D’oh

A South Auckland teenager ended up on the wrong side of the law, when he jumped the fence into the local police station while trying to escape officers.

Police were called to the Papakura Countdown supermarket around 6.45pm last night in response to a group of youths who were intimidating customers and washing windows in the carpark.

The group fled from police and one 14-year-old boy evaded officers by climbing over a nearby fence.

Unfortunately for the young man it was the fence of the Papakura Police Station.

“Unsurprisingly, he was quickly apprehended by police staff,” said Area Commander Jim Searle.

Poto Williams’ hasn’t exactly run a strong social media campaign through this by-election.  Given we are into the final day of campaigning it was good of her to put up a new facebook post (her first since 23 October). To be helpful I’ll post it here:

There is one little problem with Poto’s statement “KiwiAssure will compete with the big insurance companies and get a better deal for local people just the way Kiwibank does.”

Kiwibank has recently been added to the “Fair play on Fees” class action.  It is the second bank to be added after ANZ.

We now have a sufficient number of Kiwibank customers to take their complaint to court and fight to get their unlawful penalty fees back.  We expect thousands more Kiwibank customers to join the campaign as a result of today’s announcement and encourage them to do so before the court documents are filed.

The launch of Fair Play on Fees has seen more than 35,000 Kiwis sign up to date, of which over 6,000 are Kiwibank customers.

So I guess Poto wants KiwiAssure to potentially charge unfair fees just how Kiwibank does.  Great policy that one!

Surprise, surprise the Hamilton councillors haven’t made a decision on adding fluoride back into the water supply despite now having two referenda and multiple polls asking them to.

I think the Mayor sums it up nicely:

“We spent the last couple of weeks getting legal advice and talking about court cases in Taranaki and I came here to make a decision,”

“To be frank I think people are over it, we’ve had a year of it and people want a final decision made.”

The Mayor Julie Hardaker was one of five councillors that voted to make a decision while the other seven councillors voted to defer a decision until the outcome of the Taranaki case was determined.  All Hamilton councillors received advice that there was no legal reason to defer the decision making.

The court case in Taranaki was put forward by anti-fluoride groups arguing that the council there had no legal right to add fluoride and that fluoridation breaches section 11 of the Bill of Rights Act which allows people the right to refuse to undergo medical treatment.

The part that is a tad irksome is that the Mayor and others are now calling on central Government to legislate over top of all local government.

“…until central government takes a stand on this issue local authorities are going to continue and continue to have to go through these processes.”

I suppose they’d also like to nationalise the water supply?  While there may be some merits in that – privatising may make even more sense – the lack of joint infrastructure and various levels of disrepair could,, among other things, make it a very costly exercise.

What is going on in the Super City?

It’s hard to work out whether this is a failure in governance or management, but it is certainly another massive fail.  Yesterday a mild-mannered, Council bureaucrat called David Hay told us all that he is going to spend the next seven months campaigning to be the next male co-Leader of the Greens. By March he will need to have impressed the Hui that ranks their list,  and by June he will have sold himself to the whole membership for the big annual line dance.

Problem is that it seems Hay is going to fund his campaign through the ratepayers of Auckland – he is a senior policy advisor.

There’s a time honoured process where once every three years frustrated bureaucrats decide they don’t like having to do what they are told and try to get into Parliament. They stand down from their  pen pushing jobs, campaign, lose, and scurry back to a new public trough.

At central Government level the State Services Commission have a fascinating edict “State servants must keep their jobs out of their politics and their politics out of their jobs.”  Of course public servants can be involved in some campaigning, leaflet drops and the like but the political neutrality line is not to be crossed too much.  The Electoral Commission also has a view during election time.  Section 52 of the Electoral Act pertains to public servants seeking election and suggests that

To avoid the possibility of a real or perceived conflict of interest, the Electoral Act requires public servants that stand as candidates to take annual or unpaid leave from nomination day until the first working day after the election.

Now in Hay’s case, he is only seeking election to be the male co-Leader of the Greens however will he be campaigning on Council time? Is the important line of political neutrality of Council employees crossed by his action to seek the Greens co-Leadership?  Why is it even important?

It is important as Government and Council officials are required to give independent, non-partisan, objective advice. That is why public servants usually wait until the last minute to let their intentions be known – not a good year or so out.

