As expected:

The Speaker has finally sounded the death knell on travel perks after almost 40 years of MPs enjoying taxpayer-subsidised flights for their private international trips and holidays.

Lockwood Smith announced last night that the perks giving MPs discounted international travel would no longer be available for them. …

However, he intended to set up a scheme to allow backbench and Opposition MPs to travel on parliamentary-related trips of their own initiative, rather than the limited opportunities for official travel.

He said the new scheme would have tight rules and was likely to require some personal contribution from MPs towards costs.

I still think the appropriate way to do this, is to increase the bulk funding each parliamentary party gets. Nothing will ensure only high quality trips are funded, like the fact they would be competing for funds with staff, research, policy and comms.

Any sort of dedicated fund or entitlement will end up with controversy.

The Remuneration Authority will decide if MPs will get an increase on their base salary to compensate.

They will – it is basically required by law. The real question is how much.

The Education Review Office reports on how implementation is going:

• Of the 80 schools reviewed, 93 percent (74 schools) were either well prepared or had preparation under way to work with the National Standards.
• This data shows an increase in the percentage of schools that were well prepared to work with the National Standards, up from 19 percent (as reported in August 2010), to 34 percent. The data also showed a decrease in the percentage of schools not yet prepared to work with the standards, from 20 percent in August 2010 to 7 percent.

So most schools are indeed getting on with it. I found this quote interesting:

Strong, professional leadership in the well prepared schools meant that leaders and teachers were positive about working with the National Standards as part of their schoolo curriculum and assessment practices. …

Many of these schools had developed a school culture that was conducive to working with the National Standards. Teachers were encouraged to engage in discussion about student achievement data, inquire into and reflect on their practice and share effective teaching strategies. Such a culture helped teachers to make overall teacher judgements and moderate their judgements about student achievement.

Strong professional leadership sounds good to me.

Stuff reports:

Former Cabinet minister Pansy Wong will be entitled to a 90 per cent international travel rebate for the rest of her life if she quits Parliament.

This isn’t quite right. The entitlements were frozen. I actually got it wrong on Twitter yesterday as I assumed they were frozen at the end of 1999, when the perk was abolished  for new MPs, but in fact it is 2008. Here is the Speakers Direction:

6.14 A person who was a member before the 1999 general election has his or her travel entitlements frozen at the level for which he or she qualified at the end of the 2005–2008 term of Parliament.

At the end of the 2008 term of Parliament, Pansy has completed four terms. And 6.15(1)(g) defines what you get:

• Less than 2 terms – 0 %
• 2 full terms and was in the Executive – 50%
• 2 full terms and not in Executive – 0%
• 3 full terms – 60%
• 4 full terms – 75%
• 5 full terms – 90%

What does this mean, then for those who are still MPs and who entered at each election. When they retire it will be:

1. 2008 – 0%
2. 2005 – 0%
3. 2002 – 0%
4. 1999 – 0%
5. 1996 – 75%
6. 1993 or before – 90%

Now who can be first to say how many MPs will get 75% when they retire, and how many will get 90%, and how many 0%?

A friend of mine, Emma Mellow, has just headed off to the UK and USA where she is going to geek out with politics and study for a few months. Yes, she is an even bigger political geek than me.

On her way over to London, she had a day in Hong Kong catching up with friends, and they headed out to a local bar at the Mandarin Hotel.

When there a group of people enter, and several of them look like bodyguards. A closer stare reveals that the visitor is in fact the 5th President of France – Jacques Chirac.

Nothing at that stage could have stopped Emma, and after she convinced his security team she was not a menace, she got to meet Chirac. Her rusty French skills were put to the test as Chirac talked to her about politics, encouraged her to stand one day (not that she needs much encouragement!) and told her good places to visit in Paris and Lyon. Chirac was charming as only the French can be!

So a very nice photo of her with Chirac. My challenge to her is to get Sarkozy and Cameron also 🙂

TV3 have put on their website their full interview with Litea Ah Hoi about her calling someone who endorsed Hekia a “dumb-ass coconut”.

If I tried to summarise it, I wouldn’t do it justice. Go view it for some laughs.

