The Guardian reports:

The French prime minister has vowed to make a raft of public-spending cuts to stem France’s “intolerable” reliance on state borrowing, which he said had left the country dancing on a debt “volcano”.

In his opening speech to parliament on Tuesday, Edouard Philippe side-stepped the notion of one-size-fits-all austerity, instead insisting that the plan of the new centrist president, Emmanuel Macron, was to reduce public spending while launching a €50bn (£44bn) investment programme and cutting a range of taxes, including slashing corporate taxes to boost businesses.

Cut spending and cut taxes – there is hope for France.

“Businesses must want to set up and develop on our territory rather than elsewhere,” he added, announcing that corporate tax would be cut from 33% to 25% in the next five years.

As corporate tax rates around the world reduce, we will need to do the same.

The Herald reports:

Since Parliament had its very first debate in the mid-19th century, MPs have uttered about 500 million words in the debating chamber.

Nearly every one of those words has been transcribed verbatim and bound into volumes called Hansard, after Thomas Curson Hansard, the first official printer in the UK Parliament.

And this week, as Hansard celebrates its 150th anniversary, they will be published online in their entirety.

Ahead of the anniversary, the Clerk of the House David Wilson began investigating the possibility of a complete digital record of the debates.

In an extraordinary stroke of luck, much of the work had already been done without him knowing. The University of California digitised every Hansard volume from 1867 to 1985, as part of Google’s ambitious attempt to scan every book in the world.

This included the painstaking task of manually scanning every page of the volumes. Because many of the older volumes are fragile, it was done with a high-definition camera while a Google employee carefully turned the pages.

One of the Hansard project’s co-ordinators, Peter Riches, said that was a huge relief.

“It was 723 volumes at about 1000 pages each, so it’s quite a big project, and quite expensive. And someone has to physically do it.”

Great work to have the entire history of the NZ Parliament online.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand superannuation is unaffordable and could even be called “a pyramid scheme”, according to a senior tax lecturer at the University of Auckland Business School, Mark Keating.

Either the amount paid in superannuation will have to fall or taxes will have to be significantly increased to cover the rising costs, says Keating – adding that a universal pension is socially desirable but it is generally accepted sharply increasing costs will make it unaffordable. 

“It should be a warning that New Zealand is now the only country still paying a universal superannuation, regardless of the asset wealth or income of the recipient,” he says. “All other countries have changed their system because it is simply unaffordable.”

Yep we have the most generous superannuation scheme in the world – universal, linked to average wage and no income or asset testing. Raising the eligibility age helps but only a bit.

Currently, an average New Zealander will work for approximately 45 years on an average annual salary of $50,000, and will pay approximately $8000 per year in income tax. They will then retire at age 65 and receive superannuation while they live until almost 90.

 

“The problem is that average person can expect to receive more back in superannuation than they paid in income tax during their entire working life,” says Keating.

When doing the maths, using current tax rates and superannuation rates, an individual will pay approximately $360,000 in income tax on wages over their working life, but will receive approximately $500,000 in superannuation. 

We need as many people as possible to save for their own retirement, and superannuation should just top up those who are short.

That means the Government has to fund all non-superannuation services and benefits from other sources of taxation (mainly GST, corporate tax and user-charges). 

A universal superannuation system is sustainable in only two circumstances: either there are significantly more workers than retired people or many taxpayers die either before reaching retirement age, or shortly after, says Keating.

The ratio of workers to retired people is dropping.

The Herald reports:

The family of a woman killed more than a decade ago by a drink driver are flabbergasted to learn the man has been at it again.

Dean Anthony Martin got behind the wheel in the early hours of November 18 and veered over the opposite lane and crashed into a ditch in Dunedin’s North Rd.

He slept there for some time before police were called and was then abusive when they took him to the station and tried to breathalyse him.

And he has form:

He jailed Martin for 13 months and banned him from driving for a year and a half.

When the Otago Daily Times informed Vicki Smillie about the defendant’s latest crash, she was stunned.

Her daughter, 33-year-old Kellie-Rachel Smillie, a mother of two, was in the passenger seat of Martin’s car when he crashed near Waikouaiti on October 13, 2006. She died in the crash.

