The Herald reports:

Auckland University is in danger of slipping from a “storehouse of knowledge to a foreign warehouse” because it is increasingly catering for international students from Asia at the potential expense of New Zealanders, says Labour MP Shane Jones.

Mr Jones said the focus on increasing fee-paying students from China, India and other Asian counties was turning universities “into institutions designed to educate international populations rather than ourselves”.

Mr Jones, a graduate of Harvard in the US, initially made the comments at a political debate at Auckland University on Thursday night. One of those at the debate contacted the Weekend Herald to say there were calls of “racist” after his comments.

Mr Jones said he had not heard the “racist” comment but somebody told him that it was called out.

“If someone did say that, that would bother me not one iota. I believe a university should be a storehouse of knowledge, not a foreign warehouse. Universities have to serve Kiwis first.”

He said he was not being racist and international students were important, but a debate was needed about the purpose of a university in New Zealand. There was a risk that fewer places would be available for New Zealanders because of the need to cater for international students.

“They (universities) tell us they don’t have enough dough so, disproportionately, they are racing into the crescent from India through to China and bringing in more and more international students. I don’t want to have a situation where there is no room for Kiwis at the intellectual inn.”

 The comments by Jones seem to based on ignorance of university funding, or he is auditioning to replace Winston as NZ First Leader.

There is a limit on domestic students because each domestic student is subsidised by the taxpayer.

International students pay full fees. In fact they pay slightly more than full fees. Universities make a profit on each international student. What this means is that the more international students you have, the more domestic students you can afford. It is not a choice of one vs the other. So the comments by Jones are woefully ignorant.

The Auckland University website shows international students make up about 13 per cent of its student population.

Hardly a huge proportion.

Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce said of Mr Jones’ remark: “It’s a very strange comment to make if you’re an economic development spokesperson and you’re supposed to be about creating jobs.”

Mr Joyce said the international education sector was worth $2.5 billion to the economy and contributed 28,000 jobs.

Jones is normally pro-jobs. Disappointing.

The Waikato Times reports:

Waikato District Health Board used Facebook to tell Hamilton City Council it had no excuses for withholding fluoride from the city’s water supply.

“Surely now there can be no excuses,” the board’s post said in reaction to a landmark High Court decision which favoured fluoride.

The reserved decision of Judge Rodney Harrison, released yesterday, rejected all grounds on which Christchurch-based lobby group New Health New Zealand argued against South Taranaki District Council’s moves to add fluoride to water in Waverley and Patea.

Hamilton City Council had been holding off reintroducing fluoride until the outcome of the South Taranaki case.

“Put fluoride back into the water Hamilton City Council please?”, the health board post said.

Health board spokeswoman Mary Anne Gill told the Times: “The people have spoken. The legal system has spoken. For the good of our children’s oral health, just put it back in and put it back in now.”

But, in spite of the High Court decision and a public referendum firmly in favour of fluoridation in October, Hamilton mayor Julie Hardaker says her council still has to vote on it first.

“We’ll be reviewing all the information to enable us to decide what the next steps for Hamilton will be.”

The next step is easy. The people have voted. The court case was decisive. Stick the fluoride back in.

The court judgement is below.

140307_New Health v Taranaki

Some extracts:

Accepting, as I must, that there is respectable scientific and medical support for the Council’s position, I am driven to the conclusion that the significant advantages of fluoridation clearly outweigh the only acknowledged drawback, the increased incidence of fluorosis. I am satisfied that the power conferred on local authorities to fluoridate is a proportionate response to the scourge of dental decay, particularly in socially disadvantaged areas

The evidence relied on by the Council shows that the advantages of fluoridation significantly outweigh the mild fluorosis which is an accepted outcome of fluoridation.

A good win for science.

The NZ Initiative does B this week:

It is a wonderful convenience to be able to buy almost anything we want, offering nothing in exchange but flimsy paper or an electronic claim on our bank account. We experience this convenience every time we go to the supermarket and pay by cash, ATM or credit card.

The entire system depends on the seller’s confidence that the means of payment being offered is of real value. Counterfeit cash, or fraudulent ATM or credit card transactions potentially undermine every honest person’s ability to transact.

