Patrick Gower at 3 News reports:

3 News has learned New Zealand authorities were working with Chinese counterparts to have a controversial Chinese millionaire extradited.

Yong Ming Yan, also known as Bill Liu, is the mystery Chinese man Shane Jones granted New Zealand citizenship against official advice.

And new documents show how why officials wanted rid of Mr Yan.

In China he faced allegations that he “misappropriated funds in excess of $61 million New Zealand dollars”, and “Chinese authorities wanted him returned to face charges and had requested his extradition.” …

Discussion between officials in both countries was happening just three weeks before Mr Jones’ decision, and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security referred to “the importance of the Yan case.”

The documents also detail a raid on Mr Yan’s apartment in the Metropolis tower. They show there was plenty of interest in taking part – not just from immigration – but also the Police’s Asian Crime Squad, Internal Affairs, Customs, the Serious Fraud Office, Inland Revenue and the Ministry of Fisheries.

Authorities were also informed by Internal Affairs that Mr Yan “is spending literally millions of dollars at the casino and associating with known criminals.”

So officials here and in China were working on having Mr Yan extradited. Then, at complete cross-purposes, Mr Jones’ decision meant Mr Yan got citizenship here in a special ceremony at Parliament.

Liu/Yan seemed to be under active investigation by almost every criminal or regulatory body we have.  You had Government officials in almost a dozen ourfits investigating him, and trying to get him extradited to stand trial in China – and in the midst of this Shane Jones grants him citizenship!!!

There is another story by Gower, which wounds the contention that Liu/Yan was a democracy activist and Falun Gong supporter who feared execution in China.

Now here’s a twist – the mystery Chinese millionaire, Bill Liu/Yong Ming Yan, is linked to an even more controversial Chinese billionaire caught up in a massive political scandal that is rocking the Communist Party to its core.

That link is through a man called Xu Ming – one of richest men in China.

Xu Ming is big time – touted as a potential Chinese Finance Minister before a foiled coup plot.

And Liu/Yan is apparently so close he even bought Xu Ming into New Zealand for a visit at one point.

Gower asks:

• Why was Bill Liu/Yong Ming Yan so fearful of going back to China if he had connections with people so close to the very top of the Communist Party?
• Why was Bill Liu /Yong Ming Yan – who claims to be a leader of the Chinese Democracy movement – prepared to host such people out in New Zealand?

Good questions. Noe ones asked by Shane Jones, but hopefully will be asked by the Auditor-General.

Stuff reports:

The European Parliament overwhelmingly defeated an international anti-piracy trade agreement on Wednesday after concern that it would limit Internet freedom sparked street protests in cities across Europe.

The vote – 39 in favour, 478 against, with 165 abstentions – appeared to deal the death blow to the European Union’s participation in a treaty it helped negotiate, though other countries may still participate without the EU.

I think this shows the strength of global opposition to unbalanced copyright regimes, as pushed by the US entertainment industry. But to have barely 5% of the European Parliament vote in favour is incredible, especially when you consider the details of ACTA.

The failure to ratify the treaty is a humiliation for the European Union, which was one of the prime movers in the multi-year effort to negotiate the agreement. EU officials had maintained that ACTA would change nothing in European law, but would be simply an instance of the EU leading by example and exporting its strong copyright protection laws to other countries where safeguards are weaker.

This is the astonishing thing. The final version of ACTA was in fact relatively benign. The draft versions pushed by the US had some draconian provisions, but the New Zealand Government, and other Governments, insisted that there be nothing in there that would require a significant change to our copyright laws. Eventually the US backed down, and the final version is, well as I said, fairly benign.

What New Zealand politicians should reflect on is if even a relatively benign copyright agreement such as ACTA can provoke such opposition that only 5% of the European Parliament will vote for it, think what electoral fate would await politicians who vote for a truly horrendous copyright regime?

The New Zealand Government is currently negotiating the TPP agreement with the US and a dozen or so other countries. The draft US chapter on intellectual property laws and especially copyright is even worse than the draft ACTA chapter was – and exponentially worse than the final ACTA agreement. Think the difference between a poodle and a pack of African Wild Dogs. Rick Shera summarised it here:

• Rights holders would be allowed to prevent parallel imports
• Massive extension of copyright terms, from life of author plus 50 years, to 70 years
• Circumventing a Technological Protection Measure (TPM) will to be a criminal offence even if the work it protects is in the public domain
• The return of s92A guilt on accusation, repeat infringer, termination of internet accounts
• Forcing us to reverse the decison recently taken to exclude software patents
• Introducing statutory damages (which give rights holders windfall damages up to 3 times their actual losses)
• ISP policing of IP rights incuding a requirement for ISPs to give up their customers’ identities when they receive a mere allegation
• Criminal liability even where the infringement has no commercial value at all
• Pushing Courts to impose imprisonment as the default sentence for infringement even where no monetary benefit is obtained

The US IP chapter would also see Internet caching effectively made illegal. It really is that bad.

