Stuff reports:

Fiji’s Prime Minister has announced an end to regulations that imposed martial law on the country in 2009.

In his New Year’s address to the nation this evening, Commodore Frank Bainimarama said Public Emergency Regulations would end from Saturday January 7. …

Martial law gave the military and police the right to use lethal force without being subject to judicial review, and also includes media censorship.

This gives some hope or cautious optimism for Fiji. I am not sure if Fiji will be able to transition back to a democratic state, and if the Commodore will surrender substantial power in 2014. But this is definitely a good step in the right direction towards a democratic Fiji.

The media censorship regulations especially were quite repugnant, and it will be good to see them gone.

There are elephants everywhere in Chobe. I would have seen several hundred over two days.

These are very new born elephants. You can see their size compared to their parents.

This gives a better idea of how tiny the baby ones are – barely taller than the grass. Very cute.

Had lots of fun seeing in the New Year. Despite the fact we still had to go out driving at 5.30 am, a small group of us stayed up until 1 am to see 2012 in, with a mixture of Tequila and Champagne.  The whole camp had a group dinner outdoors around the swimming pool, and it was a beautiful cloudless night where the stars were shining, the frogs were humming and you are hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town. Truly superb – even magical.

The camp is a fun mixture of people – French, American, Mexican, Canadian and South African. Only myself and the South Africans lasted until midnight though – the others were sensible! There was a python on the path to the tents, which is rather disconcerting. But the locals says the pythons are fine – it’s the Black Mambas to avoid.

Felt slightly queasy this morning as driving around bumpy fields in a landcruiser at 6 am is not the recommended cure for a hangover.

Whale Oil has hit the No 1 spot at Open Parachute based on sitemeter stats. Well deserved.

A jackal.

You can see the jackal behind the impala but the jackal is too small to threaten them so they just ignore it.

I’ve been very lucky. It had been five months since they saw the African Wild Dog at Chobe. I thought I was lucky seeing three of them at Kruger, but here we saw a pack of 18 of them. Fabulous.

I love their colouring.

You can see them moving out here.

The next day we got lucky again – we saw some impala running silently and quickly. Our guide had told us that when chased by lions or leopards they will run and make noise as the lions and leopards like stealth and will give up after a while. If you see them running silently then it is probably being chased by wild dogs, and it was.

You can’t see it here but they have just killed an impala. I’d say it was dead within 10 seconds. The pack just savaged it.

Within probably 90 seconds there was nothing left. You can see one of them here with a bone – they literally tore it to pieces.

Around half an hour after that kill by the adults, the younger dogs got an impala also. Here they can’t actually tear it apart so they all sit around eating it. Was a bit gruesome but fascinating.

Another shot of them after the kill. I’d love to bring back to NZ a pack of 18 African wild dogs and buy a house next dooe to a gang hq. The next time one of their pit bulls bites a kid, then let lose the pack! These dogs don’t attack humans and only attack for food.

So many birds. This is just a few.

The Southern Ground Hornbill

This stork does the most graceful landings. They glide in from around 100 metres away and then just pull up as they land.

A European bee-eater.

 And this lovely bird is a white-fronted bee-eater.

Happy New Year everyone. May each new year be better than the one before.

This comes from PR consultant Billie Jordan, a 25 year industry veteran. Readers may recall reading about a few of these. They are:

2011 has provided many cringe-worthy PR disasters across both the private and public sector says Auckland based Public Relations consultant Billie Jordan.

 “Reputations have been tarnished, or in some cases, irreversibly damaged and the people at the centre of the scandal have often lost their jobs. A number of very prominent product brands have also suffered reputational damage this year resulting in angry customers and lost sales.

 “There is always an honest and positive way to get yourself or your company out of a hole. However, unfortunately many of the people and organisations in this Top 30 list have either ignored good PR advice or received very bad PR advice,” says Jordan.

The Fairfax gallery team have reported on how their 2012 predictions have gone. I like the fact they are game to make predictions, and sometimes quite specific ones. The summary is:

