I still feel bad about the fact I once cost a former employer a few thousand dollars in tax penalties for late tax returns. So I’m not sure how I could cope with this situation reported in the Herald:

Three high-ranking executives at JPMorgan Chase are expected to leave their jobs this week after a trading blunder cost the bank US$2 billion,The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Only “expected” to leave their jobs??

The Journal, citing people familiar with the situation, reported that one of the executives is Ina Drew, who for seven years has run the risk-management division at the bank responsible for the loss.

Drew, one of the highest-ranking women on Wall Street, is the bank’s chief investment officer. She was paid $15.5 million last year and almost $16 million the year before, according to a regulatory filing.

So the loss was 120 times the annual salary!

Do you recall before the election when the media reported that John Key “stormed” out of a press conference refusing to answer any more questions, and then the video showed it was a total beatup. He just called an end to questions and calmly exited.

Likewise we are now seeing reports that John Key “slammed” the media in his comments on NewstalkZB. Luckily they videoed the show, so you can judge for yourself whether this was a “slamming” or in fact a reasonable critical analysis.

An interesting op ed by Massey Pro Vice-Chancellor James Chapman on proposed changes to teacher training:

Massey University is about to undertake a quiet revolution in the way we educate teachers. We are cutting our ties with the past and forging ahead with changes that will bring Massey’s teacher education in line with some of the best education institutions around the world.

From next year we will focus all our teacher education at the graduate/postgraduate level and phase out teaching in our three- and four-year undergraduate degrees.

For what it is worth, I think it is better for teachers to gain a general degree, and then a teaching diploma on top of that.

The changes we are making at Massey to focus on graduate/postgraduate teaching, will start to address these issues by taking the teachers to that next level. As graduates and postgraduates, our students will be able to progress to masters and doctoral degrees and will be well positioned to move up the career ladder and assist those entering the profession.

The advantage of graduate and postgraduate teacher education is that the students have already qualified in a wide variety of degrees – sociology, psychology, maths, science, technology, the arts, Maori studies etc – and they bring those specialist skills and the ability to apply them.

It is a long time since I was at university, but I do recall that the numeracy requirements for those doing teaching was massively below even first year maths. I would have placed it around school cert level.

One of the arguments repeatedly put forward against this move is that it is not possible to prepare a teacher in one year.

That misrepresents what we are doing. Those completing the graduate diploma path have already studied for a minimum of four years and will undertake a further two years of professional practice before becoming fully registered.

Around half of all graduates entering primary teaching come through the graduate diploma route; that rises to more than 80 per cent for the secondary sector.

We know graduates from our graduate diploma programmes are well-regarded. They have higher completion rates and higher rates of employment and registration than those going through undergraduate programmes.

Not often I have praise for Massey University Education Department, but I do think this is a good move.

I blogged how Sir Bob Jones had proposed a lake in the Chch CBD, with businesses being allocated a shorefront location. At the time I said I liked the proposal, but wasn’t sure it was practical.

A reader e-mailed his brother who is a geological engineer. He commented:

In an area that is prone to liquefaction the last thing you want is have more ponded water in the form of a lake.  Lake edges are typically worst affected by lateral spreading induced by liquefaction, often 10s to 100s m back from the ponded water. To create an artificial lake in the Chch CBD you would have to dig a large hole in the ground to hold the water.  This allows the surrounding lake shore and adjacent land to move (expand) under strong earthquake shaking – to spread laterally into the lake. But If the ground is still in place you get a lot of cracking and water and silt ejection, but not much ground deformation.  Its the ground spreading, often accompanied by subsidence, that is most damaging to buildings.  The best way to stop this from happening is to lower the general ground water table, and create a ‘non-building buffer zone’ (of land) along the banks of rivers, canals, and around the shores of other bodies of water bodies  – not dig more holes in the ground and fill them with water !!

So sadly not practical.

Chris Trotter, like Brian Edwards, is aghast at the muzzling of David Cunliffe. He writes in the Dom Post:

David Shearer’s decision to muzzle his rival, David Cunliffe, is deeply worrying.

Right now, there’s nothing Labour needs more than an open debate about its future.

That its leader and the coterie of courtiers with which he has surrounded himself were willing to go to the extraordinary lengths of preventing Labour’s spokesperson on economic development from appearing on TV3’s The Nation reveals how ruthlessly Shearer’s faction intends to stifle all dissent.

Shearer’s petty, politically self-destructive decision can only be interpreted as Cunliffe’s punishment for delivering a speech to his New Lynn electorate’s women’s branch highly critical of Labour’s fraught, 25-year association with neo- liberal economics.

Clearly, the disparity between the Labour leader’s three uninspiring “positioning” speeches, and the compellingly radical content of Cunliffe’s April 29 address, had rankled.

The disparity is probably what was worrying his staff. What if Cunliffe went on The Nation and shone?

