The Daily Telegraph reports:

Andrew McMillian has put together a detailed timeline of events in the Bevan Chuang and Len Brown affair.  Over 50 items are dated, all referenced and linked.

A few things that I didn’t realise, that the timeline shows:

• Her involvement in the 2008 general election for a Labour candidate
• How Brown texted Chuang the very first day he met her
• That the romantic relationship had clearly started before he provided a reference to her
• Chuang interviewed Len Brown for a television show, during the election campaign, despite the fact they are in a relationship

The major issue for Brown is the inquiry set up by the Council CEO. The details were:

An Auckland Council inquiry into mayor Len Brown’s extra-marital spending is being widened to look at a reference the mayor provided for his ex-mistress to help her get a job at Auckland Art Gallery.

A council spokesman said the review – announced by chief executive Doug McKay last Thursday – would probe whether Mr Brown breached the council’s code of conduct and conflicts of interest guidelines set down by the Auditor-General.

The review would also look at whether Mr Brown provided other references for his former mistress, Bevan Chuang, the spokesman said.

For the review to be thorough, I would expect it to determine the following:

• When and how did Chuang ask for a reference? Was it during a romantic encounter?
• Did Brown provide a verbal reference as well as a written one? What was the content of each
• What role did the reference/s play in Chuang getting the job.
• How many other people has he provided verbal and written references to as Mayor? How many, if any, were for jobs at the Council or a Council CCO?
• Did he know that Chuang had been sacked from the Auckland Museum when he agreed to be a referee for her? When did he become aware of this?
• What contracts did Chuang have with Auckland Council, such as the alleged market co-ordinator contract. When were they granted, was Brown aware of these, and did he play any part in Chuang gaining these?

There is great skepticism that a review set up and reporting to the CEO, will make adverse findings against the CEO’s effective boss. The best way to dampen that skepticism is for the review to be as thorough as possible. By that I don’t mean to focus on the details on the affair. I mean to focus on Len Brown’s actions as Mayor and whether they advantaged Chuang because he was seeking or in a relationship with her. That is the issue of legitimate public interest.

Bill English has stated:

Lower income households are paying a smaller proportion of net income tax than they did in 2008, indicating that the tax system has become more progressive since the Government’s tax changes in 2010, Finance Minister Bill English says.

“This should contribute to improvements in income equality in New Zealand, contrary to the Opposition’s completely false claims that lower income households were disadvantaged by the tax changes,” he says.

If you repeat a lie often enough, people may believe it.

• Households earning less than $60,000 a year, which total around half of all households, are generally expected to pay less in percentage terms towards total net tax in 2013/14 than they were paying in 2008/09.

• Conversely, households earning more than $150,000 a year – that is, the top 12 per cent of households by income – are generally expected to pay more of the total net tax than they were paying in 2008/09.

• And only 6 per cent of individual taxpayers earn over $100,000 a year, yet they pay 37 per cent of total income tax. This has increased from the 2010/11 tax year, when those taxpayers paid 29 per cent of total income tax.

Despite this, Labour persist with their rich prick envy tax insisting that those on higher incomes must pay 39% income tax as well as 15% GST!

Using data from the Household Economic Survey, the Treasury earlier this year estimated that this year households earning over $150,000 a year – the top 12 per cent of households by income – will pay 46 per cent of income tax.

But when benefit payments, Working for Families, paid parental leave and accommodation support are taken into account, these 12 per cent of households are expected to pay 76 per cent of the net income tax. And that is before New Zealand Superannuation payments are counted.

12% of taxpayers are funding 76% of the net income tax take, and Labour says this is not enough! What do they want? 90%? 95%? 100%?

That last one is brilliantly done. Thanks to “An Occasional Reader” for sending these in.

iSentia blog on the most mentioned issues last month:

1. Emirates Team NZ
2. Syria
3. Ranfurly Shield
4. Kenyan mall terror attack
5. Labour Party leadership

Not a month where political stories dominated. I think I can guess the most mentioned issue for October!

Zealandia has announced:

General Admission has been reduced significantly. Adult entry, previously $28.50 for entry to the valley and exhibition, is now $17.50 and Family Admission has dropped from $71.50 to $44 (two adults and up to three children). A new “come back tomorrow” system will include a complimentary next day return, allowing visitors to explore the many experiences available even when their time in Wellington is limited. 

