From Keeping Stock.

This is a pretty unprincipled shafting of Lesley Soper. They selected her as the candidate, but now they think they might have a better chance of winning the seat, decide to reopen nominations.

I’ve never known this to happen before. Nominations normally only reopen if there was some flaw in the selection process. There is no suggestion that Lesley Soper was not properly selected.

The Herald reports:

Lorde has won her first Grammy, winning the award for best pop solo performance, but has missed out on the award for best pop vocal album.

She is up for four awards tonight, with two more still to come. The best pop vocal album award went to Bruno Mars and his album Unorthodox Jukebox.

Very cool. A year ago she was almost unknown.

UPDATE: And that’s two – Song of the Year also.

Stuff reports:

The Green Party wants to see cannabis decriminalised, saying it will push for the law change in any post-election discussions but that it is not a bottom line.

Speaking after her State of the Nation speech at Waitangi Park in Wellington, co-leader Metiria Turei said they wanted to see the law changed.

“I would like to progress a vast amount of our policy, actually and that would be one that would be very interesting,” she said.

Turei said they believed a drug-free lifestyle was the healthiest, but did not believe adults should be convicted of a crime if they smoked cannabis.

I agree. There may be other ways to move from the status quo, such as the Law Commission’s recommended mandatory diversion scheme if people undertake drug counselling and treatment.

The Dom Post editorial:

The only question now is: how many seats will the Maori Party lose this year? The party has lost the main reason for its being, which was the repeal Labour’s foreshore and seabed legislation. It has not really found another central cause to replace it. It is losing its two most distinguished politicians, Dr Sharples and Tariana Turia. And it has suffered the slow suffocation that all small parties suffer when they get into bed with a larger one.

The Maori Party may well lose one or even two electorate seats, but it is worth reflecting that if they lost two, then their party vote last time was high enough that they would have gained a list seat.

As the Maori middle class grows, it will produce more National supporters. At present, National’s share of the Maori vote remains small, of course, but it will rise, just as the Black Republican vote in the United States has increased. 

National picks up more support from Maori on the general roll than the Maori roll, but only post-election polls pick this up. In terms of the Maori seats, the records are:

• 1996 – 6.1%
• 1999 – 5.7%
• 2002 – 4.2%
• 2005 – 4.3%
• 2008 – 7.4%
• 2011 – 8.6%

So very modest increases.  But much better than the US where in fact black Republican vote has been declining (except for 2004).

And already we have seen a notable rise in the number of National Maori MPs in the general seats – a trend which might have been encouraged by the link between National and the Maori Party.

National’s 9th Maori MP is sworn in this week – Jo Hayes. The breakdown of Maori MPs by type of seat is interesting.

• Maori Seats – 7 – Labour 3, Maori Party 3, Mana 1
• List Seats – 12 – National 5, Greens 3, Labour 2, NZ First 2
• General Seats – 6 – National 4, Labour 2

It is MMP, however, which has had the most dramatic effect on Maori representation in parliament. The share of MPs of Maori descent in the house is now greater than the proportion of Maori in the wider population. This increase is wholly good, because it means the Maori voice is better heard in the national marae. 

The proportion is now 20.7% of Parliament are Maori. This compares to Maori being 14.1% of the overall population and just 11.3% of the adult population. So that is a very significant over-representation.

Some argue that we no longer need the Maori seats as a result, and indeed the Royal Commission which recommended MMP also believed the Maori seats would not be needed.

This may indeed be true, but it may be better to put off abolition until a majority of Maori approve it. 

I agree abolition should only happen by consent, but surely it is time to start that conversation, and even have a referendum among Maori on whether they wish to retain the Maori seats, bearing in mind how over-represented Maori MPs now are in Parliament.

Rodney Hide writes in the HoS:

One of the more common and basic mistakes to make in politics is to underestimate your opponent. It’s an easy thing to do. Your opponents are doing it all wrong and so must be either stupid or crooked and perhaps both.

Your team readily agrees and the trap is easy to fall into. And so it is with Labour and John Key.

Labour continues to dismiss Key as a political lightweight who would sell his own mother, in Labour leader David Cunliffe’s words.

They overlook that Key toppled Labour’s best and strongest leader, has seen off Phil Goff and David Shearer, and who Cunliffe has yet to dent. That’s no political lightweight.

Indeed.

Labour pooh-poohed Key’s credentials in foreign policy. He now has David Cameron’s number on speed dial.

Previous New Zealand prime ministers were ecstatic for our future trade prospects with a two-minute “pull aside” at a formal meeting. Key plays golf with the President of the United States on his holidays.

Key, with no fuss, has turned over 13 of his own MPs in just two years to refresh the party. That’s rare political power and skill.

Cunliffe, meanwhile, is stuck with the team that didn’t want him and which includes ministers from the 1980s plus the party’s two previous leaders.

