Danyl blogs:

About to hear from Michael Cullen and Dean Knight on republicanism. Dr Cullen described himself at morning tea as a “moderate monarchist” and not too far away from Dean Knight whom he called a “moderate republican”.

Jim Bolger is the Chairman. He has been talking for around five minutes so far. I should run a book on whether he will end up speaking for longer than the actual speakers 🙂

Heh. Dean just said that after reading in the Herald on Sunday that Dr Cullen now supports NZ becoming a republic, he wondered if he should just sit down and claim victory. Jim Bolger retorted that instead he should just not read the Herald, which got good laughs. It seems Dr Cullen feels they mis-stated his position.

Dean advocates a minimal change republic. Promote the Governor-General from being the effective Head of State to the actual Head of State – but with the same powers.

The selection of the Head of State should not be hereditary, discriminatory and foreign, Dean said.

The GG is currently effectively appointed by the Prime Minister. Dean advocates that Parliament should approve any appointment by a super-majority.

In terms of the Treaty obligations, Dean states these have already been transferred from the British Crown and Govt to the NZ Government, and these would not be affected by a move to the republic.

Dr Cullen has said that the GG is indeed our effective head of state. He points out the unusually, the selection is purely by the Government of the day.

He rejects the notion that the Queen is foreign, and that being a monarchy means we are not independent. He says countries like Australia and he UK are not fully foreign, as other countries are. Also says Canada shows you can be regarded as absolutely independent yet they have kept the Queen.

Cullen says if no change is made, Charles will become King of New Zealand automatically when he become King of the UK, even though he will probably be 80 when it happens.

Cullen totally against Judges being able to strike down laws on the basis of supreme law. Will lead to highly politicised Judges. Says if the move to a republic is dependent on having a written constitution as supreme law, then both Charles and Williams will have happy reigns as Kings of New Zealand.

Says if NZ Head of State has executive powers, then elect at large. But if they have no executive powers is silly to have an election for it, as they will have nothing to run on. I agree.

One amusing observation made by Bolger is that he and Cullen are old sparring partners, but now are the Chair and Deputy Chair of NZ Post!

Just caught up with John Armstrong’s column from yesterday:

Watching John Key and Bill English dispose of South Canterbury Finance yesterday was a bit like watching a python swallowing an antelope.

Except it all happened a lot quicker.

The Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance must have swallowed hard at the prospect of forking out $1.6 billion under the Crown Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme.

They had no choice. But they did have plenty of warning of the likely receivership. So the Government was ready with a plan.

That involved wrapping its jaws around the company, swallowing it whole and spitting out anything which might have stopped it becoming the sole creditor.

That way the Government is now calling the shots, even though the failed company is technically under the control of receivers.

So good marks for the Government. And Labour:

Otherwise, this was one of the smoothest crisis-management operations conducted by this Government.

It is on such days that the Opposition is better off displaying bipartisan support.

Phil Goff, instead, took the line that the firm might have traded its way out were economic conditions more favourable. It was the Government’s fault that was not the case.

This line is truly hard to swallow given South Canterbury Finance’s difficulties sprang from the heady boom times in the property market when Labour was in power.

Goff would have been better advised to have said nothing.

One of the challenges of Opposition is to hold your tongue and not try for cheap publicity on every issue.

Believe it or not, a fan has set up a website dedicated to Paul Henry. Has some of his finest (or worst) moments.

I’m attending the Reconstituting the Constitution conference today and tomorrow. Topics being discussed are:

• Overseas constitutional reform lessons
• The republican question
• The need for a written constitution
• The future of electoral law
• Australian constitutional reform
• Influence of international treaties
• The trans-tasman relationship
• The role and governance of sub-national government
• Protecting future generations

I hope to blog some of the contributions.

