The Dom Post editorial:

If any more evidence was needed that New Zealand’s creaking welfare system requires major reform, it was the news that gospel singer Alipate Liava’a drew the sickness benefit while training for a boxing match.

Mr Liava’a apparently has a form of tennis elbow that prevents him working yet, miraculously, it did not stop him going toe-to-toe with All Black giant Sonny Bill Williams.

The elbow was the latest in a run of poor health for Mr Liava’a, who was previously on the sickness benefit because of a problem with his voice. He says he would have told Work and Income about his fight with Williams, but he was too busy with his music and training I thto find the time.

Those who work for a living and whose taxes fund the $7.6 billion a year welfare bill will rightly be flabbergasted. It is difficult to decide which is worse – that Mr Liava’a saw nothing wrong with claiming a benefit intended for those too ill to work while preparing to take on a heavy-set professional athlete, or that his doctor honestly believed a dodgy elbow made him too infirm to get a job.

The doctor has some questions to answer also.

Unfortunately, it will give ammunition to those who hold the erroneous view that all beneficiaries are hopeless bludgers. That is not true. Many are genuinely too ill to work, and the mark of a civilised and compassionate society is how well they are supported.

It would be nice to do more for those who are genuinely not able to do any work at all.

Other recommendations are well worth considering, however. They include increasing the proportion of beneficiaries required to seek work from about a third now to more than three-quarters and cutting benefits for those who refuse to comply. Requiring solo parents to ensure their children attend school and have regular health checks, ensuring beneficiaries under 18 years old have a degree of adult supervision, and tying benefits for those with drug and alcohol problems to attendance at treatment programmes also have obvious merit.

Merit, apart from for those who gain politically from having as high a proportion as possible reliant on state support.

I was amused that the TV news last night seem to spend more time on the death of Shrek, than they did on profiling the new knights and dames.

NZ Herald Politics quiz is here. Got 9/10 in 40 seconds.

The full list is on the DPMC website.

Two dames and five knights. The top recepients are:

DNZM

To be Dames Companion of the said Order:

Mrs Rosemary Anne Horton, QSO, QSM, of Auckland. 
For services to philanthropy.

Dr Katerina Te Heikoko Mataira, CNZM, of Hamilton. 
For services to the M�ori language.

KNZM

To be Knights Companion of the said Order:

Mr David John Graham, CBE, ED, of Auckland. 
For services to education and sport.

The Honourable Justice Robert Grant Hammond, of Wellington. 
For services to the law.

Mr Graeme Thomas Harrison, of Wellington. 
For services to business.

Mr Daniel Patrick Higgins, ONZM, of Palmerston North. 
For services to philanthropy and the community.

Mr James Hay Wallace, ONZM, of Auckland. 
For services to the arts.

Only heard of three of them myself.

Belinda McCammon at Stuff reports:

Axed Labour MP Chris Carter looks set to take up a job with his old boss, Helen Clark, at the United Nations before the end of the year.

The independent MP has just returned from a three-week trip to New York where he said he had positive meetings over working at the UN. “I had some very interesting and productive interviews, so we’ll see.”

If Carter does take up a job at the UN, he will join former PM Clark, who is the administrator of the UN’s Development Programme.

Carter said nothing was confirmed. “Until it’s in the hand, it’s not in the bag.”

If the role is confirmed, Carter said it was likely he would leave to take up the job before the November 26 election.

However his departure would not cause a by-election as it is within the six-month threshold.

Who says the taxpayer doesn’t do enough to help people find jobs. Three weeks in New York is what anyone can get. Must have been some very extended job interviews.

Samuel L. Jackson reading out the book. Perfect.

James Ihaka at the NZ Herald reports:

The Rugby Union has stopped kids winning their matches by more than 35 points, saying it makes the game more enjoyable.

But one coach describes the changes as “political correctness gone mad” and says he and other coaches will lobby for the new rule to be dropped.

Under the NZRU’s Small Blacks development programme for children aged 13 and under, coaches from opposing sides can meet at halftime if one side has put on 35 or more points against the other to agree on how they can “generate a more-even contest”.

A score of 100-nil is now posted as 35-nil – the maximum points differential allowed.

If a side wins 90 to 5, the score is recorded as 40 to 5.

Oh please tell me you are kidding. A friend on Twitter said she was going to read 1984 for the first time – there should be a chapter on faking the rugby score.

I reckon kids will feel worse knowing that they lost by so much, that the score had to be faked. And as if they won’t keep track themselves.

