James Murray, TV3’s online editor, has done a very well researched and comprehensive blog post on the proposed TPP free trade agreement.

I am a huge supporter of free trade and my ideal free trade agreements simply consist of saying “You can sell our residents us anything you want that is legal and safe and we can sell your residents  anything we want that is legal and safe”. Of course then up to individual consumers what they choose to buy and import.

But free trade agreements are rarely that simple. They have a mixture of good and bad stuff in them. Overall the ones we have signed have been massively beneficial for New Zealand such as CER and the China FTA. But that does not mean all future ones will be. Murray points out some areas of concern in the TPP:

Hughes points out that proposed changes to copyright law could see the international copyright term (the author’s life plus 50 years) extended for another twenty years.

This would mean that no new works would enter the public domain in any of the countries signed to the TPP until 2033.

To steal a quote from the analysis linked to above – lengthening copyright terms would “impose severe costs on the American public without providing any public benefit. It would supply a windfall to the heirs and assignees of dead authors and deprive living authors of the ability to build on the cultural legacy of the past”.

What would this mean for publishing in New Zealand?

Books by James K. Baxter, Dame Ngaio Marsh and Ronald Morrieson, all soon to come into the public domain, would stay in copyright.

The US in 1998 increased the term of copyright from 75 years to 95 years, partly at the lobbying by Disney to stop early Mickey Mouse works entering the public domain. This was in my opinion not needed, as Mickey Mouse would still be a trademark owned by Disney and not able to be used by others.

Critics of the TPP point out that the agreement spelled out in the leaked document would lead to a situation where pharmaceutical companies would be able to extend patents on medicines more easily and also delay generic drugs from hitting the market.

Ever picked up a camera or mobile phone from a Parallel Import shop for less than an approved supplier?

Nicholas Jones at NZ Herald reports:

Tow-truck companies have been accused of paying “spotters” to dob in motorists – a lucrative practice that helped to pay the rent for one former student.

Several Herald readers yesterday said they knew of cases in which flatters and a dairy owner were paid to report illegal car-parkers in a practice going back at least nine years.

One reader said he’d seen taxi drivers “spotting” for tow-truck drivers, but did not know if they had been paid.

Tow firms dismissed the claims as “rubbish”, but Luke Turner, 32, said his flat was paid a $10 kickback from a towing company, which has since changed hands, when he lived in Galatos St, Newton, nine years ago. …

Tow firms the Herald contacted said such arrangements did not exist and to their knowledge never had.

I have no doubt such commissions have existed and may still exist. I don’t see why the tow truck firms deny it, as I don’t see anything wrong with it from their perspective? I mean in a moral sense, it is like being a Stasi spy, but in a commercial sense it is not an issue and tow truck firms are already hated.

Just to show you how money hungry they are, let me relate a story told to me by a friend who used to manage some inner city land in Auckland which he turned into a parking lot. Obviously he needed the services of a tow truck company to deal with those who parked there without paying the fee. He got paid a portion of the towing fee, in return for having selected that company. So that generated a bit of extra income, on top of that from actually leasing out the parks (which was considerable). There were a total of 30 parks or so, so at say $30 a day that was say $900 a day income.

Anyway after this business had been going on for some time, the tow truck company made a suggestion. They said that what he should do is actually refuse to lease out any of the car parks to people wanting them. Why? Well a piece of land with 30 empty car parks would be an irresistible honey trap to motorists. They would risk a quick park there, not knowing there would always be a tow truck waiting around the corner to pounce and tow them.

I don’t recall the exact numbers but the tow truck company was insistent my mate could make much more money by not allowing anyone to park on his site through a commission on towing them, than through actually leasing the parks out to motorists who want them.

My mate declined. He is a fervent capitalist and loved making money. But that was a step too far for him. however it does give a good insight into the behaviour of tow truck companies.

Edward Gay at NZ Herald reports:

Internet multimillionaire Kim Dotcom has been declined bail.