The Herald reports:

More than 1500 Facebook users, most of whom appear to be students, say they plan to attend the “Castor Bay Beach Party 2!” on Auckland’s North Shore in December.

At a similar gathering last Saturday night some 130 drunken youths refused to leave Castor Bay about 10pm. Police were pelted with bottles after they were called by residents when property was damaged. One man was arrested for jumping on a vehicle.

The mayhem mirrored a similar party at Cheltenham Beach the previous weekend.

More than 1500 people have signalled their intention to attend the December Castor Bay event, organised by student Ash Hilton, with another 440 “maybe attending”.

On the Facebook page, posters do not appear to care about the residents of the area, the police, the illegality of their actions, or grammar. …

Laura Petrova Isaac also intends on going.

“ha ha went to the first one… and the next day it was all over the news and i was watching it with mum and she goes ‘some children these days! im glad u dont do stupid things like this’ lol… uuhhmmm…. [sic]” she wrote.

Oh dear. Laura should know Facebook is public. Her mum probably doesn’t read Facebook, but I am sure Laura is hoping her Mum (or Mum’s friends) don’t read the Herald (or Kiwiblog)!

I can just imagine the thought process of the reporter as they read those comments, thinking I am going to teach that little miss a lesson.

The Reuters headline is:

Albino MP fears for his life

I read on with great concern, wondering why someone was trying to kill Rotorua MP Todd McClay.

But it turns out Todd is safe, so long as he stays away from Tanzania:

Tanzania’s first elected albino member of parliament fears his life could be in danger in the east African country where albino hunters kill their victims and use their blood and body parts for witchcraft.

Albino hunter would be quite a cool job title to have on your CV – would be a talking point at social functions also.

At least 59 albinos have been killed since 2007 in Tanzania and their body parts sold for use in witchcraft, especially in the remote northwest regions of Mwanza and Shinyanga which are both gold mining regions where superstition is rife.

Finally found a country, where people want to be gingas 🙂

Claire Trevett reports in the Herald:

Speaker Lockwood Smith will decide tonight whether to abolish MPs’ travel perks – but a wholesale scrapping is increasingly unlikely as some MPs argue to keep a limited discount for work trips. …

While there is broad consensus over scrapping the perks for holidays, Labour MPs at least are expected to argue in favour of retaining some funding for MPs to go on trips related to their parliamentary work, such as meeting MPs overseas or attending conferences. …

Labour leader Phil Goff has made it clear he sees the use of the rebates for holidays as unjustifiable but legitimate work-related trips were important. Opposition MPs and backbenchers are limited to official parliamentary delegations and there are few opportunities to take trips of their own initiative.

I support MPs being funded for international work related travel, but if you continue with it as an “entitlement” it will get abused, beyond doubt. If there is an entitlement  for say one “work” trip every three years, then I am sure many MPs will manage to put together a trip which will qualify for funding.

The reality is that even some “work” trips have little parliamentary aspects to them, and are mainly party political or recreational. Quite easy to visit three or four European countries to catch up with your political mates, spend a few days being wined and dined at a party conference in the UK and for good measure see the All Blacks play as you just happen to be there at the same time.

That’s at one end of the scale. At the other end you might have say the Shadow Education Spokesperson travelling to a couple of countries to meet with Education Ministers, their officials and perhaps tour around some schools being run under a new model. That is entirely legitimate and should be encouraged (again many of the best policy ideas come from overseas).

Parliamentary Service should not be placed in a position where they have to judge whether a trip has enough “work” in it to qualify for a subsidised airfare.

The answer, as I have said before, is to fund international travel out of the leader’s budget. A party leader is far better positioned to decide whether a trip is worthwhile, and they will have an incentive not to say yes to the more dubious proposals, because the more they approve for travel, the less they have for other purposes (staff, policy, research, propaganda etc).

So it is vital that any money for travel not be ring-fenced. The moment you do that, you encourage people to come up with ways to use it all. It must be part of the “bulk” fund that goes to each parliamentary party.

