Todd has done a blog post responding to some of the comments made here yesterday:

Yesterday, I fired a link to my KiwiRail/Hillside treatise through to prominent blogger David Farrar at KiwiBlog (my Brother In-Law’s, Brother and a very nice chap) in the hope of generating some discussion on this issue. Well I sure was successful in that regard. Check it out here:

Until this afternoon, I would have considered myself a fairly ‘right wing’ kind of guy when it comes to economic matters. Apparently not.

Judging from the comment stream I am actually a flag-waving neo-socialist, protectionist, pushing a thinly veiled Hugo Chavez/ Castro agenda. Crikey!

Welcome to Kiwiblog comments 🙂

Todd covers a number of points:

1. SOE’s should be run like businesses.

I agree entirely. The question is – what kind of business?

 Sarah & I have been in business for 10 years and we make purchasing decisions based on a raft of considerations outside of pure cost. We print hundreds of thousands of our postcards annually and we do so in Dunedin. We are acutely aware that we are paying about 15-20% more in Dunedin than from an Auckland printer – and at least 50% more than printing via Hong Kong. This is all money that would drop directly into our family’s coffers.

 The reason we choose to pay this premium is that we lived in Dunedin for 9 years (we no longer do). The printing industry in Dunedin has been through the wringer over the past 5 years and I have glimpsed the personal wreckage – marriages destroyed, houses lost and much worse, that ensued as business after business went under. Dunedin is a small city – ‘working class’ live next door to management – this all happened in my community.

 I don’t drink beer with anyone from our printers, we don’t have barbecues – and they don’t take us out on boozy lunches. They do a fantastic job, they look after us if things go wrong and we know that our money pays a few days wages every year.

And yes, we pass those costs on to the end user (some years more successfully than others 🙂

 This kind of fuzzy, emotive thinking may well be part of the reason that we don’t drive a Bentley Continental. Sarah & I would undoubtedly be better off if I could divorce myself from my desire to contribute to my community and do my printing offshore via an online tendering process. We are not wired that way – if that makes us Castro & Bride-incarnate so be it.

The rest of Todd’s response is on his blog (linked above). Keep the debate going until Xmas!

Also, while it is too late for Xmas presents, if you are looking for nice gifts for any occassions, Todd and Sarah have a wonderful range of photo cards, prints, blocks bookmarks, notepads, magnets and postcards.

I love this photo of the yellow-eyed penguins. They have a good range of wildlife photos, with a bias towards penguins.

And I adore this shot from Lake Tekapo. It is so hard to beat the South Island scenery.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand’s economy contracted in the third quarter and growth in the second quarter was revised down to a wafer-thin 0.1 per cent, showing the nation came close to a double-dip recession this year.

Gross domestic product shrank 0.2 per cent in the three months ended September 30, according to Statistics New Zealand, compared to the 0.2 per cent growth predicted in a Reuters survey of economists and the 0.3 per cent forecast from the Reserve Bank. Growth in the second quarter was revised down from 0.2 per cent.

I guess we can all agree now the Reserve Bank hiking interest rates was rather premature!

The Remuneration Authority has heeded the PM’s advice, and has not done a massive pay rise to compensate for loss of the international travel perk.

The perk had been valued at over $9,000 and this value was deducted from MPs remuneration to get their base salary. However the compensation has been set at only $2,000 – recognising that not all MPs were using the perk. This should mean the abolition leads to a net saving for taxpayers. There is a warning that this may just be an interim adjustment until they get advice from IRD on what the value of the travel entitlement was deemed to be.

The general wage incraese is 1.4%, which is at the lower end of the public sector. Also worth noting that there was no increase at all last year.