According to Garner, Cunliffe’s critics described his speech as “stupid and foolish”. Labour’s “Leadership Group”, advised of The Nation’s invitation, then weighed the issue and decided Cunliffe should not appear. The Nation failed to change their minds.

This sort of overt factional squabbling has not been seen in the Labour Party for more than 15 years. Throughout Helen Clark’s record-breaking reign as leader, open dissent was almost always cast as treason. …

Labour’s full recovery as a vibrant, creative and politically relevant organisation cannot be secured except by a radical opening-up of the party. Interestingly, recent reports about Labour’s organisational restructuring exercise suggest this may be happening.

The party’s constitutional review committee is rumoured to have recommended that rank-and-file members be given a deliberative voice in the choice of party leader, as well as an effective veto over sudden, caucus-inspired, leadership spills.

Unsurprisingly, it is also rumoured that Labour’s caucus is doing all it can to prevent such changes coming into immediate effect. The party’s annual conference in November promises to be a bloody affair.

I’m tempted to register as media and attend with popcorn 🙂

Courtiers make poor campaigners. As Game of Thrones addicts know, power is not always to be found among the wielders of swords.

As often as not it lies in the hands of eunuchs and whoremasters: the manipulators, tricksters and casters-of-shadows who keep their daggers hidden and seldom venture beyond the palace gates.

Heh, as a former parliamentary staffer I might fall into that description. I’d prefer to be a whoremaster than a eunuch I have to say 🙂

If Shearer believes the country will be best served by turning the Ship of State’s tiller hard to starboard, then let him say so, and let him and his faction spell out clearly what the policy implications of such a rightward shift would be.

Cunliffe has made it clear that he believes a sharp leftward turn to be in order. How exhilarating and liberating it would be, not simply for the Labour Party, but for the whole country, to see this debate played out.

How depressing, therefore, to learn that, instead of welcoming Cunliffe’s offering, his jealous courtier colleagues described it as “stupid and foolish”.

I think the time for that debate was when there was a leadership vacancy.

The irony.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister John Key has sounded off at the media, while insisting he is is not worried about what he sees as its more aggressive mood towards him.

Speaking on NewstalkZB this morning he singled out television news, the Sunday Star-Times and the NZ Herald for particular mentions.

He said the media are “in a more aggressive and hostile mood towards us”.

He did not worry about the media “despite what they think”.

“I am not that bent out of shape about that – I expected it,” he said. Former prime minister Helen Clark had warned him it would happen after the first term in office.

Pressure came on Governments more, because the media becomes more antagonistic.

He said he was not moaning about it – it was a matter of fact.

And the headline:

Key bemoans ‘hostile’ media

Really proves the point.

Key said over time the NZ Herald had become more tabloid under its new editor, with sometimes only one big sensational story on the front page.

“The Herald has turned more tabloid – that is an absolute statement of fact.” …

For instance, the Sunday Star-Times a few weeks ago had run a headline saying he had locked in former prime ministers’ entitlements.

“I am not locking anything in – it has been in the Civil List Act as long as I have been on this Earth.”

I differentiate between the Herald and the Sunday Star-Times.

The Herald is definitely more tabloid. It is a deliberate strategy, and to give them credit it is working. Their readership and circulation are both doing comparatively well from what I can recall. The impact of being more tabloid and sensationalist is that you tend to end up beating up on the Government more, because most issues are about the Government. If Labour was in Government, they would probably be bemoaning the Herald also (as Clark did – something Key specifically cited).

The Sunday Star-Times does take a very left-wing view on most issues, and is basically anti-National. The example of the MPs perks is a classic example. It was a total nonsense story. John Key has actually done more to reduce MPs perks and introduce transparency that the last ten Prime Ministers combined.

It is fine for a newspaper to be left-wing, so long as people understand that. Just as NBR tends to be centre-right on most issues. I think the few remaining SST readers are of the same persuasion as the paper.

It was trying to lift circulation, especially casual sales at dairies, and had brought over David Fisher (from the Herald on Sunday) as “an investigative journalist, so-called”.

He said former TVNZ political editor Guyon Espiner had left for TV3, and that was a loss.

Personally I think David Fisher does good work, even though on some issues such as the secret tapes, we agree to disagree. I prefer journalists who investigate things, to those who rehash press releases.

Bill Ralston just tweeted that having Key praise Guyon is probably the kiss of death for him. Heh. He is sort of right, but I don’t think it would be fair to conclude that Key thinks Espiner was in any way soft on him. I can recall many instances where he has pushed Key hard. I think it was more a comment that he thought Guyon tends to avoid sensationalism.

Otago University researchers have found:

University of Otago, Wellington researchers have just published a study that estimates for the first time the average cost of producing a new law in New Zealand.

