Kiwiblog

A really good column by Nick Smith in The Independent Financial Review yesterday.Not online but here is the beginning:

The first instinct of any decent government should be to legalise, liberalise and, where necessary, regulate.

Conversely, the universal characteristic of a lousy government is its tendency to ban things.

On that score, the present lot is a lousy government.

Absolutely – bans should be very much a last resort.

He then looks at the party pill ban:

The same cannot be said for the party pill ban, which will increase public demand for amphetamine and its more dangerous refined product, P.

People love intoxicants; always have, always will. The history of cannabis and psilocybin goes back at least 3000 years – testimony to humanity’s abiding desire to alter its consciousness. Don’t mistake this column as advocacy for drug use; these substances are dangerous if misused, particularly in comparison to party pills.

The relatively safe party pill industry serviced a huge market, and not just the dance scene, as evidenced by the drug’s ubiquitous presence on the shelves of corner dairies and booze shops. That demand will now be met, make no mistake, by the black market. Vendors won’t be selling party pills but amphetamine, which offers a higher yield to justify the seller’s risk of arrest and imprisonment.

Amphetamine abuse – already at high levels – will soar.

The fundamental economic law of denied demand underpins my certainty the prohibition will create more illegal drug use and criminal behaviour.

At some stage it would be good to compile a list of all the things the Government has tried to ban in the last nine years.

The Independent Financial Review’s editorial this week, has endorsed the suggestion from Jim Donovan, which I blogged about, to abolish public holidays and give people an extra 10 day annual leave, allowing them to decide for say five of the days when they will take them. The editorial says:

Now, here’s a thought.

Jim Donovan, a blogger, proposes we do away with public holidays altogether.

There are 10 statutory holidays, and these 10 days would be added to worker’s annual leave entitlement – 20 days, in most cases.

At present, when employees want to take annual leave, it must be agreed in advance with their employer.

The new legislation would specify a certain number of days – Donovan suggests five – which the employee can nominate in advance, and which the employer is required to grant.

To prevent gaming behaviour, those days once nominated would have to be taken off, unless the employer agreed otherwise.

One advantage, says Donovan, is the economy, businesses and consumers would gain several trading days a year.

Another is employees would gain more days they could take off when it suited them, rather than when the calendar mandates they must. So families could organise reunions at a time when peak fares and holiday traffic were no hindrance.

Of course, there are issues.

Donovan points out there would have to be exemptions for essential services, but says he’d keep the list short.

In an economy made up of small businesses, some would have problems covering for key staff taking certain days off as by right.

Some might not be able to open at all. But there would be fewer of these days than are lost at present through mandatory closing.

And some will argue, as they do now, the spiritual significance of Easter and Christmas would be diminished if those days were simply trading days like any other.

But the force of this argument is dissipating as the population becomes more multicultural, and secular.

Those who celebrate Christmas as a religious day, or as a secular holiday, could simply specify it as one of their mandatory days off.

What’s more, as blogger David Farrar points out, Donovan’s regime would be far more friendly to adherents of religions other than Christianity. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc, would be able to specify their own religious holidays as mandatory days off.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Council of Trade Unions reacts to the idea. It presumably will embrace with open arms a concept that would deliver greater output and more freedom.

Great to see a business newspaper pick up a proposal from a blog.  And it is a good proposal. Hopefully with a change in Government one could get some policy work done on whether one could implement such a change, and how.

The Herald has an interesting article on the business newspapers. Most of it is about some sad layoffs at the IFR. But I was intrigued by this section on NBR:

Gibson said a new-look NBR would begin next week moving opinion pages on to newsprint which he said would allow more space for news and glossy adverts.

Meanwhile, the NBR website was being revamped and would be developed into what Gibson described as a right-wing answer to the Public Address website which had assembled left-wing commentators under its banner.

Technically one of the PAers is not left-wing. The token “rightie” I call him

Anyway good to see NBR planning to ramp up their online presence.

In his IFR column yesterday hard core leftie Chris Trotter said:

New Zealand should probably hope for a National victory, too.

So does this mean Chris has seen the light and repented? Well, not quite. Chris goes on to explain:

A defeat for the Right in November would be all too likely to encourage conservatism’s most dim-witted and violent adherents to take Von Clausewitz at his word and “continue politics by other means”.

So Chris is just saying people should vote National, because if you don’t we’re all going to start rioting in the streets.

This is one of the reasons why People Power do harm beyond the odd smashed window. They allow Chris to paint a picture of thousands of violent rightists just waiting to go on the rampage if National should lose the election. It’s about as likely as Tame Iti voting ACT.

Earlier in the column, Chris covers the events of 2005 election reasonably fairly:

However, the Right’s conviction that they were robbed of victory in 2005 is not entirely fanciful. The money the Labour Party used to pay for Helen Clark’s infamous “pledge card” came from a public fund which at least two responsible state officials had warned it not to use. That arguably illegal decision freed-up the half-million dollars the party needed to bank-roll its South Auckland strategy. That Labour was able to edge past National in the final hours of election night was due, in no small measure, to campaign over-spending.

The Right’s rage was not abated when the final election returns showed a narrow majority of votes had been cast for the Centre-Right. The combined total of votes for the parties of the Centre-Left (Labour, Progressive, Green) was 1,082,281 (48.1%) while the Centre-Right (National, Act, NZ First, United Future) secured 1,115,257 (49.6%).

Chris hasn’t classified the Maori Party as Centre-Right or Centre-Left. Also I get slightly different percentages as there were a total of 2,275,629 valid votes.  Maybe Chris is going off total votes for parties which made it into Parliament which is 2,245,801.  Let’s see – that might be it as that gives the CR 49.7% and CL 48.2%.

Incidentially while I have heard many people rage about the illegal overspending of some $400K to $800K by Labour, I’ve not heard many claim that the CR got more votes than the CL. I certainly tend to regard the Maori Party as more CL than CR, which puts the CL marginally ahead of the CR.  Even if you add Destiny into the CR vote that gives you 1,129,467 for the CR and 1,130,544 for the CL – almost a tie – only 1,077 votes in it.