THIS WEEKEND 29/30 SEPTEMBER — PRELIMINARY DETAILS
1. Labour Leader David Shearer with Rachel Smalley, John Hartevelt and Alex Tarrant; a special extended interview.
2. The Future of Act — Natasha Smith investigates. A tape report.
There will be additional items in this weekend’s show — stay in touch via our website www.frontpage.co.nz which we will update as we firm up interviews.Broadcast on TV 3 at 9 am Saturday, repeated on Sunday at 8 am
Oral Questions 2.00 pm – 3.00 pm
Questions to Ministers.
National MPs are asking five of today’s questions, Labour four, the Greens two and New Zealand First one. Patsy of the day goes to John Hayes’ Question 8 – What percentage of households in Hawke’s Bay and on the West Coast of the South Island are expected to go digital ahead of the digital switchover in these regions on 30 September 2012?
Questions about the GCSB’s illegal spying on Kim Dotcom make up two of today’s questions. Christchurch school closures, welfare, alternative trial processes, employment and broadcast licence fees make up the rest of the questions from opposition MPs.
Government Bills 3 pm – 6 pm
1. National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill – Third Reading
2. Commerce (International Co-operation, and Fees) Amendment Bill – Third Reading
The National Memorial Park (Pukehau) Empowering Bill was introduced last month by Chris Finlayson. It seeks to grant statutory authorisations and property rights to the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the New Zealand Transport Agency (the Agency) to enable completion of the National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) (the Park) by April 2015, the centenary of the commencement of the Gallipoli landings of the First World War.
The Commerce (International Co-operation, and Fees) Amendment Bill was formerly Part of Commerce Commission (International Co-operation, and Fees) Bill, introduced in 2008. The Bill amends the powers of the Commerce Commission to enable to it work alongside overseas regulators.
The report is online here. It seems that the only information the Police asked of the GCSB was where he would be on a particular date and time, to minimise risks around his arrest. This is quite different from collecting information to be used in the prosecution around him.
The PM has said:
“At the time in question, Kim Dotcom was not a New Zealand citizen. He was, however, classed as the holder of a residence class visa, but it was not interpreted by the Police or GCSB at the time that he fell into the protected category of permanent resident.
“The GCSB relied on information provided to it by the Organised and Financial Crime Agency New Zealand. In my view, reliance on another party by GCSB is unacceptable.
“GCSB had a responsibility to fully understand what the change to the Immigration legislation in 2009 meant for its own operations, including whether individual visa holders were protected or not.
“It is the GCSB’s responsibility to act within the law, and it is hugely disappointing that in this case its actions fell outside the law. I am personally very disappointed that the agency failed to fully understand the workings of its own legislation.”
“I have received an apology from the Director of the GCSB and an assurance that he will take every step to rebuild public confidence in his organisation.”
As part of that process, Mr Key has sought an assurance that there are no other cases of people’s communications being intercepted unlawfully. The GCSB will be reviewing past cases back to 2009 when the Immigration Act was changed, and will report to the Prime Minister and the Inspector-General on this matter as soon as possible.
The GCSB will also:
- Establish new approval processes in the support of Police and other law enforcement agencies. This type of operation is halted meanwhile.
- Agree with Police and other law enforcement agencies how to confirm immigration status, before operations in support of law enforcement activity are undertaken within New Zealand.
The GCSB will submit these proposed changes to the Inspector-General in advance of their implementation.
So as I understood it they knew he was a resident, but did not think his type of residency was one which qualified him to be regarded as a permanent resident.
Got sent the e-mail below by a reader. It promotes the 2013 Telecommunications Summit and amongst all the corporate logos, is the Labour Party logo.
A political party sponsoring a commercial conference would be rather novel. If they are merely a speaker, it is rather bizarre to list their logo. I’ve never seen it done before by any other conference.
If you want to attend it is only $1,000 or so!
I think it is superb that a group of Labour MPs are living on $2.25 of food a day, for a week, to demonstrate how you can eat cheaply.
Their potato and spinach curry recipe should be displayed in all WINZ offices.