The German businessman, a resident in New Zealand, is accused of being at the centre of a computer piracy empire through Megaupload, a website business he co-founded.

Judge David McNaughton delivered his decision at the North Shore District Court today in front of a packed public gallery. …

An immediate appeal has been lodged at the High Court.

The decision is totally unsurprising. His behaviour when arrested combined with four passports and 45 credit cards, screams out flight risk.

I predict the bail decision will not rest at the High Court but they will seek leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. Likewise the extradition hearing itself will be appealed all the way to the top. The longer they can delay things, then they will use the Ahmed Zaoui trick and argue the time it has taken to get a decision, means it is unfair to keep him in jail (even though they have caused all the delays).

When he finally does get extradited back to the US, I note he has hired Bill Clinton’s old lawyer so that one will also be taken all the way to the Supreme Court. I expect a resolution to be two to three years away.

I knew someone would mis-represent what I said on Christchurch City Council, I just wasn’t sure who it would be. No Right Turn claims the prize. he says:

What is it with the right and democracy? In response to tensions in the Christchurch City Council, which have seen councillors criticise the Chief Executive’s lavish pay increase and autocratic style, DPF demands that “some or all” of them “must go”. Because obviously, the last thing you can possibly have in an elected body is disagreement. No, we should shut it down, sack them all, appoint a dictator.

Now unless Idiot/Savant neglected to read past the first paragraph of my post, he has deliberately over-looked the part where I say:

I am not an advocate of the view that on every issue, the minority on a Council must accept the view of the majority if it goes against them. It is quite legitimate to (for example) continue to fight against say an alcohol ban policy, if you as a Councillor thought it was a bad policy and a bad decision.

So I explicitly said disagreement in not the problem.

The fact of the matter is that these councillors are elected. They are there to represent their constituents, some of whom are not exactly happy with their council or its CEO. In other words, they are doing exactly the job we expect elected representatives in a democracy to do.

And again he has missed the key point. I never said Councillors can not criticise the Council, the Mayor or even the CEO.

But what they can not do is publicly state that the CEO should be sacked. Why? It’s simple – they are his employer. The Councillors who have done so have exposed ratepayers to a massive personal grievance and also made sure that if the majority on Council did want to sack the CEO, that they could only do so via a huge payout.

A Councillor can criticise the CEO when their performance warrants it (mind you it is the height of hypocrisy to attack the CEO for accepting a pay rise that the Council itself signed off on), but they can not publicly call for them to be sacked, as they are their employer.

What next? DPF will advocate the unseating of MPs who disagree with the government and criticise the public service?

No. What I would advocate is that a Minister who publicly called for their Departmental CEO to be fired, should be sacked. As their (effective) employer, that would also create an untenable situation. You can’t have employers publicly call for someone they employ to be sacked. I would have thought Idiot/Savant would have some regard for employment laws.

Richard Meadows at Stuff reports:

Sir Michael Fay’s band of farmers has launched legal proceedings today in an ongoing battle to prevent the Crafar farms group from being sold to Chinese firm Shangai Pengxin.

Represented by legal heavyweights Alan Galbraith QC and Bell Gully, the group filed proceedings in the High Court at Wellington to try and get the Official Investment Office’s (OIO) recommendation to be made public. A final decision on the OIO recommendation will be made by Government because it involves sensitive land.

There is no chance of this court action succeeding, in my opinion. The legal action is being done as part of a PR strategy designed to allow Sir Michael to pick up the Crafar farms cheaply.

Fay is a very crafty investor and businessman who has made hundreds of millions out of cunning deals, and is cleverly manipulating Labour’s xenophobia and public opinion to get a a great bargain. Good luck to him with that, but let’s be clear about the motives.

Fay’s alternative purchase group comprises several trusts as well as Aitchison Farms, Donovan Group and Brent Cook. The group had offered $171.5 million for the 16 central and southern North Island dairy farms, which KordaMentha rejected as too low.

Pengxin, which applied to the OIO to buy the farms nine months ago, is the preferred bidder with an offer believed to be around $210m.

