On Backbenches last night, Wallace Chapman asked all the MPs whether they supported VSM, including Labour MP Shane Jones. A transcript:

Wallace: Should we have VSM for student unions?

Shane: Yeah, yeah we should

It’s great to have one Labour MP speak out in favour of VSM, despite his party having an ideological stance against it.

But it does also point to the crumbling discipline within Labour. On Tuesday a Labour MP reveals the entire Maori caucus wants Goff gone, and on Wednesday another MP reveals he disagrees with his party on an issue which they have spent all year fighting tooth and nail.

Neither Phil Goff nor Annette King turned up the valedictory address of retiring Labour MP Mita Ririnui yesterday. It is very rare for the party leadership to not turn up for an MPs valedictory, but the reason in this case may be what Mita Ririnui said on Te Karere on Tuesday.

I’ve observed that MPs often say things on the Maori press, which they don’t say elsewhere. And what Mita said is a pearler. The translation of the item:

Labour MP Mita Ririnui has come out against Goff saying that he doesn’t relate to Maori and that his time as leader is up.

There are seven Maori caucus members and Ririnui says they all want Goff out.

“Of all the names put forward, Shane Jones is our choice.”

“I don’t know of anyone who disagrees.”

Ririnui is adamant Goff does not relate to Maori and Labour needs the Maori vote to govern again.

“The Maori caucus is concerned as we will be the casualties.

“If Shane Jones won’t be leader we’re in trouble.”

Hard to convince voters to vote for Labour when a retiring Labour MPs talks of the total lack of support for the person being put up as the alternate Prime Minister.

Just seven days left to roll Phil Goff, as Whale points out.

Today the VSM Bill, or more formally the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill should have its third reading and effectively pass into law to take effect on 1 January 2012.

For those who want to see the debate, this is my rough estimate of timing:

1. Question Time 2 pm – 3.15 pm (there are three questions to committee chairs)
2. General Debate 3.15 pm – 4.15 pm
3. Royal Society of NZ Amendment Bill. I presume Heather Roy will move it reports progress within the first hour. This means it would finish somewhere between 4.30 pm and 5.15 pm
4. Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill. Should start between 4.30 pm and 5.15 pm.
5. Valedictory statements from Keith Locke and Mita Ririnui from 5.30 pm to 6 .00 pm
6. Dinner Break 6.00 pm – 7.30 pm
7. Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill continues at 7.30 pm for a total of two hours so should conclude somewhere between I estimate 8.30 pm and 9.15 pm

Hundreds of thousands of students are going to gain the ability to choose whether or not they wish to join a students’ association. Over time this will impact millions of people, albeit it in a minor way. Heather Roy will have achieved a lot more than many MPs do in their time.

Labour will want to repeal the law in future and force students once again to fund their apprentices. However I think they will find that in a few years doing so will be immensely unpopular.

I note TV3 reported Labour Party activist and NZUSA President David Do as saying:

“[Students] oppose ACT’s bill, that’s why they are protesting, and they feel increasingly frustrated and appalled that the Government is continuing to ignore their voice on this issue,” he says.

This sums up all that is wrong with compulsory membership. David Do does not speak for all students, or even for a majority of students. NZUSA have never asked students if they want student association membership to be voluntary or compulsory. The only scientific poll done amongst students (during the last VSM bill) on this issue showed a majority support voluntary membership.

Student Associations and their benefactors in Labour have no-one to blame for VSM than themselves. They have had massive opportunities to reform, and to provide safeguards that should go with compulsion. But they granted the power of compulsion with none of the safeguards such as you see with local government (not that I am accepting the validity of the comparison, just pointing out the safeguards).

They also made some huge tactical blunders during the VSM Bill progress. As far as I know they never once asked to meet with Student Choice representatives, who are primarily with Act on Campus and Young Nationals.  They failed to grasp that those two groups have considerable influence with their MPs, and are the ones who have pushed their caucuses to support the law change.

