Stuff reports:

A new report by the Treasury claims private power companies offer the cheapest electricity in most parts of New Zealand, using the same survey that the Green Party claims shows the opposite. …

Last week, the Treasury issued a report that said recent analysis of the figures was “inappropriate”, because it used an average for the entire country, taking no account of regional price differences.

In other words, Treasury looked at the actual prices on offer to real people, rather than used a theoretical average that no one actually pays.

According to the Treasury’s figures, in 21 of 45 regions, private-sector companies were, on average, cheaper than the SOEs, including those in seven of the 11 largest regions.

Private-sector companies had the cheapest offerings in 29 of the 45 regions, the Treasury says, and were the second-cheapest in another six.

“In our view, the assertion that SOEs offer cheaper prices than private companies is not supported by the evidence,” the report says. “In any case, what matters is not ownership – it is . . . the level of competition among retailers.”

This is the key point. You can choose between six to 12 retailers in most areas. And hundreds of thousands of people are choosing and swapping each year.

In Auckland the cheapest retailer is the privately owned Pulse. They are $250 a year cheaper than Govt owned Mercury. Contact is $200 a year cheaper.

In Christchurch the average charge ranges from $1,950 to $2,600 with private companies being the cheapest and most expensive. It is about choice and competition – not ownership.

Stuff reports:

An Australian muay thai boxing trainer has been barred from his flight home from Singapore after posting a threat on Facebook to hijack and crash the plane.

Queenslander Wayne Avison paid a high price for venting his spleen on social media last month after his flight from Singapore to Bangkok was delayed five hours, causing him to miss a connecting flight to Australia.

Mr Avison complained on his Facebook page on September 25 that the missed flight had left him stranded in Singapore, adding that the airline Scoot had not offered him a night’s accommodation either.

His son replied a short time later: “Well that sucks. Make sure you file a complaint when u get back”.

Mr Avison responded: “I’m going to high-jack the plane on the return flight and crash it … that’ll fix the f…ers”.

The airline, Singapore-based Scoot, cancelled his flight in response, citing concern for the safety of its passengers.

Mr Avison later posted online what he said was the airline’s explanation for barring him: “You have exhibited threatening behaviour thereby posing a serious safety threat to our passengers and cabin crew. We cannot risk such behaviour, as that would be irreconcilable with the airline’s overriding duty to ensuring safety and security of its passengers and crew.”

But Mr Avison posted in reply that the threat was “an obvious joke”, claiming that Scoot had in fact cancelled his flight because of his many complaints about the airline’s poor standard of service.

“I’m Australian and live in Australia, a democratic society, which gives me the right to think, say and write whatever I bloody want!” he wrote. He has not yet deleted the comment about hijacking the plane from his Facebook page, which is publicly viewable.

What an idiot. You do have the right to say and write what you want – but there are consequences.

This case is different to the UK one where a man was prosecuted criminally for a tweet about blowing the airport up, after a cancelled flight meant he didn’t get to see his girlfriend. There the airport did not discover the tweet until a week later, and it was obviously not a threat.

But to write online that you plan to hijack and crash the flight you are waiting to catch – well don’t complain when you don’t get to board.

Keih Ng blogs:

The guy who tipped me off is Ira Bailey. He was one of the Urewera 17. He currently works as a system administrator, has a young child, and is not interested in being the media limelight. That’s why he asked for anonymity.

Mr Bailey is not interested in publicity? This must be a recent thing, as he has sought it in the past.

He did not have any special access to the system – he just had half an hour to kill at a WINZ office.

So Bailey says he just happened to be at a WINZ office, and was bored.

He plugged in his USB drive and it didn’t appear, so he had a poke around the system to find it – and found the giant vulnerability instead.

Yeah, I plug in USB drives to computer terminals all the time.

I should make very clear that I think Keith Ng has acted entirely properly and ethically. He go told of a security breach, he investigated it, he took evidence to prove it, he notified MSD and the Privacy Commissioner, he revealed the breach and handed all the data over to the Privacy Commissioner.

I also think Keith believes what Mr Bailey has told him. I’m just slightly more sceptical of the story that an experienced system admin just happens to be bored, at WINZ, and accidentally finds it. Especially when you consider what he then did.

He called MSD to ask if they had a reward system for reporting security vulnerabilities. This is not unusual practice, and it’s certainly not blackmail. Google and Facebook, for example, both pay for vulnerability reporting. It gives them a opportunity to close holes discretely, without causing embarrassment for their company.

