Whale Oil blogs:

Yesterday in the Disputes Tribunal there was a case involving former NewstalkZB radio host and Internet party press secretary Pam Corkery.

The case was the first call in the Disputes Tribunal but Pam Corkery failed to show. The judgment details that she apparently now lives in Australia and despite promising to phone into the Tribunal hearing she did not.

Accordingly, judgement was entered against her for a sum of $5285.33. She has until 27 July to pay her victim.  

So what is the dispute about?

Corkery is alleged to have proceeded to “bully the woman” with requests for money saying that she had heard this elderly lady had money she could lend. Corkery allegedly initially asked for $30000 saying it was for a property transaction and she would pay it back.

Corkery was reportedly told by the lady she only had access to $ 7500. At that stage, it is alleged that Corkery said “that will do” and took it with an understanding that it would be paid back on settlement.

This occurred in 2013, while she was still working for NewstalkZB and prior to the 2014 election when she was in the pay of the Internet party. It is alleged that there was no house purchase and that Corkery had kept the money and done very little in the way of paying it back . Corkery constantly claimed she had no money anymore and couldn’t repay it.

The decision says Corkery borrowed $5,000 in Feb 2013, agreeing to pay it back by November 2013. She borrowed another $1,800 in June 2013 agreeing to pay it back in six weeks.

She then refused to pay any of it back, until June 2014 when she started paying a small amount totalling $1,380 over three years.

So now there is a court judgement requiring her to pay, will Corkery pay up? Or will she just never return from Australia, so she can avoid her debt to the elderly woman?

News.com.au reports:

The party’s co-deputy leader said it was recently brought to his attention that he holds dual citizenship of Australia and New Zealand.

Under section 44 of the constitution, that makes him ineligible to hold elected office.

Senator Ludlam labelled it a “ridiculous oversight”.

“I apologise unreservedly for this mistake,” he said in a statement on Friday. “This was my error, something I should have checked when I first nominated for preselection in 2006.” Instead of going through protracted legal proceedings, he is resigning as a senator for Western Australia and co-deputy leader of the Australian Greens. Senator Ludlam was born in Palmerston North in New Zealand and left the country with his family when he was three.

He settled in Australia not long before his ninth birthday, before being naturalised when he was in his mid-teens.

“(I) assumed that was the end of my New Zealand citizenship.”

Wow that is a huge oversight.

At least he did the right thing by immediately resigning. In New Zealand when a similiar thing happened (A Labour Minister Harry Duynhoven applied for and got dual citizenship with Netherlands while an MP) Labour, NZ First and Greens voted to retrospectively amend the Electoral Act to keep him in Parliament. It was I think the worst constitutional abuse of modern times – if any Act should not be retrospectively amended it is the Electoral Act.

Newshub reports:

Newshub has been leaked poll results from the company that does Labour’s internal polling which show it is in big trouble, two-and-a-half months out from the election.

The results show Labour is on 26 percent support – crashing from 34 percent in May.

Down 8% in two months. That’s significant. And this is from Labour’s own pollster so they can’t claim their internal polling is different – this is their internal polling.

The Herald reports:

Five years ago, when Hugo Chvez was President and Venezuela was a much different place, Ana Margarita Rangel could still afford to go to the movies and the beach, or to buy the ingredients she needed to bake cakes.

Even three years ago, when the country’s economy was beginning a severe contraction, Rangel earned enough for an occasional treat such as ice cream. Now she spends everything she earns to fend off hunger. Her shoes are tattered and torn, but she cannot afford new ones. A tube of toothpaste costs half a week’s wages.

“I’ve always loved brushing my teeth before going to sleep,” said Rangel, who lives in a hillside slum 40km west of Caracas and works in a cosmetics factory in Guarenas city. “Now I have to choose so I do it only in the mornings.”

Imagine that – have to work three days just to but a tube of toothpaste.

Rangel earns the minimum wage, as does 32 per cent of Venezuela’s workforce. That used to mean something in the country with the world’s largest oil reserves. But 700 per cent annual inflation and chronic shortages of food and medicine have changed the meaning of Venezuela’s “minimum” in painful ways.