Some of the amendments proposed by Grant Robertson I supported (and said so in my submission to the select committee), specifically mandating that tertiary institutes should be required to offer student association membership as part of online enrolment (on an opt in tick basis).  If Labour had gone to Student Choice and said “Look we disagree on the law, but here are some amendments that you guys might support so that student associations do well under a voluntary regime, then it is quite possible Student Choice would have lobbied National and ACT MPs to agree to some of the amendments which didn’t dilute the principle of voluntary and opt in. By neglecting to engage with Student Choice, the student associations have actually made things much harder for themselves.

I was at the Aotearoa Student Press Association Awards on Saturday evening, and did reflect that it was a bit sad that some student media will struggle under VSM, due to the lack of compulsory funding. I am a huge fan of student media and enjoy reading much of their work. That does not mean I do not support VSM though. Just because I personally think student media is a good thing, is not sufficient reason that all students should be forced to fund it.

Hopefully VSM may act as a catalyst for some student newspapers to transform more into the digital age. As even large multi-national struggle with the economics of print publications, the medium may be somewhat historic. There is an opportunity for student newspapers to possibly dispense with a print edition and produce websites and e-papers which will become important hubs of student life. You may even be able to develop a subscription model. If I could get Salient on my iPad for $10 a year, I’d pay for that.

Likewise VSM does provide some opportunities for student associations, as well as considerable challenge. Student associations historically have been pretty lousy at communicating and consulting with the student body, let alone asking them what they want. Student associations need to spent some time and money asking what do students want from us, and what will they pay for.  They should consider innovations such as differing levels of membership fees. Maybe you can join the association for $10 just to have them represent you, but for say $50 you also get discounts in the cafe, free entry to orientation events and the weekly e-newspaper.

Some associations may try to undermine the law, as Auckland and Canterbury do, and have a zero membership fee and get the university to fund them. Apart from the fact that the University may be in breach of new regulations around student services levies, any association that does this will be missing the point of voluntary membership. Being dependent on members wanting to join can actually improve you, because it focuses a lot of your efforts on making sure you are providing the services students want, rather than the services you want to deliver. Even a $5 membership fee would provide that incentive. A $0 fee means that you have no idea if members see any value or not as there is no cost in joining.

There are some good student associations out there. It will be tougher under VSM, but good ones can raise to the challenge. But student associations in many many countries operate well with voluntary membership. Even in NZ, there are many voluntary student associations – the faculty student associations. Many of these operate with small budgets but have dedicated officers.

Finally I hope the universities and other tertiary institutions do their part to make voluntary membership work for student associations. By this I don’t mean backdoor funding deals which fatally undermine their own advocacy that universities are under-funded, but by allowing people to opt into membership through the enrolment process. In fact there is the potential to offer membership not just to the central student association but also the faculty students associations (to those studying the appropriate courses) and even the Maori students association (to those of Maori decent).  One could even offer membership/forwarding of contact details to registered clubs and societies. If you tick the box next to club or soc, they will be given your name and e-mail address.

Each university probably has its own online enrolment software, but NZUSA could play a useful role in developing specs for what changes would be needed to allow some of what I have advocated above. I think it would be great if as people enrol, they get offered the chance to join all relevant student associations, and indicate which clubs and societies they wish to have contact them.

Smart student associations would have been talking to their universities and institutes since November 2010, when the Government made it clear they would vote in favour of this law progressing. They’ve had 14 months to make changes, and prepare. If they put all their faith in Labour’s boasting that they could stop the law from passing before the election, then they were very foolish. However it is still better to be late than never. Within reason, I’m happy to donate my time to helping any student association with preparing for VSM (so long as it is after 26 November).

Anyway as someone who has been a proponent of VSM since I  joined OUSA in 1986, I’m delighted to see this law change finally occur. Students will finally be free to decide for themselves whether or not they wish to join a students’ association, and have the same rights of non-association as pretty much every other member of society.

I was surprised to see a report that Chris Carter had voted against the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill.

He arrived in Kabul two weeks ago.

But no it seems his resignation is timed to not occur until the end of the September.

So is it proper for the Greens to be casting a proxy vote on behalf of an MP who has left New Zealand and is now working for the UN in Kabul?

And isn’t it a fitting end to Chris’ parliamentary career that he is double dipping – being paid his parliamentary salary as well as his UN salary for a few weeks.

Andrew Geddis proposed that instead of passing a law to suspend the Supreme Court ruling on Police video surveillance, that Parliament could just instead pass into law the provisions of the Search and Surveillance Bill as reported back by Select Committee.

