A few months ago David Cohen from the Listener said he would like to do a profile on me. I think my reaction was that they must have run out of interesting people, if they were down to me 🙂

Anyway I agreed to it, partly because as David C pointed out, I had never done one anywhere. He interviewed me a few months ago, and I quite enjoyed it as we didn’t actually discuss politics too much – but lots of other stuff.

I then got quite worried about how it would appear, remembering David’s considerable acerbity and wit which he used to use at my expense in NBR. But it appeared in last week’s Listener, and I have to say I think it is very fair, with nothing out of context.

I will point out that the binoculars referred to actually came with my Time magazine subscription – honest! Also the photo of me as the devil is not photoshopped, but an actual photo of me at the Parliamentary Ball which had a Halloween theme – it took me ages to scrub off the red body paint!

The Law Commission has published Harmful Digital Communications: The adequacy of the current sanctions and remedies.

This proposal will be considered by the Government and in some form a law change is highly likely. There are significant issues for Internet users. I recommend peopel read through the paper. Their recommendations:

• The creation of a new criminal offence tailored for digital communication.
• Amendments to the Harassment Act 1997, the Human Rights Act 1993, the Privacy Act 1993 and the Crimes Act 1961 to ensure that the provisions of these Acts can be readily applied to digital communications.
• The establishment of a Communications Tribunal to provide citizens harmed by digital communications with speedy, efficient and cheap access to remedies such as takedown orders and “cease and desist” notices.
• New legal requirements for all New Zealand schools to help combat bullying of all kinds, including cyber-bullying.

From their report:

This report is primarily about the laws to which we are all accountable when we communicate. Its recommendations are not aimed at censorship. Nor are they about criminalising speech which offends people simply because it may be abusive, nasty, vulgar, untrue or inflammatory.

That is good. However I do have some fears about how this boundary may get shifted over time.

Types of digital communications covered by the offence would include comments on websites, message boards and blogs, and in the social media (e.g. Facebook and Twitter), and also emails and texts.

Hence, why people should read the report.

Under our proposed amendments it would be an offence to publish intimate photographs or recordings of another person without their consent. We also recommend that the laws about online sexual grooming be tightened.

I support that.

We recommend that it become an offence to incite a person to commit suicide, irrespective of whether or not the person does so.

Likewise.

The Tribunal we propose would comprise a District Court judge supported (where necessary) by an expert internet adviser. There would be a number of judges designated to act.

If there is to be a Tribunal (and I have some reservations), I’m glad it will comprise a Judge, as they will be acquainted with the balancing if rights more than a lay commissioner might be.

The Tribunal’s jurisdiction would be protective, rather than punitive or compensatory. It would not have any powers to impose criminal sanctions. It would be limited instead to providing civil remedies, such as takedowns and cease and desist orders. In some cases it might also require apologies, right of reply, corrections or retractions. We do not propose that it have any power to award monetary compensation.

That sounds good, but what is implicit, not explicit, that a failure to comply would be contempt of court and see someone fined or jailed for non compliance eventually. I have reservations about someone being forced to take down material they stand by and are prepared to face legal consequences of.

The Tribunal would be a solution of last resort and the threshold for obtaining a remedy would be high. Complainants would have to demonstrate that the communication complained about had caused significant harm, including distress, humiliation or mental harm.

Distress can be rather subjective.

Among the other factors the Tribunal would have to take into account would be: the nature and purpose of the communication and whether it was the type of speech requiring high protection, such as political speech; the truth or falsity of the statement; the context in which it was expressed; and the conduct of the complainant – including the extent to which that conduct may have contributed to the harm suffered.

I am glad to see this, as one concern I have is political activists trying to use the Tribunal to silence critics.

We recommend that NetSafe be given statutory recognition as an “approved agency” responsible for triaging and, where possible, mediating complaints before they reach the Tribunal.

I support this. Netsafe do an excellent job, Mediation is preferable to arbitration.

UMR has done polling of residents and business in Christchurch. Some of the more interesting results:

• 61% of residents say Chch heading in right direction and 21% wrong direction – more positive figures than for NZ as a whole
• 95% are aware of the CBD rebuild plan and 56% support it, 30% are neutral and only 13% opposed to it
• 78% of Chch businesses say Chch heading in right direction and 8% wrong direction.
• 99% of businesses are aware of the CBD rebuild plan and 74% support it, 15% are neutral and only 7% opposed to it

I’d say the CERA team will be delighted with those results. It’s also good to see that the Christchurch residents by a 3:1 majority are positive about the direction of their city as that stands in contrast to the daily doom and gloom pushed by some of the local opposition MPs.

Adam Bennett at NZ Herald reports:

Government appointed commissioners are to take over management of the heavily indebted Kaipara District Council, Local Government Minister David Carter says.

Mr Carter said the council requested the appointment of independent commissioners today after being briefed by a Government appointed review team on the report it would submit to him this week.

