3 News reported:
Despite criticism of the sales, Mr Cunliffe says Prime Minister John Key would sell his mother if he got the chance.
I don’t think the public will respond well to snide personal attacks. You can follow the link and see the video at one minute 30. I can’t imagine any swinging voter will respond well to the combination on display there.
So many “VIPs” would shuffle a young intruder off the stage, or at least have their staff do it. But the reaction of Pope Francis to the six year old boy is part of why he is becoming such a beloved figure. The highlight has to be when the boy sits on the Pope’s chair – or maybe when he starts escorting other kids up to meet the Pope.
The Catholic Church has made some mistakes in recent times, but electing Jorge Mario Bergoglio to be the 266th Pope is not one of them.
A somewhat more mundane bird pic today. Despite being common, getting a decent pic of a sparrow is a bit of a challenge with their drab appearance. This was taken in ‘the golden hour’ and the low-angled light has done a good job of picking out the detail in the feathers.
#1 Close up
Click for larger, higher res image
#2 The shot
Click for larger, higher res image
NewstalkZB reports:
Too risky is Labour’s view on a monorail proposed between Queenstown and Milford.
Officials have advised the $200 million project be given provisional approval but the Minister of Conservation is still to make a decision on the scheme.
Labour MP Ruth Dyson is against the project saying the monorail will cut a swathe through significant areas of pristine beech forest and has the potential to cost Fiordland its World Heritage status.
“Frankly I think the combination of those things, plus the fact that tourists come to New Zealand for other reasons – they want the pureness of our country.
“I think the stakes are too high, we have too much at risk, and it should be declined.”
It is disappointing that Labour is going against the advice of two separate independent reports from the Department of Conservation. Both the Hearing Commissioner and the DOC Officers have said the project should be provisionally approved. These are reports from public servants whose job is to consider if the impact on conservation land would be too detrimental. I’m disappointed that Labour is saying DOC has it wrong in this case.
There is no risk to World Heritage status with this proposal – you have to be insane to actually believe that UNESCO would remove world heritage status from Fiordland because of a monorail. And as I have said before the vast vast bulk of the monorail does not go through the National Park. It goes through the Snowdon Forest Stewardship Area.
As for tourism, I have no doubt this would lead to many more tourists visiting Fiordland. A journey by catamaran and monorail, over bus, will appeal to lots of people. Also they are proposing that the road used to construct the monorail be turned into a mountain bike route also – again lots of people will want to do that.
The man who will have the final say is Nick Smith.
Yesterday he released official advice from DOC about the project, which recommends he give the green light.
But the Conservation Minister says he still has a lot more research to do before he makes his decision.
“There’s a bit of a commercial question as to whether this thing commercially will fly.
“And the reason that is concerning for me is that if it does fail I don’t want the department and the taxpayer being left with sort of a half built white elephant.”
I’ve touched on this before and I agree that is a concern. There should be some provision that money be set aside for it to be removed, if it does fail.
Stuff reported:
TAIC Chief Commissioner John Marshall QC said he could not say for sure how much cannabis use, either long-term or recent, had contributed to the Carterton accident.
“While it is difficult to say how much each type of use contributed to the result, cannabis is known to affect a person’s judgement and decision-making ability,” TAIC said.
“Poor judgement and poor decision-making were factors contributing to this accident. The commission found that the pilot’s use of cannabis could not be excluded as a factor contributing to his errors of judgement, and therefore to the accident.”
“Both long term and recent use of cannabis may significantly impair a person’s performance of their duties, especially those involving complex tasks.”
He had levels of THC – an active ingredient of cannabis – of 2 micrograms per litre of blood.
On the balance of probabilities, that level of THC resulted from both longer term and recent use, TAIC said.
“On reviewing the evidence available, it was highly likely that the pilot smoked cannabis on the morning of the flight.”
Two witnesses had seen him smoking on the balcony of a shed shortly before the flight.
The pilot was not known to smoke regular cigarettes and his urine tested negative for cotinine, which was normally found in the urine of someone who smoked regular tobacco.
That’s appalling that a balloon operator would be smoking cannabis just before a commercial flight. 11 people died in one of the more horrific ways possible – burnt alive in a small basket up in the sky. If Lance Hopping had survived, he could well be facing manslaughter charges.
