John Hartevelt at Stuff reports:

The party may yet take a serious run at trying to win the Auckland Central seat in 2014. It is one of four electorates considered potential targets if the party decides to run more than just a party vote campaign next time.

The candidate there, Denise Roche, has a solid history in the electorate and there was a strong Green Party vote there in 2011. The third element needed to encourage serious optimism about a Green winning an electorate is weakish Labour and National candidates – not the case in Auckland Central but potentially true in Rongotai or Dunedin North by 2014.

I had been meaning to write on this issue for a while, as the Greens are indeed considering a number of seats which they could possibly win in 2014. It is unlikely they would ever drop below the 5% threshold and need the “safety net” but there are considerable benefits from having one or more seats anyway in terms of certainity plus broader community mandate and the like.

The three seats I thought the Greens should (and were) looking at are Wellington Central, Hutt South and Rongotai. I hadn’t considered Auckland Central and Dunedin North so let’s look at them also.

Wellington Central

This is arguably the most winnable seat for the Greens, for two reasons. The first is it had their highest party vote of any seat – 27.7%. They actually got more party votes than Labour did. So if all the Green party voters voted for the Green candidate, then they would be in the game. 62% of Green voters voted for the Labour candidate. If the Greens made it clear they wanted to win the seat, and have it as a secure base for the party, many of their voters would respond.

Now the incumbent Labour MP, Grant Robertson, is generally well regarded in the seat, and you would expect him to retain some support from Green voters. But then we come to the second factor – National voters. 15,000 people voted National, 11,000 Green and around 10,000 Labour. If National voters accepted their candidate could not win the seat (which is my view), how would they vote in a choice between the Labour Party Deputy Leader, and the Green candidate (especially if it is again James Shaw who has wide appeal)? I’d say many National voters would vote for Shaw over Robertson, and the Greens could well win the seat – and hold it for a long time. Worth remembering Wellington City has a Green Mayor.

Rongotai

Rongotai had the second highest party vote for the Greens, at 24.2%. Co-Leader Russel Norman got 20.2% of the electorate vote. More Green voters voted for Norman than King. Now King would be safe in the seat, but a new candidate at the 2014 election (maybe Andrew Little or Darren Hughes) might not fare so well.

But the real excitement is what if Annette King stands for, and wins, Mayor of Wellington, causing a by-election in 2013. By-elections often favour smaller parties. The Alliance almost won Tamaki in 1992 and Selwyn in 1994. ACT came second in Taranaki – King Country in 1997. If there is a 2013 by-election, I think Russel Norman would have a good chance of victory, unless Labour puts up a real star.

Hutt South

Now on the numbers Hutt South is not a Green stronghold. They got 12% on the party vote. But I have spies (well friends) in Hutt South and all I hear about is how new Green MP Holly Walker is everywhere. She is acting as a de facto electorate MP, and lots of people are saying how good she is.

Even the current electorate MP Trevor Mallard won’t say a bad word about her. In fact he seems very proud of her. Now Trevor will stand again, but Hutt South locals could just decide they want a fresh, energetic representative who is likely to become a party (co) leader in due course, and a senior Minister. Plus factor in the Nats whom loathe Mallard, and would tactically vote. Plus there’s a fair few in Labour not so happy with Mallard also, as a reminder of what people voted out in 2008. Now there may not be a lot of them in Hutt South, but I would not under-estimate Walker’s potential appeal.

Auckland Central

Auckland Central is the fourth highest party vote for Greens – at 22.8%. Denise Roche is a well known and quite popular representative (especially on Waiheke). She only got 2,900 or so votes but that is because Green supporters were urged to vote for Jacinda Ardern to try and beat Nikki Kaye. 63% of Green voters voted Ardern and only 21% Roche. However that would change if the Greens were trying to win the seat – especially as Roche is home-grown, and not an import. Labour received only 800 more party votes than Labour.

