Students at Victoria University currently wait on average for four weeks to see a counsellor, meanwhile the Vice Chancellor wants to spend $960,000 on taking a word out of the University’s name (which doesn’t appear to include physically changing signage)

— Reed Fleming (@reedfleming) July 30, 2018

Reed Fleming is one of many upset at the Council voting to change the name of Victoria University of Wellington.

There is a petition against the name change which has over 1,500 signatures to date. The Minister should only approve the name change is there is demonstrable support and in fact most submissions were against the name change. I note lots of well known lecturers have signed.

I’ve had a look at some of the research for the name change and it is fairly underwhelming.

If I wanted to do some high quality research on whether a name change would increase international student numbers I’d do an A/B test where you market the university as “Victoria University of Wellington” in half the countries you target and as “University of Wellington” in the other half. Then you can compare the change in enrolment numbers to the previous year to measure if a changed name has any impact.

That made me think though that if you can use a different name for marketing in half the countries, you could do it for all of them – without changing the name domestically. It’s what you call a trading name. Keep the name domestically as VUW but when you market the university globally you can call it University of Wellington, and just have VUW in the small print. That is the best of both worlds.

The consultation has been pretty substandard also. Changing the name of a university is a huge issue. It impacts every student, staff and graduate. Just allowing people to do a submission isn’t enough.

If I was Chris Hipkins I would refuse a name change (if one is made, the decision by Council is draft) unless VUW does the following:

1. A survey of all current students on their preferred name
2. A survey of all current staff on their preferred name
3. A survey of all graduates they have an e-mail address of, on their preferred name

This can be done for just a few thousand dollars online. The survey results should not be the only factor in the decision, but they should be influential.  If 80% of staff, students and graduates were opposed, it would be folly to continue. But if say only 10% were opposed, then it might be all steam ahead.

Stuff reports:

Business confidence continues to slide, with ANZ saying the corporate sector is “in a funk”.

The ANZ business outlook for July showed a net 45 per cent of businesses were pessimistic about the general outlook for the economy, the most downbeat reading in the monthly survey since May 2008, when New Zealand was in recession and the global financial crisis was building.

The number of businesses expecting an improvement in their own activity was more positive in the survey, but has dropped to a net 4 per cent which are positive, the lowest since May 2009.

To have lower business confidence than when the economy was in recession is some achievement.

source: tradingeconomics.com

This shows the last 11 years. In four years we’ve gone from +70 to -40.

From Hansard:

Chris Bishop: When Dr Pauline Kingi was appointed to lead the independent inquiry into the appointment process around Mr Wally Haumaha, was she aware that Dr Kingi had publicly endorsed Mr Haumaha 23 times on LinkedIn, for every skill Mr Haumaha has listed on that website, and in some cases being the only person to endorse him, and that Mr Haumaha has endorsed Dr Kingi on at least three occasions for her skills listed on the LinkedIn website? …

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: This is important. Would you like to listen? The integrity of a highly respected public servant is being questioned; it’s important that her answers be placed on the record. She did confirm that she had, like many New Zealanders, set up a LinkedIn account when it was first launched, and that at time it was— …

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: It was common practice at that time—16 years ago—for Māori professionals to support each other on this new medium, through endorsement.

So the Minister’s defence of Kingi as the inquiry head is that she endorsed Haumaha 16 years ago when LinkedIn was set up as it was common practice for Maori professionals to support each other like this.

A pretty weak and patronising defence to start with, but then comes this:

Chris Bishop: Further to that answer, is the member aware that the endorsement function on LinkedIn was only invented and established in 2012, so references to LinkedIn profiles 15 years ago are an utter irrelevance?

Boom. Game over. It means either Kingi lied to Martin about the endorsements or Martin lied to the House about them.

If Kingi continues as the inquiry head, it will be seen as a total whitewash. She has personally endorsed the person whose appointment she is investigating. You can’t get a clearer conflict of interest.

It’s time for the PM to intervene. After all she is the one who actually appointed Haumaha.

Joel Maxwell writes:

Putting aside age and actual achievement, the key difference is that I chucked it all in to learn te reo Māori fulltime. Right there is the only thing I think I’ve ever had over a high achiever.

So here is my challenge to Bridges: chuck it in too, if only for a year. Don’t wait – do it now, and you can go back to politics with a good, strong foundation in your language.

I know, it sounds like a joke. But it is a serious question for all Māori. Is anything more important than the fight to save te reo?

This shows what a privileged world Maxwell lives in, if he thinks there is nothing more important for Maori than saving te reo.