The research shows a new act costs on average $3.5 million, while a regulation is estimated to cost around $530,000.

The researchers developed a method that analysed the number of acts and regulations passed in Parliament from 1999 to 2010. They then considered the costs of running Parliament, particularly ‘sitting days’, when MPs debate new laws. Also taken into account were the costs of policy advice from government agencies related to law-making.

Their full report is here. A quote:

We estimated that, between 1999 and 2010, 26.7% of parliamentary resources and 16.7% of policy advice from government agencies were devoted to generating new laws in New Zealand.

A reminder that Parliament is not just about laws.

If a new law costs $3.5m on average, then that should be the minimum test for whether a law is needed. Is the problem the new law seeks to fix so large that it is worth spending $3.5m on fixing (and that is before we even get into the impact of the law).

Hat Tip: Homepaddock

I blogged last Wednesday about the new identity verification service, Real Me, by NZ Post and DIA. Their process for identity verification is:

1. Apply online
2. Go to a PostShop and get photo taken
3. DIA confirms identity
4. Complete verification of address with NZ Post

That gets you a near passport level of identity verification. But I’ve had an e-mail from the folks at Miicard pointing out their service, which is purely online. Their process is:

1. Create your miiCard identity
2. Prove your identity through secure access to your online bank accounts
3. Connect your social profiles for Twitter and LinkedIn to prove they belong to you

I’ve not tried it out to see exactly how it works, but I quite like the idea of using the bank authentication as a means of identity proof, as that is already highly secure. They support 2,500 banks including the NZ ones.

Tech Crunch reports:

To be clear, MiiCard doesn’t ask for your bank account number, and oddly enough, that’s something that seems to worry some folks, even though it’s info that many people and companies would know. (Hint: it’s on your checks…Besides, aren’t those the same people who are scared to shop online, but have no problem handing their credit card over to a starving college student working three shifts at their local diner to pay their bills?) Oh, and MiiCard’s service is also VeriSign Trusted and TRUSTe certified, if that makes you feel better about the security precautions in place. And it runs its tech on top of Yodlee, which powers solutions for seven of the top ten banks. (OK, that helps).

Once registered, you can begin attaching other accounts to your profile, like your social networking accounts, for example. You can then use your MiiCard where you see fit – on your eBay shop, perhaps, or your Craigslist posting. …

Last week, MiiCard launched the first third-party Twitter validation system, which allows anyone – not just celebs and public figures who get special attention from Twitter – to verify their account.

Sounds a very good service also.

Tracy Watkins at Stuff reports:

Prescription charges will increase from $3 an item to $5 an item in next week’s Budget, as the Government moves to offset the cost of extra health spending in the “zero Budget”.

The new charge will cover up to a maximum of 20 items from January 1 next year, raising $20m in the first year and $40m after that.

Health Minister Tony Ryall and Prime Minister John Key said the money raised would be  reinvested in the health sector.

“Despite tight financial times and what will be a zero Budget on May 24, health will receive a big funding boost, which will come from savings within health and across the Government’s accounts,” Ryall said.

It was the first time the prescription charge has been increased in 20 years. There will continue to be no charge for under-sixes.

Despite this Hone Harawira is claiming children will die because of this.  Anything for a cheap headline.

The fee used to be $15, and Labour in 2004 reduced it to $3. This increase is a maximum $40 per year per person, so I don’t think will be a huge impact for most. The Government noted:

New Zealand continues to have low prescription charges compared to almost every other developed country.

In Australia, for example, the standard prescription charge is up to NZ$45 and in England it’s around NZ$16. In Australia people on low incomes pay around NZ$7.45 per item. In Finland, there is an annual limit of around NZ$1,107 per patient, after which there is a flat fee of around NZ$2.50 per medicine item.

I think Australia has the right idea. It is hugely economically inefficient to provide subsidies to wealthy people who don’t need them. We spend just over $1 billion a year on subsidized medicines.

What Id like to see happen is that low income people with a community services card get their medicine highly subsidized (pay only $3 to $5), while others pay somewhere between most and all of the cost themselves.

The real challenge for this Government is to reduce the huge amount of middle class welfare we have.  We can support those less well off better, if we are not subsidizing medicines for millionaires.

UPDATE: The maximum possible extra cost per person family works out at 11c a day. This puts into context the hysterical claims by Harawira which the media are giving such prominence to.

So this week we have the offer of free voluntary contraception to beneficiaries being compared to Nazi war crimes by Josef Mengele, and a maximum 11c a day rise in the cost of prescriptions to killing children. Some on the left are getting rather demented.

