Kiwiblog

The Herald applauds changes to per-school budgets:

One of the more contentious decisions hidden in the Budget last Thursday was in the financing of early childhood education. The previous Government gave childcare centres an incentive to employ trained teachers, increasing their grants as they hired a greater proportion of qualified staff.

The Budget has done away with two of the highest bands of subsidy, effectively cutting funds to centres with more than 80 per cent of their staff trained. …

Fewer than half the country’s 4300 centres have more than 80 per cent of their teachers registered yet. The cost blowout over the past five years would have escalated further without the decision National has taken.

While the cut-off will save $295 million, Education Minister Anne Tolley plans to put $107 million back into other early education programmes, $91.8 million of it earmarked for Maori, Pacific and low-income areas. …

Plainly, National does not regard specialist teaching of pre-school children to be quite as important as Labour did. It is probably right. When the previous Government imposed training requirements, there were loud objections from childcare companies that some capable and dedicated staff would be unable to meet these. National does not want to drum them out of the industry.

Nice to see some balance on this issue.

The Press looks at the two Koreas:

Crises between the two Koreas have been so commonly in the headlines for 60 years that it is tempting to dismiss the present tension as a replay of the usual game that will come to nothing. But such is the unpredictability of the North, that would be unwise. …

The South Koreans’ painstaking investigation and the employment of international experts mean the findings are incontrovertible. Thus China, the North’s closest supporter, accepts that the boat went down as a result of a torpedo attack from an armament of the type employed by the North.

The hope must be that the same considered approach will prevail now that the report has been made public, and in this, China’s role is vital.

Its ability to lean on North Korea is the best hope that the hysterical response there to the report will not escalate into another act of military bravado.

North Korea commits an act of war, and then threatens anyone who complains about it. They really are the most thuggish of the various regimes of ill repute.

Seoul wants punishment of the North by way of United Nations sanctions, on the grounds that the incident breached the Korean War armistice and the UN charter.

China’s veto power over a resolution triggering such a response is likely to be used, if only because the North says war will result if sanctions are imposed. Few countries would regret the veto’s use, even if they publicly deplored it.

I would. China’s protection of North Korea emboldens them.

The Dom Post talks finance companies:

Mark Bryers, who is bankrupt in New Zealand but not in Australia, was sentenced last week to 75 hours’ community work and fines of $37,470, plus court costs, after earlier pleading guilty to 34 charges laid by the Economic Development Ministry in relation to the running of Blue Chip. The charges dealt with book-keeping and a failure to attend a creditors’ meeting.

For many of the more than 2000 investors owed a total of $80 million after being caught in the February 2008 collapse of Blue Chip, the sentence is not enough. Some have had their futures destroyed, and their anger was on show at the court, where Bryers was described as scum as he entered. They believe he showed little sign of repentance.

The frustration is at the law’s inability to deliver what the aggrieved would see as justice. Bryers is legally guilty of paperwork failings, but those who lost their money believe they were taken advantage of in a more fundamental way.

That may be true, but the courts and justice system deal, as they should, with legality, not morality.

There is, for example, no suggestion that Mark Hotchin or Eric Watson did anything legally wrong in the collapse of Hanover Finance, which left more than 16,000 investors out of pocket when it froze more than half a billion dollars of assets.

There is morality, and then there is the law.

The ODT also focuses on finance companies:

There were gasps in the court from those investors present, many of whom had lost their houses and savings, when it became evident that Bryers would not serve a custodial sentence.

As he entered the court some had called him “scum”, others “thief” and still more “low life”.

After hearing of his sentence they pronounced their own verdicts outside the court: “he needed to go to jail,” said one; another insisted he should “pay the price”; a third said she felt “absolutely let down by the justice system”. …

Notwithstanding the fact – as pointed out by the ministry lawyer – that the charges were not of fraud, the penalties imposed seem extraordinarily light when set against the loss and suffering of those who invested with Bryers and the Blue Chip group.

Even though they were not of fraud, he still got off lightly.

The Herald wants changes to the Super City:

The committee examining the bill is led by National’s John Carter, a pragmatist steeped in local government. He indicated to Local Government NZ that its concerns would be heard.

The committee should insert more explicit powers for the Auckland Council to direct, change, establish and disestablish, if necessary, CCOs and their functions.

It should make all the CCOs’ decision-making board meetings open to the public, not just Auckland Transport’s meetings when enacting bylaws.

It should reconsider the split of representation on these boards and the lack of influence from the Auckland Council’s executives and elected councillors on issues such as transport.

Support for uniting Auckland, which seemed strong at the time of the royal commission and its extensive public submissions, has weakened. It can be restored, if the committee hears the concerns of the people.

I expect the report to be out before long, so we will see the shape of the Council.

The Press and Dom Post both talk about the leaky homes package. The Press says:

It has taken months of wrangling between central and local government, but finally there is a financial assistance package on offer which should help to provide resolution to some of the New Zealanders with leaky homes.

The scheme will not please all, especially those ineligible for the package or who resent the costs which they still must bear. But in terms of finding a solution which is fair to both tiers of government, leaky-home owners and those who pay rates and taxes, this package is balanced and a distinct improvement on the original proposal.

And the Dom Post:

The leaky buildings fiasco and the Government’s proposed solution need to be put in perspective. If the package unveiled by the Government is accepted, the taxpayer will pick up about $1 billion of the price of fixing leaky homes in New Zealand. That is the same amount of money originally put in the fiscal envelope to spend on settling all Treaty of Waitangi claims. …

The temptation is to focus on who is responsible – and there are many. There are the politicians who loosened up the building code to allow materials and types of building that had already caused problems overseas – and who have dragged their feet on a solution since. There are the architects who designed buildings for the sunny Mediterranean, not a rain-soaked New Zealand. There are the developers who favoured cheapness over durability. There are the builders who did not do their jobs, either because they did not have the skills to work the new materials properly or because they cut corners. There are the local council inspectors who were not diligent enough in ensuring the buildings did not leak. And finally, there are the owners, who, like all buyers, must take ultimate responsibility for their decisions.

The reality is that not all who should be shouldering the blame are. Some developers, contractors and builders have accepted their responsibility. Others have vanished like a will-o’-the-wisp – the companies that carried out the work, and carried the liability, are long gone.

What is needed now is a workable solution that sees repairs carried out quickly. That is what the Government appears to be offering, though details, such as how the cost of repairs is assessed, will be important.

And they conclude:

As the result of a Court of Appeal ruling, the Government has every legal right to walk away from the problem. However, that would be the wrong thing to do.

The local authorities should take the same approach and accept the package, even though it will almost certainly mean rate rises in the most affected areas, including Wellington. They could no doubt wear down many of those in leaky homes through a battle of legal attrition, but that would not be the right thing to do either.

The solution may not be ideal, but it is workable. The alternative is more years of litigation in which the only winners are the lawyers. It’s time to end the nightmare.

The ODT looks at town and gown:

Seven years ago, the University of Otago published some statistics that indicated this dominant economic force would soon be making a $1 billion a year contribution in its broadest sense to the Dunedin economy.

There cannot be doubt today that the city’s cultural, sporting, shopping and culinary landscapes would wither were it not for the university and, to a lesser extent, the polytechnic and college of education. …

It is noteworthy that the city now has a 25-year “vision” for the university as well as a 50-year “vision” for large parts of the reclaimed upper harbour basin.

The “Campus Master Plan” envisages the equivalent transformation of the north end, including the link with the Forsyth Barr Stadium and the university plaza.

Probably most immediately controversial is the consultants’ idea for the university to purchase the more run-down areas of student flats – the so-called “ghetto” – and to take responsibility for an accommodation upgrade.

Student accommodation so close to the campus proper is a major attraction and opportunity for the university and its students.

Long may the university grow I say!

The Herald focuses on leaky homes:

Many homeowners will now see their bill for repairs effectively halved – a quarter paid by taxpayers, a quarter paid by ratepayers – and the rest of the money made available through Government-guaranteed bank loans. That will be a relief to them, and who could argue with the need to help resolve the horror that has afflicted lives and families?

A horror that was dismissed by Helen Clark as a beat up by the Herald.

Some will find the Government contribution overly generous, as a Court of Appeal ruling found the Crown had no liability because its flawed building department did not have sufficient “proximity” to the actual house leaks. We have argued here before that local authorities so poorly regulated and managed the building practices that they should take more responsibility than central government. Yet their exposure has stayed around a quarter of the cost, while the negotiations leading to this package have seen the Crown up its contribution from a proposed 10 to 25 per cent.

It is generous, but sadly necessary.

National inherited this mess from a Labour Government which did not act swiftly or comprehensively to protect the rights of afflicted citizens. Yesterday’s package is the first time the Crown has put serious money on the table and committed councils to do the same. But in truth it addresses just two-thirds of the problem.

Better than zero thirds!

The Press talks community:

Too many residents of New Zealand cities believe that good fences make good neighbours. This fortress mentality might be thought to be inevitable as cities grow and become more impersonal, with neighbours not knowing each other.

But in several Christchurch suburbs there are now promising signs that this trend is being reversed and that a greater sense of community or an urban village approach is developing.

I was lucky. I grew up on Melbourne Road, Island Bay, where there was a great sense of community. All the kids on our section of the road knew each other and on any day we would be at any of the homes.

Only an extreme idealist could believe that New Zealand society could turn back the clock completely and return to those halcyon years when, it was said, everyone in a street knew each other by name and residents did not bother locking their front doors when they went out.

Not sure about the wisdom of not locking the front door, but I see no reason why one shouldn’t know all your neighbours – it is just a matter of knocking on doors and introducing yourself.

The Dom Post deals with the Rugby Union apology:

The Rugby Union apology to Maori players excluded from three All Black tours to South Africa bears the unmistakable stamp of a grudging public relations exercise. As recently as last month, Wayne Peters, the chairman of the union’s Maori Rugby Board, was dismissing calls for an apology as “simplistic”. To say sorry would be to show a lack of respect for past administrators of Maori rugby, he said. …

The exclusion of the likes of George Nepia, considered by some the greatest All Black, and Johnny Smith from All Black touring sides because of their race is a shameful episode in rugby’s history. The union should never have allowed another country to determine who should represent New Zealand.

Absolutely.

The ODT critiques science funding:

By the same token, years of indifference to adequately fund scientific innovation for the longer term – at least 10 or 20 years – has seen New Zealand gradually fall behind its competitors in the intellectual markets in which we compete for skilled thinkers, researchers and inventors.

There was some progress during the Clark government’s term in office, with its research and development tax credit and the $700 million Fast Forward Fund, and Labour has grounds for criticising the National-led Government’s announcement last week as not being sufficient or early enough.

The Government’s Primary Growth Partnership has, Labour says, not paid one dollar to its intended recipients and, further, business has received nothing from the Government for research and development for the 18 months the Government has been in office.

Still, even a few crumbs is better than nothing at all, and of the $321 million earmarked by the Government over the next four years, $225 million is “new” funding.

There are aspects of the arrangements which look promising, including a trial scheme to establish links between private companies and publicly-funded research organisations such as universities and Crown research institutes.

It would always be nice to be more, but again we are still borrowing $240 million a week.

The NZ Herald talks Super City:

Who should lead Auckland? By a surprising margin, residents seem to favour the lesser-known of the two declared candidates for the Super City mayoralty. …

It could be that today’s survey reflects a view from across six of the seven territorial-council areas that a vote for Mr Banks represents a central Auckland takeover of their cities. An anyone-but-Auckland-City mentality would make a tough campaign for the Banks team.

He may be copping the backlash over the Government’s poor handling of the Super City reform, which is unfair as he has voiced concerns over several aspects of that process.

And The Press on rugby:

The inclusion of Argentina in what will be, from 2012, a southern hemisphere four-nations rugby tournament is obviously great news for supporters of the Pumas.

For many years the South American nation has been starved of regular top-flight tests due to the club commitments of its leading players in Europe, notably in France, but that will now change, with a rule change agreed by the International Rugby Board (IRB) this week. Finally, it seems, Argentina will be playing in a high-profile annual test rugby competition.