I’m a fan of te reo. I prefer the te reo version of the National Anthem. I think it is good for New Zealanders to know some te reo and I’m happy for taxpayer funding of the Maori Language Commission and Maori TV.

But to say that there is nothing more important for Maori than te reo is basically bonkers. Here’s nine things I’d say are inarguably more important:

1. Lifting Maori educational achievement to the same level as non-Maori
2. Reducing the crime and imprisonment rate of Maori to the same level as non-Maori
3. Improving the health outcomes of Maori to the same level as non-Maori
4. Reducing the Maori unemployment rate to the same level as non-Maori
5. Reducing the domestic violence and child abuse rates among Maori
6. Concluding the historic Treaty settlements
7. Lifting incomes for Maori to the same rates as non-Maori
8. Reducing welfare dependency among Maori families
9. Reducing the material deprivation rate for Maori families

I blogged a week ago that I thought the appointment of Pauline Kingi as the inquiry head into the appointment of Wally Haumaha as Deputy Police Commissioner was unwise. I said:

Dr Kingi is well respected. But she has a current role advising Police on recruitment, which makes her a less than ideal choice to head an inquiry into the recruitment of the Deputy Commissioner. …

So Kingi is actively involved in selection of senior police officers, and she is handpicked by NZ First Ministers to review the selection of a former NZ First candidate as Deputy Police Commissioner.

But it turns out that the choice is even more flawed than I suspected. Newstalk ZB reports:

The head of the independent inquiry into Wally Haumaha’s appointment as deputy police commissioner appears to have publicly endorsed his skills and abilities online.

The Herald can reveal that Kingi, who is involved in selecting senior police officers, appears to have endorsed Haumaha on the professional networking website LinkedIn.

The site allows other users to endorse the skills and areas of experience of other members.

Haumaha has 15 skills and areas of experience, such as leadership and stakeholder engagement, that have been endorsed by others.

An account in the name of Dr Kingi, a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, is the only one to endorse all 15.

That account is the only one to endorse Haumaha in some skills, such as ‘security’ and ‘firearms’.

This makes the independent inquiry a farce. Dr Kingi should never have been appointed or accepted appointment. If you know someone well enough to publicly endorse them on Linked In, you know them too well to head up an inquiry into their appointment.

Haumaha is a former NZ First Candidate. The Acting PM chose a NZ First Minister to be responsible for the inquiry and the NZ First Minister chose someone who is fatally compromised due to their closeness to Haumaha.

It stinks of a cover up.

NewstalkZB reports:

Winston Peters is drawing parallels between Russian interference in the US election, and John Howard saying National was robbed at last year’s election.

The former Australian Prime Minister told the National Party conference over the weekend the result of last year’s election was “unjust and unfair”.

Peters is questioning how people can be okay with a comment like that, but not about alleged Russian meddling in the US election.

“Everyone’s dancing up and down about that, but someone who is a four-time Prime Minister is here criticising the makeup of this Government without being able to itemise and particularise what he’s actually talking about.”

Wow this is a new level of stupidity, even for the Minister for Putin.

John Howard commented nine months after an election that he thought the result was unfair.

Winston thinks this is equivalent to:

• Russia hacking the e-mail accounts of a political party and its campaign chairman
• State sponsored dissemination of fake news
• Attempting to hack voter registration databases
• Stealing voter data on 200,000 voters
• Paid advertising of $100,000 on Facebook to influence voters

Even for Winston and his slavish devotion to Putin, this is a new low.

Also the hypocrisy is rather great as Winston of course has been happy to offer opinions on the UK and Brexit. So by his logic he has interfered in British elections.

This is an amended version of Israel Archaeological Dig #14

2018 Israel archaeological excavation at biblical Gath (home of Goliath)

By John Stringer, Tell es-Safi, west of Jerusalem.

I’ll sign off this blog series with this wonderful drone video of the whole Tell es-Safi/Gath site by my colleague Rev Dr John DeLancey of Pennsylvania, the other ‘dirt donkey’ in 82D.  His fascinating website is here http://biblicalisraeltours.com. And if you’d like to read more about Gath, this academic journal article below is full of information (order a full copy of Vol 80 ed. 4). It combines several academic opinions about Gath. Here’s a preview.

I’ve been asked to bring a team of Kiwis to Gath next year for 2019 June/July, so if you’re interested in coming, watch Kiwiblog later in the year for details.