Now the good news is that as with ACTA, the New Zealand Government has been resisting the US IP chapter, as have most other countries. This is a good thing. I am personally a fan of free trade agreements and would love the TPP to be concluded reducing trade barriers. But not if the price is agreeing to the US IP chapter.

TPP is more difficult than ACTA. In ACTA, New Zealand was not really seeking anything in return – so it was easy to stay firm. In the TPP, all countries have wish lists, so it is inevitable that at some stage there may be some compromises made at a senior political level.

The clear message to the United States has to be that if even a benign copyright agreement such as ACTA can’t get agreement and ratification, then they have to realise that there is no way the TPP can include the IP chapter they are pushing. It would be an electoral suicide pact.

Even in the US itself, unbalanced copyright laws have been turning toxic. SOPA and PIPA got voted down in Congress. Every single Republican Presidential candidate denounced them.

I am not one of those people who are anti-copyright.  I am all for there being penalties for people who copy a song/book/movie rather than pay for it. But the laws need to be balanced, and they need to not screw over the Internet.

The Herald reports:

 Labour MP Charles Chauvel is calling for a minimum price on alcohol, but there is no consensus among his party about what that price should be.

This is trying to have your cake and eat it to. It is like a party announcing their taxation policy and saying “Oh we favour taxes going up, but we won’t tell you to how much”. A minimum pricing policy with no detail on what they want the minimum price to be, is not credible.

Before the 2011 election, Labour MP Lianne Dalziel argued in the House for a $2 minimum price per standard drink in Parliament. She said this would bump up the price of the $6 bottles of wine which young women “pre-loaded on”, while not affecting a $15 bottle of wine.

National has argued that this would mean no bottle of wine – which usually contained 7 to 8 standard drinks – could be bought for less than $16.

Ms Dalziel’s office yesterday said that the MP used the $2 threshold as an example, and it was not Labour policy. It was up to the Justice Minister to decide on the threshold, and if minimum pricing was voted on in the House, Labour MPs would vote individually on it.

Crap.  Here are her exact words:

we should set a minimum price that would prevent wine from being sold for less than $2 for a standard drink

Does that sound like an example? It is a clear statement of what the minimum price should be.

This was not a one off. Labour’s spokesperson has been very consistent. At the first reading in 2010 she also said:

The priority is to increase the price of dirt-cheap alcohol, and that is why I am arguing for minimum pricing. I refer to the $5.99 bottles of wine. At that price, three young women can buy five bottles of wine to preload on, rather than buy two bottles of very good wine for the same price. The ones who buy five bottles of $5.99 wine are the most price-sensitive buyers. They are the ones who will change their behaviour when prices go up. Do not let anyone tell us that it will do otherwise. That is the reason for a minimum price per standard drink. The $2 per minimum standard drink price would not touch a $15 bottle of wine. That would stay the same price, but it would slightly more than double the price of the $5.99 bottle of wine.

It would touch the $15 bottle of wine. My Central Otago Pinot Noir is 14%, which for 750mls is 8.3 standard drinks. That would mean a minimum price of $16.60. I generally avoid the $6 bottles of wines, but you get many good wines for $11 or so, and Lianne is advocating they increase 50% in price.

I hope that MPs in Parliament will not let Labour get away with their policy of saying we believe in minimum pricing, we want to pass a law to enable it, but we will not tell you what the minimum price should be. Labour should be honest and tell New Zealanders what they think the minimum price should be.

Maybe it is even more than $2 a standard drink?

John Drinnan writes at NZ Herald:

Plans for TVNZ to make Back Benches for Prime TV will deliver good public relations results all round and a pleasing result for the show’s loyal audience.

The politics programme, which is one of the last vestiges of television in Wellington, has screened on TVNZ 7 until it was discontinued last week.

It does not fit with TVNZ’s aims of making profit at all costs, so TVNZ is not interested in picking up the niche-interest show for TV One.

Prime TV is prepared to run a weekly 10.30pm show – a time when it should not be too encumbered with advertising.

So now TVNZ, which owns the intellectual property, has sought taxpayer funding from New Zealand On Air to make the show in-house and sell it to Prime.

This is a win-win-win. Worthy souls will applaud the survival of Back Benches. TVNZ and New Zealand On Air will do something to keep the legacy alive.

NZ on Air has to agree to the funding request, but I certainly hope they do.

As I understand it the bid is a co-operative exercise between TVNZ and Sky, and it would probably also show on a TVNZ channel at a delayed time spot.

The good thing is this bid, if successful, will open up viewership to a potentially much larger audience than TVNZ7 had.

The PM commented a few days ago that the Greens tend to call for an inquiry every week or so. Listener journo Toby Manhire did the numbers and found they had called for 18 or so inquiries in the last year and a bit. This then led to a story by Claire Trevett which included:

In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the bride-to-be’s father Gus Portokalos’ cure-all for the injuries, rashes and afflictions that befall his family is a squirt of Windolene glass cleaner.

Sore back? Pimple? Broken marriage? Windex.

The Green Party’s version of Windex is, as Prime Minister John Key took some delight in pointing out earlier this week, the call for an inquiry. …

Key’s mockery of the Greens’ severe case of inquiry-itis has had the desired effect of reducing the potency of any calls the Greens might make in future by consigning them to the status of a punchline.