Mr Carter ordered the review in May saying the financial situation at the Northland resort town was urgent and action was needed.

Kaipara’s debts total $80.7 million including about $60 million for the Mangawhai sewerage scheme, leading the council to propose a 31 per cent average rate increase, which had ratepayers up in arms.

“Kaipara District Council is facing a range of problems including the size of its debt, invalidity of previous rates, management of its infrastructure and loss of confidence amongst parts of the community”, Mr Carter said today.

“The Council’s request to appoint commissioners under the Local Government Act is made in the best interests of the district, and I applaud that.”

I think local ratepayers will be applauding the decision. This is what happens when debt rises to an unsustainable level.

The Dom Post reports:

Back Benches looks set to live on after the demise of TVNZ7 with NZ On Air committing funding “in principle” to the programme running on Prime.

NZ On Air spokeswoman Gina Rogers said the agency was having talks with Prime about its financial contribution to the show.

It also wanted a shorter season than the planned 50-episode series for next year. Parliament sits for only 30-odd weeks a year, but Back Benches does a New Zealand summer tour.

Ms Rogers said NZ On Air wanted to see Back Benches work. “We’d be really excited about its return.”

I’m very pleased with this. Good on Sky TV for agreeing to broadcast it, and NZ on Air for funding it.

On Prime TV, which is free to air, it will have the potential to get a much bigger audience than it had on TVNZ7.

This shows that public broadcasting is not dependent on TVNZ7 – a channel which had minsicule ratings for most programmes. The NZ on Air model allows local broadcasting to be funded across all broadcasters.

TVNZ7 was a failed experiment. TVNZ can not be both a commercial and a public service broadcaster.

Personally I would sell TVNZ and use the capital to set up a proper public service broadcaster, combined with Radio NZ. But the operating costs of that could be too high in our fiscal times, so for now the NZ on Air model is working well.

Rob Salmond writes at Pundit:

Since 1996, the NZES has asked people to rate themselves ideologically on a scale from 0 (left) to 10 right). The results are public up to 2008, and have been pretty consistent. There is never an absolute majority of either left wingers or right wingers, usually not even close, and the proportion of people who say they are perfectly centrist (5 on the scale), is around 25-30%. That is a huge bloc of voters perched right in the middle. Ideology in New Zealand is a bell curve, and a steep one at that.

We await the 2011 NZES results with interest.

Given this distribution of voter ideologies, it does not take a statistician to figure out that the left needs to do well with centrist voters in order to win. Same for the right. And, when you look at the NZES figures, that is what you find. In the three MMP elections where Labour took office, the left scored its three best results with centrists. In the two elections with public data where Labour lost – 1996 and 2008 – it had its two worst results with centrists. The difference – best to worst – in that period is over ten points.

This suggests there is real benefit to the left in trying to win the support of people to the right of Labour and the left of National, and that this benefit cannot be gained any other way. Without those people, getting the left enough seats to govern becomes virtually impossible.

Salmond is of course absolutely right. Elections are won in the centre. Of course one can sometimes redefine the centre, but this is very challenging.

Of course, there are different ways to woo those folk. Labour can moderate its own policy, alter which policies it emphasizes in the political debate, try to alter voters’ perceptions of National, or try to convince centrists to change their issue opinions and even their ideology.  The last strategy, of convincing voters they are flat out wrong, is a favorite among activists of all stripes, because it requires change by others but no compromise or change on their own part. 

That was a gentle slapdown to many of the Labour activists. It also applies to activists on the right who whine constantly that John Key has not scrapped Working for Families overnight.

So what do centrist voters want? One issue that has come up recently is welfare, with David Shearer giving a speech that included an anecdote about a person who was, officially, too sick to work but, in fact, not too sick to paint his roof. That, Shearer said, was not good enough.

In 2008, the last publicly available survey, the NZES asked voters about many issues, including welfare. 61% of centrists thought welfare “made people lazy” while only 18% disagreed. Even left-leaning voters were evenly split on this issue (39% agree vs 38% disagree). Moreover, clear majorities of both centrists and lefties also supported work for the dole. Again, this is unlikely to have changed much since 2008.

Of course, anyone expecting Labour to give in to every reactionary impulse among centrists and start proposing work for the dole schemes and a return to capital punishment (66% centrist support in 2008) is in for a long wait. But these results suggest that voters of all ideological hues want something less severe than that, too – parties should emphasize what they will do to make sure the welfare system is a hand up rather than a hand out, and is not open to abuse. That is what David Shearer did.

Would anyone actually suggest that Shearer was wrong on the facts? That our welfare system is never abused at all? Or that people who can work should work? Or that people who are capable of painting their own roof are probably also capable of, say, painting someone else’s roof?

As I have said, i think many on the left were being far too precious with their trenchant criticism of Shearer over that part of his speech.

Josie Pagani said that, in her experience, Labour is seen as “the party for beneficiaries;” Shearer was reminding everyone that Labour supports people who pay taxes, too.

