Stats NZ has published the annual abortion stats. Looking at the graph the abortion rate seems to have been dropping since 2007 and is now a 12 year low.

The abortion rate per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 has dropped to 3.6 – it was last this low in 1994.

In terms of pregnancies, 1.7% of pregnancies end in a termination. That is a pretty low rate.

62% of women who had an abortion, had never had one previously. 13% had two or more previously. This rate is growing – it was 10% a decade ago.

18.2% of abortions are on teenagers. 28.1% are to those aged over 30.

The age range with the highest abortion rate is 20 to 24 year olds and then 25 to 29 year olds.

45% of women having an abortion have no chidren. 55% have at least one child and 34% have at least two.

94.3% of pregnancies occur within 13 weeks.  55% are within 9 weeks.

They supply crude numbers of abortions by ethnicity, not not the rate by ethnicity. A quick contrast to the population states finds that Maori, Pacific and Asian ethnicities both have around double the abortion rate of Europeans. The Middle East, Latin American and African rate is around 1.5 times the European one only.

Finally we have the abortion rate (per 1,000 women 15 – 44) by country:

1. Germany 7.3
2. Netherland 8.7
3. Finland 10.2
4. Scotland 12.3
5. Denmark 15.5
6. Norway 16.2
7. England 17.1
8. France 17.2
9. NZ 18.1
10. US 19.6
11. Sweden 20.9

It would be interesting to see a fuller set of international data.

Based on a release from Tony Ryall, a useful guide as to how National and Labour did asset sales. And recall Phil Goff, Annette King and Trevor Mallard vote for the Labour asset sales.

Labour sold a total of 15 assets, so some answers vary by asset sold.

What this shows is that National have acted entirely properly with their partial asset sales, and in fact it was Labour that did everything they accuse National of doing.

THIS WEEK ON BACK BENCHES: Watch Wallace Chapman, Damian Christie, the Back Benches Panel and special guests discuss the week’s hottest topics!

ACC—WHAT IT IS & WHAT IT SHOULD BE: Like the leaked private files of thousands of claimants—ACC Chief Exec Ralph Stewart and Board Chairman John Judge are out. Now it is time for us to ask, “What is ACC?” & “What Should it Be?” Will new leadership be enough to change the culture at ACC? How can an organisation like ACC have sent out the private files of its claimants on more than one occasion? Are claimants too often considered bludgers until proven sick? Is ACC still the best health scheme in the world? Can we afford ACC? Can the problems be fixed? Will a band-aid be enough to fix the problems or is it time for open heart surgery? How will we begin the healing process?

“GREEN EXTREME”: Philanthropist and economist Gareth Morgan has called out the Green Party for being extreme—anti-economic development and turning people off conservation. Is he right? Are their views too extreme? Can economic-growth and conservation live in harmony side-by-side? Do average kiwis feel like they’ve done their part by putting their plonk bottles in the recycling bin? How do we get more New Zealanders involved in conservation? And how do we grow our economy by keeping our 100% Pure NZ image?

SOLD!: The Government ran on asset sales. One argument says their win at the polls was an indication that most New Zealanders support Partial Asset Sales or at least not scared enough by asset sales to vote for the opposition. And yet—the debate over Asset Sales continues, especially in Parliament. Some in the opposition are calling for a referendum on the issues, NZ First Leader Winston Peters is predicting this will break the current Government and the filibuster word is floating in the air. What will the partial sale of our assets mean for kiwis? Will it raise our power prices? Will this be the key to putting us back into surplus? And are mum and dad investor dying to get a piece of mighty power?

Join us for a night of LIVE pub politics from the Shepherds Arms Hotel & Speights Ale House on Tinakori Road: Wednesday, 20th of June. Our Panel: Green MP Kevin Hague, Labour MP David Parker, and National MP Louise Upston.

Broadcast on Wednesdays at 9.05pm and Saturdays at 10.05pm | TVNZ 7

A couple of Fridays ago, I (and around 14 other media) spent a day touring Christchurch as guests of CERA.  I found the day quite fascinating as the scale of the issues is daunting. I’m going to blog some photos and commentary, and also at the end my overall thoughts on Christchurch.

The tour started with an amusing incident as we passed the new McDonalds. Gerry Brownlee said that sadly it was not yet open, as the Council had yet to approve its consent. This caused some amusement, and I wondered if Gerry had considered using his special powers to consent it himself 🙂

We started off looking at areas such as Kaiapoi, where in some areas house after house is noticeably damaged and of course abandoned. But we also saw the areas where new sub-divisions are planned, and construction about to start. I believe Ngai Tahu is planning what will almost be a small township of 2,500 on some of their land.

We headed into the Cashel Container Mall, where we met some of the CERA executives such as Roger Sutton and Warwick Isaacs. Sutton is a very quirky personality, who was telling us how the amount of milk he has to drink to cycle to the Port Hills, is equal to the amount of petrol a car would need – in terms of energy. This factoid is new to us, but not new to Gerry and the other CERA people who I gather hear such factoids on a daily basis.

A profile of Sutton in The Press has he has calculated it takes 7 grams of chocolate to run up the 11 floors of HSBC house.

Putting aside the quirkiness, both Sutton and Isaacs impressed with their plans. There were lots of questions from media types, and I found their replies to be realistic. They are well aware that they can not force investors back into the central city, and that the CBD will be smaller. However they are doing what they can to make investment occur, such as working with the former large tenants such as the financial institutions, the law firms, the Government sector to confirm they will relocate back to the CBD if the rental cost is similar to what it was.