And the Dom Post on Greece:

As Bill English prepares to deliver his second Budget on Thursday a spectre hovers at his shoulder. The spectre is Greece.

The land of retsina, olives and sun-drenched beaches is about to become the land of wage cuts, job losses and higher prices, thanks to the profligacy of successive Greek governments.

Greece’s predicament is a cautionary tale for governments and peoples everywhere. Keep spending more than you earn and one day the debt collector will come calling.

A lesson lost on Labour it seems as they keep calling for the Government to increase spending and borrowing.

New Zealand, fortunately, is far from Greece’s situation. Public debt is at present about 13 per cent of the size of the economy – a fraction of the 120 per cent Greece is tipped to reach this year – but Government spending is forecast to exceed revenue for the next six years and debt levels are rising.

What some may forget though is that fiscal settings inherited from Labour had spending always remaining greater than revenue, and debt indeed increasing over the long-term to Greece type levels. Without the changes made by National in the 2009 budget, net crown debt was forecast to exceed 60% of GDP within around a decade.

And Labour opposed pretty much every one of those changes that reduced the debt track.

So far John Key’s Government has struck a sensible balance. It has borrowed enough to keep the economy ticking over and to insulate New Zealanders from the worst effects of the global financial crisis but reduced the rate at which debt was forecast to grow when it took office.

It should continue to take a long-term view of New Zealand’s interests. Mr English must continue to keep a tight rein on spending, not just in 2010 but next year – election year – as well.

Spending restraint needs to be maintained until, at the earliest, the OBERAC is back in surplus, and large enough to cover NZSF contributions.

The ODT looks at classroom attacks:

Thus it is in the case of the 13-year-old year 9 Te Puke High School boy who attacked his teacher with a 10cm kitchen knife, stabbing him in the neck and shoulders several times.

A centimetre or two either way, it must be supposed, and the injuries could have been fatal.

The attack has been met with anger at the perpetrator, sympathy for the teacher, incredulity that it could have happened at all, and revelations of just how common classroom assaults are becoming.

In 2008, 238 pupils were stood down for assaulting teachers; 442 teachers needed treatment after assaults at school in 2008 and 2009 at a cost of $413,000. …

The question is, why? Why did the boy have a knife at school? Whatever possessed him to make this apparently unprovoked attack? Was he, is he, prone to violent outbursts or physical aggression? If he had an issue or a grievance, why did he not first attempt to resolve them otherwise? Perhaps he did, and perhaps more of the background to this terrible episode will yet emerge, but it will not diminish either the viciousness of the assault, nor the level of accountability to which the assailant must be held – regardless of his age.

All good questions.

The Herald looks at the Tuhoe negotiations:

At the best of times, reaching a comprehensive settlement over Waitangi claims is a delicate and tricky matter. But for a number of reasons the Tuhoe negotiations are proving especially difficult, and not just because some people in the National Government are becoming increasingly worried that their party is earning a reputation among voters for conceding too much to the Maori Party. …

But what makes the Tuhoe claim especially difficult is that the tribe is seeking a major concession that departs radically from precedents set in other Waitangi settlements. After two years of negotiations, Tuhoe remains adamant that ownership of Te Urewera National Park is at the top of its agenda.

If the Government were to concede, the resulting settlement would go far beyond any similar previous arrangements in which iwi have obtained significant areas of Department of Conservation land only to return them immediately as part of the deal. For instance, Ngai Tahu gave Aoraki/Mt Cook back to the nation after its settlement.

At a practical level, the Tuhoe claim seems to envisage something similar inasmuch as it promises that public access to some of the country’s most beautiful land would not be compromised in any way. But, importantly, it goes much further in aiming to take over the ownership and financial management of the land from the department after a 10-year transition period.

Given the justice of its claim, there is no question that Tuhoe is in line for major concessions and a payment that will be close to the Tainui and Ngai Tahu settlements of $170 million each. All the most recent historical research suggests the Tuhoe people were treated exceptionally harshly and that they are owed a full apology and generous compensation.

Tuhoe was always going to be the most challenging negotiation.

The Dom Post says Jim Anderton must choose between Mayor and MP:

Progressive Party leader Jim Anderton is a man untrammelled by self-doubt.

In a political career that stretches back 45 years to his days on Manukau City Council, he has been a member of four political parties and fallen out with virtually every high-profile figure he has worked with. Never does it appear to have occurred to him that he could be in the wrong.

So true.

Hence it comes as no surprise that Mr Anderton believes he can perform the roles of MP for Wigram and Christchurch mayor at the same time. He is mistaken.

They are both fulltime positions. One is based in Christchurch; the other is split between Christchurch and Wellington. Both carry fulltime salaries.

Anderton will earn a total of just over $400,000 (including super and allowance) or over $7,500 a week doing both jobs.

Christchurch ratepayers are paying good money to be represented by a mayor who devotes his energies to advancing the city’s interests. He cannot perform that role if he is spending several days a week in Wellington.

Taxpayers are paying good money to Mr Anderton to represent the interests of his electorate in Parliament. He cannot perform that role from the mayoral chambers.

One could clone Saint Jim.

However, it is not Parliament’s role to serve as a safety net for politicians who would like new jobs but are not sure whether they are going to get them.

If Mr Anderton wins the Christchurch mayoralty in the October local body elections, he should resign from Parliament. In fact, he should give thought to resigning ahead of those elections, or at least take unpaid leave for the duration of the campaign, as many other candidates for public office are obliged to do.

Just as he will not be able to represent Wigram’s interests in Parliament if he becomes mayor, so he will not be able to do so on the campaign trail.

Saint Jim has a private members bill that requires an MP to resign from Parliament if they contest a by-election. Yet he thinks he should be able to contest a Mayoral election as an MP.

The Press looks at the UK:

For the Lib Dems, electoral reform is at the top of their wishlist in any deal, whether it be a formal coalition or the sort of support arrangements common in New Zealand, with either Cameron’s party or Labour’s Gordon Brown.

This stance is not surprising given last week’s disproportionate election result. While the Lib Dems got 23 per cent of the votes cast, which was a disappointment following polls showing them at abound 30 per cent at one point, they won about 200 fewer seats than Labour, which gained 29 per cent of the vote. At the other end of the scale, the Tories gained 36 per cent of the vote, but won about 47 per cent of the seats.

These sorts of outcomes are as palpably unfair and undemocratic as was the unreformed voting system in New Zealand, and Nick Clegg should hold firm to his party’s proportional representation policy as he talks to Cameron and Brown.

And the ODT:

The election result has presented Mr Clegg with choices: going into government with the old Conservative foe, risking alienating many in his own party ranks; or throwing in his lot with Mr Brown and a governing coalition otherwise comprising a number of smaller independents, the chief danger of this being the perception of Labour, a distant second in the poll, as tarnished.

This could work against any subsequent referendum on electoral reform, thus defeating the chief purpose of such an alliance.

The markets, already spooked by Greece, have shown their impatience.

Mr Clegg’s role as “king-maker” – one he might have formerly anticipated with some eagerness – has been served up by the voting public along with a generously sized poisoned chalice.

We await the outcome with fascination.

The Herald approves of the electoral finance bill:

The Government’s long-awaited bill reforming electoral finance law solves many of the problems created by its contentious, discredited and repealed 2007 predecessor and the dated 1993 Electoral Act. …

It is better than both the EFA and the status quo. Personally I wanted to see considerably more reform, but accept the Government made a decision not to push through changes, which did not have wide parliamentary support. Effectively Labour were given a veto over the changes.

Several new measures have been raised since details of the reforms were announced in February.

The most welcome is news that a separate bill will finally be introduced to tighten the use by parties and MPs of parliamentary funds to campaign to voters. …

A bill later this year will align the parliamentary and electoral law definitions in the “regulated period” or three months before an election. Parties will no longer be able to spend parliamentary money for communications other than those that “explicitly” seek people’s support or party vote or donations or membership of their party.

News I exclusively broke here, using papers I obtained under the OIA.

The Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill sets a three-month regulated period, down from the entire calendar year of an election in the 2007 law, and limits it still further if an election is called fewer than three months from polling day.

The regulated period is shorter if the election date is announced less than three months before the last possible election date, not just the actual election date. Expect to see this change at select committee.

The Dominion Post has advice for Nick Clegg:

Welcome to our world. Britain is about to face the realities of coalition government. The voters have delivered an MMP result under a first-past-the-post system, effectively leaving the Liberal Democrats to decide who gets to form the next government. It is small wonder that the New Zealand Cabinet Manual is being avidly read in Whitehall offices. …

However, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg will have to be careful not to overplay his hand. His party’s tally of 57 seats is fewer than he and others expected, and he needs to be conscious that how he behaves now will play a huge role in how Britons view proportional representation.

Mr Clegg is unlikely to have a better chance to push the cause of electoral reform with the other parties than he does now while still in the role of kingmaker – at the time of writing no deals had been struck – but if he is seen as putting his party’s interests ahead of those of the country, or of seeking to be the tail that wags the dog, there will be a backlash.

As some NZ parties have found.

And the ODT looks at local government:

The pros and cons of what exactly are local government’s “core activities” continue to be debated by the public in a somewhat desultory fashion, while it is obvious central government has long embarked on providing the statutory means by which local councils can shed what might once have been regarded as essential services in favour of the private sector. …

Mr Hide’s Local Government Amendment Act 2002 Amendment Bill, which has received its first reading in Parliament and will now be further considered in select committee, enables local councils to offer tenders to private companies to provide water services for up to 35 years, essentially a technical change since councils can already take that action, but only for a 15-year period.

He has argued that the change is necessary because 15 years is not sufficient to enable an adequate return on the economic life of water assets.

In other words, his Bill is designed to make the possibility of privately contracting water services more attractive.

But even if the Bill survives without radical change, it does not necessarily mean water services will be privatised.

Indeed, councils will retain control of services should they opt to have components contracted to private providers; the restrictions on the sale of council water services in the Local Government Act 2002 remain.

d

The Herald calls on NZ to back Obama in Afghanistan:

No compliment was more apt than the one that came from the commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal: “The forces that New Zealand provides are extraordinarily professional, as you know, and they are key members of the coalition.”

He had special praise for the work done in Bamiyan, which he said needed to be reproduced around the country.

“That’s really where we are building the foundation of Afghanistan.”

No doubt such compliments are sincere, but they come with a significant fish hook.

General McChrystal made no bones about the fact that he would like the New Zealanders to stay on and not just because they are doing good work. …

Before he left Afghanistan, Mr Key was giving some pretty broad hints himself. The PRT was likely to stay for another year, he said.

He was less forthcoming about the SAS but said that its role would also be looked at, with the possibility of a smaller contingent staying for longer. Indeed, he said this was the preference of the SAS itself.

It would be no bad thing if its wish was granted. Of course no one would want to see us bogged down. But the Obama strategy needs to be given a chance to work and New Zealand should stay with it for the long haul.

It must be noted that the Labour Government supported the Bush strategy in Afghanistan three times, sending the SAS in. However they oppose the Obama strategy.

The Press looks at airline alliances:

The last time Air New Zealand sought to forge a trans-Tasman strategic alliance it was with the biggest Australian carrier, Qantas.

That proposal was knocked back by the regulators, which was not surprising as the alliance between the two would have cornered about 80 per cent of the trans-Tasman aviation market. …

Ultimately the key question must be whether the benefits for consumers, as claimed by the proposal’s backers in terms of cost and convenience, outweigh the reality that the alliance would lead to a reduction in competition. It is this issue which should determine whether this alliance will fly.

I know I’d be pissed off to book Air New Zealand and end up on Pacific Blue.

The Dom Post calls for reality from teachers:

There has long been a suspicion that reality stops at the door to the teachers’ staffroom.

The Post Primary Teachers Association’s ludicrous claim for a 4 per cent pay rise for secondary school teachers lends credence to the theory.