Now that his name is out there, can anyone expect that Hay can use that year also giving objective, unbiased advice to Auckland Council. Everything he does could be trying to gain favour with the Greens membership.  Again, it is that “possibility of real or perceived conflict of interest” that will dog poor Mr Hay.

Which raises some questions, did he tell his bosses before he announced his highly political campaign? Did the bosses tell the Mayor? Did anyone think… hold on a minute, this is a massive problem for the credibility Auckland Council?

My guess – no, no, no.

Rest assured though, by next week they will have expensive lawyers arguing with each other, crawling all over it and charging the long suffering ratepayer for the pleasure.

New Zealand First, United Future and the Maori Party have all stated their position that the Government should listen to the Commerce Commission on the Chorus and Copper tax issue. It appears to have been a highly coordinated campaign where each Party stated their position in quick succession.

What does this mean for the Government? Well, the silver lining is that they can ditch a proposal that was fairly unpopular and work on alternative arrangements for assisting Chorus that doesn’t involve internet users paying more and undermining the Commerce Commission.

Update: ACT and Mana Party have also added their support. I understand Greens and Labour Party will follow in the next hour.

John Armstrong’s column today highlights the extreme levels of apathy in the Christchurch East by-election.

Byelection? What byelection? With just a couple of days to go until the polling booths open in Christchurch East, one thing is for sure: apathy is the big winner so far. It is difficult to recall a by election that has received such scant attention.

Both National and Labour – which has held the seat since 1919 – have made a point of talking down their respective chances of victory.

In Labour’s case, it is easy to understand why. Christchurch East may be one of the poorest electorates in the country. The long-serving Lianne Dalziel, whose decision to contest the Christchurch mayoralty triggered the byelection, may have secured a solid 5,000-plus majority at the last election. The popular politician may have given a strong endorsement of her would-be Labour successor, Poto Williams.

It is no accident, however, that Williams’ campaign manager is none other than Jim Anderton. It is a measure of Labour’s nervousness that it has called on the experienced former Alliance leader to motivate the party’s volunteers who do the donkey work of electioneering.

Most of the country has no idea a by-election is under way.  And they don’t really need to.  It could be argued that Christchurch East is a seat only ever held by Labour so what is the point of ‘taking a look’ at what is going on there.  The truly startling fact is that Labour are doing so little to showcase Labour.  A lot of this comes down to the candidate.  Poto Williams is underwhelming at best.  Why else get long time campaigner Jim Anderton to lead her campaign and scurry behind Poto cleaning up what she’s said by adding a few more layers of intellectual thought and political spin.  Labour’s problem is so much of Christchurch East being a Labour territory was all about Lianne, not all about Labour.  Poto simply does not have the personality or roots that Lianne had.  Armstrong alludes to this:

Labour has reason to worry. First – and most astonishingly – National won the party vote in the seat in 2011 by a margin of more than 4,000 votes.

That outcome had a lot to do with the decline in support for Labour in successive general elections in what was previously “Fortress Christchurch” for the party.

A Labour victory may hinge on the nearly 3,200 voters who backed Dalziel with their electorate vote in 2011 but who gave their party vote to National doing the same favour for Williams at the expense of National’s candidate, Matthew Doocey.

But there are no guarantees of that happening. Quite the reverse.

While I think it is unlikely Doocey will win the by-election he has done a good, safe pair of hands job.  Yes, he is kind of boring and won’t set the world on fire but as the less favoured to win (remember a Nat have never won the electorate vote in Christchurch East) he is doing everything that needs to be done, he is plodding, shaking hands, kissing babies and looking after the Party vote for the Election proper.  A strong showing by Doocey leads to a good future for him. You see that is the point of it for the Nats – yes, it would be nice to get a surprise win but if it means they can blood someone new into that seat who can in the Election proper keep the Party vote solid then in an MMP environment that is gold.  It seems that the Nats have finally matured into MMP politics – putting solid and safe performers into Labour strongholds means two things. First, can cause a bit of bother to incumbent Labour MPs and second, can increase that all important Party vote.

The reality is that National has nothing to lose.  This by-election is no gauge of support of Government instead it is all on Labour to make sure they win.  And they are nervous.

National has wasted no opportunity downplaying its chances, mostly so it can claim a huge upset should Doocey win. If Labour holds the seat on Saturday night, Key will simply argue that was always going to be the case.