I’ve embedded below the submission from Stephen Glaister on the MMP review. Stephen argues well against some of the other submissions (including my own) on various issues, so I thought it was worth highlighting his arguments. First he argues against lowering the 5% threshold too low:

But the micro-parties that have flourished under the 5% threshold in NZ (principally because of the one electorate seat waiver) have tended to be simpatico with at least one major party. The sorts of micro-parties that no (or minimal) thresholds would grant representation would be much more selfstanding, and we’d predict, much more fractious and problematic as partners than the sorts of tame micro-parties that have flourished under a waiver-encrusted 5% threshold have been.

A good point. He argues to retain the one electorate threshold saying :

(it) creates incentives for micro-parties to do proportionality-enhancing deals with (interested, politically compatible) larger parties rather than pure overhang, antiproportional deals

He also states:

The threshold expresses a phobia of micro-parties in parliament. But since MMP is a mixed electoral system, parties can get members into parliament anyway if they win electorates. But if a party is going to have a parliamentary delegation anyway (notwithstanding the threshold) then our phobia of micro-parties recommends allowing it to have as many MPs as possible compatibly with proportionality. Additional proportionality itself is valuable, of course, but so is non-trivial team-hood for parliamentary delegations.

This is the best argument for the one electorate threshold. I still don’t like it though because it encourages tactical voting, rather than people voting for the best candidate in an electorate. Stephen also deals with the argument that it is unfair:

A threshold+waiver regime is logically just a disjunction of two boundary rules. Standard, tempting, childish mewling about what are always, partially arbitrary boundaries [24a, 24b] is then sent into overdrive by the target-rich environment of a more complicated, disjunctive boundary.

I especially liked his use of “wah wah” in the submission. As I said I obviously don’t agree with Stephen on everything, but his submission is the best defence of the status quo I have seen.

Glaister

Patrick Gower blogs:

There’s a lot of talk around the shop that that John Key has “got them mid-term blues”.

Apparently the typewriters have been telling their interviewers that all the sideshows are wearing the Prime Minister down and are symbolic of some great sea-change.

Well, in my experience, the typewriter is often wrong.

Yes, I think some media have been reading too much in a throwaway line by the PM to some school kids. In my opinion we are actually seeing a more determined Key, than in National’s first term.

JOHN KEY OWNS THE MIDDLE GROUND

Key has 49.8 percent in the latest 3 News Reid Research poll. That means John Key owns the centre voter. Historically, this is where elections are won and lost. So until something serious changes here – no worries.

SIDE-SHOWS DON’T ALWAYS MAKE A CIRCUS

Can’t see too many centre voters changing their vote because the MFAT reforms were bungled. Nor can I see too many voters switching camps because Nick Smith resigned 12 hours later than he should have.

OPPOSITION LEADER STRUGGLING TO MAKE AN IMPACT

Getting the middle ground back is David Shearer’s job. At the moment he is focussed on stopping his rival David Cunliffe from going on The Nation to be interviewed – great news for Key.

OPPOSITION IS A MESS, PART I

Could Labour, the Greens and NZ First really work together as a Government? Very unusual trio. Nobody has ever been able to explain just how this could work to me. This question will only get asked more and more over the next two-and-a-half years – no answers on the horizon.

OPPOSITION IS A MESS, PART II

The Labour/Greens/NZ First troika would likely rely on Labour leading the Government despite not having the most votes. Is the New Zealand public ready for this? Er, no. In fact, they probably won’t want a bar of it. Lot of work to do to persuade the public of this.

Gower also looks at the potential coalition partners for National and thinks they are not so bad.  He concludes:

I actually believe Key is looking quite up-for-it and motivated at the moment – I’ve heard him say on a number of occasions recently that he wants to “get stuff done”.

And how much mileage have the Opposition made out of this? Basically zero.

The reality is that Key holds all the cards.

And maybe it’s the Opposition that should have those mid-term blues.

The dynamics of a possible Labour-led Government are fascinating. Can you imagine Richard Prosser voting in favour of Green Party Ministers and policies? Can you imagine Winston and the Greens agreeing on Maori issues? And, if you also need the support of the Maori and Mana parties, it gets even more fun.

In theory Labour might be able to form a Government after achieving just 28% of the vote. But in reality for it to be a coherent government, they really need at least 35%.

The second part of my Internet Hall of Fame series. Today, the global connectors.

• Randy Bush –  founder of the Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) to help develop and deploy networking technology in projects throughout the world
• Kilnam Chon – developed the first Internet in Asia, called SDN in 1982
• Al Gore –  sponsored legislation that funded the expansion of and greater public access to the Internet. Instrumental in helping to create the “Information Superhighway”
• Nancy Hafkin – work on African networking helped build the continent’s ICT framework
• Geoff Huston – played a critical role in bringing the Internet to Australia in the 1990s
• Brewster Kahle – founder and director of the Internet Archive
• Daniel Karrenberg – helped build EUnet, the first pan-European Internet Service Provider (ISP), co-founder of RIPE
• Toru Takahashi –  instrumental in bringing the Internet to Japan and promoting it throughout Asia
• Tan Tin Wee – an Internet pioneer in Singapore, founded the multilingual Internet domain name system

These people took the Internet from the United States and helped made it global.