Well that last sentence is debatable 🙂

As Rob slaps down some activists, Jenny Michie slaps down some of the caucus:

I have spent the better part of 17 years  – eight  of those as a paid organiser for the Labour Party – practicing the ancient art of alchemy; turning supporters into volunteers, volunteers into members and members into activists. …

I make this point because I am deeply concerned about what’s going on with some members of the Labour caucus and the long term effects their behaviour  will have on Party members and supporters leading into the 2014 general election. …

I can only hope David Shearer was misquoted on Newstalk ZB when asked if he was happy with the behaviour of his caucus.  Labour Partymembers deserve better.

MPs  just can’t  indulge in this sort of disloyal, backstabbing, bitchy and  frankly unkind behaviour .  It will affect supporters and activists (not to mention the general voting public).

Jenny concludes:

Labour, get it together.

You’re letting us all down.

d

The Electoral Commission has recommended three significant changes being:

• Party vote threshold from 5% to 4%
• No electorate seat threshold
• No over-hang

I’ve modeled how the 1996 to 2011 elections would look under these changes. They are:

In 1996, this would have resulted in the Nat/NZF Govt being unable to govern as they would have fallen two seats short of a majority.  Rev Graham Capill would have become an MP and Party Leader of a five person party. Either ACT or Christian Coalition would have been needed to join Nat/NZF or it would be a Lab/All/NZF Govt.

In 1999, there would have been no change under different rules.

In 2002, the only change would be United gain a seat and Progressive lose a seat.

In 2005 there would have been a significant impact as the Lab/Prog/NZF/UF Govt would be one seat short. Either the Greens (whom NZF had vetoed) or Maori Party (last cab off the rank) would have been need by Labour also. Alternatively Nat/NZF/Maori/ACT/UFNZ could get 61 seats. Either way the combinations look pretty unstable.

In 2008, National would have been unable to govern without the Maori Party as Nat/ACT/UFNZ would have gone from 64 seats to 58 seats. One could have ended up with a Lab/Gre/NZF/Maori Government.

The only change in 2011 would have been one less Green MP.

So overall in 1996, in 2005 and in 2008 these changes would have meant a different Government being formed, than what was possible under the status quo. It may have seen Labour. not National, form Government in 1996 and 2008 which is partly why Labour likes the proposals, and National do not.

However the past is not necessarily the future. A lower threshold may benefit the CR more than the CL, if it allows the Conservatives in.

UPDATE: I mistyped the party vote for the Greens in 2011, so in fact they stay the same and National would lose an MP in 2011 under the EC proposals. This means that in 2011 as well as 2008 the Maori Party would hold the balance of power.

Oral Questions 2.00 pm – 3.00 pm

1. DAVID SHEARER to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his recent statements?
2. Hon TAU HENARE to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on the cost of living?
3. Dr RUSSEL NORMAN to the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment: How many New Zealanders are unemployed and by how many has that number increased since the quarter immediately before National came to power in 2008?
4. Hon DAVID PARKER to the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment: How many people were employed in the manufacturing sector when he took office in 2008, and how many people are employed in the manufacturing sector now, according to the most recent data produced by Statistics New Zealand?
5. Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA to the Minister for Social Development:What reports has she received on the public submissions on the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children about how to better protect our most vulnerable children from abuse and neglect?
6. JACINDA ARDERN to the Minister for Social Development: Does she stand by her statement “I want to make sure the Ministry of Social Development is focused on its core responsibilities in the years ahead, in particular those families stuck in long-term poverty. I don’t underestimate the challenges associated with this, but I intend to make it a priority.”?
7. HOLLY WALKER to the Minister of Housing: What are Housing New Zealand’s time frames for responding to maintenance requests, and in what percentage of cases are those timeframes met?
8. KATRINA SHANKS to the Minister for Courts: What recent announcements has he made on the modernisation of our courts system?
9. Hon NANAIA MAHUTA to the Minister of Education: Does she agree with the Prime Minister that National Standards data is currently “very ropey”?
10. NIKKI KAYE to the Minister of Housing: What reports has he received on his alleged visit to 44 Symonds Street earlier this year?
11. BRENDAN HORAN to the Associate Minister of Transport: Is he satisfied that everything is being done to maintain KiwiRail safety?
12. PHIL TWYFORD to the Minister for State Owned Enterprises: What advice has he received on the likelihood of KiwiRail finding $3.85 billion from its own balance sheet as required by the Turnaround Plan?
13. MOANA MACKEY to the Chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee: How many submissions have been received on the petition of Meng Foon “that the House of Representatives note that 10,240 people have signed a petition calling on KiwiRail and the Government to repair the Gisborne to Napier railway line, and that the House support this demand”?

Today there are four questions from National, five questions from Labour, two from the Greens and one from NZ First. Also one question to a select committee chair.

Patsy of the day goes to Q8 – What recent announcements has he made on the modernisation of our courts system?