Labour adopted this idea as their policy and Charles Chauvel drafted a bill which he said did this. He whined that the Government refused to grant leave for it to be introduced. But there was a very good reasons for this. Poor Charles cut and paste from the wrong version of the Search and Surveillance Bill. He used the bill as introduced, not as reported back by select committee. This is an incredibly stupid and basic error to make.

Chris Finlayson pointed out:

“Charles Chauvel’s draft SOP for the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill demonstrates the danger of taking parts of draft legislation out of the context in which they were drafted,” Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson says.

“Mr Chauvel has, apparently inadvertently, drafted his SOP using large sections of the Search and Surveillance Bill as introduced to Parliament, rather than as reported back from Select Committee last year,” Mr Finlayson said. “This has created some serious problems in what he proposes.”

A number of problems are evident in the SOP posted by Mr Chauvel on the Labour Party blogsite:

• Mr Chauvel’s clause 7(1) refers to a period not exceeding 72 hours. But this was in the Search and Surveillance Bill as introduced, not as reported back. The Select Committee altered it to 48 hours, to reduce the period of time a surveillance device is first used without obtaining a surveillance device warrant. This increases surveillance powers, something Mr Chauvel previous expressed concern about.

• Mr Chauvel’s clause 8(3)(a) uses the wording of the Search and Surveillance Bill as introduced, not as reported back. He would require a residual warrant be disclosed, even though the Select Committee ruled this out.

• Mr Chauvel’s clause 11 is completely deficient. He uses clause 50 of the Bill as originally drafted, leaving out important additions made by the Select Committee, particularly section 42AA dealing with restrictions on some trespass surveillance and use of interception devices.

What a fail. But I love his response in the Herald:

Mr Chauvel returned fire, saying the Government could have improved his SOP, rather than spend time scrutinising it and putting out a press release.

“It’s a shame we have a minister who would prefer to take the approach of chipping at the opposition, rather than looking at how we can improve the law.”

Oh yes how dare the Government point out the Opposition cut and pasted the wrong version of a bill, and that Labour were proposing a law change that would be worse than what the select committee had recommended.

Talking of the Bill, it is online here. If you wish to make a submission, you only have until midnight.

Hamish Fletcher at NZ Herald reports:

Internet failures that have forced the Companies Office and 14 other Government websites offline for four days have been described as an international embarrassment.

Other websites caught up in the outage include the Personal Property Securities Register, Intellectual Property Office and Ministry of Consumer Affairs sites. …

The MED blamed the outage on upgrade work to the servers hosting the sites.

Unscheduled outages should be measured in minutes, not days.

The companies office site especially is a high demand site.

I have some experience with such a site. I was a director from 2002 to 2010 of the NZ Domain Name Registry Ltd, which is known as .nz Registry Services (NZRS). They operate the registry for .nz domain names.

The service level agreement with the Domain Name Commission Ltd (which I now serve on) specifies that the registry must be available 99.9% of the time (excluding scheduled outages notified in advance) on a monthly basis. This means that any unscheduled outages must last no longer than 43 minutes over a month, or the company would be in breach of the SLA.

To help achieve that, a lot of redundancy is built into the system. In fact there are parallel systems in Wellington and Auckland, so if one city is unavailable, the other system can kick in.

If NZRS had an unscheduled outage of four days, I imagine there would have been resignations from both the board and senior management, unless it was for the most exceptional and unavoidable reason. I certainly would have offered my resignation as a Director to the shareholder (InternetNZ).

The companies office website is excellent. I use it often, and it is one of the reasons we score highly on ease of business surveys. You can establish a company in under an hour, all online. But the more vital a service becomes, the more important it is that you ensure it remains up.

MED should at a minimum commission an independent report into what went wrong, and what they need to do to prevent such an outage in future.

The Herald reports:

Members of the “Urewera 18” group threw Molotov cocktail fire bombs and fired semi-automatic weapons at training camps in the bush, court documents show. …

Evidence from Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe was given to the hearing that film and photographs of a September 2007 camp showed a woman he said was Ms Morse holding an object believed to be a Molotov cocktail.

