The last time a Labor Government in Australia delivered a surplus was in 1989, and this video reminds us of how different the world was back then/. Very effective.

NBR reports:

Controversial blogger Cameron Slater is taking a sabbatical from his Whale Oil site.

Comparing the move to what conservative US political blogger Andrew Sullivan “regularly did,” Mr Slater says he will be taking time out from managing the blog “for at least a month, and probably two months.”

The sabbatical starts on July 4; standing in for Mr Slater in his absence will be Pete Belt, who has been working on the site “for several years now.”

According to Mr Slater, his decision to take a break has been prompted by two things: “a couple of other projects that need some attention” and his “need [for] a rest after an intense couple of years.”

Of the latter, he says, “Having blogged constantly for 11 years this will actually be my first real break.

“So my first priority will be to get in some good hunting in what remains of the game bird season, and knock over a few deer, pigs and goats as well.”

A sabbatical sounds a great way to recharge the batteries. I hope Cam enjoys the break.

Patrick Gower writes:

Andrew Little should apologise to tax expert John Shewan for treating him with utter contempt and total disrespect.

Mr Little has been caught out big time — and it serves him right.

Mr Little got things wrong about Mr Shewan and has to put them right.

So Mr Little issued a retraction — at 5:17pm on Saturday, June 18 — two hours and 18 minutes before kick-off of the Wellington Test.

This is so cynical it is sad. Everybody knows that is the absolutely dead time in a media cycle when it would get the least attention. It is cunning and awful and rude and Mr Little’s actions show why people distrust politicians.

Now things have bounced back on Mr Little and his own credibility is being called into question — and it serves him right.

A lot of this is arcane and complex but it is important because Mr Little is auditioning to be Prime Minister. His actions and his words are important.

Mr Little yesterday repeatedly said that Mr Shewan did not ask him for an apology about incorrect statements made about him.

So then Mr Shewan pulled out a letter to Mr Little that said: “I now request the statement I sent to you yesterday be issued with the following additions: ‘I apologise to Mr Shewan for any embarrassment I have caused him through my statements’.”

Sadly for Mr Little, it doesn’t get much clearer than that. Contrary to his public claims, Mr Shewan asked for an apology.

Mr Shewan has produced an excellent report,. Labour has been quoting it in Parliament and saying it is good. But previously Little was accusing Shewan of being involved in helping the Bahamas stay a tax haven. He admits he was totally wrong on this, but won’t apologise to Shewan for the smear of his reputation.

Stuff reports:

New Plymouth’s only Maori councillor has signalled a desire to move into national politics.

During Saturday’s Maui Pomare Day celebrations at Waitara’s Owae Marae, Howie Tamati formally announced his intention to seek the candidacy to represent the Maori Party at next year’s general election.

The first step in the process is for Tamati to be selected by the party to be the person who will contest the Te Tai Hauauru seat, a decision which is not likely until the end of the year. At this stage it is unknown how many other candidates he will go up against.

Tamati said he felt it was the “opportune” moment to declare his political ambitions to his people, on his home marae.

In May, Tamati announced he would not seek re-election onto the New Plymouth District Council, 15 years after he was first elected.

Tamati is of course also well known to rugby league fans.

Labour’s Adrian Rurawhe only won the seat by 1,554 votes and has been fairly low profile, so the seat may be competitive.

The WSJ reports:

Donald Trump offered a starkly protectionist view on trade policy, pledging for the first time on Tuesday to scrap the current North American Free Trade Agreement while saying he would label China a currency manipulator and kill America’s involvement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“I’m going to tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for our workers,” said Mr. Trump, adding that if they don’t agree to favorable terms, “America intends to withdraw from the deal.”

Trump on trade is to the left of the Greens. I don’t think even the Greens advocate tearing up trade agreements already in place.

Bryan Gould writes:

It is amazing and wonderful that ordinary British people have at this late stage – after 43 years of membership – refused to be bullied and patronised by their supposed betters, by so-called experts and powerful financial interests, into betraying their own experience and judgment. The result is a new start for both Britain and Europe and a new and better prospect for both.

