Never let it be said the right can’t laugh at themselves. Note I had no input into the script!

The Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance writes in the SMH:

It is a foundational principle of good governance that taxpayers should know how their money is being spent, and governments should be as open as possible. Taxpayers who wish to discover how their money is being used must trawl hundreds of pages of budget documents and submit time-consuming and costly freedom-of-information requests. Even then, information is scant. Ask any journalist. And these requests, as a Herald report showed on Monday, could be rejected in future as certain parliamentary departments are rendered exempt to FOI laws.

But it does not have to be this way. A transparency revolution is under way overseas, empowering citizens, opening governments to scrutiny, and transforming governance.

In 2006, in the US, the senators John McCain and Barack Obama co-sponsored the US federal funding accountability act. Its premise was simple: that taxpayer expenditure be placed online in an easily searchable database, so all taxpayers can find out how their money has been spent.

I have long advocated this for New Zealand.

Since then, the City of London, the European Union and 38 US states have enacted similar online portals – many with no thresholds, so every cent of taxpayer expenditure is publicly available. In some cases, literally every expense of government is made public after being entered into a database.

The benefits are obvious: not only are taxpayers empowered, but also savings can be easily identified, waste exposed and unethical behaviour discouraged. Those who want spending to remain hidden might argue that informing people is too costly, that it just cannot be done. But international experience proves this to be false. The website usaspending.gov, which provides the details of all US federal government expenditure of more than $US25,000 ($25,800), cost less than $1 million to set up – and the software is now available free of charge in the public domain.

This means it could be implemented in New Zealand very easily. You just need each government agency to exports its payments data into it.

Citizens have been searching these websites in record numbers. In Missouri, with a population smaller than NSW, 15 million hits were reported in the first year. Millions in savings have been identified. To use just one example, Texas reported $8.7 million in savings directly attributable to their transparency website in just the first year of operation.

Opening the government books to an army of online citizen investigators has uncovered waste and duplication, and made junkets or pork-barrel spending near impossible. Corruption and rorting cannot occur when the records are freely available – sunlight truly is the best disinfectant.

Another reason to support it.

A record – 10 out of 10 in 41 seconds. Quiz here.

PROMETHEUS [Review]. John Stringer.

As a fan of the Alien franchise, Ridley Scott and James Cameron, I went and saw this tonight. Special effects by Weta.

It is great, but the plot has some holes. It’s a believable storyline, the pre-humans are excellent (they look like Pre-Raphaelite Silver Surfers – gaydom will be drooling), and the Aliens are awesome as usual. Not as scary as Alien I-III (no corridors with big slimy toothy crustaceans chasing you). The best thing about the movie is it ties together several of the Alien story pieces and explains: what the Aliens are (think other-world weapons of mass destruction and Iraq invasion allusions); how humans got to earth; and what/how the ‘alien’ space ship is from Alien 1.
Explanation (you need this). The opening sequence (don’t be late) is one of the human ancestors (“Engineers”) seeding his DNA on the earth at the dawn of time, perhaps Niagara Falls, NOT on an alien planet. Not that well explained visually which led to confusion. The black stuff in the movie seems to be Pre-Raf Ancestor DNA but has been invaded by those messy Aliens in their various life-cycles who swim around in it (we get a new one in this film, a hooded-cobra phase. They start tiny, and like eyeballs).

Prometheus, the Greek Titan, stole fire from the gods by trickery and seeded it to man on earth, viz ‘gods’ dna in this movie. The ship in The Matrix was the Nebuchadnessar, evoking madness from God.

A nice Creation/faith sub-plot centered around a Christian cross necklace (usually an anathema to Hollywood). “After everything, you still believe?” (a bit of a rip off from The Matrix). Sci Fi borrows heavily from the Bible, and this story is basically the “Sons of God” intrigue of Genesis 6.
The characters are not that strong, just ok (the fighting-daddy complex is a bit tired, played by “David” of Kings Speech [Guy Pearce]. There is another “David” here too, ie the giant slayer of Old Testament, Michael Fassbender [Mission Robot] – a reworking of Spock-who steals the show). Ultra aggressive red head Irish uptight geologist had potential, but is eaten early. He comes back though, as Wolverine on speed.

They all had great potential (especially the Captain and his Japanese Sulu) with better scripting, and CharlizeTheron is a bit wasted here. Her end by giant do-nut is good though.

The allusions to the earlier Aliens films are fab. For groupies like me (archaeology runes; deep sleep pods; long dripping dark tunnels; mission android gets head ripped off; acid blood; alien and heroine in the pod unexpectedly together; etc).