The Herald reports:

Epic HBO show Game of Thrones is on target to become the most downloaded television show of the year, and possibly of all time.

The second season of Game of Thrones, which screens on Sky TV’s SoHo channel in New Zealand, has been downloaded around 25 million times since it began in April, according to a report byForbes.com.

I love the books and the TV series. It has it all – politics, warfare, assassinations, treachery, a dwarf, sex and great plotlines.

Forums suggested HBO needed to offer better online servicers to people who wanted to pay to watch the show – an issue satarised inthis popular comic strip.

“Every time I download the new episode, I send HBO an email asking them where I can send them a dollar or two for the episode. They have yet to get back to me,” said one Forbes reader.

Other downloaders suggested they wouldn’t know about the show if it wasn’t for downloading, and pointed out they’d still buy the blu-ray set once it was available.

Despite the show being a favourite among filesharers, Game of Thrones is winning increasing numbers of viewers on television, with almost four million tuning in on Sunday nights for a new episode in the US.

I for one can’t wait to buy the blu-ray set. I am watching Season Two on Soho, but yes had to torrent a couple of episodes of Series One I missed as there was no other way to view them.

The cartoon linked above is so spot on, I have included it over the break for people to see.

Continue reading »

The Dom Post reported:

Businesses considering overseas expansion will be looking for a smooth and cost-effective process that can enhance earnings potential and spread risk, he says.

One Wellington-based company that is successfully spreading its wings – into the Australian market – is business consulting firm Davanti Consulting.

Set up five years ago by the four principals – Matt Farrar, Mick Bell, Justin Hamilton and Rob Carter – Davanti now has a staff of 85 in its two New Zealand offices and, within the past year, has also opened offices in Sydney and Melbourne.

And the company is looking to expand even further afield, talking about taking its product offerings to the Asian market.

“You’ve got to be forward thinking, but the key for us is that within our New Zealand domestic market we’ve established a reputation for being good at what we do and we’ve built up a bunch of credentials that show that, giving us leverage into Australia,” says Mr Farrar.

He attributes much of Davanti’s success to date in Australia to the company’s partnership with enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce.com.

“Our business with them in New Zealand has been very successful, they needed good partners in Australia and on the back of their commitment to supporting us there we chose to head into the Australian market as well.”

Enhancing Davanti’s reputation even further is the fact that the company took out top honours at Salesforce.com‘s awards dinner this month in Sydney.

“We were announced as their partner of the year for all of Australasia, a pretty good outcome given we’ve only been operating in the Australian market for just over a year,” says Mr Farrar.

“It’s a fantastic result, and one we can leverage off – it’s exciting to win that against a whole bunch of more established Australian organisations.”

Meanwhile, the Regus survey’s analysis into perceived barriers to international expansion found that companies around the world cite access to “property” and “people” as the key obstacles.

Among Kiwi firms, 30 per cent of businesses say the biggest obstacle to overseas expansion is the challenge of setting up a physical presence in a foreign country.

And 57 per cent of companies admit property commitments have to be very short term when setting up a foreign operation, as they do not know how quickly or slowly they will grow.

Opinion is split over whether senior management for overseas operations should be from the home country (41 per cent) or a local manager (30 per cent).

“The ‘people’ issues do require careful judgment,” says Mr Willems, “and decisions about whether to install a local manager or one from the company’s home country are critical, and largely rest on whether sales are handled mainly through a few major distributors, or with direct contact among a wide range of customers”.

Such decisions will depend on the type and size of the business and the industry of operation, he says.

Mr Farrar says expansion has brought challenges for Davanti, and, as the Regus survey shows, the “people” issue has been one of them.

He agrees there’s often debate around whether to install a local manager or bring in someone.

In Davanti’s case, it has chosen a local manager for its Sydney and Melbourne operations and is in the process of finding just the right leadership.

And that is something Mr Farrar says is key to being successful across the Tasman.

But the biggest challenge of all, he says, is working out a point of difference.

“For us it’s agility. Our expertise and agility in delivering cloud solutions enables us to produce successful outcomes for both large and small clients.”

While people and property are perceived as potentially major challenges, the wide availability of flexible workspace options around the globe make the “property” element more perception than reality, says Mr Willems.

Technology in particular has been a key enabler in helping firms overcome the difficulties of setting up a fixed office space, he says.

“And the virtual office has provided a platform for firms of all sizes to access global markets of scale but at a fraction of the cost.” 

Matt and his three partners set up Davanti just five years ago, and it was basically just the four of them at the beginning. To have built that up to a firm of 85 staff is a huge achievement. The expansion to Australia is an opportunity to grow even faster.