Over a quarter of Labour’s caucus entered Parliament in the 1980s or 1990s.

Clark was a very popular prime minister. Her average in the preferred prime minister stakes was almost 2 times her predecessor Jim Bolger’s. That’s an extraordinary achievement. But Key’s is even more extraordinary. His average is fully 10 percentage points above Clark’s.

That’s a 25 per cent advantage.

Labour has taken to calling Key lucky. They persist in underestimating him. It’s like they just have to wait until his luck runs out.

I got to work with Key. It’s not luck. This is a man who is smart, who works hard and who understands people.

National needs to poll mid 40s or high 40s to win a third term. This would be unprecedented as under MMP no other party has ever got higher than low 40s – even for their first term. But if anyone can do it, Key will.

NewstalkZB reports:

Labour’s launched its election year lolly scramble with child payments of $60 a week to all families with newborns, who earn a total annual income of up to $150,000.

My God. We’re turning families on $140,000 into beneficiaries.

Welfare should be targeted at those most in need. A family on $140,000 with one child do not need our taxes.

At the other end of the scale, this is a huge incentive to have more children if you are already on welfare.

Labour says 59,000 families – or 95 percent – would receive the payments until their child’s first birthday, and payments of up to $60 a week will continue for “modest and middle-income” families until their child turns three.

I presume this is on top of Working for Families, so in fact every extra child you have on welfare will get you an extra $120 a week.

UPDATE: Was pointed out on Twitter that backbench MPs will be eligible for this new welfare payment. Yep, if a backbench MP gets pregnant (or their wife gets pregnant), then taxpayers will be paying them $60 a week welfare because they’re in such dire need. Sickening.

UPDATE2: According to this fact sheet, a sole parent beneficiary will now get $128 a week more if they have a second child while on welfare.

The Herald reports:

Expectations are rising for a settlement by Auckland Mayor Len Brown towards the $100,000-plus cost of a review into his extramarital affair to be made public.

Three of the five councillors negotiating a settlement – Chris Fletcher, George Wood and Dick Quax – believe it is the wish of the group to make the settlement public.

Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse and Penny Webster, the other two on the negotiating group, are staying quiet.

Mr Brown told the Herald last week that when councillors set up a group last month to enter into binding negotiations, the resolution was the settlement would be confidential.

Of course it must be made public. The Auckland Council is a public organisation and has public accounts, plus the payment could be requested under the LGOIMA. I’d be amazed if the Ombudsman ruled that such a payment could be deemed commercially sensitive or confidential.

We are still waiting to hear also the full cost of the inquiry. The legal fees incurred when the Mayor lawyered up are rumoured to be well in excess of the direct cost of the inquiry itself.

Greg Mankiw is the Chairman and Professor of Economics at Harvard. His blog is ranked No 1 in the US by economic professors. He blogs:

When people think about inequality of incomes, a key issue is inequality of opportunity. Some people are born to rich parents who can afford private schools, summer camp, SAT tutors, etc., while others have poorer parents who cannot easily afford such things. One might wonder how much of the income inequality we observe can be explained by differences in the resources that people get because of varying parental incomes.

Let me suggest a rough calculation that gives an approximate answer.

The recent paper by Chetty et al. finds that the regression of kids’ income rank on parents’ income rank has a coefficient of 0.3. (See Figure 1.) That implies an R2 for the regression of 0.09. In other words, 91 percent of the variance is unexplained by parents’ income.

I would be willing venture a guess, based on adoption studies, that a lot of that 9 percent is genetics rather than environment. That is, talented parents have talented kids partly because of good genes. Conservatively, let’s say half is genetics. That leaves only 4.5 percent of the variance attributed directly to parents’ income.

Now, if you let me play a bit fast and loose with the difference between income and income rank, these numbers suggest the following: If we had some perfect policy invention (such as universal super-duper pre-school) that completely neutralized the effect of parent’s income, we would reduce the variance of kids’ income to .955 of what it now is. This implies that the standard deviation of income would fall to 0.977 of what it now is.

The bottom line: Even a highly successful policy intervention that neutralized the effects of differing parental incomes would reduce the gap between rich and poor by only about 2 percent.

This conclusion does not mean such a policy intervention is not worth doing. Evaluating the policy would require a cost-benefit analysis. But the calculations above do suggest that all the money the affluent spend on private schools, etc., explains only a tiny fraction of the income inequality that we observe.

The best way to reduce the gap between rich and poor is education, in my opinion.

The Green policy to provide free (ie taxpayer funded) school lunches to all decile 1 to 4 primary schools is a woefully bad use of taxpayer money – even if one accepted that it is the state’s role to provide two out of three meals a day to school kids.

The Greens own policy says only 9% of pupils at decile 1 to 4 schools go to school hungry. Their policy costings are based on only 9% of pupils in those schools wanting free lunches.

