Lockwood Smith will give his valedictory speech this week. I’ve already blogged several times on Lockwood’s contribution to Parliament, and will cover his valedictory.

It is timely to recognise that this also sees the retirement of Beryl Bright, who has worked for Lockwood for over 25 years.

Many staff work for an MP for a couple of years only. To work for one MP for over half your working life is a huge commitment. You become essential to them, and effectively part of their family.

Those who stay with an MP for the long haul, often have their own ups and downs which coincide with the MP. If your MP is a Minister and there is a change of Government, you go from being a Senior Private Secretary managing an office of a dozen people to a sole executive secretary.

I recall in 1999 when this happened, Parliamentary Service added insult to injury by initially saying that someone who had been an SPS for nine years had to come in at the bottom of the salary scale for executive secretaries as their ministerial experience was deemed to be with a different employer! Common sense eventually prevailed.

An experienced staff member makes a huge difference to an MPs effectiveness. They don’t just run their office and diary. They act as eyes and ears and protect them whenever they can.

I think my first experience with Beryl was in 1991 when I was organising the Young Nats policy conference we wanted Lockwood as Education Minister to attend. It was at National Park in Mt Ruapehu. Beryl politely but firmly pointed out to us that what we were asking was for an extremely busy Minister to get up at 5 am, drive an hour and a half to an airport, then fly to Auckland, then fly to Taupo, then drive an hour or so to us, and then do the same in reverse. In other words he would be giving up his entire Saturday just to spend an hour with us. That was part of the job – making sure that we understood that while we were just getting him for an hour – his attendance was in fact a major undertaking for him. Lockwood was a great supporter of the Young Nats and turned up though pretty much every year without fail.

So if you are an aspiring MP, you should hope you manage to get a Beryl Bright to work for you. The difference it can make can not be under-stated.

The Maori Council has announced:

The Māori Council is delivering a public awareness programme for the Māori Electoral Option, through a contract with the Electoral Commission’s Enrolment Services, in a number of areas within New Zealand.

As a provider of this programme, the Māori Council is committed to giving Māori the information they need to make their own choice as to which type of electoral roll they wish to be on – the Māori roll or the General roll.

The Māori Electoral Option helps determine the number of Māori and General electorates there will be for the next two General Elections.

I have to say that I think choosing a body which is currently suing the Government in court to be involved in what is meant to be a neutral enrolment option exercise is very poor judgement. It doesn’t lend confidence to the neutrality of our electoral institutions.

Green leader Russell Norman tweeted:

Lord Turner, chair UK Financial Services Authority, defends financing Govt spending by ltd printing money. radical!http://ow.ly/1S6b0Q

Labour strategist Trevor Mallard replied:

@RusselNorman stop thrashing dead horse and work on imaginative tools appropriate for NZ

This will go down well at The Standard! Russel then responds:

@TrevorMallard you just go back to closing schools and making housing unaffordable like you did in govt

Points to Norman I say. He follows up with:

@TrevorMallard 2002-2007 house prices doubled, current account ballooned. Greens repeatedly told Labour to act, but you did nothing

This is like the Iran-Iraq war – you don’t know which side to cheer for!

UPDATE: it continues. Mallard says:

Presume this is an intern not@RusselNorman but whoever it is needs to look to future not focus on rear vision mirror

And we also have a very tetchy Labour MP in Clare Curran:

@jordantcarter @pointoforder that’s bullshit Jordan

Maybe they are all nervous about Shearer’s reshuffle?

Do a traceroute to 216.81.59.173

Very cool.

H/T: Simon Allard

I got sent a link to this video of Chris Finlayson as Attorney-General talking about his role in advising Parliament under Section 7 of the Bill of Rights Act if a proposed law is unjustifiably inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act.

I thought at first it would be one for the policy wonks only, but I think many might enjoy his typically blunt appraisals. Chris also reveals that he doesn’t just submit whatever the Ministry of Justice or Crown Law says on a bill, but will often draft his own reports or majorly rewrite their drafts.

