Whale blogs an e-mail from someone who responded to a call on Twitter from TVNZ, wanting to interview people interested in purchasing MRP shares.

When he was asked if he belongs to a political party, he answered “National” and was told he couldn’t be used.

Now I actually think this is a good thing that TVNZ is asking political affiliations of people who volunteer for stories. It’s a damn sight better than what happened with TV3’s “independent” worm which was stacked full of left-wing activists.

I’m not sure whether mere party membership (as opposed to activism) was a conflict of interest for this story, but as I said it is good that TVNZ is asking. I just wish media would do it more often – and to all parties. The number of times there has been some sob story person on TV or in the newspaper, and I’ve instantly recognised them as a prominent Labour or Green activist is too many to count.

The Press reports:

LIVELY DISCUSSION: The Press deputy editor Ric Stevens, left, interviews Sir Owen Glenn at a Literary Liaison event in Christchurch last night.

Businessman and philanthropist Sir Owen Glenn came to Christchurch to promote his new book last night but his charitable work became the focus.

Last time I checked Owen Glenn was not a knight. In 2008 he was given ONZM, but that is two levels below a knighthood.

Stuff reports:

It has been a while since the last verbal clanger, or “dispatch from Keystania”, named after John Key’s infamous reference to the inhabitants of that war-torn country as “Afghanistanians”.

Who can forget the day scuttlebutt became “scuttlebug” – which under one definition is a less than wholesome sexual practice?

Yesterday, Mr Key delivered a classic in the same vein.

Trying to corral the word for where a company is based, he groped and found “domicility“.

The PM is quite good at inventing new words. The urban dictionary definition of domicility is:

When a man inserts his penis in a woman’s vagina before going to sleep and leaves it in there overnight.

To be fair, the urban dictionary has a sexual slang definition for almost every word! Still I guess, we won’t see that word used again 🙂

Whale Oil blogs on the NZ Herald changing its banner to Te Herora o Aotearoa:

If you go to the Maori Dictionary site and put in “herald”, the result is Hērara: 

 (loan) (noun) Herald, New Zealand Herald.
Kua puta tētahi kōrero ki roto i te ‘Nūpepa Hērara o Nēpia’ mō te haerenga o Te Tātana, te Pirimia, ki te Urewera (HTK 14/4/1894:1). / An account has appeared in the ‘Napier Herald’ about the trip of Mr Seddon, the Prime Minister, to the Urewera.

Not “Hērora“…which they have used,  is Maori for “Harold” or “Herod”:

1.(loan)(personal name) Herod – the name of four rulers of ancient Palestine about the time of Jesus. Herod Antipas (22 BC-c.40 AD) was responsible for the beheading of John the Baptist.
2.(loan)(personal name) Harold.

Oh dear, if that is correct that is quite a blunder. Mind you I quite like the idea of it being the New Zealand Herod! 🙂

NZ Herald Editor-in-chief Tim Murphy has responded on Twitter:

24hrs late with Harold/Herod thing. Silliness started yesty. Wrong then and now. Herora used for NZH since 1867. Te Karere uses.

Stuff reports:

Plain packaging for tobacco is no “slam dunk,” Prime Minister John Key says.

The Health Ministry today released an assessment on the impact of a plan to strip all branding off the packaging of tobacco products.

Officials backed the plan, saying it would reduce the likelihood of consumers being misled about the harmfulness of tobacco and increase the effectiveness of existing health warnings. It would also bring New Zealand into line with a plain packaging policy in Australia due to take effect in October.

But the paper warned of a ”reasonably high risk” of legal action that could cost millions of dollars in legal costs alone.

Australia has already been challenged by three countries through the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and by tobacco companies at the High Court for its plain packaging policy. The objections are over the alleged violation of international trade rules and the loss of value in trademarks.

Officials said New Zealand would face legal costs of $3m to $6m for “international investment arbitration” and a further $1.5m to $2m to defend a WTO case.

Key today said the Government felt it was “likely” to be able to legally introduce plain packaging but it was “not absolutely clear cut”.

‘‘There are lots of things we need to consider – I wouldn’t say it’s a slam dunk by any chance that plain packaging will take place but nor would I rule it out. It really is, genuinely, a true consultation period,” Key said.

