Watch this three minute video of a 30 story hotel being built in just 15 days.

I’m guessing it wasn’t a unionised workforce 🙂

Clare Curran at Red Alert is focusing on the issues that really matter to New Zealanders – how some of John Key’s followers on Twitters may be “ghosts”.

Labour’s theory is that the PM may have been “buying” followers!

Yes I can just see the Cabinet meeting. Let’s not talk about the economy, or government debt, or the Christchurch earthquake. Instead they are no doubt discussing how to increase the number of followers John Key has on Twitter. Presumably 1% of the asset sales proceeds go towards purchasing these ghost followers!

Next I await the expose on Red Alert that John Key is not in fact personally friends with all his Facebook friends!

UPDATE: It gets better. Clare has done a second post on the issue, demanding an answer into the question:

how did John Key acquire nearly 30,000 bogus  followers?

I hope Labour pursue this vital issue in the House next week. I urge them to devote all their oral questions to this issue. They should not rest until they get a Royal Commission of Inquiry established into this pressing issue.

The latest Roy Morgan poll came out on Friday. It covers the 11 days up until the 7th of June (which happens to be the day the Government reversed its class size decision). Details are at Curiablog.

TVNZ report:

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Gareth Morgan has taken a swipe at the Green Party and some conservationists.

He says that the majority of New Zealanders see them as “lefties”, “extremists” or “nutters,” which in the long run is holding back their cause of protecting the environment.

At Forest and Bird’s conference, Face up to the Future, Morgan also took aim at some conservationist groups he calls the “green extreme” or “loony left”.

In particular, he says that their opposition to mining and fracking is not evidence-based, and fails to consider employment and the economy.

Exactly. Too often they are anti-science and ignore the evidence. We need more evidence-based decision making, and less emotion-based decision making.

Hat Tip: Keeping Stock

The HoS reports:

NZ First will never agree to an increase in the pension age or a reduction in its level of payment, leader Winston Peters says.

And it would rather be in Opposition than be part of a government whose policies it opposed.

But Peters refused to be tied down yesterday on whether the pension age or even asset sales issues would be deal-breakers in any post election coalition talks in 2014, saying NZ First still had “options”.

Ahead of NZ First’s annual conference this weekend Prime Minister John Key challenged Peters to remove any doubt that maintaining the pension age at 65 truly was a bottom line for NZ First.

“I dare him to go out there and say he will not under any condition form a government with Labour even if Labour’s policy is to raise the super age from 2020,” Key said on TV3’s The Nation yesterday.

In a preview of the speech Peters will give to the conference today, he said NZ First would “never agree to reduce the pension or lift the qualifying age from 65 to 67”.

However, Peters’ comments fell short of giving the cast-iron promise Key challenged him to make over Labour’s policy.

This is why I think the only way forward is to entrench the current scheme, and set up a Royal Commission into retirement savings to design a post 2025 scheme.

The HoS reports:

Beauty pageant winner-in-limbo Avianca Bohm was spotted out shopping yesterday, apparently with time on her hands as a dispute over her eligibility is sorted out.

The newly crowned Miss Universe New Zealand may be stripped of her tiara because she was born in South African and is not yet a New Zealander. She has yet to fulfil any assignments as the crown holder. Yesterday, she told the Herald on Sunday she could not comment. However, a friend said the 22-year-old was looking forward to the situation being resolved and she was remaining positive.

The waitress has called in lawyers after being told to give up her tiara by organisers. The Herald reported pageant director Val Lott delivered a letter to Bohm, advising her that she was ineligible to represent New Zealand.

Miss Bohm should file a dispute with the WTO, claiming barring her is a trade barrier against South Africa.

It is understood Bohm’s citizenship is unlikely to come through in time for Donald Trump’s Miss Universe pageant.

Why not? If Bill Liu can get his, why not Avianca Bohm? A quick citizenship decision by the Government could be a popular move!

Scott at Imperator Fish blogs on the TPPA:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has a lot of people talking, particularly over the fear many people have that New Zealand will agree to an investor-state dispute provision that would allow foreign companies to take legal action in some circumstances, if our government passed legislation those companies didn’t like. Environmental and health groups worry that the provisions could be used by tobacco companies to challenge anti-smoking regulations, or by multinationals to toss out environmental protections they don’t like.

