Stuff reports:

One of New Zealand’s most dangerous drivers has just clocked up his 26th drink-driving conviction.

When Raymond Laing – who is already banned from driving indefinitely – was stopped in Napier last month, his breath test recorded 1198 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath, almost three times the legal limit of 400mcg.

It was the seventh time the 44-year-old Hastings man had blown more than 1000mcg, and the 31st time he had been caught driving while disqualified.

Appearing in Napier District Court yesterday, he pleaded guilty to drink-driving and driving while disqualified. Judge Tony Adeane requested a probation report and remanded Laing in custody until July for sentencing.

In 2010, Laing was jailed for two years and six months for drink-driving, refusing to give blood, assault and dangerous driving causing injury. He was also indefinitely disqualified from holding a driver’s licence.

It is a minor miracle Laing has not killed someone yet, but it is only a matter of time.

I’m tempted to say he should be given the maximum sentence but it is only two years jail, or five years if he causes injury.

The problem is he then gets out, and maybe drives drunk a few dozen more times until he is caught again.

What *might* work is if he could be sentenced to wear an ankle bracelet with GPS, that would immediately alert Police if his speed is more than say 20 km/hr indicating he must be in a vehicle. They can then intercept the vehicle and arrest him if he is the driver. Knowing that they will know if he is in a vehicle, may actually discourage him from drink driving as certainty of being caught is a major deterrent.

If someone else is driving, then that is fine. But it doesn’t sound like he is someone who gets others to drive him often.

Stuff reports:

Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe is the latest international envoy to represent the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.

Mugabe gained the recognition despite a poor international reputation in which he is accused of ethnic cleansing, rigging elections and leading Zimbabwe’s ruined economy.

University of Zimbabwe politics professor John Makumbe was surprised by the accolade.

“I think it’s ridiculous because Zimbabwe is one of the countries least used by tourists,” said Makumbe.

“Tourism is at its lowest level because of the political and economic crises it’s gone through. Tourists really wish Victoria Falls was in another country, like South Africa.

It could be worse. At least he wasn’t appointed to a UN human rights tribunal.

Vernon Small at Stuff reports:

Justice Minister Judith Collins is not seeking damages, but wants the court to declare she was defamed and to award her costs in her case against two Labour MPs.

This is a very smart move. It means that Mallard and Little can’t claim she is seeking to make money out of her lawsuit – she just want their (alleged) lies to be found to be false and defamatory. They had the choice of withdrawing their comments at no cost early on, or doing it at a later stage by which time there will be considerable costs (but not damages) attached to it.

Canterbury University law Professor Ursula Cheer said it was unusual not to seek damages.

“The most common remedies sought are an apology and damages.”

The provisions allowing a declaration had hardly ever been taken up, but they were a symbolic way to clear your reputation.

That was the point of including them in the law.

One could say that no one believes anything Trevor says anyway, so there was no point in taking proceedings. but it is possible there are some acolytes out there who do take his talk of anonymous e-mails proving his allegations, as literally true.

Collins has filed her claim in the High Court at Auckland despite the MPs being based in Wellington and the alleged defamatory comments being made in Wellington. As justice minister, Collins knew Auckland had the longest waiting list for civil hearings, Little said.

Umm Judith is an Auckland MP, and lives there most of the time. Where the comments were made has little bearing as they were broadcast on national radio. It seems pretty clear the ones trying to delay the case and Little and Mallard with their unsuccessful attempts to avoid being served.

Again, I look forward to their statements of defence. I hope Trevor especially refers to the anonymous e-mail he seems to be relying on, as I am sure the Judge will find that definitely constitutes proof.

Claire Trevett at NZ Herald reports:

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has mounted a further attack on the Whanau Ora programme, describing it as a ‘bro-ocracy’ and questioning a $60,000 grant to a rugby club.

Mr Peters said the $60,000 grant was to the Rahui Rugby and Sports Club, based in Otaki “to research the vaguely-termed ‘whanau connectedness’ and ‘resilience’ in the community.”

He said it was ridiculous the Government considered a small rural sports club an appropriate body to undertake economic and social research.

On the face of it, I have to agree with Peters. There may be factors we do not know about, but on the surface it looks quite inappropriate.

I do support the Whanua Ora programme. Empowering communities to help improve social outcomes is a good thing. But those administering the grants need to apply a high level of scrutiny to ensure any grants are going to bodies that realistically can make a difference.

He said Whanau Ora’s Whanau Innovation, Integration and Engagement Fund should be dismantled and the funding passed onto experienced Maori providers.

Again, I might partially agree. Not to dismantle the fund, but to favour those with experience and a proven track record at delivering.

Stuff reports that the families of those who died in the Pike River mine explosion have accepted it would risk further people dying to attempt a recovery of the bodies.

This is very sad for the families concerned but there may be a silver lining in that they will at least have some certainity. It is good that Solid Energy arranged for them to talk through all the issues around any recovery with the experts.

Audrey Young at NZ Herald reports:

Schools will lose no more than two teaching positions under new class ratios in an embarrassing backdown by the Government after large intermediates were set to lose seven.