So the Fay group is trying to pick up the farms for $40m less than others are willing to pay. What a great bargain, and definitely worth spending a few hundred thousand on PR and law suits, to pressure the Government into making the receiver sell them the farms at a $40m discount.

And here is the interesting thing. If the Fay group do pick up the farms, they will not have any obligations or conditions around their purchase. In fact they will be at total liberty to sell the farms a few months later – including to foreign investors. If they sell them one farm at a time, there will be less of a hurdle with OIO approval, and they’ll make a very tidy profit. So the end result will be the farms end up (inevitably) with those willing to pay the most for them, but the extra $40 million goes to Sir Michael and colleagues rather than the existing owners of the farms.

You can see why Sir Michael is such a cunning businessman, who has made so much money. And good on him – nothing wrong with that. What I am less clear on is why Labour are so keen to help him make a $40m profit at the expense of the actual owners?

Stuff reports:

New Labour leader David Shearer will visit one of the 16 Crafar farms in Taupo today and is throwing down the gauntlet as the Government prepares to make a decision on the politically charged sale.

“We believe foreign investment should add value to New Zealand. We don’t believe this does,” Mr Shearer said yesterday on the eve of a two-day caucus retreat.

“It asks a fundamental question about who owns New Zealand.”

No it does not. Labour during their nine years in office approved the equivalent of the Crafar farms being sold to foreign owners every single month! Yes the Crafar farms are around 9,000 hectares and Labour approved 650,000 hectares – equal to 75 Crafar farms.

So this is not a huge chuck of NZ land. It is not a fundamental question on anything.

And the politicians often neglect to mention the rights of the owner to get the best price they can for their land. If the owners are forced to accept an inferior offer which is $40m less than their best offer, then those owners have $40m less to invest elsewhere. That $40m may have ended up capital for a couple of small businesses employing 100 people each. It may have been used to invest in an Australian company, hence bringing dividend flows back into NZ.

I should state my view on the Pengxin bid. It is:

1. Ministers should follow the recommendations of the Overseas Investment Office. If they recommend approval, they should approve it and if they recommend it is declined, they should decline it. Ministers should not over-rule decisions based on the law, because of a PR campaign by Sir Michael Fay and Labour.
2. The current criteria for approving purchases by foreign owners, being that it be in the national interest, seems sound to me. But I’m not against some modification to the criteria for future decisions – however they can not be retrospective, and hence the Pengxin bid should be judged on the current law, not what the law might be changed to.
3. The free trade agreement with China has been hugely beneficial to New Zealand. Our exports to China have soared in the last three years, and it has reduced our trade and current account deficits. The xenophobia against this bid has dangerous economic risks. We all know that if this was a British company bidding, it wouldn’t have had one tenth the publicity. It seems silly to spit in the face of our largest growing export market.
4. With regards to (3) this does not mean the bid should be accepted if the OIO say it does not meet the criteria set down under law. It means that the bid should be judged on its economic case, not on the colour of the skin of the proposed investors.

Danya Levy and Andrea Fox at Stuff report:

Prime Minister John Key says proposed changes in the diary industry may result in cheaper milk and will give consumers confidence they are “not getting ripped off” by Fonterra.

Key this morning rejected claims by farmers that plans to force the dairy giant to provide five per cent of its raw milk to independent producers, up from three per cent, was sending profits offshore by assisting largely foreign-owned New Zealand-based exporters which compete with Fonterra.

Labour’s primary industry spokesman Damien O’Connor has voiced similar concerns. …

Key today said proposed provisions to phase out well-established competitors would alleviate concerns about overseas-owned companies profiting at Fonterra’s expense.

It was in Fonterra’s interest to have competition in the market.

“It’s very important that we have transparency because Fonterra find themselves primarily in a monopoly position, they control about 95 per cent of raw milk production in New Zealand,” he told TV3’s Firstline programme. …

Fonterra chairman Sir Henry van der Heyden has said it is valid for Fonterra to assist domestic market suppliers with milk, but requiring Fonterra to supply overseas-owned competitors “defied logic”.

