Stuff reports:

There is a strong case for adjusting tax brackets and cutting income tax in Thursday’s Budget, business lobby group BusinessNZ argues.

Chief executive Kirk Hope listed cutting company tax first in a pre-Budget wish-list published on Friday.

But he said reducing personal tax and loosening tax thresholds would also be positive.

The case for adjusting tax brackets was strong, Hope said. …

He said one option was to:

– make the 10.5 per cent rate for incomes up to $14,000 apply to incomes up to $20,000
– raise the top end of the income band for the 17.5 per cent tax rate from $48,000 to $64,000
– apply the 30 per cent rate to income up to $80,000, instead of $70,000

The approximate cost of each would be $960 million, $2 billion and $100 million. So around the $3 billion the Government used to talk about.

Someone earning $80,000 would benefit from each change by $420, $2,000 and $300 so $2,720 all up which would be an extra $55 approximately take home pay.

Hope said that while cutting income tax would help small businesses, reducing the company tax rate of 28 per cent was a “key need”.

“It’s important for international competitiveness to keep the New Zealand business tax rate below that of key trading partners. 

“Australia is currently reducing its business rate from 30 to 25 per cent while the US is moving to a 15 per cent federal business rate,” Hope said, referring to a one-page tax proposal released last month by President Trump.

A drop from 28% to 25% would cost around $720 million a year,

An interesting report evaluating charter schools performance to date. On one page (45) they look at how a school has done against their contracted targets. This is a strong aspect of the charter school model. A school has to agree with the Ministry concrete targets for performance, and can lose funding or even be closed if they fail to meet them. Think if every school had a contracted performance agreement!

The outcomes against their targets are:

1. Te Kura Hourua O Whangārei Terenga Paraoa 127%
2. Pacific Advance Senior School 124%
3. Vanguard Military School 117%
4. The Rise Up Academy 115%
5. South Auckland Middle School 97%
6. Middle School West Auckland 83%
7. Te Kura Māori o Waatea 80%
8. Te Kāpehu Whetū (Teina) 56%

So four schools significantly exceeding their targets, one school pretty close to dead on, two schools a fair way back and one school basically failing.

The report also has data on on truancy rates or unjustified absences. Two schools had zero unjustified absences which is amazing.  Their contract allowed for 380 and 106 respectively.

Six of the eight schools have had fewer suspensions that contracted.

Max Rashbrooke blogs:

Below is a table which is slightly difficult to interpret for the lay person, but which shows what happens to people in the different quintiles (that is, fifths of the population) over the six years of survey data that we analysed.

Source: Rashbrooke, Rashbrooke and Molano, ‘Wealth Disparities in New Zealand: Final Report’ (http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/publications/files/5327cc2a82f.pdf).

Q1 represents the poorest fifth of the population, Q5 the wealthiest. Each column takes one fifth of the population and shows which group they ended up in after six years. For instance, of those who started in the poorest fifth (the Q1 column), 24% ended in the next group up, while just 2% ended up in the wealthiest group.

The figures in bold are the percentage of each group who stayed in the same position across six years. As you can see, over that period, over 60% of people in the poorest and richest groups stayed where they were, but just over 40% for the middle groups. That’s not surprising: you’d expect it to be relatively easy to move up and down the middle class groups, but for rich and poor to be more fixed.

Considering this is over a period of six years, that is a reasonable level of mobility. Not totally surprising as age will have a significant impact – most people accumulate wealth as they work for longer.

But isn’t just those with less wealth getting more wealth. A third of those in the top quintile for wealth are not there six years later.

What does one make of this? Both glass half empty and glass half full responses are possible. One could say that this shows that very large numbers of people who are poor at one stage go on to become wealthier over their lives.

However, one could also say that it shows very large numbers of people remaining poor for very long periods. Personally, I focus on the latter response: while it is important to recognise what works well, the greatest effort has to go into dealing with the things that aren’t working well, and the significant entrenched poverty suggested by these findings is to me quite troubling.

