Stuff reports:

A US politician said he won’t resign after planting a fake story that he was caught having sex with a male prostitute to deflect attention from a real affair with a fellow lawmaker who is also a home-school mum.

Both lawmakers are Christian conservatives who frequently refer to their faith.

Michigan state Representative Todd Courser, a married father of four, said in an audio recording that by anonymously emailing supporters about the male prostitution allegations, he intended to create a “complete smear campaign” of false claims so that a public revelation about his relationship with state Representative Cindy Gamrat would seem “mild by comparison”.

Sorts of makes sense, except he couldn’t even smear himself properly!

The Herald reports:

Apple employees are said to be testing a new Siri function that allows the digital assistant to convert your voicemail messages into texts.

Transcribing voicemails into text and relaying them on to the user via text message could eliminate the need to call and listen to voicemail, according to Business Insider.

That would be great. I detest voicemails. You need to pay to clear them, and have to then write them down, before actioning them. My phone message actively discourages people from leaving voicemail messages and requests they text or e-mail me.

It’s a good display from the All Blacks when they score five tries against any of the top tier teams. To do it against Australia was a formidable display of power, pressure and aggression. One of their best matches, which kept the Bledisloe in New Zealand for the 12th time in a row (and 13 consecutive wins)

It was also the last time Richie McCaw would play on Eden Park, and a great game to farewell him, but also celebrate his becoming the most capped player in the history of international rugby.

McCaw is to rugby today, what Colin Meads was to the generation before me.

Amazingly it has been 21 years since the All Blacks lost at Eden Park.

I can recall the late 1990s when Australia beat NZ in the Bledisloe for five years in a row. We started to wonder if we’d ever win it back.

The Herald has some comments on McCaw becoming the most capped player in history:

“Without a doubt he is the greatest All Black of all time. I am convinced that in my lifetime there will not be another player who will captain New Zealand for as many tests, or play as many tests for the All Blacks. He is a remarkable athlete, an outstanding leader and a truly great New Zealander.
— John Key, Prime Minister

“I have seen for myself how part of his charm is the way he interacts with the fans and his connectivity with the community is immense. He is a legend. There is even a very small part of me that would like to see Richie and the All Blacks defend their World Cup in the final.”
— Nick Farr-Jones, World Cup-winning former Wallaby captain

“As an All Black and Crusaders rugby fan, I feel like I’ve spent half my life cheering on Richie McCaw. He hasn’t quite been around that long, but there’s no denying his stature in the game. For my money he is the greatest All Black we’ve ever had, and therefore the greatest player the world’s ever had!”
— Mike McRoberts, TV3 News presenter

“He is so courageous, yet so humble and is a man who is always looking to improve. He is first out the shed and last on the bus. He made others come up to his standards. This has been immensely important to the All Blacks.”
— Ian Jones, former All Black

“To me he’s simply the greatest All Black. The toughest, fittest and hardest. 142 brutal and physical full test matches. He’s been to war for his country. At times fighting with one functioning foot.”
— Duncan Garner, radio host

“I think all the kids up here just see Richie as theirs. He is Kurow’s most famous kid.”
— Deidre Senior, Waitaki Valley School principal

“A leader that others want to follow. Richie is uncompromising and pushes the boundaries to the nth degree. Fair but tough. Winners want the ball and they want to charge forward when others are crippled by fear … In the heat of competition, when his teammates are looking for someone to grab the game by the scruff of the neck — up steps Richie.”
— Jenny-May Coffin, broadcaster and former Silver Fern

Can’t wait for the Rugby World Cup to begin!

The Herald reports:

The number of people appearing before the courts for selling alcohol to minors halved between 2012 and 2014, despite an increase in police stings.

Police figures show 82 people were prosecuted for selling alcohol to minors at on and off-licences New Zealand wide in 2012 operations and 81 in 2013. In 2014 that figure nearly halved to 42. …

Police carried out 2839 controlled purchase operations in 2012 and caught 258 premises selling alcohol to minors. In 2013 they carried out 2771 and caught 232. In 2014 they carried out 3013 and caught 224.

So the strike rate in 2012 was 9.1%, in 2013 it was 8.4% and in 2014 it was 7.4%.