Labour has realised it has a scrap on its hands. The capacity of that party’s machine to prod likely Labour voters in the direction of the ballot box should ensure a Labour victory, though not a large one.

So if voter apathy continues and Labour can’t get enough of the vote out it will suggest there is something wrong with Labour’s machine.

It is worth looking at how much the fallout from Len Brown’s affair is actually costing Auckland ratepayers.  It is clear that there are top and expensive lawyers all over the aftermath of Brown’s various indiscretions.

Mayoral Chief of Staff, Phil Wilson, let it slip to the Taxpayers Union that everything that is being said is being raked over by defamation lawyers. It is one thing to threaten this over the phone but to put it writing seems foolhardy.  It is an eye-wateringly expensive exercise to pore over any and all correspondence, OIA request, phone call and email made to Council or the Mayor’s office about the affair.

Fran O’Sullivan reported yesterday that Council CEO “McKay has brought in a top outside lawyer to advise him in his dealings with the mayor’s office”. Another eye-watering bill on the rate payer – of course.

If McKay has brought in the lawyers then Ernst and Young will have done the same thing  which will be part of the bill for the investigation. If McKay is lawyered up, Brown will have a QC too. There’s only one person who signs off the Mayor’s expenses and that is Chief of Staff Phil Wilson so we can presume the ratepayers of Auckland are paying for a lawyer for him to hide behind too.

Of course the latest is that the Hong Kong trip was not included in the annual return of interests because the Chief of staff didn’t include it.

Mr Wilson said he understood Mr Brown did not file an annual return of interests by July 31 under the code of conduct because it was under review at the time.

“As a consequence, elected members – and myself on Len’s behalf – did not file returns understanding they would be requested to do so at a later date,” Mr Wilson said.

It is all very well to not include the trip on the official return of interests but to deny the trip took place and give multiple versions of what did or didn’t take place makes it look as though a Chief of Staff is hiding something on behalf of his boss, the Mayor.  Perception is everything and it appears that Wilson has failed that long time test in politics.

It may have been a few episodes of two minutes, but this is beginning to look like the most expensive sex ever.

The Herald has a nifty feature where you can view the current and/or proposed boundaries and where polling places are, and whether they voted National or Labour (or Greens). They report:

The Kelston electorate is expected to be safe for Labour but its creation could pose problems for the party in the neighbouring electorates of New Lynn, Te Atatu and Mt Albert.

Labour MP Phil Goff concedes the proposed boundary changes will mean he will compete for a drastically different Mt Roskill that has gained strong National-leaning polling places from Maungakiekie, in turn making it tougher for National’s Sam Lotu-Iiga to retain his seat.

The Herald “mashup” of the proposed electoral boundaries combined with the party votes at 2650 polling places from the 2011 election reveals a reshaped political landscape.

The proposed Upper Harbour electorate is strongly National overall, with a few polling stations on the southern boundaries that could be considered marginal for either of the main parties.

Most of the polling places in Kelston – which would replace Waitakere, currently held by National’s Paula Bennett – are strongly Labour-leaning. These polling places were formerly inside the New Lynn, Te Atatu and Mt Albert boundaries. Consequently, the three electorates end up with more evenly split voting patterns, when earlier they were more favourable to Labour.

Te Atatu, currently held by Labour’s Phil Twyford, loses a moderately Labour-leaning polling place and adds a strong National-leaning one. Auckland Central loses polling places that are either marginal or Labour-leaning.

Another big change is in the Mt Roskill electorate, which loses a number of Labour-leaning polling places to gain strong National-leaning ones.

A crude calculation based on party votes within the proposed new Mt Roskill electorate shows National with a majority of about 1500 over Labour. However, this only takes into account the party vote and only indicates that Phil Goff – who has held the seat since 1999 – will have a closer fight on hand.

Goff would be heard to beat. But a strong fresh candidate who campaigns on time for a change, could do well.

Bernard Orsman at NZ Herald reports:

Len Brown’s office last night confirmed that the Auckland Mayor has not complied with the council code of conduct rules over a trip to Hong Kong.

Responding to an urgent request under official information laws by the Herald, Mr Brown’s chief of staff, Phil Wilson, owned up after chief executive Doug McKay allowed the issue to simmer for two days.