I am a bit confused that they are so eager to demonstrate you can feed yourself on just under $16 a week, that they demand increased welfare payments for beneficiary parents. Currently a low income parent gets $88 a week welfare for their first child, and $61 a week for additional children (on top of core benefit, accom supplement etc). Of course you have non food expenses also, but thanks to Grant, Jacinda, Phil, Annette and David they are showing you can have $72 to $45 a week for those other expenses.
I look forward to their other recipes on how to cook for $2.25 a day. Maybe they could publish a book with Muriel Newman on it?
David Leigh in The Guardian writes:
Consumers won’t pay for online news. But they are of course paying, now and for the foreseeable future, and in huge numbers, for the necessary broadband connections.
A small levy on UK broadband providers – no more than £2 a month on each subscriber’s bill – could be distributed to news providers in proportion to their UK online readership. This would solve the financial problems of quality newspapers, whose readers are not disappearing, but simply migrating online.
There are almost 20m UK households that are paying upwards of £15 a month for a good broadband connection, plus another 5m mobile internet subscriptions. People willingly pay this money to a handful of telecommunications companies, but pay nothing for the news content they receive as a result, whose continued survival is generally agreed to be a fundamental plank of democracy.
A £2 levy on top – collected easily from the small number of UK service providers (BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk etc) who would add it on to consumers’ bills – would raise more than £500m annually. It could be collected by a freestanding agency, on the lines of the BBC licence fee, and redistributed automatically to “news providers” according to their share of UK online readership.
Appalling.
Why stop at forcing all Internet newspapers to fund newspapers. Let’s also add $10 per Internet connection and give it to Hollywood. And $5 per Internet connection and give to book sellers. And so on.
Now you may think such madness will never happen in NZ. Well I need to remind people that at just the last election Labour’s policy was:
investigate the viability of a small copyright levy on Internet access, which would develop the digital platform for accessing Kiwi content mentioned above. Funds raised could go to content creators through an arms length collecting and distribution arrangement
Let’s be clear what people mean when they talk of an Internet access levy. As almost all of the population develops Internet access, such levies are effectively a tax. So the Guardian writer is effectively saying taxpayers should have to fund newspapers, and Labour here was saying taxpayers should have to fund content creators!
I say no to Internet taxes!
Later in this post, I’ll come to how the NZ law enforcement agencies have behaved, but initially I want to cover Dotcom himself. While I admire his intelligence, technical, gaming and PR skills, I’m not quite in the category that he is a poor little innocent victim.
First of all, it is worth recalling he does have a less than clean record to date, before Megaupload. Specifically:
The pattern is someone who is very focused on making money, and pushes the rules, sometimes breaking them.
There is also a reasonable amount of evidence he is a bit of a fantasist, as detailed here. No that’s fine – we all want to be James Bond to some degree, but it is perhaps a reason not to regard everything he says as the holy gospel.
We then have Megaupload. This case is essentially about copyright infringement. I think most people know I was a prominent campaigner against the original S92A and the blackout campaign as it would have seen people lose Internet access upon accusation.
I’ve generally been against most of the demands of the music and film industries with NZ copyright law, and am involved in the fair deal campaign to support NZ standing firm in the TPP negotiations against any provisions which would require a change to our domestic intellectual property laws.
I’m also very firmly in the camp that Internet sites should not be held responsible for the actions of their users, so long as they comply with the law.
However on the basis of evidence seen to date, I don’t quite buy the argument that Megaupload was merely a file-sharing service the same as YouTube or Rapidshare. Their business model is one that arguably encouraged peoplee to not just share popular infringing material, but to make money from it – as did Megauplaod. Quite different to non-commercial torrent sharing.
It is claimed for example that one user, VW, uploaded 17,000 files over six years resulting in 334 million views, and none of the files had ever been deleted, despite takedown notices. My understanding is that links to files were deleted, but not files.
In my personal opinion, Dotcom built a business absolutely based on making money from people sharing popular files, that they did not have copyright of. There is a reason it become 4% of all Internet traffic.
However there is a big *If*. He may have done it legally. While one can debate the ethics of certain actions, it is the law which states enforce. He may have managed to set up his business model in such a way that he made tens of millions from the site, and didn’t break US laws. Ultimately this issue will be decided by Judges – initially in NZ on whether there is enough evidence of offences that would be illegal in both NZ and the US – and then if extradited in the US in a trial.