Curia, which I own, is just eight years old and employs a fair few staff also, so between us the Farrars are doing our bit for job growth!

Paula Bennett has proposed that taxpayer fully subsidise contraception to beneficiaries, on an entirely voluntary basis.  A policy which also happens to have widespread support. One can debate the pros and cons of it in terms of effectiveness, but it is a quite middle of the road proposal.

This of course is compared to Josef Mengele who was Chief Medical Officer at the Birkenau and later Auschwitz extermination camps. Mengele once ordered the gassing of 750 women because their block was infected with lice. Mengele also injected chemicals into children’s eyes to try and change their eye colour, amputated limbs for no medical reason, sterilized girls against their will, killed twins so he could dissect them, had two twins sewn together to try and conjoin them.

Cartoonists enjoy a wide latitude by their editors. This is how it should be. But there is a point at which an editor should say a cartoon is so offensive they do not wish to publish it.

The Dominion Post has made a grievous judgment of error in publishing that cartoon, and at a minimum owe an apology to Paula Bennett. There is no room in our political discourse for comparing MPs to Nazis, especially Josef Mengele.

Brian Edwards blogs:

The absence of anyone from Labour on The Nation was explained by Garner at the very start of the show. The programme had invited Labour’s Spokesperson for Economic Development and Associate Finance Spokesperson, David Cunliffe, to discuss more or less the same things that Norman and Peters were discussing on Q & A – the future direction of the economy. Cunliffe was happy to appear but, conscious of the current sensitivities in the parliamentary party over Labour’s leadership, sought an assurance that that topic would not be canvassed in the interview. He received that assurance in writing from Executive Producer Richard Harman and Garner himself. 

Despite those assurances, Cunliffe’s appearance was later vetoed by what Garner called Labour’s ‘top team’ which he defined as ‘David Shearer and the media team’. The reason given was apparently that the ‘top team’ didn’t want anything to distract from Finance Spokesman David Parker so close to the Budget.

Shearer was badly advised to ban Cunliffe from appearing. Rather than make his speech less of an issue, it has made it an even greater issue.

Anyway, ‘the top team’ didn’t like Cunliffe’s brilliant speech and he was apparently bawled out by Shearer and others and told the  speech was’ naive and stupid.’ That tends to be the price you pay for idealism. And, according to the extremely  well informed Duncan Garner, the  price may be high for Cunliffe who has been ‘put in his place, somewhere down the bottom of the pecking order’.

This is so utterly stupid that it beggars belief. Cunliffe is not only intellectually brilliant, he is by far Labour’s most accomplished debater in the House and on television and radio.  No-one in the Labour Party can hold a candle to him as a media spokesperson. Stammering and stuttering seem to be the main criteria for that at present.

Ouch. That is pretty brutal.

Finally, given the paranoia that clearly surrounds Cunliffe in the Labour Caucus, I should perhaps add that nothing in this post came from him.

Cunliffe had a good career before he entered Parliament. If he remains marginalised, I would not be surprised if he packs it in at the next election – which would be a pity. That is however the hope of some in the ABC faction.

This is an issue that should be investigated by the Government or the Auditor-General. Yet again we have evidence of taxpayer-funded groups using their funding to lobby the Government for specific law and policy changes.

This is an extremely bad thing. The Government should not be effectively paying people to lobby Parliament and the Government a specific way.  Just as Ministries are forbidden to lobby, it is equally wrong for them to contract other groups to lobby.

This was first exposed in 2003. Then ACT MP Rodney Hide revealed that Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and five other NGOs were receiving taxpayer money from the Ministry of Health to help lobby MPs on the Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill (the one that banned smoking in bars and cafes).

The Director-General of Health then ordered a State Services Commission investigation into the matter (the Hunn/Brazier inquiry). Hunn and Brazier considered that the advocacy and lobbying clauses in six contracts were unacceptable under public service standards and in their view could compromise the political neutrality of the Ministry of Health. They recommended that future agreements with NGOs explicitly exclude lobbying activities.

The Treasury’s most recent guidelines (2009) for contracts with non-governmental organisations also make it clear: “Government agencies should also be careful to ensure that contracts do not breach public service standards of political neutrality”.

However, the Health Ministry is still funding the “advocacy” and “awareness raising” that these organisations engage in. The Ministry still funds ASH and other organisations like the Public Health Association – it is just more careful about what it puts in the contracts.

The current ASH contract allows it to “liaise with government and private health agencies, the media and any other appropriate organisations to raise public awareness of tobacco related issues and developments”. It says it will “prepare and distribute media briefings, commentary and releases on key tobacco issues. This will include maintaining relationships with key media.”