The world is just emerging from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Government is effectively borrowing $200 million a week to maintain existing levels of services, tens of thousands of New Zealanders have lost their jobs, and hundreds of thousands have received little, if any, pay rise for the past two years.

I think one could do a science experiment on whether there is a connection between the PPTA and reality.

The majority reluctantly accept that is the price they must pay for job security. At a time of crisis, everybody – employers and employees – has to tighten their belts.

For the PPTA to demand a big pay increase at such a time is to show gross insensitivity to those who pay teacher salaries through their taxes. For it to demand the increase after its members received 4 per cent pay increases in each of the past three years is to show secondary teachers, or their union at least, are completely out of touch with the real world.

As the editorial noted, we are borrowing over $200 million a week.

Yet the present pay structure does not allow schools to differentiate between the performance of good, indifferent and bad teachers. They are all paid on the basis of their years of service and the responsibilities they hold.

If teacher unions are as serious as they say they are about wanting to keep good teachers in schools, they should work with the Education Ministry to devise a formula that allows schools to pay great teachers what they are worth and send a message to poor teachers that they should review their career options.

I agree there should be performance pay of course. But not even to a formula. Principals should have the ability to pay teachers as much as they think they are worth, within an overall budget. The top teachers should be on over $100,000 in my opinion. However the lousy teachers should be on $35,000 so they have the incentive to change professions or improve their teaching skills.

The ODT talks about John Key’s visit to Afghanistan:

There really was no choice: Prime Minister John Key’s trip to Afghanistan had to have been a “secret”.

Indeed it is standard operating procedure for all high-profile politicians and personalities who visit the volatile and dangerous region. …

To the many popular faces of Mr Key has been added that of a leader not prepared to send New Zealand troops “to a destination I am not prepared to come [to] myself”.

And further confirmation of a prime minister who likes to “see for himself” – to gather information or insight first-hand to enable better quality decision-making.

He told accompanying reporters that he wanted to make his own assessment of the work of the 70-plus SAS team on active duty in the country, and of the 140 troops in Bamiyan involved in reconstruction activities.

He would also have been wanting to get a feel for how the Nato mission of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is faring. …

But whether the occupation and the work of the ISAF is headed anywhere but towards a stalemate – and thus whether New Zealand should recommit troops towards its mission – is the burning question.

Mr Key is right, at this point, to remain non-committal.

Personally I don’t think the PM’s visit to Afghanistan was anything remarkable. It is inevitable a NZ PM will visit troops serving overseas, as conditions allow.

What has been amusing is the howls of anguish from those media organisations who were not invited along. The reality is of course one can’t travel with a full press corps into war zones.

It could be worth considering some sort of formal roster or random selection system for future trips, so that it doesn’t look like hand picked media. One could have a policy of one rep each from print, radio and television. The trouble is these trips are so infrequent, it might not be worth the bother.

The Herald talks social media:

If anyone doubts how technology is changing the way people communicate with each other they should consult the latest research by the Privacy Commissioner.

Published this week, the survey of Individual Privacy and Personal Information shows that 43 per cent of us now use a social networking site such as Facebook or Twitter.

This is an enormous increase from the 14 per cent recorded three years ago. Clearly these sites provide a welcome service to large numbers of happy customers.

But there is a big difference which Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff highlighted with the release of the survey results. She pointed out that more than half of those who used social networking sites assumed them to be private spaces.

However, this was really an illusion of privacy; personal details or pictures could be easily obtained by third parties, creating the real possibility of unintended, unacceptable and even dangerous consequences.

They are public places, but the sheer amount of info there, makes them semi-private. Unless someone is looking for your info for a reason, then people’s info generally stays with friends and families. But if you apply for a job, come to public notice in some way, it is all there to be seen.

A much better approach was suggested by Ms Shroff this week when she urged people to use internet safety resources available through Hector’s World, Netsafe and the Privacy Commissioner’s website.

As the survey has shown, most people join social networking sites with their eyes wide open and they understand the risks and issues and how to protect themselves.

Rather than bringing in more laws, the challenge should be to open the eyes of the few who fail to see the consequences of what they are doing.

I agree.

The Press wants better  roading infrastructure:

New Zealand has had a habit of under-investing in road infrastructure.

The most obvious example of this has been in Auckland, where decades of myopia has required multi-billion dollar catch-up projects, while in Wellington, the Transmission Gully route was until recently an exercise in dithering.

And in Canterbury it should not have taken a triple fatality crash on Saturday morning to highlight the driving risks on parts of State Highway 1 which require action. …

Steven Joyce has shown commendable speed in identifying roading priorities and pledging the money to them (the harder part).

This roading situation might have been adequate or acceptable a generation ago, when traffic volumes were far lower, but not today. Waimakariri and Selwyn, through which SH1 goes, are two of the fastest growing districts in New Zealand. Increasing numbers of commuters travel from small towns, including new ones such as Pegasus, into Christchurch, sharing the road with significant tourist traffic and with trucks.

The US do it quite well. Motorway and highways do not go through towns but around them.

The Dom Post looks at democracy in Tonga, or the lack of it:

The only good thing that could have come from the tragic sinking of the Princess Ashika off Tonga would have been a new openness and accountability in the Tongan political system.

The resignation of Attorney-General John Cauchi suggests that is a forlorn prospect.

The inquiry gave Tongans a rare glimpse of the inner workings of the elite who run their country – an elite who gain power based on hereditary links and personal contacts rather than talent. But having promised, and delivered, a fully transparent inquiry, it appears Tonga’s rulers are getting cold feet.

The Australian-born Mr Cauchi quit last week over government plans to abolish the judicial services commission which appoints judges. He believes the move is an attempt to interfere with the inquiry. Others say the cabinet is trying to discredit the royal commission.

The Tongan Government says Mr Cauchi was unable to properly exercise the powers he was granted and outsiders should butt out. Political reform is a matter for Tongans alone.

But as Tongans do not have the vote in a meaningful way, that is not true. They do not have the ability to get change internally.

And the ODT looks at ACC:

Unless it is a statistical blip, evidence points to procedures within ACC’s Sensitive Claims Unit having radically altered.

Figures show 32 sexual-abuse claims for counselling were approved in the first two months this year, compared with 472 in January and February 2009.

That is not far off a tenfold decrease.

And, on Monday last week, ACC Minister Nick Smith announced the way the corporation managed the claims of sexual-abuse victims was to be reconsidered.

To this end, he named a panel to undertake a “clinical review to ensure best possible practice in this sensitive area”. …

The conclusion must be that changes to the way in which ACC handles such claims, introduced in October last year by Dr Smith, have been responsible for the drop.

On the one hand, this will undoubtedly be helping to meet the savings of which the minister has made something of a mantra; on the other, it could mean that the changes have been “overcooked”, laying the minister open to charges of callousness and injustice.

Personally I don’t think sexual abuse victims should receive ACC. I do think they should get assistance for counselling etc from the state, but through Vote Health or Vote Justice. One of the problems of ACC is it has expanded too far from its original mandate.

The Herald is on judicial transparency:

The legal profession, at least in its upper echelons, is so small that there are bound to be close and long-standing relationships between senior lawyers and judges which may create the appearance of conflicts of interest.

The possibilities have been amply demonstrated by the case of Supreme Court Justice Bill Wilson, who finds himself facing the Judicial Complaints Commissioner because, when he was a Court of Appeal judge, he failed to fully disclose the extent of his indebtedness to a lawyer appearing before him.

And that is the problem – the lack of disclosure. The debt, by itself, does not mean the Judge could not sit on the case, and be impartial. In fact Justice Wilson ruled against the lawyer’s clients in a number of cases.

But the matter does not end there because now the Judicial Complaints Commissioner must decide whether the judge’s conduct in failing to promptly and fully disclose the nature of the relationship needs to be referred to either the Chief Justice or the Attorney-General. Unfortunately, either course of action may also raise questions of the kind mentioned by the Supreme Court because Justice Wilson has had close associations with both office holders.

He and Mr Galbraith have been in a racehorse-owning partnership with Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias. On the other side of the equation, Justice Wilson and Attorney-General Chris Finlayson were partners at the law firm Bell Gully and Mr Finlayson is on record as calling him a friend. So whichever way this case may turn, it gives rise to the very kinds of doubts that the courts, quite rightly, are at pains to avoid.

The Attorney-General is friends, I am sure, with a large number of Judges. I think we have to be careful about not having unrealistic expectations that Judges and lawyers have no dealings with each other at all, except in court.

But whatever the outcome of this particular case, the courts should reconsider the old policy of secrecy and remoteness as a means of preserving confidence in the system generally. More openness in the form of a public register of judges’ pecuniary interests – much like that which applies to MPs – would be much more effective.

Compulsory listing of such things as business interests, partnerships, trusts and, importantly, debts would make any possible appearance of conflicts of interest immediately apparent and therefore defuse any controversy such as the one engulfing Justice Wilson before it had a chance to arise.

The idea of a register is worth considering.

The Press suggests the winner of the UK elections will inherit a poisoned chalice:

When the British deliver their electoral verdict on Thursday, the winning party will be presented with a poisoned chalice. The huge cuts the new government will have to make to spending ensure it will be hounded into deep unpopularity and be long branded as the Scrooge that ended a decade of prosperity.

The reality that the golden economy has been dead for two years and has been sustained by massive borrowing will not ease the predicament of the incoming administration. In the cause of weathering the economic storm, spending and borrowing was maintained; only now do the bills have to be paid.

Yet the Lib Dems and Labour keep insisting one should go on borrowing and spending more for a wee bit longer.

The Dominion Post marks World Press Freedom Day:

For most New Zealanders, today is just another working day to be endured before the next long weekend heaves into view. To journalists, however, it means more than that. May 3 is the annual date that Unesco has set aside as World Press Freedom Day, an occasion to celebrate the value of a free media.

It is a prize worth winning, but comes at a price. New Zealand journalists don’t get killed for doing their jobs in this country, but that is not true elsewhere. In 1975, Kiwi Gary Cunningham was one of five journalists murdered by Indonesian forces in East Timor wanting to prevent the world knowing of their invasion. And already this year, at least 12 journalists have been slain for following a vocation with attendant dangers.

Here, the risk normally involves being called a “little creep” by an angry prime minister, being ejected from the team bus by an irate sports coach, or being sued for defamation for – perhaps – wrongly criticising someone with a reputation to defend.

True.

Thus it is harder in a modern democracy to persuade a cynical populace that to do away with a free press is to do enormous damage to the body politic and civic discourse. In the West, it is more common for the public to dismiss the work of reporters as sensationalism, trivia, and “lies”. Sometimes, they are right.

More usually, they are wrong. People often forget that everyone errs and that their errors are rarely exposed for others to judge. Chefs’ mistakes are buried in the rubbish; doctors’ mistakes are in a graveyard.

In the media business, mistakes can be of fact, emphasis or omission – and are usually inadvertent. Unlike the mistakes of others, however, journalists’ errors are published or broadcast for everyone to see, and – in the best of the breed – corrected publicly.

Alas the public correction is all too rare.

The ODT calls for no delay to the ETS:

Having once claimed to be a “follower” of our trading partners in such legislation, New Zealand, the critics claim, now looks likely to be an international leader – out on a limb with a feigned carbon tax that may in time come to be regarded as either innovative or foolish.

Businesses, for one, have not been slow to remind the Government of this risk, arguing that the policy will make it even more difficult to trade successfully with other countries which have yet to implement climate-change responses, or plan to defer them.

They have asked for New Zealand’s policies to be “aligned” with those of our major trading partners – a request that on the surface appears reasonable but is realistically impracticable. …

Yet, if the world has so much to lose from climate change, then it behoves countries to take whatever steps they can to minimise the effects – as a matter of urgency.

A global solution is obviously required and Western nations, including New Zealand, must lead it, since they are in the best possible position to afford the costs and provide the technology and innovation to achieve it.

Here the ODT is wrong. If China is not part of a deal to reduce emissions, then the efforts of the rest of the world will be futile. China by 2020, will be producing more greenhouse gas emissions than the rest of the world does today – even if they live up to their Copenhagen pledge.