So the new salaries are:

1. PM $400,500
2. DPM $282,500
3. Cabinet Ministers, Speaker and Oppn Leader $249,100
4. Ministers outside Cabinet $209,100
5. Chief Government Whip $184,640
6. Deputy Leader Labour $180,420
7. Labour Senior Whip $179,600
8. Deputy Speaker $174,200
9. Green Party Leader $161,230
10. Green Whip $152,130
11. Assistant Speakers  & Select Committee Chairs $148,500
12. ACT Whip, Maori Whip, Nat Junior Whip, Lab Junior Whip $148,500
13. Progressive Party Leader $148,500
14. Select Committee Deputy Chairs $139,100
15. Other MPs $134,800

Have a read of this one about the visit of Anna Nicole Smith to the Bahamas:

Other leaked cables released by WikiLeaks and published by the Guardian dealt with Anna Nicole Smith in the Bahamas.

She may have been just a “B-list celebrity”, but she hit the Bahamas like a hurricane, spreading scandals that toppled a string of officials and endangered the whole Government, the cables said.

The Government fell two months after the last cable was written.

“Not since Category 4 Hurricane Betsy made landfall in 1965 has one woman done as much damage in Nassau,” reads a colourful November 2006 document, apparently written by Deputy Chief of Mission D. Brent Hardt.

“Lying in disarray in her wake are Doctor’s Hospital, the Coroner’s Court, the Department of Immigration, local mega-lawyers Callenders and Co, formerly popular Minister of Immigration Shane Gibson, and possibly Prime Minister [Perry] Christie’s PLP government,” the diplomat added.

The cables described how Smith’s remarkably rapid success in gaining permanent residency led to the ouster of Gibson while the alleged bungling of her son’s treatment and death cut short the careers of several lesser officials while energising the political opposition and the press.

What a pity she never visited New Zealand before she died!

This is very well done.

RNZ report:

The Commerce Commission says the cost of switching phone calls and texts between mobile networks should drop sharply from April next year.

In a draft decision, the regulator says the cost of mobile termination rates should be cut from about 17 cents a minute to 4.7 cents a minute.

The price would gradually drop to 3.9 cents by April 2014.

For texts, the commission is recommending what is known as a “bill and keep model”, under which phone companies do not charge each other for routing messages, partly because the cost is already low.

This means that telcos can now afford to do text packages that won’t be restricted to recipients on their networks only.

Just under 5c a minute for phone termination is not too bad either.

Todd Sissons, my sister-in-law’s brother-in-law (Todd is married to Sarah, sister of Susie married to my brother Matt) has done a rare blog post on the decision by Kiwirail to have their new trains made in China, instead of Dunedin:

I have always found it remarkably easy not to get all het’ up about other people’s problems. However, over the past couple of years I have been doing a lot of thinking about ‘the economy’ and I have slowly come to realise that individual and group woes have a tendency to compound over time into big globs of ‘economic ugly’ that inevitably effect almost all of us working class shlubs, particularly in a country as small as NZ.

 KiwiRail’s recently announced decision to outsource the purchase of 300 container wagons to Chinese manufacturing concern CNR has not just het’ me up – it’s got me positively incendiary.

 This decision is bollocks – there is no other way to put it. Actually there are several better ways to put it – but hey, this is a family friendly blog…..

 The Southland Daily Times reports KiwiRail’s CEO, Jim Quinn, as saying that this decision does not imperil jobs at it’s own Hillside and Hutt Valley workshops. He proceeds to reinforce this carved-in-wet-sand assurance by further stating that he cannot guarantee that there will always be enough work for them…..[unless, of course, he did something like, lets see…award them Kiwi-Rail’s own contracts].

 I have had personal dealings with Hillside. Back in 2005/06 Sarah & I photographed the ‘Men & Women of Hillside’ for the Toll NZ calendar – that’s where the photo comes from. I gained a great deal of respect for the operation – and it’s workers during these photo shoots.

 Hillside is not inhabited by a bunch of over-entitled, Teamster style union shirkers tossing handfuls of bolts in the general direction of a locomotive. The carpark is not chocka with $60,000 SUVs and I never spotted a lunch room filled with workers taking 2 hour seniority breaks.

