Another increase in building consents, reported by Stats NZ. This is good. The annual totals for August years are:

• 2011 – 13,516
• 2012 – 15,726
• 2013 – 19,433
• 2014 – 24,016
• 2015 – 25,928

So almost a doubling since 2011.

An insightful speech on the housing market by Bill English. Some extracts:

A strong focus of our policy is to make sure our markets work.

And over the last 30 years New Zealand has done a reasonable job of this.

Over the last seven years our labour market has been tested.

It has accommodated a significant recession in 2008, and a pickup in demand particularly in Christchurch following the earthquakes.

The labour market was able to respond quickly to those shifts in supply and demand conditions.

Today New Zealand’s proportion of the working-age population in employment is among the highest in the OECD.

Another area that is now working well is the energy market.

For a long time, New Zealand energy markets were over-regulated and poorly-regulated.

Extensive government ownership further stunted price signals.

For instance, water management in the hydro-electricity system was, compared to today, very poor. …

We’re shutting down excess capacity, and excess capital is being withdrawn and returned to the owners of that capital.

After years of litigation and legal contest over the rules, the energy market is now starting to work.

Which brings me to the housing market.

This is probably the largest market in New Zealand where the rules need to be reshaped.

The most evident indication of a problem is Auckland house prices.

I’m yet to find a housing market anywhere in the world where prices go up at over 20 per cent a year without stopping and then starting to come down again.

So why is the housing market important:

Over the last five years, the Auckland housing market has been the single biggest imbalance in our macro-economic system.

It takes around eight years for the housing market to respond to a shock to demand.

In part that is because changes to council plans can take years, in some cases over a decade.

Resource consents on a housing development regularly take 18 months, including pre-application times excluded from the official statistics.

When combined, those very real delays can exceed the length of the house price cycle.

The point is that when the supply of housing is relatively fixed, shocks to demand – like migration flows increasing sharply as they have recently – are absorbed through higher prices rather than the supply of more houses.

And the main cause:

This has been borne out by extensive studies in the United States following the Global Financial Crisis.

What they’ve found is that, across different markets subject to rules which vary by state, more-intense regulation of urban development is associated with higher house price volatility.

That is, the steepest price increases and the sharpest falls are in areas where regulation is strongest.

The effects of planning rules can extend to the macro-economy.

Cities are one of the extraordinary inventions of the human race.

Studies have shown that cities are an engine room of growth. Incomes in cities are higher than elsewhere. That is one explanation for high rates of urbanisation.

Research indicates that when planning rules prevent workers shifting to higher-productivity locations, then there is a cost in terms of foregone GDP.

It’s only relatively recently that economists and politicians have understood the scale of those effects.

So when we’re talking about something as apparently dry as the Auckland Unitary Plan, we’re talking about a set of rules that will have a major impact on the city, on current and future residents – but also on the wider economy.

So the unitary plan is important.

In my view, poor urban planning is one of the significant drivers of inequality.

Poor regulation of housing has the largest proportionate effect on the lowest quartile of housing costs and rents.

So when we’re having the debate about whether there is sufficient land available, we have to recognise that the people who lose the most from getting that decision wrong – and who stand the most to gain from fixing those decisions – are those on the lowest incomes.

Income inequality in New Zealand has been flat for 20 years, but the gap between incomes measured before housing costs and after housing costs is growing.

Housing costs are becoming a larger proportion of incomes – and that matters the most at the bottom end of incomes among people who have few choices.

So one of the best ways to tackle inequality is to free up land.

Planning is often seen a public good activity that must address the needs of those who are most-vulnerable and have the lowest income.

In fact there is a strong argument to say it does exactly the opposite.

Poor planning favours “insiders” – homeowners – on high incomes and who have relatively high wealth.

It is the old unexpected consequences.

Today we spend $2 billion each year on accommodation subsidies. 60 per cent of all rentals in New Zealand are subsidised by the Government.

The state owns around $21 billion worth of houses.

One house in every 16 in Auckland is a Housing New Zealand property.

Many of these are three bedroom houses on quarter-acre sections only a few kilometres from the CBD – a massive misuse of scarce land. And all at the taxpayer’s expense.

So these are the reasons why the Government pays attention to the housing market and issues stemming from poor planning.

Yet they protest when their highly subsidised quarter acre section is turned into more housing.

For those among you who are economists, I would go so far as to say that while the justification for planning is to deal with externalities, what has actually happened is that planning in New Zealand has become the externality.

It has become a welfare-reducing activity.

And as with other externalities, such as pollution, the Government has a role to intervene, working with councils to manage the externality.

This is a key sentence and indicates English is very serious about tackling the planning rules.

Recent studies have shown rules setting minimum floor space requirements and minimum balcony requirements add $50,000 to $100,000 to the cost of an apartment.

That’s in addition to costs associated with other rules, such as rules setting minimum ceiling heights.

Some progress has been made. A study examining minimum car parking requirements in Auckland showed the costs of that planning rule exceeded benefits by a factor of at least six.