Are you kidding?

You think that if lunches are available for free, only 9% of families in those schools will ask for them? What world do they live in?

Their projected costs will double, treble and quadruple at least.

Taxpayers already fund school lunches for low income families. It is called Working for Families. Over $2.5 billion a year is given to families to cover the costs of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and more.

The cost of breakfast is about 40c a day for cereal. Lunch is around 60c to 80c for a couple of sandwiches.

But again, why stop at having the state just provide two meals a day to families. Just as kids can’t be expected to do well at school if they miss breakfast or lunch, how can you expect kids to do homework at night, if they possibly are missing dinner? Surely the Government must step in and start providing dinners also, in the name of solving inequality?

I also love (not) how the Greens sneer at the current food in schools programme that is mainly provided by Sanitarium and Fonterra as “corporate welfare“. Ummn, it is not corporate welfare, that is when corporates get welfare from the taxpayer. What Sanitarium and Fonterra do is called charitable giving. Sure they do it for brand reasons, but how depressing that a political party sees charitable giving as a bad thing. They think it is better to force taxpayers to fund the direct provision of two meals a day to families.

Newstalk ZB reports:

The bartering’s already underway ahead of this year’s election, with New Zealand First laying down the law on superannuation.

Leader Winston Peters is making it crystal clear his party’s against the age of entitlement being changed.

“Categorically, we will not support any party that seeks to move the age to beyond 65 at this point in time.”

This is a real problem for Labour.

I support the eligibility age going up, and Labour policy is for it to go up. It is a rare area where they can try and claim they are fiscally restrained and credible.

But the reality is that if Winston says it is non-negotiable, then their policy is worthless. Almost every poll since the election has shown Labour/Greens can’t govern unless NZ First support them. So the NZ First stance means that Labour’s policy is almost certainly dead on arrival.

National is (sadly) also saying the age should stay 65, so the NZ First position causes them no problem.

“Now I don’t want you running off and saying we’re reneging on raising the age. That’s a post-election discussion, I have not said that.”

But the reality is that the policy is dead in the water.

It’s pleasing to see three contenders going for either the ACT Leadership or the Epsom nominations. Both these decisions will be made by the ACT Board, and they are important decisions.

The first decisions is the easier one – the candidate for Epsom. I think the obvious and safe choice is John Boscawen.

Retaining Epsom is critical to ACT’s survival. No one thinks they can get 5% in 2014, so they must retain Epsom to stay in Parliament.

ACT did win Epsom in 2011, but a lot of feedback I got from National voters is they voted very reluctantly for the ACT candidate. One of them joked that it didn’t hurt as much as the thought it would.

I think centre-right voters in Epsom will have little reluctance to vote for John Boscawen. He is basically one of them. As Andrea Vance details, his story is from riches to rags to riches, and everyone who deals with him says he is an incredibly decent well motivated man who has managed to never burn any bridges with colleagues – which in the ACT Party is an extraordinary feat.

Epsom voters would be very comfortable with having John as their local MP. They know what they’ll be getting, and even if ACT’s brand today is somewhat bruised and battered, I think Boscawen can retain the seat for ACT. Any other candidate would be running a bigger risk of not winning.

So the Epsom decision is, I think, an easy one. The decision on the leadership is a harder one.

Again Boscawen would be a safe pair of hands for the leadership. He has been an MP, he would have a fairly united party, and you would not risk the problems of 2011 when the ACT Leader is pushing one policy (cannabis decriminalisation) and the Epsom candidate is fighting against it (knowing it would go down badly in Epsom).

However Jamie Whyte is a very attractive candidate. He is basically a pure classical liberal. In the televised minor party leader’s debates, he could well shine and attract back to ACT those who are both economically and socially liberal. Around 10% to 15% of the population or more find such a message appealing – the challenge is whether ACT as a party and brand can be credible to them. Whyte is free from the baggage of the past, so could be seen as the start of a new generation.

Of course the danger for Whyte is that if he is leader, he would only become an MP if ACT get at least 1.2% of the vote (they got 1.1% in 2011). So his job would be to make sure ACT get at least 1.2%. Boscawen’s would be to win Epsom.

But there are risks to splitting the jobs, as I detailed above. The safer route is Boscawen for both, and he is saying Kenneth Wang will be his Deputy Leader which could help attract Asian votes. They would need 2.0% to get a third MP, and that looks very challenging.

However the downside of Boscawen for both is that a generational change may not occur for some time, and may not be possible in the future. Whyte I think does have a greater ability to appeal to young urban professionals.

One other advantage of a split is if Whyte is Leader and Boscawen MP for Epsom, then my strong recommendation would be Whyte does not become a Minister. For a small party, best to keep the leader outside the Government focused on selling the party message. Boscawen hence could become a Minister if National is re-elected, helping implement ACT policies, while Whyte sells the party’s message.

