Vanguard Military School have announced:

Initial NCEA results illustrate the outstanding start Vanguard Military School students have made to the 2014 school year, achieving an average 89% success in term 1 assessments, Vanguard Chief Executive Nick Hyde said today.

Mr Hyde was commenting on Term 1 NCEA assessment results that showed Vanguard students across all demographics had significantly lifted their success rates from their previous schooling. 

European and Other students were achieving 93% success, up from 58% success prior to attending Vanguard, while Pasifika students were now achieving 90% success, up from 62%, and Maori students achieving 85% success, up from 57%.

“We’re thrilled to see our students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, already demonstrating the attitudinal and academic excellence we strive for at Vanguard”, Mr Hyde said.

The Labour/Green Opposition have vowed to close schools such as Vanguard down. We can’t allow them to do this well.

Stuff reports:

A National MP has broken Parliament’s rules by employing her civil union spouse in her electorate office.

List MP Claudette Hauiti’s wife, Nadine Mau, was employed as an issues assistant in Hauiti’s electorate office in Auckland from April 7 until last Wednesday when she was sacked.

Under direction from Speaker David Carter, MPs are not allowed to employ their spouse or partner, either in or outside Parliament.

Hauiti said she was unaware of the prohibition on employing spouses when she contracted her wife to work in her office.

“I’m really disappointed that I didn’t know the rules, I’ve only been here a year and I should have kept up to speed with that and I didn’t.

“I made a really big mistake.”

Hauiti said she thought her wife would make a pertinent issues assistant because of the type of work she did with Maori communities.

“So I just took it upon myself to think that I could do that, but I was wrong.

“We were both mortified, we didn’t know [the rules] – either of us. We were both really shocked.”

Hauiti and Mau will have been married seven years this year, she said, adding “I’ve never made a secret of it, everyone knows that, and that we have three children.”

Staff of MPs are employed and paid by the Parliamentary Service, which became aware through a staff member on May 5 that Hauiti and Mau were in a relationship, a spokeswoman said.

This shouldn’t have happened. MPs should know the rules, and when in doubt – check. And anything to do with hiring a family member should ring warning bells.

But looks like a genuine mistake, and only occurred for a month. But still shouldn’t have happened at all.

The Prime Minister of Malaysia writes:

Najib, writing in the Wall Street Journal, urged the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which has been meeting in Montreal, to act on a Malaysian recommendation to implement real-time tracking of aircraft.

Yes. If we can trace an iPhone around the world, let’s do it for planes also.

He said the communication systems on aircraft such as transponders and the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting Systems (ACARS) should be changed so they cannot be disabled mid-air.

Najib said the systems on board the missing plane “were disabled. MH370 went dark.”

Also a good idea. There is no good reason you want someone to be able to turn them off.

He said that policy makers need to reconsider the capabilities of airliners’ black box recording devices.

“At the moment, the location pingers – which are activated if a plane crashes – last for only 30 days. This should be increased to at least 90 days, as the European Union has proposed,” he said.

At least 90 days. How much cost is there for some extra batteries?

Najib said it was “wholly inadequate” that today’s black boxes only record the last two hours of cockpit conversations, meaning the important minutes and hours after the plane vanished will not be available.

“Given that a standard i-phone can record 24 hours of audio, surely the black box should have sufficient memory to record cockpit conversations for the full duration of any flight,” he said.

The problem is the pilot unions are against. But again I agree.

Najib also said that airliners’ emergency locator transmitters – which emit a distress signal when the plane is in trouble – could be improved.

“Currently they don’t work very well under water and their mandated battery life is just 24 hours.”

To be honest the status qup sounds like a bit of a custerf**k.

Stuff reports on their Ipsos poll that only 21% of adults said the Budget should see a big increase in spending, 51% say the current spending levels should be maintained and 21% say spending should be cut.

So 72% are against increasing spending beyond current levels. That’s excellent for those who believe in fiscal restraint and a rejection of those who propose big tax and spending increases.

Bruce Wills writes in the Herald:

Labour’s Shadow Minister of Finance David Parker looked the part in delivering his party’s monetary policy. I was impressed and it lasted until Mr Parker’s sequel, which read like Labour was targeting farmers as if we are ducks.