That’s a rule that should never have been made. It has probably cost the economy millions of dollars.

Fortunately, now that we’re digging in to these issues, that rule has been mostly scrapped – and credit is due to Auckland Council for doing so.

So a start has been made, but much more to do.

Chris Keall writes at NBR:

I’ve previously written that Megaupload’s cash-incentive payments would loom large in Kim Dotocom and co’s extradition case.

And so it proved yesterday as the Crown alleged one user of Mr Dotcom’s file sharing service was paid more than $US50,000 as a reward for uploading files that proved popular with Megaupload members.

Files uploaded by user “H” – just one of many to take advantage of the cash-incentive rewards scheme – generated 1.2 million downloads between 2006 and 2011 (the expanded FBI evidence summary covers it in detail here).

The US Department of Justice, plus major Hollywood studios and multinational record labels, say most of the files covered by the cash-incentive scheme were copyrighted works and that Megaupload was rewarding piracy.

This is at the heart of the case, and the argument that Megaupload was not just like Dropbox – because it paid users for sharing content that got widely downloaded.

Mr Dotcom has also pointed out that YouTube gives uploaders of popular files a share of the Google Ad revenue generated by their clip. That could well be construed as an incentive programme. But to get a share of that Google Ad money, you have to be a trusted user. And if, in its vetting process, YouTube notices there is copyright-infringing music (for example, a zany wedding dance clip features a Taylor Swift soundtrack), the service then approaches the artist or rights-holder concerned and offers to either a) take the clip down or b) leave it up but cut them in on the revenue. Megaupload never gave a cent to an artist or rights holder when it generated an alleged $US175 million in membership fees and ad revenue generated around their material.

It is no surprise they were unhappy. It is possible though Megaupload did not breach US law. They certainly knew they were making money through encouraging copyright infringment. But they may hev done just enough to comply with the US MDCA which has a process for dealing with complaints.

Mr Dotcom has also styled Google as a giant piracy machine, saying it makes it easy to find copyright-breaching material, whereas Megaupload featured no search engine or other mechanism to help users find files stored by other members.

But the Crown has already focused on FBI evidence, gatheredthrough intercepted Skype conversations, that the Megaupload crew worked with third parties to make offending content on Megaupload easily discoverable.

Again quite damning.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand has retained top marks on a global index of Budget transparency, but lags when it comes to enabling public participation. 

The Open Budget Survey ranks more than 100 countries on its transparency and accountability when it comes to Government finances, measuring across four “pillars of accountability”.

New Zealand retained the top position it’s held since 2012 in terms of public availability of Budget information, and scored highly when it came to audit oversight. 

Overall, it outranked Sweden, South Africa, Norway and the United States in the top five. 

Great to be top.

The auditors of the index criticised New Zealand for its “citizens budget”, and limited reporting of Government tax expenditures. 

“Parliamentary oversight is assessed as ‘limited’ during for Budget planning and ‘weak’ for budget implementation, with a composite score for legislative oversight of just 45 out of 100.

“Formal mechanisms for public engagement across stages of the Budget cycle are also assessed as “limited”, scoring 65 out of 100, with particular concern about lack of opportunities for public participation in processes involving Parliament and the Office of Auditor General,” the index report said.

In particular, the Government made extensive Budget information available, but it was not necessarily “user friendly”. 

Fair criticism. We may be top, but always more can be done.

Stuff reports:

Dame Tariana Turia will support Chris Brown’s visa application.

The former leader of the Maori Party will write a letter of recommendation to go alongside Brown’s long-awaited application for a special direction visa.

The singer, booked to play Vector Arena in December, is technically barred from entering New Zealand, as he has been banned from other countries.

He will need to apply for a special direction in order to enter the country. That application is still to be received.

Dame Tariana, who has worked to reduce domestic violence for decades, believed Brown would speak on his past while in New Zealand , prompting his young fans to think seriously about domestic violence.

Or they may see that you escape consequences for domestic violence, if you are famous.

I’m with Judith Collins – NZ has enough wife beaters already, and doesn’t need any more.

Tainui representative Tukoroirangi Morgan told the NZHerald that the Maori King’s representatives would consider hosting the singer.

But representatives of the King claim told Radio NZ they do not support the invitation.

Maori King Tuheitia Paki is ill at the moment, so Morgan said the King’s son Whatumoana Paki would stand in for Brown’s royal welcome.

“If he’s able to get access into the country we would be seriously interested in hosting him,” he told the NZHerald.

Brown’s conviction of domestic violence against former partner, singer Rihanna, has been atoned for according to Morgan.

“I understand he has been through a major reformation process. He has a child. He has paid for his sins,” Morgan said.

So atoning for domestic violence is having a child?

Promoter spokesperson Jevan Goulter said he had seriously researched Brown and believed him to be truly remorseful. 

“We can buy his music online, we can watch him on TV, we can hear him on the radio – why can’t we go down to Vector Arena and watch him perform?”

Because one of them requires him to enter New Zealand, and violent criminals are not allowed to without permission.