So there are pros and cons for both Whyte and Boscawen for Leader. In the end it will come down to what appetite for risk the ACT Board is willing to consider, and if they think the potential benefits are realistic and outweigh the risks.

A guest post by Deane Jessup:

On Tuesday the 21^st of January 2014 Josiah Voreqe “Frank” Bainimarama announced that on February the 28^th he would resign as leader of the Fijian Armed forces so that he could contest the 2014 election as a candidate for Prime Minister.  On Friday the 19^th of January I had returned from a two week holiday in Fiji, and weirdly I knew most of the details of Commodore Bainimarama’s announcement before I left Nadi Airport.  In fact I already knew such a surprising degree of detail that I was initially confused that it was new news.

I knew because the people of Fiji seemed to know, en-mass, well before it was announced.  They were also excited; not because a dictatorship was coming to an end, but because they were very happy that they would finally get to show their confidence in the man that had for so long ruled Fiji without a proper election.

At this point I probably need to make a few things clear; I am not a regime apologist, I am a politically aware centrist New Zealander, before this trip I knew about as much about Fijian politics as any other New Zealander does from the news, I have a couple of Fijian Friends, we have never talked about their home, and I had never been to Fiji before my family trip at the beginning of January this year.  In fact the last I had seen about Fiji was the horrific video David Farrar posted last year showing a prisoner being tortured by “police” officers of the incumbent government.  On political topics I often agree with David, I certainly agree that a solid democracy with a good electoral process is the corner stone of developed society.  I thought the coup was wrong, and the ends never justify the means.  That is why I am surprised, so much so that I felt the need to write this, and on top I am going to try and tell you why I have changed my mind and that Fiji may actually be one of those rare examples of an exception proving a rule.

While I was in Fiji I met and had deep honest conversations with people from all walks of life, the stories started with me overhearing and people volunteering information, eventually I became so drawn in that I was actively looking for opinions.   I’d like to think that I am a disarmingly genial chap, someone who people enjoy talking to and someone who attracts no ulterior reason’s to be disingenuous with.  So with that in mind I don’t believe I got a safe and couched view, I also work in high end sales, so I know when people are being dishonest and “selling” to me, this never happened.  Well almost never, I don’t count porters in Denerau, they nod and smile to anything you say as long as you’re out of the pool by 7pm and buying enough souvenirs and cocktails. 

Throughout my travels I met a senior manager from a large Fijian owned company and his wife who is a teacher, they both live in Suva.  A kiwi property developer who had lived and owned properties in outlying Fijian provinces for 20 years (currently in the far north).  Village elders (got to love those kava ceremonies), from Navua to Korovou and lots of taxi drivers both Fijian and Fijian Indian.  A Canadian man and his wife who had been in Fiji since 1997 who own a successful tourism business employing many locals.  A just arrived American couple managing a small dive resort, and many more including villagers from both rich and poor villages, expats, and tourists like me spending their own money in a country they felt very comfortable in.

 

A village elder tells me about traditional weaving

The message was the same, consistent, and delivered with vigour; the current government has done a great job, everyone expected the Commodore to step down and run for Prime Minister, and everyone intended to vote for him.  It was hard to argue looking around, education has been reformed and well-funded… from a system hardly anyone could afford to one that looks much like New Zealand’s, complete with a new law compelling parents to send children to school.  Roads look great, and the bustle of road development is everywhere, bridges are being built and other infrastructure is being improved, the police are out in force slowing down the traffic and checking seatbelts.  Health and hospitals are performing 10 times better than ever before, and new hospitals and clinics are being built everywhere.  Tourism is rising again, confidence in travel to the region is returning.

 

A very courteous sign warns that your speed will be checked soon.  Road-spikes impress that they are serious.

A man walks his horses on the very nice Kings Road over the top of Viti Levu through sugar cane country.

The really surprising thing was the anti-corruption and equality messaging, it was everywhere, from bus stops to bill boards; several people said to me that they simply did not realise how bad the racism and corruption was until attention was being called to it.  In fact the surprising thing was how welcome it really was.  One Fijian Indian taxi driver actually said to me, “Voreqe showed me I was a racist, and he also showed me a way to be different”.  Another, a villager said to me “I used to think it was right that my Chief got gifts to make decisions for people, even though my family never saw anything from it”.

