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Did my $1,000 donation today, as promised for the Mallard-Slater race. I said I’d donate $1,000 to CCS if Mallard won or $1,000 to the Mental Health Foundation if Slater won. So CCS Disability Action got the donation.

Sadly it looks like there won’t be a sequel boxing match for me to sponsor/donate to 🙂

In my Herald column I comment on the report of the Ministerial Inquiry into the use of and operation of foreign charter vessels. My conclusion:

The Government has already agreed to some of the recommendations, but is considering others in more detail. I believe it is important to keep the pressure on the Government to do everything they can to stop these abuses.

The problem is that its ability to act is limited, while the FCVs are flagged under the flags of other countries. This means that, for example, any rapes on board the ships are a matter for the flag state, not New Zealand, unless they are in New Zealand territorial waters (up to 12 miles out) rather than the New Zealand Exclusive Economic Zone (up to 200 miles out). This means that even these changes may prove ineffective, and the eventual solution may have to be require all vessels fishing in our EEZ to be New Zealand flagged ships. This would have adverse economic consequences, but we can’t allow these abuses to continue in our waters, by ships fishing New Zealand quota.

The problem is not the entire industry or all FCVs, but a subset of them. Those with records of repeated abuses should be ineligible to be contracted.

In Parliament yesterday:

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): When the House resumes on Tuesday, 6 March the Government will progress a number of bills on the Order Paper, including the Committee stage of the Search and Surveillance Bill, …

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I am sorry. I missed the very first part of the Minister’s comments. I am not going to ask him to read the whole thing again. The question I have got, though, is I am seeking an assurance that the Search and Surveillance Bill will not proceed to its Committee stage until we have had the Supplementary Order Paper for at least 48 hours. I think there is general agreement across the House that it would be good if we could have at least a bipartisan approach on this, rather than have legislation that only just goes through and because I know that there is still a bit of a gap between the major parties I would just like an assurance that we will have at least 48 hours to look at that before it does come back in.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): One of the new requirements under the Standing Orders that apply to this Parliament beyond is that the Government does indicate bills that possibly could come up for Committee stage ahead of time. I am sure that any undertakings that have been made, any understandings that relate to any of these bills, will be honoured.

It is good the Government has indicated the committee stage is next week for the Search and Surveillance Bill. However Mallard’s request for any SOPs in advance is a reasonable one – not just for Labour, but for the public also. The bill deals with fundamental issues of powers of the state and civil liberties. Any amendments which are non-trivial should be tabled as soon as possible to allow for consideration and feedback.

At this stage, none are listed on the legislation website. Hopefully they will be there by or at least on Monday.

The data is from the annual ASH survey of Year 10 students, which has around 30,000 responses.  That’s a really good trend. 12 years ago 70% of Year 10 students had smoked, and now it is 30%. What do readers think is the reason? Peer pressure? Price? Law changes?

A huge difference by ethnicity. In 2011 they are:

• Have smoked – European 23.5%, Maori 53.8%, Pacific 38.9%, Asian 11.7%
• Regular smokers – European 5.6%, Maori 18.1%, Pacific 10.7%, Asian 2.6%
• Daily smokers – European 2.4%, Maori 10.3%, Pacific 5.9%, Asian 1.2%

However Maori Year 10s have had the biggest decline over the period also.

Amelia Romanos at NZ Herald reports:

SuperGold Card travel costs are soaring as more people pick up the free scheme, and the Ministry of Transport says there is now a $4 million funding shortfall.

The card, which is available to pensioners and veterans, entitles users to a range of Government concessions, including free public transport during off-peak periods – 9am-3pm on weekdays.

This is not surprising. Anything that has a 100% subsidy tends to have costs get out of control, because there is absolutely no incentive for the beneficiaries of the subsidy to not use it as much as possible.

While personally I don’t think there should be a subsidy at all, if they have to have one it should be say 80% only, so that there is some disincentive for usage to increase to such a level that costs blow out.

Stuff reports:

Killing newborns is morally the same as abortion and should be permissible if the mother wishes it, Australian philosophers have argued in an article that has unleashed a firestorm of criticism and forced the British Medical Journal to defend its publication.

