The Maxim Institute has a very thoughtful discussion paper on poverty. They pose a number of questions, and also outline eight different ways you can measure poverty. They eight ways are:

1. Average income threshold – a percentage of mean or median income
2. Consumption expenditure – a percentage of amount spent on consumption compared to average household
3. Budget standards – based on a budget judged high enough to avoid deprivation
4. Component and multiplier – based on amount needed for an essential such as food, and multiplied
5. Subjective measures – based on self-assessment as poor
6.  Benefit-based/statutory measures – based on government definition of minimum income
7. Material deprivation indices – based on actually lacking essential necessities
8. Multi-dimensional measurement of poverty, deprivation or social exclusion – a mixture of the above and more

No measure is prefect. I don’t like the income measures because they treat all households as identical in terms of needs, and they are more about income spread than actual poverty. They also avoid the effect of tax, as they tend to be on before tax incomes.

My preference is No 7.  Stats NZ already do this – an occasional survey asking if families can afford stuff such as more than two pairs of shes for kids, transport to school etc etc. This is relatively objective, and measures actual deprivation rather than merely equality of income.

Gallup reports:

 Fewer Americans are satisfied with the freedom to choose what they do with their lives compared with seven years ago — dropping 12 percentage points from 91% in 2006 to 79% in 2013. In that same period, the percentage of Americans dissatisfied with the freedom to choose what they do with their lives more than doubled, from 9% to 21%.

The rise of big Government.

And how about other countries:

Gallup asks people in more than 120 countries each year whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the freedom to choose what they do with their lives. In 2006, the U.S. ranked among the highest in the world for people reporting satisfaction with their level of freedom. After seven years and a 12-point decline, the U.S. no longer makes the top quartile worldwide.

So who is top:

That’s a good table to top.

Eric Crampton blogs:

So, the playbook over the last 30-40 years or so: set minor policy changes every few years that work incrementally to de-normalise smoking and tobacco. Restrict use in some public places that seem like protection of non-smokers at first, then extend it outwards not to protect non-smokers, but to stigmatise smokers. Eventually smokers are so marginalised that a full ban becomes politically palatable. First you de-normalise, then further regulate, then ban. And, at every step, deny that the next step’s already planned. Until it’s too late to matter.

Now, if you follow alcohol policy, how often have you heard this one: “Alcohol is no ordinary commodity”? Or, that advertising, availability at some event, shops with visible signage, or brand sponsorship normalise alcohol consumption and so should be restricted or banned? There’s a lot of focus on making normal alcohol consumption not seem normal. There might be a reason for that.

A lot of these policy documents will draw the parallel to tobacco before claiming that, unlike in the case of tobacco, they’re just trying to hit heavy or harmful consumption and so full-on tobacco-style restrictions aren’t needed. But every year, we move further through the list of tobacco controls that the anti-alcohol folks want applied to alcohol too.

Richard Edwards’s post helps show that we’re not building strawmen when we warn about slippery slopes. There’s a direct mechanism in which each regulation makes the marginal political cost of the next one a bit smaller, helping to facilitate it. And there’s pretty clearly a planned effort to push through the incremental steps on the way to the end goals: each makes the next seem less radical. Slippery slopes are only logical fallacies if there aren’t these kinds of mechanisms. 

They want to ban smoking, ban sugar and inevitably ban alcohol. It is a slippery slope, and we ignore it at our peril.

Meet your next Justice Minister people. The Herald reports:

Labour’s justice spokesman Andrew Little did not think the party’s proposal would lead to more innocent people being convicted.

“I don’t see why. You’re assuming that there is a propensity to lay false complaints. There is no evidence pointing to that.”

So Labour’s next Justice Minister thinks that an accusation is all you need to convict someone, as there are no false complaints.

Why doesn’t he go the whole hog, and save us the expense of trials. You’re accused, and you’re automatically guilty. Bang.

Again I urge everyone to make sure people understand that if Labour is elected, you will need to prove your innocence if you have sex with someone and are accused of rape.