Labour are asking a gotcha to John Key, unemployment. poverty, national standards and Kiwirail.

Greens are on unemployment and state housing and NZ First also on Kiwirail.

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

1. Appropriations (2013/13 Estimates) Bill – committee stages continued
2. Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill – committee stage

There are three hours and 40 minutes left on the Appropriations Bill which sould last until around 8 pm, so I expect the EEZ bill will not complete its committee stage by 10 pm

The Appropriation (2012/13 Estimates) Bill was introduced in May 2012 and authorises expenditure for 2012/13. It passed first reading 64 to 57 with National, Maori, ACT and United Future voting for supply and Labour, Greens, NZ First and Mana against.

The Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill was introduced in August 2011. It seeks to establish an environmental management regime for New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and continental shelf. At first reading it was supported by National, Greens, ACT, Maori, United and C Carter and opposed by Labour, Progressive and Mana. The Local Government and Environment Committee reported it back, with opposition from Labour, Greens and NZ First. It passed second reading 64 to 57 with Labour, Greens, NZ First and Mana against.

Scott Yorke blogs the diary of a unnamed Labour Party strategist and time traveller:

3 January 49 B.C:  My latest assignment is proving to be a real delight. Rome’s a fascinating town, and I have been deeply impressed with the way the governing classes in this Roman Republic conduct themselves. The men of the Senate are vexed by Caesar’s demands, but I have assured them they have nothing to worry about. Caesar will not dare cross the Rubicon into Italy, because if he does so he will be at war with the Roman state. His men will desert him, rather than be crushed by Pompey’s armies. Caesar may be a useful general, but he has neither the courage nor the tactical nous of his opponent.

1 January 43 B.C: That Cicero fellow’s a genius. He’s not just a great orator and writer, but a perceptive and clever politician. He’s got that foolish upstart boy Octavian wrapped around his finger, and Mark Antony is running scared. I predict a long and glorious future for the Roman Republic, under the wise stewardship of Marcus Tullius Cicero. …

1 June 1876: Just appointed to the staff of Lieutenant Colonel George Custer. I have already drawn up a battle plan, and I’m confident of a swift victory. …

29 September 1938:  I told Neville just to sign the damn piece of paper. Nobody wants to go to war over a small central European country with a name nobody can spell, least of all the Germans. It will keep them quiet, and we can be assured of gloriously ruling the waves for another fifty years. Neville demurs, and worries that the Germans may simply demand more territory; but where would they go? The Polish cavalry will overrun them if they move east, and if they attack France they’ll be broken on the Maginot Line. I had to remind Neville that our staunch allies, the French, have the most powerful army in the world.

12 August 2012: Those were some times, I tell you! Now it’s time to get back to work. I’ve got some great ideas to share with David and the team.

Heh, very good.

John Ansell has blogged on the treatygate campaign, as reported yesterday by Critic. His plan is:

1. Launch Colourblind New Zealand, and set a goal to lock in one law for all by December 2014.
2. Raise a $2 million fighting fund so the politicians know we’re able to embarrass them.
3. Petition for a referendum at the 2014 election. Question: “Do you want New Zealand to be a Colourblind State, with one law for all, and no racial favouritism of any kind?”
4. How to make the PM obey the referendum result? Run lots of bold Treatygate ads telling voters just who has been conning them, and how.
5. If media refuse to run these ads, use rival media to expose them as part of the con.
6. Bombard government MPs with instructions from their voters to obey their will.
7. Support local body campaigns on Maori wards (typically attracting an 80% NO vote).

For my 2c I have long said I think NZ would be better off without the Maori parliamentary seats, and that having race based seats on local bodies is definitely not heading in the right direction..

However I differ from John in terms of how I view the Treaty of Waitangi. I think the settlement of historical grievances is a very good thing, and I do not have a problem with the Treaty of Waitangi having legal recognition – but the Treaty itself, not the more nebulous “principles”.

Also while I think NZ would be better off without the Maori seats (race based seats can only be divisive in the long run), I don’t think it is wise for the majority to remove something which has taken on huge significance with many Maori. The majority of New Zealanders who are of Maori descent have chosen to enrol on the Maori roll, which is significant. This may be partly tactical of course though.

So my preference is to convince Maori that they would be better off to do away with the Maori seats, and instead implement what the 1986 Royal Commission implemented of no threshold for Maori parties contesting the party vote. That of course is not entirely colour-blind – but I think both a better solution for Maori, and a less divisive one for New Zealand.

Just been going through the GSP growth for the various Australian states. The data tells a real story of two Australias. The data I am using is seasonally adjusted state final demand, which is similar to our GDP or economic growth.

• Western Australia 14.5%
• Queensland 7.5%
• Victoria 2.7%
• South Australia 2.3%
• NSW 1.9%
• Tasmania -0.8

It would be worth remembering those massive differences when certain politicians bemoan the fact Australia’s growth is higher overall than in NZ, yet oppose New Zealand undertaking the activities that are fuelling the boom in WA and Queensland.