For most of human history, confidence has been greatest in coins made of gold and silver. Ancient rulers who secretly debased their coins cheated their people and eroded that confidence. 

Today, we transact in a world of monopoly government paper money, backed only by trust in government. Like the rulers of old, today’s governments can cheat their people by creating unanticipated inflation through issuing too much paper money.

The diverse interest rates paid on borrowings by banks and governments illustrate how confidence varies in the value of each issuer’s promise to pay future interest and principal. Higher interest rates mean higher risk.

The modern government-controlled central bank is banker to the major commercial banks. It accepts their deposits (which count as banking system reserves) and may lend them money or buy some of their assets when they need more cash. The perceived soundness of a commercial bank depends, in part, on its perceived central bank support.

The soundness of a commercial bank also depends on the quality of its loans, the degree to which it matches deposit and lending risks, the level and quality of its reserves, and the financial strength of its major shareholders.

In contrast, the soundness of a central bank is dominated by the government’s ability to inject more taxpayer money into it when needed.

Governments may oblige central banks to lend unwisely, perhaps by forcing them to fund government deficits, or perhaps to support institutions that have made bad loans in a politically ‘worthy’ cause, such as housing loans to uncreditworthy borrowers.

Such situations can easily induce booms and crashes, banking crises and prolonged unemployment.

These roles and pressures place heavy responsibilities on central bankers. They stand at the apex of the confidence pyramid and play a pivotal role, for better or for worse, during any general banking crisis.

Central banking has mystique, but no magic wand. It cannot insulate the public from the consequences of collective fiscal and financial follies.

Next week is C for competition!

I’ve blogged the latest Roy Morgan poll at Curiablog.

The gap between National and Labour/Greens has increased from 6% to 7.5%, NZ First have dropped below the 5% threshold and the country heading in the right direction indicator has increased to 65%, which is a four year high.

Stuff reports:

A “digital content levy” being evaluated by Labour could bail out the news media industry as well as supporting local programming, says the Coalition for Better Broadcasting.

The charitable trust was established last year by people associated with a campaign to save TV

NZ7 and obtain better funding Radio New Zealand, and said it would soon be calling for members.

Chief executive Myles Thomas, a freelance television director, said it would support the idea of a levy on telcos “as a viable way to fund public service media in New Zealand, as levies already do in Europe”

Why stop at public service media (generally code for left wing shows that fight neoliberalism). Why not also tax Internet users to fund the music industry? And also tax Internet users to fund the bookstores? And also tax Internet users to fund organic farming.

Thomas said telcos charged customers “quite a lot” for access to the internet and online content. “Yet the people who make the content receive none of that direct payment. It’s unfair that while telcos do very nicely, the content creators, including news organisations like Fairfax [publishers of Stuff], struggle to develop a viable business model.

Let’s look at the logic of Mr Thomas. First of all ISPs charge for access to the Internet, not specific content. They provide access, not content. Content providers choose to voluntarily make their content available online – some charge for it, some do not.  It is their choice.

I may go into town to go shopping. If I pay a taxi to take me into town so I can access the shops, Mr Thomas seems to think the taxi firm should have to pay the shops for the privilege of delivering customers to them.

If I take a bus to a public library, the bus company should pay the library for me accessing their free content.

“Paywalls are rare and even more rarely successful. A levy could be a great way to close the loop and solve several problems at once,” Thomas said.

Forcing people to pay for content they don’t want, and don’t want to pay for. Yeah, that’s a great idea.

Once again, no one is forced to put content on the Internet. I’d love it if I made more money out of Kiwiblog, considering the 1000+ hours a year I put into it. But I don’t think people should be taxed for accessing the Internet and forced to hand that money over to me because I am a content creator.

The Dom Post reports:

Every Wellingtonian knows the capital has the best coffee in the world, but now the rest of the world know it too.

CNN has published a list of eight of the world’s great coffee cities, including the coolest little capital.

Naturally, Melbourne, Rome, Vienna, Singapore and Seattle were also mentioned.

Memphis Belle, Flight Coffee’s The Hanger, and Lamason Brew Bar were CNN’s top coffee spots in Wellington.

Us Wellingtonians do do very well on the coffee front. We have both quantity and quality when it comes to cafes.

