Andrea Vance at Stuff reports:

An inquiry is under way at the troubled students’ association at the centre of fraud allegations over concerns that it owes up to $200,000 in unpaid tax.

Police are investigating after up to $1 million was drained from the bank accounts of the Porirua-based Whitireia Independent Students Association.

So WISA is acting just like UNITE – illegally keeping the PAYE from their employees. I imagine WISA has also campaigned on higher taxes to fund more student support. The irony.

It will be a great day when the VSM legislation is passed. Compulsory membership doesn’t provide any incentives for responsible management.

John Hartevelt at Stuff reports:

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman has attacked Hone Harawira’s new Mana Party as a throwback to the last century.

Mr Harawira launched his new party in Auckland at the weekend but other parties have quickly distanced themselves from it, with both Labour and National ruling out a working relationship.

Mr Harawira, independent since he quit the Maori Party, has given his proxy vote to the Greens.

At his party launch on Saturday, former Green MPs Sue Bradford and Nandor Tanczos spoke in support of the Mana Party. Ms Bradford could run as a candidate.

Dr Norman said “there might be a few votes” for the new party, but “maybe not a lot”. “I mean, who wants to relive the battles of the 1980s and 1990s? We’re in 2011 for God’s sake. We need a progressive force that actually deals with where we are now, not tries to refight the 1980s and 1990s.

I am not surprised that Dr Norman has swiped at the Mana Party. You look at the hard left policies they advocate, and it is pretty clear you are not going to get any National voters defecting to Mana. Hard to imagine the Phil Goff led Labour Party will lose too many votes either. The two biggest potential sources of votes are the Greens and the Maori Party.

This is superb. Not sure who did it, but well done.

Hat Tip: Brian Edwards

Throng blogs:

TVNZ claims that 60 Minutes had an average audience of 130,060 in April, quoting Nielsen TAM (5+).  We publish these same ratings each day on Throng, and based on the figures we have been sent, the average audience was approximately 257,000.  TVNZ’s figure is roughly half that!

The press release gets even more dramatic by saying 60 Minutes has lost “almost 300,000 viewers per week since February”.  Hold on a minute: that’s an awful lot of viewers to be losing.  With over 8 weeks in March and April, that would have given 60 Minutes over 2.4 million viewers in February – more than the total number of Kiwis watching the Royal Wedding!

“[60 Minutes] had an average of 422,120 viewers watching each week in February” is misleading as there was only one episode of show screened in February!  It was a special 30 minute Christchurch earthquake special on the day after the quake, so not surprising that it rated so highly.  

So TVNZ was comparing a one off special the day after the earthquake, with normal ratings for 60 minutes, and using it to try and con people that 60 Minutes had a plummeting audience.

Someone in One News should explain to TVNZ Marketing that dodgy press releases from the broadcaster undermine their trustworthiness as a new source.

The more I read about the Osama operation, the more you realise what a risk it was. This wasn’t some dumb luck, or bombs hitting the right place. It is a story of intelligence agencies piecing together a puzzle over many months, and then havign enough trust in the intelligence, but also the SEALs, to send a team in.  If the mission had turned out the same as Jimmy Carter’s helicopters in Iran, then Obama would probably be joining Carter as a one term President.

But the mission was flawless – no soldiers dead, no civilians dead, no neighbour destroyed etc.

Now this will not guarantee Obama is re-elected, but it sure will give his poll numbers a boost for a fair while. And it will pretty much permamently put heed to any notion of him not being tough enough on the war on terror.

Nate Silver blogs:

Historically, the correlation between a president’s overall approval rating and his rating on foreign affairs is stronger than is the case with his rating on the economy. If you place the two variables into a regression equation, it finds that foreign affairs is the more important component, although both are clearly statistically significant.

That is a surprise, as common wisdom is economic issues trump everything.

Unless the economic indicators significantly outperform consensus expectations, the election is still liable to be fairly close, with Mr. Obama hardly assured of coming out on top.

I think one of the boggest factors will be the quality of the Republican candidate also. Donald Trump is threatening to turn the race into a joke.

Conservative PM Steven Harper has pulled off what some said was the impossible, and has not only been re-elected, but as a majority Government.