Critics have claimed the measures would amount to our handing over our sovereignty. Legally this is a nonsense. What right, if any, we give to multinationals we will give because our Parliament adopted legislation ratifying the agreement. Parliament could theoretically the very next day repeal that legislation, rendering the agreement provisions unenforceable. People, we don’t lose our sovereignty.*

It is also worth pointing out that investor-state provisions work two ways. They protect NZ companies from (for example) having their assets nationalised in another country, purely because they are NZ owned.

For me the issue is not the existence of investor-state provisions, but how they are crafted. You want them crafted in a way which does protect your country’s right to make laws and policies in the public interest.

That’s not to say the deal’s a good one, and there is plenty to be deeply concerned about. However, the nature of free trade negotiations is you win some battles and lose others. If we ratified the thing it wouldn’t be all bad. It might be more bad than good, and that might be enough reason to say no to the deal, but it’s not true to say that the TPPA offers New Zealand nothing.

I am a supporter of free trade agreements, but the chapter proposed by the US on intellectual property is deeply flawed and its inclusion in any deal would be a bad thing.

Most people following the TPPA negotiations would agree there should be more transparency in the deal-making process. But we cannot expect officials to disclose everything to the public, because if our officials did that no country on Earth would want to enter into discussions with us. Clearly there has been too much secrecy, but it isn’t realistic to expect no secrecy. However, the broad condemnation across the board suggests officials haven’t got the balance right.

There’s plenty not to like about the TPPA and the secrecy surrounding the negotiation process. The opposition parties should continue to put pressure on the Government, to ensure that if the deal proceeds it provides more opportunities than costs for New Zealand. But we can’t do a deal without any trade-offs. The challenge is to find concessions we can live with, a challenge that is looking increasingly difficult.

The reality with negotiations is you need all parties to agree to do anything – including made draft texts public. NZ can push for this, but it can not dictate to the other parties.

Scott is right that there are always trade-offs. But these need to be from all countries – including the US. It’s IP chapter is basically opposed by every other negotiating country. If they want a deal, they need to come up with a chapter that won’t make Internet caching illegal, won’t ban parallel importing, won’t stifle software innovation with patent wars, won’t extend copyright terms for decades more, and won’t force on countries laws where people lose Internet access upon unproved accusations.

The Herald reports:

Maintaining the age of eligibility for superannuation at 65 would be a bottom line for New Zealand First in any coalition negotiations after the 2014 election, says leader Winston Peters.

His stance could be an obstacle to coalition talks with Labour if NZ First is the kingmaker after 2014 – Labour has made raising the pension age to 67 a centrepiece of its policies and has sought to embarrass Prime Minister John Key on the issue.

Mr Key has been under pressure for refusing to contemplate raising the age of eligibility for super from 65 to 67.

NZ First meets for its annual conference in Palmerston North this weekend – its first since the resurgent party made it back into Parliament last year with eight MPs. It is looking for more next election and could be a strong contender for coalition talks in 2014.

Asked whether NZ First’s position that the super age should remain at 65 was likely to be an issue in such talks, Mr Peters said: “Of course it’s a bottom line.”

It is highly unlikely that Labour could form a Government without Winston, so their policy to increase the age (actually a policy to means test 65 and 66 year olds) looks dead on arrival.

One wrong so 9/10 in 59 seconds. Quiz here.

When the Government floats the SOEs on the NZX, they should announce that supergoldcard holders get a 5% discount on their share purchases.

It would be worth it, just to see Winston combust.

The NZ Initiative puts out a weekly newsletter called Insights. You can subscribe to it on their website and the archive is here. A good read. This week’s issue is on:

• Fix the super roof while the sun is still shining
• Should anti-dumping legislation be scrapped?
• Time for New Zealand to look East
• Green jobs
• Penguin mating habits
• and much more

They have not yet put up this week’s issue, so I have stuck it over the break. Again, if you want to receive it directly every Friday, subscribe at the link above.