Tour operators must be tested for drugs, families of the victims of the Carterton ballooning tragedy say after a damning report.
The call came as the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) said it had investigated six incidents in the past 10 years where people had tested positive for performance-impairing substances. Thirty-five people had died in those accidents.
The commission called for more stringent laws around alcohol and drugs in the transport sector.
I suspect drugs such as cannabis play a significant role in our road toll also.
The full report is here. They note:
Both long-term and recent use of cannabis may significantly impair a person’s performance of their duties, especially those involving complex tasks. Under no circumstances should operators of transport vehicles, or crew members and support crew with safety-critical roles, ever use it.
Indeed. Hitting the power lines wasn’t the fatal part of the accident. It was the decision to try and rise above them, rather than descend, which turned it from a likely bruising crash landing to the biggest aviation death toll since Erebus.
Labour is selling access to MPs at its party conference. Conference materials for mailing
They have asked corporates to buy a stand in their marketplace for $1,500 and in return they get:
An opportunity to meet 1:1 in a short meeting with your choice (subject to availability) of Members of Parliament and senior Party officials (further information regarding this will be sent to you on payment).
All political parties do fundraising, but I think selling direct access to MPs at a party conference is new for New Zealand.
I like how you can specify which gaggle of MPs you want to meet with. Would be tempting to have some fun and pay $1,500 just so you can force a meeting with David Cunliffe, Clayton Cosgrove and Trevor Mallard 🙂
The 2013 Legatum Prosperity Index has just been published. NZ is in 5th place out of 142 countries, which is the highest rating for an Asia-Pacific country. The top 10 are:
The bottom 10 are:
For NZ the sub-indices were:
There’s a lot worse places to live!
Got interviewed by Sarah Stuart of the Herald for their 12 questions yesterday. They send you through the questions in advance but you also get interviewed live and they throw extra ones in – we ended up talking for an hour or so.
Anyway the article is here for those interested.
Stuff reports:
Meridian Energy’s partial float on the New Zealand stock exchange was given an initial thumbs up by analysts but they warn the share price is likely to be volatile heading into next year’s general election.
One fund manager said the difference in share price between Labour and National could be as much as 90 cents.
The Government has sold 49 per cent of the country’s largest energy company for $1.50 a share. Investors paid an initial instalment of $1, with a further payment of 50 cents due in 18 months.
The first instalment price at the close of the NZX last evening saw the shares leap 8 per cent to $1.08 on turnover of just over $246 million.
Analysts agreed that day one of the float was successful and the closing share price was in line with expectations.
Devon Funds Management equity analyst Phillip Anderson said new investors would be pleased. “It’s enough for the new investors to be happy – they are feeling good about it – but not so much that it looks like the seller left a lot on the table.”
The general feeling among analysts was that institutions which had their share quotas scaled back had created strong demand for Meridian shares.
But the analysts warned that the general election could affect the share prices of both Meridian and Mighty River Power, which was partly privatised this year.
“My valuation for . . . [Meridian] as a whole is . . . around $1.10 if the Labour Party wins, but business as usual under National at around two bucks,” Anderson said.
That’s a huge amount of destruction of value if there is a change of Government. And consumesr won’t see any of it as Labour/Green changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme will see power prices increase.
Stuff reports:
New homegrown competitors to Trade Me, which include Wheedle, are “nowhere to be seen”, chief executive Jon Macdonald told several dozen shareholders at the company’s annual meeting in Wellington.
Is Wheedle still going? I don’t know anyone who uses it.
But he warned investors that the company was facing tough competition from overseas e-commerce firms which were selling online to New Zealand consumers.
Without improvements, Trade Me risked “falling behind” when it came to providing the experience people now expected when shopping online, he said.
“To be straight with you, that means spending more,” Macdonald told investors.
“That means we expect our growth to be subdued in the coming year.
“While we will remain a high-margin business, we do need to grow our team and increase our marketing spend.”
Not sure Trade Me needs marketing. I think what they need is to continue to have an excellent easy to use auction site.
