I devote my Herald column to Labour’s work and wages policy. Many of my Herald columns are reasonably reflective. In this one, I call a spade a spade.

Deborah Russell writes in Stuff:

The state has no business in the marriage game. It does have a legitimate interest in noting who is in a committed relationship. As a society, we want to be able to tell which people happen to be sharing accommodation as mere flatmates, and which have amalgamated their interests for the foreseeable future. …

It is unfair the state gives a certain status (marriage) to some households but not others. Either the recognition ought to apply to all, or none. Anything else represents the state picking and choosing among citizens, saying some are more worthy than others. That ought to be anathema in an egalitarian society.

Churches should not be allowed to perform state marriage ceremonies. They are welcome to perform their own ceremonies, but there is no reason for the state to endorse them. If the Head Prefect of the Assembly of Elf Worshippers wants to conduct wedding ceremonies on midsummer night’s eve, then she should go ahead. It just oughtn’t to count for the purposes of the state.

People who want to register their relationship with the state as well as in the eyes of their church or coven or humanist society should do that. They should make a trip to the Registry Office to record their relationship for the purposes of the state, and then independently do whatever they like that constitutes solemnising a marriage in their own religion.

As for marriage for lesbian and gay and other non-traditional couples, or trios, or whatever, what is available for one New Zealander must be available for another. If the Government wants to stay in the marriage game, then it should make its version of marriage available to everyone – straight, gay, lesbian, transgender, two or three or more, whatever. That’s only fair.

I broadly agree with Deborah that the state should merely register relationships, and it should be up to individual couples if they wish to have that relationship called a marriage by the particular religion they follow.

AP reports:

Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s dictator for 42 years until he was ousted in an uprising-turned-civil war, was killed Thursday (overnight NZ time) as revolutionary fighters overwhelmed his hometown of Sirte and captured the last major bastion of resistance two months after his regime fell.

Interim government officials said one of Gaddafi’s sons, his former national security adviser Muatassim, was also killed in Sirte and another, one-time heir apparent Seif al-Islam, was wounded and captured.

His death was probably inevitable, once he refused to flee into exile. It seems he was captured alive, and he should have been put on trial, but there are conflicting stories of whether he died from wounds or was executed.

Gaddafi did many evil things in his life. However it did seem for a while that he had become a more benign dictator when he stopped funding terrorism. However his response to peaceful protests showed that the leopard hasn’t changed his spots.

Families of victims killed in the Libyan bombing of a PanAm jet over Scotland in 1988 said justice was served with Gaddafi’s death.

PanAm flight 103 exploded as it flew to New York from London on December 21, 1988. All 259 people aboard the aircraft were killed and 11 others on the ground in Lockerbie also died from falling wreckage.

“I hope he’s in hell with Hitler,” said Kathy Tedeschi, whose first husband, Bill Daniels, was among the people killed in the bombing. “I just can’t stop crying, I am so thrilled.”

“I am sure (Gaddafi) was the one who pushed to have this done, the bombing,” said Tedeschi, 62, whose three children were aged 10, 7 and 2 when their father was killed.

Now that the Libyan Civil War is effectively over, the question is who is next?

Well, dotterels have been in the news a bit this week, so here’s a shot of one in its breeding colours.

as always, click for larger, higher res image

Answers tomorrow at 7 am

Key Points:

* Growth and current account forecasts slip
* Epsom now marginal, making a Phil Goff-led government more plausible, even without Hone Harawira
* National’s Simon O’Connor tipped for Tamaki
* Greens still riding the crest of Rena’s waves while National and Labour sink
* Alan Bollard now expected to increase OCR in March 2012
* Fonterra’s forecast 2011/12 payout increases slightly

Commentary:

Act’s chances in Epsom have dropped to marginal levels, making it just possible that Phil Goff could be our next Prime Minister, according to this week’s snapshot by New Zealand’s online prediction market, iPredict. With John Banks hovering at just over 50% chance of winning Epsom, and New Zealand First nearing MMP’s 5% threshold, a Phil Goff-led government isn’t out of the question. The stocks on National’s Tamaki selection suggest that Simon O’Connor is most likely to be the party’s candidate, while the Greens are still predicted to get a record 14 MPs. In economics, Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard is now expected to raise the OCR in March 2012, GDP and Current Account forecasts have worsened, while Fonterra’s forecast 2011/12 payout has increased slightly.

