A reader writes in:

It has largely escaped national media attention – and perhaps that is a good thing – but here in ChCh, Ngai Tahu politics is the talk of the town. 

Ngai Tahu has always done very well by staying focused, disciplined and unified under the leadership of Sir Mark Solomon (and Tipene O’Reagan at the figurehead level).

Right now, that unity is under massive pressure and behind the scenes is fractured. You kind of have to give them credit for keeping a lid on the worst of it.

There has been plenty reported about Lisa Tumahai and Arihia Bennett in the media. Among most Runanga attention is now being focused on potential candidates that would unify the iwi and transcend the recent unpleasantness. NgaiTahu probably have a bit to learn from the National Party about the transition of leadership, to be honest.

I know of two candidates that have been approached: Quintin Hix (Arowhenua Runanga) and Nuk Korako (from both the Rapaki and Tuahuriri Runanga).

Hix  is a long-serving Runanga reo and respected lawyer from Timaru and would likely jump at the chance to serve as Kaiwhakahaere. His appointment would get the Iwi past a lot of bitterness and innuendo flying around. He is widely admired and trusted. Youngish, too. He could serve for many years.

Korako has earned a lot of respect as a previous board member of Ngai Tahu Investment Ltd and his current role as Chair of the Maori Affairs Select Committee. Coming from two Runanga helps on the unity front, especially because Tuahuriri is really ground-zero for Ngai Tahu. He has less to gain from the appointment, though, as he has stepped away from Iwi affairs in recent years and is doing pretty well in National politics. His appointment would be interesting, because resigning his seat in parliament would have a spillover effect on cabinet and select committee appointments. He must be weighing up his future in each avenue. Either in parliament or in Ngai Tahu, his next role would surely be his last before retirement?

The Iwi has an acting Kaiwhakahaere and they hoped to have a replacement before xmas, but the in-fighting looks to carry on over the summer – almost as bad as Labour factionalism and summer BBQs!!

Ngai Tahu is now one of the largest commercial presences in the South Island. They have shown what you can do with a settlement, by moving past grievance mode. It will be interesting to see who becomes their new leader, and what impact there is from this.

I feared the worst after her heart attack on a flight, and her daughter has now confirmed Carrie Fisher has died aged 60.

May the force be with her.

The SSC has released its senior pay report. I find it interesting to look at who gets paid more than the PM whose base salary is $460,000 and total remuneration $527,000.

The public sector CEs who got more than the PM were:

1. NZ Super Fund $950,000
2. ACC $810,000
3. SSC $760,000
4. Auckland University $710,000
5. NZ Transport Agency $710,000
6. Police $670,000
7. Canterbury University $650,000
8. NZ Defence Force $650,000
9. Treasury $640,000
10. NZ Trade & Enterprise $640,000
11. Education $630,000
12. MBIE $620,000
13. MSD $620,000
14. Internal Affairs $610,000
15. Auckland DHB $610,000
16. IRD $610,000
17. Massey University $600,000
18. DPMC $590,000
19. Otago University $590,000
20. Waitemata DHB $590,000
21. Auditor-General $570,000
22. Counties Manukau DHB $570,000
23. Callaghan Innovation $570,000
24. Waikato DHB $560,000
25. BOP DHB $550,000
26. Justice $540,000
27. VUW $540,000
28. Financial Markets Authority $540,000
29. MPI $530,000

Also of interest is 57 non CEOS received more than a Cabinet Minister (total rem $351,000).

Fairfax hand out their annual awards. Most are tongue in cheek but the two serious ones are John Key as Politician of the Year and Mark Mitchell as Backbencher of the Year.

Sir Patrick Lynch, former President of the Secondary Principals Association writes:

I have had the honour to have worked quite closely with 15 ministers of education since 1976. All were good people whose mission was to improve the lot of New Zealand’s young people.

However, Hekia Parata has been a stand-out performer and in my view, has been quite extraordinary in the way she has handled her portfolio.

High praise from a 40 year veteran.

She did this by setting up a regular consultation with education sector leaders which led to communication systems being strengthened and trust enhanced.

The minister put a lot of energy into the organisation, which she actively led in conjunction with all the chief executives of government departments and agencies in the education sector.

This approach enabled all senior education personnel to rub shoulders with one another every six weeks. It was a master stroke.