I’m more glass half full. Some of those who stay in the bottom quintile will be because they have significant issues (on welfare, drug problems, literacy etc) or because they are now retired.

What would be interesting is to see how our wealth mobility compares to other countries.

Stuff reports:

Actor Roger Moore, who won international fame playing British secret agent James Bond, died of cancer on Tuesday (Wednesday NZ Time) aged 89, his family said.

His 12 years as Bond, the British agent with a voracious appetite for danger and sex, made Moore a millionaire and a heartthrob the world over.

“It is with a heavy heart that we must announce our loving father, Sir Roger Moore, has passed away today in Switzerland after a short but brave battle with cancer,” his three children announced in a statement on the Twitter account.

Makes you feel old when your favourite James Bonds actors are so old. Connery was my favourite but loved Moore also.

So how old are the different Bond actors?

1. Sean Connery, aged 86
2. David Niven, died age 73 in 1983, would be 107 today
3. George Lazenby, aged 77
4. Roger Moore, died age 89
5. Timothy Dalton, aged 71
6. Pierce Brosnan, aged 64
7. Daniel Craig, aged 49

Radio NZ reports:

Being a “white, middle-class male” meant Rohan Lord had no future in the Labour Party, the former East Coast Bays candidate says.

Mr Lord withdrew from the race yesterday, after being placed 72 on the party list.

He told Morning Report he was very appreciative Labour considered him and he fully supported the party’s platform and policy, but the message he got from his 72nd placement was that he was probably not for them.

No 42 probably won’t get in, let alone no 72!

“I’m white, middle class, male, I couldn’t really see a long term future.”

The likely Labour caucus will have just 49% of their caucus European and 45% Maori and Pasifika. Their respective shares of the adult population are 69% and 19% so Mr Lord is unlikely to indeed have a long-term future.

ACT’s tax plan is 10% on income to $14,000 then 15% to $48,000 then $25% on more than $48,000.

Their website allows you to calculate how much tax you would save with their plan.

Some examples:

• $35,000: save $595, 11.6% reduction
• $60,000: save $1,520, 13.8% reduction
• $100,000: save $4,420, 18.5% reduction
• $250,000: save $16,420, 22.4% reduction

Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia appears to have been very successful. This is partly because the Saudis have worked out his personality and are treating him like a King. Having a huge image of him projected onto the side of the hotel he is staying at was a master stroke. Other Presidents would have found it gaudy, but Trump would have loved it.

Politico reports:

The pageantry was not subtle, but the real import of Trump’s visit, and especially his carefully crafted speech, was to announce a new alliance between America and the Sunni autocrats of the Arab world, aimed at Shiite Iran.

No more Bush-like paeans to “freedom” or even Obama-esque warnings about being on the “right side of history” — Trump dispensed with the usual presidential to-be-sures about the democratic shortcomings of America’s regional allies and said flatly that defeating terrorism “transcends every other consideration.”

The Sunni monarchs and rulers will like this. Trump has little regard for democratic norms back home, so of course he is not going to preach to them about human rights and democracy. He openly admires strongman autocratic rulers. So they have a US President who isn’t lecturing them and has clearly come down on their side vs Shia Iran.

And who knows it may work. Defeating Islamic State and associated groups is the priority. I’ll take Saudi Arabia and Egypt leaders over Islamic State every day. But also let us remember that Islamic State is primarily Sunni, not Shia.

Trump is offering, in short, a war on terror without the pretense of idealism. There has always been a strong odor of hypocrisy hanging over the U.S. relationship with regimes like Saudi Arabia, and perhaps there’s something refreshing in Trump’s “we are not here to lecture” candor.

The United States has, after all, very little real leverage or will to remake Arab societies in America’s image — particularly ones that buy $110 billion of our weapons. All too often, U.S. criticism of the democratic failings of its allies seems meant more for our domestic consumption than for foreign audiences, who have learned to tune it out. And presidents of both parties have almost always prioritized core U.S. interests — like the Iran nuclear deal over suffering Syrians — when forced to make a choice.

There is a lot to criticise Trump for, but his approach here may not be a bad one. Let’s see how it goes.

