Liam Hehir writes at Stuff:

For example, there’s no suggestion that the prime minister himself makes use of a foreign trust (or, indeed, does anything illegal). However, we are told by political analysts that he has a perception problem since his long-time lawyer works for a firm that advises on such trusts for other clients. Again, there has been no suggestion that the services provided to those other clients are in any way provided illegally or unethically.

Let us put to one side for one moment the fact that the same commentators pronouncing on the unfortunate public perception of the matter are the people who are responsible for shaping public perception. That’s bad enough. But are the pickings really so slim that the best we can do is try to impose some guilt by association on the basis of your lawyer’s other clients. I wonder how many television reporters would like being told that they have a perception problem because the firm they used to buy their house also defends criminals?

That’s a great comparison.

Stuff reports:

Auckland doctor Robyn Toomath spent years telling her diabetes patients to lose weight only to have them fail despite their best intentions.

Eventually she stopped altogether and her book, Fat Science, explains why.

Radical as it might sound Toomath says individuals shouldn’t be held responsible for becoming fat, or obese.

“It’s not appropriate to consider body size as being within our personal control when genetics and the environment in which we live has such a powerful effect.”

Toomath says some people are genetically pre-disposed to weight gain and in an environment packed with fatty, sugar-soaked food, it is inevitable they will lose any battle of the bulge.

I totally disagree. Yes there are genetic and environmental factors but they are far less powerful than the power of individual choice.

I got massively overweight because I ate too much food.

I lost the weight because I stopped eating so much food, and did more exercise.

My problem wasn’t the type of food, the advertising, the taste. It was simply I ate too much. And that is the case for most people who are overweight (not all).

Toomath blames almost everything on evil big business, and discounts any significant role for individual choice.

Andrew Little announced:

Kris Faafoi has been promoted to Labour’s Shadow Cabinet and receives the Tourism portfolio while Clayton Cosgrove takes on a business outreach role – a move prompted by Mr Cosgrove’s decision to not stand at the next election, says Opposition Leader Andrew Little.     

Business Outreach? That doesn’t sound like a portfolio, but a description for a corporate fundraiser.

Louise Upston announced:

Associate Local Government Minister Louise Upston has announced that the online voting trial proposed for this year’s local body elections will not proceed as more work is required to ensure a trial meets public and government expectations.

“Public confidence in local elections is fundamentally important. Given real concerns about security and vote integrity, it is too early for a trial,” says Ms Upston.

Too early? I’d accept that in 2000 or even 2006 but not 2016.

I feel very sorry for the local bodies who have invested time and money into this, to be told no by the Government. The whole point of a trial, is to try it.

Fewer and fewer people use the post office. The turnout will continue to decline for local body elections if the Government continues to make it hard for people to vote. So if there is low turnout, blame the Government for saying no.

35% of people in the NZ Election Study said they would choose to vote online if they had the choice. That is for parliamentary elections, and I suspect it would be even higher for local body elections as postal voting is far more insecure than Internet voting.

The Herald reports:

Fonterra has continued to lose farmers to its competitors, based on latest production data.

The co-operative’s market share last year ran at about 85 per cent, down from 96 per cent at the time of its inception in 2001.

A timely reminder that Fonterra is not a monopoly. If dairy farmers think they will get a better price from another company, they can do so.

Rakaia-based specialist dairy manufacturer Synlait Milk said last month that it had picked up 28 new Canterbury milk suppliers – bringing its total to 201 for 2016/17.

Synlait said increased demand for nutritional products and increased production capacity had created a chance for more Canterbury dairy farmers to sign up.

Open Country Dairy – the country’s second biggest dairy manufacturer – is also understood to have added new suppliers.

“They are picking up as many as they need, based on their capacity and what they want,” Kilsby said.

Good to see the smaller companies growing.

The Economist reports:

VISITING a supermarket in Venezuela is like entering Monty Python’s cheese-shop sketch. “Do you have any milk?” The shop assistant shakes her head. Sugar? No. Coffee? No. Soap? No. Cornflour? No. Cooking oil? No. Do you in fact have any of the products that the government deems so essential that it fixes their prices at less than what it costs to make them? No.

