Whale Oil has the audio of a Cecil Walker on Morning Report yesterday slagging off Ports of Auckland, talking about how he is forced to walk work 16 hours a day and how the 10% offer from POAL is not worth losing his family over, and how he used to work long hours and almost lost his family over it as he was working 80 hours a week. He even said how one of his kids said he never sees him as he is always at work. He concludes his family is more important than money.

This makes POAL look like a heartless employer, with no consideration for families. However an e-mail to Whale (I presume it is accurate) paints a very different story of POAL, of how they gave Walker 21 weeks off on full pay when his wife had cancer, how they had a limo pick them up from their house to take them to and from Christmas in the Park to meet Frankie Stevens, and even how when he had a baby, The company tracked them down to where they was staying and sent a 5 tiered baby gift basket to him.

Richard Long writes in the Dom Post:

Just what on earth does Grey Power think it is up to? I’d always thought the organisation existed to campaign for pensioners, to ensure superannuation was inflation proofed and that privileges such as the gold card were maintained and extended.

But now the pensioners’ organisation is out there with the Council of Trade Unions, the Labour Party and assorted lefties, leading the charge against the selldown of state assets by means of a citizens-initiated referendum. 

What’s next? Can we expect Lucy Lawless-type acts by the oldies to stop mineral exploration, mining and anything else that might bring economic benefit? This highly politicised new role by the oldies’ lobby group is batty, for a host of reasons.

It is a new level of partisan activity for Grey Power. The more partisan they become, the less influence they have on parties they campaign against.

For a start, with the electorate balanced practically evenly between Left and Right, our half a million pensioners, and the half million approaching retirement, are also likely to be split fairly evenly down the middle in terms of political allegiance. So why has Grey Power opted for the Left-wing route? If those on the Right cancel their subscriptions in protest, Grey Power would be emasculated as a lobby group.

Richard could lead the way by resigning his membership 🙂

If I were John Key I’d be inclined to drop the mild-mannered courtesies for a bit and fire a warning shot across the bows of the activists who have clearly captured Grey Power.

For example, if Grey Power is not interested in reducing debt, through these sales, perhaps he should warn it a logical result would not only be an increase in the pension age and limits on inflation-proofing, but other changes as well, such as gold card restrictions, or even the dreaded means-testing. That would put the cat among the retirement pigeons.

Mr Key could also put the boot in by noting Grey Power, which is supposed to have the interests of retirees at heart, has absolutely no sympathy for the thousands of pensioners who tragically lost their retirement savings in the post-2008 collapse of the finance houses. 

If Grey Power was genuinely concerned, Mr Key could note, it would welcome the addition of such safe investment havens as the partly privatised state assets, so pensioners in future can invest with confidence and safeguard their funds.

As Richard notes, I suspect that Grey Power members will be some of the biggest investors in the SOEs.

Derek Cheng at NZ Herald reports:

Labour leader David Shearer has admitted to embarrassing mistakes in his private member’s bill to restrict foreign ownership of farms, including giving the bill two names and unintentionally removing safeguards for native flora and fauna.

The bill was the first major policy release from Mr Shearer since taking over as party leader.

Under the bill, foreign bids would have to bring substantial increases in jobs or exports through new technology or products, and these must be additional to what would happen if a New Zealander bought the land.

The present law lists a number of factors ministers can consider in determining whether the bid would bring “substantial and identifiable” benefit to New Zealand. Among the factors are protection for native flora and fauna, heritage and cultural sites, and wildlife and walking access.

But Mr Shearer’s bill would wipe these factors completely, effectively meaning an application that ticked the box for more exports but destroyed the environment could get the green light.

I think the Greens just won some more votes off Labour.

Guest Post by Peter Freedman:

It had to happen. Sooner or later Bob Katter would do something absolutely tasteless, totally without any merit of any kind, to try to win votes in the Queensland State election.

Katter is a sort of Australian Winston Peters. He has been in politics for yonks and recently formed his own party. He called it the Australia Party, then decided a more humble The Katter Party sounded better and tried to delay the entire election while the change was made. He lost that round.

Now he has come up with this ad:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/state-election-2012/newman-to-prioritise-fair-dinkum-normal-families-20120312-1utcj.html

For those who can’t get to the link, the ad about is the attitude of opponent, Liberal leader Campbell Newman, over gay marriage.  It repeats the same clip of Newman saying he supports gay marriage, interspersed with a pixelated pic of two apparently naked men being friendly, but not THAT friendly.

The ad asks: “Is a vote for Campbell Newman a vote for gay marriage?” The answer to that incredibly complex question will come later.

On the surface it is just a grubby tasteless ad, the sort that has become a part of modern politics. Sigh at the drop in standards and move on.

Yet this ad has caused a huge kerfuffle in Australia! You would think The Governor General had been snapped performing oral sex on the Prime Minister, while the entire Australia cricket team stood admiringly waiting their turn.

Yes, this is a strange country. The GG, Quentin Bryce, is actually a female.  Ask that question at your next trivia night.