I’ll come back to the investment challenge, but will note that some of the property investors in Christchurch are very “loyal” and keen to invest if it can make sense for them. The Cashel Container Mall came about because four of the major property owners got together and arranged for all the owners to temporarily donate their land into a trust which charges peppercorn rentals to the current retailers.

We headed into the restricted zone, and saw first hand the deconstructions occurring.

Large areas of the CBD are now clear. CERA believes that within 12 months all the deconstruction will have occured, which suggests that by then the construction plans will be known and pretty finalised.

There is an opportunity here for Christchurch to get a city centre which is an improvement on the old one. Many locals will admit that the sad reality is that the city centre was in decline even before the quakes. One of the reasons for this is because so few people lived in the city centre.

The draft plan for the CBD is to have apartment blocks to allow 30,000 people to live in the inner city. That’s a great plan, and will make a real difference to its vibrancy.

However CERA was quite blunt, that the investment may not happen. The return on residential property is less than on commercial property in city centres. You get less per square metre. We won’t know for some months if there are property investors who will be willing to invest. One of the real problems is that the heightened requirements in the building code, means construction costs will be greater – possibly more than even insurance will cover. So the investment equation may not be there for new residential apartment blocks.

The other thing planned is to have some sort of logical sectors within the city. For example the courts, the police and the law firms will probably all be located next to each other. I quipped it was nice that prisoners would have shorter distances to travel 🙂

Part of the Cathedral. I am not an Architect, but having seen its exterior, I reckon anyone who thinks it is safe to preserve it is barking mad. It’s fucked.

The CERA Chief Geologist took us to Redcliffs. Those houses had such stunning views, but are now obviously unsafe to live in.

That’s a mighty big load of rocks that have come down.

Further along, they have this temporary solution of containers, to prevent further rock falls spreading onto the road. A simple but effective idea. Who knew containers had so many uses – prison cells, retail shops and rock guards!

You have to be careful emerging from between the containers as you are straight onto the road. I remarked to Beck Eleven from The Press that it would be bad to get run over here, as all the other media would get to report your being hit by a car or truck. Beck agreed, but said what would really gut her is that she has no camera with her to take photos of my body after being whacked by a vehicle. We agreed that she could take my iPhone from my body, and use it to take and send in photos of the scene 🙂

A bit hard to see through the window, but yes that is a large rock in the middle of that bedroom.

What happened is the rock landed here and bounced literally through the wall in the background into the bedroom.

We were told the rocks fall at around 90 km/hr but when they land and splinter, a shard can travel a several hundred kms/hr. So even a small shard can be fatal.

This rock had a cow underneath it. No it did not land on the cow, it caught it on the way down and splattered it at the bottom. I observed that if it landed on a human, you’d probably not even know there was a body underneath it.

Somehow a discussion eventuated about what would have happened if someone was, umm, being intimate with the cow when the rock struck it. The consensus was they would be very dead, or in great pain.

We ended the tour by going to the headquarters of SCIRT, the Stronger Canterbury Infrastructure Rebuild Team. They are the group rebuilding the roads, fresh water supply, waste water and storm water networks. It is an alliance of CERA, the CCC  and NZTA on the government side and Citycare, Downer, Fletcher, Fulton Hogan and McConnell Dowell on the construction side.

The scale of the work they have on is staggering. Off hand I think their budget is $2.5 billion. but instead of that being one big $2,5b project, this is around 500+ individual projects. Over the next few years I think 40% of the sewers will be replaced or upgraded. When they dig up roads, they are notifying utility companies, so one bright thing has been a lot of fibre or duct for fibre is being laid for little cost.

We finished the day watching the Crusaders play the Highlanders at the AMI stadium. The stadium is superb – you feel very close to the rugby. For a “temporary” stadium, they’ve done a great job. We were hosted by the stadium trust, in their box. At one stage the Highlanders scored a try and as a good former Dunedin resident I jumped out of my seat clapping and cheering. I then noticed that I was the only person in our area doing so, and the Mayor who was seated next to me gave me a very strange glare. I explained I went to Otago University and one has to stay loyal.

Overall it was a very enjoyable and interesting day. I think all the media found it so. The Press has a story online about some of their impressions. There is a lot happening, but the future is of course still unknown. The plan for the CBD is around half way through the 100 day formulation period, and it remains unknown how willing the large property owners and investors will be to build in the new CBD. However there are some confirmed tenancies which will help those decisions.

There were two things which struck me during the day. The first was how much time and energy is spent “fixing” things with the Council. Many many stories were told about issues where they have had to hurry or help the Council do something. Without exception these stories were told with respect for the Council. People often said that it is not their fault – the Council simply is not geared up to rebuild an entire city. They are staffed and structured for business as normal. They simply don’t have the staff, the experience, the flexibility and the funding to do much more than their core competencies.

Some politicians have called for the Council to be given a much larger role in the rebuild. I think this view is woefully misguided, and would be a disaster. I doubt the Council itself even has this view. They simply are not structured in a way where they could perform much more than what they currently do. This is not a criticism of them, just a reality.

The other thing that struck me was the intimate detailed knowledge CERA Minister Gerry Brownlee had on the city and the issues. Over six or more hours on the bus, he was peppered by questions, and could answer pretty much them all. At almost every location he could tell you what had happened, what issues had arisen, and what probably will happen. There were many stories about ministerial interventions to stop something bad happening by some entity. We’re not talking about use of official powers, but persuasion and yes diplomacy. With a rebuild of this size, it is not surprising that so many issues arise.