Yes giant global tech companies have been known to have a reward system. I’ve never ever heard of a Govt Dept having such a system, and companies that do, tend to advertise the fact. I asked Keith if Baily asked for or suggested a specific amount, and he said no.

It is unfortunate Bailey thought his “accidental” half hour discovery was something MSD should pay for and did not do what Keith did, and just alert the Privacy Commissioner and publish what happened – either directly or via Keith.

MSD called Ira back two days later. They told Ira that they don’t pay for vulnerability reports. Ira told them he’d been talking to a journalist and the conversation didn’t go anywhere after that.

I’d be interested in details of that conversation. I’d also be interested in how after that MSD didn’t find the massive security hole. Whom was alerted to the request for payment?

Should he have reported the vulnerability, free of charge? Yeah, that would have been the selfless thing to do for the public good. But asking to be compensated for his troubles is not unreasonable, either. After all, it’s not as if the people MSD ended up relying on – KPMG – did it for free.

There is a difference between being asked to locate a vulnerability for a fee, and finding one and asking someone to pay you for it, or otherwise you’ll expose it in the media.

As I said I think Keith has acted entirely appropriately, and I’ve said so on radio – his actions has served the public interest. I’m reserving judgement on Bailey until I’ve heard more detail.

Vernon Small at Stuff reports:

The Government is giving as one-off 5 per cent boost to the War Disablement and Surviving Spouse pensions as part of a $60m package for veterans spread over five years.

Prime Minister John Key told the Returned and Services Association National Council the changes came in response to the Law Commission’s report into the War Pensions Act. The Government had accepted in part or in full 132 of the 170 recommendations in that report.

The 5 per cent increase would cost $5.8m and would cut in on April 1, 2013. It would come on top of the forecast inflation increase of 1.8 per cent.

I doubt few, if any, will begrudge this.

John Key has announced:

Prime Minister John Key today outlined the Government’s next steps to prepare Mighty River Power for its partial sale in the first half of 2013.

“I’m pleased to announce today Cabinet made three decisions regarding our shares sales programme:

“First, the Government will not implement the Waitangi Tribunal’s ‘shares plus’ concept, or engage in further negotiations in relation to that concept, before the sale of shares in our energy companies.

Good. This will almost inevitably see the Maori Council go to court – which was also pretty inevitable. They have to make the case that the Government reducing its shareholding from 100% to 51% means they will be unable to resolve any claims around water rights. Considering Contact Energy was sold 100%, without any loss of ability, I think this is a hard case to make. The bigger danger is an injunction until the full case is decided. That is why the sale is delayed until after March next year.

“Second, the Government will proceed to remove Mighty River Power from the State Owned Enterprises Act. We will prepare an Order in Council for Cabinet and Executive Council to consider and approve on Tuesday 23 October.

“And finally, we will direct officials to continue to work towards a sale of up to 49 per cent of the shares in Mighty River Power between March and June 2013.”

Good. This was at the centre of the election campaign, and parties that said they would support this received the majority of seats in Parliament.

Mr Key says the Government’s position on water has always been very clear:

• In common law no one owns water.
• Maori do have rights and interests in water, and these will continue to be addressed through a range of processes such as Treaty settlements, the Government’s Fresh Start for Fresh Water programme and dialogue with iwi leaders.
• The partial sale of Mighty River Power does not impact on the Crown’s ability to recognise Maori rights and interests in water.

A nice summary.

Mike Stockdale from the AA writes in the Dom Post:

As part of the reform of the vehicle licensing and Warrant of Fitness systems, the Government is looking at changing the frequency of the safety inspection. Changing the WOF system is a big decision that will affect us all, so it’s important it’s made on the basis of unbiased facts and evidence.

Let’s put things in perspective. New Zealand has the most frequent vehicle safety inspection in the world. No other country requires cars aged 6 years or older (most of our fleet) to be tested twice a year.

A key point.

Some countries have an annual inspection, and many only every two years. Others, like much of Australia and the United States, have no regular inspection at all.

Most vehicles in New Zealand are tested every 6000km. In Britain they’re tested every 19,000km, and in Germany vehicles travel about 32,000km between inspections.

Personally if inspections are to be regular, I think distance is more sensible than time.

Yet despite these differences in inspection frequency the number of crashes caused by vehicle faults in New Zealand is about the same as other countries at about 2.5 per cent – or less than half a per cent where it is the sole cause.