Education Minister Hekia Parata was forced to impose a cap after it became clear she could have a rebellion on her hands from schools and parents.

The $43 million a year that was to have been saved and diverted to improve teaching quality will be cut but Ms Parata did not know by how much.

Neither she nor Prime Minister John Key will admit that mistakes were made in calculating the effects of the new policy and yesterday she announced the cap as “good news”.

I think it is clear there was a mistake. The overall policy decision is still one I support – that given limited funding the priority should be on improving teacher quality rather than class size. But this was sold on the basis of a minor impact on schools and class sizes – 90% of schools having no or only a one teacher reduction.

It became apparent that some schools, mainly intermediates, would have an impact greater than minor. I’ve seen e-mails from principals talking of a 10% staffing cut. Hence the Government has moved to cap any loss at two teachers – which will probably be done by attrition.

There is a lesson here for Ministers when looking at changes like this. You can’t just look at the average impact. You need to get very detailed information on the tail, or those most affected. They are the ones whose impact will make the media. If (for example) 15 DHBs are getting extra funding of 3% and one DHB is getting a 10% funding cut, then I can guarantee the story will not be that 15 DHBs are getting 3% more, or even that funding is up 2.5% overall. You always need to be aware of those most impacted, and then if necessary mitigate that impact.

So overall not well handled by the Government. A lesson for the future.

Brian Fallow at NZ Herald reports:

The economic recovery will pick up speed only slowly, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research says, as households shed debt and the Government withdraws stimulus amid anaemic world growth.

“The economy is stagnant,” says principal economist Shamubeel Eaqub, in the institute’s Quarterly Predictions, released today.

Historically low interest rates are not encouraging new borrowing and investing, as households and businesses focus instead on paying down debt.

Eaqub said periods of deleveraging typically lasted seven years, which would imply we still had the second half of the adjustment to go.

It is a good thing we are paying off debt, and saving more. But it does mean economic growth will remain fairly low for some time – in my opinion. No more debt fuelled growth followed by a crash hopefully.

The economy eked out growth of 1.1 per cent last year and NZIER is forecasting 1.5 per cent this year before it picks up to 2.5 per cent next year.

NZIER is among the more bearish forecasters. The consensus is 2.2 per cent growth this year and 3 per cent next year.

“We are less optimistic than most on the timing of the [Canterbury] rebuild, as we think persistent aftershocks, tougher building codes and insurance issues will slow Canterbury’s recovery,” Eaqub said.

I’m down in Christchurch on Friday, so will be interesting to see how the rebuild is going. I think the really big issues are the cost of the new building code, and the private insurers.

The Domain Name Commission Ltd has published:

The Domain Name Commission is proposing to extend the .nz domain name space by allowing anybody to register domain names at the ‘second level’.  This has the potential to significantly alter New Zealand’s domain name space so it’s important we get your views.

This is a proposal for consultation, so the DNCL is keen to get views and submissions from people. Note I am a Director of the DNCL.

Basically the change means that (for example) Trade Me could try and register trademe.nz rather than trademe.co.nz. For individuals such as MPs, it could mean they could get (again for example) simonbridges.nz rather than have to decide whether to get simonbridges.co.nz or simonbridges.net.nz or simonbridges.org.nz etc.

Note that the proposal is not to close registrations in the existing sub-domains such as co.nz, org.nz. The proposal is that people have a choice of registering at the second level or at the third level, or both.

They key features of the proposal are:

• Registration of .nz domain names could be at the second or third levels on an ongoing basis.
• Existing second level domains (such as .co.nz) will remain and continue to be supported.
• There will be no impact on any currently registered .nz domain names.
• Registrations at the second level will be on a “first come, first served” basis, except during the Sunrise Period and where there are currently multiple registrations of the same name in different second level domains.
• The Sunrise Period will be a designated window, where existing .nz domain name holders (registrants) can register their domain name/s at the second level if they are the only one that has that name at the third level.
• If two or more domain name holders have the same name at the third level, no-one  will be able to register that name at the second level unless they obtain the consent of the other third level name holders. Alternatively, if all agree, it could become a second level domain instead.
• A temporary amendment to the Dispute Resolution Service Policy to cover sub-domains of generic domain names registered at the second level.

There is a consultation paper online here. I encourage those with an interest in this to read the paper, and hopefully respond to it.

Each section of the Consultation Paper raises specific questions.  Please respond to these questions or, more generally, to any of the issues raised through the online response from athttps://www.research.net/s/dnc_consultation1. 

Submissions can also be made by email to [email protected], by fax to (04) 495 2115, or by mail to P O Box 11881, Wellington.  The closing date for submissions is midday on Thursday 27 September 2012. 

More links and info are on this page.

Whale Oil quotes The Standard quoting David Cunliffe:

It’s a budget that picks pennies out of the pockets of children with after-school jobs, raids the piggy banks of the elderly with prescriptions to fill, crushes the dreams of many university hopefuls and attacks those with the least power to defend themselves. Not only is the budget not brave, it is possibly the most cowardly thing I’ve seen in my life.