The person carried the object out of the view of the camera and returned a short time later without it.

Mr Pascoe was to give evidence that he believed she threw the Molotov cocktail into an outdoor oven, where police later found remnants of Molotov cocktails. …

That was the only basis for the identification because in all the images her face was concealed.

People should remember this the next time Ms Morse claims to be a peace activist.

The latest Fairfax poll is out and details here. I’ve done an analysis at curiablog.

According to my time and size weighted average of the public polls, the seat allocation would be National 69, Labour 34 and Greens 12.

For National this would mean everyone on the list up to and including Denise Krum would get in.

For Labour it would mean everyone up to and including Carol Beaumont would get in. Andrew Little would be the only new List MP, and Davis, Sepuloni, Barker, Nash and Chadwick would miss out.

For the Greens they get everyone up to and including Holly Walker.

The Australian reports:

“I’m a very happy little vegemite being Prime Minister … being Foreign Minister of Australia,” he told ABC Central West today while on his way to Condobolin, west of Orange, to open a rotary-funded indigenous studies centre.

One can forgive Kevin for the slip-up, as regaining the top job must be at the top of his thoughts most of the time.

Recent polls have shown he would do much better against the Coalition than Julia Gillard. However she is genuinely liked by many of his colleagues and Rudd is not, so the decision is not as easy as it might otherwise be. But this latest poll is a shocker for Gillard:

Ms Gillard is now neck and neck with Mr Abbott as preferred prime minister among female voters, 39 per cent to 37 per cent, compared to 52 per cent to 33 per cent at the last election.

Abbott has always been considered a total turn-off for female voters. If he is only 2% behind amongst women, then his biggest weakness has been overcome.

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

STOP PENALISING THE PUFF?: ACT Leader Don Brash has suggested its time for cannabis to be decriminalised. Saying the current law made crims of some 400,000 kiwis who were harming no one except themselves. Is he right? Is it time to stop punishing the pot smoker? Is marijuana harmful? Some call it the slippery slope. Are we wasting money by chasing down the average joint smoker? And should we be spending our time and effort on harder drugs? Or does decriminalisation just give permission for people to break the law?

LAW & ORDER: Crime stats show Maori are disproportionately represented in prison—although they represent only 12.5% of the population, half of all prisoners are Maori. How do we turn this statistic around? Will a Maori-led approach be the most effective? And what will that look like? How do we prevent crime? And once crime has been committed how do we rehabilitate? Do we need to re-think our laws over crime & punishment?

Join us for a night of LIVE pub politics from the Backbencher Pub: Wednesday, 28th of September. Our Panel: Labour MP Shane Jones, Mana Party Leader Hone Harawira and National MP Simon Bridges.

The Dom Post reports:

Porirua city councillor Litea Ah Hoi has accepted an invitation to visit communist North Korea next week.

Ms Ah Hoi is the Labour activist who called some-one a dumb-ass coconut because they praised Hekia Parata. I’m all in favour of her flying to North Korea. Less sure about the return trip though.

The city’s ties with North Korea began in the 1970s when councillors first visited, followed by former mayor John Burke and Porirua MP Graham Kelly in 1988. A Whitireia performing arts group also visited in the mid-1990s to perform in a spring festival.

I am sure Graham felt really at home there. In hindsight he should have been appointed Ambassador to North Korea rather than High Commissioner to Canada.

However, Mr Burke, who has talked to Mrs Ah Hoi about what to expect, said he questioned how worthwhile his 1988 trip had been.

He turned down opportunities to create formal links, including a sister city relationship. “I just didn’t think the time was in any way right and I don’t think it is now, to be honest.”

During his five-day trip, his every step was watched by an interpreter who would barge through the hotel door every morning and keep Mr Burke in his sights until he went to sleep at night.

This is what I object to. Anyone who goes get a state-controlled tour, which has no reality to the real North Korea.

I’ve visited countries such as Iran, which have regimes I disapprove of. But in Iran I could tour around the country, meet locals and pretty much do whatever I wanted so long as I was dressed appropriately. And Iranian people were free to talk about their Government and what they think of their President etc.

North Korea is not like that. Anyone going on a friendship tour is a dupe for the regime.