I think we should take a science based approach to this issue, and do a trial – perhaps in the South Island. The research I have seen to date merely states that some young people say they find the packaging attractive. That is very different to concluding that fewer people would smoke with plain packaging. I’m all for reducing the number of people who start smoking, but that doesn’t mean one should support every measure proposed. The key things to ask are “Will it work?” and “What are the negative consequences of the measure?”.

No country in the world has plain packaging, so we do not know if it will work. Now, I accept the argument that you don’t know if it will work until someone does try it. This means we could wait for the results from Australia. The problem is that with overall smoking rates on the decline anyway, it will still be hard to tell if any decline was due to the plain packaging.

Hence why we should trial it in say the South Island. Have a three year trial, and at the end of each year survey the smoking rates in both North and South Island and see if there has been any significant variation in the rate of change. If the South Island rate has declined significantly more, then you would be on safe grounds to make the trial permanent, and extend it to the North Island. If it has not, then the trial ends.

Also kudos to David Shearer for being sensible on this issue, as also reported by Stuff:

Prime Minister John Key has been labelled a ”wimp” for refusing to commit to plain packaging of tobacco.

But the taunt, from Labour MP Clare Curran, is not backed by her leader David Shearer who said Key’s cautious approach was ”actually a responsible thing to do”.

A decision to implement or not to implement will be based on inadequate information. That’s why a trial is the sensible way forward. It will allow the benefits, if any, to be quantified.

Stuff reports:

The Government will provide $2 million to help Fiji prepare for its 2014 general elections.

Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully, who met with his Fijian counterpart Ratu Inoke Kubuabola in Suva over the weekend, said the funds would be to help with voter registration, constitutional process and voter education.
 
The Government has yet to decide how it would be allocated, though McCully said $500,000 would go to the Constitutional Commission for work on consultation. …

McCully said he’ll be watching the situation closely, but he was happy with the process so far.
 
”We’ve been given an assurance by the attorney general … that there would be freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the media to report on the work of the commission,” he said.

With the elections just two years away, this is a good time to be helping. The Commodore has succeeded in having the elections done on his timetable, which means there are no excuses for any further delays.

Jane Clifton writes:

Also off-limits to the media was the Saturday night dinner – a great pity, as this saw senior party figures giving what delegates could not stop gushing about as very superior comedy in the course of a fun debate.

The waspish observational humour of Attorney-General Chris Finlayson was the top crowd-pleaser, though delegates were also charmed by a taste of the habitual faux-one-up-manship English and Prime Minister John Key go in for. A senior Young Nat also ventured a killer impersonation of Key. The party members spent the evening happily lampooning one another, more traditional foes like Winston, Labour and the Greens all but forgotten for the evening.

The debate was great fun. The Attorney-General did win the prize for best speaker – for his right of reply speech. What was funny is only half way through the debate did he realise he had to do one! Chris is an incredible debater.

The mimicking of the PM was spot on. That particular Young Nat is very good at doing it.  He gets the mannerisms and tone so well.

The PM and Deputy PM were two of the three Judges, and both made their judging comments at the end. I have to say they were brilliant – arguably funnier than the teams themselves.  It made me wish the debate was being recorded, so they could be on You Tube. It would probably put National up 10% in the polls.

The Westminster Shield is the traditional inter-region debating shield for the National Party. It got revitalized this year after a 20 year or so break, with a North Island and South Island team. The moot was that the South Island should become an independent state – with the North Island team having to argue in favour and the South Island team against.

Many many funny points made – mainly against the rival teams, or in the case of one team – against their own team members. I’d love to blog some of the lines, but its unfair to take them out of the context of a humourous debate and have them on the record.

The contest was very close, but by half a point the South Island team of Nick Smith, Amy Adams and Neil Miller won the 2012 Westminster Shield.

With a degree of regret I can advise that the line which probably got the biggest laugh from the audience was from the Prime Minister when he asked if it was only him, but didn’t David Farrar look like a hobbit size version of Kim Dotcom. Even I had tears of laughter at that one.

The second funniest line of the night involved a reference to “50 shades of grey”. I can’t say more than that, but it was very well chosen (and no this one did not refer to me).