Now again some politicians have called for there to be a Board for CERA, and have the CEO report to the Board and the Board to the Minister. In my opinion that is also a very misguided and potentially disastrous idea. Apart from the fact there is no other Govt Dept that has such a setup, lets look at what would happen. The Minister would be a remote figure mainly based in Wellington deciding on recommendations from the board. The board would be a group of part-time directors who could only decide things when they formally meet every few weeks. Having a board would be near criminally stupid – it would remove the Minister from an active role, put in place some unelected directors who have no accountability, and slow things down massively. Most of all you would lose the ability of the Minister (and his associate Amy Adams who also showed a high level of knowledge) to perform that all important role of sorting out conflicts and clearing roadblocks.

As I said, the day was very interesting and I learnt a lot. I hope they do another media trip in a year’s time, when fingers crossed buildings in the new city centre will be starting to go up. But ultimately that will depend on if the private sector can get a return on any investment there.

NB – While invited by CERA, like all the other media I paid for my own travel down there.

The NZ Herald reports:

The Green Party has used $75,000 of taxpayer money to pay signature-collectors for a referendum opposing asset sales.

The party has used its Leader’s Office fund to hire the equivalent of eight fulltime staff members in an attempt to force a citizens-initiated referendum before the Government begins to sell state-owned power companies.

The payments were permitted under parliamentary rules, but it was believed to be the first time the fund has been used to gather support for a party policy.

This is not a citizen-initiated referendum. This is a taxpayer-funded Green and Labour referendum.

Electoral law expert Graeme Edgeler said that while the Greens’ strategy was allowed, he did not feel it was appropriate.

“The reason that we give parliamentary parties money is so that they can keep us informed of what they’re doing so that they can effectively do their jobs in Parliament.

“Using the money as a direct funding of people to go out and get signatures is a step more than any other party has done to date, and that might be a little concerning if it is seen to be appropriate.”

When political parties’ spending was reviewed in 2010, Mr Edgeler asked for use of Leader’s Office money on gaining support for a referendum to be banned.

“If you’re not allowed to tell people to vote a certain way in a citizens-initiated referendum, why can you spend money telling them to sign their name on a petition to get a referendum? It seems an odd distinction.”

The Greens are guilty of massive hypocrisy on this issue. They demanded that people using their own money be restricted to how much they can spend on a referendum – yet use their taxpayer funding to buy signatures for a referendum.

The Press reports:

The rental market cannot stabilise itself with its “hands tied”, a Canterbury University finance and economics lecturer says.

Dr John Fountain said the answer to Christchurch’s housing shortage did not lie with increasing the social housing pool, building working men’s villages or headleasing properties to underwrite rental costs.

The market “can’t and won’t solve this problem with its hands tied”, he said.

However, adapting existing housing or building “secondary suites” could help.

Dividing sections of large, old homes into self-contained, one or two-bedroom flats was an idea implemented in Fountain’s home city, Vancouver, when housing costs rose.

There were now “tens of thousands” secondary suites in the most popular suburbs of Vancouver and Toronto, holding up to 30 per cent of the rental market, he said.

Fountain said there were about 100,000 Christchurch properties that could follow suit and split into two.

Secondary suites in the city would not only take pressure off the rental market by increasing the supply of available accommodation in high-demand suburbs, but there was also a “very strong financial incentive for homeowners”.

Home extensions or adaptations were “fully insurable now” and would take only a few months to complete, he said.

The only hurdle was a Christchurch City Council regulation that said residential dwellings could not have a second kitchen.

“I am not asking the Government to do anything except change that one regulation so ordinary people can do this and do it quickly,” he said.

Looks like a very sensible and painless way to get more housing available. Increasing the supply is the only sustainable way to reduce rents.

Oral Questions 2 pm – 3 pm

1. TODD McCLAY to the Minister of Finance: How is the Government’s economic programme helping New Zealand manage through current global uncertainty?
2. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS to the Minister of Finance: Is he confident that the Government’s economic and fiscal strategy is on track; if so, why?
3. DAVID SHEARER to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?
4. Dr RUSSEL NORMAN to the Minister of Finance: What is the value of contracts entered into to date for spending on advertising, communications and banking services relating to the Government’s asset sales programme?
5. Dr PAUL HUTCHISON to the Minister of Health: How is the Voluntary Bonding Scheme improving health services?
6. Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Does he agree with Molly Melhuish’s calculation that the amount charged by SOEs for electricity for an average consumer is $265 per annum less than is charged by non-SOE retailers, and if not, what was the weighted average of the annual total retail price charged by SOEs and their subsidiaries to a residential consumer using 8,000 kilowatt hours of electricity compared with the weighted average of the price charged by non-SOE suppliers, according to the most recent data?
7. Hon TAU HENARE to the Minister of Trade: Can he confirm that Mexico is now a full participant in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement?
8. CHRIS HIPKINS to the Associate Minister of Education: Does he stand by his statement with regard to the public-private partnership for the Hobsonville schools “you can be assured that the contract that we’ve signed today, the taxpayer will be better off under this arrangement”?
9. MELISSA LEE to the Minister for Social Development: How will the Government’s welfare reforms, currently before the House, support young people on a collision course with the welfare system?
10. KEVIN HAGUE to the Minister for ACC: Will she return ACC to the pay-as-you-go funding model, outlined in the Green Party’s ACC Rehabilitation Plan and emailed to her this morning, and are there any points in the plan she will not consider implementing?
11. ANDREW LITTLE to the Minister for ACC: On how many occasions, and for what periods of time on each occasion, did she meet with or have discussions with the ACC Chairman or Chief Executive, including about the matter of the mass privacy breach involving Bronwyn Pullar, between 13 March and 19 March when that matter was referred to the Police by way of formal complaint?
12. JONATHAN YOUNG to the Minister of Energy and Resources: What decisions were made in Budget 2012/13 about the Warm Up New Zealand Programme?