As with his previous actions, I think Dotcom set out to push the law to its boundary. He may have stepped over. He may not have. That is for the legal system to decide. But I don’t accept the analogy that Megaupload operated just like YouTube or Rapidshare, and that a guilty verdict for Dotcom would affect those other sites greatly.
We then come to the NZ side of things. The exact details of the GCSB role should be made public soon, and will be fascinating. Graeme Edgeler has an excellent post on this issue. He raises the issue of should the GCSB have been involved at all, even of Dotcom did not have residency.
The overall impression I have of NZ law enforcement agencies is they were desperately keen to impress the boys from the US. To have the FBI and likes over here saying this guy is wanted for hundreds of millions of dollars of charges, and this case will be globally massive seemed to have got people into a mindset that we have to make sure we don’t disappoint Uncle Sam by just sending in Constable Smith to interview Dotcom.
Caution seems to have been thrown to the wind, in an attempt to impress that we are up to the job. Ironically the opposite has happened, and NZ authorities have ended up with egg on their face several times. Nowhere it seems were senior officials saying “Hey, let’s slow down and make sure everything is watertight and double checked”. The list of mistakes include:
NZ authorities absolutely have an obligation to assist the US with legal extradition efforts. I am not one of those saying we should not have co-operated. If someone broke the law in NZ, and lived in the US, we value the fact that extradition treaties allow them to be sent to NZ.
Whether or not Dotcom broke US law is a matter for Judges. It is unknown at this stage if any significant evidence will be inadmissible due to mistakes made by NZ authorities. Time will tell. And as I have said, I think Dotcom’s strategy was to push the boundary of the law as far as he could, and he may or may not have stepped outside it. Ultimately that is not a matter for us.
What is a matter for us, is the response from NZ law enforcement agencies. I doubt I am alone is concluding the culture was shall we say too overly enthusiastic, and not cautious enough. The end result has been considerable embarrassment for them, for the Government, and potentially a significant weakening of the case against Dotcom. Hopefully there will be lessons learnt.
The ads to promote Christchurch to the Aussies are surprisingly good. I thought “Bob Thinks Big” could be lame, but actually they have pulled it off quite nicely. You actually want to keep watching.
Episode 1 is below, and at the conclusion of it, you can watch episodes 2 and then 3.
Kate Chapman at Stuff reports:
Labour wants trade unions excluded from a potential lobbying register and blames the MP who drafted the plan for including them in the first place.
Green MP Holly Walker’s member’s bill would require those who lobby politicians to be registered and adhere to a code of ethics.
It passed its first reading with unanimous support from all parties, but Labour has since put forward an amendment that would exclude trade unions.
The unions are major backers of the Labour Party.
More than just backers. They
So it is no surprise Labour are desperate to exclude them.
Labour MP Trevor Mallard said the bill was a “bad piece of work” and should have been tidied up before going to select committee.
It would currently capture a union official who rang him to help with a constituent’s housing problem, or a foodbank that wanted assistance getting a client welfare entitlements, he said.
It would also capture an employer that rang him on the same issues. Is Trevor proposing an exemption for businesses? Of course not.
The exemptions should be on what types of activities count as lobbying, not on protecting your union overlords.
Stuff reports:
ANZ National Bank has confirmed it will drop the National Bank, with the brand to be gradually phased out over the next two years.
Staff were told of the change at co-ordinated meetings this afternoon.
About 20 branches will be closed, reducing the network to about 280. The remaining National Bank branches will be rebranded at a cost of $100 million.
ANZ customers will be moved across to the National Bank computer system while customers would continue to be served by the same staff, with no job losses on the front line.
ANZ would take over all sponsorship and community commitment.
ANZ National Bank chief executive David Hisco said ANZ bought the National Bank in 2003 and after nearly 10 years of reducing duplication between the two brands “the next logical step is to combine them into one”.
When ANZ purchased National, it was a weird case of a relatively poor brand buying a strong brand. Normally it is the other way around. National Bank tended to top customer satisfaction surveys, and ANZ near the bottom.
