A weird press release from a group claiming to represent Graduate Women:

Only women pay taxes on the products they use to deal with menstruation. Sanitary products such as tampons are taxed as non-essential, luxury items at 5%. So are maternity pads.Only Women Bleed – and Loose out on Education Because of It!

First of all it is lose out. Secondly there is no 5% tax on so called luxury items.

Only women pay taxes on the products they use to deal with menstruation. Sanitary products such as tampons are taxed as non-essential, luxury items at 5%. So are maternity pads.

Yet some “luxury items” are tax exempt such as edible sugar flowers and alcoholic jellies – but not tampons!

Again this is not the case in NZ. As far as I can tell this is the case in the UK. It goes to show how sensible we are having a no exemptions clean GST.

But what a weird press release from this group. They put out a release condemning something which doesn’t exist, and say they represent graduates!

Claire Trevett writes:

The reason is it very quiet is because this all looks suspiciously like National’s ‘Cabinet Clubs.’

At least, they used to be called Cabinet Clubs but underwent hasty name changes after controversy over them in 2014 and are now known as Anything But Cabinet Clubs.

National said the Cabinet Clubs (which also existed when the party was in Opposition) were harmless groups of supporters run by individual electorates who would pay to go and hear MPs, ministers or sometimes even the Prime Minister bang on for a while at a party fundraiser.

It was standard fundraising fare, they said.

However, Labour was very critical deriding them as ‘cash for access.’

Haworth claims the distinction between the Cabinet Clubs and his President’s Club is that the President’s Club is run by the party and donors are not paying to attend events with MPs at them.

However, sometimes MPs might happen to stumble upon the same events as President’s Club members. Just by coincidence, you know. It is, after all, hard to have a policy announcement without an MP to announce it. …

Haworth has also claimed since Labour is in Opposition no ministers are not involved, unlike National. That is ridiculous.

The whole point of the President’s Club is to set up a long-term framework for funding the party from regular donations.

Labour presumably expects to be in Government at some point in the future, at which point it will have ministers and they will likely do what all ministers do – make policy announcements and help to fundraise.

What Labour is trying to say is that ‘donor’ is only a dirty word when it is a National Party donor.

Spot on.

The Herald reports:

An Auckland Councillor has laid a complaint with the Human Rights Commission over a sign in the window of an Avondale shop banning people wearing burkas from entering.

The sign on the door of Coffee and Gems 2 Go says the shop has a “No Burkas, No Hoodies, No Sunglasses, No Helmets” policy.

According to the Companies Office, the store sells coffee and second hand jewellery.

Sounds perfectly reasonable. They are saying customers have to show their faces. A very reasonable protection measure.

Cathy Casey, who represents the Albert-Eden-Roskill ward, told the Herald when a local woman sent her a photo of the sign on Thursday she thought “that’s not right” and believed it may be discriminatory and illegal to stop someone from entering a shop because they are wearing a burka.

“It looks as though the business is basically flouting the Human Rights Act. I’ve checked the Act and it says you can’t discriminate on the grounds of religion and the grounds of sex.”

They’re not. First of all the burka is not a religious requirement. A tiny tiny proportion of Islamic women wear them. Secondly the burka is not being singled out. The sign clearly lists other dress elements that block visual identification.  If they listed other forms of hijab such as headscarves then that might be discrimination. But it is absolutely fine to say we need to see your face for you to enter this store, and list what isn’t allowed.

After forwarding the photo to the Council’s compliance team Casey contacted the Human Rights Commission about the sign.

So it is a politician complaining, not an actual customer.

“I’m not questioning the motives of the business owner. I’m just saying that it doesn’t feel right that you should be discriminating [against] that particular group of women.

“I’ve never met the owner of the shop so it’s not really about them. It’s about the issue. The issue is: is any shop owner above the law which says you can’t discriminate in this way?”

It is not discrimination. If a religious group claimed that their religion requires them to wear balaclavas, that would not mean you can enter a store with a balaclava.

The Washington Post reports:

The Facebook event invitation left little doubt about the protesters’ feelings toward pro-police speaker Heather Mac Donald.

They accused her of “neglecting the state sponsored genocide committed against black people” and said she represented “white supremacist and fascist ideologies.”

And just in case people didn’t get the point, organizers photo-shopped devil horns onto her picture.