David Cunliffe has started to back away from the policy, but Andrew Little has confirmed it is official policy and is obviously still extremely wedded to it.

I would have thought Mr Little would not have to think too far back in Labour’s recent past to think of how stupid it is to have a presumption of guilt based on allegation.

I am staggered that this policy got approved by the Labour Party. It is horrendous and wrong. Unless they rule it out totally, then don’t vote for them if you believe in the presumption of innocence.

The Herald reports:

Labour has raised the possibility of the taxpayer shouldering an even greater proportion of Christchurch rebuild costs, saying it would sit down with Christchurch Council to review the existing cost sharing agreement if it won the election.

I guess $10 billion or $20 billion or whatever the figure is isn’t enough. Labour wants to bail out the high spending Mayor. If the Council saved  $100 million on not restoring the Town Hall that would be better than sending the bill to taxpayers.

John Armstrong writes:

Murray McCully will not be resigning from the Cabinet over his ministry’s inept handling of the alleged sex attack involving a staff member at the Malaysian High Commission.

He is under no constitutional obligation to do so. He is under no substantial political pressure (as yet) to do so. He has done nothing that is politically shady or morally dubious which would give his opponents the grounds for demanding that he does so.

Even if the foreign minister did offer his resignation, it is most unlikely that John Key would accept it. In short, it is going to take much more than the victim in the alleged attack calling on him to step down for that to actually happen.

Interesting that the politician who has said the most insensitive things about the case is Hone Harawira for saying it is all a fuss about bugger all. Yet no one is calling on him to resign – just Murray McCully, who is actually the MP who ended up getting Malaysia to agree to extradite the alleged attacker.

A fascinating post at the Washington Post by Ali Khedery:

To understand why Iraq is imploding, you must understand Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — and why the United States has supported him since 2006.

I have known Maliki, or Abu Isra, as he is known to people close to him, for more than a decade. I have traveled across three continents with him. I know his family and his inner circle. When Maliki was an obscure member of parliament, I was among the very few Americans in Baghdad who took his phone calls. In 2006, I helped introduce him to the U.S. ambassador, recommending him as a promising option for prime minister. In 2008, I organized his medevac when he fell ill, and I accompanied him for treatment in London, spending 18 hours a day with him at Wellington Hospital. In 2009, I lobbied skeptical regional royals to support Maliki’s government.

By 2010, however, I was urging the vice president of the United States and the White House senior staff to withdraw their support for Maliki. I had come to realize that if he remained in office, he would create a divisive, despotic and sectarian government that would rip the country apart and devastate American interests.

America stuck by Maliki. As a result, we now face strategic defeat in Iraq and perhaps in the broader Middle East.

Khedery argues that if the US has stopped supporting Maliki in 2010, then what has happened in the last few weeks may not have occured.

After the December 2005 parliamentary elections, U.S. Embassy officials combed the Iraqi elite for a leader who could crush the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, battle al-Qaeda, and unite Iraqis under the banner of nationalism and inclusive government. My colleague Jeffrey Beals and I were among the few Arabic-speaking Americans on good terms with the country’s leading figures. The only man we knew with any chance to win support from all Iraqi factions — and who seemed likely to be an effective leader — was Maliki. We argued that he would be acceptable to Iraq’s Shiite Islamists, around 50 percent of the population; that he was hard-working, decisive and largely free of corruption; and that he was politically weak and thus dependent on cooperating with other Iraqi leaders to hold together a coalition. 

Khedery says Maliki was the right pick in 2005, but then things went wrong:

With the Obama administration vowing to end Bush’s “dumb war,” and the continued distraction of the global economic crisis, Maliki seized an opportunity. He began a systematic campaign to destroy the Iraqi state and replace it with his private office and his political party. He sacked professional generals and replaced them with those personally loyal to him. He coerced Iraq’s chief justice to bar some of his rivals from participating in the elections in March 2010. After the results were announced and Maliki lost to a moderate, pro-Western coalition encompassing all of Iraq’s major ethno-sectarian groups, the judge issued a ruling that awarded Maliki the first chance to form a government, ushering in more tensions and violence.

