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They’re $100 bills representing what the US national debt will be by the end of the year.

Q+A features leading scientists Robert, Lord Winston and Sir Peter Gluckman on protecting our most vulnerable children this Sunday.

Following the government’s controversial green paper this week, we’ll ask what can be done in those early years and what science can teach us?  Then, the politics. Labour is pushing a child-centred policy, so what solutions can deputy leader Annette King offer?

Paul Holmes looks at the battle for the presidency of the Maori Women’s Welfare League that’s gone all the way to court. Destiny  Church leader and presidential candidate Hannah Tamaki talks about her aspirations and the controversy that’s dogged her campaign.

Joining Dr Jon Johansson on the panel are Maxim Institute Chief Executive Greg Fleming and former Human Rights Commissioner and academic Ella Henry.

Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE.  Repeats at 9.10pm Sundays, 10.10am and 2.10pm Mondays on TVNZ 7       

Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn has responded to my blog post where I agreed with him on keeping the one electorate seat threshold, but advocated the party vote threshold should be 4%, rather than abolished.

He notes my position is the same as the Royal Commission which said:

the Commission considers that the [4%] threshold is a justifiable and desirable means of preventing the proliferation of minor parties in the House. Such a proliferation could threaten the stability and effectiveness of government.

I/S says:

Which probably sounded good back in the safe, conformist, 2-party world of 1986, where we hadn’t had a coalition government for over fifty years, and political difference and dispute was seen as threatening. But to modern eyes, it seems quaint – not to mention sniffily undemocratic. To point out the obvious, we currently have 8 parties represented in our Parliament, and in the past have had as many as 9. And it hasn’t threatened the stability or effectiveness of government one bit

First of all I would disagree that there hasn’t been an impact on stability and effectiveness. Clark went early in 2002 due to the collapse of the Alliance as one example.

But the measure is not how many parties get into Parliament, but how many do you need to *all* agree to be able to pass a law. Here’s what the situation would be under 5%, and no threshold since 1996:

1996 – Nat/NZF would not have been a majority and would have needed either ACT or Christian Coalition or both United and Legalise Cannabis to govern. Was hard enough to be stable with Winston, let alone needing either Graham Capill or the Legalise Cannabis Party to agree to the budget.

1999 – Labour/Alliance needed Greens to pass laws, and no change at 0% threshold

2002 – Labour/Progressive/UF had 62/120 seats. With no threshold they would be 59 seats. UF had ruled Greens out so they would need either Christian Heritage, Outdoor Recreation, or Alliance to support.

2005 – The only change would be Destiny would have one MP

2008 – National would not be able to choose to pass laws either with ACT or Maori, but only if both agreed. That to me would not be stable or effective.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that our political culture doesn’t support destabilising, winner-take-all, toys-out-of-the-cot tantrum politics. Winston Peters tried that in 1996, the electorate punished him for it in 1999, and our parties have learned their lesson:

Actually with no threshold, there is no chance of a party being wiped out, so I think they would be more likely to have tantrums. Falling under the threshold would no longer be oblivion.

The second reason is mathematical: a “proliferation of minor parties” actually increases stability and effectiveness, by increasing the number of possible majority coalitions, thus reducing the bargaining power of any one party.

You have more combinations, but you need more parties to agree to form a Government. I do not think a six party Government is more stable than a two party Government. Israel has shown us this many times. This is not some crazy theory – they have the empirical evidence – which is why they have raised their threshold.

We have a good example of this in the current Parliament: ACT can’t “hold the government to ransom” and demand big policy concessions because National has an alternative majority with the Maori Party. Meanwhile, the Maori Party can’t “hold the government to ransom” because the National has an alternative majority with ACT. The two parties effectively act as a check on each other’s demands.

And here I/S is just wrong, because the very thing he lauds (the ability to choose ACT or Maori) would not happen under no threshold. National would have had 55 seats, ACT 4, Maori 5 and United 1. You need 62 to govern.

Having an extra 3 or 4 kibble parties at the bottom end simply increases the balance; if one of them doesn’t like your policy, then you go to another. You’re only in trouble if they all don’t like your policy, in which case its probably well-deserved

Nope under a no threshold scenario, if even one of the kibble parties disagrees, then you’re stuck.

The other argument I have against no threshold, is it will encourage extremism. Again not just a theory – look at Israel. With no threshold you can gain a list seat with 0.4% of the vote or 10,000 supporters. Now the way you get your 10,000 votes is to come out with crazy extreme policies (for example a law change so husbands can not be charged with raping their wives) that may repeal 98% of the country but appeals to 0.4%.