Jonathan Coleman announced:

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman says a record number of doctors and nurses are working in DHBs across the country.

“Our dedicated health workforce is making a difference to the lives of New Zealanders. More doctors and nurses in our DHBs means faster treatment and better experiences for patients and their families,” says Dr Coleman.

As of 31 March 2017, there were almost 8,200 doctor full-time-equivalents and nearly 23,000 nurse full-time equivalents employed by DHBs – that’s over 2,250 more doctors and over 4,640 more nurses compared to 2008.

In total the number of doctors and nurses working in DHBs across the country has increased by over 6,900 since 2008 – an increase of over 28 per cent.

This includes over 1,220 more senior doctors, an increase of almost 45 per cent, and over 1,210 more senior nurses, an increase of over 45 per cent.

So let’s put this into context.

From 2008 to 2017 the NZ population grew 8%. So to compare:

• Population growth 8%
• 38% more doctors
• 25% more nurses
• 45% more senior doctors
• 45% more senior nurses

Remember this when Labour lie and saying funding has been cut.

The Telegraph reports:

A father has described seeing “carnage everywhere” in the wake of an explosion at Manchester Arena that left around 30 people, including children and disabled victims, lying on the floor.

The man, named Andy, said he was blown “about 30ft” by a blast that shook the building as he waited to collect his wife and daughter at the end of a concert by US artist Ariana Grande.

He said he later saw panicking families trying to find loved ones in the wake of the incident on Monday night.

He told BBC News: “It’s shocking what happened. Just carnage everywhere. There was a good 20 to 30 of them [victims]. Some were young kids, some were disabled people.”

19 dead and 50 injured is the toll to date.  It is almost inevitably a terrorist attack and a reminder of the terrible toll on the innocent that terrorists inflict – whether Islamic State or Hamas or Hezbollah or the IRA.

Thoughts are with everyone in the UK. We are lucky that to date we live in a country where you don’t run the risk of being blown to pieces simply because you were on the wrong train or at the wrong concert.

Stuff reports:

The police and the Wellington city establishment killed the “golden goose” sevens – and tournament organisers collaborated, a hospitality PR expert has claimed.

It was announced on Monday that Wellington would no longer host the annual New Zealand leg of the world sevens series, which would be held in Hamilton for the next two years.

Mark Blackham, director of Wellington-based BlacklandPR, said the demise of the sevens was driven by non-attendees who disliked the behaviour of fans, but gathered strength when it was allied with anti-alcohol and social disorder sentiments.

This is broadly correct.

I’ve heard some people assert that events just have cycles, and the Sevens had peaked and troughed and having it die off (well move to Hamilton – well done Hamilton) is part of a natural cycle.

This is bullshit.

All around the world Sevens tournaments are growing in popularity and attendance. Some like the Hong Kong Sevens have been going for much longer. They are prospering.

This was not a natural death. This was manslaughter.

It takes an extraordinary level of incompetence or malevolence to turn an event from a must attend to a won’t attend. People used to spend months planning to go to the Sevens, working out strategies for buying tickets, designing costumes etc. It was the highlight of the Wellington social calendar. And then it became something that could barely fill a third of the stadium.

The rapid fall in crowd numbers made the tournament financially unviable, and was “caused primarily by the sevens organisers themselves”, he said.

“They criticised crowd behaviour and changed rules that deterred the basis of the enjoyment: a party of silly costumes and silly behaviour, fuelled by alcohol consumption.

“The organisers acquiesced to, and collaborated with, the ‘moral panic’ … among the city establishment, including the council and police.” 

This year there was only one non low alcohol beer on sale!

Police said public safety was their priority, and “the decision to move the event is entirely a matter for the organisers”.

You see part of the problem. If so called public safety is seen as the priority over everything else then Wellington should go back to 6 pm closing and have no concerts and no events.

Westpac Stadium boss Shane Harmon agreed that 2014 was the beginning of the end.

“Fatigue set in for the 2014 tournament when we had new legislation, accompanied by a new police approach, and I believe society’s shifting view towards alcohol.