This is inevitably happens with stupid price controls.

The Venezuelan government spends like Father Christmas after too much eggnog, subsidising everything from rural homes to rice. It cannot pay its bills, especially since the oil price collapsed, so it prints money.

Sounds like Green Party policy under Russel – subsidise everything and print money!

The IMF predicts that inflation will be 720% in Venezuela this year, a figure Zimbabwe hit in 2006. By 2008 Zimbabwe was racked by hyperinflation so crippling that beggars who were offered billion-Zimbabwe-dollar bills would frown and reject them (see chart).

I have a trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe. It cost me US$1 and was over-priced.

The Telegraph reports:

Professor Sir David MacKay, who has died aged 48, was a Cambridge University physicist who set out to cut “UK emissions of twaddle” by applying the laws of physics and mathematics to the debate on sustainable energy.

48 is so very young.

MacKay’s genius was to express all forms of power consumption and production in a single unit of measurement – kilowatt hours per day (kWh/d). A 40 watt lightbulb, kept switched on all the time, uses one kWh/d, while driving the average car 50km a day consumes 40 kWh/d. Such comparisons, MacKay argued, help to shift the focus to the major issues away from much-hyped “eco-gestures” such as believing you have done your bit by remembering to switch off the mobile phone charger. “The amount of energy saved by switching off the phone charger is exactly the same as the energy used by driving an average car for one second,” he wrote. Switching it off for a year saves as much energy as is needed for one hot bath. Such gestures were akin to “bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon”.

I wish EECA or someone would so something like that here – clearly explain what measures are significant and which are trivial.

Applying the same approach to electricity generation, MacKay argued that for renewable facilities to make an appreciable contribution, they would have to be developed on a massive, industrial scale. At the time the book was written, Britain was generating about 4.5 per cent of its electricity from renewables, mostly hydro-power, landfill gas and wind.

Any substantial increase would involve nationwide projects that would have significant effects on the environment. If, for example, it was decided burning biomass (crops for fuel) was the answer, about 75 per cent of Britain would need to be covered in biomass plantations to meet only 25 per cent of our current electricity demand.

Some rational facts!

We require either a radical reduction in consumption, or significant additional sources of energy – or, of course, both” – the main “clean” alternatives to renewables being nuclear and so-called clean coal, “which is as yet an unproven technology”. MacKay was, he claimed, “absolutely not anti-renewables. I love renewables… but I’m also pro-arithmetic.”

Pro-maths – I like it.

It was here that the consumer could make a difference: “ ’Turn your thermostat down’ is, by my reckoning, the single best piece of advice you can give someone. So is ‘fly less’ and ‘drive less’. But hybrid cars and home windmills are just greenwash.”

Again be good to have a NZ guide to what makes the most difference.

There’s been a lot of stories about the detention of the Channel Nine crew who went to Lebanon to film the kidnapping or recovery of two children by a team hired by their Australian mother.

I can understand why the mother would want to hire a team to recover her children after their father refused to return them from a holiday.

But why a media organisation thought it would go along and film this, I do not know. Even worse, they may have put up the money for the operation, which means they face criminal liability for the kidnapping.

I feel sorry for the staff who are in jail in Lebanon. They may face a lengthy jail sentence. The ones who should be in the gun are the decision makers who decided to authorise this and authorise the money.

The Herald reports:

Foreign Minister Murray McCully says any suggestion a donation to National was a factor in the decision to grant a hotel chain a contract in Nuie is “utterly baseless.”

Labour has called for the Auditor General to look into Scenic Hotels Group contract to manage the Matavai resort on Niue after it was discovered the group’s founder, Earl Hagaman, gave a $101,000 donation to National the month before the contract was announced in 2014.

Mr McCully said he had no involvement in the tender process or the decision, which was run by Auckland-based consultancy company Horwath HTL in 2014. There were two proposals and Scenic Hotels was the preferred one.”I have the total confidence in the way this process was run and had no involvement in the awarding of the contract. Any suggestion that this contract was awarded on anything other than the basis of a rigorous commercial process is utterly baseless.”

Since 2011, the Government has put $18 million into the Matavai as part of its efforts to boost tourism to the small Pacific Island country.