So he started to go rogue around 2009.

After helping to bring him to power in 2006, I argued in 2010 that Maliki had to go. I felt guilty lobbying against my friend Abu Isra, but this was not personal. Vital U.S. interests were on the line. Thousands of American and Iraqi lives had been lost and trillions of dollars had been spent to help advance our national security, not the ambitions of one man or one party. The constitutional process had to be safeguarded, and we needed a sophisticated, unifying, economics-minded leader to rebuild Iraq after the security-focused Maliki crushed the militias and al-Qaeda.

In conversations with visiting White House senior staff members, the ambassador, the generals and other colleagues, I suggested Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi as a successor. A former Baathist, moderate Shiite Islamist and French-educated economist who had served as finance minister, Abdul Mahdi maintained excellent relations with Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds as well as with Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

And how high up did the lobbying go?

On Sept. 1, 2010, Vice President Biden was in Baghdad for the change-of-command ceremony that would see the departure of Gen. Ray Odierno and the arrival of Gen. Lloyd Austin as commander of U.S. forces. That night, at a dinner at the ambassador’s residence that included Biden, his staff, the generals and senior embassy officials, I made a brief but impassioned argument against Maliki and for the need to respect the constitutional process. But the vice president said Maliki was the only option. Indeed, the following month he would tell top U.S. officials, “I’ll bet you my vice presidency Maliki will extend the SOFA,” referring to the status-of-forces agreement that would allow U.S. troops to remain in Iraq past 2011.

Biden was wrong, as he so often is.

But all the lobbying was for naught. By November, the White House had settled on its disastrous Iraq strategy. The Iraqi constitutional process and election results would be ignored, and America would throw its full support behind Maliki.

So they can’t say they were not warned. What happened next:

Within a short span, Maliki’s police state effectively purged most of them from politics, parking American-supplied M1A1 tanks outside the Sunni leaders’ homes before arresting them. Within hours of the withdrawal of U.S. forces in December 2011, Maliki sought the arrest of his longtime rival Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, eventually sentencing him to death in absentia. The purge of Finance Minister Rafea al-Essawi followed a year later.

So what are we left with:

In short, Maliki’s one-man, one-Dawa-party Iraq looks a lot like Hussein’s one-man, one-Baath Party Iraq. But at least Hussein helped contain a strategic American enemy: Iran. And Washington didn’t spend $1 trillion propping him up. There is not much “democracy” left if one man and one party with close links to Iran control the judiciary, police, army, intelligence services, oil revenue, treasury and the central bank. Under these circumstances, renewed ethno-sectarian civil war in Iraq was not a possibility. It was a certainty.

I resigned in protest on Dec. 31, 2010. 

If only they had listened to him. What happened was not inevitable after the fall of Saddam. It came about through bad decisions.

Katherine Rich writes at Stuff:

Sugar taxes will extract more money from citizens’ wallets for governments but do nothing to curb obesity.

While sugar is seen by some as the current food demon, it’s important to dial back the hysteria for a fact-based discussion.

Sugars are an important part of people’s diets, providing energy for the body and brain. Over the past decade, sucrose consumption in New Zealand has declined, and reports suggest most people consume at moderate levels.

All this while obesity has been rising. The remaining part of the energy-in, energy-out equation is physical activity, but anti-sugar activists prefer to blame food companies.

Of course.

And note when they propose a new tax, they never propose lowering other taxes to compensate.

The inconvenient truth for those wanting to scapegoat full-sugar carbonated drinks – fizzy – is that there has been a dramatic drop in sales in the past 15 years as consumers turn to the growing array of zero calorie and diet fizz options now available.

With Kiwis eating less sugar and drinking less sugary fizz at a time of rising obesity levels, it’s nonsense to pretend fizz taxes are going to magic away the obesity problem.

I only drink a soda with sugar in it around 1% of the time – if nothing else is available.

Those arguing that because taxes helped curb tobacco harm they will work for sugar overlook the fact that tobacco taxes work only because they add close to 500 per cent to the cost of the product.