Patsy of the day goes to Q5 – How is the Voluntary Bonding Scheme improving health services?

Labour are doing a gotcha question, plus asking on power prices, PPPs and ACC.

Greens are on asset sales and ACC and NZ First on the economy.

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

1. Mixed Ownership Model Bill – committee stage
2. Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill – second reading continued

The Mixed Ownership Bill has only two parts to it, so would normally be around a three hour debate (ballpark is an hour per part, plus an hour for general provisions) but with lots of opposition and SOPs, I suspect it could well chew up all of the five and a half hours available.

The Mixed Ownership Model Bill was introduced in March 2012 and enables the Crown to  remove Genesis Power Limited, Meridian Energy Limited, Mighty River Power Limited, and Solid Energy New Zealand Limited from the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986, and restricts the Crown from holding less than 51% of the voting rights in each of the companies and will restrict non-Crown individuals and entities from holding more than 10% of the voting rights in each of the companies. It passed first reading 61-60 with National, ACT, United Future in favour and all other parties against. The Finance and Expenditure reported it back with minority reports from Labour and Greens. It passed second reading 61-59.

The Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill was introduced in March 2012 and seeks to  introduce a new regime in relation to Fonterra’s milk price setting, proposed capital restructure, and share valuation. It passed first reading 64 to 54 with Labour, Greens, NZ First and Mana against. The Primary Production Committee recommended it pass with amendments, with Labour and Greens giving minority reports.

Vernon Small reports:

ACC is in line for a major shake-up, with the two major parties eyeing changes that could see premiums plunge by up to 25 per cent.

Labour is rethinking its ACC policy, and could scrap the fully funded model to revert to a “pay as you go” approach – and yesterday ACC Minister Judith Collins refused to rule out a similar move.

During last year’s levy review, the Cabinet agreed to “a review of the funding policy for the ACC accounts and the reasons for the fluctuations in the projections of the ACC’s accounts”.

Ms Collins said ministers were looking at the funding policy “which could include the stability of the scheme, good process for levy setting and the impact on the economy”.

“We’re not ruling out anything at this stage.”

Labour leader David Shearer said a possible change had not yet been discussed by caucus.

But the party’s ACC spokesman, Andrew Little, said it was time for a public debate about funding options, with recent controversy highlighting ACC’s overemphasis on lowering costs rather than meeting claimants’ needs.

Under full funding the corporation builds up reserves to cover the current and future costs of existing claims, and is aiming to reach that goal by 2019.

Under a pay-as-you-go approach, it would need only enough income in a year to cover annual claims, plus a possible buffer for unexpected costs or disasters.

Mr Little said his “back of the envelope” calculation was that levies could be cut by 20 per cent to 25 per cent if there was a move away from full funding.

While it would be nice to have lower levies, such a move is a false economy which really just leaves the next generation with a huge unfunded liability. Levies should reduce because ACC is managing to rehabilitate people back to work faster, not due to accounting changes.

ACC’s revenue for a year should roughly match the liabilities it incurs in that year. That way there is security for long-term ACC recipients, and we don’t leave a huge bill for future generations. The benefits of paying for the full costs as they incur is that we can then make rational decisions about what ACC covers. When that cost is partially hidden by leaving it to the next generation, it encourages reckless spending.

This looks very very nice. The magnetic clip on keyboard means it is a tablet and a laptop. I definitely want to try one.

Stuff reports:

Filippos Nikolopoulos, a sociology professor at Crete University and SYRIZA supporter, said that Tsipras’s fans were jubilant because they had won new force and authority by increasing their share of the vote so much on Sunday.

“We want Europe, we want to cooperate,” he said. “But we do not want to be subjugated by (German Chancellor) Mrs Merkel.”

Stathis Stavropoulos, a newspaper cartoonist famous for his drawings depicting German officials preaching austerity at Greece as Nazi taskmasters, said the new conservative government would have the people of Greece against it from the outset.

“Our dream of European union was very different,” he told Reuters. “It was a union of countries and peoples, not a union to serve banks and not a Fourth German Reich.”

Using the term for a Nazi regional leader under Hitler’s Reich, Stavropoulos added: “Our country is under occupation. How would you feel if they sent a Gauleiter to run your country and tell you what to do ?”

The cartoonist said he had nothing against the German people or other European nations. Indeed, he had never visited Berlin, Paris or London – but was familiar with Moscow, Beijing and Nicaragua from his Communist activities.

“The Soviet Union may have ended but not the dream of democratic communism,” he sighed wistfully.

I detest this blaming of Germany, when in fact the poor German taxpayer has thrown billions of Euros at helping keep Greece solvent.

It is becoming clear the Euro is a flawed concept. For a common currency to work, you need a common economy. I think a number of countries should and will leave the Euro. This will allow their new currency to be set at a level which makes their economy competitive again.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister John Key has signalled his support for a form of league tables for primary and intermediate schools.

Unions argued that rankings of school performances was inevitable once the controversial national standards policy was introduced in 2010.

Last week it emerged the Education Ministry was working on a report based on data received from schools last month. All schools were required to send in information about the performance of pupils against national standards in literacy and numeracy. It is due to be finished in September.