That’s a great decision, and I hope the reduced charges will lead to enough increased patronage to recoup the income.

$57 for a couple to visit was priced too high. At $35 a couple, that is much more reasonable and certainly I’d now consider going on a spare weekend.

The Herald reports:

The Labour Party minority view also included advice from officials confirming that the bill, including provisions that would see SkyCity compensated if any of the regulatory concessions under the deal were removed, could be amended in future.

The report states that Labour MPs “reserve the right to change the law when in government”.

Mr Key this morning said it was a convention that no Parliament could bind a future Parliament, “and that’s true of any laws or anything that takes place here so, so be it”.

That was something SkyCity was well aware of .

“Legislatively they can change any law they want but there’s also contract law in New Zealand and future Governments would probably be mindful of cutting across contract law because that has implications for other things that take place, but in the end they’re the commercial risks any operator takes.

“They won’t go there. Labour’s already telling SkyCity they won’t. I know people who have told me”, Mr Key told reporters this morning.

“They won’t get rid of the deal, that’s what I’ve heard around the traps in Auckland.”

But while Mr Cunliffe said a Labour Government “won’t be incinerating the SkyCity contract,” it would be preserving “the sovereign right of every Parliament to make sovereign legislation as required”.

The language being used here is very carefully selected to sound meaningful, when it fact it isn’t.

The issue is not about the sovereign right of every Parliament to make sovereign legislation as required. That right clearly exists and does not need preserving. There is nothing is the law before Parliament that changes that.

Labour saying they wish to preserve the sovereign right of Parliament to make sovereign legislation is about as meaningful as claiming you wish to preserve the right of gravity to be 9.8 m/s^2. The only way that could ever change is if NZ adopted a written constitution as supreme law.

The issue is whether Labour will or will not legislate to over-ride the contract, if they are in Government. And Labour won’t answer that.

Mr Cunliffe would not confirm that Labour would change the legislation, “but I would reserve the right for a future Parliament to address issues of gambling harm”.

Again, that is not the issue. No one disputes that right exists. This is a red herring. The issue is whether Labour would use legislation to over-ride the contract. The fact that they will not say so (which is a good thing incidentially), shows that there clearly is an understanding.

Mr Cunliffe had not had any discussions about the issue with the casino company, “and we’ve made no commitments whatsoever to SkyCity despite what the Prime Minister might say.

Sky City is packed full of former Labour staffers and the notion that none of them would have had any conversations with any Labour MPs on this issue is ridiculous. Of course they have.  They wouldn’t have been given a cast iron guarantee, but they would have been told something along the lines of “You have nothing to worry about”.

The Herald reports:

Labels revealing how costly a glass of wine or beer could be in terms of weight gain could soon be on the way, as the Government explores making them mandatory.

Alcohol manufacturers already label drinks with standard drink measurements and some voluntary health warnings.

Now, the Government is considering adding another requirement – labelling the number of kilojoules each drink contains.

I am 100% in favour of this. If we want people to make informed choices, then knowing the energy level of what we eat or drink is the best way to do that. Almost all other food and drink sold has calorie counts – it has been strange that alcohol does not.

Personally I think including such information would have a significant impact on how much some people drink. I know I drink far less now, knowing how much weight you put on with a few beers or wines.

Food Standards has commissioned a cost-benefit analysis on the concept, including looking at how energy labels might change buying and consumption.

Good.

Eric Crampton is less enthused, and has some sensible suggestions about how to reduce the burden of any regime:

• Exempt small-batch products;
• Exempt imports;
• Require vendors selling exempt products to put up a notice somewhere saying “The alcohol in one standard drink provides 290 kilojoules.”

Claire Trevett at NZ Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key has hinted the Remuneration Authority is lining up a good pay rise for MPs this year, saying he had been consulted on the proposed increase and had told the authority he believed only a small, if not zero, pay rise should be offered.

Mr Key would not reveal what the proposed increase was or what he had said but hinted it was above the rate of inflation.

“But bluntly, I’m not in favour of big pay increases for MPs. If it was my vote, it would be no pay increases, but I don’t get that vote.”

