An e-mail alleging some sort of conspiracy involving Fletchers, CERA and the Reserve Bank has been circulating for a few weeks. I’ve received it multiple times.
The e-mail alleges the Government through the Reserve Bank is a shareholder in Fletchers and hence awarding contracts to itself. The situation is:

This anonymous email’s author has discovered the Reserve Bank’s custodial service and drawn the conclusion that the Reserve Bank, and hence the government, owns the shares held in it. In reality this is a nominee company through which local and international institutions hold shares in a range of companies, one of which is Fletcher Building. It is an absolutely standard structure, common worldwide, and which has been in place for over 20 years.

This link http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/payment/nzclear/ to the Reserve Bank website sets the NZClear system out in very simple terms.

In brief, NZClear is a real-time settlement system which members access from their premises. Each member has a security account on the system which records the securities “lodged with New Zealand Central Securities Depository Limited” (NZCSD), a custodian, fully owned by the RBNZ. NZCSD becomes the legal owner of the securities on the relevant register and holds securities on behalf of the member, the beneficial owner. The inventory of securities held in the depository currently stands at around NZD92 billion.

So it’s very clear, the government is not “the beneficial owner” of Fletcher Building shares or any other shares held under the NZClear system.

The e-mail also asks some questions. The responses to them are:

Q. Who appointed RCP (Resource Coordination Partnership Ltd) as Project Managers for the management of ‘critical buildings’ following the February 22nd earthquake?

Christchurch City Council appointed RCP to help project manage the demolition process.

Q . Who appointed Fletcher Building to manage the demolition works and then, reconstruction works?

Fletchers have not been appointed to any such role.

Q . Who called for the tenders for the demolition of the Grand Chancellor?

Originally the owner, then Civil Defence was working through the tender process. Since its establishment, CERA has been coordinating the tender process.

Q . Who was/is to be the Principle to the demolition Contract (i.e. the Payer)

CERA is the principal. However, all costs associated with the Grand Chancellor demolition will be recovered from the owner.

Q . Who assessed the Tenders for the Demolition of the Grand Chancellor?

Initially Civil Defence appointed engineers in association with the owner’s engineers. It then went to CERA appointed engineers in association with the owner’s engineers. A recommendation was then made to CERA and the owner before a final decision was made.

Q . Who has been awarded the Grand Chancellor job (at whatever price and/ or conditions)?

Fletcher Construction Company. The contract is worth in excess of $10 million – this was stated openly by the owner of the Hotel Grand Chancellor when the contract was awarded.

Q . Who has been blind-sided?

The tender process was, and is, an open tender process. It was done with all due care and with impartiality. The preferred contractor was awarded the contract based on the best deconstruction solution for the Grand Chancellor. The ultimate decision was the owner’s.

This public service announcement was brought to you by the letter N and the number 8.

Tracy Watkins at Stuff reports:

Labour will introduce a bill preventing the sale of key strategic assets without a clear public mandate, says Labour leader Phil Goff.

Goff said the bill would require any future proposal to partly or wholly privatise a State-owned enterprise or Crown entity to gain support from 75 per cent of Parliament, or from a majority of voters in a referendum.

This is hilarious, because Labour is ensuring such a bill will never get drawn from the members’ ballot because they are filibustering the VSM bill.

A journalist should ask Labour if they will stop filbustering the VSM bill, in order to allow more bills to be drawn in a ballot, and giving their anti-privatisation bill a chance to be drawn.

I bet you the answer is no.

So what does that mean? It means that Labour value protecting compulsory student associations from voluntary membership more than they value stopping asset sales. Their number one parliamentary priority is stopping VSM at all costs.

Incidentially turning to the substance of their silly bill, I’ll support a law which requires a referendum to sell any asset, so long one also needs a referendum for teh Government to buy any asset (over a non trivial value).

That’s the question I pose over at Stuff.

Jon Morgan at Stuff reports:

Four candidates are seeking the presidency of Federated Farmers for the first time in its 66-year existence.

It is the first contested election since 1999, when Alistair Polson held off two challengers.

