Labour continues lurching to the left, and stealing policies of the Greens. This time they are stealing the Greens policy for gender quotas for candidate selection, but they have gone even further than the “fruit loops” and are proposing a “man ban”, where an electorate can apply to have a women only selection!

Whale has been leaked the proposed new Labour Party selection rules. They are embedded below.

The rule mandating a quota for women is:

New Rule 289A.  For the 2014 election the Moderating Committee shall, in determining the list, ensure that for any percentage of party vote likely to be obtained, and taking into account the electorate MPs likely to be elected with that level of Labour support, the resultant Caucus will comprise at least 45% women.  For the 2017 and subsequent elections the percentage shall be at least 50%.

So this is a fully fledged quota for women. No more having to compete on merit. If Labour looks to get 50 MPs, then at least 23 of them in 2014 must be women, and from 2017 at least half of them must be women.

Note that the 50% quota is a minimum. Under this rule a caucus of 75% women and 25% men would be fine, but a caucus of 48% women must not be allowed.

New Rule 248A. An LEC may request that NZ Council determine that only women may nominate for the position of Labour candidate for their electorate. Such approval overrides the right granted in Rule 251 for any member to be eligible for nomination.

This is the one that takes the cake. Labour wants electorates to be able to ban men from even seeking selection for that seat. I don’t think even the Greens are that deranged.

I fervently hope that the Labour Party conference adopts these new rules. It will help marginalise them and make them more unelectable. Imagine having to campaign for a party that bans men from seeking selection in some seats!

I suspect some MPs will speak out against these changes, as they tried to do with the change to the leadership election rules. But the fervent activists will no doubt ignore them again.

Labour Party Rule Changes 2013 Final by Cam Slater

Stuff reports:

Ambitious plans for Hamilton to lead councils nationally in rolling out an $18.40 per hour minimum “living wage” are in doubt after official estimates of its cost nearly quadrupled.

The council voted in May to introduce a living wage over two years, from this year, on the strength of a February estimate it would cost $168,000 to lift pay rates for 80 permanent council staff now paid between the minimum and living wages.

But management now say the resolution covers 144 staff, and a revised estimate shows the cost will be at least $643,000.

Maybe the Councillors could cut their own pay, to cover the cost? Why should ratepayers have to fund their mistake?

Managers have also warned that the policy could become a can of worms, with Living Wage campaigners promising to review the wage amount annually.

Scenarios costed for city councillors show that a $1 increase to the living wage rate by July 1 next year would lift the two-year cost to $959,000.

So the Council has agreed to automatically lift their wages to whatever level some two person outfit in Lower Hutt determines is the living wage? If they say it is now $25 an hour, they’ll just pay everyone that and send ratepayers the bill?

Management have recommended that council give itself the right to refuse further increases to the living wage rate unless it first considers the impact.

Which implies the Council has just voted to write a blank cheque every year, based on what this self-appointed group determine should be the “living” wage.

Stuff reports:

A teacher has lost his job after mistakenly broadcasting pornography to his classroom.

In a decision published yesterday, the Teachers’ Disciplinary Tribunal censured the unnamed teacher for the few seconds of adult content he broadcast in November 2011, but stopped short of cancelling his registration.

The man himself was so shocked after the clip that he simply continued to teach the year 12 class without mentioning the offending material.

After pupils raised the porn clip with their student counsellor, the teacher immediately confessed and resigned.

The mistake occurred after he viewed the pornography at home on his personal work laptop.

He was streaming a PowerPoint presentation from his laptop on to the school smartboard when it switched over to the next file, which happened to be pornographic.

That reminds me of when I replied to an e-mail from my former flatmate, with a humourous quip which included use of the c word. Sadly for her she had her laptop hooked up to a data projector which was video-conferenced into a group from Singapore. My e-mail came up in Outlook preview for around three seconds, including the immortal words “Did you spell c**t wrong?”

Talking of the Teachers’ Disciplinary Tribunal decisions though, can anyone find them online? I’ve had a look through the Teachers’ Council site and can only find decisions prior to 2007.

A female gym teacher was not so lucky after being accused of sexually grooming a 12-year-old girl, texting her obsessively and rubbing her thigh.

The tribunal censured the woman, who is not named, for serious misconduct and stripped her registration.

The decision showed she and the pupil exchanged 1500 texts over a month, with the teacher using “obscene and abusive” language.