Now there is an argument that the current allocation of $57,000 per (non-Executive) MP isn’t designed to cover international travel, other than for the Leader. This is a fair enough point, and a consequence of abolishing the travel perk could well be to increase the level of funding to the parliamentary party to allow legitimate overseas travel to be funded.

How much should any increase be? Well my rough calculation would be that on average you would expect an MP to do a trip say every three years. The senior ones will do more, and the junior ones less. The average cost of a business class fare is $9,000 so maybe you look at increasing funding from $57,000 to $60,000 per MP per annum. You could argue one trip every five years, so that would be $1,800 extra per annum.

The one thing that should not be done is to retain a travel subsidy as an “entitlement”. That will just lead to rorting of the system. National has signalled it wants the entitlement abolished. Labour’s position is less clear. I hope they will clearly signal tat they do support abolishing any international travel entitlement, rather than just modifying the criteria for it.

No other business has an “entitlement” for international travel. If there is a good case to travel overseas, you make a proposal to your boss, and they agree to fund it out of their budget – or not. That is how Parliament should work also.

Prince William’s engagement to Kate Middleton will be the major news story of the day. From what one can tell at a distance, she seems very genuine and down to earth and a good choice for William. In fact she has coped superbly with the years of intensive media coverage/harassment.

It is a bit unfortunate that his private choice, is also a matter of public approval – both in the UK and here. Because William’s marriage to a girl from Leeds, means she will in time become the Queen (consort) of New Zealand.

Now I have to say Queen Kate (or more formally Queen Catherine) is a more pleasant future to look forward to, than Queen Camilla, but it would be nice if one day the marriage of someone in England didn’t have any constitutional significance for us in New Zealand.

But regardless I am looking forward to the royal wedding. I actually will be in the UK next July for a mate’s wedding, so if William can set his date for the same month, I could attend both 🙂

iPredict has just launched some Mana vote share stocks.

They predict:

• Faafoi 45.0%
• Parata 35.4%
• Others 22.0%

Is the markets are correct, what does that suggest in terms of a result.

In 2008, there were almost 35,000 votes so if turnout is the same, then that is a 3,500 or so majority.

If turnout drops from 83% to 65%, then that would suggest a majority of 2,800 or so.

It will be interesting to see how accurate iPredict is. There have been no public polls at all, so people must be investing on the basis of their sentiment over how the race is going. Obviously people think Labour will lose votes – that Faafoi will get around 8% less than Laban, but they may be wrong.

The Dom Post report:

Terry Serepisos is facing fresh legal action, with the Inland Revenue Department seeking to liquidate five of his companies – including the one which owns the Wellington Phoenix – over $3.58 million in unpaid taxes.

The largest sum – more than $1.5m – is owed by Century City Football, owner of the Phoenix football team, for PAYE tax deductions, GST and KiwiSaver contributions.

I hope Serepisos survives, but if he does I suspect he will not be hosting The Apprentice again anytime soon.

In July I was in Hong Kong and surprised to see very large ads in the local paper there for his new apartment block. My reaction was that sales back home can’t be going too well, if you are needing to advertise in Hong Kong.

A Wellington City Council spokesman, Richard MacLean, said the council was “very concerned” over the future of the Phoenix but was unlikely to contribute ratepayers’ money. “We are not in the business of owning a football club.”

Good.

I’d love the team to survive also, but it is not the role of council to fund sports teams – sports infrastructure is another matter though.

The Herald reports on the sweeping changes to trials in the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill.

The one that will probably attract the most debate is moving the threshold for jury trials from a maximum three months to a maximum three years.

While the list of offences that would be affected is long, officials have advised Mr Power that the most common cases would be theft of between $5oppos00 and $1000; receiving between $500 and $1000; possession of a class A drug; common assault; and assault on a female or child.

I’d be interested in what the stats are for these offences, in terms of how many people convicted of them even receive a jail sentence at all. A maximum is just that – and generally never given out.

The opposition Labour Party’s associate justice spokesman, Charles Chauvel, said that while some change in the threshold for jury trials made sense, Labour would reserve its position until it had heard select committee submissions.