Those wanting to apply such taxes to fizz are effectively advocating for a 1.5 litre family serve of Coke to jump from $3.39 to nearly $17.

Don’t give them ideas!

And likening food regulation to tobacco regulation doesn’t bear even the slightest scrutiny. We have to eat food to live. Food consumed in moderation is not harmful.

Exactly.

A fizz tax of 10 per cent or 20 per cent will extract more money from Kiwis but leave buyer behaviour unchanged because, as British nutrition expert Professor Jack Winkler points out, “demand for soft drinks is very inelastic, very unresponsive”.

In his 2011 commentary in the British Journal of Nutrition, he said a 10 per cent tax on soft drinks would, at best, change behaviours by “less than a sip. It would not even cut sugar intake by a gram”.

But it would take more money out of taxpayers pockets and into the Government’s.

Lindsay Mitchell blogs:

I wanted to get the whole picture before I wrote this post. Yesterday some detail arrived from MSD.

For years I have agitated about the long-term DPB population being derived from teenage births. The children of these parents form the most at-risk group.

But from 2008 the number of teenage births started dropping. In 2013 there were 29 percent fewer than in 2009.

But even better, at March 2009 there were 4,425 teenage parents on any main benefit. By March 2014 the number had dropped to 2,560. A 42 percent reduction.

The really important news is it’s happening across all ethnicities.The proportions are reasonably stable. …

This means thousands fewer children experiencing poor outcomes – ill-health, disconnect from education,  in and out of fostercare, potentially abused and neglected, having the cards stacked against them from the outset.

Thousands of would-be teen mums will continue on with their own lives and fulfilling potential, and hopefully have children when they are ready to. 

It’s a fantastic development. 

National deserve at least some credit for it with their new young parent mentoring and benefit management regime.

The reduction is huge and significant.

On The Nation:

In principle, do you like super teachers as an idea, good teachers getting paid more?

In principle I agree that having excellent teachers is really important but it’s not the only thing we have to do and you’ll find out more tomorrow.

In principle, do you agree with them being paid more though?

In principal I agree with great teachers and great schools. And you’ll find out more tomorrow.

Because will there be a choice here between having an iPad and no donations or having your good teachers paid more?

No, we can do both.

Will parents face a choice?

No, they won’t.

That was on Saturday. And then on Sunday they announced they will not pay good teachers more, as they will use the money elsewhere. So Cunliffe’s answer on Saturday was very misleading. He should have said “Yes, they will face a choice, but we think our priorities are better” – but he gave the very misleading impression that they will fund both.

The Herald reports:

Passengers flying to and from British airports, and not just those on United States-bound flights, must ensure their electronic devices are charged.

Although New Zealand authorities have not been asked to implement the tough new safety measures, the Aviation Security Service said it was prepared to step up checks.

The ASS should say that they will not succumb to the paranoia from overseas. To ban you travelling with a cellphone if it has run out of power (which is very common) is madness. Think of the huge delays as every person has to power their phone on, and then has to either give up their cellphone or change flights if it has run out of power.

A spokesman for the department said: “In line with the US advice, passengers on some routes into and out of the UK may now also be required to show that electronic devices in their hand luggage are powered up or face not being allowed to bring the device on to the aircraft.

“Passengers … are therefore advised to make sure electronic devices being carried in their hand luggage are charged before they travel.”

Has anyone done a cost benefit analysis of the huge cost this imposes, against the very marginal benefit?

Sir Bob Jones writes:

The Opposition’s role is to hold the Government to account plus present itself as an alternative administration.

The current conglomerate Opposition has fulfilled the first of these but not the second – Labour, in particular, failing abysmally as the polls consistently reflect.

I dislike third-term governments, as invariably they become arrogant, but we’re going to get one – and thank God, given the alternative. The absurd amalgam of Labour, the Greens, Harawira and possibly Harre and Winston is simply unfit to rule.

Well said. Labour can’t even govern itself with the factional warfare – let alone a five party coalition.