Alberto Giubilini, from Monash University, and Francesca Minerva, from the University of Melbourne, say a foetus and a newborn are equivalent in their lack of a sense of their own life and aspiration. They contend this justifies what they call “after-birth abortion” as long as it is painless, because the baby is not harmed by missing out on a life it cannot conceptualise.

The first flaw in their arguments is that it is not legal to abort a foetus, once it is capable of surviving outside the womb. Abortion is legal because a mother has rights over her womb which trump that of the foetus. Those rights disappear once  the foetus can survive outside the womb, and most definitely after they have left the womb.

About a third of infants with Down syndrome are not diagnosed prenatally, Drs Giubilini and Minerva say, and mothers of children with serious abnormalities should have the chance to end the child’s life after, as well as before, birth.

But this should also extend to healthy infants, the pair argue in the BMJ group’s Journal of Medical Ethics, because the interests of a mother who is unwilling to care for it outweigh a baby’s claims.

Putting aside for one moment the main issue, why on earth would the mother have the right to decide, and not both parents? Again once the baby has been born, the parents have equal rights.

On the main issue, I think the proposal is horrific. The precedent it creates is monstrous.

It is worth noting the authors seem to be from the School of Philosophy, not medical doctors.

Duncan Garner blogs:

Who really thinks National’s welfare reforms are that scary?

They’re not.

Forcing people to be work-tested should be a basic contractual agreement between the Government and its “clients” when money changes hands.

Indeed much of that happens already – and has been occurring for years.

Paying the rent and power bills of teenagers directly before they spend their benefit money on booze and cigarettes is hardly radical.

No one will lose their benefits if they can’t find a job. All the Government is asking is that they get work tested sooner and that they become more aggressive in their search for work. They will lose the right to turn down work – they must take a job if it’s offered. If they continue to thumb their nose at work, they will start to lose their benefits.

And Duncan addresses the issue of the job snobs who say you should be able to choose what job you take up:

People need meaningful sustainable jobs. Flipping burgers is a job; it’s a start, we’ve all done this sort of work.

But it’s true for those entering the workforce for the first time in a long time that they need to start somewhere but they also need a pathway to show them the way out of those jobs too.

I often get accused by some who say I’m a media hack and what would I know about low-paid work?

Well I know something. I know I cleaned the Whitcoulls Queen Street store at 16 in my school holidays for youth rates – about $4.50 an hour at the time. I powder-coated curtain rails for $6.00 an hour in a Glenfield factory a year later. I put lids on toothpaste at the Avondale Redseal factory at the same time to help me pay for my first year at university.

My first job at TVNZ in 1995 was as an intern and I was paid $15,400 a year – about $250 a week from memory. A year later they put me on $21,000. By year three it was $30,000.

I worked like a slave for $250 a week. Try living on that in Auckland – it was impossible.

They were part-time crappy jobs (not the TVNZ one) – and they sure as hell encouraged me to take my studies seriously by year three!

Like Duncan I cleaned a store while at school. But I was 14 and got $1.99 an hour for cleaning at Woolworths. I was so proud to be in regular employment, working every day after school plus Friday nights and Saturday mornings. And my first job after university was $22,000 a year only and at one point I was working part-time for $18,000 a year.

But back to Bennett and her handling of these changes so far.

She’s tough. She’s been there. She’s been a solo mum. She’s had it hard. She’s come out the other end. Labour hates her. And she hates them more. It’s a perfect rematch of the Rumble in the Jungle – except these guys might be tougher. Labour regards her as a traitor in my opinion – and they’re going after her. Problem is – nothing is sticking yet. …

But Bennett has started the year with a spring in her step. She looks determined to front foot these welfare changes that she believes in.

Yesterday in response to questioning by Hone Harawira, I thought she nailed him by telling him to sort out his patch and his voters – who she claimed would rather smoke drugs than get jobs. Not every minister would try that one – but it silenced Harawira, which isn’t easy.