He was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment and ordered not to drive for four.

He has killed one person already through drink driving. After this incident you would think he would face a lifetime ban?

The Herald reports:

Labour Waiariki candidate Tamati Coffey says it is a “missed opportunity” after he was denied a political stall at tomorrow’s Te Arawa Secondary Schools Kapa Haka Competition.

But the event’s committee is standing by its decision, saying the competition is about kapa haka, and nothing else.

Mr Coffey took to Facebook last night to air his concerns about not being allowed to set up a stall at the event.

How dare they not allow Tamati a stall. Do they think all those parents have gone there for Kapa Haka or something?

The post received mixed reactions.

“Oh man, let the tamariki do their thing without the politics – this post is the very reason organising committee has ‘banned’ political parties. You’ve lost sight of the kaupapa already. Our kids especially those that hit that stage are already inspired, by their whanau/hapu/iwi, their kura and aspirational kaiako,” one person wrote.

How can they be inspired without a Labour Government? Impossible.

Ms Mohi said the Electoral Commission and Te Puni Kokiri – Te Arawa would have stalls at the event.

“We are making sure there is election information there, but just through organisations that have no party affiliation.”

But you can’t just tell people there is an election on. You have to tell them who to vote for.

The Herald reports:

Some women are being penalised over $100 a week for not naming the father of their children.

Auckland woman Stephanie, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, can’t prove the father of five of her 10 children.

This is the example the left put up as to why there should be no sanctions for not naming the fathers?

She said the father of four of her children has denied he is their parent. The 33-year-old is currently pursuing court action to get a paternity test. 

As far as I know she does not need to prove he is the father to avoid a benefit sanction. She just needs to name him. There is a process for disputed paternity.

The father of her youngest child claimed he hasn’t had the birth registration papers delivered to his house for him to sign.

I’d say he’s lying.

Parents who don’t legally identify the other parent have $22 deducted every week for each child. A further $6 per family is added if it continues for over 13 weeks.

If you are not on welfare, then there is no sanction of course. But if you are on welfare, then taxpayers expect that the father of a child will partially contribute to the child’s upbringing, rather than be reliant purely on taxpayers. That is why the sanction exists – to make fathers face up to their responsibilities.

Stephanie said it was like the Government was punishing her and her children, when the blame sat with the fathers.

All she has to do is name them.

“Caring for them isn’t hard, but financially it is. We can’t afford heaps of things.

The most prosperous family would struggle to care for 10 children, let alone someone on welfare. The answer is not to have 10 children unless you can afford to.

Turei had felt the sting of the sanction herself when she didn’t name the father of her daughter. She said she did it to protect him from Winz harassment with the goal to keep their relationship positive for their daughter.

By WINZ harrassment, Turei presumably means pay child support as required by law.

Other reasons could include the child resulting from a rape or the woman was worried about the father exerting legal rights over the child, particularly if the relationship had been violent, Turei said.

In cases of rape and violence, no sanction is applied.

“The reasons why women do not name the father are complex and personal.”

But for many it is to cheat the taxpayer. The father pays the mother say $40 a week so long as she doesn’t name him, as his child support obligations would probably be over $100 a week. So he is better off, she is better off, but the taxpayer is worse off.

Toby Manhire writes:

The Greens loathe Gareth Morgan’s Opportunities Party, which has stolen some of their thunder on issues including drug reform and water, and has even attempted -audaciously if not hubristically – in recent weeks to steal very senior sitting Green MPs by unsuccessfully attempting to lure them into the big TOP.

So which MPs did TOP try to poach?

Stuff reports:

City-wide zoning, limited out-of-zone enrolments, and an annual “greater Christchurch ballot day” have been mooted as potential solutions to an unequal distribution of pupils across state high schools.

Oh no. An unequal distributions. Parents are not sending their kids to their designated school.

Of six options presented – a free market system, per-school student caps, zones and caps for co-educational schools, zoning and capping all schools, full regulation, or the status quo – the report writers said full regulation best met the ministry’s goal of accessible, equitable and efficiently-resourced schools.

And that sums up everything wrong. The goal is about schools, not students and families.

Full regulation would include zoning and an out-of-zone cap – likely at 5 to 10 per cent of enrolments – at all state high schools, with financial penalties for exceeding the cap.