Claire Trevett at NZ Herald writes:

On Tuesday, he buckled and revealed the names of three donors who had agreed to be named. A further two would not be named, and their donations will be returned to them. He said it was a lapse in judgment but done with the noble aims of respecting the donors’ wishes for secrecy and keeping Cunliffe at arm’s length from it all. Cunliffe claimed the latter aim was achieved – he had not known the identity of the donors. He also admitted at least one of them had approached him directly to offer a donation, but claimed he had referred that person on to the trustee, Greg Presland, so had not known for certain whether the donation ended up being made.

By this stage a neon sign with “John Banks” should have flared in his head. If Cunliffe’s 2013 donations were “historical”, what were Banks’ 2010 donations? And Banks, too, had argued his donation from Kim Dotcom was technically anonymous because his campaign manager had dealt with it after he was offered it, so he had not known for certain if it was made.

This is an interesting point. John Banks got rightly savaged for having the initial discussion with Dotcom over a donation, and then saying it was anonymous because he left the details to his campaign manager. This is what Cunliffe is now also claiming, so Banks in court can now get up and say Cunliffe did it also.

The question also arises as to how Cunliffe declared the donations to the Labour Party. Labour and Mr Cunliffe have both refused to say whether he declared the donations to the party individually, or as a lump sum from the trust. Presumably it was the latter, given Cunliffe has claimed not to know who the donors were. If so, it might not strictly be against the Labour Party’s own rules but it certainly isn’t in the spirit of them.

This is a very intriguing issue. The fact Labour will not say whether Cunliffe declared just the trust to them, or the individual donors, makes me very suspicious. I doubt Labour Head Office would have deemed it acceptable not to be told of the individual donors (in confidence).  But if they were told of the individual donors, then it means that Cunliffe has lied in saying he doesn’t know who they all were. The only possible way out from the contradiction is to do a Banks and claim he didn’t read the form his campaign manager signed.

If his disclosure to Labour did just name the trust, then they would confirm that to kill the story. I think they did disclose individual donors, and they are terrified at having to admit this because it would compromise their leader so badly.

Cunliffe is now talking about changing the rules to make the situation clearer. If any rules are to be changed, it should be those of the leadership contest, not the Register of Pecuniary Interests. Labour may be selecting its own leader, but it is also selecting the person who could be Prime Minister. No MP who is effectively auditioning to be Prime Minister should be exempt from disclosing donations simply because it is an “internal process”. If anything, it is a greater reason for disclosure.

Somehow I don’t think it is their own rules they will seek to change. If they get the numbers in Parliament, they’ll change the rules of the Register of Pecuniary Interests to exempt donations to leadership campaigns.

The Herald reports:

The maximum penalty for possessing a book about growing marijuana will be higher than actually growing marijuana, the Law Society has told MPs considering a hard-hitting new bill.

A Parliamentary Committee is hearing submissions on a law change which would increase the penalties for possessing, importing, exporting or making objectionable publications.

It was targeted at child pornography on the internet but submitters told the select committee this morning that it would capture a broad range of images or publications.

Law Society law reform committee member Graeme Edgeler said that a book which instructs someone on how to grow marijuana was encouraging a crime and would be considered objectionable.

“If this increasing sentence goes forward, the maximum penalty for possessing that book will go up to 10 years’ imprisonment, whereas the maximum penalty for running a growing operation is eight years’ imprisonment.”

The maximum penalty for possessing images of bestiality would also be increased to 10 years in jail, compared to seven years’ imprisonment for committing bestiality.

Mr Edgeler said that if child exploitation was the target of the bill, Parliament could consider whether there should be separate child pornography sentences.

This is the sensible thing to do. I’m all for increasing penalties for possession and supply of child sexual abuse images. But the problem with this law change is that are increasing the maximum penalty for all objectionable publications to 10 years, and that is a far wider group of publications. The Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 defines an objectionable publication as:

1. the exploitation of children, or young persons, or both, for sexual purposes
2. the use of violence or coercion to compel any person to participate in, or submit to, sexual conduct
3. sexual conduct with or upon the body of a dead person
4. the use of urine or excrement in association with degrading or dehumanising conduct or sexual conduct
5. bestiality
6. acts of torture or the infliction of extreme violence or extreme cruelty

Now logically possessing a publication that depicts an illegal act should carry a maximum penalty no greater than actually undertaking the act. Raping someone is far worse than possessing a publication that shows someone being raped, for example. Both are horrible, but they are not the same thing.