Labour’s problems directly reflect its management structure, to cite Labour MP Damien O’Connor, in allowing the party to be captured by a “gaggle of gays and unionists”. These factions control both candidate and leadership selection and have installed a discredited left-wing agenda, contrary to most of their senior MPs’ sentiments.

No Labour leader has ever been so unpopular as David Cunliffe, evidenced by the disastrous polls and also the Reader’s Digest trustworthy survey bracketing him humiliatingly in bottom place with Dotcom and Harawira. Cunliffe was installed against the strong wishes of those who knew him best, namely Labour’s caucus, and now the public know him as well, resulting in a wider disdain.

There are a large number of Labour MPs going around saying “We tried to tell people, but they wouldn’t listen to us”

I know someone who, through much hard work, became wealthy in the last few years. He has a sentimental historic attachment to the Labour Party, as do many affluent individuals, and he was planning a six-figure donation this year, chuffed at his new-found capability to do so.

But he was outraged after hearing a Cunliffe interview following the leadership race. “Will you raise taxes on higher incomes?” Cunliffe was asked. “You betcha,” the new leader exclaimed with gusto. My acquaintance was angry for, as he said: “I’ve worked my butt off and the tone of Cunliffe’s enthusiasm to punish me for this was sickening.”

“Will you now vote National?” I teased, knowing he’d never hitherto done so. “You betcha,” he exclaimed.

Labour are planning to tax New Zealand families and businesses an extra $5 billion a year.

National is laying off Cunliffe, fearful that the caucus will remove him – but they must. As in 1990 with Mike Moore, they should persuade someone such as Annette King to lead them into the election if only to save the party.

She’s likeable, competent and a highly-effective campaigner. Most importantly, she’d recapture the women vote which deserted Labour in droves after Cunliffe was foisted on the party.

Cunliffe insulted his caucus colleagues implying any who opposed him were scabs. A scab is someone who goes against the group – the group in this case is the Labour Party, not him.

He should go with dignity for the sake of his party. The sooner they replace him and also change their management structure, the better – not just for Labour but, more importantly, for the system.

I don’t think it will happen.

I tipped Germany to win the World Cup a few weeks ago, and their 7-1 killing of Brazil suggests they may well do that. It is hard to comprehend how rare a 7-1 result is in a World Cup semi-final – let alone against Brazil. This is like the All Blacks losing 49-5 in a World Cup match.

They’re up against Argentina, so Latin America will be behind them no doubt.

I understand lots are tooting.

This tables shows the large (over $30,000) donors to the parties since 2011. It does show quite dramatically where the big money is.

Note the figure for Colin Craig includes a donation in 2012 for around $1.6 million which was effectively for the previous campaign. However as recorded in 2012, I’ve included it.

Very interesting that NZ First claims not to have had a single large donor. They’ve claimed this in the past and it has turned out to be false, so I am naturally suspicious.

The Dom Post editorial:

 A group of Wellington apartment dwellers is angry about noise from nearby pubs.

Thankfully their gripes have been dismissed by those they have complained to: Wellington City Council, noise control officers and the district licensing inspector.

Wellington prides itself on its hospitality credentials – its array of coffee haunts and brew pubs, restaurants and noodle houses and, yes, late-night dance bars.

The whole colourful mix is part of the city’s identity. It sets it apart from other New Zealand cities, and features prominently in Wellington’s branding.

These residents live very close to Wellington’s main hospitality stretch – Courtenay Place and its surrounding lanes. They simply cannot expect to dictate the area’s noise levels and closing hours.

They have chosen to live in the heart of the city, and they need to accept the consequences of that choice.

On the plus side, they have easy walks to workplaces, and the harbour, and all of the city’s attractions. On the more challenging side, they face an increased likelihood of noise and late-night rowdiness.

Bar owner Nick Mills has a convincing point when he says “I thought you lived in the city to enjoy the vibrancy, not to object to the noise”.

Absolutely. They should go live in Tawa if they want peace and quiet.