Gould also looks at Corbyn’s arguments for staying:

Jeremy Corbyn has – through timidity rather than conviction – put himself on the losing side and missed the chance to exploit for Labour the unavoidable blow to the authority of the Tory Government that the Brexit decision represents.

He took refuge in an argument for remaining that should surely have no place in the vocabulary of a Labour leader. He urged Labour supporters to vote remain on the surprising ground that there were provisions, particularly concerning workers’ rights, that were beyond the reach of democratic change by an elected British Government.

How odd that Labour should endorse the concept of government by an unelected European bureaucracy.

Corbyn’s argument was that an unelected EU could protect workers from democracy in the UK!

How much more constructive and politically astute if he had faithfully represented the views of Labour voters (and almost certainly his own personal preference) as a step towards a democratically elected Labour Government that would have been the best protector of workers’ rights.

Well that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Stuff reports:

Patients and politicians who lobbied hard for the melanoma drug Keytruda to be publicly funded may be about to have their wish fulfilled.

The Government’s drug funding agency Pharmac, which recently announced a decision to fund the alternative drug nivolumab (Opdivo) for patients with advanced melanoma from next month, has announced a provisional deal with the maker of Keytruda.

In a statement on its website it said it had “reached a commercially favourable provisional agreement with Merck Sharpe and Dohme (MSD)… for the supply of pembrolizumab (Keytruda)” and was seeking feedback on a proposal to fund it “for patients with advanced melanoma, subject to Special Authority criteria”.

I can almost guarantee you this will be at a very significantly cheaper rate than they previously sought.

When a drug company has the only product on the market they will seek a huge price for that. That is of course their right and in their best interests. And when Pharmac won’t pay it, they often will try and create a campaign to build public support for it, so they are in a strong bargaining position.

By not having politicians over-ride Pharmac (as Little demanded), Pharmac announced a funding deal with a alternative drug that had now reached an acceptable stage. And suddenly as there is an alternative, the price for Keytruda will become more flexible and MSD decides better to have some of the market for this sort of drug at a reduced rate, rather than none of the market at their original rate.

Now I don’t blame MSD. They act in their own best interests as they should. But a good lesson as to why politicans (and National have sinned here also) should not over-ride Pharmac on the back of a lobbying campaign.

The Herald reports:

Despite what we like to think – wealth is not evenly distributed in New Zealand, in fact it’s the worst it’s been in over a decade.

Statistics New Zealand’s wealth share of individuals shows the top 10 per cent of people have almost 60 per cent of wealth.

The figures are for the year to June 2015.

Labour market and household statistics manager Diane Ramsay said it was the biggest divide between the rich and poor since 2003.

She said it was possibly worse, but when records began in 2001 slightly different questions were asked of slightly different demographics.

What was evident was the inequality of net worth distribution that continued to grow.

Divides across ethnic groups continue; European people have an individual median net worth of $114,000 compared to $33,000 for people of Asian descent, $23,000 for Maori, and $12,000 for Pacific people.

Our youth are amongst the poorest in society. People aged between 15-24 had the lowest individual median net worth of any age group, just $1000 and most young people have not yet accumulated assets but do have debt.

The most common debt is accumulated through loans for further education.

The numbers are similar per household, half the country’s wealth belongs to the top 10 per cent of households.

In stark contrast the bottom 40 per cent of households hold just 3 per cent of total wealth.

This has the usual suspects up in arms, upset that we don’t have a communist society where it is illegal to be wealthy.

The reality is the overall statistics are almost meaningless. Because it assumes all households are comparable. They’re not.

Take for example age. Here is the median net wealth for individuals by age:

• Under 25: $1,000
• 25 to 34: $26,000
• 35 to 44: 96,000
• 45 to 54: $182,000
• 55 to 64: $278,000
• 65+: $288,000

So when people complain about inequality, they may be complaining that a 21 year old doesn’t have the same wealth as a 55 year old. As in somehow someone who has never worked should have the same wealth as someone after 30 years of working.