Why only fine people for going to the wrong school? Jail them, and their accomplices such as principals of popular schools.

Shirley Boys’ High School principal John Laurenson said his “personal view is that there needs to be legislative teeth to the final decision” on the city’s enrolment system.

He said the main differences between schools were cultural, not academic, and Christchurch’s high school leaders appreciated the need for an efficient and equitable network.

I think parents have a very different view of the differences.

Labour’s education spokesman Chris Hipkins said he was open to debating enrolment mechanisms across New Zealand, but was “strongly opposed to Christchurch being treated any different because it had an earthquake”.

“If we have a policy of parental choice across the country, then Christchurch parents should have that same choice.”

When even Chris Hipkins says these proposals go too far, you know they are bad.

Stuff reports:

Bars in a central Christchurch street fighting a proposed 1am closing time have had “a win”.

The High Court has ordered the Christchurch City Council to reconsider its alcohol policy after the hospitality sector raised concerns about its decision-making over Victoria St. …

Brett Giddens, who owns Boo Radley’s bar, in north Victoria St, called the decision “a win for common sense”.

He said the council’s decision was “flawed”.

“Hopefully they take the opportunity to reconsider the entire process as it has been a substantial waste of ratepayer money to date.”

Giddens said a group of affected bar owners had been involved in the review process since 2013, supported by Hospitality NZ.

“The decisions that have come out to date have been very overwhelmingly in support for the bars on Victoria St that took the early risk to establish in the central city,” he said.

“Everyone involved in the appeal is still waiting for the council to pick up the phone and communicate what they are going to do to fix this. “

Hospitality NZ (HNZ) said it had “no other choice” but to seek a High Court review. The council spent more than $91,000 defending its policy. 

Some Councils think that they can insert whatever conditions they like in a LAP. They don’t understand the Act, which requires decisions to be based on evidence.

Mike Yardley weighs in:

HNZ sought such assurances, but in a defiant act of petulance, the council refused to provide any clarity, prompting HNZ to seek a judicial review in the High Court.

In late June, the court issued its decision, strongly ruling in favour of HNZ, confirming that “the council is directed to address the reconsideration decision afresh” in accordance with Decision 43’s intentions for Victoria St.

Despite the colossal waste of ratepayers money on these losing legal capers, the council doesn’t even seem to have the good grace to publicly accept it got it wrong.

Head of strategic policy Helen Beaumont replied to me: “The Council is considering the implications of the decision. It is currently taking legal advice and will not comment further at this stage.”

And earlier on:

When the council first embarked on crafting its LAP in February 2013, it wanted to shoehorn the city’s nightlife scene and late-night trading into a tightly designated pocket of the central city. For the likes of Victoria St, a closing time of 1am was proposed, despite its spectacular evolution into being the city’s premium entertainment precinct.

Last year the Alcohol Regulatory Licensing Authority (ARLA) ruled that Christchurch’s LAP had 13 elements that were “unreasonable”, requiring the council to “reconsider” those elements.

Again LAPs need to be based on evidence, not just the whim of staff or Councillors.

From the Electoral Commission:

1. Gareth Morgan to TOP $900,000
2. Inner Mongolia Rider Horse Industry (NZ) Ltd to National $150,000
3. E Tu Union to Labour $120,000
4. Hon Robert Smellie to Labour $115,000
5. Dame Jenny Gibbs to ACT $106,200
6. Alan Gibbs to ACT $100,000
7. Phillip Mills to Labour $50,000
8. De Yi Shi to National $50,000
9. Murray Chandler to ACT $35,000
10. MF Management Ltd to National $32,000

So by party:

1. TOP $900,000
2. Labour $285,000
3. ACT $241,200
4. National $232,000

The Herald reports:

The alcohol purchase age would be 20 years and booze prices would jump by an average of 10 per cent under policy by Gareth Morgan’s political party. …

“One doesn’t need to be a policy analyst to see that lowering the age of purchase has effectively lowered the socially acceptable age at which young people start drinking. 

If they did use a policy analyst, the analyst might have told them they are talking shit.

