Derek Cheng reports at NZ Herald:

The Government is looking at new ways to monitor beneficiaries who may be conning the system after a simple test found 11 per cent of those on an unemployment benefit last September are now no longer eligible.

Prime Minister John Key announced yesterday that a new requirement for unemployment beneficiaries, implemented in September, had already seen 7400 people go off the dole, saving the taxpayer $6 million to the end of March. A further $3.5 million in savings is expected by October.

The change requires unemployment beneficiaries to reapply for the benefit every 12 months to ensure they are still eligible.

“There are 7400 people who are not on a benefit who otherwise would have been, had it not been for this test,” Mr Key said.

You have to wonder that if a simple reapply requirement sees the numbers reduce by 11%, what would happen if you had work for the dole, work testing for other benefits etc?

Another test, requiring solo parents on the domestic purposes benefit with children over 6 years old to look for part-time work, had seen the number of people off the DPB and into work increase by 20 per cent, said Social Development Minister Paula Bennett.

All changes bitterly opposed by Labour and the Greens, IIRC.

Richard McGrath blogs at Not PC on how if you want the rich to pay more tax, you should tax them less. Recall that only half of our 100 wealthiest New Zealanders pay the top tax rate. Under the Goofynomics plan to have the top tax rate at 39% and the corporate rate at 28%, I’d say the number paying the top tax rate would drop to under 1/4.

McGrath quotes Keynes:

“[T]axation may be so high as to defeat its object, [and] a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.”

And then he goes on to give some examples:

• UK, 1979: Chancellor Geoffrey Howe cuts marginal tax rate from 83% (!) to 60%. Before the cuts, the top 1% of taxpayers were paying 11% of total income tax received. Nine years later, despite the hefty cuts, they were paying 14% of total income tax.
• UK, 1980s: Chancellor Nigel Lawson cuts marginal rate further, to 40%. By 1997, the top 1% of taxpayers are paying 21% of income tax received. Thus halving the marginal tax rate doubled the income tax receipts from the wealthiest 1%.
• US, 1920s: Presidents Coolidge and Harding reduced the top tax rate from 73% to 25%. The share of tax paid by earners making over $100,000 nearly doubled between 1921 and 1925, from 28% to 51%.
• US, 1961: The top tax rate under Eisenhower had crept up to a staggering 91%. The Democrats supported by Kennedy dropped this to 70%. He stated, a few months before a sniper removed the occipital lobes of his cerebral hemispheres: “[T]ax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to riase revenues in the long run is to cut the tax rates…” As a result of the Kennedy tax cuts, those earning over $50,000 increased the amount of tax paid by 40%, and paid 15% of income tax received in 1966, as opposed to 12% in 1963. Total income tax received went up from $69b in 1964 to $96b in 1968.
• US, 1981: Under President Reagan, Congress reduced the top tax rate from 70% to 50%. Between 1981 and 1988 the top 1% of tax earners increased their share of tax received from 18 to 28%, while the bottom 50% of taxpayers decreased their contribution to income tax received from 7.5% to 5.7% over this same period.
  
• Canada, 1990: Top federal tax rate cut from 45% to 29%; share of tax paid by top 10% of taxpayers increases from 29% to 45%.

Goff should know this. He was one of those who voted to lower the top tax rate to 33% in the 1980s.

If you spend all your after tax income, then those on the top tax rate already pay 43% of their income in tax, when you include GST. We’ll leave ACC out of this for now. I think that’s more than enough.

Bob McCoskrie has blogged responses from minor political parties on whether repeal of the anti-smacking law would be a bottom-line issue in coalition negotiations.

ACT have said they will push for it, but it is not a bottom line issue – in fact they sensibly have said there are no bottom line issues in advance, as it depends on your vote share.

The Kiwi and Conservative parties have both said it will be a bottom line issue, but neither rate in the polls.

What I found interesting was the response from NZ First:

NZ First policy is to repeal the anti smacking law passed by the last parliament despite overwhelming public opposition. Accordingly we will not enter any coalition or confidence and supply agreement with a party that wishes to ignore the publics clearly stated view in a referendum on that issue

Now if one assumes Winston is telling the truth (always dangerous), it is a very significant statement.