Stuff reports:

The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (Rianz), which represents major record labels, said that between October and April 26 it ordered internet providers send 2766 infringement notices to people it believed it had caught pirating music, including tracks from Lady Gaga and Rihanna.

It wants to increase that to 5000 notices a month, but said the fees it had to pay internet providers for on-sending the notices would first need to be cut from $25 to $2 or less.

So it spent $60,150 on getting infringement notices sent.  And they are whining they can’t afford to spend $120,000 a month on it.

Rianz said overall use of peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) services had fallen 18 per cent since Skynet, but it estimated that despite the “dent in piracy”, New Zealanders were still big cheats.

RIANZ claimed in their submission P2P file sharing was costing them $50m a year in sales. An 18% reduction is a saving of $9m a year for a mere $60,000. That sounds like the bargain of the century for me. And they have the cheek to claim they can not afford to send out more notices unless the price drops to $2.

The Federation Against Copyright Theft, which represents major US movie studios, said the number of times top-200 movies were viewed illegally by New Zealanders online plummeted from 110,000 in August, the month before the copyright law change took effect, to about 50,000 in September. But it said there had been no discernible progress since.

Neither it nor any of its members had ordered any infringement notices because of the $25 fee, which it said should be cut to “pennies”.

NZFACT have admitted 60,000 fewer movie downloads which at $20 each is a saving of $1.2m a month. And they have achieved this without spending a single cent. They should thank the Government for passing and funding the law which has been so effective.

The notion that ISPs should be forced to subsidise MPAA members by processing infringement notices for (almost) free is laughable, and they can’t be serious.

But Telecom said the fees should rise to $104. It said it had spent $534,416 complying with Skynet, but had been asked to send only 1238 notices.

Telecom will not be alone here. Many ISPs have spent a lot of money to comply with this law.

The submissions showed Telecom, TelstraClear and Vodafone each had one customer who had received a final “third strike” enforcement notice, which meant Rianz could have brought them in front of the Copyright Tribunal.

But all three enforcement notices have lapsed without Rianz taking action, meaning those internet users would be back on a clean sheet of “no strikes”.

Rianz won’t comment on why it hasn’t taken action on those three offenders.

InternetNZ chief executive Vikram Kumar said he was pleased Rianz had resisted pulling the trigger.

“We don’t want to see anyone fined.”

From an academic point of view I actually would like to see a third strike recipient referred to the Copyright Tribunal. That would allow us to learn what level of fines will be incurred for what severity of infringing. Also if it is contested, we might learn what the Tribunal regards as proof.

Rianz said there were now six music download stores and four “all you can eat” streaming music services operating in New Zealand, with another four streaming services planning to launch in the near future. Many had been encouraged to launch because of the crackdown on piracy, it said.

Yep, the law is working. While not perfect, the compromise reached on it means that we have a relatively balanced law on copyright. Let’s keep it that way.

Fifty-eight of its 2766 infringement notices had been challenged by internet users, but it had adjudged only two of those challenges “valid”.

Would be interesting to get details of those.

In a list of bouquets and brickbats, Brian Edwards notes a brickbat:

To the New Zealand Herald which accompanied a report today on the National Party Conference with deliberately chosen, highly unflattering photographs of Paula Bennett, Hekia Parata and John Key (with double chins) and a laboured attempt at a humorous caption. There can be no journalistic defence for this sort of offensive demeaning of public figures in a news story.

It did seem rather stupid.

Chris Trotter writes:

Speaking to a group of corporate head-hunters on July 11, Mr Parker spelled out the details of Labour’s policy on foreign investment. Concerned to prevent “infrastructure assets with monopoly characteristics” from being sold to offshore buyers, Labour, in the run-up to last year’s election, drew up a “closed list” – to keep a “bright line” between “what is to be sold and what is not”. Among the infrastructure that was not to be sold were any electricity line, water storage or irrigation networks; seaports or airports; and public hospitals, schools, railway lines or roads.

Not included in Labour’s “closed list” were telecommunications networks and – amazingly – “electricity generators”.

According to Labour’s policy: “While the electricity market is on the cusp of becoming uncompetitive and exhibits monopoly-like characteristics, generation assets are diverse in nature, location and ownership.”

