Questions for Oral Answer.
Questions to Ministers 2.00PM-3.00PM.
Today Labour are asking four questions. These are about income inequality, defence procurement, child poverty and whether the Minister of Internal Affairs stands by all his statements. The Greens are asking about greenhouse gas emissions and deaths in the forestry industry. New Zealand First are asking about defence procurement.
Government Bills 3.00 – 6.00PM
1. Sub Antarctic Marine Reserves Bill – Third Reading
2. Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill – Third Reading
The Sub Antarctic Marine Reserves Bill is being guided through the house by the Minister of Conservation, Nick Smith. It will create three new marine reserves in the Sub Antarctic region.
The Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill is being guided through the house by the Minister for Primary Industries, Nathan Guy. This bill provides for cost recovery arising from processing of travellers in the aviation security, biosecurity, and customs areas.
3 News reports:
Independent MP Brendan Horan has claimed in parliament that two NZ First researchers were unfairly sacked on the basis of hearsay. …
Mr Horan claimed NZ First had breached employment laws and said he wanted to know what the party’s MPs were going to do about that.
“How can anyone in that party speak on workers’ rights and be taken seriously,” he said.
Winston isn’t known for worrying about minor concepts such as due process or a fair hearing.
Patrick Smellie writes at Stuff:
It is true New Zealand has become more unequal over the past 30 years but not so true in the past 15 years. The gap between rich and poor widened radically between the early 1980s and the late 1990s, taking New Zealand from around 20th most unequal in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – the club of 34 rich countries – to about ninth today.
But recently, those differences have barely changed, although it does seem there is something cultural about the phenomenon. English-speaking countries generally rank higher than other OECD nations for inequality.
Australia is less equal than New Zealand. Don’t take my word for it, or the word of Brian Perry, the researcher at the Ministry of Social Development who has crunched the relevant data and produced the most definitive account of income inequality in a publication called Household Incomes in New Zealand.
Don’t even take the word of the team of researchers put together by journalist Max Rashbrooke for his book Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis, which has been extensively toured since publication last year to raise awareness of the issue.
Instead, take the word of Brian Easton, one of neo-liberal economics’ most long-standing critics, who has penned a handy compendium of the available data, titled: Inequality in New Zealand – A User’s Guide.
Easton’s publication is here.
In short, Easton’s summary shows that total personal income was relatively stable between 1926 and the 1950s, after which equality improved through to the mid-1980s.
That period covers both the golden age of prosperity in New Zealand and the onset of economic decline in the 1970s, to which first protectionism and then Rogernomics were the broad policy responses.
Between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, Rogernomics cut a swath through traditional, subsidised industries; income tax cuts and GST were instituted, which hit the poor rather than the rich; and then the Ruth Richardson welfare cuts of the early 1990s completed a sharp decline in equality.
“The trend after the mid-1990s is more ambiguous,” Easton said.
“The best interpretation is that the income distribution has remained at roughly the same level of inequality over the last two decades.”
During that time, however, the share of income earned by the top 1 per cent of adults rose from six to 10 times the adult average, with most of that shift happening in the early years of the Clark Labour Government, between 1998 and 2003.
How unfortunate for Labour.
Clearly, New Zealand has income inequality that has got worse and then stabilised. Political parties of all stripes know that and are responding in various ways, to varying extents.
National’s social housing foray and its retention of benefits and family assistance through the post-GFC recession are proof that Tories worry about inequality, albeit with less hand-wringing than the Left and with greater willingness to reward wealth creators disproportionately. How we respond as a nation is one of the most important things our politics can do.
But let’s start with the facts about inequality, which are not as clear-cut as many have thought.
One pet peeve I have is that so many measures focus on before tax income, rather than after tax income. It is what families actually get in the hand which matters.
3 News reports:
Labour leader David Cunliffe has admitted he got a key detail wrong when announcing his $60-a-week baby bonus policy.
Mr Cunliffe said in a speech on Monday that 59,000 families would get the bonus for a full year, but the actual number is closer to half that.
The baby bonus debate hit question time today with all the focus on that key line in his State of the Nation speech.
