Stuff reports:
A hairdressing councillor landed himself in hot water for discussing confidential council information about potential chief executives while giving people haircuts.
Earlier this month, Stratford District councillor Graham Kelly, who owns hairdressing salon 5th Avenue in Stratford, was suspended from the council’s executive, and policy and services committees for breaching the council’s code of conduct. He was also asked to write a private apology.
The stereotype of hairdressers is they love a good gossip. This really reinforces the stereotype with the thought that a councillor was sharing details of Chief Executive applicants with every random person who came in for a hair cut!
On February 13, Kelly phoned Candidate 1 and Candidate 2, as they were refereed to in the report, to say he would not be able to make it to their interviews.
Kelly told Candidate 1 he was impressed with their CV and wanted them to be successful in their application.
The report said Candidate 1 was disconcerted about Kelly’s phone call and reported it before their interview.
Candidate 2 said they had also received a phone call from Kelly, and was told by Kelly the job was likely to go them them or Candidate 1, who Kelly then named.
After the interviews on February 14 and 15, Candidate 3 phoned Volzke after being told they were unsuccessful and said the confidentiality of their name and title had been breached by Kelly, who had told it to one of the clients at his hair dressing salon in Stratford.
The customer told Candidate 3 that Kelly had “engaged in a long conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates, their backgrounds and whether he thought council could work with each”.
He really doesn’t sound suitable to be a councillor if he doesn’t understand basic employment processes. You do not call candidates and tell them who their competition is.
Interesting stats from the US election campaign. Clinton spend $1.18 billion on her campaign – almost double the $0.62 billion Trump spent.
Useful reminder that while money is useful in campaigns, it is not a major factor in success. We see this in NZ also where Dotcom and Craig spent millions and got nowhere.
Some interesting stats from MBIE on the fibre and associated rollouts.
The Herald reports:
Christchurch millionaire Earl Hagaman has died.
Hagaman, a tourism pioneer and owner of the Scenic Hotel Group, died today in his Christchurch home after an illness.
Lani Hagaman, Earl’s wife and business partner of 30 years, said he died peacefully surrounded by family and friends.
Born in America, Earl Hagaman and friend Ralph Brown bought their first hotel, the 48-room Graham Motor Inn – which is now the 130-room Scenic Hotel Franz Josef – in 1980.
Lani Hagaman said her husband was “loved and respected by many, including business and industry colleagues, and our 1000 staff working throughout Scenic Hotel Group both here in New Zealand and the Pacific”.
“He put all his energies into developing New Zealand’s tourism industry, as well as bringing much-needed jobs and income into the regional economy where most other hotel companies did not want to take that risk.
“He was a visionary and loved this country.”
A real loss. Condolences to Lani and family.
They were for the most part children and parents of children. All targeting of innocents is vile, but this particular act seems to hit a new level of callous.
Kudos should go to those members of the Muslim community who tried to stop this. Stuff reports:
Two friends of Abedi also became so worried they separately telephoned the police counter-terrorism hotline five years ago and again last year.
“They had been worried that ‘he was supporting terrorism’ and had said that ‘being a suicide bomber was OK’,” a source told the BBC.
Akram Ramadan, 49, part of the close-knit Libyan community in south Manchester, said Abedi had been banned from Didsbury mosque after he had confronted the Imam who was delivering an anti-extremist sermon.
Ramadan said he understood that Abedi had been placed on a “watch list” because the mosque reported him to the authorities for his extremist views.
A well-placed source at Didsbury mosque confirmed it had contacted the Home Office’s Prevent anti-radicalisation programme as a result.
A US official also briefed that members of Abedi’s own family had contacted British police saying that he was “dangerous”, but again the information does not appear to have been acted upon.
It is good that he was reported my multiple people for his growing radicalisation. No doubt there will be a focus on whether he should have been placed under surveillance. He can’t be arrested just for saying things like being a suicide bomber is okay, but if he had been monitored they may have been able to stop him. On the other hand, you will never prevent every attack if someone is willing to kill others and die doing so.
Labour are trying to say that the Budget provided more for the rich than the poor. They claim poor families are only $1 better off.