Groups who sometimes publicly criticised one another, quickly began to realise they all had the same goals for the education of the nation’s young people, and that they could, in fact, cooperate with one another.

A good thing.

The minister is driven by a fierce commitment to ensuring 85 per cent of students achieve at least NCEA level one.

She made it clear from the outset that Maori and Pacific students did not deserve to be destined to a life of under-achievement and this view spread to become very contagious with the leaders and practitioners in the sector, as well as most teachers.

Seldom has a minister of education been so overtly committed to student achievement in such an active and enthusiastic manner.

Fortunately, Hekia Parata was ably supported by the extraordinary leadership of a chief executive of the Ministry of Education who was appointed in the minister’s second year in the job.

Peter Hughes was a stand-out chief executive who worked very closely with her. They were a formidable duo, and changed the culture of the education sector.

An important outcome of this leadership was a demonstrable increase in NCEA results for Maori and Pacific youngsters, in particular.

Another outcome was that numbers of children in early childhood education rose quite strongly.

Close monitoring of individual student progress was done by the ministry in conjunction with particular schools and was instrumental in achieving these outcomes.

The long-term structural change initiated by the minister was the concept of communities of learning, which have been set up in many parts of the country. This change has led to a much-needed collaborative approach to learning and achievement among schools, in various locations.

The sharing of information, leadership and expertise is the focus of communities of learning and over a period of time this structural change will deliver higher levels of student achievement.

Seldom has New Zealand had a minister of education who has brought such conviction and commitment to her role, and who has been effective in doing so.

A great accolade indeed.

The Daily Mirror reports on tales of George Michael’s generosity, often without publicity. A tribute to the man.

1. Anonymously donated £15,000 to a woman who couldn’t afford IVF
2. Donated £25,000 to a crying stranger struggling with debt in a cafe
3. Anonymously volunteering at a homeless shelter
4. Anonymously donated millions to Childline
5. A children’s charity said they were “only afloat” because of George Michael.
6. In 2006, George held a special free concert for NHS nurses to attend in north London
7. Tipped a student nurse barmaid £5,000
8. Donated all the royalties from his 1996 number one single Jesus To a Child to charity.
9. Bought John Lennon’s piano for £1.45million from a private collector and donated it to the Beatles Story museum in Liverpool so that it could be kept in Lennon’s hometown forever.

Karl du Fresne writes:

A couple of weeks ago, I took part in a flagrant act of cultural appropriation. So did several thousand other people.

We watched a Christmas parade. Santa Claus was in it, complete with mock reindeer. 

Most of the floats were decorated with Christmas symbols: fake snow, tinsel, stuff like that. A brass band played traditional English carols.

How did we get away with it? It could only be because the simple provincial folk in the town where I live are ignorant of, or callously indifferent to, sensitivities surrounding cultural ownership. 

Santa Claus is a figure derived from northern European folklore. What right do we in the remote Southwest Pacific have to place him at the centre of our Christmas celebrations?

This is true. Just as kids can no longer play cowboys and indians as it is culturally insensitive, Christmas must also fail by the same standard.

Sleighs? Ditto. Christmas trees and holly too. 

These are the cultural property of people from distant lands. Those ridiculous fake antlers that shop assistants are made to wear – did we spare a thought for the people of Lapland, for whom reindeer are a taonga? No, we didn’t. 

And carols! How dare we sing about Good King Wenceslas or the Holly and the Ivy? What inflated sense of entitlement makes us think we can endlessly plagiarise Silent Night (Austrian) or O Holy Night (French)?

We should be ashamed.

Cultural appropriation must be rooted out in all its forms.

All those New Zealand reggae bands, for a start. There’s cultural appropriation right there, big time. Maori object when the haka or the tiki is ripped off, but doesn’t the same principle apply when Maori bands appropriate Jamaican music? 

Banning NZ reggae bands can only be a good thing!

And on that subject, who ever said it was culturally acceptable for white musicians to play the blues? Innumerable middle-class Brits (stand up, Eric Clapton) have grown rich ripping off black men’s music. Jazz? The same.

St Patrick’s Day, which New Zealanders use as an excuse to get drunk and pretend to be Irish, is a cultural outrage. Guy Fawkes? English. Halloween? Celtic. They should be abandoned, all of them. 

It’s a hard life living in these politically correct times.