On Wednesday night after the earthquake struck near New Plymouth, most Twitter users tweeted about trying to find pants before running outside or condiment jars falling over.

Green MP Holly Walker had bigger issues on her mind: “Anyone else concerned about the offshore oil rigs in Taranaki?”

Sure enough, in response the jokes started rolling in about how long it would take for the Greens to call for an inquiry into whether the earthquake was caused by either a) fracking, or b) John Key or c) the tremors from all those other inquiry reports landing all at once.

The Greens have responded with a press release:

The Greens have been criticised by Prime Minister John Key, who said, ‘The Greens call for an inquiry on virtually anything.’

The remark prompted immediate calls from the Green Party for an inquiry, which would focus on why the Greens call for so many inquiries. …

The Green Party announced it would convene a working group to determine the make-up of the inquiry committee, which would then report to the national executive before December. Once the gender-balanced committee was selected its first task would be to draft its terms of reference. Those would be ready sometime in the new year and the committee would report its draft by July.

The committee will not be headed by Paula Rebstock or Dame Margaret Bazley.

Sources within the Green Party predicted that the inquiry would probably be a whitewash, with its recommendations ignored. A subsequent inquiry into why the inquiry was ignored was likely. The Green Party would not approach Margaret Bazley or Paula Rebstock to lead the subsequent inquiry.

Very good. When you are getting beaten up for something, humour can absolutely be the best defence.

Last night John Key spoke to the Menzies Research Centre. I understand it was the biggest audience they have ever had to an event. His speech is here. A couple of extracts:

As John F. Kennedy once said, we in government are not permitted the luxury of irresolution.

Everyone else can debate issues forever but, in the end, the government has to cut through all that and make a decision, which will invariably please some and disappoint others.

In making those decisions, my Government is very pragmatic.

We are guided by the enduring values and principles of the National Party, but we are also focused on what is sensible and what is possible.

Partly, that is the nature of the political system in New Zealand. It is sometimes said that politics is about convincing 50 per cent of the population plus one, and that has never been truer than under the MMP system we have in New Zealand.

But, in any event, I think government is a practical business.

You don’t start with a blank sheet of paper; you start with the country as it is.

And by making a series of sensible decisions, which build on each other and which are signalled well in advance, and by taking most people with you as you go, you can effect real and durable change, which won’t simply be reversed by the next lot who come into government.

Over time, a series of moderate changes can add up to a considerable programme.

This is to some degree what John Howard did also. Rather than do a big bang reform, he did steady reform over a decade. To be fair Hawke and Keating did some useful reforms also.

In terms of the fiscal outlook, we have effected a significant turnaround.

The advice we had from the Treasury when we first came into office was that if we continued with the settings we inherited, net government debt was likely to reach 60 per cent of GDP by 2026.

Now, after all the changes we have made, net debt is projected to be zero in 2026, despite the Government also picking up much of the cost of the earthquakes.

And sadly almost every single fiscal change was opposed, as if one could run massive deficits for ever.

I want to stress, however, that while I think government is about practical, considered decision-making, it is not a technocracy.

In the end, the biggest, most fundamental decisions governments are called on to make are not reducible to calculation in a spreadsheet.

Those decisions rely on the judgements of politicians around concepts like fairness, opportunity, and the balance between individual and social responsibility.

As a politician, my own gut-level judgements have been hugely influenced by my upbringing and my life experiences.

Almost all decisions involved trade offs, and it will be your values and experiences that guide you on those trade offs.

The Party’s founders were not people who saw the world in terms of a fundamental class conflict, where people’s destinies were largely foretold. In fact the Party was set up to oppose that view.

Now the opposition seems to be more about identity politics.

It is extraordinary how many people, including a lot of Opposition MPs in New Zealand, think the economy is something separate from the normal life of the country – something that will just keep chugging along while Parliament worries about supposedly unrelated social issues, like employment.

In fact – as I am at pains to point out most days in Parliament – jobs are only created when business owners have the confidence to invest their own money to expand what they are doing or to start something new.

Giving businesses that confidence is the most important thing the Government can do to ensure people have jobs, and that those jobs are sustainable and well-paid.

It is worth recalling that every public sector job has to be paid for put the taxes paid by all those in the private sector.

Sometimes voters have been thoroughly surprised by the government they elected.

Those governments have never worked out very well.

So one of the things my Government has tried very hard to do over the past three-and-a-half years is to be predictable, consistent and upfront with voters.

This is where the Governments elected in 1984 and 1990 went wrong. Their policies were necessary, and generally good. But you need to keep faith as much as possible.

Stuff reports:

Private prison operator Serco has failed to meet half of its performance targets since taking over Auckland’s Mt Eden Prison.

A report card on Serco’s performance released today reveals three inmates were wrongly released, one escaped and there were three wrongful detentions.

The percentage of sentenced prisoners with an appropriate plan in place within required timeframes was only 28 per cent – two thirds lower than the 90 per cent target.