Well Stuff profiled five imaginary families before the Budget and looks at what it means for each of them:
The Greens are voting for the families package because it is targeted mostly towards low and middle income households. Labour are voting against because – well just because.
Even putting aside the WFF and Accomodation Supplement changes, the tax cuts proportionally target lower income earners. Someone on $20,000 a year has their tax drop from $2,520 to $2,100 – a 17% decrease.
Someone on $100,000 a year has their tax drop from $23,920 to $22,860 – a 4% decrease.
Key details so far are:
Looks a pretty sensible mixture of tax cuts and increased spending. Spending as a percentage of GDP still forecast to decline (as economic growth is projected to be high) so the surpluses will grow and allow more debt reduction.
For the first time since 2006 I won’t be in the Budget lockup, as I have as scheduling clash and have to chair a board meeting today. Hence I won’t have my usual analysis at 2 pm. I’m also on a flight this afternoon so not sure when I’ll get to write something – hopefully later afternoon.
Feel free to use this post for comments on the Budget once details are out.
Tracy Watkins writes:
If he had not already done so, Auditor-General Martin Matthews would have had no choice but to stand aside after the committee of MPs that appointed him agreed to an independent review of his handling of a major fraud case.
Matthews informed Speaker David Carter by letter on Tuesday of his decision. It was already clear by then Carter would have to intervene otherwise. Matthew’s position had become untenable as questions mounted about his management of a staffer who defrauded the Ministry of Transport.
Carter underscored the gravity of Matthew’s situation when he labelled the review as necessary to protect the integrity of the office of Auditor-General.
No one, not even Labour leader Andrew Little who called for the review, is suggesting impropriety on Matthews part.
This is not about Matthews being culpable. He acted properly. But the argument is he acted too late. That would not make him ineligible for almost any other CEO role (no agency is fraud proof) bit I think it does make him ineligible for the role of Auditor-General. It is about the integrity of the office.
Matthews, for his part, maintains that he stands by his actions at the ministry and blames misinformation and media speculation for the need to stand down.
But Matthews is not just any public servant. He is the parliamentary appointed watchdog of tax payer funds. That includes holding agencies and departments to account over their systems of oversight and governance.
It is his stewardship over both those areas that is being questioned after a staffer, Joanne Harrison, committed large scale fraud while he was Transport Secretary.
Allegations this week that two former whistle blowers were later restructured out of the ministry go to the heart of public confidence in the integrity of the public service and New Zealand’s whistle blower laws. The two men allege that senior managers were informed about fake invoices used by Harrison, including a $123,000 payment, and believe that was why they lost their job.
There are now two inquiries underway.
State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes will conduct an inquiry into the treatment of public servants who raised the alarm about Harrison, while the former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Sir Maarten Wevers, will carry out the Parliamentary inquiry.
The public can have confidence in the integrity of both not to deliver a whitewash.
Both highly respected. And while I am sceptical, if the inquiries found that no reasonable person could possibly have detected Harrison’s fraud at an earlier stage, then he may be able to resume his role. But the evidence to date of eight specific complaints or warnings is fairly damning. But there may be abother side to these stories.
Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post reports:
To everyone dreaming of a quick and easy impeachment: What do you imagine happens the day after?
Passions subside. President Mike Pence begins his orderly reign. Donald Trump retreats to Mar-a-Lago. Normalcy returns.
That’s about what you have in mind, right? Dream on.
Here’s a likelier scenario: Trump goes to Mar-a-Lago to regroup, not retreat. Early in the morning, he tweets: “Join me on Day One of our campaign to reverse the most corrupt theft in political history and reclaim the White House in 2020.” His supporters vow to reverse the coup d’etat.
And they may not restrict themselves to political protest. Unless there was clear and undeniable proof of wrong-doing, his supporters would think there was no way to change the system from within.
Trump was legitimately elected by Americans who knew they were voting for an inexperienced, bombastic, intermittently truthful, thin-skinned, race-baiting businessman. If Trump turns out to be an inexperienced, bombastic, intermittently truthful, thin-skinned, race-baiting president, that should not come as a surprise. Nor is it grounds for impeachment.
