dividends as well”.

The report went on to note that to win the 2014 election, Labour needed to move about 5 to 7 per cent of the voting public to favour it.

Jones suggested energy analysts’ capacity to “make 5 to 7 per cent of the public hate us [because of this policy] is zero. Our capacity to impress that percentage [with this policy] is infinite”.

In other words, the sniff of power is so enticing to Jones that he is prepared to give away the return on state-owned assets to consumers to bribe his party’s way back to power.

Their next policy may be to announce that if you have more than one house, the government will confiscate it and give it to an aspiring home owner.

An update to the post on The Nation, as Fran O’Sullivan has been adding up 2 and 2 to get five.

I saw (I think on Twitter) a reference to a story saying The Nation was not being funded next year by NZ on Air. I followed the link to a website I had never seen before called NZ Inc. The story seemed definitive “news spread last night that The Nation has missed out on funding for 2013” so I blogged a story on it. I did the story at 9.18 am and set it to appear at 2.00 pm. Most of my stories are done earlier in the day and then set to appear later.

I didn’t even note on the website whom the author was, and as I said the site was previously unknown to me.

I then left home to go to Te Papa for the preview of their Gamemakers display (opens tomorrow).  On the taxi ride there at 11.55 am I saw a comment by Fran O’Sullivan that The Nation will be back in 2013 and she stands corrected. I took this to mean that TV3 would be funding it, but then saw a further comment that NZ on Air was in fact funding it.

I then commented that this means the NZ Inc report was wrong, and I must go change my blog post lamenting it set for this afternoon.

That was the intention. I wasn’t sure what time it was set for exactly (as I do 10 a day), but anyway by the time I finished at Te Papa and headed to the airport, it was just after 2 pm when I got to go into the blog to edit the post. I do Facebook and Twitter easily from the iPhone, but significant editing of a blog post on a phone is incredibly difficult to do.

I got to the Koru Club, started up the laptop, and found that the post had already appeared, which annoyed me as I preferred not to run incorrect information.

I did a quick update to the blog the post at the top, stating the report was wrong and expressing some mild displeasure that the site I quoted hadn’t lived up to their tagline. It was only as I did that update I even realised that Fran was one of those behind the site.

Anyway Fran then lets loose on Facebook claiming my post was a “bitchy little hissy fit“,  and I was “just being an asshole cos he can be” and “He is just wanting to snipe from the sidelines. Nasty and stoking ill-will in an ill-advised manner.”

The irony may not escape people of Fran claiming I was being the nasty one.

I responded to Fran explaining the post was pre-timed, but she then effectively called me a liar. I have absolutely no time for people who doubt my word, and behave like that.

Fran doesn’t seem to have considered that if I really was wanting to damage her (and God knows why she thinks I am someone who would want to) then I would hardly have posted on her Facebook page noting the correction and saying I plan to change my blog entry. I could have said nothing at all. I could have rushed the post forward to do maximum damage, so that it got out there before the corrected version did. Her interpretation is ridiculous when you consider I made the comment myself that I planned to update it.

Sure I could have in the update acknowledged that the discovery that the story was wrong, had occurred a couple of hours earlier, but it doesn’t change the fact it was wrong and I didn’t think it was material what time the error was discovered. My commenters had already caught on that the story was wrong, and the link went through to the corrected story.

At the end I’m just surprised that Fran has such a thin skin, and turns so nasty when it is her who ran an incorrect story. We’ve all run stories that have proven to be incorrect. I don’t even mind pushback that the correction could have referred to the time, but as I said I detest people who call me a liar. I never ever will say something I know to be false (usual disclaimer around jokes, pranks etc), and as far as I know this is the first journalist to ever claim otherwise.

Duncan Garner, Fran O’Sullivan and John Amrstrong all write on Labour this weekend.

First Duncan:

Dissent. Uprisings. Rebellion. Scraps. Blood.

It was something Helen Clark kept a careful lid on. 

Not even on her weakest day or in a moment of madness would Clark have given up control of who picks the leader of the proud Labour Party – never, ever.

Caucus must control its own destiny.

What happened last Saturday would never have happened under Clark’s strong leadership. Now the Labour leader can get rolled and rolled easily.

If a minority of 13 other MPs out of 34 decide to support Grant Robertson or David Cunliffe next February, then that triggers a party wide vote.

Actually I think it is even worse than that. I have not seen the final rule, but I don’t think a contender even needs to challenge. The vote is basically just a confidence vote in the Leader. Someone could just quietly encourage 14 MPs to vote no, and bang there is a leadership ballot – and only then do contenders have t step forward.

During that vote, party members get a 40 percent say and unions get a 20 percent say. You reckon they’ll hang on to David Shearer in that scenario? Doubt it. And it’s like that every three years.

If Shearer lost the Feb caucus vote, I don’t think he would even contest the party wide ballot. He’d be impotent in Parliament while he has to fight a rearguard action to stay on as Leader. I think he would bow out.

The February following each election, Labour will be able to boot out their sitting leader – that leader may have just months earlier been crowned Prime Minister.

So when you vote for Labour, you don’t know who you will end up with as PM.

It’s a recipe for instability. Quite frankly it’s a disaster, a train-wreck waiting to happen. …

If the 40 percent caucus vote and 40 percent party member vote cancels each other out – i.e the caucus wants a change but the party members don’t, then guess who has the casting vote?

The unions. They get 20 percent.

Could the unions select the next Prime Minister? Yes. Could they dump a sitting Prime Minister just two or three months after they took office?Yes.

By this move, Labour have become even more subservient to the unions.

And now Fran O’Sullivan:

Four days on from Cunliffe’s execution, there is little sign that Shearer is on top of his game.

His post-caucus press conference was a bumbling, mumbling mess which at times bordered on total incoherency.

It was a shocker.

It does not bode well for Labour to have its own leader so frightened of his own shadow that he has to banish one of his few competent colleagues to the back bench.

Unfortunately, Shearer was also simply not politically tough enough, nor sufficiently competent and astute, to have pulled off the accommodation that Australian Liberal Leader Tony Abbott made with potential rival Malcolm Turnbull this week to position his party to win the next Australian federal election.

I blogged on this yesterday. A much smarter way to handle a more popular rival.

