Stuff reports:

New Zealand is ranked second worldwide for percentage of hotels offering internet access, according to a survey.

The United States came first in the survey of more than 700,000 hotels listed on hotel comparison website trivago, with 89 per cent of its hotels offering internet via wi-fi or ethernet cable.

New Zealand followed with 82 per cent and Romania came third with 78 per cent.

Australia was ranked surprisingly low at 16th with 66 per cent of hotels offering internet, trivago said.

Almost every hotel or motel I’ve encountered now has Internet access. That’s not the important stat to me.

The important stat is do they charge for it, and how much.

Sadly New Zealand is woeful there. Many hotels have a daily charge of around $40 for Internet access. That’s equal to $1,200 a month. When I travel overseas, generally the Internet access is free. I now just use tether to my mobile phone when travelling domestically, but I feel sorry for tourists who don’t have this option and may face such outrageous charges.

Stuff reports:

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were the most generous American philanthropists in 2013, with  a donation of 18 million shares of Facebook stock, valued at more  than $970 million (NZ$1.17 billion), to a Silicon Valley non-profit in December.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that Zuckerberg’s donation was the largest charitable gift on the public record in 2013 and put the young couple at the top of the magazine’s annual list of 50 most generous Americans in 2013.

The top 50 contributors made donations last year totalling $7.7 billion, plus pledges of $2.9 billion. …

Ten of the 50 made the list because of bequests after their deaths, including the second biggest giver in 2013, George Mitchell, a Texan who made his fortune in energy and real estate.

At No 3 were Nike chairman Philip Knight and his wife Penelope, of Portland, Oregon, who made a $500 million challenge grant to Oregon Health & Science University Foundation for cancer research. 

The Knight pledge requires the university to match it within the next two years.

No 4 was philanthropist and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who made gifts totalling $452 million in 2013 to arts, education, environment, public health and other causes.

More than 120 of the world’s wealthiest individuals and families have pledged to give at least half their wealth to charity since the movement began. Although most people on the list were prominent wealthy people who have given generously in the past, Palmer said a few were surprises, including Jack MacDonald, a Seattle lawyer, who gave $139 million to three non-profits upon his death.

Some people get upset that we have millionaires and billionaires. They say it is terrible anyone has so much wealth. We even have some local communists academics who claim that it should be illegal for anyone to earn more than three times as much as anyone else.

But ultimately a lot of the wealth now ends up in the charitable sector when people die – or before. It is very different to 100 years ago when wealth was almost always inherited. And I think that (for example) the Gates Foundation does far more good with a billion dollars of expenditure than a government would do with it.

NZIER report:

A new Insight from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) shows that increasing net migration would lift incomes not just for immigrants but for the native population.
An additional 40,000 people a year for 10 years increases GDP per capita by a chunky $410 a year.

“A more ambitious population policy is needed to increase New Zealand’s population.” said Dr Kirdan Lees, Senior Economist at NZIER. “New Zealand’s point-based immigration framework gets the mix of migrants required about right. But we need to do more to keep lifting the number of migrants that come.”

Almost one-in-four New Zealanders are born overseas but the current policy of 45,000 to 50,000 migrants a year is too low and very arbitrary – bringing in more migrants would lift incomes.
Immigrants provide firms with new skillsets, allowing firms to access new markets, new ideas and new products. A deeper population base also helps firms to get big and offset initial start-up or fixed costs that can be high. But our work shows that the impact on incomes outweighs the inflationary impacts of migration.

International studies also point to positive effects of immigration.

“So let’s grow for it and plan to entice more migrants.”

I am a supporter of more migration. However we need to make sure our infrastructure is resourced enough to cope with the population growth. Also we need to make sure that the rate of migration isn’t so large that we end up with groups of migrants who do not integrate into NZ. But with those caveats, the benefits of migration are considerable.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key has defended downing several cups of beer during a drinking game yesterday, saying it was not “too crazy” and in the spirit of fun.

Mr Key was challenged to a game of beer pong at the Big Gay Out in Auckland’s Pt Chevalier yesterday. He agreed, and had to down several cups of beer in the process.

On TVNZ’s Breakfast this morning Mr Key defended his decision to take part in the game.