So why is she not named?

A male teacher caught with his underpants around his knees next to a 16-year-old female pupil in the back of his car was stripped of registration. When asked by police what he was doing, he responded that they were discussing “family matters”.

Family matters? Only if you’re Tasmanian!

The House remains in urgency. However by leave it does still have question time. So the House will debate laws from 9 am to 12 pm, 1 pm to 2 pm, question time 2 pm to 3 pm, laws from 3 pm to 6 pm and 7 pm to midnight.

The remaining laws are:

• the committee stage of the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill
• the committee stage and third reading of the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill and any bills into which it may be divided
• the committee stage of the Taxation (Livestock Valuation, Assets Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill
• the committee stage of the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill
• the committee stage of the Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill
• the committee stage of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Covered Bonds) Amendment Bill, and
• the committee stage of the Medicines Amendment Bill.

None of these are hugely controversial. It is good that while the Government is using urgency, they have granted leave for question time to remain – and also have not sought to bypass select committees on any bills, It is effectively just extended hours.

I’ve been sent a copy of the appeal by the Lombard Four to the Supreme Court – Lombard Appln Leave to Appeal SC 2 July 2013

I have no particular view on the findings of guilt in regard to the charges. The courts have determined guilt, and that is also one issue being appealed to the Supreme Court.

The issue of more interest is whether custodial sentences are appropriate, when the court has specifically said they accept there was no dishonesty involved. I’ve got no problem with white collar criminals getting custodial sentences when they have defrauded people. But is a custodial sentence appropriate when the court has accepted there was no dishonesty?

The Lombard case involved “honest misjudgments” as opposed to other cases of gross negligence, related lending etc.

It is appropriate directors are held liable for their governance of a company that fails. But are custodial sentences appropriate when there was no fraud or deliberate deception?

Simon Collins at NZ Herald reports:

Members of an expert think-tank set up to guide Sir Owen Glenn’s $2 million inquiry into family violence say the only way for the inquiry to continue now would be for Sir Owen to step out of the process.

At least 14 of the 25 original NZ-based think-tank members have now quit following a report on Sunday that Sir Owen was accused of physically abusing a young woman in Hawaii in 2002.

“It’s made the credibility of anything coming out of the inquiry pretty much irreversible. You can’t get that kind of credibility back,” said veteran anti-violence advocate Kirimatao Paipa. “If he [Sir Owen] takes his name off it and leaves his money … then maybe we can salvage something out of this.”

Sadly I think his good intentions are now doomed. No matter who remains involved, the departure of so many means that whatever report it produces will not be able to build wide-spread support. He runs the risk of spending millions of dollars on a report that will not lead anywhere.

Mind you looking at the views of some of those who have departed the inquiry, I suspect that they were going to conclude that all child abuse is the result of poverty, colonialism, and correctional smacking. I’m not making this up – that is what one of the experts said on the radio. So even without this fiasco, I was sceptical that the inquiry would really confront the difficult issues such as whether abused children should be looked after by the extending family (who may also be dysfuntional) or be placed with total strangers (which is less than ideal). Likewise would it have confronted issues such as how to stop abusive parents having more children? Far too easy to blame it all on poverty.

Anyway the “experts” now seem to be saying that the only way forward is for Sir Owen to hand over great wads of money as a blank cheque to them, but to have no actual role in anyway with the inquiry – and to remove his name from it – plus remove his appointed board.

Gisborne District Councillor Manu Caddie and human rights campaigner Marama Davidson said Sir Owen and the former Supreme Court judge who now chairs the inquiry’s governance board, Bill Wilson, should go.

“If the inquiry has any future, changing the name and board membership is required. Sir Owen and Bill Wilson will need to give up their places on the board …”

I think Sir Owen deserves better than this. There are many other good causes in New Zealand he can support. Those who have left the inquiry will just continue to snipe at it and him from the sidelines.

The Herald is not having a good week. Not only do they run a sob story from a Green Party candidate, without revealing his affiliation – they also had Brian Rudman got it entirely wrong regarding Maggie Barry and the City Rail Link.

Rudman wrote on Monday:

I’m guessing that North Shore National MP Maggie Barry will have experienced a true “Oh bugger” moment when she first heard of her leader’s shock u-turn in favour of building the Auckland City rail link.

