Stuff reports:

Improvements to the merging of SH1 and SH2 traffic at the Ngauranga Interchange north of Wellington, completed in August 2011, had shaved an average of two minutes off people’s journeys, he said.

The opening of a third lane through the Victoria Park Tunnel in Auckland last year had reduced travel times by between 5 and 17 minutes, while upgrades to the Te Rapa section of the Waikato Expressway were saving motorists an average of 3.5 minutes.

“These travel time savings are just the beginning, with much of the roads of national significance programme still to come, but already these roads are delivering huge benefits to productivity and the environment,” Mr Brownlee said.

Green Party transport spokeswoman Julie Anne Genter said her party never opposed sensible, cost-effective roading projects like the Ngauranga upgrade.

Really?

Can anyone name a roading project the Greens have supported?

For Ngauranga, their 2005 policy was:

Wellington: Inner-city ‘bypass’ and the Western Corridor from Ngauranga to Otaki

The Western Corridor is a narrow stretch of land ideally suited to public transport. Major roading projects are extremely expensive and send the wrong signals in terms of climate change, peak oil and urban sprawl. The Green Party will Work to ensure a comprehensive upgrade of public transport occurs before further consideration is given to significant roading upgrades.

Doesn’t sound like support to me.

They also opposed for over a decade the inner city bypass which has made a massive difference to traffic flows onto and off the motorway.

But I’m serious with my challenge. If you can find a press release from the Green Party unequivocally supporting a specific roading project then post the link in the comments.

Kate Chapman at Stuff reports:

The Maori Party is considering three leaders after a failed leadership bid by party whip Te Ururoa Flavell.

Co-leader Tariana Turia has described it as akin to having no leader at all. …

Professor Winiata’s suggestion was that the co-leader model be scrapped and each of the party’s three MPs be given responsibilities.

It would likely see Dr Sharples taking over within Parliament, Mr Flavell with the party’s grassroots and Mrs Turia sticking with Whanau Ora. Dr Sharples and Mrs Turia would retain their ministerial portfolios.

The best tweet on this idea came from Marcus Cook:

Breaking; Maori Party to trial having no leader. Cites Labour Party as example

Heh.

Dr Sharples has repeatedly refused to step aside. “The bottom line is I’m prepared to lead us until I’m dead; I mean forever,” he said yesterday.

Not a useful statement. The best leaders are those who aim to achieve a few things during their time at the top, and help train up and mentor their successors.

Audrey Young in the NZ Herald wrote:

The temperature in Parliament is sure to rocket when the law “reinstating” youth rates is debated this week.

It happens every time the emotive issue is debated, as it did last week when the bill to bring them back passed its second reading. …

The new youth rates will be called the Starting Out Wage.

Labour says youth rates will be reinstated, suggesting that they were previously abolished.

But Labour did not support the bill of former Green MP Sue Bradford to abolish youth rates. It opted instead for a dilution of her bill but which limited the amount of time that a new young worker could remain on youth rates to 200 hours or three months.

National went to the last election campaigning for a change to that regime, saying the move had contributed to a significant rise in youth unemployment.

The change is in fact quite modest. It is not full youth rates. The starting out rate will only apply:

• To a 16 or 17 year old with a new employer, for the first six months
• To an 18 or 19 year old who has been on a benefit for more than six months

The $13.50 minimum wage will be raised to $13.75 on April 1. From May 1 the Starting Out Wage would be 80 per cent of that, or $11.

Act leader John Banks said his party believed 80 per cent was too high as a minimum. In Britain the rate was 60 per cent for 16-year-olds and in Australia it was 48 per cent for 16-year-olds.

He compared the Starting Out Wage to the dole, paid to 40,000 young people every fortnight between 15 and 19 – equivalent to $4.50 an hour. He said they desperately needed the “dignity of work and a job opportunity”.

I believe getting a young person their first job is incredibly important and making it illegal for a 16 year old to work for less than $13.75 an hour is incredibly stupid.

We see the impact of this stupidity by the fact that the unemployment rate is currently 30.9% for under 20s.

Labour MP Darien Fenton compared the move to discrimination against women and Maori who at one time were paid less because some people said they were worth less. No one would tolerate that type of discrimination today.

You are remain female or Maori for ever. You do not remain 16 for ever. Also minimum wages are not maximum wages.

It would then also be acceptable, she said, to discriminate against older workers.

We don’t allow a 16 year old to vote, yet allow 70 year olds to vote so the comparison is invalid.

“It perpetuates its stereotype of young workers being unreliable and incapable, and it ignores the fact that many young workers have already had considerable work experience at the age of 16.”

if they have had work experience at 16, it can only be because they were employed under the age of 16 – when there is no minimum wage.

One of the strongest submissions against the bill came from the Human Rights Commission. It said unequivocally that the discrimination could not be justified.

“In New Zealand, the age at which children and young people are deemed to be adult is considerably younger than 20 in many critical areas of life.

“The minimum age of criminal prosecution is 14 for most offences, 12 for serious offences and 10 for murder and manslaughter.

“Children in New Zealand are legally able to marry at 16 (with parental consent if either party is 16 or 17) and drive at 16.

“Children can enlist in the military at 17 and be deployed at 18.

“Yet they are not considered to be sufficiently adult enough to be protected by the minimum wage.”

I agree you gain you rights of adulthood at before 20. I actually support 18 and 19 year olds getting the adult minimum wage.

But I think there is no justification for having the minimum wage start at 16 instead of 15 or 17 or 14. 16 is arbitrary and capacious.

18 is when you are generally deemed an adult who can vote, marry without permission etc. It is also when most people finish school and leave home.