Whale highlights a letter to the editor which said:

A budget which has the worst growth in 50 years, sees 50,000 people moving to Australia and has 50,000 more people on benefits. It’s a budget that picks pennies out of the pockets of children with after-school jobs, raids the piggy banks of the elderly with prescriptions to fill, crushes the dreams of many university hopefuls and attacks those with the least power to defend themselves. Not only is the budget not brave, it is possibly the most cowardly thing I’ve seen in my life.

So who is the original author and who is the plagiarist? Worth finding out.

UPDATE: No plagiarism at all. It seems David Cunliffe liked the quote on someone’s Facebook page, meaning it appeared on his timeline, and The Standard misattributed the quote to Cunliffe.

Thanks to the NZ Initiative I was able to attend the Eurocalypse debate at the Auckland War Memorial Museum last week. Cam Browne was also there and has blogged on it. The pro-EU speaker commented that given the timing of the debate (new Greek elections just called), that he felt like someone preaching contraception to the College of Cardinals 🙂

I won’t cover the debate in full, but it was a good example of the NZ Initiative can contribute to public policy discussions in New Zealand. There was one statement by MEP Dan Hannan which resonated with me.

Hannan said that the reason the UK (and other countries) went into the EU was the promise of prosperity. No country wants to surrender political sovereignty, unless there are benefits for them in doing so. The trade-off for surrendering power to the EU, was that they were forming a prosperous and powerful trading bloc. Europe would rival the United States as an economic super-power.

Two issues have undermined those benefits. One is the declining power of the EU in the global economy, as Asia especially grows. Growth in the EU is fairly minimal in the older member countries (but quite strong in the new economies). Already the EU has shrunk to just under 30% of the global economy. By 2050, it will be just 15% they project.

Worth noting the original EEC cost only 0.03% of European GDP. The EU now costs 1%, or 30 times that.

Now also put on top of that the Euro crisis, as weak economies threaten even the healthier EU economies. It becomes apparent that the rationale of greater economic prosperity in return for surrendering political sovereignty has disappeared.  Hannan asked if either major party in the UK would propose joining the EU today, if it were not already a member. He says there is no chance at all.

So Hannan advocates that the UK leave the EU, but like Switzerland and Norway sign free trade agreements with the EU, so you get the benefits without the loss of control. Hannan said he thought a referendum on the UK staying in the EU was inevitable, but conceded to the other speaker that it is quite possible the UK would vote to remain, as the two main parties would both campaign to stay in there.

So it was an interesting debate, which I hope we will see more of. Also worth highlighting a profile and interview in the Listener of Initiative Executive Director Oliver Hartwich. Some extracts:

“Thank God for the porn industry,” he wrote in a newspaper column two years ago. “The seemingly questionable industry does not care about morality, but is nevertheless a constant source of innovation and social improvement.” The column lauded the industry for the development of 3D films, predicting the technology – if not the content – could be used by schools to make geography and chemistry lessons much more interesting. “With some justification, sexual needs could be called the mother of the web’s invention. Without streaming videos of screaming porn stars, bandwidth would not have been added so fast to the global net,” he suggested.

Oliver is not the only person to have noted the Internet porn industry has had a considerable part in the development of the Internet.

Since the end of the gold standard in the US in 1971 – which required the US dollar to be backed by a fi xed amount of gold – money has had no intrinsic value. Hartwich believes we need to again anchor the monetary system to a commodity – although not necessarily gold, and maybe a mixture of commodities. He’s not a lone voice on this. In 2010, World Bank president Robert Zoellick called for a return to the gold standard, saying the world needed a more co-operative monetary system and should “consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values”.

Hartwich’s friend and colleague Detlev Schlichter, author of Paper Money Collapse, says the financial crisis is not an accident of capitalism but the “unavoidable consequence of the political decision to abandon a gold standard and to adopt in 1971 a system of unrestricted fiat money creation”. Hartwich believes New Zealand and Australia should consider moving their currencies to some “new system of commodity banking”, although he hasn’t got a recipe for how that could be done.

A return to the gold standard is far from the orthodox view. Would be quite interesting to hear maybe Oliver and the Reserve Bank Governor debate whether we should return to commodity based currencies. I’m personally not convinced, but have never heard anyone except the anti-monetarist lunatics of Social Credit advocate this. It would be good to hear a more rational debate.

Although international leaders promoting stimulus packages often say they are following the path of British economist John Maynard Keynes, Hartwich claims they often misrepresent his actual writings. “Keynes never said you can spend and spend and spend.” In the 1920s, Keynes even said that government should make up no more than 25% of the economy. “That would make him a neoliberal by some standards today,” Hartwich chuckles.

A good reminder.

Hartwich is obviously well to the right of centre, yet he is not an aggressive tax cutter. He agrees there is a relationship between economic growth and levels of taxation, but he derides last decade’s Bush tax cuts in the US as “fiscally irresponsible” and does not believe governments should go into deficit to fund them.

I agree. Spending has to be under control to cut taxes.

Asked about his top priorities for New Zealand, he names education and housing policy. He also wants to examine social issues such as mental health. He worked for 15 months in a mental health institution as a young man “because I didn’t want to join the army”, and was moved by the experience.

Glad to see education on the list.

