In my blog at Stuff, I moot whether we should have term limits for List MPs, as a way to respond to the issue of people not liking defeated electorate candidates coming in on the list.

Pat Brittenden writes:

If society can be judged by how we treat the least, then the death of ‘Blanket Man’ tells us we suck

I disagree.

We spend $13 billion a year on welfare. Hama would have qualified for welfare if had wanted it. He qualified for community or emergency housing. A number of places had standing offers for him to stay there. He declined them.

The Wellington City Mission checked up on him weekly.

Places like Burger King gave him free food.

He got free health care, and died in a public hospital, where people who cared had taken him.

Grant Robertson also blogs:

He was the face of homelessness in Wellington. It is true to say that he shunned the idea of moving off the streets in recent years, and indeed of taking on much in the way of formalised help. He was beyond that, and wanted none of it.

Hana was a very sad case, but i reject that his death is in any way any sort of reflection on the generous society that is New Zealand. The old saying goes that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.

Unless you wish to champion a law that allows the state to forcibly detain those who lives on the streets and lock them in community housing, there will always be cases like Hana.

We have a real shortage of emergency accomodation, affordable accomodation and accomodation for those with mental illness. The different agencies involved are getting better at working together to find solutions, but still need to be more coordinated and flexible if we are to truly address these issues. Its not just government either, the community has a responsibility too. Many private landlords will not take on those who have a history of mental illness.

But Hana was offered plenty of accommodation. There was no shortage when it came to him.

His real problem was his mental illness fuelled by drug addiction. The problem is there is no sure fire way to cure either mental illness or drug addiction. There are many courses (mostly 100% taxpayer funded) that help cure or heal some of the people some of the time. But with mental illness there is no universal cure.

If there is any lesson to be taken from the death of Hana, it is not to turn the homeless into icons and glorify their existence. Once this started, Hana refused more and more help.

Even funner than Plunket in Metro, was the column by David Slack. Again well worth buying a copy to read the full thing, but let me share some extracts from Slack’s Captain Log for David Shearer:

Day One: I have had the privilege of meeting some truly fascinating people in my life. Energetic people. Inspiring people. Imaginative people. People whose work fills you with hope. I look around the caucus room again. I miss those people.

LOL.

Day Two: Quietly kicking myself. I’ve dealt with Somali warlords who got along better than this.

He then decides to take the Labour caucus on a bonding retreat to Somalia.

Day 68: Trevor asking awkward questions about the funding for the trip. Quietly kicking myself for taking up Hooton’s offer. Still can’t believe how fast he and his mates came up with the money …

Walk up and down the plane. They all have their gripes. Parker’s complaining he didn’t get his special meal. Street wants a window seat. King wants the same one. Ross Robertson gets sniffy when I don’t recognise him and ask him for ID.

Heh.

Clare Curran wants to show me what she’s read on a blog about “chemtrails“. Sit down next to her and use up three hours pointing out the window, drawing diagrams, explaining sunlight, temperature, wind shear, humidity levels, aeronautics and conspiracy nutbars. Think we’ve got it all squared away but then she says “Bout of course that’s what Fox News wants people to think isn’t it?”

ROTFLMAO.

Then over in Somalia the bus break downs.

Day 71. Arrive back with replacement bus. Shambles. Laundry hanging out of windows. Trevor has a card school going. Do a head count. One missing.

“Where’s Charles?” I ask. Without looking up from his hand, Trevor says: “Flogged down a Mercedes and pissed off back to Mogadishu to look for a four seasons.”

And the wonderful ending:

Just then there’s a toot of a horn and a cheery “Hi-de-hi” from outsid. Look out the window to see what’s going on. Great. Chris Carter.

I’m going to have to read Metro more often!

A hilarious column by Sean Plunket in Metro on the National-ACT negotiations after the election. Worth getting Metro just to read the whole thing. Some extracts:

Banks: Golly it was close, wasn’t it? Great to be back in Parliament as a National… oh, sorry… Act MP. No, no tea, thanks Prime Minister. Anyway boss, what am I here for?”

“So what is it you want Banksy?” queries Key.  “I know you are going to drive a bloody hard bargain, mate”

“Not really,” says Banks. Then adds quizzically, “What do I want?”

“You are one wily old fox, aren’t you, Banksy? Pulling the old I-don’t-know-what-I-want-trick, when I know and you know that you want charter schools.”

“Charter whats?” says Banks.

“Charter schools, Einstein. You know schools where we can blow away the national curriculum, give those pinko teachers the boot and say it’s all in the cause of improving outcomes for kids like you and me who climbed their way to the top despite a failing state education system.”

“Sounds good, Leader. We’ll take it”

One can’t be sure that isn’t how it went, which is what makes it so funny. Then he carries on:

Banks moves towards the door. “If there is nothing else, I’ve got an optician’s appointment to replace those silly glassses.”