The fine print reveals 26,000 parents will be ineligible for six months because they get paid parental leave. This means only 33,000 will get it for the full year. …
Mr Cunliffe has been forced to admit he got a key part of his State of the Nation speech wrong, and that has given the Government a clear attack line and a major distraction on an otherwise popular policy.
Related to this, Claire Trevett tweeted:
the fact sheets handed out to reporters at the speech were not the fact sheets that contained the PPL bit.
So was it incompetence or a deliberate attempt to mislead?
UPDATE: It seems there is no doubt now it was deliberate. Below is the advertisement that Labour tweeted:
Note that it shows the paid parental leave being concurrent with the Best Start payment, when in fact it is one or the other. I suspect a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority would be successful on the grounds it is misleading – as it appears it was designed to be.
The Herald reports:
Prime Minister John Key’s tentative proposal to change the national flag has wide support within Parliament, although he admits that debate about an alternative design could distract people from more important issues during election year.
Mr Key planned to discuss a new flag with senior ministers and possibly put it to a referendum as part of this year’s election.
He said that finding a consensus on a new flag would be difficult and if ministers backed a change, the Government would decide on a design and ask the public to vote for or against it.
“We have to make it simple,” he said yesterday.
The flag could be changed by legislation, but Mr Key said it was a constitutional issue and required consultation.
He publicly backed replacing the flag with a silver fern in 2010.
Young Kiwis have already adopted the silver fern as the de facto flag. When Kiwis backpack overseas, they often wear the fern. You see it at sporting events. I know several people who have a tattoo of it. I’ve yet to find anyone who has a tattoo of the current NZ flag!
The proposal was backed by most political parties yesterday.
Labour Party deputy leader David Parker said it was not an important issue, but he supported a change to a red, white and blue design by an unnamed Dunedin designer which incorporated Maori and colonial influences.
United Future leader Peter Dunne said the present flag “smacks of British imperialism” and recommended the Union Jack be removed.
Mana Party leader Hone Harawira, who negotiated with the Government to get a Maori flag flown from the Auckland Harbour Bridge on Waitangi Day, said it was “time for for us to grow up and move on”.
He flew the Tino Rangitiratanga flag on his car but said any flag would be an improvement on the Union Jack and Southern Cross.
On this issue, I agree with Hone. I find the current flag absolutely uninspiring, and at a distance very difficult to differentiate from Australia’s.
I want a flag that will be our equivalent of the Canadian Maple Leaf – instantly recognisable as a NZ symbol.
Labour continue with their jihad against the tech giants. From Hansard yesterday:
Hon DAVID PARKER: … Neither do we think it is fair that some of the multinationals plunder the New Zealand economy—like Google, like Apple, like Facebook—take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the New Zealand economy, compete with New Zealand – based companies, and pay virtually no tax.
Wow I didn’t know that there were NZ companies competing with Apple, Google and Facebook. Is David Parker saying that Microsoft, Yahoo and Bebo are NZ based companies?
But regardless we can all agree that multinationals who plunder the NZ economy are evil and must be shunned. I await all Labour MPs giving up their iPhones and closing down their Facebook accounts.
As I have often pointed out Fairfax and APN also pay virtually no (income) tax. Will Labour shun these multinationals also?
We in the Labour Party are willing to move on that, but the Government is not because once again it is preferring the interests of the wealthy. It is not willing to take on the multinationals, despite the fact that there is a glaring unfairness there, that they should pay their fair share of tax too, which they do not, and that there are mechanisms that could be used.
Here’s my challenge to David Parker who wants to be Minister of Finance. It is a very simple challenge. Name these mechanisms that can be used. You don’t even have to name them all. Just name one of them. Just give us one specific example of how they would change the law in a way that would require those companies to pay more tax?
In related news, 3 News reports:
Banning Facebook was an extreme suggestion from Labour Party MP David Clark – and it took party leader David Cunliffe just 24 hours to shut it down.
Mr Cunliffe has now ruled it out completely, but ridicule from the Government still came hard and fast.
Half the population, nearly 2.3 million, are on Facebook, and Mr Cunliffe’s own page has more than 8000 likes.
The social networking website has been accused of avoiding paying its fair share of taxes in New Zealand.