Mr Key yesterday defended the move as the information could now be discovered under the Official Information Act and media could put together their own rankings. “Some sort of coherent league table makes sense,” he said.

“I’ve always had a view that somehow this information is going to be in the public domain. The question is what form is it going to take and what’s it going to look like. What I don’t want to see is schools actually damaged by the information being presented in the wrong way.”

The ministry has turned down requests to release the information from more than 2000 schools because it is working on its own report.

Education Minister Hekia Parata said a series of meetings would be held with parents and teachers next month to determine what information should be made available.

Mr Key said there must be buy-in from the education sector. “If we … get agreement from the sector, we may well be in a position where we’d provide much more understandable and, actually, relevant information than some league table that is constructed … poorly put together.”

Presenting the data was complex, he said.

“It’s complicated as hell, because it’s not just a matter of who’s at the standard, above the standard or below the standard. It’s the progress that is made during the year, by different subject types, by different age groups.”

Ultimately he wanted parents to be able to access information on a school “and see the progress that they are achieving in lifting literacy and numeracy overall”.

League tables are inevitable in a free and open society. School assessment data is not a state secret. With the tables being inevitable, it seems sensible for the Government to compile the data in a way which is as useful as possible (as highlighted above, rather than have a league table just on percentage at or over the standard.

Yesterday schools called for a review after it emerged the number of Pakeha attending low-decile schools has halved in the past decade – but argued the funding should remain.

I discussed this issue on RNZ Panel yesterday with the head of the Secondary Principals Association. He made the valid point that many parents treat the decile ranking as a proxy for quality, and this is a bad thing as there are some high quality schools with low decile rankings. I suggested that one solution to this is to do what the Gillard Government does in Australia and have a schools database which allows parents to easily compare schools in their area, so that parents have more information than just the decile ranking. He agreed that such a database could be useful.

Stuff reports:

An Opotiki policeman says he was shocked to find that a woman he had stopped for drink-driving had a baby on her lap and two other preschool children unrestrained in her car.

Acting on information received from a member of the public, police stopped the 24-year-old woman in Opotiki about 9.30am on Friday. She recorded a breath alcohol reading of 780 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath – nearly twice the legal limit, Senior Constable Doug Henry said.

She was also found to have been a disqualified driver, so her car was impounded.

This sounds like a good candidate for having their kids removed from them.

Labour and others have been claiming that the cost of power from privately owned power companies is much more than SOEs, and hence scare-mongering that the partial sales will make power prices go up. I have debunked this myth on two previous occasions.

A further debunking is done by Tony Ryall:

 “Treasury advises there are 21 regions listed on the Consumer Institute’s Powerswitch website. In 14 of these regions the cheapest electricity company is privately owned, in 1 the cheapest company is owned by a council, and in the other 6 an SOE is cheapest.”

You can see the data for yourself here.

Treasury advises that in the 12 months from May 2011 to April 2012, 422,256 customers changed electricity retailers (or an average of 35,188 each month)

That is excellent. Competition is what keeps the prices down.

This 22 year old has just been elected to the French Parliament, becoming their youngest MP since 1791.

Normally I would approve of such an election. Time magazine describes Marion as “Intelligent, articulate and exceptionally easy to gaze upon” – a description hard to dispute.

However there is a downside. Her full name is Marion Maréchal-Le Pen. She is the grand-daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen and got elected as a National Front MP – a feat even her aunt and party leader failed to achieve. She is already being touted as a future National Front Leader.

Incidentally in 1986 France introduced proportional representation, and the result was the National Front won 35 seats in the French Parliament. They abolished proportional representation for the next round of elections, and they were reduced to one MP.

Very funny.

Rodney Hide’s column at the HoS is on racial preferences or quotas at medical school. His conclusion was:

But race, colour, creed shouldn’t worry us. We shouldn’t care if doctors are yellow, white or brown. All we should care about is that they are good at the job. And that should be the university’s sole concern. It is wrong that the university discriminates on skin colour. It is wrong that it is attempting a correct colour mix. The university should treat all applicants equally: that means being blind to race.

That wasn’t what got my attention though. It was this comment on the Herald website:

Debate on this article is now closed due to an increasing number of unpublishable comments.

I’ve never seen that on the Herald before. Well done Rodney, you’ve managed to turn the Herald into a blog 🙂

I spent the weekend visiting friends in Palmerston North – firstly catching up with a blogging friend and his new wife, who was amusingly literally barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen :-). Then stayed the night with a couple of old university friends, and their family.

I am known for mocking Palmerston North with similar enthusiasm to mocking gingas.  However I do have to say on this occasion, Palmie was rather nice. While for me personally I would go batshit insane living there, it is not a bad place if you have kids. For an affordable price you get a decent house and section, kids can play on the road (so to speak), the neighbourhood is pretty safe.  So not the place to  live if you enjoy an active nightlife perhaps, but pretty good if you have rugrats.

Talking of rugrats, or their more advanced form, children. The friends I were staying with had three kids. And it transpired over drinks that one of the ten year olds had written a letter to John Key and a letter to John Campbell over the class size issue. I was initially amused and impressed that she had identified John Campbell as being as powerful as John Key and written him also.

I did quietly start to wonder though whether or not this was a 10 year old expressing her own view, or had some teacher unionist ranted about the evil Government in class for weeks on end, and encouraged these letters. So I asked her mum how she heard about the issue, and decided to write to the two Johns on it. Mum redirected the question to said daughter, and the answer came back that she learnt about it from watching the television news. I was pretty impressed that a 10 year old watches the TV news, let alone gets motivated to write on an issue.

