Kiwiblog

Rob Hosking responds to Russel Norman’s claims his figures were accurate:

Well, it seems we have an explanation for where Green Party co-leader got his “40,000 jobs lost in manufacturing” claim.

It is not a good explanation, but at least it is one.

The claim, made in a press release after the release of the latest manufacturing data on Monday, caused no little head scratching.

It came in a press released headed “Manufacturing languishes for four years under National” and went on to claim, “there’s no signs of clawing back any of the 40,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing sector since 2008”.

It did not seem an unreasonable inference that Dr Norman was talking of 40,000 jobs lost since the change of government. Indeed, that was clearly the inference he wanted people to draw.

The trouble is, none of the three measures of employment back this up, and NBR ONLINE took the time to explain why.

The NBR ONLINE story  prompted something of an online debate, especially on Twitter, where Dr Norman demanded an apology and then conceded he was taking his figures from March-June 2008.

As his earlier statement had carefully avoided saying this, NBR ONLINE does not really feel any apology is owed.

It’s pretty easy. Since 2008 doesn’t include half of 2008. Dr Norman could have said since June 2008 but chose not to. The reason is he wanted to deceive people that the 40,000 jobs lost had happened under National, rather than it being 20,000.

99 people out of 100 would take “Since 2008″ to be since December 2008, not since June 2008.

Hosking also makes another useful point:

In principle, politicians really should stop talking New Zealand down. It is shallow, cheap and easy, and it is immensely destructive.

This also applies to politicians’ staff, and to economic and political commentators. New Zealand public discourse was dominated for much of the 1970s to 1990s by an all-encompassing and corrosively negative commentary about this country’s economic prospects.

It did a huge amount of damage to the nation’s morale and skills base. At least it was, at the time, based on a real economic crisis.

When such corrosive negativity is based, as this is, on claims of a bogus “crisis” it is particularly despicable.

It is one thing to point out that the manufacturing industry has had job losses. But for a couple of years now the opposition have been trying to literally manufacture a “crisis” in manufacturing.

As an aside, jobs have grown in manufacturing over the past six months by around 5000 – which means even Dr Norman’s claim of “no signs of any clawing back” of jobs lost is just not true. 

But the timing of that 2004 drop in employment is highly significant. It is also when New Zealand firms started picking up their capital investment, particularly in plant and machinery.

In short, a shift began towards more capital intensive and less labour intensive work.

Let’s burn all the machines, and we’ll have full employment!

Adam Bennett at NZ Herald reports:

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman has accused Prime Minister John Key of conspiring to establish a surveillance state in New Zealand by encouraging American data-mining company Palantir to set up shop here.

Well that is an 11 on a 0 to 10 hysteria scale.

The comments prompted a savage response from Rod Drury, a business associate of Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, with Mr Drury labelling the attack another example of economic vandalism.

The Greens – working to destroy jobs since 1999. Now actively campaigning against high tech companies being in New Zealand.

Dr Norman later tweeted: “When crony govt meets surveillance state – John Key appoints Peter Thiel’s Palantir to spy on NZers”.

That drew an angry response from Mr Drury who tweeted: “Don’t be w***ers”, and followed that up with “Hey Greens. Cheating NZ out of $200m on Mighty River Power now spinning this rubbish. Please put NZ ahead of yourselves.”

He said the Greens were “ruining relationships and/by insinuating cronyism is vandalism. Politics in NZ is getting nasty. Lift the game.”

Basically just another Muldoonist attack from Nasty Norman.

Suggesting Peter Thiel has ill-will against NZ, and is part of an operation to spy on us is churlish to say the least. He personally donated $1 million to the Christchurch earthquake appeal fund and has a long history of philanthropy – including the Committee to Protect Journalists which promotes the right of journalists to report news without fear of reprisal.

Russel Norman proclaimed:

“There’s no signs of clawing back any of the 40,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing sector since 2008.

Rob Hoksing at NBR fisks this claim:

Manufacturing has lost 40,000 jobs, Green co-leader Russel Norman proclaimed yesterday when the latest manufacturing data came out.

He might be right – if you go back to the late 1990s.

However, Dr Norman claimed the sector had lost 40,000 jobs since the current government took office at the end of 2008.

We’ll call that bogus and leave readers to use shorter or pithier epithets if they so wish.

So who is right? Russel Norman or Rob Hoksing?

The full-time equivalent employee numbers, which are included in Statistics New Zealand’s quarterly employment survey, show 18,000 fewer working in the industry over the past 17 quarters since National took office. 

The previous 17 quarters show a 16,700 drop. Remember this was also, mostly, prior to the global financial crisis, in a much more different – not to say optimistic – environment.

The filled job figures, also contained in the quarterly employment survey, show a 20,400 fall in jobs in the most recent 17 quarters, and 18,300 in the equivalent previous period.

So if you go by the QES, Norman is out by over 100%.

The official unemployment measure, the household labour force, shows a much larger difference.

 The number of people employed in manufacturing fell 9400 since the change of government. The previous 17 quarters shows a loss of more than double that number of jobs, by 19,900.

And from the HLFS stats, Norman is out by 300%.

All these figures paint the same picture with a slightly different emphasis: the sector has been employing fewer people for a long time. 

They also show Dr Norman is just making numbers up. 

Making a lot of things up lately to manufacture a crisis in manufacturing.

Russel Norman has facebooked:

1. The Kitteridge report was going to be released anyway, maybe a week after it was leaked. Whoever leaked it simply gave Vance an exclusive, they weren’t releasing any secret document.