He said there might be a valid argument for low increases to an MPs’ salary to keep pace with inflation. “That would be the top end. But I don’t buy the argument that they’re out of whack with the rest of the private sector or the public sector.” Inflation over the 2012/13 year was 0.7 per cent.

Wage increases across the board is one of the factors the authority takes into account when setting the salary, which it usually announces in December and is backdated to July.

Mr Key said he often copped the blame for those increases, although the authority was independent and made its own decisions.

The Government and MPs could save themselves some pain if they adopted my submission which was that the salary for MPs should be set just prior to each election, and remain fixed for a term of Parliament. In these days of low inflation, that won’t disadvantage them. Rather than say get three annual pay rises of 2% each, the salary for each term might be say 6% more than the term before. The key thing is they would get elected on that salary and stay on it.

MPs’ pay

Between 2009 and 2012:
*MPs salaries rose by 2.9 per cent
*General wages rose 5.6 per cent

A useful fact. I still expects howls of outrage though.

Winston announced after the election, they would appoint/annoint a Deputy Leader for him by March 2012. Now in October 2013 we read in the Herald:

However, he did make what may be a concession to the fact the party must at some point face life without him by yesterday revealing it will select a deputy leader “within a few weeks”.

While NZ First has had deputy leaders before, it hasn’t had one for some years.

Mr Peters, his MPs and party members are all reluctant to discuss who might take over when he steps down but the appointment of a deputy would surely provide some kind of answer.

Already at number two on the party list is Tracey Martin.

Ms Martin is likely to have some handy allies in the party hierarchy and membership given her mother and long-time party secretary, Anne Martin, was yesterday elected party president. But neither Tracey Martin nor anyone else at the senior or any other level of the party appears to have anything like even the potential to develop the abilities, experience and charisma of Mr Peters.

How about Brendan Horan? Richard Prosser?

Stuff reports:

Migration to New Zealand hit a 10-year high in September, as fewer Kiwis left for Australia and more new migrants arrived, adding more support for the housing market.

New Zealand saw a net gain of 2700 people in September as more people arrived than left, Statistics New Zealand said.

That was the highest monthly net gain since the middle of 2003 and stronger than economists had expected.

Westpac Bank senior economist Felix Delbruck said the surprise gain was largely due to fewer New Zealanders leaving for Australia, though arrivals of non-New Zealand immigrants continued at above-average levels.

The annual net gain was more than 15,000 for the year to September, which reversed the small net loss in the previous year.

If the recent trends continued annual net migration would easily surpass 20,000 by the end of this year, Delbruck said.

“With unemployment in Australia expected to hit around 6.5 per cent next year, we expect net immigration to rise even further in 2014, which would make this New Zealand’s biggest migration cycle since the early 2000s.”

There seems to be a trend here.

Labour declares a crisis in manufacturing and all the manufacturing indicators reach record levels.

Labour declares an economic crisis and the economy looks on track to have one of the highest growths in the developed world.

Labour declares a migration crisis with far too many Kiwis leaving, and we have a ten year record for net migration.

We should encourage Labour to declare more things to be in crisis.

by mayra.artes.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.

Makes you feel very insignificant doesn’t it!

Treasury announced:

Inaugural Treasury University Challenge Winner Announced The winner of the New Zealand Treasury’s inaugural University Challenge is Sarah Shier, a Master of International Business student at the University of Auckland.

Her essay on Health and the possibility of co-payments was judged the best among entries submitted by students from all of New Zealand’s universities and from a range of disciplines. Entrants were asked to write a 2000-word essay to answer one of three questions on Crown assets, health, and overseas investment.

“The calibre of Sarah Shier’s essay and those of the other finalists was very impressive,” says Deputy Secretary for Strategy, Change & Performance Bill Moran.

“In assessing pros and cons of extending part-payments in our health system, Sarah showed both sides of arguments and brought together evidence from several sources to make her case. She also looked at how different socioeconomic groups might be affected, anticipated issues, and put forward measures to address concerns. It was high-quality work and I congratulate Sarah on her success.

“This competition has been a success for the Treasury too. We wanted to give university students a feel for the range of work the Treasury does and let them test their analytical skills on real life policy issues. We also wanted to reward excellence in public policy analysis and the University Challenge was a great chance to do this.

“After this year’s success the Treasury is looking forward to running the University Challenge again in 2014.”