To recoup the cost, yesterday, Labour’s tax spokesman David Clark suggested the Government should “always have in its back pocket the ability to ban websites as an extreme option”.
But Russell Norman says he thinks it is “ridiculous” to consider banning Facebook or any other website.
When the Greens call a Labour policy ridiculous, you know how bad it is.
Labour’s musing on banning Facebook has even gone international, making the International Business Times.
Anyway the next time you see a Labour MP using an iPhone or iPad or Apple laptop, make sure you tell them off for using an evil company that plunders the NZ economy.
An advertorial post from Evolution Cycles:
Whether you are an experienced mountain bike rider or are just getting into mountain bikes, New Zealand’s North Island has variety of riding opportunities for every skill set. Whether you want to experience the blood curdling rush of high speed downhill or slowly meander along a flat road, you will find it in the North Island.
Mountain bikes are a great way to see New Zealand and cycling is very popular here. Getting out of a motorized vehicle and onto a two wheeled device powered by nothing but legs, is a great way to get a discover the country and all it has to offer. You will experience unique wildlife and the serene countryside you as you have your adrenaline pumped like never before. Here’s my top 10 list (in no particular order), I welcome any criticism and comments. I’m happy to update this list if I’ve missed someone’s favourite spot!
#1 Waikato River Trails – this network for mountain bikes has trails for all ability levels. There are boardwalks, farmland, forest and riverside with a wide range of interesting geological formations and notable landmarks. This network of trails runs 100 km and goes from Lake Karapiro to Atiamuri’s hydro dam.
#2 Summerhill Farm – for beginners on mountain bikes, this privately owned park has something for everyone. There are trails for walking or riding that take you through native forest and green farmland. There is a single track and also a skills area. Guided tours encompass a combination of kayaking and biking, giving you access to a variety of islands that are located in the Tauranga Harbour.
#3 Woodhill Forest – this beautiful (and incredibly popular) forest contains 150 km of tracks for every level of rider. There is also a network of 50 bike trails throughout this area. Many people would put this right at the top of their list, it’s one of those places you must see when visiting New Zealand. You might recognise this forest as the White Witch’s camp in the Narnia film series.
#4 Waihi and the greater Coromandel Peninsula area offers a range of rides (and terrific walking tracks) through this historic region whether you prefer a guided tour or to go it alone.
#5 Te Aroha – This mountain bike track is tucked snugly into the lower part of Mount Te Aroha (where I lived for 5 years) and features a scenic 10km ride that is open all year round. Every 500m or so, you have a choice of expert or beginner track (one of my favourite features). The track takes you past bush covered foothills, mountain streams, past the Mokena Geyser (the only know hot water soda geyser in the world) and waterfalls. While living there, I worked for the council and helped build some of this track myself, so it has a special place in my heart.
#6 Rotorua Thermal Region – a globally renowned destination for many dedicated mountain bikers. Rotorua is one of my favourite places to visit, we go there several times a year. The Redwood Forest (part of the Whakarewarewa forest) is a popular location and bikes can be hired at the location itself. There are local cycle shops that hire bikes as well and maps are also available almost anywhere. Just a few minutes drive from town, these tracks cover over 70km of very unique terrain beautiful surrounding views.
#7 Pan Pac Eskdale Mountain Bike Park – This park is one of the largest mountain bike parks in New Zealand. It is located with a privately owned commercial area – the Tangoio Forest. The park has been developed by the Hawke’s Bay Mountain Bike Club for use by all mountain biking enthusiasts. There are some spectacular views from the 290m peak of the mountain and more than 80km of trails to be ridden by anyone of any skill level.
#8 The Whirinaki Forest Trails were rated “ride of the trip” in 2009 by Australian Mountain Bike Magazine. These trails include the 36km Moerangi Trail and Whirinaki Loop track. A serious bun burner, these trails are sure to satisfy even the biggest adrenaline junky.
#9 The Central North Island Ruapehu region offers 14 tracks for every level of cyclist which includes the Tongariro Forest Park’s 42 Traverse track which covers 46km of challenging terrain on a volcanic plateau.