That is a very sensible position to take, and good on Labour for not being opposed just for the sake of it. I’m not 100% convinced myself moving the threshold to three years is the right point – maybe it should be two years – again would be good to see hard data on this.

Some of the charges no longer tried before a jury (with current maximum term):

SIX MONTHS
* Ill treatment or wilful neglect of child
* Possession or use of class A drug

ONE YEAR
* Possession of unauthorised seed or fruit

TWO YEARS
* Driving with excess breath alcohol (3rd offence onwards)
* Driving while disqualified (3rd offence onwards)
* Bigamy
* Infanticide

THREE YEARS
* Assault with intent
* Making intimate visual recording
* Aggravated careless use of vehicle causing injury or death
* Indecency with animal

Oh that is unfortunate. If these changes come through, I’ll never get to be a juror on a donkey sex case. I always thought if one has to be a juror, that would be more interesting that an assault or burglary case etc.

On the other hand these donkey sex cases tend to always be in Nelson or Christchurch, so I guess I would not have got one anyway. And add to that, that in 25 years of availability I have never once been summoned for jury service.

Thomas Beagle blogs on the first year of operations for Tech Liberty. In the last year they have:

• Written 70 articles for our website and published two guest editorials (security risks of internet filtering, copyright).
• Received 15,000 visitors who looked at 27,000 pages and left 134 comments.
• Made two written (Copyright, Search and Surveillance) and one oral submission (Search & Surveillance) to Parliamentary Select Committees.
• Established an @TechLiberty Twitter presence with 287 followers and 469 updates.
• Assisted people in their legal issues with Customs and Sky TV.
• Written a guest editorial about internet filtering for the National Business Review.
• Been quoted in a variety of online and print media and been interviewed on TV and radio.

Next year looks as busy. Their plans:

As part of this we’re also looking at changing how we do things:

• We are investigating what is involved with becoming a mass-membership organisation.
• We intend to establish a fund to help finance our work.
• Improving our internal communications so we can better support contributors all over the country.

And they want more people involved:

What we do need is more people to help us with this work.

We are currently a Wellington-based collective but we’re looking for people across the country who can help us with one or more of the following roles:

• Join the core collective and work with us to develop Tech Liberty.
• Providing professional legal assistance to help us in interpreting current and proposed laws and helping people who face legal problems.
• Adopt an issue and become our internal expert, writing articles and submissions about it.
• Assist us with advice about becoming a membership organisation.

Or, if you’ve just got a bee in your bonnet about a particular issue, write us a guest editorial.

Read about our principles and then send us an email, we’d love to hear from you.

Tech Liberty do some great work. Touch base with them if you can help them out.

The Herald reports:

An increase to MPs’ salaries is almost inevitable if the Prime Minister’s bid to get rid of their foreign-travel perks is successful.

It is. As people now all know (and something I was the first to highlight over a year ago as it was obscurely buried in the Remuneration Authority’s 2003 determination, and had not been explicitly listed since) the value of the perk (as calculated by IRD) is deducted from their salary effectively.

If the Speaker just abolished it unilaterally, then MPs would have their base salary increase by $9,500 by the Remuneration Authority.

Although the demise of the perk seems certain, the taxpayer is likely to have to make up for it by an increase in MPs’ salaries.

Mr Key said he expected any rise to be “very modest” and putting salaries up by the full $9800 value of the perk was “unacceptable to me”. A significant increase would only expose MPs to more criticism, even though they had no say in their pay, he said.

Mr Key has urged the Speaker to ask the Remuneration Authority to decide how to abolish the perk and whether changes should be made to salaries as a result.

This is where the PM has been quite cunning. He is basically asking the Remuneration Authority to say in advance how much they would increase salaries, if the perk is abolished – with a rather unsubtle note that an increase to the full value is “unacceptable”.

So the Remuneration Authority now has to decide what to do, which is challenging as the most logical would just be to stop deducting the $9,800 from the base salary.