A quick look at the ASH website makes it clear it is a lobby group, but a lobby group that gets 89% of its funding from the taxpayer. I am all in favour of taxpayer funding quit smoking initiatives, but not funding a lobby group. One of its values is “A dedication to influencing public policy and social norms to tobacco related harm.” It has a page on its current campaigns, of which seven are about law changes, only one is actually about quitting smoking,

The current ASH contract provides for it to receive $578,000 p.a of taxpayer money in 2012. I’d say the vast majority of this goes on lobbying and media activities.

The Public Health Association received $311,967 from government grants in 2011, $305,843 in 2010 and $323,498 in 2009. In its financial statements it lists an item of income as “Advocacy/Healthy Public Policy”, as well as “Informed Debate/Communications”.

The PHA says that it “takes a leading role in promoting public health and influencing public policy…Our goal is to improve the health of all New Zealanders by progressively strengthening the organised efforts of society by being an informed collaborative and strong advocate for public health.”

On its website it has a letters to the editor guide.  It says: “Do you feel strongly about a public health issue? Write a letter to the editor using our simple letter writing techniques, list of email addresses and examples of sample letters (alcohol, housing, tobacco, oral health and preventing family violence).”

Smoke-free Coalition

The Smokefree Coalition (www.sfc.org.nz) says it is “committed to preventing the uptake of smoking among young people and reducing the smoking rates of all New Zealanders” and it has published a road-map for how to make NZ smoke-free by 2025. It received $167,213 in 2011 and 2010 and $179,890 in 2009 from government. This represented 98%, 96% and 95% of its funding in each of those years.

Those are just three examples where there is over a million dollars a year of government money going to NGOs for lobbying.

Another example is  the Turanga website (a government funded anti-smoking research initiative) has posted a page listing “3 ways to support a tobacco tax increase.” One of the ways is to write to MPs. The website directs readers to http://www.taxtobacco.org.nz/ in which readers can fill in their name and write a personal message to Key, Ryall, English or Turia. Readers can select from a range of sentences that they have written for them.

Now I personally support an increase in tobacco tax. But that is not the point. Government money should not be used for NGOs to campaign for what the law should be. It is the thin end of corruption.

The second way of supporting a tobacco increase is: “ASH have some tax postcards to send to John Key, Bill English, Tony Ryall and Tariana Turia. If you would like a batch please email ash via their website www.ash.org.nz with your postal address and let ASH Director Ben Youdan know how many you need.”

That is also explicitly political lobbying.

As an individual taxpayer I’d be quite happy to donate some of my money to anti-smoking groups. But the Government should only fund anti-smoking groups which actually provide stop smoking services or genuine medical research. They should not fund advocacy groups to influence public opinion on future law and policy changes. ASH and the PHA should have their public funding removed, and they should rely on donations like all the other advocacy groups out there have to.

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

CYBER-BULLIES: It used to be, if you were bullied at school, home could be a refuge. But now in the age of the internet—bullies can always be there simply with a click of a mouse. How can we reduce the harm caused by cyber-bullies? The law commission has several proposals but how many will or should we adopt? Do parents need to do more to protect their kids on the internet? Can they do more? And when the Chief Coroner talks—why aren’t we listening?

A REQUIRED SHOT: A new proposal under consideration for beneficiaries—immunise your children to get your benefit. As Social Development Minister Paula Bennett says, “We see immunisations as important so when you’re looking at those kinds of things, you question at what point should a social obligation be part of a requirement to get a benefit.” We’ve got shocking immunisation rates—so is this a good idea? Or benefit bashing? As always, prevention is cheaper than a cure so does compulsory immunisation make sense? By that argument then, why not require immunisation jabs for entry into schools?

Join us for a night of LIVE pub politics from the Backbencher Pub: Wednesday, 16th of May. Our Panel: Green Party MP Holly Walker, Labour MP Grant Robertson, National MP Colin King, and New Zealand First MP Tracey Martin.

Wednesday 9.05 pm, and Saturday 10.05 pm – TVNZ 7

The Press editorial:

It will now be possible to consider Dalziel’s criticisms of the recovery process – and they have been many and seem to encompass just about everyone involved – the mayor, the minister, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority – without the thought they are designed to advance any designs on the mayoralty.

And the Council. Dalziel has been pretty relentlessly critical of everyone and everything.

Whether, if Labour were to win power in 2014, Dalziel would be a good choice to take Gerry Brownlee’s job as the minister for earthquake recovery is highly debatable. It is, in any case, a slightly unambitious goal. By the time it could come about, more than 2 1/2 years from now, the hard political and financial decisions on earthquake recovery will largely have been taken. By that time, it must be hoped, the recovery will be well under way and any ministerial involvement will have become peripheral.

Indeed. In fact the big decisions should all be made by mid 2013 I hope.

While Dalziel has many commendable personal qualities – and her energy as a critic of what is being done has been indefatigable – whether she would be the right person for the job is doubtful. She has been a minister before, of course, and though she was competent enough she hardly shone in the role.