A roadside bus stop encourages locals to call a toll free number to report corruption

Bainimarama is always painted by his opponents as a man who wanted control, a man who would do anything for power, and a man that has constantly meddled in Fijian politics (since he was able from 1999).  The funny thing is I sort of agree with them, and he probably would too.  I remember a line that Commodore Bainimarama used a while ago; it went something like “We cannot hold elections because the country will elect the old prime minister”.  At the time I thought how arrogant and dictatorial.  Retrospectively, and after seeing the bustling economic proof of his actions, I have come to see him slightly differently; yes he wanted and took control, but he has the air of a disappointed man with a heavy heart, I think he hoped that Fiji could find another way, yes he put Laisenia Qarase in power, and yes Qarase turned out to be quite a native Fijian nationalist, perhaps to begin with maybe Bainimarama thought the New Zealand apologise, respect, and repay (the indigenous) model could work for the Fijian Indian’s.  But at some point it seems he decided it wouldn’t, Fiji simply has too many other dominant points on its political compass, namely the Council of Chiefs and the Methodist Church, on top of this the Fijian Indian’s were not the dominant all controlling invading force that had something to apologise for.  Most of them were in Fiji because of external forces, brought as slaves to work fields, those forces have largely been dealt with by Fiji’s move to a republic.

I don’t know this for certain; I did not go before the coup, but I suspect that Fiji was effectively Feudal before the recent changes, and yet we are judging the change by modern standards applied to the creation of a 21^st century country.  Realistically though the changes that the last coup brought could be viewed as little different to the American Revolution, or so many others that took place before and after.  No, this is not how you create a country these days, but viewed through a different lens perhaps it could be seen quite differently, perhaps even justifiably.

Bad things do happen occasionally, we saw that with the video I spoke of earlier, but bad things happen in New Zealand too, ask any European camper traveling Aotearoa with a touch more trepidation for those quite country nights than we would want them to have.  The kiwi’s, American’s, and Canadians I spoke to who have invested in Fiji are certainly staying, they are excited by the opportunity presented by an economy clearly poised for growth, every foreign ex-pat I spoke to said that without the current government they would have left years ago, some were considering it prior to 2006.  I bet the racially motivated nationalists in Fiji hate me saying that.

Either way, I have seen with my own eyes and more than 1000km of travel that Fiji is improving, and I cannot deny that the people at all ends approve of the changes.  I would put money that Voreqe Bainimarama will be elected with a good margin, and I will also bet that if he wants a second term he will get it.  Not because he will control the military, rig the election, and oppress his opponents.  But because he will literally do the exact opposite at the same time as running the best government he can muster with the people elected by the country he loves more than anything else.  Don’t forget he is a Fijian Native Methodist, for him to push equality ahead of his personal upbringing and risk the hatred of all he cares about he must have been completely determined that this was the only way.

As for me, I am already planning my next trip to Fiji at the end of this year, it will be twice as long as the last one, and my wife, my two children and I will see twice as much of the country that welcomed us in and told a fascinating story of positive change through revolutionary glasses.  Perhaps then, post-election I will get to see if sometimes the end can indeed justify the means.

By Deane Jessep; father, enterprise communications specialist, traveller, writer, and semi-reformed politico.
https://twitter.com/DeaneJessep
http://www.linkedin.com/in/deanejessep

The Herald report:

A private prosecution alleging bribery against Auckland’s embattled Mayor Len Brown has been stalled at the Auckland District Court.

Two charging documents sent to Auckland District Court by retired Wellington accountant Graham McCready state that between November 2010 and November last year, Mr Brown accepted for himself and his wife Shan Inglis three complimentary hotel rooms and five free room upgrades from SkyCity and SkyCity Grand Hotels.

The gifts, worth about $4600 by Mr McCready’s calculations, led to “favourable consideration” given by Mr Brown towards SkyCity and parent company SkyCity Casinos, say the documents.

However, in a decision from Judge Emma Aitken released yesterday, she said the private prosecution could not proceed until the Attorney General consented to it.

The Attorney General is almost certain to delegate the decision to the Solicitor General. The Solicitor General is almost certain to decline consent on the basis there is no proof to back up McCready’s assertions.

That is the correct decision.

Len Brown’s behaviour has been woeful, and he should never have accepted freebies from major hotels without declaring them. But that is a very different issue from asserting that the behaviour was corrupt and the freebies were a bribe.

Claire Trevett at NZ Herald writes:

The Green Party has launched its election year today by announcing the $90 million a year package for low decile schools, including free after school care and holiday programmes, free lunches, and school nurses in every decile 1-4 primary and intermediate school.

So the Greens want schools to provide free breakfasts to all kids, free lunches also, and free after school care. Why stop there? Surely schools should also be required to provide free dinners also? And look by 7 pm, the kids are tired, so maybe look after them for the night also – as well as for the holidays.

Bill Gates on “The Bet”:

The year 1981 was a big one in my business life. It was the year Paul Allen and I incorporated Microsoft in our home state of Washington.

As it turns out, 1981 also had big implications for my current work in health, development, and the environment. Right when Paul and I were pulling all-nighters to get ready for the release of the MS-DOS operating system for the brand new IBM-PC, two rival professors with radically divergent perspectives were sealing a bet that the Chronicle of Higher Education called “the scholarly wager of the decade.”

