The NO campaign has had a massive victory in the UK, with a move to Alternate Vote (where you rank candidates in order and the lowest polling drops off until someone gets over 50%).

The vote is not final, but at this stage it looks like 69% voted NO. My mate Matthew Elliott (The NO campaign chief) will be a very happy man tonight.

The other big news from their elections, is that the SNP has gained a majority in the Scottish Parliament, which will probably mean a vote in the next three years on whether Scotland should secede from the United Kingdom.

Ironically many conservatives also support Scottish independence. Scotland votes massively left. If Scotland left the UK, then the Conservatives would get to be in Government far more easily. They would become the natural party of Government in England.

In Wales (which could leave also if Scotland did), Labour did well picking up 30 seats, but are one short of a majority.

And in England, despite the unpopularity of the spending cuts, the Conservatives polled 1% higher than Labour. This augurs well for the next election, which of course is not until 2015.

Marty Sharpe at the Dom Post reports:

A 91-year-old special forces veteran has been told he has to stop carrying out solo night patrols on the streets of Waipawa.

John Bray used to drive around on volunteer community patrols with a companion, but decided to go solo after finding his sidekick, in his late 80s, kept falling asleep on duty.

Now he’s been told by the head of the local patrol that the national Community Patrol organisation does not want volunteers working alone, and Mr Bray can stay on the roster only if he finds a partner.

I am sure he will now have many offers.

For more than 10 years he has spent at least one night a month driving Waipawa’s streets, armed with a spotlight, fluorescent vest and a mobile phone, looking for suspicious behaviour.

He has no qualms about approaching people to ask them about their motives.

But he says he can understand the national body’s concerns for his safety. “I’m not getting my hackles up about it. I know their thinking. I mean, I know 70-year-olds who shouldn’t be driving a wheelbarrow, let alone a car.”

Heh a sense of humour also.

He keeps busy working from home doing saddlery and stitching work, and is also the caretaker of a block of retirement flats – whose residents are all his junior.

So much for taking it quiet when you are 90!

Claire Trevett in the Herald reports:

Television has become so raunchy that even Coronation Street is no longer acceptable for children’s viewing, says Labour MP Lianne Dalziel.

She said the “Adults Only” television watershed should be moved to 7.30pm as 8.30pm no longer reflected the content of the shows broadcast.

Ms Dalziel put her request to the Broadcasting Standards Authority at the commerce select committee yesterday.

She said she had watched Coronation Street as a child when Ena Sharples ruled supreme, “and I would have to say its content at that stage was unremarkable”.

“The most raunchy part of it was Elsie Tanner having a divorce. But there was no question around parents being able to be sure about what their children were watching.”

Ms Dalziel said she had seen the British soap opera recently after years of not watching, and “was shocked”.

Oh please. Coronation Street is hardly shocking. Californication is shocking maybe, but not Coronation Street.

And good luck trying to enforce kids not being able to watch TV after 7.30 pm.

At the end of the day, it is up to parents to decide what they do or do not allow their kids to watch. The BSA may have a role in making sure accurate information is provided to parents on the nature of a show or episode, so that parents are making well informed choices.

The future, when it is all digital, should be that parents can program their TVs to not show shows with violence or sex over certain levels, like one can do on Sky boxes.

Up until at least the election, I’m writing a weekly column for nzherald.co.nz.

They will appear every Friday, and the first one is here, called the Done and Hone show.

The blurb for USO at Downstage is:

A modern day story on an epic scale, USO is a story about growing up in South Auckland and the pressures Pacific Island youth experience living there. Lincoln must deal with the conflicting desires of his family, friends, girlfriend, school and peers in order to survive. USO explores the tensions between friendship, brotherhood, betrayal and loyalty.

It sounds like it will be rather moralistic and overly “worthy”, but in fact the performance was heaps of fun, and really engaging. It was like watching an episode of Glee set in Wesley College.

I have become a big fan of the Black Friars, who are a South Auckland based Pacific Island theatre company. They capture that Polynesian humour and sense of mischief so well, while also telling a story that many in New Zealand could relate to.

They are only on for three days at Downstage, so if you are free tonight or tomorrow you may be able to get tickets. It’s a fairly short show at 80 – 90 minutes, but make sure you stay on afterwards for Q+A with the Friars. I almost found that the best part of the evening. The banter between them is as good as on Seven Days, and the audience was totally engaged.