1. National will form a government after the November 26 election – 10/10
2. Botany will be a Clayton’s by-election – 8/10
3. Judith Collins will become defence minister after the retirement of Wayne Mapp – 3/10
4. Mercurial NZ First leader Winston Peters will stand in an inner-Auckland seat to maximise coverage of his bid to return to Parliament – 0/10
5. The Maori Party will not improve its current tally of five seats –  6/10
6. MMP will survive the referendum, meaning a second one will not be necessary – 10/10
7. Labour president Andrew Little will not win New Plymouth, but will get into Parliament on the list – 10/10
8. Labour will campaign on a new top tax rate on income above $120,000 a year – 8/10
9. The Government’s popularity will drop mid-year as the rising cost of living, slow economic recovery and cuts in public spending usher in a mild winter of discontent – 3/10
10. Labour leader Phil Goff will survive till the election, but not long after – 10/10
11. Kris Faafoi’s majority in Mana will rebound in line with Labour’s traditional dominance in the seat – 6/10
12. The Greens will beat their 6.72 per cent share of the vote from 2008 and bring in at least one fresh female face – 8/10
13. National will campaign on partial listings of minority stakes in some state assets, including some of the bigger SOEs – 10/10
14. Steven Joyce will take over the education portfolio – 0/10
15. The Maori Party will hold its nose and see the new foreshore and seabed law into force despite Hone Harawira’s opposition – 10/10
16. Georgina te Heuheu and Sandra Goudie will signal an end to their political careers – 10/10
17. Rodney Hide will hold on to ACT’s Epsom lifeline – 1/10
18. Revenue Minister and UnitedFuture leader Peter Dunne will finally realise his haircut is his biggest electoral liability and change it – or even admit it is a hairpiece – 5/10
19. Another senior Labour MP will announce they are bailing out of politics at the next election – and unlike the retirement of George Hawkins and Pete Hodgson, this one will be a surprise – 0/10
20. John Key will come back from “kicking the tyres” during his Hawaiian holiday and declare himself “relaxed” about his chances in election year – 10/10

Overall they got 128/200 – the same as last year. I’ll cover their 2012 predictions once they are published.

You can see the lion stalking the warthogs. Fortunately for them, they saw him and got away. The lions like to get very close to their prey – they are fast but lack some stamina.

Two lions happily ignoring us.

Looking at their physique, you can see why they can take on beasts bigger than them.

Yay. Finally after six days, captured a leopard on camera. They are very shy of humans. We were literally on the way to the airport, and my guide insisted on a final check of places they had been reported, and bingo. He was hiding in some bushes, but if you circle the bushes once in the vehicle, he knows you have seen him, so then comes out.

A close up. A beautiful beast.

The NZ Herald has the full list. The top honours are:

Order of New Zealand

Ralph Hotere, Artist

Knight and Dame Companions of the NZ Order of Merit

• Dame Roseanne Meo, for services to business
• Dame Susy Moncrieff, for services to arts (World of Wearable Arts)
• Sir Father Des Britten, for services to the community (Wellington Downtown Ministry)
• Sir Colin Giltrap, for services to motorsport and philanthropy
• Sir Graham Henry, for services to rugby
• Sir John Todd, for services to business

Noty a bad mixture of arts, community, sport and business.

I like this sight of King George sitting on his rock.

This shot at dusk is of the baboons going up the tree to sleep for the night.

As you can see the baboons can travel in large groups, to and from the water.

This is cute. The mum is holding the baby, and dad is giving her a backrub.

One of things in Chobe especially (but not only there) is how the different animals all mix in together. Well sure, not those who eat the others, but is quite a sight to see impala and baboons all together.

A nice viewing point for them.

This is a monkey, not a baboon. Far less of them about.

A more unusual antelope, with the hump and the more twisting horns – the kudu.

Two Impala having a fight.

A waterbuck.

Now you might be thinking how does an impala get up a tree? Can they climb? No. A leopard put him there. He wasn’t hungry when he killed him so is saving him up for the next day. Quite cunning and challenging to drag a dead impala up a tree.

A group of young impala. Their main purpose in life it seems is to be eaten up other animals.

Another of the rarer antelopes – the bushbuck.

Sadly all religions have fanatics. Of course the proportion of a religion who are fanatics is not the same in each religion, but here’s an example of some in Israel:

A shy 8-year-old schoolgirl has unwittingly found herself on the front line of Israel’s latest religious war.

Naama Margolese is a ponytailed, bespectacled second-grader who is afraid of walking to her religious Jewish girls school for fear of ultra-Orthodox extremists who have spat on her and called her a whore for dressing “immodestly.”

Anyone who calls an eight year old girl a whore should be ashamed of themselves, because their God most definitely will be.

The girls school that Naama attends in the city of Beit Shemesh, to the west of Jerusalem, is on the border between an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood and a community of modern Orthodox Jewish residents, many of them American immigrants.

The ultra-Orthodox consider the school, which moved to its present site at the beginning of the school year, an encroachment on their territory. Dozens of black-hatted men jeer and physically accost the girls almost daily, claiming their very presence is a provocation.

No, firing guns is a provocation. Yelling whore at eight year olds is provocation. Going to school is not.

The televised images of Naama sobbing as she walked to school shocked many Israelis, elicited statements of outrage from the country’s leadership, sparked a Facebook page with nearly 10,000 followers dedicated to “protecting little Naama” and a demonstration was held in her honour. As the case has attracted attention, extremists have heckled and thrown eggs and rocks at journalists descending on town.