The Hansard records the exchange:

Hone Harawira: When the Minister talks about young mums going out to look for jobs, does she think young mums should be allowed to go to the front of the queue of the 150,000 people who are already unemployed, or does she think that the young mums should be made to wait until the 150,000 get jobs first, and can she please tell us where the jobs are for the 150,000 who are already unemployed, so that young mums can then get in line for the next jobs?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: The member could look in his own patch, actually. I have a newspaper article here about the forestry industry that is saying they cannot get enough workers because of the drug taking that is going on, and some of those workers are not stepping up and do not actually want the jobs. I was in Kawakawa just a few weeks ago, when I heard about someone who had 19 jobs and could not fill them. Two young women had gone into a job in hospitality in his own patch. Within 3 days their boyfriends came along and told them they did not want to see them working, because they did not want to see them getting ahead of themselves. We are going to back those young women. We are going to back them into work and try to get them off benefits. That member may not think that they are worth it, but we do.

Bang.

Throng blogs:

Every major TV network in the world that we work with regularly sends out publicity material which we gladly publish for them because, well, we love talking about TV.  When the latest reality TV show hits the airwaves, our inbox gets flooded with bios and photos of the contestants from publicists desperate to get their content talked about andpromoted for, in the most part, free.

Contrast this with the latest no from TVNZ:

Hi [throng]

We’re currently being very selective with the provision of our MasterChef contestant images, so were are not sending any additional ones out at this stage.

Regards

[publicist]

Why would a broadcaster turn down free publicity? Especially free publicity from the site that specifically caters to the fans of their reality TV shows.

Plus Throng can of course grab images from screen shots, so TVNZ saying no seems to just be about petulance.

Oral Questions 2 pm – 3 pm

1. Dr RUSSEL NORMAN to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement that “the mixed ownership programme will be good for…the economy as a whole; if so, will it be good for the economy as a whole if these mixed ownership companies then sell New Zealand electricity generating assets into foreign ownership?
2. LOUISE UPSTON to the Minister of Transport: What important transport projects are underway in the Waikato region?
3. Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE to the Minister for Economic Development: Does he stand by his statement, in his answer to Oral Question No 8 yesterday, that the current account deficit is forecast in the PREFU to deteriorate by “about just under $5 billion over the next 4 years”?
4. SIMON O’CONNOR to the Minister of Justice: What initiatives is the Government planning in the justice system to help reduce drug and alcohol related offending?
5. Hon DAVID PARKER to the Minister of Finance: What current account deficit, in dollars, was projected in the pre-election fiscal update by the Treasury for 2012 and for 2016; and does he agree with Hon Steven Joyce’s answer in Oral Question No 8 yesterday, that “the pre-election update last year forecast the current account deficit to widen by about just under $5 billion over the next 4 years”?
6. IAN McKELVIE to the Minister for Primary Industries: Has he received the report of the Ministerial Inquiry into Foreign Charter Vessels?
7. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS to the Minister of Local Government: Does he have confidence in the financial management of Auckland City Council?
8. DARIEN FENTON to the Minister of Labour: What action, if any, does the Government intend to take in respect of industrial action currently occurring in New Zealand?
9. MICHAEL WOODHOUSE to the Minister for Communications and Information Technology: What recent progress has the Government made to improve New Zealanders’ access to broadband?
10. GARETH HUGHES to the Minister of Transport: Will he commit to holding a Royal Commission or a Commission of Inquiry into the Government’s response to the grounding of the Rena?
11. CLARE CURRAN to the Minister of Broadcasting: What duties if any, does he believe he has to protect the Broadcasting Commission, also known as NZ On Air, and broadcasters from political interference?
12. SCOTT SIMPSON to the Minister for the Environment: What action has the Government taken to assist local councils to deal with the possible contamination of residential and community properties in Moanataiari?

Today there are five questions from National, four questions from Labour, two from the Greens, and one from NZ First.

Patsy of the day goes to Q4 – What initiatives is the Government planning in the justice system to help reduce drug and alcohol related offending?

Labour are asking about current account deficit twice, industrial action and NZ on Air again.

Greens are on asset sales and Rena. NZ First is on confidence in the financial management of the Auckland City Council. That could be a short question and answer as no such entity exists any longer.

Government Notices of Motion (no debate as agreed by Business Committee)

1. to approve the Misuse of Drugs (Classification of Tapentadol) Order 2011 (makes Tapentadol a Class B3 drug)
2. to appoint as members of the Parliamentary Service Commission: Michael Woodhouse, Chris Hipkins, Metiria Turei, Barbara Stewart, Te Ururoa Flavell, and Hone Harawira.
3. to make the Abortion Supervisory Committee, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and Air New Zealand Limited be public organisations for the purposes of the Standing Orders.