The Press editorial:

The Christchurch City Council’s decision to pause its project to restore the Christchurch Town Hall until its financial position is clearer is plainly a wise one. The council had intended to begin seeking expressions of interest from companies who wanted to be involved in the project in May. But that has not gone ahead while the council awaits the outcome of negotiations with is insurers. That makes sense. There would be little point in committing a lot of time and money to the project if in the end there would be no rational way for the council to complete it.

The Council is already struggling with debt.

The Town Hall was insured for $69.1 million, but not all of that is necessarily recoverable. In any case, repairs have been estimated to cost $127.5m, more than it cost, in inflation-adjusted terms, to build.

So the net cost to ratepayers is at least $58 million.But it sounds like they won’t get the full insurance and we all know government construction projects tend to cost more than originally estimated. I would not be surprised if ratepayers end up having to pay over $100 million. That is almost $800 per household. If you asked households if they would rather have the $800 themselves or spend it on the Town Hall, I know what the answer would be.

Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn blogs on Labour’s policy to require those accused of rape to prove they had consent:

This clearly violates the presumption of innocence affirmed in the Bill of Rights Act (not to mention the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ICCPR, and every other major human rights instrument). Under that presumption, the state has to prove each and every aspect of its case (“the burden of proof is on he who declares, not on he who denies”). That’s clearly not the case under Labour’s proposal.

Our Supreme Court has already found that the presumption of supply in the Misuse of Drugs Act violates the Bill of Rights Act for exactly these reasons. They will draw exactly the same conclusion about this proposal – as will the UN Human Rights Commission.

I accept that rape cases are difficult to prove. This change will make them remarkably easier. If Labour gets its way, there will be a lot more convictions for rape. And a lot more of them will be of innocent people. We presume innocence because we believe it is far better for the guilty to go free than for the innocent to be punished. Labour clearly does not believe that any more.

A party which does not believe in and will not defend the presumption of innocence does not deserve your vote. All they deserve is your contempt. If they retain this policy, you should not vote Labour.

I can not believe they will not back down on this policy. Surely it is just a matter of time.

I’m surprised the Law Society and the Criminal Bar Association have been silent on Labour’s policy. It’s hard to think of a policy that strikes more at the heart of the justice system.

An interesting cable on Wikileaks from the then US Consul-General in Auckland after he met with David Cunliffe. Some extracts:

Summary. Up-and-coming Labour Party Minister David Cunliffe is confident about his party’s reelection chances despite poor recent poll numbers.

That was in June 2007.

Pointing out that elections are as far as 18 months away, Cunliffe said Labour had plenty of time to make up the lost ground and would do so.

They’re saying the same thing now, and only 77 days to go.

Cunliffe said there was last year debate within Labour regarding how to respond to the then-National Party leader, the intellectually respected but politically awkward Don Brash. Many in the Labour caucus, Cunliffe said, believed that Brash’s clumsiness was a gift to Labour, and that Labour should do all it could to ensure Brash remained leader of the opposition. Most Labour MPs, however, argued that Key would certainly unseat Brash before the next election. If it was inevitable that Key rather than Brash would lead National into the next election, the argument went, it was in Labour’s interest to have Key in the opposition leader’s seat as soon as possible so that the friction of politics could rub away some of his glow. Better to run against Key when he’s been opposition leader for 18 months rather than only 4-6 months. Therefore Labour kept the heat on Brash, doing whatever they could to speed his downfall.

That strategy worked well!

While emphasizing that New Zealand Muslims are loyal to their adopted country and inclined to leave the conflicts of their homelands behind them, Cunliffe expressed some concern that more radical imams are trying to enter the country and stir up trouble. Asked what tools he had to exclude those who have committed no crimes but still might be considered a threat, Cunliffe turned coy. “Some people simply find their visas don’t get renewed,” he said.

Excellent judgement.

Cunliffe is a former diplomat and is widely touted as one of Labour’s future leaders.

That was right.

Asked why he left the diplomatic service, he said he was more tempermentally suited to politics than to diplomacy. Another reason he cited for leaving was so that his spouse, whom he described as the family’s breadwinner, could return to her law practice. Cunliffe, who spent six years studying and working in the U.S., comes across as genuinely pro-American.