In her shoes, who wouldn’t have? Contemplating your own demise has a way of concentrating the mind.

I bet she’s wishing she’d observed the advice of a long-time National PM, Sir Keith Holyoake, who advised new MPs to breathe through their noses for their first term. In other words, the way to avoid terminal embarrassment is to keep your lips zipped until you learn the rules.

But in the sweet euphoria of post election victory, back in November 2011, playing dumb was the last thing on Ms Barry’s mind. She told her local paper to pass on the message to Auckland Mayor Len Brown that there would be a CBD rail link before a new harbour crossing “over our dead bodies”.

The only problem for Rudman is Barry was speaking about a rail link between the airport and the CBD, not the City Rail Link – which is an entirely different project.

This follow up story in the North Shore Times makes it clear Maggie was referring to the airport-CBD rail project. With regards to the CBD rail loop, she said:

Basically I support the City Rail Link, but only if the business case ultimately stacks up.

Now it is possible Rudman never saw the follow up story. I guess too much too hope for that he would check. But will he now do a retraction with the same prominence as his original column, or will there be some grudging clarification which no one will see?

Maggie commented on Facebook:

During the 30 years I was a Radio and television news presenter and as a senior feature writer for the Listener, I never really expected the same rigorous standards of fact checking from populist columnists as I did from professional journalists. Some columnists are the print mediums version of shock jocks who opine and shamelessly push their own politically biased agendas and don’t much like the facts to get in the way of their stance. Mondays column wasn’t an example of Brian’s finest work but maybe when you’ve been in the job for a long time you think you can get away with tossing off any old purple prose to fill your word allocation. While Brian no doubt had a lovely time dreaming up punishments for a crime I didn’t commit, I take the future vision of Auckland’s transport more seriously than that and judging from the universally positive feedback to the PM’s announcement from my constituents, so does the North Shore electorate. No dead bodies on my side of the political divide Brian.

The decent thing for the Herald to do would be to give Maggie a full right of reply, with the same prominence as Rudman’s article. But many media hate admitting they got it wrong, so I won’t hold my breath.

Does anyone who gets the print edition of the Herald know if they have done a follow up on the Max Coyle story, informing people he is a Green candidate? And there was their housing story that featured the Labour Party vice-president who posed as a house buyer and just happened to say all her problems would be fixed by Labour’s policies. Never saw any follow up to that one either. No wonder fewer people trust the media.

Stuff reports:

InternetNZ has appointed its former policy manager and one-time Labour Party candidate Jordan Carter as chief executive.

Carter had been serving as acting chief executive of the non-profit society since January following the sudden departure of former boss Vikram Kumar, who quickly went on to secure the role of chief executive of Kim Dotcom’s new online storage service, Mega.

InternetNZ said 36 candidates had applied for the position.

Carter stood down from InternetNZ in May 2011, after seven years at the organisation, when he was confirmed as a Labour-list candidate in the November 2011 general election. He was 40th on Labour’s list and missed the cut-off.

He today ruled out a return to politics “in the next few years” and said he would not be standing in the 2014 election.

He did not believe his decision to stand for Labour in 2011 would cause complications in InternetNZ’s relations with the current Government.

“I have been involved in this sector for so long, people know my roots are in the ICT policy area. It is completely transparent what my political views have been but they don’t colour what I do professionally.”

InternetNZ president Frank March said Carter had a deep understanding of internet policy and research and was “fully across the intricacies of regulation concerning the internet and ICT more generally.”

Carter said an “open and uncapturable internet” was essential to New Zealand’s prospects.

I think Jordan will do an excellent job, and he did well to beat out many top class candidates who applied.

I’ve worked closely with Jordan on Internet issues for well over a decade. He has a superb grasp of policy, a strategic mindset and is also an excellent administrator. The nice thing about InternetNZ is that it has members from all over the political spectrum, united in their belief that the Internet should remain open and uncaptureable and sharing InternetNZ’s goal of protecting and promoting the Internet in New Zealand. In 2005 I was the Acting President, and Jordan the Acting Chief Executive for a couple of months. We also happened to be rival campaign managers for National and Labour in Wellington Central. We would meet or talk several times a day on InternetNZ issues – and then inevitable see each other in the evenings at Meet the Candidate meetings as wee would vocally support our chosen candidates. It was surreal, and amusing.