This was again one of the shows I wasn’t sure I would like, but absolutely did. They also tour around schools. If you ever see the Black Friars performing near you, give them a try – I suspect you’ll enjoy them as much as I did.

Of and I am not making this up, but one of the actors is a near dead ringer for Wellington central National candidate Paul Foster-Bell. Paul must have some Samoan blood hiden away in him 🙂

Darien Fention announced:

Staff for Members of Parliament will now face the 90 day no rights trial period, unless they are employed to work for Labour, says Darien Fenton, Labour’s spokesperson for Labour Issues.

“Labour does not believe that 90 day trial period is fair, justified or needed and our caucus has unanimously resolved that no Labour MP or manager will accept a 90 day trial period as part of the employment of any new staff member,” Darien Fenton said.

This is hilarious hypocrisy, because Darien has forgotten to mention one key thing.

All parliamentary staff who work for an MP or a parliamentary party (even if they have worked there for 20 years) are effectively on a permament probation period where they can be dismissed at any time, regardless of performance.

In every employment contract there is a clause called “irreconciable differences”, which states that if your MP or Leader declares they have irreconciable differences, you lose you job in return for a payout.

So Labour trumpeting that their staff are protected from the 90 day probation period is meaningless, as Labour MPs can (and have) sack their staff at any time without any need to prove it is a justified dismissal.

The question that should be asked of Labour is why do they campaign to deny other employers the same rights they have as MPs to dismiss their staff purely because they no longer have confidence in them.

I’m on Great Barrier Island for the weekend, so blogging will be light until Monday. Enjoy.

Something ‘scaly’ for this morning.
NZ has some of the most archaic gecko species in the world, as a consequence of our long isolation. They are though, often very cryptic.

This is one of the forest species

Click for larger, higher res image

Labour are bonkers if they think they will win the election by whining about the PM’s costs. People want to hear about their policies and plans for jobs, for keeping inflation down, for economic growth etc.

Their latest has Pete Hodgson claiming that the PM doesn’t need to have bodyguards with him all the time, and he does it just to make himself feel more important.

Kate Chapman at Stuff reports:

Police Minister Judith Collins is defending the blow out in the diplomatic security budget, saying police do not tell Prime Minister John Key about threats against him and make independent risk assessments.

Ms Collins revealed yesterday that a person had been arrested and charged in the past few weeks over a threat against Key.

So Hodgson calls for less DPS, just weeks after someone arrested.

Key told Radio Sport it was public knowledge that people had been arrested for threatening to kill him.

“If I walk to the dairy, someone comes with me. Do people seriously think at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon if I want to walk down and buy the newspaper or a litre of milk, that I really want to have a diplomatic protection agent? The answer’s obviously no.”

But, he said the squad made their own decisions and he did not direct them.

I think I have worked out how Labour plans to pay for the billions of dollars of unfunded spending pledges.

They plan for the Prime Minister to hitchhike between appointments, and further for his press secretaries to be equiped with tasers so they can double as bodyguards!

The latest HLFS has some moderately good news in it.

• 30,000 more jobs in the last quarter
• 3,000 fewer unemployed
• Unemployment rate drops to 6.6%
• NZ unemployment rate now 11th lowest of 34 in the OECD

However unemployment amongst under 20 year olds remains high – up from 25.5% to 27.5%. 6,000 fewer teenagers were in employment.

jacinda Ardern has said:

“Youth unemployment has now hit 27 percent for those aged 15-19; more than four times the average unemployment rate. We’ve reached crisis point, with more young people looking for work now than we have ever seen on record before,” Jacinda Ardern said.

It is a crisis, but one created by Labour (and not changed by National). Labour made it illegal for a teenager to accept a job for less than the adult minimum wage. They abolished the lower minimum wage for youth.

A 16 year old generally has no skills, no experience and lives at home. They would love to be able to earn a bit of money for say $10/hour. But Labour has priced them off the market. If an employer has a choice of an experienced 25 year old or a novice 16 year old, of course they will not choose the 16 year old.