Winner Sarah Shier will receive $2,500 towards her university fees for 2014.

Well done Sarah. Her essay is here. Some extracts:

Increasing co-payments for costly medications creates the opportunity to improve patient access to clinically effective medicines. Additionally, expenditures would be reduced as patients opt for preventative treatments over costly hospitalisations. Co-payment reform would also address socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities in the healthcare system by ensuring that subsidies are provided for those who need them the most.

Nonetheless, if not structured correctly, increased patient payments may exacerbate ethnic healthcare inequalities in the status quo. Furthermore, policies ought to continue subsidising preventative care in order to reduce long-run healthcare expenditures.

And on PHARMAC:

Medical professionals argue that PHARMAC’s rationing policies have limited the availability of effective medications within New Zealand. A 2008 report indicated that “New Zealand has 84 fewer innovative medicines funded than Australia.” Limited availability of blood pressure and lipid level medication can be costly in the long run as patients seek more expensive treatment for largely preventable cardiovascular conditions. Cardiovascular disorders accounted for the largest percent of “avoidable hospitalisations” within a Canterbury Hospital study.

Increasing co-payments for medications that benefit patients but are restricted in the status quo would improve the quality and efficiency of the healthcare system. Funding limitations have driven PHARMAC to fund some medications for high risk individuals only. However, expanded usage of pharmaceuticals such as statins may benefit lower risk patients and strengthen the healthcare system by preventing unnecessary costs in the long run. Co-payments could be applied to drugs such as statins that are widely beneficial but expensive to provide.

And on targeting:

Although funding for low-income healthcare has increased, a disproportionate amount of current expenditures are spent on high decile areas. Since the late 1990s, healthcare funding has increased more for higher income deciles than the more needy lower income categories.

Increased expenditures on broad initiatives—such as the community-based Primary Healthcare Strategy— have been largely responsible for the discrepancy between deciles. As a result, combined spending on decile 1-5 areas dropped to 54% in 2010.

Under a co-payment reform plan, subsidies could be targeted towards low-income groups to ensure equitable treatment. Increased patient payments could be designated for higher income individuals with the means to afford a modest increase in their current co-pay.

I believe it is sensible to target health care subsidies to those on lower incomes, and have those better off pay for a larger proportion of their own health needs.

The NY Times editorial:

In all the bombast it is worth making two points. First, there’s little question that New York has one of the nation’s most successful charter school systems. A study published earlier this year shows that the typical New York City charter student learned more reading and math in a year than his or her public school peers.

The New York Times is one of the most consistently left voices in the US (it has endorsed only Democrat presidential candidates since 1956), so when its editorial boards say NY charter schools are sucessful, you can’t claim this to be a right wing view.

The second point is that the next mayor can improve the system, in part by shutting down poorly performing schools, awarding new charters only to groups with proven track records, and smoothing relations between charters and traditional schools by making sure “co-locations” take place only in buildings big enough to house both.

All for shutting down poorly performing charter schools – and poorly performing non-charter schools!

The teachers’ union is never going to fall in love with charter schools because a vast majority of them are not unionized

Hence the opposition.

and they have real financial advantages because their work force is younger and more transient and their payrolls, pensions and medical costs are lower. Many charters plow these savings back into education — hiring social workers, lengthening the school day, or staffing classrooms with more than one teacher as a way of helping disadvantaged children. 

How awful!

Have received a press release saying:

Massey’s Extramural Students Society (EXMSS) has dumped its president, Jeannette (JV) Chapman, at a Special General Meeting on October 19, held at Massey University’s Palmerston North campus. 

Two temporary co-presidents, Tiri Porter, and Mark Lester, now head a new eight-member executive of current and recently elected executive members. All will hold office until the society’s Annual General Meeting.

A former executive member, Mr Lester, along with Ms Porter, who was on the most recent executive, are now tasked with rebuilding EXMSS.

Mr Lester, a chartered accountant and a former EXMSS treasurer, is keen to actively engage the membership.  

“I would like nothing more than for students to show an interest in the operation and direction of EXMSS, and that will be a focus.”

Ms Porter has extensive governance experience, is a former member of the Massey University Council, and is on the Board of Trustees at her daughters’ school.