Phil Quin writes:

In the unlikely event I get a say over Laila Harré’s likely bid for Labour’s nomination in New Lynn, I would enthusiastically vote for her opponent. Among the many questions today’s Labour has to ask itself, Laila Harré is the answer to precisely none of them.

Not a fan obviously, but …

But I do not dispute Harré’s right to rejoin the Labour Party; nor do I think she should be prevented from standing because of her nominal ineligibility (party rules require at least one year’s continuous membership).

Technicalities aside, Harré is well within her rights to present her credentials to New Lynn party members, and ask them to determine whether her re-entry to Parliament is in Labour’s, or the nation’s, best interests.

It’s no secret that my answer to that question is a resounding, lectern-thumping “no”. But I also concede there are many others within the Labour movement who support Harré for various reasons. If they prevail, and nominate Harré for New Lynn, so be it. Them’s the rules.

As an advocate for a broad church Labour Party, it would be churlish and hypocritical for me to issue some kind of fatwa against Harré or any other potential nominee whose politics offend me.

So Quin is saying that the whole idea of a broad church is you have people within your party that you don’t agree with on issues.

Harré hates free-trade and opposed the TPPA. She regards the recently deceased Fidel Castro as a hero worthy of formal parliamentary recognition.

Would be more at home in the Greens but left them after she didn’t get a good enough list promise. To date her parties have been Labour, New Labour, Alliance, Greens, Internet and now Labour again.

Labour needs to be broad enough to encompass the views of Lila Harré and people like me if it is to form a viable alternative government.

And yet the party’s culture and rules explicitly prohibit that kind of ideological pluralism. Its organs of power — the NZ Council and the list moderating committee, most critically — are elected on a first past the post basis, meaning that the dominant clique is able to shut out any and all dissenting voices. That New Zealand Labour has no factions is an enduring but preposterous myth. The truth is, it is a monofactional party, controlled by a handful of elites and apparatchiks determined to shape Labour in their own image. Anyone who refuses to play along is deemed, often by Little himself, as a right-wing troublemaker. But if the party provides no room for dissent, what other path do we have available to us but to express our frustrations in the public arena?

By contrast, the Australian Labour Party, of which I was a member and activist for 12 years, actively encourages a diversity of views via an overtly factional system built on proportional representation. In an ALP context, both Laila Harré and David Shearer would enjoy institutional backing commensurate with their respective support among members. If, for argument’s sake, Shearer and his allies were able to command 20 percent support, they could expect this to be reflected on the NZ Council and in the list selection process. This could allow them to operate freely, expressing their sincerely held views on public policy matters without fear of being ostracized or expelled by a single dominant clique who regard the mere presence of moderates like Shearer in caucus as anathema.

It’s the difference between power-sharing and power hogging. To my mind, it is Labour’s embrace of the latter, more than any other single factor, that has led to its diminution as a political force in New Zealand.

So maybe the answer in NZ is to have formal factions within Labour, to ensure the minority get representation?

The latest Roy Morgan poll is at Curia. As usual it has bounced around. Note that despite what the commentary says, most of the poll was done before John Key resigned.

+Max Roser writes:

Unfortunately the media is overly obsessed with reporting single events and with things that go wrong and does not nearly pay enough attention to the slow developments that reshape our world. With this empirical data on the reduction of poverty we can make it more concrete what a media that would report global development would look like. The headline could be “The number of people in extreme poverty fell by 130,000 since yesterday” and they wouldn’t have this headline once, but since – on average – there were 130,000 people fewer in extreme poverty every single day they should have had this headline every single day since 1990.

An amazing achievement. See the graph below:

As Rosen says we see few stories about this.

The Herald reports:

Australia’s forecast budget deficit is soaring as New Zealand continues to outperform its neighbour on the fiscal front – putting pressure on the Lucky Country’s coveted credit rating.

In its fiscal update, the Australian Government said its projected Budget deficit for the current fiscal year had increased by A$4.4 billion to A$41.5b as the economy continued to slow after a China-driven mining boom.

Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s said the fiscal update had no immediate effect on the credit rating but that the worsening position had put pressure on it.

“We remain pessimistic about the Government’s ability to close existing Budget deficits and return a balanced Budget by the year ending June 30, 2021,” the agency said.

We got back into surplus last year and Australia is unlikely to get back by even 2021.