To recap Brown:

• Assaulted Rihanna in 2009 with a barrage of punches to her face, bit her ear and strangled her
• Became violent again in 2011 throwing an object at a window because he got asked in an interview about the assault
• Involved in a brawl in 2012
• Used drugs while on community service, breaking its terms
• Ignore the restraining order not to go to the same functions as Rhianna
• Got a neck tattoo that looks like the face of a battered woman
• Punched someone in 2013 over a parking space, and threatened to shoot him
• Arrested in 2013 for felony assault, sentenced to rehab, violated rules there and then prison

So Brown is not someone who made a mistake once. He has a history of violence, and a history of not complying with punishments for those assaults. I see no remorse or learning, and he should not be allowed in.

The Herald reports:

It began with a little girl and a dining table full of junk.

The little girl’s family might have been poor, but the assortment of bits and pieces her father would bring home and spread about the kitchen unlocked a special world few kids ever got to see.

Her father, frantically trying to teach himself aircraft avionics for a better job in the military, had surrounded himself with soldering irons, engineering textbooks and items like a ZX Spectrum computer that he hardly knew how to use.

The little girl began tinkering with the junk herself and trying to solder pieces of it together, before too many burns on her fingers forced dad to give her a tutorial.

Soon, the pair were buying broken toasters, televisions and washing machines to fix up – anything bought new was a waste of money.

“Just taking them apart and understanding how electricity was flowing through and the information was transferring … yeah man, that’s awesome,” says Dr Michelle Dickinson, today one of our country’s most inspirational and best-known scientists.

“It was a secret world that only me and my dad knew existed.”

A very cool backstory.

Dr Dickinson spent today working with kids in Rotorua, ahead of the charity’s official launch in Auckland on Wednesday.

Beyond getting kids hooked on science and tech generally, it will have the strategic targets of reaching those pupils between the ages of eight and 11 – the period that matters most when plotting future career courses – and especially girls and Maori and Pasifika children.

This reflects the present shortage of women and Maori and Pasifika people in STEM (science, engineering, maths or technology), which itself as a tertiary level subject has long taken a back-seat to social science and humanities.

The urgent case for more of these tech-savvy people in our country is straight-forward: we’re going to need them in the future to tackle and solve our biggest problems, whatever they might be.

And our next top engineers and technologists don’t have to be only those earning top grades in Year 7 or 8 at the moment.

“There are four learning styles, and one of them is kinesthetic – that’s more or less hands-on; you learn by building, breaking, doing – and those aren’t the kids who necessarily do very well academically at school,” Dr Dickinson said.

“It’s implied that they’re failures, but actually, they are successful in a different way – and our charity wants to make sure that kids know that they’re successful, even if their exam grades say they’re not.”

Over the next three years, Dr Dickinson and her team aim to host a different workshop in a new place every few weeks.

“The idea is that we come to you – but our bigger motive is actually not just to tech the kids, but educate the teachers and empower them to have confidence in teaching something that can be quite daunting,” she said.

“We want to make sure they are able to embrace the technology, and we can help build their competence on how to teach with it.”

For educators, there’s a specially designed open-source curriculum to help them; but for kids, this isn’t boring stuff.

Just think of being able to programme your own robot and race it against your classmates’ bots, or coding your very own computer game and playing it within an hour.

Sounds like a great initiative.

Dr Dickinson’s ways to get your kids hooked on tech

1) Sign up for hour of code, a free one hour online lesson in coding for all ages. Visit: hourofcode.com
2) Design your next invention using tinkercad. Visit www.tinkercad.com then print it using your local 3D printer at www.3dhubs.com.
3) Get your kids to code their own computer game using a simple drop and drag sequence at Scratch. Visit www.scratch.mit.edu
4) Open up old electronics and let your kids discover circuit boards and microchips.
5) Run a fridge magnet in the same direction along a screwdriver a few times to magnetise it. Show it works by trying to pick up a screw before and after the magnetisation.

Looks fun.

For those in Wellington tomorrow, could well be worth attending:

The Justice Hot Tub, in association with Victoria University, are proud to announce the inaugural Greg King Memorial Lecture, to be held at Victoria University Law School on Wednesday 30 September (at 6 pm).
 
The organizers are hoping that the event will become an annual “must attend” event for anyone with an interest in the criminal law and victims’  rights. The inaugural lecture is entitled “Three strikes – five years on”, and is to be given by Professor Warren Brookbanks of Auckland University Law School.
 
“I asked Warren to give the inaugural lecture on ‘three strikes’ for several reasons. Firstly, his is a well qualified and  credible voice, and  Warren can by no stretch be seen as a mouthpiece for the Sensible Sentencing Trust” said event organizer David  Garrett.
 
“Secondly, Greg King was – like Warren – opposed to the three strikes legislation when it was enacted five years ago. I believe Greg was somewhat altering his view of it  prior to his tragic death. I will be very interested to hear Warren’s take on how the law is working five years on. If Greg was still with us, I know he would be too”  Garrett said
 
“While Greg was best known as being a high profile criminal defence lawyer, his involvement with victims’ rights groups was less well known” said Sensible Sentencing Trust founder Garth McVicar.
 