Yesterday I blogged how research showed that the prevalence of youth drinking has in fact been significantly dropping in New Zealand. Today I want to focus on reason no 2 not to increase the purchase age.

Increasing the purchase age will dilute the message not to supply to minors

One of the most important changes proposed in the Alcohol Reform Act is to make it an offence to supply alcohol to minors without parental permission. I supports this new law, as a major flaw in the current law is that (for example) it is currently legal for any adult to supply beer, wine or even spirits to a 14 year old.

I believe we need both a law change and a culture change where it is illegal and “uncool” to supply alcohol without parental permission to those not able to legally purchase it for themselves – just as over the past few decades it has become “uncool” to drink and drive.

But increasing the purchase age to 20 for off licenses, will work against achieving a culture of not supplying alcohol to those who can not purchase alcohol for themselves. 18 and 19 year olds are legally not minors and hence the new law making it an offence to supply alcohol to minors without parental consent will not apply to them. What this means is that if the purchase age is increased it will be legal for a 20 year old to supply alcohol to a 19 year old (who can not legally purchase it), but illegal to supply it to an 18 year old. This will be confusing and work against achieving a culture where no one supplies alcohol to those unable to purchase it for themselves, without parental consent.

The only way to achieve a culture of non-supply is to have the purchase age the same as the age at which a minor becomes an adult – which is 18. That will be consistent and maximise the chance of the new non-supply law being respected.

A purchase age of 20 will encourage a culture of supplying to those under the purchase age. This works directly against the other reforms in the Alcohol Reform Bill to prevent supply to minors.

I have had it confirmed that the Greens are using taxpayer funds to hire staff to collect signatures for the asset sales petition, as speculated yesterday.

This is effectively an abuse of what the CIR process is about. First of all the idea behind citizen’s initiated referenda are that it gives a chance for non MPs to petition Parliament and force a vote on an issue. It has never before been used by the losing parties in a general election to try and over-throw the results of an election, by holding a referendum on the policy which was at the centre of the election campaign. The history of CIR is that they have been on issues for which no party had explicitly campaigned at a previous election.

So bad enough that Labour and the Greens are pushing a referendum on a policy that was debated for 11 months during the election campaign, but even worse that the Greens are using some of their $1.3m of taxpayer funding to purchase signatures for the petition. The same Greens who decry money in politics. CIR are meant to be about showing the level of community support for a vote on an issue. Using taxpayer funds to hire people to collect signatures will demonstrate little other than how much taxpayer money the Greens are prepared to spend on it.

So much for being the party of grass-roots activism.

At least it is a step up from the Labour MP who was paying an 11 year old girl $10 an hour to wave Labour Party placards during the election campaign.

An op-ed in the NY Times by father of the Internet Vint Cerf:

The Internet stands at a crossroads. Built from the bottom up, powered by the people, it has become a powerful economic engine and a positive social force. But its success has generated a worrying backlash. Around the world, repressive regimes are putting in place or proposing measures that restrict free expression and affect fundamental rights. The number of governments that censor Internet content has grown to 40 today from about four in 2002. And this number is still growing, threatening to take away the Internet as you and I have known it.

It is no longer only China and Iran.

Some of these steps are in reaction to the various harms that can be and are being propagated through the network. Like almost every major infrastructure, the Internet can be abused and its users harmed. We must, however, take great care that the cure for these ills does not do more harm than good. The benefits of the open and accessible Internet are nearly incalculable and their loss would wreak significant social and economic damage.

Not all censorship of the Internet is done for bad intentions. UK PM David Cameron said he wanted the ability to turn off Twitter as it may have been used by criminals during the London rioting. Now that may be with good intentions, but then Iran would be turning it off during the pro-democracy protests.

Against this background, a new front in the battle for the Internet is opening at the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations organization that counts 193 countries as its members. It is conducting a review of the international agreements governing telecommunications and aims to expand its regulatory authority to the Internet at a summit scheduled for December in Dubai.

This should be of great concern to everyone. The reason the Internet has had the success it has had, is because it grew under the open processes of the IETF and IAB, not the bureaucratic monstrosity known as the ITU.

Such a move holds potentially profound — and I believe potentially hazardous — implications for the future of the Internet and all of its users.

Quite simply, it must not be allowed to happen.

Each of the 193 members gets a vote, no matter its record on fundamental rights — and a simple majority suffices to effect change. 

Total up all the countries that are not true democracies, and you get close to a majority.

Last June, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated the goal of Russia and its allies as “establishing international control over the Internet” through the I.T.U. And in September 2011, China, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan submitted a proposal for an “International Code of Conduct for Information Security” to the U.N. General Assembly, with the goal of establishing government-led “international norms and rules standardizing the behavior of countries concerning information and cyberspace.”

China, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – what could go wrong.

Several authoritarian regimes reportedly would ban anonymity from the Web, which would make it easier to find and arrest dissidents. Others have suggested moving the privately run system that manages domain names and Internet addresses to the United Nations.

Governments could use the domain name system to force compliance with their censorship desires.

The decisions taken in Dubai in December have the potential to put government handcuffs on the Net. To prevent that — and keep the Internet open and free for the next generations — we need to prevent a fundamental shift in how the Internet is governed.