It is not as scary, but quite visceral (a self-caesarian section is pretty dramatic stuff) but in the end I wasn’t with the heroine as much as Sigourney fighting to survive and saving children. At least this femme fatale wasn’t the gorgeous tall Amazonian cliche so many Sci Fi.s wimp out on (like “Alien vs Predator Requiem”). She’s just a confused but persevering Seeker not a kick-butt Barbwire Babe (sigh of relief).

Best line: “distance from earth 3.7m x 10 power of 4” screen text. Some great Alien close-ups and fight scenes (not shadows and darkness on this one Bug-eyed Monster lovers). You’ll never eat squid again.

Held me all the way, but missed some of its queues, mainly in the dialogue and character development, and overall, potential was missed. But definitely worth seeing. 7/10.

Avengers is better.

My Herald column is online. An extract:

Any trade off, will always have its supporters and its opponents. Hence, a Government proposing any change to the status quo has to be able to makes it case in a clear coherent and persuasive manner. It is in this task, that the Government has failed and been forced to reverse its policy. …

I elaborate:

 it appears the Government had done no detailed work on how they would use the money freed up by increasing class sizes on improving the ability of teachers to teach (we all know some teachers are brilliant at it, while others struggle). The only details given were that the $43 million freed up by the ratio changes would go towards the development of an appraisal system focusing on driving up quality teaching and quality professional leadership.

This lack of any detail around what this might be, meant that the perceived benefits of the trade off were impossible to calculate, while the costs in increased class sizes were calculated to exact detail in every school staffroom around the country. Effectively the Government was saying “Let us increase the size of your kid’s classes, and just trust us that we will do something good with that money to improve teacher quality”.

I conclude:

But you simply can gain public support on an issue, where you are unable to articulate and define the benefits.

Mai Chen writes in the Herald:

When I went to Harvard Law School 25 years ago, I studied discrimination and affirmative action with a black law professor whose research showed that legislated quotas often become a ceiling as well as a floor beneath a certain number of “diverse” workers.

Absolutely.

Also, legislated quotas can cast a cloud of suspected incompetency over every member of the groups that are the subject of affirmative action. A professor remarked to me when I got into Harvard, “I hear they were looking for women’, to which I responded, “No, I topped the law class.”

Heh.

Fresh thinking often comes from people who are different. I also think being underestimated often provides the motivation to be the best. And all employers know that the winning combination for employees is talent, hard work and motivation to win.

I think the breakthrough for women and minorities will come when people study the research and find that diversity pays dividends. Indirect discrimination and culture is intangible, but money is not.

Very true. There is research showing companies with one or more female directors do better than those with none.

Andrea Vance at Stuff reports:

Quake recovery tsar Roger Sutton has been named top public service chief executive.

The Economic Development Ministry – about to be merged into a new super- ministry – was ranked top government department of the year.

A panel of 19 high-profile business people, lobbyists and trade unionists rated 38 government departments and their bosses on performance of the chief executive, overall performance, quality of service and value for money.

The report was compiled by political newsletter Trans Tasman.

I met Roger Sutton last Friday when I was down in Christchurch for a CERA hosted tour. He is a very engaging personality. I will be blogging more fully on my observations about Christchurch early next week.

Trans Tasman editor-in- chief Max Bowden said Sutton had found himself in the “role as lightning rod for those dissatisfied about the pace of reconstruction” and praised his “calm and reasoned approach”. He added: “It seems Sutton and the authority are in for the long haul and with final decisions nearing about land zoning and the future of the central business district . . . there is still a big job to be done.”

Sutton paid tribute to his 200 staff. “It’s a very hard- working team . . . it’s a place with an amazing amount of energy and tenacity. Even when we get knockbacks we regroup and work out what we can be doing better and we get on with it.”

Rumours about his resignation were “bull….”, he said. “It’s ridiculous. I love my job. Ask my PA if I’ve ever been close to resignation. Nah.” Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee said: “Trans Tasman have properly recognised that setting up a new government department and getting it up and running is no easy task. It’s fantastic.”

Police Commissioner Peter Marshall, who took up the post slightly more than a year ago, was ranked second in the report.

Marshall is proving an excellent Police Commissioner.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand’s dismal organ donation rate is the focus of three new schemes from the Government.

Figures released last year showed New Zealand had the lowest rate in the Western world aside from Greece.

Last year 186 patients received transplants.

But Health Minister Tony Ryall said many people were waiting for organs, including 600 in need of kidney replacements.

In Dunedin yesterday he announced $4 million over four years would be directed at boosting donations.