For New Zealand to now delay further what has already been a slow, step-by-step procedure, would deny pragmatism in favour of the changing winds of political fortune.

I don’t support a change to the ETS legislation being done under urgency. If however there is no post Kyoto agreement, which includes commitments from China, then the rationale for an ETS is greatly reduced.

All four are on the proposed alcohol law reform. First up the Herald:

Against earlier indications and its better judgment perhaps, the Law Commission has recommended a drastic reversal of 20 years of liberal liquor regulation. …

f Parliament takes the commission’s advice, the minimum purchasing age will be restored to 20 without previous exceptions. A reasonable suggestion that 18 might remain the minimum for licensed premises, with 20 for off-licence purchases, has come to nothing.

Students and other 18 and 19-year-olds will lose the right to drink in bars and clubs unless MPs take a more realistic view. …

Communities ought to be able to decide the character and scale of their liquor supply.

That goes for inner city nightlife districts too. The commission’s proposed prohibition on all-night bars is needless. While a 4am closure would be late enough for anybody most of the time, there is self-evidently a demand for all night services in the central city and they should not be prohibited without good cause and proven benefit.

The past 20 years might not have made us more civilised but previous experience suggests the proposed regime would be a retrograde step, destined for regret.

I like the comment one journalist made to me about the proposed regime. They said they tried to thing of a single thing short on outright prohibition that Sir Geoffrey did not recommend, and they couldn’t think of any.

Next The Press:

There will be support for raising the purchase age to 20 years at all venues selling alcohol, because the experiment of lowering the age a decade ago has been a costly failure.

As critics feared, the age when teenagers begin drinking has percolated down, with many as young as 14 years heavily imbibing, and there is growing evidence of the harm alcohol does to developing brains.

Raising the age should make it harder for under-age drinkers to buy alcohol and less likely for older friends or relatives to purchase it for those as young as 14. The medical evidence also outweighs complaints from older teenagers that it is unfair to raise the liquor purchase age when they can drive or marry at a younger age.

I hate such fuzzy logic. Advocating that the solution to stopping 14 year olds getting alcohol is to make it illegal for 19 year olds to go to a bar or have wine in a restaurant. They also ignore the evidence most under age alcohol supply comes from parents.

While much attention will centre on the purchase age and the proposed increase in the alcohol excise tax, even though the latter is unlikely to be implemented, the commission’s recommendations should be regarded as a coherent package, with the focus on moderation and responsibility.

It’s a coherent package alright. Prohibition was coherent also.

The Dom Post:

The problem the commission faces is that, in seeking to deal with problem drinkers, it has also affected the majority, who believe they drink responsibly.

No-one wants drunks running amok in the capital’s party zone, but nor do they want to be told that they cannot buy a bottle of wine to take home from a supermarket after 10pm.

There are similar reservations over the proposed rise in the drinking age to 20. Whatever the science – and recent research indicates that the effects of alcohol on young brains have been underestimated – convincing the public that people old enough to vote, join the armed forces and marry are not mature enough to buy a cold beer at the end of a hot summer’s day will not be easy.

More particularly, politicians who want the age to rise will have to tell a sizeable chunk of their voters – the 18 to 20-year-olds – that a right they previously had would be taken from them. In the face of a promised organised campaign by young people, including the youth wings of major parties, to keep the age at 18, that is asking for a lot of political courage.

The talk of political courage reminds of of the Yes Minister episode when teh sure fire way to scare a Minister off doing something is to tell them doing so would be brave or courageous

And the ODT:

Our most recent experiment with liberalisation has proved to be a fatally attractive combination for our youth in the sale of wine and beer in supermarkets and the reduction of the minimum age of purchase to 18 years.

No doubt mature and sensible drinkers have welcomed both innovations – supermarket sales statistics would seem to bear out that presumption – and the State has certainly benefited from taxes on alcohol, for excise tax alone produced more than $900 million in 2008. …

To some extent, the additional recommendations of the commission – restrictions on who can supply alcohol to minors and in what circumstances; increasing the ability of local people to influence how and where alcohol is sold in their communities; a civil cost recovery regime for those taken into custody when grossly intoxicated – may have a greater long-term impact than simply increasing the purchase age. …

The way I count it is one editorial pretty hostile to the thrust of the Law Commission’s recommendations, one very supportive and two somewhat cautiously in the middle – pro doing something, but not everything.

The Herald editorial does not appear to be online.

The Press looks at the Melbourne Storm controversy:

Seldom, if ever, has an Australasian sporting team suffered such a resounding fall from grace as the Melbourne Storm.

From being regarded as a glamour side with one of the best records in the National Rugby League (NRL), the club is now mired in disgrace and ignominy.

The Storm’s deliberate breaches of the player salary cap have cost the club the premierships it “won” in 2007 and 2009, it must repay A$1.1 million (NZ$1.42m) in prizemoney, the franchise has been fined A$500,000 and must play out the season without being eligible for competition points. …

Over the past two decades a variety of Australasian rugby league clubs have been punished for exceeding salary caps, but the scale of the Storm’s breaches and the way it ran two sets of books was remarkable. Faced with evidence of the practice the NRL acted with commendable speed in publicly handing down its penalties. …

The Storm saga emphasises the wisdom of leading New Zealand rugby players being contracted to the New Zealand Rugby Union rather than having rugby league-style salary caps, which are open to abuse. And although provinces in the Air New Zealand Cup do have salary caps, it is unlikely that many local unions would reach the maximum salary limits.

I think NZ Rugby avoids most of the problems with its setups, but I am sure some provincial players end up getting jobs and cars etc as a way around the salary cap.

The Dom Post reflects on the loss of the RNZAF crew:

The deaths of two air force pilots and a crewman in a helicopter crash on Sunday is the cruellest of ironies. Flight Lieutenant Hayden Madsen, Flying Officer Dan Gregory and helicopter crewman Corporal Ben Carson were flying from Ohakea airbase to Wellington for Anzac Day commemorations when their Iroquois helicopter crashed into a steep, scrubby gully above State Highway 1 near Pukerua Bay. …

The crash is a reminder that those who serve in the armed forces do so at considerable personal risk. Since the Boer War more than 30,000 servicemen and women have lost their lives in the service of New Zealand. Many, many more have been injured. …

The funerals will be held this week. Mourners will include not just family and friends but probably the prime minister, who has cancelled a visit to Bahrain and Kuwait to attend. That is appropriate.

As Defence chief Lieutenant General Jerry Mateparae said “We’re a small defence force and we know those people. The prime minister knows them. I know them. We fly with them all of the time. They’re part of our family.”

They’re part of a wider family too. All New Zealanders have reason to be grateful to those who carry on the proud Anzac tradition.

It will be a very sad funeral.

The ODT looks at the UK elections:

There have now been two such debates involving the leaders of the three main British parties involving Prime Minister and Labour Party leader Gordon Brown, Conservative Party leader David Cameron and leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg.

And, while there has been some disquiet about subsequent superficial predictions – and the dangers of facile “worm”-like performance indicators familiar to the New Zealand public – most pundits agree Mr Clegg emerged from the first debate as the outright winner, and from the second as at least holding his own in a three-way tie.

This has been mirrored in the opinion polls, which show the Conservatives to be leading at around 34%, the Lib Dems at about 29% and Labour at 27%.

Yet ironically Gordon Brown may remain Prime Minister, despite coming third.

The Herald supports discounts for late consents:

The Government has now provided details of the stick intended to “incentivise prompt processing” of consents. If the process exceeds statutory timeframes, a council must apply a discount of 1 per cent per working day, up to a maximum of 50 per cent.

The initiative is highly welcome. Figures released by the Environment Minister, Nick Smith, illustrate how the problem has become progressively worse over the past decade.

During that period, late consents increased from 18 to 31 per cent, despite a ninefold increase from 3 to 28 per cent in consents where councils allowed themselves a 20-day extension. …

Before these regulations, councils had no incentive to process resource consents on time. Given that, it is probably unsurprising that almost a third of applications are being dealt with outside the statutory time limits.

Discounts may not deliver total satisfaction to ratepayers but, at the very least, they are a substantial step in the right direction.

I am confident the incentives to process on time will have an impact.

The Press talks volcanic gloom:

The nightmare the international aviation industry has feared for years has come to pass with the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull.

Iceland’s apparent isolation from the busiest air corridors in the world counted for little once upper-level winds conspired to blow the volcano’s massive plume of potentially damaging ash directly across much of the British Isles and on to parts of mainland Europe.

It seems preposterous for the whole world to be held to ransom by what, in geological terms, is a pipsqueak volcano.

The Dom Post looks at the UK election:

On May 6, they must decide if they want another five years under Labour, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, or to throw in their lot with his rivals, the Tories’ David Cameron or the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg. Until last week, opinion polls showed the Conservatives at or about 38 per cent, Labour about 31 per cent and the Lib Dems on about 20 per cent. Things changed markedly, however, last Friday.

That was when party leaders engaged in the first of three live TV debates, a first in Britain. Opinion polls since show a remarkable shift. This week, a Populus poll for The Times, for example, showed Mr Clegg’s party had risen 10 points in a week to 31 per cent, Labour down five on 28 per cent, and the Tories down four on 32 per cent.

The latest daily YouGov poll has Conservative 34%, Lab 29%, Lib Dems 28%. This would give Labour the most seats.

Even if the Lib Dems do not do major damage to the Tories on May 6, Mr Cameron’s party reportedly needs a national swing greater than any modern leader has achieved, in order to win even a single-seat majority.

It will be tough for them to get a majority, rather than just a plurality.

The ODT fights for Dunedin Hospital:

The threats to Dunedin Hospital and consequently to Dunedin itself, the Dunedin School of Medicine and the people of the South keep recurring.

Dunedin regularly has to staff the ramparts and fight for its hospital’s advanced status and that battle might soon begin again. Neurosurgery services, so often threatened in the past, are under fire with proposals that all six South Island neurosurgeons be based in Christchurch. …

As Dunedin School of Medicine dean Dr John Adams said this month, the loss of neurology has the potential to affect the whole teaching environment.

The service deals with about 350 patients a year, including scheduled surgery and, most significantly, emergency treatment. In accident situations, for example, it is a very long way from Te Anau or Invercargill to Christchurch, even by helicopter, when half an hour can be crucial to survival.

The Dominion Post praises Nick Smith:

Machiavellian, arrogant, hot-headed. ACC Minister Nick Smith has been called all those things and more. And by his friends. He has a reputation for throwing tantrums and flying off the handle when things don’t go his way.

Don’t worry – the praise is coming.

But Dr Smith is also a passionate advocate of his constituents’ interests and a minister who takes his responsibilities seriously. For that, taxpayers have reason to be grateful. It is because he keeps his ear to the ground and takes an active interest in his portfolios that a potential fraud has been uncovered within ACC. The corporation said this week that it had sacked a staff member – known to be its property manager Malcolm Mason – and referred “matters of concern” to the Serious Fraud Office.

Those matters relate to property transactions involving ACC in several different parts of the country and that appear to go back some time. However, it was not until Dr Smith queried the rent ACC was paying for its new offices in Nelson that anyone within the corporation thought to compare the prices it was paying for office space with the going rates. Dr Smith did so because local retailers were worried that the $346,320 a year ACC was paying to rent its Nelson premises set too high a benchmark and because other locals feared ACC was not getting value for money.

The advantage of a Minister also being a well connected local MP.

Dr Smith signalled his unhappiness by refusing to open the building. Contrast his attitude with that of Labour’s former internal affairs minister, George Hawkins, who ignored newspaper reports and industry concerns about the leaky building crisis for more than 12 months about 10 years ago because officials had not formally advised him there was a problem.

“One would expect that, if there was a problem, the people set up to deal with that would inform their minister,” he said at the time. “They did not.”

If Dr Smith had taken the same approach, ACC would still be unaware it was paying twice the going rate for office accommodation in Nelson and would not have uncovered irregularities in other parts of the country.