The fact that teenage unemployment levels are increasing, while the overall unemployment level is falling, shows that getting rid of the youth minimum wage was a disaster for our teenagers. They deserve the chance to gain employment, and National should pledge to reintroduce a lower minimum wage for youth.

Al registered parties had to file their 2010 donations return with the Electoral Commission by 30 April 2011. The returns won’t be up on the Elections NZ website until next week, but they are open for inspection at their offices so I headed on down today to check them out.

Three parties have not filed returns, and are in breach of the law. The New World Order Party and The Workers Party. Technically also the New Citizen Party, but they onlyregistered in November 2010.

Parties have to disclose any donations over $10,000 (plus overseas and anon donations etc). Nil returns were filed by United Future, ALCP, Libz, Alliance, Kiwi, Democrats and Winston First. Of course we know that a nil return for Winston First can actually mean they’ve had hundreds of thousands of donations.

ACT

One donation of $19,000 from Margaret Alldred, who is also the Party’s Administration Manager.

Progressive

They’ve disclosed $$13,000 from the “Wigram Progressive Party”. This suggests that Jim’s local organisation was not a formal part of the overall party, and he kept the funds close to him locally.

Maori Party

Pita Sharples has donated $19,171.50, in fortnightly payments. Interesting that no other MP has donated over $10,000.

Labour

In addition to the already disclosed $25,120 from former party secretary Mike Smith (donations over $20,000 are disclosed as they are made, and don’t wait just for the annual return), they also had $16,500 from Ann Robinson and $15,100 from Karl Maughan.

I presume Ann Robinson is the glass sculptor of that name, and Karl Maughan the painter. I suspect they did not make a cash donation, but donated art works that were auctioned off for the amounts disclosed.

Greens

All nine MPs had to pay a tithe, which totalled $136,786.64. This is an average per MP of around $15,200.

National

National had total donations of $397,820.50. All but $17,820.50 of this had been previously disclosed (and I had blogged them previously). The $17,820.50 comes from Garth Barfoot, presumably the director of Barfoot & Thompson real estate agents.

These disclosed donations are only of the large ones over $10,000 in value. They may represent a small or large portion of a party’s overall funding. For example National raises around $4m over three years just from relatively small membership donations.

The new electoral finance law passed by National, will have some extra transparency around donations made in 2011 and afterwards. As well as disclosing the individual large donations (those over $15,000), parties will also have to disclose the number and total value of donations from $1,501 to $5,000 and from $5,001 to $15,000. But we will not see these until April 2012.

Katie Bradford-Crozier at NewstalkZB reports:

Cries of abuse of parliamentary privilege rang out across the debating chamber last night as Labour again delayed proceedings of ACT’s Voluntary Student Membership legislation.

The bill was due to have its fourth committee stage debate but was delayed again because Labour filibustered on a minor bill that has the entire support of the House, the Royal Society of New Zealand bill.

ACT MP Heather Roy, the VSM bill’s sponsor, says enough is enough.

“My party has been as guilty as others at times of filibustering, but the filibustering but the filibustering has reached a point now where I think we need to say is this an abuse of parliamentary time or not, and it definitely is.”

Ms Roy says the party has delayed the bill for months now and in doing so, denied other MPs the ability to have one of their bills debated.

“A Member’s Bill is the only opportunity a backbench MP has of raising their issues in Parliament, and so they’re denying all other backbench MPs an ability to have the issues that they feel strongly about debated in the house,” she told Newstalk ZB.

It’s one thing to filibuster a bill you are totally opposed to. But Labour are filibustering their own non controversial bills, such as the Royal Society Bill.

I had a major flick at the Government over the use of urgency, but we should equally condemn what Labour is doing here.It is an abuse of Parliament, and in fact is partly to blame for use or urgency. If an Opposition filibusters, then the Govcernment is forced to use urgency so that it can make some progress with Parliament’s legislative agenda.

I don’t regard it as acceptable to block an entire year’s worth of members’ bills, through filibustering.

If the Government does go into urgency again, before the election, then Labour is at risk of having no credibility if it criticises the use of urgency. The more a party filibusters, the more urgency will be used.

As I said, I have little problem with filibustering laws you are totally opposed to. But filibustering totally uncontroversial laws which are supported by all 122 MPs in Parliament is an abuse, and those of us who condemned over-use of urgency should also condemn Labour’s filibustering of totally uncontroversial laws.