However I have to say I regard it as unlikely that Roche would win the seat off Kaye in 2014. Kaye saw off the very high profile (and now Labour #4) Jacinda Ardern, and boundary changes next year are likely to favour Kaye. National has grown its party vote in Auckland Central in each of the last three elections, partly as a result of boundary changes.

However if the Greens went for a medium-term strategic approach, they would be sensible to target Auckland Central in 2014. While I do not think they would win in 2014, I think it is quite possible Roche could come second, and when Kaye retires be in prime position to take the seat.

Dunedin North

This has the third highest party vote fr the Greens at 23.4%.  Turei got around 20% of the electorate vote. However Labour had around 3,000 more party votes than the Greens which makes it a harder seat to take. David Clark seems to be reasonably well regarded. Also National’s party vote is not so high in this seat, so even if some of them tactically voted, it is hard to see Clark losing.

So overall while none of them are certs, there are a number of strong possibilities for the Greens. If I were them, I wouldn’t just choose one seat to target, but go for three or four where they could be contenders, to maximise their chances of winning at least one of them. It is not at all impossible that they could even win more than one electorate seat.

Claire Trevett at NZ Herald reports:

Donations towards MPs’ election campaigns came from diverse sources, ranging from artists to fisheries companies and Australian unions and some disclosed donations well in excess of the $25,000 spending limit.

This is  because the $25,000 spending limit only covers advertising expenses, and also is for the last three months only. The total cost of an electorate campaign is usually in excess of this.

In the three months before an election, candidates can spend up to $25,000. However, there are no limits on spending on election material before that.

And again only certain types of expenditure counts towards the limit.

Labour MP Andrew Little’s disclosure of $29,975 in donations included $2500 from Crafar Farms receiver Michael Stiassny, who is a partner at KordaMentha and chairman of the board of Vector. Mr Little said he first met Mr Stiassny when the pair worked on the collapse of Ansett. They had stayed in touch ever since and were “good mates”.

A former EPMU secretary, Mr Little also disclosed two $1500 donations from Australian unions, including the coal miners’ union which he said had been supportive over the Pike River disaster. The maximum donation allowed from overseas donors is $1500. Todd Energy also gave $5000 to Mr Little and his National Party rival in New Plymouth, Jonathan Young.

That is interesting that Andrew and Stiassny are mates. I don’t know Mr Stiassny, but from  various accounts he is not the most popular person in the country – to be fair that sort of goes with being a receiver.

Also interesting the $3,000 from foreign unions to try and help Andrew win New Plymouth.

The returns showed Auckland Central MP Nikki Kaye spent almost twice as much as her main rival, Labour’s Jacinda Ardern, on the battle for the seat – but Ms Ardern raked in the big donations. Ms Kaye spent $21,347 on her campaign in the Auckland Central seat while Ms Ardern spent just $11,365.

This is spending attributed to the candidate. It is worth noting That Labour  also spent around $10,500 in advertising in Auckland Central on top of that $11,365 and National spent around $3,000. Generally how it works is that most advertisement ask for both the party and the electorate vote so you can split the cost 50/50 if you want. Labour split most of their ads 50/50 while National did not (as they did not want the electorates spending too much of the party vote budget.

However, Ms Ardern declared $27,295 of donations for her campaign – including artworks for a fundraiser from artists John Reynolds, Greer Twiss and Karl Maughan, worth a combined total of $10,750. Ms Kaye got just $5525 in donations – most of it from National’s central office.

Again some context is needed here. These are not the total level of donations for each candidate. They are merely the total level of donations above the disclosure limit of $1,500. If a candidate received 30 donations of $1,000 each, none of that would be disclosed. One can not know from the Electoral Commission returns, how much money a campaign received.

Also a minor correction. National’s head office does not donate money to electorate campaigns – in fact it is very much the other way around – electorates “donate” considerably to the central campaign. The error would be based on the fact that the address used in the return was the Wellington head office address – but that is because electorates are part of the overall party, and that is the official office address. However almost certainly any donation from the party to a candidate is from the local electorate.