A recent jaundiced attack upon irrigation has me questioning if the party gets it. This speech reads as an electoral game plan designed to demonise a minority of the population while amplifying prejudices and preconceptions about what we do.

Labour’s political calculus is cynical because “farming equals bad water” is dog-whistle politics. 

Evil evil farmers.

Labour’s anti-irrigation stance is a flip-flop from when Jim Anderton was Agriculture Minister. It also contradicts Labour’s desire to enact the world’s most repressive emissions trading scheme.

Winding up the Crown irrigation company not only flies in the face of regional economic development but regional climate adaptation. Are memories so short that we have forgotten adaptation was a key criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?

According to the panel, Hawkes Bay can expect double or even triple the time spent in drought by 2040. Adaptation means new pastures and technologies, but fundamentally, it means storing rainwater. Residents in towns and cities do not wait for rain before taking a shower.

While water is vital to farming, without stored water some of our rivers increasingly will run lower and warmer. This is a consequence of less rainfall in a changing climate. It will also impact on farming and the environment equally.

So why is Labour so anti-irrigation?

The most distressing thing about dog-whistle politics is that it denies that farmers live where we farm.

It is a naked attempt to make farmers a breed apart. It is unreconstructed class warfare.

So the capitalists are no longer the enemy of the working class – it is the farmers!

3 News reported:

The National Party is facing more accusations of systematic fundraising like it does with its Cabinet Clubs.

This time it’s through a trust called the National Foundation, which targets large donations from deceased estates.

I thought the media reporting on fundraising issues couldn’t get more stupid – but this is definitely a new low.

3 News thinks there is something wrong with a political party doing “systematic” fundraising, and specifically that supporters of National are being asked to leave a bequest in their wills.

I’m sorry, but WHAT THE FUCK?

Do they think dead people are getting access to Ministers in return for donations from their estates?

Or are they worried that dead people are purchasing policies to make heaven a nice place to live?

Should we have a law to stop people donating money to political parties in their wills?

This is the moment where coverage of this issue did not just jump the shark, but the shark ate Fonzie.

The Australian Budget yesterday was a great example of what happens when previous Governments don’t get spending under control and the deficit gets so large.

As we are about to hit surplus. Australia has a $30 billion deficit.

Some of the Government Budget decisions include:

• The government will axe 16,500 jobs over three years, by cutting 230 bureaucratic programs and 70 government agencies.
• A temporary tax increase on those earning over $180,000
• A cut in tertiary education subsidies by 20%
• A lower repayment threshold and higher interest rate on student loans
• Increase in pension age to 70
• A part charge for seeing a GP

A reader sent me this photo, from Labour’s facebook page.

They comment:

They’ve obviously photoshopped Cunliffe into this photo – check out the right side of his head.

I’m not a photoshop expert but I’ve shown it to a couple of people who handy with photo editing, and they reckon it is photoshopped. They may be wrong. Any experts out there who can offer an opinion?

UPDATE: Have had confirmed that David Cunliffe was at the rally. So the image may be touched up, but is genuine.

UPDATE2: Or maybe not. A reader e-mails:

Place your Cunliffe image in Photoshop

Go Image > Adjustments > Brightness/contrast and change brightness to about 40

separates Cunliffe from background

obvious fiddle

9 added arrows indicate small ‘artifacts’ in sloppy selection in cutting him out of original

1 on suit should is wrong lighting

The adjusted image is below:

UPDATE3: Heh, a reader sends in this photo, from the archives:

The Herald editorial:

But if these misuses of company property had not occurred, Taurima’s position would still have been untenable. He not only joined the Labour Party while working in news and current affairs, he made an unsuccessful bid to be Labour’s candidate in the Ikaroa-Rawhiti byelection last year. Strangely, after missing the selection, he was able to return to his position at TVNZ. There, his continuing Labour activities reached a level that, the report says, “would plainly be deeply embarrassing to TVNZ if it came to light”.

He must have known that would be so. It is elementary to journalists that joining a political party is not an option unless they plan to make their career in the party’s publications. Those who want to be credible reporters of news and politics for a mass audience cannot belong to a party. If they did, they would have to declare their affiliation, and their audience would rightly question the reliability of everything they reported.