In Shearer’s case he does not have the skill to bring off an accommodation with Cunliffe. (Though in months to come he may wish he had gone down that path instead of listening to the caucus players who want the New Lynn MP buried at all costs).

The old guard remain in charge.

And John Armstrong pulls no punches:

Barmy, loopy, stupid, crazy. Last weekend’s Labour Party conference had so much political madness on and off the conference floor that the proceedings could well have been deemed certifiable.

The handful of MPs who tried to talk sense into delegates may agree – particularly on the vexed question of how high to set the bar before a leadership ballot involving the whole party membership is triggered.

The MPs’ advice was not only ignored, they were shouted down. The rank-and-file saw things very differently. The rewrite of the party’s constitution was giving them a rare whiff of grass-roots democracy. They were not about to say “no thanks” even if their votes were being manipulated for nefarious reasons.

All I’ll say is I can’t see National rushing off to make similar changes.

I guess in Labour the desire for more of a say is understandable, as members have traditionally only a very weak say in even electorate selections.

From now on, the leader will be subject to a post-election endorsement vote by the caucus which must take place no later than three months after polling day.

Failure by a leader to secure more than 60 per cent backing from his or her colleagues will trigger a leadership vote involving the whole party.

The upshot is National will spend the election campaign delightedly claiming the Labour leader cannot guarantee he or she will still be in charge three months after the election.

Moreover, the new method of electing the leader gives a slice of the action to affiliated trade unions. You can imagine how National will exploit that.

Oh, yes.

I actually the the principle of giving members a say is laudable. But giving unions 20% of the vote is not far off organised corruption (just look at the Australian unions for examples of what they do with the extra power) and having a threshold below 50% for a challenge is silly.

When they were not naively setting things up to the advantage of the old enemy, delegates occupied themselves with such pressing matters as lowering the voting age to 16 – something for which there is absolutely no demand – and ordering school boards of trustees to let same-sex couples attend school balls.

Then there was the remit requiring 50 per cent gender equality among officials on the party’s electorate committees.

When it was pointed out that most committees had three officials, the conference determined that an extra position such as an assistant treasurer could be created.

Staggering. Their solution is to create an extra unneeded role, just so there is prefect gender equality on a committee. They have effectively outlawed a committee having an add number of members!

This kind of nonsense shows that political correctness is alive and well in Labour.

It speaks of a party that is out of touch with mainstream New Zealand. And it speaks of a leader who has no control over his party.

Where was the strategy for the conference?

The other casualty of what John Key describes as the now very “public war” within Labour is the party’s ability to project unity and stability.

That is a serious handicap for Labour, which may well have to patch together some kind of governing arrangement which accommodates the reforming zeal of the Greens and the reactionary predilections of New Zealand First.

Think if they were to form a Government. They’d first have to get agreement between the internal factions in Labour, and then with the Greens, and then with NZ First and maybe then with Mana also. If another financial crisis struck, it would probably take a month to even make a decision!

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

I’ve really drunk the Kool Aid when it comes to the inspirational blueprint for Christchurch’s new CBD. It is a stunner. Compact. Cutting edge. Green. Sustainable.

It was crunched out in just over 100 days; a brilliant demonstration of that old maxim “pressure makes a diamond”.

It is also a plan that all New Zealanders need to embrace.

I doubt many of us seriously appreciated that the whole of New Zealand is pretty much a seismic zone until the devastating Canterbury earthquakes hit.

Yeah I thought it was just Wellington that was going to get a big one.

But I’ll never forget the look of abject horror on the faces of the hundreds of people who poured out of the Christchurch CBD after the 6.3 magnitude quake that struck on February 22, 2011 … or the grim chat I had with Mayor Bob Parker at the Christchurch Art Gallery shortly afterwards when he told me “there has been serious death”. Nor will I forget the sincerity of former US Secretary of State Richard Armitage, also in Christchurch when the quake struck, who later that afternoon told me the United States had instantly offered assistance from its own military based in Hawaii.

Disasters do bring out the best in people, as we band together. The memory for me is the Australian police officers and others landing in Christchurch to cheery crowds.

Key has now ordered them to get the L-shaped frame of parks which will surround the new CBD in place by the end of 2013. Decisions will be made super fast. Most will bypass the Resource Management Act.

The tempo will be fast.

If anyone doubts just how fast officialdom can work when the whip is cracked just consider the AMI stadium. David McConnell’s Hawkins Construction got that up in 11 weeks.

Which has proved to be excellent.

The brute reality is that before the quakes struck Christchurch was effectively dying. The very compactness of this new city heart will ensure its vibrancy.

Something I have said also.

What if other New Zealand cities – particularly Auckland – were given the tools so they too could follow Christchurch’s example and wipe the barriers that stymie economic growth?

Hear hear. Matthew Hooton also writes in NBR:

The government has created a major political risk for itself given the sheer brilliance of its new Christchurch plan.

I try to strictly avoid writing here about anything I am working on in my day job but, like everything else that has happened in Christchurch these last 21 months, this is a once-in-a-lifetime exception.

The Christchurch plan is the result of two madcap ideas by sometimes uneasy bedfellows, Christchurch mayor Bob Parker and earthquake czar Gerry Brownlee.

  Mr Parker led his council’s “Share an Idea” campaign where the people of Christchurch got to say what they wanted in their new city.  

It wasn’t the typically stifling local government “consultation” exercise.  Lawyers, formal submissions and correct spelling and grammar were not welcome.  People just got to scribble down in their own words what they wanted.

Over 100,000 Cantabrians responded, more than a quarter of Christchurch’s population.  The campaign became the first community engagement programme outside Europe to win the international Co-Creation Association’s supreme award and it did so unanimously.

The lawyers and lobbyists who make it their business to get between the public and their elected officials were sidelined.

I wasn’t aware of the award.

The plan is radical and far more clean, green, politically-correct and urban-design-y than would be expected to be signed off by the sometimes gruff and usually conservative Mr Brownlee.  There are all sorts of parks and art and culture hubs and so forth.  Christchurch will be the most beautiful city in the world.

But the plan is far more commercially astute than might be expected from the urban designers and creative types who prepared it. 