2. We don’t know what Dunne may have leaked other than the K report, including from the Intelligence and Security Cttee (ISC) of the Appendix tot he K report – Henry Report says Dunne didn’t leak the classified Apprendix as he didnt have access to it. If there is a police investigation, and it seems that NZF have complained to the police, then that seems the relevant issue. I don’t think this is the central issue but clearly my comments on it have been a cause of some concern.

This looks like a hasty retreat from his position of a few days ago when Radio NZ reported:

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman says the Prime Minister should ask police to determine who leaked the report, and says a police inquiry would have the power to force Mr Dunne to release his emails.

Glad to see the Greens are acting more sensibly on this now.

5. On Privileges Cttee, I’m pretty dubious about giving a bunch of MPs the right to force another MP to release their emails. If there is something criminal then it’s a matter for the police, but otherwise it is only the Kitterridge report and that isn’t sensitive. Of course if it goes to Privileges Cttee then we’ll do our duty to be fair minded about it.

It is a fair point about the undesirability of MPs voting on whether or not to force another MP to release their e-mail. That could set a nasty precedent.

6. On Dunne leaving parliament. Based on the publicly available evidence he hasnt done anything serious enough to call for him to leave parliament.

Glad to see Norman say this. This affair is a long way off the bar for an MP to resign his seat and force a by-election.

John Armstrong woke at the weekend:

Norman appeared to offer further evidence of that later in the week when he rounded on the chairman of the Electricity Authority, Brent Layton.

National Party-aligned bloggers were not the only people asking in the wake of that attack who was being Muldoonist now.

Norman’s curt response to Layton’s detailed critique of the joint Labour-Greens plan to reform the wholesale electricity market was pretty tame stuff, especially when placed alongside Winston Peters’ slow evisceration of Peter Dunne.

However, Norman’s attack struck a discordant note coming as it did only days after the Greens’ co-leader had accused John Key of vilifying and bullying his critics in a manner which was as divisive as that of the late Sir Robert Muldoon.

Norman’s rejection of Layton’s 28-page paper, which sought to demolish the Labour-Greens’ notion of setting up a single institution to set wholesale electricity prices, was also in marked contrast to the rebuttal by Labour’s David Parker. The latter challenged Layton’s arguments one by one in a measured tone.

That was the point. Parker showed how to disagree on policy grounds. Norman made it personal, and nasty. Becoming a habit.

Norman’s statement was far more belligerent with a number of references to Layton as a “National Party appointee” to a “National Party-created” regulator.

Layton is no National Party hack, however. He is a highly-respected economist with extensive knowledge and experience of the electricity generating industry over many years.

Indeed Dr Layton is a highly respected economist. He was the director of the non-profit NZIER economics co-operative for five years. Dr Norman’s PhD was on the history of the Alliance Party. Dr Layton’s was on economic history.

I doubt there is an economist in NZ who has done more work in the electricity sector. Dr Layton looks to have done 20 or so reports in the 2000s, for the Major Electricity Users Group (the ones who benefit the most from reliable supply, cheaper prices and better competition).

Fran O’Sullivan also writes:

Russel Norman exposed himself as a “Muldoonist” when he slammed into highly respected economist Brent Layton this week for daring to raise his head above the parapet and defend the work of the NZ Electricity Authority, which he chairs.

Norman was clearly incensed that Layton had issued a paper on the economics of electricity that laid waste to the arguments of three critics of the current regime, and challenged the proposal by the Greens and Labour to set up a new entity – NZ Power – to effectively control prices.

But by slagging Layton off as “nothing more than a National Party-appointed civil servant who has failed to do his job and is now trying to protect his patch”, Norman was straying well into the territory of personal attacks that Sir Robert Muldoon made an art form, and demonstrating a predisposition to a form of political management the Greens co-leader claims to despise.

Long may Russel keep it up. Once a brand is damaged, it is very hard to repair it.

And there would be few people in the Wellington political firmament who would have missed the underlying message sent by the NZ Institute of Economic Research when it issued a short-form CV yesterday under the simple headline: Background: Dr Brent Layton.

The release simply noted the many roles Layton has held: chairman of the electricity market rules committee, a director of Transpower and M-Co, former chairman of Trust Bank Canterbury, a director of the Futures Exchange, deputy chairman of the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, chairman of Lyttelton Port Company, chairman of Canterbury Health and also AgResearch and its commercial arm Celentis. Currently, He chairs Sastek, a Brisbane-based hardware manufacturing and software development company. And he has also been one of two external monetary policy advisers to the Governor of the Reserve Bank.

In other words: frame that up against a PhD on the Alliance and a working life spent mainly in Parliament? There is no real comparison.

One can disagree with Layton’s analysis and conclusions. But to label him as basically a failed hack was unworthy.

Labour, Greens and NZ First are all somewhat hysterically saying that the report leaked (presumably) by Peter Dunne is a criminal matter, and have all rushed off to the Police to try and get him investigated.

I’ll come back to the hypocrisy of opposition parties demanding a Police investigation into a leak, but let us first deal with two recent leaks. The first is the Kitteridge report.

This was a report that was due to be released to the public. The leak changed the timing of that (and was politically very very unhelpful to the Government), but again it was a report written for public release and its classification was sensitive. What is a sensitive classification. There are six types of classifications in two categories. The two categories are:

• National security classifications where compromise would damage NZ’s security, defence or international relations
• Policy and privacy classifications where compromise would damage government functions or be detrimental to an individual

There are four national security classifications, They are:

1. Top secret
2. Secret
3. Confidential
4. Restricted

The Kitteridge report had NO national security classification.

The two policy and privacy classifications  are sensitive and in-confidence, and it was classified sensitive.