“You’ve got me again Banksy!” says Key as he mimes being shot through the heart and falling dead. “The old that’s-all-I-want-and-I’m-on-my-way-trick! You weren’t really just going to walk out the door without even asking for a departmental spending freeze that would require any minister wanting a budget increase to have it approved by Parliament?”

“Yes I was, actually” Banks looks increasingly confused.

“Okay, you can stop twisting my arm now, Banksy. It’s yours.”

And the conclusion:

“I’m happy with that. Is there anything else I want?”

“Oh, there are a couple of other issues you’ll be wanting to hold my feet to the fire on, but why not just sign the agreement here and I’ll get Steven Joyce to fill in the details.”

“Righto, boss. I’ll see you in a couple of years, then.”

Plunket must have been in the room 🙂

Brian Edwards blogs on the Josie Pagani (and interestingly notes she used to be his producer) op ed on Labour, and comes up with his own list of why Labour did so poorly. I agree with some of what Brian has said, but not all so will go through them in turn.

The extreme improbability of any political party in New Zealand being voted out after just one term in office

That is a factor in why National got re-elected but less so about why Labour dropped 7%. I would also note that under MMP getting a second term is not so easy – at the end of the day we avoided a hung Parliament by just one seat.

The nation’s love affair with John Key, without doubt the greatest exponent of the photo opportunity and ‘skinetics’ in the history of New Zealand politics;

Yes John Key is popular, and this was definitely a factor. But the implication that it is all about photo opportunities falls into the trap so many on the left make of under-estimating Key, and thinking he is just “smile and wave”. I’m not saying Dr Edwards does as he has written in more detail on Key previously, but just in this post the reasons Key are so popular are not explored much – especially the fact he ran a very moderate and centrist first term programme (second term is less centrist), that he was hugely reassuring on the economy (ask anyone who has been to a business breakfast where he talks about the issues), that he has opened up the books on MPs and Ministers spending, that he will back down on some (but not all) issues etc etc.

The relative lack of voter enthusiasm for Phil Goff

This was one of the larger factors. And it generally wasn’t anything Goff could change. Putting up someone who entered Parliament 30 years ago as the face for the future was always going to be hugely difficult. Add to that his mishandling of the Richard Worth allegations, the Darren Hughes allegations and even the SIS briefing, and his ratings stayed massively low until the campaign period itself.

Earthquakes, mining and shipping disasters which, in media terms, disadvantage those not in power and unable to influence events;

Yes, but only with a caveat – so long as the Government in power responds competently to them. Hurricane Katrina didn’t exactly help the Bush Administration. And the hysteria around the Rena in the early days wasn’t great either.

The Rugby World Cup, a convenient distraction for National shortly before the election;

The more major impact is that it shortened the campaign period during which people started to tune into Labour. But having said that, Labour then dropped away during the same campaign period.

The general euphoria that winning the Cup produced;

Must thank Helen and Trevor for bidding to host it in an election year.

Widespread voter disengagement from politics, particularly on the Left.

But why? The Greens did well.

The self-fulfilling nature of three  years of polls branding Key and National  sure-fire winners and Goff and Labour sure-fire losers.

That definitely does have an impact.

Labour’s courage in advancing policies that made long-term economic sense, but were highly unattractive to voters in the short term: a capital gains tax and raising the age of eligibility for the pension.  

I’m not sure the CGT or superannuation policy (both which I supported to some degree) turned off many voters. Maybe the superannuation one delivered a few to Winston.

I think the pledging an extra $70 a week to beneficiaries with children and only $10 a week to working parents with children went down like cold sick.

I also think Goff fumbling the numbers, combined with policies requiring more borrowing in the next seven years (even by Labour’s numbers) were a significant factor.

Nor was Goff helped by the idiotic decision of Labour’s campaign team not to have a Party launch and not to feature the Party Leader on any of their election billboards. The only possible interpretation that could be placed on this hare-brained scheme was that Labour was embarrassed by Goff and wanted him kept in the background. And that is precisely the interpretation that the media, political commentators and, I suspect, voters placed on it.

Yep, a very stupid decision. And the question that hasn’t been answered is who made that decision? Is he now the Deputy Leader?

Finally, Phil was probably not helped by Helen’s dramatic departure from the scene or by her ordination of him as Labour’s new leader. Having served a parliamentary apprenticeship only three years short of hers, he might just have appreciated another three or six months to get his bearings and turn to her for advice.

I agree this was unhelpful. Not just for the advice, but the fact he gained no profile when he took over, as all the focus was on Key. Labour did it much smarter this time around.

There’s other factors also. The front-bench was all Clark era Ministers. The ongoing series of social media own goals. The smear brochures which people don’t like, the relative strength of the Greens, the u-turns on policy, the three years of attacking every single spending cut and then claiming they will adopt National’s fiscal parameters except in one or two areas. I could go on.