So what I would do is simple.

• No minimum wage at all for 16 and 17 year olds (like it is for 14 and 15 year olds). Getting a job is far more important than what it pays, especially when almost everyone at that age is still living at home. 
• Full minimum wage at age 18

I’ve blogged on the leaked comments showing that Labour, Greens and the unions spent probably around $400,000 (mainly taxpayer funded) on gaining enough signatures for their referendum petition.

I thought it would be useful to contrast that with the previous successful petition, on the smacking issue.

I e-mailed the organiser, Larry Baldock, on how they got enough signatures and they did it the old fashioned way. They didn’t use taxpayer money to hire people to collect signatures. Larry says:

My wife and I spent almost 16 months travelling around NZ almost 4 times, some of the time in a sign written camper van collecting signatures in towns and cities, at AMP shows, field days and any events like V8’s, home shows etc.  Many days on the beach at Mt Maunganui. Some elderly supporters, spent many days each week right through winter sitting at a table outside a Post shop and collected thousands of signatures.  There are many stories! 

Such a contrast to having 10 paid staff work on co-ordinating the petition and using taxpayer funding to pay people to collect signatures. What Larry and others did is what CIRs are meant to be about – the public petitioning Parliament. Not the losing parties in an election trying to over-ride the election result.

Now the smacking petition got their signatures and a referendum was held. The result was beyond over-whelming. In response to the question:

“Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”

87% voted no. Now one can quibble that the use of the term “good” is a bit loaded, but anyone who seriously thinks the result would have been vastly different with deletion of that word is deluded.

The referendum was held at the end of a two year high profile debate on the anti-smacking law. It is silly to suggest that NZers did not know exactly what they were voting for.  Maybe a slightly differently worded question would have got say 80% in favour instead of 87%. But that result was a massive landslide, You just can not credibly suggest that there was not a majority against the ban on correctional smacking.

Also polls every year since the referendum has shown a vast majority think that the law should allow correctional smacking that is reasonable (the old law allowed reasonable force). Family First have released the 2013 one which Curia did for them. I think the question is quite fair. In full it says:

In 2007 Parliament passed a law that removes a defence of reasonable force for parents who smack a child to correct their  behaviour, but states the Police have discretion not to prosecute if they consider the offence was inconsequential. 

Do you think the anti-smacking law should be changed to state explicitly that parents who give their children a smack that is reasonable and for the purpose of correction are not breaking the law?

So the question include what the law change was, specifically mentions the inclusion of the Police discretion and asks if they think correctional smacking should be legal, if reasonable. Now I am sure some can and will quibble over exact wording but considering the results were 77% said yes and only 18% no I am utterly confident that any alternate wording would produce much the same result, so long as it wasn’t totally slanted (such as should parents be able to assault their children).

There can be no doubt that the majority of New Zealanders want correctional smacking to be legal, and there was a referendum that said so by a massive 7:1 margin.

Now one can have the view that a party’s policy should triumph over a non binding referendum. I certainly hold that view.

But what is absolute hypocrisy is to be a party that ignored the results of this 2009 referendum, and then two years later to then demand that the Government should break its election policy on the basis of the asset sales referendum.

What many do not know is that a bill was selected for first reading in Parliament in 2010, just a couple of weeks after the referendum result. The bill would have implemented the referendum result by amending the law so that:

it is no longer a criminal offence for parents, and those in the place of parents, to use reasonable force for the purpose of correcting their children’s behaviour and there are clear statutory limits on what constitutes reasonable force

The law was basically identical to what the referendum called for. Now how did Labour and Greens vote on this bill, just three weeks after the referendum? The voted it down (along with every other party except ACT) at first reading.

Now I think National should have voted for the bill, but at least National is consistent that their party’s policy over-rides a referendum result. They have never ever said that referenda should trump elections.

But the actions of Labour and Greens in 2010 show that they are happy to ignore referendum results – unless it is a result they personally agree with.

Their asset sales referendum is nothing to do with democracy. It is mainly a device for them to use taxpayers money to get people onto their e-mail and direct mail lists.

So every time Russell Norman or David Shearer demands that the Government should not proceed with asset sales due to the proposed referendum, someone should ask them when will they be voting to amend the Crimes Act to allow correctional smacking. There is no response they can give which isn’t hypocritical.

And we should change the law to stop parliamentary parties from spending their parliamentary resources on promoting a referendum petition. CIRs are meant to be initiated by citizens, not by the losing parties in an election campaign.

An interesting 12 questions with Katherine Rich:

3. Was there, and is there still, sexism in the House?
Yes, but you’d strike that anywhere. Just think about the way politics is reported. I’ve never seen a “Battle of the Babes” sort of headline for any electoral battle between male candidates or seen them described with words like feisty, perky or shrill.

Very true.

4. How did you cope with that?
I can’t think of any recent example, but years ago I’d deal with issues with either a sense of humour or by choosing battles. Sometimes I’d be less patient or polite. Although I would, of course, never resort to violence, I did tell one colleague who patted my pregnant tummy too many times that if he did it again I would punch him on the nose. I said it with a smile, but with sufficient firmness that he didn’t do it again.

Heh, I wonder who it was?

8. Your role at the Food and Grocery Council can be a controversial one, especially when you are opposing food campaigners on issues such as food labelling and salt. Are you doing God’s work?
I don’t see it as controversial. I see it more as providing the other side to a lot of grocery industry discussions. You’d be surprised but many shock/horror stories about the food and grocery industry aren’t true. I don’t doubt the sincerity of those who call for fat taxes, bans, salt regulation or all sorts of different warning labels, but many ideas are completely unworkable. A fat tax in New Zealand would raise the price of cheese and butter, so support for these ideas falls away when Kiwis understand the implications. There’s only so much salt, fat and sugar that can be removed from a product before [it] tastes like cardboard. Eating a healthy diet and moderation in all things is something I talk about a lot.

