Kiwiblog

The NZ Herald focuses on the departure of Vanda Vitali:

The trust board was also keen to see the museum throw off austerity and become part of an international trend typified by Te Papa. Part of this was a restructuring that left 46 personnel, many of them senior staff, without jobs.

Amid accusations that this meant core museum displays were being downgraded, the board backed Dr Vitali to the hilt for most of her tenure. Its support began to waver late last year, however, after a series of public relations disasters.

It is questionable who should bear the responsibility for these. Did the board, having appointed Dr Vitali and provided a mandate, fail to give sufficient direction and guidance?

Did it not recognise sufficiently that, as a Canadian, she was operating in an unfamiliar cultural context? Or did the director, like many set on instituting change, not see finesse and heedfulness as part of her job description? …

It must not become fusty and tradition-bound. Dr Vitali’s achievement can be measured by comments lamenting her resignation.

One of the more notable came from Naida Glavish, of the Ngati Whatua Runanga, who said she had brought the museum “back to life”. An initial reservation about Dr Vitali was her sensitivity to the Maori and Pacific exhibitions.

Museums are always seeking a balance. In Auckland’s case, that involves using flair and imagination to attract local people, while also catering for overseas tourists’ major interest, the Polynesian treasures.

Dr Vitali wrought major change in a short time. With a little finesse, the correct balance can be struck.

Is Te Papa still looking for a CEO?

The Dominion Post is unhappy with Israel:

The timing of Israel’s announcement of a new 1600-house Jewish development in East Jerusalem was the equivalent of a one-fingered salute to the United States and to the peace process.

It demonstrates a contempt for the Obama Administration so withering that it diminishes the American ability to broker any deal. The administration had last year demanded a freeze on Jewish settlements, but eventually got only a partial, temporary halt – except in Jerusalem.

Why should the Palestinians pay any heed to what Washington wants, when the Israelis clearly don’t? It will also raise questions even among those sympathetic to Israel whether its current leadership has any intention of reaching a negotiated settlement.

I am a friend and supporter of Israel, but on this issue I agree they are wrong. They really should stop building new settlements. It makes the job of achieving a peace agreement a lot lot harder, for little gain.

The Press focuses on bad driving:

It is the common complaint of many New Zealand motorists. Truck drivers hog the road and, being oblivious to other road users, are responsible for accidents and near misses, both in urban areas and on the open road.

Those who subscribe to this jaundiced view should be taking a hard look at the video footage on The Press’s website. This footage, which was taken from cameras mounted in Canterbury Waste Services (CWS) trucks and which has created great public interest, has graphic images of other road users behaving recklessly and illegally.

It includes video images of one car overtaking a truck and forcing oncoming traffic to take evasive action. Other footage shows motorists not stopping at red lights or compulsory stop signs, failing to adhere to the give-way rule at other intersections, adopting some appalling driving techniques at roundabouts, and skidding due to a failure to drive to the conditions.

Luckily Wellington drivers are better than that

The ODT looks at child abuse in the Catholic Church:

It is hard to believe the senior ranks of the Roman Catholic Church, increasingly under siege in Fortress Vatican, have any real appreciation of the extent of the calamity facing them.

For if they did, surely they, and Pope Benedict XVI, would be cutting a radically different course from that now being offered to a confused, disappointed and sometimes angry congregation.

Prominent among the strategies it has adopted in the face of what is beginning to seem like a perfect storm of recent revelations – of sexual abuse cases and “cover-ups” in Brazil, the United States, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Germany and, periodically, in this country and Australia – has been the time-honoured tactic of attacking the messenger. …

It just reminds me of the South Park episode where a priest calls on the gathered Cardinals to stop priests having sex with little boys, and the response back is that as they can’t have sex with women, if they stop having sex with little boys, then they’ll get to have no sex at all!

Abstinence is not natural in my opinion!

The Herald calls for PPPs to hasten infrastructure projects:

Finance Minister Bill English calls his National Infrastructure Plan an important step towards better infrastructure management. “Even a small improvement in this area could reap gains worth billions – making our infrastructure dollars go further and ensuring a better return for taxpayers,” he says.

The multibillion-dollar sums sprinkled throughout the plan leave no doubt about the size of the commitment. Equally, the OECD’s view that investment in infrastructure, especially transport and communications, boosts long-term economic output more than other kinds of physical investment emphasises this is a road that must be travelled.

The Government, like its predecessor, does not seem sold on fixing this by adopting the bold option of build, own, operate, transfer (Boot) schemes, even though they have been widely used in Australia. The plan is not specific, talking only of PPPs expanding “the scope for innovation in design, construction and management of new assets”.