That included $7.5 million after Scenic Hotels took over the management to build a conference centre.

Labour leader Andrew Little asked the Auditor General to investigate whether Mr Hagaman’s donation to National at the same time his company was tendering for the Niue contract was above board.

I think it is appropriate for the Auditor-General to investigate, but that doesn’t mean I think there is any link.

This is why it is good to have transparency of major donations – so people can apply scrutiny such as this.

It also means that anyone donating a significant amount knows their donation is public.

Brendan Taylor, the managing director of Scenic Hotel Group, said linking the donation to the tender was “a lot of misinformation.”

Mr Hagaman had donated to National and Act in the past. “What he does from a personal perspective is totally up to him. What we do at the Scenic Hotel Group, in a lot of cases, we’ve got nothing to do with each other.”

“I was involved in the whole [process] and I can put my hand on my heart and say I know it was a squeaky clean transaction. There was no favouritism in any way towards it.”

And who are the trustees?

The Matavai is owned by the Niue Tourism Property Trust on behalf of the Government of Niue, which owned the resort before then. That arrangement was put in place in 2011 to ensure oversight of the aid investment New Zealand was putting in. Mr McCully appoints the trustees who are Ross Ardern (NZ’s High Commissioner to Niue and father of Labour MP Jacinda Ardern), Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputy secretary Jonathan Kings and former High Commissioner Mark Blumsky, who was formerly a National MP and now lives in Niue.

I really don’t think the father of a Labour MP is going to be awarding tenders to a company because they donated to National.

In another story, the Herald reports:

The managing director of Scenic Hotel Group says he doubted the company’s founder knew the company was negotiating a management contract in Niue, which it won, at the time he made a $101,000 donation to the National Party.

Labour wants the Auditor-General to look into Scenic Hotels Group’s contract to manage the Matavai resort on Niue after it was discovered the group’s founder, Earl Hagaman, gave the $101,000 to National during the election campaign before the contract was awarded in 2014. Foreign Minister Murray McCully said any suggestion the donation was a factor in granting Scenic Hotels the contract was “utterly baseless”.

Mr McCully said he had no involvement in the tender process or decision, which was run by Auckland-based consultancy company Horwath HTL in 2014. Scenic Hotels was one of two proposals and was the preferred one.

Scenic Hotel Group managing director Brendan Taylor said Mr Hagaman knew the company was looking into Niue but that had been a six-year process and Mr Hagaman had not even known where Niue was. Any mention the company was tendering for it would have been “a cursory conversation”.

As I said, I don’t think it would be a bad thing if the Auditor-General investigates, just to remove any suspicion. But I don’t see anything beyond coincidence at this stage.

Real Clear Politics reports:

The U.S. Department of Energy published data last week with some amazing revelations — so amazing that most Americans will find them hard to believe. As a nation, the United States reduced its carbon emissions by 2 percent from last year. Over the past 14 years, our carbon emissions are down more than 10 percent. On a per-unit-of-GDP basis, U.S. carbon emissions are down by closer to 20 percent.

A fracking great result.

Even more stunning: We’ve reduced our carbon emissions more than virtually any other nation in the world, including most of Europe.

 How can this be? We never ratified the Kyoto Treaty. We never adopted a national cap-and-trade system, or a carbon tax, as so many of the sanctimonious Europeans have done.

The answer isn’t that the EPA has regulated CO2 out of the economy. With strict emission standards, the EPA surely has started to strangle our domestic industries, such as coal, and our electric utilities. But that’s not the big story here.

The primary reason carbon emissions are falling is because of hydraulic fracturing — or fracking.

This is where the Greens fall down. They say time and time again that climate change is the most vital issue of all time, yet they refuse to have anything to do with other energy sources with lower greenhouse gas emissions such as fracking and nuclear energy.

Fracking is simply a new way to get at America’s vast storehouse of tens of trillions of dollars worth of shale oil and gas that lies beneath us, coast to coast — from California to upstate New York. Fracking produces massive amounts of natural gas, and, as a consequence, natural gas prices have fallen in the past decade from above $8 per million BTUs to closer to $2 this year — a 75 percent reduction — due to the spike in domestic supplies.