28 Auckland Council Local Board Members have called on Ports of Auckland to surrender to the demands of the Maritime Union, and rule out any contracting out as that will have few work-life balance protections.

I guess having to work more than 28 hours a week to have remuneration of $91,000 would upset the work-life balance.

The majority of the 28 board members are well known Labour activists. Useful of them to provide a hadny list of whom not to vote for.

Worth  noting that the total number of local board members is 148, so 120 have not signed the Labour Party missive.

Jesse Norman, a UK, makes a good case for real capitalism, not crony capitalism. It’s an 18 page pdf, so not a long read. His summary:

• Capitalism is the greatest tool of wealth creation, social advance and economic development ever known.
• We are living through a period of crony capitalism, of which the Goldman Sachs flotation and Lloyds-HBOS merger are just two examples.
• Conservatives must make the moral case for real capitalism, and take action against crony capitalism — and the culture that created it.

He notes the track record of capitalism vs the alternative:

In fact capitalism is the greatest tool of economic development, wealth creation and social advance ever known. In capitalism, owners of intellectual, financial or human capital have property rights that enable them to earn a profit as a reward for putting that capital at risk in some form of free market economic activity.

Korea used to be one country. Thirty years after the Korean war, GDP per capita in capitalist South Korea was five times that of communist North Korea; in 2009 it was sixteen times greater.

But says capitalism has to also be defended on moral grounds, not just economic:

But the case for capitalism is not just economic and social; it is also moral. For many decades, capitalism has come under attack on moral grounds. It is said to be intrinsically immoral, and driven by greed; to be founded on theft, with the greatest capitalists mere “robber barons”; to create and perpetuate exploitation and inequality; even to be morally vacant.

Something we hear in NZ a lot.

Of course abuses of capitalism often occur. But the bigger truth is that capitalism is at root a moral force for good. It relies on, and so demands:

a. Personal freedom and individual autonomy, the foundation stones of personal morality;
b. The virtues of hard work, creativity and thrift;
c. Social exchange: traditions and practices by which intellectual, financial and human capital can be shared to best effect;
d. Institutions such as the rule of law and the family that preserve property over time;
e. Effective government to create and enforce the law, to share social costs and, I would argue, to help the disadvantaged;
f. A wider culture and a stable but fluid social order in which its virtues are respected and opportunity exists for all of energy and talent, that is for all.

He then turns to crony capitalism:

What is crony capitalism? One can identify different varieties, such as monopoly, franchise, khaki and narco-capitalism:
• Monopoly capitalism flourished in the USA at the end of the 19th century. At that time individuals such as Cooke, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller were able to amass enormous wealth by agglomerating new industries into “trusts”, which exercised monopoly or oligopoly market power within markets.
• Franchise capitalism developed in Russia during the 1990s. A generation of “oligarchs” emerged, alongside the official apparatus of the state, whose wealth derived from winning lucrative natural resources franchises in oil and gas.
• Khaki capitalism has taken root in countries such as Egypt and Pakistan, where the armed forces have become large economic actors in their own right. In Egypt, for example, the army runs roughly 10 per cent of the economy.
• Narco-capitalism has been seen in recent decades in Mexico and Colombia, among other countries. The drugs trade created enormous illicit profits for its chiefs. As the trade became a substantial part of a regional or national economy, it was further entrenched through corruption.

These varieties can and do often co-exist in a given country or society. They all exploit the absence of law or law enforcement, market mechanisms or culture which act elsewhere as constraints on individual self-enrichment.

More generally, one might say crony capitalism has two key features:
a. Business activity loses any relation to the wider public interest
b. Business merit is separated from business reward.

By contrast, real capitalism is a system where real people take real risk, invest real time in real work and reap real rewards for their efforts. A day’s work for a day’s pay. Markets are used, but not venerated. Competition is welcomed, but made subject to proper regulation and supervision. People are rewarded and respected for their aspiration, energy and innovation, not for who they are.

I don’t agree with everything he advocates, but he makes some good points. He finishes with nine lessons:

1. Conservatives need to turn up the volume on crony capitalism.
2. Culture matters.
3. Excessive pay is a serious issue.
4. Corporate governance isn’t sexy. But it is vital.
5. The banks should temporarily restrain, and perhaps cease, dividend and large bonus distributions.
6. We need a fundamental rethink about competition.
7. Key public institutions require better governance.
8. The new Financial Policy Committee must have a range of tools to control asset bubbles.
9. We need to love our savers.

Good food for thought.

I love this photo, supplied to the Herald. Very man of the people. A party leader who surfs is a cool look.

Karl du Fresne makes some excellent points here:

When did the police decide that their role extended beyond preventing crime and apprehending lawbreakers?

Clearly, a new generation of officers is under the delusion that they have a remit to provide moral guidance and matronly advice to the rest of us on how to lead wholesome lives.