 

It is enough to buy just one-quarter of the food needed by a family of five in one month, according to the Centre of Documentation and Analysis for Workers, an independent advocacy group. It is enough for only about five cartons of eggs. At the country’s informal exchange rate, the raise brings the average worker’s income to roughly US$33 per month. That is far below the minimum monthly wage in neighboring Colombia – about US$250 – or even Haiti, where it is US$135.

The Government can and does set whatever minimum wage it wants. But the exchange rate is not something they can control and hence if the economy is not strong the relative minimum wage falls.

The Herald reports:

Two unusual new charter schools have been approved for Maori students in Rotorua and Taupo

One, in Rotorua, will be what is believed to be the country’s first school combining a science and technology focus with a Kaupapa Maori philosophy for 200 children throughout almost all school years 1 to 10, leaving out only the last three years of high school.

The other, in Taupo, will be a boarding school for 90 mainly Maori boys only in those last three years of high school, Years 11 to 13.

The Taupo school, Blue Light Senior Boys High School, will be run by Blue Light Ventures which runs youth activities out of police stations around the country.

Both schools seem like the sort of novel approaches to education that the charter school model is designed for.

He said Blue Light was run by former police officers and had a memorandum of understanding with the NZ Police, but the Police would not be directly involved in the school.

The school will open in February with 30 boys in Year 11 and will add Year 12 in 2019 and Year 13 in 2020, building up to a staff of 12 fulltime-equivalent teachers.

Jackson said it would offer outdoor activities and community service programmes such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award, but would also aim to get every boy through at least Level 2 of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA).

“We’ll be focusing particularly on maths, science and technology, and English of course because they will need it,” he said.

“We’ll be up with the kids early in the morning, working through to the evening, with classes scheduled throughout that time and remedial work in the evening with the staff.”

Superb. Again the flexibility in the model is paramount.

The school will be “trilingual” in English, Maori and computer coding. It will cover the full NZ curriculum but with a focus on science and technology, teaching literacy and other learning areas through science topics defined in Maori terms such as whakapapa (genetics) and ahuwhenua (agriculture).

Bennett said the span of years 1 to 10 was aimed at ending the “tragic transition points” from primary to intermediate and then to secondary school, where many Maori children now “just bleed out of the system”.

Both schools are taking a very novel approach to try and achieve better outcomes for those not suceeding in the state system.

The Herald editorial:

Even within the Best Start package, some of the money is to be wasted on a payment of $60 a week for all children, regardless of family income, in their first year of life.

Like paid parental leave, this money is effectively wasted on households that can well afford to have children.

Likewise for a winter heating subsidy, $140 a month, Labour is promising to all superannuitants as well as other beneficiaries.

It is worthwhile redistributing income to those who do not have enough but when it is “redistributed” back to self-supporting taxpayers it is worse than pointless, it is costing money to collect and return. Labour should collect no more than necessary.

I’m all for targeting assistance to poorer families. But Labour is about taking money from everyone and giving it back to everyone! They’re going to give millionaires aged over 65 a $140 a month heating subsidy!

They’re also going to give $3,000 to a family earning $500,000 a year if they have a baby.

Andrew Geddis writes at Pundit:

Sir Geoffrey Palmer fears that the Government’s response to a Supreme Court ruling may be “deeply offensive to the rule of law and a constitutional outrage.” At the risk of challenging a legal Goliath, I must demur. 

This is the polite version of telling Sir Geoffrey to stop being so hysterical.

Perhaps most importantly, I have yet to see any National Minister proposing to pass legislation to permit the dam to be built despite the Supreme Court’s ruling. Certainly, both English and Barry have said that they want to allow for such conservation land swaps in the future. And Barry has suggested that because DoC has made other such land swaps in the past, there may be a need to tidy up their legal status – although that claim appears to contradict the Supreme Court’s statement at [122] that DoC’s Ruataniwha land swap decision was “novel”.