The extra milk obligation would cost Fonterra $200 million over three years alone, he said. …

Dairy farmer James Houghton, a Fonterra supplier and president of Waikato Federated Farmers, said if Fonterra lost money, farmers’ payouts would be affected.

“I believe it is the Government wanting to control an industry it doesn’t need to control,” he said. “The more rules and regulations, the more control it has.

Hmmn, an interesting situation. On one side you have the Government and on the other side you have Fonterra and Federated Farmers, with some opportunistic backing by Labour. So is the Government doing the right thing or not?

Former Green MP Sue Kedgley, who was a member of the parliamentary select committee looking into milk pricing last year, said the proposals were good steps.

Well that solves it for me. The Government must be wrong!

The table below lists in order what percentage of people who gave Labour their party vote, gave their electorate vote to the National candidate. To some degree this measures the cross-party appeal of a candidate.

It is worth noting that not all electorates are equal. In seats which are safe National, it is no big thing for a Labour voter to give their electorate vote to the National MP. In seats which are marginal, and Labour was trying to win, you get fewer Labour voters splitting their votes.

Okay no surprise that Epsom tops the list, as Labour voters there were voting strategically. The surprise, if any, is that only 36% of them voted strategically.

Nick Smith in Nelson gets the most support after that from Labour voters, followed by Simon Bridges in Tauranga and Tony Ryall in the Bay of Plenty.

In 26 of 63 seats, National candidates had 5% or more of Labour voters give then the candidate vote.

The seat which got the most Labour people voting for the National candidate, that National did not win, was Mana with 3.1%.

And the seat which National did win, with the lowest level of Labour party voters splitting their vote was Christchurch Central at 2.1%.

In eight seats, the National candidate attracted less than 1% of Labour party voters. The bottom three were Mangere, Mt Roskill and New Lynn.

Michael Field at Stuff reports:

Samoans who claim they are poor are lazy, Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele says.

In a comment on the government website Savali, Tuilaepa says having no food, water, clothes, a home or access to medical treatment was poverty.

There was no poverty in Samoa. 

“Every Samoan has claim to land. There are plenty of mangoes, pawpaws, bananas and breadfruit falling off and rotting on the ground, plenty of fish in the sea,” he said.

“The problem is too many people are coming into town and loathing around. They are lazy and do not want to go back to their village to work the land. They should stay in their village where their lands are and develop it.”

Tuilaepa says that some Samoans think that not having car, a TV or a European house is poverty.

“Those are luxuries. Having none of those is certainly not poverty.”

Maybe the PM of Samoa should have been appointed to the Welfare Working Group!

No not that one, the good one.

This quote is from “The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill” by James C. Humes in 1995:

Late in his life, Sir Winston took a cruise on an Italian ship. A journalist from a New York newspaper approached the former prime minister to ask him why he chose to travel on an Italian line when the Queen Elizabeth under the British flag was available.

Churchill gave the question his consideration and then gravely replied: “There are three things I like about Italian ships. First, their cuisine, which is unsurpassed. Second, their service, which is quite superb. And then — in time of emergency — there is none of this nonsense about women and children first.”

This is rather weird. On Thursday I was at Waikanae Beach in the morning. Drove to Wellington and then flew to Auckland. At Auckland Airport I grabbed my luggage and got on the flight to Great Barrier Island. Got to sit in the co-pilot seat which is always fun as you get the best view. You just have to be very careful not to knock or grab anything.

Anyway a few minutes into the flight the underside of my right arm starts throbbing – quite significant pain. I turn it over to see what the problem is, and I see this:

This photo was taken two days later, so have faded a bit. You can’t see all of them, but in total there were ten cuts from just above my wrist to just below my elbow. Still fairly visible five days later.