Government Bills 3.00 pm – 6.00 pm

1. Search and Surveillance Bill – second reading
2. Game Animal Council Bill – first reading
3. Crown Pastoral Land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill – second reading
4. Building Amendment Bill (No 3) – committee stage

The Search and Surveillance Bill was introduced in July 2009 and aims to implement the Government’s decisions on the legislative reform of search and surveillance powers”, based on the Law Commission’s report, “Search and Surveillance Powers”. It amends 69 different Acts and was supported at first reading by all parties except the Green Party.

The select committee did an interim report in August 2010 and a final report in November 2010. There was considerable opposition to the bill as originally drafted, such as by Tech Liberty.  Significant changes were made by the select committee with the Greens noting “They generally restrict search and surveillance powers more than the original bill, and improve accountability provisions”.  However they still oppose the bill, especially the provisions for Examination and Production Orders. Labour also opposes those two provisions.

The Game Animal Council Bill was introduced in October 2011. It aims to deliver on the Government’s confidence and supply agreement with the United Future Party to proceed with the establishment of a Big Game Hunting Council as part of a national wild game management strategy with a view to it becoming a statutory authority. The primary purpose of establishing such a council is to improve the management of deer, tahr, chamois, and wild pig, including the improvement of opportunities to hunt those animals.

The Crown Pastoral Land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill was introduced in December 2010 and aims to replace the land valuation basis for setting rents for pastoral leases with a property-earning-capacity basis for setting rents for pastoral leases. It was supported at first reading by National, Greens, ACT, Maori and United and opposed by Labour.  Labour opposed the bill at select committee saying it “severely compromises the property rights of the land owner, the Crown, to negotiate a fair return on the full value of the land”.

The Building Amendment Bill (No 3) was introduced in October 2010 and aims to implement policy decisions from the 2009 Building Act review. It was passed on a voice vote at first reading but the select committee reports that Labour and Greens will now oppose the bill as they see the building reforms as being done piecemeal.

Trevor Mallard blogs:

Wayne Mapp’s commercial legal experience is limited to three years assisting one John Collinge, former President of the National Party who is better known for activity on the the table at the London High Commission than legal expertise.

He spent thirteen years at the University of Auckland but was unable to obtain a chair or a position in the Law School. He then became an undistinguished MP and a lacklustre Minister.

Mapp got the push from the National caucus but has been given a job at the Law Commission – a role normally reserved for distinguished lawyers.

Cronyism again.

An incredibly nasty and spiteful post by Mallard, who continues to remind people of all that is bad within Labour. He doesn’t just attack the appointment of Dr Mapp, but denigrates his entire career.

I have no issue with people having a go at appointments not made on merit, due primarily to their political links. for example the appointment of Brian Neeson to the Human Rights Review tribunal was rightly criticised by many (including me).

The most outrageous crony appointments was when Mallard’s Government appointed Labour MP Di Yates to four separate boards – to Food Standards Australia New Zealand,  Trust Waikato Community Trust, education book publisher Learning Media’s board and the board of the Waikato Institute of Technology.  The appointment to FSANZ was justified in the press release on the basis Yates was from Waikato which is “arguably the food bowl of New Zealand”. Yes, seriously, that was the only rationale they could come up with..

But anyway back to Dr Mapp, his appointment needs a fairer appraisal than Mallard’s nasty denigration. I’m surprised he has such venom for Mapp, because in fact Wayne was one of the least partisan MPs in Parliament. In fact he was a member of the Labour Party for many years, before he joined National. He even stood against Phil Goff for the Labour nomination for Mt Roskill in 1981 (when Wayne was in his 20s). Most Labour MPs would be far more generous towards Wayne, and probably be mortified by Mallard’s nastiness towards him. However they allow Mallard to remain their public face.

Wayne has always had a great love of policy and the law. I first met him before he was an MP, when he was Northern Region Policy Chair, and I was the Young Nats policy person. He would happily spend hours debating policy and law with me and others. He’s exactly the sort of person you do want on the Law Commission – he won’t be partisan, he has huge intellectual curiosity (which is what you need on the Law Commission) and a passion for good law and policy. I think his appointment is an excellent one – and it is useful to have someone with actual parliamentary experience on the Law Commission, in my opinion.