On this issue, I agree with Trevor Mallard.

I’m about to head off to Palliser Bay until Tuesday. No cellphone or Internet coverage where we’re staying, so blogging likely to be minimal – will depend how often we go into town.

Adam Bennett in the NZ Herald reports:

The lack of Auckland representation at the top of its party list, along with a controversial proposal to allow a post-election coalition with the National Party, look set to dominate discussions at the Green Party’s AGM this weekend.

The Greens, New Zealand’s third largest political party, meet at Point Chevalier’s Te Mahurehure marae days after finalising its party list for the November election which features just one Auckland-based candidate – David Clendon – among its top 10. …

The Greens’ North Shore candidate Pieter Watson, who is himself well down the list, said there was some frustration evident among Auckland members at the party list’s southern flavour given that more than half the nation’s population was in Auckland.

Umm, a third, not a half. But what is the composition of the top ten:

• South Island – 50%
• Wellington – 30%
• Auckland – 10%
• Other NI – 10%

In their search for gender, age, racial and sexual orientation diversity, they seem to have overlooked geographic diversity. Only 20% of the MPs come from North of Wellington even though that is where 70% of the population is.

But a more difficult pill for many members to swallow is the proposal to open the door to a potential confidence and supply agreement with National, a possibility the Greens have clearly ruled out in the lead up to previous elections.

Even if the remit is passed, it will likely be a largely symbolic move intended to position the Greens further into the political mainstream, in the minds of voters at least.

Co-leader Russel Norman has already said that even if the remit is passed, a coalition with National is extremely unlikely.

Dr Norman expects a lively debate on the issue given indications that some party members found the prospect extremely unsavoury, while others wanted to “moderate” the remit to suggest such an arrangement is more possible than the words “extremely unlikely” would suggest.

Passing the remit means they get some negotiating clout with Labour. Otherwise Labour take them for granted and crap on them in order to gain favour with their preferred coalition partner of Winston – as happened during 1999 – 2008.

If the Greens ever have a choice of a Labour-led Government or National-led Government, then they will choose Labour.

But is it possible that in the event of a Labour-led Government not being viable, you could have an agreement with National to abstain on supply and confidence in return for some significant policy gains and/or a Ministerial portfolio? Unlikely, but possible.

Stuff reports:

Sports commentator Murray Deaker is in the firing line after describing someone on his Sky TV show as “working like a nigger”.

His network has described the phrase as “widely used” but the race relations commissioner has condemned the words.

Deaker, who has hosted several controversial moments on his talk show, was describing a person who ran a sheep farm on Wednesday night.

He slipped in the controversial phrase without missing a beat and it has since been doing the rounds on social media sites.

Sky Television spokesman Tony O’Brien said the network had not received any complaints about Deaker’s comments.

“I’m not defending him, but that’s a phrase that’s widely used.”

Not anymore. Just apologise. I doubt anyone thinks Deaker was meaning any offence, but it is an offensive word to many and not appropriate to be used on air. Deaker should apologise asap.

Logged into BNZ Internet Banking this morning and discovered they now allow you to make payments to international bank accounts. This will be very useful, as I need to do this from time to time.

Danya Levy at Stuff reports:

The ACT Party says moves by Labour to delay the passing of its volunteer student membership bill is costing taxpayers more than $453,000 every hour Parliament sits.

The member’s Bill sponsored by ACT MP Heather Roy ends compulsory student association membership, and passed its second reading last December.

Labour opposes the Bill and has stopped Parliament reaching the next stage of debate on it by putting up spurious amendments to other non-controversial legislation.

Roy said the delay tactics, known as filibustering, denied backbench MPs the right to have their issues debated and cost taxpayers the same amount an hour as Hone Harawira’s Te Tai Tokerau by-election.

”Hone Harawira has been rightly condemned for costing the taxpayer half a million dollars by forcing the Te Tai Tokerau by-election, yet Labour’s filibustering is costing taxpayers the equivalent of one such by-election every hour.

The staggering thing is that Labour have not just fillibustered this once or twice – they have filbustered it all year, so desperate are they to protect their future caucus intakes. As someone said, there is no limit to what a mother will do to protect her young.

Heather said:

“I’m not opposed to any party delaying a Bill they strongly disagree with but Labour MPs are delaying Bills they already support.  If Labour continue to debate each of the Royal Society Bill’s 23 clauses – which they openly support – in their entirety this could take 23 hours of the House’s time and cost taxpayers over $10 million.  It is this sort of churlish behaviour that demeans our nation’s Parliament.