#10 Taranaki downhills – the 18 km Whangamomona Road is located along Forgotten World Highway and offers a grade 3+ mountain bike trail starting with the “Bridge to Nowhere” and ending at the Whangamomona Pub. This trail is not for sissies, and was carved into the rugged landscape over a 100 years ago
So that’s the list, I hope you’ll be able to visit some of these amazing places the next time you want an adventure!
Written by Daniel McCarthy from Evolution Cycles
Evolution Cycles offer a massive range of bikes, scooters, bike components and accessories. We are also the only bike store offering Free Shipping NZ wide. Visit Site>
The Herald reports:
Prime Minister John Key says the Government would throw its weight behind any bid by former Prime Minister Helen Clark for the top job at the United Nations in 2016, but said it would be a tough ask for her to secure the post.
Helen Clark, who heads the United Nations Development Programme, was tipped in Britain’s Guardian newspaper as a front-runner to take over from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon when his term runs out in 2016.
The Guardian ran an interview with Helen Clark, in which she was asked if she was interested in the job.
She did not confirm it outright, but clearly hinted it was in her sights, saying: “There will be interest in whether the UN will have a first woman because they’re looking like the last bastions, as it were.”
Asked again if she would run, she said: “If there’s enough support for the style of leadership that I have, it will be interesting.”
Mr Key said he had not received any advice of her intentions, and it would be a hard job for her to get.
“It would be well and truly sought after and these things are deeply political. But she’s done a very good job as the administrator of the UNDP. We would back her, but whether or not she can actually get there, I don’t know.”
Regardless of how Clark has done at UNDP, I think it is highly unlikely she would be a viable candidate for the top job. This is for several reasons.
The first is the very strong convention that there is regional rotation based on continent. We are seen as part of Western Europe, as we are part of that region for Security Council voting. But that doesn’t help us as most third world countries don’t want a Western European to head the UN.
Eastern Europe is the only region not to have supplied a Secretary General, and regional rotation is very important.
A further factor is that every other UN SG has not already been a UN official. The career path is usually from being a current Foreign Minister or diplomat. The exception was Kofi Annan.
Also a factor is that the host region has to unite behind a candidate for them to win. Would the EU unite behind Clark or one of their own?
In Clark’s favour is she is a woman, and many will say time for a female UN Secretary General. But history shows regional rotation is more important than gender to member states.
Another factor is the unofficial requirement to speak French, which Clark doesn’t do.
My pick is a bilingual woman from Eastern Europe is likely to be the next Secretary General.
Stuff reports:
And Labour Energy spokesman David Shearer said consumers would disagree with the authority’s claim that power prices were fair, after bills had risen 30 per cent in the past five years.
But they have not. The CPI shows the cost of electricity is 19.7% higher than five years ago, not 30%.
In the previous five years under Labour it increased 39.2%
3 News reports:
Labour sold the baby bonus as $60 per week “for a baby’s first year”. But the truth was buried in the fine print. For most parents it only starts after an expanded 26 weeks of paid parental leave.
Labour’s own publicity showed the $60 payment applying from birth to age one. It actually starts after six months.
“If the parents are getting paid parental leave, they don’t get this concurrently,” says Mr Cunliffe.
“When I read the speech and looked at it, I thought absolutely you got it for the entire year your child was under one year of age,” says Prime Minister John Key. “I think David Cunliffe is being very tricky. I think he’s actually trying to mislead the New Zealand public.”
And further it seems you may be earning hundreds of thousands you until having the baby, and still get the baby bribe:
If Labour wins power, all families who earn less than $150,000 will get the bonus. Mr Cunliffe says that limit would be judged when they had the baby and were down to one income.
“It applies to income at the time they are applying for the $60-a-week benefit,” says Mr Cunliffe.
That means a couple earning a total of up to $300,000 would get the bonus if one took leave to be with the baby and they fall under the $150,000 mark. But before this could be properly clarified, Mr Cunliffe walked off.
It’s even worse than that. If Theresa Gattung was still CEO of Telecom and took a year off from being CEO to have a baby, then she’d get the baby bonus (if her partner earns less than $150,000) even though she was returning to a job that paid over a million dollars a year.