There are five “major” parties in Canadian politics. they are:

1. Conservatives (a merger of predecessor parties that often fought each other)
2. Liberals – traditional centre-left party, but business-friendly. Been in Govt most of the time.
3. New Democratic Party – a hard left party, mainly with support in Vancouver and Toronto
4. Bloc Québécois – the separatists in Quebec
5. Greens – support has ranged up to 10%, but no seats in Parliament yet

So what happened:

1. Conservatives went from 143 seats (38%) to 166 (40%)
2. Liberals went from 77 seats (26%) to 35 (19%)
3. BQ went from 49 seats (10%) to 4 (6%)
4. NDP went from 37 seats (18%) to 102 (31%)
5. Greens went from 0 seats (7%) to 1 (4%)

The Liberals have gone from being the natural party of Government to a minor party. The only consolation is the Conservatives have been there and done that previously. Their leader, Michael Ignatieff, is a former academic and never came across as a strong leader. He has lost his actual seat in Parliament, as has the BQ leader. It is not unknown for PMs to lose seats as they get swept from office, but almost unheard of for an Opposition Leader to lose his seat. I suspect Ignatieff now regrets forcing an early election.

The BQ are basically wiped out, and this is a huge blow to the separatists – but good for Canada.

Harper is the big winner. He has been pilloried by the left since he became leader. They said he was unelectable. But he has now won three elections, and increased his number of seats at each election.

Jack Layton is a big winner, and at the age of 60 is now the Leader of the Opposition. He may be the next Prime Minister also. But he will need to watch out for the Libs and BQ who will target him as much as the Conservatives.

The NDP are pretty hard left. They wish to ban private healthcare for example.

The Law Commission has completed its report reviewing our drug laws. Their key proposals include:

• A mandatory cautioning scheme for all personal possession and use offences that come to the attention of the police
• Removing minor drug offenders from the criminal justice system and providing greater opportunities for those in need of treatment to access it.
• A full scale review of the current drug classification system which is used to determine restrictiveness of controls and severity of penalties, addressing existing inconsistencies and focusing solely on assessing a drug’s risk of harm, including social harm.
• Making separate funding available for the treatment of offenders through the justice sector to support courts when they impose rehabilitative sentences to address alcohol and drug dependence problems;
• Consideration of a pilot drug court, allowing the government to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of deferring sentencing of  some  offenders until they had undergone court-imposed alcohol and/or drug treatment

I think the Law Commission’s proposals are very sound, and they are not a “soft line on drugs“, as Stuff says.

Giving people a criminal record over a one time possession of small amounts of cannabis is silly, considering arund half the adult population have smoked cannabis. I’m not one of them incidentially.

I hope the Government does not reject this report knee-jerk, and doesn’t rule out any changes which might lead to better outcomes for New Zealand and New Zealanders. The proposed warning system for drug use provides good incentives for people to stop.

Derek Cheng at the NZ Herald reports:

Labour leader Phil Goff also ruled out working with the Mana Party and called the byelection a farce.

“There’s 21 sitting days from the time when a new MP is sworn in for Te Tai Tokerau to when the House is adjourned for the election campaign.

That’s a useful number to remember. So effectively Hone’s by-election will cost $25,000 per sitting day the MP will be there for. Plus on top of that you have Hone’s higher salary and extra parliamentary funding.

Don Brash has just announced that John Boscawen will be ACT’s parliamentary leader. This is a rapid promotion for a first term MP. Presumably he remains Deputy Leader and will stay on in that role after the election, if re-elected.

Congratulations to John for his promotion.

UPDATE: Rodney Hide is remaining Local Government Minister, on the grounds he is steering important legislation through Parliament. I suspect the real reason is that if Rodney was forced onto the backbench, then he would have no incentive to play nice. Rodney has confirmed he will retire at the election.

Boscawen is surrendering his portfolios. Not sure if they will be picked up by a current Minister or a new Minister. And Hilary Calvert has become the party whip. So Heather is the only one missing out. So what salary changes are there:

• Rodney remains on $209,100
• John Boscawen goes from $209,100 to $155,780 (the party leader rate)
• Hilary Calvert goes from $134,800 to $148,500
• Sir Roger and Heather remain on $134,800

Malcolm McMillan writes at Stuff:

A former police detective who has spent the last five years raising awareness of the dangers of methamphetamine has been selected as National’s new Northland candidate.

Mike Sabin will replace veteran Northland MP John Carter, who is retiring from politics after 24 years.

Sabin, of Coopers Beach, was the founder of MethCon, which he sold in September last year.