This free fall in prices means that America is using far more natural gas for heating and electricity and much less coal. Here is how the International Energy Agency put it: “In the United States, (carbon) emissions declined by 2 percent, as a large switch from coal to natural gas use in electricity generation took place.”

The problem with many in the Greens and environment lobby groups is they don’t care about facts or science. They have a quasi-religious view that anything extractive is unnatural and hence should be banned. So even though fracking has seen the US decrease their greenhouse gas emissions, they still want it banned.

“The bounty to the white-herring fishery is a tonnage bounty; and is proportioned to the burden of the ship, not to her diligence or success in the fishery; and it has, I am afraid, been too common for vessels to fit out for the sole purpose of catching, not the fish, but the bounty.”

– Adam Smith

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.

Seen some interesting data from Chorus:

• Average monthly usage over all connections is 100GB/mth
• This is double a year ago and seven times what we did in 2012
• For fibre connections it is 200 GB/mth
• Average download speeds are now 26 Mb/s – up from 16 Mb/s a year ago

So in the last year data usage has doubled and download speeds are up 65% or so.

The Washington Post reports:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has cleared the way for the prosecution of German comedian Jan Böhmermann, whose poem mocking Turkey’s president has become the centerpiece of a clash between Germany’s free-speech traditions and the government’s efforts to safeguard its important relations with Turkey.

In a news conference Friday, Merkel emphasized that it will now be up to German courts to decide whether Böhmermann is guilty of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But critics — including members of her own government — have described it as a betrayal of values protecting open expression.

“In a country under the rule of law, it is not up to the government to decide,” Merkel said. “Prosecutors and courts should weight personal rights against the freedom of press and art.” …

In her statement Friday, Merkel tried to appease critics by announcing that she would seek to repeal the controversial German law against insulting heads of state.

They should repeal the law. Heads of State are exactly the sort of people who should be able to be insulted, not protected.

Blogger Tim Murphy writes at The Spinoff:

Tim Murphy was a sceptic when Victoria Crone’s candidacy for the Auckland mayoralty was announced. But watching her form at a public meeting on Thursday has him questioning that judgement. …

On a Thursday night at the Takapuna Boating Club, six months from election day, Crone is showing many signs of someone with the bit between her teeth. Months ago, when she announced her bid, she seemed one-dimensional: vote for me because I’m a CEO and young and businesspeople get it.

It’s clear she’s spent the intervening period getting to grips with Auckland issues and some of the intricacies of the Auckland Council and its Council-Controlled Organisations. Talking to some of the players. Poring over the numbers. Looking for points of weakness in the status quo, and in Phil Goff’s personal platform.

To an audience of about 50 mainly middle-aged to older voters, she impresses with her knowledge of things city-wide and local.

The full article is worth a read.

Incidentally Tim has written a number of good pieces for The Spinoff. The site is worth regularly checking out.

CNN reports:

After more than five hours of voting, a motion to impeach Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff garnered enough support to pass in the country’s lower house Sunday night, but voting is still ongoing. As of 11:08 p.m. (10:08 p.m. ET), at least 342 lawmakers had voted in favor of impeachment.

That is 342 out of 475 votes to date, so there are 38 votes still to be cast.

The next step is:

The impeachment motion would next go to the country’s Senate. If a majority approves it there, Rousseff will have to step down for 180 days to defend herself in an impeachment trial.

So the next step is for the Snate to vote to hold a trial – a simple majority of 41/81 votes needed.

Then after the trial the Senate votes whether to remove her from office, which needs a two thirds majority.

The NYT reports:

A former Marxist guerilla, Ms. Rousseff had never before held elected office, and critics say her lack of political skills hampered her ability to work with opposition members in Congress as well as key figures in her governing coalition.

And she diddled the books in order to get re-elected.

Heather du Plessis-Allan writes:

It was a couple of weeks ago, at the height of Labour’s most recent series of fluffs. You know, the stuff about Indian chefs and acting like Rob Muldoon with bank lending rates.

I was killing time around Parliament, waiting for a minister. A Labour Party insider was killing time too. We got talking.