Irascible? Yes. Economical with the truth? Sometimes. But also an example to other ministers of what the public expects. The job of ministers is not simply to sign pieces of paper put in front of them by officials, open new buildings, bandy unpleasantries across the floor of the House and enjoy their generous salaries and perks. It is to actively represent the interests of voters.

Dr Smith has done so. He deserves to be congratulated.

On this issue, few would disagree.

The ODT focuses on the UN declaration:

The latest manifestation is the sudden – it has been described as “secret” – accession on Tuesday to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples with a statement delivered by Maori Party co-leader and Maori Affairs Minister Dr Pita Sharples to the United Nations in New York.

It has been met with tension, and what might be described as a tantrum, by the third party in the coalition Government’s bed: Act New Zealand.

Leader Rodney Hide has responded to the news with a display seldom seen even within the somewhat elastic emotional parameters of coalition politics. …

Mr Key and senior National Party figures will be gambling that this gesture towards the Maori Party will further enhance the mana of the latter, cement more tightly the political allegiance between the two parties, and deflate the more demanding ambitions of radical Maori – personified in Parliament in the character and rhetoric of Hone Harawira – while, in practice, giving nothing at all away.

They appear to have decided that the subtlety of principle should be subjugated to the symbolic glue of pragmatism.

It may make political sense, but while National retreats to the safety of descriptors such as “aspirational” and “non-binding”, it is hard to escape the conclusion that, on this matter, it speaks with a forked tongue.

Three editorials on the UN Declaration. First the Herald:

When the previous Labour Government was confronted with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, it quailed.

The potential political backlash, rather than the practical outcome of signing a non-binding document, was uppermost in its mind.

At its behest, New Zealand joined a group of only four UN members opposed to the declaration. It was a nonsensical state of affairs for a country whose record on indigenous rights is far superior to the vast majority of those who had signed up. …

If New Zealand does certain things differently to the ideal scenario alluded to by the declaration, that is of no great practical consequence. The focus should be on its record on indigenous relations, which places it in the international vanguard.

The work of the Waitangi Tribunal, which since 1975 has served as an effective sounding board for iwi to relate their stories of land loss, has been an integral part of that.

New Zealand has always spoken from a position of strength on matters of indigenous rights because it comes closer than most to meeting the aspirations espoused in the UN declaration.

Signing that document was, as Dr Sharples suggests, a small step but one that has symbolic value domestically and internationally.

There may, indeed, be no practical impact. That does not mean, however, that grasping this nettle was not worthwhile.

So Herald very supportive.

The Press:

The Maori Party chalked up another victory this week with the announcement that the Government will support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Although this decision is largely symbolic, support for the declaration had been a long-standing goal of the party and a source of friction between it and the previous Labour-led administration.

From a political perspective, support for the declaration makes sense for both the Maori Party and National. The Maori Party can add this to a growing list of policy concessions by National, including retaining the Maori seats and flying the Maori flag on Waitangi Day. In addition, the hated foreshore and seabed law will be repealed and the Maori Party’s flagship Whanau Ora policy will be introduced.

For National, these concessions have the effect of tying the Maori Party closer to it and creating the prospect that a support relationship between the two could endure past this term. In particular, it creates a point of difference with Labour, which justified its position as one of just four nations to oppose the declaration in 2007 by saying that it was at odds with New Zealand’s constitutional and legal framework. …

There is a risk that the declaration could be the basis of future attacks on this nation’s human rights record. But New Zealand governments have shown themselves capable of shrugging off previous criticism from bodies such as the UN Commission on Human Rights.

It might be argued, as Labour has done, that there was little point in endorsing the declaration if it would have no practical effect. It is, however, a symbol of New Zealand’s support for indigenous peoples across the globe.

And it was always incongruous that the vast majority of nations, many of which have appalling human rights records compared with New Zealand, voted for the bill, and that this nation did not.

Two in favour.

The Dom Post:

Recognising blah blah blah, affirming waffle waffle waffle. As a contribution to the human rights canon, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples leaves something to be desired.

It reads like a 48-page wish list assembled by a committee, which is exactly what it is – a committee which debated the merits of additional clauses, full stops and commas for 22 years. Drafting began in 1985, but the final wording was not approved by the United Nations General Assembly until 2007.

Heh sounds typical.

However, its drawn-out conception is not a reason to oppose it. Nor is its verbosity. The declaration is a flawed document – an assemblage of truisms and platitudes that imposes no obligations on signatories but contains fishhooks for nations that try to honour it.

It is actually to the last government’s credit that it declined to endorse a document it knew it could not implement. Amid the verbiage are a handful of articles that confer rights on indigenous peoples that are denied to other citizens. They include the right to veto government decisions and reclaim ownership of traditional lands – a right that, in New Zealand’s case, could be interpreted as covering the entire country.

New Zealand does not need to pay lip service to unworkable statements to demonstrate its good intent. …

However, there is value in restating the special status of Maori as New Zealand’s indigenous people, acknowledging the importance of Maori culture, affirming the Treaty of Waitangi’s place as New Zealand’s founding document and acknowledging the historic injustices suffered by Maori.

The negotiations between the Maori Party and National have enabled the Government to do so in a way which does not expose it to accusations of bad faith.

New Zealand’s declaration of support explicitly reaffirms the legal and constitutional frameworks that underpin the legal system and notes that those frameworks define the bounds of New Zealand’s engagement with the UN declaration. In other words, New Zealand law takes precedence over the declaration.

A momentous occasion as the Maori Party has suggested? Perhaps not, but a welcome opportunity to remove a source of friction between Maori and the Government and to put New Zealand back in the international mainstream. Of the four countries that initially opposed the declaration – New Zealand, the United States, Australia and Canada – only the US now stands outside the declaration. Australia changed its position last year and Canada has said it will do so.

Luke warm, but broadly supportive.

The ODT focuses on volcanic fallout:

If there is a lesson to be learned – again – from the billowing clouds of volcanic ash in the skies over Europe, it is the latent power of nature.

In 1783, the eruption of the volcano Laki in Iceland lasted for about eight months.

The effects of the layers of dust it threw into the atmosphere have been linked, among other things, to the failure of crops in France, and subsequent famine.

The fallout, Dr Stephen Edwards of the Department of Earth Sciences at University College London told the London Observer at the weekend, may have been one of a number of factors that led to the French Revolution. …

The interruption to normal service is costing the airline industry alone almost $NZ500 million a day, according to a conservative estimate by the International Air Transport Association.

The knock-on effects to a world economy just beginning to witness the signs of a fragile recovery from the recent recession, could be considerably amplified beyond the immediate consequences of cancelled flights.

The Herald supports proposed student loan changes:

Either way, it is clear that the Government, having declined to do away with interest-free student loans, must find ways to reduce the cost of the scheme.

t has to do this, first, because an alarming 41.5 per cent of the Government money placed in tertiary education goes directly to students as loans, allowances and interest subsidies. That is more than double the OECD average. Also, Mr Joyce, like other ministers, must find savings in his portfolio for this year’s Budget. This year he took a first step by proposing that student loans should be conditional on students’ success. That was reasonable, if only because it moved the loans into the same territory as living allowances to students on age, income and residential criteria, which are not available to those who failed more than half their course the previous year. In the same vein, new residents already have to wait two years for a student allowance or a welfare benefit. There seems no reason for student loans to be different, and good reason for them to be aligned. …

If any exception is to be made to the proposed stand-down period for student loans, it should be for refugees. Most, by dint of their status, arrive in this country with virtually nothing. The scheme provides those who wish to study with a degree of independence. Clearly, refugees are not comparable to the new residents who Mr Joyce suggests swoop on student loans as soon as they arrive, whether or not they are committed to their studies or to New Zealand. In effect, signing on for tertiary courses provides them with funding denied them by the two-year benefit stand-down.

I agree that the two year stand down for new migrants should exclude refugees. Refugees are admitted for humanitarian reasons, not economic reasons.

The Dom Post talks terrorism:

Hence, terrorist threats to Olympic and Commonwealth Games are not just an attack on the athletes, or host countries, but an attack on international fellowship – an attempt to stop nations and peoples co-operating and getting to know each other.

The reasons for the weekend bomb blast outside the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, venue for an Indian Premier League cricket match, are not yet known, but the amateurish nature of the devices that injured 17 people suggests it may have been the work of disaffected locals rather than al Qaeda, which early this year warned international competitors to stay away from the World Hockey Cup, the IPL tournament and the October Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

But, whatever the case, Commonwealth governments and sporting associations are doing the right thing by not being panicked.

And the ODT supports safer driving measures:

Something must be done about youth driving.

The statistics are oft-quoted but they bear repeating because they lie at the heart of the Government’s move, among other things, to raise the driving age to 16.

Take comparison with Australia: New Zealand drivers in the 15-19 age group suffer an average of 21 deaths a year for every 100,000 of population, compared with Australia’s rate of 13.

Further, young drivers between the ages of 15 and 24 in this country comprise 16% of all licensed drivers but in 2008 they were involved in around 37% of all fatal crashes and 38% of all serious injury crashes. …

Road crashes in fact are the highest single killer of 15- to 24-year-olds and the leading cause of their permanent injury.

Broadening out the international comparisons, 15- to 17-year-olds in New Zealand have the highest road death rate in the OECD and 18- to 20-year-olds the fourth highest.

The Government’s moves in the area of youth driving are widely supported as long overdue.

The NZ Herald looks at Canada’s dole:

New Zealand is somewhat unusual among OECD nations in having a non-contributory scheme that pays unemployment benefits directly from general taxation. But it shares a common need to seek ways of reducing unsustainable welfare spending, and to encouraging the jobless to return quickly to the workforce.

For those reasons, it is more than appropriate that the recently established Welfare Working Group will look at alternative means of financing unemployment compensation, including those based on pre-funding some benefits through insurance. Most notably, this will involve the examination of Canada’s employment insurance scheme.

The group’s chairwoman, Paula Rebstock, has already pointed out one obvious benefit of such insurance. “Right now, if you are in a relationship with someone and you become unemployed, the chances are you would not be entitled to a social welfare benefit,” she noted. “But if you are involved in an insurance scheme and you have contributed then you would also be in receipt of an unemployment benefit for a period.”

A very worthwhile point.

In Canada, workers pay premiums of 1.73 per cent of insured earnings for benefits if they lose their jobs, and employers contribute 1.4 times the value of employee premiums. The amount received by an unemployed worker and how long they can stay on the insurance depends on their previous salary, how long they were working and the local unemployment rate. The scheme is operated by Service Canada, a government agency, and sits alongside the welfare system, as would be the case if it were adopted in this country.

Just so long as we don’t get ACC to run it!

The Dom Post warns “celebrity” directors:

News this week that the Securities Commission has filed civil proceedings in the High Court at Wellington against four finance company directors – including two former justice ministers – highlights yet again the risks associated with celebrity endorsements.

They have also filed criminal proceedings.

If mum-and-dad investors need to do more due diligence, not only about the independence of the financial advisers they consult but also about the companies they might invest in, the so-called celebrities who lend their names to the letterheads of those companies need to do so, too.

Reputation is everything to those with integrity. To have one’s name dragged through the courts is unpleasant, undignified, and undoes all that went into creating a reputation in the first place. Sir Douglas and Mr Jeffries will be most unhappy this week. Former deputy prime minister Wyatt Creech and former police minister John Luxton, too, must rue the day they agreed to serve on the Blue Chip board, even though they quit before it went under. Famous one-time All Black Sir Colin Meads surely squirmed when Provincial Finance, about which he said publicly: “Solid as, I’d say”, keeled over.

Due diligence is all important. I’ve been on a panel interviewing prospective company directors and the good ones turn the interview around and do due diligence on the company to make sure it is a company they wish to be on the board of.

The ODT remembers closing the gaps:

In 1999, the Labour Party threw into its election campaign mix the policy objective of diminishing the widening gulf between Pakeha New Zealanders and those of Maori or Pacific Island ethnicity – as evidenced in a variety of well-publicised statistics.