Some quotes:

• also (report) on a couple of members’ bill which are shockers like Holly Walker’s ridiculous lobby legislation which seems to breach almost every provision of the Bill of Rights
• How the disgraceful Foreshore & Seabed legislation avoided a Section 7 report beats me
• The Electoral Finance Bill, which was frankly a Stalinist piece of legislation introduced by Helen Clark in her third term to pay the National Party back for doing so well at the 2005 election, breached numerous provisions of the Bill of Rights yet it never received a Section 7 report.
• This is the 19th floor of Bowen House. As you can see I look down on all of my colleagues in the Beehive … Don’t put that in the film

Chris also said that if he thinks a proposed bill is likely to get an adverse Section 7 report, some of his colleagues will then work with him to amend the bill so that it avoids conflicting with the Bill of Right Act.

Quite a few things announced by Gillard and Key in Queenstown. They are:

• Joint action to address the high cost of mobile roaming rates between the two countries
  
• an $8 million trial of fast‑track automated border technology for trans-tasman travel
• Commencement of new retirement savings portability arrangements between Australia and New Zealand from 1 July 2013
• Entry into force of the CER Investment Protocol from 1 March 2013
• New Zealand has agreed to resettle 150 refugees who are subject to Australia’s offshore processing legislation, as part of their annual quota of 750 refugees
• NZ$3 million in matched funding over two years to support trans-Tasman collaboration to identify potential vaccines for rheumatic fever
• Investigate a possible reciprocal student debt recovery scheme.
• An A$5 million memorial will be erected in Wellington’s National War Memorial park precinct by the Australian Government

Damien Grant writes in the HoS:

David Shearer and his cohort of prospective coalition partners, the Greens, Mana and NZ First, are holding a show-trial into who killed the manufacturing industry.

Forty thousand manufacturing jobs have disappeared, Shearer declares.

What he does not say is those 40,000 jobs have gone since a peak right before the 2008 recession and almost half of that loss occurred in the final year of the last Labour government.

But if Shearer and his band of the grumpy and frumpy were to take the time to read the Department of Statistics September 2012 Economic Survey on Manufacturing, they would learn that total sales in the sector have been static.

Falling from a high of $24 billion in 2008, it is now sitting at $23 billion, measured in 2010 dollars.

The industry has become more productive; jobs have gone, but sales have not.

A good point.

Shearer is known to enjoy the surf, so he will understand it is best to ride the waves – not try to turn them back.

Manufacturing jobs that have gone are not coming back and there is nothing he, Graeme Wheeler or King Canute can do about it.

As well as his plan to build slums for the urban poor in areas where there will never be any employment – manufacturing or otherwise – he is granting a platform for the vested interests of the likes of the Manufacturers Association to cry about the exchange rate.

It is worth noting that the MEA represents relatively few manufacturers. Business NZ has a far higher proportion of manufacturers in their membership.

Manufacturing jobs have been killed because the economic tide has moved.

Shearer knows it, or should know it.

He may be king one day and if he is telling us he can control the tides of economic change, then he is going to look pretty silly on the beach after the next election.

Grant points out we also have fewer typists and lighthouse keepers than we used to!

Steve Kilgallon at Stuff reports:

Tamihere reckons it’s not what he says, but how he says it that gets him into trouble. He reckons people know he’s saying the right thing, “but they might be far more genteel or academic [how they say it]. I’m not”.

And so, in the course of an hour, he casually insults Helen Clark, most of Labour’s front bench, radio broadcaster Danny Watson, Bennett (again – still fat), TV3’s Tova O’Brien (again – still silly), former Waitakere mayor Bob Harvey, Wishart (scumbag), the Act Party (also scumbags), the Maori Party (incompetent), the unions (lazy), academics (timid), me (loser), and himself.