One News reports:

Valerie Adams says she was overcome with emotion at the news that she has been awarded the Olympic gold medal in the women’s shot put.

Adams has been awarded the medal, after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced today that Belarus’s Nadzeya Ostapchuk, 33, was excluded from competition following a positive test for metenolone.

“I am speechless with this news. It is taking me some time to take this in,” said Adams from her base in Switzerland.

“It is huge and I am absolutely thrilled of course. It makes me extraordinarily proud as a New Zealander.

“It is also encouraging for those athletes, like myself who are proud to compete cleanly, that the system works and doping cheats are caught,” she said.

The New Zealand Olympic Committee Secretary General Kereyn Smith congratulated Adams on her gold medal and says the honour is well deserved. She added that the vast majority of New Zealand athletes are proud to compete cleanly on the world’s stage. 

New Zealand Chef de Mission Dave Currie said the news was wonderful and he is very proud of Adams.

Adams threw 20.70m in the shot put final at the Olympic Stadium on 6 August and was awarded silver behind the Belarusian who had taken gold with 21.36m. It was the first time Adams had been beaten by Ostapchuk in nearly two years.

Very very pleased for Adams. Thankfully Ostapchuk is the only medalist to fail a drug test to date.

Ostapchuk had been openly speculated about as a drug cheat, due to her sudden improvement in performance, and I’m not sure too many were deeply surprised by the finding.

I was on NewstalkZb with Pam Corkery the day she beat Adams for the gold, and we were asked about possible drug cheating. I was fairly diplomatic and said her improvement has been suspicious but we shouldn’t be bad losers, and give her the benefit of the doubt unless she subsequently fails.

Pam, rather hilariously, said that Ostapchuk should be required to give a semen sample as her drugs test. Both Larry Williams and I took some time to stop laughing. Yes, rather cruel, but also rather funny – and the confirmation Ostapchuk was using Metenolone which has androgenic properties, means that it is self-inflicted.

It is interesting that Ostapchuk passed drugs tests on 25 July, 26 July and 1 August but failed on 5 August and 6 August. The tests she passed were done before the games. I hope they inquire into the testing agency that did those ones.

Nick Smith writes in the Herald:

The hysteria sweeping the country over fracking is like a modern-day version of the Chicken Licken story.

It is not the fear of the sky falling in but of what is happening underground that is seeing the formation of anti-fracking groups. Councils in Christchurch, Hawkes Bay, Dunedin, Hastings and Kaikoura, as well as many community boards, have jumped on the Greens’ “Don’t Frack with NZ” bandwagon. It is time to inject some science and common sense into the debate.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, has been used in New Zealand for decades. Some 25 years ago, fracking was used in the construction of the Clyde Dam while I was undertaking my doctoral thesis in geotechnical engineering. Fracking is used to develop geothermal energy fields and to enhance oil and gas recovery in the petroleum industry. It is similar to “well stimulation” in the water industry.

As Nick points out he knows a bit more about this stuff than the average MP or city councillor jumping on the bandwagon.

The first environmental risk cited by those seeking a ban is that fracking can trigger small earthquakes. This is true for all sorts of engineering works. A magnitude 4 earthquake was triggered by the filling of Lake Pukaki in the 1960s. Lots of small earthquakes are triggered by constructing pile foundations for buildings, bridges and wharves. Hundreds of small quakes are occurring with the current geothermal energy developments north of Taupo. The few small earthquakes that could be caused by fracking need to be considered in the context of there being 18,000 naturally occurring earthquakes over magnitude 2.5 across the country a year. New Zealanders have more to fear from the vibration of their mobile phone than that caused by fracking.

Nice. That puts it into context.

The second concern is pollution of New Zealand’s waterways and aquifers. These risks are also low. The proppants used are just fillers. They pose fewer health risks than sand in the family sand pit. The lubricants have a toxicity similar to dish washing liquid. The far greater risk to water quality is the natural contaminants from underground that may be picked up by the water during drilling or fracking of a well. This is particularly true of geothermal wells in volcanic strata that often contain toxic chemicals.

The argument here is not that fracking is risk-free but rather that the risks are manageable. This is the conclusion of the Taranaki Regional Council which has overseen 20 years of petroleum industry fracking without incident. The United States Environmental Protection Authority has come to a similar conclusion. A detailed inquiry just published by the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering in the United Kingdom also concludes the technology can be used safely. We do need to ensure wells are properly sealed, that drilling and fracking wastewater is responsibly managed and that ground vibrations are monitored and minimised.

As Nick says fracking is not new, and it is about risk minimisation and management. The calls by the Greens and associated politicians to ban fracking temporarily or indefinitely are the modern day anti-science witch-hunt.