The last words on the invite, which has since been deleted, offered instructions to like-minded Claremont McKenna College students and others: Show up wearing black and “bring your comrades, because we’re shutting this down.”

They were true to their word. On Thursday evening, about 250 protesters chanted “black lives matter” and other, more choice phrases at the entrance to the Athenaeum, a campus building where Mac Donald was slated to speak, according to a YouTube video of the demonstration. (Warning, it contains strong language.)

Blocking buildings on the California campus is an arrest-able offense, but seeing the sizable crowd, campus officials decided not to force the issue and instead live-streamed Mac Donald’s event.

“We jointly concluded that any forced interventions or arrests would have created unsafe conditions for students, faculty, staff, and guests,” Claremont McKenna College President Hiram E. Chodosh said Friday in a statement. “I take full responsibility for the decision to err on the side of these overriding safety considerations.”

The demonstration was the second time this year that a large-scale protest has targeted a conservative speaker on a college campus.

Once again the totalitarian left succeeds in preventing free speech on campus. It is one thing to protest against views you don’t like, but quite another to try and ensure the speech never occurs by disrupting it.

The College authorities could of course stop this. They could say that if you use force to prevent other students from accessing a building to hear a speaker, then you will be dismissed from the college.

Have just read the sentencing notes of Michael Waripouri. An awful awful killing. The victim died a horrible death.

One part that struck me was this:

You have been convicted of 91 offences, and sentenced to imprisonment for 40 of them. Relevantly, they include convictions for kidnapping, injuring with intent, various forms of assault, possession of an offensive weapon and threatening to kill. 

To be fair to Waripouri, the convictions occurred a long time ago. But what still strikes me is that someone can have 40 imprisonable offences and be out at large.

Jack Shafer at Politico writes:

Observers have been waiting for more than a year for Donald Trump to stop acting like a beer hall bouncer and start acting more presidential. On Wednesday, that wish came true, as Baby Donald completed his transformation into a standard chief executive of the United States by espousing many of the hallmark policies one would have associated with President Hillary Clinton.

My Politico Playbook colleagues discerned Trump’s recent policy shift in their Thursday tipsheet. Previously, Trump said NATO was obsolete. Now, he salutes it, Clinton-style, as a “great alliance.” Previously, he lavished kisses on Vladimir Putin and Russia. Now Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have taken a Clintonesque stand against Russia, admitting to low levels of trust between the two nations. Then: No war in Syria. Now, Trump is bombing Syria with the sort of glee Clinton would have brought to the mission. And on and on it goes, with Trump adopting Clintonian stances on Chinese currency manipulation (doesn’t exist!) and the Export-Import Bank (for it).

Hillary Clinton’s presidency would have been a family affair, with Bill and Chelsea mobbing the White House with their advice; Trump has seated daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner at on his roundtable and acts on their guidance. Hillary Clinton would have recruited pros from Goldman Sachs; Trump has brushed the rafters of his administration a beaming gold with guys from Goldman. Hillary Clinton would have gone to war with the Republican Congress, vowing to campaign against them once they refused to pass her legislation; Trump has come close to realizing that goal, telling the leader of the troublesome House Freedom Caucus, “Mark, I’m coming after you.”

Remember how Trump’s surrogates said during the campaign that a Clinton presidency would be too hobbled by the ongoing FBI investigation to govern effectively? Instead, we’ve gotten a Trump presidency tainted by an FBI investigation of several of his top campaign aides. During the campaign, Trump beat on Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen with the baseball-bat fury of Joey Ramone. “To a certain extent, I think she should be ashamed of herself,” he said. That statement is now inoperative, replaced with the “I like her, I respect her” statement he gave to the Wall Street Journal. Reappointing her to the Fed is not outside the realm of possibility.

Elsewhere on the Clintonification front, Trump through his legislative bungling has preserved Obamacare, which he vowed to repeal, and is ready to make common cause with Democrats to pass an infrastructure pork bill. Had Clinton gone shopping for generals to stock her administration, she might have filled her cart with the likes of H.R. McMaster, Jim Mattis, and John F. Kelly.

Trump of course was for many years a liberal NY Democrat. His daughter and son-in-law were the same and it looks like their faction is winning dominance in the White House.

The Herald reports:

A bill designed to protect teenagers from forced marriages will go before Parliament.

The private member’s bill by National MP Joanne Hayes changes the consent requirements for 16 and 17-year-olds who wish to marry.