 They are a highly skilled, workforce building remarkable products on a scale that I have not seen previously in NZ. Quite simply, they are bloody good at building big heavy stuff and they do it all – from foundry to paint shop to high tech electrical controls – in about the most Dickensian agglomeration of buildings still standing in the Southern Hemisphere.

 The bottom line is this – Hillside Engineering is about as competive and lean as a manufacturer can be in New Zealand. In 10 years time when China is no longer cheap we will need these skills again in NZ, so we had better not lose them in the interim.

 The reason for Hillside’s failed bid on this project was surprise, surprise – cost. To my knowledge, CNR have not promised to deliver a 40% lighter, self-loading, web-savvy super-wagon that comes complete with it’s own facebook and twitter accounts. Nope, CNR are 25% cheaper than Hillside on this $29 million contract and that’s it. By my calculations that equates to about $7.25 million – so for expediency I’ll call it an even $7M between friends which, admittedly, seems like a lot of money – but is it in the scheme of things?

 Now, I don’t fully understand the operating rationale behind SOE’s – I would naively assume that it would be to utilise and safeguard state owned assets for the betterment of the broader New Zealand economy. What I do understand is that the previous Labour Government stumped up at least $665 million to purchase what is quite possibly the least successful monopoly in commercial history. If we had three privately owned railroad competitors in NZ, I could understand that the imperative to cut costs would exist – but we don’t** and we as the taxpayer are stuck with Kiwi-Rail (at least until after the next election) whether we like it or not – I for one do like it.

 So if we own a monopoly why don’t we just do what all good monopolies do best – pass the extra costs on to the end user in order to deliver a more holistic package of benefits to the NZ economy?

 If we are already at least $665 million plus in the hole, what the hell is another $7m to keep New Zealanders working at a time like this? Bernard Hickey summed it up beautifully when he said that we need to be much more nationalistic about these issues – damned right we do.

 Like most of the developed world, manufacturing is more expensive here because we live in a country where we expect a living wage, social safety nets and a safe working environment. Inevitably we operate under A LOT of Government penned legislation that safeguards these expectations and adds A LOT of costs in the process. If an SOE cannot afford to pay the true cost of manufacturing in NZ using it’s own workers, who else can? We might as well just shut up shop tomorrow.

 Let’s face it. Hillside will never be able to beat the Chinese on price. Everything is cheaper in China – in fact Kiwi Rail might like to consider outsourcing it’s CEO role to China, I am sure they could easily exceed a 25% saving on that.

 So the question has to be what do we stand to lose from this deal? Are we really saving $7 million?

 I would argue that from the get-go the New Zealand loses at least 12 million dollars by sending this deal to China. (apples for apples – The Hillside deal has a $7 million ‘buy NZ’ premium and I am assuming $10m imported materials which is a capital outflow from NZ – meaning an additional $12 million leaves NZ under the CNR deal). I am a macro-economics gumby*, but as far as I can see, The CNR deal ensures that this additional $12m is off to China, and unless someone in the CNR Mansion*** is in the market for a few thousand tonne of kiwifruit or a nice package deal holiday to NZ it ain’t coming back except as part of Bill English’s weekly $300 million loan package.

 Which segues rather neatly to my next point – let’s look at that $7 million in context – as we have previously established $7 million is a shed load of money to most of us (though up until last week $7 million was probably Mark Hotchin’s monthly living costs). But $7 million is a mere 2.3% of the aforementioned weekly rogering that we are already taking as a country – I can’t be bothered looking it up, but I suspect that $7 million pays for about 6 hours of dole and DPB payments at present.

 Continuation of this accounting-centric purchasing at Kiwi Rail could well ensure that the dole, DPB, or worse, Australia, is where a large portion the 180 skilled workers of Hillside could soon be headed. What is the downstream cost of that? Is it worth the risk for a measly $7 million? I for one don’t think so and I would be happy to foot my portion of that bill as a taxpayer.