While Mrs Ah Hoi intends to showcase Porirua, she is not going as a city councillor and is personally funding 40 per cent of the cost of the trip, with society chairman Don Borrie paying the remainder.

Oh yes, Rev Borrie. North Korea’s No 1 fan. He writes letters to Government ministers imploring them to rule out any military action – even if North Korea invades South Korea. Well at least good on him for putting his money where his beliefs are.

She was aware that North Korean officials were keen to talk about creating a sister city, however, Porirua Mayor Nick Leggett said the council had no desire to create links with North Korea.

What a sensible Mayor.

The Standing Orders Committee has just reported back a review of the standing orders that govern Parliament. This are of interest to few people, but are highly important. They are the rules of our Parliament.

The full report is 110 pages. I’ve yet to read it all, but on first browse it looks to include some significant enhancement. I hope the House and the Government adopt the recommendations. A brief summary include:

• The Clerk to record and publish attendance of MPs
• A new form of legislation called a revision bill that has no debate at first and third reading but does have a select committee hearing and a second reading debate
• an inquiry into how Parliament should respond to future national emergencies
• the ability to deduce an MPs pay if they are suspended from the House
• an extension of privilege to include broadcasting of the House etc
• A Bill of Rights analysis to be supplied not just at first reading but also for substantive SOPs amending bills. This is something I have advocated several times.
• Provision for extended sitting hours without going into urgency by sitting on either a Wednesday or Thursday morning, if necessary. Again something I have strongly advocated, as it should reduce the need for urgency so much.
• Also provision for extended sitting hours on a Thursday evening and Friday morning, but only if the Business Committee agrees, which means basically the Opposition consents to it.
• Ministers moving urgency in future will need to state the reason for the urgency. Good.
• Uncorrected transcripts of Parliament to be placed on website within three hours. Excellent initiative.
• Clark’s Office working towards a public fully searchable database of text and video of Parliament. This will replace the printed weekly Hansard.
• An MP not giving the correct oath will be required by standing orders to immediately withdraw from the House. They also note that most of the committee support a review of the oath. I agree with both clamping down on improper oaths, but also changing the oath.
• Business Committee determinations to be published on the Parliament website. These proposals give a lot more power to the Business Committee, so this is good. The BC needs near-unanimous consent to make decisions, so it is about encouraging parties to work together more.
• A requirement for an MP intending to talk about an issue before the courts to notify the Speaker in advance
• Proposed members bills will now be recognised before they are drawn from the ballot, and be available of the Parliament website, which may help the MP proposing it to gain support for it. Sensible.

There are some areas where they could have gone further, but overall I think the proposals would make Parliament significantly better, and I hope that they are adopted.

Whale has screen shots of a Facebook thread from Labour MP Darien Fenton on the Mad Butcher. It reveals a lot.

Darien posts:

So, Mad Butcher, you have a choice, but so do I

So the Mad Butcher dared to say he though John Key was doing a good job (something that only 15% of NZers disagree with), and for that Darien wants him punished with a consumer boycott.

She stresses:

Sucking up to John Key big time. I’m never going near him again.

It must be tough for Darien, only able to shop at places where the owners agree with her political views. Personally, I shop based on location, price, quality and service.

Darien then exclaims:

Yes, he’s been good in the past. I don’t know what happened.

Note how the thinking is that something must have happened to Leitch to turn him evil.

Brad then makes the suggestion:

Perhaps Labour should work to earn back his support then.

Darien then responds with a priceless:

Brad – why?

Need any more be said.

The Dom Post reports:

The man accused of murdering Feilding farmer Scott Guy will stand trial in June next year.

Ewen Kerry Macdonald – Guy’s brother-in-law – appeared before Justice Alan MacKenzie in the High Court at Palmerston North this morning.

His murder trial will be held on June 5 in Palmerston North and is expected to take six weeks.

As I read this, I reflected how good it is that the Guy family are spared having to go through what is effectively two entire trials, now that deposition hearings are the exception not the rule.

The trial is going to be incredibly hard on the Guy family. I’m pleased for them that the law change (initiated by Labour IIRC) means they only have to go through it once – especially as it was inevitable that a depositions hearing would end up in committing to trial anyway.