I don’t see Jordan’s political background as a big issue. I was always grateful that when David Cunliffe was Labour’s ICT and Comms Minister he would work with me on Internet issues, despite my National background.  I was very supportive of Cunliffe’s efforts to bring in anti-spam legislation, and to increase competition in the telco sector by requiring operational separation of Telecom.  Part of politics is working in good faith with people on issues you agree on, even when you disagree on other issues.

So congrats to Jordan and InternetNZ. Next week is the annual Net Hui in Wellington, which as usual already has a large waiting list, as (off memory) already over 500 people registered to attend. Hope to see many people I know there.

The Press reports:

Christchurch City Council Chief Executive Tony Marryatt is taking leave.

The council has issued a statement announcing Marryatt was taking leave “pending further discussions with the council”.

General manager city environment Jane Parfitt will be acting chief executive.

I’ve not been a long-term Marryatt hater, like some people. I thought the issue around his salary was a beat up. However he has on a number of occassions demonstrated judgement not up to the job – in my view.

The decision to give an extra day’s leave per month to all staff, without even informing Councillors, was one example.

The consenting failure has to be his responsibility – both the lack of capacity, the inability to improve enough, and the downplaying of the seriousness of it.

This afternoon’s planned meeting with four Government ministers has been cancelled.

Instead, councillors have been called to a special meeting of council at 12.45pm tomorrow when a resolution will be put to invite the local government minister Chris Tremain to install a Crown manager to oversee the council’s consents department.

Following the meeting, councillors will meet with the minister who will discuss the terms of reference for the Crown manager.

Mayor Bob Parker said it was “crucial that the community and the Government have complete confidence in the robustness of the consents process”.

This is a smart move by the Council – a crown manager, just for the consenting function. This should mean that the Council can be assisted to get its processes and resources sorted out, so they can regain the ability to authorise consents.

As a sign of how bad it may be, the Insurance Council says:

Christchurch buildings constructed using faulty council consents may have to be demolished, the Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ) says.

International Accreditation New Zealand (Ianz) this week said it would revoke the council’s consents accreditation on July 8, prompting a council and Government scramble to ensure consents can continue to be issued in the rebuilding city. 

The council had granted consents that Ianz found ”did not meet the requirements of the Building Code”.

ICNZ insurance manager John Lucas said today that the Ianz revelations were ”quite startling”.

Recently consented buildings should be audited on a case-by-case basis by an independent authority, he said.

”If insurers have started work on developing a new property, rebuilding a house or repairing a house, and then partway through that construction period there’s a delay because they find out later the building consent was issued incorrectly, then that’s going to stop that project,” Lucas said.

”It may cost the parties a lot of money because the project may have to be demolished and rebuilt, or there may be some very expensive remediation costs involved.”

Non-compliant foundations were the most likely to be an issue, he said.

Now who is it that has been calling for the Govt to be more hands off in Christchurch?

Summertime view of Whale Bay, Tutukaka Coast, North Island. New Zealand photography by Sarah Sisson.

Yet again I find myself drawn to another warm beach image….

The landscape photography eBook that has consumed my life for the past month is now in the hands of the designer and should be hitting the ‘shelves’ late this month.

In more uncharacteristically collaborative news – Sarah & I will be instructing at the first of celebrity HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff’s New Zealand Photo Adventures in late October (don’t hate me @Beautox! ;-).  Check out the details – not cheap, but certainly a world class experience.

Cheers – Todd

Free Wallpaper Download

You may download the large version of today’s image from this link:   Password = wwp

Canvas Prints

This image is available on the website, – I have also just loaded last week’s Cathedral Cove image .

Thanks for your support!

Cheers – Todd [www.sisson.co.nz] 

Went up Te Ahumairangi (Tinakori) Hill this morning for the first time since the storm. I think there were some signs up saying the tracks were impassable. This wasn’t quite the case, but it did involve a fair amount of climbing, on squeezing under fallen trees.

Fairly easy over that one.

Under that one.

The dog went under that one, and we went over it!

This was very thick to get through.

Under and over these ones coming up.

And the main Northern Walkway route has basically a trail of destruction on it towards the end.

The Herald reports:

Begging could be banned throughout Auckland under a bylaw being drafted by the council – a move described as overdue by advocates and fascist by those targeted.