To be fair to ANZ, I think their brand is significantly better today than it was a decade ago. However National Bank has remained a strong brand, and they may lose some customers with this move. However not a lot I suspect.
ANZ has the rights to the black horse and green colour branding of the National Bank from British Bank Lloyds TSB until 2014.
This will make it harder to play and win the driving game “Horse” where you gain one point for every horse you see and ten points for every picture of a horse.
NBR reported:
Mainfreight co-founder and Rich-Lister Neil Graham is taking on Trade Me with a new online auction and classified site, Wheedle.co.nz, that officially opens for business on Monday.
New Zealand cyberspace is littered with the train wrecks of online adventures that tried to take on Trade Me but which failed to crack the “chicken and egg” problem of attracting a critical mass of buyers and sellers.
It is very hard to gain sellers unless you have a critical mass of buyers, as sellers know the more buyers, the higher the likely price. However as Trade Me increases fees, it opens up the probability that sellers will judge that probability of a lower auction price is exceeded by the certainty of lower fees. But I don’t think they are there yet. The other factor is that some people may go elsewhere just so there is competition to keep fees down.
But Graham said Wheedle had the management experience, technical expertise and “firepower” to become a long term success. His personal wealth was put at $65 million in NBR’s 2011 Rich List.
Wheedle will launch a television, radio and online advertising campaign on Sunday to promote the site. Chief executive Carl Rees, one of three other shareholders in the business, would not disclose how much it would sink into the campaign, but said it had a multimillion dollar war-chest.
The venture had been two years in the making and will run off 40 servers in IBM’s Auckland data centre, he said. “We are not doing anything by halves. Our infrastructure is huge to run this.”
Rees said Wheedle had 10 staff in Christchurch and another 12 in India who had been developing software for the site and who would be involved in another undisclosed venture. …
Wheedle aims to undercut Trade Me, charging a flat-rate $1 fee on items that sell through the site for more than $20. The fees will be waived and the site will be free to use until November 29.
It is not clear what fee if any will apply for under $20. Sellers won’t like a fee if it does not sell at all. But the fees are a lot cheaper than Trade Me. However the major factor is price. Say your item sells for $50. Then it is $1 on Wheedle and $3.95 on Trade Me making it a net $49 vs $46.25.
But if you get $50 on Trade Me and $45 on Wheedle, then Trade Me is a net $46.25 and Wheedle $44.
But they sound well financed, so may be able to take the initial losses to build up enough critical mass. Free fees initially is a very good idea, but the problem is if people are selling one item, they can not auction it on both sites to see which site gets better results.
Another competitor, List Sell Trade has also been launched. Their model is a $10 a month subscription for all site listing services. Can’t see it flying. Sella continues to exist. They have no listing or success fees, just enhancement option fees.
Sella has 654 listings for historical fiction books which is a lot. However I note almost none have bids on them – they are basically all listed with buy now prices equal to reserves, so it more like a 2nd hand service than an auction. Trade Me has 4,214 historical fiction listings and a mixture of buy nows and proper auctions.
I’ve embedded below a column by 3 News Political Editor Duncan Garner on David Shearer and the Labour leadership. He concludes that Shearer is not up to the job, and that David Cunliffe should be made leader. Some quotes:
Shearer is a hell of a nice guy…Labour picked him to be like John Key. But he can’t out-Key Key…The public doesn’t know what he stands for or against. He struggles to articulate himself….and in my opinion he’s largely botched his honeymoon….It’s become clear too that Shearer divides not only Labour’s caucus, but its membership too. He’s neither steeped inLabour Party knowldge or history.
Labour needs to take it to Key in 2013 and 2014, and Shearer hasn’t really kicked in. How would Cunliffe be any different? Substantially I think. He’s enormously articulate and can present an alternative vision. But there’s an element of fear within the caucus. A number of the more mature MPs fear Cunliffe will demote them and it will be the end of their careers. That’s why he is bad-mouthed so often. Some of those MPs need to go. Their time is up.
None of this should stop the caucus. .. The leadership of the party if too important for personal agenda to get in the way right now.