This bet is the subject of Yale history professor Paul Sabin’s new book. The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future provides surprising insights for anyone involved in addressing the world’s “wicked problems.” Most of all, it gave me new perspective on why so many big challenges get bogged down in political battles rather than being focused on problem-solving.

So what was the bet? University of Illinois economist Julian Simon challenged Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was and wager up to $1,000 on whether the prices of five different metals would rise or fall over the next decade. Ehrlich and Simon saw the price of metals as a proxy for whether the world was hurtling toward apocalyptic scarcity (Ehrlich’s position) or was on the verge of creating greater abundance (Simon’s).

Ehrlich was the country’s, and perhaps the world’s, most prominent environmental Cassandra. He argued in books, articles, lectures, and popular television programs that a worldwide population explosion threatened humanity with “the most colossal catastrophe in history” and would result in hundreds of millions of deaths from starvation and dire shortages not just of food but all types of raw materials.

Ehrlich is still preaching his doom and gloom.

Who won the bet? Simon. Definitively. Even as the world population grew from 4.5 to 5.3 billion in the 1980s, the five minerals that were included in the bet—chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten—collectively dropped in price by almost half. Ehrlich begrudgingly made good on the bet. But to this day he still does not concede that his predictions of Malthusian horrors have been off the mark. Similarly, he does not acknowledge that the discipline of economics has anything of value to contribute to discussions of population or the environment.

However he has inspired Green parties around the world to insist we need population control policies.

Even though I had gone back in recent years to read Ehrlich’s Population Bomb (1968) and the Club of Rome’s intellectually aligned book Limits to Growth (1972), The Bet was a stark reminder to me of how apocalyptic a big part of the environmental movement has been. Ehrlich claimed to have science on his side in all of his predictions, including how many people the Earth can feed. He stated as scientific fact that U.S. lifestyles were unsustainable, calling developed countries “overdeveloped countries.” Limits to Growth claimed the credibility of computer modeling to justify its predictions of apocalypse. …

We know now that Ehrlich was extremely wrong and that following his scientific certainties would have been terrible for the poor. He floated the concept of mandatory sterilizations. He pushed aggressively for draconian immigration policies that, if enacted, would have kept out much of the foreign talent that came into the U.S. over the past three decades and added greatly to the U.S. economy. Ehrlich and his fellow scientists criticized the Green Revolution’s agricultural innovations because, in his view, “we [will] have an even bigger population when the crash comes.”

On population, Ehrlich ignored the evidence that countries that developed economically dropped their birth rate. (The current view is that population will rise only modestly after hitting a bit over 9 billion by 2050.) Granted, population growth is a huge issue in some poor countries, where it creates locally some of the instability and scarcity that Ehrlich foresaw for the entire world. But fortunately, there is strong evidence that if we continue to produce innovative reproductive health tools and make them available to women who want them, and we keep pushing forward on economic growth, there will be fewer and fewer of these places in the decades ahead.

As incomes rise, births decrease. It’s ironic, but true.

The recent Economist special report on biodiversity makes a strong case that economic growth allows us to make environmental concerns a priority. It contrasts the environmental record of the rich countries with that of poor countries to say that economic growth is the best hope for environment protection. All of this suggests to me that we should be wary of broad attacks on economic growth. 

The Green Party philosophy is historically anti economic growth. They now cover this up with buzz words such as smart growth and green growth.

I’ve been meaning to read “The Bet” so must get around to it.

The HoS report:

A top Auckland secondary school is asking parents to shell out more than $1,000 when their sons return to class in two weeks’ time.

Auckland Grammar is the first state school to crack the four-figure mark for school donations, making it the country’s most expensive.

Parents are expected to pay $1,050 for their boys to attend the decile-10 school.

The $1,000 a year “donation” is a trivial cost for those attending Grammar. Zoning laws mean that you have to pay around $500,000 more to buy a property in the Grammar zone.

Have heard that VUW not the only university that went to extraordinary lengths to rort the PBRF. Have heard that AUT actually got rid of tenured professors just to boost their PBRF grades, even though the Tertiary Education Commisson issued a bylaw under the Education Act specifically prohibiting such actions.

It seems there have been many academics in NZ whose contracts have been terminated in an effort to boost PBRF grades.  One of them has suggested there could be grounds for a class action. I am happy to put those affected in touch with each other, if they contact by e-mail.

Stuff reports:

Speaking at the celebration of prophet Wiremu Potiki Ratana’s birthday, an event that marks that start of the political year, Fred Macdonald of the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party (ALCP) argued that legalising cannabis would earn more revenue for the Crown and see fewer people imprisoned. Macdonald said the drug was used as a medicine in the time of Jesus Christ.