Nevertheless, it is quite possible to change the law in a way that permits future land swaps by DoC and (if necessary) validates any past conservation land swaps, yet still does not overturn the particular outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Ruataniwha case. That is, after all, what Parliament did when the Government passed its (still constitutionally outrageous) family carers legislation back in 2013 to try and override the Court of Appeal’s decision in Ministry of Health v Atkinson.

Unless and until I see a Minister actually come out and say “we will overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling by validating DoC’s decision to make a land swap for the Ruataniwha project”, or until a Bill to that effect enters the House, I’m going to give the Government the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that’s hopelessly naive and starry-eyed of me, but let’s just wait and see.

As far as I know the dam project is dead and no one is proposing over-turning the Supreme Court ruling on the project.

Second, I’m not necessarily opposed in principle to the sort of law change the Government is mooting to enable conservation land swaps to occur. The majority of the Supreme Court interpreted the Conservation Act as being (in effect) a lock-box. Once some land is deemed ecologically significant enough to be classified as “conservation land”, then it must remain conservation land unless and until something happens to it that degrades its innate importance.

Even if swapping a piece of conservation land for some other land would be much, much better for New Zealand’s overall conservation goals, tough luck. That seems to me an overly prescriptive approach to take. Applying reductio ad absurdum, if a private land owner offered to trade 10,000 hectares of untouched native forest for just 1 hectare of conservation land near Queenstown on which to build a dream retirement home, the law says no.

Worth remembering this analysis. The law, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, means that you can never ever do any sort of land swap, even if the net gain for the conservation estate is huge.

If Labour Greens and NZ First did manage to form a Government, what would it look like?

Let’s assume their seats in Cabinet would represent their share of the vote so on current polls Labour gets 11 seats, Greens five and NZ First four.

Assuming they allocate them on caucus order, the Cabinet would be:

1. Andrew Little, Prime Minister, National Security
2. Metiria Turei, co-Deputy Prime Minister, Social Welfare, Women
3. James Shaw, co-Deputy Prime Minister, Climate Change, Economic Development
4. Winston Peters, Associate Prime Minister, Foreign Affairs, Racing
5. Jacinda Ardern, Arts, Children, State Services, Youth
6. Grant Robertson, Finance, SOEs
7. Phil Twyford, Building, Science, Workplaces Relations and Safety
8. Marama Davidson, Local Govt
9. Ron Mark, Defence
10. Megan Woods, Greater Chch Regeneration, Stats, Tertiary Education
11. Chris Hipkins, Education
12. Kelvin Davis, Corrections, Police
13. Julie-Anne Genter, Energy, Health, Transport
14. Barbara Stewart, Courts, Internal Affairs
15. Carmel Sepuloni, Customs, Pacific, Tourism
16. David Clark, Commerce, Immigration, Revenue
17. David Parker, Attorney-General, Justice, Primary Industries, Trade, Treaty
18. Eugenie Sage, Conservation, Environment
19. Fletcher Tabuteau, ACC, Sport
20. Nanaia Mahuta, Community, Maori Development, Whanau Ora

The portfolios are of course my guess as to whom might get what.

Hayden Donnell writes that it is outraegous to accuse Winston of being racist:

Winston Peters has never had a racist approach to anything.

Apart perhaps from when he campaigned on repelling the “Asian Invasion”, which did not exist, in the 1996 general election.

And when he came to “the rescue of man’s best friend” by hitting out at “Asian dog farmers”.

Or when he issued a statement calling New Zealand “the last Asian colony”, while warning the country will soon be “unrecognisable”.

And the time he claimed “we have now reached the point where you can wander down Queen Street in Auckland and wonder if you are still in New Zealand or some other country”, before proposing “flying squads” to investigate migrant crime.

Or the time he said Asian immigration was “imported criminal activity”, and claimed refusing to cut it would cause race relations to descend into “chaos”.

Or when NZ First deputy leader Peter Brown said the country was going to be flooded with Asians and there was “no guarantee what they’d do here” in 2008, while Peters was serving as foreign minister.

And the time Peters got angry there were too many delicious Asian restaurants on Auckland’s Dominion Road.