The Special General Meeting was arranged by members of the society after repeated calls for the society to convene requests for a meeting were rebuffed by Ms Chapman.

I wonder if Chapman will accept this as a legally binding meeting? If she doesn’t, it may come down to who has the keys to the building or court action.

Massey University has taken over provision of student services previously undertaken by the society after Ms Chapman’s reports were deemed by the University to be inadequate, and funding was pulled by the University.

Fresh elections will also be held for executive members – including the President and Vice President – with nominations opening on 21 October and closing a month later.  The new executive will be ratified at January’s AGM, where it is hoped a new constitution will also be approved and subsequently registered with the registrar of Incorporated Societies.

Both Presidents are looking forward to representing and assisting members and students.  

Hopefully this sees the end of the troubles.

Former Labor Attorney General Nicola Roxon delivered a speech on ten housekeeping tips for a future Labor Government. In one sense it is a catalogue of how bad Kevin Rudd was, but the ten points are worth highlighting as general good practice:

1. Labor must always focus on the fact that good policy improves people’s lives and that is why the party exists.
2. Governments as a whole, and the prime minister in particular, need to keep their focus high level – spending time and energy on the things that really matter.
3. Good leaders are good delegators.
4. Labor needs to welcome debate, not fear it.
5. Be polite and be persuasive. Or I could call this “Keep yourself nice”.
6. Always ask what you can do for the party (and the nation) not what it can do for you (with apologies to JFK).
7. Good governments run best with good diaries – so boring, but universally true.
8. Choose good people – as leaders, as MPs and as staff.
9. Accept you are not always right, and cannot always fix everything. It’s easier with this as your starting point.
10. And lastly, never forget polling is only a snapshot, not a predictor.

No 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are ones I especially endorse.

Hamish Rutherford at Stuff reports:

Winston Peters is proposing to establish a new state-owned KiwiSaver fund, saying private schemes were a “pot of gold” for providers, but not savers.

Speaking at the NZ First conference in Christchurch today, Peters said KiwiSaver providers had extracted excessive fees from savers. Since it was formed five years ago, providers had “sucked off $325 million from the people paying into the scheme”.

According to Peters, an “independent source” had told him that over the next 30 years, the amount of fees would climb to $22 billion.

“KiwiSaver is a pot of gold – for the providers – not the savers.”

Peters today proposed that a scheme on the same footing at the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, called KiwiFund, which would be government guaranteed.

Return would be “a lot higher” than they were in private providers, Peters said.

“Our plan is to change KiwiSaver so that it is a truly Government backed and managed retirement fund. 

I’m in Carmel Fisher’s KiwiSaver Fund and very happy with the returns thank you.

If Winston thinks KiwiSaver Funds are not delivering a good enough return, then there is a simple solution.

Winston should set up his own KiwiSaver Fund. This would allow all those who believe in the financial genius of Winston to invest their life savings with him, and get this guaranteed higher return he talks of.

The Herald reports that Winston’s policy may cause problems with Labour:

New Zealand First has put a potential roadblock between itself and a post-election coalition deal with Labour by setting a bottom line on retirement savings that Labour is lukewarm on at best.

Leader Winston Peters told NZ First’s annual conference in Christchurch yesterday that the party wanted to effectively nationalise KiwiSaver by putting it “on the same footing as the New Zealand Super Fund”.

So many politicians wanting to nationalise so many things – it is like being back in the 1970s.

The KiwiFund policy was “most definitely” a bottom line for any post-election coalition talks next year.

But while Labour leader David Cunliffe said his party was happy to look at the policy in more detail, “we don’t think that the KiwiSaver industry is fundamentally broken.

Some sanity from Labour. Yay.

Stuff reports:

Some New Zealanders might be the last to believe it, but overseas analysts and investors are convinced the country really could have a stellar success on its hands in cloud-software firm Xero.

After raising $180 million from investors on Monday, Xero’s shares smashed through $20 and climbed as high as $27 during a frenetic week’s trading.

Incredible. What is really fascinating is those buying up shares are not small inexperienced investors, but large professional investors who have concluded Xero is going places.

Founder and chief executive Rod Drury’s own stake in Xero is now about $570m, making him wealthier on paper than property investor Sir Robert Jones or film-maker Sir Peter Jackson.