Half of that would go into training for intensive care staff to identify dying patients who might be candidates and give support to their families.

Another $1.75m was aimed at raising the number of ‘live’ donations by employing dedicated staff to guide patients and their families through the decision.

A further $250,000 will pay for a pilot “exchange scheme” to “mix and match” donor and recipient pairs.

That’s all very good, and sensible. But the Government should go further.

The law should be changed so that organs can be taken from a deceased person who has agreed to be an organ donor, without family agreement. The decision of the individual donor should not be able to be over-turned by family members.

And today we have a pair of squabbling, immature kotuku

The shot is taken once again at Okarito Lagoon.

Click for larger, higher res image

Stuff reports:

Former National MP Sandra Goudie has launched a petition opposing Maori seats on the Waikato regional council, saying people just need to “get off their arse” if they want proper representation.

Last year the council voted to establish two Maori seats in time for the 2013 local body election.

Ms Goudie said the concept of Maori seats also went against elected representatives’ fiduciary duty to represent everyone in their community “not just one sector of society”.

Council chairman Peter Buckley said almost a quarter of Waikato’s population was Maori but there had never been elected Maori representation on council.

That figure by itself means little. What would be essential to know, is how often have there been Maori candidates standing who failed to get elected.

I note Auckland Council has three Maori Councillors, with no special race based seats in place.

Green MP Denise Roche said the regional council had got it right, adding councils were required under the Local Government Act to encourage Maori participation.

“I think what Sandra Goudie is proposing is a big step backward in terms of race relations in New Zealand particularly when the Government is actively looking at Maori representation in local government.

“You can develop much better relationship and decision-making if you’ve got Maori represented at the decision-making table. What we’re hearing from Sandra Goudie is basically a request to enshrine institutional racism into regional local government.”

So Green logic is that not having race based seats is racist!!!

I think Roche should win the 1984 award for doublespeech.

Photo by Kent Blechynden, of the Dom Post.

Stuff reports:

Firefighters were called to a fire at well-known Wellington landmark the Backbencher Pub this morning.

Fire Service central communications shift manager Murray Dunbar said firefighters were alerted at 4.45am when an alarm went off in the multi-storey Kate Sheppard apartment building, next to the pub.

It is understood the fire began in the pub’s kitchen.

Apartment residents were evacuated and eight fire trucks were sent.

Thank goodness no one was harmed, but this is still an awful thing. The Backbencher is an iconic Wellington institution.

Boycie and his staff will be devastated. Seeing the damage will be soul destroying, and their collection of political cartoons and puppets may be irreplacable.

I worked at the Red Cross on Hill Street in 1990 when the Backbencher opened, and went there on its opening day. So I’ve been going there for over 20 years, and it comes close to my second home. I just hope the damage doesn’t see it closed for too long.

On a more practical note, it means the Backbenches TV show will need a new venue for its final three shows on TVNZ7.

Stuff reports:

In a major u-turn, Education Minister Hekia Parata says staff pupil ratios will not change.

The move comes in the face of a backlash from teachers and parents after Budget moves to increase class sizes.

Sources this morning confirmed the policy was not “set in stone” and the Government was open to other ways to achieve its goal of lifting the quality of teaching, after a signal from Prime Minister John Key that it was prepared to listen to alternatives.

Speaking to Radio New Zealand from London, Key said: “My view is that we want to achieve the outcome that we stated. And that is to improve the quality of teaching and teacher quality in general and that’s the purpose of the policy.”

Asked if there was another way to achieve that he said: “Other people will suggest that. That’s one of the reasons why the minister is talking to the unions. She is talking to the sector. I’m sure she will continue to do that.”

It is understood feedback to the Government, especially to electorate MPs, has been highly critical of the plan.

I’m going to write on this in more detail tomorrow in the Herald Online. But this was a case of the policy intention being good (focus on teacher quality more than class size), but the detail and implementation being flawed.

Any trade-off can always be challenging to do. To make the case, you need to be able to be highly specific as to the benefits or upsides, as well as the costs or downsides.

The problem here is that the downsides are highly specific and known, but the upside (improved teacher quality) has absolutely no detail. How can you win a public debate, which is based on a vague commitment of “do something around improving teacher quality”. If you wanted to win the debate, you needed to have worked that side out in advance. Then if it was say a debate between a minor reduction in class sizes in exchange for say $10,000 bonuses for the top 10% of teachers – that could be supported.

So a big black eye for the Government here on this issue. Governments will always make mistakes from time to time. The lesson is to learn from them, so you don’t repeat them.