The Public Service Association seems not to understand this. It thinks a recommendation to ban reporters, content producers and editors from political activity is a draconian and unnecessary breach of their rights as citizens. It believes the State Services Commission guidelines for public servants are sufficient for the state broadcaster and that TVNZ will set “a dangerous precedent for other public servants”.

Public servants serve the Government of the day. They can belong to a political party and take part in its activities after hours because the primary audience for their professional work is ministers and other politicians understand their code. State-owned media such as TVNZ and Maori Television are different. Their primary audience must know their reporters, producers and editors are not a member of any party in their spare time.

I thought the PSA position was appalling. They should be defending neutrality – but they were effectively arguing that political journalists for state television should be able to be party activists.

The Herald does not allow its editorial staff to participate in community or political activities that could compromise their work. This means not only membership of political parties but taking part in public campaigns that they could have to cover. Preserving this distance from politics is not an onerous restriction for those whose credibility is paramount. They have the privilege of observing, reporting and commenting on public affairs. Once they cross the line to partisan participation, there is no coming back.

Well stated.

Stuff reports:

NZ First MP Winston Peters was booted out of Parliament after claiming Justice Minister Judith Collins failed to declare travel costs paid for by the Chinese government.

For days, Peters has been claiming he has a smoking gun that would see Prime Minister John Key sack Collins.

But in farcical scenes during Question Time, it took several attempts for him to make the allegations, as he was blocked by Speaker David Carter.

His stumbling caused Key to remark: ”I don’t understand the information that the member has got or the allegation… if the member could just speak a bit more clearly it might help everyone including the media.”

Stumbling is a polite term for it.

Eventually Peters tabled a cabinet report which he says show Collins failed to list ”substantial” travel, accommodation and other costs met by China in the MPs register of pecuniary interests. He said Key knew about the contributions. 

This is hilarious. The revelation that the host Government picks up internal travel costs of visiting Ministers, is about as much as a surprise that you get wet if it is raining.

It isn’t entirely clear if Ministers need to declare every overseas trip they undertake. Standing Orders say:

the information referred to in subclause (1)(a) does not have to be included in the return if the travel costs or accommodation costs (as the case may be) were paid by … any government, parliament, or international parliamentary organisation, if the primary purpose of the travel was in connection with an official parliamentary visit.

It is best to err on the side of caution and include all trips, but any omission is a minor issue. The trips are announced publicly when undertaken. Absolutely no one is surprised that the host Government picks up internal travel costs.

Several articles on Winston’s misfire.

Jane Clifton writes:

It was less the promised “smoking gun” than a dribbling water pistol, but Winston Peters made sure to get himself turfed out of Parliament yesterday to ensure his allegations about Judith Collins made the news one way or another. …

John Armstrong writes:

‘And pick up your smoking gun on the way out.” It was quite simply the killer interjection; one containing just the right amount of sarcasm to really get under the skin of its target. Or – more accurately in this case – loser.

You do not usually associate that word with Winston Peters. But his promise to dish more dirt – sorry, fresh information – on Judith Collins, such that she would be “gone by Monday”, was a dismal failure in Parliament yesterday.

It must have been especially galling for Peters that the paralysing interjection came from his one-time New Zealand First colleague, Tau Henare. The pair fell out when the National-New Zealand First coalition government fell apart in 1998.

Best quip of the month.

Andrea Vance reports on why Winston was slurring so much. he had the flu!

NZ First leader Winston Peters has blamed the flu, after he turned in a shambling performance in Parliament yesterday and MPs questioned his health.

The veteran politician, 69, displayed shaking hands and slurred speech as he attempted to catch out Prime Minister John Key with new allegations about Justice Minister Judith Collins.

And at a media conference after he was ejected from the House, Peters was sweating profusely, wiping his face with a handkerchief.

A spokeswoman later said that he was suffering from the flu.

The flu can be very nasty and take weeks to recover from. It’s not something that disappears in 24 hours. So it will be interesting to see if Winston has recovered today.

Questions for Oral Answer.

Questions to Ministers 2.00PM-3.00PM.

