NZPA report:

Prime Minister John Key and Labour leader Phil Goff won’t be sharing the stage with smaller party leaders in the lead up to this year’s general election.

In 2008 then Prime Minister Helen Clark and Mr Key refused to participate in debates alongside minor party leaders, despite doing so in previous years.

And that was, in my opinion, undoubtedly the right decision. Having separate one on one debates between the two people vying to be Prime Minister worked really well. Having only the two participants meant they actually had time to explain themselves, and respond to assertion each other made. Plus there was time for several topics. The one on one debates were high quality and useful activities.

The all comers debates are, at best, a circus. If you have eight participants then it means in a commercial hour, each gets five minutes at most. So responses tend to be 30 second soundbites.

And look at who will be lining up for the all comers debate – Hone, Winston, Don, Peter, Metiria/Russell and Tariana/Pita. I think it is safe to say it will be more heat than light. And that is putting it kindly.

A couple of good examples in recent weeks of how different polls can get different answers on the same issue, because they asked the question in different ways.

The first is equal pay.

Research NZ asked:

“The issue of income inequality between men and women has been the subject of much comment in the media recently. Do you believe that equal pay for equal work applies for men and women in your workplace?

85% agreed.

However Digipoll asked for the NZ Herald:

“Do you believe women in workplace are paid less because they are women?”

54% said yes and 36% no.

So on the surface 85% think there is equal pay for equal work yet only 36% disagree that women are paid less because they are women.

How do you reconcile it? Two significant differences. The first asked people about their actual workplace, the second asked about workplaces generally. It is quite common for people to think others will act in a bad way, even though they personally don’t experience it.

Another difference is the second question asked do women get paid less because they are women? Some who said yes might have said yes because they think women get paid less because they take take out of the workplace to be a mother. So you may answer yes to the second question but still think a workplace does equal pay for equal work.

Another example of different results is on same sex marriage. ResearchNZ asked:

“In your view, should same sex couples be allowed to marry”

60% said yes and 34% no.

A poll earlier this year by Curia (my firm) asked:

The law currently defines marriage as being only allowable between a man and a woman. Do you support this?

52% said yes and 42% no.

So 60% say they want same sex couples to marry but only 42% support changing the law to allow this, according to the two polls!

Now the difference in questions is not as great as the first example, but there is still some which partially may explain the difference. The first question does not mention the current law or a law change. It just asks whether something should be allowable.

The second question states the current law, and asks if people support the current law. It does not specifically mention same sex marriage, but the implication of the current definition is to not allow same sex marriage.

With poll questions there is rarely a clearly “right” or “wrong” question. There can be a dozen different ways to ask a question. The important thing is that the poll results make it very clear the exact question that was asked, and that reporting of the results does the same.

Winston told many lies at the weekend, but we will focus on just two of them. The first is that he is not a Klingon, and Whale has proof to the other.

Before we move onto the next lie, enjoy the fact that NZ First has selected Andrew Williams as their candidate for North Shore. They deserve each other.

What I want to focus on is this report from Stuff:

The polls were wrong by 100 per cent in 2002 and 500 per cent in 2005 and again in 2008, Peters said.

This has been widely reported. Once upon a time when a politician made a claim, someone would fact check it. So I’ve done it in this case. I’ve compared NZ First’s actual election results with the average of the polls for the five MMP elections. They are

• 1996 – 13.4% result v 15.0% poll average
• 1999 – 4.3% result v 4.0% poll average
• 2002 – 10.4% result v 9.1% poll average
• 2005 – 5.7% result v 6.0% poll average
• 2008 – 4.1% result v 3.4% poll average

What is really interesting is if you average out the five elections. NZ First on average got 7.6% and the average poll rating immediately prior to the elections was 7.5%.

Polls can be wrong and have been wrong. But not as wrong as Winston’s claims.

TVNZ reports:

Prime Minister John Key’s appearance on Late Show with David Letterman may have cost taxpayers up to $10,000.

Not really.

“I’ve been informed that Tourism New Zealand have a PR company. They’re on a retainer. They pay them every month, irrelevant of what I do.”

“Apparently, when the Letterman show was on, that was one of the projects they worked on. They would have made the payment whether I was there or not.”

So in fact no extra money was spent. Not that I would have had a problem if there had been – as a tourism promotion, $10,000 would have been ridiculously cheap.