Asked about the link between games like beer pong and irresponsible drinking, Mr Key said: “I’ve heard those sorts of things before. I mean look, it was a bit of fun. It was about that much beer [about an inch] in the cups, so it wasn’t anything too crazy.”

Mr Key added it was “in the spirit of a bit of fun”.

Beer Pong is a great fun game, and as the PM says the amount in a cup is around a quarter of a standard drink so he probably had less than a standard drink in total. The fun police need to be less uptight. He got challenged to take part, and he played along for a couple of minutes. I guess some people would rather he gave them all a lecture on how beer pong is an evil game, and they should all drink fruit juice instead of beer.

He said he would “definitely win” a game of beer pong against Labour leader David Cunliffe.

“Wouldn’t be any doubt about it.”

Now that would be a great televised sport 🙂

The Green Party has a self-assessment that aspiring candidates are required to complete. One candidate has his on Facebook.

Most of the self-assessment is quite sensible and laudable, and in fact other parties would do well to consider requiring the same. Example questions include:

• What professional, trade or life skills and experiences do you have which are relevant to being a Green candidate / MP?
• What experience/skills do you have in public speaking, facilitating meetings, writing articles or media releases and cross cultural communication?
• Which sources do you use for collecting political information, and how do you rate your skills in information collection and analysis?
• What fundraising have you done for causes /organisations and how did you do it?
• What are some examples of your ability to plan and to form and lead teams?

As I said, good questions to ask.

But it gets more fun on the personal qualities.

How do you walk the Green talk by living sustainably, fairly, democratically and peacefully?

My personal level of commitment to the Green Party is, in many ways, the greatest demonstration of living these values. 

Have long configured my life so that I live within walking distance of work to avoid motorised commuting and am able to ride my bicycle often; I eat minimal meat and never buy products of cruelty

So if you eat more than minimal meat, would this affect your list ranking?

I am generally a conscious politicised consumer and channel any recreational shopping urges that arise entirely into visits to op shops and recycling centres.

So if you shop at the Warehouse, does that

Rate yourself on the following personal attributes and qualities.

Personal Qualities

Rating 1(low) -5(high)

 Speaking succinctly in simple language – 3
Ability to prioritise work – 4
Ability to delegate work – 4
Co-operation, working well in a team – 4
Even temper – 4
Self-confidence – 3
Sense of humour – 5
Stamina – 3
Humility – 3
Ambition – 3
Commitment to working hard to get results – 4
Attracting and maintaining personal and political support –  4
Being enthusiastic and motivating others – 4

How do you rate your own humility? If you give yourself a 5 for humility, doesn’t that imply you are not humble if you think you are that good at humility?

Hunua is one of the safest seats for National in the country. Retiring MP Paul Hutchison got 66% of the vote in 2011 and the Labour candidate just 17%, giving a majority of 16,797.

With Hutch retiring, many good people are already seeking the nomination.  An additional candidate has just announced they will join the race:

Auckland banker, Seby Reeves, has announced he will be putting his name forward to contest the selection of the Hunua candidate to represent the New Zealand National Party at the General Election later this year.

Mr Reeves is 33 and lives in Auckland with his wife Julie and young son.

Born in Wellington, Mr Reeves attended Scots College where he became Deputy Head Boy and Captain of the 1st XV.  He has degrees in Law and Commerce from Victoria and Otago Universities.

Between 2006 and 2011, Mr Reeves and his wife lived in London where he was a senior lawyer for a large international law firm and HSBC’s investment banking division.  Mr Reeves is currently a Manager in ANZ’s Commercial & Agri banking division.

Mr Reeves is the son of former National MP Graeme Reeves and has been active in the National Party for several years including being a member of the National Party’s Candidate College.

Mr Reeves says, “I am passionate about New Zealand and its politics and absolutely committed to representing the people of Hunua in the next National led government.

I believe I have the skills to be a strong MP and a firm advocate of Hunua issues.”

I don’t know Seby, but do know his father Graeme well. He was one of only two National MPs to hold the Miramar electorate. Labour has held it from 1946 to the current day (now Rongotai) except for Bill Young 1966 to 1981 and Graeme from 1990 to 1993.