1. Dr RUSSEL NORMAN to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government’s policies?
2. Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE to the Prime Minister: Has his Government delivered on his expectation of a “more equal society” and as a result is “every one of our children getting the very best start to life”?
3. JOHN HAYES to the Minister of Finance: How will the Budget tomorrow support a growing economy, including jobs, higher wages, and delivery of better public services?
4. Hon DAVID PARKER to the Minister of Finance: Will Budget 2014 continue the trend of widening inequality between the wealthy and poorer areas of New Zealand, as shown by the University of Otago 2013 index of deprivation?
5. Hon PHIL HEATLEY to the Minister for Social Development:What recent announcement has the Government made about funding for sexual violence services?
6. Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES to the Minister of Energy and Resources: How many homes have been insulated as a result of the Relationship Accords signed with the Māori Party in 2008 and 2011, and of these, how many were in low income households?
7. Hon ANNETTE KING to the Minister of Health: Will the total allocated funding for Vote Health in Budget 2014 be sufficient to keep pace with population growth, ageing, and increased costs?
8. ANDREW WILLIAMS to the Minister of Finance: Will the 2014 Budget contain specific measures to improve tighter rules on foreign ownership of New Zealand land, businesses and other New Zealand-owned assets; if not, why not?
9. Dr JIAN YANG to the Minister of Health: What is the Government doing to increase awareness of prostate cancer?
10. JACINDA ARDERN to the Minister of Finance: Does he believe families with newborn babies are currently receiving adequate support via Government-funded tax credits and paid parental leave?
11. CLAUDETTE HAUITI to the Minister of Statistics: What reports has she received on how the 2013 Census data will help shape communities and inform decision making?
12. PHIL TWYFORD to the Minister of Housing: Does he stand by his statement that collecting the data on offshore ownership of houses “would be a waste of public money”; if so, what would the cost be?

Today Labour are asking about the government’s record in creating a better society,  inequality, health spending, paid parental leave and home ownership. The Greens are asking whether the government stands by all its policies.  New Zealand First are asking about foreign ownership of New Zealand businesses and property.

Patsy question of the day goes to Claudette Hauiti for Question 11: What reports has she received on how the 2013 Census data will help shape communities and inform decision making?

General Debate 3.00PM-4.00PM

A debate consisting of 12 speeches of no more than 5 minutes in duration. Informative and entertaining.

Government Bills 4.00PM-6.00PM and 7.30PM-10.00PM.

1. Food Bill –  Committee Stage

2. Vulnerable Children Bill – Committee Stage

3. Veterans’ Support Bill – Committee Stage

The Food Bill is being guided through the house by the Minister for Food Safety, Nikki Kaye. The bill introduces substantial reforms to the regulatory regime for the safety and suitability of food.

The Vulnerable Children Bill is being guided through the house by the Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett. This is an omnibus bill that proposes establishing the Vulnerable Children Act and the Child Harm Prevention Orders Act. The purpose of the proposed amendments is to protect and improve the well-being of vulnerable children.

The Veterans’ Support Bill is being guided through the house by the Minister for Veteran’s Affairs, Michael Woodhouse. This bill proposes a new support scheme for veterans of military service that would replace the current scheme prescribed in the War Pensions Act 1954.

Stuff reports:

The occasion certainly did not pass unnoticed, with the prime minister in town to visit Manaia View School, the first location to connect to fibre back in 2011.

Principal Leanne Otene proudly showed John Key the ways in which fibre has benefited her pupils, eliminating frustration and decreasing truancy rates.

Otene says her students no longer remember a time before fibre and now have digital, rather than wooden, desks to store their school work. …

Board of Trustees member Kirsten Holtz says the technological transformation at the school has been “absolutely amazing”.

“There’s now one device for every two kids, and fibre has made online learning more accessible and instant, there’s no waiting around so there’s more learning.”

“Children are engaged, and engaged children are children that are learning,” she says.

In the next few years fibre will not be just in every school, but available to 75% of NZ homes.  The impact in education is starting to show. The impact for other sectors will take longer to be realised, but may be no less significant.

In a speech to various unions, Andrew Little has bemoaned:

last 20 years, bottom 50% of earners – their wages either stayed the same or went backwards …

The story of the last 20 years is it’s been tough on workers.