There are huge geothermal energy resources in the upper North Island that can be developed only with fracking. It is contradictory for the Greens to campaign on a platform of creating 100,000 jobs from renewable energy, identify geothermal as a key opportunity and then propose a fracking ban that would kill this industry.

Just as they whine loudly about affordable housing and bitterly oppose freeing up more land to reduce land prices.

Fracking technologies are underpinning an energy revolution in the United States. Huge unconventional shale gas resources in Louisiana and Pennsylvania are coming on stream, enabling gas to replace coal-fired electricity generation. Gas emits one-third the greenhouse gas emissions of coal. This low-cost gas is also reducing American dependence on the Middle East.

So fracking can be good relatively for the environment.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, in response to demands from the Greens, is undertaking an inquiry and will report by Christmas. I fear this will unfold in a similar way to when the Greens demanded a Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, but then rubbished its conclusions.

Yep.

I am passionate about New Zealand’s natural environment. I want to bequeath my children and grandchildren a nation with a great lifestyle, a strong economy and a clean environment. That will only be possible if we take a rational and science-based approach to our natural resources and risk management. Fracking may have too many letters in common with our favourite swear word, but it is the least of New Zealand’s environmental worries.

An excellent column.

The building fire alarm went off at 2.30 am. This has happened several times in the last year and every time it is a false alarm – they are fucking annoying. This time I came very very close to just staying in bed, and not heading down ten flights of steps to wait outside in the cold.

The alarm started off as a “An alarm has gone off, prepare for instructions” which at least gave me time to have a quick look through my apartment to check there was nothing here.

I got back in bed and it then changed to “Evacuate the building” so very grumpily I headed down the stairs. As I got to the bottom floor, I checked the alarm monitor to see which apartment had the alarm going, and was rather surprised to find it was mine. I ceased the mental curses I had been directing towards the apartment responsible!

I concluded probably just as well I hadn’t stayed in bed. Not that I thought there was anything wrong in my apartment, as I had checked it. It was more that it would have been a bad look to have stayed up there and have the fire fighters turning up.

It turned out that some steam from a bath I had at 9 pm (scraping off mud and clay from a river bed walk up the Pinnacles at Cape Palliser) somehow managed to set the fire alarm off five and a half hours later. Talk about over-sensitive. Some quick discussions while outside with body corporate committee members about getting less sensitive sensors. Steam in a bathroom is hardly unusual!

Hopefully can get back to sleep now.

The Electoral Commission has published its draft recommendations on changes to the MMP electoral system. The key points are:

• The one electorate seat threshold for the allocation of list seats should be abolished.
• The party vote threshold for the allocation of list seats should be lowered to 4%.
• Candidates should continue to be able to stand both in an electorate and on a party list at general elections.
• List MPs should continue to be able to contest by-elections.
• Political parties should continue to have responsibility for the composition and ranking of candidates on their party lists.
• The provision for overhang seats should be abolished for parties that do not cross the party vote threshold.
• On the basis of current information it would be prudent to identify 76 electorate seats (in a 120 seat Parliament) as the point at which the risk to proportionality from insufficient list seats becomes unacceptable. New Zealand is unlikely to reach that point before 2026.
• The gradual erosion of list seats relative to electorate seats risks undermining the diversity of representation in Parliament. Parliament should review this matter.

You can provide feedback to the Commission on their draft recommendations.

They will publish final recommendations later this year. Then it will be up to Parliament as to whether or not they adopt them.  It will be interesting if any party proposes a members’ bill to adopt all their recommendations, rather than cherry picking the ones they think personally favour them.

I’m a bit disappointed the Commission has been so timid. I do support lowering the threshold to 4% and abolishing the one seat threshold. However I think they should have recommended greater internal democracy measures for party list rankings, and should have proposed either not allowing List MPs to contest by-elections or indeed even abolishing by-elections (which they talk about but take no stance on). Also no movement on dual candidacy means that the issue which most upsets people the most in my experience, is not dealt with. I think so long as List MPs do not have their own distinct role, and instead remain shadow constituency MPs, we will have significant issues.

So some good stuff there, but overall disappointingly timid.

John Hartevelt at Stuff reports:

ACC Minister Judith Collins wants the state insurer to start sacking staff who breach a new “zero tolerance” policy on privacy breaches.

A furious Ms Collins has revealed her astonishment at the failure of ACC to include privacy among nine of its “top priorities”.

“I’m not going to sit back and let one of the most important government entities [that] we have let people down time and time again around things such as privacy.

“They have to act in the way that I expect them to act. When I go around the branches, most of the people there absolutely understand it.

“But, actually, a few are letting them down and when we have things like the audit and risk committee having nine priorities for the year and not one of them [being] privacy, how can that be acceptable given everything else that’s going on?”

Ms Collins’ comments come as figures from ACC show 11 staff members have been reprimanded over “serious misconduct” since 2010.

The breaches involved: theft; fraud against ACC or a claimant; serious misuse of ACC property, including information and systems; dishonesty; disobeying a lawful and reasonable instruction from a manager; and any act that had the potential to bring ACC into disrepute.