Stuff reports:
Don’t expect an early election next year. Prime Minister John Key hinted yesterday that polling day would be before November but said “one or two” big events could affect the timing. He was coy about the details. He said he would reveal potential post-election coalition partners early in the new year, followed later by the election date. “Not six weeks before it but not necessarily 10 months or so before it.”
I like the way the PM announced the election date so early last time, rather than keep it as a state secret until the last minute in an attempt to gain tactical advantage.
I suspect more interest may be on what he says around potential coalition partners.
After 65 years or so, it will actually start construction next year. This is hugely important as that will make it very very hard for the Greens to get it scrapped if they are part of a Government after the next election.
The Herald reports:
Construction on the Transmission Gully alternative route to Wellington will begin in the second half of next year – just before the next general election – Prime Minister John Key announced today.
He expected the 27 km project to be ready for use by 2020. Transmission Gully forms part of the Wellington Northern Corridor which is estimated to cost $2.5 billion.
He said morning peak time traffic from Levin to Wellington is expected to improve by 40 minutes.
He also said the new corridor is projected to reduce the number of fatal and serious traffic crashes from 140 over five years after its completion to 100.
We should organise some parties for the day the construction starts!
Stuff reports:
A Canberra public servant injured in a “vigorous” sex session in a country motel six years ago has lost her claim against the federal government for workers’ compensation.
The High Court has ruled in Canberra this morning that the woman was not entitled to compensation from the federal workplace insurer Comcare because the circumstances of her injury were not related to her employment.
Lawyers for Comcare argued throughout the four-year legal saga that the public servant should not get taxpayer-funded compensation as result of a “personal choice” to have sex while on the work trip.
Hard to see what other decision they could come to!
The bureaucrat suffered lacerations to her nose and mouth as well as “psychological injuries” when a glass light fitting was pulled from the wall of the motel room as she had sex with a local man in Nowra in November 2007.
Psychological issues?
Maybe the solution is to be umm less vigorous in the motel room!
Stuff reports:
A former professional baseball player and financial high flier has been nominated ambassador to New Zealand by United States President Barack Obama.
Mark Gilbert, 57, is a director at Barclays Wealth, formerly Lehman Brothers, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The nomination was announced by the White House today.
If Gilbert is confirmed by the US Senate he would replace David Huebner, an Obama nominee in the president’s first term.
“I have spoken with Mr. Gilbert on a several occasions, and I look forward to tracking his confirmation process,” Huebner wrote on his blog. “If confirmed, he would be joined in Wellington by this wife, Nancy. The couple has two adult daughters, Danielle and Elizabeth.”
Previously, Gilbert was the senior vice president of Goldman Sachs in Miami.
It will probably take a while for him to be confirmed. The current Ambassador has been an excellent public face for the United States in New Zealand, and also a prolific social media aficionado. Hopefully the new Ambassador will be as open and friendly as his predecessor.
Nick Smith has announced:
Conservation Minister Dr Nick Smith today inspected the site of the proposed Fiordland monorail, met with the applicants, and released official advice recommending he approve the project subject to extensive conditions.
“This ambitious $200 million project involves the building of the world’s longest monorail to enhance the experience of the hundreds of thousands of visitors travelling between Queenstown and Milford Sound,” Dr Smith says.
“I wanted to see for myself the areas affected by the construction of the two terminals and the 29.5-kilometre long, six-metre wide corridor that would be cleared to make way for the monorail through public conservation land. I also wanted to thoroughly scrutinise the impacts on the Snowdon Forest and its wildlife, as well as understanding the effects on the existing recreational users of the area.
“This monorail decision will be no easier than that of the Milford Tunnel. I am very protective of National Parks like Fiordland and this project has the advantage of being largely outside it. However, the monorail still requires clearance of a large area of forest on public conservation land.
This is a key point – that the monorail is almost entirely outside the Fiordland National Park itself.
Jacinda Ardern has announced:
Labour will scrap the Families Commission to prioritise work on reducing child poverty, its Children’s spokesperson Jacinda Ardern says.
Bravo. I’m all for Labour finding quangos they want to scrap. May they locate many more of them.
Sadly this may be a one off. I think this is the first time in five years they have found a quango they want to scrap. But hey, a start is a start.