As for his legal background, so denigrated by Trevor Mallard who has a BCA (and an assault conviction). Wayne has an honours degree in law from Auckland University, a masters from the University of Toronto and a PhD in international law from Cambridge. He spent 12 years as an academic in commercial law, and left as an Associate Professor before he became an MP.

The suggestion he got the push from the National Caucus is also a typical Mallard lie. Wayne’s decision to retire at the last election took everyone by surprise. His primary motivation for leaving Parliament was to open doors for his wife Denese Henare, whose activities as a lawyer had to be somewhat restricted while he was an MP. Denese, incidentally, has served on the Law Commission herself and I am confident that Wayne’s contribution will match her own distinguished record.

We know the details that shocked a nation:

Inside the caravan, Raurangi Marino locked the door and grabbed the girl around the neck as she tried to flee.

He began to choke her in an attempt to stop her screams; he did so with such force that she passed out. Then he began to beat her about the face and body with his fists and elbows while sexually assaulting her.

The attack on the girl left her with four teeth knocked out and serious internal injuries.

Both her eyes were swollen shut and she had cuts and bruising to her face.

She was rushed to Waikato Hospital in a life-threatened condition and underwent surgery for 4½ hours.

The 10 year sentence seems appropriate for me. I understand the severity of the assault had a starting point of 18 years, but then you discount 30% for the guilty plea and a discount for his age.  While not abdicating him of responsibility, his background is very sad:

Immersed in a life of gang culture, Marino grew up wanting to emulate his father and join a gang, the court was told.

His childhood was bereft of role models or strong parenting, and marked by excessive violence between his parents, and from his father.

His parents separated when he was 13 and he did not see his mother for three years.

He was badly burned as a child when his siblings ran a hot bath for him, because his mother was drunk.

The injuries to his hands required extensive skin grafts.

A family member sexually assaulted him when he was 9 and again when he was 15, the court heard.

I do wonder how he managed to stay with his parents all this time, and not get placed into care?

Nicholas Kristof in the NY Times writes:

A landmark new research paper underscores that the difference between a strong teacher and a weak teacher lasts a lifetime. Having a good fourth-grade teacher makes a student 1.25 percent more likely to go to college, the research suggests, and 1.25 percent less likely to get pregnant as a teenager. Each of the students will go on as an adult to earn, on average, $25,000 more over a lifetime — or about $700,000 in gains for an average size class — all attributable to that ace teacher back in the fourth grade. That’s right: A great teacher is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each year’s students, just in the extra income they will earn.

The study, by economists at Harvard and Columbia universities, finds that if a great teacher is leaving, parents should hold bake sales or pass the hat around in hopes of collectively offering the teacher as much as a $100,000 bonus to stay for an extra year. Sure, that’s implausible  — but their children would gain a benefit that far exceeds even that sum.

Conversely, a very poor teacher has the same effect as a pupil missing 40 percent of the school year. We don’t allow that kind of truancy, so it’s not clear why we should put up with such poor teaching. In fact, the study shows that parents should pay a bad teacher $100,000 to retire (assuming the replacement is of average quality) because a weak teacher holds children back so much.

That is a staggering figure. A poor teacher has the same impact as a 40% truancy rate. This is why bad teachers should not be paid the same as good teachers. A flexible pay scale would allow principals to send messages to bad teachers by not giving them automatic payrises. It would encourage them to leave the profession. Also it would allow principals to pay the good teachers more.

An old but important post by Eric Crampton:

NZ’s organ donation regime is an inefficient nightmare that kills people. Donor’s wishes, expressed via their drivers’ licence, aren’t taken as binding and can be overturned by anyone claiming a connection to the potential donor. Even suggesting that folks signing up to be future organ donors get bumped up the waiting listgets folks riled up, though there were some encouraging noises two years ago about maybe allowing that Kiwi donors be compensated; similar calls for compensation came up in the UK last year. As it stands, Otago’s med school is allowed to cover funeral costs for cadaveric whole body donations, but nobody’s allowed to cover funeral costs for organ donors. There are all kinds of policies that would improve on the status quo but haven’t been explored, at least in NZ.

I think the current practice where donors wishes are not binding is a terrible thing.