The other leadership options are either not ready or aren’t up to it: Grant Robertson: Ambitious? Yes. Ready? No. He’s best to bide his time. To be brutal, Key will wipe the floor with the Wellington Central MP. His time will come. But his immeditate elevation will not bring back the provinces. Jacinda Ardern: Way too early. Out of her depth as it is. David Parker: Get real. Andrew Little: Should put his name forward.
The quotes are from Twisted Hive.
His call for some of Labour’s senior MPs to go for the good of the party is correct, but I suspect unlikely to occur.
The column appeared in Wellington Magazine Fishhead.
Three interesting posts by Whale.
Oral Questions 2.00 pm – 3.00 pm
Questions to Ministers.
Government Bills 3.00 pm – 6.00 pm and 7.30 pm – 10.00 pm
1. Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill– First Reading
2. National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) Empowering Bill-Committee Stage
3.Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill-Committee Stage
The Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill was introduced yesterday by Phil Heatley. This bill is an omnibus bill and amends the Crown Minerals Act 1991, the Conservation Act 1987, the Continental Shelf Act 1964, the Reserves Act 1977, and the Wildlife Act 1953. This bill aims to promote prospecting for, exploration for, and mining of Crown owned minerals for the benefit of New Zealand.
The National Memorial Park (Pukehau) Empowering Bill was introduced last month by Chris Finlayson. It seeks to grant statutory authorisations and property rights to the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the New Zealand Transport Agency (the Agency) to enable completion of the National War Memorial Park (Pukeahu) (the Park) by April 2015, the centenary of the commencement of the Gallipoli landings of the First World War. Only the Greens and Mana opposed it at the end of the second reading.
The Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products-Budget Measures) Amendment Bill was introduced by Tariana Turia in May, and seeks to amend the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to make 4 cumulative 10% increases to the duties on all tobacco products. It passed its second reading unanimously.
Stuff reports:
Trade Me will raise the “success fees” members pay to sell most items through its online marketplace by more than 5 per cent on Monday.
The announcement of the pending hike was met with a mixture of indignation and resignation on the company’s community bulletin board.
Last month Trade Me reported an 8.4 per cent jump in its annual profit to $75.6 million. One member described the price rise as “greedy”, placing the company in the same category as “councils, power companies, water companies, supermarkets, petrol companies and so many more”.
Others said rival free auction sites were no real alternative because they lacked a critical mass of buyers. Some said they were having success selling items through Facebook, but one poster forecast nothing would change.
“People will moan for a while and will suggest the sky is falling in. Others will suggest going to ‘X site’ or ‘Y site’ instead and a few will try. Ultimately, all will find that selling through here is still the easiest way to go because the buyers are here.”
Trade Me said the fee for selling an item valued at $50 – about its average trade – would rise from $3.75 to $3.95, an increase of 5.3 per cent.
The highest rise would be for items priced at $1500, for which success fees will increase by 8.1 per cent to $79.50. There will be lower increases on higher-priced items and no change to the maximum $149 success fee.
The current fees are:
At $5,500 you reach the maximum fee of $149. After the increase you’ll reach it at $5,150.
So the fee for various price levels is
They’re pretty significant increases, as in my opinion the business model should be based on increasing volume of trades, not the percentage fee per trade.
What I’d be interested in is what have the fee changes over time been? Does anyone have data on what the fees were before it was sold in 2006?
Sunset on Walter and Cecil Peaks, Queenstown, seen from Coronet Peak road, South Island, New Zealand.
Welcome to a remotely posted Wednesday Wallpaper – I am out of town today, so hopefully WordPress scheduling is doing it’s thing…..
This image is of Queenstown from near the Coronet Peak road. It was the result of some serious personal discomfort, as I (unintentionally) found myself waist deep in a snow-filled ditch and straddling a barbed wire fence in order to get in position for this one…
You may download the large version from this link: [free iPad wallpaper] Password = freewallpaper
See you next week!
Cheers – Todd
Stuff reports:
In the industrialised world, women live at least five years longer, on average, than men.
Scientists have attributed that difference to everything from healthier habits to hardier cells.