An initial draft of the bylaw banned asking for money, food, other items or soliciting donations “in a manner that may intimidate or cause a nuisance to any person”.

But after public feedback, commissioners appointed by the Auckland Council and Auckland Transport have recommended all begging be banned.

The total ban was sought by business associations, including Heart of the City, and an upmarket department store, which said a hard core of beggars intimidated shoppers.

“We have too many examples of behaviour being defended under the guise of exercising a public right to occupy public spaces,” said Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney.

NZ has a generous welfare system. We provide benefits, family and child support and accommodation assistance. There is no need for anyone to be begging. The few who do, tend to have issues of addiction or worse.

Simon Robinson, begging for money on Queen St yesterday, said he did so for about three hours a day, and felt he had the right to do so.

The 43-year-old, who began begging five years ago after his debts got on top of him and lives in a boarding house in Mt Eden, said banning begging was a “bit fascist” and “stepping towards a police state”.

“I used to shoplift, so it’s either that to get food, or sit there begging and not being a nuisance, and as soon as someone gives me $20 to get a decent meal and a couple of cans of beer, I’m off.”

Need more be said.

Vernon Small at Stuff reports:

For many Pakeha the first memory of him may be as the leader of the young kapa haka group he had trained for the ceremony at the 1990 Commonwealth Games.

But political commentator Rawiri Taonui, indigenous studies adjunct professor at Auckland University of Technology, sets his contribution in a context going back to the 1970s.

“He’s one of a declining number of Maori leaders who is a full embodiment of the Maori renaissance going back to the 1970s and 1980s, helping establish the first kohanga reo, the first kura kaupapa at Hoani Waititi, getting urban marae up and running and contributing to the development of Maori tertiary education and the renaissance of kapa haka.”

He said Dr Sharples was at the cutting edge of the debate on the foreshore and seabed and of the development of an independent Maori voice in Parliament and of local body Maori representation.

“It has been a huge and significant contribution.”

Sharples has made an fine contribution to New Zealand.

Rival Labour list MP Shane Jones, who is lining up to take Dr Sharples’ Tamaki Makaurau seat, also gave credit to Dr Sharples’ cultural achievement, but he was less flattering about his political legacy.

“He’s not been a strong or decisive figure in his parliamentary leadership. He was always a figure of the cultural renaissance and that’s incredibly important; no-one can take that away from him. But in terms of a parliamentary scrapper or a beacon for a brighter set of policies through Parliament, Dr Sharples has probably been one of the weakest Maori ministers that we’ve had, certainly in my lifetime.”

Dr Taonui could not disagree more.

“History will look back at Pita Sharples as one of the finest Maori politicians of this generation.”

He had tried to address every issue including criminal justice and the health system. “I think actually he has been one of the best [Maori affairs ministers] and probably the best in the last four years.”

I’d put him somewhere in-between. Turia was and is the sharper political operator, but Sharples was excellent at developing positive relationships 0 and relationships are what politics thrives on.

His other big achievement was helping win in Parliament mainstream acceptance of kaupapa Maori “in a more relaxed and open atmosphere than at any time in our history”.

Not for him “white motherf……” outbursts and the occasional angry rhetoric of Mana leader Hone Harawira.

Sharples has always been warmly regarded by most New Zealanders.

Martin van Beynen at The Press reports:

The Christchurch City Council has granted building consents that potentially put people and property at risk, International Accreditation New Zealand (Ianz) says.

Ianz on Monday announced it was revoking the council’s accreditation of its consents function on July 8, prompting a council and Government scramble to ensure consents can continue to be issued in the rebuilding city.

The council had granted consents that Ianz found ‘‘did not meet the requirements of the Building Code’’, prompting one earthquake widower to label the debacle ‘‘very worrying’’.

Council officials will meet Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee and Local Government Minister Chris Tremain in Christchurch today. The most likely outcome is the appointment of a commissioner to run the council’s consents department until accreditation can be regained.

While attempts have been made to downplay the seriousness of the revocation, Ianz chief executive Llew Richards told The Press yesterday ‘‘we have serious concerns’’.

He referred to sections of the latest Ianz report saying the authority had identified council building consents that breached the Building Code and/or Act.

‘‘These have the potential to cause damage to the property, other adjoining property or injury to people,’’ the report says.

Hardly the equivalent of a parking ticket, as claimed by the Mayor.