But the reaction to this ad is probably the strangest I have seen since arriving in Australia. Everyone is talking about it. Still worse I can’t find anyone who is defending it, except Bob K himself of course. And me.

The ad, while perhaps disgusting and offensive to some, is true. Newman DOES support gay marriage. The pic of the two men is not indecent, the pixels cover their chests, FFS, and the shot stops well before the dangly bits.

Isn’t this ad just another example of free speech?

Not if you believe last night’s Q and A on the ABC.  There were five people on the panel, an Aboriginal leader, a bright young Labor Cabinet minister, an elderly weather beaten farming leader, a cocky youthful feminist writer and a Liberal MP who wants to be the party leader but dare not say so. A more diverse mob would be hard to find.

Yet they all agreed. Katter’s ad should be banned. It demonized gay people, it was homophobic and deeply objectionable. Throw it on the fire, I say!

But wait, there’s more. Australia’s third most rightwing columnist, Andrew Bolt, the same gentleman so adored by Australia’s fourth most rightwing columnist, Janet Albrechtsen, wants the ad banned as well. Or so the feminist writer said.

Bolt’s blog is here:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/katter_disgraces_himself/

Nowhere that I can find does he call for a ban. But he clearly didn’t like the advertisement, terms like “a vile ad, openly and shamelessly appealing to homophobia” tend to give that impression.

Unfortunately for his credibility, Bolt has been openly and shamelessly appealing to the worst of human nature for years.  This man has been openly and shamelessly in and out of court so often there’s talk of providing a revolving door marked “Andrew Bolt Entrance” on one side and “Andrew Bolt Exit” on the other.

Bolt is a “Stolen Generation” denier. Despite all the historical documentation he continues to claim that large numbers of black kids weren’t snatched from their families to be placed with white families. He once asked a professor to provide “just 10 names” of stolen kids.  When the prof produced four pages of names, Bolt still remained unconvinced.

Then he defamed a magistrate, claiming she had hugged two drug traffickers as she set them free.  The magistrate said she shook their hands to congratulate them for completing a rehab programme and a jury believed her. Bolt got it wrong because he couldn’t be bothered contacting the magistrate for her side of the story, one of the first things I learned when I became a journalist. It is called “balance” or “getting both sides”.

That little mishap cost Bolt, or his employers, $246,000 in damages.

Then in late 2010, Bolt was sued by seven people for a series of columns claiming white people in Australia sometimes pretend to be black for political or career advancement. Again he was found to have broken the law. Fortunately for his employers the seven only wanted their names cleared and sought no money .

Every time he is criticized Bolt falls back on his rights  of free speech.  But isn’t Bob Katter’s ad free speech? Apparently not.

I am of Jewish ancestry. If a Nazi in full uniform marched up and down a public spot yelling  “Sieg Heil” I wouldn’t stop and offer him some matzo ball soup.  But I would believe he had a right to make a dick  of himself, whether  beschnittener or unbeschnittener. It’s called free speech.

“I disapprove of what you say, but will defend with my life your right to say it” – Though these words are regularly attributed to Voltaire, they were first used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym of Stephen G Tallentyre in The Friends of Voltaire (1906).

 “Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also”  Henrich Heine,99 years before the Nazis came to power.

 Think about it.

For the record I do not agree with what Peter has said on Andrew Bolt.  Nowhere has Bolt said the ad should be banned (as noted) so there is no issue of consistency. I would have thought Peter would welcome the leading conservative commentator in Australia saying “But to oppose civil unions is just bloody-minded interference in the lives of others”.

There is also another side of the story on the issues cited about Bolt. For example the debate about the stolen generation wasn’t whether or not lots of Aboriginal children were not put into white families. It was about how many were taken without the consent of a parent, and where there was no abuse – which is far fewer number.

Gareth Hughes blog at Frog Blog:

With the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations having just occurred in Melbourne I’m urging the Government not to surrender New Zealand’s sovereignty on copyright so we can keep enjoying Kiwi Music in the public domain.

Under a leaked draft of the TPPA, copyright length is to be extended from 50 to ‘…not less than 95 years from the end of the calendar year of the first authorized publication of the work, performance, or phonogram,’ meaning music and recordings set to enter the public domain in New Zealand will take decades longer.

An iconic song that would be impacted by the copyright extension is the Fourmyula’s “Nature”which was voted the best New Zealand song ever written. Produced in 1969 this song should enter the public domain in 2020 to be remixed, re-played, and re-imagined however under proposed TPPA rules Kiwis would have to wait to 2065. Likewise Ray Columbus’s “She’s a Mod,” released in June 1964 wouldn’t enter the public domain till 2059.

The extension in the term of copyright would mean no new works would enter the public domain in New Zealand until at least the late 2050s negatively impacting access to New Zealand culture and history. In particular ‘orphan works’ that aren’t available commercially would just not be accessible.

Kiwi listeners and artists will miss out on freely accessing Kiwi classics until the 2060s not benefiting the musicians who would have likely died decade’s prior, but benefitting mostly very profitable businesses who own the copyright. Copyright is about finding a balance and I welcome a discussion – should it be 40, 50, 60 years etc. but I think 95 years is extreme.