But it also pays attention to their potential downsides. These include the “reduced flexibility due to the long-term nature of the contract, and the cost that arises from unanticipated contract variations”. The latter can, of course, be mitigated by precise framing, so the private partner is in no doubt about the risk to itself.

Far more emphasis should have been placed on the advantages of PPPs at a time when, despite the squeeze on its finances, the Government is eyeing spending $8 billion to $9.6 billion on designated roads of national significance over the next decade. These pluses include not only the reduced cost to the Crown but the economic value of private investment decisions if they have to carry a fair share of the risk.

Transmission Gully would be a fine candidate for a PPP.

The Dom Post looks at waterfront democracy:

Democracy can be a messy, expensive and lengthy business, as Wellington City Council is finding as it tries to push ahead with its plans for the waterfront. It also provides the best chance of the public ending up with with something it finds acceptable.

Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast’s sense of frustration at the appeals against Variation 11 is palpable. In broad terms, Waterfront Watch and the Historic Places Trust believe the variation, which allows buildings under certain heights to go ahead on part of the waterfront without any public consultation, is not stringent enough, and will mean the loss of transparency in the process. Queens Wharf Holdings, on the other hand, believes the proposed restrictions are too stringent. …

Ms Prendergast hopes a solution can be found through mediation. That, based on past experience, is unlikely. The dispute over the proper role for the waterfront has dragged on too long and the positions are too entrenched to hope with any sense of realism for a negotiated settlement. Instead, it seems inevitable that both sides will remain in their trenches, lobbing legal grenades at each other. That is not ideal, but it is the price paid for having a democracy where everyone can have their say and test their case.

It’s ridicolous that after almost two decades we still have no agreed upon plan implemented for the waterfront.

The Press looks at the proposed driving changes:

Despite clear evidence that younger drivers are over-represented in crash statistics, successive governments had for too long placed the controversial issue of the driving age in the too-hard basket.

Finally the present administration has decided to act by accepting the recommendation in the Safer Journeys discussion document to raise the age to 16. And, in another welcome move, the Government has announced that there will be a zero-alcohol limit for drivers under 20. …

And the ODT also looks at the driving changes:

Fifteen is too young to be out and about on the road in cars.

Once, of course, cars in this country were a relatively expensive commodity, owned only after years of hard work and saving.

It might be surmised that a degree of maturity and good sense would have been inculcated in the individual in that time.

There were no cheap Japanese imports, the banks operated under much stricter lending criteria, and there were no such entities as finance companies as might be recognised today; certainly none especially designed to propel young men and women, barely past puberty, into the ownership of fast cars.

There is a table of probable first actions for the Government’s Safer Journeys Strategy. They are:

Raise driving age to 16.

I support this one, as I have always seen it as linked to the school leaving age.

Make the restricted licence test more difficult to encourage 120 hours of supervised driving practice.

More supervision before you drive solo sounds good to me. However 120 hours may be a bit too high. That means a (probable) parent spending two hours a day week supervising their kid for 60 weeks.

Introduce a zero drink-drive limit for drivers under 20.

I do support this one, and not just because I am over 20. I think it will be beneficial to have a clear message saying if you are under 20 you should never drive if you have been drinking alcohol. The crash statistics show too many young people don’t know when to stop, so a zero limit makes it easier for friends to intervene also.

Investigate vehicle power restrictions for young drivers.

Not so sure about this, but will be interested to see the research.

Address repeat offenders and high level offending through Compulsory alcohol interlocks and a zero drink-drive limit for offenders.

I prefer solutions that target the problem, and don’t hassle or criminalise the vast majority who are not causing a problem, so supportive of these measures for repeat offenders.

Either, lower the drink-drive limit to BAC 0.05 and introduce infringement penalties for offences between 0.05 and 0.08
Or
Establish the level of risk posed by drivers with a BAC between 0.05 – 0.08.

I remain quite opposed to the first option, even though I note they are talking infringement not criminal penalties. Quite simply the 2007 crash statistics show just two drivers killed in car crashes had blood alcohol limits in the .05 to .08 range. I’ve seen some media reports suggesting 20 to 30 lives a year could be saved by such a change.  This is propaganda.

The second looks like a we’ll do it later version of the first option, but one can hope there is an open mind on the issue.  I certainly would like to see some good research on the risk posed by adults with a BAC of 0.05 to 0.08, but also on the prevalence of adults who drive at that level so one can have an idea of how many people a change may affect, and what the benefits will be.