Classic Tamihere.

And, amid all that, for the first time, he announces he definitely wants to become a Labour MP again.

Oh excellent.

While the chance of a tilt at the “train wreck” Maori Party in the Tamaki Makaurau Maori seat appeals, it seems more likely Tamihere will persuade Labour Maori members to switch electoral rolls into the Waitakere seat, giving him enough clout to win selection and, he hopes, beat Bennett.

But against that will be the unions.

Parliament has announced:

Later in 2013 public hearings of evidence before select committees will be webcast live on this website. This will be part of a pilot to assess how this type of service could be delivered in the future. …

During the pilot, one select committee hearing will be webcast at a time. Webcasting will be able to occur only from certain select committee rooms, but committee rooms will continue to be allocated on the basis of committees’ needs; this will not involve any judgment about the newsworthiness of committee business. A committee intending to hear evidence in public and allocated a room with webcasting facilities will be able to choose whether those hearings are webcast.

I’m pleased to see this initiative. Select Committees are an important part of Parliament and this should allow more people to see what happens at them.

Hopefully eventually we’ll see all select committees available for viewing over the Internet, and also archived for future reference.

Pat Pilcher writes:

For technology to become a fully functioning cog in NZ’s economy, the way we treat intellectual property (e.g. the ideas and concepts behind the software, hardware and other innovation that underpins much of the tech sector) is critically important. In a nutshell, we’d better get our patent laws right or we may find local businesses involved in unwinnable patent fights against lawyered-up multinationals when they could be innovating, exporting and otherwise creating wealth for New Zealanders.

And the patent trolls.

The overarching aim is for the government to provide a balance between innovation and protecting public interests.

Achieving this is no easy feat, and already the bill is mired in controversy as Commerce Minister Craig Foss changed the wording of a clause within the bill which could have huge ramifications for New Zealand’s fledgling software industry.

His amendment has changed some crucial wording in the bill that some say has the government moving away from excluding software from being patented (as per select committee recommendations), to parts of the bill being sufficiently vague that software may indeed become patentable. Clause 10a of the supplementary order paper 120 was amended to read: “..prevents anything from being an invention for the purposes of this Act only to the extent that a patent or an application relates to a computer program as such”

It might only be two words, but from a legal standpoint the addition of “as such” makes all the difference and could see kiwi companies being locked into protracted legal battles against multinationals whose lawyers are likely to emerge as the only real victors, whilst New Zealand could end up on the losing side.

I’m not sure how significant the two extra words are but personally prefer to err on the side of caution and leave them out.

Of equal concern, changes to the bill could see businesses that had invested in New Zealand pulling out. Geomechanica, a Canadian software company had planned to relocate to NZ because they felt that the original patent ban on software as proposed in the unmodified form of the bill would foster an innovation friendly environment. Sadly tweaks made to the patent bill could render a New Zealand business case untenable for them and others, depriving New Zealand of employment opportunities, potentially setting our digital economy back by decades.

According to AJ Guillon, co-founder of Geomechanica, “We have planned our products and marketing based on a relocation to New Zealand, exporting innovative software without the threat of domestic software patents. If the software patent bill passes with the “as such” wording, we cannot justify a relocation to a country with an ambiguous law on a matter that is so important to us.”

Seems like a good case for a clear law that is explicit that software can not be patented.

The latest Nielsen data is here. Major papers are:

• NZ Herald 531,000 (-39,000, -8% drop in last year)
• Waikato Times 96,000 (+2,000, +1%)
• Dominion Post 235,000 (+3,000, +1%)
• The Press 215,000 (-18,000, -9%)
• ODT 96,000 (-9,000, -10%)

That’s some huge drops for the Herald, Press and ODT. The Herald has dropped 68,000 in the last two years.

Weeklies:

• Sunday News 220,000 (-39,000, -16%)
• SST 432,000 (-105,000, -21%)
• HoS 362,000 (-20,000, -6%)
• NBR 53,000 (-5,000, -11%)

Look at the drop for the SST. That is like an arterial blood loss.