“I first met Greg when he  attended a victims  conference organized by the Sensible Sentencing Trust. At that event, Greg knew he would be coming face to face with the victims of some of those he had defended. I thought that showed incredible  courage” said  Garrett
 
“Greg King was a fantastic human being. We sincerely hope he can be remembered every year by a lecture in his name given by someone who  commands the same level of respect as Greg himself did” said Garrett. 

In 2000, the UN adopted eight Millennium Development Goals for 2000 to 2015. They were:

• Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
• Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
• Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
• Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
• Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
• Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
• Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
• Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

They were reasonably specific, and in most of the eight areas there has been significant progress, namely:

• Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty – down from 47% to 14%
• Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education – up from 83% to 91%
• Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women – ratio of girls to boys in education in Southern Asia up from 74 per 100 to 103.
• Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality – down from 90 per 1,000 to 43
• Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health – maternal mortality rate down 45%
• Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases – new HIV infections down 40%
• Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability – 2.1 billion people have improved sanitation
• Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development – ODA spending up 66%

Now I don’t think much of the progress is just because the UN made them a goal. It helps having the focus, but the reduction in extreme poverty for example is due to China and India embracing a more market economy.

But it is not a bad thing for there to be specific development goals, rather than have no co-ordination or targets. So the MDGs generally have been a good thing.

But the 17 new goals to replace this seem like waffle which are so broad, they won’t actually provide any focus. The 17 new goals are:

• 1. No Poverty
• 2. No Hunger
• 3. Good Health and Well-being
• 4. Quality Education
• 5. Gender Equality
• 6. Clean Water and Sanitation
• 7. Affordable and Clean Energy
• 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
• 9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
• 10. Reduce Inequalities
• 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
• 12. Responsible Consumption and Production
• 13. Climate Action
• 14. “Life Below Water”
• 15. Life on Land
• 16. “Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions”
• 17. Partnerships For the Goals

Take the targets for Goal 5. There is no hard measures there. Just aspirational statements about ending all forms of discrimination against all women. Well we know that isn’t going to happen in any country with sharia law.

If I do a comparison back to NZ, the health system here under Labour had almost 100 goals, targets and aims. And it was shambolic. National introduced just six to eight specific but achievable targets and the health system and staff have done a great job of achieving them. Fewer goals with specific targets is better than lots of goals.

So I think the 17 global goals will be far far less effective than the MDGs they are replacing. And that is a pity.

The Dom Post editorial:

Wellington would love to have pandas in its zoo, of course. Pandas have a unique appeal to human beings: nature made them look like a cross between a clown and a teddy bear. So arguments about the economics  and politics of pandas tend to get trumped by an overwhelming cuteness factor.

So true.

Prime Minister John Key is keen to stoke the panda cause, for two reasons. He wants to cuddle up even closer to China, our economic patron. And he knows that politicians who come bearing pandas can’t lose.

So it was that Andrew Little, the hapless Labour leader and an anti-panda politician, got it wrong again in Parliament this week.

Anything National talks about, and Little is against it. Raise benefits for the first time in 43 years, and Little condemns the Budget!

Finally, panda politics are murky. The panda circus is run by China, a ruthless police state, which gives its pandas to political and economic  favourites. This means John Key might get one.

The question then is: How to divide the cost of pandas? The Government says it would help, and so it should. After all, this is a geopolitical project of John Key’s, so his administration should contribute most of the money.

Wellington would also benefit, of course, so it would have to put in money too, but there are strict limits here. Wellingtonians are as prone to panda-madness as anyone, but Wellington ratepayers have notoriously cold hearts.

Apart from vague geopolitical benefits, I don’t see benefits to taxpayers. Any taxpayer contribution should be minimal. Pandas will not get any more tourists to NZ. They will get many more people coming to Wellington, so hence there is a case for ratepayer funding. However a price tag anywhere near $10 million is just way out of the ballpark.

An amusing sarcastic column from Rodney Hide on why Winston should be PM.

1. It’s his turn
2. Experience
3. Entertainment
4. Good for journalists
5. His integrity is not in question – we know he lies
6. Partnership
7. Historical prophecy – hailed by Muldoon
8. A Kingmaker can make himself King
9. What else can he do?
10. We deserve him, as people keep voting for him

Jack Tame writes in the Herald:

We are definitely too fat. Our diabetes rates are too high. Our heart-disease numbers are terrible. We’re fat and we need to tax sugar soon-as.

News flash: taxing stuff works. If you haven’t been to Europe lately, you’ll probably not be surprised to hear that cigarettes are generally much cheaper there than they are in New Zealand.

You’ll also not be surprised to hear more Europeans than New Zealanders haven’t yet kicked the smoking habit. Funny that.

Tame is write that if you tax something people consume less of it. But where his argument falls down is substitution.

Mexico is doing better. It’s one of the few countries fatter than us. The average person gets through half a litre of fizzy drink every day.