Mr Wilson said he understood Mr Brown did not file an annual return of interests by July 31 under the code of conduct because it was under review at the time.

“As a consequence, elected members – and myself on Len’s behalf – did not file returns understanding they would be requested to do so at a later date,” Mr Wilson said.

Mayors should lead by example. The excuse for not filing is bloody weak.

Mr Brown went to Hong Kong on official business in January without telling councillors. The trip only came to light when Mr Brown’s two-year affair with Bevan Chuang hit the headlines last month.

The mayor has refused to answer questions about the six-day trip, but his office said he travelled alone as one of three international guests of a Hong Kong Government-funded “special visitors programme”.

Ms Chuang told the Herald that she had remained in New Zealand.

Two Auckland businessmen, Tim Ashton and Nick Love, said after they got off the same flight as Mr Brown, they saw the mayor and an Asian woman ahead talking together.

A source said the woman was an official who met Mr Brown when he got off the plane.

If the Mayor was invited in his capacity as Mayor, he can’t refuse to answer questions about the trip. Celia Wade-Brown no only notified her Council of a similiar trip, but reported back to them afterwards on it.

The Herald reports:

Parents with inflatable paddling pools could face $500 fines if they ignore council orders to fence them off or empty them after use under proposed rules to be unveiled today.

Building and Construction Minister Maurice Williamson will announce changes to the 1987 Fencing of Swimming Pools Act which, if passed next year, will introduce a new enforcement regime, including $500 fines for those who don’t fence off their pools properly.

The new law will mean any pool where the water is more than 30cm deep – even portable and inflatable – will need to be fenced off.

I can understand fences for permanent pools. But do you have to construct a fence when you have the paddling pool out for a couple of days? Ridiculous.

Officials estimate there are about 60,000 portable pools that will be affected. The Government hopes the changes will encourage parents to adopt “best practice” and empty and store portable pools after each use.

It will encourage 60,000 parents to get rid of their paddling pools.

The Herald reports that homeowners may be fined $500 for no fencing around paddling pools of a depth of 30cm or more.

As a parent I have a few questions about this interesting new development:

To meet the fencing requirements what is the cost to fence versus the cost of a paddling pool?  I bought a pool last week for $30.  It now requires a fence and a gate.  The fence will cost more than the pool.  Water is one of life’s cheapest toys.  We also run the risk of water shortages if people choose instead to empty the pool each time it is used – but I am guessing that unintended consequence was never assessed.

Why isn’t a full perimeter fence around a home enough?  Surely I get to decide which children get to come into my property.  They have parents too who can decide whether it is OK to come into my property.

What happened to personal and parental responsibility? I choose to supervise my children (and their friends) when they are in the pool.  Good parents and responsible adults do that – as do those who are responsible parents at the public swimming pool, the river or the beach.

Should we fence off the sea and our rivers and lakes too?

Of the six children who die each decade, how many die because of poor supervision? And how many die in paddling pools versus permanent pools, lakes, ponds, buckets etc?

Yes, it is important we keep our children safe but there needs to be a bit of reality in our policy making.  I don’t want children to die but I do believe we need balance in policy making.

There is another option – we could educate our own children on the dangers of water, teach them to swim and recognise that good parents generally supervise their children in all circumstances and assess the dangers of all situations?  What’s next?  All dishwashing powder must be in a special lock box because children can ingest and get very very ill?  I had better not give them too many ideas.

*Yep, another post by Jadis so don’t all freak out that DPF could be a parent.

Stuff reports:

An international debating competition held in Wellington has been criticised for mooting that girls should be told to drink responsibly to avoid sexual assault.

The New Zealand British Parliamentary Debating Championships hosted by Victoria University last weekend debated that “This House, as a parent, would tell their daughter to drink responsibly to avoid sexual assault”.

The topic left female debaters “forced to defend their own rights to consume alcohol and have consensual sex”, a spectator, who wished to remain anonymous, said. 

The tournament was held on behalf of the New Zealand Universities Debating Council, and included teams from around the country, and some from Australia.

The spectator said many of the female participants in the tournament were adamant they did not wish to engage in the debate, but were pressured into “hardening up” and arguing the motion.