At long last, we have a final decision from the Commerce Commission.

The termination rate for mobile phone calls between networks is going to reduce as follows:

• Today – 15c to 17c
• Tomorrow – 7.48c
• 1 Oct 2011 – 5.88c
• 1 Apr 2012 – 3.97c
• 1 Apr 2013 – 3.72c
• 1 Apr 2014 – 3.56c

And the termination rate for text messages between networks will reduce as follows:

• Today 9.50c
• Tomorrow 0.06c

This move is long overdue, and congrats goes to the Commission and Steven Joyce who made the decision to regulate.

It will be interesting to see the impact on retail prices. It won’t be immediate, but it means we should eventually see people choosing their network based quality and price, not based on which network their friends are already on.

Dave Burgess at the Dom Post reports:

Shops, bars and restaurants have joined in criticising Wellington City Council plans to charge for two hours of extra parking in the evenings and to increase fees to $5 an hour.

The increase would make Wellington’s parking the most expensive in New Zealand and dearer than Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.

The Council is just being greedy. The increase to $5/hr is bad enough, but they also are going to make you pay up to 8 pm, instead of 6 pm.

The association also criticised the two-hour extension of the time the council can impose parking fees. “To me it looks like a money grab … I don’t accept the argument that by having higher parking fees you turn over the parks more quickly. I think by having higher parking fees you run the risk of having all the parks empty,” Mr Albertson said.

After 6 pm, there are generally lots of parks, so it is a nonsense to say they need to extend the fee to turn parks over more quickly.

If somone stood for Mayor in 2013 on a platform of reducing parking fees, I reckon they could do very well.

In an ealier blog, I highlighted how Hone praised bin Laden, and wondered whether he would also have praised Hitler as a freedom fighter.

Well talking of Hitler, he is seriously insisting that Dn Brash is like Hitler. Not as some throw-away comment – but as a serious proposition. Stuff reports:

MP and Mana Party leader Hone Harawira has accused new ACT leader Don Brash of aiming to destroy Maori in a testy television debate.

Harawira again compared Brash to Hitler, echoing comments he first made six years ago.

“The politics you talk about are very much like Hitler’s, Don. You target Maori very much like Hitler targetted the Jews. You are aiming to destroy us the same way that others haved done.”

Yes advocating that there should be no race based seats is of course the same as marching six millions Jews into concentration camps, where they were systematically killed.

And this ManaParty is the great hope of the hard left.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key has revealed he is not immune from his boot camp mania – first he set up boot camps for young crims, then for young unemployed people and now his personal guards have set up a personalised boot camp for him.

That could be a great TV show – the PM’s boot camp! Actually the show which would be fun to make would be “The Political Apprentice”, where you have aspiring politicians compete to cope with various political challenges.

Mr Key made the revelation after sympathising with Limited Services Volunteers Brendan Howell and Levi Ro about the difficulties of carrying a jerry can full of water while running.

“I should know. I’ve done it.”

He said his Diplomatic Protection Squad personnel sometimes changed his early morning runs to something more challenging – including carrying full jerry cans “if they’re trying to make things difficult.”

A jerry can weighs around 20 kgs when full, so that would not be the easiest thing to do.

NZ Herald reports:

Hone Harawira has described Osama bin Laden as “a man who fought for the rights, the land and the freedom of his people”.

In tributes on Maori-language television, the leader of the new Mana Party said the al-Qaeda founder should be “honoured” rather than “damned” in death according to Maori culture.

Mr Harawira twice paid tribute to bin Laden in te reo, saying it was Maori custom to acknowledge the dead. …

Mr Harawira said on Maori Television’s Native Affairs that bin Laden had “pursued independence for his people, his family and his tribe”.

When asked if he was concerned about how such comment could be construed, he said he was Maori and “tributes to the dead are always appropriate” in Maori custom.

Actually most of his familiy had disowned him, but let’s not even debate Hone’s factual errors.

I’m going to risk Godwin’s Law and ask whether Hone would say the same thing about Hitler. I mean it would almost fit – “Hitler pursued independence for his Germanic people, his family, and his Aryan tribe”.

Labour MP Shane Jones said he did not have the same level of affection for bin Laden as Mr Harawira.