And no threshold will encourage extremist parties, and reward them with a seat. And if that seat is needed to form a Government, they will then get some sort of policy win.

As I said I think one can debate a 3% v 4% v 5% threshold, but I believe a threshold is desirable and necessary.

Meanwhile, this illusion costs us in democratic terms, by effectively disenfranchising (at the last election) 6.5% of the population. DPF would probably counter that those people and their views and votes aren’t important. I disagree.

Well they always have the choice of voting for a party likely to be in Parliament. No party perfectly represents my policy views. I choose to vote for the party that I deem most able to fulfil my policy desires.

If you take the view that every person must be able to get their preferred party into Parliament, then why stop at a 120 MP house where the effective threshold is 0.4% if there is no statutory threshold. You could argue for a 500 MP House, so that even parties with 0.1% of the vote get to be represented.

As I have said before, I think it is very healthy to have the Prime Minister do public meetings. I’d attend this one myself, but I am judging a debate between young ACT candidates that night at the Backbencher!

Well done to Jonathan Fletcher for organising this. I’d encourage people to ask tough (but genuine – not point scoring) questions. If I was attending I’d ask why National won’t introduce performance pay for teachers.

This week’s column at NZ Herald:

I think the time has come where National can do better than be more competent and pleasant managers of Labour’s health, education and welfare systems. The Government is thankfully looking seriously at reforming the welfare system, but the education system for example badly needs a decentralised performance pay system for teachers. Will National be content with national standards (which are entirely laudable), or will they propose more substantive reforms?

I also nominate the Labour MP whom I think could make the most credible advocate of reform.

Congrats to Fairfax and Keith Ng for this graphical interface of their poll results. You can see the responses to six different questions broken down by seven possible splits.  This sets the bar for poll reporting.

The second resource is from the Guardian. It shows from 1972 to 2011 the countries of the EU and whether their Government is left-wing or right-wing. I had not realised until I saw their graphic, how massively centre-right Europe currently is.

Only six Governments are left-wing, and 21 are right-wing. Europe has never been so blue.

Matthew Hooton has written in NBR (offline):

As a rumour, it’s surprisingly prevalent.

  Just as he wanted to be a successful businessman, but not necessarily the world’s wealthiest, John Key wanted to be prime minister, but not necessarily the longest-serving.

  After achieving the top job, he would serve a few years before going out on a high.

  According to the theory, Mr Key would hand over to Steven Joyce sometime before the 2014 election.

This gets pushed a lot, mainly I suspect by Labour. There is a degree of truth to it. I don’t think John Key is obsessed with staying Prime Minister for as long as possible, and I think he could well retire before he loses an election.

However I’ve never thought he would not contest the 2014 election, and seek a third term (if he gets a second). Anyway Matthew asked Key the question about 2014:

When I asked Mr Key specifically this week if he intended to serve a full second term and lead National into the 2014 election, he barely bothered with the usual platitudes about “taking one election at a time” or “serving at the pleasure of the party and the public.”

His answer was not arrogant but it was unequivocal: yes, that was exactly his intention.

So that’s one little rumour we can put to bed.

While I regard the chance of Labour forming Government after the next election as remote, I’ve never dismissed it entirely. In fact I have warned of a possible scenario where National gets 46% and loses to Labour on say 32% if Labour can pull off a deal with principally the Greens and NZ First (if they make it).

However NewstalkZB’s Felix Marwick has just tweeted:

NZF leader Winston Peters won’t be drawn on possible post election deals but says he doesn’t envisage a Lab’, Green, NZF scenario happening

This is potentially a huge blow to Labour, as they desperately need Winston to both make 5% and to back them, to be in with a chance.

Winston has not ruled Labour out per se, but has ruled out Labour, Greens and NZ First. This suggests he may do a repeat of what he did in 2005 (if he is in a position to do so) and veto the Greens from being Ministers.

The Greens would then have to decide between accepting being screwed over again by Labour, forcing a new election, or allowing a National-led Government to govern. None of them pleasant options for them. So I think the Greens will be hoping Winston doesn’t make 5%.

Elizabeth Binning at NZ Herald reports:

More than 200 tertiary providers will meet in Auckland today to find ways of getting more Maori students into tertiary education.

That’s an interesting goal. Here are the latest tertiary education participation rates (2009) for four ethnic groups, alphabetically – Asians, Europeans, Maori and Pasifika.

In order of best to worst, here are the four participation rates – 17%, 13%, 12%, 11%.