It halves the size of the CBD, making land scarce to improve returns per square metre, creating competition among investors and developers for the best spaces.  There is going to be a gold rush.

What is interesting is that the Property Council has welcomed the plan. They represent the property owners who have the capital that is essential to making the plan a reality. They were negative on the original plan, but have been supportive of this final one, which is a good and important thing.

Decisions will be made on urban design resource consents within five working days, by a three-person committee representing the government, the city council and Ngai Tahu and they will not then need to be notified under the Resource Management Act.

Proposals will of course need to be pretty, clean and green and fit the plan but the tradeoff is that developers get a final answer in a week.

Mr Parker’s city council has then resolved to make final decisions on all other aspects of building consent applications within a fortnight. …

Do Aucklanders need to wait for Rangitoto to erupt before Len Brown will launch a community engagement programme about its spatial plan as good as Mr Parker’s “Share an Idea”?

Do Dunedites need to suffer some sort of biblical-type flood before their leaders will develop an innovative 100-day plan to deal with some of the same long-term economic challenges that were faced by Christchurch?

Do Wellingtonians need to suffer their major earthquake before they get access to 24-hour investment services, five-day resource consent decisions and two-week building consents?

Does the Waikato need to be devastated by mad cow disease before delays at the OIO and Immigration Service are sorted out?

For that matter, why on earth doesn’t the government roll out its bold, visionary Christchurch approach on a nationwide basis and just slash all the barriers to economic growth that still exist everywhere but Canterbury?

A roadmap to growth.

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

I found myself wondering this week whether Shearer – who notoriously hates wearing a suit and tie – really only gets supercharged when he is wearing a flak jacket. He fluffed his way through a punchy interview on NewstalkZB when host Sean Plunket tried to pin him down on Labour’s position on the Maori Council’s controversial water rights claim.

The Shearer argument went something like this: Yes, John Key is inflaming things by rarking up the Maori Council and saying his Government won’t be bound by any Waitangi Tribunal ruling on the push to stop the Mighty River Power share float until a deal is done in this area. But, no, Maori don’t have a valid water claim. Nobody owns water. We pay for water rights to use water, whether it be for irrigation or hydro-electricity or whatever.

In other words, Key is right but I don’t want to say so because my party expects me to go into opposition mode at every opportunity.

There are plenty of other examples.

Shearer’s opposition to foreign investment in New Zealand farmland was also rather contrived. When Labour’s private polling indicated widespread public unease over the Shanghai Pengxin acquisition of 16 dairy farms, he chose to lift the scab off this running sore rather than pour on salving balm. Though privately he is not that fazed. Same too with partial privatisation of state-owned power companies.

Shearer held up Norway as a shining exemplar of what’s possible when it comes to developing a small nation economy. Yet many Norwegian SOEs are partially listed; the country has also built its fortune on oil.

Shearer should not have backed himself into these ideological corners.

Norway seems to be the new Finland.

Shearer needs to get out of this poll-driven mode. He is fundamentally an intelligent man who is at heart an internationalist. There is no shame in agreeing with the Prime Minister on some basic fundamentals. Both men are trying to capture the centre, after all.

His caucus seem to be pushing him towards the left.

Fran O’Sullivan writes in the Weekend Herald:

John Key has made a strategic decision to burn some political capital and front-foot major Government decisions as he tries to wrest control of the national agenda. It’s a strategy that is bearing fruit.

Finally, the PM is putting a stamp on his Government as he lifts its tempo and gets some serious purchase on major issues.

So far Key is making reasonable headway as he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Cabinet ministers while they unveil pre-Budget announcements on hot issues, such as Paula Bennett’s on welfare reform. …

The Government is very determined to do more than just manage the finances, but also to take hard decisions which will boost economic growth and hence jobs.

It is easy to underplay the impact of the Prime Minister’s cheery influence in keeping New Zealand business sufficiently confident in his Government’s management of the NZ economy so the vast majority of firms stay focused on the medium-term prospects and don’t simply shut up shop and move to Australia.

Political journalists and Beltway denizens don’t see much of this side of Key as, outside of the general election campaign, few venture forth on a consistent basis to watch the PM intersecting with the business community.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have heard from reasonably politically agnostic business people how impressive the PM is when talking on economic issues at business forums.

The PM’s decision to front-foot the mini-scandals – instead of relying on his press minders to trot out the spin – is also a change from default mode.

He didn’t need the SkyCity convention centre wrangle, or the ACC and John Banks mini-scandals. But Key has more than held his own on television programmes such as Campbell Live or on Radio NZ’s Morning Report against critical news presenters trying to expose chinks in his political spin.

I can’t recall a time when a PM was being interview one on one so often.

Fran O’Sullivan backs David Shearer:

But unlike Cunliffe and Robertson he is not hostage to Labour’s past policy positions. He wasn’t an active player in policy formation for the 2011 general election. This has proved to be a strength – not a weakness – as he quickly jettisoned one of Labour’s more wacky election policies, wiping GST on fruit and vegetables. He followed through yesterday by abandoning another ill-considered Labour policy to support Government borrowing offshore to top up the Super Fund.

Shearer’s moves display political courage. He is not afraid to upset grassroot Labour Party members. By adopting a classically rational approach he will increase Labour’s appeal to centrist voters from across the voting spectrum.

I agree, so long as he can carry his party with him. Trevor Mallard was attacking National’s suspensions of contributions to the NZ Super Fund just two days before Shearer announced he is adopting National’s policy.

Also John Roughan writes:

Shearer seemed a normal guy who is not a natural at the arts of politics. For that reason I’d like to see him succeed.

Not too soon, of course. John Key is doing good things and if he continues the way he is going he will deserve the three terms New Zealand voters usually give a government. But Labour’s turn will come and when it does I hope Shearer is still there.

I think that is being optimistics. If Shearer doesn’t win in 2014, I find it hard to imagine he will be there in 2017.

One of the posters (not commenters) at The Standard posted this over the weekend:

As you can see he calls Fran O’Sullivan a traitor, enemy and sell-out who will be shunned and reviled. This is because Fran dared to support the Crafar farm sale. It shows how demented some of the opponents have become. Redlogix of course cowers behind his alias, and would never ever dare to write such stuff under his own name – unlike Fran.