He was selected from a short list of five candidates for the job. The other candidates were Matt King, Ken Rintoul, Mark Tan and Sarah Davies.

Selection was via votes cast by 275 delegates with Sabin being announced the winner on Sunday.

Every single one of those delegates were local party members. Each branch gets a delegate for every 15 members, so the electorate as a whole has over 4,000 paid up party members. Over 10% of the electorate is a party member!

Congratulations to Mike Sabin for his victory. He has very big shoes to fill.

Green co-leader Russel Norman tweeted:

Call me old fashioned but aren’t we different to terrorists because we don’t assassinate people and we adhere to rule of law?

As most of the world celebrates, the Greens demonise the United States.

Does Dr Norman think that the US should have knocked on the front door of the highly fortified compound, and asked bin Laden to come out and surrender? That would have probably resulted in a death toll of hundreds – and possibly lead to bin Laden escaping.

When will the Greens realse that heading up a terrorist army is not the same thing as being some thug who held up a dairy with a gun.

The US action was legal under US law. It was authorised, and bin Laden was a legitimate military target. Again, he was not some bank robber, but head of a global army of terrorists.

Also Dr Norman misses the key point of terrorists. Terrorists deliberately attack civilians and the more dead civilians the more sucessful they deem their attack to be. In military operations, the more dead civilians, the bigger the failure it has been.

President Obama about to hold a press conference. Have heard a rumour he will announce that Osama bin Laden is dead. Will find out in a few minutes.

1440: Obama yet to speak, but the Osama speculation is now widespread and being reported. A good day for mankind, so to speak. Not the end of terrorism, but a major blow. Yay. Obama now expected on at 1450 NZST.

1443: Seems the US has his body. I guess this means Donald Trump won’t demand a copy of the long form death certificate 🙂

1510: It seems he was killed in Pakistan, not far from the capital. No statement yet.

1536: It’s now official, with Obama making his statement. I wonder if the delay was teleprompter broke down 🙂

More seriously while this is news that will be welcomed by hudnreds of millions, my thoughts are with the families of the 9/11 victims. For them, this is more personal. Today is the equivalent of having the guy who killed your Mum or Dad sent to prison for life. The guy primarily responsible for their deaths is no longer a threat to anyone else.

1539: The operation was only launched today on Obama’s orders. No US deaths and they got Bin Laden’s body. Obama is about to shoot up in the polls. He is no Jimmy Carter.

The other speculation doing the circles is that rather than decide which two ACT MPs continue as Ministers, Don may have ACT surrender their portfolios, which would give ACT greater room to criticise the Government (but still maintaining a confidence and supply agreement).

Thw downsides for ACT in doing so is that two of their MPs will take a huge pay cut. Also they will lose a dozen staff or so. In return they get around $130,000 extra Leader’s Office funding.

In political terms they will lose the ability to manage government policy in their assigned portfoio areas, and the publicity they get from that.

However they would gain a greater ability to differentitate themselves from the Government, and be seen as a party focused on principle, not power.

Again this is speculation, and I doubt anyone knows for sure what Don will decide (and it will be his decision, not a caucus decision).

Copy of building-status-list-270411

I’ve been sent a spreadsheet, which I’ve embedded below. It appears to be a list of all the buildings in the CBD, and whether it is intended they be demolished, partially demolished or made safe. Not sure if this is publicly available or not , but figure I’ll blog it here so any Christchuch readers can check out the likely fate of their buildings.

The actual spreadsheet is downloadable above, or you can view it in Scribd below.

Copy of Building Status List 270411

UPDATE: The list is public at http://canterburyearthquake.org.nz/demolitions/

Keith Locke will be very upset reading Wikileaks, according to Stuff:

A discreet diplomatic lunch, a free trip to Washington and assurance of “assistance” from the US Embassy in Wellington have been used to blunt the Green Party’s “radical positions on many issues”, a leaked American diplomatic cable reveals.

The Americans seduced Green co-leaders Metiria Turei and Russel Norman, the latter with a free trip to Washington, and managed, over a lunch, to get a commitment from list MP Kennedy Graham “to turn (to the embassy) for any assistance he may need in the future.”

Accepting Uncle Sam’s free lunchs and trips to Washington will not go down well with the Comrades.

But to be fair to the Greens, these cables are just standard stuff from Embassies. They have to make themselves sound relevant and important, so of course they talk up a meeting or a lunch.