And a final picture below shows site supervisor Dr Jeff Chadwick during final image capture of the D2 site at the end of season 21 (2018).  And below that I have added some graphic extrapolation to help understand the site. This is only one area of current excavations –D2, of Areas D1, Areas Y, K and M. We have only penetrated the soil of a tiny percentage of Gath which remains a huge site, one of the largest in the world, certainly the largest in Israel. You can clearly see the Iron-Age Philistine ‘E’ gate construction over older Bronze-Age Canaanite levels (what I dubbed the ‘Nixon Water Gate’) and the brown cross walls and soil infills in between, to block the pathway of the 830BC besiegers. The pile of stones at right is perhaps the foundations of a protective tower at the NW corner. I began and cleared the triangle pit this side of the ‘E’ structure, but that is as far as I got before excavations finished for the year. My main square and the subjects of these posts is the square to the right of Jeff, where the black/white measuring stick lays.

In the next month or so, the senior archaeologists will present a considered hypothesis about these diggings and then publish. The ‘E’ is possibly much later (late Iron-Age Philistine) and the buildings (where 82 C and 82D is noted below) could be either Canannite or Philistine.  Dr Jeff reports…”Shalom from Israel, Area D team 2018! …Our final aerial and “cherry picker” photos are in, and are they spectacular! And we’re seeing amazing things that weren’t visible ‘on the ground’ even a week ago. As Eric would say – “This changes everything!” … I’ll get back to you with the latest info. It’ll be a bit different than it was on tell tour. (Oh, we do still have a gate – it just all makes more sense now.  )…”  This is how archaeology works.  Educated people with the data present working hypotheses and then equally well-informed peers argue the toss. And somewhere in between we arrive at the truth based on the evidence, and then we find something else which up ends the whole ancient pie cart (one of the Murphy Laws of fieldwork).

Ciao4now.  –John Stringer. Christchurch.

The Guardian reports:

A former board member of the Charity Commission, John Purkis, said the regulator should be worried that the IEA’s director told undercover investigators posing as US beef farmers that the IEA was “in the Brexit influencing game”.

Shock horror. A think-tank says it wants to influence public policy. Quick lock them up.

In footage recorded secretly on behalf of Greenpeace, the IEA’s director, Mark Littlewood, spoke to an undercover reporter posing as a representative of a potential US beef farming donor.

So Greenpeace has gone from fighting for the environment to fighting organisations that are pro-markets.

Littlewood told the would-be donors that a supposedly independent report on the future of agriculture, for which the IEA was seeking £42,500 in funding, would conclude that US beef should be allowed to be sold in the UK.

This is about as astonishing that a CTU report will call for more powers for unions or a Taxpayers Union report will call for lower taxes.

The IEA is a longstanding free market thinktank. It supports US beef being sold in the UK because it supports free trade – not because US beef farmers also want it.

It also exposed how in May the IEA arranged for real US donors with agricultural interests to have a private meeting at the IEA’s offices with Steve Baker, the then Brexit minister.

Shock horror, think tanks can arrange meetings with Ministers. So can non think tanks. So can just about anyone.

An IEA spokeswoman said it was confident it had acted in accordance with the charity regulations. She said: “We do not act in donors’ interests, except to the extent that they have an interest in pursuing free trade and free markets.” She added it makes “independent editorial decisions and then seeks funding … it is surely uncontroversial that the IEA’s principles coincide with the interests of our donors”.

Donors support organisations where their interests coincide. You’d hardly donate to an organisation you disagree with.

What a silly little attempted beatup.

Disclosure: I was went on a drunken boat cruise on the River Thames with a bunch of libertarians. I think the boat cruise was organised by the IEA. I wasn’t so drunk that I fell into the Thames, but was happy enough that I can’t recall for sure who was paying for the drinks.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will officially return from maternity leave early on Thursday.

Ardern will take up the reins as prime minister again at midnight,  when Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters leaves the country. …

“The Prime Minister will resume her duties from the time my plane takes off on midnight on Wednesday night,” Peters said.

Ardern won’t be back in Wellington until the following week, but with Peters flying out of the country there was really no choice but for her to take up the reins again as Peters departs.

Because otherwise Kelvin Davis would become Acting Prime Minister. Labour have wisely decided that even a few hours of Kelvin as Acting PM is too great a risk so wham we get a midnight handover.

The Herald reports:

The Manukau Institute of Technology has warned that proposals to tighten post-study work visas for overseas students could threaten the institute’s financial viability.