Annual totals for international travel perks for existing MPs:

1992-93 – $263,567
1995-96 – $387,950
2008-09 – $600,000
2009-10 – $432,989

Here’s what I would do. Divide $433,000 by 120 MPs and that is $3,500 per MP. Add that to the base salary and you can claim the exercise is revenue neutral. It’s not the principled way to do it (that would be the $9,800 option) but it is a pragmatic solution.

Labour leader Phil Goff agreed with Mr Key’s request for the perk to be reviewed independently, but said it was essential to retain some entitlement to international travel to allow MPs to go overseas on parliamentary business.

He had used his rebate for his recent trip to Australia to meet Prime Minister Julia Gillard and senior Cabinet ministers. “That enables me to do my job properly and is a legitimate use. Trying to justify the use of it for holidays will never be regarded by the public as a legitimate use.” …

Act leader Rodney Hide said he agreed with the Prime Minister that the perk should go and although it was for the Remuneration Authority to decide on salary increases in lieu of the perk, “you’d hope they’d be a wee bit judicious”.

He disputed Mr Goff’s call for some provision for work travel, saying there was already enough discretionary funding for it in party leaders’ budgets – a bulk sum they get to run their offices.

I’m actually more in agreement with Phil Goff on this point. I do think MPs should be able to travel internationally when it is work related. Many of the best policy ideas come from initiatives in other countries etc.

Now Rodney is right that such travel can be funded from the leader’s office budget. And that is where it should be funded from – rather than a separate dedicated fund. If you have a fund for travel – then people will make sure it gets fully used. If it comes from the bulk fund, then the leader (or their COS) has to decide whether the value of that travel is greater than the value they would get from spending it on more staff, or policy research, or a pamphlet etc etc.

But what I think Goff wants, and I agree with him, is a review of the level of funding for the Leader’s Office to ensure it is adequate to be able to fund legitimate work related international travel by MPs, now they can not use the perk to fund it.

Whale Oil blogs:

Some time ago I sent an OIA request to the Auditor-General for all of their credit card expenses. They ini­tially refused because the Auditor-General is not sub­ject to the OIA.

They have now recon­sid­ered and accord­ingly pro­vided the infor­ma­tion that I requested.

Voluntary compliance with a request, when there is no statutory obligation to do so is great leadership.

Every instance of expense is detailed with who was there and what it was about. Even park­ing dock­ets are fully explained. Com­pare that to Len Brown’s still secret Volare dinner.

Talking of which, has the Ombudsman made a decision yet?

Lyn Provost is the epit­ome of fis­cal rec­ti­tude. She flew Pacific Blue to Port Moresby which is pig of a flight at the best of times and one that no one would be-grudge a busi­ness class fare and/or a Groser/McCully style truck load of piss to soothe the nerves for that flight. But our cheap and fru­gal Auditor-General flew Pacific Blue and bought two sets of sand­wiches, cook­ies and an iced tea for a total of $28.20. That’s a bar­gain no mat­ter how much they charge for an iced tea on Pacific Blue. She even stayed in a dive of a hotel. That’s tak­ing one for the team in any­ones book. …

On the 26^th of March 2010 there is an amount of $3 for short term park­ing, this was when her fam­ily came to pick her up at the air­port instead of billing it to Cor­po­rate Cabs for a hundy. She fre­quently gets peo­ple to pick her up from air­ports instead of bill the tax­payer for cab fares.

She is tighter than a fish’s arse and that’s water­proof. Lyn Provost, civil ser­vant, I dub thee The Queen of Mean.

Most recipients of a nickname from Whale Oil are not that happy about it, but in this case I think the Auditor-General will be happy with it.

More seriously, it is great to see the AG aware of the moral leadership role of her office. It is a million years removed from the days of Jeff Chapman, who was actually convicted for fraud.

Patrick Gower at TV3 reports:

Labour’s pursuit of the Pacific Islander vote in the Mana by-election has been dealt a blow, with a member of candidate Kris Faafoi’s campaign team forced to apologise for calling a National Party rival a “dumb-ass coconut”.

Litea Ah Hoi is a hardcore Labour supporter out fighting for votes in the by-election – so hardcore her Facebook page carried a message calling a rival a “dumb-ass coconut”.