These included prison populations, employment figures, health outcomes, income levels, educational achievement, and intergenerational benefit dependency in all of which areas Maori and Pasifika peoples were shown to fare poorly compared to the rest of the population. It labelled the policy it would devise to address such disadvantage “Closing the Gaps”. …

In practice, it seems funds which would otherwise be distributed through a range of social services will be channelled through centralised Whanau Ora providers in an holistic approach to troubled and vulnerable families’ needs – bulk funding for social betterment.

This may erase some duplication of administration costs, but is equally likely to prove problematic in monitoring and measuring effectiveness. It is also unclear at this point just what the policy will cost.

The Herald chomps into the apple debate:

Apple-growers from China, the United States and Chile are queuing to sell their fruit in Australia.

They, especially, will be interested in New Zealand’s reported success in persuading the World Trade Organisation to overturn Australia’s long-running ban on the importing of apples from this country.

But they, too, are the reason Australia is bound to use every conceivable delaying tactic to deny the benefits of that verdict to New Zealand orchardists.

Protection of struggling Australian producers has become the only rationale for the ban in the latter years of its 90 years’ existence.

Hypocrisy for a nation which has championed free trade in agriculture.

In the process, however, Australia is besmirching its reputation as a promoter of free trade. At the moment, its trade practices are the subject of 10 complaints from other countries.

New Zealand has no such cases against it.

Yay.

The Press also takes up the cudgels on apples:

The reported World Trade Organisation decision which would allow New Zealand to export apples across the Tasman is not just a victory for our pipfruit industry. It is also a big win for New Zealand trade officials and for the cause of free trade itself. For Australia to have used spurious science to block for so long New Zealand apples was nonsensical and a complete contradiction of its otherwise strong free-trade credentials.

If Australia do not accept the ruling, once final, then NZ can apply for and get trade sanctions against Australia. That would be very damaging to the relationship, but may be necessary if Australia refuses to comply with the rules it signed up to.

The Dominion Post focuses on the Waihopai Three:

Father Murnane believes it unlikely that the Government will pursue a lawsuit against them because, he says, they don’t have much money and civil action would cost taxpayers too much.

He is right that yet more court proceedings would not be cheap. But sometimes protesters need to accept that principles can come at a cost.

Messrs Murnane, Leason and Land would surely be prepared to pay that price? If principles are worth standing up for – and they almost always are – those who hold them dear must be willing to go down to the wire to uphold them. If that means having an attachment order assigned to their income, or a lien placed against their property, to meet the cost of paying for damage to public property, so be it. And if the jury verdict was as popular as the triumvirate believes, their supporters will obviously be willing to help fund any damages awarded against them.

The solicitor-general should proceed. Taxpayers should not have to stump up the cash to fund this pointless protest.

The news their claimed poverty didn’t include half a million dollars of land, does make a civil case more appealing.

The ODT looks at competitive education

Comparisons can help human beings, a competitive species, strive to do better – whether in NCEA pass rates or scholarship numbers or in provincial education correlations.

They give schools and communities the chance for pride, often well earned, or for motivation to do better next time.

Sometimes, too, they provide opportunities for finding reasons, often valid, why performances are down the scale. Even if bald results taken at face value can be misleading, they are a part of the information mix.

Except for those who want to ban them.

The ODT alarms:

Dunedin could face some stark choices by the end of the century, with sea-level rise expected to force either the retreat from, or complete evacuation of, South Dunedin, St Kilda and St Clair.

Dunedin will just be one giant swimming pool!

A report on climate change and its effect on Dunedin includes a prediction of an upper level for sea-level rise of 1.6m by 2090.

Okay that is 1600 mm over 80 years which is an average rise of 20 mm a year.

Predicting the upper range for sea-level rise was also “problematic”, he said, with the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggesting 0.6m, but more recent research suggesting 1.6m was a more prudent prediction.

I prefer to wait for the IPCC to update their report, rather than have people cherry pick individual more alarmist pieces of research.

The IPCC report said that the likely increase in sex levels was 180 to 590 mm, which is an average rise of 1.8 to 5.9 mm a year – between one tenth and one third of what the ODT story reports.

So how likely is a sea level rise of a massive 20 mm a year?

What has been the rise so far in NZ?

Consequently, sea levels around New Zealand have risen on average 1.8 mm/year over the last 40 years with the total sea level rise over the last century of 0.17 m.

So the rise over the last 100 years has been 1.7 mm a year and last 40 years has been 1.8 mm a year. So that is 10% of the 20 mm Dunedin will be flooded scaremongering.

Now in the last 17 years, sea level rises have been greater – an average 3.1 mm a year. That is consistent with the IPCC 590 mm increase, but still a long way off the 1600 mm talked about in the ODT article.

Also one has to understand that to get an average of 20 mm a year over 80 years, you need quite massive increases in the latter section to make up for the current slower rises.

If you assume a linear increase in the average annual rise, then the amount of annual rise has to increase by 0.45 mm a year. What this means is that by 2020 the rise will be 7 mm/yr, by 2030 12 mm/yr and by 2090 it would be 39 mm/yr.

Is anyone willing to bet money that by 2020 the average sea level rise will be 7 mm/yr?

The Herald warms up on nukes:

Who would have thought even a few short years ago that the New Zealand Prime Minister would be on the guest list for the nuclear security summit hosted by the President of the United States in Washington? John Key’s presence offers further evidence that the anti-nuclear rift of the 1980s is all but mended. It may be too soon for a resumption of visits to New Zealand ports by American warships, but there is an undoubted resonance between this country’s anti-nuclear law and President Barack Obama’s long-time commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons.

Indeed. And while I doubt we will ever rid the world of nuclear weapons, I will be glad to see a lot less of them.

A constant grievance of non-nuclear nations has been that, while the non-proliferation treaty denied them the right to acquire nuclear arms, those countries with such weaponry seemed to regard its retention as their right. The importance of President Obama’s initiatives, and those of Russia, is that they illustrate a change of attitude by the pair, which possess more than 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons between them. Their move towards disarmament provides, in turn, a greater moral authority to address examples of proliferation, real and potential, whether the likes of Iran’s nuclear programme or nuclear weaponry becoming part of the arsenal of terrorists.

In this area, I think Obama’s policies have been sound, It is hard to preach restraint to the rest of the world, while not doing anything to reduce your own arsenal.

President Obama said last week that nuclear terrorism posed a graver threat than the risk of war between nuclear nations. He is undoubtedly right, and the crafting of a pact to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of groups like al Qaeda will be a focus in Washington.

Stopping Iran from developing them would be a good start to that.

The Press also talks nuclear, but ore on ships:

Passage of the nuclear-free legislation in 1987 marked New Zealand as a nation prepared to take an independent stance on the world stage.

This stand did win friends, especially in Europe, but it also came at a cost. It led to a defence freeze with the United States, including an end to US navy ship visits. But with Prime Minister John Key now attending a nuclear summit in Washington, it is inevitable that a resumption of visits should be mooted, in this case by Sir Geoffrey Palmer, an architect of the nuclear-free law.

Renewed visits by US navy vessels would be a logical step in the thawing of the defence freeze with our former ally and would not require a change to the present anti-nuclear law.

Yep. No law change needed. Of course the Greens will still protest it, but they protest almost everything about the US.

It is possible that the nuclear propulsion issue will be revisited in the future. But this is likely to be in the context of nuclear power generation, especially if other electricity sources, such as hydro and wind turbines, continue to be beset by opposition to their location, and the security of power supply is seriously threatened.

Actually nuclear power is not particularly practical for New Zealand, but I agree it should be an option. Much better than coal!

The Dominion Post focuses on Justice Wilson:

Justice,” a former lord chief justice of England said, “should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.”

Manifestly that has not been the case in the long-running, and convoluted, dispute between the former Wool Board and a group of woolgrowers that found its way to the Court of Appeal in 2007.

One of the judges who considered the case, Bill Wilson, was a close friend and business partner of Wool Board counsel Alan Galbraith, QC. Justice Wilson disclosed their shared ownership of a racehorse or racehorses to counsel for the woolgrowers and, if his recollections are accurate, their shared ownership of a horse stud. But for reasons that are now presumably costing him a great deal of sleep, he did not disclose that he owed Mr Galbraith almost $250,000. Nor did he disclose the debt to colleagues in the Supreme Court when they considered an appeal from the growers in March last year. In fact, he led the court to believe he was not beholden to Mr Galbraith in any way. …

Justice Wilson is a well-liked and well-regarded legal practitioner who has added a dose of common sense to the bench. However, in this instance his judgment has failed him completely.

By neglecting to fully inform the growers’ counsel of his links with Mr Galbraith, he has not only damaged his own reputation, but that of the highest court in the land.

The operation of the justice system relies upon public confidence in those who administer it. New Zealand is a small country. Inevitably, there will be friendships between judges and lawyers, and lawyers and lawyers. The public knows that lawyers who one day are verbally brawling in court may the next be arguing in support of each other and that, on other occasions, they may be observed enjoying each other’s company in social settings.

That is reasonable. Members of the legal profession are not expected to carry professional enmities over to private life and judges are not expected to sever all personal ties on being elevated to the bench. However, for public trust in the system to be maintained, all conflicts and potential conflicts of interest have to be properly disclosed.

And that lack of disclosure, especially to his Supreme Court colleagues, may extract a heavy price.

But such processes take time. In the meantime, the reputation of the judiciary is being compromised.

At the very least Justice Wilson should have stepped aside from his duties, when the case was referred to the judicial commissioner. When he did not do so, Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias should have stood him down.

I disagree. A mere investigation by the JCC should not require a Judge to stand down. However if the JCC recommends a complaints panel be established, then a stand down would be appropriate.

And the ODT also talks nuclear:

A year ago, President Obama announced his plans for a world without nuclear weapons, expressing a hope rather than any rational expectation, but nevertheless a plea for disarmament that was widely welcomed.

This week he signed the “New Start” treaty with Russia, under which both powers will reduce their nuclear arsenals, while still deploying 1550 warheads each. …

Perhaps the true significance of these measures is to compare the situation with that which existed before 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed: at that time each side deployed more than 20,000 strategic warheads.

I remember those days well. At school we saw films about nuclear war, and around half of my generation though a global nuclear war was likely in our life time.

The collapse of the Soviet Empire was a wonderful thing.

The Herald looks at the UK elections:

Thirteen years of Labour Party rule in Britain has taken its toll. Indisputably, a desire for change is in the air. Yet the outcome of a general election on May 6 is by no means certain. Doubts linger about the capability and substance of the Conservative Party’s 43-year-old leader, David Cameron. Polls show that voters rate the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, more highly on almost all leadership measures. They also suggest that a likely election outcome is that most unwelcome of circumstances, a hung Parliament.

Which is not a big thing in NZ< but still a rare event in the UK.

The Conservatives, however, have been unable to make the most of this most propitious of opportunities. In part, this is because they, like Labour, have been tarred by the ongoing scandal over fraudulent and inflated expenses claims that has encompassed members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The beneficiaries have been minor parties, most notably the Liberal Democrats, led by Nick Clegg. They look most likely to play the kingmaker role in forming the next government if there is a hung Parliament. Part of the price for their support would undoubtedly be moves to terminate the first-past-the-post electoral system in favour of one based on proportional representation.

I believe the Conservatives would look in the first instance to Scottish, Irish and Welsh parties before the Lib Dems.

The Dom Post is cautious on Whanua Ora:

It is hard to be critical of the detail of the Whanau Ora policy. That’s because there is precious little of it, and that is why the scheme should be treated with scepticism.

It is easy to see why the scheme has a superficial appeal. The old saying “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” does not apply to welfare, especially when it comes to Maori. The current system clearly is broken, with a plethora of agencies, a voracious appetite for cash and little sign that it is doing anything to provide long-term cures rather than temporary Band-Aids. Adopting an approach where the needs of the whole family are looked at together makes sense.