UPDATE: The conference is being webcast for those who are interested in these issues – http://www.r2.co.nz/20100902/

Grant Robertson, as host, did the welcome address. He must have read my blog this morning as he remarked how looking around the people gathered in the Legislative Council Chamber, he thought what a fine upper house they would make. Then seeing me at the back, he hastened to add on “except for David Farrar”. I guess Grant prefers one party rule 🙂

In a  nice twist the opening speech is not from one of the “good or great”, but a couple of recent Victoria law graduates – Greg who now works for Crown Law and Catherine who is a clerk to Justice Arnold of the Court of Appeal.

Greg made the point that most people probably know more about the US constitution, than the NZ one. He went on to say this is partly because our arrangements do work. He does see the future as NZ having a document which is supreme law, and NZ being a republic.

He also touched on how to get better engagement with these issues. Looking around the room I note there are very very few MPs or media present. If one really wanted to get constitution debate going you need the people who can actually do something about it there and participating.

Catherine touched on how the projected population growth for Maori (21% vs 11% for non Maori) means it is likely treaty issues will become more important in future. She compared our approach to constitutional issues as being like McGyver – we patch it up with number 8 wire and think she’ll be fine mate.

Was a very good idea starting with two young graduates. Any constitutional changes in future will affect them most of all, and it was refreshing hearing from them.

The Herald reports:

Three non-executive directors have been appointed to the Treasury’s board, but Labour is continuing to question the reason for the board’s existence.

Treasury Secretary John Whitehead, who announced the governance board last month, said it would include private and community representatives to provide advice.

Mr Whitehead would be able to veto the board’s advice.

He said he would continue to answer to the State Services Commission and Finance Minister.

I think this is a good initiative. It may stop Treasury getting too insular, and provide some external views on how Treasury are doing.

Labour’s state services spokesman Grant Robertson said the board challenged the neutrality of the public service and public service bosses’ responsibility to ministers.

With various working groups, purchase advisers, a review of public sector advice and now a board for the Treasury, the Government was fundamentally changing the nature of the public sector, he said.

“This board looks designed to lock in place the economic thinking of the current Government.

Oh what tosh. I should remind people that Mr Whitehead was appointed to his role in 2003 under a Labour Government, and incidentally one of his former jobs was Deputy Director of the Labour Parliamentary Research Unit.

Okay. I aim to get a new laptop every three years, and am already eight months overdue. Considering they get used around 12 – 15 hours a day (are are meant to only be used for one battery life per day), my current one has lasted well – a HP Compaq nc4400.

The current one is very small and light. A 12.1 inch display and weights just under four pounds. That has been useful as I travel so much with it. Having said, that I could go for something larger, as the new iPad means I can leave the laptop behind more and more.

I am what you call a power user. At anyone time I will have half a dozen or more applications open, and a dozen or more webpages. Plus all the background apps such as MSN Messenger, Twitter running. So lots of power and RAM is vital. I routinely handle data bases which are 1 GB or more in size. 4 GB RAM would be the minimum I’d consider and I’d prefer something that would allow me to stick up to 8 GB in.

It has to be a Windows laptop. I know Macs can emulate etc, and how I should use Linux etc etc. Decision has been made that I am staying with Windows. So don’t even bother telling me I am wrong.

What I am after is recommendations (preferably from personal experience) on good grunty laptops. Ideal features are:

• Fast
• Long battery life
• Relatively light
• Quick start up
• Can handle multiple apps open at same time
• Resilient
• 500 GB or more storage
• 4 GB or more RAM
• Not a serious gamer, so doesn’t need to be optimised for that
• Doesn’t freeze when multiple things happening

The operating system will be Windows 7 Ultimate (which I have a copy of).

All feedback appreciated.

Oh these are good. The Telegraph reports:

The Herald:

In the end, South Canterbury Finance was not, as some had predicted, too big to fail.

The Government, quite correctly, resisted the temptation to support the recapitalisation of the country’s second-biggest finance company, consigning it to receivership. …

There was, however, no point in keeping South Canterbury Finance afloat. Bad governance and loan practices have destroyed a once strong brand.