Continue reading »

I write at the NZ Herald:

The decision by the Deputy Auditor-General to inquire into international convention centre tender, more popularly known as the Sky City deal, is a double-edged sword for the Government and the Opposition.

If the Deputy Auditor-General finds that the tender process was not run in a fair way, then it will damage the credibility of the Minister of Tourism. The Minister also, of course, happens to be the Prime Minister. This means adverse findings could strike at the heart of the Government.

However if the Deputy Auditor-General does not conclude there were any significant issues in the awarding of the tender, then it could blunt the opposition attacks on the awarding in principle of the tender to Sky City.

I also note the way different PMs have handled the Audit Office:

The Office of the Auditor-General is a vital one in our constitutional arrangements. It is the public watchdog, and has very wide powers. It has not always endeared itself to the Government of the day. When the Auditor-General found that most parliamentary parties had illegally spent taxpayer money on electioneering, then Prime Minister Helen Clark attacked the finding, saying she does not accept the reasoning in his opinion and judgement, and that he was wrong. She refused to express confidence in his competence, and said he “has a serious credibility problem”.

This response is in stark contrast to the current Prime Minister who said he welcome the inquiry by the Deputy Auditor-General, and was “delighted” with it. 

I still regard those attacks on the Auditor-General as a low point in executive behaviour.

Both employers and employees breach employment contracts, but normally action is only taken against an employer. Let’s face it, if for example an employee resigns with only two week’s notice instead of the required four – it is not generally worth your time to spend money enforcing the contract.

But Andrew Scott-Howman blogs at Workforce on a recent NZ case where it was:

It’s one of the most difficult areas of employment law : what to do where an employee has acted in breach of a restraint, or an obligation of confidentiality. But a recent decision of the Employment Court gives heart to employers – where you can establish breach, some serious consequences may follow for employees.

The case is Rooney Earthmoving v McTague, Whiting and Bartlett (unreported, Employment Court Christchurch, 23 April 2012).  It concerned three men, each of whom had been employed by the plaintiff before establishing a competing company (BMW Contracting).  A previous decision had established that the men had variously acted in breach of a number of contractual obligations owed to the former employer, including enticing away staff, securing customers and using the employer’s confidential information. …

First, the contractual measure of loss will often do just fine. In Plain English, these employees were liable to put the employer in the same position it would have been in if the various contractual breaches had not occurred. In this case, that meant a complicated assessment to work out exactly what business the employees had taken away from their old employer as a result of their breaches.

Secondly, some limitation had to be applied to the damages assessment (ie at some point, if the employees hadn’t acted in breach they would have become legitimate competitors). This involved the application of the doctrine of remoteness – an enormously complicated and contentious area of law in itself.

Finally, the quantum of loss assessed here was, on any view, massive : $4,290,000 – and, of course, because the debt is owed jointly and severally the employer can go after one, two, or all of the ex-employees for the whole amount.

As you can probably tell, this case is an important one for lawyers who may be called upon to advise in cases involving breaches of restraints and confidentiality.

But it is more than that. It is a decision that illustrates that the Court will not hold back in ordering massive damages – where a case justifies that.  And that sort of order will not be a “finger to the wind” type of award, but an astute objective assessment of actual contractual loss.

A $4 million award must be one of the largest in NZ – and especially for an award against employees, not an employer.

Throng blogs:

For the second time this week, Martyn Bradburyhas lashed out at a TV network that doesn’t employ him.  While his initial ire was towards TVNZ for failing to keep TVNZ7 running, it has now been directed towards NZ On Air (One of his employers?) and a different network that has stepped in to act as saviour for one of the channel’s shows when it goes dark.

I think this shows that the Save TVNZ7 movement is all about ego and politics, and has little to do with an actual desire to have good public broadcasting in NZ.

If a Saturday morning show on TV3 is the ghetto, what then does that make the unpromoted TVNZ7?  As David Farrar pointed out recently, the “others” rating of which Media7 is included in, is a fraction of what the commercial networks pull.  It isn’t unreasonable to expect that the audience TV3 will deliver to Media 3 on a Saturday morning will be higher than what the audience would have been on TVNZ7.  Certainly the Sunday night encore will be bigger.  You also have to wonder whether Media 3 will also deliver news bites for 6pm in a similar fashion as The Nation does.