While the report was about the GCSB, it doesn’t mean the report was classified for national security reasons. In fact the report was due to be released publicly anyway. This makes the leaking of it a government issue, not a criminal issue. Don’t get me wrong – the leak was appalling, and a resignation is the appropriate  outcome. But talking of Police complaints is hysteria.

Now let us compare this leak to the leak of a Cabinet paper on MFAt restructuring. Unlike the Kitteridge report, the Cabinet paper was not a paper about to be released to the public. Cabinet papers are for Cabinet, and that paper was leaked even before it got to Cabinet (off memory). That leak is clearly just as “bad” a leak as the Kitteridge report, and arguably worse.

Yet in this case Labour have spent months arguing the leak should not be pursued, and that a leak inquiry is a waste of money. Flagrant hypocrisy. And I hope one day, we will be publicly able to publish why Labour is so frightened about the leaker’s identity being revealed, and any links back to them.

Several on the left are critical of opposition parties demanding a criminal investigation into a leak. No Right Turn blogs:

Firstly, the idea that this leak breached the Crimes Act is utterly ridiculous. Both the offences of espionage (which peters accused Dunne of in Parliament on Thursday) and wrongful communication of official information require that the information in question “be likely to prejudice seriously the security or defence of New Zealand”. John Key was quite clear in his press conference that that was not the case, and there is no possible way in which the leak of material exposing GCSB wrongdoing could be seen in that light. So, the idea that an offence has been commited is pure bullshit, and the Greens should not be trading in it. …

A party like the Greens, committed to democracy and freedom, should be encouraging such leaks, not calling for them to be punished – especially given the shit we’re learning about what the GCSB’s foreign masters have been getting up to.

Russel Norman has sought to justify his position on the grounds that such leaks undermine the idea of Parliamentary oversight of intelligence agencies. Firstly, this wasn’t an ISC document, so that’s just a non-sequitur. But more importantly, Parliament pays the bills, so it has an absolute right to scrutinise what is done with our money, no matter how secret and sensitive. And I regard it as not just a right, but a duty of politicians on the ISC to inform the public of wrongdoing. If Norman seriously believes what he’s said, then he is not doing his job properly, and should resign immediately so that his place can be taken by someone less credulous and authoritarian.

The authoritarian Dr Norman!

NBR also reports:

Labour and the Greens are illiberal in pushing for a police inquiry into the Peter Dunne affair, and have revealed themselves as anti leaks to the media, says Bryce Edwards.

“It’s incredibly surprising to see Labour and the Greens have called on the police to intervene over the leak of the GCSB,” the Otago University lecturer and commentator tells NBR Online.

“There’s always problems when the police get involved in the political and media realm. It can have a very chilling affect on politics and journalism,” Dr Edwards says.

And the next time there is a leak to say an opposition MP, how could Labour or Greens complain if there is a criminal Police investigation into it? They are so kneejerk desperate to get a media headline that day, they rarely think about the consistency of their long-term position.

Generally those that regard themselves as politically liberal will not want the police involved unless utterly necessary, says the Politics Daily compiler.

“Therefore the threshold for calling the cops into Parliament and newsrooms should be very high. It’s hard to see that this threshold has been reached in this case,” Dr Edwards says.

“Normally those that call the police in on their political opponents are from an authoritarian political philosophy. By contrast, liberals generally regard those that leak government department reports as heroic whistleblowers that are enabling the freedom of information and the right of the public to know what those in authority are doing.”

The Greens, Labour and New Zealand First have now shown that they stand opposed to leaks to the media, says the lecturer.

That’s the second commentator to use the term authoritarian. And I am unsure of the media will like the opposition (presumably) demanding that a reporter’s phone records, e-mails and other communications be seized because she received a leak.

Dr Norman says a key issue is whether the appendix to the inquiry was leaked. Unlike the body of the report, which was always scheduled to be shared with the public, the appendix is secret – and breaching it could constitute a breach of the Crimes Act.

Peter Dunne did not have the appendix. No information from the appendix has been published, so nice try inventing a make believe crime.

Labour leader David Shearer has called on police to seize Mr Dunne’s emails. His deputy, Grant Robertson, says Mr Dunne should be compelled to give evidence under oath. 

On that basis, they must also be demanding that Phil Goff have his emails seized by the Police and Goff should be compelled to give evidence under oath.

Rodney Hide writes in the HoS:

Norman was safe and secure in launching a personal attack on Key. It is Key’s style and strategy not to fire back. But Muldoon would not have sat quietly by. Muldoon would have eaten him up and spat him out.

Muldoon also would never have shared his leadership as Norman does. He wasn’t a touchy-feely, let’s-sit-around-the-table-holding-hands sort of guy. He was leader and that was that. Muldoon would never have tolerated a co-leader.

And then there was Norman crying, “Give me back my flag. Give me back my flag.” That was when he was attempting to stick the Tibetan flag in the face of Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping. Muldoon would never have done that. He was polite and respectful to our guests, whatever he thought of their domestic politics.

And if Muldoon did get into a scuffle, he would not have come out second. Once a rowdy group of young protesters shouting “Heil Hitler” attacked Muldoon as he was leaving a meeting. They hit him in the face, kicked his leg and shoved him against his car.

The then Leader of the Opposition decked one and chased the others down the street shouting, “One at a time and you’re welcome”.

Heh. An iconic moment.

Norman is Australian. Muldoon was a New Zealander through and through. In comparing Key to Muldoon, Norman gave us a very sharp reminder that he’s a very recent arrival. No one who lived in New Zealand would ever think Key was in any way a Muldoon. The comparison is bizarre.