“I attended a meeting with police in October 2013, and they made it clear they didn’t want the event in Wellington, and would enforce new procedures.

The Police in Wellington became anti alcohol zealots.

Radio NZ reports:

The State Services Commissioner will decide this week whether to launch his own investigation into claims whistleblowers were forced out of their jobs at the Transport Ministry.

Joanne Harrison was sentenced to three years and seven months in prison in February for stealing $723,000 while employed as a top manager at the ministry.

Several long-standing employees lost their jobs in a 2015 restructure just months after they alerted managers to a fake invoice Harrison presented, and questioned her domestic and international travel.

Last week, the ministry’s new chief executive, Peter Mersi, announced he had appointed an independent investigator to look into claims staff who were raising red flags about Harrison were restructured out of the organisation.

He had previously declined to investigate the matter.

Two of those who lost their jobs have told RNZ News they had no doubt the concerns they raised led to their axing.

State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes said the former employees had now asked him to investigate whether they were unfairly forced out.

“I take their concerns seriously and I am currently considering this request.”

This issue will fester away unless there is a comprehensive independent investigation. You don’t need one just because someone committed fraud. But you do need one when the fraud was detected early on and nothing done about it.

The SSC should investigate not just the claims of the whistle blowers, but the entire saga, namely:\

1. How was Harrison hired, despite a fraudulent background. What reference checks were done.
2. How often did staff raise issues of inappropriate spending. Who were they elevated to, and what happened
3. What were the internal controls at the Ministry and why didn’t they work?
4. What was the rationale for the restructuring that saw whistleblowers lose their job, and who was the decision maker in it
5. How often did issues around Harrison come to the attention of then CEO Martin Matthews, and what did he do

I would also look into the wider performance of Harrison. I suspect she wasn’t just a fraudster but someone who produced nothing of value in her job which was one of those nebulous ones such as organisational performance. How was she regarded by other second level managers and by the third level managers that reported to her.

The SSC inquiry would also mean that it could allow a resolution to the issue of whether Matthews should continue as Auditor-General. It is not in anyone’s interest for this to become a political issue. If the SSC inquiry finds that no reasonable CEO would have acted differently, then Matthews might be able to continue. But if it finds that there were enough warning bells that he should have acted sooner, then I think it would provide the opportunity for him to do the honourable thing.

We do need to be careful not to be too zealous over this and set a bar that any agency that has fraud, should result in the CEO losing their job. That would be silly and unhelpful. But when the CEO’s new role is Auditor-General the bar should be very high, and if elements of the fraud was picked up by staff at an early stage then it does raise legitimate questions.

So having the SSC do a full independent inquiry is the best way forward to protect the independence of the Auditor-General’s Office and to allow a conclusion to be reached.

The Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill has submissions close end of Wednesday. It is a good bill. One of the provisions introduces a new specific crime to the Crimes Act of strangulation. It says:

Everyone is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years who intentionally or recklessly impedes another person’s normal breathing, blood circulation, or both, by doing (manually, or using any aid) all or any of the following:

(a) blocking that other person’s nose, mouth, or both:

(b) applying pressure on, or to, that other person’s throat, neck, or both.

Jonathan Freedland writes in The Guardian:

Voters tell pollsters all the timethat they want, say, to renationalise the railways or end zero-hours contracts: one party says it’ll give them what they want; the other refuses. How can there not be a resounding Labour victory?

And yet those same polls that show support for individual Labour policies also show an electorate readying to deliver precisely the opposite verdict at the ballot box. How do we explain a country that is poised to spurn Santa and his big bag of goodies and instead willingly embrace Scrooge?

Policies are important, but secondary to credibility and leadership and unity.

The coming rejection of an apparently popular platform will be a brutal reminder of a central truth about politics, that what matters is not just the product you’re offering but your perceived ability to deliver it. It comes down to credibility. Voters don’t believe Labour has a hope of fulfilling its promises.

I think the same applies here. Does anyone actually think a Labour-led government would build 30,000 homes in three years. People know they have no ability to do it. They don’t even have the land for it.