“Just get on with it, stop making our cannabis convicts political prisoners because that’s what’s going on. The war on drugs, it’s just a whole lot of bullies . . .,” Macdonald said.

Jones, who was in the audience for the speech, then launched a rebuttal when it was his turn to speak, saying drugs and alcohol were a major problem in Maori communities and a religious celebration on a marae was not a place to associate Jesus with cannabis, praise its potential or argue for decriminalisation.

“I wanted to send a message to all the visitors and to Ratana: do not allow your powhiri to be diminished by some half-stoned creature from Macdonald’s farm,” he said.

It was particularly “galling” that a Pakeha man could make such a speech on a marae when Maori women were not accorded that privilege, he said, adding “the vast majority of the Maori there were offended”.

Jones said he had been taken aside by Ratana followers and thanked for his actions.

But Church spokesman Andre Mason said he was disappointed in the actions of both men and defended Macdonald’s right to speak his mind, even if his views were not shared by everyone there.

“That was very inappropriate of Shane doing that. This is not a normal marae like every other marae , . . .This is a place of freedom of speech and he was right to share his thoughts, maybe it would’ve been a bit long but he shared he thoughts.”

I suspect it was the nature of the response, being a personal attack on Macdonald, that didn’t go down so well.

A reader has sent this in to me. They note:

Just got a letter today that informs me that the Auckland Council will now inspect my pool fencing every three years to make sure it is still there and charge me for the privilege. Revenue generating at its best.

Original inspection received sign-off. It cost a fortune to put in a steel fence. Current charge for initial inspection is $75 – I am OK with that and foolishly thought that was the end of it.

Now it will be inspected every three years at a higher cost of $125 per inspection. For now.

My points are:

• Why follow up inspections? It is a metal fence set in concrete – we are hardly likely to lift it out of the ground
• Why more expensive since it is just (supposedly) reaffirming it is still there so technically they could look from the top of our drive and view it rather than inspect it
• Why can’t we just send in a photo showing it is still there – saves them a trip and us a lot of money

This is revenue generating pure and simple. It is a loose interpretation of Fencing of Swimming Pools Act 1987 section 10 (Every territorial authority shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that this Act is complied with within its district.)Exploitation of vague legislation seen as a revenue opportunity.

Since Len(it’s all about me) came in our rates have increased and services decreased as well as additional charges sneaking into the mix. This is snowballing and there seems to be no vehicle to challenge other than talk to a child at the call centre who sounded very sweet but “that picnic may be short of a sandwich” if you know what I mean. She struggled to know what to say and failed to find me anyone to talk to. Any suggestions for recourse?

The $75 initial charge does seem okay, but checking every three years the fence set in concrete is still there seems indeed just revenue generating – especially as they will cost more than the original check.

Stuff reports:

Ripping up the playground rulebook is having incredible effects on children at an Auckland school.

Chaos may reign at Swanson Primary School with children climbing trees, riding skateboards and playing bullrush during playtime, but surprisingly the students don’t cause bedlam, the principal says.

The school is actually seeing a drop in bullying, serious injuries and vandalism, while concentration levels in class are increasing.

Principal Bruce McLachlan rid the school of playtime rules as part of a successful university experiment.

“We want kids to be safe and to look after them, but we end up wrapping them in cotton wool when in fact they should be able to fall over.”

Letting children test themselves on a scooter during playtime could make them more aware of the dangers when getting behind the wheel of a car in high school, he said.

“When you look at our playground it looks chaotic. From an adult’s perspective, it looks like kids might get hurt, but they don’t.”

Swanson School signed up to the study by AUT and Otago University just over two years ago, with the aim of encouraging active play.

However, the school took the experiment a step further by abandoning the rules completely, much to the horror of some teachers at the time, he said.

When the university study wrapped up at the end of last year the school and researchers were amazed by the results.

Mudslides, skateboarding, bullrush and tree climbing kept the children so occupied the school no longer needed a timeout area or as many teachers on patrol.

Instead of a playground, children used their imagination to play in a “loose parts pit” which contained junk such as wood, tyres and an old fire hose.

“The kids were motivated, busy and engaged. In my experience, the time children get into trouble is when they are not busy, motivated and engaged. It’s during that time they bully other kids, graffiti or wreck things around the school.”

I’m not surprised. Kids treats rules as a challenge, not a restriction.

AUT professor of public health Grant Schofield, who worked on the research project, said there are too many rules in modern playgrounds.

“The great paradox of cotton-woolling children is it’s more dangerous in the long-run.”

Society’s obsession with protecting children ignores the benefits of risk-taking, he said.

Absolutely.

The research project morphed into something bigger when plans to upgrade playgrounds were stopped due to over-zealous safety regulations and costly play equipment.

“There was so many ridiculous health and safety regulations and the kids thought the static structures of playgrounds were boring.”