Currently parental consent is needed in such cases. This would change to require an application to be lodged to the court and the consent of a Family Court judge.

“This bill will address the concern that some 16 and 17 year olds may be being force into marriage,” Hayes said.

I’m very supportive of this bill. Every year around 500 teenagers get married – mainly young women. I can’t see why anyone needs to get married before they are 18, but if so then it is sensible to make sure the marriage is truly willing.

David Seymour’s speech against appointing Winston Peters to the Intelligence and Security Committee:

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I have never heard a more solemn or subdued debate in this House, and I could barely hear the words of Gerry Brownlee, David Parker, Kennedy Graham, or Ron Mark through the chewing on dead rat that was stopping those words from getting out. Well, I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this motion. I cannot think of a worse person in this House that could be nominated to such an important committee as the Intelligence and Security Committee.

We know that security is important and perhaps now more important than at any other time, with the various geopolitical tensions that we face, whether it be off the coast of North Korea, in Syria, or wherever else. We know that terrorism is changing its shape and is becoming harder and harder to detect and prevent. We know—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I will ask the member to sit down for a second. This is clearly controversial and painful for some members, but they must control their interjections to those that are appropriate. I am not looking at Mr Mark; I am looking at Mr Ball at the moment. You must not bring me into this debate.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Thank you for your intervention, but I am not bothered by the squealing from New Zealand First—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member has now been here long enough to know that he does not comment on my rulings, and he will not if he wants to continue.

DAVID SEYMOUR: I apologise, Mr Assistant Speaker. What do we need in a member of a security and intelligence committee? Well, I would say that such a member should be diligent, should be collegial, should be honest, and, ironically, should be prepared to put New Zealand first. And what do we see in the characteristics of Winston Peters? This is a guy who has been called diligent. Well, I prefer the words of somebody else whom we are about to debate, Simon Upton, who said of his time in Cabinet with Winston Peters: “There was something genuinely sad about watching him arrive at Cabinet meetings with his papers unread, still tightly secured by their green Cabinet Office ribbon.” That is the person going on the most important committee in New Zealand, according to this motion. I have watched the same thing in the Finance and Expenditure Committee in the last 2 years, when he shows up with his papers unread, asking questions that would be embarrassing if only anyone could understand what he was trying to say, far off topic, to the bemusement of the officials before the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

I said that a member of this committee should be collegial. The least collegial person in this House is someone who has been sacked from three different Cabinets by three different Prime Ministers. That is the opposite of collegiality. This committee requires someone who is honest, not somebody who has been censured by this House—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member has just reflected on the honesty of another member. He will withdraw and apologise.

DAVID SEYMOUR: I withdraw and apologise, but putting the interests—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Mr Seymour, you cannot withdraw and apologise and say “but”, all right? Just make it absolutely unequivocal and move on to another topic.

DAVID SEYMOUR: I withdraw and apologise. Now, the next thing that you might want in a member of this committee is the ability to put New Zealand first. Well, the fact of the matter is that Winston Peters is like one of those old lags in prison—somebody who cannot retire, who cannot go nowhere else, because he has got nowhere else to go. The Rt Hon John Key—he could retire, because he has got other options. He has got other things to do. In fact, most members of this House have that, but Winston Peters is somebody who has absolutely nothing else to offer the world and is scared to leave this House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member’s speech is concluded.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. As an elected member, I have a right to speak in this House and time on the clock. Could you please explain—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member will resume his seat. [Interruption] The member will resume his seat. I will give the member an explanation. His speech has been terminated for repeated breaches of Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings. He had been warned twice, and he breached on a third occasion. I think the member knows about the three-strikes law. He is probably lucky still to be here.

What a pity David was cut off before he finished. Still a fine speech. An interesting point is that generally you can’t call another member dishonest, but what is the situation when the Privileges Committee and the House have found the member lied to the House previously?

Stuff reports:

Window washers could be stung with $150 spot fines under a new bill which passed its first reading in Parliament on Wednesday.

The bill submitted by National MP Jami-Lee Ross’, has support from National and Labour.

Ross wants windscreen washing at intersections to be made illegal, giving police the power to issue washers with $150 instant fines.

Excellent. Intersection window washers are a form of intimidation. They start washing your car even after you explicitly signal to them you don’t want them to, and then as you are stuck at the intersection, you are intimidated into paying them for a service you did not want, out of fear they may damage your car or worse if you do not.