NewstalkZb reports:

Auckland motorists are in line to be hit hard in the pocket if they want to park in the CBD in future.

Consultation is underway for Auckland Transport’s parking proposal to remove time restrictions and replace them with a single approach to pricing.

It’ll see hourly rates of between three and five dollars for the first hour, and between five and eight dollars each hour thereafter – so potentially costing around $30 for four hours’ parking.

Auckland Transport’s Mark Hannan says if people are parking all day, they should be looking at parking buildings instead.

“The aim is basically to get people moving in and out all the time. We don’t want people to park all day on city streets.”

The consultation period runs until July 1.

I quite like the idea of higher charges for longer periods. I agree streetside parking should be for relatively short periods of time – a quick shop, a meal etc. More than 90 minutes or so, and you should be in a parking building.

The Herald reports:

A retirement policy expert says KiwiSaver providers should not be allowed to publish investment performance returns based on gross figures because they are “meaningless” and cannot be easily compared.

Finance Minister Bill English announced as part of the Budget that all KiwiSaver providers will have to produce quarterly reports from April including information on investment performance, fees and assets.

A report gives an example of how the information would be set out, placing the gross return percentage at the top of a table, which would also include dollar figures on the gross return based on a $10,000 investment, as well as dollar figures for the tax and fees paid and an explanation of how much in the hand investors would get.

But Retirement Policy and Research Centre director Michael Littlewood said publicity that emphasised gross returns should not be permitted or, if published, they should be given a lower prominence over the net return.

“Gross returns are almost meaningless and are certainly not comparable across providers,” Littlewood said.

“Providers will naturally want to emphasise larger numbers, even if they are not meaningful.”

There is a lot of crappy info about KiwiSaver returns – especially from the self-appointed champion of transparency, and commentator on everything (you know who I mean).

Net returns are harder to do, but should be the default information provided. One can show them for various tax rates if necessary.

With all respect, the decisions made around the Christchurch Cathedral are not an issue that should need to be justified to someone living in London. The decisions are a matter for the Anglican Church in Christchurch and New Zealand.

Forbes reports:

Public sector unions have reached their high water mark. Let the cleanup begin as the red ink recedes.

Despite a last-minute smear campaign accusing Scott Walker of fathering an illegitimate love child, the governor’s recall election victory sends a clear message that should resonate around the nation: The fiscal cancer devouring state budgets has a cure, and he has found it. The costly defeat for the entrenched union interests that tried to oust Walker in retribution for challenging their power was marked by President Obama’s refusal to lend his weight to the campaign for fear of being stained by defeat. …

This fight is not without precedent. Progressive patron saint Franklin Delano Roosevelt—who more than any other president set our country on a course away from the founding principles of limited government—knew that public sector unions would be the death of the social welfare state he worked so hard to create. Hence, he consistently opposed allowing government employees to unionize. Today, Greece sets the example of what happens when public sector unions gain the upper hand. …

In 1959 Wisconsin became the first state to allow collective bargaining by government employees. The projected cost of supporting Baby Boomer union retirees now threatens to bankrupt the state, as it does many others. Scott Walker ran for office promising change. The fiscal medicine he is administering may be bitter, but it looks like it is starting to work.  The state budget has been balanced.  The unemployment rate has been dropping and is now below the national average. Property taxes are down. Fraudulent sick leave policies—which allowed employees to call in sick and then work the next shift for overtime pay—have been ended. The government has stopped forcibly collecting union dues from workers’ paychecks.

Best of all, the myth that union bosses represent their members’ interests has been exposed as a lie. Now that union dues are voluntary, tens of thousands of union members have stopped paying them.

I’ve always thought that unions should invoice their members directly for their membership fees – not have employers do it for them.

This is the first time a Governor has won a recall election. It provides Walker with a renewed mandate, and more importantly shows other Governors that they can retain support by implementing similar policies.

Stuff reports:

Housing New Zealand has had to hire almost the same number of staff to run its new call centre as it made redundant to set up its “more efficient” system, figures obtained by Labour show.

In April, the state corporation changed the way it operated, shutting its local office doors to its 200,000 tenants and members of the public with accommodation emergencies, and directing inquiries through a new customer service call centre.

The changes led to 70 frontline positions being axed.

The centre was touted as being able to cope with 1 million calls a year but has failed to keep up with demand after receiving 119,000 calls in April alone, 53,000 of which went unanswered.

Labour housing spokeswoman Annette King said answers she received from Housing Minister Phil Heatley showed the corporation had been forced to employ 68.5 additional staff for the call centre.

“All they have done is shuffle jobs from one area to another. But it doesn’t stop there: there is going to be even more employed.”