Also look at median wealth per type of household:

• Couple no kids $489,000
• Couple one kid $248,000
• Sole parent: $26,000

Now is it any surprise that if a couple decides not to have kids, they have more money than a couple who does? Likewise any surprise that a one income household has less wealth that a two income household?

The focus should be on equality of opportunity, not equality of wealth. Communist countries claim to have equality of wealth (in fact everyone is equally poor except the rulers).  Let’s focus on improving educational outcomes for the most disadvantaged families, not creating a mindset that wealth is static, and that a wealthy household has somehow taken it off a poor household.

Stuff reports:

A New Zealander that was kidnapped and released in Nigeria has sustained injuries that weren’t “life-threatening”, says Prime Minister John Key.

Kiwi Jamal Khan and three Australians were kidnapped in a deadly attack in Nigeria and were rescued four days after being taken hostage by gunmen.

“I have some information about Mr Khan’s health and well-being,” Key said on Monday, having been informed on Sunday night.

For privacy reasons, Key couldn’t share much about Khan’s injuries except to say: “None of the injuries he sustained are life-threatening.”

Pleased he has been freed, along with the Aussies. Details seem murky on how he was freed, but I imagine will become clearer in time.

NBR reports:

Party unity will keep US Democrats from opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), despite both of the party’s leading presidential nominees saying they are against the deal.

Members of the Democratic National Convention platform committee have decided to move against including a specific opposition to the TPP to the party’s platform (essentially, it’s manifesto for the November election).

The attempt failed because both members appointed by Hillary Clinton and DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz say it is inappropriate to oppose the TPP when US President Barack Obama is supportive of the deal.

Clinton’s opposition to TPP is insincere. Her husband did the same – campaigned against NAFTA, but then endorsed it.

If Clinton wins, I’d say there is a reasonable chance it will pass in the lame duck session of Congress with support from mainly Republicans but also some Democrats.

If Trump wins, then far harder for Republicans to vote for it, when the President-Elect has campaigned so vigorously against it.

So the best chances for Jane Kelsey and co of stopping TPP, is for Trump to win.

The Herald reports:

Police are frustrated at the number of licensed premises in Auckland’s suburbs selling alcohol to minors.

In a sting operation over the weekend, four of the six on-licence premises Auckland police targeted served alcohol to under-18s.

Auckland City Police Prevention Manager Inspector Gary Davey called the result “hugely disappointing”.

“These premises are ignoring their responsibilities under the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act.”

The six bars were all in Auckland’s central suburbs, with several in Onehunga and Epsom.

One of the premises served alcohol to a 15-year-old who presented ID clearly showing their age, Inspector Davey said.

The result is similar to other recent sting operations in the Auckland City Police District.

One operation in March saw five out of seven bars serve alcohol to 16 and 17-year-olds.

In this area I think the Police do very good work. Bars need to be not just asking for ID, but checking it. If they don’t, then they should get sanctions.

I’d much rather the Police put more resources into enforcing the laws we have, rather than trying to change the law by insisting that certain types of alcohol should not be sold, or they’ll object to a licence.

The Herald reports:

Tax expert John Shewan says that claims by Andrew Little that he did not seek an apology from the Labour leader are misleading.

“The statement that I never asked for an apology is completely incorrect,” Mr Shewan told the Herald today.

Mr Little told reporters this morning that he did not apologise to Mr Shewan, a former PwC chairman, over incorrect statements he made about his background in April because he was never asked to.

“I wasn’t asked to provide an apology. I was asked to provide his assurance that the media report I relied on was wrong.”

He added: “[Mr Shewan] explicitly said ‘I don’t need you to apologise, I want a correction of a statement’, and that’s what I’ve done.” …

But when Mr Little failed to issue a retraction for nearly two months, he wrote back to Mr Little’s office on June 10 and asked for the retraction to be expanded to include an apology.

“I specifically asked for an apology, that being because of the prolonged delay in getting the [comments corrected],” he said.