Labour’s police spokesman Stuart Nash said it was a pragmatic solution to an identified issue.

The Green Party opposed the bill and MP Jan Logie said it risked being an “attack on the poor”.

Of course they are against it.

Stuff reports:

Former Labour Prime Minister Mike Moore worries about his party. Yes his party still. Oh, there is some bitterness and bad blood for sure, but he’s still a party member and desperately wants Labour to win office again.

It was an emotional day with Moore. Sadness, laughter, passion, love and regret. It sat at the other end of the spectrum from our interview with Sir Geoffrey Palmer. While Palmer speaks with forensic accuracy, Moore speaks largely from the heart, leaving you with images, forcing you to ‘feel’ and interpret what he has said.

Chalk and cheese.

Are you a proud member of Labour, I asked him as we drew to a close late in the afternoon. Yes I’m proud of what the Labour Party has done for people. And we can do it again, he says.

I hope I live long enough to see another Labour government, he chuckles, in one of many laughs we had that day.

Moore is only 68. A Pakeka male aged 70 will on average live 15 more years so there is a reasonable chance Moore will see another Labour Government.

But he has some sharp criticisms too. At one point Moore turns the questions on me, in his typically cryptic and profound way. He’s started watching Country Calendar again.

How many of those people on Country Calendar do you think vote Labour now? I choose the diplomatic route.

What do you think the answer is? “None.”

Why? Because were not seen to be on the side of those who are strivers, he says.

This is from a former Labour Leader.

I do think we’ve got trouble. What sort of trouble? I think its basis is how you elect your leader, he says.

The caucus is our primary and sitting in that caucus you know what is going on and the idea that someone can not have the support in the caucus and the leader has to speak for that is a terrible idea.

Andrew Little was elected with four out of 32 votes in caucus.

The Herald reports:

Former broadcaster Shane Taurima has been selected as the Maori Party’s candidate in Tamaki Makaurau.

Taurima is an advisor in Maori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell’s office and was selected as candidate by the local electorate committee and party members over the weekend.

His candidacy is yet to be confirmed by the Maori Party’s National Council and Taurima would not comment until that happened.

The Maori Party had been in talks with Willie Jackson to stand in the seat, but Jackson then decided to stand for Labour instead, saying it was partly because he did not believe he had support from Flavell.

Taurima had hoped to stand for Labour in the electorate in 2014, but blotted his copybook after he was found to have used TVNZ resources for Labour Party purposes, including hosting meetings on TVNZ property.

So Taurima has defected from Labour to the Maori Party and Willie Jackson from the Maori Party to Labour.

Henare won the seat with a majority of 1462 votes over Maori Party candidate Rangi McLean. The Mana Party candidate Kereama Pene got 2624 votes in that election.

Taurima will be hoping the electorate deal between the Maori Party and Mana Party will help him win the seat back.

It could be a very close race. Henare seems to be one of the more useful Labour MPs so he may hold on.

The headline:

Retail workers say opening on Easter Sunday robs them of a break

Really, considering the law explicitly says no employee can be forced to work. So I was interested to read the story to see if it stacked up.

Some shop workers are upset that changes to the Easter trading laws this year mean many of them will lose one of their few guaranteed days off in the year.

Actually no one can be forced to work, but again is there an example?

Yvonne and Allan Pope in Motueka are both in retail and struggle to get a full weekend together.

Yvonne’s work includes Sunday, and Allan works a full week. He used to work half of Saturdays too “but I’m 69”.

While they now have Saturdays together, they have always looked forward to the compulsory break that Easter Sunday gave them.

“It was one of those days you could rely on,” Allan Pope said. 

The Popes’ day off is safe this year after the Tasman district rejected Easter Sunday trading, although nearby Marlborough has voted to allow it.

So this bullshit story is based on a couple who don’t have to work Easter Sunday and in fact can’t work Easter Sunday if they even wanted to, as they live in an area which has not allowed for Easter Sunday trading.

Another nail in the coffin of journalism.

Some extracts from David Cunliffe’s valedictory speech:

I was fortunate to cut my teeth in the Beehive with Sir Michael Cullen, surely one of New Zealand’s greatest finance Ministers, and under the leadership of Helen Clark. I always thought to work with one of them would have been lucky; to work with a team of two was extraordinary. But it did not take me long to work out that the real job of an Associate Minister is photocopying, which is shorthand for “anything else that senior Ministers either do not have the time or the inclination to do”.