“Who’s afraid of an 8-year-old student?” said Sunday’s main headline in the leading Yediot Ahronot daily.

Beit Shemesh’s growing ultra-Orthodox population has erected street signs calling for the separation of sexes on the pavements, dispatched “modesty patrols” to enforce a chaste female appearance and hurled stones at offenders and outsiders.

Great to read of the response from most normal Israelis. The fanatics sound like they would be happy living with the Taliban.

Naama’s case has been especially shocking because of her young age and because she attends a religious school and dresses with long sleeves and a skirt. Extremists, however, consider even that outfit, standard in mainstream Jewish religious schools, to be immodest.

Maybe a hajib?

Protesters held signs reading, “Free Israel from religious coercion,” and “Stop Israel from becoming Iran.”

The abuse and segregation of women in Israel in ultra-Orthodox areas is nothing new, and critics accuse the government of turning a blind eye.

The ultra-Orthodox are perennial king-makers in Israeli coalition politics – two such parties serve as key members of the ruling coalition. They receive generous government subsidies, and police have traditionally been reluctant to enter their communities.

Worth remembering this story, when our own extremists advocate getting rid of a threshold for MMP, so we would end up like Israel (which has been increasing their threshold).

Just spent two days under canvas in the Chobe National Park in Botswana. No Internet obviously there, in fact electricity was off batteries and generator. Huge amount of wildlife there – so much I will have to blog them by category.

At the end of the trip I’ll also blog in detail on the four safari camps or lodges I stayed at, with the differences between them. So far all have been very good, but quite different.

This is the dining area at camp.

This was a porcupine. Not many animals can kill a porcupine, but something did.

Just because it does not fit elsewhere, included this photo of six giraffes.

Now relax, this is NOT the toilet at the camp site. Our ones are totally clean. There is a public picnic area and these are the toilets out there. I think you are safer using the bush!

A Monitor.

Chobe is very different to Kruger. You had many large open areas, with watering holes and a River. Hence you’ll see in lkater photos large groups of beasts migrating every day to and from the water.

A couple of tents back at the camp. They only have five tents, so a maximum of ten people. The tents are very comfortable – they have a bed in them, and a make-shift shower (think a can with holes). So not quite roughing it like when a Scout, but still a great experience to be in the outdoors. They have to move campsite every five days.

This photo is taken from our dining room, so yes elephants literally walk through the campsite.

Jordan Carter blogs:

Here’s my short list for starters, of a few problems we really need to face.

• a record low vote, lowest since the 1920s
• low and static membership in the past three years
• over centralisation of control over policy and strategy, with too little power for members
• an inward focused ‘divide the pie’ approach by too many party units
• a cultural acceptance of low to no organisation in too many places, and a related culture of federalism divided between electorates rather than a sense of a nation-wide, cooperating organisation
• too much belief that our connections with a wide range of Kiwis are strong, when they are weak
• a sense that we ‘own’ the voters that went to the greens and nzf, and that they are bound to return to us
• a perception among some parts of the electorate that we are out of touch with their hopes and dreams
• a structure that incentivises our inward focus

It’s a long list to which I am sure you can add things, friend or foe.

The main thing I would add is killing off the culture of the ends justify the means. Some will say there is no such culture, but it has been shown time after time again. There is the belief that they are inherently good, and that those from the centre-right are inherently bad, so hence anything which helps deliver Labour to victory is culturally acceptable.

Danyl at Dim Post has his own key thing to change:

I’d narrow almost all of this down to the problem of candidate selection. The primary goal of a candidate is to win votes for themselves and the party, but Labour doesn’t seem to value this quality in any of their candidates or MPs. They’re chosen for attributes that seem mysterious to the rest of the country, usually from a small pool of parliamentary staffers, unionists and activists and then farmed out to electorates to which they pretend some spurious connection (‘whanau in the region’).

I’ve just been doing an analysis of which Labour candidates did best at getting people who party vote National to vote for them – ie those who can attract support from across the spectrum.  The three best are Ross Robertson, Lianne Dalziel and Clayton Cosgrove who attracted 27%, 24% and 21% of National voters respectively.

The three worse were Jeremy Greenbrook-Held (he was against John Key) who got 0.3%, Deborah Mahuta-Coyle who got 0.4% and the Taupo candidates whose name I can’t even recall who got 0.5% – ie less than 1 in 200 National party voters gave their candidate vote to the candidate from the second largest party. The average was 5.4%, or around 1 in 20.

Take Deborah Mahuta-Coyle, a Labour communications advisor who was given a high list position (although not high enough) and ran as a candidate in Tauranga, explaining that she grew up ‘further along State Highway One’ (SH1 does not run through, or near Tauranga). With Mahuta Coyle as a candidate Labour’s party vote in Tauranga was one of the worst in the entire country, declining by 33% (Labour’s nationwide decline was 20%).