All candidate donations of more than $1500 must be disclosed. The return of donations to political parties is yet to be released. All party donations of more than $15,000 must be disclosed and parties will now also have to disclose the number of donations they received in bands of between $1500 and $5000 and $5000 to $15000.

The party returns will be interesting. Any donation over $30,000 has already been disclosed, but we will get to see the donors between $15,000 and $30,000 plus see the overall level of donations in bands.

The Electoral Commission has all the submissions on the MMP review online. There are over 100 pages of them.

I’ve done a table showing the positions of the political parties on the various issues. While they will not necessarily carry huge weight with the Electoral Commission, they do show what there may or not be support for within the House, when it comes to dealing with any recommendations.

Before I go into each issue, I would comment that overall I thought the political party submissions were (perhaps inevitable) very self-interested, and not particularly well argued (little research quoted etc).

On the issue of the party vote threshold, National, NZ First and ACT support it remaining at 5%. I give credit to NZ First for supporting a 5% threshold, when when they failed to make it in 2008. A rare example of principle before self-interest.  Labour and Greens support it reducing to 4% (as do I), and the Conservatives opt for 3.5% and United for 3% – for fairly obvious reasons.

On the issue of the electorate seat threshold to get list MPs, National, Conservative, ACT and United support it remaining. Labour and Green support it going (presumably as a way to stop ACT or United ever gaining List MPs again), and NZ First say that if a party wins an electorate seat then their party vote threshold should drop from 5% to 4%.

On the issue of the ratio of electorate seats to list seats, National and ACT support the status quo. Greens say there should be a set ratio, without saying what. Labour proposes a change to an 80:40 Parliament (even thought that would probably make disproportional results more likely). United goes further and proposes 90:30, so long as there is preferential voting in electorate seats (they believe this means more proportional distribution of electorates, but I would suggest Queensland shows this not to be the case).

The overhang issue has all parties supporting the status quo.

On the issue of dual candidacy (where an electorate candidate can also be on the party list), all seven parties supported the status quo of allowing it. This is no surprise as dual candidacy works very well for political parties. Whether it is so good for voters is another issue.

The parties were also united on the issue of closed lists, with none of them (except United Future who says list ranking should be based on the percentage of party votes a candidate gets) wanting the public to be allowed to rank their lists for them. Again, no surprise.

And once again on the issue of List MPs standing in by-elections, no party wanted a change from the status quo.

In terms of other issues, National suggesting increasing the tolerance for electorate boundaries from 5% to 10%, and Labour and United suggested that List MPs who leave their party should have to leave Parliament.

So overall it is clear that there is no realistic possibility of changes around by-elections, list ranking, overhang and dual candidacy rules. No party supports change there, as it is not in their interests.

There are a couple of differing views on the ration of electorate to list MPs, but none of the parties has come up with a workable alternative to the status quo.

So in reality, the only area where there is a clash of views is on the threshold – 5% vs 4% and whether to have the one electorate seat threshold.

This is not to say that the Electoral Commission will recommend what the parties have submitted. In fact I hope they don’t. They will I am sure apply their own judgement to the issues. But the submissions do show that there is not a lot of parliamentary appetite for significant change.

Sadly Easter is over, and today is the long drive back to Wellington. I said on Twitter last night I’d love Easter to be longer which got a Labour acquaintance excited at me supporting more public holidays, until I said but in return I’d cancel Labour Day and Queens birthday 🙂

On Easter Sunday we … well … did nothing … and it was great. Just spent the day reading and drinking in the sun on the balcony.

One would never get sick of the view.

On Easter Monday headed back to Cathedral Cove, this time getting there early. Spent the day swimming, sunning and reading.

This is on the other side of the cave, at Mare’s Leg Cove. As you can see with the tide higher you can get cut off.

Incredible to think of the cave having been created over so many years by tidal pressures. Some parts of the interior now have concrete, to stop it collapsing on us!

At a guess, I’d say this young lad is not happy there is no longer an ice cream seller with a concession for the Cove!

The weather forecast was for terrible weather and rain all Easter. As it turned out, the weather was brilliant. Almost makes up for the summer!