Consider the advice that a glass of red wine a day is good for you. If a doctor says it, you’ll accept it. But if the same advice comes from an alcoholic, you’ll hesitate. Labour aspires to be entrusted with the nation’s health and wealth. But the country first needs to be sure that its hands are not trembling.

Labour is the alcoholic when it comes to the economy and spending.

Until I saw this article in NBR, I didn’t realise how much of an increase there has been with women directors on NZSE100 boards. The stats are:

• 2008 – 8.65%
• 2010 – 9.32%
• 2012 – 14.75%
• 2016 – 20.10%
• 2017 – 22.17%

So since 2008, the proportion of directors who are women has increased by over 150%. All without quotas.

There is a lot of research that shows boards with a mixture of men and women on the board perform better than all male boards.

Stuff reports:

Former US Congressman Anthony Weiner, whose penchant for sexting strangers ended his political career and led to an investigation that upended the US presidential race, has pleaded guilty to criminal charges in connection with his online communications with a 15-year-old girl.

Weiner pleaded guilty to a charge of transmitting sexual material to a minor and could get years in prison. He agreed not to appeal any sentence between 21 and 27 months in prison. …

Weiner, who represented New York in Congress from 1999 to 2011, resigned after revelations that he was sending sexually explicit messages to multiple women.

He ran for New York City mayor in 2013 and was leading several polls until it was revealed he had continued his questionable behaviour. His failed mayoral bid was the subject of the documentary Weiner.

For any married man to sext random people he meets online is a bad idea. Doing it as a Congressman was an even worst idea, as inevitable it would get put eventually. But what shows that this was a compulsion is he carried on after resigning and then running for office again, and then after the next expose, he carried on and on.

Sadly for him it ends with the departure of his wife and a possible prison term.

Stuff reports:

Kielly Garrett, 34, and her husband had just bought a ute and were about to start their own business.

Having heard of a number of business start-up grants, Garrett hopped onto Google, searched for New Zealand Government grants and clicked the first link on the list.

She found a website with a helpful list of New Zealand business grants with branded video testimonials from New Zealanders who had been successfully helped by the scheme, and filled in some details to see what she was eligible for. 

“Within 15 minutes they’d rung me, they sold me a dream.”

“She’s like you’ll need insurance’ and all these things I hadn’t even thought of and I was like ‘oh, you’re onto it!'”

According to the website Garrett had found – NZFundingGrants.org – Garrett was eligible for start-up financing of $10,000.

This is one of the more sophisicated frauds. They do have a fairly credible website and do indeed come up high in Google. I think they even do paid advertising (which Google should decline).

But a key giveaway here is the domain is .org not .nz. This means it is highly unlikely to be an official Government site as they tend to be in govt.nz. Also the fact they are not a .nz site may be significant as .nz sites have to publish the details of the site registrant, while .org do not.

So another check is to do a WHOIS on the domain name. The fact the registrant has hidden their details is a pretty good sign of a scam – especially when the site asks for money.

“They were telling me they’d take this admin fee and I said ‘oh yeah how much is that?’ 

“They said $350 and I was like oh yeah, that’s a bit steep but if you’re offering me $10,000, OK.”

Garrett started getting a sinking feeling as soon as she had submitted her debit card details – she immediately had second thoughts. 

She checked online and discovered she was one of hundreds, possibly thousands, who had been scammed since 2013 by the so-called New Zealand Government Grants Department, New Zealand Small Business Assistance Centre, and two other incarnations centred around the domain names nzfundinggrants.org and nzgovernmentgrants.org.

“I just can’t believe it’s still running, I really can’t,” said Garrett.

“These are the things our government should be stopping, or find out where it’s coming from because these people are nasty people.”

Good she got suspicious. Not a lot the Government can do as the scammers are almost certainly not based in NZ.

Todd McClay writes:

Trade Minister Todd McClay has welcomed a joint statement from the TPP 11 countries saying it shows unity between the 11 and important next steps for the agreement.