Now the weird thing is I have no memory of them. I can’t think of any activity I did which could give me multiple cuts on my arm, let alone ones I would not notice until later. If it had happened in Africa I would assume it was some bush we drove through, but this was back in NZ.

And no, they are not self inflicted – unless I have a very bad case of sleep walking. Plus they are cut the wrong way for that.

So this will have to go down as one of life’s mysteries – both how they occurred, but also why I only felt them when I was on the plane to Barrier.

Ports of Auckland have twice released information on average remuneration levels for wharfies or stevedores employed by them. Many on the left have claimed these figures are wrong on the basis of a column by Matt McCarten which used third hand information from the union.

It has been interesting seeing so many try to deny factual figures, on the basis of just wishing they were different, as they are unhelpful to their cause.

Anyway Ernst & Young have audited the Ports of Auckland figures, and confirmed them. Hopefully this means the deniers will now be quiet. I’ve embedded below the Scribd by Whale.

Ports of Auckland Fact Sheet – Ernst and Young

A summary is:

• Ernst & Young found Ports of Auckland was correct in stating that the average remuneration for full time stevedores was $91,000.
• Not a single full-time stevedore earned as little as the $56,700 described by theMaritime Union as the basic wage at Ports of Auckland.
• Ernst & Young found that even part time stevedores made more than this, earning on average $65,000.
• 43 individuals earned over $100,000 with the highest earner making $122,000.
• Union claims that a stevedore would have to work around 32 weeks of overtime a year to receive the average remuneration of $91,000 are untrue.
• The $91,000 includes a range of allowances, benefits and shift payments with the average number of hours paid per week averaging 43.9.
• However, the real issue is the lack of flexibility which results in an excessive amount of paid downtime at the port. This means that for every 40 hours paid, Ports of Auckland’s stevedores are only working 26.

So Ernst & Young have confirmed that the average remuneration for a wharfie at POAL is $91,000 and the average umber of hours actually worked a week to gain that is 28 (26 x 44/40). That is an average hourly remuneration of $62.50 for actual hours worked.

The Herald reports:

The pregnant owner of an American pitbull which attacked a young girl in Rotorua reportedly lunged at the dog to save the 9-year-old.

Stevie-Rebecca Shipgood, 9, suffered deep cuts to her head and arm after a neighbour’s American bulldog attacked her in Rotorua on Sunday.

The dog’s owner, who did not want to be named, said his partner was walking the 2-year-old dog, Riley, on a lead about 2.30pm on Te Ngae Rd near Puketawhero Park in Rotorua.

Dog attacks on children (and adults) are horrifying. Even putting aside the dangerous breeds, even the nicest domesticated animal can lash out in certain circumstances. Normally it requires significant provocation, but for some animals it requires none. Plus of course, some animals can not do a great deal of harm as they are so small.

The last Government did a knee-jerk response to the issue with micro-chipping. As far as I can tell, it has made no difference at all. Sadly they seem to be equally knee-jerk now, with Damien O’Connor blogging at Red Alert:

It is about time we stopped pussyfooting around and advocated and implemented the destruction of any dog and breed of dog that is considered dangerous in New Zealand.

Is Damien really advocating that the Government pro-actively shoot every dog in New Zealand that is considered dangerous?

I tend to think dog owners are as much an issue, as the dogs themselves. Not in every case, such as the one reported above. But all too often, the owner is an issue.

It is worth looking at whether certain breeds which are known to consistently attack people should be banned, but you would need to grand-father in existing pets, as I don’t think killing dogs that have done nothing wrong is acceptable. Requiring them not to be bred or imported should eliminate them over time.

Andrew Geddis at Pundit blogs:

I’ve been asked by a colleague at an overseas law school to contribute to a special issue of their journal. The topic for the issue is: “The worst decision by a nation’s top court of the last 25 years.”

As the Kiwi representative, I’m expected to give a response to that prompt in relation to New Zealand jurisprudence. But I thought I’d throw it over to the knowledgable and opinionated readers of this site to crowdsource their wisdom (or, at least, pick up some suggestions of avenues that might be worth chasing down).