Eric blogs on Israel:

Living donors are now paid 40 days’ lost wages plus a very generous expenses allowance. Folks with family members on the waiting list can request to become living donors for other people on the list and are then matched with other folks in the same circumstances: a “chain of living donors” not unlike the American MatchingDonors service. Result?

Israel experienced a dramatic increase in the number of organ transplants in 2011, totaling 384, 68 percent higher than the previous year, although the number of transplants performed in 2010 was particularly low. Kidney transplants from deceased donors were 2.37 times greater in 2011, with 123 operations, than in 2010. There were 69 liver transplants from deceased donors in the past year, 2.15 times as many the previous year, 59 lung transplants, representing an 84 percent increase, and 23 heart transplants – 2.09 times the number in 2010.

Excellent. And further:

The Priority Law, which takes effect in April, will give holders of Adi donor cards priority if they ever need a transplant.

The number of cardholders has considerably increased recently following a publicity campaign touting the new law. Anyone signing the card before April will be immediately eligible for the benefit, while those signing after the law goes into effect will need to wait three years for eligibility after signing.

The number of organ donor signatures rose 71,229 during the year to a total of 632,300 while another 20,000 requests for the cards are being processed by the National Transplant Center.

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

CHANGES ARE A COMIN’: Changes to the benefit are a comin’—with reforms announced this week. The focus is on our youth and getting them off the dole and into work. $20 million a day or $8 billion a year is spent on beneficiaries. What are the reforms? Is it about training or incentives? Are there jobs for the unemployed? Do the reforms look at early intervention programmes? Do we need to reform more than our youth sector? Will these reforms fix the problem or leave more young people out in the cold?

SPEAKING OF JOBS: A new poll shows many tertiary students plan to head overseas because they fear they won’t be able to find a job in New Zealand. Are their fears justified? It’s “O” week—should new students keep this in mind when entering University? How do we keep our students in the country?

MMP: In November we decided we wanted to stick with MMP. Now, it’s time to have our say on MMP reform. What changes would you like to see to MMP? What should the threshold be for list seats? Should a list MP be able to stand in a by-election? Should a candidate have to choose between the list and an electorate? Who should rank the list? How many MPs do we need in Parliament? How should we manage proportion of the seats? What if a party wins more electorate seats than it would get under its share of the party vote?

Join us for a night of LIVE pub politics from the Backbencher Pub: Wednesday, 29th of February. Our Panel: Green Party MP Catherine Delahunty, Labour MP Sue Moroney, New Zealand First MP Tracey Martin, and National MP David Bennett.

Wednesday 9.05 pm and Saturday 10.05 pm TVNZ 7

Phil Twyford blogs:

Len Brown was elected the people’s mayor on a wave of support across west and south Auckland. People opted decisively for his plan for public transport, and a modern inclusive vision for the city that embraced the young, the brown and working people.

Which makes it puzzling that he is choosing to stand by and watch while his port subsidiary tries to contract out 300 jobs. …

It is all the more puzzling given the Mayor’s commitment to reducing social inequality, reflected in the excellent Auckland Plan. It is hard to see how we are going to build a more prosperous and inclusive city by stripping the city’s employees of their work rights and job security. …

It is time for Len Brown and his Council to rethink their demand for a 12% return, and replace it with something reasonable and not excessive. He should tell the port company casualisation is not an acceptable approach to employment relations in a port owned by the people of Auckland.

This is the same Phil Twyford who spent years saying that Wellington should not dictate to Auckland, yet is now trying to bully Len Brown into putting the interests of the Labour Party (for the Maritime Union is part of the Labour Party) ahead of the interests of Auckland.

Len knows he would be toast if he kneecapped a Council subsidiary, just to please the Labour caucus in Wellington.

Stuff reports:

The captain of the cargo ship which grounded on a reef off Tauranga last year has pleaded guilty to all charges against him.

The Rena hit the Astrolabe Reef in October last year causing an environmental disaster – spilling oil and containers into the water and killing masses of sea animals. The stricken ship broke in two early this year.

The captain pleaded guilty today in the Tauranga District Court to charges laid under the Maritime Transport Act, Crimes Act and Resource Management Act.

Good to have the guilty pleas. It will be interesting to see the summary of facts when it is released.

Stuff reports:

The children have been placed in Child Youth and Family care and their parents are under investigation.