In Mexico it’s not unusual to see someone drinking Coke for breakfast.

But Mexico slapped a 10 per cent tax on sugary drinks. In just a year, sales dropped 6 per cent and in lower-income communities where people are generally more affected, the impact was even larger.

Tame is wrong on two fronts. The first is that actually consumption of soda drinks has not decreased in Mexico.

But even if it has, that does not mean Mexicans are less obese. They just eat or drink something else.

In NZ only 1.6% of total energy intake comes from sugar drinks. You could tax them or ban them all you like, and it won’t reduce obesity at all. In fact sugar consumption has been dropping in NZ, while obesity rates are increasing.

It’s draft woolly thinking that you can reduce obesity by targeting just one area of energy.

One News reported:

However revelations have been made against Mr Teitiota by a former employer saying he sexually assaulted a female co-worker and violently assaulted other colleagues before being fired from a west Auckland market garden.

 Labour’s Phil Twyford, his local MP, says Mr Teitiota had an “exemplary work record”.

This poll from the New Statesman shows very well the difference between appealing to the base, appealing to your own voters and appealing to potential voters for your party.

Corbyn supporters are very left wing. Only 20% think competition is good, 67% want more taxes, 65% want private schools abolished and 65% want to abolish the monarchy.

Now even among firm Labour voters, their views are quite different. 38% support markets, only 38% support higher taxes, and 42% want private schools abolished.

But go out to the potential voters UK Labour needs to win, and there 58% support competition, only 19% want higher taxes and only 25% want private schools gone.

So how can Corbyn’s policies win Labour an election? Stuffed if I know.

Stuff reports:

Israeli soldiers involved in an operation that left thousands of Palestinians dead will speak at Victoria University, to the horror of some staff and students.

But the group of Jewish students bringing the former soldiers out say attempts to stop them coming to the university are an affront to free speech.

Students are planning to picket the Tuesday evening event at the university while 11 academics have signed a letter opposing it, arguing Palestinians would not be able to do the same.

This is just the typical we want to shut down speech from those we disagree with.

Speakers representing the Palestinian view speak regularly on campuses around the world. No one ever ever suggests they not be allowed to speak. But whenever there is a speaker representing the Israeli view, they try to shut it down.

The event, at the Cotton Building, is organised by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS).

Spokesman Caelan MacBeth said it was shameful students were trying to prevent “an open exchange of views on a complex, longstanding Middle East conflict”.

“The basis upon which a university is built is that of debate, open discussion, equality of representation, and the right to free speech.”

The reserve soldiers were now students of medicine and business on holiday in New Zealand and planned to share their experiences of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Wouldn’t it be better to hear their first hand perspective, to ask questions of them, to challenge them if necessary. But instead they just want them silenced.

A letter signed by 11 academics expressed dismay the university would host the event which was “part of a nationwide campaign to justify Israeli crimes in last year’s war in Gaza”.

Operation Protective Edge in 2014 saw an Israel assault on the Gaza Strip in which more than 2000 people were killed. Of them, 1523 were civilians, the letter said.

“The United Nations stated that Israel’s use of heavy artillery against Gaza ‘may amount to a war crime’.”

Educational institutes were damaged and students were among the dead.

“It is astonishing, therefore, that an exercise in propaganda and apologetics for military violence should be hosted at a university setting under the guise of education and learning opportunities,” the letter states.

“This meeting gives a platform to [Israeli Defence Force] soldiers for them to celebrate the very conflict that led to such massive Palestinian loss of life.”

English lecturer Dougal McNeill – who signed the statement – said the event was nothing more than a propaganda project by Israel which, due largely to the rise of social media, was facing a “public relations disaster” after the deadly operation.

Palestinians would not be offered the same freedom, as most were unable to leave Palestine, he said.

While it seemed inevitable the event would go ahead he wished it would be cancelled.

The university has not invited them, but a club. The academics are saying they don’t want students to have the right to invite people they disapprove of. They are a shame to free speech and the hundreds of years of history of universities in promoting free speech.

The Atlantic reports:

As Brazil or Italy is to soccer, New Zealand is to rugby. And aside from their superior performance on the pitch, the All Blacks—as the country’s national team is known—are perhaps most famous for a special pre-game ritual.

Before each match, the All Blacks, who are set to play Namibia on September 24 in the 2015 Rugby World Cup, perform “the haka”—a traditional, full-body dance and accompanying chant derived from Māori culture. (The Māori are New Zealand’s indigenous people.) …

As the World Cup unfolds in England, the haka remains an incredible sight to behold. And one that, regardless of one’s national affiliations, is bound to hit you with a rush of adrenaline. The Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor describes it as a“perfect act of nationalism.”

I would venture a step further: The All Blacks’ rendition of the haka is indeed a superb act of nationalism, but also a heartening example of postcolonial cohesion. (Rugby has a knack for this.) As Tharoor puts it, “the haka, in its growling intensity, captures … the solidarity of warriors—both of Māori and non-Māori descent—fighting for a common future.”