So we are paying extra for no benefit.

The Automobile Association believes some of the focus on vehicle safety should shift away from the majority of compliant motorists to the minority who choose to ignore our laws and put other lives at risk, and focusing more on factors that most contribute to crashes – tyres, brakes and lighting. When it comes to vehicle faults contributing to crashes, the main cause is worn tyres and our current six-monthly test isn’t preventing that.

We need to be smarter about how we ensure vehicle safety is maintained and enforced, rather than only relying on a WOF check once or twice a year.

We need to encourage more motorists to get in the habit of regularly checking their tyres and vehicle condition themselves. If drivers in other countries can, so can we.

Absolutely. The WOF checks can give a false confidence.

The international evidence suggests road safety will actually improve if we follow their example and reduce inspection frequency while beefing up driver education and roadside enforcement of unsafe vehicles.

In the last few decades the quality of the New Zealand fleet has vastly improved from the days when Kiwis routinely drove elderly and worn-out vehicles on unsafe roads, when our road toll was three times what it is today, and when a twice-yearly test made sense. Since then vehicle technology and safety have progressed, but the frequency of the WOF test hasn’t changed to suit. Maybe it’s time it did.

I’ve seen no evidence in favour of the status quo – just a scare campaign.

The Herald reports:

Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford is crying foul over proposed public transport zones making it cheaper to travel to downtown Auckland from the North Shore than from other areas an equal distance away.

He claims the scheme discriminates against residents of lower-income western and southern suburbs, making it reminiscent of racially segregated “Alabama, 1955”.

I have no view on what the zone charges should be, but really I think the hyperbole is a but hysterical.

The Herald reports:

Timothy Kurek grew up hating homosexuality. As a conservative Christian deep in America’s “Bible Belt”, he was taught that being gay was an abomination before God.

But when a Christian friend in a karaoke bar told him how her family had kicked her out when she revealed she was a lesbian, Kurek began to question his beliefs. Amazingly, the 26-year-old decided to “walk in the shoes” of a gay person in the United States by pretending to be homosexual.

For an entire year Kurek lived “undercover” as a gay man in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee.

I think people’s beliefs often change, when they have gay and lesbian friends. This is why there is such an divergence by age on some issues. Many people over 45 never grew up with gay or lesbian friends.  But today there would be few who don’t go through school or university without knowing or being friends with people whose sexual orientation is different to theirs.

His account of his year being gay is an emotional, honest and at times hilarious account of a journey that begins with him as a strait-laced yet questioning conservative, and ends with him reaffirming his faith while embracing the cause of gay equality.

Along the way he sheds many friends, especially from Liberty, who emailed him after he came out asking him to repent his sins and warning that he faced damnation. He does not regret their loss. “I now have lots of new gay friends,” Kurek said.

What good friends, telling him to repent his sins or he will go to hell.

In one gay bar, Kurek was stunned to discover gay Christians earnestly discussing their belief in creationism. “I found gay Christians more devout than me!” Kurek says. He became active in a gay rights group and wound up joining a protest outside the Vatican’s embassy to the United Nations in New York.

However, there was a cost. To gauge his mother’s true reaction to the news that her son was gay, Kurek read her private journal. In it he found that she had written: “I’d rather have found out from a doctor that I had terminal cancer than I have a gay son.”

But Kurek’s journey also became hers. Eventually she was won over and changed her views. “My [mother] went from being a very conservative Christian to being an ally to the gay community. I am very proud of her,” he said.

Love conquers all.

Finally Kurek’s journey ended when he revealed his secret life and “came out” again, but this time as a straight Christian. However, he says one of the most surprising elements of his journey was that it renewed his religious faith rather than undermined it. “Being gay for a year saved my faith.”

Kurek feels his experience should not only show conservative Christians that gay people need equal rights and can be devout too, but can also reveal another side of evangelicals to the gay community.

“The vast majority of conservative Christians are not hateful bigots at all. It is just a vocal minority that gets noticed and attracts all the attention.”

Absolutely.

Bernard Orsman at NZ Herald reports:

 Seven chief executives and their staffs plus 49 directors are responsible for 75 per cent of the Super City’s services.

Auckland ratepayers are spending $13.1 million a year to pay for seven boards of directors, seven chief executives and seven executive teams who run much of the Super City.

The seven council-controlled organisations (CCOs) run about 75 per cent of Super City services at arm’s length from the democratically elected Auckland Council.