So – in the comments below, what do you think our top court’s worst decision has been in the last quarter century, and what makes it so bad? I’ll be interested to see if there’s any sort of consensus on this question, in the same way as US lawyers virtually all agree Dred Scott, Lochner, Plessy and Korematsu were bad. I’ll also be interested in what people think makes a “bad” court decision in the first place – is it the reasoning (or lack of), or the consequences, or something else instead?

There’s already an interesting thread at Pundit on the issue, but no consensus. If any lawyers reading this have an opinion, feel free to share.

It is becoming obvious that some or all of the Christchurch City Councillors must go. Two Councillors have called for the CEO to be sacked, and another has called for the Council to be sacked and replaced with a Commissioner.

First let’s look at those calling for the CEO to be sacked. Tim Carter said:

Outspoken Christchurch City councillor Tim Carter wants council boss Tony Marryatt sacked, prompting Mayor Bob Parker to accuse Carter of playing “a destructive game”.

Carter slammed Marryatt yesterday for acting “as the 14th councillor” at the council table and asked the Government to replace him with a commissioner.

In a statement to The Press, Carter said it was time for the Government to appoint a commissioner willing to engage with the full council and residents in an open and transparent manner.

And today:

Cr Glenn Livingstone agreed there had been a “loss of confidence” in the council by the public, but he disagreed with Wells’ views that the council should be disbanded.

He said he would support moves to sack chief executive Tony Marryatt if it was necessary for the council’s survival.

The thing which is clear to me is that Cr Carter and arguably Cr Livingstone should resign immediately. It is untenable to have a Councillor campaigning for the CEO to be sacked. It is impossible for the CEO to do his job, under such an environment.

The reality is that the majority of the Council voted to re-appoint Tony Marryatt as CEO. The Councillors against that had every right to vote against, and try and persuade their colleagues. But once they lost that argument, and the majority voted to re-appoint him, they have a duty to either accept the majority’s decision, or if they are unable to, resign from the Council in protest.

I am not an advocate of the view that on every issue, the minority on a Council must accept the view of the majority if it goes against them. It is quite legitimate to (for example) continue to fight against say an alcohol ban policy, if you as a Councillor thought it was a bad policy and a bad decision.

But when it comes to employment matters, you just can not have Councillors calling for the CEO, who is employed by the Council, to be sacked.

So at a minimum, those Councillors who are publicly advocating for the CEO to be sacked should resign off Council. Their position is untenable, and they are making the Council ungovernable and unmanageable.

One Councillor, Sue Wells, has called for the entire Council to be sacked and replaced with a Commissioner – whom the CEO would report to. This is an extreme step and I don’t think things have got that bad. But there would be one significant advantage of it, if this did happen.

Around 80% of the Council’s powers and functions are reputed to now lie with CERA. Also we have the Regional Council of ECan. And a huge amount of time and energy goes into sorting out disagreements between the three organisations. If the Council was replaced with a Commissioner, then you could (as Cr Wells suggested) combine ECan, CCC and CERA into one organisation for the next couple of years.

As I said, I don’t think a Commissioner is yet warranted, but the status quo is not sustainable either. At a minimum Cr Carter should go.

I’ve done an analysis of split voting from the official data in the E9. Will do a few posts on this.

The table below lists in order what percentage of people who gave National their party vote, gave their electorate vote to the Labour candidate. To some degree this measures the cross-party appeal of a candidate.

The Labour candidates who did best at attracting support from National voters were Ross Robertson in Manukau East, Lianne Dalziel in Christchurch East and Clayton Cosgrove in Waimakariri. They all got over 20% of National voters to vote for them.

Damien O’Connor shows how he won West Coast-Tasman, with 16% of National voters having voted for him.

Of the seats won by Labour, Dunedin North had the least number of National party voters vote for the Labour candidate – at 5.1%.