That is a bit unfair. While I don’t share her policies, Dalziel was actually an  effective Commerce Minister, and one of the better performing Labour Ministers.

 In addition, her well-signalled party-political partisanship could hinder her capacity to get on with others in a job that requires party politics to be put firmly aside. Her suggestion for some new layer of bureaucracy between the minister and Cera – as if more bureaucracy is what is required – also does not augur well.

I agree. Having the Minister appoint a board who supervise the CERA CEO seems bizarre. You have boards for commercial SOEs, not for government departments.

With Dalziel out of the running, attention can now turn to other possible contenders. While it may be a thankless job in many ways, it is also one of unprecedented opportunity and the incumbent Bob Parker shows no signs of having lost his appetite for it. At this early stage, talk inevitably centres on sitting councillors, and the names of Tim Carter, Peter Beck and Glenn Livingstone have been mentioned. All are very new to the council and their only mark of distinction so far is their inexperience in all the skills that will be needed in the next phase of Christchurch’s recovery. Neither they, nor indeed anyone else on the council, inspires much confidence as a future leader of the city and voters may be forgiven for hoping some better alternatives emerge before the election.

The Council obviously has bitter divisions. A new Mayor from one of those factions, will just compound the frictions. If people want an alternative to Bob Parker, they need someone not currently on Council who has proven leadership experience.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. The comrades at Socialist International have downgraded the NZ Laboru Party to observer status because they have not paid their bills. I presume this is because they are broke or inefficient, rather than a renouncing of socialism. Presumably Jacinda Ardern (the former President of the International Union of Socialist Youth) is aghast at this downgrade. Chris Flatt may have some explaining to do.

Hat Tip: Whale Oil

A reader writes:

Because of the new VSM legislation, the WSU is no longer allowed to force students to join their union. Because the union no longer represents all students, as some students choose not to join (64% have not joined despite membership being free) the university no longer sees them as being representative of all students.

This has resulted in the WSU losing its default seat on the university council, and the university holding its own elections. The WSU has elected to stand a candidate in this election. There are three other candidates. Voting is done online, and the university has done a terrible job regulating and enforcing the election.

The WSU has found a way to get around the VSM legislation which stopped them forcing students to pay their fee’s by simply becoming a “service provider” for the university. This allows their fee to be charged to students via the student services levy, regardless of whether they join the union or not. As part of this agreement the WSU is funded to provide services such as student media – Nexus Magazine.

The student union clearly decided that the biggest election on campus was not news worthy and failed to run profiles etc of the candidates to inform students of their options, however, felt it was appropriate to have their candidate, Sapphire Gillard (the WSU President), promoted in the magazine with a full page. No other candidates were advertised.

The WSU also felt it was appropriate to have paid WSU staff campaigning throughout the election, with laptops set up, and posters advertising the WSU candidate plastered behind on a backdrop, offering cake (which the president apparently paid for herself) and tea, coffee, and hot chocolate (which the WSU paid for) to students who voted. This raises questions of fairness in the campaign, given some of the other candidates are WSU members.

What value to students get from this campaign?

Clearly this is not a service the university funds them for?

This is not the first time the WSU and Waikato University have acted unethically.

Students at Waikato voted three times to be voluntary in the 1990s. Then one year the university (when former UK Labour MP Bryan Gould was Vice-Chancellor) scheduled a fresh vote on whether to have WSU voluntary or compulsory. They gave only around three working days notice of the vote and scheduled it for study week when almost no students are on campus. Hence a small number of compulsion touts managed to make WSU compulsory again.

It is outrageous for WSU to use money granted to it from the university, to support their own candidate in an election, rather than allow a fair election.

My view is that if universities have enough money to help fund partisan election campaigns, then they need no more funding from the taxpayer.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister John Key says he would give initial support to a proposed bill allowing gay marriage. 

Labour’s rainbow caucus chair Louisa Wall said she was drafting a private members’ bill which would define marriage and enable same sex couples to wed.

The bill, which has yet to be discussed by the wider Labour caucus, would have to be drawn from a ballot before it went before Parliament. …

Key this morning said he would vote for the bill’s first reading if it was pulled from the ballot.

“Personally I’m not opposed. There will be a range of views of course. Let’s have the debate.”

The bill may not get drawn for months or years, so the debate may not be immediate. But having seen nothing bad happen with civil unions (except allowing people in a stable relationship commit to each other and gain legal rights), I can’t see too many getting worked up about same sex marriage.

UK Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron said last year:

The Prime Minister said “commitment” in relationships should be valued regardless of whether it involved “a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and another man”. …

Speaking to the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, Mr Cameron said: “We’re consulting on legalising gay marriage. To anyone who has reservations, I say: Yes, it’s about equality, but it’s also about something else: commitment.

“Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other.