I will always have a soft spot for Graeme as he did NZ politics a great public service. He was the MP that initiated the caucus petition to suspend Winston Peters from the National caucus in 1992.

It will be interesting to see who else stands for Hunua. I’m aware of two other declared candidates at this stage.

I published last week a draft Green Party list. The Greens said it was an entirely unofficial list, and was not the list that the hierarchy and electorate delegates put together for members to vote on. That is correct, as that list is yet to be drawn up. But in political parties it is not unusual for different factions to start circulating what they see as their desired list.

The source who provided the draft list has elaborated:

I can confirm that the list I gave you the other week came from the parliamentary wing of the party. It reflects internal thinking that the party needs to constantly refresh caucus as this has been done well up to now. Good performance needs to be rewarded and poor performance needs to be dealt with accordingly.

In particular, there is a lot of support for Julie Anne Genter to secure the Transport Minister role amongst parliament and and the wider party. Hence her big jump and high ranking.

Marama Davidson and Aaryn Barlow are seen as up and comers with strong personal backgrounds and were good candidate performers. James Shaw rounds off a solid 1st 15.

David Clendon has been demoted in the list as he is regarded as lazy and lacking cut-through while Steffen Browning is seen as a political liability by his caucus colleagues. Kennedy Graham begins to drop down the rankings and while being a poor performer in opposition it is hoped his previous experience may help in government.

I would be surprised if many in the Greens disagreed with those assessments. What will be interesting is if the draft list out together by the hierarchy is close to the list that was circulating last week. It will not be identical of course, but the key things to look out for is whether Genter shoots up the rankings, and if Browning and Clendon stay in the top 10.

UPDATE: A manager with the parliamentary party has said on the record that the parliamentary leadership and senior staff have not had any involvement with the unofficial list that was sent to me. They can’t rule out that someone at Parliament hasn’t compiled their own wish list, and been pushing it – but they are unaware of any activity like that and do not sanction it. I believe those assurances.

I have no reason however to doubt the source has said anything untrue, and that they did not receive the list from someone in Parliament. I won’t print anything I believe to be untrue. The source has been reliable in the past. Also I do apply my own judgement to a degree and the rankings in the unofficial list do meld with general consensus around the beltway around individual MPs. If for example someone sent me what purports to be an unofficial Green Party list with Browning ranked No 3, I’d laugh out loud as I hit the trash bin.

Headed up on Waitangi Day to the Whakapapa Village to do the second of the nine Great Walks – the Tongariro Northern Circuit. Got up there around midday and after a quick lunch at Schnapps Bar at National Park, we started the trail around 1 pm.

We got off to a good start by starting on the right trail. A few other trampers started off on the track you end on, and ended up doing an extra hour or so.

The track starts off well formed, and you can see Ngauruhoe in the distance.

There’s a small amount of bush to go through, but mainly in the open.

Lots of streams to cross, but being summer quite a few of them were dry.

Most of the terrain on the first day is like this.

The signs indicate the 9 km track on the first day takes three hours in good weather and five hours in bad weather. We thought this must be a mistake, but a lot of the track is eroded and in heavy rain would be a nightmare to plod through.

Kerry and David descending to one of the reasonably dry streams. You would drop down into and rise up from over a dozen of them. Nothing at all hard, but does slow you down a bit

Most of the way it was good weather on the Thursday.

You see Mangatepopo Hut from around a km away. Really well located, and some nice sun to be enjoyed from the balcony.

Mt Ngauruhoe as seen from the hut.

Inside the hut. It’s pretty basic but decent. Sleeps 20 in two bunkrooms and a couple of cookers and tables in the main area. It’s around 15 minutes from the car park where many people start the Tongariro Crossing.

The first day is pretty easy, and a good warm up. Day two was a lot harder!

The Herald editorial:

A buy-Australian campaign in two Australian supermarket chains is a sobering lesson for the Green Party and anyone else in New Zealand who advocates the same thing here. The unfairness to suppliers from this country is exactly the effect a buy-New Zealand campaign has in other countries, though the scale of our market diminishes the impact on most of them and increases the damage to us.

Exactly. Its hypocritical to relentlessly claim we should only purchase from NZ suppliers, and then complain when Australian supermarkets promote Australian food over NZ food.