“What resulted were many of the male debaters literally laughing at their female peers as they tried to defend their own rights to consume alcohol and have consensual sex, and there was also much joking about the circumstances in which sexual assault occurs,” she said.

Participants were reduced to tears both during and after the debate, she said.

“One woman began crying during the debate which she participated in, and others were crying after the debate, for reasons ranging from personal experiences with rape, to the sheer shock of feeling they had to defend those rapists.”

Debate topics across the weekend were set by chief adjudicator Stephen Whittington, a former member of the Victoria University Debating Society.

Considering the sensitivity of the topic, he discussed the motion with five other adjudicators before setting it, he said.

Each of them agreed it was acceptable for the purposes of a debating tournament, Whittington said.

“As part of that discussion we discussed what the purpose of debating was, and as part of that discussion we talked about the fact that debating often requires people to defend ideas or arguments that they don’t personally agree with, even in circumstances where people do in fact have very strong views about those issues.”

Debating the morality of abortion, or whether Israel had a right to exist as a country, were instances in which people could have strong views on a topic and be forced to take the other side of the argument, he said.

Whittington said the idea for the premise of the debate was based on an article in Slate magazine, written by Emily Yoffe.

The view that women shouldn’t drink to avoid being sexually assaulted is a neanderthal one. However I don’t think you do anyone a service by saying that such a view can not be the topic of a debate. Far better to allow the topic to be debated and have talented debaters expose the massive flaws in that argument.

As Whittington says, many debating topics are controversial and may involve deeply personal issues such as abortion.

Stuff reports:

Nearing a month of living on the streets without food, Mike Dixon-McIver says only two things will end his protest – death, or a fair deal from ACC.

The 75-year-old ACC advocate has long assisted people with their claims, but has been locked in a six-year battle with the corporation after it tried to prosecute him for fraud.

The case was thrown out, and earlier this year a judge awarded Mr Dixon-McIver full legal costs of $13,000, but the corporation refused to go to mediation to discuss damages.

That led to Dixon-McIver camping outside ACC’s head office in Aitken St, demanding more than $4 million for damages and losses.

ACC agreed to talks, but the protest resumed last month after Dixon-McIver declined a $90,000 compensation offer that he considered an insult.

He wants those of us who fund ACC to hand over $4 million to him. That’s greed.

Dixon-McIver said he believed he would win if he took his case to court again, but did not have the will to spend another three years tied up in legal wranglings.

It had been difficult not eating for almost a month, but he was adamant he would not alter his course of action, even if that meant dying.

Emotional blackmail is so much easier than actually proving your case in court.

I think $90,000 is pretty generous offer. Demanding at least $4 million is sheer greed.

As I found out last time when I blogged on Mr Dixon-McIver:

Incidentally Mr Dixon-McIver seems to have had some compensation issues of his own, after the Employment Court ordered him to pay three months salary and $6,750 for distress, humiliation and injury to feelings to a former employee who was constructively dismissed after he threatened to assault her, following his son assaulting her.

Maybe the former employee should have gone for $4 million also.

I was a bit perplexed as to why Colin Craig continues to come out with support for what seems like rather extreme views.  Yes, he is a minority party leader however drip feeding his views on how wonderful Sarah Palin is, that man-made climate change doesn’t exist and now that Chemtrails could exist takes him to a whole new level.  So what is his strategy behind it?  There must be some science and reasoning as to why Colin Craig would be willing to make such public statements – and it isn’t just because he wants Ken Ring as a List candidate for the Conservatives.

I can reveal that a piece of research conducted by UMR Research in 2011 is the likely source of Colin Craig’s vote chasing and strategic planning

UMR polled 1000 New Zealanders and found the following:

1. 61% of respondents believe there is a God or universal spirit
2. 55% of respondents believed some people had psychic powers
3. 33% of respondents believed aliens had visited the earth
4. 24% of respondents believed that astrology can predict a person’s future

Colin has the first point covered.  We know that he has expressed his own belief in God, his chief executive is apparently a Buddhist and the Conservatives list from last election is peppered with committed and open Christian politicians.  61% of the population suggests to Craig that the Conservatives have an extensive pool to reach into to get to the magical 5% threshold.  That 61% starts to get really interesting when we use math in only a way Craig would know how and add 1, 2, 3 and 4 to each other – that is a potential pool of voters of 173% of New Zealanders.  Colin is on to a winner.