So the bill before Parliament proposes a maximum 10 year penalty for possession of an objectionable publication. So what is the maximum sentence for the actual acts that are deemed objectionable to publish.

1. child sexual abuse – 14 years
2. rape – 20 years
3. necrophilia – 2 years
4. golden showers and coprophilia – not a criminal offence
5. Bestiality – 7 years
6. torture – 14 years

So you see the problem. This law would have the maximum penalty for possessing a photo of necrophilia as 10 years, but the actual act of necrophilia as only two years.

Most bizarrely, one category of objectionable publication is for something that isn’t even illegal – golden showers and coprophilia. Two adults can legally golden shower each other to their hearts content, but if they take a photo of themselves doing it, then up to 10 years jail!

The purpose of the law change is to increase penalties for possession of child sexual abuse images. I support that totally. The bill should be modified to increase penalties just for that sub-section of objectionable publications. Having a maximum 10 year penalty apply to all objectionable publications is way over the top.

For the avoidance of doubt, I find all of the above activities repugnant or repulsive. My concern is sensible laws.

Stuff reports:

The Government has rejected a call by Vodafone New Zealand chief executive Russell Stanners to scrap the roll-out of fibre-based ultrafast broadband in much of Wellington and Christchurch.

Stanners said the cost of the UFB scheme could be cut by $500 million and taxpayers could save $145m if people instead used its cable networks in the two cities.

Vodafone was all in favour of the UFB. Then it buys the Telstra-Clear cable network and suddenly it is all no, no we don’t want UFB – use our cables instead.

InternetNZ said earlier today it strongly opposed Stanners’ proposal.

“This suggestion by Vodafone begs the question, why would Kiwis choose to make use of a second-class network when we are already on our way to having a first-class network?” chief executive Jordan Carter said.

Fibre is a future-proofed investment.

UPDATE: Also if Vodafone really wants their cable network to be used instead of fibre, then they should do what Telecom had to do, and separate it out into a separate company with open access requirements to all retailers.

Stuff reports:

The Government is scotching claims that it has struck a deal to sell parts of Solid Energy to Indian buyers, but says parts of the troubled mining company will be offloaded.

Meanwhile, Labour’s West Coast-Tasman MP Damien O’Connor said he would support foreign buyers investing in inactive West Coast mines, even though he likened it to asset sales.

It’s good to have a Labour Mp say he supports an asset sale, but here’s the problem. Labour have in the past also sold assets – but only failing ones. They support selling a company after it has gone bust or near bust and cost the taxpayers millions. But they don’t support selling a company when it is profitable and taxpayers will get a good price for it. Instead they come up with policies to sabotage the share prices.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand has been ranked sixth overall in a global index measuring the rule of law.

The World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index surveyed 99 countries on eight categories including government accountability, crime, corruption, fundamental rights, access to justice and order and security.

New Zealand came sixth after Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands.

That’s not bad.

New Zealand also came second in the index’s open government category – beaten only by Norway – and third in the absence of corruption category.

Even better.

The country reports are here. NZ’s sub-rankings are:

1. Open Government 2nd
2. Absence of Corruption 3rd
3. Constraints on Government Powers 4th
4. Regulatory Environment 5th
5. Fundamental Rights 7th
6. Civil Justice 9th
7. Order and Security 11th
8. Criminal Justice 12th

Stuff reports:

Labour leader David Cunliffe came out swinging in Hamilton after weathering an onslaught of criticism over repeated gaffes that threaten to derail him in an election year.

He was in Hamilton to push his Best Start policy to the education and social service sectors and the party faithful after a week-long scandal he said was just a storm in a teacup.

“Mate, that is just Wellington beltway politics,” he said yesterday. “Government has been trying to throw the kitchen sink at me in the last couple of weeks just to discredit me.”