Continue reading »

United Future have announced their party list:

1 Peter Dunne (Ohariu)
2 Doug Stevens (Nelson)
3 Rob Eaddy (Hutt South)
4 Sultan Eusoff (Palmerston North)
5 Alan Simmons (Taupo)

If United Future gets around 1.2% they get a second MP and at around 2.0% they would get a third MP.

Rob Eaddy, at No 3, is a former Chief of Staff to Jim Bolger, and one of the best political managers around. If United Future did manage to get him into Parliament, he would be an easy pick to become a very competent and successful Minister.

You can read bios on the top five at the link above. I’m not sure if they’ll get any MPs on top of Peter, but its a pretty good calibre of candidates in their top five.

The Greens are offering:

Enrol to vote and be in the draw to win cool prizes, including a custom-fitted bike, in our Mobilising Aotearoa Competition!

I think it is very much a thin end of the wedge to have political parties offering money or prizes to people to enrol. Even worse, there appears to be no checking that said person actually enrols, or was not already enrolled.

Think if you had MPs or candidates knocking on people’s doors handing out cash if residents there promised to go off and enrol?

I blog in my “By the numbers” blog at Stuff, on the Roy Morgan poll, specifically the right v wrong direction indicator.

All three major newspaper editorials have come out slamming Labour’s 1970s workplace policy. The Herald says:

It will not be easy to take the Labour Party seriously at this election if it comes up with any more policy like the one announced on Tuesday. To lift the level of wages in this country it proposes industry-wide wage orders.

Can you imagine it. The struggling corner dairy may suddenly be told that it has to pay its staff the same as the massive supermarket around the corner, even though it will force them to close.

The Labour Party would surely hesitate to propose this if there was much prospect of the party winning the election and having to put the policy into effect. Like one or two other planks in the party’s platform this year – notably the removal of GST on fresh fruit and vegetables – the policy is mainly interesting for what it says about Labour’s condition at present and how much younger members of the caucus have to learn.

Helen Clark would have never come out with such an unelectable policy. I agree with the Herald that the push for this has come from the newer MPs.

A strong economy needs to let employers prosper wherever they can and compete for the employees they need. Wages grow when employers need more people with valuable skills. A policy for productivity encourages more investment in productive activities, and better education to equip workers with adaptive skills. It does not put industries back in a straitjacket for unions’ sake. The country has been there.

It really is the Marty McFly policy.

Adam Bennett at the NZ Herald reports:

Independent newspaper standards watchdog the Press Council has panned Labour’s suggestion it may bring the organisation under statutory control and incorporate it into a new cross media regulator. …

That would “probably not” be welcomed by the industry,” Mr Paterson said.

“I suspect they wouldn’t be prepared to fund it on that basis and we would be probably the only country in the world that would have statutory regulation of the press.”

This will be promoted by Labour as NZ being world-leading.

Amelia Romanos at NZ Herald reports:

New Zealand First has defended dumping an election candidate who drank his own urine on a TV show.

Joe Glenn, a 69-year-old former SAS soldier, had been standing for the party in the Rimutaka electorate, but was asked to withdraw his candidacy following his appearance last month on a 20/20 item about extreme diets.

On the programme, Mr Glenn spoke about how drinking his urine each day had helped to cure his arthritis, and then downed a glass for the cameras.

This is very unfair on Mr Glenn. I think the symbolism is perfect. Voting for NZ First is akin to drinking urine.

UPDATE: Also with Andrew Williams as a candidate, they would be the perfect match. One could keep the other well quenched. Why ban a candidate for drinking piss, but welcome the one who pisses in public?

A second editorial pouring scorn:

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

If living standards were determined by government decree, Labour’s new industrial relations policy would be a breakthrough contribution to an age-old debate.

Sadly for the low-paid workers Phil Goff’s party is trying to woo, wishful thinking has nothing to do with living standards.

The consequence of hiking the minimum wage from $13 to $15 an hour, as Labour is proposing to do, will be to deny more unskilled young job seekers the opportunity to get a foot on the job ladder. The consequence of telling international film producers it is our way or the highway will be for them to pack their bags. And the consequence of requiring all employers in an industry to offer the same minimum set of terms and conditions will be to ship more jobs off overseas.

It is arguably the great job destruction policy we have ever seen.