Last week the head of the Canterbury police alcohol strategy and enforcement team, Sergeant Al Lawn, was publicly tut-tutting over the granting of an alcohol licence to a new Christchurch supermarket.

With respect, Mr Lawn should pull his head in. The law allows the police to have their say when submissions are heard on liquor licence applications, but once the decision is made, that should be an end to it.

Absolutely. It is not their job to undermine the decision of the independent authority, through the media.

Obviously not satisfied with this state of affairs, and probably smarting because the decision didn’t go his way, Mr Lawn seized on the opportunity to lecture supermarkets on their supposed moral responsibilities.

He doesn’t think supermarkets should discount alcohol because it supposedly encourages binge drinking. But I know lots of people who are happy to buy discounted wine and beer from supermarkets and they couldn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, be labelled as binge drinkers.

Mr Lawn went even further, suggesting that stores should reduce the price of milk, fruit and vegetables to attract customers “in a way that is also good for the community”. What pompous moralising.

Someone send him a membership form for the Mana Party.

When did the Police become responsible for the price of milk?

Out of curiosity I googled Mr Lawn and on the basis of what I saw, I concluded that he has well and truly crossed the line between objective law enforcement and political activism. He makes emotive statements about liquor industry “drug pushers” and condemns politicians for not getting tougher on alcohol.

He is entitled to those views as a private citizen, but to push them as a police officer is an abuse of his position.

Absolutely.

Tahu Potiki writes in Stuff in defence of Destiny:

Why is it that a Christian-based church that has never done anything legally wrong has raised the ire and suspicion of so many?

Because we expect better things of some, than merely not breaking the law. Lots of unethical scumbags never broke the law.

But the general population, and certainly the media, have an inherent distrust of the man and his church. In fact, he has been voted one of the least-trusted high-profile men in New Zealand on a couple of occasions.

How very sensible.

Let’s have a look at those accusations because, although his time as church leader has certainly been controversial and he stands for many things that are unpopular in modern times Destiny Church is certainly not alone with these views.

He has a big problem with homosexuality. He is outspoken and judgmental about the issue and has condemned the past Labour government for their civil union legislation which legitimises such relationships. Because of this, and other statements, he has been labelled a homophobe which implies he is frightened of homosexuals or homosexuality.

I don’t actually think he is any more frightened of gay people than the Pope is. Instead he has adopted a very puritanical and rigid interpretation of scripture which utterly condemns the idea of any sexual relationship that is not between a man and a woman. This is pretty consistent with other conservative church positions, including the official position of the Catholic Church. But, despite the proven Catholic clergy proclivity for moral indecency and the obvious hypocrisy of their stated position, the stated Destiny position is seen as more offensive than the Catholic one.

Potiki misses a huge point here.

The Catholic Church never formed a political party that stood for Parliament on a platform of forcing its religious beliefs on all New Zealanders.

The Catholic Church also never organised a march called “Enough is Enough” where a thousand or more identically clad black shirted followers marched in military like precision down the main street of Wellington, waving their pre-supplied signs to support the Church’s agenda.

Another criticism of Tamaki is that he is practically self-ordained and that he is the church. Followers pledge their allegiance to him as the “man of God” and not to the more depersonalised church itself. Religious and spiritual philosophy is a terribly complex subject but it is important to note that many of the large religions have a spiritual head who, although they are earthly and of real flesh and blood, are also a spiritual vessel on earth for their particular god.

Yes, but Catholics do not worship the Pope and Anglicans do not worship the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Most of us accept that this is simply part of the faith and do not lose sleep over such claims even though in general terms it would be considered pretty questionable. Despite that the Dalai Lama, the Pope and the Grand Ayatollah are followed both as corporeal individuals and spiritual representatives of God. But Tamaki’s claim to be a vessel of God’s power on Earth is treated with disdain by most.

Yes, party because he appointed himself God’s vessel. For all their faults, the other churches were not created just to benefit their current head. That is a huge difference.

Perhaps the most damning accusation of Tamaki is his wealth accumulation philosophy which apparently emerges from prosperity theology. This is the idea that personal empowerment is advocated as a core part of Christian doctrine and that part of empowerment is personal wealth. Not surprisingly this philosophy is very controversial and does not find favour with most mainstream Christian churches. But, as we know, most of the traditional Christian churches have also accumulated enormous wealth as a result of leveraging their position within their communities over the past couple of millennia, so assuming the moral high ground now that values and social mores have shifted dramatically is a little bit rich.

I think the Catholic Church is also obscenely rich. But again there are huge differences. Destiny mandates a 10% or more tithe, and aggressively pressure people to pay it. They actually pass EFTPOS terminals around their church. They visit you at home if you do not pay. And they come up with numerous other ways to fleece people into paying more money.

The Catholic Church doesn’t see Easter as a commercial opportunity. Destiny tends to see everything as a commercial opportunity. They are more akin to Scientology without the aliens.