However, it is not the concept but the detail which will determine whether Whanau Ora is a success. That detail must focus on accountability and transparency, and on ensuring that Whanau Ora does not become an expensive add-on.

I agree.

The ODT discusses the Catholic Church and child abuse:

It is regrettable that Pope Benedict XVI made no reference in his Easter homily to the sex-abuse scandal that has globally for several decades beset the Roman Catholic Church, for which throughout that period the heirachy has strenuously concealed details from the knowledge of the police, let alone its faithful adherents.

There had existed a reasonable expectation the Pope would make some comment – even apologise for the church’s incompatible behaviour or at least accept personal responsibility as head of the church- but none was forthcoming. …

At Easter, his personal preacher likened the criticism to the “more shameful aspects of antisemitism” – a ludicrous claim for which he later apologised; and the dean of the College of Cardinals asserted that the controversy amounted to petty gossip; others have suggested or implied the whole business is a media “beat-up”, a charge so removed from the truth as to be delusion: it was in fact the print media that exposed the hideous crimes of the past 20 years.

More acceptable might be a public instruction to all bishops to refer allegations of abuse to the secular authorities, such as the police, as soon as they are made.

That would be a very good policy. The Police are the competent authorities to deal with such allegations.

The Herald welcomes the legal aid changes:

Criminal defence lawyers have escaped remarkably unscathed by the damning report they received from a ministerial inquiry into legal aid last year. Decisions announced by the Justice Minister, Simon Power, this week will impose requirements on publicly financed lawyers that are no more than reasonable and long overdue. …

It will be interesting to see how well a full-fledged Public Defender Service competes with the car-boot brigade. Mr Power has been advised that the costs of setting up the service can be recovered in lower operating costs. It is hard to believe lawyers working in public service conditions can match the efficiencies of those who work with low overheads and greater mobility, but we may see.

The difference may be in the remuneration lawyers at the PDS get, compared to the income a car boot lawyer can make from legal aid.

The Press is concerned over the proposed Fijian media controls:

The freedom of the media clearly remains a totally alien and undesirable concept for Fiji’s self-appointed leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama. …

The decree, to be enforced by a media authority appointed by the regime, would provide for fines of NZ$344,000 for news organisations that failed to comply with it.

Individual journalists whose work was deemed to be critical of Bainimarama’s regime would face fines of up to NZ$69,000, which would be crippling in Fiji, and a possible five-year prison term. To ensure the authorities knew who had written a story, it would also be an offence not to identify the journalist concerned.

And

The regime claims its decree is intended to encourage responsible journalism, but nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, it aims to ensure the news media cannot perform its democratic role of holding Bainimarama’s unsavoury government to account and promoting free and frank debate on issues of public interest.

Absolutely. I want to believe that the Commodore has a plan to put in place a non race based constitution, and return to democratic elections in 2014. But his actions point towards an ongoing dictatorship.

The Dom Post focuses on the Princess Ashika ferry tragedy:

The report of the Tongan royal commission of inquiry into the sinking of the ferry Princess Ashika has laid bare a system of government as riddled with flaws as the ship was with rust – and just as dangerous. …

However, it is up to the king to deal with the systemic ones that allowed people such as Lord Dalgety QC (the title is Tongan), now resigned transport minister Paul Karalus and Prime Minister Feleti Sevele into pivotal roles in his kingdom. The report notes that Lord Dalgety, the Shipping Corporation of Polynesia company secretary, “clearly lacks integrity and honesty, even when giving evidence before a royal commission” and that “he was not a fit and proper person to be a company secretary of any company in Tonga”.

I have some friends who have lived in Tonga. They alerted me to the vileness of Lord Dalgety some time ago, and what I have seen of him on television reinforces their view that he is a deeply corrupt and racist individual. His arrest was a very good thing. While I don’t condone Wikipedia vandalism, I did have to laugh at the edit done to his Wikipedia profile which said:

On February 26 Lord Dalgety, the Secretary of the Shipping Corporation of Polynesia Ltd, gained an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s lowest form of life

Back to the editorial:

What must not be forgotten in all this is that 74 people drowned. No women or children survived. The impact in a country the size of Tonga is, as commentator Josephine Latu has pointed out, the equivalent of 3200 New Zealanders dying. The Princess Ashika tragedy was a scandal that cannot be repeated.

Absolutely. And may the tragedy bring about some democratic reform.

The ODT talks foreshore & seabed:

Just let us pause for a moment: if the legal status of the foreshore and seabed is to be “public domain”, then who owns it, and therefore can claim the rights and benefits of ownership?

Will Maori?

Will Mr and Mrs Joe Bloggs?

Will the Crown – the obvious choice?

On the basis of the options paper published by the Government last week, in which “public domain” is the Government’s preferred choice, the issue of ownership most likely will be determined in the long term by the courts, piece by piece, over time.

Well yes courts do determine rights. The ODT editorial writer (whom I suspect is the former Labour Government Press Secretary) presumably prefers the status quo where the right to test your rights in court was extinguished.

The Herald calls for transparency over MPs legal expenses:

Taxpayers have a right to know how their dollars are being spent. That includes the allowances paid to the country’s parliamentarians for accommodation or travel, as some MPs have learned to their discomfort over the past year or so. It should also include the use of public money to cover legal costs when parliamentarians are sued. …

Clearly, there are occasions when it is legitimate for MPs’ legal bills to be paid with public money. Parliamentarians should act vigorously on behalf of their constituents. …

Yet but for the publication of documents by the New Zealand Herald and an admission by Dr Smith of the use of some public funding, taxpayers would have been none the wiser about either of the requests for reimbursement or their granting or denial.

The Prime Minister, John Key, said yesterday that taxpayers were entitled to know that money from the public kitty was being used for MPs’ legal costs, and that he would be open to such information being made public. That is a refreshing outlook, and one that indicates Mr Key is fully aware of the harsh spotlight on MPs’ expenses and allowances, both here and in Britain.

As I blogged, I’d include it in the six monthly expense reports.

The Dominion Post also wants more transparency, but around a health spending scandal:

Unacceptable. There is no other word for the situation that police claim has developed with Waikanae’s Te Runanga O Te Ati Awa Ki Whakarongotai, its health-provider arm Hora Te Pai and Capital & Coast District Health Board.

Stripped to its essentials, the police allege that money that was meant to be spent improving health has been siphoned off into other areas.

Regardless of the final outcome of the police inquiries, that is no way to manage $590,000 of taxpayers’ money. It is public money, and the handling of it should be transparent, with the details of where it is or what it has been spent on readily available.

I agree. Phil Kitchin does an invaluable job in expsoing their spending scandals. But we should not have to rely on him.

As I have said previously, I’d do what some US states do and have the entire cheque register for the Government put online. People could then file OIAs about spending that looks dodgy.

The Press says the dam decision is a close call:

The benefits from building a hydro dam on the Mokihinui River, north of Westport, are obvious.

It would, by using a resource that on the West Coast is endlessly renewable, give the region enough electricity to power 45,000 homes.

The dam would not only supply most of the region’s electricity needs in an undeniably carbon-zero way, it would also end the reliance on a long and vulnerable transmission line that brings the area’s present power supply from the Waitaki. Supply would not only be more secure, it would be more efficient and West Coast electricity prices, at present some of the highest in the country, would be lower.

Which is why many locals support it.

The proposal would require a 85-metre high, 300m wide dam across the river that would create a narrow, 14 kilometre long lake covering 340 hectares. Meridian says that the impact would be minor and it has made a considerable effort to make sure they are kept to a minimum. No endangered species are threatened, it says. In addition, the resource consents Meridian has received have more than 200 conditions attached to them to further reduce the impact. Nonetheless, according to the objectors, a precious, irreplaceable part of the landscape will be irretrievably changed. …

But the country cannot afford to have decisions like this one made on emotion and sentiment. Electricity demand is growing by 2 per cent a year, equivalent to the needs of a city the size of Dunedin. The two-to-one vote on this scheme shows that the commissioners’ approval was not easily arrived at but it was made, as it must be under the Resource Management Act, after rigorously detached consideration of all the arguments. In this case the commissioners decided the development’s impact on the environment are not bad enough to block the project.

I’ve blogged on this separately also.

And the ODT looks at Easter trading:

Parliament, as it so often does, tried to design a horse with its legislative provisions controlling private enterprise during Easter, and instead produced a camel.

A particulary stupid camel, that has a limp.

There is nothing about the regulations that can in 2010 be considered just and necessary, let alone reflective of contemporary society.

The creation of geographic exemptions to trading on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, meaning some places can open their doors while others must close – backed by farcically small penalties – is simply unjustly partial. …

The Muldoon National government passed the legislation in 1980 which provided for shops to be open on Saturdays, and also broadened the range of heavily restricted goods able to be sold on Sundays.

The world did not come to a halt as a result; indeed, apart from the predictable complaints from the unions, the public in general welcomed the measure, which also signalled the decade’s major social change – the end of the five-day, 40-hour working week.

And one day when we have sensible laws around Easter, we will look back with bemusement over how long it took us to do it.

It is time for the matter to be settled and the only way that will happen is to abandon the so-called “personal vote” in Parliament and achieve suitable legislation by way of a Government Bill.

Whether John Key’s administration has the fortitude to do so, or is prepared to risk the undoubted wrath of church and union, is arguable: Mr Key agrees the present regulations are a shambles and would like them to be liberalised, and he has voted accordingly in the past.

It is time for a national solution: declaring Easter Sunday to be a public holiday would protect workers’ wage levels, and sending a Bill to a select committee would ensure public opinion – more accurately reflecting the times in which we live rather than electorate pressure on individual MPs – could be canvassed.

I’m a big supporter of change, and have myself mooted a trade off of making all of Easter public holidays in exchange for removign the trading restrictions.

But I am reluctant to have this become a party whipped issue. I think MPs should have freedom of choice on this.

Having said that, I note that Labour have almost adoped a party line on the issue, so maybe in time National will also.

The Herald weighs up large trucks on roads:

According to the Ministry of Transport, trucks carrying heavier loads on our roads “will help to improve road safety, while reducing road congestion, operating costs and vehicle emissions”.

The statement is a highly contrary one to critics of the move, who foresee only an increased threat to safety. They are apt to point out that trucks are involved in 16 per cent of all road fatalities despite comprising only 4 per cent of the vehicle fleet.

The MOT rationale is I presume that it is safer to have a fewer number of heavier trucks on the road, than a larger number of lighter trucks.

Allowing trucks to carry loads of up to 53 tonnes – an increase from the present limit of 44 tonnes – from next month can only, they say, make matters worse.

Basic physics supports their view. Heavier trucks will take longer to stop, thereby creating heightened danger for any motorist caught in their path.

That individual truck may be more dangerous, but it does not mean the trucking fleet as a whole will be more dangerous.

But physics are not uppermost in the ministry’s mind when it talks of safety. It hangs its hat on the productivity equation – that a given amount of freight will be carried on fewer trucks.

Safer roads, it says, will be the product of an estimated 20 per cent decrease in the number of trips by trucks, as will be an increase of productivity of between 10 and 20 per cent.

I’d rather have fewer trucks on the road, even if they are heavier.

The Dom Post looks at Auckland Mayors today:

Aucklanders sometimes wonder why the rest of the country rolls its eyes when contemplating shenanigans in the City of Sails.

Sunday newspaper reports about the behaviour of North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams illustrate why. He has been accused of public drunkenness, urinating in a public place and driving the mayoral car after he had been drinking one night. …

The mayor has built for himself a reputation of volatility and irascibility, particularly when his will is crossed. Still, he won’t be North Shore mayor after October.

I suspect many North Shore residents are counting down the days.

Mr Williams says he will run for the super-city but won’t say if he’ll contest the mayoralty – probably the second-most-important political position in the country. If he does, he is unlikely to win. New Zealand might love its iconoclasts, but this job is too important to entrust to someone of his ilk.

Little risk there I would say.