Russel has been whining that it is wrong to say he can’t write about Muldoon as he wasn’t in NZ then, saying that means no one could write about Peter Fraser who wasn’t alive in the 1940s.

He misses the point that no one who actually lived in NZ when Muldoon was PM, would compare him to John Key without bursting into a fit of laughter at the ridiculousness of the comparison.

Norman has a PhD in political science. For Muldoon there were two types of doctors: the ones who made you well, and the ones who made you sick. He would have had a very clear view of what sort of doctor Norman was.

Muldoon fought fascism and totalitarianism in World War II. Norman was for several years active in the Marxist-Leninist Democratic Socialist Party.

They are two very different men. Muldoon was popular. His majority in his electorate was unassailable. The best Norman has done is come third.

They are men of different eras. Muldoon was minister of finance the year Norman was born.

But in other ways they aren’t so different.

Muldoon’s policies were to control the economy, fix prices, set the exchange rate, invest in hare-brained schemes, and print money to pay for it all.

He all but bankrupted the country.

In this regard, Muldoon and Norman are peas in a pod.

Matthew Hooton goes down this road also in the NBR:

Sir Robert left office in 1984, roughly when Dr Norman left high school.  At that time, he tells us, he was busy opposing Australia’s “new right” Hawke/Keating government, elected in March 1983, and “peace rallies, anti-nuclear demonstrations and animal rights activism soon became a large part of extra-curricular high school life.”

It is fantastic that the adolescent Dr Norman had time left over to follow developments across the Tasman, including Sir Robert publicly issuing enemies’ lists, banning unfriendly journalists from his press conferences, personally directing monetary policy, ramming through the Clutha Development (Clyde Dam) Empowering Act 1982, abusing young backbenchers in drunken rages, lying about the country’s fiscal position, provoking a foreign exchange crisis, refusing to follow the instructions of the incoming government and having to be bullied into doing so by his outgoing cabinet.

And on the policy front:

The irony of Dr Norman’s preposterous comparison of Mr Key to Sir Robert is that the party in today’s parliament with an economic programme most similar to Muldoon’s is the Greens.

It is the Greens who advocate greater control of the currency, extra monetary tools and more aggressive interventions by the Reserve Bank.  They are the only main party comfortable with Muldoon-style import substitution and against free trade.  How green were Muldoon’s carless days, designed to reduce reliance on oil?  How stimulatory were his deficits? 

More topically, Sir Robert exercised direct state control of the electricity sector including the state directing what new electricity generation would be built and where.  What else is Labour/Green’s NZ Power?

Instead of an across-the-board GST, Sir Robert favoured lower sales taxes on things he considered good and higher taxes on things he considered bad.

With their promised new “suite of ecological taxes,” the Greens promise the same.

This could be a good question for the Greens. How many of Sir Robert’s economic policies do they disagree with today? Any?

The Herald reported:

In a 28 page paper delivered to an industry audience in Auckland, Dr Brent Layton argues current arrangements are working well but can be better, and that returning to a central planning approach will lead to higher prices and more likelihood of power shortages.

“Conclusions based on inadequate research are not a basis for sound economic policy,” said Layton, in a direct attack on Victoria University Institute of Policy Studies economist Dr Geoff Bertram, whom he accuses of producing graphs that overstate the extent of household power price increases relative to other countries.

Dr Layton is the Chairman of the Electricity Authority, which is the sector equivalent of the Commerce Commission. It is the body that helps regulate the market to try and maximise competition to benefit consumers.

Dr Layton is not a politician or lobbyist. He is not campaigning for votes. His job is to identify what sort of regulatory regime will best deliver for consumers.

Layton also says he would not implement the Labour-Greens’ NZ Power proposal because it would contravene the requirements of the regulator’s legislation “to promote competition in, reliable supply by, and the efficient operation of the electricity industry for the long term benefit of consumers.”

Asked whether he would be able to serve on the Electricity Authority if a Labour-Green government were elected, Layton said: “I personally wouldn’t.”

What he is effectively saying is that their proposal threatens reliable supply. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t want to be the fall guy, should that come to pass.

On central buyer proposals, he said similar policies had been examined four times in the last 25 years and “found wanting in terms of what would be of long term benefit to consumers.

That is not just his view. That was also the view of David Parker when he was Minister of Energy.

What is fascinating is the responses from David Parker and Russel Norman to his paper.

David Parker has done a critique of his analysis. I don’t agree with Parker’s critique, but it is policy based and respectful.

Contrast that to Russel Norman’s response:

“Dr Layton’s extraordinary foray into political debate is nothing more than a National Party-appointed civil servant who has failed to do his job and is now trying to protect his patch,” said Dr Norman.

So once again Dr Norman attacks the man, instead of the issue. Rather Muldoonist, dare I say.

It is worth recalling what the annual increase in electricity CPI have been. For the last ten years they have been:

• 2003 9.3%
• 2004 8.8%
• 2005 4.1%
• 2006 7.1%
• 2007 6.5%
• 2008 7.7%

Then since the election

• 2009 2.1%
• 2010 5.8% (of which 2.2% was GST increase, so underlying figure was 3.6%)
• 2011 2.4%
• 2012 5.2%

The increases in the last four years have been fairly modest. Excluding the GST change, it has been around 3.3% a year which is higher than desirable but much less than the previous Government.

The Dom Post editorial:

If Russel Norman’s purpose in likening John Key to former prime minister Sir Robert Muldoon was to demonstrate that the Green Party is now as eager to make personal attacks as other political parties, his speech to the Green Party’s annual conference in Christchurch should be judged a triumph.