Heh, about right. The worst associate job is associate immigration where you have to decide on all the appeals.

When, after the 2005 election, Helen Clark asked me to take on the ICT portfolio, we started a broad-based stocktake review immediately, and after 6 months of research, it was a compelling business case for pro-competitive regulation. Because of the sensitivity of the issue, we placed high security around all of the paperwork, but that did not stop a Beehive messenger slipping a copy of the Cabinet committee papers to someone from Telecom at a cycle club meeting. The resulting protest from Telecom was, however, too late; Cabinet had already approved the far-reaching package that unbundled and operationally separated Telecom and overhauled the regulator. Taking legal advice, we released the package that very day, and despite the short-term impact on share prices generated by the loss of monopoly rents, as predicted, investment in the sector doubled, retail prices fell, and broadband rollout took off. The current Government has continued that work, and good on it. New Zealanders are now amongst one of the best served telecommunications markets in the world, and Kiwis really did get faster, cheaper broadband.

I thought Cunliffe was an excellent Communications and IT Minister and the operational separation of Telecom was a vitally important reform.

This side of the House makes no apology for fighting inequality, investing in people and smarts, and celebrating all that is good in this beautiful, diverse, and innovative country, and much of that, thank goodness, we all share. That was the message I hoped would resonate with many New Zealanders during my short time as Leader of the Opposition, including some of the missing million who could not be bothered to turn out to vote at all because they could not see the point any more. I could write a book about the 2014 election campaign, but I do not think anyone would believe it, or possibly read it. But, in any case, that campaign was one of the most bizarre the country has ever seen. We had Kim Dotcom, Donghua Liu, and Dirty Politics coming out of our ears, but what the Labour Party did not have enough of was time: time to heal our old wounds, time to raise the money, and time to build the systems to get our message through.

It was a bizarre election. Hopefully 2017 will be a more policy focused election.

I wish David well with his life after politics.

An interesting 12 questions with Bill English. Some extracts:

Your wife Mary’s father is Samoan and her mother is Italian. What have you learned from them?

They’re a remarkable example of the promise of coming to New Zealand being realised. They raised 13 children on one income and own their own home. They had a very strong focus on their kids getting educated and maintaining their health which is a challenge in a large family on a low income.

Wow, that is an amazing achievement.

You grew up in a family of 12 kids on a farm in Dipton. What was your childhood like?

A mixture of discipline, hard work and adventure. We were expected to contribute to the farm and the household to the maximum of our ability at whatever age. When I was 10 I was sent out to plough our paddock on the tractor with very little instruction. At age 12 I cooked breakfast for 20 people when the shearers came up for breakfast.

Good life skills.

What have you learned about leadership that you didn’t know back in 2002?

When people put you into a leadership position, they expect you to exercise your judgment when it really matters. I’ve tended to take a consultative and collective approach but looking back I should have followed my intuition a bit more and not relied so much on advice.

Yep, follow your instincts.

What role does your Catholic faith play in your political life?

My faith is a significant part of who I am so it can’t help but affect my personal decision-making. It’s part of your conscience. I go to church most Sundays. I like sitting down the back as just another congregation member. You hear ideas around humility, forgiveness and mercy which are not part of the general political round. I find it very balancing.

Nicely said.

Stuff reports:

Labour is promising to build 400 new houses in Lower Hutt during its first term in Government, if elected in September.

Labour Leader Andrew Little announced the plan on Wednesday, while standing on one of the dozens of vacant Housing New Zealand sections that litter Lower Hutt.

Having so much unused Housing NZ land was unacceptable, and Labour would act quickly to start building on it, he said.

The vacant Housing NZ land should be built on. But Labour’s numbers are as credible as well all their other numbers.

This Stuff article notes that there is 17,000 square metres of vacant HNZ land in Hutt City. That is 1.7 hectares.

To build 400 homes on that space would mean an average of 42 square metres per property!!

If you check how many homes used to be on these vacant sites, I think it was around 50.

And Labour claim that these homes will be up to three bedrooms!

It simply is not possible.

Within an hour of each other, there was new news in the two big defamation trials of the last year.

The judge in Williams vs Craig has found the amount of damages awarded by the jury was excessive. This is not entirely surprising as it was 50% larger than the previous NZ record – and that award was for what the court labelled the worst defamation in the history of the Commonwealth.