But as you can see, not content with just having Fran labeled a traitor and enemy to be shunned and reviled, a commentor Millsy calls for her to executed, saying “the likes of O’Sullivan, Key, Williamson, and Coleman will find themselves … rewarded for their treachery with a one way trip to the gallows”.

Now Millsy is just a commenter, and this is not the first time he has advocated violence against those whose political views he opposes. I of all people would say you don’t judge a blog on the basis of a comment by a commenter. I mean, after all it is possible they didn’t even see the comment (I read a small proportion of total comments on KB). If they did, surely they would delete it and at least kick him off?

But no, as you can see Red Logix (who is an author, not a commenter) effectively endorses the comment, saying that while it was a marginal call, it is okay because he said “the likes of” and that Millsy is correct in general.

Fran actually had been contributing to the thread (and kudos to Fran for standing up to people who call you a traitor and enemy) and pointed out that Millsy is Brendon Mills (easily found through Google). Now get this – The Standard deleted Fran’s comment, but left up the one effectively calling for her to go to the gallows!

Fran sums it all up nicely, with this tweet from Fran:

The Standard? Internet version of the Ku Klux Klan. Happy to string up people behind web cloak of anonymity.

There is a reason so many of their authors (not all) wear virtual hoods to hide their identities.

Fran O’Sullivan writes in the NZ Herald:

It seems pretty obvious that the ports company has been determined to ensure productivity at its downtown Waitemata Harbour operations is markedly increased. Particularly in the vital area of crane productivity, where rival Port of Tauranga sub-contracts its container stevedoring work and boasts a superior performance to its Auckland competitor.

If the Maritime Union didn’t see this one coming, then they haven’t been paying much attention to the Ministry of Transport report on container productivity at New Zealand ports. Nor has the union been paying attention to the Productivity Commission which estimates exporters and importers spend upwards of $5 billion a year on freight and has forecasted annual trade could be boosted by $1.25 billion if transport costs were shaved by 10 per cent. There is a national interest issue at stake here.

$1.25b if costs are down 10%. The Ports of Auckland are definitely working in the national interest if they can make themselves more efficient.

I note the Port of Tauranga sub-contracts its stevedoring work out. Maybe that sub-contractor could apply to do the work for Ports of Auckland also?

Fran O’Sullivan writes in the NZ Herald:

In his bones, Key will know that in the longer term the partial privatisation policy will prove very popular indeed, particularly if the sales are sweetened with a sprinkling of “popular capitalism”.

Australia’s Queensland Government – run by Labor’s Anna Bligh – did just this by offering incentives to mum and dad investors in a highly successful string of assets sales.

There were no brokers’ fees, a specified maximum price per share and a loyalty bonus to incentivise small shareholders to hold on to their shares, as well as a free parcel of shares for relevant workers; particularly with the float of Queensland Rail (now QR National) – the second largest IPO in Australia’s history.

 People did not like Telecom and NZ Rail being sold off entirely to large foreign corporates. But the floats of Auckland Airport and Contact Energy to local investors were actually relatively uncontroversial at the time.

But on this side of the Tasman, Labour leader Phil Goff – who was an integral member of the David Lange Cabinet that privatised many state assets – is hell bent on re-erecting Fortress NZ.

What I dislike about Goff is that he reneges on policies he previously promoted when he believes he can score a naked political advantage.

Hence at the 2005 election he blithely stood by while a fellow Cabinet minister made untrue allegations that the United States was writing New Zealand’s policy even though he knew full well that an American slagged off as a National “bagman” had partially under-written a New Zealand lobbying programme in the US capital.

The same bagman who has been our most generous donor to the arts. What shameful treatment.

So when Goff gets all pumped up and red-faced and hyperbolic, Key only has to dip into the recent history books to underscore the Labour leader’s hypocrisy.

In fact, the partial asset sales will provide an investment home for KiwiSaver providers, the NZ Superannuation Fund, iwi and retail investors. They will also release capital for the Government to reinvest in much needed new infrastructure and to help get the budget back into the black.

Labour is going into an election campaign which they say they want to fight on asset sales, yet their leader was once the most enthusiastic advocate for. Do they really think they will get much resonance?

NBR carry an NZPA story on Winston’s latest claim:

Overseas ownership of New Zealand news media outlets is in the political spotlight, with New Zealand First leader Winston Peters saying it has eroded journalism standards.

A traditional opponent of overseas ownership, Mr Peters told NZPA he was concerned about the profits of domestic media, banking and forestry companies going off shore.

“It has also led to serious erosion of media standards and journalism reporting because people are given no time to do any work properly, instant sound bites have become the name of the game, and that is sliding its way into tabloid journalism,” Mr Peters said.

International companies that owned New Zealand media outlets had failed to support investigative journalism and had “squeezed the professional capacity” out of the industry, he said.

“I’m the last one in the world that should be making a sympathetic argument for the journalists of this country, but I’m telling you that’s exactly what happened.”

Proper investigative journalism was essential for the democracy of a nation, Mr Peters said.

Now normally I ignore what Winston says, but the irony here is too great. I actually agree we need more investigative journalism, but we do have some sterling examples of good investigative journalism by Fairfax and APN journalists. Namely the superb work done by reports Phil Kitchin, David Fisher, Audrey Young and others in exposing the tissue of lies Winston told about the funding of NZ First and himself by various wealthy businesspeople. It was investigative journalism at its finest and exposed Peters as a charlatan whose reality was the direct opposite of what he railed again.

The comments thread on the NBR story has some superb contributions, such as Phil Kitchin:

Attended the annual Herald’s Mood of the Boardroom breakfast yesterday. A big crowd gather to hear the results of the survey by Fran O’Sullivan, plus speeches and Q&A with the Finance Minister and normally the Opposition Spokesperson. For some reason David Cunliffe couldn’t attend this year, which was a pity.

Around 350 CEOs took part in the survey. Now before anyone states the obvious, no of course they are not a representative sample of New Zealanders. But as a group they manage a greater share of the economy than the Government does, and their view on business conditions determines whether or not billions of dollars of investments and purchases occur. So I regard it as a very good group to get views from.

