Stuff reports:

The paper suggests beefing up protection orders, requiring police to make an arrest every time there is a breach rather than exercise discretion.

Adams said this may be “contentious”. Breaching a protection order carries a maximum sentence of three years in jail.

“We don’t want to shy away from making big change just because it is a little unsettling,” she said. “There is …a concern amongst some that protection orders are not taken seriously enough and I worry that if victims don’t have confidence that [they] will be enforced then they are less likely to report violence.”

I don’t think protection orders are taken seriously enough, and far too often they get ignored, and then someone is killed.

The knowledge that if you break an order, you will be arrested no ifs or buts,  would be a welcome deterrent.

Been quite a bit of publicity around ports and safety , so thought there would be some interest in an OIA I have been sent with the serious harm stats for NZ Ports.

The total serious harm notifications by year have been:

• 2012: 38
• 2013: 35
• 2014: 26

So a good downwards trend.

And for the latest year the notifications per port is:

• Port of Tauranga 5
• Centreport Wellington 4
• Lyttleton Port 3
• Port Nelson 3
• NorthPort 2
• Port Marlborough 2
• Port Otago 2
• Ports of Auckland 2
• PrimePort Timaru 2
• Napier Port 1
• Eastland Port 0
• Port Taranaki 0
• SouthPort 0

But this does not take into account the size of ports. So in the table below I’ve taken the average serious harm notifications for 2012 to 2014 per port and expressed them in terms of serious harm incidents per million dollars of port revenue. With two ports this is an estimate (no public accounts) based on their cargo volumes.

The relative rates are:

1. Port Marlborough 0.167
2. PrimePort Timaru 0.154
3. Port Nelson 0.126
4. Centreport Wellington 0.60
5. Port Otago 0.048
6. Lyttleton Port 0.023
7. Port of Tauranga 0.023
8. Napier Port 0.016
9. Port Taranaki 0.014
10. NorthPort 0.012
11. Ports of Auckland 0.011
12. Southport 0.011
13. Eastland Port 0.010

That’s some huge variations, relative to port size.

Stuff reports:

Tony Douglas Robertson has been sentenced to preventive detention for the “bestial” rape and murder of Auckland mother Blessie Gotingco. …

On the charge of murder, Robertson was sentenced to life with a minimum non-parole period of 24 years.

I’ll make a prediction that he isn’t ever going to be let out, or at least not in the next 50 years or so.

Some people can be rehabilitated. There is nothing to suggest he can be.

The Herald reports:

The woman at the centre of the Sir Edward Heath child abuse storm is a Filipino prostitute who ran a brothel just a kilometre from the late Prime Minister’s former home in Salisbury.

Myra Ling-Ling Forde, 67, has twice been jailed for operating as a madam out of her home in the Wiltshire town where Heath lived after leaving office. But in the early 1990s it is alleged she had a prosecution dropped after threatening to expose Heath as a paedophile.

A retired senior detective came forward last year to allege that his colleagues quietly dropped a trial against twice-married Forde to protect the reputation of the former Tory leader. That allegation is now the subject of an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigation, but Wiltshire police have also appealed for any potential victims of Heath to come forward.

Heath is now at the centre of five separate police investigations.

Is this smoke without fire, or is there substance to the allegations?

There has been long-standing speculation on Heath being homosexual, or alternatively asexual. But the suggestions of pedophilia are relatively new, and of course massively different. It is important to note there is only one specific allegation, and so far not substantiated.

Dan Hodges writes in The Telegraph:

That is literally all it takes now – in Britain, in 2015. One letter. One phone call. One meeting. And it’s done.

It’s time it was undone. I’m bored of listening to the howl of the mob. Watching sun glinting off the scythes, and being told this represents “justice”.

The summary of Curia’s monthly newsletter is:

There were three political voting polls in July – a Roy Morgan, One News Colmar Brunton and 3 News Reid Research.

The average of the public polls has National 14% ahead of Labour in July, down 10% from June. The current seat projection is centre-right 57 seats, centre-left 54 which would see NZ First hold the balance of power.

In the United States Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican field.

In the UK Jeremy Corbyn has gone from being a 100 to 1 outside to the favourite with the bookmakers to become the next UK Labour Party Leader.

In Australia Shorten’s approval ratings continue to decline after his testimony at the Royal Commission into union corruption.

In Canada they remain on track to elect their first ever NDP Government. The Liberals continue to lose support to the NDP.

The normal three tables are provided comparing the country direction sentiment, head of government approval and opposition leader approval sentiment for the five countries.

We also carry details of polls on foreign house buyers, genetic modification, refugees, organ donation, euthanasia, intelligence agencies plus the normal business and consumer confidence polls.

This newsletter is normally only available by e-mail.  If you would like to receive future issues, please go to http://curia.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e9168e04adbaaaf75e062779e&id=8507431512 to subscribe yourself

 

Proactive Investors report:

What UniBio does is take natural gas and convert it into animal feed using a naturally occurring bacterial process.

It sounds simple enough, but the implications are profound.

Currently, it takes one hectare of land to produce 700 kilogrammes of soy, but the equivalent per hectare figure for UniBio is 25,000 tonnes.

That’s several orders of magnitude higher and represents a significant easing of pressure on scarce environmental resources.