I love that quote I have bolded.

12. Will you always be a Tory?
I’m a centre-right thinker and I did vote Labour in ’87 – my first vote – when they were the more centre-right party.

I voted Labour in 1987 also.

Claire Trevett at NZ Herald reports:

Labour leader David Shearer says his failure to declare a US-based bank account with more than $50,000 in it on the MPs’ Register of Pecuniary Interests was simply an oversight. …

Mr Shearer would not reveal how much was in the account, but MPs are required to include accounts with more than $50,000 in them.

He had included his UN pension scheme in the register since becoming an MP, but Mr Shearer said he realised, while he was doing his tax paperwork recently, he had not included the bank account in the register. Inland Revenue had known about the account, for tax purposes.

This is the puzzling part. You are filing a tax return every year where you include the bank account and interest earned, but it never twigs that you should also include that is your Register of Pecuniary Interests.

I am sure it is a genuine mistake, but it is very sloppy.

Prime Minister John Key yesterday would not comment on Mr Shearer’s omission, saying it was up to Mr Shearer.

Could you have imagined what would have happened if the situation is reversed.

We already have the precedent that Trevor Mallard called for Chris Finlayson to be stood down over a non-substantive omission.

If John Key had forgotten to include a foreign bank account, I have no doubt that Labour MPs would be calling him corrupt and a liar. They would be demanding an inquiry into what other bank accounts he hasn’t disclosed, and they would have filed contempt of Parliament charges with the Speaker to refer to the Privileges Committee.

Rather than be a minor story in the Herald (and it seems no mention at all at Stuff), it would be the lead item for at least a week.

Personally I’m glad National MPs are acting like decent human beings and not accusing Shearer of anything. I believe it was a genuine sloppy mistake. But I have no doubt at all that if the situation was reversed there would be hysterical language used against Key by Labour MPs.

Scott Yorke adds a typically humourous touch to the issue:

Labour Party leader David Shearer has moved quickly to discipline one of his MPs for failing to declare a pecuniary interest.

“I expect high standards from my MPs” said Shearer, as he announced that MP David Shearer would be stood down from all duties. …

Labour’s leader said he hoped the move would be a “wake-up call” to members of Labour’s caucus.

“These rules exist for a reason, and we have to take them seriously” Shearer said.

Shearer agreed that the failure by one of his MPs to follow the rules was a “bad look” that “let the side down”.

But he refused to be drawn on whether he would reinstate the MP for Mt Albert after a spell on the backbenches. …

The demoted MP last night refused to comment on the decision by his leader. But he confirmed that he still fully supported David Shearer as leader of the Labour Party.

Heh.

John Banks has also pointed out Labour’s double standard:

Labour Leader David Shearer should apply his own ethical standards to himself and stand down, ACT Leader John Banks said today. 

“Shearer is on record as saying those who suffer from a memory lapse aren’t fit to hold office,” Mr Banks said.

“But yesterday, Shearer admitted he ‘forgot’ to declare more than $50,000 he has stashed away in an overseas bank account.  

“Worse, he didn’t forget once, he forgot four years in a row.   Shearer’s hypocrisy is staggering.    

The Local Electoral Act amendment bill will be debated soon. It was going to be open season on John Banks, but now when Labour point out his failure to disclose, they’ll have their own leader’s failure thrown back at them.

An updated story has John Key saying:

“In the end it’s a matter for him,” Mr Key said today.

“People make mistakes. I make mistakes and when I do, I try and tell people I’ve made them. It’s just that you don’t get cut any slack from the Labour Party when you say you’ve made a mistake, but when they make one they don’t want anyone to have a look at it.”

Again, incredibly mild.

You can vote in my sidebar poll on What are you least likely to forget?

The options are:

• A 5 second mention of Kim Dotcom in a powerpoint briefing
  
• The existence of a foreign bank account with at least $50,000 in it, for three years

Steven Joyce has announced assistance for schools:

The $6 million package will be allocated as a one-off payment across the sector, calculated on a formula of $105 per Full-time Teaching Equivalents (FTTEs) plus $500 per school. For example:

• A small school of 5 FTTEs will receive $1,025
• A medium school of 20 FTTEs will receive $2,600
• A large school of 120 FTTEs will receive $13,100.

If there is eventually a court battle between the Government and Talent 2, then this will be added to the disputed bill!

Joyce also updated on the system:

“In the last three fortnightly pay periods, the percentage of complaints and notifications received dropped from 2.2 per cent to 1.9 per cent to 1 per cent while at the same time the total number of people being paid increased from 74,373 to 84,822.

“Following Pay Period 26 this week, the next big challenge will be Pay Period 1, in which significant changes occur for the start of the new financial year, including adjustments to KiwiSaver and student loan repayment rates. These changes may introduce new issues. The Ministry is working closely with Talent2 to minimise any increases in error rate.

So it has got better, but may get worse with the new financial year.

Out of interest does anyone know what the error rate with Datacom was?

“In regards to bug fixes, 87 defects have been resolved as part of the remediation plan to date, with 143 scheduled for resolution in a release on 23 March and a further 46 currently scheduled for 20 April. 228 defects are being managed through business as usual processes and we are looking at a fourth release to deal with remaining defects and usability issues.