“It’s Pacific humour,” she says. “Whether you put it together with dumb-ass, and then the coconut… if she took offence to it, then like…” Ms Ah Hoi pulls a surprised face.

But the target didn’t laugh – she found it abusive.

Liz Tanielu says Labour doesn’t like losing the Pacific vote to Hekia Parata – and bullies anyone who gets out of line.

Indeed, they don’t like it when “their people” dare to endorse someone not from Labour. Just like the principals who get bullied for daring to disagree.

“If this was a non-Pacific person who said that, they would have been sacked,” she says. “There would have been severe consequences.

“Well the same thing should apply to Litea and her flunkies.”

But 3 News found Ms Ah Hoi working in Mr Faafoi’s campaign headquarters today. She will be staying on, even though Mr Faafoi himself doesn’t like the term.

“In some senses it can be funny,” says Mr Faafoi, “in a context when it’s comedy. But in this context, it’s wrong.”

It is comedy, when done in humour. It isn’t comedy when done as a way to slag some one off because they said good things about Hekia on television.

Stuff has just tweeted:

BREAKING: Prime Minister tells speaker to abolish MPs perks.

Excellent. Amazing how quickly things can change in a couple of years, once you have transparency. No details yet.

It’s been a playful week, as I also was at the theatre on Saturday night also – this time seeing Robin Hood the Pantomime, in Circa 1.

My God, it was great fun. I had forgotten how hilarious a good pantomime is – and one by Roger Hall especially. Hall remains our king of the theatre.

The pantomime is great viewing for all ages. The kids love it, and they even get to go up on stage for a bit. But adults, parents and grand parents can all equally enjoy it, as it works into the script mounds of adult humour.

Wellingtonians will love how Robin Hood has been localised – Sherwood Forest has become Zealandia, and the town square is Civic Square.

There is a cast of eight. The star for me was Gavin Rutherford who plays Robin Hood’s mother – Mrs Hood – pictured above. Mrs Hood acts as the effective narrator and keeps you in non stop laughter with her antics.

Kali Kopae played a petite and immaculate Maid Marion. She had a wonderful singing voice (I later found out she was a finalist in NZ Idol), and was almost as good an archer as Robin.

I have to also mention John Wraight for his Little John character. Wraight has a wonderfully expressive face which lights up the stage as he sings. He also triples as the Abbott and King John.

There were lots of political and current affairs references. The husband of one character had been sent off to fight for the Crusaders. The wife remarked she was disappointed it wasn’t the Crusades, as then he would have got more air points than Chris Carter.

I was amused that evil Prince John turned out to be John Key, and the Sheriff of Nottingham Rodney Hyde (with a y). I texted Rodney at half time to tell him of his fortune. The peasants were unhappy with the Greedy Sheriff Tax increase. The play wasn’t party political – I think whoever was in Government would have ended up as the Sheriff.

The blue creature is Thor the Viking. He doesn’t appear in the classical version, but does a good job as Rodney’s rather dim bodyguard.

I must make mention of the talented musical director Michael Nicholas Williams. He provided great music and singing throughout the show, and was instrumental to is success.

I almost forgot the three Crows. The play actually starts with two Crows, and much laughter as we hear one is called Russell and one called Martin. Later they are joined by a female crow – Sheryl Crow. It’s all very silly yet funny.

I didn’t think Robin Hood would work well as a pantomime, but it worked brilliantly. I had a smile on my face for the entire two hours, and was disappointed when it finally ended.

If you have young kids, take them to see this – they’ll love it. But again, this is not just for the kids – most of the audience were adults there by themselves, and I suspect we actually got more laughs out of it than the kids. The only requirement is that you have to be prepared to “Kaw Kaw” when a baddie appears on stage (to warn Robin) and have fun.

It is on at Circa 1 until the 23rd of December. I rate it a must see.

On Thursday evening went off to Circa to see Me and Robert McKee.

It’s a black comedy which is the tale of two mates – Billy the scruffy script-writer and teacher, and Mac his best mate, who is a producer.

The Robert McKee referred to in the title is the author of the biblical “Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting”. To say he is successful is under-stating it. His former students include 26 Academy Awards winners and 125 Emmy Awards winners.