The Press:

South Canterbury Finance’s decision to call in the receivers yesterday had an inevitability about it. …

But the investor repayments, and the fact that the receivership process means there will be no fire sale of assets or fast call-in of loans, should limit the economic, and perhaps political, fallout. This might otherwise have been more serious at a time when the economy is still fragile, a strong reason for the Government to act.

The Dom Post:

The failure of South Canterbury Finance is a tragedy – for founder Allan Hubbard, for South Island businesses and for taxpayers who must now make good the deposit guarantee made by the last government.

Mr Hubbard, 82, is no Mark Hotchin or Rod Petricevic. There are no multimillion-dollar mansions, flash cars or luxury yachts lurking in his cupboards. He lives in a modest Timaru bungalow and drives an ageing Volkswagen Beetle.

However, the $1.6 billion SCF owes investors is roughly three times the amount Mr Hotchin’s Hanover and Petricevic’s Bridgecorp each owed investors when they collapsed. …

It is time for the loyal band of letter-writing supporters who believe Mr Hubbard can do no wrong to bite their tongues. Their hero is decent, generous and well-intentioned. Earlier this year he put family assets worth more than $150m into SCF in an attempt to shore up its balance sheet. Those assets have now been lost.

The interim report of the statutory managers appointed to run his affairs, plus those of other companies and charities associated with him and his wife, Jean, suggests the acumen that made him the South Island’s richest man has deserted him. …

Many will wonder why the last government ever agreed to guarantee the deposits of investors who went looking for higher interest rates in finance companies. The answer is that both Labour and National, then in Opposition, considered the guarantee the lesser of two evils. Better payouts than the total collapse of the financial system. They may have been right, but the payouts announced yesterday still stick in the craw. This is not what we pay taxes for.

The Dom Post is on the money. It is easy in hindsight to say that one should not have had the guarantee scheme, but in late 2008 the wordl financial system was on the brink of possible collapse, and pretty much every OECD country did much the same as a stability measure.

The ODT:

But with SCF’s investors largely covered by the guarantee scheme, the Government chose to see it go into receivership at least in part so that it could have some degree of control over the impact of the company’s failure on the core South Island economy – and so the fallout could be managed, as far as possible, in an orderly manner.

SCF may be regarded as the biggest single South Island casualty of the recession, and without the greatest care by the receivers and the principal debtor – the taxpayer – the long-term consequences may be a chief cause of slowing the economic recovery.

Everyone in the South will hope that prospect can be avoided.

On the brighter side, some sensible reduction of rural land prices may eventually result from this failure, just as it appears to be occurring in the urban property market once the speculative bubble burst.

None of the four editorials are saying the Government should have stepped in to stop receivership, which is what some were urging.

Some quite amusing questions in this week’s quiz. 45 seconds.

I think their question 4 may have the wrong answer though. I am not aware of any tobacco major reforms proposed last week, but there were some alcohol ones.

Marty Sharpe in the Dom Post reports:

A woman’s eight-year jail term for murdering her partner reflects the judiciary’s lack of understanding towards male victims of domestic violence, a men’s rights spokesman says.

Hastings GP Viv Roberts was commenting on Monday’s sentencing of Jacqueline Wihongi, 33, in the High Court at Napier.

The mother of six stabbed her partner of 17 years, Vivian Hirini, in the chest with a kitchen knife in June last year.

In sentencing, Justice John Wild said Wihongi had a tragic “history of victimhood” and it would have been “manifestly unjust” to have given her life imprisonment.

The couple had a violent relationship and frequently assaulted each other. Mr Hirini had been stabbed previously by Wihongi and had lost an eye when she hit him with a bottle. The court was shown a ringbinder containing about 500 pages of police reports on domestic callouts involving the couple.

Splitting up would seem rather sensible.