The total number of current defects is 526. These include 49 Category Two defects (very serious), 320 Category Three defects (serious), 115 Category Four defects (moderate), and 42 Category Five defects (cosmetic). It is planned that the number of Category Two defects will be reduced to 12 on completion of the second release this coming weekend.

I guess a category one defect is the system is offline!

The Press editorial:

On the face of it, the attack last week by the Minister for Earthquake Recovery, Gerry Brownlee, appears to be amply justified.

While there may be room for quibbling about the exact numbers, the pace with which the Christchurch City Council has repaired and replaced the social housing damaged by the earthquakes has been slow.

Quoting from the council’s own latest report, the council has closed 327 social housing units but has managed, in a programme that is supposed to be urgent, to repair and relet only six of them.

Astonishing.

Brownlee is quite right to draw attention to it and to try to set a fire under councillors to get something done about it.

His singling out of Cr Yani Johanson for criticism was, however, misdirected. It is possible to understand the minister’s temptation to target Johanson. In the political spectrum of the council, Johanson sits on the gadfly Left wing.

After some years in office, he still has the slightly bumptious and irritating air of the student politician about him. He is also not slow to criticise the performance of others.

Indeed.

So when the council fails in a serious responsibility he appears to be in charge of, one can see how taking a swipe at him would be hard to resist.

It is, nonetheless, unfair.

For one thing, while Johanson is chairman of the committee that is in charge of the social housing stock, he is only one councillor among the others. He is not like a minister of the Crown. Any failure with repairs to social housing lies not with Johanson alone but with the other councillors on his committee and with the whole council.

I agree, Johanson is not solely responsible. However his share of responsibility must be greater than other Councillors as he chairs the committee in charge.

Taking the opportunity provided by Brownlee’s broadside to have a dig of his own at Johanson, Cr Aaron Keown suggested there were tensions between Johanson’s committee and council staff that were impeding progress on repair work.

If that is correct, the remedy is not, as Keown suggested, to transfer the work to the committee on which Keown sits, but for any difficulties to be identified and fixed. Council staff must provide councillors with prompt, accurate, complete information, and councillors must provide staff with clear and precise directions.

It is hard to say what the solution is, until we know what the problem is. The Council needs to clarify why it has only been able to fix six houses in two years and what changes are necessary to speed this up.

It was almost exactly a year ago that Brownlee lit a rocket under the Housing Corporation for its apparent lethargy on getting state houses repaired and replaced. More action quickly followed.

Beleaguered city council tenants will be hoping his latest blast will be as effective.

That would be good.

Personally this reinforces my belief that Councils should not be landlords. They tend to be very bad at it, and providing community housing is better done by Housing NZ and community groups. If the Council was not the owner, I suspect many more of those houses or apartments would be repaired by now.

Jordan Weissmann writes at The Atlantic:

It’s hard to think of any business more inherently obnoxious than a patent troll. These are the tech-world parasites that buy up troves of intellectual property, not so that they can make a product, but so that they can turn around and sue successful companies for patent infringement with the aim of nabbing a quick and profitable settlement. They’ve infested the courts over the last decade, and by one count are now responsible for more than half of all U.S. patent cases, potentially costing American businesses some $29 billion a year.

So kudos to Oregon congressman Peter DeFazio, who Thursday morning introduced a bill aimed squarely at putting the trolls out of commission. His smart and simple legislation, called the SHIELD Act, would force trolls that lose in court to reimburse the companies they sue for their legal fees, which can amount to millions of dollars. That might not sound particularly bold. But it’s a carefully calibrated step that could go a long way to containing the the troll problem by driving up the cost — and risk — of bringing flimsy patent cases. 

I like it.

Trolls have flourished over the last few years largely because it’s now easier and cheaper to bring a patent case than it is to defend against one. Much like personal injury lawyers who advertise on TV, the attorneys who represent trolls often work on contingency, meaning they only take a cut of what they win. Defense lawyers, on the other hand, ask for their pay up front, and usually bill by the hour. As a result, a single troll can file a barrage of lawsuits without putting much skin in the game, while the small companies they tend to target — about 55 percent of the businesses sued make less than $10 million a year — are forced to mount a costly defense that saps their finances with each passing day. 

We’re lucky that generally we’re too small to target, but we have had a few.

There’s also a more subtle way DeFazio’s bill throws a kink into the troll business model. At the start of each patent suit, the plaintiffs will have to show that they are either a university, the original inventor of the patent, or a company sincerely trying to turn it into a commercial product. If they can’t, they will be officially deemed a troll, and be required to post a bond to cover the defendant’s costs, should they lose a case. That will tie up their money, which in turn will make it more cost-intensive to bring lots of suits while simultaneously cutting their return on investment. 

Hopefully he can get it past Congress.

Oral Questions 2.00 pm – 3.00 pm

Questions to Ministers

1. MAGGIE BARRY (National) to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on the economy?
2. BRENDAN HORAN (Independent) to the Minister of Education: Is accountability within our education system paramount?
3. DAVID SHEARER (Labour) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?
4. Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Greens) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his response that human-induced climate change “may well be” real?
5. NICKY WAGNER (National) to the Minister of Health: What progress can he report on the Christchurch Hospital redevelopment project?
6. DARIEN FENTON (Labour) to the Minister of Transport: Does he have confidence in KiwiRail’s health and safety standards; if not, why not?
7. PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Transport: What progress has the Government made on improving roading infrastructure?
8. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his reported statement in relation to the film Argo that “I think it’s disappointing, but I don’t think we want to go too far on these things”?
9. METIRIA TUREI (Greens) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement that “our plan will allow Auckland’s civic leaders to think regionally, plan strategically and act decisively in a way that has not happened for the past six decades”?
10. Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour) to the Minister of Revenue: Why has the Government decided not to change the fringe benefit taxation of employer-provided car parks in Auckland and Wellington, but to leave in place proposals to tax cell phones and laptops?
11. MELISSA LEE (National) to the Minister for Social Development: How is the Government’s Social Workers in Hospitals initiative making a difference for vulnerable children?
12. CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour) to the Minister responsible for Novopay: Is he confident that teachers will now be receiving the correct pay in future pay rounds; if not, why not?