Graeme Edgeler at Public Address has put together a referendum tool, where you answer 10 questions and rate their importance, and it assesses the five electoral systems against your responses.

It is a tool, not a bible. But well worth having a play with and seeing what systems it says you are most aligned with.

Chris Trotter writes at Stuff:

They weren’t the most important events of the past week. In fact, in a world racked by economic crisis and intractable conflict, they weren’t important at all.

But, as is so often the case with small, seemingly trivial events, they were highly instructive. They told us why John Key’s National Party will have to work very hard to lose the forthcoming election, and why – barring a miracle – Labour hasn’t the slightest chance of winning it.

So what is Chris referring to?

The first event involved a visit by the Prime Minister to Canterbury University.  …

Except for the sign that fourth-year mechanical engineering students had stuck to the “Mech Suite” window overlooking the PM’s arrival-point.

“John, mate,” read the sign, “come up for a yarn with your country’s future engineers.”

The Prime Minister spotted the sign and, yep, you guessed it, to the whoops and hollers of the (mostly male) students he came up.

But wait, there’s more. Not only did the PM come up, but he also agreed to match one of his larger and more terrifying DPS bodyguards against the students’ massive arm-wrestling champion, “Mad Dog”. …

What matters is that a) John Key was up for it, and carried it off with considerable aplomb. And b) The whole event is now available to the electorate via the internet. Just three days after it was first posted, more than 13,000 people had watched the YouTube clip.

Which is quite a lot for a 10 minute video.

And the other event?

In a posting headed “Bill English Funds Bryce Edwards”, the Labour caucus’ chief election strategist, Trevor Mallard, launched a vicious attack on the young Otago University academic Dr Bryce Edwards for his, at times, highly critical assessments of the Labour Opposition’s performance. …

It is difficult to know where to begin with this outburst.

That it was made by the caucus’s chief strategist raises a whole host of questions about the nature of the election campaign Labour is intending to run.

Does Phil Goff sanction this stuff? We can only hope that he does not endorse the sort of crude ad hominem arguments featured in Mallard’s posting.

We must hope, too, that Labour’s appeal to the electorate is fuelled by emotions considerably less disreputable than the petty spitefulness and partisan hostility which it displays.

To be fair, it is not all in Labour who act like this. But they sit back and enable it by having Mallard as their “chief strategist”.

And this is how they act in Opposition. It is worse when they are in Government, when they can actually use the powers of office to strike back at those who dare criticise.

Trotter concludes:

All elections have a “tone”: a mode of address to the voting public which (largely unconsciously) “cues” their response to the competing parties.

If we compare and contrast the tone of the YouTube clip of the PM’s visit to the Mech Suite, with the tone of Mallard’s Red Alert posting, picking the election result becomes a cinch. Sometimes, little things generate big consequences.

I recall Chris wearing a red Labour rosette in the lead up to the last election. Now Labour probably dismiss him as a member of the VRWNLLWC.

What was potentially a good news story, about ACT returning to its liberal roots, has been over-shadowed by the fact other candidates were unaware of Dr Brash’s speech advocating a change from the current cannabis laws.

The issue isn’t so much that there is a diversity of opinion within ACT on this issue, but that the rest of the ACT team were in the dark about the speech.

It is absolutely basic political management that a major speech from the leader should have been circulated in advance to key people in the party. To be fair to ACT, it is more difficult when your candidates are not the same as your caucus, as this is bread and butter parliamentary stuff. But regardless it was a major failure to not have had anyone run the speech through John Banks and other top candidates.

This is not to give them a veto on the speech, but to make sure there are no surprises, and you know what each will say. It was 100% predictable that the media would ask Banks for his view. Now if they were smart, Don would have even mentioned in his speech that John Banks doesn’t agree with him, but that he is (for example) open to having a debate and a conscience vote on the issue. And again with better political management, you would have had Banks have his response to the media prepared in advance.

If you don’t get basic political management right, potential supporters will be deterred from supporting your party, even if they agree on policies.

Family First say:

Family First NZ has released the results of a family issues questionnaire which has been sent to leaders of the main political parties. The results can be viewed on their new website www.valueyourvote.org.nz .