He was staggered the problem went back as far as 2007, he said, but admitted in Parliament he did not know about the September Ianz report until June 7.

“At that point I decided that this situation was intolerable and we have been taking action since that time and we will have further discussions with the city council tomorrow, because this situation cannot continue.”

Those who had argued the Government should stay out of local authority functions should now be reconsidering, he said.

Indeed.

Nicholas Jones writes:

Charter school students outperform their public school peers in some areas, a new study shows, as the Government continues to work towards introducing the controversial schools in New Zealand.

Yet the opposition and their unions say that charter schools must not even be trialled in NZ.

My view is simple. Allow suitable applicants to establish charter schools, so long as no student is forced to attend one (they won’t be), and keep them going only so long as they match or exceed the performance of other schools.

The study by Stanford University researchers at the Center for Research on Education Outcomes examined the standardised test results of students enrolled in charter schools in 26 states and New York City.

Results were compared to those of students with the same demographics and academic profiles in public schools that the charter students would have otherwise attended.

The original study in 2009 found many students in charter schools were not performing as well as those in nearby public schools, and was widely cited by opponents of the publicly funded, privately-run schools.

However, the updated study shows that, overall, charter school students are now surpassing those in public schools in reading gains and keeping pace in maths.

This is a major finding. It reverses the earlier study that opponents were citing.

The improvement was helped by the closure of 8 per cent of schools included in the 2009 analysis because they were underperforming.

And this is key. You generally can not close a state school that is merely under-performing. Charter schools are more accountable as they can be closed for non-performance.

Parliament is in urgency today from 9 am until midnight. The items being considered are:

• the second reading of the Families Commission Amendment Bill (0900 – 1000)
• the second reading of the Financial Reporting Bill (1000 – 1200)
• the second reading of the Bail Amendment Bill (1300 – 1500)
• the second reading of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill (1500 – 1700)
• the second reading and committee stage of the Psychoactive Substances Bill (1700 onwards)
• the committee stage of the Legal Assistance Amendment Bill
• the committee stage of the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill
• the committee stage and third reading of the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill and any bills into which it may be divided
• the committee stage of the Taxation (Livestock Valuation, Assets Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill
• the committee stage of the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill
• the committee stage of the Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill
• the committee stage of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Covered Bonds) Amendment Bill, and
• the committee stage of the Medicines Amendment Bill.

The time estimates are mine. Very hard to predict how long all the different committee stages will take, but I’d say the House will be sitting well into Thursday, and probably beyond. However many of the bills are not very controversial, so committee stages may not take too long.

The latest Roy Morgan poll is at Curiablog.

Over the last two RM polls, National has gone up 5.5% and Labour down 3.5%.

Isaac Davidson at NZ Herald reports:

MPs will give way to New Zealand soldiers – including SAS troops – and their families this evening for a ceremony in Parliament’s debating chamber to mark the Defence Force’s service and losses in overseas conflict.

In a rare move, up to 200 people will be allowed on to the floor of the House during Parliament’s dinner break for the unveiling of three commemorative plaques which recognise New Zealanders wounded or killed in Afghanistan, Timor-Leste and on peace-keeping missions.

Defence Force officials, families of the soldiers, and elite troops will hear speeches by Speaker David Carter, Prime Minister John Key and Leader of the Opposition David Shearer.

The plaques are the first to be added to the debating chamber since the 1990s, when memorials for wars in Malaysia and Vietnam were put up.

I often look at those plaques, if I’m in the gallery.

Parliamentary tour notes say the wood-carved plaques were placed in the debating chamber “as solemn reminders of the gravity of decisions made by Parliamentarians to send men and women overseas on active service and operations, and to acknowledge the service and sacrifice of those men and women”.

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard referred to the plaques in a speech in the debating chamber in 2011, describing them as “snapshots of the shared and lasting bonds between our two nations”.

“Our ties were indelibly forged in hardship and mateship, from Gallipoli and the Somme to Tobruk, Korea and beyond … And wherever Australian and New Zealand blood has been shed, it remains sacred ground.”

Indeed. I hope to visit Gallipoli next April. It will be the 99th anniversary of Gallipoli. I’d like to go for the 100th but it will be too difficult to get in.