Matthew Hooton also looks at the policy. He notes:
Matthew also picks up on the point I highlighted a few days ago. David Cunliffe claimed that one in five Kiwi kids can’t afford a second pair of shoes, when in fact the real number is one in 20. He generously suggests Labour mixed up 20% and one in twenty!
UPDATE: Patrick Gower blogs on Labour’s misleading policy:
The Labour Party has been putting voters wrong about its baby bonus.
Labour has been deliberately misleading, and in my view dishonest by omission.
On Monday night I told 3 News viewers that under Labour’s $60 a week baby bonus policy, families would get $3120 a year for their baby’s first year.
A simple calculation you might think, of $60 mutiplied by 52 weeks, given David Cunliffe announced in his State of the Nation speech: “That’s why today, I am announcing that for 59,000 families with new-born babies, they will all receive a Best Start payment of $60 per week, for the first year of their child’s life.”
Now most normal people would think that means “all” those parents will get the payment “for the first year of their child’s life”.
But it wasn’t true – not that you would know that from Cunliffe’s speech, media stand-up, the MPs who were there to “help” and all the glossy material handed out to us.
Because buried in the material was a website link that takes you to a more detailed explanation policy.
And on page six of that policy document, in paragraph 3, it revealed the payment would commence at the “end of the household’s time of using Paid Parental Leave, ie. after 26 weeks in most cases.”
So translated, in most cases, the $60 a week payment is not for the first year, but for the second six months.
Most journalists, like our office, only had time to find this overnight on Monday.
Here’s a question. When all the media reported the policy as applying for a full year, instead of six months, did anyone in Labour contact them and tell them they were wrong? Or were they happy for the media (like everyone else) to report it the way they did, and hoped they wouldn’t notice the fine print?
Now Cunliffe and Labour knew this $3120 for one year figure was wrong, but nobody rang to correct it.
Usually political parties and the taxpayer-funded spin doctors are screaming down the phone if there is an error (and rightfully so, I might add), but in this case Labour was dead quiet.
Question answered.
And I believe that’s because Labour wanted the punters to think it was $60 for a year.
They were desperate to get cut-through and were happy to omit key information and let the wrong message get out there.
And I think that is deliberately misleading and dishonest from Labour.
At some point, I’m sure senior Labour people made a decision to omit key details on the day to maximise publicity – it was no mistake.
But not the way to win friends and influence people.
And it goes on: Labour’s Sue Moroney has just explained to me that there are 60,000 births in New Zealand each year, 59,000 of those families earn under $150,000, 26,000 are eligible for paid parental leave, meaning 23,000 will get the $60 for the full twelve months.
That means Cunliffe should have said 23,000 people will get the baby bonus for a year, which is not “most” of the 60,000 familes that have babies each year – it’s actually under half.
Interestingly it means the baby bonus will mainly go to those who were not working when they got pregnant!
Cunliffe also struggled to explain yesterday whether families would be judged on their pre-baby double income (ie. two earners of $140,000 each, getting $280,000) or after-baby income $140,000.
This seems a pretty straightforward aspect to me, and I wonder if it was policy-on-the-hoof. He either didn’t know the policy properly or was trying to avoid showing how generous the policy is.
For the record, it’s judged on the after-baby, one income and Cunliffe says he misunderstood the questions from myself and Brent Edwards.
So as I said above, the CEO of Telecom could get the baby bonus if she takes a year off. This isn’t middle class welfare, but universal welfare – which we pay for!
The bonus kicking in after six months is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a generous policy and has set the political agenda this week.
Labour didn’t have to be dishonest – it could have just told voters the truth.
Media will be very very careful with the next announcement to ignore the speech and press release and look for the fine print.
Stuff reports:
Labour has hit out at a Defence Force decision to ditch its New Zealand training aircraft manufacturer and risk jobs by handing a $154 million contract to a United States competitor.
The Government on Monday announced it had selected Beechcraft to provide a new fleet of 11 high-performance training aircraft and simulators.
The T-6C single-engine turboprop aircraft would replace the New Zealand-built Pacific Aerospace CT-4E Airtrainers and the twin-engined turboprop Beechcraft King Air B200s.
The CT-4Es were due to reach the end of their service life in 2018 and the King Air B200s’ lease also expired that year.