SIMILARITIES OF VIOLENT CRIMES

MALE

Bailey Gabriel Pirini, 38, of Kaikohe, pleaded guilty at his fifth court appearance to murdering his partner of six months, Lola Paraha, on January 13.

His daughter was present when he used an iron bar to kill Ms Paraha.

The pair had been drinking and started to argue.

Crown prosecutor Mike Smith said Pirini showed no remorse and tried to shift the blame to Paraha, saying she provoked him.

Defence lawyer Doug Blaikie said Pirini’s injuries indicated that he was attacked first. There was an intention to inflict injury rather than to kill, Mr Blaikie said.

Pirini suffered a head injury in a motorcycle accident in 1989.

In sentencing him to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 12 years, Justice Douglas White said Pirini had a history of violent offending and his actions could not be seen as self-defence.

FEMALE

Jacqueline Elaine Wihongi, 33, of Napier, was found guilty of murdering her partner of 17 years, Vivian Hirini, on June 5 last year.

The couple’s daughter was present when Wihongi fatally stabbed Hirini in the chest with a knife.

The pair had been drinking and started to argue.

There was a long history of violence between the pair. She had previously stabbed him and he had lost an eye when she hit him with a bottle.

Defence lawyer Russell Fairbrother said she “self-medicated” with alcohol after a tragic history of being raped several times and being the victim of a home invasion.

Wihongi still suffered from a brain injury after an overdose of painkillers when she was 13.

Justice John Wild said it would be manifestly unjust to sentence the mother of six to life imprisonment. She was sentenced to eight years’ jail and will be eligible to apply for parole after serving a third of her time.

She may be out in three years for murder. This was not a one off episode of self defence. She had stabbed him and partially blinded him previously.

The victim was no angel, but I do suspect if he had killed her, he would be doing life with 10 years non parole.

NZPA report:

Wellington radio personality Justin du Fresne has announced that he will step down as host of the morning show on NewstalkZB.

He has hosted the show since 1987, and this year marked 50 years since he began his radio career.

“This is my decision, I’ve had an amazing time but feel I need to enjoy life without the pressure of a daily radio show. I would like to thank my listeners for the sustained support I’ve had,” he said.

Wellington general manager of The Radio Network Rhys Nimmo said: “Justin has been a fixture on Wellington’s airwaves for well over two decades and has been a key reason behind NewstalkZB’s status as a market leader in talk radio”.

Du Fresne was in discussions about an ongoing role with NewstalkZB.

Christmas Eve will be his last day in his current role.

1987 is around when I started listening to talk radio, so I can’t recall a time when Justin has not been the morning voice on Newstalk ZB, or 2ZB as it was then.

The trend in broadcasting has been to centralise the broadcasts. Once upon a time 1ZB, 2ZB and 3ZB all have very different shows and presenters. It makes economic sense to have one presenter nation-wide if you will keep much the same ratings.

The exception to this trend has been Justin, in Wellington. He has such a dedicated following, that he has maintained his Wellington only mornings show.

In the last couple of years, I’ve gone from a listener to a regular panellist on his Friday face off panel. This was my favourite part of his show, as a listener, so it has been a real treat to be on Face Off, and hand out bouquets and brickbats.

Hopefully NewstalkZB will continue with a Wellington only show in the mornings, after Justin retires – but they may find his boots are too big to fill.

The next time I am on the show, I must ask Justin the question I keep forgetting – is he related to Karl du Fresne?

Day 12 and no result. The latest stories suggest there is pressure from within the electorates of the three Independents to go with the Coalition, but who knows. Their list of demands seems to grow by the day.

The latest two party preferred count has the Coalition ahead by 893 votes of almost 11 million. As a percentage it means they lead 50.004% to 49.996%. Truly a nation divided.

The Herald reports:

Yesterday Mr Hubbard condemned the Government for preventing him working to save South Canterbury by placing his affairs under statutory management two months ago.