Hopefully this means that bars and retailers are being more stringent in checking for ID.

The Herald reports:

Auckland Council is reviewing its ownership of 13 golf courses worth more than $40 million, as pressure builds to find space for thousands of new homes in the city.

Developers say the land could be used for up to 8000 houses and apartments if the entire 200ha-plus area was made available, easing the city’s chronic shortfall of about 30,000 homes.

Golf courses are commercial propositions. No need for the Council to own them.

However, the exercise comes as the council is urgently looking for new sources of revenue and space to build houses within existing city limits. Several golf courses, such as Waiheke and Waitemata in Devonport, occupy real estate worth millions but pay only peppercorn rents as little as $1 a year.

Outrageous. Subsidised golf. General parks are open to everyone to use for recreation. These are available only to members of the associated golf club. The golf club should buy the land from the Council or at least pay market rent for it.

Figures obtained by the Weekend Herald show many golf courses enjoy historic sweetheart deals: the Waitemata Golf Club and the Waiheke Golf Club each pay only $1 a year for their privileged positions, surrounded by hundreds of 800sq m private sections paying $4000 a year in rates.

Those two clubs alone occupy 42.7ha, while Omaha, near the holiday home of golfing Prime Minister John Key, returns $5 a year to ratepayers.

That’s 427,000 square metres or 534 800 sq metre sections. So the rates alone from those sections would be $2.14 million.

Hobsonville Land Company chief executive Chris Aiken estimated 5000 to 6000 houses could be built on 200ha but more-intensive use could see up to 8000 residences.

He called for a close examination of all under-utilised Auckland land, not just that used for sports or recreation.

Yep.

The Herald reports:

It started with a murder. The year was 2006 and the dead man was Sita Selupe’s cousin. Just 17, a “sweet boy”, he was beaten to death by a group of thugs with a baseball bat, one of a spate of terrible attacks to sweep Otara that year. The killer was found to be part of a youth gang, his victim a harmless bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time.

After the funeral, the family gathered, and prayed, and sat around the table for a talk. “It made us think,” Mrs Selupe says. “How are our boys tracking? Could this happen again to one of our other boys? And we said we had better do something.”

A primary school teacher with Tongan and Niuean heritage, Mrs Selupe had already been running classes for her sons and a few nephews and nieces in her garage for around a year. Each Saturday morning the kids would come for a couple of hours, and Mrs Selupe taught them using an “inquiry” method – teaching through applied learning – picked up at her previous job.

“It was only meant to be four of them,” Mrs Selupe says. “But then the rest of the whanau found out.”

After her cousin’s death, the family decided the homeschool was one way they could help Pasifika children in the area, and placed a renewed focus on education. The numbers of students increased. The school was renamed Rise UP, as a message of hope. And Mrs Selupe became a woman on a mission.

Out of something awful, came something good.

Almost ten years on, Mrs Selupe still has the same goal. However after a decade’s hard work, she now runs her own government-funded school with around 85 primary-aged kids.

One of the country’s first partnership schools, Rise Up last year posted some encouraging results, and is on track to do so again.

Yes an evil charter school which Labour and Greens have vowed to close down if elected, and the PPTA boycotts anyone who teaches there. They see Mrs Selupe as the enemy.

The kids, particularly boys, thrive on experience-based learning, Mrs Selupe says. Earlier this year, the Year 3 and 4 students spent a term researching and designing a playground. Eventually their designs went off to a planner, and now the playground has been built in the front of the buildings they share with a church.

What a great idea.

The school’s results seem to show that it works. Last year Rise UP’s children reached national standards in reading, writing and maths at a rate of at least 20 percentage points above the average of the other children in the Mangere and Otahuhu areas. They were also well above the national average, and within their contract obligations.

Again, this is what Labour and Greens are vowing to stop.

However Mrs Selupe doesn’t believe the school is undermining the wider system. She likes to think it is another way to keep kids local, rather than travelling to get a better start. “In my day, every day, there were buses taking kids to school in the city. I wonder if our school provides another chance, if we can stop those buses. That would be good.”

Indeed it would.