Chief executive Gus Gilmore has told the Government that the proposed changes would halve the institute’s fulltime-equivalent foreign students from 1000 to 500, cost 64 tutoring jobs and slash its revenue by $10 million a year, or 10 per cent of its $103m total revenue.

The Government says it wants to make the polytech sector more financially viable, yet its own policies may doom some of them.

The backlash from the polytechnic sector appears to have surprised the Government, as Labour’s 2017 election policy said its proposed crackdown on student work rights would only affect “low-level courses at private training establishments”.

“We do not expect them to adversely impact universities, polytechnics or schools,” the policy said.

Surely not. Labour getting the impact of its policies wrong. What a surprise.

Stuff reports:

“We’re at the end of what I’d say is the economic cycle at the moment. There’s no question that when I look around the world and the things I’m now involved in internationally, you can start to see the pressure in the system,” Key said. 

“I was in China a week ago, it’s clear their economy is really starting to splutter a little bit. While the United States economy is doing well, they’re running massive, massive deficits – 7 per cent of GDP. Europe’s obviously much weaker than it was.

“So I think you are starting to see a slowdown in the economy and I think that, in part, reflects the business confidence numbers in New Zealand, and I think in part New Zealand businesses are looking at what the Government’s doing and they’re uncertain about that.” 

Low business confidence numbers could not be ignored, but Key said he hoped the economy remained strong “because every day, New Zealanders rely on it”.

Key and John Howard spoke at the dinner of the conference. It was interesting but rather scary to hear what he had to say on the economy. Especially considering he is now the Chair of ANZ Bank and is very very focused on the global economy.

Basically it was that the world recovered okay from the GFC as China kept the global economy going, and also many OECD countries were able to borrow against fairly strong balance sheets.

Today we don’t have the same capacity. With the welcome exception of NZ, many countries still have very high debt and are not even back into surplus. So another global shock woule be more punishing.

China is in a very different place also. It still has economic growth above most OECD countries, but weaker than in the past. But their real problem is their household debt. That constrains their ability to respond as they have in the past.

In 2008 household debt in China was under 20% of GDP. It is now almost 50%.That is a huge increase in just a decade. It is a sign of an expanding middle class but it has risks.

The household debt in China is now at 110% of disposable income. In nominal terms it is nine times higher than a decade ago.

So when the next global shock comes (now overdue – 1973, 1987, 1998, 2008) it could be really nasty. A good reminder why we need to pay off debt in good times, so we can cope with the bad times.

Stuff reports:

Retired Methodist minister Dave Mullan is fighting for his right to die with dignity. But is he committing the ultimate sin?

After 16 years, the Auckland man is sick of his advanced prostate cancer, and says he desperately supports the End of Life Choice Bill. 

As do most NZers.

Mullan looks healthy but in reality his cancer is now compressing his spinal nerves.

He can expect to be progressively paralysed and eventually made helpless. Road trips and referendums won’t benefit him.

He says it was a struggle to get through June. “I can now feel the cancer in my spine, hip and left leg. It’s difficult for me to wake up,” he says. 

“I’m only just surviving now, I’m in constant pain and feel miserable all the time.”

After an unrelated surgery, he began experiencing “appalling” spasms, he says.

“I felt as if every muscle between my shoulders and knees was tugging on the edge of the incision. I could neither move nor cry out. If that kind of pain, even in short spasms while unconscious is what I might expect when this wretched disease overtakes me, I don’t want it,” he says.

“I am being medicated for daily pain. My experience with the mysterious tetany spasms leads me to believe I may be one of the few hospice patients whose pain is simply not suitable for palliative care.”

This is a key aspect. The providers of palliative care do a wonderful job for most people. But not for everyone. And people like Dave Mullan should have the choice of ending their agonizing pain and suffering.

The Press editorial:

The biggest shock from news the superannuation payout isn’t enough to support even a “no frills” lifestyle is that anyone is shocked at all.

It demonstrates a worrying gap between what taxpayers might expect their pension to be able to cover and the reality of what it can pay for.

At about $600 in the hand each week for a couple and $400 for a single person it’s no wonder there are elderly people living in cars and relying on food banks to get by.

After all, the living wage – that level of income being increasingly adopted by organisations as a reasonable payment on which people can live – is $700 a week. And you’d struggle to find people on that wage who are doing anything more than scraping by.

That’s a silly comparison. The living wage is a calculation about what a family with children need. To suggest it should also be used as a basis for retirement income is not sensible.

It is also worth noting that the OECD found NZ has the lowest rate of elderly poverty in the developed world at just 2%.