 But do we really have to foot the bill?

 I always like to chunk business problems down to the smallest denominator – it brings perspective and big problems often look a lot more resolvable.

 Firstly, lets spread the $7m extra cost over the 300 carriages. That’s about $23,000 extra per carriage – significant yes, but wagons don’t curl up and die after a year – though it is entirely possible that they could be tagged to death in South Auckland within their first week of service.

 I am no train spotter, but looking at Kiwi Rail’s current rolling stock it would appear that a wagon can ride the rails for at least 97 years and survive two world wars – but I’ll adopt a more economically palatable 10 year timeframe. That’s a paltry $2,300 per annum across their life span – we’ll apply some snazzy time value of money guess-timation and make that $2500 per annum to give the bean-counters a return on investment. That’s less than $7 a day – or the equivalent of a Big Mac combo a day we have to recover to keep 180 Kiwis in work.

 I have no idea how rail container freight is charged out (volume, time, or weight) but trucking 2.5 cubic metres from Alexandra to Auckland return cost us $750 return last month so I am guessing a container would cost thousands for the same trip. Will Fonterra**** really balk at the equivalent of $7 or even $25 dollars a day in charges? I doubt it.

 So what to do? It’s simple really – CANCEL THE CONTRACT maybe pay some penalties to keep the diplomatic corp from squirming at embassy dinners and bring the jobs home. We all know that the Chinese Government would have few qualms reciprocating if their manufacturing sector looked like ours.

 Do the right thing, CANCEL THE CONTRACT.

 I’ll leave it to economists to do battle with Todd over the economics, but will just make one point in response. If we put up barriers to overseas firms being able to win NZ contracts, then inevitably NZ firms will face barriers to being able to win contracts overseas.

Stuff reports:

The failure of government agencies to halt appalling abuse of a nine-year-old girl has led the children’s commissioner to call for a broad independent report.

A neighbour said she called Housing New Zealand, a teacher says her school contacted the Education Ministry, and Child, Youth and Family were monitoring the girl’s family.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett will this morning review a fast-tracked interim report by CYF about how the girl was left with her family despite concerns raised about her welfare.

But Children’s Commissioner John Angus said a wider, independent report into the failure by multiple government agencies may be required. “It looks like the systems have failed this child.”

I think a wider independent inquiry is needed, but note it may not be possible until the court cases are done. I want to know who did the school tell, and how often; why did CYFS not pick up the abuse; what did Housing NZ do etc etc.

The school board’s chairwoman said the school followed the right procedures in dealing with government agencies.

A next-door neighbour of the couple said she rang Housing NZ and told three different case managers of her concerns for the couple’s children. “I knew there was something wrong.”

The good thing is that people did report their concerns – the teacher and the neighbours did the right thing. But somewhere along the way there was a failure with agencies. Not good enough.

Trevor Mallard blogs:

I’ve not been a supporter of mandatory reporting of child abuse. One of those finely balanced 60/40 things. Not die in a ditch for me.

The evidence we got was that lots of kids would not tell teachers counsellors nurses about abuse if they knew Police or CYFS would automatically be involved.

Every time we have a bad case where the system fails a child I ask myself whether we have it right

I’m not sure if such a policy would have made a difference in this case, but generally I do support mandatory reporting. I think the fear of less reporting of abuse is supposition.

Reuters reports:

Venezuela’s parliament approved tighter regulation of the internet on Monday in the latest of a package of laws to entrench President Hugo Chavez’s socialist “revolution” before a new Assembly is sworn in next month.

The bill prohibits online content attacking “good customs”, disrespecting public officials or inciting violence against the president.

Many of Venezuela’s lively news forums currently operate without a moderator or editor filtering out extremist or vulgar content.

But under the new regulations, all internet traffic is supposed to pass through a single, government-controlled access point.

The bill has stoked opposition fears about surveillance and censorship and concerned some free speech activists, who have drawn comparisons with how China and Cuba police the web.