And their problem is one you lose a brand attribute, it is very hard to get it back. If the Greens ever again proclaim they don’t do personal attacks, people will and should laugh.

If, on the other hand, the Australian-born and educated co-leader of the environmental party was attempting to convince voters he shares their experiences, it was an abysmal failure.

When Muldoon was Prime Minister, Norman was running around Australia promoting Marxism.

However, to suggest Mr Key’s personal style is akin to that of Sir Robert is to do nothing but betray ignorance.

The two could not be more different. Sir Robert was a micro-manager; Mr Key delegates. Sir Robert snarled; Mr Key smiles. Sir Robert banned journalists from press conferences, insulted foreign leaders and once punched a demonstrator outside a meeting. Mr Key occasionally gets a little tetchy.

“Divisive and corrosive” Sir Robert certainly was, although, ironically, his command and control approach to running the economy was probably closer to Green Party policy than anything seen since he was voted out of office in 1984.

That’s a good point. Many of the economic policies of the Greens are Muldoonist.

The curious thing about Dr Norman’s attack is that it is he who has resorted to the Muldoonist tactic of attacking the man and Mr Key who has responded by playing the issue.

The Press editorial is similar:

The strident personal attack by the co-leader of the Greens, Russel Norman, on Prime Minister John Key at the weekend may have gone down well with the 100 or so faithful he was addressing at a party conference in Christchurch.

But to most others, even those on the Left, it will have seemed strikingly ill-judged. It introduced an unpleasant personal note not heard since the days, oddly enough, of Robert Muldoon, the man whose name he invoked to make an invidious comparison with the present prime minister.

Both editorials have concluded that it was Norman, not Key, who was exhibiting Muldoon type qualities. That’s some political genius to achieve that.

Norman can perhaps be forgiven for not understanding the truly corrosive nature of many of Muldoon’s actions – the nasty personal attacks on political opponents, the shatteringly divisive Springbok tour, the disastrous economic policies, the final unwillingness to relinquish power after political defeat. Norman did not come to New Zealand until five years after Muldoon’s death and 23 years after he fell from power. But the memory of the toxic nature of much of what happened under Muldoon is still strong to those who lived through it, and to many who heard of it later. And they know perfectly well that nothing done by the present Government can remotely be compared.

So why did he do it? Desperation?

It suggests, too, that Norman is not entirely confident that he can make electoral headway on policies alone. The Greens in recent months have made a lot of the running on Opposition policy, particularly economic policy, so much so that a pollster asked a question suggesting that Norman was Bill English’s opposite number on finance rather than Labour’s finance spokesman, David Parker. Much of this (a radical loosening of monetary policy, a government-run electricity market) along with Labour’s own policies (government housing projects), has been seen by many analysts as taking the Opposition on a lurch to the Left.

The latest opinion polls, which showed little reaction to the policies, disappointed the Opposition. The answer to that disappointment should not, however, be a resort to personal attack. That really would be an undesirable step down the slippery track toward Muldoonism.

Imagine what he would be like if he got to be Finance Minister!

Andrea Vance writes at Stuff:

Norman had a comprehensive list of examples to back his assertion that “something in rotten in the state of New Zealand politics…something is rotting in the Beehive.”

He cited: the SkyCity deal; Hobbit employment law changes; the sacking of Environment Canterbury councillors; dumping of proposed MMP changes; a ban on deep sea drilling protests at the behest of oil companies; and recent disabled carers’ legislation.

Let’s be very clear. It is absolutely appropriate opposition parties attack the Government for decisions they don’t like. I do wish they would stop lying about deep see protests being banned. They are not. All that is banned is protests within 500 metres of a commercial operation, as the right to protest doesn’t trump the right to do your lawful business.

Anyway absolutely legitimate to attack the Govt and the PM for decisions you dislike.

But the 20-minute address marked a departure from the Green’s particular brand of play-the-ball-not-the-man-politics. Norman launched a personal attack on Key, painting him as a Muldoon-style bully. There was also a snide reference to Key’s personal wealth: he is “irritated if we are not all grateful for him generously agreeing to be PM.” And he trashed Key’s trademark genial disposition.

“The next time you see John Key smiling, …he’s smiling because he’s giving favours to his mates while undermining your democracy,” he said.

What Norman is doing here is trying to paint Key as an evil person. He’s trying to make people think that Key actually hates ordinary New Zealanders and just pretends to be friendly when he is smiling.

It is ridiculous, as anyone who knows John Key would testify. John Armstrong writes:

Muldoonist? John Key? Russel Norman cannot be serious.

The Green Party co-leader’s assertion that the “divisive and corrosive” behaviour exhibited by the leader of the National Party is akin to that of his most notorious of predecessors is certainly headline-grabbing. It also verges on the ludicrous. Sir Robert Muldoon was without question our most belligerent, abrasive, polarising, dictatorial and vindictive politician.

The fear and loathing he was capable of generating within his own ranks – let alone in the wider world of politics – was summed up by a caucus colleague who said he went to Muldoon’s funeral only so he could be assured the lid on the coffin had been nailed down properly.

I knew Muldoon, unlike Norman. Norman only moved to New Zealand five years after Muldoon died. I can’t think of an MP who is more different to Muldoon in personality, than John Key.

This is shown in Key’s response to Norman:

Prime Minister John Key was remarkably restrained in his response to Greens co-leader Russel Norman’s personal attack on Saturday. Dr Norman called Mr Key corrosive and said he is ”irritated if we are not all grateful for him generously agreeing to be PM”. Through a spokeswoman, Mr Key said the Government is ”focused on the things that matter – like building a strong and stable economy with more, better paying jobs to help New Zealand families”.