National has already ruled out Winston as a potential option. In fact Key has explicitly said he would go into Opposition than do a deal with Peters. Hence, the only party that may end up negotiating with Peters is Labour.

So if NZ First, do make 5%, and somehow a centre-left Government can be formed, a non negotiable condition of support from NZ First will be repealing the anti-smacking law. I wonder how that would go down with all the Labour and Green voters?

In my By the numbers blog at Stuff, I reveal some stats on Tea Party supporters, which may surprise some:

• 43% of Tea Party supporters have an unfavourable view of the Republican Party.
• Only 40% of Tea Party supporters think Sarah Palin has the ability to be an effective president.
• 57% of Tea Party supporters think gay couples should be able to enter a civil union or marry.
• Only 18% of Tea Party supporters say they always vote Republican.
• 36% of Tea Party supporters identify as Independents, and 5% as Democrats.

There’s already a furious debate at Stuff over my characterisation of them.

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

CHOICE—JUST AROUND THE CORNER?: The filibuster’s been broken so is choice just around the corner? Will the Voluntary Student Membership bill pass? Could this be the death knell of University Student Unions? Or will this separate the wheat from the chaff? And what does it mean for Student media? How important is our student media? Does student radio and magazines need to be separately funded rather than through Student Membership dues?

SAVED!:  It was facing cuts up to 60% but the release of the Early Childhood Education Taskforce report means that playcentre and parent-led ECE services are safe from cuts. But what about other ECE services?

Join us for a night of LIVE pub politics from the Backbencher Pub: Wednesday, 10^th of August. Our Panel: ACT MP Heather Roy, Green MP Gareth Hughes, Labour MP David Parker and National MP Amy Adams.

Back Benches screens on Wednesdays at 9.05pm with encore screenings on Thursdays at 9.05am and 1.05pm, Saturdays at 10.05pm, Sundays at 10.05am and 2.05pm – TVNZ 7

I was just about to sit down and blog about Labour’s pitiful rip-off of Whale Oil’s Texts from Helen, where Trevor did Txts from JK. I wasn’t sure what was worse – that it was unoriginal, or that it wasn’t funny, or that a man near 60 is doing teenage text speak or that it doesn’t even “fit”. It is well known Helen is an inveterate texter and keeps in touch with many of her former colleagues. While John Key and Jenny Shipley were never even in Parliament together.

But I don’t have to blog all that, as John Hartevelt has done it for me at Stuff:

Sigh. Another day and the Labour Party takes yet another turn for the cringe-makingly desperate.

The party’s chief strategist, their sharpest political mind and the chap responsible for winning the election campaign has this morning come up with this rather lame attempt at humour.

Trevor Mallard’s theft of an overused and not terribly funny concept from a right-wing blogger is just a bit sad.

If it was an isolated example of an odd attack on the PM, it wouldn’t rate a mention.

But ever since the intellectual excitement and esprit de corps that accompanied Labour’s tax policy announcement died down a fortnight ago, a steady drip feed of rather juvenile stunts – many of them played out unthinkingly online – has been issued from a few in the Labour caucus.

Mallard and the Dunedin South MP Clare Curran are the chief mischief makers. A missive from Curran last week seemed to subtly encourage readers to make some sort of a link between John Key and the 1991 US invasion of Iraq, on the grounds that a PR company hired by Tourism NZ to secure a spot for Key on the Letterman show was the same firm that had been criticised for its role “as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign”. Good grief.

These have got so bad, that even on Red Alert Labour MPs are getting a pasting for such idiocy. The response is for Clare Curran to do a poll asking people if they agree that Red Alert should be moderated more tightly, with no option for people to say that the censorship there is already way over the top.

Normally you would count on the campaign manager, being the one to tell MPs who are making the party look like idiots, to pull their heads in. But when it is the campaign manager himself leading the charge, well you really do have problems.

Nancy Wake has died. She was born in Roseneath, Wellington in 1912 and gave up a life in France of pleasure and privilege to fight the Nazis. She became the Gestapo’s most wanted person, and was known as the White Mouse.

I could go on for pages about her, but I won’t. I do suggest people read the captivating biography of her which was published some years ago. I’ve blogged on Nancy Wake previously, and am saddened that she has now died without an official New Zealand honour.