In fact one 25th the cost of the $250,000 spent in 2002 on a Discovery documentary about NZ, starring Helen Clark. And that was in an election year.

I have no problem with either expenditure if they are genuinely deemed a worthwhile tourism investment.

What an amazing play. My emotions felt they were on a roller coaster as this poignant story of four generations of a family played out in front of me.

After watching the When the Rain Stops Falling at Circa on Saturday night, I searched for more info on it, and was not at all surprised to find that Time Magazine declared it the best new play of the year in 2010.

The playwright, Australian Andrew Bovell, produced a first class award winning script. The director and cast matched the script with a superb performance. The play is like a jigsaw as seemingly disconnected aspects suddenly connect up together. The most shocking connection hits you like a bolt of thunder – I only worked it out a few minutes before it was made explicit.

The programme on your seat helpfully includes a family tree, and a list of the five settings of the play. I recommend you get there a bit early so you have time to read and re-read these. It really helps you follow the play.

The four time settings of the play are 1960s, 1988, 2013 and 2039. It jumps from one period to another in a way which is puzzling at first, but dramatically works wonderfully well, as pieces of the jigsaw start to fall into place.

Another feature of the play, is that two of the characters have a younger and older version. You wonder at first what turned such a happy young woman into a sad despairing alcoholic, but again over time, the answer is revealed. And you get some especially poignant scenes as the older version of the character silently observes the younger version receiving some bad news.

(photo by Stephen A’Court)

Sophie Hambleton played a young Australian girl, Gabrielle York, perfectly. The accent, the attitude were all there, and especially the stoic reserve as she copes with tragedy after tragedy.

Jason Whyte was also superb in his dual roles as Henry Law and Henry’s grandson Gabriel York. Whyte managed to make Henry Law a somewhat compassionate character, whom you feel sorry for – and that is no mean feat when the story fully unfolds.

While the play does have a lot of sadness, and some shocking events, there is an ending which puts aside all the sadness, and reminds us of the importance of family – no matter how flawed they may be

This play was one of the most compelling, memorable and moving plays I have seen. It was simply exceptional.

A deal has been done on the US debt ceiling, with agreement on around US$1,000,000,000,000 of spending cuts over the next decade. That is not enough to get back into surplus, but is a promising start. And no tax increases.

The Washington Post looks at the winners and losers:

Winners

• Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell
• Tea party
• President Obama
• Congressional Budget Office
• Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax reform
• David Wu (as the crisis overshadowed his sex scandal)

Losers

• Congress
• Gang of Six
• Commissions
• Liberals

Americans for Tax Reform played a big role in keeping the Republicans from agreeing to tax increases as many Republican representatives and senators had signed pledges to never vote for a tax increase. If they broke that pledge, they knew they would face a primary challenge.

I quite like how they have made sure of a second round of spending cuts:

The first step would take place immediately, raising the debt limit by nearly $1 trillion and cutting spending by a slightly larger amount over a decade.

That would be followed by creation of a new congressional committee that would have until the end of November to recommend $1.8 trillion or more in deficit cuts, targeting benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, or overhauling the tax code. Those deficit cuts would allow a second increase in the debt limit, which would be needed by early next year.

If the committee failed to reach its $1.8 trillion target, or Congress failed to approve its recommendations by the end of 2011, lawmakers would then have to vote on a proposed balanced-budget constitutional amendment.

If that failed to pass, automatic spending cuts totaling $1.2 trillion would automatically take effect, and the debt limit would rise by an identical amount.

So if they can not agree on the next $1.8 of deficit trimming, then they vote on a balanced budget constitutional amendment (a good idea), and if that does not pass then $1.2 trillion of extra spending cuts takes place across the board – including defence spending, but excluding welfare entitlements.

Public Polls July 2011

Curia publishes a (free) monthly newsletter summarising the polls in New Zealand, Australia, US, UK and Canada. It is normally available by e-mail only (you can subscribe here), but I thought I would share this one through Scribd.

In my latest By the numbers blog at Stuff, I look at the revelation from the Fairfax poll that Labour is losing its own base support.

Toad (who holds senior office in the Greens) blogs on Ruth Richardson gaining an honorary degree from Canterbury University:

She is the most evil New Zealander of the last century. She should be vilified, not honoured by the University of Canterbury with a doctorate she didn’t even study for.