But the best was yet to come. When asked, why she wrote on this issue, she explained that it was because of her own experiences with class sizes. She started off at Karori Normal school in Wellington which had a fairly small class and got help with her spelling and reading which she had been struggling with. Then the folks moved to Australia and her school there had 30 kids in it, and she fell behind with her spelling. Then they moved back to NZ, and her class was much smaller again and in one year of a smaller class with some dedicated assistance, her spelling improved by over three years of ability.

She didn’t want other kids to fall behind with their spelling, as they might not be able to get a job when they leave school, so she thought it would be a bad thing to increase class sizes.

I was hugely impressed that a 10 year old would not just learn about an issue through the media, but would apply their own personal experience to a situation to drawn conclusions on the issue, and want to share them with the PM (and John Campbell!).

Now of course that doesn’t mean I agree 100% with Miss Ten on the issue. I certainly agree that a class size of 15 and a class size of 30 (which were her experiences) will definitely have an impact on student achievement. It would have been interesting to see if she would have accepted a trade off of just slightly bigger class sizes, if it meant all her teachers were as good as her favourite teacher. But I didn’t want to enter into a debate on the issue, in case I lost 🙂

My first letter to the editor was at age 14, calling on Merv Wellington to introduce a 4 year school term term school year (I was 20 years ahead of my time!). I think it is a great thing when young Kiwis are politically aware, and form their own opinions on issues (as opposed to their parents or teachers opinions). Now by this I don’t mean they join a political party and spend all their time being a political activist (that is best left until 18). I mean they are a normal kid who enjoys doing all the things that other kids of that age do, but on top of that they also have demonstrated an awareness and understanding of “adult” issues, and can discuss them intelligently and rationally.

I drove back to Wellington via Wairarapa. It takes a fair bit longer, but the scenery is worth it. Much nicer than SH1. On the way back did a quick loop track to see the ANZAC Memorial Bridge. The only thing that spoilt those beautiful Wairarapa roads were all the Police cars on them! 🙂

Stuff reports:

 Politicians are divided over a suggestion by the Financial Services Council for an increase in KiwiSaver contributions to 10 per cent of incomes to help pay for Superannuation.

The council, which represents investment and life insurance companies, says raising KiwiSaver contributions by 1 per cent a year will enable people to still retire at 65, despite the growing costs of the scheme because of the ageing population.

There may be merit in an increase in KiwiSave contributions, but it is important to note the not inconsiderable self-interest the FSC has in the proposal. It would see KiwiSaver funds and revenue for their members triple.

Chief executive Peter Neilson said New Zealanders surveyed by the council said they could not live on the current Super payment of $349 a week.

Expanding KiwiSaver would enable them to use that saving to pay for their retirement at 65 until the future eligibility age, of perhaps 67, kicked in.

It would also enable people to double the amount they received in Super.

The trade off is not that simple. First of all, we do need to look at retirements savings as a whole. You should not treat superannuation and KiwiSaver separately. What no politicians have done is look at whether the current floor for super should be lower in future – in recognition of the level of private savings in KiwiSaver.

For someone on the average wage, they would under this proposal have a higher net income in retirement than they would have had while working. Now that is actually nuts, as when you are working you have the greater expenses, and are raising a family etc.

This is why we need a first principles review – what is the minimum and what is the desirable level of retirement savings, and how much should come from public super, from workplace super and from private super.

NZ First leader Winston Peters said the council’s call was “hopeless”.

“We offered people a straight tax-break so they could painlessly save.”

The crisis in Super was “manufactured” by certain elements in the finance sector, he said.

The council’s idea was the first step in privatising Super, Mr Peters said, but would not elaborate how.

Now this is ironic, as Winston championed the 1997 referendum which would have essentially privatised superannuation entirely.

It was fair that over 65-year-olds who were still working received the pension.

“For decades we all believed in a universal scheme whereby if you worked hard and you saved, you should not be punished.”

Why should Winston get public superannuation while an MP? That’s outrageous. And when he leaves again, he’ll get his gold plated parliamentary pension plus his public super.

Public superannuation should be used to assist those who do not have adequate savings of their own. It should not be used to give Winston an extra $15,000 a year income.

The announcements today by Fairfax are massive. In summary, they are:

•  The Sydney Morning Herald and (Melbourne) age to move to tabloid format on 4 March 2013
• SMH and Age websites have most content go subscription only
• Two printing facilities to close
• 1,900 staff to be let go over three years
• A$248m of restructuring costs, which will lead to A$215m annual savings
• Sale of 15% of Trade Me for A$160m
• Metro newspapers may go digital only (no print edition) if print advertising and circulation revenue declines materially

It will be interesting to see what happens to Fairfax in New Zealand.

The Press reports:

 A Christchurch man has lost $20,000 in a scam that offered him a “flicker of hope”.

The man, who did not want to be named, fed thousands of dollars to a wire transfer scam after receiving an email on April 25 saying he had won more than US$600,000 (NZ$760,000) from Ghana.

His first impression was that the email was a joke and he sent an email reply saying “in no uncertain terms … don’t try to scam me”.

Mistake No 1 – replying. He was right of course it was a scam. You can not win money in a lottery you did not enter!

The man was then emailed several different forms of identification, including one from someone claiming to be from the United States Department of Homeland Security.

He also talked on the phone to one of the scammers up to 20 times.

“Everything came across as being factual. These people are so expert in persuasion.”

They are con artists, but you still have to be very gullible. If it is too good to be true – it is. The correct way to deal with a scammer on the phone is to transfer the call to a fax machine.