Now, a new study that analyses the longevity of eunuchs, or castrated men, suggests that testosterone may play a part in shortening men’s lives.
The idea that testosterone, the male sex hormone, affects lifespan isn’t new.
Neutered dogs and other animals that have had their sources of testosterone removed often live longer than their intact counterparts.
For me, I go for quality of life over quantity!
Stuff reports:
Wellington road policing manager Inspector Pete Baird said most buses trundled along the Golden Mile at between 13kmh and 17kmh but getting hit by a 12-tonne bus “is like getting hit by a car at 140kmh”.
Is it? Instinctively I’d choose a bus at 17 km/hr over a car at 140 km/hr? I’ve been run over by a bus, but never hit by one, so I can’t judge off experience.
Someone with a better memory of physics want to calculate the force in each case?
Incidentally the article is on lowering the speed limit in the golden mile from 30 km/hr to 20 km/hr, which I’m fine with.
I feel so sorry for people on the West Coast. First they lose Pike River in the worst possible way, and then they lose Spring Creek. The Press reported:
Christchurch and the West Coast have both been dealt major job hits after Solid Energy’s announcement to slash about 440 positions nationwide.
It was a black Monday on the West Coast in particular after the state-owned company said it would mothball Spring Creek Mine and slash 360 jobs.
Solid Energy also announced proposals to cut more than half the jobs at its corporate, support and development divisions. Staff numbers would plummet from 313 to 150, it said, with most of those affected working at the Christchurch head office in Addington.
Those in Chch are not so bad off:
However, city leaders say opportunities in Christchurch’s rebuild could soften the blow for the white-collar workers in Christchurch and blue-collar workers on the coast.
Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce chief executive Peter Townsend said Christchurch was poised to move into the most extraordinary period of reconstruction and he hoped many skilled people at Solid Energy would find jobs there.
“I really believe the opportunities are just beginning to grow,” Townsend said.
Mayor Bob Parker said while it would be stressful for staff losing jobs, he was aware of several organisations looking for skilled people in the services sector .
“I think there will be opportunities here, even if in the short term for some people they are not the ideal opportunities.”
He also said the city needed “engineers, builders, plumbers, painters, construction workers and administration staff”.
About 31,000 people live on the West Coast, meaning one in 86 people was affected by yesterday’s announcement.
The reality is the global price of coal has plummeted, and nothing can protect a company from that, except some hedging in the short term. The price per tonne has been as low as $120 and Solid Energy needs $200 just to break even. The price has dropped 30% or so in just two months. Companies around the world are laying off staff also.
Steven Joyce has said:
Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce is calling on objectors to Bathurst Resources’ Escarpment Mine project near Westport to support 225 new jobs on the West Coast by withdrawing their court action.
“The Escarpment Mine is an open cast mining project that is ready to go and would provide 225 jobs and incomes for workers and their families on the West Coast straight away,” Mr Joyce says.
“The developer is being held up from opening the Escarpment Mine by on-going litigation that has gone through the Environment Court, the High Court and the Court of Appeal.
“These on-going objections are to resource consents which were granted more than a year ago. The whole consenting process for this development has now taken a staggering seven years.
“I call on those objectors to the mine to reconsider their appeals and consider the economic future of the West Coast and its people.
“I also call on the EPMU, Labour and the Greens to join my call and back the West Coast community by supporting the immediate development of the Escarpment Mine.
“The political opposition can’t have it both ways. They can’t on one hand moan about job losses and then on the other not support initiatives that would create the sort of jobs that they’re asking for.
I think there is an unnecessary comma in the second to last paragraph!
The Herald reports:
Meetings between two heavyweight Tainui leaders are under way to iron out internal tribal confusion around water ownership issues.
King Tuheitia’s spokesman Tuku Morgan is emphatic that all iwi leaders must stick to resolutions passed at the King’s water summit, which include working out a framework for water rights before iwi negotiate with the Crown.
Immediately after the hui this month, Mr Morgan said: “The A list of Maoridom were here, the who’s who of Maoridom were here – they are part of the decision and they are bound by the decision.”