Don’t tell The Standard and The Daily Blog!

While a student, he worked on Senator Kennedy’s re-election campaign against Governor Romney. Cunliffe has a mixed reputation among his colleagues, some of whom have complained to Emboffs that he is arrogant and (ironically) undiplomatic.

Heh.

Stuff reports:

Canterbury Television was blocked by police from covering an earthquake memorial event at its former site after an apparent government blunder.

The Department of Internal affairs has apologised to Canterbury Television (CTV) after journalists were turned away from covering the arrival of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday.

Abe and his wife, Akie Abe, paid tribute to the people who died in the CTV building during the Christchurch earthquake. The pair laid a wreath at the site.

The building was where 115 of the 185 people who died in the February 2011 earthquake died.

Among those victims were employees of the station and 28 Japanese students*.

However, CTV’s head of news and content, Jacqui Shrimpton, said it received no notice of the site visit or what it entailed from the Department of Internal Affairs, which managed the event’s media coverage.

It is possible the DIA doesn’t have list or contacts for regional media, and just uses a national media list. But regardless, they should have regional media lists.

When a CTV journalist and cameraman arrived they had been ejected by police because their names were not on the list, Shrimpton said.

“We are frustrated and disappointed to not have been invited and were embarrassed in front of Christchurch media to have been sent away.”

Police had been apologetic, but strict security meant they could not allow the journalist and cameraman to stay.

The Police need to take some of the blame also. There’s a time to follow orders blindly, and there’s a time to use some discretion. At a minimum the officers should have checked higher up the line, until someone with authority could say of course you should let CTV staff in, so long as they have ID (which they would have).

The combination of the DIA oversight and the Police inflexibility combined in what really was a quite offensive way, albeit unintentionally – blocking CTV from covering a memorial at their own former site.

The Herald reports:

A video of the Maori King’s son has emerged showing him making an expletive-laden rant. …

The source said Mr Paki was his school’s kaitataki tane (male leader in a kapa haka group) but was kicked out of the team for bad behaviour while on the trip and sent home.

In the 25 second video, Mr Paki says; “rubbish c###, rubbish…I’m the f###### man boy. I’ll f###### show you how to lead a f###### roopu (group) boy, I’ll f###### show you what the f### is up c###.

I’m the f####### kaitataki f###### tane (male leader)..o te motu boy. I’m the f###### man, I’ll show you what is f###### up c###.”

And the Judge let him off his crimes on the basis it may stop him becoming the Maori King one day. Yeah, right. You don’t need to be a genius to work out his older brother will succeed, and Korotangi Paki is no potential successor.  Of course even if he was, I think it is repugnant that someone gets a lighter (or no) sentence purely on the basis of who his parents are.

Stuff reports:

A Massey University survey shows that young people are more likely to vote if it is made more convenient.

The research is based on a survey, which shows online voting is more of an incentive than a $50 payment.

The survey, which was conducted by academics and students from the university’s politics programme, targeted 18- to 24-year-old students to gauge their attitudes to the upcoming general election.

Of the respondents who indicated they did not intend to vote, 75 per cent said they would be more likely to vote if online voting was introduced, while only 51 per cent said they would be motivated by a $50 payment.

Postal voting is a dying medium. I’m not sure about online voting for parliamentary elections, but I think it’s a non brainer for local body elections which currently rely on postal voting.

Massey University politics lecturer Dr Damien Rogers said the results reflected the level to which technology shaped the lives of young people.

“Among our 288 responders we have a high level of technological literacy and there’s a sense that they want voting to be made as convenient as everything else in their lives.”

Absolutely. Make it easy to vote.

But politics programme colleague Associate Professor Richard Shaw warned online voting alone was unlikely to be the silver bullet that fixed declining participation levels among young voters.

“Online voting would help – but we should be careful to make sure the solutions match the problems.

Definitely not a silver bullet, but something that will help slow or halt the decline in voting rates.