I don’t know about you, but $13.1 million for governors, CEOs and executive teams seems pretty reasonable to me. The Herald doesn’t state how many staff are on the combined executive teams, but an average of under $2 million per CCO for a Board, a CEO and a senior executive team does not seem unreasonable. The combined Auckland Council spends $2 billion a year.

The chief executive salaries range from $330,000 for the head of Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development, Brett O’Riley, and Auckland Council Investments’ Gary Swift, to about $710,000 for Watercare boss Mark Ford.

The Herald estimates that Mr Ford’s salary is the equivalent cost of Aucklanders taking about 9.5 million showers.

This is the part I really wanted to blog on. I’m sorry, but what the fuck? How is this a useful or relevant stat? Tell me what his salary is as a percentage of Watercare revenue. Is the Herald now going to write about the salaries of Telecom CEO in terms of the number of e-mails of the same cost? Or the salaries of a newspaper editor in terms of the number of website ads served?

If the comparison had been to the number of days water to a household, I’d find that semi-useful. But unless you know how much of your daily water use tends to be a shower, then the comparison is useless. The suspicion is it is used to just make the salary sound really bad.

The Herald reports:

Labour’s communications spokeswoman, Clare Curran, has taken her colleague Shane Jones to task for wading into her portfolio area and criticising a Green Party bill to allow exemptions to copyright for the sake of satire.

In the Weekend Herald, Mr Jones said Green MP Gareth Hughes’ proposed bill to allow copyrighted work to be used for parody or satire was part of a “Green agenda” of economic vandalism and would endanger jobs by damaging companies’ brands.

However, Ms Curran said she did not agree with Mr Jones and his comments were contrary to Labour’s general policy on the issue.

She later told the Herald she had contacted Mr Jones.

She said Mr Hughes’ Copyright (Parody and Satire) Amendment Bill was in line with Labour’s policy.

“From my perspective and our policy perspective, it’s the mark of a civilised society to do so. So my view and our policy view are not in accord with Shane Jones’ views. We will have a discussion with him when we get back [from the United States].”

Labour’s caucus was yet to discuss the bill, but she would recommend the party support it if it was drawn from the member’s ballot.

The main article on what Jones said is here. Danyl has also commented here.

On this issue I agree with Clare and Gareth. I think parody and satire should be “fair use” of material under our laws – as it is in the United States. Companies should not be able to prevent satire or parody by resort to copyright laws.

However there is an issue about how far fair use stretches. Few would say you shouldn’t be able to highlight and mock extracts from an advertisement, but is it fair use to say take an entire five minute video, and edit it into a parody? Does it make a difference if a competitor does it, or a lobby group?

There is also the reality that any attempt to remove a parody or satire of an ad, will probably just see the ad get wider publicity and hosted more widely.

If Gareth’s bill gets drawn, I hope it passes first reading. There would be some interesting factors to consider at select committee though about how far “fair use” (or “fair dealing” extends.  How would we feel if some US lobby group did ads using Fonterra’s intellectual property to try and damage their brand in the US and cause harm to NZ exports?

For me the principle is clear, that parody and satire should be allowed. The details may need some work.

Marc Krieger of Krieger Capital blogs:

In any event, quantitative easing ultimately benefits the rich. For example, the Bank of England commissioned a study in which it said that 40% of the gains of its quantitative easing programme went to the top 5% of British households. The reason is simple. The rich own shares, property, and precious metals, whose values rise or remain constant when the central banks flood the world with money conjured out of thin air. Conversely, working people and savers rarely own financial assets whilst simultaneously having their real wages drop during an inflationary period. Dr Norman’s tacit support of even lower interest rates penalises retirees who depend on interest income to live. In essence, Dr Norman wants the Reserve Bank to continue the very imbalances that helped produce the Global Financial Crisis by punishing those prudent enough to save and rewarding the spendthrifts.

So this is what the pro-inflation policies of the left will bring – gains for the top 5% and losses for poorer working people. Are these not the same people who go on about income inequality?

A guest post by David Garrett:

Sterilize child abusers – compulsorily if necessary

It is a cliché that while one needs a licence to own a dog, no such permission from the state is required to have children. The same illogical disparity applies when owners or parents abuse their charges: an abuser  can be banned from owing an animal for a period of years or for ever, but the state has no power to prevent abusive “parents” continuing to bring innocent children into the world.