“This outcome was better than we might have hoped for. It demonstrates a commitment from all 11 countries to implement the agreement which is extremely valuable for New Zealand and sets a clear path to a meeting of leaders in November of this year,” Mr McClay says.

“TPP is a high-quality set of rules for the Asia-Pacific which will increase market access for our exporters and benefits our wider economy.”

The statement was unanimously agreed to by the 11 countries at a meeting which New Zealand co-chaired with Vietnam on the sidelines of APEC in Hanoi.

This may be the diplomatic coup of the decade. I thought that TPP was dead as a door knob with the US pulling out of it. The US being in it, was why everyone else was in it. To have Japan and Canada say they still want to implement it without the US is amazing.

Stuff reports:

Sweden has dropped its investigation into a rape allegation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who says he won’t forgive or forget the slandering of his name following an “important victory”.

The country’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Marianne Ny, made the announcement in Stockholm on Friday.

“Chief Prosecutor Marianne Ny has today decided to discontinue the preliminary investigation regarding suspected rape concerning Julian Assange,” the prosecutors’ office said in a statement.

I have several thoughts on this:

1. Julian Assange is a narcissistic doofus
2. I never thought there was enough evidence to support a conviction, or even a prosecution
3. Assange should have flown to Sweden to co-operate and this could have been dealt with years ago
4. His claims that he could be extradited from Sweden to the US was a nonsense pretext to avoid the Swedish justice system – he lived for many years in the UK which is more likely to extradite if requested

I knew Seth Rich. I know he was the @Wikileaks source. I was involved. https://t.co/MbGQteHhZM

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 20, 2017

This is interesting. Dotcom does not have great credibility so an assertion is just an assertion. But if it does transpire the DNC e-mails were leaked by a disgruntled staffer, rather than hacked by Russian interests, then that changes the story considerably.

This Herald story reports that Rich was a huge supporter of Sanders and hence could be motivated to expose a pro-Clinton bias in the DNC.

But an assertion and a possible motive is not proof. And stories suggesting Rich was murdered because of this are wildly speculative and have been based on false facts.

But if Dotcom can or does produce alleged proof, or has some specificity to his allegations, then it is worth considering them. But bearing in mind he almost certainly forged the Warners e-mail about John Key, one should be highly sceptical.

The Taxpayers’ Union has announced:

• Over a lifetime, an average household (gross income of $98,818) will pay $1.48 million in taxes (at 2016 prices).
• This is equivalent to the total income of a household over 15 years.
• Of the $1.48 million, approximately $826,000 is paid in income tax (56% of the total tax bill), $375,000 in GST, $121,000 in council rates, and $40,000 in petrol taxes.

This is why people should take more notice of wasteful Government spending and support lower taxes. You end up paying more in tax than you do for your house.

• Households earning more or less than the average take even longer to pay their lifetime tax bills.
• The average household in the bottom ten percent of income earners will pay $381,187 in direct and indirect taxes, taking 18½ years to pay.
• An average household in the top ten percent of income earners will pay $2,772,842 in direct and indirect taxes, taking 20½ years to pay.

So if you are in the top 10% of income earners, you spend over 20 years working to fund the Government!

“Kiwi’s tax bills are too high – and growing because the Government has not adjusted income tax thresholds to match wage inflation.  Lower taxes don’t mean cuts to services, they mean a focus on cutting out wasteful spending.  We hope Thursday’s Budget indicates renewed fiscal discipline, rather than loosening of the purse strings now that there are surpluses.”

If National can’t deliver meaningful tax relief now, when will they?

The data is from Stats NZ. It is the number of births to teenagers for each calendar year. Quite a remarkable change in trend. From 2002 to 2008 the number kept increasing, while since 2008 the numbers have almost halved.

This is a good thing. While some teenagers will be good parents, I can speak from first hand experience that being a parent is effing hard. It’s challenging enough in your 30s or 40s, let alone when you’re still in school or just out of it.

So why do people think the numbers have fallen away? Government policy on welfare reforms? Just coincidence? Changing societal norms?