The seat where the Labour candidate got the fewest National voters was not surprisingly Helensville where Jeremy Greendrook-Held got only 0.3% of National voters voting for him. Not far behind was Tauranga where Deborah Mahuta-Coyle got only 0.4% of National voters to vote for her.

In total there were 13 seats where Labour candidates failed to attract even 1 in 100 National voters.

Tomorrow I’ll blog how the National candidates did picking up votes from Labour voters, and then how candidates from both parties did picking up votes from Green voters.

Reuters reports at Stuff:

Syria has rebuffed an Arab League call for President Bashar al-Assad step down in favour of a unity government as interference in its affairs, underlining its determination to defeat a 10-month-old uprising seeking Assad’s overthrow.

It was not immediately clear whether Syria would accept the League’s decision to keep Arab observers in the country for another month despite their failure to stem bloodshed in which hundreds of people have died since they deployed on December 26.

But any credibility the mission might retain was undermined when Saudi Arabia, a foe of Syria’s closest ally Iran, announced it would withdraw its own monitors because of the Syrian authorities’ failure to cooperate with its mandate. It was unclear if other Gulf states would follow suit. …

Rami Khouri, a Beirut-based commentator, said the unusually bold Arab plan announced at the Arab League’s Cairo headquarters on Sunday was clearly “bad news” for Assad.

“The fact that Arab countries would propose such a clear intervention and essentially order him to step aside and give him a mechanism to do so is quite a dramatic sign of how much credibility and legitimacy he has lost in the region,” he said.

It’s good to see the Arab League putting the pressure on Syria to stop killing its people, and to have elections. It makes it much harder for the regime to say the opposition is a tool of the United States etc.

However it is ironic that you have a league made up of so many countries that themselves do not have democratic elections, pushing for elections in Syria. I guess the difference is their monarchies are  relatively benign, and are not killing their citizens. However even the House of Saud may feel the winds of change one day.

The NZ Herald Politics Quiz is back. Despite my holiday, still got 10/10 in 33 seconds.

AP report at Stuff:

Indonesian police say a civil servant who posted “God does not exist” on Facebook faces a maximum penalty of five years behind bars for blasphemy. …

Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim nation of 240 million, recognises the right to practice five other religions. But atheism is illegal.

Atheism is illegal?

Do they also prosecute people for talking about evolution? Or gravity?

What sort of a supreme being needs laws to force people to believe in him? If there is a supreme being, I suspect he is very ashamed of Indonesia.

Kirsty Johnston at Stuff reports:

The men’s hearing comes as Opposition politicians call for accountability into Dotcom’s status as a resident.

Although the overweight, flamboyant former hacker – who legally changed his name to Dotcom from Shmitz – had convictions from his native Germany, he was able to settle in Auckland after investing $10 million in New Zealand government bonds in 2010.

Those bonds are now part of the assets frozen by authorities investigating the charges against Megaupload – which include racketeering, money laundering and copyright infringements.

NZ First leader Winston Peters called for the prime minister to set up an immediate inquiry into how Dotcom was allowed to stay permanently in Auckland, where he lived in a $30 million mansion belonging to the Chrisco enterprise founders.

“It has been reported that Dotcom is known in Germany as a notorious computer hacker and has been convicted of insider trading, yet immigration authorities let him settle here under the so-called investor-plus category. The prime minister should order an immediate inquiry … to see who was involved in this immigration scandal and ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”

Labour immigration spokeswoman Darien Fenton said that before there was an inquiry, it should be asked whose responsibility it was to allow the discretion to overlook his convictions.

The “investor-plus” category Dotcom’s residency fell into needed to be looked at to ensure others of “dubious” character were not also able to bypass the good character test, she said.

In a statement, the Immigration Service said that “Mr Dotcom made full disclosure of his previous convictions and they were taken into account in the granting of his residence. The Immigration Act allows for discretion to be exercised in certain cases. In this particular case, Immigration NZ weighed the character issue and any associated risk to New Zealand against potential benefits to New Zealand”.

Calling for an inquiry into why he had been granted residency before he has even had a trial, is a rather bad case of the horse before the cart.