But Labour’s defence spokesman Phil Goff said the Government should save taxpayer money and Kiwi jobs by sticking with Hamilton-based Pacific Aerospace, which supplies and maintains the current single engine CT-4E.
As it happens I was talking to a former RNZAF person about this yesterday and the answer is very simple.
The RNZAF wants the new planes to be digital rather than analog. All their other new planes are digital, and I don’t think anyone would argue that in 2014 one should be buying analog planes.
Sadly for Pacific Aerospace, they have to date only built analog planes. They have no experience or track record with digital planes.
So even putting aside what the respective costs may have been with Pacific Aerospace, the reality was the planes they have experience in making are not what are needed anymore.
And even if you get past any issues of price and experience, you then have the problems of parts if you go with the NZ company. Even if they could produce digital planes for RNZAF, it would be the only digital planes they have. This means they would not have the same capacity for spare parts and maintenance as another company that has produced hundreds of digital planes for other customers. So RNZAF decided the risks are too great to go Pacific Aerospace.
Note that this info doesn’t come from anyone political, but a former RNZAF officer.
Questions for Oral Answer 2.00PM -3.00PM
Questions to Ministers.
Today Labour are asking five questions. These are two questions about child poverty, one about inequality, elective surgery and immigration. The Greens are asking about child poverty and power bills. NZ First is asking about immigration.
Government Bills 3.00 -5.30PM and 7.30PM- 10.00PM
All legislation is delayed until the debate on the Prime Ministers 2014 statement is completed. There is 11 hours and 23 minutes remaining. Speeches are 10 minutes in duration and take the form of either a defence or attack of the Government’s legislative programme.
Maiden Speeches 5.30PM – 6.00PM
Maiden speeches are 15 minutes each. Poto Williams, the new Labour MP for Christchurch East will make her Maiden Statement to the house. Here is a profile of Poto. Joanne Hayes, a new National list MP following the early retirement of Katrina Shanks, will also make her Maiden Statement to the house. I assume if these speeches are allowed to happen today it will be at 5.30PM before the dinner break. Here is a profile of Jo Hayes.
The Greens have said:
UN inquiry highlights NZ’s shameful human rights record
The Greens really think New Zealand has a shameful record on human rights? Isn’t that the sort of rhetoric and language you expect to hear about repressive regimes. Is that really what the Greens think of New Zealand?
Of course NZ is not perfect when it comes to human rights. But we have an incredibly strong and proud record with human rights – better I’d say than almost every other country on Earth. Yet the Greens think our record is shameful.
Well how do we rank internationally:
So again, this is what the Greens call a shameful record.
Rather ironic also to have the Greens go on about human rights, when they proudly supported the Electoral Finance Bill and Act, and were the only party to vote against its repeal.
The Herald continues with the fantasy that there in a parallel universe in which National might agree to make Winston Peters Prime Minister.
Audrey Young writes:
John Key this morning scoffed at speculation that National might consider any power-sharing arrangement with New Zealand First leader Winston Peters as though it were complete fantasy.
Scoffed? This is the equivalent of asking if there are little green men on the moon. It is complete fantasy.
But the notion is not that off-the-planet that is hasn’t been contemplated. Here’s some of the context.
Back in 1996, at the final stages of coalition negotiations, NZ First asked Labour for a power sharing arrangement in which Peters would be Prime Minister for some of the term and Helen Clark the other.
I’m sure Winston did ask for it in 1996, or someone on his behalf did. He may have asked for the Crown Jewels also. The issue isn’t that of course Winston wants to be PM. The issue is whether a party that gets 5% of the vote would ever get their leader made PM.
It was instantly rejected by Labour.
Of course it was. So what makes anyone think that if a party on 28% of the vote instantly rejected making the leader of a party that got 13% of the vote Prime Minister, that a party looking to get 45% of the vote would make the leader of a party that gets say 5% of the vote prime minister?
Herald correspondent John Armstrong raised the power-sharing issue at the weekend in his political column following Key’s decision last week to lift his ban on working with NZ First post-election.
In light of John’s column, I asked the Prime Minister this morning if he would rule out a power-sharing deal and he said “that’s not on the table.”
Pressed further, he said ”No, Winston Peters won’t become Prime Minister.”