When researchers – inspired by their own risk-taking childhoods – decided to give children the freedom to create their own play, principals shook their heads but eventually four Dunedin schools and four West Auckland schools agreed to take on the challenge, including Swanson Primary School.

It was expected the children would be more active, but researchers were amazed by all the behavioural pay-offs. The final results of the study will be collated this year.

Look forward to the formal results.

Bill Gates writes:

By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been. People are living longer, healthier lives. Many nations that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient. You might think that such striking progress would be widely celebrated, but in fact, Melinda and I are struck by how many people think the world is getting worse. The belief that the world can’t solve extreme poverty and disease isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.

Myth 1 – POOR COUNTRIES ARE DOOMED TO STAY POOR

The global picture of poverty has been completely redrawn in my lifetime. Per-person incomes in Turkey and Chile are where the United States level was in 1960. Malaysia is nearly there, as is Gabon. And that no-man’s-land between rich and poor countries has been filled in by China, India, Brazil, and others. Since 1960, China’s real income per person has gone up eightfold. India’s has quadrupled, Brazil’s has almost quintupled, and the small country of Botswana, with shrewd management of its mineral resources, has seen a thirty-fold increase. There is a class of nations in the middle that barely existed 50 years ago, and it includes more than half of the world’s population.

Botswana has a huge focus on education and fights corruption actively. And progress is not just in Asia:

First, don’t let anyone tell you that Africa is worse off today than it was 50 years ago. Income per person has in fact risen in sub-Saharan Africa over that time, and quite a bit in a few countries. After plummeting during the debt crisis of the 1980s, it has climbed by two thirds since 1998, to nearly $2,200 from just over $1,300. Today, more and more countries are turning toward strong sustained development, and more will follow. Seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies of the past half-decade are in Africa.

Africa has also made big strides in health and education. Since 1960, the life span for women in sub-Saharan Africa has gone up from 41 to 57 years, despite the HIV epidemic. Without HIV it would be 61 years. The percentage of children in school has gone from the low 40s to over 75 percent since 1970. Fewer people are hungry, and more people have good nutrition. If getting enough to eat, going to school, and living longer are measures of a good life, then life is definitely getting better there. These improvements are not the end of the story; they’re the foundation for more progress.

Myth 2 – FOREIGN AID IS A BIG WASTE

It also helps to look at the overall impact this spending has. To get a rough figure, I added up all the money spent by donors on health-related aid since 1980. Then I divided by the number of children’s deaths that have been prevented in that same time. It comes to less than $5,000 per child saved (and that doesn’t include the improvements in health that go beyond saving the lives of young children).5 $5,000 may sound expensive, but keep in mind that U.S. government agencies typically value the life of an American at several million dollars.

Also remember that healthy children do more than merely survive. They go to school and eventually work, and over time they make their countries more self-sufficient. This is why I say aid is such a bargain.

And some things foreign aid has helped achieve:

• 440 million children vaccinated
• 2.5 billion children immunised against polio
• 11.2 million cases of TB detected and treated
• 360 million insecticide treated bed nets distributed

Also:

Second, the “aid breeds dependency” argument misses all the countries that have graduated from being aid recipients, and focuses only on the most difficult remaining cases. Here is a quick list of former major recipients that have grown so much that they receive hardly any aid today: Botswana, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Thailand, Mauritius, Singapore, and Malaysia. South Korea received enormous amounts of aid after the Korean War, and is now a net donor. China is also a net aid donor and funds a lot of science to help developing countries. India receives 0.09 percent of its GDP in aid, down from 1 percent in 1991.

Myth 3 – SAVING LIVES LEADS TO OVERPOPULATION

Going back at least to Thomas Malthus, who published his An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, people have worried about doomsday scenarios in which food supply can’t keep up with population growth. …

When children survive in greater numbers, parents decide to have smaller families. Consider Thailand. Around 1960, child mortality started going down. Then, around 1970, after the government invested in a strong family planning program, birth rates started to drop. In the course of just two decades, Thai women went from having an average of six children to an average of two. Today, child mortality in Thailand is almost as low as it is in the United States, and Thai women have an average of 1.6 children.

And:

Because most countries—with exceptions in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia—have now gone through this transition, the global population is growing more slowly every year. As Hans Rosling, a professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and one of my favorite data geeks, said, “The amount of children in the world today is probably the most there will be! We are entering into the age of the Peak Child!”

Peak Child – I like it.

Gates summarises:

If you read the news every day, it’s easy to get the impression that the world is getting worse. There is nothing inherently wrong with focusing on bad news, of course—as long as you get it in context. Melinda and I are disgusted by the fact that more than six million children died last year. But we are motivated by the fact that this number is the lowest ever recorded. We want to make sure it keeps going down.

A really good open letter.