The weekend papers contain two examples of this ridiculous dichotomy. A Sunday paper reports that one of the abusers of three year old Nia Glassie – the little girl who died after being put in clothes drier and   then choked by her grandfather  until her face went purple – is pregnant.  Oriwa Kemp, aged 22, apparently lives “ a transient lifestyle”, and will probably have her latest baby removed by CYF at birth.

Meanwhile down in the western Bay of Plenty, a farmer who broke some of his cows’ tails and hit them over the legs with a steel pipe causing fractures and “weeping lesions” has been sentenced to ten months home detention. Because his victims were animal and not human, he could have been disqualified from ever again owning or exercising authority over  animals. Oriwa Kemp can go on producing children until menopause, and many of the deluded clowns on the left will vehemently defend her “human right” to do so.

One of the earlier controversies during my brief political career arose from my  supporting a guest poster on this blog who suggested that incentives be offered to abusive parents to have themselves sterilized. That night, my “outrageous” comments led the TV news, with  my face superimposed over massed ranks of marching Nazi storm troopers, and shots of Auschwitz.

While I found that astounding – I was very naïve about journos in those days – I was even more surprised at the positive reaction my comments gave rise to, or more correctly, where they came from. I got numerous e-mails agreeing with me from people I had never met, but who made it clear they were not ACT supporters. One former friend – a leftie family lawyer with whom I had fallen out – wrote that all was forgiven because I had said publicly   “what someone needs to say”.

Now we have a government “white paper” – prompted by the Glassie outrage – which recommends “strategies” to combat child abuse. I have not read it, but judging by the media reports it contains nothing particularly radical or new. We don’t need white papers, or “further study” or “consultations with stakeholders” on this issue.  Someone in government needs to stand up and actually LEAD – and if it’s not someone in this lot it surely won’t be someone in the next, which looks likely to be a ghastly amalgam of Labour, the Greens,  Hone the Racist and Winston First.

We once led the world in  the introduction of what were then utterly radical social policies: pensions for the aged; votes for women; a comprehensive welfare state; free medical care for all. Most of those ideas were considered utterly outrageous at the time. Don’t take my word for it – have a look at reports of  the reaction of the medical profession to “socialized medicine” following the election of the first Labour government in 1935.

We could lead the world in social policy again. We could stop wringing our hands about child abuse, take a big breath, and say “Actually NO, everyone doesn’t  have the inalienable right to give birth to children. If you prove you are unfit to do so, we as a society will ensure you don’t”. Cue   howls of outrage from the left, including the sophomoric navel agonizing over “who decides”.

We allow ordinary people to decide the most weighty decisions – whether someone is guilty or not guilty of murder or other serious violent crimes – every day.  Those ordinary people are called “jurors”.  One  of those who sat in judgment on Oriwa Kemp wants the baby to be removed at birth and Kemp to undergo sterilization. The first will happen, the second won’t.

I cannot improve on the words of that (female)  juror as reported in the HoS:

“I think it’s disgusting, revolting, abhorrent…there are so many people in this world who would love to have children and can’t…and for [Kemp] to be able to go and get pregnant and pop them out whenever she feels like it is just mind blowing”

Right on, as we once said.  There are thousands dozens or hundreds of Oriwa Kemps.  Why do we allow this to continue?

DPF: The Nia Glassie case is arguably our worst. Nia was: “kicked, beaten, slapped, jumped on, held over a burning fire, had wrestling moves copied from a computer game practiced on her, spit on, placed into a clothes dryer spinning at top heat for up to 30 minutes, folded into a sofa and sat on, shoved into piles of rubbish, dragged through a sandpit half-naked, flung against a wall, dropped from a height onto the floor, and whirled rapidly on an outdoor rotary clothes line until thrown off”

Her family also waited 36 hours after she went into a coma before they sought medical help. Her mother went out clubbing (so enough money for that) while Nia lay dying in hospital.

My instinct is to execute, not sterilise, all those involved. But more rationally I can’t bring myself to support compulsory sterilisation (or execution)  – even for those who deserve it. I just can’t defend the precedent it creates in terms of power of the state.

I hope that the new law changes which will allow for an order that all future children be removed at birth, will discourage people like Oriwa Kemp from getting pregnant again. But considering her first born is in CYFS care, I suspect she knows this one will end up there also – but that wasn’t enough to discourage her from getting pregnant. I just hope her son or daughter when born, never find out who their birth mother was.