And we shouldn’t forget his failure to censure his then-Deputy Ron Mark after he told National MP Melissa Lee to “go back to Korea”.

Or the time he joked that “two Wongs don’t make a white” in a speech on Chinese land ownership, then responded to media criticism by saying “what we don’t need is a few journalists who decide that they’re going to be the Nazi politically correct police of this country”.

Or when he initially failed to apologise, then refused to stand down NZ First MP Richard Prosser, after he wrote that New Zealanders’ rights were being denigrated by “misogynist troglodytes from Wogistan” and argued young men who “look like a Muslim” should be banned from flying on “Western” airlines.

And the time he accused “two Asian immigrant reporters” of fabricating statistics to suit their pro-Asian agenda.

It is very clear that Winston in no way has anything racist against Asians. He just doesn’t want them in New Zealand.

The Herald reports:

Only 12 months ago, the city’s top transport bureaucrat was assuring Aucklanders the rail link could be built for as little as $2b.

Auckland Transport chief executive David Warburton said in July last year the cost estimate for the 3.4km underground rail tunnel remained at $2.5b, plus or minus 20 per cent.

Two months later, Bridges and Finance Minister Steven Joyce revealed the cost had increased to between $2.8b and $3.4b.

So from maybe $2 billion to maybe $3.4 billion.

Pressed on whether he had received any advice from officials on the figures moving above $3.4b, Bridges said: “I think I would say they have moved around.”

The briefing papers, obtained by the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance under the Official Information Act, say “we cannot be confident at this point that the changes to the CRL cost profile will not lead to a reduction in other current planned transport expenditure”.

Sounds like that is code for increased costs. Anyone think it won’t cost more than $4 billion?

Danyl McL writes at The Spin Off:

A few days before the 2014 election I ran into the leader of a political party who shall remain nameless. They weren’t doing well in the polls but were still optimistic. “Apparently ten percent of all voters make their minds up on election day – so anything could happen!” They said this while bouncing up and down on their toes, eyes gleaming, obviously deeply lost in the fantasy that a hundred percent of this vacillating ten percent might swing behind their struggling party and sweep them to power.

Sounds like either the Labour leader or a Green co-leader.

In 2014 the Department of Statistics published a report on non-voters in the 2008 and 2011 general elections based on their General Social Survey – a study of 8,795 residents from randomly selected households. They found that a very high proportion of non-voters were neither woke-but-alienated radicals nor shiftless sexting millennial deadbeats. Instead the single highest predictor of being a non-voter was identifying as a recent migrant to New Zealand.

So Labour’s strategy of getting the missing million to vote by attacking migration to NZ may be somewhat flawed!

But when you look at the political attitudes of non-voters in the New Zealand Electoral Survey, a longitudinal study of voting attitudes and behaviour, the results are not wildly encouraging for the left. When non-voters in the 2014 NZES were asked to rate the National government’s performance, over 70% thought that the government was doing a good job. 

So National might benefit the most from the missing million!

This doesn’t mean they’d all vote National – 43% of Labour voters also thought the government were doing a good job. 

Nearly a majority!

But it doesn’t point to the simmering discontent we’ve seen in the British and US elections.

Maybe things have changed since the last election? Maybe there is something in the air? According to Roy Morgan the percentage of people who ‘think the country is heading in the right direction’, is at 62%, almost exactly what it was before the 2014 election. Prior to the recent British election the government’s ‘right direction’ rating was literally half that.

And in the US the right direction has been under 30% for around 15 years!

But over the next ten years, Asian New Zealanders are projected to overtake Māori  as the second-largest ethnic group in New Zealand (although “Asian” is not so much an ethnic group as a vague and convenient category). If the findings in the GSS survey are correct, those who were recent migrants will become much more engaged with the political process. If so it will be increasingly difficult for major political parties to win elections without the support of those voters. Tricky decisions ahead for Labour, but I don’t think the hypothesised missing million desperate for radical change will be a huge factor in them.

Not even if those nice unpaid US interns ask them to vote please.