It will be voted on by the 40 delegates at the national conference in Rotorua on July 1.

The candidates are vice-president Don Aubrey, the man he ousted as vice-president in 2009, Frank Brenmuhl, and the retiring chairmen of the dairy and meat and fibre sections, Lachlan McKenzie and Bruce Wills.

They seek to replace Southland farmer Don Nicolson, retiring after a three-year term.

It will be interesting to see who wins. I suspect whomever it is, they’ll be hard pushed to match Don’s profile.

The contested election reminds me of Phil Goff’s comments last week, as reported in the Waikato Times:

Labour leader Phil Goff has angered industry leaders at the National Agricultural Fieldays by suggesting that Federated Farmers were considered the National Party in gumboots.

The comment was in response to being asked how important the agricultural vote was to Labour, in election year, during his Fieldays visit yesterday.

“In financial terms agriculture is hugely important, in political terms someone once said that Federated Farmers is the National Party in gumboots, it’s always been that way and we have to accept that,” Mr Goff told Waikato Times.

However that comment hasn’t gone down well with Federated Farmers dairy chairman Lachlan McKenzie who said the organisation was staunchly apolitical.

 A silly comment by Goff. Certainly farmers tend to be more conservative in their political tendencies than others, but that is not at all the same as being National in gumboots. Not all farmers think alike.

Federated Farmers have actually had a pretty tense relationship with the National -led Government. Anyone who thinks they are akin to unions and Labour do not know what they are talking about.

James Meager blogged on Friday:

This blog can reveal that [deleted by DPF as post linked to has now deleted the name] was arrested last Thursday and charged with indecent assault. The charges relate to multiple occasions where [name deleted], while while under the influence of alcohol, indecently assaulted a female victim who was known to him. Particular details regarding the incidents are being withheld to protect the identity of the victim.

The name of the alleged victim is automatically supressed by statute, specifically s139 of the Criminal Justice Act.

What surprised me, was reading the comments (which are now deleted but stayed up for a fair while) in which the person charged commented and said:

In case you are curious what happened: I got drunk at my flat some time ago, and groped [name of victim]’s breast. I was too drunk to remember what happened, but when I discovered what had happened (through being told the next morning), I sent her an apology via text. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of the matter, and this person has come around on to my flat since then, with nothing untoward happening. The person then, completely out of the blue, decided to press charges. No, I have not plead guilty: having received diversion means the process does not get that far, and this does not constitute a conviction. I have complied fully with the police, and I believe (hopefully) that that is the end of the matter. So there you are: I got drunk and groped a breast, and apologised afterwards. That’s all there is to it.

I was staggered that the person charged named the victim. Not only is it illegal in itself, but it could have the Police decide not to offer diversion.

But then even more unusually, the victim commented under her own name:

I am the victim. Being drunk is no excuse. I did not press charges out of the blue but rather agonised over it for two weeks, whilst my anxiety disorder spiralled out of control and I suffered nightmares. As a friend, who I felt I had shared close times with, I was saddened and disappointed that [name deleted] was not sorry. A text is not an apology; facing your victim, accepting responsibility (not blaming the booze) and saying sorry sincerely is an apology. Getting alcohol counselling shows you are sorry. Bitching and moaning and getting revenge is not sorry.  FYI – you cannot get a diversion unless you admit that you have done it ie you are guilty.

Now this raises an interesting question. Is it illegal for a victim to name herself? The Act says a victim can apply to the court (if aged over 16) for their name to longer be suppressed, but in theory I would say naming outing yourself could be an offence.

And does the victim naming herself effectively let [name deleted] off the hook for doing so?

Mathew Dearnaley in the NZ Herald reports:

Taxi passengers’ privacy concerns have scotched a plan to add voice recordings to new legally-required cameras in cabs.

Wellington Combined Taxis, the capital’s largest company, has decided against recording conversations after many of its passengers became alarmed at the idea.

Their fears have also prompted Corporate Cabs, with fleets in Auckland and the other main centres, to issue an assurance it will not install microphones.