So what is it that gets everyone’s goat when it comes to Brian Tamaki and Destiny Church? Is it more distasteful to us because his particular position is 100 per cent home-grown, or because we find it easier to accept such statements from geriatric Germans in golden robes and jewellery rather than a flashy toothed, Maori man wearing a tailor-made suit?

Nope, nothing to do with that. It is the combination of having formed a political party to force his religious views on us, having declared himself God’s vessel on earth and having an extremely aggressive approach to forcing believers to tithe that get’s my goat, and most people’s. Nothing to do with him being Maori.

Having said all that I acknowledge Destiny do some good with some of their community programmes in South Auckland. If they stayed out of politics, didn’t portray Tamaki as the Messiah, and were less aggressive in their fleecing of followers then most people would not care about them, or even mildly approve of what they do.

I disapproved of the the film The Iron Lady long before I saw it. What sort of sick Hollywood types think it is okay to mock a still living person by highlighting their suffering from Alzheimer’s to the world.

If Jimmy Carter had Alzheimer’s, would they be making films of him as an old confused man, babbling about the SALT treaty. No chance at all.

Don’t get me wrong, once someone is dead, any portrayal of their life should be warts and all, and include their twilight years when their mental facilities were not what they once were. But my views were that such a film should not be made when the subject is still alive. And I still believe the film was premature.

But something wonderful happened with this film, despite the suspect motives of those behind it. Meryl Streep brought Margaret Thatcher to life, in a way I would not have thought possible. She made her strong, she made her powerful, she made her sad, she made her obstinate, she made her defiant, she made her out of touch, she made her lonely and most of all she made her human – not just a caricature.

If Streep does not win an Oscar for her performance, then there is something seriously wrong. It was a stunning performance by her. She looked and sounded absolutely convincing. Alexandra Roach as the younger Margaret also performed wonderfully.

The film is an emotional one. Yes, I got wet eyes at times. It was a very sad story, but also a very uplifting one at times. It is effectively a series of flashbacks of the present day Lady Thatcher thinking through her life from working in her father’s grocery store, to getting involved in politics, standing for Parliament, becoming Leader and then Prime Minister plus the highs and lows of her time in office with her eventual resignation 11 and a half years on.

The present day Lady Thatcher is obviously suffering from Alzheimer’s. In the main, they capture this remarkably accurately and with sensitivity. A good example is how she slips out of the house to buy some milk as she needs some for breakfast, and this sparks a major panic amongst her staff and Police. From her point of view of course she is capable of going to the dairy. But from their point of view they are worried that if she has a forgetful spell when out, she’ll get confused and may wonder anywhere.

They accurately showed that she was still somewhat active – signing books, the odd public outing – but also obviously frail. The big plot element was that her dead husband Denis always appeared to her as a ghost, and she was often seen talking to him to the dismay of her minders.

They over-played the ghost of Denis angle, but it was still quite endearing. They captured his charm very well, and there is no doubt she terribly misses him. Anyone who has lost a partner of 50+ years would understand.

On the political side, they got it absolutely right. People forget what a massive achievement it was for her to become leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. This was a time when few few women were in politics, and she battled to be accepted every step of the way. You just wanted to punch some of those patronising old men.

They showed her at her best when talking about doing what is right, not what is popular. Absolutely inspiring. And the scene where she verbally lashes the US Secretary of State for suggesting they negotiate (she called it surrender) to the Argentinians was superb – especially how then suddenly she goes all lovely and asks if she should play mother and pour the tea. The Americans are all pale white at this stage.

The film though is definitely not a sycophantic account. They show the hatred, and the protests. They show her unwillingness to bend on the poll tax and they show the humiliating way she treated some of her cabinet colleagues such as Lord Howe – which led to her downfall. They subtly made Heseltine out to be a type of rodent, which was excellent.

Finally the ending was spot on. In her hallucinations she has finally let Denis move on and he is seen walking down the corridor away from her with his bags packed. She cries out for him not to leave her alone, and he replies that he isn’t – that she has always been alone.

And that gets to the crux of Thatcher – she fought battles all her life – and generally she did fight alone. It was a lonely life, and in her end years an even lonelier existence. You feel both sorry for her and (if not a hater of her) inspired by her.

As I said, I was prejudiced against the film before I saw it. But as I saw reviews come out from the likes of Boris Johnson describing how well it captured Thatcher, I started to look forward more to the film. And Boris was right – it did capture her so well, warts and all. I still don’t like the timing of the film, but Meryl Streep especially made the film a magnificent portrayal of her life.

Incidentally I saw the film at the Shoreline Cinema in Waikanae. It’s a lovely little cinema with two rooms. Room 1 which we were in seats 40, but on two seater couches which were very cool. They also have room for wine or food in the spaces between each couch.