Of 37 targets Serco was to meet in the nine months to April half weren’t met.

While it is not good that Serco is only meeting half its targets, what is great is that a prison operator actually has targets that they are being held to. When is the last time you heard about the public prison service being subjected to the accountability of such targets.

And if Serco continue not to meet the targets, then they will be financially penalised and eventually can be sacked. This is how it should be.

The full set of performance targets and results is here.

Some of the “failures” are pretty minor such as only 99% instead of 100% of prisoners were seen by a health professional within four hours of arrving.

The KPIs look pretty good. Does anyone know if the prisons run by the Corrections Department have to meet the same KPIs?

Sticking to the kaka theme today:

click for larger, higher res image

1. Tim Groser on the ETS with Rachel Smalley, John Hartevelt and Alex Tarrant in an extended interview.
2. Natasha Smith investigates a property development row in Christchurch which has seen Gerry Brownleee being accused of backroom deals and another MP receiving large donations after he tried to introduce legislation to help one of the developers.
3. Brian Edwards and Bill Ralston will be joined on the media panel by Auckland barrister Gary Gotlieb to talk abvout suppression in criminal cases.

Broadcast on TV 3 at 9.30 am, repeated on Sunday at 8 am

The Electoral Commission has published some interesting stats on how many people in each age group are enrolled, compared to their estimated population.

The stats for NZ as a whole (they have them for each electorate) are:

• 18 – 24 year olds – 75%
• 25 – 29 84%
• 30 – 34 92%
• 35 – 64 98%
• 65 – 69 97%
• 70+ 95%

It is a pity the Electoral Commission doesn’t record centrally who actually voted when they do the scrutiny of the rolls, because then they could calculate the actual voting turnout for each age group, not just the enrolment percentage.

In my seat of Wellington Central, only 58% of under 25s are enrolled.

Photo from Cr Brewer on Facebook.

Captions below. Funny, not nasty please.

Clayton Cosgrove has said:

Buying shares in the Government’s sell-off of state assets would break the bank for most New Zealanders says Labour’s State Owned Enterprises spokesperson Clayton Cosgrove.

His comment follows an analysis of figures which show the median Kiwi household has only $1700 in savings and would be struggling to buy shares in Mighty River Power, the first of the SOEs to be floated.

I have an easy solution, based in fact on Labour Party policy. Labour have spent three years attacking the Government for not borrowing more money from overseas, to give to the NZ Super Fund to invest in shares and bonds.

Using Labour’s logic, then obviously the solution is that every Kiwi household should go out and borrow $2,000, so they can buy shares in Mighty River Power. It’s a win-win.

Now some of you may say it is daft to borrow money to invest in shares. I might even agree. But that is what Labour spent three years advocating, so I am sure they want households to go out and do it. Plus that way, more shares will stay in local hands!

In my Herald column I write about Labour’s proposed minimum pricing for alcohol.

Labour seem very reluctant to confirm what minimum price they are actually advocating. Lianne Dalziel twice stated in Parliament it should be at least $2 a standard drink. Her colleagues seem to want to ignore that, as seen below.

You can’t have it both ways and have your MPs get up in Parliament and say the law should be this, and then deny that is your policy – especially when the MP is your spokesperson on alcohol issues.

A reader sent me this graphic, which sums it up.

More usefully, Eric Crampton has an excellent analysis of minimum pricing. He states:

What would the world have to look like for minimum alcohol pricing to be a reasonable policy solution?

Suppose it is the case that harmful heavy drinkers, the sort that impose the greatest harms on others when they consume alcohol, really don’t care about the quality of the alcohol they’re drinking; they’re buying whatever product provides alcohol at the lowest price per standard drink. Suppose further that this cohort’s consumption is reasonably responsive to price measures: if you raise the price of the cheapest form of alcohol, you’ll do a lot to curb that cohort’s consumption while not doing much to reduce the normal consumption of moderate drinkers. Finally, assume that there’s little overlap between the kinds of alcohol consumed by harmful drinkers and that consumed by moderate low-income drinkers.

So minimum pricing is a good idea Eric says, if the above holds true.

where both heavy drinkers and moderate drinkers are choosing the same kinds of products, albeit in different quantities, we have to worry a lot about how each kind of consumer responds to changes in prices. The best meta-study on the topic remains Wagenaar, who found that heavy drinkers are roughly 60% as price responsive as moderate drinkers: the price elasticity of demand among heavy drinkers is -0.28 while it’s -0.44 for average drinkers. If we doubled the price of lower cost products, which we’d have to do to get to Labour’s preferred $2 minimum price per standard drink, moderate drinkers who currently choose that class of product would cut back their consumption by about 44% while heavy drinkers would reduce their consumption by only about 28%.

Intuitively you would expect heavy drinkers to be less price sensitive.