Just as well. I am a regular and large user of Combined. If they had gone ahead with their plans to audio record conversations in taxis, and keep them for a month, I would have blacklisted them. No way would I take a taxi where a recording is made of what I say.

The only people allowed to listen into my phone calls are the GCSB! 🙂

Tom Pullar-Strecker at Stuff reports:

Telecom is likely to split evenly into two parts, with shares in its retail arm and Chorus worth similar amounts, financial analysts believe.

Telecom shareholders will be given a share in Chorus and another in the yet-to-be-named retail business for each Telecom share they own, if they approve the company split, which is a condition of Telecom’s government contract to build the bulk of the ultrafast broadband network.

Really? Equal value?

I am not a financial analyst and this should not be taken as financial advice.

But personally I will be looking to buy lots of shares in Chorus, and no shares in Telecom Retail. I think Chorus has a very good future, managing both the copper and fibre.

I am not at all convinced that Telecom’s culture is well developed enough to compete on the retail level, without the integrated vertical monopoly. I hope they do, but at this stage I wouldn’t invest money on it.

A look at the annual regulatory accounts shows that the profit from Chorus as a percentage of turnover is much much higher than for Telecom Wholesale or Retail.

Very amusing incident this morning. I’m on holiday with one of closest friends, who is German. We’re exes from around 15 years ago but have only caught up twice since then.

This morning she wanted to use my laptop, so she could use some web to cellphone SMS site (to save money). I gave it to her and go back to reading a magazine. She asks what the login password is. I have to think a second as I normally login with my fingerprints, but then spell out the password to her automatically while reading the magazine.

Suddenly the room is quiet with no typing, and I look up to see her giving me a very intense gaze. I suddenly recall that my password is in fact her name!

I blush and confirm that yes she has been my PC password for the last 15 years. Hard to tell from the look whether she regards this as a good or a bad thing 🙂

Mind you Destiny deserve to be rubbished when they try stuff like this. Stuff reports:

Destiny Church has launched a hostile take-over battle for control of one of the country’s more respected culture organisations, the Maori Women’s Welfare League.

Hannah Tamaki, wife of bishop and founder of Destiny, Brian Tamaki, is running a slick photo-shopped campaign in a bid to become national president of the league and its nearly 4000 members.

It is causing outrage in the league, whose first patron was the legendary Princess Te Puea Herangi (1884-1952), and was led into political pre-eminence by land rights campaigner Dame Whina Cooper (1895-1994).

Hannah Tamaki says in her campaign material that her husband “is a direct descendent” of Te Puea.

Te Puea had no children.

Doh.

Hone Harawira blogs:

I understand that my going to Destiny Church last week has offended some members of MANA, and that my attendance and speech have been seen as an endorsement of Destiny’s stance on homosexuality.

That is not so.

I value the broad support that MANA has attracted from all sectors of our society, and I owe it to everyone to explain things from my own point of view.

You see … like everyone else I have gay people in my whanau, and like everyone else I also have straight people in my whanau, and like everyone else I love them all.

I would sincerely hope that my attendance at the Destiny hui is not seen as an endorsement by either myself or MANA of the views held by Bishop Brian Tamaki and the Destiny Church, in the same way that I hope my attendance at the Mormon Stake Conference on Saturday is not seen as an endorsement of their more unsavoury racial practices of the recent past, or my attendance at an Anglican church service seen as an endorsement of their practice of stealing Maori land over the centuries.

I broadly agree with Hone on this. A politician accepting a speaking engagement is not an endorsement of everything the host stands for – far from it. MPs should and do attend meetings held by groups they disagree with, and this is a good thing.

Do we think John Key endorses all the CTU policies when he addresses their national conference?

Only the most extreme groups should be considered out of bounds for an MP to speak to – basically neo-nazis and others that preach hatred.

Now I am no fan of Destiny. To my mind they come closer to the “should not address under any circumstance” group than many others. They are cult-like.

But they do actually do some good with their social services, and now that they are not also running a parallel political wing, they are not as big a threat as they once were.