95 years definitely is extreme, and the TPP should not be used to rewrite our copyright and other intellectual property laws. The Government has been resisting the US demands, but of course at some stage there will be great pressure to make concessions. Our concessions should be  allowing the US to export whatever goods or services they want to us, but not allowing them to export their laws onto us.

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

CASUALIZATION OF WORKERS: The union protests at the Ports of Auckland continues—the Maritime Union wants a continuation of eight-hour shifts and job security. While the ports wants greater flexibility and productivity. But is greater flexibility—the casualization of the workforce—the future? Should any worker expect job security? Have the needs of workers and businesses changed? Is the age of 9-5 over? Or are businesses thinking only of themselves?

JOB CUTS: Every industry is looking to cut money from their budgets and our State Sector is not any different. MFAT is looking to save $40million but they are not alone with the Defence force and the Police are looking at places to save, too. Some 3500 public sector jobs are set to go but does this mean a cut in services. Or was the industry bloated in need of big cost cutting measures? With new technologies—do we need as much staff? Is the future—doing more with less?

Join us for a night of LIVE pub politics from the Backbencher Pub: Wednesday, 14th of March. Our Panel: Green Party MP Gareth Hughes, Labour MP Kris Faafoi, and National MP Ian McKelvie.
Wednesday at 9.05pm and Saturday at 10.05pm | TVNZ 7

Hayden Donnell at NZ Herald reports:

Radio Live host Willie Jackson has called for striking wharfies to mount violent “militant action” in their ongoing battle with Ports of Auckland bosses.

Mr Jackson, a former trade union organiser and Alliance Party MP, supported the striking port workers’ calls for eight hour shifts and job security on his Radio Liveafternoon slot today.

He called Ports of Auckland bosses “greedy, filthy, right wing fundamentalists” who were led by a “gutless wonder” mayor.

Intimidation or violence was needed to stop non-union workers being called in to do the striking workers’ jobs, he said.

We first saw some violence on the protest, against counter-protesters. Then there was damage done to at least one car this morning. And now a former MP is advocating there needs to be more violence and intimidation.

Will the CTU and/or the Maritime Union condemn Jackson’s remarks, and say they support peaceful protest only? Or will they implicitly condone them, by remaining silent? For they are the ones who have organised the picket line, so they can’t say it is nothing to do with them.

UPDATE: Jackson now says he only wants the union to be more militant and use greater intimidation, but not use violence, after his earlier remarks were highlighted.

APNZ reports:

A young construction worker was seriously injured when he fell onto a steel rod and was impaled in Auckland this afternoon.

The man, thought to be aged 18, was doing work for Canam Construction at Meadowbank Primary School when the incident occurred about 1.15pm.

An ambulance spokesman said he was thought to have been impaled through his rectum.

Ouch indeed. Luckily it looks like he will survive to be the butt of a few jokes at his workplace.

A further article from the CIS paper – You Can’t Say That! Freedom of Speech and the Invisible Muzzle.

This one is by Janet Albrechtsen, a columnist with the Australian.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

— Mark Twain

It’s tempting to assume that the PC-crowd is having us on. How else can we explain the Seattle school’s decision last year to rename Easter eggs as ‘Spring spheres,’ worrying that a chocolate egg might remind, or even worse, offend kids by alluding to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Sesame Street has been sanitised too: episodes made between 1969 and 1974 are screened with an adults-only warning. Enid Blyton has not been spared either. To appease the ‘don’t smack children’ lobby, Dame Slap is now Dame Snap. Feminists have been accommodated: Julian and Dick are now required to share household chores with the female characters. The gay lobby has not been forgotten either: the word ‘gay’ has been replaced with ‘happy.’ Bessie has been renamed Beth to avoid any connotations to slavery. Blyton’s golliwogs have been banished. And The Lion King has been decreed full of racist and homophobic messages. According to Carolyn Newberger of Harvard University, those good-for-nothing hyenas are urban blacks who speak in gay clichés.

Surely, they’re having us on with this PC stuff.

But, of course, we know they are not having us on. And they are not imbeciles. They are smart people who really mean it. Smart because the PC virus has infected so much of what we do, what we read, how we live, how we think.

It’s the thinking part that should trouble us the most.

Earlier this year, Alan Gribben, an English professor at Auburn University in Alabama, published a new edition of Mark Twain’s classics, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The word ‘nigger,’ which appears more than 200 times in the book, has been replaced with ‘slave.’ The professor worried that the word would offend too many students and turn them off from reading the book.

What the good professor doesn’t seem to know is that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn satirises Southern prejudices of the time. It is an anti-racist book. If you mess with the power of Twain’s words, you mess with the power of Twain’s message. If school children are to really think about American history and the Deep South, they need to read about ‘niggers.’ The history and the language are confronting.

Great literature unsettles us. It forces us to think about our reactions. If we’re offended, we think about why we’re offended.

By denying us the ability to think, political correctness is a heresy for those who are truly committed to liberalism. Political correctness tells people what to think. And it seeps into society, so often without us even paying attention to the subliminal message.