What this means is that although Labour went into the last general election on a policy of “no asset sales”; and in spite of the fact that its campaign advertising showed a vast banner displaying that very message being draped over a hydro-electricity generating dam, the party was unwilling to include electricity generators on the list of state-owned infrastructure that “ought to be run in the New Zealand interest” – and never be sold to foreigners.

Am I alone in thinking that Labour’s foreign investment policy fatally compromises its current campaign against asset sales? If the generation of electricity is an activity which properly belongs to the market, and if New Zealand’s electricity generation assets are “diverse in nature, location and ownership” and, therefore, able to be purchased by foreign interests, then I’m at a loss to know why the Labour Party is opposed to their partial privatisation.

In one sense you can argue that there is no contradiction. The foreign investment policy deals with assets owned by the private sector while the privatisation policy is about assets owned by the Government.

However considering the hysteria from Labour over minority share-holdings in some SOE energy companies, it is interesting to contrast that with their policy that it would be fine for (for example) a foreign company to buy all of Contact Energy or Todd Energy.

Also useful to contrast to their record in office. They claim they are now against any foreign investment in electricity lines companies, yet they approved the sale of the Wellington lines company.

At the end of the day, you have to wonder if Labour actually stands for anything, apart from wanting to be in power.

Maryan Street has finalised her euthanasia bill, called the End of Life Choice Bill.  The last bill on euthanasia failed just 58-60 in 2003, so there is a very reasonable chance that such a bill can pass, if drawn.

I believe we need such a bill, and will be supporting it. It is inhumane what some families are forced to go through. They key elements of the bill are:

• that the person making the request must be mentally competent, as attested by 2 medical practitioners – and that there is no coercion involved
• that the person suffers from a terminal illness which is likely to cause death within 12 months, or from an irreversible physical or mental condition that, in the person’s view, renders his or her life unbearable
• A 7 day reflection period
• Can do an end of life directive, while mentally competent, specifying wishes. Must be renewed every five years
• Medical practitioners can refuse to be involved
• Family members can not annul the wishes of the applicant (unlike with organ donations!)
• An annual review of how the law is being operated

There are no doubt some areas of the bill that can be improved upon in select committee, but to me it looks worthy of support for at least first reading.

I commented on Twitter yesterday how Sue Bradford complained there were more Police at the National Party conference than protesters. I remarked that I thought this was more a reflection on the protesters than the Police, as not the fault of the Police there were so few protesters.

John Armstrong writes in the NZ Herald:

National’s annual conference was not short of protests. But the protests were embarrassingly short of protesters.

Contrary to the impression given by some accounts, the 400 or so party faithful did not spend their weekend cowering inside Auckland’s SkyCity Convention Centre behind a not-so-thin blue line of police.

The police showed up in significant number; the protesters did not. Yesterday morning’s all-comers rally against everything National stands for drew a total of 79 people – it may well have been counter-productive.

Must have been the weather!

News broke on Twitter of the shootings at the screening of Batman Aurora. The local newspaper was live tweeting from the scene, and their follower numbers skyrocketed, as millions of people realised they could get reports faster through Twitter than through news websites.

Incredible sadness for all those who died, but especially the woman who survived a mass shooting in Toronto, to be killed in Aurora – how unlucky do you have to be, to be in two mass shootings.

A minor blessing I guess is James Holmes was such a lousy shot. Of 70 people he shot, he only killed 12. The death toll could have been far worse.

While all mass shooters are to a degree mad, this one seems more inexlicable than most. With Columbine, it was two kids who snapped after years of bullying. In Norway it was a political extremist who wanted to make a point. With Holmes, it is not at all clear why he did this, apart from obviously trying to emulate The Joker. Also somewhat unusual that he got taken alive.

Holmes had no history of problems apart from struggling with a PhD in neuroscience. However he got honours for his undergrad degree. Almost no Internet footprint.

Maybe one day we will find out what caused him to do this, but that won’t bring back the dead of course.

Its illogical, but I don’t intend to see the movie now. I’ll probably watch it at some stage when it hits TV. But Batman will never quite be the same again.