Nine staff were sacked as a result of the breaches and two were given final written warnings.

Ms Collins said while the serious misconduct cases were “a shame”, she was pleased they were taken seriously and not covered up. “I think that they need to be – and they are now – taking on a culture of zero tolerance to privacy breaches, in particular,” she said.

Police had a “zero tolerance” approach to staff accessing private details about people without good reason.

“People lose their jobs over it, and that’s something that I think ACC needs to have, which is that we have people’s very personal information, we should treat it with respect and should understand it’s a very privileged position.”

d

An exclusive from Critic:

Critic has obtained documents from controversial race campaigner Louis Crimp, setting out a plan for a $2million campaign aiming to make New Zealand a “colourblind” (racially neutral) state. The campaign will be split into two distinct “brands”, known as “Treatygate” and “Colourblind State”.

‘Treatygate” is the “attack brand”, and will involve a series of brief, hard-hitting advertisements designed to incite “anger” in “hothead” voters. Treatygate aims to “expose the 40 year state brainwashing campaign that has distorted the history of Crown-Maori relations”.

Speaking to Critic, John Ansell, the advertising guru behind the campaign, described the planned advertisements for Treatygate as “short sharp little messages with one piece of evidence in each one”, such as that “Maori companies pay 17.5% tax, [while] others pay 28%.”

According to Ansell the primary goal of the Treatygate campaign is to “expose the bias and enrage the public”. “You have to make the public mad… otherwise we’re the passionless people, we won’t rouse ourselves to oppose the politicians unless [the public] have the information.”

The Treatygate campaign is likely to kick off before the end of 2012, dependent on funding.

After the public have been fired up by the Treatygate campaign, “Colourblind State” aims to harness this anger to get 80% or more of the public to vote in favour of a referendum question along the lines of “Should New Zealand be a colourblind state, with no race-based political representation, policies, or funding?”. Ansell intends to submit his referendum question by the end of August, which will give Parliament three months to approve it. After that, Ansell and his fellow campaigners will have one year to gather the more than 300,000 signatures required to trigger a citizens initiated referendum.

I wonder which CIR may gain more signatures – the asset sales one, or this proposed one? I guess the Greens will not be using taxpayer funding to hire staff to colect signatures for this one!

But Labour and the Greens are insisting that a CIR trumps an election mandate. So if this CIR does happen, and gets majority support, will they adopt it as policy?

For Ansell and his supporters, time is of the essence – the Constitutional Advisory Panel, which was set up in 2011 to review NZ’s constitutional arrangements and draft a set of recommendations, is due to report back in September 2013. Ansell believes that the panel is “stacked” in favour of what he describes as “Griever Maori”, and that the panel is likely to recommend that the government “impose a Treaty-based Maorified constitution by 2014”, which would be “the end of NZ as we know it”.

The Treatygate campaign will involve TV and print advertisements, dependent on funding. However, Ansell says: “The NZ media are pretty gutless so they probably won’t run the ads, so we may have to find other ways of getting them to the public – putting them in letterboxes, dropping them from planes, whatever it takes.”

As well as whipping up public sentiment in favour of a colourblind state, Ansell hopes his campaign will “turn people around from the belief that if you say one thing against this rort then you’re a racist. It’s a tough road, because in America you’re a racist if you wear a white hood and want to lynch black people, and in NZ you’re a racist if you want racial equality.”

Funding is the biggest roadblock standing in the way of Ansell’s campaign so far – although he is aiming for a “political party-type budget” of $2 million, several of his donors have bailed out on him, including one “patriot” who had originally pledged $250,000. Despite this setback, Ansell remains hopeful that funding will trickle in over time. “Hopefully we can start with something small and it’ll snowball. I will be putting out my prospectus to as many people I can think of as possible, with deep pockets, who might be prepared to help, and to ordinary people.”

Note John has commented on the articles in the comments below it.

Mitt Romney has selected Congressman Paul Ryan as his Vice-Presidential running mate, as expected.

Ryan is Chair of the House Budget Committee and his pick signifies the campaign will continue to be on economic management. Romney is a fair way behind Obama in the polls. The choice of Ryan will help him, and he will be a contrast to the bumbling Biden. However at the end of the day people vote for the P, not the VP.

The NY Times reports:

The decision instantly made the campaign seem bigger and more consequential, with the size and role of the federal government squarely at the center of the debate. It was a choice intended to galvanize the Republican base and represented a clear tactical shift by Mr. Romney, who until now had been singularly focused on weak job growth since Mr. Obama took office.

“There are a lot of people in the other party who might disagree with Paul Ryan,” Mr. Romney said in announcing his vice-presidential candidate. “I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t respect his character and judgment.”