Labour and National are asking four questions apiece, the Greens two, NZ First one, and Brendan Horan one. Patsy of the day goes to Melissa Lee for question 10: How is the Government’s Social Workers in Hospitals initiative making a difference for vulnerable children?

Labour is asking on KiwiRail’s health and safety standards, the car park tax, Novopay, and a gotcha to the PM. The Greens are asking on climate change and regional planning in Auckland, NZ First is asking on the film Argo and Brendan Horan is asking about education.

Government Bills 3.00 pm – 6.00 pm and 7.30 pm – 10.00 pm

1. Appropriation (2011/12 Financial Review) Bill – committee stage (cont.)
2. Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill – committee stage
3. Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) – committee stage

The Appropriation (2011/12 Financial Review) Bill is under the guidance of Bill English and confirms the financial matters relating to the financial year ended 30 June 2012. Four hours are allocated to it and all financial reviews are available for debate.

The Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill is under the guidance of Simon Bridges and amends the Minimum Wage Act 1983 through changes to the Order-in-Council provisions. These include introducing the ability to set 1 or more starting-out rates of wages (payable at not less than 80% of the minimum adult rate of wages) for eligible young people aged 16, 17, 18, or 19 years who are not supervising or training other workers, repealing the ability to set the current new entrant rate, and changing the criteria for setting the current training rate.

The Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) was introduced by Peter Dunne in August 2012, in his role as Minister of Revenue. The Bill introduces data-matching with the New Zealand Customs Service to locate borrowers in serious default when they enter or leave New Zealand. It will also change the definition of income, bringing it into line with the definition used for Working For Families tax credits and student allowances, from April 2014. At second reading only the Greens and Mana voted against.

Antony Green has launched his 2013 election calculator. Antony is the premier election analyst in Australia.

It makes predictions for all 150 seats on the basis of either the swing or two party preferred vote. But it has some additional nifty features.

• Can select the results from a recent poll
• Can set individual swings for each state (and swings do not tend to be uniform across the country)
• Can factor in retiring MPs
• Can over-ride the projected result in a few marginal seats

On the latest (Neilsen) poll Labor is projected to lose 25 seats and win 47 while the Coalition is projected to gain 25 seats and win 98.

On the best poll to date for the Coalition, they would win 110 seats to 35 for Labor.

One can see why some of the Labor MP are thinking the unthinkable and Rudd may challenge again.

Tyler Cowen writes in the NYT:

ECONOMICS is sometimes associated with the study and defense of selfishness and material inequality, but it has an egalitarian and civil libertarian core that should be celebrated.

Specifically:

At least since the 19th century, the interest of economists in personal liberty can be easily documented. In 1829, all 15 economists who held seats in the British Parliament voted to allow Roman Catholics as members. In 1858, the 13 economists in Parliament voted unanimously to extend full civil rights to Jews. (While both measures were approved, they were controversial among many non-economist members.) For many years leading up to the various abolitions of slavery, economists were generally critics of slavery and advocates of people’s natural equality

I see it as partly being a rationalist.

For example, Adam Smith cited birth and fortune, as opposed to intrinsically different capabilities, as the primary reasons for differences in social rank. And the classical economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill promoted equal legal and institutional rights for women long before such views were fashionable.

Equality of opportunity!

More recently, a tradition from University of Chicago economists asserts that deep down, all human beings have the same desires, even though they may face different circumstances and incentives. Gary Becker, the Nobel laureate who is one of the founders of this approach, used the economic method to lay bare the selfish motives behind racial and ethnic discrimination.

Discrimination tends to be a very selfish act.

Often, economists spend their energies squabbling with one another, but arguably the more important contrast is between our broadly liberal economic worldview and the various alternatives — common around the globe — that postulate natural hierarchies of religion, ethnicity, caste and gender, often enforced by law and strict custom.

A nice contrast.

Economics evolved as a more moral and more egalitarian approach to policy than prevailed in its surrounding milieu. Let’s cherish and extend that heritage. The real contributions of economics to human welfare might turn out to be very different from what most people — even most economists — expect.

Cowen is of course one of my favourite economists.

Nicole Pryor at Stuff reports:

Sick people are more likely to be out of work and have money problems than injured people, says new research.

A study from the University of Otago, which has been published in Social Science & Medicine, compared over 100 stroke victims under 65-years-old with 429 people who had a similarly debilitating injury.

Both groups were followed for one year to compare their standard of living under the ACC system and means-tested benefits.

Under the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), injured people could get up to 80% of their weekly wages while recovering, as well as treatment and rehabilitation support.

Sick people could get treatment costs, but no compensation for lost wages beyond limited means-tested benefits.

There is a huge variation between those who have accidents and those who are sick. This even extends to situations that if you are born disabled (say with one leg) you get far less support than if you lose a leg in a car crash.

McAllister said at the very least there needs to be better income support for people with illnesses.

“For years people have been saying how unfair this is, the two quite different systems, and that just because someone has the misfortune of having an illness, rather than an injury, they have greater financial consequences.”