I’ve just noticed that Scoop has put up the notes made by the audience (note taking was crowd sourced) during Nethui, and specifically the one from the copyright session I facilitated. The part that made me laugh was:

citing Sipa, Popa, TPP, Farrar says “If it doesn’t have an acronym, it can’t be evil”. That’s David Farrar, often known as DPF.

That wasn’t an interjection, just the note taker with a sense of humour.

Audrey Young reports at the Herald:

Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce made a stinging attack today on Labour and the Greens accusing them of being “snake oil salesmen” and by pretending they could stop development and still have more jobs.

“It’s fairy tale stuff,” he told delegates to the National Party conference in Auckland.
They had to be called out for their “intellectual dishonesty”. …

Mr Joyce said the greatest risk for New Zealand was that it could “ankle-tap” itself by not developing because of small vocal minority who hated change and hated progress.

“It’s about the mitigation of the risk, it’s not about saying no. Every time you say no, it’s less jobs.”

He said Labour behaved different in Opposition to Government. It opposed the part sales of State owned enterprises but in Government had supported the privatisation of SOE subsidiaries which was only a subtle difference.

This is absolutely true. In fact Labour Ministers approved the sale of a mine from Solid Energy to the private sector.

It had also encouraged oil and gas exploration and celebrated the building of the Sky City casino.

“Those people are beneath contempt because they want to slow down New Zealand’s development for their own political ends.”

Good to see Ministers willing to hit back.

Matt McCarten writes in the HoS:

On the day this review came out I dropped into the conference of Andrew Little’s old union, the EPMU. I went to listen to the Greens’ Russel Norman and the new Labour leader.

I must have spoken to close to 30 Labour-aligned activists. They all enthusiastically supported the review’s recommendations.

I’m sure they were. The EPMU is Labour’s largest union. The proposed constitutional changes will give the EPMU a massive say in who future leaders will be, and will entrench their power. I am sure the EPMU activists were delirious with delight at the changes.

This has been a hectic week. It was a normal Monday (16th) until I got a call asking me if I wanted to attend the Asia-Pacific Internet Governance Forum in Tokyo. I said yes in principle but depends on dates – thinking it was a couple of months away. It turned out that it was starting Wednesday 18th. That would meant catching a flight at 0630 Tuesday to Auckland and then Tokyo to get there in time.

To complicate things further I was booked to fly to Auckland on Friday for a couple of VRWC meetings and then the National Party conference, followed by a week’s holiday in Vanuatu starting Sunday 29th.

This mean I would have to cancel my Friday meetings, as a flight back from Tokyo got back Saturday morning. At 8.30 pm Monday the funding for travel costs (which was from Google and the Japanese Internet Providers Association) was confirmed. This meant I had 10 hours to suddenly pack for Tokyo, Auckland and Vanuatu, arrange neighbours to collect some deliveries for me, and cancel various appointments. I don’t think I’ve ever before had such a short time-frame between knowing I was going overseas and actually going.

Did an all nighter and headed to Wgtn Airport around 5.30 am.

Got to Tokyo Tuesday night and then had to work for a few hours on a poll. Then up early Wednesday for conference. Went though until 8 pm, and Thursday it went until 6 pm and then had dinner with some of my co-panelists at the Google Tokyo office (very nice views!).

Friday I did the panel, and then flew out early evening arriving Auckland around 9.45 am. Had to go buy some new shirts at midday as literally had not had time to do laundry (but on plus side, new shirts are three sizes smaller than old ones) and then straight after lunch had to get some photos done at 2 pm for The Listener, and then straight from there to TV3 where I did a pre-record with Sam Hayes for Three60 on Sunday morning.

Straight from TV3 back to Sky City where I was due to host pre-dinner drinks for a few people at 5 pm. Had a great time – so good that hotel management felt obliged to show me their (up until then) obscure rules that parties may incur a $5,000 fine (yes, seriously) as the room value is $800,000 (which was crap – it was a suite but not that grand a one), and also that their rules prohibit more than two people in a room after midnight. I did ask them why they were banning threesomes, but they didn’t really take the joke 🙂

i thought it ironic one part of the hotel is telling me no parties, while another part had kindly supplied a couple of dozen extra glasses for us. Anyway we did lower the noise level and the at 7 pm headed off to the dinner. The dinner and debate (which I will touch on in a later post) went until 11 pm and then a few people (officially no more than one at a time) came up for end of night drinks. Well the last person left at 3.30 am and I had not slept much on the flight back from Tokyo that morning. I set wake up call for 5.30 am and woke up at 8.20 am. As my international flight was leaving at 9.30 am it would be fair to say I was somewhat panicked and had an extremely quick packing and shower.