Labour were in office for nine of the last twenty years, so what is Andrew saying?

Is he saying that the last Labour Government (which he was President of the party for) failed to lift wages for low income workers?

Or is he saying that the EPMU, which he was the head of, failed to lift wages for their members?

Philip K. Howard writes:

In February 2011, during a winter storm, a tree fell into a creek in Franklin Township, New Jersey, and caused flooding. The town was about to send a tractor in to pull the tree out when someone, probably the town lawyer, helpfully pointed out that it was a “class C-1 creek” and required formal approvals before any natural condition was altered. The flooding continued while town officials spent 12 days and $12,000 to get a permit to do what was obvious: pull the tree out of the creek.

Government’s ineptitude is not news. But something else has happened in the last few decades. Government is making America inept. Other countries don’t have difficulty pulling a tree out of a creek. Other countries also have modern infrastructure, and schools that generally succeed, and better health care at little more than half the cost.

Reforms, often embodied in hundreds of pages of new regulations, are tried constantly. But they only seem to make the problems worse. Political debate is so predictable that it’s barely worth listening to, offering ideology without practicality—as if our only choice, as comedian Jon Stewart put it, is that “government must go away completely—or we must be run by an incompetent bureaucracy.”

The missing element in American government could hardly be more basic: No official has authority to make a decision. Law has crowded out the ability to be practical or fair. Mindless rigidity has descended upon the land, from the schoolhouse to the White House to, sometimes, your house. Nothing much works, because no one is free to make things work.

Automatic law causes public failure. A system of detailed dictates is supposed to make government work better. Instead it causes failure.

The simplest tasks often turn into bureaucratic ordeals. A teacher in Chicago who called the custodian to report a broken water fountain was chewed out because he didn’t follow “broken water fountain reporting procedures.” On the first day of school he was required to read to his students a list of disciplinary rules, including this one, just to start things off on the right foot: “You may be expelled for homicide.”

It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so sad.

Budgets are out of control because government executives lack flexibility to shave here and there to make ends meet. Soon after his election, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo thought he had found an easy way to save $50 million when he learned that a large juvenile detention center was empty, with no prospects of use anytime soon. There it was, sitting upstate, with several dozen employees—doing nothing but costing taxpayers millions of dollars. But no one had the authority to close it down, not even the governor. There’s a New York law that prohibits closing down any facility with union employees without at least one year’s notice. 

I look forward to Labour adopting this as policy!

Even matters of life and death are sometimes asked to yield to the rigid imperatives of a clear rule. In 2012, Florida lifeguard Tomas Lopez was fired for leaving his designated zone on the beach to rescue a drowning man just over the line. “On radio I heard Tommy saying ‘I’m going for a rescue but it’s out of our zone,’” said another lifeguard, who added that the “manager told him not to go and to call 911.” Lopez said he couldn’t just sit back, and was prepared to get fired, adding, “It wasn’t too much of an upset, because I had my morals intact.” After publicity about the incident, Lopez was offered his job back. He declined.

These are extreme examples, but they show why it is important to rely more on values and judgement than strict rules.

Let this be our motto: Just tell me the rules. In 2013, an elderly woman collapsed at an assisted living facility in Bakersfield, California, and a nurse called 911. The operator asked the nurse to try to revive the woman with CPR, but the nurse refused, saying it was against policy at that facility. “I understand if your boss is telling you, you can’t do it, but … as a human being … is there anybody that’s willing to help this lady and not let her die?” “Not at this time,” the nurse replied. During the seven-minute, sixteen-second call, the dispatcher continued to plead with the nurse: “Is there a gardener? Any staff, anyone who doesn’t work for you? Anywhere? Can we flag someone down in the street to help this lady? Can we flag a stranger down? I bet a stranger would help her.” By the time the ambulance arrived, the woman had died. The executive director of the facility defended the nurse on the basis that she had followed the rules: “In the event of a health emergency … our practice is to immediately call emergency medical personnel for assistance … That is the protocol we followed.”

Very sad.