She said another option could be to extend ACC to cover illnesses.

While the disparity is a problem, the proposed solution could be more of a problem.

The first is that ACC premiums would increase massively. Every employer and employee would be paying more into ACC.

The second is that the whole basis for ACC was for accidents, and the no faults system was in return for removing the possibility of expensive lawsuits to determine compensation. That rationale does not apply for sickness. You can of curse get income protection insurance to cover the possibility of lost income due to illness.

Is it better to have one government run income protection scheme for illness that is compulsory or competing ones that people can choose to be in?

Finally look at the growth in even the sickness benefit by those who prefer not to work (of course not all or even most, but a significant minority). Think of the incentives if the sickness benefit is effectively set at 80% of your previous earnings? Especially consider that many people are on the sickness benefit due to alcohol or drug addiction. Do we really want to pay people 80% of their previous wages to remain an alcoholic or drug addict?

[UPDATE: According to MSD 7% of sickness beneficiaries are there for substance abuse, so not as many as I thought. Still a reasonable number. Also around 40% are due to psychological or psychiatric conditions which may have a substance aspect to them as the data records primary reasons only – not all reasons.]

So yes there is a disparity and a problem. But the solution is not extending ACC to illness. There could be merit in taking a more integrated approach to accidents and illness but it has to be an affordable one that doesn’t provide bad incentives.

Tracey Chatterton at Dom Post reports:

A prominent Napier lawyer has admitted to carelessly driving into the car of lobbyist Garth McVicar.

Defence lawyer Nigel Hewat, 65, collided with a car being driven by the Sensible Sentencing Trust chairman on July 26 last year.

McVicar, of Te Pohue, was driving the trust’s sponsored Hyundai on his way to a meeting about 5.50pm when the incident happened.

Hewat had been driving along the 100km/h-zoned Napier Rd, the Napier District Court was told today.

He drove into the driver’s door of McVicar’s car while turning right into Lawn Rd.

The impact spun McVicar’s car full-circle before it crashed into a power pole, bringing the power lines down.

Hewat parked his car about 75 metres away from the intersection and walked away from the scene.

You send another car into a power pole, bringing power lines down and you walk away?? I’m sorry but that is criminal.

McVicar, who was not injured, and another motorist found Hewat and brought him back to the scene.

Hewat left again only to be picked up by the police walking along Lawn Rd.

And after he was brought back, he again left the scene. And this is not a dumb 19 year old. This is a lawyer.

At the time Hewat told police he did not know he had collided with another vehicle.

Really? You did not notice the crash?

Appearing in the Napier District Court this morning, Hewat pleaded guilty to careless driving and failing to stop to ascertain whether anyone was injured.

He had intended to defend the charges but changed his plea to save the court time and money, his lawyer Roger Philip said.

Love to hear how he could defend them.

Mr Philip said Hewat was an experienced criminal lawyer who knew he was obliged to check if anyone was hurt. However, he was traumatised and confused from the impact.

‘‘Even today he can’t explain his actions,’’ Mr Philip said.

I think the word we are looking for is won’t, not can’t.

Hewat was fined $850, ordered to pay court costs and disqualified from driving for six months.

That’s an appallingly light sentence for twice fleeing the scene.

McVicar was next to a cyclist, and it would have been all too easy for her to have been killed if McVicar’s car had been pushed into her.

In Quebec it is actually an offence to have a sign in English (or any other language) and not in French. Personally I think this is ridiculous and we have seen why. The Economist reports:

On February 19th, Massimo Lecas, co-owner of an Italian restaurant, Buonanotte, in Montreal, wrote that he had received a letter from the office warning him that there were too many Italian words (such as “pasta”) on his menu. This was a violation of Quebec’s language charter, he was told, and if they were not changed to the French equivalents (pâtes in the case of pasta) he would face a fine.

Think how much money they spend on enforcing this stupid law. I wonder if they’d warn a place that has a quote in Latin!

Other restaurant owners who had received similar letters—a fish-and-chip-shop owner who was instructed to call his main offering poisson frits et frites, a brasserie owner who was asked to cover the “redial” button on his telephone and the “on/off” button on his microwave—came forward, an indication this was not an isolated incident.

You can’t make this up!

Journalists happily uncovered more extreme examples, such as the owner of a sex shop who tussled with inspectors over the English-only instructions on a sex aid. She offered to translate the safety instructions into French and place a sticker over the English warning, but this did not satisfy the inspectors. The case went to all the way to the Superior Court of Justice. (I wonder if the lawyers were able to keep a straight face.) The owner ended up with a C$500 fine.

She got fined $500 because the sex aid only had English instructions! I love this extract from the more detailed story:

The product in question, she wrote, is a ring used on the male sexual organ to enhance a female partner’s pleasure. During Mr. Picard’s first visit, he noted that the packaging and safety label were in English only. Ever vigilant, he made three subsequent visits and noted “partial corrections” but not enough to make the product conform to the law.

The poor bureaucrat – had to visit the sex store three times and inspect all the gear for correct language instructions!

In testimony at trial, the store manager said no similar product was available with French text. Under cross-examination, the Crown inquired about a Trojan product sold in drug stores with bilingual packaging, but it was established that the Trojan product was different because it vibrated. Store records introduced as evidence established that 16 of the Super Stretch Sleeves were sold over 12 months.

What a great trial this must have been.

Chris Rennie blogged in June 2010:

If Pope Benedict XVI doesn’t get a good priest-offender communication strategy underway pretty soon, he’ll be resigning. Preposterous, you might say – it’s unthinkable a Pope could resign. 