Audrey Young writes:

With the list of the final 40 just published, the debate has barely begun, apart from the objections by Opposition parties – two of which appear to be opposing the review for opposition’s sake.

Quite what Labour and the Greens will do when the debate gains momentum will present a conundrum for them. They cannot continue to attack the referendum process without indirectly attacking New Zealanders who are interested in it and want to be part of it.

They have ignored a basic principle in politics as in life: to thine own self be true, or the voters will see right through you.

It was understandable for the parties to rail against the Government asset sales programme last term – even though National won a mandate for it – because it was against Labour and Green policy.

But to rail against a review of the New Zealand flag – which National also promised at the last election – when it echoes your own party’s policy is simply dishonest and erodes trust in a party.

Labour campaigned on reviewing the flag. Andrew Little said he favoured a referendum. But purely because it is National doing it (which was an explicit promise in the manifesto), they are opposing the very thing they championed.

How can you trust a party that objects to its own policy?

You can’t.

The low turnout to public meetings on the flag was no surprise. There may even be a low turnout to the first postal referendum (November 20 to December 11) to choose the best alternative from four final flags.

But the interest in the referendum that really counts, the one from March 3 to 24, will be intense.

That is when the present flag will be put up against a single alternative.

I’ll bet the turnout for that vote will be as high as a general election.

Yep. Maybe not quite that high but I think it will be the highest a referendum has had, not concurrent with an election, in 15 years.

Labour also argues there should have been a referendum first to see whether voters wanted change before spending the money on the process.

But you wouldn’t expect to agree to a free house-paint without knowing what colour it was going to be.

And as the officials designing the process pointed out, “asking people to vote without seeing what these alternative designs look like would risk the legitimacy of the referendum process”.

It’s silly to have a vote, without knowing what you are voting on.

Labour leader Andrew Little this week said he would not vote in the referendum.

And, more absurdly, the party’s flag spokesman, Trevor Mallard, said that in November’s preferential vote he would rank the flag he thought was best the last and the flag he disliked the most the best.

That way, if everyone were as clever as Trevor, the present flag would be pitted against the most horrible one in March, the present flag would stay and John Key could be accused of having wasted time and money.

That is all it is about for Labour. They acre nothing about the opportunity we have to vote on what should be out national flag for the first time ever. They want to sabotage the process, as a way to attack Key. It is why they are unfit for office.

Mike Hosking writes:

From our mixed message file… comes Labour leader Andrew Little.

Andrew is spending the week trying to scare the bejesus out of us over dairy.

According to Andrew there is a crisis in dairy, farmers will go broke, the banks will bail on them and they’ll need to sell their land at which point the foreigners will pounce and come and sweep it out from under our feet.

Having said all that… And we can deal with the specifics of why he’s out to lunch in a minute.

He then goes onto say in another interview that what this country needs is… You ready for it… More foreign investment… Hello?

He said this was a country built on foreign direct investment and more of it was needed.

What he wasn’t asked and should have been was what happens if that foreign direct investment comes from people with names like Wang or Chow?

You say one thing to one audience, another thing to another audience, and hope no-one notices.

Secondly in trying to stir this up into something it isn’t, Little is using classic Labour party thinking in asking the government what they’re going to do.

Why the government?
What’s a bloke buying a farm got to do with the government?
What has any person setting up a business got to do with the government?
When a shop closes is it the government’s job to mop it up?
When a factory down sizes… Is the govt supposed to do something?

Dairy, like all business products and markets is beyond a government scope.

A government is there to provide over arching policy direction… Like tax and trade deals and welfare.

It’s not there to milk the cows, man the tills and set the price for commodities.

Exactly. The Government doesn’t decide if we have a dairy industry. Land owners do. They decide whether to use their land for forestry, lamb, beef, wool, dairy, viticulture, horticulture etc. Tens of thousands of land owners decide individually (not collectively) what to use their land for.

We don’t have a country where the Government decides what industries we will or will not have, and how much of each industry we are allowed.

The Herald reports:

A Dunedin woman has been left $2500 out of pocket after a man she met online took advantage of her by telling her what she “wanted to hear”.

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said a man from America added her on Facebook and started messaging her.

“He was saying things like he needed a friend.