It’s also an instance of a sports team paying homage to an indigenous culture without simply appropriating it. In this way, the All Blacks stand in stark contrast to controversial U.S. franchises such as the Cleveland Indians, the Washington Redskins, and, sadly, my hometown Chicago Blackhawks—all of which incorporate imagery and nomenclature that offends many Native Americans.

It’s a good point about paying homage without it just being appropriation.

The All Blacks’ presentation of the haka is inclusive and participatory. It is, from most reports, authentically performed and assiduously studied by Māori and non-Māori players alike. And this signals, more broadly, New Zealand’s relative success at integrating colonial and indigenous societies.

Far from perfect, but better than most they conclude:

But, on balance, New Zealand’s relationship with the Māori is, relatively speaking, something to be emulated. The Māori were accorded civil rights comparably earlier than most colonized peoples around the world. They were granted rights as full British subjects and had their property rights recognized with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. This was more than 100 years before the Aboriginal people of Australia were offered full citizenship, and more than 80 years before the Indian Citizenship Act in the United States.

They also note:

Politically, the Māori have also been quite successful—again, relatively speaking. They were guaranteed four seats in New Zealand’s parliament starting in 1867, which has since grown to seven. As of the 2014 election, representation far surpasses the seven-seat minimum. There are a total of 25 sitting MPs of Māori descent, constituting 21% of the legislature.

When it comes to the political inclusion of indigenous peoples, the U.S., Canada, and Australia could learn a thing or two from their Kiwi peers. When it comes to paying homage to indigenous cultures in meaningful, respectful ways, the MLB, NFL, and the NHL should also all take note. Because New Zealand and its All Blacks have figured it out.

What I like is how several Maori words have become common words that almost all New Zealanders use – whānau for example.

Stuff reports:

A vast stretch of New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone is being turned into an ocean sanctuary in a landmark deal to preserve one of the most pristine and unique environments on earth.

Prime Minister John Key is poised to announce the deal in New York, and said it would encompass 620,000 km2 in the seas north-east of New Zealand in the Kermadec region.

“The Kermadec Ocean sanctuary will be one of the world’s largest and most significant fully-protected areas, preserving important habitats for seabirds, whales and dolphins, endangered marine turtles and thousands of species of fish and other marine life,” Key said.

The sanctuary will cover 15 per cent of New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone, an area twice the size of our landmass and 50 times the size of our largest national park in Fiordland.

“As well as being home to a wide range of marine species, the Kermadec region is one of the most geographically and geologically diverse areas in the word. It contains the world’s longest underwater volcanic arc and he second deepest ocean trench at 10 kilometres deep,” Key said.

This is a huge decision. It’s a marine sanctuary twice the size of New Zealand. Most decisions made by New Zealand don’t have global impact, but this one does.

The sanctuary will create a no-take, fully protected zone preventing all fishing and mining in the area, adding to the protections already in place. …

Environment Minister Nick Smith said oceans were the new frontier for environmental protection.

“They make up 72 per cent of the globe and are home to half of the world’s species but currently only two per cent is protected,” Smith said.

“There is increased pressure from over fishing, mining and pollution with the populations of fish and seabird species estimated to have halved over the past 40 years.”

Just as New Zealand had set aside significant areas of land like the Tongariro and Fiordland National Parks, it also needed to protect special areas of the sea like the pristine ocean around the Kermadec Islands.

According to information supplied by Smith’s office, the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will be one of the world’s largest and most significant fully protected areas. It includes the second deepest ocean trench at over 10 kilometres, deeper than Mt Everest is tall, and an arc of 30 underwater volcanoes, the largest anywhere on earth.

It is also some to six million seabirds of 39 different species, over 150 species of fish, 35 species of whales and dolphins, three species of endangered sea turtles and many other marine species like coals, shellfish and crabs unique to the area.

I’ve blogged in the past urging the Government to turn the Kermadecs into a marine reserve, noting:

There are a number of smaller marine reserves there, but we could make the entire area a unique marine reserve. There would be little economic loss in doing so (unlike in other areas), and considerable environmental gain.

I’m absolutely delighted the Government has done this. It is arguably the most significant environmental and conservation initiative of any Government.

The Bookbinder is storytelling at its finest.

What first strikes you when you enter Circa 2, is how the theatre has been transformed. You can’t even see the stage when you enter. Instead you go down a corridor of books until you finally emerge onto the intimate set. The bookbinder’s office is in one corner of the theatre and the seating has been arranged at a right angle on two sides of it.

Ralph McCubbin Howell awakens from his desk, and proceeds to tell the story of the former apprentice. He plays the bookbinder, the apprentice, the  old woman, the young woman and even the Haast Eagle. Yes – a Haast Eagle.

Over 55 minutes he pulls you into a story, and into the story within the story. It is a story with purpose, and sometimes without purpose. After all sometimes you just can’t make an omelette!