This, he said, was “a body blow” for the company.

But Prime Minister John Key said the global recession and the company’s poor-quality lending had “taken us into the situation we’re in today”.

If the gap between assets and liabilities is $500 million, then the collapse was probably inevitable. Mr Hubbard would be well advised to reflect on his own role in costing taxpayers such a huge amount of money, rather than seek to blame those picking up the pieces.

Mr Key said the Government’s finances could handle the payout and credit ratings agencies had assured the Treasury it would not have any immediate effect on the country’s credit rating.

Although the sum involved would appear large to struggling taxpayers, “it is relatively small compared to other losses the Crown has incurred with the deterioration, for instance, in ACC”, Mr Key said.

Sad but true.

Opposition Leader Phil Goff said yesterday’s payout was “a huge cost to the taxpayer for the ordinary Kiwi who’s struggling to save for him or herself”.

“Having to bail out the investors of South Canterbury Finance will come as a huge burden.”

Mr Goff said the company’s fate was “sealed by the Government’s failure to get a proper economic recovery”.

Oh what a pathetic statement. You just look desperate and irrelevant when you come up with such tripe and nonsense.

Whale blogs:

I got sent more than a few copies of a Len Brown email that has been sent to staff at Manukau City Council. The truly creepy thing about this email from the Brown cam­paign is that it was sent to inter­nal email addresses, and it was sent with embed­ded links that if you check the code are hard-coded to the indi­vid­ual receiv­ing it so that the mere act of click­ing on a link can iden­tify you to the Brown cam­paign team. …

Not only is he solic­it­ing dona­tions from staff of Manukau City but he is also encour­ag­ing them to join the cam­paign and it is all being tracked in some sort of big brother creepy way.

The peo­ple that have received this and for­warded to me all say that they have never joined any mail­ing list for Len Brown. The code of the email shows clearly that this email was sent inter­nally, osten­si­bly from the Mayor’s office. …

Bot­tom line is that Len Brown has used coun­cil pro­vided resources to cam­paign amongst coun­cil staff and thereby politi­cized the neu­tral hard work­ing staff of Manukau City.

Sending a fundraising e-mail to Council staff is incredibly unethical, if the report is correct.

NZPA have done a story, based on No Right Turn’s OIA study. This is a good example of how blogs can do good quality research and get stories into the media based on their worth:

Nearly all ministers fail to supply information requested under the Official Information Act (OIA) in the required time, a study by a blogsite has found.

Idiot/Savant of No Right Turn, a left-wing blogsite, gathered information using the Act over the past three months on how requests for information were handled.

The fastest answering ministers were: Chris Finlayson (who is Attorney-General, and has responsibility for Treaty negotiations and arts) who answered all requests within the 20 working day deadline and Maurice Williamson (a minister outside Cabinet responsible for a range of portfolios including building, customs and statistics) who answered 96.1 percent on time.

The slowest were:

* Gerry Brownlee (energy, economic development, leader of the house) — 39.7 percent on-time.

* Judith Collins (police, corrections, veterans’s affairs) — 48.3 percent.

* Tim Groser (trade, climate change negotiations) and Jonathan Coleman (immigration, broadcasting, tourism) — 50 percent.

* Kate Wilkinson (labour, conservation, food safety) — 52.3 percent.

* Phil Heatley (fisheries, housing) –54.2 percent.

* Paula Bennett (social development and employment, youth affairs) refused to cooperate with the survey.

The blogger said it was appalling that ministers were not ensuring they met the legal time limit.

Hopefully the sunlight will encourage more Ministers to meet the deadlines in future. They are a deadline – not a target.

At White House Tapes you can hear LBJ ordering some trousers from a tailor, in his trademark coarse language.

The Herald updates:

The Green Party caucus last week decided to have a conscience vote on the alcohol purchasing age and their positions are not all undecided as reported yesterday in a poll of MPs.