Because the purveyors of PC are not imbeciles but smart people armed with clever tricks, we need to pay attention.

The Left in Australia are claiming that those who raise questions about multiculturalism, immigration and the relationship between Islam and modernity have blood on our hands. I say ‘our hands’ because I have been named as someone who bears some responsibility for what happened in Oslo. Others complicit in the mass murder include Keith Windschuttle, Andrew Bolt, and Geoffrey Blainey.

Here, murder is used as a muzzle to close down free speech. And this is just the latest addition to what is a growing list of tactics to curb free speech, and even worse, to stifle genuine enquiry and independent thinking.

Here are some of their tricks.

The emotional hoax

The Left are armed with a range of emotionally charged tools to immediately close down discussion about immigration or border control. Call your opponents racists and point to xenophobia in the community. Opponents are not just wrong, they’re evil. Their views should not be aired in a civilised society.

John Howard copped this for years. When the Prime Minister Gillard called for an open debate about these issues last year, she was accused of whipping up the racists within Australia.

But remember this: the stifling political correctness that rejected an open debate about immigration in the early 1990s fuelled the emergence and popularity of Pauline Hanson.

 The victim game

The victim game has been fuelled by two recent developments. We now live in an age when ‘feelings’ are treated as a measurement of moral values, so you measure your feelings against the feelings of others to determine morality. Hence, we live in what author Monica Ali calls ‘the marketplace of outrage,’ where groups vie for victimhood status, each claiming their feelings have been hurt more than others.

Secondly, the focus on vulnerability is used to justify curbing Enlightenment values such as freedom of expression. The minority simply have to utter the word ‘phobia’ to silence all debate.

Over the last few years, we have witnessed a familiar opera of Muslim oppression.

Act I starts with something simple. Perhaps it’s a book called The Satanic Verses. Or a silly Danish cartoon. Or a film called Submission. Or a cheeky episode of South Park stating that Mohammad is the only guy free from ridicule.

Then the libretto comes: Muslims scream about hurt feelings. The drama builds in Act II: death threats are issued, flags and effigies are burnt, maybe even a few boycotts are imposed, and then we hear that great aria of all accusations—Islamophobia.

Act III is the most depressing. The West capitulates, preferring the path of least resistance to launching a staunch defence of freedom of expression.

Hence then US President George H. Bush declared both Salman Rushdie’s book and the fatwa against Rushdie as equally offensive.

Hence, 20 years later, newspapers across the globe chose not to publish the Danish cartoons and Western politicians muttered about protecting hurt feelings.

Hence, last year, Comedy Central, the channel that broadcasts South Park, inserted audio bleeps and large blocks of black that read CENSORED at the very mention or image of Mohammad to prevent more hurt feelings.

And as the clever guys at South Park lamented, ‘like, we lost.’

And we, too, may lose. If we don’t even recognise the tactics, let alone the consequences, we are left with a new norm of anticipatory surrender and self-censorship.

The legal route

The victim game works so well because it is augmented by laws: the apparatus of the state is used to censor free speech.

The prosecutions are mounting: politician Geert Wilders in Holland, writers Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant in Canada. And in Australia, Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt is defending a claim by a group of Aborigines that he ‘offended, insulted and humiliated’ them in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The PC crowd is clever and they’re not having us on. They know that there are no useful legal tests about hurt feelings and inciting hate. They enact nice-sounding laws, build bureaucracies, and wait for them to blossom and bludgeon free speech. They have effectively co-opted Islamic style oppression to prohibit debate, be it about Islam or anything else they wish to fence off from free speech.

Death by silence

The other trick is to quietly exclude certain people from the national discourse. It is best summed up by the German word totschweigtaktik.

To be ‘totsched’ is to be subjected to death by silence—books, ideas, people that challenge the status quo are simply ignored.

Shelly Gare wrote about it in Quadrant last year. Those who are totsched find ‘their efforts left to expire soundlessly like a butterfly in a jar.’

It happened to Orwell when he wrote his 1938 classic Homage to Catalonia, which addressed Stalinist Russia’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War. The left-wing literati simply ignored it. By the time Orwell died in 1950, barely 1,500 copies had been sold.

The same death by silence was used to ignore Australian writers such as Chris Kenny, who challenged the secret women’s business behind the Hindmarsh Island affair. It was used when author Kate Jennings aimed her fire at the sisterhood, post-modernism, and women’s studies.

It’s used by those who tell us that climate change will destroy us all if we do not act immediately. The sceptics are being totsched. Opposing views? What opposing views?

 The bipartisanship racket

Governments have their own tactics. In recent times in Australia, those with poor ideas and even worse policies have resorted to what is best described as the bipartisanship racket to fence themselves off from criticism on a range of topics.

The former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called for bipartisanship on Indigenous policies. It soon became clear that what he meant was supine obedience to his agenda. There could be no disagreement with the roll-back of the NT intervention. If you dared to disagree, you were immediately charged with politicising the issue. Imagine if these kinds of calls from those defending the status quo had managed to shut out the ideas of people like Noel Pearson.