Your challenge is to match them up.

Labour List MP Raymond Huo blogs at Red Alert:

One Chinese community leader told me that Labour’s economic package is a “watershed moment” to define the future of New Zealand. Other constituents told me that when encountered with a natural disaster “Key is talking about how to save lives while Goff is going there to save lives”.

I’m amazed the media failed to report this saving of lives.

Whale and Cactus have been playing detective and discovered that one of my 1,500 or so “friends” on Facebook is a fake.

This is not surprising. I am sure others are also. My policy for the last couple of years has been to say “yes” to all Facebook friend requests, unless they are a known sociopath etc.

I used to only say yes to people I actually knew, but the hassle of trying to recall had I met someone or not, and potentially offending them by saying no got to much, so I went for an automatic yes policy.

In an ideal world I’d set up a second account, and restrict it to close friends only. Might do that, when I have the time.

iPredict launches www.electionresults.co.nz

Four months before November’s election, political journalists, activists and junkies now have 24/7 access to New Zealand’s most accurate forecast of the 2011 election result, following today’s launch by New Zealand’s online predictions market, iPredict, of www.electionresults.co.nz

The new site provides constantly updating forecasts of every aspect of the New Zealand 2011 election, including the party vote share, every electorate contest and a graphical projection of the shape of the 2011-14 New Zealand Parliament.

Daily commentary on the main market movers will be provided by www.electionresults.co.nz editor Ian Llewellyn, a former press gallery political reporter for The Independent business weekly and the New Zealand Press Association (NZPA), and a former press secretary in the 1990s to Finance Minister Bill English and former Health Minister Simon Upton after spending eight months on the picket line during widespread industrial unrest in Thatcher’s Britain in 1989.

www.electionresults.co.nz is powered by the iPredict market, New Zealand’s most accurate forecaster of political and economic events, and sponsored by Auckland corporate and public affairs consultancy Exceltium and online news-service www.scoop.co.nz

The Chief Executive of iPredict, Matt Burgess, said www.electionresults.co.nz would bring to life the comprehensive and detailed information on New Zealand
politics available at www.ipredict.co.nz and would help bring new traders to the market.

“In Ian Llewellyn, we have also found someone with a very broad range of political and journalistic experience, in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, to bring to life what our market is telling us about the future,” Mr Burgess said.

The Managing Director of www.scoop.co.nz, Alastair Thompson, said online predictions markets were uniquely suited to provide data to other 24/7 news organisations, such as www.scoop.co.nz

“Polls are static and out of date the moment they are completed and while they might be useful to fill the gaps in daily newspapers and 6pm news bulletins, the online environment can provide so much richer and more immediate information,” Mr Thompson said.  “At Scoop, we are delighted to be partnering with Exceltium and iPredict to bring this information to life and complement our own 24/7 election coverage.”

The Managing Director of Exceltium, Matthew Hooton, said his company was committed to assisting iPredict in its growth.

“Across the world, predictions markets such as iPredict in New Zealand or inTrade in the United States are showing they are far more accurate, timely and relevant than traditional political polling and we have been pleased to work with iPredict over the last year to develop its offering,” Mr Hooton said.  “We’ve funded www.electionresults.co.nz because the proven predictive power of iPredict will continue to become more important in New Zealand politics and we want to be associated with its growth and success in the years ahead.”

iPredict is owned by Victoria University of Wellington.  Journalists are welcome to use, with attribution, data and reports from www.electionresults.co.nz in their
own reporting of the New Zealand election.

Sean Plunket with:

1. Judith Tizard (former Auckland Central MP) on the way ahead for Labour.
2. An extended interview with Simon Power on his career, his reforms, his ideas and his future.
3. Ian Duncan Smith (British Work and Pensions Minister) on welfare reform.
4. Sunday Edition Panel — David Kemeys (Sun Star Times editor), Michael Cummings (Manawatu Standard editor)

30/07/2011 10.30 am, Sunday Repeat 31/07/2011 8.00 am – TV3

At Auckland Koru Club on the way back down to Wellington after going out to Eden Park for a lunch with former UK PM Tony Blair.

Had a very brief chat to him before the lunch, mainly about a mutual friend who used to be his children’s nanny.

Blair’s presentation wasn’t stunning – I suspect he is a bit jet lagged, but the content was excellent. I swear the man is more Tory than me. What I mean is that he gave one of the best repudiations of Keynesian economics around, explained why a fiscal stimulus in response to the financial crisis doesn’t mean one should go back the days of big Government.