I hope the NZ Government takes this issue seriously and makes sure we advocate as strongly as we can that the ITU should have no role in Internet governance,, beyond its current mandate with telecommunication standards.

Inventory2 at Keeping Stock blogs:

We’ve just been alerted to something very interesting on Twitter; check out this vacancy on the Student Job Search website:

That’s right Dear Readers; the Green Party, that last bastion of honesty and principle in New Zealand politics is paying people to go out and collect signatures for their petition against the Government’s Mixed Ownership Model, which they still misleadingly refer to as “Asset Sales”.

Two questions come to mind immediately; is it so hard to get people to sign this petition that the Green Party has to pay for people to accost members of the public and bully them into signing; rather like Scientologists do? And can the Green Party give us a categorical assurance that no taxpayer funds are being spent on this initiative?

The Listener reports:

Wellington’s Brittany Trilford will speak at UN Earth Summit in Brazil after winning Date With History contest.

A Wellington teenager will travel to Rio next month to school the world’s leaders on the challenges of the future, after topping a global online search.

Seventeen-year-old Brittany Trilford will address the Earth Summit this June 20-22 in Brazil as winner of theDate with History contest. (See tcktcktck for more.)

Congratulations to Brittany for winning the global contest. It is a huge achievement to win any global competition, and will be an even bigger achievement to speak to a major international summit at the age of 17. From the video though, you can see why she won – a very clear and confident speaker.

Now I don’t agree 100% with Brittany’s outlook. The actual IPCC projections on sea level rises are not particularly extreme, for example. But this post is not designed to be a forum on whether or not people agree on the impact of climate change, and the need for more sustainability.

I have always been a huge fan of young people taking an interest in political issues. They are the ones that are most impacted by the decisions of today. It is somewhat depressing that so many under 30s do not vote. I suspect Brittany will never be a non-voter, and that her winning the contest to speak to world leaders in Rio may motivate others to take an interest in issues that affect them.

The New Zealand National Party is currently hosting a meeting of the Executive of the International Democrat Union. This is the federation of centre-right parties from around the globe. Chaired by John Howard, it has 80 member parties.

As I have been involved in the past, and know quite a few of the people attending I’ve been fortunate enough to be attending the meeting, and the associated social functions.

Last night was the formal dinner at Hippopotamus Restaurant at the Museum Hotel (which incidentally was top class  fantastic food). Yesterday morning I got a call from National Party HQ saying they had had a couple of people unable to attend, and I could bring a date at no extra cost if I wanted to.

I thought this was wonderful, and my mind started to think about which lovely young woman I could invite and impress by introducing her to the various party leaders and MPs from around the world. Before my mind could even start compiling a short-list of dates, I then was informed “And we want your date to be Neil Miller“.

Now I’m about as liberal as one can get on same sex issues, having supported civil unions, gay marriage and same sex adoption. But having National make it compulsory for me to have a same sex date to the IDU dinner was just a step too far.

However as a loyal person, I rang up Neil and invited him to be my date for the dinner. Strangely Neil seemed more upset by the fact he had to wear a tie, than being my date. He did show some concern when I joked his name tag would be Mrs Neil Farrar. He got revenge though by giving me a hug and kiss on the cheek in front of the Prime Minister. Luckily I had pre-briefed the PM that it was his party that had made same sex dating compulsory.

Neil proved to be an admirable date, so I have decided not to join Colin Craig’s Conservative Party yet. I will insist on choosing my own dates for any future events though!

The Dom Post editorial:

The facts, as set out during sentencing by Justice Rodney Hansen, are these: in January, September and October 2007 Iti organised, and the others participated in, a series of camps, or rama, near Ruatoki. During the camps semi-automatic weapons, sawn-off shotguns, and sporting rifles were fired. In addition, Molotov cocktails were made and thrown at one of the camps. When police terminated their surveillance operation, three rifles, two of them semi-automatic, were found under a tarpaulin at Iti’s Ruatoki house, four rifles and a semi-automatic shotgun were found in the boot of Kemara’s car and in a caravan he occupied, and a .22 rifle was found in a backpack at a Wellington campsite occupied by Signer and Bailey.

I think the Police said a total of 18 firearms were found, and none of these people were licenses to have them.

A crime committed in pursuit of laudable objectives is just as much a crime as a crime committed for base motives. Those who have rushed to defend Iti and his fellows should ask themselves how they would react if a group of white supremacists was found to be covertly preparing for guerilla warfare.

A point I also made. We should condemn anyone who mixes politics with guns. Europe bears the scars of such legacies.

The sentences are just. They serve as a warning not just to Iti and his fellows, but to others of all political persuasions that political activity must fall within the bounds of the law.

The rule of law depends upon all being equal before the law.

The deterrent factor is important.

Chris Trotter blogs:

The persons arrested as a result of “Operation Eight” were not held incommunicado, denied access to legal advice and tortured until they confessed. Nor were they tried and executed in secret. On the contrary, they were given a fair trial in an open court and only convicted on a number of firearms charges. Two of the accused were jailed for two-and-a-half years. Their convictions and their sentences are now being appealed.