As it had been a light political week, I asked on Twitter or Facebook if people could think of anything more interesting to write on for my NZ Herald column than the ETS changes. In the end I went with alcohol minimum pricing, but people may be interested to see all the suggestions made which were:

• you could explain why the taxpayer is picking up the cost for polluters. not so much “market” in that market-based policy
• list the companies that the melons would shut down if they got into Govt .. might need a biger than normal column
• Stephen Gale’s appointment?
• Definitely ETS.
• how the left somehow blame fracking for last nites earthquake
• You’re forgetting the big news of the week… NZCS became @IITPnz 🙂
• Discopants could be a great topic!
• anything but the speakers tour…
• Proposed minimum alcohol prices?
• US Intellectual Property laws as the Manifest Destiny of the 21st Century.
•  “internal enemies” as ministerial rhetoric.
•  the rain in Auckland. No seriously, slow week. how about Speaker’s trip flying business class, cost to taxpayer $110 K?
• welfaredrugtesting – why the politics are easy but the implementation is bloody hard
• Propensity of the Greens to demand independent enquiries?
• you could talk about alcohol minimum pricing as well and just do a general drugs related riff.
• international relations. ETS and asylum seeker issue. NZ helped under the Pacific Solution.
• How about “How to sprint down 10 floors faster than Usain Bolt”
• alcohol minimum price-related?
• plain pack, Navy/Hawaii/nuclear ‘snub’, ETS changes, drug testing proposal or national standards data?
• the keep it 18 campaign & alcohol law reform?
• ETS sounds good. Yay, free trade for carbon credits…
• Polls look like a narrow Obama win, esp marginal states
• how about Psa?
• Defn8ly go with ETS mate. Farmers need a break especially with the result of the ladt milk auction
• Sick of the ETS. Go for the Taxpayer funded parliamentary trip of dubious intent. Fenton / O’Rourke / Hughes et al. And Speaker + wife.
• How about Lenny baby swanning off on a junket, after his press release of the proposed rate payers petrol head event.
• the Auckland Transport inner city rail loop plan that has yet to actually get the funding it needs from central govt.
•  Mr Dotcom sues NZ, and will Mr key personally cough up the money if Mr Dotcom should win?
• why nz is better than Australia to live
• Perhaps if Dr Chris Warner will get off the murder charge?
•  is “Drop, Cover and Hold” really good advice?
• On the parliamentary security guy who died suddenly. Security have a very important job to do at parliament and sounds like he will be very much missed. (Especially after the earthquake last night – who knows what tomorrow will bring…….).
•  Alcohol reform and the 4 Maori Party SOPs.
• Asset sales and post modern feminism, if you dare ?
• Seriously, a libertarians perspective of minimum alcohol pricing would be interesting
• Prometheus as a part of the Alien canon… Has Ridley Scott become Michael Bay?
• How about peak oil and the Monbiot expose – about how Malthusians refuse to die out, no matter how often they are proven wrong?
• How about: “Not Guilty versus Not Proven – how the lynch mob mentality can drive Justice Policy”?
• The Higgs Boson. What else is left?
• Drug testing of beneficiaries
• Food rescue (kaibosh) and need for good Samaritan legislation
•  the extradition treaty with the US. I believe NZ needs to stand up on its hind legs over this one. The Dotcom case should have been discarded out-of-hand by our police. It is not our police force’s business to defend Hollywood’s Inte…
• How TV3 news seems to be dominated by the whining left?
• Plenty on Auckland politics, especially as we JAFAs are asking the national tax payer for a few billion
• I think the Aussie super story is one that deserves mores legs over there. Has been pushed pretty heavily here in SYD today.
• I find it annoying the ETS has escaped as much public pressure as it has – now implemented and forgotten. Making energy more expensive for all of us inaccessible for those on the lowest incomes the greatest travesty of all of it. Nail that f**ker to the wall
• The Greens and their inquiries into everything would be a good angle.
• Have a personal interest in ETS but think universal benefit is my new favourite rant. When your kid is diagnosed with a terminal disease you should not have to stand down from benefits…but I was at dinner stop hope you got something sorted
• How about the need to target health benefits better. I no long work in the sector but the universal subsidies on pharmaceuticals still makes no sense. Tis is an issue of both the fee per item and also the ceiling (or safety net) of 20 scripts. Have a look at what they do in Australia!
• TAX

I’m never again going to complain about a lack of things to write about!

Computerworld reports:

 Labour ICT spokesperson Clare Curran will ask the Auditor General to investigate the appointment of Stephen Gale as telecommunications commissioner.

Gale’s appointment, announced today, confirms industry rumours that the incumbent Ross Patterson would not be re-appointed. 

First of all I want to say that I think Ross Patterson did a very good job as the Telecommunications Commissioner. If he had been re-appointed, I would have regarded that as a good thing. I think the determinations made by the Commission were generally the right ones, and helped promote competition.

Telecommunications is always a challenging regulatory area, for two reasons. The first is that inter-connection issues are huge. It doesn’t matter (for example) if you have VHS and Beta video recorders and tapes that are not compatible. However it does matter if you are unable to call a Vodafone mobile from a Telecom mobile (for example). Could you imagine the Internet if one could not e-mail people at another ISP?