The weekly quiz is here. Guessed one.

The Herald reports:

The lowest price of broadband internet access is less important than ensuring consumers move as quickly as possible to high-speed fibre-based services, says Telecommunications Minister Amy Adams.

I disagree. I’m a huge fan of the fibre roll-out but you don’t force people onto fibre by artificially keeping the cost of copper high.

“I don’t think the over-arching criteria in this is ‘what is the cheapest option’,” Adams told BusinessDesk. “If that was the case, we’d be sticking with dial-up. I don’t think you’d find any consumer saying ‘if dial-up’s cheaper, let me have that’.”

I don’t accept that comparison. The difference between dial-up and broadband is massive. My laptop effectively freezes on dialup. The difference between dial-up and DSL is like the difference between a wheelchair and a car. While the difference between DSL and fibre is more like the difference between a Lada and a Porsche. And for some people a Lada is fine.

Her comments followed her announcement the government would accelerate its timetable for reviewing the regulatory regime for telecommunications services. The decision effectively neuters the Commerce Commission, which issued a draft determination late last year that could favour a longer life for the existing copper wire network by pricing it highly competitively with new fibre services.

That draft determination, which Adams described as a “curve ball”, sparked protest from the key players in the ultra-fast broadband roll-out, including NZX-listed Chorus, whose share price recovered 12 per cent today, immediately following Adams’s announcement.

I think it is disappointing that the Government has intervened in this way. The Commerce Commission is doing the job set down by statute. If it has made an error, then that can be challenged in the submissions on the draft and if need be in court. I’ve not see any suggestion the Commission has got the law wrong.

“Carrying on the way it was would have changed the landscape in the way telecommunications services were priced and delivered and we saw some real risks around that in terms of market uncertainty and the market not looking to develop and promote high speed fibre products,” said Adams.

I think the market works better when the Government doesn’t artificially push the price of one product up.

“What became very clear is that this sort of uncertainty and decisions coming out that have really taken everyone by surprise are the last thing that anyone needs in this space.

Not at all. I am not surprised that the Commission found out copper services were over-priced.

Again got sent the link by the persons or persons responsible for the A Bit Shit page. I have no idea at all who they are, but the appear to be disgruntled left-wingers.

Alex Fensome at Stuff reports:

Film giant Warner Brothers has told the Government it will jeopardise future film investment if it releases “sensitive information” about the deal to keep production of The Hobbit in New Zealand.

Ombudsman David McGee has ordered the release of 18 previously withheld Government documents about the 2010 deal.

They include emails between Warner Bros’ New Line studio, Sir Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Films and the Government about the union dispute that threatened to take production offshore.

The Government, which had refused to release the documents, can now prevent their publication only by issuing an order in council, signed by the governor-general. Such a power has never been used.

It is not unusual for an information release to go to the Ombudsman for a ruling. As far as I am aware the Government has not indicated in any way that it would over-rule the Ombudsman. But it goes without saying, that of course they should not.

In Mr McGee’s ruling, New Line warns that, “if the Government is not willing to adequately protect this sensitive information from disclosure, this will operate as a major disincentive to motion picture studios as well as local and foreign talent to utilise New Zealand as a location for future productions”.

It said the documents reflected “negotiations and innermost thinking, including certain strategic decisions, legal and personal opinions, offers from third-party governments and other private information”. If made public, the information would damage New Line’s business relationships and impair its ability to negotiate with unions and third parties, it said.

There are a number of grounds on which information can be with-held. The Ombudsman is the authority that decides on if the information qualifies. He has decided it does not. Companies should know when corresponding with Government that pretty much anything they say is likely to be made public unless it qualifies to be with-held.

Prime Minister John Key said the Government was “quite relaxed” about releasing the paperwork and he expected it to happen.