Most days I get someone I don’t know messaging me on Facebook. I block them and report them as spam unless it is an obviously genuine contact. Those that start with “Hello” tend not to be.

Within a day he started saying he loved me and could see a future with me,” she said.

Oh dear.

That carried on for two weeks before he told her he had sent her a parcel with valuable gifts in it, and gave her the track and trace number.

She then received emails from a courier company in Malaysia asking for $2500 in tax.

She got out a loan and paid the $2500

No, no, no.

before the courier company emailed again saying she would have to pay $15,000 for insurance – so she called the man who told her there was $600,000, a diamond ring, a watch, some jewellery and an iPhone 6.

Yes, total strangers often send $600,000 of presents to someone after chatting to them online for two weeks.

“He said ‘please, please, please’ and I’m the type of person who will do anything for anyone so I went to the bank to get another loan. That’s when the lady there said I think we’re being scammed, I think we need to go and see the police.”

Good bank lady.

Stuff reports:

The young New Zealander forced to sleep in a tent in Geneva has quit his prestigious but unpaid internship at the United Nations.

The plight of David Hyde featured on the front page of a Swiss newspaper on Tuesday (Wednesday NZ Time) and on Wednesday (Thursday NZT), the 22-year-old from Christchurch told journalists outside the gates of the UN’s European headquarters he had decided to resign.

“It’s my own decision and I chose to resign because I felt that it would be too difficult to continue to focus on my work as an intern at this stage,” said Hyde, who started his internship two weeks ago, AFP reported.

A photo of him standing in a suit, UN badge around his neck, next to a small tent and rolled up foam mattress near Lake Geneva, caused outrage and an outpouring of offers of accommodation, according to the Tribune de Geneve, which broke the story.

He described the excitement at home when he was accepted to the prestigious position, but said his family was unaware of his precarious situation in the Swiss city, where rents are among the highest in the world, AFP reported.

“I just want to make it clear that no person forced me to sleep in a tent, but rather my circumstances and the conditions for this internship made it the only real possibility that I could see,” he told reporters.

Hyde acknowledged lying during his internship interview when asked whether he would be able to support himself during his stay in Geneva, AFP reported.

But he said he had previously answered that question truthfully and had found all doors closed to him.

“The UN was clear about their intern policy from the start: No wage or stipend, no transport help, no food allowance, no health assistance. I understood this, and in that regard, I have to take responsibility for taking the internship in the first place,” he said during the media scrum.

But Hyde called for the UN to change its policies.

“I do not feel that this is a fair system,” he said, urging interns worldwide to “push for the recognition of our value and the equal rights that we deserve.”

I’m not sure such a sense of entitlement is going to be of great assistance to Mr Hyde in the future.

As he said, the UN makes very clear that you do not get paid. The reason so many people want to be an intern is it gives them experience which helps you get paid jobs in the future.

If being an unpaid intern isn’t appealing to you, well then don’t apply to be one. Apply for a paid UN job.

The Herald reported:

Staff at the agency charged with making our roads safer have been caught illegally hooning in work cars at least 8500 times in nine months – twice at 145km/h – and not one will get a ticket.

The speeding staff at the NZ Transport Agency include a member of the senior leadership team and a handful of managers.

In a three-month sample of the data, at least 45 of NZTA’s 139 cars were found to have been driven “consistently at speeds over 110km/h and sustained high speed over a number of kilometres”.

A NZ Herald analysis of data obtained through the Official Information Act found 8500 occasions on which NZTA cars were driven faster than 110 km/h – well over any unofficial tolerance applied to speed enforcement. There were 910 instances where the cars were driven at speeds greater than 120km/h – and 130 instances of speeds more than 130km/h.

Of those, eight people exceeded 140km/h, with at least one going more than 145km/h.

Good detective work by the Herald.

How stupid do you have to be to speed when you are in an NZTA work car, with GPS.

Minister of Transport Simon Bridges described the data as disappointing and embarrassing. “To say I’m unimpressed would be one of my big understatements. I’m very disappointed … You’ve got a government agency here that is a key player in road safety and in many cases it has not led by example.”