Being on TV3 will give Media 7/3 not just higher ratings, but more impact. If a guest on the show says something newsworthy, it may then end up on the network news that night.

The Herald reports:

British authorities unveiled an ambitious plan to log details about every Web visit, email, phone call or text message in the U.K. and in a sharply-worded editorial the nation’s top law enforcement official accused those worried about the surveillance program of being either criminals or conspiracy theorists.

An outrageous proposed law. Private communication should be logged and recorded once a warrant is granted. But they should not otherwise be routinely recorded and stored by legislative fiat.

Yet plenty of people were worried, including a senior lawmaker from May’s governing Conservative Party.

“This is a huge amount of information, very intrusive to collect on people,” David Davis, one of the proposal’s most outspoken critics, told BBC radio. “It’s not content, but it’s incredibly intrusive.”

Human rights defenders were aghast. Privacy group Big Brother Watch said the proposal risked turning Britain into a “nation of suspects.” Civil rights organisation Liberty said the law would mean the “indiscriminate stockpiling of private data.”

Absolutely.

The bill would force providers companies such as the BT Group PLC or Virgin Media Inc. to log where emails, tweets, Skype calls and other messages were sent from, who was sending them, who they were sent to, and how large they were. Details of file transfers, phone calls, text messages and instant conversations, such as those carried over BlackBerry Messenger, would also be recorded.

The bill demands that providers collect IP addresses, details of customers’ electronic hardware, and subscriber information, including names, addresses, and payment information.

What May didn’t mention in her editorial and the Home Office left off its press release was that the government also is seeking to keep logs of citizens’ internet history, giving officials access to the browsing habits of roughly 60 million people including sensitive visits to medical, dating, or pornography websites.

This is simply horrendous.

In a statement to fellow lawmakers, May struck a measured tone, saying she recognized “that these proposals raise important issues around personal privacy” but that the law would be balanced.

She was less measured in The Sun, where she dismissed worries that the bill would stomp on free expression as “ridiculous claims” dreamed up by “conspiracy theorists.”

“Without changing the law the only freedom we would protect is that of criminals, terrorists and pedophiles,” she said.

Yeah, right.

The Dom Post editorial:

The Government’s review discussion paper also argues that although the state has a clear role in protecting children and vulnerable adults, its role in resolving what are private parenting squabbles should be reduced. It says, “The court should promote children’s welfare, not parents’ rights”. Neither the Greens nor Labour can fault that, surely? The discussion paper considers, too, whether Domestic Violence Act matters should properly become the preserve of the Domestic Violence Courts, and asks whether opening Family Court hearings to greater public scrutiny might make the courts more transparent and the parties more accountable for what is said in court.

Chief Family Court judge Peter Boshier notes the trivial matters that, under present arrangements, reach the bench time and again. “Answers are sought from judges”, he says, “on everything from choice of school to choice of surnames”. Thus, the new fee regime is the least of Family Court issues that should worry Opposition MPs and family lawyers. If its processes are being abused, the family law community has a responsibility not only to ensure that taxpayers get value for the millions they invest in this branch of law, but also that children, not their parents, are front and centre in the process. A Family Court hearing should surely be a last resort.

I think the emphasis on the Family Court being a last resort for feuding couples is the correct one. Having taxpayers pay for court rulings on which school a kid goes to is bad for us, but also bad for the kid that his or her parents have no incentive to sort such disputes out themselves.

The Press editorial:

Some change at the ACC is plainly necessary. The row between Pullar and the organisation intensified when ACC accidentally sent her an email that included files containing confidential information about many other ACC clients.

It has since emerged that such inadvertent disclosure of private information has occurred on a number of occasions.

Given the amount of highly sensitive information the ACC holds about individuals, it seems extraordinary that, so many years after email became the most common means of communication, the organisation still cannot manage it without this kind of blunder.