 So, no. The “real life” Tame Iti is not the same as the fictional hero “Smith” played by Sam Neill. He was not fighting a murderous dictatorship. He was not being hunted down by US “advisers”. Nor were he and his followers being strafed and bombed by RNZAF Skyhawks.

What Mr Iti does appear to have been doing, however, was giving practical effect to the numerous discussions, extending over many decades, in which Maori nationalists and their far-Left Pakeha allies have weighed the pros and cons of organising a revolutionary Maori army.

Deborah Russell writes in the Dom Post:

New Zealand has a proud record when it comes to political representation. We were among the first in the world to extend the vote to all adult women, and we have long had Maori representation in Parliament.

Since the change to MMP, we have had MPs of Chinese and Pacific Island ethnic origin, and Muslim MPs. We’ve also had openly gay MPs, something that would have been unthinkable under the old first past the post system.

I think it was more unthinkable in the 1970s and 1980s, than due to MMP. I recall Georgina Beyer got elected MP for Wairarapa.

It is vitally important that these diverse voices are heard in parliament. We may not need parliaments that exactly mirror the population. But parliaments need to be sensitive to the needs of the people they govern, in order to make effective laws and policies. Diverse participation in parliament, what political philosopher Anne Phillips calls a politics of presence, makes government better.

A classic example of how the politics of presence could help government occurred during Helen Clark’s Labour government. Miss Clark and her ministers noticed that a large number of women in their thirties and forties weren’t in paid work, an untapped resource in the economy. They reasoned that the problem was a lack of childcare. Miss Clark proposed that schools should look at providing dawn to dusk childcare, so that mothers could take up paid employment.

Parents were annoyed. What they actually wanted was flexible and part time work, so that they could take up some paid employment, and look after their children themselves. At the time, Miss Clark had many highly capable advisers, but very few of them were parents. Had some parents been present, they might have been able to tell her that the lack of flexible work was the more significant barrier.

A good example of the value of diversity. I do not support quotas, or tokenism, but do think diversity is a good thing which should be encouraged. Just as I don’t want a Parliament with 120 thirty year old MPs, neither do I want one with no MPs aged under 50.

But the politics of presence is resented by some people. They criticise identity politics, and grumble that life is getting harder for straight white men. These days, in order to get ahead, a straight white man has to compete with all the minorities who get a helping hand. It’s common to hear complaints about positive discrimination, and feminism being to blame for men and boys not doing so well any more.

One can support diversity but also think you can take identity politics too far.

Because the number of seats in Parliament is limited, if more of those seats are held by women and Maori, and people from other minority groups, then fewer are held by straight white men. Now they know they will only hold 60 per cent or so of the seats. They really have lost power.

Actually straight white men are now a minority in Parliament according to a tally I have just done – being 58 of 121 MPs. So we are now a minority 🙂

Of course straight white men comprise only 33% of the population, so being 48% of Parliament is not doing too badly. What is interesting is the diversity on each factor.

Men do make up 67% of Parliament, and are only 50% of the population.

However on ethnicity, Maori are actually over-represented being 17% of Parliament, and around 12% of the adult population.

And on sexuality, 94% of Parliament is straight, which is probably a bit lower than the adult population which is 95% to 97% straight according to most research.

So in NZ it is gender which is the area of least diversity, not so much race or sexual orientation.

But only in comparison to the amount of power they previously held. Most seats in Parliament, most positions on boards, most high ranking civil service positions, and most highly paid jobs continue to be held by straight white men. They have lost some power. But they remain the only group not under-represented in the corridors of power. Those corridors of power will work better the more open they become to diverse representation, and to a politics of presence.

Again this is not quite accurate. Straight white men are over-represented. But so are are Maori men who make up 11% of Parliament and 6% of the adult population.

Maori women are approx proportional being 7% of Parliament and 6% of the adult population.

European women make up 24% of Parliament, and 35% of the population, so is is not all minorities that are under-represented, but European women and Asians. Asians are in fact the most under-represented group in Parliament at just 3%.

3% of Parliament is gay and 2% lesbian, which is slightly in excess of their assumed prevalence in the overall population.

Now as I said, while I support diversity I don’t think the aim is to get a Parliament that is perfectly proportional in every demographic. I think it is about being broadly representative. And we are in terms of Caucasian, Maori, Pacific and gay MPs. We’re not doing so well with female and Asian MPs.

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

IT’S OUT!: The Budget is out and now it’s time to wade through hundreds of pages to sort out the candy from the coal. There’s not much fun in fiscal responsibility. Yes, there is more money for Science and R&D, Housing and Education but there’s been some robbing of Peter to save Paul. We need to make tough choices, but are we robbing the wrong Peter and saving the wrong Paul?

A 25% REDUCTION: Corrections Minister Anne Tolley has promised a 25% reduction is prisoner reoffending. Is this doable or just a number pulled out of the air? How do we reduce recidivism? New drug and alcohol treatments in prisons, rehabilitation services & education and job training are part of the plan. But will that be enough to do the trick?

Join us for a night of LIVE pub politics from the Backbencher Pub: Wednesday, 30th of May. Our Panel: Green Party MP Dr. Kennedy Graham, Labour MP Maryan Street, New Zealand First MP Andrew Williams and National MP David Bennett.