He came to believe the prize was legitimate and that he would have to send some money through Western Union for administration fees before he could receive the total sum.

“Then he started to want more money.

“I said `no, no, you’re full of s…, you’re having me on’.”

The man then began to receive emails claiming they were from “Infidelity Bank” and saying they were holding the promised prize. He found a website for the bank, which appeared to be legitimate, and he again believed that the prize was real. He sent more money for what he believed were insurance fees.

Oh God. It is not as if these scams are unknown.

He acknowledged he was “a victim of me”, but was angry that no-one had been able to confirm the prize was a scam.

Umm. Did he try a google on the text? Did he try Consumer Affairs? A community law centre? Asking friends? His accountant? His lawyer?

He had asked his bank to verify the claims made by the scammers, but was “laughed out of the bank”.

“I took those documents into the bank … and just wanted them to check the validity of them, but they refused.”

If the really did laugh at the claims, would that not ring a bell?

Stuff reports:

 Lobby group Save TVNZ7 has hired high-profile constitutional lawyer Mai Chen to examine whether the Government has acted lawfully in its decision to axe funding for the free-to-air channel.

The media are so gullible at times. This, like most of the Save TVNZ7 campaign, is a media stunt.  The decision to not grant additional funding to TVNZ7 (Labour only granted limited duration funding) was taken well over a year ago – and well before the last election. If there was any serious issue about the legality of doing so, then it would have been challenged at the time.  The channel ceases in 12 days, and this is just about whipping up a cheap headline. Well not necessarily cheap – Mai’s normal hourly fee could probably fund TVNZ7 for a month :-(This is a joke – I have no idea what Mai’s fees are).

While I am not a lawyer, and have great respect for Mai’s public law knowledge, I have to say I struggle to see how one can say the Government may have acted illegally in deciding not to fund something. Again, if there was a serious question of this I would have expected it to be looked at well before now.

It was vital that public service television was retained because without it New Zealand was left with only commercial broadcasters.

I agree. And we have masses of public service television funded by NZ on Air – such as Media 3 which will now enjoy a larger audience and more influence.

“That means our news is prey to commercial interests and everything is simplified because commercial programmes don’t want anyone to change channel.

Which is exactly why TVNZ7 was doomed. It was on a broadcaster which had no interest in having people watch it. How many times do you have to state the obvious – a broadcaster can not be both a commercial broadcaster and a public service broadcaster.

If you want public service television, there are really only two sustainable models. The first is the NZ on Air contestable funding model which allows all broadcasters to air public service programmes that are not commercially viable.

The second is a dedicated stand alone broadcaster. That will cost around $200m to $250m or so a year.

Labour’s broadcasting spokeswoman, Clare Curran, said public broadcasting was crucial for New Zealand’s culture and heritage.

“The Government doesn’t seem to understand there are many thousands of New Zealanders who believe public broadcasting is a right of citizenship.”

Well first of all it is no such thing. Your rights are freedom of speech, liberty etc etc. Please do not invent rights.

What I would agree with Clare on is that public broadcasting is a good thing. Just as funding the conservation estate is a good thing. I don’t know any National Minister who thinks the Government should not fund public broadcaasting.

But that is very different from trying to have TVNZ be both a commercial and public service broadcaster. Everyone from Ian Fraser on has said it does not work. How many times do you need to fail to understand that?

Broadcasting Minister Craig Foss said TVNZ7 was set up with time-limited funding in 2006 to encourage people to “go digital” ahead of the digital switchover.

“The Government values Kiwi content and invests $230m each year on public broadcasting and supporting New Zealand content on our screens.”

So it is not a choice between public broadcasting and no public broadcasting. It is not even much of a debate over the level of investment in public broadcasting. It is a debate about how best to deliver it. And the TVNZ7 model is not the way to do it.

Recent audience data shows TVNZ7’s audience has grown from 863,100 last year to 1.47 million, comparable with the audience of Maori Television.

Oh for fuck’s sake if you are going to quote a dodgy stat, at least define what it is. This is “cumulative” monthly audience which means someone who tuned in to one programme for 15 minutes gets treated the same as someone who watches a channel for five hours a day, 30 days a month. It is a near meaningless statistic.

Kiwiblog’s total cumulative audience is 2.3 million or so, if I wanted to inflate my numbers.

With television, always ask for the actual population share of their highest rating programme. Does TVNZ7 have a single programme that ever attracted over 1% of the population?

John Key was on The Nation at the weekend. I can’t see the transcript online, so here are some extracts, starting with Sky City:

Rachel         Okay, let’s move on and look at the Convention Centre, the Sky City Convention Centre.  Do you have some unease if you like that the Auditor General is now investigating that tender process?

 John Key     No, actually I think it’s a good thing.  I mean people will say well he would say that.  My view’s the complete opposite.  I think it’s a good thing because there have been people making claims, and you saw it with David Shearer and to a certain degree the Greens on Thursday, making claims which are completely incorrect.  And so the good thing about the Auditor General coming in is that assuming it comes through a clean bill of health, it won’t stop their criticism by the way, because what they say in Opposition and what they did in government are quite different things, but it will at least be able to put that to one side.  Let me just take you through that for a moment.  The involvement I had as Minister of Tourism was to go and talk to a number of critical players and as part of a general conversation say to them hey look New Zealand’s interested in building a Convention Centre.  I did that with Sky City. I did that with the people out at the ASB Centre, the Edge.  I did that with Ngati Whatua.  That’s not unusual.  I mean and to argue that that would be unusual would be say well look I have discussions with people in Whangarei about building a Museum there, and I have discussions with people in Auckland about building a cycle way.  So now what we’re talking about is okay, was there undue influence or was the process correctly handled?  That’s what the Auditor General is saying.  So let me tell you this.  For a start off okay, in terms of the expression of interest process my office had absolutely no involvement, no correspondence, no phone calls – absolutely nothing.  So when the Auditor General comes in there will be no correspondence, no phone calls, no discussions at all.  Zero.