When popes Pontian (230-235), Marcellinus (296 – 304), John XVIII (1003 – 1009) Benedict IX (no exact dates due to confusion), Celestine V (1294) and Gregory XII (1406 – 1417) put on their funny hats for the first time probably the last thing on their mind would have been the prospect of resigning. 

But resign they all did and rather messily. So Pope Boniface VIII who succeeded Celestine thought he’d better tidy up the resignation process and put it into Church Law. 

What we don’t know is whether the resignation will now be seen as a precedent for future Popes.

Talking of Popes, I have to say that so far the new Pope seems to be making a pretty good impression. His strengths (for me) are:

• Excellent inter-faith relations in Argentina
• His name – I like St Francis of Assisi
• Appears relatively down to earth
• A focus on helping poor people, and that the Church should be poorer
• Not from the Curia, so may help clean up the corruption

Patrick Gower has tweeted:

David Shearer has corrected MPs Register of Pecuniary Interests after not disclosing United Nations bank account. Says it was mistake.

This means that his declaration to the Registrar has been incorrect for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Mistakes of course can happen, and maybe it only had a trivial amount of money in it, such as $50.

But it would be good to know how material the non-disclosure was and how it was over-looked.

UPDATE: Trevor Mallard blogged in 2010 that Chris Finlayson must be stood down for a minor non-disclosure that year. I can only presume that Mr Mallard regards failing to disclose an entire bank account as far more serious and also warrants a stand down. Also note that the Finlayson incident was entirely technical and non-substantive. What we are still awaiting is how large was David Shearer’s forgotten bank account.

UPDATE 2: NRT on Twitter has pointed out the bank account must have had at least $50,000 in it to be required to be disclosed.

UPDATE3: I/S at NRT has blogged:

 Shearer clearly knows the rules around bank accounts, because he already declares one (a term deposit with Westpac). So he can’t claim ignorance as a defence. If he deliberately tried to deceive the New Zealand public about his assets, then he’s morally unfit to be leader of the Labour Party, or an MP for that matter. But even if we accept his excuse, and ascribe it to sheer forgetfulness (something which I think the New Zealand public would find extremely difficult to believe), then he’s too incompetent for the job. 

Meanwhile, its worth pointing out: knowingly making a false return is Contempt of Parliament, and the argument that this was not knowing requires superhuman credulity. Will Parliament hold its own to account? Or will they once again collude in their cozy conspiracy of silence around these matters?

I’m not as harsh as NRT. I am assuming it is an honest mistake. But it is a pretty big omission, so there is a need for David Shearer to fully explain the omission.

UPDATE4: Cactus Kate has raised an interesting point. Did Shearer declare the bank account to the IRD? If he did not, then that is even bigger trouble. If he did, then how was it included for tax compliance but not for transparency requirements? If every year you are filing a tax return that includes income from the foreign bank account, that should prompt you to remember it for the Register of Pecuniary Interests.

Some free campaign advice from me.

If one of your major arguments against same sex marriage is that it will lead to polygamous marriage also being made legal, it’s not a great idea to state that polygamy is more justified than same sex marriage, as a natural institution.

Interesting of the three sorts of polygamy, polygyny is most common – a man with multiple wives. As Liz points out it is already legal in around 60 countries. Polyandry is not really legal anywhere and exists in a just a few far flung places.

Also of interest is that the Nazis looked at making polygyny legal because WWII killed so many men. Their reasoning was that with such a shortage of men, some men have to have multiple wives so that all German women could have children.

The Telegraph reports:

In a rare interview, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal tells Christian Sylt about his anger over the Forbes Rich List, which estimated that he is worth $20bn – $9.6bn less than he claims and not enough to place him in the coveted top 10.

Heh, most people claim these rich lists over-estimate their wealth. Not often someone is angry that they say the estimate is too low!

Prince Alwaleed is the 58-year-old grandson of the founder of Saudi Arabia but not one drop of his fortune comes from oil or inheritance. Instead, he made his money by investing in global brands at a time when their share prices were depressed. Along the way he has built up significant stakes in trophy assets such as Apple, Citigroup, Disney and the Savoy Hotel in London. His portfolio spans the globe and he likes people to know it.

I admire people whose wealth is earnt, not inherited.

The dispute has drawn attention to the extent of Prince Alwaleed’s influence. His career was kick-started with a $30,000 loan from his father after graduating with a degree in business administration from California’s Menlo College in 1979.

His father also gave Prince Alwaleed a house which he mortgaged, raising about $400,000, and each month, as a grandson of Ibn Saud, the first king and founder of Saudi Arabia, he receives a $15,000 allowance. The prince was no pauper, but it was business savvy that built his wealth.

They say the first million is the hardest but even without that initial assistance, he’s done pretty well. But he does seem obsessed with having his worth seen as high as possible. The Wikipedia article on him quotes:

Kerry A. Dolan, the editor of Forbes billionaires list wrote the article Prince Alwaleed and the Curious Case of Kingdom Holding Stock upon the 2013 publication of the list.^[6] Dolan wrote of the importance of the list to Al Waleed, most notably detailing the leap in the share price of Kingdom Holdings in the time leading up to the publication of the list.^[6] Al Waleed would blind copy Dolan on text messages he sent to prominent people to impress her, she also spent a week with him in Riyadh in 2008, at his behest, touring his palaces. In 2006 Forbes estimated his net worth as $7 billion less than Al Waleed claimed. He telephoned Dolan at her home, with Dolan claiming that he sounded “nearly in tears”.^[6] Al Waleed also had Kingdom Holding’s chief financial officer fly to New York before a previous list had been published to ensure that Forbes used his stated numbers.^[6] Dolan wrote that “…for the past few years former Alwaleed executives have been telling me that the prince, while indeed one of the richest men in the world, systematically exaggerates his net worth by several billion dollars….The value that the prince puts on his holdings at times feels like an alternate reality, including his publicly traded Kingdom Holding, which rises and falls based on factors that, coincidentally, seem more tied to the Forbes billionaires list than fundamentals.”