In all seriousness though, Colin Craig and the Conservatives have a huge opportunity.  Espousing these sorts of fringe views means that the serious positioning of the Conservatives goes to waste.  There is a real space for the Conservatives as the Muldoonists of the future and social conservatives.  As a fiscal conservative and social liberal they aren’t my people but there are a swag of voters that Craig should be reaching out to.  Those voters are in the provinces, in the cities, in Grey Power and on school boards BUT do they really want to be associated with a man who can’t shut his trap on such things as Chemtrails?  Time for Colin Craig to get some discipline.

* This post is written by Jadis – so don’t freak out that DPF would be so mean!

I’m tramping on the Heaphy Track with a group of friends from Thursday morning to Sunday afternoon. Will be outside phone and Internet coverage for 95% of that time so no blog posts from me for four days, except those I have pre-set. Jadis and possibly others will do the occasional guest posts.

If I’m not posting again by Monday morning, then some one let Search and Rescue know 🙂

Talking to various Greens sources it has become abundantly clear that David Hay is an ‘interesting’ character.  All sources including the current male co-Leader Russel Norman’s media comments are polite enough publicly but behind closed doors there must be some serious wonder going on.

So let us look at the possible motivations behind Hay’s challenge to Norman. First, there’s the obvious one.  He’s a man who has very little profile (except may be in his own mind) and desperately wants to be higher up the list.  If he was a smart man he’d use the challenge mechanism to rally support behind him to elevate him up the list. He’d be using lots of talk abut how the growing grassroots membership needs more voice, he’d have a very clear plan of what he would say to media and he would also have a few MPs or high profile Greens pre-organised to say more positive things about him – including behind closed doors to media and bloggers alike.  None of that has happened.  Indeed the opposite is true.  So I think we can mostly strike that motivation out.

In the last hour Hay has been interviewed by Duncan Garner on Radio Live.  A pretty soft interview but to be honest give this man a forum and he is going to say some pretty batty stuff.  First there was the fighting talking from Hay of how Russel has been a great leader.  Oops. Then he admitted that Russel would inevitably remain Leader. Oops again.  Hay’s one concern that he managed to express at all was that the Greens need to reposition themselves to takeover Labour’s position and stop being the ‘handbag’.

It is possible that the Greens are so cunning that they are using a moron to shoot across the bow of Labour but I think the obvious is clear.  Hay is acting mostly alone – albeit after a bit of enthusiastic excitement from a few Greens close to him worried about the lack of presence in Auckland. Hay named them clearly in the Garner interview as the likes of Denise Roche and others.

So this leads me to think that something is wrong with the Greens that happens to all parties as they grow.  They have lost connection with their grassroots.  You see, if they had real connection they would have known Hay was going to do this and would have managed the situation – even in a democratic way.  Instead, Hay surprised the parliamentary wing of the Party with his shock announcement.

So, what other motivations could Hay have?  Well, the cynic in me suggests that the Greens could also be copying the Labour model.  Labour’s membership increased by 75% through the leadership contest.  More members means more potential helpers on the ground.  Is it possible that Hay is actually a very loyal, albeit media inept, hack who is doing the Party a service by driving membership and showing how ‘good’ co-Leader Russel really is?  More than a little possible.  Indeed if I were the Greens I might spin it that way to look mildly united and politically savvy.

So, there’s a few possibilities that motivate Hay – is it personal gain to get up the List, is it greater good for the Greens, is it to drive up membership, or is to put a spanner in the works of what has been a pretty well run Greens machine of late?  Whatever it is he is a useless front man.

*And before someone freaks in the comments that this doesn’t seem like a DPF post.  It isn’t. It is Jadis and I am a tad more blunt that friend to all Dpf.

The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank – the largest one in the United States. They are huge supporters of free markets and free trade. So with that in mind this article by Bill Watson on their behalf is worth considering:

The prospects for timely completion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement are looking increasingly bleak. Just as the president was struggling to secure fast track trade negotiating authority from Congress, a barrage of anti-TPP sentiment erupted last week when WikiLeaks published a classified draft text of the agreement’s intellectual property rules. The text was rightly criticized for enabling Hollywood and other industries to improperly influence U.S. and foreign law in their favor.