Remember how the Greens claim they don’t do personal attacks – they are all about the issue.

And one of their most senior office holders says a democratically elected politician, whose crime is to implement policies he disagrees with, is the most evil New Zealander of the last century.

More so presumably than Clayton Weatherston. More so than the sadists who stuck a baby in a drying machine and also pegged them on a clothes line. More so than Graeme Burton etc etc.

The politics of hate is very ugly – no matter where it comes from.

UPDATE: Blunt provides this picture of the Toadian perspective.

John Armstrong at NZ Herald reports:

Former Act leader Rodney Hide will not be delivering a farewell speech to Parliament because as far as he is concerned he is not retiring from politics.

He is instead being pushed out of the House by his successor.

Retiring MPs traditionally deliver a valedictory speech before the House rises for an election in which they review the highs and lows of their parliamentary career.

“I am not retiring,” Mr Hide said last night. “I did not choose to be pushed out.”

True, but many MPs leaving Parliament were pushed out.

For my part, I think it is a pity, as I’d like to hear what Rodney would have said in a valedictory.

The Dom Post reports:

An office containing thousands of sensitive documents was burgled days after a Serious Fraud Office claim against Radio New Zealand was filed, with a copy of the claim among items taken, the occupant says.

John Hickling, husband of former RNZ news boss Lynne Snowdon, who has been locked in an almost decade-long dispute with her former employer, said he was reeling after the break-in at the office in Johnston St, Wellington. “Quite frankly, I’m scared shitless.”

As one should be. It was obviously the work of the Mossad branch of Radio New Zealand.

Most people only know Radio New Zealand for its, well, radio. But they also have an entire section that does break-ins, false passports, counterfeiting, and of course a wet squad.

I understand that Kathryn Ryan is the head of the Mossad branch of Radio NZ. She signs off on all the activities. But day to day operations are done by Jim Mora. By working afternoons only, Mora is free during the evenings to break into buildings, steal documents on behalf of Radio NZ and of course dispose of anyone who gets in the way.

Mike Rann is the Premier of South Australia, and fairly well known in NZ as an old school mate’s of Phil Goff. Has been a guest speaker at Labour conferences.

He effectively got rolled yesterday by the factions. This is despite him leading them to victory for a third election win in March 2010. They are only 15 months into a four year term.

They are negotiating his exact departure date.  If he can hold off until November, maybe him and Phil can retire together.

The Daily Telegraph reports:

The number of MPs tweeting – sending messages of 140 characters or fewer – has more than doubled from 111 in January last year to 275 today, and is expected to go on rising as more politicians sign up.

Susan Pepperell at HoS reports:

A former Radio New Zealand news boss who has been fighting her sacking for more than six years has placed a new dossier in front of the Serious Fraud Office, alleging money went missing from the state broadcaster between 1999 and 2003.

But the toll on Lynne Snowdon has been severe.

She was due to appear in court in Wellington tomorrow for the next stage in what has become a costly and protracted employment dispute, but her husband and lawyer John Hickling has sought an adjournment because Snowdon’s health is too bad. She could not stand up to the rigour of courtroom questioning.

I am not surprised her health is bad. She has fought a jihad for eight years against Radio NZ, since she lost her job there. Now I’m all for fighting for your rights, but Snowdon has taken this beyond rational levels. I imagine she has turned herself unemployable.

“It has been extremely expensive and has taken a terrible toll. It’s unrelenting and you can’t get on with your life,” Hickling said.

Hickling tries to make it sound like Radio NZ is responsible for it dragging on six years, when of course it is his wife. No one has forced her to run to the SFO, to appeal multiple times on multiple issues.

She managed to get two years sick leave at $120/000 year before she was let go. As far as I can tell, she believes she should have remained on sick leave for life. Most employees have a maximum of 5 – 10 days a year – she got 500 days.

As we roll out fibre to the home, more and more people will work from home – at least part of the time. This will have a number of positive side-effects such as reduced congestion, lower carbon emissions and reduced office rental pressure.

However as previously reported here, and now by Maria Slade in the HoS, Labour’s proposed CGT will tax people who work from home.