Sarah Harvey reports:

Traffic waiting times could be slashed, productivity would soar and frustration levels fall if congestion fees were introduced to New Zealand, the Business Council for Sustainable Development says.

Congestion fees, where drivers pay a premium to drive on some roads during peak hours, have cut traffic issues in London and Stockholm, and fast lanes introduced in the United States, where people pay to use the lanes, have reduced congestion.

I am a big fan of congestion fees or congestion charging. It is a very good market response to congestion problems.

The best use of congestion pricing I have read about is in one US state. They have two routes to the airport. One route is free, but is often congested and takes a significant period of time.

The otehr route has a variable charge. They guarantee you that you will be able to get to the airport in 20 minutes. Most of the time the charge is just $2 or so, but if the number of cars on the road gets too high, meaning the trip may take more than 20 minutes, then the charge increases. Sometimes the charge has even gone up as high as $25 – so that people will only use the road if they are really desperate to do so.

This provides an excellent choice – those who value time and those who value money can both be satisfied.

Just heard some speculation that Don Brash may appoint Sir Roger Douglas as his parliamentary leader. I have no idea if it is accurate speculation or not, but let’s look at what logic may lie below it.

If John Boscawen remains Deputy Leader, then Heather Roy may feel resentment that her support of Don hasn’t gained her old job back.

If Don appoints Heather, then Rodney and his supporters may feel this is a slap in the face and go feral.

Appointing Sir Roger could avoid both those scenarios. Plus it reinforces the Brash focus on reducing spending. Finally it also means a seamless transition as presumably Sir Roger will retire at the election, so he leads the parliamentary wing up until the election, and Brash afterwards (if they get re-elected).

As I said, I don’t know how accurate the speculation is – but it doesn’t seem totally implausible.

Good news. Tomorrow is Tax Freedom Day. This means everything you have earnt up to tomorrow has gone to the Government to fund its spending, and you get to keep everything from tomorrow onwards.

I’d love tax freedom day to be held in March. That won’t happen anytime soon, but what would be realistic is a goal of having government spending no more than 30% of GDP. I’d like the Fiscal Responsibility Act amended so that a Government has to publicly state what its target or limit for government spending will be. This would not be binding, but would give some transparency over Government policy, and allow a more informed choice between parties.

A couple of commentators have said that the by-election is justified as Hone needs a new mandate, having left the Maori Party. Now I partly agree with this argument, but they miss a key point. If it was about a new mandate, then Hone could have called a by-election in February when he was pushed out of the Maori Party.

This is not about a mandate. It is about having greater taxpayer funding for the Mana Party.

Mind you part of me wants the Mana Party to do well. getting John Minto into Parliament will help the centre-right no end. And with Sue Bradford and Nandor Tanczos backing the Mana Party, you wonder what will happen with the Green Party vote.

Danyl at Dim-Post:

Sometimes I just want to strap the entire spectrum of left-wing politicians into dentists chairs and patiently explain to them – using chisels and barbed wire – that most the state’s wealth comes from ordinary people working hard and then giving a huge chunk of their income to the government, so spending it is a sacred trust not an endless opportunity to squander it all on gimmicks and whims and political stunts.

This is in relation to the $500,000 to be wasted on a by-election.

Bevan Hurley at the HoS reports:

Jailed Kiwi Sharon Armstrong knew she was carrying a secret parcel in a hidden compartment in her suitcase – but she is adamant she had no idea the parcel contained drugs. …

In the interview yesterday, the former Wellington civil servant said she was tricked into believing she was taking a top secret business contract to a man in London that she had been dating online for six months.

“I know I have been incredibly stupid,” she said. “But I was in love with him.

“He said that it was documents and a contract. I don’t know any more about it and I didn’t ask. I just thought it was really important and that the contract was worth a lot of money.

“I know I am innocent, my family and friends know I am innocent. If you ask them, they will say my biggest fault is that I am too trusting.”

There is trusting, and there is being a moron. I’m sorry, but you’re in Latin America, and the guy you have never met tells you there is a secret compartment and parcel, and tells you not to tell Customs you didn not pack the bags yourself, and no warning bells go off?

Why the hell would a contract need to be hidden in a secret compartment, and could anyone think a contract would weigh 5 kgs?

I have no way of knowing if Ms Armstrong is the most gullible person alive, but frankly I can’t see how she will escape going to jail because her “excuse” is so weak.