The ODT report:

Euthanasia law-reform activist Sean Davison is shaken but unfazed despite death threats and an attack on his Dunedin residence over the weekend.

A brick, with a note attached, was thrown through the window of his Kaikorai address at 11.05pm on Friday, landing 4m across the living room floor. The note said: “Leave Gods [sic] laws or be struck down dead”.

How lovely.

“They’re obviously from people who are opposed to the law change I’m seeking. They’re obviously not very bright, because they glued all the letters, but hand-wrote the address on the envelope,” he said.

Dumb and dumber.

The offender picked the wrong target in Davison, who is head of the University of Western Cape forensic DNA laboratory in South Africa.

“I’m going to get the letters DNA-tested at our laboratory in Cape Town … you can easily get profiles from stamps and envelopes,” he said.

“Then I’ll provide the results to the police.”

Excellent. Great initiative.

Mike Hosking’s editorial:

In a way, you can’t blame the wharfies for putting up the fight they are at the Ports of Auckland. I mean if you were being paid to do nothing, you would be looking to hang on to the deal, wouldn’t you?

Eight hours pay, three hours work – good on them for getting the deal. God only knows who was thick enough to sign it off, but the game’s up. The port is lacklustre. it’s losing business and money to other ports. Its reputation isn’t flash and at long last they’re looking to get things tidied up.

What a good summary.

The wharfies have lost. They don’t have the support of the company, of the council which owns them, they certainly don’t have the support of the Auckland ratepayers who are watching a company they own get destroyed, and they don’t have the support of the wider public. Through all the bluster and hot air and jibes at management pulled directly out of Arthur Scargill’s handbook on how to run a class ridden industrial dispute, they have been seen for what they are – a fiefdom on a deal from another age refusing to be realistic.

Even Len Brown doesn’t back them. The man who took their money to get elelcted sees it for what it is. He should have been playing a far greater role before it ever got to the state it’s in. Ports of Auckland is a major company with a major contribution to the economy of the biggest city in the country and it’s operating in a time warp. Business is leaving – Maersk has walked, Fonterra’s gone.

This even goes beyond Auckland. Reducing freight costs through more efficient ports and the like has benefits for all of New Zealand, especially exporters.

Where’s the council? The owners? The representatives of all the rate payers who have a stake in the business? The dividends are a joke compared to Tauranga. Do they think the port is a welfare scheme? A jobs programme? Why aren’t they demanding better performance and better returns? The answer is there – lay them off. Too many strikes, too many lock outs, too much disruption. Get rid of them and find some people that actually want to do the job.

We must thank Mike Lee for buying out the minority private sector answers, so ratepayers would be the only ones having to tolerate a return of just 2% on capital.

Today’s Herald editorial:

The Labour Party could bounce back quickly from its heavy election defeat if it heeds the testimony of one of its candidates in a contributed column we published on Friday. Josie Pagani wrote: “We didn’t sound aspirational, we sounded miserable. We were turning up on people’s doorsteps telling them their lives were gloomy …

“The hardest week to door- knock,” she said, “was when we were telling people who had just come home from a day’s work earning the minimum wage, that it was a great idea to extend their Working for Families tax credit to beneficiaries.” She could see them thinking, ‘so what’s the point of working my guts out all week while someone sitting at home on the dole gets the same tax credit as me?’

In a long line of bad policies (and a few good ones), this one was arguably the worst.

Labour’s new leadership will be listening to the likes of Ms Pagani. It has some highly aspirational young candidates who could have expected to come into Parliament if the party had not polled so low in November.

And if their list ranking had not protected incumbents.

If Labour can go to the next election with well-developed ideas for helping people who aspire to work hard, make sound choices, raise happy and healthy children, maybe start a business and invest their savings, it will strike a strong chord. If it can tell people only that they are poor, deprived, under-valued, and obese, it will not give the Government a run for our money.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to have Labour go into an election not vowing to punish the well off and raise taxes on them?

Stuff report:

Wellington street personality Ben Hana, more commonly known as “Blanket Man”, has died.

Hana, 54, died in Wellington Hospital at 3.35pm today, a Capital and Coast District Health Board spokeswoman confirmed.

Authorities had become increasingly concerned about his health in the past few weeks.

It was not known what he died from. However, he was suffering medical problems stemming from heavy alcohol use and malnutrition, lawyer Maxine Dixon said.

Many Wellingtonians had a soft spot for Blanket Man, and he did become an unofficial icon. However he was also a serial pest to some shop keepers, and to female passer-bys from time to time.

I recall there was once a Facebook group called something like “I’ve seen Blanket Man’s penis” and there were several thousand members of it. His public page had 25,500 fans, which is a lot.

If I recall, Hana was a successful forestry worker, married with four children. A number of traumatic personal events including a drink driving death led to his downward spiral. For all the fun associated with Blanket Man, he was in fact a very sad and tragic figure.  May he rest in peace now.