He spoke about how the need for reform in public services is continual, and quipped that if Clement Atlee was alive today, the only part of society he would still feel comfortable in would be the public service, as so little had changed since the 1950s.

Talked about Iraq and Afghanistan. He thinks both will still end up better off than if there had been no intervention, however is very worried about the meddling and influence of Iran.

I asked him a question on which of the five or six Opposition Leaders he had seen off, did he respect the most and why. I quipped that he could include Gordon Brown in the answer to that question, which he seemed to find amusing.

Someone at our table (the Telecom table), asked whether he thought David Miliband should have challenged Gordon Brown for the leadership, and would the election result have been different. Blair hesitated about answering this, and asked if any journalists were in the room. It was hilarious to observe as in unison all the journalists in the room yelled out “no”, which meant Blair went on to answer. He was a master though of re-writing questions, so the answer he gave was that if Labour had remained New Labour, he thinks they had the potential to get a different result.

Blair also had interesting observations on the Middle East and the Arab Spring. He has a belief that so called western values of democracy and freedom are in fact universal values, and we are seeing this take place through the uprisings.

The company which was the major sponsor of the lunch, is Visy. They are one of the world’s largest paper recycling and packing companies and believe that responding to climate change is a business opportunity, not a cost. their Chairman spoke also to the lunch. Interestingly not a single question to Blair was on climate change though.

The Government Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding is well worth a read. Only 32 pages.

It sets out long-term funding for both road and rail. Predictably the Greens (and sadly Labour also) have criticised it because they hate roads. The Greens do not accept that one needs both roads and public transport. They think it is a choice, rather than being complementary. I guess in their ideal world roads would be so congested and unsafe that no one would use them, and hence save the planet.

Their reaction to the policy statement would have you think Steven Joyce is scrapping all public transport funding. Instead the true situation is:

• increasing the funding available for new and improved State highways by $125 million for the first 3 years
• increasing the funding available for public transport services by $140 million for the first 3 years

So of the new funding, 47% goes into state highways and 53% into public transport. Truly the Greens won’t be happy until it is $0 for highways.

Just out of the National Land Transport Fund (petrol tax, road user charges, vehicle registration and licensing fees), public transport will receive between $750m and $1.1b in the next three years. Also up to $90m for dedicated walking and cycling programmes.

But that just the public transport funding from the NLTF. The Government has directly invested $2b into Auckland and Wellington rail.

So it is amusing to hear Labour and Greens call Steven anti-public transport. I think he has provided more funding for it than any other Minister. The Greens just seem to hate the fact that any money goes on highways, as that are by definition evil.

Anne Gibson at the NZ Herald reports:

Two female real estate agents came to blows over the sale of an apartment in a fight that left both with minor injuries – and a fine.

The catfight erupted in front of onlookers at an inner-Auckland apartment that both agents – Hulan (Wendy) Feng of City Sales and Soon (Fiona) Lee of LJ Hooker Ponsonby – had been trying to sell. …

The tribunal said the fight was witnessed by the apartment tenant and Ms Lee’s client.

How disappointing that they did not have the presence of mind to film the fight on their cellphones and upload it to You Tube.

The Dom Post Press editorial:

The leader of the Labour Party, Phil Goff, yesterday attempted to dismiss the latest opinion-poll results showing popular support for the party continuing to slump dramatically, but the fact is the dire results are only the latest in what appears to be an unstoppable decline. …

Even more worrying for Labour, given the way election campaigns nowadays are very much presidential-style campaigns focused on party leaders, is the fact that Goff himself is rating not far above invisibility in the preferred prime minister rankings.

Goff defends his 6% by saying Clark was much the same in 1996. But this is not a good comparison because back then left wing voters were not saying Jim Bolger was their preferred PM, but that Anderton and Peters were.

In July 1996, Colmar Brunton had Clark at 7%, Peters 19% (and was 29% in May), Anderton 6%(had been 24% a year earlier) and Bolger 27%. Bolger was less than Clark, Peters and Anderton.

Compare this to Key who is 9 times as high as Goff, and no other left wing politician features strongly.

Let us look at how opposition leaders have polled in July of election years:

• 2008 – Key was ahead of Clark
• 2005 – Brash 20%, Clark 40%
• 2002 – English 19%, Clark 48%
• 1999 – Clark 22%, Shipley 25%
• 1993 – Moore 14%, Peters 20%, Bolger 12%, Anderton 6%
• 1990 – Bolger 12%, Moore 12%, Muldoon 8%, Peters 15%, Palmer 15%
• 1987 – Bolger 14%, Lange 35%, Muldoon 13%,

So prior to 1999, other politicians such as Anderton, Peters and Muldoon took big chunks of the preferred PM ratings. That makes comparisons for the Opposition Leader less than useful. But since 1999 the polls have clearly shown that normally an opposition leader will poll around 20% – yet Goff is at 6%.