The best thing we can do is to focus on quality of product and price, not country of origin.

Ultimately the best response of excluded suppliers is to make their products doubly attractive and competitive on the same market. Quality, taste, price and brand reputations can trump the country of origin in consumers’ decisions. But it takes a sustained marketing effort, preferably before a threat of this sort comes along.

You can’t take export markets for granted.

The campaign will pass, of course. As soon as the supermarkets sense consumers going elsewhere for familiar items they no longer stock, the non-Australian brands will be quietly restored. But the lessons should not be forgotten when we are urged to buy on country-of-origin labels. Compulsory labelling is a fine principle of consumer information but if the labels are used for an exclusive purpose, fair competitors somewhere will suffer.

Also correct me if I am wrong, but the Australian supermarkets have not banned any NZ food. They have made a decision to only use Australian sourced food for their in-house brands. There is a considerable difference.

The Dom Post reports:

A proposal to relocate Wellington Airport to a site on the hills north of Newlands is worth investigating, Greater Wellington Regional Council chairwoman Fran Wilde says.

The relocation, which has been labelled an “exciting” idea by Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee, has been proposed by Wellington property investor Richard Burrell, who said a completely new airport with a longer runway would have major economic advantages for the region.

It would take a lot of pressure off Wellington City’s roading network and do away with the need for expensive roadworks, including a second Mt Victoria tunnel and more than $300 million that is needed to extend the current airport’s runway.

Mr Burrell said surveyors and engineers had assessed a proposal to put an airport with a 2.4 kilometre runway – able to handle long-haul flights – on farmland at Hunters Hill, between Newlands and Grenada North.

The costings for a new 120ha airport came to about $750 million, far less than the estimated $1.1 billion needed to improve road links to Wellington Airport and to extend the runway.

When I saw the headline, I thought moving the airport is nuts. But if a new airport would cost less than extending the current runway, worth looking at.

If the current Wellington Airport was closed, the land could be sold off for housing and the net effect would be that Wellington would get a better airport with an all-up capital saving of around $500m, Mr Burrell said.

Would be good to be able to get into Wellington from the airport without going through the Mt Vic tunnel.

Mr Brownlee gave his qualified support. “It’s very exciting that someone has had an idea for a new airport, especially as when the private sector comes up with plans of this nature they tend to be fully funded.

However, “the Government has no intention of helping fund a new airport on the hills above Newlands”.

Hopefully that also means the Government won’t help fund extending the runway either.

Stuff reports:

Junk food advertising targeting children should be banned as part of the fight against childhood obesity, scientists say.

A new Otago University study reveals how advertisers use free toys, gifts, discounts, competitions, promotional characters and celebrity endorsements to sell junk food to kids.

Has there ever been a study out of Otago University that hasn’t concluded that the answer is to ban advertising of something?

Childhood obesity rates have risen from about 8 per cent in 2007 to 11 per cent in 2013. . This had corresponded with a rise of Type 2 diabetes in children, which was once known only as adult-onset diabetes.

Has advertising changed in those six years? No. So maybe the increase is due to other factors such as parents not ensuring their kids have a balanced diet and enough exercise.

But Food and Grocery Council chief executive Katherine Rich, who represents members including Mars and Nestle, said the calls to ban the advertising were emotive.

There were already strict rules governing what food ads could be aired during children’s television programmes, she said.

“The idea of banning free toys and characters sometimes makes me think these people have forgotten the joys of childhood.”

She said past campaigns like the Milky Bar Kid and Cookie Bear had given a generation of kids fond childhood memories.

In New Zealand, Mars, Coca-Cola and Nestle all had policies of not targeting food ads at children.

Ultimately, controlling what children ate was a parental responsibility, she said.

“Children don’t stroll in to McDonald’s on their own.”

Indeed.

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal revolution blogs:

Private and charter schools appear to have significant but modest effects on test scores but much larger effects on educational attainment and even on long-run earnings. A new working paper from Booker, Sass, Gill and Zimmer and associated brief from Mathematica Policy Research finds that charter schools raise high school graduation, college enrollment and college persistence rates by ~7 to 13%. Moreover, the income of former charter school students when measured at 23-25 years old is 12.7% higher than similar students. Similar in this context is measured by students who were in charter schools in grade 8 but who then switched to a traditional high school–in many ways this is a conservative comparison group since any non-random switchers would presumably switch to a better school (other controls are also included).