The other issue, is that the “last mile” network tends to almost always be a monopoly as it is not economically efficient to have multiple sewerage pipes, multiple electricity lines, multiple phone lines etc into every residence.

So the Commission has to balance up competition, investment, consumers and providers. It is not an easy job, and as I said I thought Ross Patterson did a good job.

I look forward to Dr Gale hopefully also performing so well.

I want to deal with some myths around the appointment though. The first is that Patterson was not re-appointed at the behest of Sky TV. I don’t know who invented this fantasy, but it simply is not true. I happened to be talking to some Sky TV people a few weeks ago, and I asked them about this. They told me that Sky TV had never expressed a view on who the Telco Commissioner should be to anyone in Government, or at all. The Official Information Act would disclose any communications – there has been none.

As it happens, the appointment of Dr Gale was recommended by an independent panel consisting of Brent Layton (chair of the panel), chairperson of the Electricity Authority, Liz Sinclair, deputy commissioner at the State Services Commission and Mark Steel, deputy secretary of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s economic development branch. There were 44 applicants for the role, and they recommended Dr Gale. I think it is unfair to those three officials, plus Dr Gale, to push conspiracy theories with no evidental basis about his appointment.

As I said, I would have been very happy for Patterson to be re-appointed. But I don’t think there is some sinister conspiracy involving Sky TV around him not being re-appointed.  It is possible that his 10 month absence from the job for an alcohol-related illness was a factor – I heard there was a run in with the then Commerce Commission Chair, which won’t have helped.

Labour ICT spokesperson Clare Curran will ask the Auditor General to investigate the appointment of Stephen Gale as telecommunications commissioner.

Curran claims that a “new direction taken by the telecommunications commissioner role is to focus on the interests of investors, rather than consumers.”

In today’s announcement, ICT Minister Amy Adams specifically mentioned investors while congratulating Gale on his appointment. “Dr Gale impressed the panel with his wide range of experience in regulated industries and his ability to articulate the role of the regulator to promote the interests of consumers through encouraging competition and ensuring that investors have the incentives to invest over the long-term,” she wrote.

It is simply incorrect to say the Minister’s press release represents a new focus on investors over consumers. The Minister is simply quoting from the Telecommunications Act 2001 that Labour passed. S18 says:

(1) The purpose of this Part and Schedules 1 to 3 is to promote competition in telecommunications markets for the long-term benefit of end-users of telecommunications services within New Zealand by regulating, and providing for the regulation of, the supply of certain telecommunications services between service providers.

(2)In determining whether or not, or the extent to which, any act or omission will result, or will be likely to result, in competition in telecommunications markets for the long-term benefit of end-users of telecommunications services within New Zealand, the efficiencies that will result, or will be likely to result, from that act or omission must be considered.

Tracy Watkins reports:

Police pay negotiations could be the next political fight, as figures emerge showing the number of police constables who are paid over $80,000 a year.

The figures were on a National-aligned blog yesterday. Police bosses are in pay negotiations with the rank and file. …

The National-aligned Kiwiblog yesterday posted figures showing about 640 police constables earn over $80,000 a year, while about 40 per cent of sergeants are on more than $90,000 a year, along with 80 per cent of senior sergeants.

Police Association president Greg O’Connor said yesterday it preferred to conduct pay negotiations behind closed doors.

Good God, I never thought my post yesterday would be seen as anything to do with the Government and the Police pay negotiations. It is all rather innocent. I blogged a couple of weeks ago on how the Police have a binding arbitration mechanism in their salary negotiations – a panel of three choose between the Commissioner’s offer and the union’s offer, if they can’t agree by themselves. This means that any stand off can be resolved.

I got an unsolicited e-mail (as I often) do from a reader who said:

I saw your post on Kiwiblog today questioning the amount that police are paid. I got curious about this myself so I did an OIA request over it: the results of which are attached. The top police officers appear to be paid in the $110,000-$120,000 bracket.

The OIA which I published shows it was a Josh Grainger, who I think it is fair to say not aligned with the Government 🙂

Josh actually did the OIA in 2011. I just found the data interesting, as you don’t normally see such detail in media stories, so I blogged it. I actually said:

The numbers are interesting, but for one I think they are appropriate. Police officers have to put up with a lot of crap.

So no, it wasn’t a post to help the Government fight the Police pay demand. As I have tried to explain several times, there is an arbitration mechanism in place. If the Police union think the Commissioner’s offer is crap, and their offer is fair – then they can seek a binding arbitration on it.

The nice thing with the binding arbitration is that it is all or nothing. They have to go 100% with the Commissioner’s offer or the union’s request. What this tends to do is moderate both parties to be reasonable. Quite unlike most other pay disputes where massively unrealistic claims are made.

Grant Robertson has put out this pamphlet, which really needs a response. It is hard to know where to start, so let us take them in order.

Climate Change

Labour is great on rhetoric, but crap on results. In 1999 NZ’s gross emissions were 67,395 CO₂e. Under nine years of Labour gross emissions went up 10% to  74,198  (and net emissions went up 13.4%). In the first two years under National gross emissions dropped 3.4% to 71,657.  There was a failure to deal with climate change -Labour’s. Under National we are set to come in under our Kyoto Protocol target.