When Mr. Ryan bounded onto the stage to join Mr. Romney, against a backdrop of the retired battleship Wisconsin, he carried a generational message; at 42, he is 23 years younger than Mr. Romney and is the same age as Mr. Romney’s oldest son. Neither man has military experience or much background in foreign policy.

If Romney and Ryan do not win, Ryan may be well placed in 2016. He may stand for the House again also, as allowed to under Wisconsin law.

Adam Dunning writes in the SST:

The conditions of Wilson’s imminent release to a purpose-built house in the grounds of Whanganui Prison are extraordinarily stringent for a couple of reasons. The first, official, reason is that without them this unrepentant serial rapist would be all but guaranteed to find new victims to terrify and abuse.

The second – which the Parole Board is unlikely to admit to out loud – is that with so many conditions to meet, Wilson is bound to breach one of them, and sooner rather than later.

Some of Wilson’s 17 release conditions seem bizarre, but each has a sinister subtext. The ban on attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and church groups? That’s because it was at such gatherings that he trawled for vulnerable women he could take home and subjugate. The ban on placing or responding to classified advertisements? That’s how he found another victim. The more general bans on contact with females or anyone under the age of 16 speak for themselves.

But even if Wilson can resist seeking out alcohol, drugs, internet access, women, children, churches, classified ads, 12-step meetings, employment or a car, he is also obliged to attend sessions with a psychologist for the purpose of developing a safety plan, and to “abide by the rules” of a reintegration programme.

Basically it is inevitable he will break one or more of her conditions of release.

Giving a dangerous sex offender enough rope is a sloppy, scary way to keep the community safe, but in this case there are few alternatives. 

Yeah, and hopefully no one will be harmed in the process.

Stuff reports:

It opened on a cold August night 15 years ago when fire works and army abseilers lit up a $75 million project that was set to change the Auckland skyline forever.

At 328 metres, the world’s 28th tallest tower took more than two years to build, using 15,000 cubic metres of concrete and almost 3000 tonnes of steel.

Plans for the tower date back to 1987, but they didn’t gain momentum until 1994 and within three years, on August 3, 1997, it had its grand opening.

I would have sworn the Sky Tower had been with us for more than 15 years. It has become so iconic that it is hard to recall central Auckland without it. I thought it was over 20 years old, but it isn’t.

Haven’t been up for a fair while. I do recall though the first time jumping up and down on the glass floor to test if it was as solid as claimed.

Matt McCarten writes in the HoS:

Does it look like Shearer could despatch Key yet? Of course not.

But no single person can win government without a front bench of competent potential cabinet ministers. So here’s the real question: do Labour front benchers look like they are ready to govern? Have they earned the confidence of the public?

Labour’s problem is not its leader, it’s the caucus. The Green Party in Parliament is less than half Labour’s size yet day after day they prove how lacklustre our main opposition party is.

This may partly be because the media don’t scrutinise the Greens so much.

With the exception of Shearer and his deputy Grant Robertson, do we hear anything much from the rest of Labour? What sense do you have of their finance spokesman? It’s David Parker, if you’ve forgotten.

I assumed David Cunliffe would have been a better pick. But Shearer did appoint him to target Key’s right-hand man, Steven Joyce, the Minister of Everything.

Cunliffe must have a secret plan he’s not sharing with us because he hasn’t initiated one attack on Joyce for more than a month. He’s awol.

And what about our other great hope, Shane Jones? Admittedly, he’s sidelined but he still sits on the front bench so he should do something notable. Alas, his website hasn’t been touched since November.

Cunliffe and Jones’ lack of seriousness suggests they should recommit or put up their hands for early retirement.

I think Jones’ time is up. Cunliffe still has a contribution to make, but the ABC faction would like him to retire.

So about the other talent? During Cunliffe’s leadership bid, he tried to persuade me that Nanaia Mahuta was a hidden talent and once in a front-bench leadership role she would be formidable. I was unconvinced. Does anyone outside the Wellington beltway even know she is Labour’s education spokesperson?

You’d think with all the fallout from National Standards and charter schools she’d be a household name. Yet in over a month, according to her own website, she’s put out a total of three press releases.

Even the new blood such as Jacinda Ardern, at No 4, can’t seem to lay a hand on Paula Bennett as she goes about kicking the poor. The most attention Ardern got was when Maggie Barry made a nasty remark over her not having a child.

Labour has always owned health but I bet you couldn’t tell me who its spokesperson is? Health minister Tony Ryall must find it hard to believe he hasn’t had one sleepless night from being marked by Maryan Street. I respect Street but she’s made no impact on him.

One can dispute some of Matt’s individual comments, but hard to dispute that collectively there is a lack of profile and impact from the Labour front bench.

Even putting aside the day-to-day non-performance, think about this. Winning the Maori seats from the Government at the next election is Labour’s key to victory. Yet its Maori Affairs spokesperson, Parekura Horomia, has put out just two press releases in nearly six months. One was condolences to a family and the other acknowledged the Maori New Year. Good grief!

That is one definite case for retirement.