New Zealand had outperformed Australia on the fiscal front, he said. “New Zealand’s policy makers have been more diligent. You are well and truly back in surplus. Australia is still struggling,” Bloxham said.

Bill English’s fiscal discipline paid off.

The SMH reports:

Internal tensions within the Greens have boiled over, with members of the hard-left of the party grouped around NSW Senator Lee Rhiannon forming their own faction dedicated to the “fight to bring about the end of capitalism”.

Venezuela has managed this very successfully. That must be their role model.

Senator Rhiannon is a “former” communist who authored scores of pro-Soviet articles. Her surname is adopted from Welsh mythology as it sounds better than Lee Brown!

The formation of the group calling itself “Left

Renewal” is an escalation of an ongoing battle between the so-called eastern bloc of the Greens and the group they dismiss as “tree Tories”.

I quite like the name tree Tories!

On Thursday Senator Di Natale described the Left Renewal’s manifesto as “ridiculous” and “ill-thought through” and suggested its members consider joining another party.

The communist party perhaps?

Following a meeting in Sydney on Wednesday night, Left Renewal issued a statement of principles that includes the “rejection of the state’s legitimacy”.

“We believe . . . that capitalism is a violent and antagonistic relation between workers, and those who exploit them. As workers, whether or not we are waged, we experience perpetual violence and that this violence must be brought to an end. We therefore fight to bring about the end of capitalism,” it states.

“Capitalism depends upon violent and authoritarian divisions within the working class, such as elitism, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, religious sectarianism, and ableism (among others). It is only with the abolition of these authoritarian relations that we will be able to create a thriving movement capable of transforming society and so must challenge these wherever we encounter it.”

You know it is a doozy when they get both transphobia and ableism into the same sentence!

Merry Christmas from the Farrar Family!

Top employment lawyer Peter Cullen writes:

One of the positive consequences of the disaster was the new Health and Safety at Work Act,  which was the first significant reform of health and safety law in more than 20 years.

There is a terrible irony for the Pike River families that the new legislation which came about as a result of the tragedy is now preventing the re-entry to the mine they are pushing for.

In deciding not to allow re-entry to the mine, Solid Energy will be concerned about breaching the Act.

Unlike previous legislation the Act carries hefty penalties, and by allowing people into the mine when they know it to be dangerous, Solid Energy could face severe sanctions.

The Act has a wide scope, placing duties to ensure safety in the workplace, so far as reasonably practicable, on any person conducting a business or undertaking. Now individuals involved with the management of businesses can face penalties personality.

Conduct that is reckless as to the risk of death, serious injury, or serious illness (and certainly knowing the risk places Solid Energy in that category) carries a fine of up to $3 million, or for an individual, a $600,000 fine and/or five years imprisonment.

So if Solid Energy has a report from experts telling them it is not safe to re-enter the mine, they would be taking a huge risk to ignore that advice.

It doesn’t matter that some other group has their own advice. If the advice commissioned by the board says it is unsafe, and you cherry pick some other piece of advice, bang each director faces up to five years jail and $600,000 fines. And these fines can not be insured against.

So the typical Solid Energy Director is paid around $50,000 a year. And the Pike activists want them to risk $600,000 fines and five years jail.

Under the Act it is not necessary for someone to actually be killed or injured in the workplace for sanctions to be imposed. Failure to comply with a duty to ensure health and safety, which exposes persons to the risk of death, serious injury or illness, carries a fine of up to $1.5m or $300,000 for individuals.

Even if no one is exposed to the risk of death, serious injury or serious illness, but a duty within the Act is not complied with, you can be fined up to $500,000, or $100,000 for individuals.

So even if no one dies or is injured, just bypassing their duty of safety first could see massive fines.

Solid Energy would face huge liability if the mine was re-entered, not to mention how disastrous it would be if harm to more people occurred in Pike River.

The prime minister has said the issue is not a political one, it is a health and safety one, and he is most certainly right.

Except Winston Peters and Andrew Little are trying to make it a political issue.

Audrey Young reports:

The Israeli Government has recalled its ambassador from New Zealand after the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning Israel’s continued settlements.

New Zealand co-sponsored the resolution, which said the settlements violate international law and undermine a two-state solution in Israel’s conflict with Palestine.

The resolution was passed 14-0 at the last council meeting of the year, and New Zealand’s last meeting in its two-year term as an elected member of the Security Council.