Cunliffe said the same on Radio NZ, saying that the Government has been trawling through his accounts and trying to make out he is the victim of some Government hit campaign. But the reality is that all of his problems have been self-inflicted. Let’s take them in order:

1. His misleading speech and false advertisement about the baby bonus – own goal
2. The next day not knowing the details of part of his own policy – own goal
3. Deciding to go after John Key for living in a leafy subject – own goal
4. Describing his own household as a middle rang existence while on prob $600,000 or more a year – own goal
5. Setting up a secret trust for his leadership donations – own goal, and exposed by NZ Herald – nothing to do with National
6. Failing to disclose an investment trust to the Registrar of Pecuniary Interest on time – own goal, and exposed by TV3 after they heard him mention it
7. Having his own office send Amy Adams their ICT policy ideas – own goal
8. Letting Clare Curran take the blame and fall for a stuff up by his own office – own goal

I sort of wish National was so good they had a secret smart unit that was responsible for all of Cunliffe’s problems. But they’re not. All of them have been own goals, and the two about trusts have all been stories exposed by the media.

Earlier in the week the Labour leader admitted the late disclosure was a lapse of judgment but yesterday he said: “They are threatened by the ideas that we are bringing to New Zealanders. Everybody gets a chance, not just the few at the top. I guess the guys at the top, they don’t like that because they think they are going to pay for it and so they are really trying to take me out.

“Well, they can try but I am tougher than that.”

The humble phase doesn’t last long, does it.

The Herald reports:

Chavez died on March 5, 2013, after a long battle with cancer. He chose Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, to be his successor, but the ride since his death has been anything but smooth. Inflation hit 56 per cent last year, there are shortages of basic commodities such as cooking oil and flour and one of the highest murder rates in the world keeps people locked in their homes at night.

Imagine a country where the price of goods and services is 50% higher at the end of the year. And then even worse that you can’t buy basic necessities. And finally you cower inside at night. Welcome to the success of socialism. They even have had shortages of toilet paper!

Venezuela has a huge amount of natural resources. Its problem is that it has one of the weakest property rights regimes in the world and has nationalised and confiscated property. So investment goes away.

As for crime, the crime rate is so bad there, do you know what the Goverment did in response? They no longer publish crime data!!

A person is murdered every 21 minutes and the homicide rate has quadrupled in the last 15 years. More people are killed there than in the Iraq War. In the capital city, the homicide rate is 122 per 100,000. That means that over 1 in 1000 residents are killed every year. Over a 10 year period your chance of being murdered is greater than 1 in 100.

Steven Joyce does 12 questions with the NZ Herald. Some extracts:

No, I haven’t always voted National. I’ve never voted Labour but I’m thinking I might have voted in ’81 for Social Credit and ’84 for the New Zealand Party. 

It’s fine to have voted NZ Party in 1984. But Social Credit in 1981 – oh dear me.

Are older dads different do you think?

You’re assuming I’m old. I’m younger than I look, I assure you. I don’t know about different, but sometimes it’s hard for older dads to keep up. You do get the benefits of experience of course. I’m just glad I am a dad. Should I have done it earlier? Well, that would have been a problem because I hadn’t met my wife.

Heh, indeed. As it happens I was present the day they met! But so were around 200 other people – it was a National caucus party.

Who is the non-National politician you admire most?

It has to be Annette [King]. We’ve had five years together on radio now, talking in the breaks and so on. I volunteered to be her campaign manager for the Labour leadership – I even had a slogan “King for Queen” – but she has yet to take me up on it.

Never too late!

Stuff reports:

Making all Aucklanders pay a council income tax may help elderly people in affluent areas who can’t afford their rates, mayor Len Brown says.

The current system is “inherently unfair” on people living on fixed incomes and paying high rates because of the value of their properties in areas like Devonport-Takapuna, Brown says.

Introducing an income-related tax for local council services that everyone pays is an option, he says.

Only property owners pay rates but the council is spending money on infrastructure and services for everyone, Brown says.

I’ve long thought that a local income (or sales) tax could be a fairer way of funding local government than a property tax.

Arguably it would lead to greater fiscal restraint. Councils are always increasing rates without too much backlash because the average householder doesn’t know how much of the change in their rates bill is due to increased Council spending and how much due to a change in relative house values.