Newhub reports:

Green MP Barry Coates says the party would refuse to support a Labour-NZ First Government – and even indicated the Greens would even be prepared to force another election to stop it.

In an extraordinary move, Mr Coates has said a Labour-NZ First Government would be “unacceptable” to the Greens.

Asked by Newshub if this meant forcing the country back to the polls for another election, Mr Coates responded: “It could do.”

Extraordinary. The Greens are threatening to vote against Labour if NZ First blocks them from Government. They’d force NZ back to the polls and another $40 million election just weeks after the last one.

This shows that the only possible stable Government is a National-led Government.

The Herald reports:

While it is all about Bill English for National’s campaign, Labour is steering clear of a strictly presidential campaign by featuring both leader Andrew Little and deputy Jacinda Ardern in its election material.

Labour’s newly released hoardings appear to be aimed at harnessing Ardern’s popularity and high-recognition factor as Little struggles to make headway in the polls – Ardern is nipping at his heels and has even overtaken him in some polls.

Labour also believes Ardern complements little – balancing out his more serious, older image.

There will be little to no advertising featuring Little alone – Ardern will also feature in the television ads with him.

A clear admission that Labour knows Little is deeply unattractive to the public. Can you recall any other party that has ever had the deputy leader feature equally on their hoardings and advertisements?

Louise Roberts writes at news.com.au:

If your child is too ill to go to school today, do you take her on a business trip at the taxpayer’s expense? A moral bind surely, even if it is within the so-called company rules.

But if you’re a warrior for Single Motherhood, that excuses everything.

You can attend, with a sick child in tow, an overnight jaunt to see a few whales and shuck oysters because you are simply doing your job.

In other words, tick, another problem solved in the tyranny of life known as Single Motherhood.

That is, of course, if you’re blindly entitled like the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young.

The Senator has this week been condemned nationwide for using a reported $3874.24 of taxpayers’ money to go whale watching with her daughter Kora last September in the Great Australian Bight.

Incredible. Taxpayer funded whale watching!

There was no alternative childcare available, it was not her fault so be quiet, haters. No regrets either at a decision that has subsequently been lambasted as a poor one.

But her world is not the world inhabited by the typical single mother raising a child bereft of a financial or care-contributing parent in the home.

In that alternate universe, there is usually a plan B such as a carer’s day or the decision to work from home while a sick child is cosy and recovering in bed.

The Senator gets paid $200,000 a year but couldn’t get someone to look after her sick daughter for the day.

Hanson-Young decided to fight fire with fire, telling Sky News: “Well the truth is… that I didn’t have a choice at the time.

“And you always weight up these things in terms of balance between the commitments of your job as a senator or indeed the demands on myself as a parent and a mum.

“So of course I don’t regret it.

“What I regret is the idea that there’s some grumpy old white men who have been deciding what is best for my family in the last 24 hours and I tell you what — I’m not going to be lectured to by some grumpy old men about how to be a mother or indeed what is best for my family.”

If a male Senator took a child whale watching on the taxpayer’s dime, I’d say they’d be equally criticised.

Liam Dann writes:

Food prices are bugging people this winter. It feels like we’re being ripped off.
Part of the problem is that inflation is supposed to be low.

It is for TVs and phones and clothes and broadband plans. It definitely is for wages.

But food – and fresh healthy food in particular – hasn’t been sticking to the script.

Food prices rose 2.2 per cent in the March quarter but fruit and vege was up 16 per cent.

Food prices have spiked in the last couple of months, but this is not uncommon due to weather or other seasonal factors.

I had a look at what food prices have done on an annual basis for the last decade.

So what has been the average price increase from 2009 to 2016?

Well food prices in December 2016 were 9.9% higher than December 2008 so an average annual increase of 1.2%.

Fruit and vegetable prices in December 2016 were 13.7% higher than December 2008 so an average annual increase of 1.7%.

So I think Liam is premature in concluding there is a problem.

Got sent a very interesting thesis looking at the change in voting patterns of the working classes in the UK and NZ.  The two respective Labour parties were formed primarily to represent the working class, but has there been a class realignment.