Even if Trump turns out to be worse than feared, a failure, a disappointment even to his voters, someone who would, say, boorishly disparage America’s FBI chief as a “nut job” while speaking to America’s adversaries – even that would not be grounds for impeachment. The remedy for poor performance is not to re-elect. It is a decision for the voters.
Yep. Unless you have proof of criminal behaviour, lying under oath etc.
Would Trump, if convicted by the Senate, stage a run for redemption in 2020, fuelling and feeding on that kind of paranoia? That would depend on many factors, including whether Congress chose to bar him from future service, which it is allowed but not required to do in an impeachment trial.
But certainly many among the 46 per cent of the electorate who rallied to Trump’s side in order to “drain the swamp” of Washington elitism would not subside quietly if the swamp, as they saw it, swallowed him. Maybe their candidate would be Donald Jr or Eric Trump, who last week tweeted, “This entire thing is a witch hunt propagated by a failed political campaign.” Maybe they would find another champion.
President Ivanka?
Stuff reports:
Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel wants the Government to buy and repair the Christ Church Cathedral if the Anglicans reject a restoration deal.
Dalziel stated her position on the quake-damaged Christ Church Cathedral on Wednesday, shortly before Labour, Green and National MPs united to break a deadlock over the building.
Labour and Green MPs said Christchurch Regeneration Minister Nicky Wagner had agreed to set up a cross-party initiative to tackle the cathedral. Wagner said she had invited all Christchurch MPs to meet on Friday to “discuss the Government’s next steps” on the cathedral.
So Lianne thinks people living in Stratford and Auckland and Gore should buy a church in Christchurch.
If (and that is a big if) there is a case for public funds to be used, then it should be the Christchurch City Council, not the Government.
She said it was her personal view that the Government may have to purchase the building using its earthquake recovery powers.
I’m against the Government confiscating the church.
Dalziel said if Anglicans rejected the offer and chose demolition it would be bad for regeneration of the city.
It’s their church, not yours. If you want a say then go offer to buy it off them and restore it yourself.
Stuff reports:
OMG, could this be true? It’s still illegal to blaspheme in New Zealand.
Parliament had the opportunity to remove decades-old anti-blasphemy laws but, heaven’s above, bailed out on Tuesday night.
Labour MP Chris Hipkins introduced an amendment to remove anti-blasphemy laws but both the National Party and the Maori Party voted against throwing it out of the Crimes Act..
They voted against throwing it out without allowing the public a chance to submit on it.
It’s understood National changed its mind about dealing with the law quickly and with the help of the Maori Party stopped it going through.
Instead, the government wanted to go through the process of select committee and give the public the opportunity to submit on the potential law change.
Which is absolutely proper. It is an outdated law that should go, but Parliament should not be making changes to the Crimes Act without public consultation, except where it is urgent.
Hipkins said it was a “sad day for freedom of speech, tolerance and leadership”.
“What moral authority does New Zealand have condemning other countries for draconian blasphemy laws when we have one of our own that we refuse to repeal?”
Chris is being hypocritical. He has often ranted against the Government pushing law changes through without consultation. Now he is demanding they do just that.
No one is refusing to repeal the law. They are just saying it should go to a select committee for submissions.
Chris could submit a members’ bill to do so, and I suspect it would get 121 votes if drawn.
A guest post by Auckland Councillor Greg Sayers:
When there is a vote for the Mayor’s targeted rate on hotels to fund the Council owned ATEED organisation odds-on I will be voting against this measure. Introducing a new form of rates is a cop out for an organisation that should spend more time concentrating on efficiencies and cost savings and less time trying to take more money out of ratepayers pockets.
The targeted rate is flawed in its design. It is not a bed tax which travellers may be familiar with seeing overseas whereby an itemised surcharge is added onto the bill. The revenue raised is then ring fenced for building city infrastructure which visitors can use. Such a tax would have to be central government initiated and I would support this. As I am sure my constituents would.
With a bed tax the amount charged overseas is a percentage of the room cost. Auckland Council, however, is planning to use the capital value of a property as the calculation tool for introducing a new kind of rate, called a targeted rate. This is a blunt and highly inappropriate financial instrument and is the second major flaw in the model.