Wednesday 9.05 pm, repeated on Saturday 10.05 pm – TVNZ 7

The Dom Post reports:

There were more than a few raised eyebrows on the train from Ngauranga to Wellington today as 40 young people did the morning commute in their underwear.

They were part of a youth environmental group called Generation Zero, which fights for climate change action and intergenerational justice.

Group organiser James Young-Drew, 22, said the stunt was designed to launch their 50:50 campaign, which is protesting the government’s plans to spend $14 billion on highway projects over next decade but not nearly as much on ”smart transport options” such as light rail, buses and cycleways.

“We were aiming to expose the government’s unbalanced transport budget and what better way to do that than by exposing ourselves,” he said.

So the more the Government spends on motorways, the more often they will ride the trains in their underwear.

I think the Government should announce an extra billion for motorways, to ensure the protests are repeated on a weekly basis. This will also result in many more people then taking the train to work so is a win-win 🙂

Yesterday’s Dom Post editorial:

It is a toss-up which is more embarrassing for the Labour Party – former associate immigration minister Shane Jones’ explanation for granting citizenship to a shadowy Chinese millionaire with multiple identities or leader David Shearer’s initial acceptance of that explanation.

Not just an initial acceptance, it seems.

However, Labour’s problems go far deeper than Mr Shearer’s timorous leadership and Mr Jones’ quixotic approach to his ministerial responsibilities.

While Labour’s leader and senior spokespeople um and ah about what they would do differently from the Government, its putative ally, the Green Party, is eating its lunch.

Having shed itself of the nutty Sue Bradford, now helping the Mana Party plumb public opinion poll depths, its 14 MPs are bringing a previously unseen focus to environmental issues.

There will be many who shudder at the prospect of the introduction of a carbon tax, and the other tax changes proposed by Green Party co-leader Russel Norman in a pre-Budget article in last week’s Dominion Post. The party’s philosophical objections to major roading projects and its feel-good plans for state-owned power companies are equally alarming.

However, there is no disputing that the Greens know their stuff and are arguing from a position of principle. The contrast with Labour could not be starker. It is apparent every day – in Parliament during question time, and on the airwaves.

The Greens are sharper and more intellectually rigorous. Labour’s MPs give the impression they are waiting to be told by their researchers what the public thinks about an issue before taking a position. The Greens, on the other hand, are setting out to change public opinion.

It is interesting to have the Dominion Post saying this. I made much the same comments in my NZ Herald column a couple of months ago, and concluded that if you are a genuine left-wing voter then it is hard to see why you would vote Labour rather than the Greens.

But while the Greens continue to expose the inadequacies of their Labour opposites, there is little prospect of Labour reasserting itself.

Labour needs to deal with its historical baggage and sort out what it stands for quickly. Otherwise it might as well forget about the 2014 election and start planning for 2017.

The Labour Governments of Helen Clark managed to form Governments on winning around 40% of the vote. Labour’s ambition nowadays seems to be to get 30%, and hope that Greens, Mana and NZ First can get enough votes to propel them into office.

As I blogged yesterday I am in support of modernising our adoption laws. They are literally a relic from the 1950s. But the law reform is not just about whether same sex couples should be able to adopt, but needs to deal with a wide range of adoption issues, guardianship issues and surrogacy issues.

A few people think this will lead to many gay couples getting to adopt children, ahead of “deserving” heterosexual couples. But I quote Andrew Geddis on this:

This law change will result in only an infinitesimal increase in the number of children who actually get raised by a same-sex couples because there are Fuck All “stranger” adoptions in New Zealand (less than 100 a year). And then a given same-sex couple only will be able to adopt a child if the birth mother chose them ahead of all other eligible couples. So if gay couples could join the pool of people eligible to adopt in this manner, the number of children who would be placed with them likely would be negligible

What this means is that the argument about whether kids being raised by same-sex couples is good/bad is pretty much irrelevant to this issue, because it ISN’T ABOUT MORE KIDS BEING RAISED BY SAME SEX COUPLES THAN THERE ARE AT THE MOMENT.

What this is about is like what we saw on TV3, where two lesbians have lived together for 19 years, and both have a biological child. however they can not make each other the adoptive parent of each child. So if one of them dies, one of the children could be left in limbo. The current law actually prevents the best interests of the child being paramount.

Media reported yesterday that National MP Nikki Kaye and Green MP Kevin Hague have been working for around 18 months on an adoption law reform bill. As I indicated, it is a hugely complex area, and just identifying the key policy issues is quite a task.