The thesis uses NZ Election Study data to look at voting patterns of working class voters, being those who are manual or routine workers.

So what has it found for New Zealand. Well below is the margin between Labour and National in the last six elections for working class voters:

• 1999 – Labour +25%
• 2002 – Labour +29%
• 2005 – Labour +15%
• 2008 – Labour +4%
• 2011 – Labour +3%
• 2014 – National +3%

So think about that. More working class voters in 2014 voted for National than Labour. I think this illustrates what Chris Trotter has often said – they have lost touch with many working class families.

Nick Smith announced:

Five of New Zealand’s fastest growing Councils will have infrastructure projects funded through the Government’s $1 billion Housing Infrastructure Fund, Finance Minister Steven Joyce and Building and Construction Minister Dr Nick Smith say.

“These funding decisions will help provide another big step forward in housing supply,” Minister Joyce says. “The funding will be used to provide network roading and water infrastructure for 60,000 houses across nine projects in these five fast-growing urban areas.”

A useful supply side measure. The details are:

• Auckland Council – $300 million – 10,500 housesGreenfield development (North-west) at Whenuapai and Redhills.
• Hamilton City Council – $272 million – 8,100 housesGreenfield development (Peacockes) on southern edge of Hamilton.
• Waikato District Council – $37 million – 2,600 housesTe Kauwhata (new development on the shore of Lake Waikare).
• Tauranga City Council – $230 million – 35,000 housesGreenfield development at Te Tumu (eastern end of Papamoa) as well as a capacity upgrade to the Te Maunga Wastewater Treatment Plant and a new (Waiari) water treatment plant (at Te Puke).
• Queenstown Lakes District Council – $50 million – 3,200 housesTwo new greenfield sites (Quail Rise South and Ladies Mile) on the Frankton Flats and an extension of the Kingston township.

Around 20,000 of the 60,000 homes will be delivered within five years.

I’m a fan of congestion charging for roads, which is the busier a road gets the more expensive it is to use it. The best example of this is in some US cities where there are say two routes to the airport – one which is free, and one with a variable charge so that you are guaranteed to get there in 20 minutes. Sometimes the charge may be $2 and sometimes $15 depending on how high it needs to be to deter motorists.

I wonder if we could do the same for parking. Instead of a flat $4/hr charge, have variable fees. So sometimes it might be $1/hr and other times it might even be $10/hr – the fee adjusting to the level needed to make sure there are always say 5% of parks available.

Stuff reports:

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has arrived in Mosul and congratulated the armed forces for their “victory” over Islamic State after nearly nine months of urban warfare, bringing an end to jihadist rule in the city.

Islamic State’s defeat in Mosul three years after taking the city is a major blow for the hardline Sunni Islamist group, which is also losing ground in its operational base in the Syrian city of Raqqa, where it has planned global attacks.

The group, however, still controls territory in Iraq and is expected to revert to more conventional insurgent tactics such as bombings as its self-proclaimed caliphate falls apart.

This is a major victory. Absolutely Islamic State will still sponsor terrorist attacks, but losing Mosul means that they no longer credibly can promise a caliphate which attracted so many to their cause.

We should be pleased that NZ troops played a small but significant role in training up the Iraqi troops.

Certain politicians here opposed our training role by claiming that the Iraqis were cowards and could never win against Islamic State. They said we should just abandon Iraq. I’m glad we did not. Iraq still has many challenges ahead, but liberating major cities from IS rule has freed millions.

Stuff reports:

Labour is promising to scrap National’s Budget tax cut plan.

Instead it will funnell the cash into higher Working for Families payments and extra help for those with young children.

It’s a package it says will deliver up to $48 a week to extra to middle income families.

And zero for every one else. If you don’t have children you get nothing.

National’s package was a nice balance of both tax reductions and targeted extra assistance. Labour just seem unable to ever agree to reduce the burden on tax payers. In fact with fiscal drag their policies mean taxpayers end up paying a higher and higher share of their income in taxes.