ZB’s Barry Soper asked him if it were put on the table, would he consider it, and Key said No.
I look forward to the Herald asking the leaders of National and Labour if they would agree to declare war on Australia, if NZ First ask for it. Also ask them if they would agree to sacrifice their eldest child to Lord Xenu, and become Scientologists if NZ First asked for it. All there scenarios are equally likely – ie zero.
Now I’m quite happy to stand by my certainty. The odds of Elvis being alive are 1000 to 1. I’m happy to offer the same odds against National ever making Winston Peters Prime Minister – 1000 to 1. The only criteria are you must pledge at least $500 (so I would pay out $500,000) and you must pay the $500 immediately to me, and I will pay the $500,000 on the day Peters is sworn in as Prime Minister, backed by National.
Stuff reports:
Prime Minister John Key has accused Mana party leader Hone Harawira of “taking the mickey” over his absences from Parliament.
MPs will have their attendance recorded – and made public – from today. Parliament has adopted a roll call to show how many MPs, who earn at least $147,800 a year, turn up for debates, select committees and other business.
And this morning Key pointed the finger at the Mana leader, saying he was often not present. However, he could not provide further details.
“Hone Harawria is an obvious one,” he told reporters.
“You go and look at the number of days he was here in the 2011-12-13 period – not very many.”
The record for this Parliament (from 2011 to present) shows Harawira had approval for 68 days leave.
ACT’s John Banks had 29 and United Future Peter Dunne had 13 days leave approved. Independent MP Brendan Horan had permission for 21 days off since he was expelled from NZ First in 2012.
Exactly what proportion of sitting days Harawira has missed was unclear, but this year there were 84 sitting days scheduled.
That’s a key thing. We’re talking 68 days away, out of only around 84 scheduled days a year. Now this is over two years, but still suggests an absentee rate of 40% or so.
The PM and the Foreign and Trade Ministers will generally not be in the House much because their jobs require them to travel a lot.
I’ve blogged before on how rarely Harawira has spoken in the House, and also how he has asked almost no written questions.
NBR reports:
Cam Slater’s Whaleoil site was offline early this afternoon after being swamped by a denial-of-service attack (which sees a malicious hacker buy space on a network of hijacked PCs to send an avalanche of connection requests that overwhelm a website’s capacity).
“It’s a DoS attack, originating in New Zealand,” Mr Slater told NBR.
The site went down several times last night under DoS attack, then was taken offline completely at around 8am this morning.
The controversial blogger has no shortage of enemies. He named a couple of people covered by recent Whaleoil stories whom he thought could be responsible for today’s attack – but you’ll have to wait until his site goes back online to read those (so far) unsubstantiated allegations.
“I have also been getting death threats via text and on Facebook,” Mr Slater told NBR.
The cellphone and Facebook threats do not seem to be related to the DoS attack; it’s just a particularly bad day at the Whaleoil office.
“I have notified police, especially [over] the text messages,” Mr Slater said.
The death threats are bad enough, but the threats against Cam’s children are so far beyond the pale that I hope those responsible are getting visited by the Police.
The DOS attacks are probably unrelated, but obviously are arranged by someone who thinks that a site that says something you disagree with should be closed down.
Hopefully Whale Oil will be back online in the near future.
3 News reports:
The Labour Party has put forward a possible solution to force multi-national corporations to pay more tax – ban them from the internet.
It says the Government should first talk with companies like Facebook, but if that doesn’t work it is important to have a backup, something Labour is describing as a credible threat.
Facebook is the world’s largest social network by far, but pays little tax here in New Zealand.
“The Government should always have in its back pocket the ability to ban websites,” says Labour revenue spokesman David Clark.
No they shouldn’t. At all.
But Finance Minister Bill English says “frankly, that sounds nuts”.
“Fine print, he’s going to close down Facebook,” says Prime Minister John Key. “That’ll be interesting.”
Not just Facebook. Labour says Google, Apple and Amazon also don’t pay enough tax, so I presume they are included in the list of sites they might try and ban. Perhaps EBay also?
Why stop there. Fairfax and APN pay no tax, or very little tax, in New Zealand. Maybe Labour will also try and ban the NZ Herald and Stuff websites.