Labour’s policy blunders saw 30,000 hectares of deforestation in their fianl three years.

Maritime Disasters

This is a reference to the fact that National did not pass a law to give effect to the International Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage that would have doubled the liability of the Rena’s owners from $12m to $24m.

What Grant omits to mention is the convention was adopted in 2001, and Labour didn’t legislate for seven years on it, and the Labour Cabinet gave the legislation the lowest priority rating. Sure with perfect hindsight would have been good for National to have passed it, but for Grant and Labour to claim not passing the law has dented our clean green image is stupid. The impact of not having changed the law is potentially fiscal, not environmental.

EEZ environment

National has in fact passed a law to give give environment protection to the EEZ. Previously there was no protection at all. One can dispute the balance in the legislation, but again ironic and rich for the party that did nothing to protect the EEZ to be saying that actually passing a law to protect the EEZ damages NZ’s clean green reputation while having no law at all, bolstered it!

46 wells were drilled in the EEZ under Labour – all without any legislation at all to protect the environment.

Mining conservation land

Oh my God, National put out a discussion document on mining. Oh yeah, I am sure that really undermined NZ’s clean green image – a discussion document.

And do I even have to mention that Labour approved 218 permits for mining on conservation land – all done without harming NZ’s clean green image. You see in Labour world, it is only bad if National talks about it. It is good when Labour does it.

MFE Funding

Now this is just getting silly. No funding has been cut for environmental activities. The $1.75m budget cut was for 12 admin staff, after a review found their admin/non-admin staff ratio was 1:10 and in most agencies it was 1:20 to 1:40.

In Labourland, I guess there are hordes of foreign tourists thinking about coming to New Zealand because of its clean green reputation, and they decide not to come because 12 admin staff were got rid of in the Ministry for the Environment!  Really, what planet do they think people live on.

I guess it is easy to stick five nonsensical bullet points on a postcard with a lovely picture as a backdrop. Far harder to actually have a track record that comes anywhere close to matching your rhetoric. I’ll take substance over rhetoric any day.

Katie Chapman at Stuff reports:

A big quake could leave Wellington cut off from the rest of the North Island for four months, new disaster predictions show.

It could take 40 days to restore the water supply to even a basic level, while road access could take up to 120 days, according to “worst case” predictions presented to the region’s Civil Defence Emergency Management Group.

That could leave Wellington residents or commuters trapped in the city for months, and dependent on water rations being distributed by authorities for about six weeks.

The predictions relate to a quake of magnitude 7.5 or higher, and come after a magnitude-7 quake off Taranaki on Tuesday.

Basically we are very fucked if the big one strikes. I’m just 200 metres away from the local New World, so in the event of the big one, I’ll be looting shopping for supplies as quickly as I can, and then probably pitch my emergency shelter tent in Katherine Mansfield Park. Rather than rely on authorities for water rations, I’ll do a daily trip to the Kaiwharawhara stream for fresh water.

By coincidence there is going to be a nation-wide earthquake drill in September called the New Zealand ShakeOut campaign. The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management want to get a million people involved in it, so I’ll blog details close to the time.

They also kindly reminded me that in a quake their advice is to drop, cover and hold – not to flee the building as I did!

John Armstrong writes:

Petty, petulant and pathetic. What other conclusion is it possible to draw from the absurd, vindictive and ultimately short-sighted refusal by the United States military to allow two New Zealand naval vessels to berth at the Pearl Harbour military base?

Having invited New Zealand to participate in the Rimpac exercises off Hawaii for the first time in nearly three decades, the Pentagon then slaps this country in the face by making the frigate Te Kaha and the refuelling ship Endeavour tie up at civilian port facilities in Honolulu.

They invite us. and then say we have to park down the road. Some Pentagon bozo should receive a visit from Hillary Clinton and told to pull their head in.

John Key should have ignored the diplomatic niceties and gone with gut feeling. He should have pointed out that resolving the anti-nuclear impasse has not come without cost for New Zealand. A terse brief statement including the words “New Zealand”, “Afghanistan” and “sacrifice” would have not have gone amiss.

Key has to be diplomatic, but it does piss me off that we do have soldiers fighting and dying in Afghanistan. and the USG is fixated on an almost 30 year old issue.

This tawdry episode smells very much like the revenge of the United States Navy, the branch of the American military machine most affected by New Zealand’s ban on nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered warships and consequently the one most averse to resolving the subsequent two decades-plus stand-off.

The berthing ban is even more ridiculous given other Rimpac participants include Japan which almost destroyed the American Pacific fleet based at Pearl Harbour some 70 years ago. 

Exactly.

I know Ambassador Huebner is the US representative to New Zealand, and not vice-versa. I do hope however he reports back on how insensitive the US decision was, and counter-productive.

Michael Forbes at Stuff reports:

Ewen Macdonald has been acquitted of murder in a court of law but he will still have to overcome the “Bain factor” in the court of public opinion, a top defence lawyer says.