Andrew Little said this. Andrew Little said that. Tired of his cock-ups. Tired of being blamed for his mistakes.

It wasn’t a surprise morale in the Labour Party was low, it was a surprise someone was being honest about it.

For a while now, everyone in the party has bravely kept painting their faces, putting on their party frocks and pretending life was peachy.

Later that day, I walked through the arrivals gate at Auckland airport next to a well-connected political mover and shaker. We got talking. Trouble’s brewing in the Labour Party.

They’re talking of cutting Grant Robertson. They’re talking of cutting the chief of staff. Watch this space.

That was two weeks ago. That was before the party hit 28 per cent in the latest poll.

That was before the poll result? Wonder what the chatter must be like now!

Labour has it tough. Labour parties across the world have it tough. These were parties formed to save workers from unjust working conditions. The parties have mostly succeeded. Workplaces and employment legislation is a million times better now than in 1916.

So what does a political party do when its mission is accomplished?

It sits down with a cup of tea – the eight years of opposition might have been an opportune time – and figures out its next task.

But it has to be honest about what it stands for.

Labour told us it stood for the old flag. That’s not true. In black and white, its own policy was to change the flag. It was just trying to get one over John Key. Well, it got one over John Key and it’s still polling worse than the tea-towel flag.

Good point.

Labour told us it stood for keeping Indian restaurant chef jobs for Kiwis. We pondered why we had never seriously considered a career as a chef in an Indian restaurant.

Their future of work!

Look at UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. He’s beating David Cameron in some polls. He’s a borderline-communist eccentric you’re never entirely convinced bothered to shower that morning.

But he’s authentic. He says what he means and will do it.

Corbyn is authentic. I’m not sure emulating Corbyn will help Labour here, but they should give it a try!

Stats NZ reports:

The consumers price index (CPI) rose 0.2 percent in the March 2016 quarter, Statistics New Zealand said today. This follows a fall of 0.5 percent in the December 2015 quarter.

“Higher prices for cigarettes, food, and housing-related costs were countered by lower prices for petrol and air fares,” consumer prices manager Matt Haigh said.

Cigarette and tobacco prices showed the highest upward contribution, up 9.4 percent in the March 2016 quarter following a rise in excise duty in January.

“The average price of a pack of 25 cigarettes was $28.79 in the March 2016 quarter, more than double the price from six years ago when annual 10 percent excise tax increases were introduced,” Mr Haigh said.

Excluding cigarettes and tobacco, the CPI showed a fall of 0.1 percent in the March 2016 quarter.

So if you’re not a smoker, then on average prices have not increased this quarter. That’s great considering there has been steady increase in wages, benefit rates and the level of superannuation. You get increased spending power.

The CPI increased 0.4 percent in the year to the March 2016 quarter, up from a 0.1 percent increase for the year to the December 2015 quarter.  

Housing-related prices continue to be the main upward contributor, up 3.0 percent in the year. This rise was led by higher prices for rent (up 2.3 percent) and newly built houses excluding land (up 5.0 percent).

Transport prices made the largest downward contribution for the year, influenced by lower petrol prices (down 5.1 percent). Excluding petrol, the CPI showed a 0.7 percent increase in the year to the March 2016 quarter.

I think around 1% is a good place to be for inflation. High enough to avoid deflation but not so high as to chew up purchasing power.

And as always I check the prices of a couple of items that Labour declared were a crisis as they were increasing so much.

• Electricity prices up 0.6% from a year ago
• Milk prices down 8.9% from a year ago

This transcript was found by Tim Murphy at The Spinoff. Hilarious. Good on the Judge.

The Herald reports:

Mayor Len Brown had the worst attendance at Auckland Council’s most important meetings last year.

The Herald on Sunday has analysed attendance records for all 21 elected councillors across the four committees that made the biggest decisions – the Auckland Development Committee, the Finance and Performance Committee, and the Regional Strategy and Policy Committee – collectively known as “Committees of the Whole”.

Council’s primary decision-making arm, the Governing Body, which also expects all councillors to attend, was also included.

Across 47 meetings, outgoing mayor Brown and experienced councillor Christine Fletcher were around the table the least, attending 33 meetings (70 per cent).