Seven of the nine MPs support the purchasing age being 18 for on- and off-licensed premises.

They are Metiria Turei, Russel Norman, Keith Locke, Kevin Hague, Catherine Delahunty, David Clendon and Gareth Hughes.

Yay. Go the Greens!

Labour MPs Jacinda Ardern and Charles Chauvel support the age of 18 for both.

Good. I was surprised when yesterday it was reported Labour’s Youth Affairs Spokesperson was effectively favouring 19 year olds being banned from being able to buy a bottle of wine, but good to see Jacinda (and Charles) are  in fact supporting 18.

This now means twice as many MPs are supporting 18 over 20 – 27 MPs to 14 MPs. The split age still has the most support with 37 MPs leaning that way.

The Herald reports:

South Canterbury Finance Limited announced today that it has been unable to complete a recapitalisation and restructure.

As a result, the Company would have been unable to certify to Trustees Executors Limited, in accordance with the terms of its debenture trust deed with Trustees Executors Limited, that it was compliant with various financial covenants under the debenture trust deed for the financial year ended 30 June 2010.

Accordingly, South Canterbury Finance Limited has requested Trustees Executors Limited to appoint a receiver in respect of the whole of its undertaking and assets, and Trustees Executors Limited has done so.

This is not the end of the road – it means TEL now has control of SCF. However it strongly indicates that the Government’s guarantee of deposits will be called on.

Personally I am pleased the Government didn’t attempt a King Canute.

Bernard Hickey writes:

The government’s decision not to support a recapitalisation plan for South Canterbury Finance was the right one. Receivership was the cleanest, simplest and ultimately safest option for both taxpayers and investors.

The government will now have to pay out around NZ$1.6 billion to 35,000 depositers in South Canterbury Finance that were covered under the extended guarantee scheme.

They have already paid out today $1.7 billion. Ouch. However some of that will be recovered over time.

It was clear from Prime Minister John Key’s comments yesterday about the administrative and institutional mess inherited by CEO Sandy Maier that he was no fan of the way Allan Hubbard had created and run the business as part of his own charitable small business empire.

Hubbard was making no interest ‘helping hand’ loans to young farmers and then mortgaging his own assets to make the interest payments.

Which is well intentioned. But he lent too much bad money, and in the end he has left the taxpayer with the bill. That is not generosity. Allan Hubbard is not the victim here – the taxpayer is.

The Herald reports:

The man who murdered undercover police officer Sergeant Don Wilkinson has been jailed for at least fifteen years.

On June 12 a jury found John Skinner guilty of murdering Sergeant Wilkinson during a covert police operation in September 2008.

Skinner was under police surveillance as a suspected P manufacturer and shot Sergeant Wilkinson with a powerful air rifle after catching him trying to install a tracking device on his Ford Explorer.

Janet Wilson summed this up wonderfully on NewstalkZB yesterday. She said it was not self defence, but quite the opposite – Skinner hunted down Wilkinson and the other office, and shot them like dogs.

It was an execution. I don’t think someone who chases someone in their car, and when catches up to them shoots them multiple times until they are dead is the sort of person who will ever rehabilitate.

A reader has compiled this little video of Trevor Mallard’s great hits and misdeeds. A nice walk through memory lane.

The Herald reports:

There is still a one-in-three chance of another crash, says Standard and Poor’s global chief economist David Wyss.

“The recession is over but it is a half-speed recovery,” he told a Breakfast With the Economists gathering in Auckland yesterday.

“We have now had four quarters of growth in all the major economies but we are crawling out of recession. And a slow recovery is a fragile recovery.”

Among the risks was the perennial one of another oil shock emanating from the Middle East.

“Another is the financial markets. Europe seems to be settling down but there is still a lot of debt in what we are now supposed to call the ‘olive belt.”‘

I’m surprised he only rates it one in three. I reckon it might even be one in two when you look at how weak the US recovery is also. The saving grace may be Asia.