I have mixed feelings on this. On the substance I don’t support Israel building settlements in the occupied territories. They just make a peace settlement way more difficult. An eventual peace settlement won’t be on the exact 1967 borders but comprise an equivalent area. However the more settlements there are the less flexibility there is on what those areas will be, and the harder an agreement is.

However the UN has a terrible bias against Israel and a history of passing resolutions that only call for action by Israel, and nothing from the Palestinians. So it is regrettable this resolution followed that path also.

Steven Joyce released:

The New Zealand economy continued to grow solidly in the September quarter, posting a higher than expected 1.1 per cent growth rate for the quarter and 3.5 per cent over the last year, Finance Minister Steven Joyce says.

“New Zealand’s focus on developing a strong and open economy is delivering good results for Kiwi families, especially relative to most of the rest of the developed world,” Mr Joyce says.

New Zealand’s economic growth in the year to September was the fifth strongest in the OECD ahead of Australia (1.8 per cent), the USA (1.6 per cent), Canada (1.3 per cent) and the Euro Area (1.7 per cent).

3.5% is very good growth.

Growth in the quarter was strong across 13 of 16 industries, including:

• Business services (up 2.0 per cent)

• Transport, postal, and warehousing (up 3.7 per cent)

• Construction (up 2.1 per cent)

• Manufacturing (up 1.2 per cent)

That manufactured manufacturing crisis is still going strong!

The Herald reports:

A video has emerged that appears to show two young girls being embraced and kissed by their parents before leaving to complete suicide missions.

The 7-year-old girl was reportedly sent to a police station in the Syrian city of Damascus last week where explosives she was carrying were remotely detonated. Her 9-year-old sister was reportedly stopped at the Ministry of Interior before she could carry out her mission.

Chilling footage shows a man lecturing the two children about the suicide attack.
“You are not going to be afraid because you are going to the heavens, right?” he says.

“No,” one of the girls answers.

Afterwards the girls say “Allahu Akbar”.

Syrian journalists are reporting the adults in the footage are the parents of the children.

The woman is asked why she is sending her daughters to jihad even though they are so young.

“No one is young when it comes to jihad as every Muslim is supposed to participate in jihad,” she replies.

I’m trying to think of a punishment bad enough for these parents but can’t. The fact they are happy to kill their own children means that they have no empathy. They won’t be afraid of death as they are sure they are going to heaven.

Maybe have the surviving child fostered off to a atheist couple?

Stuff reports:

US President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday called for the United States to expand its nuclear arsenal, which would be a radical shift in US policy dating back decades.

In a tweet that offered no details, Trump said, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

Trump’s suggestion would reverse a long-standing policy under both Republican and Democratic presidents to reduce the number and the role of nuclear weapons, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. Russia and before it, the Soviet Union, hold a similar policy.

Since President George HW Bush’s administration, it has been US policy not to build new nuclear warheads.

There are times when I think Trump might not be an awful President and then there are times when I think he could be an absolute disaster – and this is one of them.

The last thing the world needs is a new nuclear arms race. The US and Russia have enough nukes to blow up the planet many times over.

The Herald reports:

A group of Auckland families are facing a bleak Christmas in cramped motel rooms that are costing taxpayers thousands of dollars each week.

The Herald visited a motel in South Auckland today where several tenants have been housed under the Ministry of Social Development’s emergency accommodation scheme.

Hazel Waipouri and her two granddaughters have been living in a single-bedroom unit at the motel, which the Herald has agreed not to identify, for four months.

Why is she in emergency accommodation? Why did the Herald not spend 30 seconds searching the Tenancy Tribunal and find this eviction from a state house for unpaid rent.

Now remember as a state house they get a massive subsidy so the rent is only 25% of their income. If they are on a benefit, it can be paid direct from the benefit. The rent was only $52 a week but even that was unpaid for at least 15 weeks. And now she wails to the media that the motel is costing taxpayers $1,000 a week.

Joyleen Taihia, her partner and four children have been living in a two-bedroom motel unit for 11 weeks, at a cost of more than $2000 a week.

And she has been to the Tenancy Tribunal three times. Unpaid rent of $3,050 in April 2016.

This is frankly terrible journalism without a shred of research. Why not ask the first person quoted why they didn’t pay a miniscule $52 a week in rent?