Certainly based on what has been reported to date, I have a pretty negative impression of Mr Dotcom. And in fact in several media interviews have said that at this stage the copyright holders have acted appropriately in complaining to the authorities, and the authorities laying charges if they have a good faith belief laws have been broken.

This is very different to demanding that new laws be instituted so that people may lose their Internet access on the basis of accusation, or in the case of SOPA that ISPs be forced to block websites based on accusations. These damage the Internet terribly.

But having said that my initial impression of Dotcom is negative, he has yet to have his extradition hearing let alone have his day in court. Only if he is found guilty of breaking the law, would you then expect there to be (quite legitimate) questions about the process and decision making around his residency approval.

Cactus Kate has blogged her version of the agenda for the Labour Party Summer School.

Some extracts:

5.45PM Housekeeping

Here Charles Chauvel will show you all how to make your bed properly. So you can tell the staff to do it for you later.

5AM Coping With Loss

David Cunliffe will speak on his time dealing with disappointment. We haven’t told him (or Greg Presland) yet but you will all be away biking with Trevor at the same time except those of you in wheelchairs or who are heavily physically impaired.

8.00AM Breakfast

If you still can stand after the compulsory bike ride our esteemed Deputy Leader Grant Robertson will serve you a Blanketman breakfast in honor of his favorite constituent. Just to get you all going for the day on a high.

Neelam Choudary

Needs no introduction. How to catch sleazy Tories in a honey trap. Neelam did more damage to National in the last term than any Labour MP could manage.

6.00PM Dinner – Sausages on BBQ sponsored by The Mad Butcher

Indepth after dinner conversation on “Traitors in the media” featuring John Pagani and Chris Trotter with comparisons to “Thee Who Can’t be Named” from the pre 1990 era and Mad Dog Prebble. Guest historian Judith Tizard and Michael Bassett.

Prayers to Dear Former Leader Rt Hon Helen Clark and Skype to NYC. Followed by a bit of social media training to explain the phenomenon of Whaleoil and how to combat him. Alcohol will be provided so please bring a plastic cup.

At various times in the past, the Police leadership hasn’t been all inspiring. It it important our Police our well led and effective. So great to see this article in the Herald.

The country’s top cop, Peter Marshall, was out with the rank and file on the late shift on New Year’s Eve helping staff deal with a young woman cutting her wrists with a knife at the end of Princes Wharf.

A few days later one of Marshall’s deputies, Mike Bush, and a few other senior officers went to the mortuary while Disaster Victim Identification staff were assisting with the post-mortems of the Carterton balloon tragedy victims.

Marshall says that in the past executive staff would go out “sporadically, shall we say” with the frontline officers, but now they are out there regularly.

Excellent.

This is the new top echelon of the New Zealand police, and staff all the way down the hierarchy seem to be highly impressed.

It’s unheard of, an officer told us, the Commissioner of Police going out on the beat.

“The guys really respond to that. He’s a very inspiring man.”

And not once as a PR stunt. But regularly.

The new leadership and direction seems to be paying dividends with the troops. Marshall has two deputy commissioners – Bush and Viv Rickard. Of the more than 20 police officers we spoke to around the country, from constables to superintendents, every single one was glowing about the leaders. Some said it was the best administration they had served under in 30-year careers – one even called the three the “Holy Trinity.” Another said they were “good blokes, down to earth, no bullshit, no pretensions”.

Credit should also go to Judith Collins who effectively appointed the Commissioner, and approved the Deputies. She leaves the Police in much better state than what she inherited three years ago.

They also appreciate someone defending them in the media. Several commented on how quickly and firmly Marshall had moved to rebut a critical article by former MP and police inspector Ross Meurant in North & South magazine. Marshall regularly blogs on the police website and sings the praises of the force or points out positive public trust and confidence ratings or tells anecdotes.

Openness also.

It’s not perfect. They still seem to have no idea when it comes to electoral offences. But they are making a real difference.