This is a key difference. I will absolutely defend the right of a party to filibuster a bill they strongly oppose. Such filibusters normally last a few days. But here Labour is filbustering every single local, private and members bill there is, in a year long filibuster. This is I think literally without precedent in New Zealand. They are for example going to spend two dozen hours of time, on a totally non controversial bill about the Royal Society of NZ.

Trevor Mallard has blogged that the marginal cost is zero, as they are not forcing any extra costs onto Parliament. This misses the point as it ignores the fact that during all this time, Parliament is not passing laws as it is meant to be – it is having Labour MPs stand up and talk screeds of nonsense for hours on end.  An analogy would be having staff members in a retailer refuse to actually sell any goods, yet claim they are not costing any money as they haven’t imposed extra costs on the shop.

I have pinged the Government on their use of urgency this year – something which pissed off quite a few people within National. But filibustering is the flip side of urgency. If an Opposition continues with mindless sustained filbustering, then they can expect no-one to take them seriously if they complain about use of urgency in the future. If you turn yourself into a roadblock, don’t be surpised when a bulldozer is used.

Labour is also being incredibly selfish. Backbench Mps get only one day a fortnight to have their bills heard. Dozens of MPs from the Greens, Maori and National parties have members bills they would like to have debated. Labour has decided that no other members bill can be allowed to pass this year, just so they can try and allow their future MPs to keep forcing students to fund their political activism.

So next time a Labour MP complains about urgency, the response should be to buy themselves a mirror so they can find someone to blame.

This week’s column in the Herald focuses on what was by far the most significant announcement of the week, but one which received little publicity as Labour was so silent on it.

In talking about the potential welfare reforms, I also focus on Labour’s welfare policy:

In fact Labour’s official policy is to increase the net value of benefits, and pay people more to be on a benefit as their tax policy is to move benefits being calculated net of tax, to gross of tax, meaning they will get $10 more a week for being on the benefit with Labour’s policy to have no tax on the first $5,000 of income.

There has been remarkably little attention paid to the fact that Labour is promising every beneficiary an extra $10 a week for not having a job. This is different to 2008 when Dr Cullen cut the bottom tax rate, but kept benefits calculated on a net basis.

So we will have an interesting choice come the election time – National will be offering welfare reform to reduce the numbers on welfare, and Labour will be offering to pay beneficiaries $10 a week more.

Boomers Behaving Badly was one of those shows I was somewhat nervous about. A one person show tends to be either very bad or very good. And I wasn’t sure if a show about the reflections of a woman “perilously close to 60” was something I’d enjoy.

I got even more nervous as Auckland Girl and I piled into Circa Theatre No 2. I’d say 90% of the audience was female, and AG was arguably the youngest person there. I was mentally prepared for a discrete exit at half time.

And then Jane Keller came on stage and started singing, and telling her stories. Within minutes I was laughing as loud as anyone there.

Keller has a superb voice. In fact I later discovered she actually is a singing coach to a friend of mine who sings. But her personality is equally strong – she is funny, witty, sometimes a bit catty and often naughty.

She takes you through the various attendees at her 40 year class reunion. The former flame, the romantic rival etc. And then she continues through her life with stories ranging from divorce parties to Internet dating. The show is a barrel of laughs, and it was one of those rare times when you actually would have rather there was no halfway break, and the show continued on without pause. Keller has a fantastic sense of humour, and combines her singing and her facial expressions to maximum impact.

I should give warning that if you are like me in terms of being folically challenged, you may not wish to sit on the front row, unless you like becoming part of the show!

Boomers Behaving Badly is on until the 11th of June, and it is a wonderfully funny show. Both Auckland Girl and I loved it.

Must also make special mention of the wonderful contribution by Michael Nicholas Williams on the piano. he doesn’t just provide the music with excellence, but also gets a minor, but important, speaking part.

Stuff has a top ten John Key moments, including a short video of them. very amusing. They are:

1. Saying Tuhoe wants to have him for dinner
2. Calling Hillary Clinton, President Clinton
3. The fashion shoot
4. Saying Liz Hurley was hot
5. The bbq photo with Prince Williams
6. Max’s planking photo
7. Riding the Shotover tiny buggy
8. Saying lunch with the Queen was “fulsome”  because he was full
9. Keyisms such as “Afghanistanians”
10. Saying he leads a Labour Government

I am sure there will be some more in future.