Ernst & Young tax partner Jo Doolan said Labour had claimed that only a small proportion of New Zealanders would be impacted by capital gains tax, but because most firms employed fewer than five people many owner/operators could be affected.

“It’s quite clear in [Labour’s] document … but they’re hoping they can distract attention from it,” Doolan said. “Let’s not be sneaky about it and pretend it’s not going to impact on a lot of people.”

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) could choose not to claim tax deductions for a home office, and would therefore avoid the capital gains tax. “Either way you’re going to be paying more tax. We want our SMEs to grow and that’s absolutely critical to the future. We can’t afford to be hitting them.”

And just think about the compliance costs:

There would also be issues in policing it, defining the areas used for operating the business, and valuing those areas, Craig said. Many entrepreneurial companies kept costs low by working from home. “Why would you punish that efficiency? It’s going to add a whole lot of compliance obligations for very little practical effect,” Craig said.

BusinessNZ chief executive Phil O’Reilly described the proposed tax as “absolutely counterproductive”. If a person owned a house for 10 years but ran a business from the home for only half that time, which part would be subject to the tax? “It just shows you the ridiculous nature of this proposal.”

If you are going to do a Capital Gains Tax, then it should be simple and fair and apply to all assets.

Imogen Neale in the SST reports:

Lots of babies, lots of partners, lots of houses and lots of benefits.

Welcome to the career dream of young boys already failing in the education system. …

“There is no warmth about loving little children or wanting to be good parents. It is purely about this being a pathway to an income,” the one-time principal of a youth justice facility school said.  …

Sutherland said in some cases the children were merely repeating what they saw in their own homes.

“They perceive that they’ll get a girl pregnant. She will be on some form of benefit and will get a house, and that they’ll live with them, and that is their income.

“They live with mum, who often has a number of children and boyfriends.”

If you grow up in a household where no adults are ever in employment, then all too often your expectations are changed.

NewstalkZB reports:

There’s a pledge from New Zealand First ahead of its annual conference that it will follow the rules on disclosing political donations.

The party was forced to correct its donation returns before the last election, revealing gifts which should have been declared.

Returns filed to the Electoral Commission show New Zealand First has lodged nil donations over the past two years.

Party Leader Winston Peters says next year’s contributions will be reported appropriately.

“We will be abiding by the law, as we have always done,” says Mr Peters.

As we have always done? What a blatant lie.

NZ First were never charged or prosecuted – that is correct. But that is because there was a six month (off memory) time limit for charges.

They did not abide by the law. Here is what the Electoral Commission said:

Although the 2007 return was materially false, no offence committed under section 214G(3) or 214G(4) of the Electoral Act 1993 as the Party Secretary had no intention to mis-state or conceal the facts

So the return was false, but no prosecution because only the party secretary can be held liable.

In respect of the 2005 and 2006 returns, the statutory time limit for any prosecution has expired.

And these were not trivial donations unreported. From 2005 to 2007, NZ First declared there had been zero donations over $10,000 when in fact there had been around $235,000 of donations.

And no that doesn’t include the $100,000 Owen Glenn gave to pay Winston’s legal bills. Likewise it does not include the revelation by the SFO that the Velas had also paid Winston’s electoral petition expenses to Bob Clarkson.

Yet Winston still insists they have always abided by the law.

Danyl blogs:

Senior government Minister and key National Party campaign strategist Steven Joyce will be spotted to the Labour Party for the election campaign, Prime Minister John Key announced today.

The surprise announcement comes after weeks of dire polling for the Labour Party, compounded by a series of public relations fiascos. Joyce is regarded as Key’s closest advisor, and National’s strategic mastermind.

‘This will make the 2011 General Election a fair fight instead of a somewhat undemocratic cake-walk,’ Key said in his Beehive Press Conference. He added that came to the decision after speaking with Joyce, who ‘loves a challenge.’

Heh.

Joyce will work closely with senior Labour MP Trevor Mallard, who is currently running Labour’s election campaign. Joyce has insisted that the two men will work together as equals.

‘Trevor’s role will be crucial to our success’ Joyce announced in a joint press conference with Labour leader Phil Goff. ‘In light of recent information security problems, Trevor will safeguard our campaign strategy documents in a tent on the Auckland Islands.’