The Press calls for Easter trading reform:

If there is one area of the law which is crying out for a thorough re-examination it is the Easter shop trading restrictions.

Once again over the past long weekend Labour Department inspectors were out and about, attempting to enforce a hotchpotch trading regime which is riddled with inconsistencies. …

Then there is the view that with liberal retailing hours at other times of the year it is not too much to reserve Good Friday and Easter Sunday as, generally, shopping-free days, along with Christmas Day and Anzac Day before 1pm.

Yet loosening the restrictions on Easter Sunday or even Good Friday would not compel New Zealanders to head to the cash register. Those who choose, instead, to spend time with family could still do so.

Provided there are safeguards to ensure that reluctant employees could not be coerced into working, then it is high time that the traditional justifications for trading restrictions be scrutinised to determine whether they remain relevant.

Absoultely. And once the change had been made, everyone will wonder why we didn’t do it years ago – just like weekend shopping.

The ODT focuses on the military:

While the air force’s lack of strike-force capability remains a joke, significant expense and effort has gone towards better equipping the navy and army – only for poor judgements and decision-making to undermine much of the progress. …

HMNZS Canterbury, the multi-role ship in this little fleet, had so many defects that manufacturer BAE Systems paid the Government $84.6 million to repair them.

A scathing independent review last year said the ship’s poor performance in high seas would now just have to be accepted. …

How disappointing that one of the army’s latest purchases did its best to outdo the worst of the navy’s larks.

The army spent $590,000 on bullets that were unfit for use in the army’s guns, and had to resell the ammunition for $350,000.

Not to be outdone in magnitude of waste, the army’s light operational vehicles were 63 months late, cost $37 million more than planned and had a string of difficulties.

Now the Government is looking at selling 35 of the 105 because it believes too many were bought.

It was obvious from the beginning we have too many LAVs.

My personal view is that without a strike capability, there is no reason to maintain the RNZAF as a separate service, and our remaining planes and choppers should be integrated into the Army and Navy.

The Herald calls for aligning of top tax rates:

It will lower the top rate of income tax from 38 per cent to perhaps 33 per cent, which would leave it still significantly higher than the company rate of 30 per cent.

Aligning those rates should be a primary aim of tax reform. The top income and company rates should be the same for reasons of social equity and economic efficiency.

It is neither fair nor useful to the economy that taxpayers on the same incomes should pay different rates because one puts some costs through a company and the other does not.

Arguably it is more important to align the trust rate and the personal rate.

I think we should aim to align all three, but a 3% difference between company and personal is not huge, considering company tax is inputted.

The rates were aligned for a long time after the 1980s reforms when incentives for tax avoidance were taken out of the system.

The incentives were restored by Helen Clark’s Government as a byproduct of its determination to “tax the rich”.

It introduced a new top income rate of 39 per cent in its first year of office, 2000, and tax-avoidance opportunities returned.

Chief among them are the use of trust funds and personal investment entities that carry a lower tax rate, 33 per cent.

Yeah, that unnecessary tax increase has been a boon for the avoidance industry. Remember 50 of the 100 richest NZers do not even pay it.

The Government expects to be borrowing $240 million a week for the next four years. Tax cuts must be balanced by spending cuts if the red ink is not to get worse.

The economy would gain as much strength from a balanced Budget as it would from competitive company tax rates.

Whatever decision the Government makes on the alignment of income and company rates it should be guided by the implications for its revenue. But if it can afford to align those rates it should do so.

Alignment is tidy, simple and fairer for everybody.

Can’t disagree with that.

The Dom Post welcomes open justice:

Justice Warwick Gendall, presiding in the High Court at Whangarei, was upholding the concept of “open justice” in another way. He said talented Blues rugby player Rene Ranger had no more right to anonymity than anyone else charged with assault. The charge of injuring with intent to injure dates from October, when Ranger appeared in Warkworth District Court after an incident outside a Mangawhai pub. He was given name suppression at the time, after his counsel argued that naming him might end his contract with the New Zealand Rugby Union. Poor lamb.

Justice Gendall was having none of such nonsense and reversed the order.

It is cheering when judges remember that they work in public courts, on behalf of people who have not only entrusted them with dispensing justice fairly and impartially, but who also must fund much of what goes on within their courtrooms. Open justice needs to prevail as often as possible; the circumstances in which secrecy supplants it should be rare indeed. …

The shape of Mr Power’s bill, therefore, will be interesting. It will, this newspaper hopes, make it much harder for the wealthy, the well-known, and those who can engage a judge’s sympathy to hide from public scrutiny. It is a basic tenet of our justice system that everyone be equal before the law.

Again, I agree.

The Press focuses on rampaging crime:

New Zealanders will be disturbed that crime is continuing to grow at an alarming rate. They have become used to statistics that show increases, but not to the sort of large jump recorded in Wednesday’s figures.

That surprise will be the greater because of the tougher measures implemented by John Key’s Government and touted as a means of reducing wrongdoing.

The Government’s defence – that its measures have not been in effect long enough to impact on crime – is reasonable to a degree. But the trumpeting of its tough measures must have sunk into the awareness of most citizens, criminal and law-abiding, and should already be showing a beneficial result if it is the right approach.

The problem for the Government is that it will be able to use the excuse – that its measures need to be given time to work – only once. If the crime statistics continue to grow in the next 12 months, the Government will have to find a more convincing reason to account for the apparent failure of its policies.

Another increase of this magnitude for violent crime would be a problem.

The ODT discusses the case of the Norweians who hunted protected Kereu:

Most New Zealanders would have been horrified to learn of the incident involving Norwegian tourists who posted on the internet images of shooting at a fully protected native wood pigeon (kereru), the bird falling from a tree, and film of one of the tourists holding two dead birds.

Though heavily dependent on tourism, the country does not need or want visitors such as these, but there appears to be no existing mechanism within the prosecution regime whereby they can be banned from returning.

Yet if the perpetrators were to be charged and convicted under Norwegian law, the punishment would be far more in keeping with the crime – up to six years’ jail for having wilfully or through gross negligence reduced a natural population of protected wildlife in Norway or overseas.

It is ironic that they face greater punishment in Norway for what they did in NZ, than what they could face if they were still here.

The Herald focuses on the SFO:

Helen Clark’s Government threatened to abolish the SFO and merge its functions with a police unit.

Having survived that, the SFO is now facing a renewed barrage of criticism and an overhaul that seems likely to comprehensively change its mode of operation.

Judith Collins, the Minister Responsible for the SFO, has talked of rebuilding “its capabilities after years of political neglect”. …

The upshot appears to be that five senior staff with more than 70 years of fraud investigation experience among them, including Gib Beattie, the present assistant director, are unlikely to reapply for new roles.

All have been involved in high-profile cases, including, most recently, that of ASB Bank fraudster Stephen Versalko. If they depart, the SFO will lose a huge fund of institutional knowledge.

It will surely face a greater struggle to combine with other regulators to ensure the “speedier, united response to cases of suspected fraud” demanded by Ms Collins.

Too much of the criticism of the SFO has been over the top. It should not be the whipping boy for the finance-company debacle and nor should it be restructured in such a way that valuable experience is driven away.

If a wiser approach is not adopted, white-collar criminals will be the only winners.

In the end, the SFO will be judged on its results.

The Press calls for goodwill on the foreshore & seabed issue:

In recent New Zealand political and social history, few issues have been as divisive as the foreshore and seabed. This controversial debate was triggered by the Court of Appeal ruling in the 2003 Ngati Apa legal action, which suggested that in some narrow cases iwi might be able to convert customary title into freehold title.

For the then-Labour Government, this raised the spectre that Maori could end up controlling sections of the coastline and limiting public access. Labour over-reacted by passing legislation that placed the foreshore and seabed in Crown ownership, albeit with a process for recognising customary rights, and this triggered the formation of the Maori Party.

Now, National has offered an olive branch to iwi and the Maori Party. It is, inevitably, a compromise solution but, with goodwill on all sides, it does have the potential to heal the lingering sore that has been the foreshore and seabed issue.

People should not be surprised that most Iwi will say they want more, than what is in the proposed solution. To some degrees, this is like any other commercial negotiation. You never have one party say “Oh well actually I think we have enough money/resource, so we won’t try and get any more”. Of course you do.

But this tension is not the only reason why the Maori Party has been circumspect in its reaction to National’s foreshore and seabed proposal. Maori leaders will want to be seen as pushing for the maximum concessions possible.

The party will be acutely conscious that within its ranks are those who would agree with its MP Hone Harawira’s view that Maori should have full ownership, rather than just customary title.

And that is a view some may have. But that is not what the Court of Appeal ruled. In fact, it is a million miles from what the Court of Appeal said.

But this would be totally unacceptable to National, and Prime Minister John Key has delivered a blunt warning that if he cannot forge a consensus around his party’s proposal, then the status quo will prevail.

Given that the Maori Party was originally formed to get rid of the hated foreshore and seabed legislation, the chance to achieve this and to get customary title through the courts is one which, while not ideal for all iwi, should still be firmly grasped.

And so far, there does seem to be goodwill.

The Dominion Post looks at Labour’s plans for Wellington City Council:

The Labour Party has announced it will relaunch itself into local body politics, and put up a slate of council candidates as well as, perhaps, someone for mayor.

So Labour want to take over the Council. I’m tempted to joke that at least it makes it easy to know who not to vote for, but in fact I don’t vote purely on ideological lines for local bodies. I regard (for example) that Ray Ahipene-Mercer does a good job as a Councillor, and he is left of centre. Celia Stephanie Cook also does a reasonable job, and she is Green.

Does Wellington want local body politics to return to tribal affiliations? Would that be good for the city?

The answer is “maybe”. Having a stance thrashed out at caucus meetings – which MPs hold regularly – before council meetings might mean that the fractious debate that so marks Wellington City Council disappears. Arguments would happen within the caucus instead.

That might improve the council’s public reputation.

On the other hand, councillors who represent a political party would be subject to the party whip – that is, be forced to toe the party line – or risk being dropped from the party ticket at the next election.

The same might be true, of course, of those who rely on Sir Robert’s patronage when or if they stand in October.

Party politics have their place. That might be around a council table. But cleaving to rigid ideologies is no substitute for considered thought, which is what ratepayers vote councillors into office to provide – especially when Wellington’s future is at stake in a post-Auckland super-city environment.

The over-riding concern of any councillor must surely be what is best for the city they have the honour to represent.

That is not possible for Labour Councillors. I agree a ticket can sometimes be of value, to get a coherent agenda through. But tickets are best as groupings of like minded people, but not as a party that bans Councillors from voting against the majority.

Labour has specific rules on local body elections.

• Rule 87 bans party members from standing as Independents if Labour contests the election
• Rule 91 requires candidates to sign a pledge that they will vote in line with the Caucus for that local body

So be aware, if you vote for a Labour candidate, you are voting for candidates who are forbidden freedom of opinion on any issue that comes before Council.

The ODT focuses on land in Africa and New Zealand:

During the past two or three years, as many as 20 million hectares of African land, an area equivalent to all the arable farming land in France and worth about $US20 billion-$US30 billion, have been acquired by countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and China.

These vast tracts have been either bought or leased to grow staple crops, or biofuels, which are then repatriated, says a 2009 Economist magazine article. …

It is partly against this background that attempts to buy up large parcels of New Zealand land should be considered.

The latest such move came to light on Wednesday when it was reported that a company, Southern Pastures, registered in Auckland, is seeking $500 million from local and offshore investors either to buy outright or controlling shares in farming concerns thoughout the southern hemisphere, but with a bias towards New Zealand. …

Leadership is required, and care needed, to devise policy on how New Zealand will play its part in the food supply chain over the next several decades.

On the one hand, the country requires inward investment to develop further aspects of food production infrastructure; on the other, once the land is gone, it is gone forever.

Measurable gains from such sales will need to be demonstrably substantial and long-lasting before they can be permitted.

If we ban Chinese firms from investing in NZ farms, then we can’t complain if China bans Fonterra from investing in Chinese dairy operations.