The first instinct of trade advocates is to be defensive, but this time the criticism actually offers an excellent opportunity: Instead of mumbling unconvincingly about the political power of innovative U.S. industries, free traders should put their collective foot down and demand a stop. Imposing intellectual property rules through trade agreements has become a political liability that serves special interests at the expense of free trade.

I agree. Some of the provisions in the chapter are aimed at preventing free trade, and restricting parallel importing.

Getting intellectual property out of the TPP would increase the agreement’s ability to open markets, improve its chances for passage in Congress, and bring the negotiations back to what they ought to be about in the first place: lowering protectionist trade barriers.

Hear, hear.

Despite being tightly wedded in the U.S. trade agenda for the last 20 years, trade policy and intellectual property policy don’t fit together very well. Trade agreements are useful because they provide an effective but imperfect way to improve U.S. trade policy. By offsetting the political power of protectionist industries with the political power of exporting industries, trade agreements offer the promise of open markets at home and abroad.

But this model doesn’t make any sense for intellectual property laws. Unlike tariff reductions, extending intellectual property rights in foreign markets does not directly benefit foreign consumers. At the same time, there is the potential for harm to U.S. consumers when international obligations make domestic intellectual property laws harder to reform or, in some cases, stricter than they would be otherwise. Using trade negotiations to set patent and copyright policy gives excessive power to industry without any justification.

All good points.

Global rules already exist that prevent piracy or severe regulatory differences. The World Trade Organization imposes minimum standards for patent copyright protection and prohibits discrimination. Intellectual property rules in the TPP, on the other hand, are about things like extending copyright terms from really long to really, really long. Getting Canada to impose a longer copyright term may benefit Disney, but that shouldn’t be a goal of U.S. economic relations.

WIPO treaties are where changes to international intellectual property laws should occur.

You don’t have to oppose stronger intellectual property laws to recognize that they reduce the value of trade agreements. The United States is expending a significant amount of negotiating capital to secure patent and copyright rules at the behest of a narrow set of industries. As the leaked text reveals, U.S. proposals are facing coordinated opposition from most, and sometimes all, TPP partners. What other negotiating goals have had to be sacrificed in order to push these unpopular rules through?

There could well be an agreement by now, if it were not for the IP chapter.

U.S. negotiators can accomplish more in other areas if they stop fighting for detailed intellectual property provisions. Hollywood and biotech are not the only industries hoping that the TPP will secure foreign markets for them. The American dairy industry, for instance, doesn’t benefit if negotiators give New Zealand a pass on milk barriers in order to secure concessions on medical procedure patents. More importantly, consumers in New Zealand don’t benefit either.

Not sure what milk barriers they men – I presume Fonterra?

Most proponents of the TPP wrongly claim that we must have intellectual property in agreements to get enough political support. That may have been true in the past, but times have changed. U.S. negotiators would do well to remember how the Stop Online Piracy Act crashed so dramatically after internet activists got popular opposition to go viral. Good news about how the TPP lowers regulatory barriers for financial service firms operating in Asia is not going to assuage the online masses who think you’re coming to kill the internet.

A common criticism of the TPP has been that the agreement is not really about free trade. It’s time to fix that and remove intellectual property negotiations from the TPP.

Sadly I don’t think the US Government will change its policy.

The Herald reports:

Labour’s outspoken economic development spokesman Shane Jones has lashed out at “arrogant” foreign owners of New Zealand’s forests, saying their pursuit of the highest possible profits comes at the expense of local workers, communities and the wood processing industry.

Jones’ comments come as he and industry figures ring alarm bells that local processors are being priced out of the log market as skyrocketing Chinese demand drives prices higher.

So the global price of wood is increasing. I’m not sure this is a bad thing for a country that produces wood.

Jones seems to be saying that owners of NZ forests should refuse to take the highest price for their wood, and should sell locally for a cheaper price.

I wonder if this logic extends to all industries? Should all companies be told they are not allowed to accept a high foreign price for their products until they have sold all they can domestically?

“These foreign-owned companies rely on ratepayers to upgrade roads so they can move their logs to the ports, they rely on New Zealand’s social insurance when workers in the forests are killed.

Neither of these statements are true. When logs are moved on roads, they pay for the costs of maintaining and upgrading roads through road user charges. They pay up to $368 per 1000 kms.