And on the substance:

John H         Well the flattery’s fine but this is a serious question isn’t it, about that social cost aspect?

 John Key     No but this was gonna be my point.  My point was that I always thought there would be people like you and other commentators that would come out and say I don’t like this particular trade off, which is a cross subsidisation of income.  I accepted that.  But you see when you say you look at the social costs we’re also looking at an environment where we know the number of pokie machines now around New Zealand is reducing.  So we know this year there’ll be 468 less, so that’s gotta be taken into consideration.  Secondly, there are people that have problem gambling, you and I both know that, and that’s risky, but they could go to Sky City Casino or any other pokie machine anyway at the moment, and further by the way they could get on the internet as they’re listening to this show and they could gamble 24/7.  So there are ills there and there are ills with drinking, and there are ills with all sorts of things in the world.  I can’t necessarily stop them, but I think in the context of the harm minimisation which – the only thing I’ve ever said to Sky City is harm minimisation reduction is off the table, Len Brown won’t accept it and I wouldn’t accept it.

And on the surplus target:

Rachel         You’re raising that issue now.  Let’s talk about the economy.  This week the Reserve Bank forecast that a return to surplus could take another two years beyond what you would like to do.  How wedded are you, how committed are you to returning the country to surplus?

 John Key     Well I’d like to do it by 2014/15, and that’s the government’s stated aim and goal, and we’re doing everything we can to get there.  If you look at the start of this year I came out and gave a speech that said look, it is obviously very volatile internationally and Europe’s going worse than we thought, and if I thought that getting back to surplus would make things much worse and drive the economy into recession, then we’ve given ourselves the political freedom if you like to take a step back from that, but we’re not walking away from that 14/15 target unless we absolutely have to.

 Alex             You have indicated that you’re willing to bridge another couple of years if that does happen.

 John Key     We had to yes.

If Europe goes ape, we definitely will miss 2014/15 target. On Chch:

John H         The speed of Christchurch, government has real ambition around the speed there and it’s tied a lot up with that speed.  Is that at the heart of tension with Christchurch City Council in that they are not able to meet what you need from them?

 John Key     To be honest I think it’s just the sheer pressure on a small organisation.  The one thing I’ve learned being Prime Minister is that government has frankly great officials, they have huge capacity to fund things, and they have the capacity to respond, and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a Civil Defence emergency or something else, they have the breadth and depth to cope.  You’re asking Christchurch, you know a council, it’s a big council relative to New Zealand but it’s still a small organisation, to deal with a massive event, and that’s what causes the tension.

Councils are geared up to deliver business as normal, and modest expansions. They are not geared up to rebuild an entire CBD. On mining:

Rachel         But look at Backhurst on the Denniston Plateau there’s some 20 consents 14 months ago – I mean who would want to do mining in this country, it’s a nightmare.  Is there a limit to environmentalism?

 John Key     Well for a start off it’s – oil is our fourth largest export, behind dairy and sheep meat and wood, it’s our fourth largest export.  So we’re already doing a lot of it.  You know gas has been a big part of the New Zealand economy for 30 years.  What we’ve said as a government is look we accept all of the environmental concerns, that’s why we’re putting through EEZ legislation so if there’s deep sea drilling and the likes it’s professionally done.  But we’ve openly said we want to see more oil and gas exploration, potentially more coal mining in New Zealand.  Potentially the use of lignite, certainly iron sands, and we’ve unashamedly said that we think we can balance that with the environmental concerns that people have to grow the overall cake.  The people that are opposed are Labour and the Greens and they’re the same people that are opposed to absolutely everything and then by the way David Parker gets up and says I’m sick of John Key talking about Greece.  Well hullo-o.  We live in the real world not Planet Labour, you know.

Heh. And on the polls:

John Key     There’s a range of different issues but I also accept this is a democracy, and MMP is designed you know to never get a majority.  So that’s the way the system works.  The thing I don’t accept by the way is that you know the Greens and Labour, okay look we need to put a bit of perspective around the polls.  Yeah the polls have eased back a little bit, we all accept that, they might even ease back a bit more frankly over the next six months.  That’s because you know the government’s doing (a) some things that are edgy, mixed ownership model, (b) they’re doing some things which are you know there’s lots of challenges out there, but you have a look at it.  We are polling on you know all the polls that I can see at the moment, clearly Roy Morgan late last week, TV3 and TV1, we are polling what we did virtually on election night.  Since 2008 there’s only been one European government that’s been re-elected, that’s the Germans.  You know David Cameron’s polling 28% Labour are polling 45% in the UK.  In Australia Gillard’s on her knees.  So we’re the only incumbent government in four years that’s held our numbers.  That shows you for all of the claims that commentators make about our government, we are for the most part understood, not always universally popular in every decision we make, but I think supported that we’re on the right track.  And we are ambitious and positive and everything else we hear is negative, and I’m sorry I think that’s why it resonates with the New Zealand public.

You can watch the full interview here.

The panel obviously forgot to ask him about the most vital issue consuming the body politic – his ghost Twitter followers!