The Rudd government tried the bipartisanship scam again with climate change and immigration. Each time the aim was the same: to place limits on free debate, to get opponents to rubber-stamp rather than question government policy.

No, the very last thing we want is bipartisanship when it is used so blatantly to stifle dissent and vest moral authority in one voice.

Consensus con

Another trick emerged from Canberra last year from the cloistered offices of the federal Treasury. Treasury boss Ken Henry demanded a supporting consensus from academic economists on major policy issues such as the emissions trading system and the equally ill-fated super profits tax on mining companies.

In one breath, Henry said that he supported the ‘contest of ideas’ and that there were ‘occasions on which economists might, at least for a period, put down their weapons and join a consensus.’

It sends shudders up your spine. A senior bureaucrat—who crafts a policy that, according to many, threatened to undermine Australia’s economy—demands obedience from economists. Henry lost that debate. And that’s the point of free debate. Ideas are not finessed through consensus or bipartisanship. Debate is the single most effective mechanism for disposing of bad ideas.

 Why vigilance?

The aim of political correctness is to tell people what to think and stop them from thinking for themselves. If we are serious about defending free speech, vigilance demands that we look out for the tricks and test the trickery against first principles. The alternative means more moral disorientation and a death wish for the West.

The principles are clear enough: free speech is not a Left/Right thing, as Mark Steyn said. It’s a free/unfree thing. You don’t get to cry in favour of free speech just to defend those with whom you agree. And free speech must include the right to offend. If we prosecute offensive opinions, we encourage ever more ridiculous claims to protection. We fuel that marketplace of outrage. And we end up shutting down the true genius of modern Western civilisation—the contest of ideas.

But, of course, free speech and the real value of debate depend on one more important principle: people genuinely listening to each other.

There are two more articles to come.

A guest post by Peter Freedman:

I suffer from a mental illness.

That probably won’t surprise too many of you.

I am happy to tell about my illness for two reasons. Firstly, there is still a view that having an MI means you are dangerous and mad. I am not either. Next this is an encouragement to men, especially, that you do not need to suffer in silence.

As John Kirwan says, tell someone. And if they don’t get it tell someone else. Keep telling someone till they get it. That’s what I did.

I get panic attacks. Looking back, I now recognize that I have suffered these attacks most of my life. My wife remembers me getting the shakes during our marriage ceremony. I still maintain this was just anticipation of the night to come, but, perhaps not.

The symptoms of panic are varied. Most commonplace is uncontrollable shaking and what is called a “feeling of impending doom” – the fear that something big and nasty is just around the next corner. And it is coming for YOU. You don’t know what it is except that it is coming……

Random and silly fears are also common. Once, while peeling prawns I became convinced that they would poison us unless I removed every single bit of the black membrane. Another time I woke in the middle of the night, shook my wife awake demanding we evacuate immediately because the house was about to catch fire.

“Go back to bed, you silly old fool,” she said lovingly. And when I awoke the house was still standing.

My illness came to a head about two years ago when I suffered all the symptoms of a heart attack. The ambos did an ECG which showed my ticker was fine.

We went to hospital where they conducted test after test. All came back normal. The doctors told me I was suffering from stress.

Three nights later, I thought I was having a stroke. Back to hospital. Even more tests, scans, xrays. All results were normal, normal, normal.

So why was I feeling so crook when there was nothing wrong?

“It’s all in your head, dear,” said the nurse, gently patting my hand.

This time I went to the doctor who gave me some pills. In a couple of days , I felt right. YIPPEE, I WAS CURED!

So I stopped taking the drug. Staunch Kiwi bloke doesn’t need THOSE THINGS.

Bad move. My next panic attack lasted 48 hours. By the end I was almost suicidal.

So I went back to the doctor ,then to a counselor. Finally to a shrink. SHE GOT IT.

Now I am kept under control by a cocktail of drugs. I will never be cured and will pop pills for the rest of my life. Far better than the alternative.

And remember this:

If you THINK you are going mad, that’s the surest sign that you are not. It’s only if you don’t think you are growing mad, but everyone else is going loopy, that you are really going insane.

PS: I have just reread that last sentence five times and still don’t understand it.

Sheet, maybe I AM going loony……..Aghhhhhhh!!!

I admire people who do or have suffered from mental illness to be so upfront about it. I know that it helps a lot of people out there who have been through the same, and see they are not alone.

Derek Cheng at NZ Herald reports:

Labour leader David Shearer says he has taken a consistent position on the Ports of Auckland industrial dispute, even though he marched with the workers on Saturday and earlier described the issue as “not about taking sides”.

Perhaps David was marching with the two counter-protesters, if he was not taking sides?

The Herald reports:

New Zealand Cricket says claims some New Zealand cricketers have been allegedly involved in match-fixing simply aren’t credible. …

Players for all the main cricketing nations took part, the bookmakers claimed, and New Zealanders were currently being offered to bookmakers to help fix matches.

One bookmaker claimed to have fixed matches with two New Zealand players – who he named – in 2010. The newspaper did not publish the names.

Last night New Zealand Cricket Players’ Association boss Heath Mills told the Herald the allegations were a slur on every player in New Zealand.