All the money will go to ATEED, the arm of Council which promotes Auckland as a tourism destination. This benefits a wide range and a large number of diverse businesses. However, the Mayor is asking for 100% of the targeted rate to be paid entirely by the hotel and motel sector – a sector which gains only 9% of the benefits. This is grossly unfair. The model is again fundamentally flawed.
Essentially the Mayor is asking a few businesses to fund all of Auckland’s promotions and advertising. Using smoke and mirrors the Mayor then promises more money will be allocated to fixing traffic congestion.
It is really just a money grab and Aucklanders need to understand the deceitfulness behind it. This has included direct threats from the Mayor if I don’t vote with him “there will be future consequences” for myself and my electorate.
So, what about the tourism and accommodation industry providers themselves – what do they say? They say the Mayor’s campaign is built on untruths, uneducated assumptions, distorted facts and public consultation documents that harbour clear biases. They are telling me they are thinking Mayor Goff is becoming more like Mayor Brown by the day.
Bottom line, the test for Mayor Goff’s leadership is not whether he can get enough of us as Auckland Councillors to vote with them. It is whether he does the right thing.
This targeted rate is definitely not the right thing. It is a poorly conceived tax on a small number of businesses that allows the Mayor to continue freely spending ratepayer’s money. He should drop this targeted rate, and go back to consult transparently with the people affected. Properly understand how the visitor industry works without a predetermined outcome. Gain buy-in to a workable solution and a fair way of charging visitors to pay their fair share towards Auckland’s growth challenges.
The fight over this targeted rate raises a broader issue about Auckland Council’s costs. Those supporting the Mayor tell us that costs are under control, and that adding targeted rates is a solution to the underlying problem of Council not having control of its spending. The Mayor and his supporters have decided to increase rates and also introduce new rates rather than aggressively attack Council’s waste and overspending.
The Council has an proposed annual budget of approximately $4.2 billion, up from $3.8 billion. The Council staff have come back with a proposal to make $17 million in savings this year on Len Browns budget. This is a fractional savings goal of the total Council budget. This would be completely unacceptable in the commercial sector whose Board of Directors would be looking for 10% savings as a minimum if their company’s debt and financial performance looked anything like Auckland Councils.
Any accountancy firm or Chief Financial Officer presenting savings this low in the private sector would be sacked. Before entering politics I spent a good part of my career looking at cost savings and efficiencies in businesses. My experience is that all organisations can find efficiency gains, however, it is only by setting tough goals that they do find these gains.
Auckland’s Mayor and Council are too weak. The bureaucrats are running the show in the vacuum. Ratepayers remain the soft target being hit with more rates increases, rather than Council initiating a thorough cost cutting process to find savings that can be passed onto ratepayers.
When I was running for Auckland Council I made a series of pledges, including to adhere to rates increases of no more than 2%. I am standing by that pledge, and will be voting against the new targeted rate to fund ATEED. I will consistently call on the Mayor to present options for cutting wastage and cutting overspending not increasing revenue, and I believe he should be more effective in managing the costs across all of council.
Bolding is done by me.
Great to see a Councillor living up to his pledge not to vote for a rates increase of greater than 2%. Goff is proposing a 4%+ rates increase. If Councillors who made that pledge vote for it, they will be targeted for defeat at the next election and their constituents reminded of their broken pledge.
Interesting list of major (over $30,000) donors in 2017:
So by party we have:
The Herald reports:
The Labour Party’s parliamentary and local body wing is taking different tacks on the privatisation of Ports of Auckland.
The parliamentary wing is strongly opposed to a sell-off, whereas some Labour councillors on Auckland Council are prepared to consider a sale of some or all of the $1 billion port company.
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff, who promised to “Stop Asset Sales” as Labour leader during the 2011 general election, has ruled out selling the port company’s land holdings but has not ruled out privatising part or all of the operating company. …
The position of some Labour councillors is at odds with Labour’s MP for Te Atatu and Auckland issues spokesman Phil Twyford who said the party strongly opposes the sell-off to fix a short-term cash crisis.
I can never understand politicians that insist assets can only be purchased by borrowing money, never by selling off other assets.
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:
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?
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:
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.