What’s nice about Rod is he is no different to a few years ago. He still makes time to pop into things like Net Hui, and to promote things he believes in such as a second cable for New Zealand.

Xero faces bigger and more established competition in each of its target markets: MYOB in New Zealand and Australia, Sage in Britain (worth £3.5b (NZ$6.68b)) and Intuit in the US, worth US$19.6b (NZ$23.17), all of which are also putting their accounting software online.

But David Goel, a managing member of Matrix, reckons Xero is emerging as the “definitive software platform for small business worldwide”. That’s a huge claim. But among Xero’s 600 staff are a growing number of executives who have moved to the company from the world’s biggest technology companies, persuaded by the opportunity.

Two of them are Scottish-born chief revenue officer Stuart McLean, who previously ran Google’s enterprise software business in Australia and New Zealand, and general manager of marketing Jonathan Allan, a former vice-president of German software giant SAP in the Asia-Pacific.

Xero “hasn’t even scratched the surface” of the market, McLean says, comparing the potential to the area of a table and its current business as a dollar coin. McLean says there are 4 million businesses in the US that have made an upfront investment in Intuit’s popular Quickbooks packaged software to do their accounts. But there are another 21 million that currently use pen and paper or spreadsheets, and he believes many of them could reasonably be expected to make the switch to low-cost, cloud-based accounting software.

The share price of Xero reflects a belief it can not only win market share off the existing players, but also grow the market.

Xero has an advantage of never having been a non SAAS product. It has designed its software entirely for use in the cloud. I use it as a customer and love it. The other companies are trying to modify existing software to work in the cloud, as they have to keep current customers happy. That can limit their ability to innovate.

Allan says Xero is essentially following the same growth trajectory as another of his former employers, Salesforce.com, the US pioneer of online customer relationship management software, which is now worth US$31.5b on the New York Stock Exchange.

As Xero rents its software online, its revenue will keep building, he says.

“We don’t land $1 million deals. We land a $50 per-month subscription, but it is going to last perhaps 15 years.”

Xero is spending a lot of expanding. But there will come a day when it will have all these revenues and relatively light maintenance and development costs going forward

Horse is New Zealand’s iconic road trip game, made popular by Neil Miller esquire. From time to time there have been queries as to the rules, so I am happy to present the official rules of Horse. The three rules are:

1. If you see a horse you point at it and yell out “horse” and you score one point
2. If you see a picture of a horse, you point at it and yell out “picture of a horse” and you scores ten points
3. If you see a cemetery, you point at it and yell out “bury all the horses” and everyone else’s scores reset to zero

The rules are quite simple and the person at the end of the trip with the most points wins, but there are a number of areas of interpretation which Mr Miller and I can provide authoritative guidance on.

Does a statue of a horse count as a picture of a horse?

Yes. Any inanimate representation of a horse counts.

Can you claim multiple pictures of horses on the one building or structure?

No. The first person who points to and claims a picture of a horse on a structure nullifies the others. So if a National Bank has four horses on it, only one can be claimed.

Do you lose a point if you claim a horse and it turns out to be a cow?

No. But you do get mocked by everyone else in the vehicle.

Does the Pegasus on Mobil petrol stations count as a horse?

Yes. A Pegasus is simply a winged horse.

What counts as a cemetery?

One or more graves. You must sight an actual grave. You can not claim a cemetery just on the basis of seeing a sign.

What do you score if you are playing horse and an advertisement on the radio has a horse neighing on it?

This was only encountered last week, and as it is so rare we believe a bonus of 20 points is appropriate.

What if you see a horse float with a horse inside it, and a picture of a horse on it?

Yell out “picture of a horse and a horse” and score 11 points.

Can the driver play?

Yes. However it is regarded as a bad thing if he or she wins as they should be concentrating on the road.

Lian Dann writes in NZ Herald:

New Zealanders need to brace themselves for an economic boom.

It sounds crazy because good growth sure beats a recession, but after five years in the doldrums we may not be prepared for the strength of the rebound that economists are now tipping.

Next year the country will be “firing on all cylinders”, says Paul Bloxham, HSBC’s Sydney-based chief economist for Australia and New Zealand, in his latest report.

Bloxham is confident that we’ll be booming next year with GDP growth headed for 3 per cent and beyond.