The Mayor is the one you expect to attend the most meetings, not the least.

Audrey Young writes:

Little will stay leader until the next election, of that there is no doubt. If he is not Prime Minister after the 2017 election, it will be Grant Robertson and Jacinda Ardern’s turn.

But who will be Leader and who will be Deputy?

To put it in perspective, the 28 per cent in TV One’s poll this week is exactly what they got two elections ago, under Goff, but it is better than the 25 per cent they got at the last election under Cunliffe.

I find it is better to compare poll results with poll results at the same stage in previous terms, rather than election results. The reason is that Labour generally loses vote share during election campaigns as minor parties get more attention.

In April of the middle year of National’s 1st term Labour was at 33% (April 2010) and in April 2013 it was at 36%. So the 28% result is significantly worse than what Labour were doing under Goff and Shearer.

The poll results are a reflection of the long-running identity crisis and Little’s recent exacerbation of it.

The party that began TPP under Clark rejected the done deal then tried to be the farmers’ best friend.

The party seeks respectability in the business community but contemplates a return to Muldoonist regulation of interest rates.

It wants to be the party to target inequality but toys with the idea of giving the rich and poor the same universal basic income.

A good summary.

That approach was in action this week with Little’s extraordinary attack on John Key’s so-called moral compass – according to Little, he doesn’t have one – in the wake of the Panama papers.

Establishing a negative impression of Key is everything; nuance is non-existent and facts are a luxury in this new clobbering approach of Little’s.

Labour is not bothered that Key has no foreign trust, that there is no evidence of any unethical behaviour by Key or his lawyer. It is apparently enough that he was a currency trader, that he is wealthy, that he waited for a week before ordering an inquiry into the 12,000 foreign trusts in New Zealand in order to cast him as the Prime Minister only for the privileged and greedy end of town and a person of “no moral compass”.

Yep. The same strategy that Labour has tried to use since 2007.

The 2015 World Internet Project study for NZ is out. Some interesting data:

• 91% of NZers use the Internet
• 3% are ex users and 5% have never used the Internet
• 75% of NZers have accessed the Internet through a laptop, 74% mobile phone, 70% PC, 59% tablet, 22% games console and 17% smart TV
• 16% of Internet users have a fibre connection
• Those who do an activity at least weekly are
  • Browse web 91%
  • Social Media 78%
  • Watch videos online 49%
  • Listen to music 44%
  • Watch TV shows online 42%
  • Play games 36%
  • Listen to radio 23%
  • Download films 21%
  • View porn 14%
  • Look at religious sites 11%
  • Gamble 5%
• Social media use is Facebook 44%, You Tube 27%, Linked In 16%, Instagram 10%, Twitter 9%
• Sadly only 35% think it is safe to express political opinion online

Stuff reports:

Canada’s Liberal government on Thursday (Friday NZ Time) unveiled draft legislation on doctor-assisted suicide which would apply to adults suffering incurable illness or disability but stopped short of extending it to minors or the mentally ill for now.

Legislators will vote on the draft law, which applies only to Canadians and residents in the country, in the next few weeks. The law is expected to pass because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have a majority in Parliament.

The Supreme Court of Canada overturned a ban on physician-assisted suicide last year but gave the new government extra time to pass legislation, adding Canada to the handful of Western countries that allow the practice.

Trudeau, whose father declined treatment for cancer before his 2000 death, said Canadians were “extremely seized with this issue.”

“It’s a deeply personal issue that affects all of us and our families and all of us individually as we approach the end of our lives,” he told reporters. “The plan we have put forward is one that respects Canadians’ choices while putting in place the kinds of safeguards needed.”

Polls show physician-assisted suicide has broad support in Canada but the issue has divided politicians in Parliament as they grapple with how to protect vulnerable Canadians while respecting their rights and choices at the end of life.

Under the law, patients would have to make a written request for medical assistance in dying or have a designated person do so if they are unable.

There would be a mandatory waiting period of at least 15 days in many cases, and patients would be able to withdraw a request at any time.

Patients would also have to be experiencing “enduring and intolerable suffering” and death would have to be “reasonably foreseeable”.

Useful timing as we have a select committee looking at this issue at the moment.