The effect of charters on graduation rates is consistent with a larger literature finding that Catholic schools increase graduation rates (e.g. here and here). I am also not surprised that charters increase earnings but the earnings gain is surprisingly large; especially so when we consider that the gain appears just as large among charter and non-charter students both of whom attended college (i.e. the gain is not just through the college attendance effect).

I wouldn’t bet on the size of the earnings effect just yet but what we are learning from this and related research, such as Chetty et al. on teachers, is that better schools and better teachers appear to have a significant and beneficial long-run impact that is not fully captured by higher test scores.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could replicate that impact in New Zealand.

Murray Goldsworthy at NZ Herald writes:

But what to do about it? My answer is actually what has been calculated above. Tax multinationals based on their stated sales in New Zealand, make them show where the difference in values occurs, instead of allowing them to charge a higher cost price for their items to New Zealand subsidiaries. Make them prove why it is different, why they make substantially more elsewhere for the same items.

Make them pay their fair share of tax on activity in New Zealand. Give us our bite of the Apple. It’s fair, isn’t it?

I agree it is fair. This old fashioned concept of paying tax on profit must be disposed of. We should demand a fair tax system. Let’s calling it a living tax – the level of tax a company should pay so that it no longer feels wretched and is helping fund a civilised society.

I think a 15% tax on revenue would be a fair living tax.  Both the Herald and the Dom Post have repeatedly run stories and editorials comparing tax to turnover, not profit. So we should start the living tax campaign with them. Here’s how it would work:

• APN made revenue of $857 million in 2012. So the fair living tax on them would be $129 million instead of zero
• Fairfax has revenue of $2,045 million in 2013. So the fair living tax on them would be $307 million instead of zero
• Fonterra had revenue of $19.8 billion in 2012. So the fair living tax on them would be $2.97 billion instead of $53 million

I think the living tax campaign should also extend to other organisations that avoid tax such as charities. They should also pay 15% of their revenue as tax.

I look forward to the left championing the living tax campaign as vigorously as they do the living wage campaign.

The Herald reports:

City Impact Church founders Peter and Bev Mortlock are selling their Whangaparaoa mansion – and its pricetag has surprised one church member, who says some in the congregation are struggling to pay their bills after giving so much to the church.

The couple are selling their luxury mansion in Gulf Harbour, north of Auckland, for $1.88 million.

Best known for fronting a weekly church-funded TV programme, the Mortlocks have put their 548sq m private home on the market.

A person who has been attending City Impact’s two Auckland branches in Mt Wellington and Albany for the past three years knew of a church member who was struggling to pay his bills after giving so much to the church.

I reckon setting up a church or religion must be one of the easier ways to make money.

The churchgoer said representatives made a big push during each service about the importance of giving to the church before baskets were passed around for the weekly offerings, given on top of tithings of 10 per cent of people’s salary.

What other business has a variable price based on income, rather than a fixed price as most goods and services have? It’s a good business model, so long as you can convince people the price means they get salvation.

Payments could be made by credit card, Eftpos, cash, internet banking or a new mobile app.

Smart. Good to see the business up with the technology.

Mr Mortlock, a former salesman and real estate agent, and his wife front the religious show.

Not so much a career change, as a change of product that he sells.

I joked that the long list of requests from the UN Human Rights Council (which has some of the worst global abusers of human rights on it) would probably end up as Green Party policy.

My joke may become reality, with Green MP Jan Logie saying we should be concerned that there were 155 recommendations, compared to 64 last time.

I look forward to the Greens pledging to implement all 155 recommendations if they are in Government!

Chris Finlayson wrote on Waitangi Day:

Some people say they want an end to historical settlements. Most people agree. I do. Maori want them resolved as well.

For a while it seemed as if this might never happen. The process, which had started with fanfare in the 1990s, was crawling along at a snail’s pace for much of the 2000s.

One briefing to the previous government optimistically predicted all settlements could be completed by the year 2060.

That has changed. The completion of all settlements is now an achievable goal. It can happen, with the goodwill of all parties, in the next few years.