I can’t recall the last time John Key did a nasty personal attack in a set speech. Making a joking reference to Labour and Greens as the devil-beast is not a personal attack. It is a political one.

Here’s a challenge. What”s the worst thing John Key ever said about Helen Clark? To the best of my memory he attacked her Government, not her. In fact once he beat her, he helped get her a job at the UN.

I think people can decide for themselves who has decided to be corrosive. Now I’m not complaining about it. I think it is good that people are now able to see what the Greens are prepared to do, in order to get into power.

UPDATE: Karl du Fresne, who was a journalist under Muldoon blogs:

Russel Norman’s speech to the annual conference of the Greens, in which he compared John Key with Robert Muldoon, rated a 10 for desperation and a zero for credibility. …

Norman arrived in New Zealand from Australia in 1997, and on the basis of his speech I would guess that’s about as far back as his knowledge of our political history extends.None of the prime ministers we’ve had since Muldoon could be compared with him, for which we should be grateful. He was a vindictive bully who cleverly exploited the politics of fear and division, and never more so than during the 1981 Springbok tour.

In fact I would suggest that in terms of personality, Key is the least like Muldoon. Anyone old enough to remember the political unpleasantness of the late 1970s and early 80s – which probably excludes a lot of Green voters – would have reacted with astonishment to Norman’s bizarre attempt to compare the two men.

Muldoon’s default facial expression was a snarl. Key’s is a grin (or if you want to be harsh, a smirk).

Arguably, the politician who most closely resembles Muldoon, and who served his apprenticeship under him, is Winston Peters. Like Muldoon, Peters has a penchant for demagoguery. But even the New Zealand First leader falls far short of Muldoon’s menacing intolerance of dissent, though it might have been a different story had he ever won power.

That’s the Winston Peters that the Greens are preparing to go into Government with?

There are only two possible explanations for Norman’s attack on Key. The first is that, as postulated above, he knows nothing about our modern political history (not that that stops him from promoting himself as a credible alternative leader). The second, which is even more worrying, is that he knows the comparison between Key and Muldoon is absurd but ran with it anyway. Perhaps he senses the Greens’ momentum is slipping and is prepared to resort to extreme measures to get some traction.

I think it is the second.

Andrea Vance at Stuff writes:

And he launched an astonishing personal attack on Prime Minister John Key, who he says is “divisive and corrosive” and “irritated if we are not all grateful for him generously agreeing to be PM.”

He added: “So next time you see John Key smiling, remember he’s not smiling because he likes you, he’s smiling because he’s giving favours to his mates while undermining your democracy.”

And Isaac Davidson at NZ Herald writes:

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman has made a rare personal attack on Prime Minister John Key, comparing him to former Prime Minister Robert Muldoon

You could say a lot about the policies put forward by Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald, but you know that they never would have carried out the sort of personal smear attack Russel Norman is now doing with the Greens.

Once upon a time the Greens boasted that they didn’t do personal attacks. I presume they’ll never make that claim again.

I can only presume it is desperation as Russell sees his long awaited dreams of being a Minister slip away.

His speech resembles one of the more angry rants you often read at The Standard. That is because it was probably written by one of the authors at The Standard.

Pete George blogs:

Some party leaders were asked their views on waka jumping. National:

“I think there is potentially the need for legislation to support that view,” says Mr Key.

And National’s rank-and-file are calling for a law change too, clearly worried Mr Gilmore was going to do a Horan, and stick around on $144,000 a year.

Labour:

And the Opposition agrees the likes of Mr Gilmore and Mr Horan should not be able to stay.

“It wouldn’t have helped good government, and actually overall it brings the Parliament into disrepute as well,” say Labour leader David Shearer.

NZ First:

“People are voting for the party, not for someone who thinks they can behave any way they like,” says New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.

There was one party leader who bucked the majority in support of protection against leaders abusing their power:

But the Greens don’t agree.

“Party leaders like me would basically get to say to individual MPs, ‘If you don’t do what I like then I’ll expel you from caucus and you’ll be kicked out of Parliament,’” says Greens co-leader Russel Norman. 

On this issue, I agree with Russel Norman. As frustrating as it is, when a List MP leaves their party and goes rogue, the solution is better candidate selection procedures – not turning List MPs into party creatures even more than they are. Once parties gain the ability to sack MPs from Parliament mid-term, there will be a chilling effect.

Steven Joyce pointed out today:

Labour and the Greens have jumped the shark with a half-baked Soviet Union-style nationalisation “plan” for electricity in New Zealand, Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce says.

“This is truly wacky and desperate stuff obviously made up in the last minute in the Koru Lounge between comrades Norman and Shearer,” Mr Joyce says.

“Their crazy idea to have both a single national purchaser of electricity and to exempt Government-owned companies from both company tax and dividends would effectively demolish private investment in the electricity industry overnight. It would also raise real questions as to why any individual or company would want to invest in businesses in New Zealand.

I never thought we’d see parties in NZ advocating socialist nationalisation policies from decades ago. Stuck in a time warp.

Anyway Russel Norman responded:

Minister Joyce’s release on the Greens and Labour’s electricity announcement is full of basic inaccuracies: he says that NZ Power would exempt electricity companies from corporate tax and dividends, which is completely false and not backed by anything in the discussion document.

So is Russel correct that Joyce has it wrong? Let’s look at the press release from no less than David Shearer:

The Crown will forgo dividends and tax revenue from the power companies.

I say game and set to Joyce.

Bad enough to have a mad Soviet style policy. Even worse to not even knowing what is in it, when you are auditioning to be Finance Minister for a Labour-Greens-Mana Government.