Matt Nippert at NBR writes:

Part of left-wing polit­i­cal Machi­avelli Matt McCarten’s Unite union empire has gone under owing money to the taxman.

The Auck­land High Court con­firmed Unite Social Ser­vices was placed into liq­ui­da­tion this morn­ing at the request of the Com­mis­sioner of Inland Rev­enue at 10.56am.

The Offi­cial Assignee was appointed as liquidator.

Unite Social Ser­vices is sep­a­rate from the union Unite Incor­po­rated, but finan­cial accounts filed with the Com­pa­nies Office show the two enti­ties are linked.

The 2008/09 accounts for UNITE showed a huge debt to the IRD, including shamefully unpaid PAYE tax which they hold in trust for their employees.

Their 2009/10 accounts are yet to surface, even though it is 15 months since balance date. Their AGM is officially October, so they should have been approved eight months ago. They have until this October to file them, before the Registrar of Incorporated Societies will take action.

I admire some of what UNITE union has done – effective advocacy for low paid workers. I also like the fact they are more about their principles than just being a wing of a political party – mind you that has got blurred recently with the Mana party.

Hat Tip: Whale

My Herald column is on the political impact of the third earthquake on Monday. An extract:

So it is no surprise that the Government is wanting to take the time to get it right, and be able to do the above. But there is a wonderful quote by François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire. He is credited as saying in 1772 “The perfect is the enemy of the good”.

Voltaire was warning that if you keep delaying to get a perfect solution, you may end up not achieving anything at all. That sometimes it is better to go forward with what you have, rather than “improving” it further.

Comments and feedback can be left at the Herald.

The Herald reports:

Clayton Weatherston has had his appeal against his conviction for the murder of Otago University graduate Sophie Elliott dismissed.

Yay. Now we can forget all about him for at least 18 years.

All grounds of appeal were dismissed.

This photo from Waikato University is of Phil Goff doing “virtual pig shooting”. Captions to be funny, not nasty.

Stuff reports:

Stranded passengers are holding their breath as a giant ash cloud in New Zealand’s airspace begins to move away, with hopes all flights could resume by today.

The ash cloud – made up of two plumes – was shifting to the east, away from New Zealand, the Wellington Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre said.

Good. I am due to fly to Auckland, and then Heathrow via Hong Kong this evening. I have been moderately anxious.

One of my oldest mates is getting married in England, so I am heading over for the wedding (and stag do). Not cost effective to fly over just for a weekend, so going for around a fortnight. A friend from Germany and I are holidaying around- one week in England and Wales and one week in Scotland before the wedding at Lytham St Annes, which is on the coast in Lancashire.

By coincidence I’ll be in London the same night as Rotorua MP Todd McClay – Saturday 25 June. We’ll be hosting a pub meeting for Kiwis and anyone else interested for an update and chat on NZ politics. I’ll blog details of the pub ext next week.

Blogging will be lighter for the next fortnight or so – especially when I am on a plane!

AP report:

Embattled US politician Anthony Weiner is resigning from Congress, saying he cannot continue in office amid the intense controversy surrounding sexually explicit messages he sent online to several women.

The 46-year-old Democrat made the announcement in his home district in New York after two weeks of fighting off pressure to step aside. Weiner apologised again for “the embarrassment that I have caused” and said he hoped to continue to fight for the causes dear to his constituents.

His wife, Huma Abedin, was not with him for the announcement.

Weiner has been on leave from the House and at a treatment facility at an undisclosed location since last weekend. He has not been seen in public since telling reporters on Saturday morning (local time) he intended to return to work.

Was inevitable, and only surprise was how long it took.

What has caused much amusement is this treatment he is meant to be receiving. How do they treat the urge to send hot women photos of your penis?

I feel for the wife – she is pregnant with their first child.

An apple a day…

Click for larger, high res image

No need for any explanation I guess for what this bird is and what its doing.
Hope everyone has a good Friday.

This advertisement appeared in a Grey Power magazine. In scanning it the e-mail address [email protected] got obscured, after the phone number.