Of the big settlements, only really Ngapuhi to go.

The settlements will end not because Maori and the public have tired of them, but because they are finished.

The Ngati Kuri will bring to 42 the number of settlements this Government has signed with iwi. That brings the total to 68.

National’s policy since the 1990s has been to address real grievances by reaching full and final settlements with genuine claimants in a timely fashion. Are there non-genuine claims? Certainly, just as there are vexatious cases in the common law courts. They are easy to spot. We are not interested in claims about the ownership of wind, for example.

Or the airwaves!

We are determined, however, to put right the thoroughly and accurately documented cases of hurt caused by the Crown’s wrongful actions in the past. This is what Treaty settlements are about.

The faster we settle these claims, the sooner there is an end. The sooner we settle, the sooner iwi can see the benefits of their settlements, and the sooner all New Zealanders benefit from moving on from grievance. Justice delayed is justice denied.

And the good news is that the completion of settlements is closer than many people think.

The number of remaining settlements is fewer than 50. Many of the remaining claimants have signed agreements in principle setting out the broad parameters of their settlements, and the Crown is engaged with almost all groups.

We are well on the way to the end. And the sky has not fallen. Despite dire predictions from a small minority at the beginning of this process, the quality of life of most New Zealanders has not been affected in any way. Beaches, national parks, rivers and mountain ranges are still enjoyed by everyone in exactly the same way they were before.

What has happened is that iwi have invested in their people and their regions.

Rather than blowing the proceeds of Treaty settlements, as was again predicted by a vocal few, most have acted wisely and developed the capacity of their people.

This is true. Even Tainui which had some problems a decade ago, is doing very well now.

The Herald reported:

An Auckland mother says she is subjected to abuse and insults by elderly strangers for using mobility parks because her brain-damaged son “doesn’t look disabled”.

Other parents with disabled children, those suffering from disabilities themselves and disability advocates say it is a common problem.

The North Shore woman has a permit to use the parks due to the needs of her 3-year-old son who cannot walk or control his upper body following the removal of a brain tumour when he was 3 months old. She does not want to be named for fear of further abuse and said the level of aggression she is subjected to means she will now abandon her errands if the only option is to use one of the parks.

“Elderly people have come up to me and made it clear that I shouldn’t be parking there because I don’t look disabled and my child doesn’t look disabled,” she said.

Last week an elderly man blocked her into a mobility park she was using at Westfield Glenfield, yelled at her and threatened her with his walking stick.

“He parked his car behind my car and jumped out like he was … in his 20s with his walking stick and came up and said, ‘You need to move your car because you’re not disabled’.

“I said that I wasn’t but my son was, and he looked at my son and said, ‘What? This boy? He’s not disabled’. He got his stick and waved it around at me and shouted at me and I just stood there and said, ‘I am sorry but I won’t be moving, I am entitled to park here just like you are’. And he threatened to call the police so I pulled my phone out and offered to do it for him because he was the one waving a stick in my face.”

What a pillock. One should never make assume that all disabilities are visible. It is quite valid to check if someone has a mobility parking permit and point out these parks are reserved for those who do. But if someone does have a permit, it is not for you to decide if you personally think they deserve it.

Another Aucklander, Bonnie Robinson, suffers from multiple sclerosis and said she was often questioned about her use of the parks despite displaying her permit.

“I have had people come up to me,” she said. “They have just queried and I can understand why as long as people are polite, respectful and sensitive about how they do it.

“Not everyone who parks in a disabled car park actually wants to tell people why they can because it can be quite private.”

Absolutely.

Emma Hart writes at Public Address:

So it turns out the longer I’m home from Egypt, the harder it is to write about. Everything I was going to say becomes hedged around with caveats. I kept telling people how lucky we were, seeing it the way we did, but was it luck? We made a conscious, and on my part pretty much agonised-over, decision, and that was the payoff. No, we didn’t get shot, but I’m not sure that was any more of a risk than it would be anywhere else at any other time. 

I’m going to write about the politics elsewhere, so I don’t want to get into that too much. I will say, though, that I had to rethink a lot of things once I was actually there, and get a bit embarrassed re: Western paternalism. I will say that if your view is basically “Democracy = Good, Army = Bad”, you need to understand that, very broadly, the grassroots democracy movement supports the army and sees it as an ally. There’s an Egyptian pop song thanking the army for coming to the aid of the people against Morsi. 