And as I mentioned failed to attract even 1 in 200 of those who did vote National on the party vote. This is not to say that Mahuta-Coyle would not be a very good MP, but different qualities can be needed to also be a good candidate who can attract both party and electorate votes.

Nationals’ backbench electorate MPs drive the party’s Wellington based political staffers crazy, because they’re always running off to the Prime Minister and complaining about ‘some trivial little rural issue that no one in Wellington cares about’. Labour’s MPs are, increasingly, former political staffers who share the same elite background and Wellington-centric focus.

This is basically true, and it is important to have this tension. I’ve been a Wellington based staffer and certain MPs did drive you batty over issues you just knew were of no importance to the press gallery, the leadership etc. However those backbench MPs would go on to win massive majorities as they were in touch with their communities and helping stop their party from getting too out of touch with life outside Wellington. Parties need those backbench electorate MPs to keep raising those local issues.

Jordan endorses getting in touch with the voters, and Shearer’s said the same thing. Great. But Phil Goff spent a year ‘getting in touch with voters’ after the loss in 2008. The Labour team drove around the country in a bus singing songs and meeting with ‘real New Zealanders’ like, uh, Darren Hughes’ uncle. Goff then went back to Wellington and cheerfully went about promoting his own office staffers as electorate candidates, including Mahuta-Coyle.

The number of former political staff in the Labour caucus is large – Shearer himself, Robertson, Ardern, Hipkins for a start – three of the top four plus the Chief Whip. Then you also have Cosgrove, Faafoi, Mallard and David Clark. That’s almost a quarter of the caucus.

If Labour decided to operate selections on a one member one vote basis, it would solve Danyl’s problem, but also help solve Jordan’s problem of low and static membership, over-centralisation, low to no organisation in some places.

National’s electorate selection process is incredibly democratic. So democratic there are regular occasions when I groan at whom the locals have voted for, and I wish myself and a few mates could decide all the selections. But the reality is I would never want to give up a system where the grass-roots members decide whom their local candidate is – the benefits of having them do so are significant.

One person, one vote, is a pretty good basis for voting personally. Labour should try it some time.

Now that Labour have abandoned 25 years of bipartisan commitment to sane monetary policy, we may need to get used to bank notes like this if they win in future (unless they quietly drop their policy to have more inflation).

One NZ$ is worth around 4,000 Zambian kwacha, so that note is worth around NZ$1.25. Note that in 1968 the kwacha was worth more than the US dollar.

Their largest note is for 50,000 which is NZ$12.50.

Yes that is a 100 trillion dollar note. Dr Evil, take that!

We shouldn’t have to worry about this scenario unless it is a four-way coalition of Labour, Greens, NZ First and Mana 🙂

In fact the note is “worth” more than 100 trillion as there were three redenominations. The first was a 1,000:1 redenomination, the second was a 10 billion:1 and the third a 1 trillion:1 redenomination.

So in terms of the original Zimbabwean dollar, that note is worth 1×10^39 or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which could be called a duodecillion dollars.

This note was worth US30 when printed in 2009 but is worthless today. Their inflation rate in 2008 was 231,000,000%. It was only 28 years ago in 1983 that their dollar purchased US1.

The Herald reports:

The Government’s demand for court costs from cameraman Bradley Ambrose can only be seen as “political vindictiveness”, according to political analyst Dr Bryce Edwards.

The Attorney-General has filed a memorandum in the High Court at Auckland seeking $13,669.45 in costs from Mr Ambrose after the freelancer sought a declaration from the High Court on whether the “tea tape” conversation was private.

I disagree with Bryce on this one, and think he has overlooked a crucial factor.

First of all I would note that no one forced Mr Ambrose to file a lawsuit. He chose to do so, and presumably knew the chance of success was minimal, as a ruling would have undermined the Police investigation. Lawyers I spoke to said the chance of success was less than 1%, and he would have known this.

Otago University political analyst Dr Bryce Edwards told Newstalk ZB the almost $14,000 request is a small amount for the Government, and it was legitimate for Mr Ambrose to try to get a declaratory judgment on whether the conversation recorded between John Key and John Banks was private.

Dr Edwards felt the demand smacks of revenge.

It is standard to seek costs when someone files a lawsuit which forces you to respond, and they lose.

I suspect Bryce sees this as big nasty Government trying to screw over a struggling camera man. But there is no way Ambrose is paying for the court costs. Mediaworks, beyond doubt, bankrolled his court case and will pay the costs, if granted.

Mediaworks is a large commercial company, owned by an even larger one. I see no reasons why the taxpayer should subsidise them, through not claiming costs.