Claire Trevett in NZ Herald reports:

Winston Peters says the cost of this country’s passports, which raked in $79 million last year, is a rip-off compared with many other nations’.

The NZ First leader yesterday called for lower passport fees, saying he had received a number of complaints about the cost and the five-year term for which they lasted.

A review of passport fees is expected next year.

In 2005, the fee increased from $71 and the term was reduced from 10 to five years as New Zealand moved to biometric passports.

Remind me again who was Foreign Minister from 2005 to 2008?

Now if Winston had actually done some homework, he would have looked up the DIA Annual Report, where he would find they have a memorandum account for Passports, recording each year the surplus or deficits from passports. In 2010/11 there was a surplus of around $8 million on revenue of $80 million which suggests there is room for maybe a 10% reduction. The actual income and costs of the service is what matters, now whether or not people have complained about the cost.

The previous year the surplus was $3.9m, so it is increasing.

Geoff Palmer at Stuff reports:

In 2010, Washington DC unveiled its state of the art internet-based electronic voting system.

To demonstrate it, it held a unique public trial: a mock school board election in which people were invited to test the new system and even, they challenged confidently, try to compromise its security. Within days of it going live, an unlisted election candidate – one Bender Bending Rodriguez, also known simply as Bender from the TV series Futurama – was the leading contender, with 100% of the vote.

Which will be used by some as a reason why there should be no Internet voting, but look at the details:

They found an unencrypted copy of every registered voter’s authentication code, and those, combined with the public key used to encrypt the ballots, allowed them to alter every vote already cast and replace any subsequent ones with fakes.

Having the authentication codes unencrypted is a pretty big security hole.

While they were about it, they blocked other attacks coming from New Jersey, India and China, and noticed that hackers from Iran were accessing part of the system via a default admin password (“admin”). 

And that is just incompetence.

There are risks with Internet voting, but they can be minimised and mitigated. You could have (for example) a paper copy print out at Election HQ of every vote cast over the Internet. You can have confirmation e-mails of votes. You can have random audits.

I’m not an advocate of only having Internet voting, but in an era of declining turnouts, having the option to vote over the Internet would help turn that around.

Q+A interviewed David Mahon, a Kiwi who has lived in China for the last 25 years and invests there. Some extracts from the interview:

SHANE      So can you tell us exactly what China wants? Is this just one deal or the start of China targeting our resources?

 DAVID       China actually wants resources – whether they’re fibre, timber, wool – or whether it is protein. In the case of the Crafar farm deal, it’s a search for protein. The Chinese aren’t looking to buy land and to own land around the world; they’re looking to secure the resources that their own narrow agriculture base doesn’t supply them. And given the fact that Chinese are urbanising in such great numbers, and the demand for food is increasing, there is an urgency for the Chinese to secure good lines of supply.

Jenny Shipley has said the same thing. They basically just want secure supply of food, to feed their own population. This is an opportunity, not a threat.

If you look at the Crafar deal, already these farms have been owned by Australian banks. Effectively you’re transferring Westpac debt, largely, into Chinese equity. So the land was already lost to New Zealand by the time the company went into receivership. 

Exactly. The farms are now effectively Australian owned. Those who oppose the sale then are not really against foreign investment – just Chinese investment.

We’re staying at Hot Water Beach, and the name is literal. Within an hour of low tide, you can dig down and hit hot water springs. And they are hot – up to 65 celsius.

The beach gets very crowded, The most inland spots go first, and the challenge of being further out is well the tide comes in over the walls.

One can see the pool taking shape with the workers hard at work.

Me working, and ‘Young Nigella” pretending to work.

One happy child.

Two happy children.

Two more happy bigger children.

One happy couple!

In some of the pools the water got so hot, that they had to let seawater in to cool it down. Our pool was at a very nice temperature – probably 30 celsius or so.  Sadly a slightly cold ending as when the tide started to come back in a large wave crashed into it. Brrrrrrr.