Jonathan Eaton said the best advice he gave clients found not guilty of serious crimes was to accept the allegation would always follow them around.

Mr Eaton had Rex Haig’s murder conviction quashed in 2008 and successfully defended George Gwaze on charges of murder and sexual violation in May.

On Tuesday, Macdonald was found not guilty of murdering his brother-in-law and business partner, Scott Guy, in July 2010 after a month-long trial in the High Court at Wellington.

Mr Eaton said that in Macdonald’s case – where a crime had clearly been committed and police were not looking for anyone else – there would inevitably be members of the public who thought he was “lucky”.

“Regrettably, you’re always going to be tainted; whether it’s applying for employment positions, starting new relationships, moving to a new town – there’s always going to be a Bain factor, which you can’t escape.”

I’m not sure it is a case for regret. I don’t think there is anything wrong with people having an opinion based on balance of probabilities, rather than a criminal sentence which must be based on proof beyond reasonable doubt.

On Radio Rhema yesterday it was suggested to me and Sue Bradford (the panelists) that all defendants should receive name suppression until they are convicted, so they don’t have to wear the stigma of being accused but found not guilty. It was a rare issue where Sue and I both agreed – we were against.

I actually think it reflects well on our society, that we understand the difference between thinking someone did it, and the legal need to prove it beyond reasonable doubt.

I see the Macdonald case as somewhat different from the Bain case, which suggests to me that Macdonald may face much more hostility than David Bain. They are:

1. In the Bain case, there was a plausible (to some anyway) alternative explanation for the killer. In the Guy killing, there has been no alternative explanation.
2. David Bain actually served over a decade in prison for the murders, so even those who think he did it, recognise that he in no way “got away scot-free”,
3. If David Bain did not do it, he was the horrible victim of a framing by his father. With Ewen Macdonald, he has admitted to a campaign of harrassment, vandalism and arson against Scott and Kyle Guy. So regardless of (1) and (2) above he will rightfully be judged badly for the crimes he has admitted to.

It will be interesting to see what sentences are handed down for the six charges Macdonald has admitted to.

Bob Jones writes in the Herald:

 Defending the contentious asset sales policy, the Prime Minister argues he was open about his party’s intentions before the last election and thus has a mandate. The openness was commendable but not so his assumption. His party would still have won if it had also proposed publicly hanging the unemployed, which, mind you, when one quietly considers it, does have some merit.

I look forward to all the outraged comments that Jones advocating hanging beneficiaries.

After all, public hangings were immensely popular entertainments in Britain, drawing enormous crowds and in the process creating much happiness and gainful work, (hangmen for example) plus considerable food and beverage, manufacturing and purveying employment. The sole shortcoming with the public hanging industry though was its brevity.

This was resolved by introducing multiple successive hangings, thereby ensuring a decent day’s family outing and a corresponding greater demand for food and drinks. Learning from this, boxing promoters of the day introduced preliminary bouts; these multiple hangings and preliminary fights initiatives marking yet another giant stride forward in the march of civilisation.

Heh.

Our existing dams are monopolies, thanks to the greenies’ wrong assertion that they always damage the environment. They certainly can do, such as the ill-considered enormous Mekong dam planned by Laos, which likely will be stopped by the other Mekong nations. But in New Zealand? I don’t think so.

Rather than wreck the environment, they’ve enhanced it. Prior to the construction (despite the then massive public protest) of the huge South Island dams, the top end of the food chain in the rivers to be dammed were brown trout, averaging in weight at maturity, rarely more than 3lb. Today, Otago newspapers regularly show photos of anglers holding 15lb and upwards trout, caught from these dam-created lakes.

Have a chat to nymphs, cockabullies and the other diverse lake life, all the way up the food chain, and they’ll tell you they’re now living the life of Riley, having escaped the arduous river existence of their ancestors.

Additionally, the lakes have created yachting, boating, lakeside residences and other pluses. Nevertheless, as the greenies are currently in the policy ascendancy and people enjoying themselves always hugely upsets them, new dams are out.

I agree a dam can have many benefits. But I don’t think dams are monopolies. They compete with other dams and other sources of power. We have a competitive market and price for electricity – 400,000 people swapped provider last year. The ultimate proof.

What puzzles me is why the Government doesn’t sell TVNZ. The rationale for owning it was to ensure quality public broadcasting. It’s hardly debatable that TVNZ’s fare is, with few exceptions, a diet of populist trash, yet inexplicably, its one attempt to create a channel providing a degree of quality broadcasting it’s now closing.

TVNZ should be sold, and the capital used to fund a public broadcaster.

David Fisher at NZ Herald reports:

Kim Dotcom says the shutdown of his Megaupload filesharing service was ordered by the White House after Hollywood studio executives met with US Vice President Joe Biden. …

“I do know from a credible source that it was Joe Biden, the best friend of former Senator and MPAA boss Chris Dodd, who ordered his former lawyer and now state attorney Neil MacBride to take Mega down,” Dotcom told the TorrentFreak website.

I’m sorry, but I doubt the White House allows Joe Biden to order his own lunch, let alone direct the FBI.