It had not released the information in the previous two years because of commercial negotiations during the filming of the movies.

While he acknowledged that Warner Bros and Wingnut did not want the information released, he said it was unlikely the Government would use its veto powers.

Good.

Stuff reports:

Nothing about homeless man Lindsay Evans shouts money.

Everything from the worn clothes to the grime screams tramp, and there’s the down-and-out expression of a man with nowhere to go and nothing to do but hope for something better.

Yet as the 53-year-old sucks hungrily at another freshly rolled Bali Shag cigarette in Garden Place, the Hamilton man says his savings add up to $76,200.

Homeless, but can afford to smoke.

For dinner the previous evening Mr Evans ate half a packet of $2.59 Home Brand pretzels. For breakfast, he ate the other half.

How much do cigarettes cost?

Now he can’t wait to get back into employment, as long as it’s the right work, and get a roof over his head.

In the past three years he has applied for more than 800 jobs and hasn’t had a single interview.

Not sure he can afford to be so choosy. But why no jobs?

It’s a grim, boring life, he says. Miserable even. He once went without a shower for seven months – not a big deal.

Could be a good idea, if he does get an interview.

First there’s breakfast, closely followed by one of up to 20 cups of the cheHomeapest instant coffee available.

20 cups a day?

Trace Watkins reports:

Australia and New Zealand regulators will get new powers to crack down on exorbitant mobile phone roaming rates both sides of the Tasman.

Prime Minister John Key and his Australian counterpart Julia Gillard are expected to announce the changes today after meetings in Queenstown.

They will give the Commerce Commission and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission the power to set price caps, or force operators to offer local access services that do not require a change of SIM card.

This looks like a good step to me. Fair to mention though things are a lot better now with Telecom’s flat rate roaming deal.

The changes follow a lengthy investigation and horror stories about holiday makers returning home with mobile phone charges steeper than the cost of their holiday.

Literally.

While prices had dropped recently, that was only because the threat of legislation hung over telecommunications providers, she said.

“When the work began on the report, New Zealanders were facing mobile data charges of up to $30 per megabit but the price had now dropped in most cases to 50c per megabit.”

I think you mean megabyte.

Even 50c is massive. Domestic charges are around 0.1c per MB or $1 per GB.

Brian Fallow writes at NZ Herald:

The New Zealand dollar has hit 76 on the Reserve Bank’s trade-weighted index, its highest level since at least 1990.

Surely that means manufacturers have a point when they plead for a defensive response from policymakers at the bank or in the Beehive?

Only up to a point.

The TWI is highly unlikely to reflect the exchange rates relevant to any particular manufacturer, either exporting or competing with imports.

For many the US dollar will be much more significant than its 30 per cent weighting in the TWI.

For others the Australian dollar is far more important than its 22 per cent index weighting.

And remarkably, the TWI, whose composition was last revised in 1999, does not include the renminbi even though China is now New Zealand’s second-largest export market and largest source of imports.

I’d say time to reweight the TWI. However as the Chinese currency is not a floating one, there may be issues with including it.

Helpfully, though, the ASB Bank economists have compiled two alternative exchange rate indices, weighted by manufacturing import and export flows.

They define manufacturing narrowly, excluding the output of dairy factories and meat works, so as to reflect the position of more value-added, or in the jargon of statisticians “elaborately transformed”, manufactured goods. Such goods represent about 19 per cent of exports and 51 per cent of imports.

Like the official index, it includes five currencies, but with the renminbi replacing sterling.

During the last cycle – from the recession at the start of the millennium to the more recent one – the three indices tracked each other quiet closely.

But since 2009 they have diverged.

All three have appreciated, but the index reflecting manufactured imports less so than the official TWI, and the index for manufactured exports less still.

The result is that the ASB exchange rate indices for both manufactured exports and imports, and especially the former, are even now at levels lower than they were during the boom years of the mid-2000s.