This is a must read story. Keith Ng details how you can access pretty much the entire MSD computer system through their public kiosks. We are talking sensitive details magnitudes worse than in the ACC privacy breach. We’re talking:

• fraud investigations
• invoices including all contractors (including their media trainers who will now be much needed)
• details of candidates for adoptions
• children in CYFS care
• medical records
• Debts owed to MSD
• Full names of kids in their High and Complex Needs section
• Names of kids in CYFS residential care
• Phone bills that reveal physical addresses of CYFS homes
• Bills from pharmacies that deatils which children get which medications
• An invoices from a community group for whanau support after a suicide, with the full name of the deceased

Keith says:

• Public kiosks should not have been connected to the corporate network.
• Servers that didn’t need to be globally accessible should not have been globally accessible, even if they only contained innocuous data.
• Invoices, file logs and call logs, at a place like MSD, should not have been treated as innocuous data. 

That is a minimum. I’d expect invoices to be username and password accessible only. But the first point is the key one – the kiosks should not be linked to the corporate network.

It goes beyond saying that there must be a full inquiry into this. I have to say that my expectationis there should be staff resignations over this. This is not like ACC where the privacy breach was a mistake – a file accidentally attached to an e-mail. Mistakes will always happen. This appears to be a case of fundamentally flawed decisions – such as connecting the kiosks to the corporate network.

I don’t know how long it has been this way, but it must change.

Keith is a freelance journalist. If you want to help fund the excellent work he has done in this area, you can donate to it here. I have.

Talking on insecure data, you should also read how Whale managed to change the advertisements on The Standard through an insecure adserver. Also not a good look.

Another US politics quiz. You answer various questions, and it then analyses which presidential candidate you most side with. My results are:

• Economy – Gary Johnson (libertarian)
• Immigration – Mitt Romney
• Foreign Policy – Barack Obama
• Social – Gary Johnson
• Science – Gary Johnson, Barack Obama and Jill Stein
• Environment – Gary Johnson
• Healthcare – Gary Johnson
• Domestic Policy – Gary Johnson

I bet you many others have wanted to do this. David Thorne in response to HR asking him to complete a self-evaluation form:

Yes, I looked at it. Then I flipped it over and used the blank pages to draw pictures of Simon performing oral sex on a whale. Please find attached.

There seemed little point going through the embarrassing and transparent process of writing down what an exceptional employee I am in the hope of receiving some form of monetary based pat on the head. It might be suggested that someone working in the HR department of an agency with a total of eight other employees would have a vague working knowledge of who those employees are and how exceptional, average or piss-poor they are at their job. Especially if she has sat in on every weekly production meeting for the last year and her only other role is to design forms and make people fill out forms.

 As such, accepting that you already know how dreadful I am to have around, the fact that I haven’t been fired yet must speak volumes for the quality of my work and a big raise is probably in order.

HR insisted he fill it in, and so he did to great comic effect as you’ll see at the link.

Green MP Kevin Hague has announced:

 Green MP Kevin Hague today unveiled a Bill to comprehensively overhaul adoption law and address related surrogacy issues, which will be entered in the next Members’ bill ballot.

“This Bill is the result of considerable work, and is a much more ambitious reform than is usually attempted through the Members’ bill process,” Kevin Hague said.

“The Law Commission reviewed adoption law and in 2000 recommended the consolidation of the legislation relating to parenting and care of children. The changes they recommended are what we have based my Members Bill on.

“We have also used previous Ministry of Justice advice, and more recently had assistance from other experts with an interest in these issues. I want to thank everyone for helping us get the Bill this far.

The current Act is almost 60 years old, and has almost no relevance to what is happening today. It is primarily based on “closed” adoptions and the vast majority of adoptions today are “open”.

The Member’s Bill places adoption in the Care of Children Act, as originally intended by the Law Commission, and makes the best interests of the child the fundamental principle underpinning the law. The Bill also:

• Ensures that all adoptions will be “open” unless exceptional circumstances mean there is a need to extinguish links with the child’s biological parents. While this has become common practice, the current law does not provide for it at all.
• Removes unnecessary restrictions on the kinds of people who may be considered to adopt, ensuring that adoptive parents can be selected from all the options, in the best interests of the child.
• Acknowledges, but does not regulate whāngai arrangements, which are instead controlled by traditional Iwi practice.
• Provides for the adoption of children conceived and born through altruistic surrogacy arrangements.