An actual local income tax would be much more transparent and hopefully there would be such a backlash against increasing it that Councils would then adjust expenditure to fit within their income (as central Govt does) rather than their current practice of working out everything they want to spend and then just setting rates at a high enough level to fund it.

The Herald reports:

Are sexy pedestrians just too distracting? Or are your kids driving you mad at the wheel?

You’re not alone. They are among the top distractions found in a UK survey of 1500 drivers by IAM and Vision Critical.

Children (29 per cent), changing the stereo (27 per cent), back-seat drivers (26 per cent), the satnav (15 per cent) and attractive pedestrians, drivers or passengers (14 per cent) were rated the things which most took attention away from the road.

The Government banned the use of non hands-free cellphones in cars because they were deemed a distraction. Logically they should also ban sexy pedestrians from sidewalks in case they too cause car crashes.

This might seem unfair to sexy pedestrians, but just as one can still use a cellphone if it is hands-free, they would still be allowed out in public so long as they are covered up.

A reader sent me a link to this 2012 story:

One of New Zealand’s most prolific burglars – with 388 convictions to his name – has been sent back to jail, but is hopeful he can change his ways.

Allan Tremain Adams, 41, added two more burglaries to his bulging list on April 17 when he broke into Autocraft in Tremaine Ave, Palmerston North.

He got away with nothing after activating the alarm but then broke into the Willard Rest Home in Russell St and stole $1200 of petty cash.

Blood stains found at the two premises led police to Adams, who was released from his previous prison sentence late last year.

In Palmerston District Court yesterday, he was sent back for two years and nine months on two charges of burglary and one of breaching parole.

Adams has 439 convictions in total and began offending when he was 12 years old and committed arson.

439 convictions and a sentence of under three years!

Stuff reports:

A former Labour energy minister has slammed the party’s proposed power policy, saying it would mostly benefit the rich while damaging the renewable energy sector.

David Butcher, who now runs a consulting firm, was one of four speakers debating the merits of NZ Power at the Downstream energy forum in Auckland. …

Butcher said the proposal would overturn 25 years of collaborative market development for an “untested and very flawed model”.

“I think it would largely destroy the renewables industry, or at least set it back five or six years,” he said.

Butcher said that before deregulation in 1990, power prices were rising by about 20 per cent a year.

Today, 72 per cent of new generation was renewable, there was private investment in renewables and there were no blackouts, he said.

Butcher said the benefits of the policy would largely go to rich people with high power usage and companies like Rio Tinto, which runs the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter.

Of their many bad policies, I rate this one the worse.

Whale Oil has this audio of Kim DotCom telling his wife Mona how Germans built the Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty several hundred years ago and how they cost billions of dollars. It seems not a single “fact” is correct. It does make you wonder about his claim he has “proof” John Key lied.

Duncan Garner writes at Radio Live:

Labour Leader David Cunliffe’s apology for setting up a trust for his campaign donations baffles me. I can see why he’s done it. He wants the issue to go away. But it leaves just so many unanswered questions.

The big question for me is, who are the other donors? Is Kim Dotcom one? Or is it another fancy, wealthy businessman who is embarrassed to be linked to him? If not, who are the other two and why can’t we know?

They must be very embarrassing to demand their donations back rather than be named.

Cunliffe has only apologised to lance the boil; he’s only done it because he’s been caught red-handed and embarrassed. So, who is the real David Cunliffe? And why did he set up the trust in the first place?

Trusts are set up to either hide something, protect something or to give people and donors anonymity. In politics, that always draws attention. What on earth was Cunliffe thinking when he agreed for the trust to be set-up? This trust wasn’t set-up without his knowledge. He gave it the nod. Nothing happens in an MP’s life without their say-so.

As I said his apology is more than odd. He said: “I don’t think in hindsight that a trust structure fully represented the values I would like to bring to this leadership”. That is weird and simply doesn’t stack up. It looks like a fake apology to me. I actually don’t believe him.

Values don’t just appear issue by issue. Values and principles are things that guide you in your everyday life. Surely Cunliffe would have known by now if having a ‘trust’ represented his values. And a trust structure completely represents who David Cunliffe is. ..