Mr Shewan said the Labour leader’s office rejected this request. He was also told that any further correspondence should be sent to Mr Little’s lawyer.

On the evening of June 18, a Saturday, Mr Little issued a statement retracting his comments, but stopped short of an apology.

Mr Shewan said he had been reluctant to take legal action while he was undertaking the inquiry into foreign trusts, which was publicly released yesterday.

But he was “dismayed” at Mr Little’s latest comments, and would not rule out further action.

“I’m not prepared to sit by and let him say anything more defamatory.

“I would prefer not to take any legal action and I think it is unlikely that I would. But I don’t just sit around and let people defame me. It’s just not on.”

Getting to be a bit of a trend here with the Hagaman defamation case also.

The Herald article includes the e-mail from Shewan to Little’s office which explicitly seeks an apology.

For Little to claim Shewan never asked for an apology means there are only really two possible options:

1. Little’s office didn’t show Little the letter
2. Little is lying

Stuff reports:

Some Kiwi children are leaving school having being failed for their entire education, a new report reveals.

School quality reports from the Education Review Office (ERO) reveal as of June last year 185 schools were in ERO’s worst performing category.

Of those schools, one-third were “persistent” poor performers and some had repeatedly failed students for at least a decade – spanning the entire schooling career of their students, says the New Zealand Initiative report.

That kind of underperformance wouldn’t be tolerated in other sectors but is “accepted in education”.

“If restaurants were repeatedly failing hygiene standards or if hospitals were constantly killing patients they’d be shut down. But we accept it with schools,” says NZ Initiative executive director Oliver Hartwich.

Only in state schools. The good thing about the charter school model is a poorly performing charter school gets shut down. While there appear to be around 60 state schools that have been persistently failing – yet carry on.

The resignations have reached an unprecedented level. So far there have been:

• 20 members of the Shadow Cabinet resign
• 18 junior shadow ministers resign
• Nine parliamentary private secretaries resign

Corbyn’s new shadow cabinet has MPs in it who were elected just a year ago.

There are a number of ways they may sack Corbyn. The main three are:

1. Have a formal challenge to him triggering a leadership election and if fewer than 35 MPs and MEPs nominate him, he can’t stand (this is a matter of some dispute and could end up in court)
2. Have a contested leadership election and hope they get a majority of members and supporters voting to replace him
3. Elect their own leader of the parliamentary party, and insist the Speaker recognises him or her as Leader of the Opposition leaving Corbyn as leader of the extra parliamentary party but without funds or staff

Any of these paths may tear the Labour Party apart. And leaving Corbyn as Leader will almost certainly mean the Conservatives win the upcoming election.

UPDATE: Corbyn has lost a confidence vote 40 to 172. So less than 20% of his caucus support him. To be fair to him though that is a greater percentage than Andrew Little got when he was elected leader – Little had the confidence of only four MPs!

Spoilers and speculation follow.

Continue reading »

News.com.au reports:

HILLARY Clinton leads Donald Trump by double digits in a new national poll — a stark reversal for the mogul, who one month ago led the same poll by two percentage points.

The Washington Post/ABC News poll finds Clinton at 51 per cent to Trump’s 39 per cent — her largest lead in the survey since last fall.

A month ago, the same poll had Trump at 46 per cent and Clinton at 44 per cent, reports the New York Post.

So he is down 7% and she is up 7%. And this is even before the conventions. The Democratic convention will be a fairly unified affair with keynote speeches from Obama, Biden, Bill Clinton, Sanders and of course Hillary.

The Republican convention is struggling to find anyone prominent to attend, let alone speak!

Trump is not just going to cost the Republicans the presidency against a candidate whom was very vulnerable, but also the Senate and much of their House majority. Oh, and also the Supreme Court for maybe the next 20 years or so.

The Herald reports:

The man and woman who pleaded guilty to killing Taupo 3-year-old Moko Sayviah Rangitoheriri have been sentenced to 17 years each with a minimum of nine years at the High Court in Rotorua.