The HoS reports:

Critics are amazed a magazine has named a restaurant as one of Auckland’s top 50 within days of opening for business.

Botswana Butchery opened to the public on March 22. Eleven days later, Metro included it in the magazine’s annual top 50 list.

The restaurant, which has received lukewarm reviews, is a branch of a successful establishment of the same name in Queenstown, and Metro editor Simon Wilson conceded it was in the top 50 partly on faith it would succeed in Auckland.

Personally this devalues any worth from having a list of top restaurants. Maybe for McDonald’s restaurants you can judge one restaurant off one in another city, but how on earth can you for what is meant to be a top restaurant?

“They have a universally highly praised restaurant in Queenstown. We would be surprised if Botswana Butchery in Auckland fell apart.”

So the Metro list is based on assumption?

NZ Herald reviewer John Gardner gave the food an eight out of 10 but the service a six. He wrote a waitress couldn’t tell him about a dish without first returning to the kitchen to ask about it.

Herald on Sunday food critic Peter Calder gave it 3 stars and noted two dishes destined for his table went to a neighbouring one. “It all seemed a bit Fawltyesque for a branch of an established operation,” he wrote.

This week Calder also said he found the restaurant’s email-only booking system “colossally rude and unprofessional”. Another critic, David MacGregor wrote on the Unscrewed website: “When quizzed the waitress wasn’t able to answer a single question about the dishes.”

Which is why you don’t judge on the basis of a sister restaurant in Queenstown.

Russell Gray, chief executive of the Good Group, which owned Botswana Butchery, said he was pleased to be on a list, despite being open only a short time. “We are not new to the industry, we have been successful in the hospitality game for a long time.”

He said the eatery made the list by passing an “acid test” of a Metrojudge’s visit.

However, he agreed that they were working on improving standards of service.

“We are not trying to be a fine dining establishment, we are a fun dining establishment.”

I did not know the two were contradictory.

Anyway the main point is it is silly to be listing any new restaurant as in the top 50, when they have barely been open a week. A credible list is based on experiences over time.

UPDATE: Another bad review for the “top 50” restaurant here. This really dent’s Metro’s credibility. It is fair enough to have differing views, but if you are going to put a restaurant in your top 50 after barely a week of opening, it should have out of this world service – rather than what appears to be consistently poor service.

This week’s Herald politics quiz is here. Got 9/10 in 48 seconds.

I’ve blogged at Curiablog the details of the latest Roy Morgan poll.

It is the first poll since (off memory) 2007 which has shown a centre-left government able to be formed, categorising Labour, Greens, NZ First and Mana as centre-left.

Headed up North just after Thursday lunchtime to avoid the traffic and made Taupo around 5.30 pm. Spent the night in Taupo, and nice view of Lake Taupo as the sun came up.

On the way to the Coromandel stopped at Paeroa for breakfast.

Arrived at Hot Water Beach around lunchtime on Good Friday. This is the place we’re staying at.

The view from the (very large) deck. Yes, we have been out there a lot.

Looking down and out.

And you can see the crowds down at Hot Water Beach during low tide.

Then we headed to Hahei, where above is the start of the walk to Cathedral Cove.

It’s around a 45 minute walk in, and mainly uncovered but a few parts get into the bush.

The view around half way along the path.

Then we are down in the cove. It was highish tide as you can see.

The famous tunnel which makes Cathedral Cove iconic. It was incidentally used as the entrance to Narnia in the Prince Caspian film.

Looking out to sea.

Kids love going up on the ledge. All around the examples of erosion are massive.

At the lookout on the way back, with one of Jadis’ kids. There’s eight of us staying here at the moment, and have some more friends visiting later.

Stuff reports:

Sir Peter Tapsell, the first Maori Speaker of the House, has died at home in Ruatoria, aged 82.

Sir Peter, who entered Parliament in 1981 as the Labour MP for what was then the Eastern Maori electorate, held the role of Speaker from 1993 to 1996.

Before becoming Speaker, Sir Peter held the portfolios of  internal affairs, arts, police, civil defence, science and forestry.