Some of the findings were:

• 79% support there being a Regulatory Responsibility Act
• 70% support mining on the conservation estate, so long as conservation values are retained or restored
• 62% are focused on reducing energy costs
• 60% support foreshore & seabed reform
• 76% want ACC opened up to competition
• 58% want the NZ company tax rate to be below Australia’s
• 57% support partial listings of some SOEs on the NZX

I found it interesting that partial sales of SOES had the least support, even though still a majority.

The budget was rated 3.63/5 (think 73%) as a solid foundation for future growth, 3.8 (76%) as business friendly and 3.92 (78%) as making the taxt system fairer.

The eight top ranked Ministers were:

• John Key 4.58
• Steve Joyce 4.50
• Chris Finlayson 4.47
• Tony Ryall 4.09
• Simon Power 4.08
• Judith Collins 4.08
• bill English 4.06
• Jonathan Coleman 4.03

Individual Labour spokesperson were not ranked but 98% of CEOs said Labour’s leadership has yet to begin carving out a credible alternative to the Government.

The top ten domestic issues of concern (out of 10) were:

1. Labour productivity 7.2
2. Regulation 6.9
3. Skills and labour shortages 6.9
4. Level of govt spending 6.9
5. Adequacy of infrastructure 6.8
6. NZ dollar level 6.7
7. Wage increases 6.4
8. ETS 6.2
9. Level of NZ Govt borrowing 6.1
10. Access to capital 5.9

The top ten international issues affecting confidence are:

1. Instability in capital markets 8.5
2. Protracted global recession 8.4
3. Level of borrowing by govts 8.0
4. Strength of US recovery 7.7
5. Exchange rate volatility 7.7
6. US dollar value 7.2
7. Competition for global talent 6.5
8. Protectionism 6.3
9. Commodity prices 6.2
10. Global inflation 6.2

They also ranked the two leading candidate for Mayor on several attributes on a 1 to 5 scale

• Leadership skills – Banks 3.47 v Brown 3.06
• Puts interest of Auckland over political alignment – Banks 3.33 v Brown 2.74
• Vision and strategy – Banks 3.33 v Brown 2.99
• Management – Banks 3.27 v Brown 2.63
• Experience – Banks 4.11 v brown 2.84
• Judgement – Banks 3.26 v Brown 2.51
• Trustworthiness – Banks 3.37 v Brown 2.86
• Ability to form support within Council – Banks 2.98 v Brown 3.15
• Economic management – Banks 3.65 v Brown 2.56
• Courage – Banks 4.30 v Brown 3.46

But 50% of CEOs want a new candidate to also enter the race.

Also 85% of CEOs support compulsory superannuation, as in Australia.

And ratings of various aspects of the budget:

• Closing loopholes for Working for Families 4.73
• Increase in GST 4.44
• Personal tax cuts 4.24
• Corporate tax rate cut 4.21
• Aligning top personal and trust rates 4.09
• Change tax treatment for LACQ’s 4.06
• Axe depreciation for residential housing 4.01
• Cuts to savings vehicle tax rates 3.95
• Reduction in thin cap threshold from 75% to 60% 3.63
• Ace depreciation on commercial buildings 3.17
• Axe 20% depreciation loading on new assets 3.16

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

John Key’s refusal to postpone the implementation of the next phase of the emissions trading scheme (ETS) is setting the scene for a ‘winter of discontent’ with New Zealand business.

In just two days the perception of the Key Government as a climate change laggard has morphed into an unwitting climate change leader as our major trading partners, like Australia and the United States, prepare to defer their own schemes leaving this country out in front of the pack instead of the “fast follower” the PM promised.

The decision by Kevin Rudd to delay his ETS until 2013 does place pressure on NZ. It is almost ironic that National is at risk of accidentally achieving Helen Clark’s aim of being a global leader rather than a fast follower in terms of responses to climate change.

Of course the Australian ETS has never been passed into law – it is easy to delay something not yet legislated for.

The NZ ETS was passed into law by Labour in 2008, and them amended by National in 2009. It is already in effect for sectors such as forestry.

The Auckland Regional Chamber of Commerce has been adding fuel to the fire by asking its membership to email Key directly to ask for the July 1 cost hikes to be deferred.

The chamber reckons it will increase electricity prices by 5 per cent and add 4c a litre to the cost of petrol and diesel. Its boss Michael Barnett reckons the cost hikes will jeopardise the profitability of small to medium businesses as they get back on a growth curve after the lengthy domestic recession.

I’ll have to read the ETS legislation to check, but am unsure whether or not the Government can defer the entry of those sectors, without amending or repealing the ETS law. If a law change is needed, it couldn’t realistically be done by 1 July.

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

Australia now earns more than A$1 billion annually from exporting uranium ore concentrate. By 2014, that figure is expected to be A$1.7 billion.

There are tight controls: Australian uranium is produced only for export and is used only for peaceful purposes in civil nuclear power stations outside of Australia and is trumpeted as a contributor to global climate relief.’

The reason Australia doesn’t have a suite of nuclear power stations is it burns cheap coal for power.

But NZ is stuck in a 1980s cul de sac: Nuclear equals bad.

Secondly, is the PM now expected to order the administrator of his blind trust not to invest in any company that could be mining uranium simply because New Zealand has anti-nuclear laws?

If so, that rules out many companies with diverse interests. Bizarre really.

I thought it was bizarre. Nuclear power is indeed a way to reduce carbon emissions, so wy the fuss over the PM having shares in a company that helps reduce carbon emissions.

The EU had a reception at the Backbencher last night, so lots of MPs and journalists there to chat to.  The typical opening line from a National MP was “So about that B grade” while from Labour MPs it was “Unlike Annette we won’t use Farrar and respect in the same sentence unless there are some other words in between”

Phil Goff was there also, so I said I looked forward to him quoting me more often in future . Actually had an interesting chat generally on economic stuff, such as land tax. If Labour are bold they could consider proposing a land tax (tied to income tax reductions) for 2011. That could attract some support from economic reformers.

General consensus I got from pundits there was that there was definitely some good stuff in the Government’s work plan – in fact more detailed plans that most Governments announce in the PMs statement.