Mr Bridges, who has not had a speeding ticket since becoming an MP: “That’s certainly something I don’t want to be. I’ve directly contacted both the chair and chief executive on learning about this. I’ve made my views and expectations crystal clear. I’ve sought assurances from them both that … speeding will come down. It is embarrassing.”

Chief executive Geoff Dangerfield said the speeding was “unacceptable”. He said staff identified as exceeding the speed limit have “had a formal conversation with their manager”. Asked if that was the same as a verbal warning, he agreed.

If particular staff have routinely sped at very high speeds (say over 120), then I think more than that may be needed. This is not them as private citizens, but them as NZTA staff, using NZTA vehicles, on NZTA business.

Stuff reports:

A new study has dispelled the myth that having drunken sex before waking to a world of regret is only common among young New Zealanders.

Depends on your definition of common. The study found 13% of 38 year olds had regrets, which means 87% did not. Not sure I’d call that common.

It also reveals Kiwis are more likely to have at least one heavy drinking session a week at the age of 38 than when they were 32. 

But it also reveals that are more likely to have had no heavy drinking sessions at all.

The University of Otago study has shown drinking alcohol before sex remains common among people approaching middle age and can lead to sexually transmitted diseases and abortion. 

Linking two things here, which are quite different.

Yes many 38 year olds have alcohol before sex. If you have a glass of wine over dinner with your partner and then you have sex, that counts as alcohol before sex. Is that somehow bad? It is not surprise that 82% of 38 year olds have said they sometimes have alcohol before sex

Those who have regretful sex with bad conseqences is far less common – only 13%.

“We feel young people drink a lot because we see a lot of it, but really the whole population drinks a lot,” the study’s lead author Professor Jennie Connor said.

The study found that 53% of 38 year old men and 73% of 38 year old women have had no heavy drinking occasions (20% and 35%) or rare (less than monthly) ones (33% and 39%).

The definition of heavy drinking is not apparent in the article, but I presume it is four or more standard drinks. So share a bottle of wine over dinner and that is a heavy drinking occasion.

When they were assessed at 38 years of age, 8 per cent of men and almost 15 per cent of women in the study said they usually or always drunk alcohol before having sex in the previous 12 months. Only 20 per cent of men and 16 per cent of women said they never did so.

The actual data is:

• Always 0.5% men/1.6% women
• Usually 8%/13%
• Sometimes 42%/40%
• Rarely 30%/30%
• Never 20%/15

I don’t see any problem with the 92% of 38 year old men who sometimes, rarely or never have alcohol before sex, or 85% of women. So the problem group is around in 12 men and one in 7 women.

About 14 per cent of men and 12 per cent of women reported some adverse effects of drinking before sex in that year, including regretting sex and failure to use contraception or condoms.

Only 13% have had an adverse effect, which means 87% have not.

The study showed that drinking heavily at least once a week was more common at 38 years of age than it had been at 32.

Yes, but not mentioned is not drinking at all also more common at age 38. Only the bad data has been highlighted by the author.

The change in heavy drinking occasions were:

• Never 11% to 20% for men/34% to 35% for women
• Less than monthly 34% to 33%/30% to 39%
• Monthly to less than weekly 34% to 24%/19% to 17%
• Weekly 21% to 24%/7% to 10%

So if we group never and less than monthly together as light and weekly to monthly as heavy then the data is:

• Light drinking men – from 45% to 53%
• Light drinking women – from 74% to 73%
• Heavy drinking men – from 55% to 47%
• Heavy drinking women – from 26% to 27%

So the argument that heavy drinking is more common at age 38 than 32 is not supported. Women have stayed much the same, and men are having fewer heavy drinking occasions.

Note I have done this post based on reading the actual academic article, and the data. That requires more work than just repeating the press release.

Love the Men in Black theme.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand’s first register of child sex offenders is to be set-up – with the Government saying currently such people can “disappear into communities”.

Police and the Corrections Department will run the register, which will be established under legislation introduced to Parliament today.

Offenders will need to provide a range of information including fingerprints, photographs, aliases, address, workplace and employer, car registration, computer IP address and passport details.

Umm most computers do not have a fixed IP address.

The Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill will track convicted child sex offenders aged 18 or over at the time of committing their offence who are:
• Convicted of a qualifying offence and sentenced to prison.
• Convicted of a qualifying offence and sentenced to a non-custodial sentence, and directed to be registered by the sentencing judge.
• Convicted of an equivalent offence and sentenced overseas, or have been on an overseas register, if they intend to reside in New Zealand

Offenders will be on the register for life, 15 years or eight years, depending on the severity of their crimes.

Sounds very reasonable.

Authorised Police and Corrections staff, and authorised staff from relevant agencies such as the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand, will be able to share relevant information in the register.

There will not be public access, but in certain cases, such as where there is a threat to a child, information may be released to a third party such as a parent or teacher.

Potentially over time the register might include other offenders?

Jonathan Coleman announced:

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman says more New Zealanders are receiving the elective surgeries they need compared to seven years ago.

“As New Zealanders live longer lives, access to elective surgery is becoming more important than ever,” says Dr Coleman.

“Improving access to electives is a multi-dimensional goal. It includes reducing waiting times, increasing the number of First Specialist Assessments and elective discharges.

“The number of patients receiving elective surgery across the country has increased from 117,954 in 2007/08 to 167,188 in 2014/15. That’s around 50,000 more surgeries over the last seven years – a 42 percent increase.

“The elective surgery target of 4,000 more operations a year has again been exceeded in 2014/15 with over 5,000 electives carried out.

“This lift in elective surgery rates is a credit to the hard working health professionals working across the country.”

That’s an increase well in excess of population growth.

Three bills were drawn from the ballot yesterday. They are:

Affordable Healthcare Bill by NZ First MP Barbara Stewart

The bill’s purpose is to encourage people to contribute to their own healthcare costs in a way that is consistent with supporting the public health system. It also makes health insurance a requirement for Parent Category visa applications. It proposes to require Parent Category migrants to have health insurance on arrival and to maintain it in New Zealand for 10 years; remove fringe benefit tax (FBT) from health insurance; and introduce the SuperGold health insurance premium rebate.

Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill by Green MP Gareth Hughes

This bill is intended to break down existing barriers and provide a fair regime for small-scale renewable electricity generators to encourage greater renewable distributed generation and to help New Zealand in meeting the goal of 90% renewable electricity by 2025.

Keep Kiwibank Bill by Labour MP Clayton Cosgrove

This purpose of this bill is to ensure that any proposal to partly or wholly privatise Kiwibank would require the support of 75% of all members of the House of Representatives or, alternatively, the support of a majority of voters in a referendum, in order to lawfully proceed.

Barbara Stewart’s bill has a mixture of good and bad. I think one can have a useful debate about who meets health costs of migrants who come in as parents of residents. Removing FBT from health insurance is a daft idea that will just lead to huge tax avoidance and the health premium rebate would be very costly to taxpayers. Overall I’d vote against this bill. If it was just the first part, I’d vote for it at first reading.

Gareth Hughes’ bill seems worth supporting at first reading. I’m not sure it will achieve a lot, but it looks like it could help solve a problem, without large unintended consequences. Not sure if it will be worth supporting all the way through, but at a minimum it deserves to go to select committee and have submissions on it. One of the more thoughtful opposition bills.

Clayton Cosgrove’s bill is a piece of ridiculous grandstanding that should be terminated on sight. It solves a non-existent problem with a constitutionally repugnant solution.

A guest post by Carrick Graham:

The current rate of obesity in New Zealand (particularly child obesity) is a concern of every New Zealander.

As a small country of limited resources it is important to make sure that our government’s investment in reducing rates of obesity is effective.

For the last decade I have been tracking the funding streams of public money spent by the Ministry of Health on obesity related services via contracts with non-government organisations/service providers.

Collectively over this period the Government has spent approximately $317,565,118 to address obesity concerns in New Zealand. This figure was obtained from official data provided by the Ministry of Health and released under the Official Information Act 1986.

This $317.5 million figure does not include research grants or other funding for academic research on obesity. Research grants identified by my company Facilitate Communications, to just a few well-known researchers in the field total more than $16 million and represents the tip of the iceberg of government and other funding sources for obesity related research.