His report, titled New Zealand’s boom, sets the tone for the way the rest of the world is starting to look at us.

Last week ANZ economist Cameron Bagrie noted that latest business and consumer confidence surveys were so strong they pointed to economic growth of around 4 per cent by early 2014. 

Bagrie was sceptical about that happening and suggested the economy might “blow a gasket” if it were to accelerate so fast.

But he concluded that New Zealand could be on track for GDP growth above 3 per cent, putting us amongst the strongest performers in the OECD. “It’s been a long time since New Zealand can claim such rock star status,” he said.

Even the IMF expects the growth to pick up to 2.9 per cent next year – ahead of the our Western trading partners (including Australia) and not far behind Asian nations like South Korea and Singapore.

I have to say it would be a nice problem to have! I’d rather have too strong growth than too weak growth!

So why the predictions for strong growth?

The reasons we’re on the up are simple. Dairy prices have stayed at record high through a period of concern about Chinese growth which caused hard commodity prices to fall. Meanwhile, we are on track for record dairy production. That’s a huge boost to an economy that gets about 20 per cent of its income from cows.

Then there is the Christchurch rebuild, which should be kicking into top gear and boosting domestic activity.

I am not sure it is correct to say we get 20% of our income from cows. Dairy does represent around 20% of exports but that is only around 3% of GDP, and I think most people would regard a reference to national income as being GDP not exports.

Bernard Orsman at NZ Herald reports:

An Auckland Council inquiry into mayor Len Brown’s extra-marital spending is being widened to look at a reference the mayor provided for his ex-mistress to help her get a job at Auckland Art Gallery.

A council spokesman said the review – announced by chief executive Doug McKay last Thursday – would probe whether Mr Brown breached the council’s code of conduct and conflicts of interest guidelines set down by the Auditor-General.

The review would also look at whether Mr Brown provided other references for his former mistress, Bevan Chuang, the spokesman said.

Decisions on terms of reference for the independent review and who will conduct it are expected to be finalised today or tomorrow.

I think this is appropriate, because it focuses on the conflict of interest – which is a legitimate issue of public concern. I think it actually benefits Len Brown also as the review will allow there to be a conclusion to the story, which otherwise might continue on and on.

John Palino – Mr Brown’s rival at the mayoral election – issued a statement on Saturday confirming he met Ms Chuang for a late-night discussion in a Mission Bay carpark the night after the election and two days before the affair was made public.

He said he met with Ms Chuang – at her request – in relation to threatening text messages the pair had both received from the same number, but did not say what they discussed.

Mr Palino continued to say the first he was aware of the affair was last Tuesday when it was made public.

“Bevan has never disclosed to me the full nature of her relationship with the mayor and only ever indicated she received persistent and unwanted propositions from the mayor,” the statement said.

A reader has pointed out to me that the text messages printed by the Herald appear to back this up. The print edition has more of these than online, and as far as I can see, none of them refer to an affair. It is possible the Herald has some texts (they said they have 90 pages of texts) that they have not printed which do, but I would have assumed they would have included those ones if they had.

As I understand it, those who had knowledge that there had been contact between Brown and Chuang say they were all operating under the assumption that the contact was along the lines of unwanted unsuccessful propositions rather than a consensual consummated affair, and that the fact it was the latter only emerged after the election.

It would be useful to understand if this is in fact the case (I simply do not know). At what stage were people told it was an affair, as opposed to presumed sexual harassment? If there are 90 pages of texts, I would expect at least one of them to refer to it being an affair, if that is what was known.

Graeme Edgeler writes at Public Address:

I have just finished watching Q+A on time delay. In it, both former National Party President Michelle Boag and Unite Union head Matt McCarten made the claim that if Len Brown was to resign before before sworn in for his second term as mayor of Auckland City, that the second-placed candidate would be declared elected and be sworn in.

This is false.

Whatever the reason any New Zealand mayor-elect may not take up office, the result is a by-election. If a mayor (or councillor) leaves office during the term, there is a by-election unless there are less than 12 months to the next full council election.

If a mayor-elect dies, or is disqualified between the vote and the swearing in, there is a by-election. The runner-up can never simply assume the office of mayor. The Local Electoral Act simply does not allow it.

This is as it should be. Incidentally Matt McCarten acknowledges his mistake in the comments.