Let hotel just after 8.30 am and rang Air NZ to say I would probably make airport at 9.05 pm, and any efforts to get me on the flight would be appreciated. They said no guarantees at that time.

Luckily traffic was light and my taxi driver was correctly incentivised (a flat fee if I got there on time) got me there just before 9 am. Managed to get bag on flight. Had to quickly grab some foreign currency and of course the gate was the furthest one away, and got there just as they were calling me by name. Whew.

Amazing how much you de-stress once you are actually on board the plane. Then four hours later land in Vanuatu and all is good. Beautiful climate, and staying on a private resort island for a week. Blogging will be lighter this week, but I do have some old posts times delayed.

My general intent is to always take a week off in the middle of winter to somewhere warm. Having had basically no sleep for three of the seven last nights, I definitely need it!

NZ Herald quiz is here. 9/10 in 42 seconds.

John Key announced:

The Government will ensure New Zealanders will be at the front of the queue for shares in Mighty River Power, with Prime Minister John Key today announcing further details about the sale of shares in the energy company. …

“Accessibility to the share offer is also broadened with the minimum application size of $1000 for Mighty River Power shares, meaning a wide range of New Zealanders will be in a position to apply.

“Those New Zealanders seeking up to $2000 worth of shares will not have their offer scaled back. In other words, New Zealanders applying for up to $2000 worth of shares are guaranteed to receive the shares they apply for.

“Big institutions aren’t getting any guarantees, so this is another way we’re putting everyday New Zealanders at the front of the queue,” Mr Key said.

These are both good. A minimum package of $1,000 will allow many Kiwis to purchase shares – and if short of cash, they should follow Labour’s advice and borrow some money so they can buy the shares.

A guarantee that you can get at least $2,000 worth is also excellent. I’d recommend those families with enough cash or savings buy $2,000 in each of their kids names – can even be the start of a trust for them.

A motion to extend adoption eligibility to couples in a civil union (hence same sex couples also) passed on the main floor of the National Party’s national annual conference yesterday by arounds a two thirds majority.

I’m massively pleased that the vast majority of the National Party grassroots membership who were at the conference voted for the remit. I think it shows how even over a relatively short period of five or six years, the views of the party have changed.

Huge congrats to the Young Nationals who put the remit up, spoke passionately in its favour, and did the hard yards lobbying delegates, arranging other speakers etc. It shows that youth wings can have a good impact on national politics – just as they did with the VSM legislation.

Now if a bill on the issue does get submitted and drawn out of the ballot, it will be a conscience vote for National MPs – as it should be. So the resolution of the conference is not binding. However I think it was be reasonably persuasive with some MPs in terms of demonstrating that there is majority support for such a move (as polls have shown also). It isn’t about saying there is no difference between different types of families – i is about saying that there shouldn’t be a legislative ban on certain types of families adopting – the law should be about making a decision which is in the best interest of the child.

The Young Nats managed to get this remit through both the Northern Regional Conference, and now the Annual Conference. They also managed to get passed a remit supporting a “pay protection” law, which would require unions to have their members pay them directly, rather than have it deducted out of pay packets along with PAYE.

CBS reports:

Bay Area drivers could one day be tracked using a GPS-like device in their cars and taxed per miles driven – a scenario which is part of a proposed long-range study aimed at finding ways to reduce traffic and pollution, while also raising revenues.

Members of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments are scheduled to vote on Thursday on whether or not to authorize a study of the proposal. Under the plan, drivers would have to install  trackers in their vehicle and officials would tax drivers for every mile they travel.

So long as you can deal with the privacy issue, I think this is the future. Those who use the roads should pay for them. Petrol tax is as close as we can currently get to making users pay, but being able to charge based on actual usage would be better. You could even have some roads cost more to use at various times.