But what may trip the Government up is they misplayed the expectations game. Building the statement up as the “most important” one ever was a mistake, as was talking about it being a “step change”. Again, there is some good stuff there that certainly will help lift economic growth. But will the announcements alone close the gap with Australia? Of course not. But the rhetoric leading up to it, got expectations artificially high.

With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better to have positioned the statement as a typical PMs statement – a general overview of the Government’s achievements and workplan, and then surprise the media and opposition when it turns out to have close to 30 specific initiatives in it.

As I said yesterday, I welcome the focus on growing the economic cake, not just how to split it up, and look forward to more details in the budget.

Reaction from others:

• John Armstrong – 4/10 for economic boldness
• Fran O’Sullivan – John Key deserves an A- for intent. But a mere D for the dreadful prime ministerial statement that buried a coherent economic agenda in a mass of confusion.
• Tax Working Group members seem happy
• NZ Herald editorial calls it a stutter not a step-change
• Bernard Hickey hits new levels of hyperbole
• Canterbury Employers call the package welcome but light
• Solid Energy is excited
• Colin Espiner gives it a pass, but with much more to do
• Tracy Watkins looks at the risks
• The Press editorial says it was lacking boldness
• The Dom Post editorial says it was a welcome focus on growth, not slogans

Fran thinks big:

Instead of tilting at windmills, the dairy industry should think big.

If cows are housed indoors for much of the time, their poop can easily be captured for commercial biogas.

And while they are about it, why not invent a gas exchange system to extract methane from the air inside cowsheds.

We could even follow the Swedes and run a railway on biogas produced from digesting the parts of cows that usually get discarded at slaughterhouses to extract residual methane.

The big upshot is our tourism industry will also be protected. And I will get my fishing back.

Is this genius or lunacy? Or both?

The moment there is a small upturn in the economy, Labour is already pushing for a splurge o Government spending. This is reckless, and fiscal restraint is needed for not just a year or two, but probably a decade. Brian Fallow explains:

The net effect of a reduced tax take and much higher public spending will have given a boost roughly equivalent to 6 per cent of gross domestic product over the two years to June next year.

That was entirely appropriate.

But the recession’s legacy of a shrunken tax base, a string of deficits and mounting debt servicing costs will cast a dark and cold shadow over next year’s Budget. …

It will be 2016, if we are lucky, before surpluses return, and every year in the red adds to the public debt burden.

It is a recipe for interest costs to eat up more and more of the future tax dollar, well before the echo of the baby boom sends health and superannuation costs through the roof. It is not sustainable.

Spending needs to be restrained, and to shrink as a proportion of the economy.

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

It doesn’t want to “rip the guts” out of the Government’s expenditure line. But if the Government holds new Budget spending to a constant $1.1 billion increase each year, over time this will have the effect of pulling Government spending back down towards 30 per cent of GDP and, in Key’s words, “force change through the system”.

This is around half the new spending that Labour had, and keeping spending increases to this level for more than a couple of years will be pretty bloody difficult. But we do need to get Government spending down to under 30% of GDP.

And Colin Espiner reports:

The Government remained committed to a new spending limit of $1.1b and was investigating a total spending cap, English said.

Total Crown spending is expected to reach $65b this year and rise by about $3b each year.

“Demand-driven” expenditure such as health and education, benefits, superannuation and KiwiSaver payments are not currently included in the Government’s sinking lid on public spending.

Under a total cap, any increases in expenditure would have to be offset by cuts in other areas or approved by the Cabinet. English said he was looking at “better and more coherent methods of knowing where spending is occurring and what the alternatives are”.

The Netherlands and Sweden had spending caps, he said. “We’ll be talking more about that in Budget 2010.”

I think the Fiscal Responsibility Act should be amended so that the Government has to set a target (like it does for CPI for the Reserve Bank) for spending as a percentage of GDP and for what level of surplus is desired. This would require political parties to be more transparent about what they propose. If Labour wants to spend an extra $6 billion a year, then they’ll have to be open about it, and let people see the consequences.

Fran lets loose:

John Key’s celebrated faux pas at his first National Party conference as leader (“Under a Labour Government I lead … ) was portrayed as simply an inadvertent slip born out of nervousness.

But after Key’s outright panning of the Don Brash-led 2025 Taskforce report his 2007 slip-up is starting to look almost Freudian.

What I would like to know is how the Government thinks it will close the gap with Australia, if it does not adopt some of the recommendations of the 2025 Taskforce. The gap will not close by magic. Action is needed, not rhetoric.

Brash and his four taskforce cohorts: former Labour Finance Minister David Caygill, Wellington economist Bryce Wilkinson, Icebreaker CEO Jeremy Moon and Australian Productivity Commission part-time member Judith Sloan, were deliberately cute in delivering Key and English a ready rationale for cutting spending back to 29 per cent of GDP.

This after all was the level of core Government expenditure registered in 2004-2005 before former Finance Minister Michael Cullen opened the floodgates on social spending.

All it required was for Key and English to start taking the axe to some of Labour’s sacred cows, urgently review some major spending programmes, and get serious about setting measurable goals to turn this economy around.

No one is underestimating the political difficulties in making such substantial change. But unless substantial change is made, New Zealand will not catch Australia. Ever.

The 29% goal is not politically possible by 2012, but that is no reason not to have it as a longer term target. Or to have a slightly higher target. Or something. What is not acceptable is having no target. I want both National and Labour to say what their target is for spending as a % of GDP, and for them to offer different targets so we have a choice.

A factor which English seemed to concede yesterday by saying the 2025 goal was merely “aspirational”.

Aspirational means they did not mean it.

Problem is the top Government duo reckons its options are constrained because they don’t want to break National’s 2008 election pledge to keep Labour’s own big-ticket election bribes such as interest-free student loans and the expansion of Working for Families which Key had demonised as “communism by stealth”(before the 2005 election).

And I accept no breaking of election promises. But that doesn’t mean the other recommendations can’t be implemented, and it also doesn’t rule out National having a more flexible set of policies for 2011.

Fran compares John Key to Barrack Obama, and not in a good way!