What this means is either the Judge will set the amount of damages (if both parties agree) or there will be a new trial – but only to establish the amount of damages, not on the issue of liability.

In Hagaman vs Little, Mrs Hagaman announced that they will proceed with a new trial on the charges that jury could not agree on. This will be unwelcome to Andrew Little of course. And if Mr Hagaman does die before the next trial, then not a great way to avoid court.

The sensible thing in both cases would be to avoid new trials.

Rob Hosking at NBR reports:

A high-flying former foreign policy adviser and an ambassador is tipped to be named as Auckland Mayor Phil Goff’s new chief of staff. 

Taha MacPherson has previously served as New Zealand’s ambassador to Israel and was, in more recent times, foreign policy adviser to then prime minister John Key.

Mr MacPherson worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade at the same time Mr Goff served as Trade Minister during Helen Clark’s Labour-led government. 

But he has connections, strong ones, across the political spectrum, and his selection for the role is an indication of Mr Goff’s view there is a strong need to keep the channels open no matter which party is in power in Wellington. 

A smart move. MacPherson is highly respected and a good negotiator.

Barry Soper writes:

If you ever wanted any proof of how bloody minded Andrew Little is, you should have no doubt with the events that played out in the Wellington High Court over the past week. …

All of this could easily have been avoided by Andrew Little if had the good grace to make it clear where his target was. And of course that’s why we have parliamentary privilege where dodgy claims can be made, and have frequently been made by politicians with impunity, which doesn’t necessarily make them right, but at least avoids this sort of litigation.

Little’s second monetary offer to the Hagamans will be a drop in the legal fee bucket that he’s now confronting, money he said he would have raised by taking a mortgage over his house.

At least now he’ll get some understanding of what it’s like to be a first-home buyer. He could though go for costs from the substantial Hagaman pot but that’d require more legal time and money.

The whole saga does Little no credit, an apology sooner rather than later would have saved a lot of heartache.

Yep, while he didn’t end up with damages in court, he will have significant costs.

Stuff reports:

Adding employment to the Reserve Bank’s targets may be no more than a “cosmetic” change, economists warn.

On Monday Labour formally proposed adding a “commitment to full employment” to the Reserve Bank’s role of controlling inflation.

While the change is meaningless, it is still significant that Labour are pushing it.

ANZ chief economist Cameron Bagrie said even under Labour’s proposals, the changes may have little practical difference in decision making.

“It’s obvious there’s going to be some changes, but I think where we’re headed there’s going to be some cosmetic surgery, and not much more than that,” Bagrie said.

When it comes to monetary policy, the Reserve Bank has one tool, the OCR, and one target, inflation.

Bagrie said giving the central bank a target of full employment was not uncommon around the world, but was impossible to execute.

“When you’ve got one instrument, you can target one thing. We can talk about giving them a dual mandate, but when push comes to shove, the inflation target will end up dominating.

“It is mathematically impossible to target two variables with one instrument.” 

ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley said the experience across the Tasman, where the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has employment and inflation targets, was that employment tended to be overlooked.

“It’s pretty clear from the way they [the RBA] behave that what they’re focused on is inflation outcomes.”

There were times in the economic cycle when controlling inflation may send interest rates in the opposite direction to the aim of maintaining full employment.

“You end up having your stated aims opposing each other.”

People used to think that you couldn’t have low inflation and low unemployment. The history of the last 30 years is of course you can. Increasing inflation does not create more jobs in the long term – at best it has a short-term impact. So adding full employment to the target means little, as the Bank will still aim to keep inflation low.

Basically it is just a feel good self pleasuring device for politicians, to add full employment to the goals. It will be as successful as when they told TVNZ to be both a commercial broadcaster and a public service broadcaster – it failed at both.

Liam Hehir writes:

A 2014 Massey University study, for example, showed that 22 percent of New Zealand journalists considered themselves Centrists. Just 16 percent said they were on the Right and fully 62 percent said they were on the Left.

The study was published in ejournalist.com.au.

So around three times as many journalists identify as centre-left than centre-right.

52% of the population voted for a centre-right party, yet only 16% of journalists consider themselves centre-right.

This is no surprise of course. But it is useful to remember as world views do impact reporting. It is not conscious bias, but it still results in the media being unbalanced.