Chavez is the new Castro. I doubt he will ever surrender power.

Whale Oil has highlighted two Wikileaks cables which show Phil Goff supporting not just the SAS returning to Afghanistan, but also in 2006 sending troops back into Iraq.

First the SAS quote:

Goff told the General that he could expect a positive outcome on redeploying the PRT past Sept 2006 and was reasonably assured the SAS (Special Forces) would deploy again after regeneration.

And the Iraq quote:

Goff noted Senator McCain’s comment that New Zealand should think about replicating its success in Bamiyan by heading a PRT in Iraq.

The Minister said he told McCain that New Zealand was not averse to doing so once the security situation had stabilized.

If I was a Young Labour member who has stuck up posters about how Don Brash would send troops to Iraq, I’d be looking for a new party, or at least a new leader, about now.

Fran O’Sullivan also whacks at Goff:

Frankly it’s been rather delicious to watch Phil Goff squirm on the head of a proverbial pin as he flatly denies the insinuation in a WikiLeaks cable that the former Labour Government was prepared to trade “blood for milk” in Iraq. …

Inevitably, there will have been a number of factors in the former Labour Cabinet’s decision to deploy New Zealand engineers alongside the British contingent in Basra.

But it would be pushing credulity to claim the Clark Government did not consider the clear desire by New Zealand business – particularly Fonterra – to ensure its Iraqi trade did not go down the tubes when the postwar reconstruction contracts were doled out. Particularly when America still controlled the game.

I think it was a good thing that Helen Clark and Phil Goff were mindful of NZ’s commercial interests, when they decide to send troops to Iraq.

Goff, while speaking about nations like France and Germany which had also opposed the invasion, said then that “they will want to be part of whatever benefits will flow from reconstructing Iraq and rebuilding the relationship [with the United States]”.

Given their respective comments in 2003 it would be fatuous indeed to believe the decision to commit troops to the reconstruction effort did not have a tinge of economic reality.

More than a tinge I say.

Goff’s problem is that he is embarrassed by the WikiLeaks revelation.

He should look closer to home.

He had no compunction using notes of a private meeting between former National leader Don Brash and a visiting United States delegation to claim New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy “would be gone by lunchtime” under a National government.

The WikiLeaks documents have something to say on this score too.

Former United States ambassador Bill McCormick wrote in November 2006 that Goff had “misquoted” an Mfat staffer’s notes from the meeting to claim that Brash had promised the nuclear ban would be “gone by lunchtime”.

Julian Assange at least releases the full cables and notes, unlike Phil Goff who broke a decades-long convention and quoted a small extract out of context.

The Herald reports:

What Betty White did in 2010 doesn’t usually happen: an 88-year-old actress, with more than six decades in Hollywood, suddenly became the object of adulation of the Facebook-connected masses, which campaigned for her to host the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, boosting its ratings and helping her set ratings records for her own show.

After a year remarkable for a star of any age, White has been voted the Entertainer of the Year by members of The Associated Press.

I loved Betty on Boston Legal, and also on the Comedy Central roast of William Shatner. There’s something disturbing, but hilarious, about a (then) 85 year old who can be so filthy.

Adam Bennett reports in the Herald:

The Government has turned down Hong Kong listed Natural Dairy NZ’s controversial bid to buy the Crafar dairy farms.

Land Information Minister Maurice Williamson and Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson said they had declined Natural Dairy’s Overseas Investment Office application to buy the 16 farms from receivers in a deal thought to be worth about $200 million. …

“We concur with the Overseas Investment Office’s recommendation that consent should be declined,” the Ministers said.

Not exactly a surprise. It will be interesting to see what the receivers now do.

The Herald reports:

Independent MP Chris Carter was going to use his international travel perk for an overseas holiday but cancelled it after media found out, it was reported tonight.