If I had $30 billion I wouldn’t get upset if people said it was only $20 billion!

The Herald editorial:

A tax on carparks provided by employers might be justified on the principles of fairness and consistency that ought to govern all taxation. A carpark has a clear monetary value and it is puzzling that it was not part of the 2007 legislation which introduced fringe benefit tax to cover benefits that employees receive as part of their employment. Why, after all, should those with free staff carparks receive a substantial untaxed advantage denied those who commute to work by other means?

I agree. The best tax system is one with few loopholes, low rates and a broad base.

The pursuit of principle can, however, be undone if the costs of a policy outweigh the benefits or if it is tainted by its own inconsistency, as this proposal is.

Let’s look at that.

Among other things, the group suggested the tax would net just $17 million for Inland Revenue, while generating additional compliance costs of about $30 million for businesses.

If that is the case, the tax extension should not increase. If compliance costs are greater than revenue it is economically inefficient. I would add a note of caution though that the estimate of compliance costs is one commissioned by opponents. I’d have to read the assumptions to determine how robust it is. So I wouldn’t take it as holy grail. But we should rightly be concerned about compliance costs.

 If tax purity is the reason for this exercise, the impost should be applied throughout the country. An employee carpark, like other non-cash benefits such as petrol vouchers, is an advantage whether it is applied in Akaroa or Auckland. It is a perk for the car-driving workers of Whangarei as much as those of Wellington, and one denied those who get to work by bicycle, foot or public transport, even if the last of those modes is also subsidised.

I think the issue her is again benefit to cost ratio.  Take the fact IRD does not apply GST to anything you purchase from overseas unless the GST is over $50 in value (off memory). Now that is not purist, but it is sensible as if they tried to impose GST on every overseas purchase the compliance costs would be massive – far more than the revenue.

The same go with the proposed regional differentiation on the car park issue. In many areas the value of a car park is minimal – say $300 a year. It would be as silly to insist on paying FBT on those parks as it would be to insist every employee must account for every single personal phone call on their work phone.

So it is quite legitimate to say we’ll only ask bsuinesses to go to the hassle of calculating FBT on car parks when they are located in an area where the value of a car park is high. If you did not do that, then the compliance costs would absolutely exceed the revenue.

The revenue this tax would gather, $17 million, is a drop in the public bucket. It could be justified only if there were no significant adverse consequences. Accountants Lock & Partners estimate the costs of gathering the carpark tax would be almost double the take.

If their analysis is robust, then the tax should not proceed. Maybe one of the economist bloggers could scrutinise their analysis?

Then there is the damage that may be done to the city centres of Auckland and Wellington.

The capital has already been affected by the layoffs in government departments. Like Auckland, it also faces a struggle to retain businesses. Many small companies, in particular, are constantly assessing whether they would find it cheaper, and no handicap to their business, to move to suburban locations.

I don’t see that as damage. It can be economically beneficial to have a business not be in the CBD. Decisons on whether to be in the CBD or not should be based on the actual costs of doing so, and not false subsidies such as exempting parks from FBT.

The Unite union has warned that if nightshift employees lose their work carparks it would force them to walk to cars parked some distance away at unsafe hours.

I think they have raised a valid concern there.

It should not come to that. Opposition to the tax is widespread and well-founded. The Government sounds no more than lukewarm on the idea. It should drop it.

Oh the tax change is as dead as a doorknob I’d say. I’d just make the point that not all the criticism of it is well-founded. There are some valid issues of concern, but some of the issues cited are over-blown.

UPDATE: And the Government has announced the tax change will not proceed.

Adam Dudding at Stuff reports:

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has broken the habit of a lifetime and said something nice about a foreign country – namely New Zealand.

Clarkson, who has referred to Mexicans as “lazy, feckless, flatulent” oafs, given a Nazi salute in an episode about BMWs, and labelled Australians “convicts”, raves about New Zealand in his column in today’s London Sunday Times.

New Zealand, he writes, is “absolutely stunning; bite-the-back-of-your-hand-to-stop-yourself-from-crying-out lovely”.

It is. I think we take what we have for granted sometimes.

With characteristic humility, Clarkson uses his newspaper column to advise God that he made a mistake when choosing the Middle East as his religious base.

“If you were God and you were all-powerful, you wouldn’t select Bethlehem as a suitable birthplace for your only child because it’s a horrible place.

“And you certainly wouldn’t let him grow up anywhere in the Holy Land.

“What you’d actually do is choose New Zealand.”

If God really were all-knowing, continues Clarkson, “children at Christmas time today would be singing ‘Oh little town of Wellington’ and people would not cease from mental fight until Jerusalem had been built in Auckland’s green and pleasant land.”

Perhaps the most startling compliment, however, is Clarkson’s claim that if God had got it right, “Jesus would have been from Palmerston North”, a stark deviation from the verdict of his countryman John Cleese, who once said the North Island city should be renamed “suicide capital of New Zealand” because “if you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick”.

Where would they find a virgin in Palmerston North?? 🙂

This is a real letter written by a father who overheard his son talking about how to come out to his parents. Nate took a photo of it and sent it to FCKH8. On Facebook it has had around 81,000 likes and 49,000 shares.