The “Mr Nice Guys” like Prime Minister John Key – and US President Barack Obama – who have soared high on the basis of personal popularity and feel-good vibes – are now finding out the hard way thatthere is more to making a good political hamburger than mere sizzle. …

Less than one year into his reign as New Zealand Prime Minister, Key’s popularity – like that of his party’s – is rocketing high in the opinion polls.

Much more so that Obama incidentially. Obama has only a net 11% positive rating, and the Democrats are polling only 4% ahead of the Republicans nationally.

Like Obama, Key has succeeded in one critical area: changing “the vibe” around his nation’s capital. Like Obama he is perceived as a Mr Nice Guy in large part because he is not his predecessor: Helen Clark in Key’s case, or George W. Bush (Obama).

That is a fair point. Of course John Key hasn’t won the Nobel Peace Prize simply for not being his predecessor!

It is a political truism the crucial strengths that underline a leader’s popularity are also their weaknesses.

Key – like his alter ego – is now in desperate need of the vital machine skills to ensure his Government does make progress on controversial flagship policies.

Key will be hoping he doesn’t have another week like the last one. The public are fairly forgiving of stuff ups, if they are corrected quickly. But if they start to form a pattern, then confidence gets shaken.

Fran O’Sullivan had what I consider a really good idea, during her speech on political blogging yesterday.

Part of the discussion was around the increasing commercial pressures on newspapers, and their diminishing resources to do investigative journalism etc.

Fran said she thought it was very unbalances that the Government (taxpayer) funds some media through NZ on Air, but this is restricted to broadcasters only.

She advocated that NZ on Air should become NZ on Media, and all media should be able to apply for worthy “local content” projects whether they be TV, radio, print or Internet.

I think that is a concept with some merit. First of all it does make for a more level playing field. But also because a contestable funding pool for print (and Internet) journalism could help turn around the decline in quality research intensive journalism (which is often not commercially viable).

Now as print and Internet has much lower costs than broadcast, I don’t think opening up the field, would lead to a huge amount of money being drained from the broadcasters. Maybe a couple of million out of the tens of millions they grant every year.

Note this is not about increasing the total amount of funding for NZ on Air, but increasing the range of eligible applicants.

Someone like No Right Turn could (for example) have applied for a grant for his research and series of posts on the sedition laws (which helped lead to the law being unanimously repealed).

A newspaper could apply for a grant of say $25,000 to allow a journalist to spend three months working on a story about (for example) the immigration system.

There would be some challenges such as editorial independence, but I think it is a proposal worth considering. Why should TV and radio retain exclusive rights to NZOA funding?

It is worth mentioning that NZ on Air does sort of fund stuff on the Internet – the very worthy NZ on Screen archive of iconic NZ TV shows. However that is funding Internet storage and access of TV shows, which is different to funding contemporary material regardless of medium.

Fran O’Sullivan addressed several dozen people at breakfast this morning on the topic of the Accidental Empire of Political Blogging. Rural Women NZ hosted the breakfast.

Fran was mainly positive about the impact political blogging has had in NZ, saying the diversity is useful, as is the competition for the media to some degree.

She did have some criticisms, such as accuracy and fact checking, and most of all political bloggers who blog anonymously. Her big call was for more political bloggers to post under their names so there is some accountability for what they say – as journalists have.

She was full of praise for Red Alert and said it has obviously replaced The Standard as the most influential and useful blog on the left.

Whale Oil got a mention with praise for his willingness to savage members of his own party (she joked that his father must be glad he has a life membership that can’t be revoked) but said she thought the pre-election scuttlebutt on Damien O’Connor was a serious error of judgement.

Lots of questions and discussion ranging from has a blogger been sued yet, to press gallery membership. Fran nicely refers to the gallery as a cartel

Was a very good breakfast and even better drinks afterwards, finally escaping around 10.30 am!

I’m not a woman, or rural, but am attending a breakfast meeting of Rural Women New Zealand to hear Fran O’Sullivan talk on “An Accidental Empire: The Rise of Political Blogging and its Effect on Conventional Media.”

Other interested people are welcome to attend:

Speaker: Fran O’Sullivan

Topic:        An Accidental Empire: The Rise of Political Blogging and its Effect on Conventional Media.

RWNZ is delighted to have special guest Fran O’Sullivan – a columnist for the New Zealand Herald – speaking at this month’s breakfast meeting on the rise of political blogging. Fran’s expertise is in politics and business. She was labelled a “right-wing blogger” by Helen Clark – but has yet to launch her own blog.

Date: Tuesday 29 September

Time:        7.15am – 8.15 a.m.

Venue: D4 on Featherston Street
Level 1, 143 Featherston St
Wellington

Breakfast:  There is no charge for attending RWNZ breakfast meetings. A D4 Breakfast Special costing $12 has been arranged for this occasion. The Special includes bacon, a choice of eggs on toast, and tea or coffee and juice. Or, you can order a continental breakfast with jam and marmalade served with juice, tea or coffee for $12. If you have a little more time, you may wish to order from any of the full range of dishes available on D4’s superb breakfast menu which can be viewed at www.d4.co.nz/menu

Please RSVP to Noeline Holt: noeline.holt@ruralwomen.org.nz

or Tracy Galland: tracygalland@xtra.co.nz

Fran O’Sullivan is not impressed if Labour is only going to apologise for shower and lightbulb restrictions:

Fessing up to an unhealthy preoccupation with Nanny State might buy Phil Goff a few brownie points with bored news media looking for a headline at Labour’s first post-election defeat conference tomorrow.

But seeking redemption for such egregious – but ultimately inconsequential – policies like trying to force Kiwis to adopt eco bulbs, or, switch to barely dribbling shower heads, or, stop smacking kids is sublimely absurd.

Only in New Zealand could a leading politician fall prey to the erroneous belief that this factor alone cost the ruling Labour Government and its cronies the last election.

They were a factor, but I agree not the dominant one.

The Labour leader could start with offering up an apology for his party’s savage assault on democracy, the Electoral Finance Act, which it had the gall to steamroller into existence after being caught red-handed ripping off the taxpayer to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund its 2005 election campaign.

To be fair to Goff he has admitted they got parts of the EFA wrong and voted to repeal it. But an apology at his party’s conference would carry sincerity.