“The questionnaire finds out the party leaders’ views on issues ranging from marriage, abortion and income splitting to loan sharks, Easter trading laws, same-sex adoption, and broadcasting standards,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

I always find an election guide by Family First as very useful, but in reverse 🙂

Let’s look at how they rate them:

1. Colin Craig 90%
2. Winston Peters 80%
3. Don Brash 43%
4. Peter Dunne 37%
5. Hone Harwira 30%
6. Russel Norman 25%
7. Metiria Turei 23%
8. Tariana Turia 19%
9. John Key 17%
10. Pita Sharples 14%
11. Phil Goff 10%

Interesting that Key and Goff are two of the three at the bottom. Well done guys.

Of the 30 or so issues they rate leaders on, around the only ones I agree with Family First on are decriminalise non-abusive smacking, education parental choice, welfare vouchers where children are at risk and maybe an Independent CYF Complaints Authority.

I disagree on marriage, income splitting, abortion, sex education, surrogacy, stem cell research, same sex adoption, euthanasia, cannabis, brothels, prostitution, broadcasting standards, public nudity, billboards, alcohol purchase age, Easter trading laws, loans sharks, gaming machines and binding CIRs.

We’ve a very diverse lot in the VRWNLLWC!

Just blogged at Stuff on the long overdue cannabis debate. I note:

The Law Commission has also advocated a mandatory cautioning scheme for anyone charged with a personal possession or use offence. For Class C drugs such as cannabis they recommend that a person only be prosecuted from their fourth offence. This could be a sensible compromise between full decriminalisation and the current law.

The debate will not go away, just because some do not want to admit the current approach is failing.

I saw a headline at Pundit, which was “The election campaign so far: Trevor one, Steven nil”.

I wondered which commentator there had just suffered a breakdown, and was so keen to kill off their credibility by alleging that Trevor Mallard is running a better campaign than Steven Joyce. The best campaign managers I note are those who do not constantly make negative stories for their own party.

So who was it, that had gone bonkers? Surely not that nice Tim Watkin? No. Likewise Jane Young and David Beatson care far too much about their reputations to be so preposterous. Maybe it could be Deborah Coddington as some sort of sarcastic joke. Even Sue Bradford would avoid being so ridiculous.

So I went to have a look, and found out it was former Labour Party President, Mike Williams. Suddenly the mystery is no more.

But I was curious, what was this strategic victory that Mallard had pulled off, over Joyce? It takes a while to find it. First Williams bleats about national standards. Then in the very last paragraph Williams says:

Back to the campaign count-downs, and in the marginal seat of Te Atatu, its one nil to Trevor Mallard over Steven Joyce. Labour candidates, Phil Twyford and Kelvin Davies got their hoardings up at the first opportunity.

We’re still waiting for National’s Tau Henare to get motivated.

Give him a call, Steven. Not a good look.

Only could a former Labour Party President regard obeying the law as “not a good look”.

As readers will know, Labour MPs en masse (and a couple of National MPs) ignored the Auckland Council bylaw and instructions and stuck their hoardings up early, and illegally. In the culture that is the Labour Party, this is to be applauded as utilising the first opportunity. Others would compare it to cheating, and starting the race before the gun goes off.

This is what I mean about the culture of being above the law that permeates Labour. It’s not one or two isolated MPs.

Anyway there was one interesting aspect to the blog by Williams. He called Te Atatu a marginal seat, despite a 5,298 majority in 2008.

Now I am not disputing that Te Atatu may well indeed be a marginal seat. Just how extraordinary it is for an opposition party to label a seat with a majority over 5,000 as marginal. It shows they realise how much trouble they may be in. Here’s the general seats Labour holds with a smaller than 5,298 majority.

• Christchurch Central
• Hutt South
• New Lynn
• Palmerston North
• Port Hills
• Rimutaka
• Waimakariri
• Wellington Central

From Whale:

From Leo Molly owner of a bar and appar­ently also of some footage of Eng­lish cap­tain Mike Tin­dall and a blonde.

“Our posi­tion is that if it’s not a crime, then we won’t release the footage. Root­ing [hav­ing sex] isn’t a crime in New Zealand — I’m not sure about Eng­land, but it’s not in New Zealand.’

I love how the Herald felt it necessary to explain to readers what rooting is 🙂