The only winners from Labour’s work and wages policy, unveiled on Tuesday, will be unions, which can expect a temporary increase in members and influence.

These are the same union that not only fund the Labour Party, but actually are members of it, and have significant voting rights with it?

Circumstances vary from workplace to workplace. To succeed in the global market, businesses have to be flexible. Rewards should be shared fairly, but the way that is done should be a matter for shareholders, managers and employees to work out, not bureaucrats in the new Workplace Commission that Labour proposes to create.

Oh it won’t be bureaucrats on the Workplace Commission. It will be full of former or future Labour MPs.

The Dom Post reports:

No-one has given up a job, or taken leave from work, to be here, and no-one seems to know how long they will stay.

So none of them actually are paying any income tax at the moment.

Ben says: “Everyone here has at some point paid tax, we’ve all given our bit to society. There’s no-one here who has never worked.”

At some point? When and for how long? For two weeks when you were 17?

My question would be to take the last five years and ask each of them how much income tax have you paid in the last five years and how much money have you received from taxpayers in the last five years?

The Press editorial:

The Labour Party claims its work and wages policy, which it released this week, will boost the country’s economic performance and generally provide a better future for workers. That is very unlikely. The policy’s strange mish-mash of bureaucratic centralised wage-setting, legislated higher minimum pay and repeal of some of the present Government’s liberalising workplace reforms has gruesome echoes of the unlovely 1970s. Far from being a forward-looking policy, as the Labour leader, Phil Goff, has declared it to be, it recalls policies long thought dead and buried.

The policy has been welcomed by unions, as well it might be. It could well have been written by them.

I shudder at the thought of a union being able to go to a group of mates appointed by Labour and get them to set terms and conditions for an entire industry. Employers, no matter what their size or location or profitability, will suddenly have to comply with the dictates of this new commission.

According to Goff, the policy would help stem the flow of people to Australia. Given that the effect of much of it would be to price some jobs out of existence, quite how it would do this is unclear. Labour still does not appear to understand that it cannot legislate its way to prosperity.

It’s a basic concept, but one which seems alien to them.

Whale shows us what Middle Earth would look like under Labour’s industrial relations policy. Enjoy and share.

Whale has two more hits against Labour today.

First he reveals that they have used a photo of the Clyde Dam in their anti-mixed ownership model pamphlet. The Clyde Dam is not owned by a Government SOE, but by Contact Energy!! It’s like saying we won’t see Air NZ and having a photo of a Qantas jet.

Also is this the same Clyde Dam Labour fought so hard against?

Whale’s second post is a Facebook comment from Labour Party candidate and former President Andrew Little. Little makes a vicious personal attack on former North Shore Mayor and Police Commander George Wood.

Wood facebooked:

I certainly agree with my colleague Chris Fletcher. These people should have been removed from the Aotea Square on Sunday. Their actions are illegal and the more that they are allowed to remain in situ the more difficult it will be to remove them.

This is not an unreasonable view, that if people are staging an illegal occupation, they should be removed. Some call it the rule of law. Anyway reasonable people can agree to disagree on the pros and cons of such a move.

Cactus Kate suggested:

Water cannons George. Hose them down hourly.

And then Andrew Little opened up with:

Water cannons? Pah!Weakness! How about ice guns to freeze them out. No, no, wait a minute. Flame throwers. That’ll burn their little arses. Forget that. Just strafe them with rifle fire, the way George always dreamed of dealing with unruly crowds when he was a cop. Just who do they think they are challenging George’s smug, self-satisfied, complacent little world? Eh? The cheek of it. Tell them to get a real job. Like George. BTW, what is George’s job?

I’ve got no problems with hitting back at Cactus’s suggestions, but the venom against George Wood is quite remarkable, and dare I say it rather nasty. He basically says George Wood wanted to mow down protesters with guns when he was a cop and goes on to say Wood lives in a smug, self-satisfied, complacent little world.

So this is Labour’s great hope for the future?

I have to say I am surprised. I hold Andrew in considerable regard. He has done many good things as EPMU National Secretary. His attack on George Wood is beneath him, and he should apologise.

Danya Levy at Stuff reports:

Fledging Auckland-based political movement the New Citizens Party has withdrawn from this year’s election and will join forces with the Conservative Party.

Spokesperson Paul Young said the party’s values were aligned with those of the Conservative Party.