The children, whose ages ranged from five months to eight years old, were found in the van around 11am on Sunday morning.

SkyCity said their surveillance recordings indicated the children had been locked in the vehicle for about 45 minutes.

A couple returning to their car heard the children crying and notified SkyCity security staff.

Staff found the parents upstairs gambling in the casino.

The family was taken to Auckland central police station.

I’m sorry, but there is just no excuse for that. How can you leave a five month old alone without adults, let alone five kids?

Marika Hill at Stuff reports:

Alleged internet pirate Kim Dotcom and his wife have requested $220,000 per month to cover living costs including security guards, nannies and a butler.

The 38-year-old, who was granted electronic bail last week but is currently awaiting the results of a Crown challenge to overturn it, made the request at the High Court at Auckland today.

Crown lawyer Anne Toohey said the request for $220,000 was unreasonable considering the average New Zealand family gets by on just over $6000 per month.

I knew the cost of living was going up, but I suspect Mr Dotcom wants that sum of money available to him for other purposes – maybe travel.

At Stuff I blog on when work testing should apply.

For my part I support having just a 12-month suspension of work testing for sole parents who have further children while on the DPB. There is a wealth of research that children who grow up in households where no adults are in paid employment do far worse than other children in other families – even those of the same income level. The DPB should be temporary assistance for parents who find themselves without the support of a partner. Too many recepients remain on it for well over a decade.

You can comment over at Stuff.

Oral Questions 2 pm – 3 pm

1. DAVID SHEARER to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his recent statements?
2. SIMON BRIDGES to the Minister of Finance: What will be the main focus of Budget 2012?
3. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS to the Minister of Finance: Does he believe it is his responsibility, if it is his intention to sell strategic assets, to obtain the best possible price; if not, why not?
4. HONE HARAWIRA to the Minister for Social Development: Does she agree with the comment in today’s New Zealand Herald that she is stripping away the rights of beneficiaries that she herself had as a sole parent; if not, why not?
5. Hon PHIL GOFF to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: Does he support proposals to make redundant 63 people in policy and diplomatic positions within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade; if so, why?
6. SCOTT SIMPSON to the Minister for Social Development: How do the Government’s recently announced welfare reforms balance obligations with incentives?
7. GARETH HUGHES to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Does he stand by his statement that he is “not aware of any reason to justify a moratorium” on fracking in New Zealand?
8. MARK MITCHELL to the Minister for Economic Development: What reports has he received demonstrating New Zealand’s improved export performance?
9. Hon NANAIA MAHUTA to the Minister of Education: Does she have confidence in her Ministry?
10. ALFRED NGARO to the Minister for Social Development: What response has she had to the Government’s Green Paper for Vulnerable Children?
11. JAN LOGIE to the Minister of Corrections: Does she agree with the finding of the Chief Ombudsman that “transgender prisoners are particularly vulnerable to abuse and/or sexual assault”?
12. CLARE CURRAN to the Minister of Broadcasting: Does he stand by his primary answer to Oral Question No 11 on Wednesday, 15 February 2012?

Patsy of the day goes to Q8 – What reports has he received demonstrating New Zealand’s improved export performance?

Labour are asking the PM a general question on his recent statements, MFAT restructuring, Education (presumably the teacher sex offender case) and NZ on Air.

Greens are on fracking and trans-gender prisoners. Winston is on revenue from asset sales and Hone on welfare reform. Fascinating that only Mana is asking questions on welfare reform today.

General Debate 3 pm – 4 pm

Private and Local Bills 4 pm – 6 pm and 7.30 pm – 10 pm 

The Law Commission is discussing at public address the issue of who are the news media, and what regulation should there be of the media. You can comment over there and your views will help influence their final report. One extract:

In chapter 4 of our Issues Paper we attempt to answer these questions by posing another, more fundamental, question: what is the function of the news media? What is it that distinguishes the news media from other types of publishers?

These questions are the subject of a very large and divergent academic literature which we cannot traverse here. But it may be worth re-stating the orthodox view that suggests the key functions of the “Press” in a liberal democracy are to:

* act as an independent watchdog on government and other seats of power;

* represent the public (for example in Parliament and the courts );

* disseminate information to the public;

* provide a forum for debate and the formation and expression of public opinion.

You can also make a formal submission to the Law Commission.