Mr Carter booked flights for himself and his partner Peter Kaiser, business class to Colombo, Sri Lanka, just before Speaker Lockwood Smith last month stopped MPs from using the taxpayer subsidy for holidays, TV3 News reported.

It would have cost an estimated $13,900 – with 90 per cent paid for from the public purse.

Would have been somewhat fitting if the last use of the MP perk had been by Chris Carter.

Mr Carter is quitting politics at next year’s election, and as a former MP he will be able to use the international travel rebate for the rest of his life, without media scrutiny.

It may give him the incentive to quite before the election, so he can start using it earlier.

And Kate Chapman at Stuff also reports:

Mr Carter was not keen to discuss details of the trip when contacted last night. “We have cancelled it. We’ve lost the deposit. We’ve cancelled. We’re not going. Ok, fair enough? You guys have had yet another victory. So thanks, that’s the end of the discussion.”

Poor Chris. This transparency thing is a real burden.

Mr Carter has accused Dr Smith’s office of leaking the details of his trip.

“The leak had the date I was leaving, the hotel I was staying [at] in Singapore, the flight numbers – the only people that know that are Parliamentary Travel and the Speaker’s office, I’m quite sure that Parliamentary Travel wouldn’t have leaked it, so that only leaves one suspect,” he said. The leak was ” incredibly pathetic, vindictive and spiteful”.

Dr Smith has denied leaking the documents and said he did not even know about Mr Carter’s planned trip.

“I didn’t want to comment because I didn’t want to lend dignity to his accusation, but I didn’t even know he was going anywhere, so there was no way I could possibly have leaked anything.”

I have no idea who leaked it, but I agree unlikely to be parliamentary travel. The parliamentary travel office probably have awarded Chris the title of “Most Valued Customer” for his outstanding contributions to their sales targets.

Was interested that the second most popular term for finding Kiwiblog (after Kiwiblog itself) is “Julian Assange”. I was surprised I would be on the first page of Google hits for his name, and even more surprised when I stuck his name in that Kiwiblog came up as the second hit after Wikipedia.

Someone is stalking Rex Widerstrom as his name is in 9th place for search terms and the NZEI death sqauds are hunting Peter McKeefry who is in 11th place.

Very amusing that we have a tie for 21st place with 179 hits each between “donkey sex” and “trevor mallard labour leader’. Is it 358 random searches or one person searching for both terms 179 times? 🙂

Act on Campus have been trying to place NZ political parties and their youth sections on the Political Compass.

They want to crowd source it and have as many people as possible answer the survey on behalf of a political party – the idea being that you don’t answer with your personal views, but with how you perceive that party would answer. Then post the party name and their two scores in the comments.

This ad is so cringeworthy, it deserves to be seen by a wider audience.

No wonder the creators of the video are anonymous.

Also by chance just had a coastal coalition leaflet in my letterbox. I count five factual errors in it, the largest being that the current law requires Iwi to test their claims in court.

The year in review episode of Backbenches screens tonight on TVNZ 7 at 9 pm. We filed it last week.

We were asked to make various picks and predictions. In the end, we didn’t have time to do all of them on air, so I figure might as well reveal all my picks here.