Billy could not be more different. He is washed up, and his income comes from teaching screenwriting at a local institute. His big hope is to write the screenplay for his mate Mac. The play consists of quite intense scenes between them, as Billy wants to use Mac’s childhood memories as the basis of his script.

The two actors are very skilled at bringing their characters to life. Christopher Brougham plays Billy in a hugely engaging and entertaining way – in fact at times he almost seemed like a leprechaun.

Having said that, this is probably more a play for dedicated theatre patrons, rather than those who just go occasionally. The first 45 minutes were a bit slow with the major plot developments happening later on. There are a couple of great twists towards the end.

Money is a theme throughout the show – to attract the wealthy doctors to invest in the film, the cashflow requirements, and the line that writing is about “telling lies for money”. And at the end of the show you may learn whether money is the root of all evil.

The show is on at Circa 2 until 4 December.

The SMH reports:

New research suggests that reducing class sizes fails to improve student performance at school and the government would do better to focus on improving teacher quality.

It found mandated class-size reductions of two to three students – costing $1500 a student or $1 million a school each year – resulted in no significant improvement in academic outcomes for students in Florida.

Yet this is what the PPTA is striking over – class sizes.

Dr Jensen said a student with a teacher in the top 10 per cent of the profession can achieve in six months what a student with a poor teacher can achieve in a year.

The PPTA, if i truly wanted to lift educational standards, should demand performance pay. They should go on strike unless the Government agrees to pay the best teachers more money.

He said Australia needed to improve the effectiveness of all teachers by 10 per cent or improve the poorest teachers by 14 per cent.

This would help students learn 5 per cent more each year and improve Australia’s declining performance in world rankings of student performance.

And what a difference it can make:

”Improving teacher effectiveness would have a greater impact on economic growth than any other reform before Australian governments,” Dr Jensen said in his report.

”The improvement in student learning could lift Australian students to the top of international performance tables.”

He argues that this in turn would lift productivity, increasing growth by $90 billion by 2050, making Australians 12 per cent richer by the turn of the century.

Dr Jensen said to achieve this, governments would need to take their focus off reducing class sizes. ”The vast majority of studies around the world have shown that class-size reductions do not significantly improve schooling and student outcomes,” he said.

”Initiatives to improve teacher effectiveness not only help students more, they cost much less.”

Of course the unions don’t even want teacher effectiveness measured.

Andrea Vance at Stuff reports:

Labour leader Phil Goff has admitted National’s Hekia Parata could win the Mana by-election if turnout is low.

His press secretary, Kris Faafoi, is standing for the seat, traditionally seen as a Labour stronghold. But yesterday Mr Goff said a low turnout would “jeopardise Labour’s hold on the seat”.

Goff is trying to do two things here. The first is to motivate Labour supporters to turn out and vote. He is right – turnout is important.

The second is he is trying to make the seat sound marginal, so that if Labour’s majority is slashed, it does not reflect so badly on them.

Mana is one of their safest seats. It (and its predecessors) have never been held by National. Mana has a larger majority than Lianne Dalziel in Christchurch East, Trevor Mallard in Hutt South and Jim Anderton in Wigram.

A few people point to the party vote margin at 2,500 and say this means it is not safe for Labour. But they make a fatal mistake. The releveant comparison with the party vote is between right and left, as both right and left voters will vote tactically on the electorate candidate (many green voters vote for a labour candidate and many ACT voters vote for a National candidate).

So what was the party vote for the right in 2008 in Mana? 39%. And the left vote? 53%.

In the median electorates, the right is 8% ahead of the left on the 2008 party vote. In Mana the right is 14% behind the left on the party vote.

Now this does not mean Hekia can not win. She has been winning endorsements from some non traditional National voters. Even Willie Jackson and John Tamihere have come out and said people should vote for her or Matt McCarten (partly because they fronted up onto their radio show).

But the reality is that no Government has ever won a seat off an Opposition in a by-election. I’ve checked back over 90 years. If Hekia wins, or even comes close, it will be a seismic event.