But Tom Roa, who is chairman of the tribe’s executive board Te Arataura and on the Iwi Leaders Group for Freshwater, says the King’s “strong” position on water – that Maori own it – also reflected respect towards the individual right of iwi to go back to their people to weigh the resolutions.
“From my perspective … every iwi and every hapu has their right to their autonomy and that includes Waikato-Tainui.
“The New Zealand Maori Council will not negotiate on Waikato-Tainui’s behalf. Nor will any group. That’s our plain position and I suggest that’s the position of every iwi and hapu in the country.”
It is not unusual to have a different point of view between different Iwi. But this is a split between Tainui and their King. That is significant.
Line the two positions up and Mr Roa admits the sentiments are at odds.
“Yes. We’re having meetings to sort that through. Tuku is the spokesperson for the Kingitanga and I am the spokesperson for Waikato-Tainui,” he said.
Asked if there should be a unified position between the two, Mr Roa said: “Very clearly.”
Which is an admission, there isn’t.
What is not in doubt is that there has been a sharp evolution of the Kingitanga. In the past, spokesmen have been the voice of the movement – in part to protect the monarch from direct criticism.
King Tuheitia’s speech to 1000 Maori on such a charged issue changed that.
“In terms of Waikato-Tainui I would suggest that whatever the King says, whatever the King does, the people support,” Mr Roa said. “There is some concern for him, there is some concern for our relationships [in the tribe] and with other iwi and hapu but there is total support for the King.”
The Labour MP for Hauraki-Waikato, Nanaia Mahuta, the King’s cousin, said the move came with risks as exposure to criticism would come on any issues in the public domain.
“That is a matter for Tuheitia to weigh up as the media can be critical and sceptical of any perspective he may have. Tuheitia has his advisers and they must be accountable for the advice they give him.”
While expressed very politely, that statement by Nanaia is significant. She seems to be blaming Tuku Morgan for turning King Tuheitia into a political figure, rather than a unifying figure.
The Herald reports:
Child protection officials believe New Zealand may be finally tackling its child abuse problem after the first drop in substantiated abuse cases for at least eight years.
Child, Youth and Family Services has reported a 4 per cent drop in substantiated findings of abuse and neglect, down from a record 22,087 in the year to June last year to 21,525 in the latest June year.
It is the first decline since a dramatic escalation of abuse statistics dating back to 2003-04
A drop in one year is not a trend, but it will be great if it turns into one. Our record has been shameful.
But he said two things gave him more confidence that the drop may be more than just a statistical blip.
First, the drop in substantiated cases came despite a continued increase in notifications to CYFS of suspected abuse and neglect – up from 150,747 to a record 152,800 in the latest year, including an increase in police referrals of children in homes where domestic violence occurred from 57,153 to 62,678.
CYFS also investigated more cases – up from 57,949 to 61,074.
“So we have investigated more cases but found slightly less child abuse,” Mr Nixon said.
Encouraging.
The Herald reports:
A US charter school guru whose programme was considered a success in poor neighbourhoods has warned against giving contracts to businesses or groups which do not have a long, robust track record in education.
Seems fairly sensible. We know some charter schools do well, and some do not, so the trick is to emulate the ones that do well.
Knowledge is Power Programme (Kipp) co-founder Mike Feinberg, who is on a speaking tour in New Zealand, also backed the Government’s controversial decision to allow unqualified teachers in its proposed Partnership Schools.
Kipp schools were launched in poor American neighbourhoods in 1994, with a policy of longer school days and terms, and a strict code of behaviour for students.
Charter schools have had mixed success in the US, but Kipp schools have a good record in getting underprivileged children into university.
This is what Labour and the Greens are fighting against??
Knowledge is Power Programme:
*125 public charter schools (elementary, middle, high school) with 40,000 students across the US.
*85 per cent of students from low socio-economic backgrounds.
*90 per cent of Kipp students graduate to high school, 80 per cent continue to university.
*Classes run from 7.30am to 5pm weekdays, with 2 to 3 hours homework and extra classes on Saturdays and holidays.
*90 per cent funded by the state, with some private contributions.
*Teachers earn 10 per cent more than in state schools.
*Reported to have a high drop-out rate of students.
Impressive results.