I wasn’t aware of the ASB indices. It makes more sense to use them when referring to the impact on manufacturing than just the US dollar or even the TWI.

ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley says the fact that the manufacturing-relevant exchange rates have not climbed as much as the official TWI highlights a key difference between the most recent appreciation compared with that of the early to mid-2000s.

“In the 2000s the New Zealand dollar appreciated more broadly, that is, against most major currencies and to a similar degree against each. Since 2009, though, it has held broadly stable at a low level against the Australian dollar.”

Australia is the destination for nearly half of New Zealand’s manufactured exports.

A point I made the other day.

David Fisher at NZ Herald reports:

John Key went to meet Hollywood bosses with a briefing from officials saying studio bosses were looking for easier ways to target New Zealanders who downloaded and shared films illegally.

Officials told the Prime Minister Hollywood objected to the $25 fee it had to pay each time a notice warning against copyright infringement was issued and wanted to pay less.

Yep, they hate it. They say it should be zero or at best a few cents. They think ISPs should act as their delivery agents for no charge at all, and that they should be able to send tens of thousands of infringment notices per month via ISPs at the ISPs expense.

What they also hate is that the NZ charge may set an international precedent of reasonable reimbursement of costs for ISPs.

The briefing stated the support came through the MPAA’s New Zealand arm – the Federation Against Copyright Theft – which saw the regime as becoming a “gold standard” for similar schemes around the world. Despite the support, Mr Key was told the studios behind the MPAA did not use it because the $25 fee paid to internet service providers to send warning notices was too high.

Yep, they threw their toys out. I give RIANZ credit that they are at least using the system they lobbied for.

A recent review of the scheme kept the fee at $25 because lower costs would hurt ISPs, who were forced to pay up to $100 to send each notice. Mr Key was told the MPAA’s involvement would lead to an increase in the number of warning notices sent to people and give a “critical mass” that would bring the cost down.

Opponents of the fee change warned cheaper costs could lead to a rise in vexatious complaints.

As reported, the Government recently decided to not give in to the demands from the MPAA and kept the fee at $25. What is also not widely known is that when the scheme was set up, the (then) MED recommended the fee be only $20 and it was in fact Cabinet that increased the fee to $25.

Seven Sharp is not current affairs so much as infotainment. I don’t have a problem with that because I am not sure enough happens in NZ for a daily current affairs show. This leads to manufactured stories and the like.

But I do think current affairs shows are important, even if not daily. And Rachel Glucina points out how many we have now:

• Sunday, TV One
• 360, TV3
• 60 Minutes, Prime
• Native Affairs, Maori TV
• 3rd Degree, TV3
• The Vote, TV3
• 20/20, TV2
• Q+A, TV One
• The Nation, TV3

When people say there is no current affairs in New Zealand, well far from it.

Tom Pullar-Strecker at Stuff reports:

Government websites will switch to free, open-source software from Wellington firm Silverstripe under an “all-of-government” contract …

DIA last year chose 33 firms to design and develop websites for government agencies through separate all-of-government web services contracts. The decision to pick Silverstripe as its “common web services platform” following a tender means those firms will use Silverstripe’s software in place of about 50 other content management systems when carrying out work for government agencies. …

Don Christie, co-chairman of NZ Rise, which lobbies on behalf of domestic information technology suppliers, said the win was “fabulous” for Silverstripe, which employs 50 people. The company was founded by three Wellington College and Scots College graduates in 2000 – Tim Copeland, Sam Minnee and Sigurd Magnusson, who still own 84 per cent.

Although its software is free, Silverstripe earns money from add-ons and consulting.

Silverstripe rose to prominence in 2008 when its software was used to manage the website for the United States Democrats’ National Convention at which Barack Obama was selected as the party’s presidential candidate.

Air New Zealand switched from a Microsoft content management system to Silverstripe the following year.

Silverstripe is a great local success story, and they go from strength to strength.