A few weeks ago I had a debate on Twitter (if you can call 140 character tweets arguments) about CEO salaries. A Labour acquaintance had tweeted that the Westpac CEO’s tax cut last year could pay for 500 KiwiSaver subsidies for workers on the average wage.

I responded that may be so, but it overlooks that even after the tax cut, the Westpac CEO still pays so much income tax that they fund around 2,600 KiwiSaver subsidies for workers on the average wage.

This then turned the debate more into well they should not get paid so much. I think they are on $5 million a year or so (which I tend to think is high, but I am not a shareholder or customer of Westpac so it is none of my business). The argument was paid that no one is worth that much. And I suspect many people probably share that view that no CEO should be paid more than a certain level.

I don’t share that view.

First of all, I think is is rather sad that as a society we celebrate someone who wins $1 million through blink luck at Lotto, but many condemn someone who through decades of hard work and excellence gets to earn a salary of $1 million a year.

Few people complain that someone like Anna Paquin earns over a million dollars a year through her incredible acting skills, but they resent someone earning that much through their incredible business skills.

Some people seem to have the view that anyone could be a sucessful CEO. That the impact of a CEO on a business is around the margins, and they are not worth more than a few hundred thousand dollars.

Now sure some CEOs are not worth one million dollars, but I can think of one who clearly is – Rob Fyfe of Air New Zealand. He has done some amazing stuff at Air NZ, and his personal brand has become very linked to the corporate brand. I think it is a no brainer that Fyfe is easily worth a salary of $1 million or more a year.

But how about the $5 million salary the Westpac CEO is on. Is anyone worth $5 million a year? Personally I’m not sure if the Westpac CEO is, as I don’t know much about them, and what they have done with Westpac.

But I saw a story this week which reminded me of this debate. It is Steve Jobs returns to Apple. That saw Apple share price alone increase 3% which I guess is a value somewhere between $100 million and $1 billion. Now as it happens Jobs has a salary of $1 (but I guess a lot of stock), but would anyone really want to argue that Jobs would not be worth a salary of $5 million a year for Apple if that is waht is needed to keep him?

So I don’t think there is anything wrong with someone earning a salary of $1 million a year, or $10 million a year or $50 million a year. Some on the left say it is obscene and no one should earn that much money, yet I don’t hear them argue a price cap for Hollywood stars, for sports stars, for musicians, for lottery payouts. And I don’t hear them argue that there should be a maximum amount you can earn from being an entrepreneur.

I think why large CEO salaries get a lot of criticism, is because sometimes the performance doesn’t justify it. And there I have some sympathy. Nothing worse than seeing a CEO get paid several millions dollars, while the company’s share prices plummets, and it makes a huge loss.

But the solution is not to set limits on CEO salaries. It is to sack CEOs who don’t perform to the level you would expect from their salary.

Andrea Vance at Stuff reports:

Public Defence Service lawyers have been hissed at and abused by members of the criminal bar, it has emerged.

PDS head Sir John Hansen has hit out at criminal lawyers over “appalling behaviour” towards its members after the Government-funded legal agency was launched.

The defence service is now being expanded by the Government – but continues to face vehement public attacks from within the legal fraternity.

In a strongly worded speech this week, Sir John, a retired high court judge, said the behaviour was seen in Auckland courts, particularly Manukau.

“It was this kind of unprofessionalism from a small proportion of the defence bar that featured so strongly in Dame Margaret Bazley’s review of legal aid,” he said at the opening of the Hamilton PDS. “It is something that I would have thought following that review would have ceased. Sadly it has not.”

 I think it is fair to point out that this is a very small, albeit vocal, minority who behavve so unprofessionally. It is a pity that perhaps NZLS has not been able to take any action at an earlier stage.

Sir John pointed out that “lawyer of choice” was not an option for any charges other than murder before 2001.

I did not know that. So I presume Registrars allocated cases or how did it work?

Peter Dunne “planking” on Backbenches. Good on him for taking up the challenge from a viewer, but nevertheless can’t resist a caption contest.

As always, funny not nasty please.

In my Stuff blog, I take a look at the currency, with the record highs against the US and UK. I concluded:

Politically the currency can have a big impact on the economy and the popularity of the government. But it is not something governments can do a lot about in the short term, unless they want to risk billions of dollars in currency speculation. Long-term policies that lead to better productivity can lead to a stronger currency, but in a way which doesn’t harm the export sector so much, as the increased productivity gives them competitive advantage. That is how you get a win-win.