She will be mourned amongst all the allied nations of WWII. Her honours include:

• George Medal
• Companion of the Order of Australia
• US Medal of Freedom with Bronze Palm
• Légion d’honneur (the highest French decoration)
• Croix de guerre
• NZ RSA Gold Medal

I hope the NZ Government ensures New Zealand is represented at her funeral.

May her memory go to inspire generations that one woman can make a difference.

Deborah Coddington writes in the HoS:

But there is hope for equity from our youth. Midweek I co-judged, with David Farrar, a debate with the somewhat dodgy moot, ‘Politicians are even worse in the boardroom than in the bedroom’. Don Brash was host and I’ll say no more on that.

The occasion was launching Youth for Act and listening to the debaters – male and female – was encouraging. They want government out of our bedrooms, for instance, with same-sex marriage, not just civil unions. Racism does exist – Maori youth are busted for drugs, not white middle class, so legalise cannabis. Act, they said, shouldn’t just bang on about economic issues.

And here’s a good analogy they posited. If liberal parties just want individual freedom, like tax cuts, to enrich themselves, consider this: do you really think Sir Roger Douglas and Heather Roy voted against the banning of Kronic because they want to smoke themselves into a stupor?

Like Deborah I was encouraged by the debate, hearing young ACT candidates make the case for ACT to push social liberalism as much or even more than economic liberalism.

It was nice to hear passionate ACT candidates talking about the need for same sex couples to not be discriminated against, and to (as Deborah reported) argue that the current drug laws unfairly criminalise young Maori, as they are more likely to be searched for drugs.

The debate was about whether ACT should focus more on economic liberalism or social liberalism. There were good arguments on both sides, and of course the answer is in fact you should do both. But I tend to think it would be good to hear more from ACT on social liberalism, because their brand there has been unclear. No one doubts ACT’s commitment to economic liberalism, but they do wonder about the commitment to social liberalism.

Wouldn’t it be great I thought to hear Don Brash say something along the lines of “Yes we are going to get rid of the Maori seats, because race based seats are wrong – but we are also going to decriminalise personal use of cannabis, as our current drug laws unfairly penalise young Maori”.

NZ Herald reports:

Charlie Sheen’s Two and a Half Men character will meet a horrific death under a subway train – and a Kiwi actress is responsible.

According to gossip site TMZ, sources who attended the taping of Kutcher’s first episode on Friday have revealed how producers decided to kill off his character, Charlie Harper.

They told the showbiz website that Harper marries Rose, the stalker with whom he flew to Paris last season, before meeting a grisly death in the French capital’s Metro network.

At the funeral for Sheen’s character, Rose – played by Kiwi actress Melanie Lynskey – reportedly says she found him in the shower with another woman.

The following day, she says, he slipped and fell while the two were waiting for a subway, with the implication that Rose probably pushed him.

Having Rose kill Charlie is a very fitting end. I still can’t imagine the show working without him though. So much of the humour is based around Charlie’s relationships with his mother, brother and nephew.

Anna Leask at NZ Herald reports:

Broadcaster Michael Laws is sporting a black eye after he was assaulted in a Wanganui bar by a man he said “hit like a girl”.

Maybe it was a girl? 🙂

More seriously, I do hope the Police find out who did it. Assaulting people just (presumably) because you don’t like their views is not on.

I’ve seen a lot of rugby games at the Stadium in Wellington, and a few at Athletic Park, Carisbrook and Lancaster Park, but had never been to a match at Eden Park before.

And it was a great game to watch up close. The first Dan Carter penalty was a nice little morale booster as so much was riding on this game. No not just the Bledisloe Cup, but everyone was aware that this could be the the Rugby World Cup final in two months time – New Zealand vs Australia.

Nonu’s try just before 10 minutes was a close call and right on the boundary. Very impressive conversion from Carter. Then the All Blacks are all defence, and yay they don’t let the Wallabies through. Then Mealamu burrows over the line and with an easy conversion it is 17-0. Around this stage I am thinking it should be an All Black victory, but things could change. And a nervous 10 minutes as the Wallabies get close several times to scoring, but the All Blacks don’t let the pressure get to them. 17-0 at half time is a good result.