Hart says it is complicated, and it is.  One can only hope that eventually they manage to have a democratic government that doesn’t want to turn Egypt into an Islamist state.

The down side was the touts. So many people in Egypt are dependent on selling tat to tourists in order to survive. Middle-Eastern sales tactics can be intimidating to Westerners at the best of times. At the tourist sites in Egypt, and the souk in Luxor, it was off the wall. 

I was there in 2009 and found the touts more aggressive in Egypt than anywhere else I’ve been, except Zimbabwe.

It was interesting to note who coped with this better. For men who’ve never been able to understand why women get upset about street harassment, I heartily recommend a visit to an Egyptian tourist market. See how long you can handle, “Hello! Good morning! Where you from? Welcome to Egypt! What’s your name? Smile!” from men who will not leave you alone. The women coped better because we already knew not to engage, to keep our heads down and not make eye contact, to stick together and walk briskly. Yes, they’re being “nice”. Because they want something.

Sadly I have come to hate a stranger coming up to me, when I am overseas, and saying “Where are you from?” as it is inevitably just a foray into trying to get you to part with some money. Egypt is especially bad and they follow you down the street.

Despite all that I’d love to go back one day when it is safer.

The Law Society has been complaining to media that its concerns about Parliament’s use of urgency have been ignored by the government in its report to the UN Human Rights Council.

Austin Forbes said:

“No reference was made to the enactment of Bill of Rights-inconsistent legislation, to the issues with the reporting mechanism, nor to any of the Law Society’s rule of law concerns”  

In Law Talk, the NZLS Committee members Andrew Butler, Joss Opie and Peter Barnett also complained that the government had failed to highlight the issues they had raised around the rule of law:

“Disappointingly, the Law Society’s concerns were not addressed in the final report. For example, no reference was made to the enactment of Bill of Rights-inconsistent legislation, to the issues with the reporting mechanism, nor to any of the Law Society’s rule of law concerns.” 

“Part of the means by which that improvement can occur is through the quality of the process of talking about human rights issues. While the Government is, of course, entitled to disagree with the Law Society’s views, recognising those views, engaging with them, and setting out the Government’s position on them would improve the quality of the domestic and international conversation.”

So does this mean that the Government has been trying to cover up the Law Society’s criticisms? Well, no. The Law Society itself says:

“The UPR process provides for input by and consultation with non-governamental organisations. As part of this, on 17 June 2013 the New Zealand Law Society submitted a shadow report to the UN Human Rights Council.”

This is very important. The UNHRC already had a copy of their report and its concerns. Their concerns weren’t ignored by the New Zealand government – they were ignored by the United Nations. The Government responds to queries raised by member states after they have read all the submission from NGOs.

A reader has e-mailed an explanation:

 “The process for these reports is that submissions to the Office of the High Commission of Human Rights, including the NZLS shadow report and other matters raised, are summarised by OHCHR in the stakeholder report. Then it’s up to the members of the HRC to raise or not raise those matters through the question and/or recommendation procedure. In this case – of all the criticisms they chose to raise – the NZLS’s rule of law concerns didn’t interest the Council members enough to raise the matter once during their questions.”

So the Law Society’s shadow report was provided to the UN directly and summarised by the High Commission to the Council in preparation for New Zealand’s statement. Out of the 105 individual points raised by council members during New Zealand’s appearance, none were following up the Law Society’s shadow report.

Chris Finlayson was understandably unimpressed with the Law Society’s comments about being ignored:

“The Law Society has an important role to play in contributing to the creation of quality legislation,” he said in a statement.

“But it diminishes its standing by continually crying wolf over non-existent human rights issues that really just reflect the personal taste of some of its members.”

Given the rest of the advice that the members of the Council gave New Zealand, I think if there had been any human rights issues in the Law Society’s report, they would have been seized on eagerly. It is rather sad that the Law Society takes a cheap shot at the Government when the ones they should be blaming is themselves for writing a submission so lacking in effectiveness that they couldn’t get a single member of 47 strong UN Human Rights Council to think their issues were worth raising.