Labour of course set up the Families Commission in (I think) 2005 as part of a coalition deal with United Future.
Maybe the Ministry of Women’s Affairs could be next?
The Dom Post reports:
A university professor who left the priesthood after a year has been awarded more than $760,000 of public money to study Kiwis’ spirituality and religious beliefs.
Joseph Bulbulia, of Victoria University, is one of 109 researchers who will receive a total of $59 million from the Marsden Fund over the next three years.
Professor Bulbulia said religion was “intensely important” to him, but “as for an afterlife, or God, I have no idea”.
I thought God and afterlife tended to be a fairly important part of religion!
Well except for Scientology, which is really a money making scam.
He migrated to Wellington from the United States in 2000, having left the priesthood earlier in his life and then had a daughter before he was married.
He hasn’t been to church for 20 years, other than to please his mother, but said research showed that some events, such as the Christchurch earthquakes, renewed people’s religious beliefs.
Do we need to spend $760,000 to research this?
The full list of Marsden Awards is here. The grant for a study of religious belief is one of the largest, which surprises me. Many of the other grants involve physical science which tends to be far more costly. Some of the more useful physical science ones include:
All of the above awards (except the cancer one) are for less than the religion one. Other fairly dubious ones include:
University staff can and do research in all sorts of varied areas, as is their right with academic freedom. But I would have thought with a relatively small pool of contestable grants for research beyond the normal, they would be prioritized towards things of more direct relevance for New Zealand.
The Herald reports:
An independent inquiry into Fonterra’s botulism scare has revealed a broken torch sparked the contamination scandal.
The inquiry was funded by the dairy giant and employed a panel of seven experts to discover what went wrong when tests incorrectly identified the clostridium botulinum bacteria, which can cause botulism, in whey protein concentrate (WPC80) used in infant formula worldwide.
Products were recalled from shelves across the globe in August, and the country’s international reputation as a safe and reliable exporter was questioned by key export markets.
For its report, released yesterday, the inquiry team visited eight Fonterra plants, interviewed more than 70 employees and 30 stakeholders to identify the chain of events that led to the scandal.
Plastic from a broken torch at Fonterra’s Hautapu plant in Waikato was found to be the catalyst, not a dirty pipe as claimed by Fonterra at the time. “In February 2012 … during an examination of a large dryer in operation, a torch came into contact with a part of the equipment, breaking the hard torch lens,” the report said.
“A few pieces of this plastic were not recovered and thus contaminated the WPC80.”
Staff were approved to re-filter the affected product and remove the broken pieces in May 2012, an uncommon practice which required “improvisations”.
A pipe which hadn’t been used in two years was required to do this. When investigating the source of the contamination “circumstantial evidence” suggested that a film of micro-organisms had survived cleaning processes to contaminate the whey, but the inquiry disproved this theory.
“Describing the rework process in terms of use of a ‘dirty pipe’ was uninformative and practically misleading, if not careless.”
Plastic from a broken torch sounds far less scary than a dirty pipe. A real own goal.
The NZ Herald reports:
An Auckland man is furious his pre-approved home loan was withdrawn less than 24 hours after he called his bank and was assured the deal was sound.
The man and his partner had dropped leaflets across a West Auckland neighbourhood in search of a property and were about to put in an offer for a private sale.
The Bank of New Zealand pre-approved a loan for up to $800,000 with a $60,000 deposit on September 3, giving the couple three months before the pre-approval expired.
Last Thursday the man, who asked not to be named as he is still hoping to re-finance the purchase, called BNZ and was assured the pre-approval was still valid.
“We said, ‘Is everything all right?”‘ the man recalled.
“They said, ‘Yep, sweet, go for your life, you’re all right’.”
That same day he paid for a valuation report and was about to put in an offer.
But the next day and hours before the start of Labour Weekend he was called by BNZ and told it was withdrawing the pre-approval.
“I’m closing my bank account with them … I don’t want anything to do with them. I don’t do business like that,” the man said.
There’s really no excuse for that. It is not as if the LVR policy was not known well before September 3. The policy outline has been known for six months or longer.