As I blogged in 2011:

Certain lobby groups and MPs would have you believe that since the alcohol purchase age was lowered in 1999, many more young people are drinking alcohol.

But an Auckland University study of 9,000 high school students has found the following changes from 2001 to 2007:

• Students who have never drunk alcohol increased from 18% to 28%

• Students who do not currently drink alcohol increased from 30% to 39%

So fewer students drinking. Also I blogged in 2012:

And if you go back to before the age dropped from 20 to 18, in 1997, 80% of 14 to 18 year olds were drinking alcohol despite it being illegal to purchase it. There is no direct data for the the same age range today, but the closest we have is 53% of 15 to 17 year olds were drinkers in 2010. Overall there looks to be fewer minors drinking today than when the purchase age was 20, and beyond doubt the rate has fallen massively since 2005.

That data is from two independent surveys. And also Stuff reported in 2013:

Lowering the drinking age to 18 has not led to more binge-drinking or alcohol-related road accidents among young people, researchers have found.

The study, due to be published in an academic journal later this year, shows changes to the minimum purchasing age passed by Parliament in 1999 had no significant impact on the drinking patterns of 15 to 19-year-olds relative to 22 to 23-year-olds between 1996 and 2007.

I have a summary of all the evidence that fewer young people are drinking today than in the past in this blog post.

So it is a real shame to see a party that claims to be about policy and evidence, ignore the evidence which doesn’t fit with their views. That is not to say the level of harm from alcohol abuse amongst some young people is too high. Of course it is. But the change in the purchase age in 1999 was not a factor, and is a lazy cop out from the more complex solutions.

McGreedy Winder & Co do a monthly newsletter called Town Hall that focuses on the Auckland Council. It is excellent reading and well worth subscribing to for those interested in Auckland.

Their analysis of the Auckland Council’s latest budget is so astute that I thought I’d share some key aspects here:

Alongside its torrid passage, the budgets noteworthy characteristic was the most fiscally lax approach that has been seen in an annual plan to date. To be honest, if you are even remotely a fiscal conservative who thinks Auckland Council needs to tighten up its ship, it was an absolute shocker.

So why was it so fiscally lax?

Internal council documents provided to the Town Hall show that the efficiency savings achieved during the 2017 budget process were a meagre $11.3 million (in the context of a $3.8 billion operating expenditure budget). To put this another way, Mayor Goff’s first annual budget delivered efficiency savings of 0.30%.

So that is bad enough – Goff only found 0.3% of spending to cut. But they find that half of even that paltry $11 million came from Auckland Transport (which can be done by capitalising some opex). How much came from the Council itself:

The truly staggering number though, is the savings generated within the Council organisation itself. From its $2.957 billion operating budget, the cost cutting crusader of a Mayor managed to find
$800,000 in savings. Despite all the Mayors huffing, all of his puffing, he could only drag 0.03% of savings out of Council’s bureaucracy.

Let’s put that into context. Say you are in a household spending $100,000 a year. Things are tight so you need to save money. This is equivalent to reducing your annual household spend from $100,000 to $99,970.

And finally to add insult to injury:

The budget includes an additional $1.2 million for 17A cost efficiency reviews (that were discussed in the March edition). So, the initial budget impact of the Mayor’s much heralded efficiency drive, in the financial year that starts tomorrow, is to increase costs by $1.2 million. For lovers of the slap stick, that is 50% more than the council organisation managed to capture as efficiency gains during the budget round.

So Goff has spent more trying to save money than the Council has actually saved. Someone should turn this into a Yes Minister episode.

The Herald reports:

More evidence has emerged showing the Auckland property market prices are falling.

Monthly figures for Barfoot & Thompson, the real estate firm handling nearly a third of Auckland sales, show prices have dropped 3.1 per cent in three months.

Lower sales numbers are finally having an effect on Auckland residential property sales prices, said Peter Thompson, managing director of Barfoot & Thompson.

“In June the average sales price was $913,606, a 3.1 per cent fall on the average price for the previous three months, and only 0.6 per cent higher than it was 12 months ago,” he said.

That means house inflation in Auckland is now less than overall inflation.

This is only one measure, so too early to be certain. But it looks like the combination of supply and demand side measures are finally having the impact people wanted.