Travelmole reports:

A former Qantas group chief economist says people who weigh more should pay more to fly on planes.

Writing for Business Day in Fairfax newspapers, Tony Webber, now managing director of Webber Quantitative Consulting and Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Business School, claims fuel burnt by planes depends on many things “but the most important is the weight of the aircraft. The more a plane weighs, the more fuel it must burn”.

Webber said if passengers on the aircraft weigh more, the aircraft consumes more fuel and the airline’s costs go up.

In turn, the airline would need to lift airfares to recover the additional costs. And when they did, the burden of the higher fees should not be lumbered “on those who are shedding a few kilos or keeping their weight stable”.

Webber said airline fuel costs have increased since 2000 not just because of higher oil and jet fuel prices…”but also because the average adult passenger is carrying a bit more heft”.

Between 1926 and 2008, the average weight of an Aussie female adult increased from 59 kilograms to 71 kilos and the average weight of an Aussie male adult increased from 72 to 85 kilos, according to Webber.

I agree. If you pay more for extra weight in your baggage, you should pay more for extra weight on your person. It will also provide a good extra incentive to lose weight.

There would be some practicalities, but if you just get people to select a weight group upon booking most would do so honestly. I don’t think you need to weigh people upon check in.

The SST report:

Woolworths New Zealand’s underlying profit margins have increased much faster than the cost of food for the past three years.

Australian-owned Woolworths, which operates Countdown supermarkets locally, said the results were due to improved efficiency, but the Green Party said an investigation into supermarket pricing is overdue and the industry is in need of tighter regulation.

What a bizarre comparison. It is a good thing that profits have increased faster than the cost of food.

Are the Greens saying that if profits had stayed the same, and food prices had increased more (hence decreasing the gap), that would be good for NZers?

Are they saying that if profits had stayed the same, and food prices had dropped (hence increasing the gap), that would be bad for NZers?

The comparison is absolutely nonsensical. What the Greens are really saying is that just don’t like companies making profits.

Calculations by the Sunday Star-Times show that once unusual costs and income are stripped out of Woolworths NZ’s accounts – items such as losses on the company’s investment in The Warehouse and the impact of the Christchurch earthquakes – the business posted year-on-year increases in earnings before interest and tax of 14.3%, 19.3% and 9.6% over the period.

Recorded food inflation over the same time-frame was 7%, -0.7% and 7.5%, according to Statistics New Zealand.

Again, so what? Take the middle year – EBIT increased 19.3% and food prices dropped by 0.7%. Great.

If you want to make the case the supermarkets are making excessive profits, then you need to be looking at profits compared to capital and dividends compared to share price etc.

The supermarket operator’s latest financial statements show that it earned gross revenue of $22.33 for each $100 of sales shoppers put through its tills in the year to the end of June 2011. That was up from $21.95 in 2010 and $21.61 the year before.

That’s higher than UK chains Tesco and Sainsburys, which earned gross revenue of 8.30 and 5.50 respectively for every 100 that went through their tills.

Gross margins mean little, especially when comparing just four companies in two countries. What about economy of scale, what about underlying costs?

Green MP Mojo Mathers said the country needs to act on food prices, and promote “genuine” competition.

“We are overdue for an investigation into supermarket pricing practices,” she told the Sunday Star-Times. “We need a supermarket code of conduct and a supermarket ombudsman set up to enforce the code.”

Such measures, now established in the UK and being considered in Australia, will help create a level playing field for consumers and producers, Mathers said.

I fail to understand what is needed beyond the current provisions of the Commerce Act and Fair Trading Act. I suspect the Green call for an Ombudsman is so the Greens can achieve their long held desire to ban foods they don’t approve of, such as large easter eggs which Sue Kedgley used to campaign against.

However, Woolworths said its margin and earnings improvements are the result of investment in efficient systems that have delivered food price increases below the rate of inflation.

“We think there is a really great business story in our results over the past three years, which, in the main, is due to the significant investment Woolworths has been making in Progressive Enterprises and our brand Countdown,” said Dave Chambers, the managing director of Woolworths’ subsidiary Progressive Enterprises.

“This investment in new systems, new warehouses, and new and refurbished stores is now well in excess of $1 billion and has meant our Countdown stores are more appealing to customers, as evidenced by our sales growing ahead of the market,” he said.

As a result, the company has reduced wastage, stock losses and trimmed stock in the supply chain.

Sounds good to me.

Readers may be able to solve a debate a few of us were having yesterday.

If containers from the Rena wash up on a beach and there is no representative of the owner there to claim them, is it looting to help yourself to the contents, or it is salvage under international marine law?

I think it qualifies as looting as people surely know who the owner is, but a lawyer friend (not a specialist in marine law though) said that people have a right to salvage anything that washes up unless the owner is there to claim it.

Anyone want to clarify the law?