Housing NZ yesterday apologised for waiting times of up to 40 minutes, although Mr Heatley has said the average waiting time was about eight minutes.

I think Labour has a fair point here. The concept of a call centre may have been sound, but if it actually means more staff and worse service then it is not a good thing. Inquiries should be made of whether demand was under-estimated or the length of calls was miscalculated.

In terms of the waiting time – even eight minutes is a very long wait. It is slightly more tolerable if the call centre software can tell people how long the likely wait is, or their position in the queue. Anyone know if it does? This should be a function of all modern call centres.

The average time can be skewed by extremes. What I would be interested in knowing is what the median response time was, plus the response times for say the 1st, 10th, 25th, 75th, 90th and 99th percentiles.

Stuff reports:

There has been a political backlash to Cabinet considering tougher measures to remove babies from abusive parents, but Prime Minister John Key insists the country needs to face up to an “uncomfortable conversation” about child abuse.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett yesterday said Cabinet had discussed allowing courts to issue warnings to parents during sentencing that they faced having subsequent children taken off them, potentially permanently.

“At the moment, [abusive parents] could live with or have future children and it would be taken on its merits at that point. We actually don’t even do that with dogs that have been abused – there can be a sanction put on that you cannot own a dog for two years or five years, yet we don’t do that with children,” Bennett said.

“So we are looking at measures like should you not be able to live in the house with children or work with children if you have been at that serious end of abuse or neglect.”

I do not support sterilisation of child abusers, because in no way can you have the state subject someone to a surgical procedure against their will.

However I think there is a place for a court to be able to make a ruling that if a child abuser gets pregnant again, the child is automatically removed from them at birth.

At present CYFS can get court orders for custody of new born babies, but as I understand it they have to find out about the pregnancy and get a specific order.

The benefit of what is being proposed, is certainity. If a child abuser has such a history of neglect that clearly no future child is safe with them – then they are left under no misapprehension that they will never be allowed to look after a child again. This provides them with an incentive to not get pregnant, if they know that the child is removed at birth.

Such a sanction should be only for the worst child abusers – but it should be there. The rights of a child to be safe trump those of the mother.

This December marks the 40th anniversary of New Zealand’s establishment of diplomatic relations with China. “The Nation” this weekend will examine that relationship over a full programme on China.

1. Natasha Smith reports from the boom city of Shenzen on what the Chinese economy has to offer NZ.

2. Jenee Tibshraeny meets Future Dragonz — the young Chinese-New Zealand professionals who want to build bridges between the two countries.

3. Natasha talks to Cheng Lei, Counsellor at the Chinese Embassy in Wellington on the NZ-China relationship and on what China wants in New Zealand and the Pacific.

4. Richard Harman talks to Foreign Minister Murray McCully on our relationship with China.

5. Simon Shepherd will present the programme (Rachel is delayed returning from Ghana) and he will be talking to Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesman Phil Goff and the Chairman of the NZ China Trade Association, Tim White.

Next weekend – the 16/17 th June we will have an extended interview with Prime Minister John Key. Rachel will be joined by John Hartevelt from Fairfax’s Press Gallery office and Alex Tarrant from Interest.co.nz.

Broadcast Saturday June 9.30 am, and repeated Sunday June 3 at 8 am on TV3

Salient reports:

NZUSA’s involvement in the ‘Keep Our Assets’ referendum campaign is still ruffling feathers on the dead pigeon that is student politics, with Otago University Students’ Association President Logan Edgar moving a motion that they withdraw support.

The motion was discussed, and the University Sector Council—constituted of students’ association presidents—made some recommendations to the NZUSA Board, which are currently confidential. All comment on the issue has been frozen until the Board makes a decision on how to proceed.

Edgar told Critic that it was inappropriate for NZUSA to get involved with the campaign because it’s “not an education issue” and that “NZUSA has better things to be doing at the moment.” …

As previously reported in Salient NZUSA claimed to have no stance on the outcome and were just supporting it because it gave students an opportunity to get involved in the political process—a justification that differed from internal correspondences and promotional materials quoting NZUSA Vice-President Arena Williams as advocating the retention of assets. Williams also claimed all students’ association presidents had been consulted prior to supporting the campaign, which all presidents to speak on the issue have disputed.

So NZUSA has been lying on this issue. No wonder some of its members are upset.  NZUSA should be a strong and professional voice on issues such as student loans, allowances, quality of tertiary education, governance issues, student welfare etc. But their decision to support the assets referendum campaign achieves nothing for students, except to marginalise any influence NZUSA has with Government.