Stuff reports:

A new Fairfax Media-Research International poll asked voters which parties they preferred as a coalition partner and which parties they opposed.  …

However, the poll found no voters, whether they were National, Labour or Green supporters, preferred Mana as a coalition partner.

Not even 1 in 1,000 voters think Mana is a preferred coalition partner.

Hone is likely to get re-elected in November, and even bring a benchmate with him. But they will be an impotent party, that will be able to do little beyond angry press releases.

Idiot/Savant at NRT blogs:

With ACT cutting a deal in Epsom, and Peter Dunne cutting one in Ohariu, MMP’s “electorate lifeboat”, which sees parties gain list seats in parliament if they gain a single electorate, has come in for a fair amount of flack. And today, Labour leader Phil Goff has reminded us all that he opposes it, and that he wishes MMP to have a strict 5% threshold, with no exception for electorates. I think this is exactly the wrong position to take. Why? Because the “electorate lifeboat” improves proportionality.

Phil Goff’s stance is pretty naked self interest. He only opposes it, so ACT will lose representation in Parliament. Goff’s view of a good electoral system is one which gets rid of Labour’s opponents.

My concern is that a future Labour Government will make unilateral partisan changes to the Electoral Act, as they did with the Electoral Finance Act. Simon Power set the model for bipartisan co-operation on electoral issues, but will Labour return his generosity? My concern again is that they will think National were suckers for giving them a say on electoral law, and that they will revert to type as we saw with the Electoral Finance Act and the retrospective legislation to retain Harry Duynhoven as an MP.

Proportionality, remember, was the entire point of MMP. We wanted parties to be represented in direct proportion to the votes cast. The 5% threshold undermines this, but the “electorate lifeboat” provides a way around it. Without it, the Parliaments of 1999, 2002, 2005, and 2008 would have been less proportional, and less representative, thanks to the exclusion of (respectively) of NZFirst, the Progressives, United Future and ACT. That would have been bad for our democracy.

Sometimes the lifeboat gives perverse results, as in 2008 when ACT gained 5 MPs while NZ First gained none despite receiving more party votes (4.07% vs 3.65%). This is obviously unfair. But you don’t remove unfairness by increasing it. The appropriate response to this situation is to give parties in NZ First’s situation representation, not deny it to both.

Even though personally I do not want NZ First in Parliament, I agree (somewhat) with Idiot/Savant. I support the threshold being lowered to 4%, as the Royal Commission recommended, even though this would have led to NZ First staying in Parliament.

I don’t support eliminating the threshold entirely, which would lead to a party on 0.4% gaining representation. I think this would lead to an Israel type situation where miniscule extremist parties have massive say in who forms the Government. Israel has learnt from their mistakes and has been increasing the threshold.

So in my opinion 5% is too high a threshold and no threshold is too “low”. I could possibly be convinced of say 3%, but in the end I think one should stick with the Royal Commission’s model as closely as possible, in the absence of strong reasons not to.

Goff’s – and Labour’s – position is not founded on democratic principles. Instead, it is driven by naked self-interest – most obviously, by a desire to remove ACT from the political equation …

Indeed.

Strait Times reports:

SEOUL – ALL North Koreans who took part in local elections on Sunday voted for state-selected candidates and turnout was 99.97 per cent, state media said on Tuesday.

A total of 28,116 representatives were elected as deputies to assemblies at provincial, city and county level with not a single vote of opposition to the candidates, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

Opposition Leader Phil-Kim Goff said that no one briefed him that the election was being held that day.

A very good column in the NZ Herald by the former principals of Auckland Grammar and Kings – Sir John Graham and John Taylor respectively. Their recommendations:

• We need to be far more pro-active and bold in attracting, retaining and rewarding high quality teachers
• The role and importance of the Principal needs to be more effectively recognised, supported and rewarded
• NCEA should be fixed to make it more acceptable to, and adopted by, all secondary schools throughout NZ
• The Board of Governance structure set up under Tomorrow’s Schools 20 years ago should be reviewed and enhanced
• There should uniformly higher expectations and insistence on basic disciplines and respect for the rules

Performance pay for teachers is well overdue. The top teachers should be on over $100,000 and the top principals close to double that.