David Cunliffe is a former high-flying business consultant – his wife is a top lawyer – they know how these things work. His friends are business people. His wife knew about it and kept all this secret. How on earth did she think they were going to get away with this approach? Their collective judgement on this is woeful.

Where was he when Labour rallied against National’s use of trusts to fund its many elections campaigns? It’s why Labour changed the law and brought in the Electoral Finance Law. Was he not in the Parliament at the time? No, he was there. Did he speak up against National’s use of secret trusts? Oh yes he did.

Labour politicians of all shapes and sizes criticised National for months for receiving secret money. Cunliffe was in there, boots-‘n’-all. Trevor Mallard went further and claimed there was a ‘secret American bag-man.’ It was never proved.

I’ll never forget Labour climbing into National over electoral finances. Now Cunliffe looks like a complete hypocrite despite the apology. National has every right to pile into him on this. Just like Labour piled into National over secret trusts and campaign donations.

I’m starting to wonder just who Cunliffe is. What does he stand for? Is he anti-business or pro-business? Does he care about the poor? Or hang out with the rich? My big question really is this: Who is the real David Cunliffe?

Is he a fake?

A reasonable question.

John Armstrong also writes:

You could almost hear the “told you so” refrain that is never far away from the lips of David Cunliffe’s many detractors.

Those within the Labour Party who warned that electing him as leader would be a mistake may well feel vindicated. But they will take cold comfort from that.

You do wonder if there is the odd Labour Party activist who is now sitting back an saying ‘Hey maybe the MPs in my caucus are not a total bunch of idiots after all, and we should have listened to them”

That he cannot seem to stop his fingers hovering over the self-destruct button is no surprise to anyone who has watched him for any length of time. It is a great mystery why someone overly blessed with essential political attributes gets it wrong with such frequency.

Maybe it is overconfidence. Maybe it is an inability to see the line between being bold and being foolhardy. He got away with it when he held lower ranked positions in the Labour caucus. The role of Leader of the Opposition offers no escape from the spotlight.

This latest piece of bungling follows other gaffes this year including being badly caught out as to how many parents would actually qualify for Labour’s promise of a $60-a-week “baby bonus”.

Then there was the odd decision to ping John Key for residing in a “leafy suburb” when Cunliffe does likewise. On Saturday, he admitted on TV3’s The Nation that he had not made the best choice of words on that occasion.

That makes it two mea culpas in four days – not a pretty strike rate. It is one that could see Cunliffe being indelibly labelled as accident-prone; that everything he touches ends up backfiring on him and Labour’s less-than-solid poll ratings.

For my 2c I think it is over-confidence.

And finally people may enjoy a 30 second musical compilation from Newstalk ZB’s Laura McQuillan called “Tricky”

Anne Tolley has said:

Corrections Minister Anne Tolley says there has been a rise of almost 1500 per cent in places on drug and alcohol treatment programmes for prisoners since 2008.

This financial year over 3,700 prisoners will have access to treatment for their addictions, rising to 4,700 next year, up from just 234 in 2007/08.

The Government has expanded the number of specialist Drug Treatment Units in prisons from six to nine, while there has been a fourfold increase in places at the Units. In addition, since last year all prisons have introduced brief and intermediate treatment programmes and Northland and Auckland Women’s have begun intensive support, as part of the drive to reduce reoffending by 25 per cent by 2017.

Corrections has so far reduced reoffending by 11.8 per cent, resulting in 8668 fewer victims of crime each year.

“The revolution in offender rehabilitation is going from strength to strength in the key areas of addiction treatment, education and skills training,” says Mrs Tolley.

“Support for prisoners tackling drug and alcohol abuse is just common sense, as we know that these addictions are a major driver of crime.

“All prisoners are now screened for alcohol and drug problems when they enter prison, which allows staff to make appropriate decisions on the amount of support required. This means that every prisoner now undergoes screening for addictions, health, mental health and education when they enter a facility.

When a criminal keeps reoffending, we need to take a hard line and keep them locked up to protect the community. But absolutely we should be investing in treatment to reduce reoffending as that is a win-win. It’s great to see the Government investing so much in drug and alcohol treatment and reducing reoffending.