Stuff reports:

Greens co-leader Russel Norman has written an open letter to new Speaker David Carter urging him to return to the rulings set down by his predecessor Lockwood Smith or risk increasing disorder in the House.

Smith instituted a new regime that ditched the old requirement for ministers to merely ”address” a question in favour of a tougher requirement to answer a direct question where possible.

But opposition MPs have been frustrated at what they see as Carter’s shift away from that.

Norman is due to meet Carter soon to discuss the letter.

In it Norman said he felt compelled to write after sitting through ”another chaotic question time”.

He said Smith’s rules in summary were that “a straight question will get a straight answer” and that delivered a more orderly and effective question time.

I thought the straight question gets a straight answer rule was a very good one, so in that regard I agree with Norman.

What I’m not so sure about is whether that rule is or is not still being applied. I simply have not watched enough question time to judge. I would make the point that there remains a difference between a primary question and a supplementary. A straight primary question should get a straight answer. A supplementary question which is seeking very specific data may often be unable to be answered unless it was very tightly connected to the primary.

This is the alternative. They honestly seem to believe that you can enrich a country by just printing more money. I thought this lunacy died out with Social Credit.

The only Western countries doing QE are those which have the official cash rate near zero and have run out of other options. No sensible country is advocating printing money in the circumstances NZ is in.

There is a difference between a last resort and a preferred option. As an analogy if someone is dying from blood loss through a severed limb then a tourniquet is your last resort to stop them dying. But if they have just cut their leg open a bit, you don’t apply a tourniquet as your first response because the impact of doing so is very nasty.

In monetary terms, the nasty impact is prices go up and up.

You can see the Twitter debate here.

Be scared, be very scared. Most Green policies will just be inefficient and waste money but not necessarily be hugely harmful. This one is different.

Vernon Small at Stuff reports:

David Shearer appears to be weighing up his options for deputy prime minister between Green co-leader Russel Norman and NZ First leader Winston Peters as he looks for ways to reward support partners without letting go of the key finance portfolio.

I have the solution. Make Russel and Winston co-deputy PMs!

Green Party leader Russel Norman is reported on 3 News:

The Greens and Labour are already fighting over how a left-wing coalition would work, following a 3 News Reid-Research poll that shows they could form a government together.

Greens co-leader Russel Norman wants to be Minister of Finance, and is demanding his MPs make up to a third of the Cabinet.

“It’s one of the portfolios that will be on the table,” says Dr Norman. “It will be part of the negotiating mix.”

Yes, that’s right: Dr Norman wants to control the country’s finances. He would be in charge of the Budget.

Quick go buy those shares in Xerox now, before NZ gives them the contact to start printing more money!

But Mr Shearer had a one word answer about giving him the job – “no”.

Shearer can say that now, but the reality is it will all depend on the relative vote of Labour and Greens, if they get to form a Government. If Labour gets 40% and Greens 10% then no they won’t. If Labour got 30% and Greens 15% then I’d say they would get it.

So Dr Norman’s demands go on. He wants a “proportional Cabinet” that reflects the Greens’ presence. That would mean five to seven ministerial roles.

“That would be the fair approach,” says Dr Norman.

“That would seem to be the fair way to do it,” says Mr Shearer.

So Dr Norman wants Finance, Metiria Turei could get Social Development, Kevin Hague may get Health, Kennedy Graham could go for Trade, Eugenie Sage for the Christchurch rebuild, Gareth Hughes with Energy and Catherine Delahunty with Education.

A welfare minister who believes every family, no matter how wealthy,  should be receiving welfare. A trade minister against trade. An energy minister against energy. That will be fun.

Stuff reports:

The Commerce Commission has unconditionally approved Vodafone’s purchase of TelstraClear, a decision the Green Party says will reduce options and push up prices.

Co-leader Russel Norman noted the terms of the $840m takeover included a clause that would prevent Telstra re-entering the New Zealand market for an undisclosed period.

“Make no mistake – Vodafone’s move is about eliminating competition,” he said.

“We’ve seen it in the banking sector, the insurance sector, and now it’s happening in the telco sector. Vodafone’s takeover of TelstraClear will inevitably lead to higher prices for end-users, businesses, and government.

“It’s not in the long-term interests of the New Zealand economy for our primary competition regulator to be eliminating competition in the telecommunications industry.”

Oh Good God, now Russel wants to be the Commerce Commission also. Let politicians decide on the basis of a five minute chat to their staff, rather than you know months and months of legal and economic analysis.

However, the commission said it did not find any significant business overlap between Vodafone and TelstraClear in the provision of either mobile phone services or fixed line services to large businesses.

Exactly. It would be vastly different if it was a Telecom and Vodafone merger. That would be bad for consumers. But many in the industry think that the TelstraClear acquisition by Vodafone will actually enhance competition as it means there will be a fully fledged competitor to Telecom. Individually neither TC nor Vodafone could effectively compete with Telecom in all aspects. Together, they can.

With David Parker having declared that Ministers (not shareholders) should determine who can buy F&P shares, and Russel Norman declaring who can buy TelstraClear, it is becoming clear that in a future Labour-Green Government the way to get sales approved will be to cosy up to Ministers.

From The Nation:

Rachel         Okay you said that you’re open to potentially, you know helping to form a coalition.  Presumably you’d want a ministerial position in that coalition.  What do you think you’d be best suited to?

Russel         Yeah I mean I think the Green team would want ministerial positions.  So you know we come as a package, so we’ve got co-leaders, and we’ve got some really talented MPs, so we’d be looking at some of those key portfolios, both economics and finance portfolios, but other social and environmental portfolios as well.