Also the requirement for no more than 10% of their mortgages to be for mortgages with less than a 20% deposit is over a six month window. It is not a month by month requirement. It is over the period 1 October 2013 to 31 March 2014.
Basically the BNZ has stuffed up its projections.
BNZ director of retail Andy Symons said the bank sincerely regretted any inconvenience the withdrawal had caused the man and his partner.
“BNZ confirmed it has very limited capacity to go on meeting pre-approvals for home loans with a deposit less than 20 per cent and communicated this to all our bankers on Friday.
“This has been a rapidly evolving situation in which we have worked hard to balance customer demand with the realities of a stringent new regulatory regime.”
Mr Symons said he was keen to talk to the man about meeting the costs of the valuation, and understood his frustration, particularly after he had checked on Thursday to make sure the pre-approval was still in effect.
“Our bankers across the network were informed of the decision on Friday … he may well have been caught in the middle of that change.”
Mr Symons said that after moves by other banks to cancel pre-approvals, BNZ had had an increase in demand for loans.
Surely you honour your pre-approvals before you accept other loans?
Stuff reports:
NZ First MP Asenati Lole-Taylor spent much of yesterday on Twitter attack, after taking offence at questions about her views on prostitution. She asked Twitter users if they were themselves prostitutes. She asked one whether it was their parents who gave them their lack of integrity, before eventually finding the block button.
You can see one of the exchanges here. Hilarious, albiet unintentionally.
Stuff reports:
In an amiable press conference at the Pentagon, the New Zealand Defence Minister, Jonathan Coleman, handed his American counterpart an All Blacks jersey – and a three-decade military chill between the two nations appeared to be consigned to history.
US secretary of defence Chuck Hagel told reporters: “Today, I authorised a New Zealand navy ship to dock at Pearl Harbor… This will be the first time a New Zealand navy ship will have visited Pearl Harbor in more than 30 years.”
In fact it will be the first since the New Zealand government refused to allow a US destroyer to dock in its ports in 1984.
It’s taken a long time, but I’m glad we’re finally worked out a way to be good allies, despite a disagreement on NZ’s anti-nuclear policy.
Today is the launch day for the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. The official release is:
A group of New Zealanders is establishing the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union to give Kiwi taxpayers a strong voice in the corridors of power. The Taxpayers’ Union begins operations today.
The Taxpayers’ Union is a politically independent grassroots campaign to lower New Zealanders’ tax burden and reduce wasteful government spending.
Chairman John Bishop says, “we’ve come together to promote sensible fiscal management, to expose government waste and to promote policies to make public spending work better. Government, politicians and taxpayer funded groups are on notice that we are looking to expose waste or rorts.”
“We’re asking New Zealanders to join us and report government waste via a ‘tip line’ on our website.”
Executive Director Jordan Williams says “thousands of organisations and special interest groups lobby for more tax-and-spend. The Taxpayers’ Union will ensure that at least one group is looking after hard working Kiwis whose taxes pay for politicians’ promises.”
David Farrar, a member of the Union Board says “the concern for our members is that vast amounts of public money is being spent by government on our behalf and we don’t get value for that money. Our aims aren’t just to cut government spending, but to make public spending work better.”
Setting up a union for hardworking New Zealand taxpayers has been an aim of mine for over seven years. There are thousands of lobby groups out there who demand more spending by taxpayers on their pet causes, and there hasn’t been a voice dedicated to representing the interests of those who have to fund all the spending – taxpayers and ratepayers. It has been my belief that the political environment in New Zealand will be better by having a lobby group that can contribute to the debate on what should and should not be funded by taxpayers.
We are ambitious for the Taxpayers’ Union. Our aim is to become the largest union in New Zealand, achieving over 50,000 members and supporters. We can only achieve this with your help. Please go to our website, like our facebook page, follow us on Twitter. You can subscribe to our newsletter, join as a member and perhaps most importantly donate to us. We are reliant 100% on membership fees and donations from supporters. We do not get any Government funding, and never will.
Some of our initial projects will include:
Over the break, is a brief history of how the Taxpayers’ Union was formed. This has been a huge labour of love for us. I’ve put in countless hours, and it’s great to have finally launched. We hope to make a real difference.