Brian Gaynor provides some excellent analysis:

One of POA’s biggest issues is its wage bill of $54.9 million compared with POT’s total employee expenses of $25.3 million, even though the latter is now the larger port.

Port of Tauranga was miniscule when it listed 20 years ago, but today has higher revenue, earnings and dividends than POA.

POT is an excellent model for the proposed partial sale of the Crown-owned electricity generators and Solid Energy.

The port company had a 10 per cent ownership restriction, a strong board and management and has performed exceptionally well as a listed company under the public/private ownership model.

In 2002, the company had a capital return of $7 per cancelled share on the basis of one share for every eight shares held, and the following year it had a two-for-one share split. Thus an investor who bought 1000 shares for $1050 in the IPO has had $875 of capital returned, and the remaining 1750 shares are now worth $17,850 at $10.20 a share. These figures do not take into account total dividends of more than $370 million over the two decades.

In other words, POT’s sharemarket value has surged from $80 million to $1368 million over this 20-year period and the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, which still owns 55 per cent, has been a major beneficiary of this.

Stunning results. And the key thing to note is a mixed ownership model can result in the public’s stake being worth more at (say) 55% than if they had retained 100% ownership.

As the accompanying figures show, POA has been hammered by POT in recent years: POA’s ebitda has fallen from $92.6 million in 2003 to $74.4 million, whereas POT’s has increased from $69.5 million to $95.0 million; POA’s ebitda margin has fallen from 55.3 per cent to 40.5 per cent while POT’s has increased from 47.6 per cent to 51.2 per cent; most importantly, POA’s dividend has declined from $34.5 million to $17.6 million while POT’s has increased from $22.8 million to $40.2 million.

This is a huge concern to Auckland ratepayers as the $17.8 million POA dividend represents a return of only 2.1 per cent on POA’s $848 million 2005 takeover value.

Mike Lee should be held accountable for this.

In 2010, POA had total employee expenses of $51.9 million compared with only $18.5 million at POT and last year employee benefits plus pension costs were $54.9 million at POA compared with POT’s $25.3 million.

This is what happens when people get paid for 43 hours, despite only working 28 hours. I am presuming the POT costs included contracted labour.

Lee made the ridiculous statement that POA and POT should act in an anti-competitive way by working together to get better rates from shipping companies. He went on to say that the shipping cartel Maersk and Fonterra “have kept prices right down by playing Tauranga off with Auckland” – yet Lee was primarily responsible for stopping merger talks between POA and POT.

We want competition between ports. That drives efficiency and productivity gains.

Vernon Small reports at Stuff:

Labour will not challenge the cliff-hanger election result in the west Auckland seat of Waitakere, confirming National’s Social Development Minister Paula Bennett in the seat.

“We have made the decision against seeking an electoral petition,”  Labour secretary Chris Flatt said today. …

Flatt said the party had discussed the possibility of a challenge with those involved in the recount.

“We have confidence in the Electoral Commission and the process they took.”

A petition could have cost $30,000-$50,000 and possibly over $100,000 if Labour had chosen to challenge on the basis of malpractice.

Plus National has not lost an electoral petition in the last 40 years or so. I suspect the only outcome of an electoral petition in Waitakere (apart from wealth gain for lawyers) would be National to increase their majority.

Stuff reports:

People and businesses who find “.co.nz” insufficiently patriotic may be able to register websites that end with “.kiwi” from next year.

A group of ex-pat New Zealanders based in Vancouver has teamed up with Wellington lawyer Peter Dengate Thrush – a former chairman of worldwide internet governance body Icann – to found a new company, Dot Kiwi, which hopes to cater for those who want a more “Kiwi flavour” to their online identity. …

Dot Kiwi, which is Canadian-owned, would compete with New Zealand’s non-profit internet society, InternetNZ, which oversees “.nz” addresses and is funded by a compulsory levy on registrations.

Dengate Thrush said the administration of the “.kiwi” registry would be outsourced to Minds and Machines, a company he chairs that is based in Santa Monica in the United States.

InternetNZ president Frank March said all new and existing top-level domains competed with “.nz” and the society had not ruled out lodging its own application to run “.kiwi”.

“We’d certainly have a good case to put up, but there are very heavy costs involved in establishing a top-level domain and it is not a process we would undertake lightly. The arguments are quite finely balanced,” he said.

The .nz Domain Name Commission did some research last year through Colmar Brunton and around 11% of respondents (off memory) said that they would register in .kiwi in preference to .nz or .com, if they had the choice – so I think there is market demand for .kiwi. Whether or not the demand is high enough to cover the costs of a registry is another issue.

As a disclosure I’m on the working group which is looking at the pros and cons of InternetNZ applying for .kiwi. The WG’s role is not to decide, but to prepare consultation papers for discussion with the InternetNZ Council and members. As Frank March is quoted as saying, there are heavy costs involved, and many other issues.