Tania Shailer, 26, and David William Haerewa, 43, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and ill treating a child. They had originally been charged with murder.

Judge Sarah Katz said this was the highest sentence imposed in New Zealand for manslaughter against a child.

Good. The Attorney-General has noted:

Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson today set out the reasons for the Crown’s decision to accept the manslaughter pleas of Tania Shailer and David Haerewa in substitution of murder charges for the killing of Moko Rangitoheriri.

Ms Shailer and Mr Haerewa were today both sentenced to 17 years in prison, with a minimum non-parole period of nine years. Until that sentencing took place, the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General were unable to comment on the specifics of the case, as the sentencing was a matter for the courts.

“The Crown’s decisions in this case, including the decision to accept the manslaughter pleas, were motivated by the need to secure convictions for this horrendous killing and to avoid the significant risk that either of the defendants could escape such a conviction because of evidential issues,” Mr Finlayson said.

“The guilty pleas and admitted facts enabled the Crown to argue for a sentence which reflected the nature of the crimes committed. Without the guilty pleas, the full details of the facts set out in the Statement of Facts may not have otherwise come to light.

“The decision to accept a plea of manslaughter in substitution of a murder charge is never taken lightly. A robust process is followed which ultimately requires the approval of the Solicitor-General.

“The overarching consideration is whether the interests of justice are met in accepting the plea and in particular, whether the charge can adequately reflect the criminal nature of the conduct as well as allow sufficient scope for sentencing.

 “Based on the evidence available for trial, there was a substantial risk that one or both of the defendants would not be convicted of the legal charge of murder or manslaughter.

The Herald editorial:

Ironically, “the right to attend the nearest school” was the principle advanced by a previous Epsom MP, Christine Fletcher, to have zoning restored in a partial reversal of the competitive elements of the “Tomorrow’s Schools” reform. But withdrawing that right from future residents is only one possible solution Mr Seymour has proposed. Another, he suggests, would be to block students who lived in the zone without their parents. He says schools have told him of foreigners buying a house in the zone, staying just long enough to gain permanent residency and their child’s enrolment, then leave the child here with relatives or acquaintances.

His third and most obvious suggestion is to build more high schools in the area. The Ministry of Education bought land for a new school from the Auckland Trotting Club in 1999 but the school has not eventuated. It was opposed by residents who feared for their real estate values. The restoration of zoning has created a monster capable of defeating the ministry’s reasonable plans. Mr Seymour’s proposal to pull up the drawbridge against new arrivals may be the only political solution but it would be simpler to abolish zones and restore schools’ freedom to enrol aspirants from anywhere.

That is my preferred policy. You’d need a safeguard where the Ministry can direct a school to take a student if say they have not been accepted into any school within 5 kms (urban) and 50 kms (rural), but otherwise leave it to parents and schools.

The current zoning system gives choice only to those who can afford to buy a house in the zone foor the school they want.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand’s biggest anti-smoking lobby groups face likely closure after a Government decision to slash funding for anti-smoking advocacy.

The Smokefree Coalition will close next month, Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) faces closure unless it can find new funding sources, and Smokefree Nurses Aotearoa and Pacific anti-smoking agency Tala Pasifika have all lost their funding from this week.

Instead, the Ministry of Health has awarded a single national anti-smoking advocacy contract to West Auckland-based Maori health agency Hapai Te Hauora.

Total funding for national advocacy has been cut from $1.7 million to $450,000.

There should be no funding for advocacy. It is appropriate to fund research and also good to fund cessation services, but taxpayers should not allow government departments to hand out money to lobby groups, so they can lobby MPs on what the law should be. The role of the public service is to serve, not to fund advocacy.

Ministry service commissioning director Jill Lane said the funding cut from advocacy would be redirected into “strengthening our frontline cessation services with improved training to get better quit results”.

The training budget has jumped from $286,000 to $1.6 million, lifting total spending on advocacy and training from $2.26 million to $2.37 million.