A Carter drop goal to start the second half scoring off with gets smiles all around, and I start to think maybe the All Blacks can not concede a point. A couple of minutes later the Wallabies score a well deserved try. The speed of a couple of their backs is amazing.

Two minutes later the All Blacks score again and Carter kicks perfectly to make it 27-7. With 25 minutes to go I mentally conclude this is going to be a win – the battle is now for the score. Wallabies spend much of the next 15 minutes attacking again, and while I’m not happy we’re in defence so much, it’s great to see them hacking the pressure. Then around 12 minutes to go and Carter kicks a penalty bringing up his 15th point in the match.

30-7 would have been a great full-time score but with five minutes to go the Wallabies get another try, and sadly they deserved it. The final score of 30-14 is a fair reflection of the match.

In terms of the facilities, Eden Park was looking magnificent, and well up to the Rugby World Cup. Not much of a queue to get in, and the traffic into Kingsland Shops was pretty light, and from there an easy walk to the park. Scores of police, security and guides around to make sure you get to the right gate without problems.

Watching rugby on tv is good fun. But there is something great about being there in the stadium, and soaking up the atmosphere. I’ve already got tickets for some of the Rugby World Cup games – I think I’ll get some more. South Africa v Wales on 9/11 looks fun. Already booked in for Australia vs USA. I love the idea of 30,000 people cheering for the US!

France v Tonga has promise also. Not sure the Frenchies will be used to the size of the Tongans. At this stage not planning to see NZ vs Canada, because expectations are so high for a thrashing, we can’t live up to them. Am leaning towards the third quarter-final in Wellington also.

Tickets for the final are all gone, but if NZ is going well might try and go up to Auckland for their semi-final if tickets still remain by then.

Best yet – 10/10 in 39 seconds in the Herald Politics Quiz.

Matt McCarten writes in the HoS:

US counts financial costs of tea partiers

More damage was done to capitalism this week than any communist revolutionary could have ever dreamed possible.

Matt has it all wrong. The drop in the markets isn’t because Tea Party supported Congressman insisted on spending cuts. It is because the spending cuts did not go far enough to stop US debt growing. The massive deficit and debt is due to a series of Presidents and Congresses spending way more money than they had. Clinton was the one near exception.

Everyday Americans, sick of both parties, rose up and said no more spending increases we can’t afford. Thanks to them, the US may one day get back into surplus – but it is a long time off.

Anyway I would have thought Matt would have liked the Tea Party – like his UNITE union, they don’t like paying taxes. The difference is the Tea Party campaigns to change the law, while UNITE simply takes its employees PAYE tax and spends it elsewhere, rather than passing it onto the IRD as required by law.

The country’s official unemployment is more than 9 per cent and is people’s number one concern. Poll after poll show people want more expenditure on jobs, health and education. Yet the tea partiers – funded by the super wealthy – have forced the Obama administration to cut these three items.

Until now every sane economist will tell a government to spend money when an economy needs to grow. This country is going in the opposite direction.

The 9% unemployment rate came after the biggest spend-up in history. Obama asked for and got a huge fiscal stimulus, in the hundreds of billions. He claimed it would stop unemployment reaching 7%. Instead it made 10%. The myth that the Government can spend itself out of trouble has been dispelled by the evidence.

If that isn’t enough Obama has a Supreme Court with a majority of Republican appointees approving laws allowing corporations to give unlimited amounts of secret funding to politicians.

Not secret. Simply companies in the US, are like companies in NZ. They have to disclose their donations, but there is no limit on them.

AP reports:

A Swedish man who was arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen said Wednesday he was only doing it as a hobby.

Richard Handl told The Associated Press that he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment in southern Sweden when police showed up and arrested him on charges of unauthorized possession of nuclear material.

The 31-year-old Handl said he had tried for months to set up a nuclear reactor at home and kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove.

Only later did he realize it might not be legal and sent a question to Sweden’s Radiation Authority, which answered by sending the police.

May have been wiser to check before you start, whether it is legal to build your own nuclear reactor at home.

Andrea Vance at Stuff reports:

The public service union has weighed in behind spy boss Warren Tucker as Labour leader Phil Goff continues to attack his recollection of secret briefings.

Mr Goff disputes the accuracy of a report signed off by Dr Tucker showing that he briefed the Opposition leader on an investigation into whether Israeli backpackers who fled after the February 22 Christchurch earthquake might be spies.