Stuff reports:

It is not your imagination – something does indeed appear to be wrong with the petrol market, a government study has found.

Energy and Resources Minister Judith Collins said a report into the retail fuel market had found “features which may not be consistent with a workably competitive market.”

The gross profit margin on fuel at the pump had doubled to about 30 cents a litre in Wellington and the South Island over the past four years, and the price of fuel – ignoring taxes – was now the highest in the OECD, the report found.

​Higher profit margins in the South Island and Wellington were “not explained by higher costs in those areas”.

Collins said the study didn’t say for sure whether fuel prices were reasonable or not, but she noted the report’s authors said “we have reason to believe that they might not be”.

I think the market is clearly not competitive enough. Now the solution is not necessarily to regulate, but to look at how to get better competition. A petrol price app could be one useful tool for motorists – it can automatically tell you the cheapest price within x kms.

This graph uses MBIE data and shows how the margin between the importer cost and retail cost has grown in the last decade. It clearly shows there is a price and competition issue.

Barry Soper writes:

Labour’s biggest problem going into this year’s election isn’t what’s been identified by Shane Jones, the man who before the last election unsuccessfully tried to become the party’s leader, missing out to David Cunliffe.

Jones, who’s now formally joined forces to become what he says is a union with Winston Peters in the far north, believes the hook up with The Greens has diminished Labour’s brand.

The biggest problem for Labour is the trade unions and the influence they’re able to exert on who’s the party’s leader, given to them just five years ago. Andrew Little’s there simply because the unions want him there.

It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with trade unions, many of us can thank them for the working conditions we have today. It’s just their political influence takes away the ability of the caucus to chose who they want to daily lead them, and those at the pitface of politics know better.

I’m always surprised more people are not outraged over the union power within Labour. There;’s a huge difference between being pro-worker and letting unions decide who your leader is.

Imagine if the National Party leadership wasn’t decided purely by National but the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, Dunedin Employers Association, Business NZ etc all got to vote on National’s leader, vote on National’s list rankings, vote on candidate selection and bulk vote at conferences on policy.

And for Labour, anything they announce that benefits trade unions is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being done to feather their beds.

Generally rightly. The more money they funnel to unions, the more unions spend on helping Labour.

Stuff have done a useful article looking at the policy of each party with regards to the status of cannabis for both personal and medical use.

I’ve summarised this in the table below:

These are based on the substance of their policies. So the parties that are totally prohibitionist are National and Maori Party. The total legalisation ones are Greens, TOP, ALCP and basically ACT (no official policy but their sole MP is in favour). The others are a mixture.

Politik reports:

A nine year veteran and two times candidate walked out of the Labour Party last Friday and joined National because he was fed up with Labour’s approach to law and order.

Sunny Kaushal is a well known Indian community leader in Auckland who has been leading a campaign to get more protection for Indian shopkeepers faced with violent robberies. …

The Indian Weekender website said that Kaushal had been with Labour for the past nine years, and many in the Indian community believed that he had become the face of the Labour Party.

The Indian Weekender says that Kaushal’s defection meant that the leaders within the community who had first hand connection with the Labour Party during the Helen Clark and Phil Goff leadership were gradually slipping into political oblivion under the current Labour leadership. 

“Only time will tell if the current Labour leadership has done a major miscalculation in sidelining Mr Kaushal from the Party in building bridges with the Kiwi-Indian community,” it says.

However, it singled out Labour’s Maungakiekie candidate, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, as being one Labour person who was in touch with the Indian community.

National is clearly revelling in the defection and arranged a lunch for Kaushal last Friday with Party President, Peter Goodfellow and Auckland Regional Chair, Andrew Hunt at a Khyber Pass restaurant.

Kaushal has led a campaign calling for tougher action to combat dairy and small shop robberies in Auckland – an issue important to the Indian community, many of whom are shop owners.

He told POLITIK that he was getting a lot of support for his stance and more and more members of the community, which had historically backed Labour, were now turning to National.

“For the community, the law and order issue is Number One,” he said.

Kaushal is very well connected in the Indian community and his defection could be quite significant.

Pete George blogged:

The ‘Auckland Labour Party’ has now been named by Labour Party general secretary Andrew Kirton as responsible along with Matt McCarten for the intern scheme.