“Paedophile websites are banned the world around,” says Mr Clark.
Oh my God. He is comparing Facebook to paedophile websites. How can anyone think Labour is even close to ready for power, when they come out with this crap.
And as it happens paedophile websites are not banned in NZ. It is illegal to download or upload paedophile images, and browsing such a site may be a criminal offence, but the Government has no power to ban any website.
Putting aside the sheer lunacy of advocating the Government should try and ban Facebook if they don’t pay more tax, isn’t there something deeply malevolent about an aspiring Government making such threats. If you think a company should pay more tax, then you change the law to close down loopholes. But to declare as an MP that you have unilaterally decided Company X should pay more tax, and that you will threaten to ban them from New Zealand unless they voluntarily agree to pay more tax is what you expect from some tin pot third world dictatorship, not a so called serious political party.
Labour’s baby bribe doesn’t just apply to those working and earning $148,000 a year, but also to those not in work.
One thing that interested me is how much money would someone on the DPB Sole Earner Benefit receive under Labour with their new policy. This excludes childcare subsidies or the like, and is just direct welfare payments. For someone in Auckland and with 1 or 2 children it would be:
That is a total of $613 a week in the hand if they have one child aged under 3 and $746 in the hand for two children under three.
If you gross that up to an equivalent pre-tax wage, that is around $37,500 if you have one child and $45,700 if you have two children on the DPB.
The Greens would go further. They want the IETC for working parents paid to those on the DPB also. That would increase the equivalent gross salary to $41,000 for being on the DPB and having one child, if you are receiving the maximum accommodation supplement in Auckland.
Labour have said if you earn under $150,000 a year you need welfare payments from the Government if you have a baby. The following MPs have a salary below $150,000 so if their partner is not working and they (or their partner) has a baby, taxpayers will have to fork out a baby bonus to them under Labour.
So the question I would ask each of those MPs is if they agree it is a good use of taxpayer money to give them a welfare payment of $3,000 a year if they or their partner chose to have a baby? Do they think that on their salary of $147,800 that taxpayers should be giving them welfare payments if they or their partner have a baby?
News.com.au reports:
An employee surnamed Zhang from Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, China, said that his boss placed a pile of money on the table saying that people would get their bonuses based on how much they drink.
“Men were given 500 yuan ($92) for a shot of liquor, 200 yuan for a glass of red wine and 100 yuan for a beer. Women were given twice as much money for consuming the same amounts,” Zhang told the Global Times. “We worked hard all year only to learn our bonuses would be decided by our alcohol tolerance. It was absolutely unfair to people who can’t drink much.”
The boss said that the company’s business success was rooted in employees being able to hold their liquor with clients. …
Legal experts said there are no laws related to the distribution of year-end bonuses, which is determined at the discretion of employers.
I’d go for the shots. Wouldn’t be too hard to make 10,000 yuan. The average wage is around 3,500 yuan a month so that is a bonus of three months’ salary.
I wouldn’t implement that scheme in my company though. We have far too many students from Hamilton to risk that!
A fun play to see during the Fringe Festival, and you may even see me make a brief cameo. Also profits go to a youth and development charity.
Tickets are available now from www.thetheatre.co.nz
Keep up to date with production news at: www.facebook.com/ImmaculateDeceptionFringe2014
Here’s an interesting aspect of Labour’s announcement yesterday.
If a low to middle income family already has kids at school, they get nothing at all. Say you have three kids at primary school and your family income is $60,000. You get not one cent as far as I can tell.
But if you are a backbench MP who gets pregnant, or whose partner gets pregnant, in the near future, then Labour will give you $60 a week for a year.
This is why National should offer tax cuts, because all working families benefit from tax cuts, including those who have already had their babies.
From Lindsay Mitchell.
The Gini coefficient is what most on the left say is the best measure of income inequality. This clearly shows no worsening trend, and in fact most of the OECD is getting more unequal, but not New Zealand.
Mitchell also looks at the standard measures of poverty. These are not measures the right might use such as actual need, but the normal proportion of median income. What is the record for NZ from 2007 to 2012:
So when a politician claims NZ has more poverty or income inequality, just ask them a simple question. On what measure.