He also scotched Mr Harawira’s claim that it was Maori custom to always pay tribute to the dead.

“In the old days, a great enemy – if he wasn’t eaten – his bones were used to make musical instruments. So this romantic notion that in the old time, Maori spent hours of their time saluting the enemy was not the case.

“Enemies were turned to dust and people rejoiced, because of the suffering they had caused.”

I’m with Shane Jones on this.

The Greens should be pleased with the existence of the new Mana Party. They finally have a party that makes then look moderate.

Did you watch them on Close Up?

I thought Don did well. Initially I was hesitant about the wisdom of mixing it up with Hone, but I think Don managed to get a clear message across which will appeal to a fair few people.

Top copyright law professor Michael Geist blogs on how Wikileaks revealed the extent of the US lobbying pressure on our copyright laws:

Wikileaks has also just posted hundreds of cables from U.S. personnel in New Zealand that reveal much the same story including regular government lobbying, offers to draft New Zealand three-strikes and you’re out legislation, and a recommendation to spend over NZ$500,000 to fund a recording industry-backed IP enforcement initiative.

Yes, the US Embassy actually offered to do the rewrite of Section 92A. Thanks, but no thanks. We’ll write our own laws thanks.

Geist also notes:

Finally, an April 2005 cable reveals the U.S. willingness to pay over NZ$500,000 (US$386,000) to fund a recording industry enforcement initiative. The project was backed by the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) and the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS).  Performance metrics include:

“The project’s performance will be judged by specific milestones, including increases in the number of enforcement operations and seizures, with percentages or numerical targets re-set annually.  The unit also will be measured by the number of reports it submits to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) on its contributions to IP protection and enforcement methodology.”

The proposed budget included four salaried positions, legal costs for investigation and prosecution, and training programs. The RIANZ still runs an anti-piracy site, but does not include disclosure about the source of funding.  It certainly raises the question of whether New Zealand is aware that local enforcement initiatives have been funded by the U.S. government and whether the same thing is occurring in Canada.

The current S92A is not too bad (but it should not have termination as an option), but the real danger is the TPPA negotiations. The US is demanding as part of those negotiations a total rewrite of our intellectual property laws in their favour. This is a price we should not be willing to pay, unless the trade gains from the deal are massive. To date the NZ Government has been resisting the demands. I hope they continue to do so.

Christchurch gets earthquakes and Auckland got a tornado.

What is heading Wellington’s way? Tsunami?

Whale Oil blogs on the McCully air force plane to Vanuatu:

I thought I was defi­nately onto a bash­ing of immense pro­por­tions here. But as I learned from a cou­ple of screw up over the past few years, fact check­ing is paramount.

I checked inter­na­tional flights into and out of Van­u­atu. This is where the story started to come un-raveled. The tim­ing of the meet­ing meant that inter­na­tional flights didn’t pro­vide use­ful con­nec­tions. I think from mem­ory that if they had used com­mer­cial flights then all the Pacific diplo­mats in atten­dence would ahve had to have stayed over 3 more days before the next com­mer­cial flight out from Vanuatu.

Although the RNZAF Boe­ing may have gone over next to empty and con­fig­ured for VIP travel at short notice, how­ever it returned with a greater num­ber of pax on the return leg to New Zealand (I didn’t receive any pas­sen­ger details, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to find out who has used the ser­vice after the fact if one was that inquis­i­tive), one can only spec­u­late at to who they may be, but as even politi­cians don’t repli­cate that fast it seems log­i­cal that for­eign dig­ni­taries were using the ser­vice and New Zealand as a trans­port hub, which is hardly unheard of, and hardly the travel rort which the first leg made it appear.

Whale has shown no hestitation putting the boot into National MPs over perks, when he thinks it is justified. In fact i doubt any blogger has been as consistent as he has, in attacking MP spending. So when he says this is no big issue, I tend to believe him.

I had a similiar issue to McCully when I was in Noumea. The lack of commercial flights meant I had to stay for six days, for a two day conference. I’m pretty sure Murray would have been happy to holiday in Vanuatu for a few days, but instead he did some diplomacy by transoporting a few of his pacific peers back with him.

I recall Helen Clark got an air force flight back from Australia when there was a problem with Ansett, so this faux outrage at use of air force is fairly tiresome.