By 2030 there will be an estimated 1.1 million people retired in New Zealand and the spending on pensions has been calculated to reach $20 billion a year by then.

So you may have two million working age people paying $10,000 a year each in taxation just to fund NZ Super!

Hard decisions are coming for this country.

The retirement age will have to go up. No question. It may be politically untenable but a good government should see it as its responsibility to effectively communicate to voters when their heads are in the sand.

Sadly this Government has reversed the decision of the previous Government to increase the age to 67.

Stuff reports:

It may or may not have been a coincidence that Jacinda Ardern broke radio silence for the first time in nearly a month on the same day National leader Simon Bridges took to the stage with his own baby and young children for his first major speech to the National Party faithful.

There had been murmurs in National ahead of the weekend about whether or not Ardern would gatecrash Bridges’ big day from maternity leave.

But Ardern’s brief Facebook message talking about her return to work in the next week or so still managed to catch some of them by surprise. It was her first since a Facebook post celebrating the start of Labour’s families package on July 1.

Timing your video to be one hour after the opposition leader’s conference speech is pretty desperate stuff.

If Labour were smarter they would have done the Ardern video the next day, so it wouldn’t look so blatant.

The Herald reports:

National will reduce primary class sizes if it comes into power in 2020, leader Simon Bridges says.

The announcement to lift the number of primary school teachers in New Zealand – an issue which once badly damaged National – was the centrepiece of Bridges’ speech at his party’s annual conference this afternoon.

“All our kids should get the individual attention they deserve,” Bridges told an audience of about 600 party members at Skycity Conference Centre in Auckland.

“That’s why I want more teachers in our primary schools, to ensure smaller class sizes for our children.

“Schools currently get one teacher for every 29 nine and ten year olds. It’s lower than that for younger children.

“Those ratios should be reduced.” …

Bridges also said National wanted to improve the quality of early childhood education.

“Most centres do a good job of looking after our young children, but a few not doing good enough is a few too many in my book.

“We need to know what is happening in every early childhood centre in the country.”

National would demand the highest standards from ECE centres, he said.

I’d far rather money from Vote Education is spent on improving the quality of early childhood education and reducing primary school class sizes, than giving lawyers and accountants free degrees.

The early years of education are the most important, and that is where you can make the greatest difference for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. So National is saying lets target money there, while Labour is bribing tertiary students.

But while the focus on primary and early childhood education is welcome, smaller class sizes is not a silver bullet. In fact the impact on learning achievement is quite minor – assessed as 0.21 by Hattie. There are many many things that are more effective. I made this point in 2014 when Labour pledged smaller class sizes.

I suspect politicians focus on class sizes for two reasons. The first is it does have some benefit (all other things equal, a kid does better in a class of 15 vs 30, but the difference between say 23 and 25 is minor), but more it is something politicians can actually directly change. You can set class sizes through your funding. All the other impacts are not ones that can be set or changed so directly.

What are the factors that have the largest impact? The top 10 are:

1. Collective teacher efficacy 1.57
2. Self-reported grades 1.33
3. Teacher estimates of achievement 1.29
4. Cognitive task analysis 1.20
5. Response to intervention 1.29
6. Piagetian programs 1.28
7. Jigsaw method 1.20
8. Conceptual change programs 0.99
9. Prior ability 0.95
10. Strategy to integrate with prior knowledge 0.93

These are not as sexy as smaller class sizes, but they are more influential. Of course ideally it is not either/or. But National needs to do more than just promise smaller classes.

What is also interesting is the most important negative factors. They are:

1. ADHD -0.90
2. Deafness -0.61
3. Boredom -0.49
4. Depression -0.36
5. Moving between schools -0.34

Some of those are not easy to change but the boredom one is interesting. If a kid is bored at school it massively impacts them.

Kerre McIvor writes:

The Domestic Violence Victim Protection Bill was passed in Parliament this week and has been hailed by its architect, Green MP Jan Logie, as a “win for victims, a win for business and ultimately a win for all of us”. …

I fail to see how this new provision for victims of abuse will save any lives whatsoever.

Every single victim of domestic abuse who has phoned me on talkback over the years has said they were so ashamed and embarrassed by their situation, they couldn’t bring themselves to let friends or family know what was going on behind closed doors. Particularly the men.

Is is often forgotten that men are also victims of domestic violence. In fact the Dunedin Health and Development Study has found 34% of men in the study have been physically abused by a partner and 27% of women.

The notion of asking for help was anathema to them and abusers know that. Despite the fact that it’s the abusers who should be feeling shame, they are master manipulaters.