Audrey Young at NZ Herald reports:

Steven Joyce and Judith Collins may be involved in an unofficial leadership contest within National to take over when John Key finally leaves politics, but neither is seen as the best replacement were it to happen tomorrow, according to a New Zealand Herald DigiPoll survey.

Finance Minister Bill English is the preferred choice of general voters.

Mr English was favoured by 29.7 per cent, Mr Joyce by 25.4 per cent and Ms Collins by 13 per cent. Almost 20 per cent thought none of them.

Of course there is no vacancy, and the decision will be made by caucus, not public vote – or membership vote like in Labour.

Asked at his post-Cabinet press conference who he thinks would be best to replace him if he fell under a bus, he said initially “someone with a sense of humour”.

“We’ve got a very talented caucus and If I name one of them the other 58 … will be bitter and twisted.”

The worst thing can be to labeled a future leader at an early stage!

Helen Clark once nominated Trevor Mallard as her natural successor, early on in her prime ministership.

Might have happened!

Mr Key has previously indicated he would leave politics if he were voted out of office. The unofficial leadership battle between Ms Collins, the Justice Minister, and Mr Joyce, the Economic Development Minister, is realistically for Leader of the Opposition and would be determined by National MPs, not voters.

That’s not quite right. If National wins a third term, then it is possible John Key would not seek to go into a fourth election, and retire part-way through the third term.  National would want him to stay on, but he could well decide that eight years is enough.

Stuff reports:

A judge has held out hope two parents in a shocking case of child neglect could have their children returned to them.

The Lower Hutt couple’s four children, aged 4 and under, were taken into care in January after police found them living in squalor while their parents partied.

However, police and child experts cast doubt on whether the parents could learn from their past mistakes.

“This was not an issue of poverty for this family. These parents simply prioritised alcohol, drugs and parties ahead of the needs of their children,” Inspector Mike Hill said after the sentencing.

And the background to the parents is sad:

The mother was one of 18 children, had started binge-drinking aged about 13, and was expelled from school before having her first child at 17.

The father had been taken out of his alcoholic mother’s care as a baby and had never met his father. He started drinking heavily when he was about 15 and was introduced to gangs a year later.

So the grandparents were dysfunctional. The parents are dysfunctional and the kids may have already been so damaged that they will grow up dysfunctional.

Stopping the cycle of child abuse is incredibly hard. In this case though CYF should have intervened earlier. It was the Police responding to a noisy party that led to them losing the children. CYF had been involved for five years trying to help the parents. But some parents can’t be helped, sadly.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers. 2.00PM – 3.00 PM.

Mike Yardley writes in The Press:

The news ricocheted across the city yesterday morning, like a thunderclap.

Despite all the soothing tones of reassurance, despite all the varnished rhetoric that the big bad wolf of revocation would be kept from the council door, International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) has walked the talk and blown the house down.

The Christchurch City Council has incurred the unique and ignominious distinction of becoming the nation’s first consenting authority to be stripped of its accreditation.

On the day that the IANZ letter, outlining their intention to revoke, was brought to the public’s attention by the Earthquake Recovery Minister, the Christchurch mayor’s first reflex was to absolve the council of any blame or responsibility.

He slammed Gerry Brownlee for launching a ”media missile”, and he accused the Government of ”undermining public confidence in the council”. 

And that is something I doubt he will recover from. Up until the Govt made it public, the Council itself wasn’t aware they were on the verge of losing accreditation. And Parker attacked the Government for their transparency.

In the wake of such embellished bravado, the political fallout for Bob Parker is thunderous. Just three months out from election day, it’s a hell of a black eye. But beyond the political ramifications, this is a withering hammerblow to our sense of trust in the council. 

Would you trust them to be straight with you?

Late last week, the council’s senior management were trumpeting all of the progress they’d made to ward off and neutralise the compliance concerns IANZ had flagged.

But as the council brass back-slapped themselves into believing that all was well in the state of Denmark, ministers Gerry Brownlee and Maurice Williamson were busily deploying contingency plans, just in case the council was duly defrocked. 

Now that the nightmare scenario has become a reality, we should learn more about those plans tomorrow. But a show of accountability would also help clear the head. 

So, now that the good ship Christchurch has hit the rocks, stripped of its accreditation for one its most critical functions, who will resign?

I think the Chief Executive has to go. Consenting is a core function of Council, and losing accreditation is a management failure. This was not a surprise – IANZ had been warning for over a year.