Public Service Association national secretary Brenda Pilott said using public servants to score political points was “ill-advised”, especially in an election year.

“Public servants are required to keep their politics out of their job and their job out of politics. That means they cannot respond publicly to criticism or become embroiled in political rows.”

I was listening to a Labour MP talk on this issue on the radio yesterday and he was very luke warm in his defence of Goff. Rather than defend Goff, it was more “Wow, what a mystery this is”.

I don’t imagine there is anyone who really wants to say Goff’s memory is more credible than a written file note made at the time four months ago. But Goff continues to insist only he is right and everyone else is wrong.

John Armstrong writes in the NZ Herald:

The Labour Party does not have very much cause to feel grateful for anything right now. But it should get down on bended knee and thank the Almighty that hardly anybody would have been watching Parliament late on Wednesday afternoon.

Anyone doing so would have witnessed a spectacle which would immediately have brought several words to mind – words such as pitiful, pathetic, embarrassing and disgraceful.

You can watch for yourself at In the House.

What matters now is that last Wednesday things shifted from straight filibuster to pure farce. The only characters needed to make this Trevor Mallard-orchestrated protest a complete pantomime were Chuckles the Clown and Dorothy the Dinosaur.

Labour not only demeaned itself, again – something it is perfectly at liberty to do – it also demeaned Parliament, and that is unacceptable.

For the best part of an hour, Labour MPs raised timewasting points of order and forced a series of pointless votes to try to stop debate on Roy’s bill from even starting.

Labour made repeated demands that Speaker Lockwood Smith be recalled to the chamber to rule on decisions made by National’s Eric Roy, who was chairing the House.

This went beyond the ridiculous by including decisions from Roy (no relation to Heather Roy) granting those very Labour MPs the call to speak in the debate – a perverse case of deliberately biting the hand that feeds.

Next time Labour protests the use of urgency, they should be reminded of this.

Some of the Labour MPs caught up in this episode must now surely regret it.

One such MP, Wellington Central’s Grant Robertson, felt obliged to post a lengthy explanation on Red Alert, the Labour MPs’ blog.

He made no apology for the ways in which Labour was trying to stop Roy’s bill. He admitted it was “unedifying” – surely the understatement of the week – but claimed it was all part and parcel of parliamentary practice.

Well, no. A clear line can be drawn between trying to delay a measure’s progress through Parliament by filibuster and trying to find and exploit gaps, loopholes and apparent anomalies in Parliament’s rules to subvert the will of the majority. Labour crossed that line.

On top of that, Labour’s filibustering has denied other parties’ MPs the opportunity to get their own private member’s bills – some of which are worthy measures deserving of enactment – on to the order paper.

That is unfair. But it is symptomatic of Labour’s lingering arrogance from its years in power.

Incredibly, it continues to try to pull the wool over voters’ eyes by promising to bring in private member’s bills to block things such as National’s plans for partial state asset sales. Such talk is poppycock. Such bills would first have to be lucky enough to be drawn in the ballot which determines which bills get on to the order paper.

In the last ballot, 24 bills were vying for a lone spot.

Furthermore, there has not been a ballot since November last year. No prizes for guessing who is responsible for that.

This has been the delicious irony. Labour have blocked every single Labour and Green private members bill from progressing, in their desire to ensure their mates retain compulsory funding. And it has all been for nothing.

Enraged by the fact they will not be able to compel people to join OUSA next year, some of the OUSA people protested against John Key in Dunedin.

This photo from James Meager again illustrates why voluntary membership is such a necessary reform.

And if you need further convincing, read how OUSA also protested by ripping up photos of Heather Roy. Having seen the photo Heather asked them to use, I suspect quite a few students probably took one home instead 🙂

The Nation lineup this week:

The international financial crisis:

1. Andrew Thorburn CEO, BNZ.
2. Cheng Lei, Political Counsellor, Chinese embassy, Wellington.
3. Shamubeel Eaqub, Principal Economist, NZIER, Nick Tuffley, Chief Economist ASB Securities.

Climate Change

1. Lord Monckton
2. Glenn McGregor, Director, University of Auckland Environment School.

Plus a tape report on NZ First and why they believe revolution is at hand.