Howell is a master of story-telling (and play writing), and gets both his vocal intonations and facial expressions just right. He dominates the stage. You get sucked in, wanting to know what happens next, and how the story ends. A godo play has to be emotionally engaging, and this succeeds.

He is backed up by an incredibly effective use of props. Various lamps are used to great effect, and some of the books themselves display their stories in three dimensions. Great creativity.

Howell works with director Hannah Smith (they are Trick of the Light), and the creativity that has gone into the play reflects their joint contribution. The props, the lighting, the sound and the story all blend together on the intimate stage.

You can see why it won best theatre at last year’s NZ Fringe Festival and also an award at the Sydney Fringe Festival.

It’s on until Saturday 10 October 2015 at Circa, both in the evening and also at 11 am.

Rating: ****1/2

Often requests to reduce regulatory costs are very general – just a moan about regulations generally. Well in response to a request from the PM, members of the NZ Initiative have put forward a very specific list of law changes which would reduce unnecessary regulatory costs.

This is their summary.  There are some really good and specific examples here. I hope the Government takes this report seriously and looks to implement much of it. I don’t agree with every single recommendation, but a few good examples are:

• exempt reporting by NZ SME entities to the extent that funds are received from NZ Registered Trading Banks that are fully complying with AML legislation.
• remove Companies Act requirement that a notice in accordance with section 209(1)(b) of that Act must be sent asking if shareholders would like to receive a hard copy of the annual report
• replacing some or all of the existing purpose based exceptions for copyright with an open-ended flexible exception
• The  the Electricity (Low Fixed Charge Tariff Option for Domestic Consumers) Regulations cause large low-income households to subsidise wealthier low-user households. The Regulations most strongly benefit those consumers who are not necessarily the households most in need of assistance – instead, they are dual fuel customers, apartment dwellers, and houses with fewer than two people. Replace with a general welfare payment targeted specifically at energy vulnerability and/ or making greater funding available for insulation and efficient heating.
• The Holidays Act means a person that takes a full 52 weeks extended parental leave earns a full year’s annual leave and also a full year’s entitlement to sick/domestic leave, while not working.
• KiwiSaver only allows 3%, 4%, or 8% employee contribution rates. Should allow 5%, 6% or 7%, 9% and 10%.
• Government should remove the ability for councils to control hazardous substances and new organisms (GMOs) from the RMA as this should be done at the national level
• The desired outcome is a hybrid model (with legislated automatic rights of installation for low impact activities and a “deemed consent” regime for high impact activities), which facilitates fibre connections, whilst still ensuring that property rights are respected.

There’s also some very good tax simplification proposals from Deloitte.

How the Government responds to these will be a good test of whether they have third termitis. It will be easy to find reasons not to act. But a good Government should be prepared to tackle some of these areas.

Idealog reports:

When Ian McCrae’s teenage son took digital technologies as one of his NCEA subjects, the Orion Health boss was pleased. With a serious IT skills shortage affecting businesses like his, one more student heading towards computer science at university was a bonus.

A few months down the track, McCrae’s view changed. He was shocked to find that instead of learning coding and working on algorithms, his son seemed to be spending his time writing reports – part of a curriculum which sees ICT lumped in with woodwork and sewing, not science and maths.

“I suspect you can do the entire digital tech course without writing a line of code,” McCrae says – correctly, as it turns out.

McCrae says instead of studying topics like coding, algorithms and logical reasoning, his son’s high school digital technology curriculum shares modules with the other tech subjects like hard tech (woodwork and metalwork), soft tech (sewing) and food tech (cooking). These courses involve a lot of lengthy report-writing, which also puts potential IT students off.

Have not meant many techies who like report writing!

“Bright kids coming through the school system are being turned off computing because digital technologies is considered a dumb subject. Clever kids do chemistry or physics, but those naturally lead on to chemistry or physics courses at university, not computer science.”

McCrae argues this is crazy, because IT is where the jobs are – not chemistry. And it leaves companies like Orion Health forced to find their developers overseas, or poach them from other IT companies – companies like Xero, Diligent, Trade Me or Wynyard Group – all of which are themselves struggling to find experienced staff.

They report Trade Me has 1,200 computer science jobs and 22 chemistry jobs!

New Zealand needs to follow the lead of the UK, where major changes to the curriculum have already happened, McCrae says.

In September 2014, the UK became what the Guardian newspaper called “the guinea pig for the most ambitious attempt yet to get kids coding”. Curriculum changes saw ICT (information and communications technology) replaced by “computing”, including coding for children as young as five.

Cool.

We asked Ian McCrae’s what three IT jobs our kids should be aiming for:

• Data scientist. The industry is crying out for people that can take all those numbers coming out of the cloud and make sense of them;

• Mobility expert. No, not walking about. Mobility is all about doing clever stuff for mobile devices;

• Cyber security guru. McCrae spoke to one US company recently that estimated 80% (yes 80%!) of the traffic to their site is “inappropriate” – ie unwanted or dangerous. There aren’t nearly enough experts blocking all that stuff.

Data science is very cool.