So the concept of someone who has been knocked about, emotionally and physically, being able to find it within themselves to approach their boss and come clean about their domestic situation seems unlikely.

This is correct. I suspect the number of people who ever take up the entitlement will be miniscule. It’s a law that will make very little difference to victims.

And it’s not just the financial burden for small- to medium-sized employers that’s most concerning – what about the health and safety ramifications?

If one of their employees tells them they are living with a violent partner then begs them not to tell anyone, and later that employee ends up dead, will the employer be held liable for not divulging that their staffer was at risk?

They may not be held legally liable, but they will probably feel moral culpability.

I absolutely agree that our domestic violence stats are a source of shame and our violent homes are a breeding ground for future offenders. But I really don’t think Logie’s bill is the answer.

And while I don’t have a solution, I would suggest that others do. When Counties Manukau police attend a violent domestic situation, they give it a couple of days to allow all parties to cool off, then go into the home with trained counsellors and try to work out the root of the problem.

The children are asked their opinion – it’s a holistic, wrap-around approach to domestic abuse which gives the people involved the chance to save themselves and their family.

Putting money and energy into that sort of initiative makes a whole lot more sense to me than making businesses cough up 10 days extra leave.

I agree.

The GDP growth in the US has shot up to 4.1%. Generally anything over 3% is regarded as great.

In NZ the GDP growth is 2.7%. It was above 3% from Dec 14 to Sep 17 but has been falling

The Herald reports:

No free lunches, video-conferencing instead of sending staff to expensive conferences and livestock to control grassy areas and cut down on maintenance contracts are on a hit-list that could slash millions from council budgets.

As councils around the country try to tackle budget blowouts amid rising costs, the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union has published a report – 102 Ways to Save Money in Local Government – which it says could provide financial relief for under-pressure local authorities.

Councils can save money if they have the right mindset.

New Zealand’s 78 local councils collected more than $5 billion in rates revenue during the 2016-17 financial year – about $1100 per New Zealander – and the Taxpayers’ Union said it was imperative those funds were spent more wisely than, in some cases, they are now. …

Cost-cutting proposals from the Taxpayers’ Union include:

Grass cutting:

“Where appropriate use cattle and sheep to graze on council land rather than spending money on grass cutting.

“Auckland Council run sheep and cattle on Cornwall Park in One Tree Hill. The animals are an attraction for children and families. Livestock could easily by used at other parks.”

Scrap political advisers: “Political advisers don’t work for ratepayeres – they work for the mayor.

“If local politicians want political advice they should pay for it.”

The Taxpayers’ Union said that in Wellington, the mayor spent more than $400,000 on advisers and support staff in 2017; in Auckland $2.079m was spent on staff employed by the mayor’s office; in Christchurch the mayor’s office bill totalled $905,344.

Youth councils: “Abolish youth councils and standing consultative committees, which are more about photo opportunities and keeping people happy than useful public debate.

“Councils should be focused on allowing all members of society to participate in meaningful consultation processes as issues arise. Elected councillors are clearly not doing their job if they need to pay people to advise them on what sections of the community think.

“Youth councils are a nice idea but, in our experience, achieve little (if anything), and are used by local politicians as a Claytons solution to youth engagement.”

Playgroups: “Do not have children’s playgroups directly run by the council.

“Instead, better value for less money can be achieved through funding this much-needed resource via the voluntary sector, community groups and independent groups of parents and playgroups.”

Sports payouts: “Get rid of professional sports subsidies disguised as ‘economic development’.

“Hamilton City Council paid around $40 million over the five years it hosted the V8 Supercar races – if residents are not willing to pay their own money to go it’s not reasonable use of ratepayers’ money. It it’s good for businesses then let businesses or the chambers of commerce pay, not the poor residents.”

Lots of good ideas.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand has tumbled down the OECD business confidence rankings to the second lowest among countries in the developed world.

Two years ago New Zealand was the second highest in the OECD with 33 of the 35 countries trailing it. Now everyone except South Korea is above New Zealand.

Amy Adams, National finance spokesperson, said it was a shocking revelation given New Zealand has typically been a haven of political and economic stability.

“Given the high level of political uncertainty around the world it is a shocking revelation that New Zealand – typically a haven of political and economic stability – has the second lowest level of business confidence in the OECD,” Adams said.

So the only country with lower business confidence than NZ is the country with a heavily armed neighbour threatening regional annihilation.

If Labour work really hard, I’m sure they can get us below South Korea also.