Kirton has also said that “it started off as a Labour Party project”. So Kirton, and one would expect Labour’s leader Andrew Little, would have known more about the scheme than they have admitted.

When the Labour intern story broke it was obvious that Little and Kirton were not being open about what they knew about the scheme.

Little has said he had heard about the scheme as an idea at the start of the year, has admitted finding out it was running as an unapproved scheme in May, and he says he stepped in when they started getting complaints around Monday last week (but there are variations in that story too).

Matt McCarten quickly became the scapegoat. He was employed (by Parliamentary Services) to work for Andrew Little in Auckland, and no campaign work was allowed. However it is clear that McCarten has spent some time (months) working on the intern scheme aimed at campaigning for Labour.

It is clear that this Campaign for Change was in no way independent of Labour or non-partisan. It was run by the Auckland division of the Labour Party. Now it may well be true the Head Office was not fully in the loop, but that is an internal issue for Labour. It does not change that this was a Labour Party campaign.

In two other posts, Peter George details how the interns were working for Labour Party candidates and MPs. To quote one intern:

• Authored campaign strategy to increase Pacifica turnout for Auckland’s 19 electorates
• Pinpointed four “flippable” Auckland electorates
• Worked directly with North Shore MPs to craft specifically-altered campaign strategy to increase religious Labour votes in the heaving National Party-leaning electorate

How much more evidence do you need that this is and was a campaign for Labour, and hence all expenses and donations associated with it must be treated as Labour Party expenses and donations. Our electoral laws will be a mockery if the Labour Party can claim that anything done by the Auckland Labour Party doesn’t count.

The 10 working day deadline for revealing the mystery donor has already passed.

The Press reports:

The offer includes a $10 million Christchurch City Council pledge – supported in principle unanimously by councillors behind closed doors on Friday, but subject to public consultation – a Great Christchurch Buildings Trust (GCBT) pledge of $13.7m, a $10m Crown cash contribution and a $15m government loan that would not have to be paid back if the restoration was completed in a reasonable time and stayed within budget. That money, along with the church’s insurance proceeds of nearly $42m, amounted to just over $90m of the estimated $104m restoration cost.

So the contributions would be:

1. Insurance $42 million
2. Taxpayers $25 million
3. GCBT (public) $14 million
4. Anglican Church $13 million
5. Ratepayers $10 million

As a taxpayer I can think of much better things to spend $25 million on. But I can understand that a decision is needed as soon as possible, so other development work can occur. The uncertainty has gone on for too long.

The offer also proposes new legislation, which would allow reinstatement of the cathedral to be fast tracked, and the formation of an independent fundraising trust to find the remaining money. 

So the Anglican Church may not even need to find the $13 million shortfall. Can’t see them saying no.

Wagner said: “The Government contribution is a significant amount of money, but we need to balance the property rights of the church with the historical value of the building and the need to break this deadlock.” 

“About half of Christchurch wants to see the cathedral reinstated, the other half wants a modernised version or a contemporary new-build, but really, everyone just needs a decision. It’s time to move forward, and I think this is our best option.”

Yeah, just decide.  I have no problems at all if the Anglican Church says no – it is their cathedral, not ours. But it looks a pretty generous offer.

Liam Hehir writes:

I have been writing columns for almost six years now. Freedom of speech has been a theme of them. I do not think I have come out in favour of censorship once. But that doesn’t mean there are no lines that should not be crossed.

As Nobody Speak built up to a rah-rah finale extolling journalism, something was missing. It was something that the film never really dealt with properly. That is that, when it came down to it, Gawker was undone by its own grossness.

The help Thiel gave Hogan would have come to nothing if Gawker  were not guilty of a shameful abuse of platform.

Gawker had media rabies. While its editor points out the good stories it was involved in, overt cruelty was its signature trait. It was a site built around the profitability of nastiness. 

During the proceedings, another Gawker editor said that his personal line for celebrity sex-tape publication would be if it involved a child. Asked to explain further, he ventured that the line be drawn at  4 years old and younger. That editor now says he was joking, but it’s hard to imagine a sentiment more emblematic of gutter reporting.

I can’t say I mourn Gawker.