Worth watching the Campbell Live episode in the home of David Cunliffe and Karen Price. I thought both David and Karen came across really well, and it is nice to get to see the person behind the politics. While I don’t support the Labour Party, I’ve always found David Cunliffe to be very professional, courteous and upfront in his dealings with me – and like most MPs, he is in politics because of a genuine belief in the government’s ability for its policies to make New Zealand a better place to live.

An extract from the story:

Ms Price had an urban childhood, having grown up in Auckland surrounded by pets, a tradition that has continued. 

The Cunliffe family have an obvious love of animals, owning one beehive, five chickens, a cat, dog, puppy, two budgies, two canaries, and recently gave away eight rabbits, because they were just too much.

One might believe that surrounded by so many animals, Ms Price may have dreamt of becoming a vet one day, but instead she wanted to become a pilot, and that is exactly what she did. 

“Just a little private pilot licence,” says Ms Price. “I never wanted to fly people; I just wanted to play games myself.” 

I’m not so sure about bees as pets, but thoroughly approve of the birds, cat  and dogs. And having a pilot licence is very cool. It would be great to be able to fly a little plane to islands such as Great Barrier.

Jane Clifton reviews the show and says it was nicely crafted and a must watch.

This is very unusual. Whale blogs about a poll being done, presumably on behalf of Labour, asking if people’s view of Shane Jones was:

• Shane Jones delivered amusing one liners but his political career was accident prone and did not amount to much. The most attention he got was for using his parliamentary credit card to pay for pornographic movies.
• Shane Jones was one of the few politicians who tells it like it is and with his attacks on Countdown has been the most effective Labour politician this year. He will be a huge loss to Labour especially amongst Maori and blue collar voters.

If the polling was being done for a media client, then the question would be sensible – it would be for a story on the impact of Shane Jones. But presumably the poll is on behalf of Labour (as was being done by their normal polling company) and the question is why would you poll on Shane Jones, once he has already resigned, unless it was to publicly attack him saying that their polls show that most voters think he was an accident prone MP who amounted to little whose most noticeable achievement was the taxpayer funded porn.

They can’t change the fact he resigned, so I really can’t think of any other reasons they would be polling on him except to undermine him. I’d love to see Shane’s face when he read that Labour is polling on whether people think he was an accident prone lazy pornography viewer or an in touch effective MP. Labour’s caucus meeting next week could be fun What other Labour MPs are Labour polling about in such derogatory terms?

UPDATE: I’m told from a very reliable source that in this case Labour is not responsible for this question. So it will be fascinating to discover who is, if it ever comes out.

Commentators called last week National’s worst week since the election. Stuff today have published a Stuff.co.nz/Ipsos poll that was conducted from Saturday until Monday, immediately at the end of what was called National’s worst week.

I’ve blogged the results at Curiablog, which show National at 48%, Labour dipping below 30% and David Cunliffe dropping 3.9% as Preferred Prime Minister.

Grant Robertson will be a happy man. He only has 129 days to wait until he can become Labour Party Leader!

Stuff reports:

Palmerston North Mayor Jono Naylor is the sole nominee for the National Party candidacy for the Palmerston North electorate.

Naylor has just announced he will run against sitting Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway in September’s election, subject to confirmation by local party members.

He said after 13 years in local government, he felt he had more to offer the city and could be more effective as a member of parliament than as mayor.

The timing was right for his family, he said, and while he had not been a member of a political party until recently, he believed National’s values around personal responsibility, strong families and community aligned best with his own.

If successful, he would resign from the mayoralty, triggering a by-election.

He plans to continue as mayor during the campaign.

Naylor was first elected mayor in 2007, after serving six years as a city councillor.

He was re-elected last year, in the city’s first election under STV, when he received 51.7 per cent of voters’ first choices.

This makes Palmerston North very interesting. Iain Lees-Galloway holds it for Labour by 3,285 votes.

Naylor has been elected Mayor three times. In 2013 he got more than twice as many votes as the second placed candidate. He got 52% to their 23%. National must have a very reasonable chance of winning the seat.

Liam Hehir writes in the Manawatu Standard:

Are you ready to hear something that will shake your faith in our democracy? Brace yourself.

I can reveal that a network of highly organised corporations have gained influence over one of our political parties. They give this party thousands of dollars – and there is no doubt they get their money’s worth.