• Best Scandal – David Garrett, noting all the others were basically about MPs expenses
• Best of 2010 – the fact the Canterbury Earthquake happened at 4 am
• Worst of 2010 – the Pike River tragedy
• Best Govt action – the tax package that got rid of the loopholes, increased the incentives for people to save, plus finally killed off Michael Cullen’s envy tax
• Worst Govt action – doing a deal with Labour to bring back the Electoral Finance Act
• Best Opposition action – was tempted to say not rolling Phil Goff, but I’d pick David Cunliffe’s speech where he promoted public-private partnerships and the potential for private sector investment in new subsidiaries of SOEs. I thought that was a significant step away from demonising the private sector.
• Worst Opposition action – voting unanimously to give Gerry Brownlee the power to suspend or repeal around 2,000 laws if they proved inconvenient.
• Best Backbencher – Te Ururoa Flavell – an absolute workhorse for the Maori Party, growing in stature and the next male co-leader
• Best Maverick – the entire ACT Caucus, whom I likened to the Adamms Family, which prompted Heather Roy to proclaim she had never been a Goth 🙂
• Best Rising Star – my local MP Grant Robertson, whom I predicted was the next Labour Pirime Minister
• Biggest Loser: Chris Carter, mainly for the incompetence of delivering hsi own secret letter to the press gallery with his handwriting on the envelopes
• Biggest Waste of Space: Ashraf Choudhary, the invisible man
• Biggest Surprise: Shane Jones, for not knowing that you can get free pronography on the Internet, so no need to use the hotel service
• Best Minister: Tony Ryall – got unamious parliamenbtary support for his structural improvements
• Who should be dropped from the list: Rajen Prasad who was ranked No 12 in 2008 – a lot normally reserved for superstars. Also near invisible
• Biggest events in 2011: Botany by-election, May budget, September Rugby World Cup
• Biggest issues in 2011: Economy, wages, jobs, welfare reform, savings policy
• 2011 campaign: A fairly short campaign after the Rugby World Cup and a fairly disinterested population

On the show, you’ll also get the picks and predictions from Bomber Bradbury, TVNZ’s Jess Mutch and Mark Unsworth. Was my first time on the panel, and enjoyed it greatly even though my voice was rather squeeky from the press gallery party the night before.

The Herald reports:

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark has angrily denied a claim in a United States diplomatic cable that the previous Labour-led Government sent New Zealand non-combat engineers to Iraq so that dairy company Fonterra could secure a United Nations contract.

She described the claim as preposterous.

So why did Helen send tropps to Iraq, if it were not to help Fonterra?

Mr Goff yesterday said the allegation was ridiculous.

“No such trade-off was ever suggested and if it ever had been, it would have been rejected out-of-hand. We do not trade putting the lives of our military personnel at risk for commercial deals. It is a completely false claim.”

What is interesting is that Michael Cullen has not denied that he did talk about the risk to Fonterra.

The Herald reports:

Waiariki MP Te Ururoa Flavell has criticised a Rotorua judge for sending a teenager to prison for 12 months for breaching a sentence of home detention.

Last week Judge Phillip Cooper sentenced Mere Ohlson, 17, to jail after she breached her home detention by cutting off her ankle bracelet and leaving the address where she was supposed to be serving her sentence. She was arrested four days later.

Mr Flavell said he was shocked at the sentence and the judge had other options including sentencing the teenager to some form of rehabilitation instead of spending $100,000 of taxpayers’ money to keep her in prison. …

Ohlson was initially sentenced in September to six months’ home detention and 200 hours’ community work for her part in the robbery of Jeram’s Superette in March.

Ohlson went into the store with two others pretending to have a gun and demanding cigarettes and cash from the owner’s son.

I have to disagree with Mr Flavell on this case. Ohlson was effectively given a second chance and an opportunity to rehabilitate by being given home detention. Home detention is 100 times more preferable than prison, yet she threw away that privilege by cutting the braclet off.

It is no surprise that the Judge then had to go to a custodial sentence, after she effectively rejected the easy option of home detention.

The Herald reports an e-mail from Peter Jackson:

“There is no connection between the blacklist (and it’s eventual retraction) and the choice of production base for The Hobbit,” he wrote.

Sir Peter will no doubt put the e-mail in context at some stage, but I wonder if the word “now” is not missing. In otehr words what he is saying is that just because the blacklist has been or will be retracted doesn’t mean that The Hobbit is safe here.

“What Warners requires for The Hobbit is the certainty of a stable employment environment and the ability to conduct its business in such as way that it feels its $500 million investment is as secure as possible.”

It has always been clear that to some degree Warners used the dispute as a way to get better terms. But if the global boycott had never been instituted, I don’t see that they would have done so – the location had been long agreed.