Other government entities that hold confidential private information – the Inland Revenue Department and Work and Income, for instance – seem to be able to do so.

Some comments made in messages between ACC personnel handling Pullar’s case have also emerged that indicate a kind of cavalier dismissiveness towards her.

These remarks have understandably been seized on as reflecting ACC’s general attitude towards its claimants.

There is no evidence that this is true but even if the comments are not at all widespread, they are deeply unprofessional and should not be tolerated.

Absolutely. I am amazed the person who made them is still working there.

Whatever other shortcomings might have occurred during his chairmanship, Judge has done that. ACC’s net deficit last financial year was reduced from $10.3 billion to $6.7 billion and it is on target to meet its legal obligation to be fully funded by 2019.

Financial viability is crucial if ACC is to survive as a no- fault accident compensation system and meet its obligations to claimants.

It must be run as a sound business. It is right, for instance, that claims are examined rigorously so that they may be dealt with fairly.

Any “change of culture” that would turn ACC into some sort of soft-hearted arm of the social-welfare industry, as some critics appear to imply, would be a backward step.

As an employer I endorse this also.

ICANN has announced the details of the 1,930 applications for new gTLD strings. 1,409 unique strings have been applied for by 1,153 different organisations. Some such as .blog have as many as nine applicants for it. Ultimately they will go to an auction if the bidders cannot agree amongst themselves.

Some of the more unusual or interesting applications (considering it costs around $200,000 to apply) are:

• .africamagic
• .bananarepublic
• .blackfriday
• .cashbackbonus
• .chloe
• .dotafrica
• .fyi
• .ira
• .ketchup
• .kiwi
• .love
• .now
• .porn
• .republican
• .rip
• .rsvp
• .sex
• .silk
• .transformers
• .vip
• .you
• .zero

There is still a long way to go before these will appear in the DNS. Governments and others can object to various strings. ICANN estimates it will take 9 – 20 months for an application to be approved and delegated into the DNS.

Jane Clifton writes:

There is one thing worse for an Opposition MP than getting knocked back on an application for a snap debate in Parliament on a subject embarrassing to the Government – and that is being granted a snap debate when you are not expecting it and suddenly having little to say.

That was the fate yesterday of Labour’s Andrew Little, who must have felt like the dog that chases cars, but cannot think what on earth to do on the day one obligingly stops and surrenders. He had to get up and speak about the Government’s ACC woes for 15 long minutes, and by the time he had lamented the running down of the corporation, upbraided the Government for being beastly to claimant Bronwyn Pullar and her friend Michelle Boag, and demanded ACC Minister Judith Collins be sacked, he had started to repeat himself rather forlornly.

Not a good look to call on the Minister to resign for doing exactly what you asked her to do!

But, in time, the fabled Labour machine swung into action. Frontbencher David Parker took out a pad and started scribbling large-print notes, which he passed behind him to Trevor Mallard, who appeared to proof-read them, before passing them on to Mr Little, who quickly glanced down at each sheet of paper and, without missing a beat, introduced a new aspect of the Government’s perfidy. Socialism in action.

When finally his ordeal was over – no-one was mean enough to move an extension of time

Oh dear having to have Parker write your speech and Trevor vet it.  They probably stepped in after he said this:

Then when the heat gets really tough she starts suing her political opponents, because that is the best way she knows to shut them down. This is not a Minister for ACC worth speaking of. This is not ministerial conduct that we understand in a Western democracy. This is shocking stuff. If you asked anybody else in the world “Is there a country where a Minister of Justice, who is charge of the courts, is using those courts to sue her political opponents?”, you would think we would be talking about somewhere in Africa, or maybe a Pacific Island. 

I guess Andrew isn’t going to be Foreign Affairs Spokesperson after those comments. As I have commented, he seems more focused on stopping the lawsuit against himself (which he could have stopped with a simple retraction and apology), than on the actual ACC issues and how they impact on New Zealanders.

And in a rare deviation from birds, I’ve gone for a scenic look.

Click for larger, higher res image

And as an aside, hauling camera gear & a heavy tripod over the bush-trails of NZ is a good way to give your body a workout…