Develop a classification system for the roading network

That would be useful to know which roads are safest and least safe.

Change the give way rules for turning traffic.

This will be a major change, but I think it is overdue.

In an ideal world we would also change to driving on the right hand side of the road, so tourists who come here don’t pose such a danger, and vice-versa for NZers overseas. However the transition costs would be immense.

Stuff reports:

Police are amazed no-one was killed when a car left the road at Rangitata, cleared a creek, rolled eight times, hit a tree and landed on its wheels.

I always wonder how much of our lower road toll is due to advances in car safety, rather than safer driving.

Rural Women New Zealand have alerted me to the strange cast of the Road Safety Trust – an organisation funded by a crown monopoly that declined every grant application it received this year.

This quango is funded out of the sale of personalised plates. According to the 2007/08 annual report it made a $2.2 million  surplus that year. They budgeted $2.33 million of grants and paid out just $150,000. And this year they have approved none it seems.

Radio NZ reports:

The independent trust is funded by a portion of profits from the sale of personalised plates and one of its aims is to hand out money for community safety initiatives.

The trust has been spending money on its own national campaign to reduce driver distraction and has rejected 14 applications from community groups for the year to June because they did not meet its criteria.

Among those rejected were the organisations Rural Women and Safekids.

Rural Women asked for money to create signs to remind drivers of the speed limit when passing school buses.

So we have this quango deciding to fund its own campaigns (which seem to mirror existing NZTA campaigns) and declining every community group’s application as not being innovative enough.

The campaign to remind drivers to slow down passing school buses seems very laudable. According to Rural Women NZ a pilot on SH58 has seen an average speed drop from 90 – 100 km/hr to 20 – 40 km/hr.

The Minister has said he will look into the trust. I think that would be an excellent idea. They are privileged to receive money from a state monopoly – personalised plates. And the purpose of the funding is not to empire build with massive reserves, or running solely their own advertising campaigns. If your criteria are so restrictive that not a single group can manage to qualify, that suggests there is a problem.

UPDATE: A reader has located where some of the money goes. The Road Safety Trust is an “Official Partner of both the Air New Zealand Cup Referees and Heartland Championship Referees for the 2009 season”.

That’s much better than getting cars to slow down for school buses!

UPDATE2:

Now I understand what they mean by restricting funding to innovative campaigns. Because no one has ever thought that you can reduce the road toll by sticking a meaningless slogan on a rugby referee’s shirt, they decided to innovate and try that to see what happens.

While billboards telling people to slow down for school buses doesn’t meet that all important innovation criteria.

This is from South Korea but could happen here:

A woman in South Korea who tried to pass the written exam for a driver’s licence with near-daily attempts since April 2005, has finally succeeded on her 950th try.

The aspiring driver spent more than 5 million won (NZ$5836) in application fees, but until now had failed to score the minimum 60 out of a possible 100 points needed to get behind the wheel for a driving test.

Cha Sa-soon, 68, finally passed the written exam with a score of 60 last week, said Choi Young-chul, a police official at the drivers’ licence agency in Jeonju, 210km south of Seoul.

Police said Cha took the test hundreds of times, but had no specific total. Local media said she took the test 950 times.

Now she must pass a driving test before getting her licence, Choi said.

I’ve always wondered why we have a system that says you are a fit driver for life, if say 30 years ago you managed to pass an exam on your tenth go.

If the Government really wanted to make a difference to road safety, they should force motorists to resit their driving licence every five to ten years.

And maybe have a limit on how often you can sit a test and fail, before you can retry.

From Stuff:

Transport Minister Steven Joyce has made the introduction of drug tests for drivers his “top priority”.

A bill, which would give police the power to stop and make drivers have a roadside test for drug impairment, is before Parliament’s select committee.

Drafted by the previous Labour Government, the bill failed to get through the select committee stage in 2007.

Mr Joyce has now put the bill forward again and believes it will be passed by the middle of the year.

It certainly is a serious problem:

An ESR study between 2004 and 2008 found 52 per cent of drivers that died in accidents were under the influence or alcohol or drugs.

What I don’t know if how any testing will determine if the drug use was recent (ie is currently impairing the driver) or historical. Off memory cannabis can remain in your bloodstream for weeks or longer.

Readers (with kids especially) might want to check out this paper about how the use of booster eats in cars can reduce injuries to kids. This isn’t about infants but kids up until the age of ten years who are too short for seatbelts to best prevent injuries.

This video above shows the problem.