I very much agree that the focus should be on the best interests of the child, and arbitrary restrictions should not be in place to restrict an adoption which is best for the child.

“Drafting a Bill of this size means that I’m sure there are further improvements that can be made. I will continue to work with interested parties to fine-tune the Bill while it sits in the ballot waiting to be drawn.

Few bills get drawn in their first ballot, and it is indeed sensible to listen to feedback and improve them for future ballots.

GayNZ has written:

Labour’s Jacinda Ardern will put forward an amendment to her adoption bill at its upcoming first reading to immediately fix the basic discrimination in the current law, because the full overhaul her proposed legislation will lead to will take a long time.

The problem is you can not amend a bill at first reading. Standing orders do not allow for amendments to a bill to be considered at first reading. You can change a bill between members’s ballots before it is selected. You can have a select committee amend a bill, or you can amend a bill at the committee of the house stage. There is no provision to amend a bill at first reading.

Any MP can ask for leave to do something outside standing orders, but this requires not a single MP out of 121 to object, and have never known this to be granted for a first reading amendment that is substantive.

I blogged over four and a half months ago on the problems in Jacinda’s bill. It was resubmitted unchanged over three months later. The time for amendments was before resubmitting it. You simply can not amend a bill (without unanimous leave) at first reading. Now I’m not suggesting MPs should change their bills, just because I’ve criticised them. But the fact that Jacinda is now trying to amend her bill, indicates that many others share at least some of my concerns over her bill. Note that I believe we all want the same thing – a modern child-focused adoption law.

The challenge for an MP, is to not just write a bill, but to seek feedback on it from colleagues, from interested groups, from experts. You want to have it fit for purpose before it gets drawn from the ballot.

For those interested the Hague bill is here. I’m sure Kevin would welcome feedback on improvements to it (that are consistent with its aim).

Cactus Kate summarises:

 1. Allege there is a recording of something John Key is alleged to have said inside the GCSB.

2. Admit you have not actually heard or seen the alleged recording and have the GCSB deny one exists.

3. Appear on RadioLive to be interviewed by a former Minister who has dealt with these matters and stutter your way through the interview without a shred of actual evidence of #1.

4. More importantly have those allegations the night before completely overshadow the news cycle of a very poorly attended long-awaited manufactured EPMU conference on the alleged manufacturing crisis in New Zealand.

5. Completely expose your female Chief Press Secretary to allegations about her private life and professionalism of those close to her based on being the most obvious Beltway source of the leak in #1.

6. Change your story about the recording which is now allegedly one made without the GCSB’s permission.

7. Have zero of your own colleagues back you up.  Even the loud cheerleaders stay deathly silent.

8. By the end of Friday, when all the journalists are on their first beer at happy hour gasping over the whole sordid mess and you have run out of the week while Parliament is in recess anyway – have successfully put the entire focus on yourself to actually produce the recording.

I can’t add anything to that.

Simon Collins in NZ Herald reports:

An economist who has developed a mathematical method of predicting child abuse says it is about as accurate as a mammogram is in spotting breast cancer.

Auckland University associate professor Rhema Vaithianathan, who led a team that developed the technique for the Government’s white paper on vulnerable children, hopes it can be introduced through the country next year.

This could be incredibly useful. As I understand it, it applies all the known factors which increase prevalence of child abuse to identify those most at risk. This gives an opportunity to provide support and if necessary protection before it is too late.

Sri Lanka-born Dr Vaithianathan, 46, who came to New Zealand at the age of 7, has also written papers applying economic techniques to the “marriage market” for female genital mutilation in Africa and to the likelihood of patients who are admitted to New Zealand hospitals being readmitted in the following year.

The three Auckland health boards are using her hospital formula to tell family doctors how likely their patients are to be readmitted.

Professor Vaithianathan contested the Labour nomination for Parliament in the 2009 Mt Albert byelection, won by David Shearer, but she said she was happy to do research for the National Government.

“I think New Zealand is too small, and our problems are too grave, for partisanship.”

A view not shared by Jacinda Ardern it seems, who called it a “dodgy” tool from Auckland University.

Her team found that children born between January 2003 and June 2006 whose parents were on welfare at some point in their first two years accounted for 83 per cent of total New Zealand substantiated findings of abuse or neglect of children under 5 during the subsequent five years.

The rate of substantiated abuse or neglect in children on welfare (13 per cent) was almost 10 times the 1.4 per cent rate in families that were never on welfare in those five years.