He could follow that with another mea culpa for an even more egregious matter – Labour’s economic policies – which had the effect of driving this country into recession fully nine months ahead of the Lehman Brothers collapse which heralded the beginning of the global financial crisis.

I think Fran will be disappointed here.

And the three-ring circus called Winston Peters that Labour continued to inflict on New Zealanders from ministerial heights long after journalists exposed the extent of his secret big-business backing.

This for me is probably the most important one. Their defence of Peters was disgraceful, and voting against the Privileges Committee recommendations was a shameful act. I don’t think one could ever take Labour serious on issues of electoral funding transparency after their pandering to Winston.

And Helen Clark’s con act that positioned New Zealand as a leader on combating greenhouse gas emissions when it did nothing on that score till weeks before losing power.

And gross emissions relative to 1990 under Clark rose faster than the US under Bush.

Goff’s real challenge is to break out of the robotic style that has become his political leitmotif; stop contaminating his leadership style by authoring personal attacks on other MPs which fail at the authenticity stakes. And to stop playing situational politics with the US on defence issues like Afghanistan and get back into the main game.

He should get National to a climate change deal that will ensure a real reduction in emissions rather than simply allowing Kiwis to trade out of their responsibilities – and take some political credit.

It will be interesting to see if Goff can deliver his caucus on such a deal. I am unsure that he will be able to.

An insightful column by Fran:

But with China poised to overtake the United States within a decade as the world’s largest economy, it is no surprise that the implications of China’s rapid economic rise were given considerable focus during New Zealand and Australia’s first joint Cabinet meeting in Sydney eight days ago.

Herald inquiries indicate Rudd went to considerable lengths to outline why the two Australasian countries should move closer together at a strategic level through maintaining “close foreign policy settings” during a lengthy overview he gave as co-chair of the joint Cabinet.

The issue barely rated a mention in the two prime minister’s joint press statements. But Herald inquiries indicate that Rudd strongly positioned the impact of China’s rise on Australasia during a lengthy strategic overview.

Several Cabinet Ministers from both sides privately credit the “risks based” analysis – above all other factors – as paramount in the Rudd Government’s decision to focus on New Zealand’s strategic utility to Australia, by moving to finalise single economic market negotiations by 2015. And to increase military co-operation to protect (if needed) supply lines between Australasia and the region during possible fractious times ahead.

This would explain why Australia has gone from luke warm to highly receptive on the move to a single economic market.

For most of our existence our location has been a barrier economically. In the next century, we may find being so close to Asia is a life saver. The US economy, and to a lesser degree the EU, could struggle to match Asian economic power in a few years.

Under this scenario, Australia – as a country with “middle power” pretensions – will increase its regional impact by drawing New Zealand further within its own strategic sphere of influence.

This is where NZ needs to be a bit careful. While I am fully supportive of closer economic ties with Australia, we must not lose our identity. NZ is generally held in higher esteem than Australia with most Asian countries – partly because we are non-threatening, but also because we have never been seen as the US Deputy Sheriff.

Rudd – who thinks deeply about strategic issues – believes that unlike previous downturns, Australia and New Zealand cannot rely on American consumers to quickly refuel global economic growth through another debt-fuelled spending binge. Both New Zealand and Australia thus needed to focus on how to sustain their respective economies.

Both prime ministers share the belief that it is in the countries’ interests to strongly brand Australasia as an investment destination focused on quality products and lifestyles, and, are concerned at the upcoming “war for talent” implied by changing demographics.

Key, in particular, sees a future where both nations will have to pay “near global price” to attract and retain highly-skilled people such as doctors, lawyers and engineers.

By drawing closer together the two “Europeans in Asia” will be able to more strongly position themselves as the Asian century develops.

This makes us closing the gap with Australia even more important. You want to keep doctors, lawyers and engineers? Well maybe then allowing mining on 0.0001% of the conservation estate is not the end of the world.

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

The Government will soon launch a Productivity Commission designed to run its ruler over key sectors in the NZ economy and advise on initiatives that might ultimately help bridge the income gap with Australia.

The proposal for a Productivity Commission has grown out of the post-election agreement National and Act made for a “high quality advisory group” which would be tasked with the challenge of investigating how NZ would close the income gap with Australia by 2025.

I think a productivity is one of the most important things we can do, for increasing long-term growth. The Australian equivalent is one of the reasons they have done better economically – for them reform is not just something that happened in the 1980s, but has been an ongoing work programme under Hawke, Keating, Howard and now Rudd.

One of the first initiatives for the new Productivity Commission should be to examine why New Zealand has so many ports.

Ports productivity is a major issue – for both exporters and importers – given NZ’s distance from markets. Just two NZ ports have agreed to transparently provide benchmarking data to overlay on the Australian Productivity Commission’s benchmarking studies in this area – other ports declined to participate.

Given the fact that Australia is New Zealand’s biggest export market, it is important to get ports’ efficiency increased.

That does sound like a good first project.

It is still unclear who will chair the commission.

Minister for Regulatory Reform Rodney Hide favours former Reserve Bank Governor and now company director Don Brash.

Economically my views are very close to Don Brash. From an economic point of view, I think he would do a great job.

But, and this is a big but, the sucess of the Australian Productivity Commission is that it has been supported by both the Coalition and the ALP. Sure they don’t agree with every recommendation, but they recognise its importance and don’t try and demonise and undermine the Commission.

Getting NZ Labour to support a NZ Productivity Commission will be difficult enough. However Goff and Cunliffe are more moderate than Clark and Cullen, and I hope they will be constructive towards it. Just because it will sometimes recommend unpalatable reforms is not a reason to silence or marginalise it.

And this is where politically having Don as inaugural Chairman may be inadvisable. It would almost guarantee Labour’s opposition to it. And in most cases I wouldn’t care about that. But I have heard multiple times that the success of the APC comes down a lot to the bipartisan support for it.

The Australian Productivity Commission’s work programme gives some insights into the type of issues that the New Zealand commission could be invited to examine.

The Australians are examining the relative performance of the public and private hospital systems looking into comparative hospital and medical costs for clinically similar procedures.

It is examining Australia’s anti-dumping system, executive remuneration, the contribution of the not-for-profit sector and gambling.

They all look interesting topics. I would be most interested in a study of gambling from an economic point of view.