Now we know from the minutes Whale published, that Labur have been instructed to use parliamentary service resources to benefit Labour, and this ad is funded by Parliament.

Now up until the regulated period starts on 26 August, this ad can be funded form Labour’s parliamentary budget as it does not explicitly call for votes, money or members. However my recollection is the rules are the party logo must be the same size as the parliamentary crest, and clearly in this ad it is way way larger, and appears twice.

So Labour may have broken PS rules (unless they have amended the rule about logo size) in this advertisement. However it could be worse. They may have broken the Electoral Act because there is no authorised by promoter statement.

The Electoral Commission has just this month published a booklet with guidance for MPs. They stress that even taxpayer funded advertisements need an authorisation statement if they can be “reasonably regarded as encouraging or persuading voters to vote or not vote for a party”.

In their official guide, the Commission notes a factor that may indicate if an advertisement is an election advertisement is “references to a party’s election policy or what they will do if re-elected”.

Look at the ad and the part that says “Under Labour there will be no asset sales”. Bingo.

The ad is very clearly designed to encourage people to vote Labour. That means it should have an authorisation statement with a name and address.

Phil Quin writes in the Business Spectator:

Key, who returned from a successful career on Wall St to enter parliament in 2002, seems mostly untroubled by ego or ambition. In this respect, he reminds me of former Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, in that both wear authority lightly and make a virtue out of a rough-hewn rhetorical style. A one-time adviser told me over lunch how Key is quick to tell colleagues and staff that he is “the Prime Minister of New Zealand, not the Prime Minister of the National Party,” a corny talking point that ought to induce groans, but somehow doesn’t coming from Key.

All this makes him the most popular NZ Prime Minister on record, but the outcome of the election is not as certain as his double-digit lead over Labour would suggest.

David Farrar, founder and editor of Kiwiblog, New Zealand’s top conservative-leaning politics website, painted a scenario for me whereby National attracts as much as 46 per cent of the vote – and loses. Under the Mixed-Member Proportional electoral system, Farrar explains that Labour could conceivably cobble together a narrow majority together with the Greens and an unseemly concoction of Winston Peters’ populist New Zealand First perhaps and the Maori Party. This appears unlikely unless Labour, the Greens and NZ First significantly outperform expectations without cannibalising each other’s vote (according to the most recent Colmar-Brunton One News poll, Labour is at 34 per cent, the Greens 6 per cent and NZ First 2 per cent).

 An interesting over-view of where things are at.

Ars Technica reports:

Earlier this month we covered a UN report that argued that “three strikes” laws that deprive alleged copyright infringers of Internet access violate human rights. The report was delivered by an independent UN investigator, and so didn’t represent the view of any UN member governments.

Michael Geist notes that on Friday, Sweden made remarks at the UN Human Rights Council that endorsed many of the report’s findings, including the criticism of “three strikes” rules. The statement was signed by 40 other nations, including the United States and Canada. The United Kingdom and France, two nations that have enacted “three strikes” regimes, did not sign the statement.

“All users should have greatest possible access to Internet-based content, applications and services,” the statement said, adding that “cutting off users from access to the Internet is generally not a proportionate sanction.” It also called network neutrality and Internet openness “important objectives.”

Interestingly, the report is signed by New Zealand, which enacted legislation in April that sets up a special Copyright Tribunal for expediting file-sharing cases. The penalties available to the New Zealand government include Internet disconnections of up to six months.

Very interesting. The Swedish statement which NZ endorsed said:

All users, including persons with disabilities, should have greatest possible access to Internet-based content, applications and services, whether or not they are offered free of charge. In this context, network neutrality and openness are important objectives. Cutting off users from access to the Internet is generally not a proportionate sanction.

I’m glad to see the NZ Government says that cutting off Inernet access is generally not a proportionate response. From that I assume the Government will never activate the power for a Judge to cut off Internet access as a response to copyright infringement.

If the postition of the Government is such an act is not a proportionate sanction, then it would have been nice if they had removed it entirely from the Copyright Act. Otherwise there can be the appearance of saying one thing at the UN, and doing another thing back home.