Which is why reducing the number of families on long-term welfare (excepting those absolutely incapable of work) is so important. Note that 87% of families on welfare do not have child abuse issues, so this not about demonising all families on welfare. Most do an excellent job in difficult circumstances. But to have one in seven families on welfare with substantiated abuse is far far too high.

The Herald reports:

Broadband users are being bombarded with offers of higher data caps, Sky TV discounts, free surfing on unmetered websites and cheaper prices.

And an industry expert says New Zealanders will soon have access to even more data without any great cost increase.

Orcon is leading the charge with a $99-a-month plan that includes unlimited data and national landline calls of up to an hour.

That’s pretty good. I suspect they have some sort of reasonable use policy though for their data.

A year ago, customers on Vodafone’s Ultimate package paid about $120 for 30 gigabytes of data and anytime national toll calls.

Now their data limit has been lifted to 80GB – at no extra cost.

Telecom has also increased its 30GB data allowance to 50GB – also at no extra cost.

That’s good from both.

Telecom’s head of marketing, Chris Thompson, said more of its customers were spending time online and increasing their data use mainly because of the availability of music, video and on-demand TV services.

Among its packages is a 500GB plan for heavy users. “We are also seeing usage increasing on mobile data very strongly as Kiwi take-up of smartphones rapidly increases.”

Orcon’s general manager of retail, Taryn Hamilton, said that three years ago, customers paid $81 for 1GB.

“Now we do 30GB and free national calling for $75, or unlimited data for $99.”

As UFB really hits my expectation is data plans will be TBs not GBs, and hopefully one day NZer kids will say”Daddy/Mummy what was a data cap”.

MOD writes at Stuff:

It’s seldom that I feel sorry for politicians, but I found myself feeling that way last week for the nine members of the Commerce Select Committee, and Consumer Affairs Minister Simon Bridges.

After a three-year policy gestation period that chewed up and spat out five ministers , and a submission process that saw 90 organisations vent their spleens, the final form of the Consumer Law Reform Bill was delivered back to the House last week.

The Bill proposes changes to six acts and knocks another three on the head as it seeks to make sure New Zealand’s basket of consumer laws is still fit for purpose.

The jewel in the crown here is the Consumer Guarantees Act (CGA), the first line of defence if we get ripped off with crappy products or poor service.  This Act, along with that well known bodice ripper the Fair Trading Act (FTA), has had a thorough spruce-up to ensure they remain relevant in an online age.  The end result is nothing less than breath-taking in its potency.  

The CGA will apply to all transactions between professional traders and consumers, anywhere and anytime.  It doesn’t matter if you buy your widget at a high street store, online venue, or farmers market; if you buy from a trader you are covered.  And you will be covered from start to finish – including all seven specific guarantees within the CGA covering acceptable quality and fit for purpose.

Sounds good.

Put together – comprehensive CGA protection in any venue and the requirement for online traders to identify themselves – it’s hard to see how such fundamental benefits could be anything but good for consumers, and a recipe for economic confidence.  But despite this, the good news got drowned in a chorus of confusion

Some of the confusion came off the new requirement for online traders to identify themselves online as bringing supposed new tax obligations.  This is simply incorrect.  
And the idea that the IRD doesn’t already make full use of the giant indexation and caching machine that Google provides them is laughable.

There have also been grim warnings about the emergence of a black market among car dealers, where car dealers will offload worn cars to unregistered traders because they don’t want the responsibility of honouring far-reaching guarantees.   Again this is doing the proposals a disservice.  The acceptable quality guarantee must be a contextual one, relative to what is reasonable to the age and history of the item.  

The Select Committee’s job was to iron out any wrinkles in the draft Bill and try to stand strong on behalf of consumers as they were subjected to a withering barrage of submissions and lobbying by everyone from power companies to direct marketers.  
Basically everyone who reckoned they had an irresistibly good reason to create an exception to the principles of the CGA.  The good news is that the Committee appears to have done its job.   

Consumers will benefit from full CGA protection whenever and where ever they buy stuff from professional traders, it’s a simple concept to understand, and a worthy outcome in its own right.  Ethical traders will benefit from the “flushing out” and removal of dodgy traders who have tried to fly under the radar by not declaring their trader status or have made use of legal auction loopholes to knowingly sell poor quality items to consumers, knowing they wouldn’t be held accountable.  

A useful reminder than standing up for consumers doesn’t always win headlines, but generally is the right thing to do.