I don’t think our players throw games, because they get paid to do so. I think they just play like crap occasionally regardless of financial incentive!

Alex Tarrant at interest.co.nz has exposed how David Shearer’s bill on foreign farm land is an incompetent PR stunt. This is typical Labour – they go for meaningless PR stunts rather than careful well considered policy.

Alex blogs:

For starters, you can’t even figure out what you want to call this law change.

Right at the top, in the space of eleven lines, you gave it two different names.

Overseas Investment (Owning our Own Rural Land) Amendment Bill is the initial title at the very top.

Then you decide that the new Act should be called the Overseas Investment (Owning our own Infrastructure) Amendment Act 2010

I presume the staff hadn’t yet decided which term rates better with the public.

But then we get to section 17.

In the rush to get this Bill written before Shearer appeared on Q&A on Sunday, you managed to indicate that you would repeal all environmental, heritage, conservation and walking access requirements on foreign landowners for Ministers when making their decisions.

Now I know you didn’t mean to do this – you told me so this morning – but if you’re going to go on national television and announce you’re presenting a member’s Bill to change one of this country’s laws, then I for one would be hoping you’ve given it serious consideration, had a few people look over it, and had another look at the actual legislation to figure out what you’ll be repealing.

Yep, the bill in the name of Labour’s leader does just that.  You can see over at the linked site the full details of all the existing criteria, that Shearer’s bill does away with.

This is amateur hour, and is a long way from convincing people you are up to running a country.

Amelia Wade at NZ herald reports:

Sold-out tickets to boy band One Direction’s concerts are selling in online auctions for more than four times their face value.

But some Trade Me users are fighting back against the large profits and are sabotaging the auctions by placing large, “silly” bids with no intention of paying.

One mother of a disappointed 12-year-old girl who missed out on a ticket has questioned whether it’s fair that reselling Rugby World Cup tickets was illegal but reselling One Direction tickets is not.

Maybe she should raise the issue with the then Minister who introduced the anti-scalping law?

Of course there is a significant possibility that the former Minister is one of those buying up tickets to One Directions and onselling them for a profit to 12 year olds.

The $92 tickets for the three April shows in Auckland and Wellington sold out in minutes but within hours some had been listed on Trade Me. The bids have sky-rocketed as more tickets were listed. Last night there were almost 40 listings, with pairs of tickets costing as much as $735.

Do any of them have buy now prices? I understand they are very difficult to work out how to do.

Andrea Vance at Stuff reports:

The Government is set to introduce sweeping reforms to curb local council powers and get soaring debt levels down.

Troubled by escalating rates and in line with National’s public sector reforms, Local Government Minister Nick Smith wants to make elected representatives take more responsibility for wage bills and the generous packages offered to chief executives.

And he will pare back the scope of local government functions so they will only have control of essential local services such as waste, water, roads, libraries and consents.

The reforms will also require authorities to be more “prudent” in event management. It follows David Beckham’s 2009 football game which lost Auckland Regional Council $1.79 million and the saga of the V8 Supercar races which cost Hamilton ratepayers more than $40m.

Dr Smith is concerned that local government debt has burgeoned from $1.5 billion to well over $8b in the past decade. At the same time, rates have climbed 6.85 per cent.

That’s 6.85% a year, which is not only higher than inflation, but higher than both economic and wage growth. Quite simply it is unsustainable.

He believes the blowout stems from 2002 legislation which introduced the “power of general competence”, widening the scope of council responsibilities. Dr Smith said he was “fundamentally re-evaluating that structure”.

“[Councils] can do anything they like. In the Auckland plan, they have set targets for NCEA pass rates by 2020 … nothing to do with the council.

The power of general competence was an expensive mistake. However once granted, it can be very difficult to undo.

Local Government New Zealand president Lawrence Yule said his organisation would work constructively with the minister but councils were “uncomfortable” with some of the proposals.

The sector did not believe debt was a problem, he said.

“The debt servicing costs sits at about 5.8 per cent of the income level of councils. The world best-practice model says it should be under 10 per cent. Most of that debt is in infrastructure. It’s not frilly things, it’s in water systems, wastewater systems and some big roading projects that are going to last 50 years.”

Debt is the appropriate method to fund capital works. But not all of the $8b debt is infrastructure.

I’m also unsure about that 5.8% of income figure. If debt is $8b, then the servicing cost is say 6% so $480m a year. If $480m is 5.8% of revenue, that suggests revenue of $8.3b for local government.  As the Auckland Council has revenues of $1.9b, I doubt total local govt revenue is that high.

Incidentally the Auckland Council has finance costs of $221m on income of $1.87b, which is well over the 10% best-practice figure quoted.

UPDATE: Good to see Hamilton Mayor Julie Hardaker supporting the need for reform, saying:

The Government must give more clarity about what local government should do and, more importantly, should not do. Councils need to be able to explain their decisions for focusing more on the delivery of traditional services and push back on the numerous requests for funding marginal activities.

Hardaker is a first term Mayor whose Council is struggling with the legacy of some white elephant projects approved by previous Councils.

No not a politics quiz.