Ms Lane said the ministry’s total spending on tobacco control, including the Quitline service, was $61 million.

So more money for cessation services and less money for lobbying. Good.

A good article by Lord Ridley on the EU and innovation. It highlights one of the factors behind the frustrations that caused a leave vote.

The total value of “unicorns” (billion-dollar tech start-ups) created in Europe is about half of Facebook’s valuation alone. (Britain has the most of those European unicorns.) Spotify, the music-streaming firm based in Stockholm, is the nearest Europe has to a digital giant — and it is now threatening to leave Sweden for America. Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, and chairman of the Global Commission on Internet Governance, recently made a speech in which he said that “Europe is lagging behind and the gap with the US is widening”. In 2001, he said, Europe was investing 80 per cent as much in digital as the US. Today that proportion is just 60 per cent.

 

Fortunately, our masters in Brussels have a plan. Unlike us, you see, they do know what is coming next in tech, being altogether wiser folk. The European Commission, as part of its “digital agenda”, has unveiled a €5 billion action plan to “unify and galvanise” Europe’s progress towards the “fourth industrial revolution”. According to the EurActiv website it wants to “put in place all the necessary building blocks for the next industrial phase so that European firms remain [sic] in the driving seat”.

 

Fine words. Yet to achieve this, what’s needed is not the picking of winners, or even the setting of standards, indeed nothing top-down at all. What’s needed is the general encouragement of the conditions under which bright people set up businesses and engage in massive amounts of trial and error to discover unpredictable opportunities. That means generous tax breaks for entrepreneurs, light-touch regulation, access to global talent and tolerance of failure. Then stand back and let a thousand flowers bloom.

 

Yet there is no sign of such policies being discussed in Brussels. The measures the commission is currently proposing are making it harder to do digital business. Prominent among them is the general data protection regulation (GDPR), agreed in April with very little fanfare and coming into force by 2018. It’s a “regulation” not a directive, which is the commission’s preferred new way of doing things these days — that way it does not even have to waft through parliament, but just lands in our law unscrutinised by any national democracy. A harbinger of how the EU will be run from the centre if we vote to remain.

 

The GDPR punishes any company that mishandles data with a fine of up to 4 per cent of turnover — which could wipe out all profits in a low-margin sector — or ¤20 million, whichever is the larger. Instead of leaving it up to national information commissioners to set standards for data protection and limiting the risk to any one state, it makes the concept transnational. So the whole company will be vulnerable to a data-handling mistake in the weakest subsidiary or partner.

 

You can see where this came from: European politicians suspicious at what the likes of Google do with “our” data. But it will have a deterrent effect on home-grown digital companies trying to “enrich European citizens’ lives by discovering solutions to challenges in health care, education, or the environment” as Robert Atkinson, president of the think tank the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, puts it. One entrepreneur tells me: “If there is a more potent impediment to free trade over national borders between companies that will have to rely upon their partners’ resilient and robust compliance procedures, I should be very surprised.”

 

Tech entrepreneurs say that the additional cost to companies (and perhaps public-sector bodies) of trying to protect themselves in the light of the GDPR is likely to be prohibitive. Handling data about people is what digital companies do, and while it is right to insist they do not mess up, it is wrong to extend the concept of private property too literally into cyberspace. We do not punish people for discussing other people in pubs, after all.

 

Europe’s biggest problem is its inability to achieve significant economic growth, unlike all the other continents. Ordinary macroeconomic management just won’t do: we need to rediscover the passion for innovation that was the continent’s hallmark for centuries. Yet when faced with a whole new digital world, the best the European Commission can think of doing is putting obstacles in the way of entrepreneurs.

1. Asia 8.0%
2. Africa 5.8%
3. Middle East 4.4%
4. World 3.8%
5. CIS 3.5%
6. Latin America 3.4%
7. EU 1.0%
8. Euro zone 0.7%

“If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.”

– H. L. Mencken

The quote of the week is brought to you by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. To support the Union’s campaign for lower taxes and less government waste, click here.