He retired from politics in 1996.

Sir Peter, who was an orthopaedic surgeon before becoming an MP, was awarded a MBE in 1968 for services to medicine and the Maori people.

Sir Peter was a very dignified Speaker, and a rarity – he was a Speaker from an opposition party.

An absolute gentleman, whom few people would ever have a bad word about.

Condolences as always to his family.

Kate Chapman reports at Stuff:

National is likely to come under intense pressure to support extending paid parental leave to six months.

Labour MP Sue Moroney’s Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill has been drawn from the ballot and may have the numbers without National.

UnitedFuture leader Peter Dunne has campaigned on extending paid parental leave to 12 months, and most other political parties, except ACT, are likely to support the bill. That will leave National in a tight spot if it chooses to vote against the family-friendly legislation.

The bill would increase paid parental leave by four weeks a year to 26 weeks in 2014, almost double the current 14 weeks.

It is worth mentioning that the Government can stop the bill being passed into law, even without a majority in Government. If the Minister of Finance signs a certificate saying the bill “would have more than a minor impact on the Government’s fiscal aggregates”, then under Standing Orders the Speaker will not give the bill a third reading. It can however proceed up until then.

On the merits of increasing paid parental leave, lets just say it is a debate which could be worthwhile to have when we are back in surplus, but while we are struggling with debt and deficit, it would be irresponsible to do so.

The Herald reports:

State-owned MightyRiverPower wasted around $100 million on an unnecessary hunt for natural gas in the last decade, its chief executive Doug Heffernan told the commerce select committee.

He was answering questions from Labour MP David Cunliffe for examples of decisions the company might not have made, had it been partially privatised. …

Cunliffe and colleague Clayton Cosgrove peppered Heffernan and MRP chair Joan Withers with questions designed to demonstrate the company has operated no differently than it would have as a private listed owned company, despite its government ownership. …

Asked to nominate decisions that would have been made differently, Heffernan volunteered the company should not have spent around $100 million searching for natural gas in the mid-2000’s, when its subsequent strategy has seen the company concentrate instead on geothermal generation.

“We should have stopped earlier, or not started at all,” said Heffernan. “Under private sector disciplines, we would have corrected much faster. From my experience, in a listed company environment, that would not have happened.”

Having private shareholders and the discipline of being a listed company will make a difference. This is in fact the main rationale for the part-sales (in my eyes), rather than the debt for equity swap.

Answers tomorrow at 7 am

A guest post by Peter Freedman:

Former Health Services Union official Craig Thomson has been a naughty boy. He used a union credit card to visit ladies of the night, obviously to try and recruit them as union members.

Thomson is also a Labor MP. To be a Labor MP in Australia it is not quite compulsory to have been a unionist, but is certainly an advantage.

The dominance of unionists in the Parliamentary Party is distinctly unhealthy. Not only does it give the LNP a stick to beat the left over the head with, but union officials are not always nice people to know

Not that union connections are restricted to leftwing parties. Bill iBirch once confessed to me he had joined the Meatworkers Union when just a lad, probably not something he would bring up over the pinot noir at a National Party pissup.

Thopmson’s dilemma has been all over the rightwing papers and the LNP, understandably, are having a ball. Constant demands that Thomson release to the media his laundry list and the extent of his vegemite addiction are in the news every day.

Questions beginning “Given that the member for Dobell is a proven debaucher of innocent young females, could the Minister please explain……” tumble out one after the other like clowns in a circus.

And the police, Fair Work Australia and a very suspicious man in a grubby raincoat and felt fedora who looks definitely ASIO, have all been ferreting away to get the dirt on Craig T.

Julia Gillard is standing by this ratbag because she has no choice. When the cold winds of a snap election are blowing up your majority skirt all you can do is try to pull it down even if the result is that you protect a scumbag like Thomson.

My prediction is that Thomson will not be charged and if he is will not be convicted. Fucking a prostitute using your penis and someone else’s credit card is hardly the crime of the century.

Thomson, incidentally, was born in Wellington.