Two successive governments have spent significant amounts following the same strategy of funding an array of NGOs and action groups and still there appears to be little change in New Zealand’s obesity statistics.

Perhaps it is time to take stock of the situation and ask whether there could be a different outcome if that same money was invested in a different way?

There are concerns that public money continues to be spent on groups that do little aside from talk to themselves at conferences for which they’ve utilised public money to organise, and naturally attend. Imagine if more of that $317.5 million had been spent on engaging more New Zealanders to lead healthier lives?

One such example is the group Agencies for Nutrition Action. For the last six years they have received more than $1.8 million from the Ministry of Health for ‘Nutrition and Physical Activity’ services. The expected outcomes could be best described as a ‘talkfest’ with little if any measurable impact on obesity levels.

Having researched this area for 15 years I see too often it is the same academics talking to the same people rather than sparking positive change out in the community.

Recently the Minister of Health Jonathan Coleman instructed the Ministry of Health to develop an obesity prevention plan in response to the high and increasing levels of obesity in New Zealand. One positive result is that the Ministry is now only contracting nutritional and physical activity servies for a further one-year period – until future service priorities are known.

But a fundamental question remains. 

With the Ministry having spent and continuing to spend on average $31 million dollars per year for the last 10 years on obesity related service providers, there is a real question about the effectiveness of this spend.

I believe a review of this spend and its findings would have signicant public interest.

This point is further reinforced with the New Zealand Health Survey indicates 1.2m New Zealanders are obese; and this rate is increasing. Certainly questions could be raised about the efficacy of continuing with spending $30 million on service providers when that money could be utilised in generating more physical activities in schools, clubs or sporting organisations that focus on getting kids out exercising.

The Government’s Healthy Families NZ initiative is certainly a step in the right direction. Other successful programmes could be adopted from overseas to meet local community needs.

The ‘Let’s Move!’ programme, announced by Michelle Obama in 2010 is but one example and  promotes physical activity through the support and cooperation of families, schools and communities. The official ‘Let’s Move! “Move Your Body” music video has been viewed 32 million times.

Contrast this initiaitive against the outputs of a multitude of government funded contracts – such as that with the Agencies for Nutrition Action (a six monthly report to the Ministry’s contract manager outlinging the meetings, workshops or consultations they’ve had) and it is glaringly obvious that the later is not going to achieve the goals of reducing obesity in New Zealand.

In light of the significant amount of public funding that has been spent with no apparent success in reducing the level of obesity in New Zealand, a reprioritisation or reapportioning of funding to more community-focused initiatives for real New Zealanders seems highly appropriate. 

It seems to me that if you continue to fund the same groups in the same way you will get the same result. Perhaps it is time for a different approach.

Disclosure: Carrick Graham’s Facilitate Communications has advised clients on how to deal with increasing calls for regulation and restrictions on products within the food supply chain.

The Herald reports:

The board of state owned coal company Solid Energy has put the company into temporary voluntary administration, the Government has just announced.

Solid Energy chief executive Dan Clifford today encouraged workers to “stick with us”.
However, he accepted it was up to each individual if they tonight wanted to start looking for a new job.

The best thing the company could now do was to continue running the business safely, efficiently and to plan, Mr Clifford said.

Mr Coup said it was too early to say how much the company was worth.

However, he said it was “unlikely” that its sale, or sales, would cover its outstanding debt.
The money the Crown had put in would not be recovered, Mr Coup said.

Very sad for staff and their families.

It is a reminder of why taxpayers should not own commercial trading companies. We should not own Solid Energy. We should not part of Air NZ. I don’t even think we should own parts of the power companies. These are not guaranteed cash cows. I don’t want my taxes spent investing in businesses. I want it spent on public services.

The global coal price is currently $62/mt. It was $180/mt in 2008. When a commodity is globally traded, it can vary massively in price. Just as we are seeing with dairy prices.

From the Herald’s Mood of the Boardroom:

• Bill English 4.60 (out of 5)
• John Key 4.28
• Paula Bennett 3.85
• Tim Groser 3.77
• Steven Joyce 3.65
• Chris Finlayson 3.41
• Jonathan Coleman 3.28
• Michael Woodhouse 3.22
• Maggie Barry 2.22

Key got 4.28 out of 5.0.  Somehow this convinced NewstalkZB to run a story saying business leaders say it is time for Key to go. They’ve since deleted the story, presumably out of embarrassment. They even invented a new former MP called Simon Powell.