Forest companies also pay ACC. Their levy rate is $6.35 per $100 of wages. This is set to cover the costs of accidents and deaths in that industry.

“The foreign owners’ agenda has eclipsed the rights and interests of the New Zealand taxpayer and workforce, this is not a sustainable forest policy.”

Jones is good about complaining, but does he have a solution? Is he saying Labour will pass a law to ban companies from selling goods overseas if they can be sold cheaper in New Zealand?

Hancock did not return the Herald’s calls but Forest Owners Association president Paul Nicholls said owners were looking for the best return on their investment.

“Most forest owners sell somewhere between half and two thirds of their product to domestic mills but there’s always competition for those logs from overseas buyers, so it does come down to a matter of economics, which markets the domestic mills are selling into and what they can afford to pay for logs.”

The global price of wood is high and rising. I don’t see you can do much about that.

The Herald editorial:

Now Greenpeace has given up its seaborne protest against exploratory oil drilling off Raglan it is not clear what it intended to prove out there. Once one vessel of its flotilla entered the statutory exclusion zone the protest statements became somewhat contradictory. Sometimes they said their action showed the exclusion zone was not justified, at other times they reckoned it proved Anadarko Petroleum was reckless.

They seem very disappointed they were not arrested.

A report commissioned by Greenpeace last month imagines an undersea drilling accident could release 40,000 barrels a day. If we have an oil well of that scale and pressure under our continental shelf it would be very good news indeed and we should find it.

A very good point. The price of oil is US$93 a barrel or NZ$113 a barrel. So that would be $4.5 million of oil a day. Over a year that is $1.65 billion. Why would we want that left there, so we have to buy more oil from the Middle East instead?

Unfortunately for our prospects of wealth, but reassuring for our coastal environment, few experts agree with the Greenpeace report. If oil or gas reserves can be found, they are likely to have a gentle flow more easily plugged.

The good news is that even looking for the oil is involving spending of $1 million a day – which benefits the NZ economy.

Vernon Small looks at what will be a good and bad result for the main parties in the Christchurch East by-election:

Dalziel secured 53.54 per cent and Gilmore 36.5 per cent in 2011.

Presuming Labour holds the seat, if Poto Williams gets much less than a 3:2 advantage over National’s Matthew Doocey then Labour and Cunliffe will have reason to worry.

Anything above 53 per cent will look like a fine result for Labour, anything under 50 per cent a relative failure.

If Doocey can attract 40 per cent of the vote National can be well-pleased. Less than 33 per cent and the warning bells will be ringing for 2014.

Looks a fairly reasonable analysis.

Stuff reports:

Five councils could become one in Hawke’s Bay – despite resistance from all but one mayor.

Mayors generally do not want to lose their jobs.

The Local Government Commission revealed yesterday a recommendation to create a single Hawke’s Bay Council for the region, encompassing the city, district and regional councils into a unitary authority, in a decision being watched by other areas investigating council mergers.

There would be one council, one mayor and one voice, chairman Basil Morrison said. It would stop rivalry and lack of co-operation between local authorities, which were holding back development in the region, he said.

The rivalry and infighting is massive. Napier and Hastings especially have this weird fetish of trying to have as little to do with each other as possible, despite being close to each other than some suburbs in Auckland.

Combining Napier, Hastings, Wairoa, Central Hawke’s Bay and the regional council could save up to $10 million a year, he said.

Not a small amount for a region of 150,000.

Mr Dalton was confident the “ridiculous notion” could be defeated. “Thinking people right across Hawke’s Bay will rise up and reject this arrogant suggestion,” he said. “Regardless of whether the administration centre goes to Napier or Hastings, there will be massive job losses. Surrounding businesses will suffer and I’m sure many will be forced to close their doors.”

Mr Dalton thinks the more jobs you have funded by ratepayers the better it is for businesses. It obviously does not occur to him that if businesses have lower rates, that is great for them.

But I doubt reform will happen. Napier residents are too against it.

Late afternoon scenic view from the Crown Range saddle. Queenstown, New Zealand. Landscape photography by Sarah Sisson.

This week’s wallpaper was made, by Sarah, earlier this month during a workshop in Queenstown.

You can read a little more about it over on the blog, including shooting data (for any tech-heads or out there)

See you next week!

Cheers – Todd

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Cheers – Todd [website]  [Blog]