The Auckland’s are an unpopulated sub-Antarctic island group with no phone or internet access. ‘Everything depends on this,’ Joyce insisted, as Mallard’s tiny orange dinghy sailed out from Invercargill into fearsome three meter swells.

Well they will be safer there, than backing them up to the webserver.

In the interests of party balance, Labour has traded Joyce for Dunedin South MP Clare Curran, and she’s believed to be behind the Prime Minister’s shock announcement that he will conduct the remainder of his campaign in virtual reality environment Second Life, and prefix every single word he speaks with the letter ‘i’.

The Prime Minister’s fairy-winger avatar commented on the new strategy when he addressed an online press conference of goblins, virtual journalists and the National Party Cosplay Association this afternoon.

‘iI imay ihave imade a ihuge imistake,’ Key said.

I love the phrase “the Prime Minister’s fairy-winger avatar” 🙂

The ODT ran this column from Year 13 student Sarah Mosley:

Political correctness. Is it a well-meaning initiative, or an attempt to undermine our laid-back way of life?

No more can we have policemen and firemen. We must be non-gender specific, and don’t even think about mentioning religion or race. The world is going into PC overdrive. …

Political correctness in New Zealand is on a smaller scale compared to the madness in the United Kingdom. A chief constable refused to release pictures of two escaped murderers because it might breach their privacy. What about the victim?

New Zealand hasn’t completely escaped though. The PC fog is sneaking down the country.

Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital has removed the crucifix from the hospital’s chapel, oh, sorry, I mean the spiritual centre. How much comfort will patients or visitors find in an empty room, devoid of any of the religious symbols that they have come to expect? …

The Eskimo lolly is one of our country’s favourites. Last year, there was a lot of publicity about them. The large majority of us have all eaten at least one, if not 50. Apparently that makes us cannibalistic, Inuit-hating people. Get real. Most of the time they’re processed so badly that you can’t tell what they are anyway.  …

Political correctness is a crazy plan to stop human beings doing what we were designed to do – think for ourselves.

To stop this dangerous trend we need to stand up for what we believe in and think for ourselves. Keep a sense of humour and stop small-minded people ruining our lives.

These PC trends are sneaking in all over the world. Society is at risk of being destroyed. We need to unite, burn those risk management plans, buy a big bag of Eskimos, and take responsibility for our own actions.

Hear hear. Well said Sarah.

Shane Jones says:

Labour’s Transport spokesman Shane Jones says a future Labour government is committed to 100 per cent funding of a two-lane link road on the Kapiti Coast instead of National’s planned four-lane expressway.

Shane Jones made the announcement at a meeting in Waikanae last night.

“Transport Minister Steven Joyce ditched the long-planned link road when he announced a four-lane raised expressway about 18 months ago, roughly along the same route,” Shane Jones said.

“But the link road is what people want. It’s far cheaper, which is important when cash is strapped, will have far less environmental impact on the district than the four-lane expressway, and will do the job that’s needed of reducing congestion.”

No, it won’t. Two lane roads are terrible for congestion, as all traffic slows down to the slowest vehicle.

After decades of dithering, Steven Joyce announced a plan for four lanes from the airport to Levin. This is exactly what the Wellington Region had been calling out for. We’ve alll had the multiple congestion delays on Sunday afternoons etc.

However a road is only as fast as its slowest point. Under Labour you would have four lanes everywhere but Kapiti, which means when it is busy the entire corridor will slow down to the slowest car on the road.

John Pagani notes on election results:

Before the transport agency decided on its particular route, it put out options that seemed to threaten most homes in the region. Colmar Brunton did a survey (pdf) and a route was selected that was the most popular in that survey.

49 per cent supported it.

Opponents of the motorway have argued the poll was flawed because it didn’t offer a ‘no expressway’  option.

Since about 15 per cent of respondents selected ‘no need for expressway’ or some variation such as ‘upgrade existing SH1’, I’m not sure how people arrive at this claim, but it is what they say.

Yesterday, Labour came out with a policy – the one supported by 7 per cent in the poll.

If opposition to the expressway was as strong as opponents say, then you would expect Labour would have picked up support in Otaki.

Interestingly iPredict stocks in Otaki haven’t moved at all.

Labour are just pandering to a vocal but minority pressure group. This isn’t unusual, but in this case they are prepared to screw over all the Wellingtonians who drive to Kapiti or beyond.