On Sunday 25 March, two of our giveway rules are changing. NZTA has a 10 nine scenario quiz for you to try, to see if you will know what the law will be, after 25 March.

The one question I got wrong, was on round-abouts.

Submission close at the end of today to the Law Commission on their discussion paper, “The News Media meets ‘New Media’: Rights, Responsibilities and Regulation in the Digital Age“.

My submission is below. I encourage others with an interest in this area to do even a brief submission.

New Media Submission to Law Commission

Sarah Harvey in the SST reports:

More and more New Zealanders believe child abuse is a cultural issue despite statistics showing that abuse does not discriminate between cultures, a social work lecturer says.

Raema Merchant, a social work lecturer at the Eastern Institute of Technology, said it was unclear how the public had developed a perception that it was a Maori issue.

Her masters thesis at Massey University found about half of the children killed in New Zealand died at the hands of a Pakeha abuser.

This story came up last year also, and is basically a rehash. As the weather is crap today, I’ve just spent a couple of hours reading the thesis. It is 158 pages in total.

There are some interesting stats in it, which I will get to. But its biggest failing is a total ignoring of the fact that European and Maori populations are of different sizes, so prevalance rates are what should be looked at.

The thesis says that the ethnicity of those convicted of assaulting children are Maori 48%, European 28%, PI 19%. To get a prevalence figure, I will use the population figures for under 14s. This is 21% Maori, 58% European, 11% PI and 9% Asian.

This works out to a prevalence rate for Maori that is 4.8 times that of Europeans. It is also 3.4 times that of Pacific Islanders. Or to compare all three, the comparative rates are Maori 4.8, PI 1.4, European 1.0.

Almost 9000 children were victims of physical abuse between 2000 and 2008, yet only 21 became “household names” in the media, she said.

Just one-third of child deaths were reported in the press, and they were predominantly Maori cases.

This is because no child victim can be named, unless they are killed. So it is the deaths that get most reported.  I do not believe they get reported more because they are Maori. They get reported more due to the nature of their details, with the more horrific the abuse, the more they get reported.

“Where are they getting it from? Child abuse is not a cultural issue.”

A recent survey by Research New Zealand found that 58 per cent of people believed child abuse was a cultural issue, up from 51 per cent the year before.

About 55 per cent believed child abuse was an economic issue, compared with 34 per cent in 2011, something which Merchant said was pleasing.

“I would applaud the people that accept that poverty has a lot to do with it. It’s often not so much the poverty of the people but in countries where the gap between rich and poor is the greatest then the child abuse figures tend to be the greatest.”

There are many factors in child abuse. I suspect the most powerful factor is that those who were abused themselves go on to become abusers.

The thesis is inadequately done to be able to make conclusions on whether or not ethnicity or culture is an issue. First it ignores the prevalence rate being 4.75 times higher. However if for example poverty is a powerful factor, that ethnic difference may be because (for example) Maori are 4.75 times to be in a family with low household income.

High quality research would look at ethnic prevalence rates, while controlling other factors which might be an influence such as poverty, welfare status etc.  I’d be very interested to also see data on prevalence rates by welfare status, once income has been removed as a factor. In other words is there more child abuse in households where no adults work, than in households where at least one adult works – but has much the same level of income.

There was some interesting data in the thesis. In terms of relationship to victims, 50% of perpetrators are step-parents or partners, 15% Mums, 11% Dads, and 12% other relatives.

Brogan Powlesland blogs:

“Our most valuable asset is the right to protest.” – Matt McCarten

Yesterday, I found out what this actually means in the eyes of some unionist protesters. I have always believed in the right to protest, despite not always agree with what is being protested. Heck, most of the time I strongly disagree with the protest message, but so long as the protesters don’t directly harm anyone, I tend to be fine with it. At the March 10 Save Our Ports protest, organised by the Council of Trade Unions, I found that this feeling is not always mutual. 

I am reminded that there is no virtue in wanting to protect popular speech. The virtue is in defending the rights of free speech for people whose message you totally disagree with. Hence I have supported the right of holocaust denier David Irving to come to NZ, and speak.

So David (former AoC Auckland President) and I decided to take to the streets with placards, joining the march from the opposite side of the road that they were on. My placard read “Union Strikes, Efficiency up 25%” and David’s read “Who still has their jobs? Helen Kelly and Garry Parsloe”. I had made a decision from the start that this would be a silent protest, as I knew we would be shouted at and thought that we would have been just as bad as them if we shouted profanities back. 

As predicted, during the march we were screamed at, being called things such as “Fascist pigs”, “f**ken scumbags”, and “NAZIs”. Although I was expecting people to shout at us, I was not expecting that extreme verbal abuse. Those are names I would never use to describe anyone, simply because they are extremist and are offensive to both the person you’re shouting at, and the people who were victims to the NAZIs. I would think that the people who like to think they fight most for so called freedom would understand that.*Sigh* I guess not.

While distasteful, free speech even extends to the marchers screaming Nazi names at Brogan and David.