The Herald reports:

The median Auckland house sale price dropped $20,000 last month, according to the Real Estate Institute out this morning, following Barfoot & Thompson sales data which also showed the same trend.

The latest REINZ figures showed the Auckland region’s median price fell from $755,000 to June to $735,000 last month, down 2.65 per cent.

Shouldn’t read too much into a monthly change, but if it continued for another couple of months that might indicate the bubble is bursting.

Later this year the new tax rules for investment properties take effect, and also the Reserve Bank’s stricter lending rations for Auckland and for property investors. They may have an impact also – or may even be impacting already.

UPDATE: Once again Labour’s curse may have worked. They declare something to be a crisis, and it immediately improves.

The order paper is here.

Oral Questions 2.00 pm – 3.00 pm

1. Dr RUSSEL NORMAN to the Minister of Trade: Does he stand by his statement that the $6.2 billion investor-state dispute settlement action initiated by the Swedish power company Vattenfall, “is not, in fact, an attempt by the company to stop a democratically elected German Government from shifting its policy on nuclear power; it is about the financial implications of that decision”; if so, why?
2. DAVID BENNETT to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on the resilience of the New Zealand economy?
3. IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Will all New Zealand workers have the right to have a health and safety representative when they request one, under the Health and Safety Reform Bill?
4. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR to the Minister for Economic Development: What is the Government doing to encourage more investment throughout New Zealand?
5. Hon DAVID PARKER to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade stated on 19 April 2012 that they were “finding an appropriate mechanism to meet Al Khalaf’s concern for ‘compensation’ (possibly through the joint venture)”, did ‘compensation’ mean compensation or have some other meaning like “not compensation”?
6. MARK MITCHELL to the Minister of Trade: What is the Government doing to reduce, what some commentators are saying is, an overdependence on trade with China?
7. Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE to the Minister for State Owned Enterprises: What was Solid Energy’s debt in 2008/09 and what was it in the latest annual report?
8. CLAYTON MITCHELL to the Minister of Broadcasting: Does she stand by all her statements?
9. BRETT HUDSON to the Minister of Energy and Resources: What recent reports has he received on energy trends and growth in New Zealand?
10. STUART NASH to the Minister for Land Information: Has she received information from the Overseas Investment Office which confirms the statement of the Minister of Economic Development that “We have not been as effective as other countries in ensuring that overseas investment into New Zealand has provided the additional benefits”?
11. JAN LOGIE to the Minister for Social Development: What actions, if any, has the Ministry of Social Development taken to ensure the wellbeing of children in families subjected to benefit sanctions, given that sanctions of sole parents have increased by 19.98 percent in the last year?
12. TODD BARCLAY to the Minister for Food Safety: What announcements has the Government made that will help our primary sector have greater access to the latest technologies and agricultural products?

National: Five questions on the economy, investment, trade with China, energy and primary sector

Labour: Four questions on workplace safety, the Saudi Arabia farm, Solid Energy and overseas investment

Greens: Two questions on TPP and welfare sanctions

NZ First: One question on Minister of Broadcasting standing by her statements

Government Bills 3.00 pm to 6.00 pm

Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill – committee stage continued

This Bill authorises the individual appropriations contained in The Estimates of Appropriations for the Government of New Zealand for the year ending 30 June 2016.

• Introduced May 2015
• 1st reading: May 2015, passed without dissent
• 2nd reading: June 2015, passed 63-58 with Labour, Greens, NZ First against

The debate is an 11 hour debate divided into ten sector debates. The sectors are:

• Economic Development and Infrastructure Sector – done
• Education Sector – done
• Environment Sector – done
• External Sector – done
• Finance and Government Administration Sector – done
• Health Sector – done
• Justice Sector – done
• Māori, Other Populations and Cultural Sector – done
• Primary Sector – done
• Social Development and Housing Sector – current

Each debate is a minimum of eight speeches of up to five minutes each, led off by the relevant select committee chairperson.