A reader writes in:

Nick Smith’s and MBIE’s press releases regarding the Pool Fencing changes have been widely published as circulated and, understandably, cast the changes in a positive light.  But a closer reading shows much of the proposed revision to be shallower than some of the wading pools that are to be exempted.  In fact there is very little relief for the average pool owner who has been long-suffering under the vagaries of council enforcement of the old law.

True, they are getting rid of some of the silliest aspects of the old law which brought derision such as applicability to inflatable wading pools (so long as they are shallow), but by their own admission there is little relief in store for the average punter with an in-ground pool or spa and some significant reason for concern behind some of the claim for added ‘clarity’ (code for less flexible) and cost savings (by councils).  Much of the statistics behind the justification are shallow and difficult to audit, controlled as they are by Water Safe NZ, one of the strong supporters of the bill.  Much of the change is driven WaterSafe Auckland, Water Safety NZ, and Auckland Council enforcement staff, all paid (at least in part) by the public to promote wider and more complete water safety precautions.

One of the most sinister aspects of the change is the granting of wide ranging authority to enter private property for inspections.  This is pretty well established practice for the purpose of commercial and public building WOF’s but is new, and the thin edge of the wedge, when applied to people’s homes.

Also included are infringement notices, instructions to fix, and fines levied by pool inspectors for failure to comply.  The inspectors are not judges and there are often disagreements over interpretation and what is reasonable.  The fencing enforcement team have already earned the reputation as the Pool Stasi.  Watch this space.

There is much wrong with the existing pool fencing regime which starts reasonably enough by wanting to protect children and works its way through layers of questionable logic to the conclusion that this can only be done by sequestering every pool in the country in case a caregiver’s attention is distracted while a child is in the vicinity.

The low hanging benefits of pool fencing have already been realised.  This attempt at reducing the nation’s child drowning rate from 3/Yr. to 2.4/Yr. (really) is unlikely to be a painless and cost effective step forward.

So sounds like still a long way to go.

Vox reports:

People concerned about liberal political correctness on college campuses have a powerful ally: President Obama.

At a town hall here on college affordability on Monday afternoon, one student asked Obama to respond to Republican presidential contender Ben Carson’s proposal to cut off funding to colleges that demonstrate political bias.

Unsurprisingly, Obama didn’t like it much. “I have no idea what that means, and I suspect he doesn’t either,” he said, then continued: “The idea that you’d have somebody in government making a decision about what you should think ahead of time or what you should be taught, and if it’s not the right thought, or idea, or perspective or philosophy, that person would be — they wouldn’t get funding, runs contrary to everything we believe about education,” he said. “That might work in the Soviet Union, but that doesn’t work here. That’s not who we are.”

After that criticism, he went on to give his opinion about what’s been called the “new political correctness” on college campuses:

It’s not just sometimes folks who are mad that colleges are too liberal that have a problem. Sometimes there are folks on college campuses who are liberal, and maybe even agree with me on a bunch of issues, who sometimes aren’t listening to the other side, and that’s a problem too. I’ve heard some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I gotta tell you, I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, “You can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.” That’s not the way we learn either.

The word Obama chose is telling. The idea that college students are demanding to be “coddled” comes up frequently in debates about how much colleges should accommodate requests from students for trigger warnings on syllabuses, for example, or how they should respond to criticisms of graduation speakers or even comedy shows. A recent Atlantic article on the phenomenon was headlined “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

Self-censorship on US campuses is reaching massive levels. Controversial speakers (only from the right of course) are banned because they say something that offends someone.

Stuff reports:

Some families who have come to the attention of authorities may be stopped from having more children by the Government.

Social Development Minister Anne Tolley told TVNZ’s Q+A said she expected the panel looking at restructuring Child, Youth and Family would recommend getting faster contraceptive advice to some families.

“We should be offering, you know, tubal ligations, all sorts of things and counselling those families’,” she said the panel would likely say.

Tolley acknowledged it would be a “huge step” for the state to start telling people that they could not have another child, but said it was “a conversation that New Zealanders, perhaps, need to have”.

Some families that had been involved with government agencies needed more contraceptive advice, she said on Q+A. 

“I mean, I know of cases that CYF have taken the sixth and seventh baby from.

“The question I’ve asked is, ‘So what advice now is going into that parent?'”

Tolley did not rule out limiting or preventing some families from having another child, but said she would wait to see what the panel recommended in December. 

Broadly I guess there are four ways you can discourage bad (as in parents who abuse and neglect their kids parents from having further children.

1. Education and counselling
2. Positive incentives (pay them not to have more kids or get sterilisied)
3. Negatives incentives (no further welfare if they have further children
4. Coercion (forced sterilization, automatic confiscation of further kids)

I don’t support forced sterilization. We simply should not give any Government that power.

There is now provision for a Judge to rule that any further children will be taken into care the moment they’re born. Too early to know if this will be effective.

I’m interested in a combination of two and three. Where a parent has a track record of abuse and neglect, you give them an incentive to get sterilised, and/or also make clear further children doesn’t mean more welfare.