Into about fifteen minutes of marching, we were rushed by a bunch of protesters. One of the protesters knocked my arm and stole my placard, one punched David in the back of his head and stole his placard. They both ripped the placards and chucked the pieces onto the road, receiving cheers from many of the marchers. One of the protesters had been filming it, and came up to us, narrating his ‘film’ by continuously calling us “f**king fascists” and “fascist pigs”, telling us that we were going to be famous on Facebook. Within about 30 seconds, one of the police officers that had been on duty came running and that seemed to be the cue for the protesters to run back into the mob.

The irony is that it was the protesters who were being fascists, with their violent suppression of messages they disagreed with.

The police officer, instead of pursuing the people who had offended, came to ask us to leave. He had seen everything, but told us that there were too many protesters for them to protect our right to protest. At the time, I was quite shaken. I was in no mood or state of mind to argue with the officer, and so we left peacefully. Although David and I have protested and counter-protested before, this was the first time things had become physical, which is something we thought New Zealand was above. It seems we were wrong there too.

The Police Commissioner should instruct the Auckland Police that the next time this happens, the appropriate response is to call for more police officers to protect the rights of peaceful protest.

After the march on that part of the street was finished, David and I returned to pick up the remains of the placards. Although we knew we were not the cause of the litter, we still thought that we shouldn’t leave it lying around the road and footpath. During this time, thankfully, drivers were actually relatively friendly and respectful of what we were doing. A few protesters coming back from the Vector Arena were not though. We again were verbally abused with the same extremist labels. One protester in particular encouraged cars to run us over, and said if they didn’t, he would do it himself.

What a pity Brogan and David didn’t have a friend along with a video recorder. It would be very interesting to identify those who resort to violence to suppress speech they disagree with.

I recall an anti-EFA march in Wellington. A handful of (mainly) Young Labour activists did a counter-protest. When we got to Parliament we actually offered them a chance to speak to have their view heard. A stark contrast.

Hat Tip: Whale Oil

Rob Stock in the SST reports:

Labour MP Phil Twyford has tabled a petition calling for an investigation into the decision not to proceed with charges against John Banks and Don Brash as directors of the Huljich KiwiSaver scheme.

Twyford won’t comment on the petition, which is the work of former Auckland mayoral candidate Penny Bright who is incensed that Banks, the minister for regulatory reform, escaped having to defend himself in court for signing a prospectus that contained false and misleading statements.

The petition now must be considered by the Commerce Select Committee, made up of nine MPs of which five are from the National Party. 

People may not be aware that there is no significance to what has happened. An MP who tables a petition does not mean they agree with ts intent. Almost all MPs will accept a petition.

The Office of the Clerk allocate the petition to a select committee. There is no vote about accepting it. It is automatic. I could do a petition asking for the House to declare war on Australia and liberate Tasmania by armed force, and it would end up with the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

The Commerce Select Committee does not need to respond to the petition, beyond reporting it to the House with no recommendations.

Now as to the substance:

The FMA said the Securities Commission “obtained the advice of respected counsel on this issue. That advice was then reviewed and confirmed by a Queen’s Counsel. The commission considered that advice and the results of its investigation carefully.

“It formed the view that there was insufficient evidence to show that either Dr Brash or Mr Banks would have known that the prospectus contained misleading information.”

What Bright is seeking to do is in my opinion a form of corruption in itself. She is asking for politicians to overturn the decision of an independent authority, and prosecute people because she does not like their politics. This is what you get in Zimbabwe, not New Zealand.

MPs should never be involved in deciding if charges should have been laid against anyone, let alone other politicians. The sole exception is of course the Attorney-General, but even then this is almost always delegated to the Solicitor-General.  And even then it is usually that the AG has to consent to a prosecution – not that the AG can determine that someone should be prosecuted, against the decision of the appropriate prosecuting authority.

So this petition will go nowhere, and that is a good thing.

Damien Grant writes in the HoS:

The medical profession no longer drills holes into fevered skulls because science has demonstrated that such measures do not work, often kill the patient and leave a shocking mess in the surgery room.

When it comes to economics, however, there is no shortage of amateurs recycling discredited miracle cures: deficit spending and printing money.

Bryan Gould has been complaining that austerity does not work and is no solution to our current woes. He points to Greece, Spain, et al, to illustrate his point.

Greece, however, is a mess precisely because it has never practised austerity. Greek governments used to print drachmas, and lately borrowed euros. If borrowing money was a path to riches then Greece would be wealthy. It isn’t.

And he deals with the other fad:

If that sounds unpleasant, do not worry. Bryan Gould and Bernard Hickey have an idea – we can print the $13.6 billion. All we need to do is write ourselves cheques for $3000 each. Christchurch will be rebuilt, our butter will be cheaper and the Auckland man-drought will end as our talented lost-boys rush back.

Sadly, this will not work. Printing money to stimulate growth worked when citizens could be tricked that inflation meant economic conditions had improved.

Quantitative easing, a modern form of printing money, has been used overseas to help bolster the capital base of failing banks and prevent deflation in Japan. It does not create jobs.

There is no miracle cure. It is time we stopped listening to the snake oil salesmen.

We need to live within our means, not borrow more or start printing money.