For instance, the corporations in question have privileged party connections. As hard as it is to believe, they actually have a direct hand in choosing the party leader. Less directly, a high number of party MPs and organisers used to work for them.

The party regularly proposes legislation that furthers the goals of these corporations.

One of their umbrella organisations was even awarded a government contract that one watchdog group called a “cosy deal” to do “little, if anything”.

Yes, the role and influence of unions over the Labour Party is truly disturbing.

Of course, you probably shouldn’t expect the TV3 news team to express any alarm over this. I also wouldn’t hold my breath while waiting for John Campbell to demand which Labour Party figures met with which union bosses (and what was discussed and what promises were made).

Union bosses that pay enough money to Labour ever get private meetings on a regular basis with MPs to discuss and write policy.

Reasonable disclosure standards should be maintained and adhered to. As long as they are – and there’s no evidence of actual favours being traded for donations – it’s hard to see what there is to get het up about.

After all, it’s reasonable that people who are donating to a cause have an opportunity to talk to the people they are donating to. It’s also reasonable for politicians to talk with the people they hope will back their cause.

So it doesn’t really disturb me to know that organised labour is a powerful force within the Labour Party. I know that the party is supported by, and will support legislation favourable to, the trade union movement. I price that into my decision about voting for it. People make the same calculation about National and the farming and business sectors.

The alternative is for private donations to political parties to be banned altogether and for all political activity to be exclusively financed by the state. This is the preference of the Green Party – and it is hard to escape the feeling that the “revelations” about private donor fundraising are being used as a stalking horse for that cause.

Public financing of political parties should be resisted. When parties don’t depend on voluntary donations – from individuals, business, trade unions and other non-government sectors – they will become a self-perpetuating elite of career politicians. Incumbents will benefit from a system rigged even more in their favour, and grassroots politics will wither.

Our members of Parliament will become less like our delegates to the Government, and more like the Government’s emissaries to us.

And however you feel about the present system, it’s preferable to that.

This is the agenda that must be resisted. Taxpayers being forced to fund political parties. It entrenches the incumbents and means that we end up not donating to the parties we agree with or support – but being forced to fund the parties we detest.

Fraser Nelson writes in the Daily Telegraph:

The latest to turn is David Lammy, a Harvard-educated lawyer who was a health minister under Tony Blair at the age of 29. A few months ago, he proposed an idea for London: rent controls, where the government lays down terms to landlords. There is a “patently obvious” demand for such controls, he said, because it’s so costly to rent in the capital. So landlords can be told not to charge so much. No one took the idea very seriously: after all, since when could government order lower prices? Wasn’t that kind of thing tried in the Soviet Union with, erm, mixed results?

Some weird stats from the Herald:

• Most children – 69 to one mother – 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets. Her husband also had 18 children with his 2nd wife!
• The longest pregnancy is 375 days. Ouch.
• The heaviest baby was 10.8 kgs at birth – double ouch.
• Lightest surviving baby was 260 grams
• Yuck – youngest mother was five years old. She is alive today, aged 82. she had a second son 33 years after her first
• Oldest mother – 69.
• Most children in a single birth – eight to the Octomum.

The Green Party has announced:

The Green Party will establish a Green Investment Bank as a first step in accelerating New Zealand’s transition to a smarter greener economy, Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman announced today.

The Green Investment Bank will be an enduring, government-owned, for-profit bank partnering with the private sector to fund new projects ranging from renewable energy and biofuel production to new clean technologies.

I blogged a couple of days ago on how the Greens had lost 96% of themoney they invested into Windflow, which they trumpeted as a sustainable green investment.

They now want to raid taxpayer funds and throw millions and milliosn of taxpayer dollars into trendy investments they approve of.

I say no no no.

Let them invest their own money in whatever companies they want.  But I don’t want them taking my taxes to throw away on their pet projects. This is the Green equivalent of the Development Finance Corporation which was initially Government owned and had the same mandate – funding new projects etc.  The DFC collapsed in a heap, owing over $1.8 billion.

This is their plan for the future – another DFC – but with them in charge and only their pet projects being deemed suitable for funding.