“We understand the importance of family, business and everyone making a contribution.”

I’m surprised Danya didn’t mention in the article this story, which I think is a significant factor in their decision:

The future of a Chinese milk export plant at Tauranga is up in the air after corruption charges were laid in Hong Kong this week against its founder, former Crafar-farms bidder May Wang, and an arrest warrant issued for its bankroller, Jack Chen.

Chen, IIRC, helped found the NCP.

The Herald reports:

Outside prison yesterday, Field said: “Despite what’s happened my conscience is clear.

I am sure his conscience is indeed entirely untroubled by what he did.

I never have at any time had the intention to break any law and, in God’s good time, I believe that the full truth of things will be revealed and exposed.”

Yes, he had no idea that asking witnesses to lie and perjure themselves to the Ingram Inquiry was breaking the law. Poor man.

Anyway things may be looking up for Field. I’ve got the perfect job for him, if Labour wins the election. They can appoint him as a former union official to their Workplace Commission, to set minimum pay rates and conditions for industries. The perfect gamekeeper turned poacher turned gamekeeper again.

The Herald reports:

A man who says the law should not apply to him because he is tangata whenua has had his bail application rejected.

Jay Maui Wallace was sentenced in June to four years and three months in prison on charges of injuring with intent to injure over an incident in which he hit a woman with a sawn-off shotgun.

Wallace applied to the High Court in July seeking to be released from prison through a habeas corpus writ, which is used in cases of unlawful detention.

Representing himself, he argued New Zealand laws could not be applied to him because he was tangata whenua and he did not recognise the court’s jurisdiction over him.

Sounds a nasty piece of work – hitting a woman with a shotgun. His attempt to play what I call the “tangata whenua” card angered me, mainly because it inflames race relations. Nothing pisses people off more by some criminal claiming the law doesn’t apply to him because of his race.

I’m a but more sanguine about it now. The argument never works, and you can’t stop people making pathetic and stupid claims. So maybe one should just fight their claims with humour.

Mr Wallace has both Maori and non-Maori ancestors. So maybe the Judge should tell him that the jail sentence only applies to his Pakeha cells 🙂

Derek Cheng at NZ Herald reports:

The Police Association says a gun on every constable’s hip could have prevented high-profile shootings of officers, including the death of Senior Constable Len Snee in Napier in 2009.

Yes it may have, but I don’t think the prevalence of these sorts of incidents are at a high enough level (thankfully) that the benefits of arming all Police outweigh the negatives. Having arms in each police car is a sensible compromise in my opinion.

But what else does the Police Association want:

Mandatory vehicle impounding, licence suspension and possible imprisonment every time a driver flees police.

Absolutely.

Reserving the best radio spectrum for police to ensure the best data transmission, including the possibility of live CCTV feeds and mobile fingerprint terminals.

Depends. What is the quality difference between the best and second best? What impact on others would such a policy have? Worth looking into though.

Imposing non-contact conditions on remanded prisoners so they cannot intimidate potential witnesses.

No-brainer.

Empowering police to intervene early before disorder can escalate into violence.

Hmmn, I’d be a bit careful here. We don’t want pre-crimes.

Danya Levy at Stuff reports:

Labour says its plans to overhaul employment laws will bring New Zealand in line with other developed countries and claims it is a return to 1970s-style industrial relations are scaremongering.

No scaremongering at all. But let us look at the claims it will bring NZ in line with other developed countries.

Take the 90 day probation period. We are almost the only country in the OECD that didn’t have one. Australia has 90 days, Canada 6 months, UK 12 months and Ireland 12 months. Germany is 6 months. The only OECD country without a legal probationary period is Denmark. So don’t believe the crap that this brings us in line with other countries.

Now take the plan to price more people out of the workforce by making it illegal for an employee to work for less than $15 an hour, even an unskilled 16 year old. Wikipedia has a list of minimum wages by country and what percentage they are of GDP/capita. This allows a comparison. Under Labour’s policy NZ would go from 62% to 72%. Here’s other OECD countries:

• Australia 52%
• Austria 37%
• Belgium 53%
• Canada 44%
• Denmark 66%
• France 53%
• Ireland 49%
• Netherlands 48%
• Switzerland 38%
• UK 66%
• US 33%

So again not bringing us in line with other OECD countries, but in fact increasing the gap between us and other OECD countries.