Clayton Adams, whose brother Conrad died at Pike River, says thank you through the NZ Herald:

During the time we spent on the Coast the people of NZ and Greymouth have been unstinting in their support, kindness and generosity of spirit towards the workers’ and contractors’ families.

On our arrival friends of my brother provided accommodation to the family for several weeks and when we needed a second car they delivered a vehicle immediately for our use. But it was not just these larger more obvious offers of help that were so meaningful.

When I arrived my only pair of shoes fell apart so I resorted to using my brother’s jandals, which were 3 sizes too big. When one of Conrad’s friends found out they took my shoes away and returned them within an hour, repaired. Everyone wanted to do something to help. …

Donna at Kiwibank in Greymouth was amazing and without her support we would have struggled to manage the household finances in my brother’s absence.

In the initial days of waiting Air New Zealand provided a staff member for every family to assist them with the burden of the seemingly endless small tasks that filled our days and required decisions. This help was invaluable in removing the strain and pressure of arranging flights, accommodation and accessing the myriad offers of support provided by New Zealand companies.

Well done Kiwibank and Air New Zealand.

Later that night it seemed as if the whole of New Zealand had mobilised to provide any assistance they could, people who had never met my brother offered accommodation, meals and to pick family members up from the airport, baskets of food, supermarket vouchers, cash. There seemed to be no end to the generosity. Even kindergarten children baked biscuits and couriered them to the families in Greymouth.

If it was not for the compassion of my employer and the donations of fellow staff and workmates my wife and I would not have been able to dedicate two weeks to helping my brother’s children and providing support to them where we could.

No one should ever have to experience the intensity of the days while we waited and then the desolation as we realised our loved ones would not be returning to us, however the selflessness, generosity and compassion of the people of Greymouth and New Zealand has been humbling and I would like to publicly thank those people and companies who assisted us.

A very moving letter.

Anna Leask writes on the case of the abused nine year old:

CYF will also investigate claims by the girl’s teacher that reports of abuse by the school were not investigated.

In an email to Prime Minister John Key, the teacher said she reported her concerns about “constant abuse” the girl was suffering to school management on a “weekly, almost daily” basis.

But the message the school got back from the child’s social worker was that she was “clumsy and accident prone”.

Mr Key forwarded the email, sent six days after the girl was found and her parents arrested, to Ms Bennett.

“I have grave concerns about issues raised in the letter, including the fact the teacher says she made others aware she suspected abuse was occurring,” Ms Bennett said.

“It must be incredibly heart-breaking to be closely involved with a child who has been the victim of such horrific abuse.

“I have asked for a full report on this and I intend to get to the bottom of the matter.”

In her email, the teacher said she felt powerless to do anything to protect the girl and keep her safe.

“This child has come to school with black eyes, a swollen face, swollen nose, bruises, abrasions and infected wounds that have all been explained as her being ‘clumsy and accident prone’.

“However she is only accident prone at home, she has not had a so-called accident while at school …

“Why do we have to wait for a child to be seriously injured or killed before action is taken?”

The teacher said the emotional toll of seeing the girl suffer all year was “extreme”. She had resigned from her job because she felt her concerns were not taken seriously.

“A young innocent child has suffered unimaginable pain that at her age she should not have suffered,” she told Mr Key. “Please don’t sit back and do nothing.”

Ms Mackenzie said CYF records showed concerns were raised by the school on one occasion.

“This was looked into by the social worker who did not believe this to be a result of abuse.”

“I find the issues raised by the teacher very worrying and am determined that the review gets to the bottom of exactly what happened.”

The poor teacher. If they had listened to him or her earlier, a lot of the abuse may have been prevented.

On the surface it seems both the school management and the social worker may be at fault. If the teacher raised concerns weekly and the school management only once passed these onto the social worker, then they’re let that teacher and the child down.

But it also seems clear the social worker did not investigate at all. In fact the excuse “accident prone” should ring alarm bells.