Rachel         Okay so what would sit well with you?  Minister of Finance?

Russel         You know obviously that needs to be sorted in a post-election negotiation.  Obviously we are interested in positions like that, but in terms of the detail you couldn’t really sort it out until you know what the vote were.  It’s up to the voters to decide how much influence the Green Party has.

Rachel         Would you rule it out?

Russel         I wouldn’t rule it out, I wouldn’t rule it in. You know at the end of the day we’ll go to the election, the voters will determine the level of influence we have, and that will determine the outcome.

In 1996 National got 34% and NZ First got 13% and that was enough to get Winston Peters Treasurer. If there is a change of Government, then the Greens are looking will placed to demand the same. They are currently polling around 12% and Labour 32%.

We’d be the first country outside Eastern Europe I suspect to have a former Marxist (or was it a Maoist – always get them confused!) as Minister of Finance!

With at least three parties needed to form a centre-left Government, it would be a fascinating thing to observe. On current polling it could be Labour gets only 12 – 14 Cabinet Ministers, with the Greens getting 4 – 6, NZ First 2 – 3 and possibly Mana 1.

From a political observation point of view, it would be fascinating. From a taxpayer point of view, it would be less fun.

Marc Krieger of Krieger Capital blogs:

In any event, quantitative easing ultimately benefits the rich. For example, the Bank of England commissioned a study in which it said that 40% of the gains of its quantitative easing programme went to the top 5% of British households. The reason is simple. The rich own shares, property, and precious metals, whose values rise or remain constant when the central banks flood the world with money conjured out of thin air. Conversely, working people and savers rarely own financial assets whilst simultaneously having their real wages drop during an inflationary period. Dr Norman’s tacit support of even lower interest rates penalises retirees who depend on interest income to live. In essence, Dr Norman wants the Reserve Bank to continue the very imbalances that helped produce the Global Financial Crisis by punishing those prudent enough to save and rewarding the spendthrifts.

So this is what the pro-inflation policies of the left will bring – gains for the top 5% and losses for poorer working people. Are these not the same people who go on about income inequality?

This graph of of the number of manufacturing jobs, as reported by the Household Labour Force Survey, from the beginning of 2009.

This is what Russel Norman hysterically claims is a crisis.

I thought this madness died with Social Credit, but Greens (and Labour may not be far behind) have said that they want the NZ Reserve Bank to effectively start printing money. They think that NZ printing more money is a good way to increase the relative value of the US dollar. We might as well start burning our savings.

Make no mistake, what they are calling for is the value of everyone’s savings to be reduce, as inflation takes off. You know all how they say wages are too low for low income workers? Well they want the cost of food, goods and services like electricity to increase faster than they have been.

There are basically two sorts of countries that print money. Those that are bankrupt, and those whose economies are so stalled that the central bank cash rate is as low as it can go.  In the US it is 0.25%. NZ is at 2.5% so a fair way away from that.

Russel Norman claimed:

Secondly, when you look overseas at the use of quantitative easing – because all of our major— most of our major trading partners are using it

This is simply wrong. The US and the the Eurozone and Japan have done it (and sort of the UK)  - again because they are almost bankrupt or their central rate can not be lowered anymore. But they are not our major trading partners.

Our exports for the year to June 2012 came to $46.7b. Exports to the Eurozone were $2.9b, UK $1.4b, Japan $3.4b and US $4.1b. That is a mere $11.8b out of $46.7b – under one quarter. Australia is almost a bigger export market than those four combined.

And let me tell you if we started printing money, and Australia was not, watch the outpour to Australia get far far worse.

Some policies put forward are just silly, or ineffective, or wasteful. Some are very very bad and dangerous. This is one of them. The idea of printing money to grow the economy has never worked long-term. It gives you a short-term sugar rush at best. It puts up the price of pretty much all goods and services as inflation grows.

It is actually to our advantage long-term that the US and Eurozone are printing money. Proposing to follow them voluntarily is the worst thing NZ could do.

My column in the Herald (now published Thursdays) was on the members’ bill ballot. This was timed with four bills being drawn from the ballot. They are:

Dr Norman’s bill would ban foreign ownership of “sensitive land”. This is any non-urban land greater than 0.05 square kilometers!

Chris Auchinvole’s bill implements some recommendations from the Law Commission on  habeas corpus applications. Mainly seems to be giving Judges slightly more discretion in dealing with them.

Annette King’s would require the State Services Commissioner to approve local authority CEO remuneration packages, as they do for government departments. Technically a bit of a breach of the independence of local bodies, but worth supporting at least for first reading as may be a useful tool for keeping relativity between central and local government.

Todd McClay’s would ban gang insignia being displayed within government (central and local) premises.

Cactus Kate fisks claims by Russel Norman. She blogs:

Kermit has an academically lazy post on The NZ Superannuation Fund where apparently it has

“decided to take a $23 million bet on a property development company with significant exposure to China — a country where some reports say that there are 64 million vacant apartments”.

Kermit has got all confused comparing SHKP to pathetically run Landcorp in New Zealand and is worried about this

Kermit then has a Hickeyesque moment where he predicts the collapse of China because Hong Kong listed company SHKP is developing new cities and starts bagging the Super Fund for investing in it …

Is China the next big property bubble on the brink of collapse?

The Chinese Government has spent much of its massive export revenues on building brand new cities. Trouble is, not many Chinese people can afford the prices of new apartments and some of the cities have become ghost cities — their emptiness

Thank you for the concern Mr Frog.

Oh my God. How can this not be a caption contest. Remember they should be funny, not nasty. And try to not make them too dirty.

Photo from Heather du Plessis-Allan on Twitter.