Now some in Labour have been saying that there is no need for a bill by Hague/Kaye, as Jacinda Ardern already has a bill in the members’ ballot. This prompted me to look more closely at the bill, and I’m afraid it is very seriously flawed. I have absolutely no doubt that Jacinda genuinely wants good law reform in this area, but the bill she has put forward is basically little more than a legislative request for the Government to do something. The bill, which is only slightly longer than a press release, essentially does the following:

1. Requires the Minister for the Law Commission to ask the Law Commission to review the law relating to the care of children and update its September 2000 report on adoption
2. Requires the Law Commission to report within 12 months a report, recommendations and draft legislation
3. Requires the Minister of Justice to introduce the bill, as drafted by the Law Commission, without amendment within seven days

There are a significant number of semi-fatal flaws with this approach. The first is timing. Under the Ardern bill, there would probably be no law change for four or more years until after it has been selected from the ballot. The likely timings are:

• 1st reading – 3 months after introduction
• select committee – 6 months
• 2nd and 3rd reading – 3 months
• Law Commission report – 12 months
• Govt Bill has first reading scheduled – up to 12 months
• select committee – 6 months
• 2nd and 3rd reading – 3 months

So even if the Ardern bill was drawn tomorrow, any actual law change would take four or more years, so maybe the law would be changed by 2017. The problem is that Jacinda is trying to use a bill, to get the Law Commission to write a bill. But Ardern’s bill itself would have to go through the full legislative process which would take probably 12 months. And I am being generous in suggesting it could take 12 months to pass. Many member’s bill have spent 18 months just awaiting their first reading!

Effectively what Ardern wants could be achieved by writing a letter to the Minister of Justice, and this would save one to two year’s time if the Minister agreed. However Ardern is trying to legislate to force the Minister to introduce a bill, even if they do not want to. But she has made a fatal error. She has legislated that such a bill must be introduced within 7 days of the Law Commission drafting it, but she has not said that the Government must schedule it for a first reading debate.  So if the Government did not want the bill to progress, it would simply place it at the bottom of the order paper – which they can do as it would be a Government bill. Even a minority Government would be able to prevent the bill from ever being voted on – something they can’t do with a private members’ bill that actually seeks a law change – rather than just ordering the Government to introduce a bill.

So to be very clear, even if a majority in Parliament favoured law reform, the process outlined in this bill would give the Government an effective veto. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario where for example it is after the 2014 election and say Colin Craig or Winston Peters could demand that the price of their support is the bill not proceed, as their constituents do not like it. By making it a Government bill, you lose control of its timing.

So the biggest problem if Ardern’s bill would not actually see any law change for four or more years, and could in fact never be voted on if the Government did not want it to pass. But that is only one flaw.

The second flaw is that the Ardern bill doesn’t specify a single policy principle. Not one. It gives actually no direction to the Law Commission as to what should be in the bill, what its scope should be, or even that the bill should not discriminate against same sex relationships. Every single detail is left to the Law Commission. This is a blank piece of paper. Now one could say, well surely they would mainly repeat what they reported in September 2000. Well they might. But it is worth considering that I think every single member of the Law Commission is now different from 12 year ago. So there is no guarantee that what the Law Commission would deliver is what Ardern wants. It is the job of legislators to spell out the general policy principles they want a law to reflect.

The third flaw is that the Minister of Justice is required to introduce whatever the Law Commission drafts, without amendment. Putting aside the rather important constitutional issues of making the Law Commission able to bypass Cabinet, it means that if a first reading is scheduled the MPs have to vote on whatever the Law Commission drafted. It could not be amended unless it survives to select committee. Such a bill could include a provision that all babies named David have to be placed into the care of CYFS and the Minister of Justice would be forced to introduce it without amendment. Sure that is an unlikely example, but it is a horrific precedent to have draft laws bypass Ministerial and/or MP approval, and going straight to a vote. This gives huge powers to the unelected Law Commissioners.

This is obviously a very bad idea. The political process is about MPs and parties working together to ensure a bill is acceptable and has enough support to pass first reading. There are often intense negotiations before a bill is introduced into Parliament.  The Ardern Bill actually entirely removes MPs from the legislative equation until the Law Commission bill reaches select committee – if it even made it that far. And the probability that it would face massive changes at select committee is enhanced when MPs have had zero say in its drafting.

The fourth flaw, I touched on earlier. Rather than introduce a private members’ bill that actually outlines the desired law changes, it just instructs the Government to introduce a bill in probably two years time. By then making it a Government bill, it means Parliament loses control of when it gets voted on, as Government bills are debated at the discretion of the Government. So by failing to specify that the bill must be scheduled for first (and subsequent) reading/s at the top of the Government order paper, the bill is basically entirely ineffective.

So in summary the Ardern bill is not a helpful (while I am sure well motivated) step towards sensible adoption law reform for the following four reasons:

1. It would probably delay any actual law reform for four or more years. By contrast a private members bill which actually specified the proposed reforms could be passed into law within a year or so.
2. There are absolutely no policy principles in the bill (not even that the welfare of the child is paramount). It is a total blank piece of paper for the Law Commission.
3. The bill locks MPs out of any involvement in the eventual draft government legislation prepared by the Law Commission, making it far less likely of gaining the necessary support.
4. The private members bill requires the Government to introduce a Government bill, which will then only progress at the timetable decided by the Government – rather than as Parliament wishes. Under MMP the two are not the same thing.

It is very easy to write a nine clause bill and trumpet that as the “solution”, claiming it would “address a wide range of concerns about the outdated Adoption Act”. But alas law making is not that simple or easy. Either you convince the Government to make adoption law a Government priority, or you draft a private members bill to do it yourself.