But that natural gas comes from fracking!

Do the Greens think that natural gas should be left in the ground, rather than convert it into animal feed?

A very good op ed at the NYT by Goodwell Nzou:

MY mind was absorbed by the biochemistry of gene editing when the text messages and Facebook posts distracted me.

So sorry about Cecil.

Did Cecil live near your place in Zimbabwe?

Cecil who? I wondered. When I turned on the news and discovered that the messages were about a lion killed by an American dentist, the village boy inside me instinctively cheered: One lion fewer to menace families like mine.

My excitement was doused when I realized that the lion killer was being painted as the villain. I faced the starkest cultural contradiction I’d experienced during my five years studying in the United States.

Did all those Americans signing petitions understand that lions actually kill people? That all the talk about Cecil being “beloved” or a “local favorite” was media hype? Did Jimmy Kimmel choke up because Cecil was murdered or because he confused him with Simba from “The Lion King”?

In my village in Zimbabwe, surrounded by wildlife conservation areas, no lion has ever been beloved, or granted an affectionate nickname. They are objects of terror.

Cecil was not a tame pet.

Recently, a 14-year-old boy in a village not far from mine wasn’t so lucky. Sleeping in his family’s fields, as villagers do to protect crops from the hippos, buffalo and elephants that trample them, he was mauled by a lion and died.

The killing of Cecil hasn’t garnered much more sympathy from urban Zimbabweans, although they live with no such danger. Few have ever seen a lion, since game drives are a luxury residents of a country with an average monthly income below $150 cannot afford.

Don’t misunderstand me: For Zimbabweans, wild animals have near-mystical significance. We belong to clans, and each clan claims an animal totem as its mythological ancestor. Mine is Nzou, elephant, and by tradition, I can’t eat elephant meat; it would be akin to eating a relative’s flesh. But our respect for these animals has never kept us from hunting them or allowing them to be hunted.

Wed need to be very careful to not impose our reality, safely behind computer screens, on the reality of life in Zimbabwe.

The American tendency to romanticize animals that have been given actual names and to jump onto a hashtag train has turned an ordinary situation — there were 800 lions legally killed over a decade by well-heeled foreigners who shelled out serious money to prove their prowess — into what seems to my Zimbabwean eyes an absurdist circus.

Yep.

PETA is calling for the hunter to be hanged. Zimbabwean politicians are accusing the United States of staging Cecil’s killing as a “ploy” to make our country look bad. And Americans who can’t find Zimbabwe on a map are applauding the nation’s demand for the extradition of the dentist, unaware that a baby elephant was reportedly slaughtered for our president’s most recent birthday banquet.

We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people.

A very good point.

Fox News has announced the 10 top polling candidates who will make the first debate today. They are:

1. Donald Trump 10.4%
2. Governor Jeb Bush 43.5%
3. Governor Scott Walker 18.4%
4. Governor Mick Huckabee 4.0%
5. Dr Ben Carson 1.7%
6. Senator Ted Cruz 3.1%
7. Senator Marco Rubio 7.7%
8. Senator Rand Paul 3.9%
9. Governor Chris Christie 3.3%
10. Govenor John Kasich 4.1%

I’ve included the current probability to get the nomination each are at with Betfair. It will be interesting to see how this changes after the debate.

The Herald reports:

When Chief Petty Officer Kelly Kahukiwa left the navy to teach in Northland he did not know what a charter school was.

Now, because he had a job at a Whangarei charter school, the student teacher is caught between a teachers’ union and a controversial government policy that has left him blacklisted from training at state schools. It comes after the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) said its members will not work with employees of charter schools.

Mr Kahukiwa started teaching te reo Maori and music at Te Kura Hourua O Whangarei Terenga Paraoa in Whangarei at the start of the year. He sought out the school after meeting some of its students at the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Cassino in Italy last May, where he was with the Royal New Zealand Navy.

“All of us in the military, when we met those kids, we knew there was something special going on,” he said.

“I just thought, oh well, whatever a charter school is it works for these kids, I want to be part of it.”

Mr Kahukiwa said the first he knew of any issues was three days into his next placement, at Tikipunga High School in May. Once the school found out he was from a charter school, the board asked him not to return.

“I was just astounded,” he said. “I had no idea why or what was going on. I’m just one teacher trying to do what [the PPTA members] all joined for, which is educate kids, uplift the kids and share my skills.”

PPTA members should be ashamed that they are treating someone who wants to educate kids, so poorly. It’s appalling.

David Seymour also comments:

The case of the trainee teacher caught in the political campaigning of the PPTA is a national disgrace, says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“The PPTA doesn’t seem to understand that whether a teacher is employed in the state sector, an integrated school, or a partnership school, they are employed by taxpayers. And as taxpayers we elect governments to take decisions on our behalf,” said Mr Seymour.

“The PPTA blog, Pigeonhole, has summarised the rationale for the union’s campaign of discrimination against all staff or trainee teachers associated with Partnership Schools. Its commentary is a welter of misinformation and inaccuracy.

“But there is one very revealing comment: ‘It’s perfectly legal to choose not to employ or work with people on the basis of their current employer – it’s the same as a business not wanting to sell something to a competitor because you don’t want to be copied by them’.

“The PPTA seems to think it operates like a business, in charge of our education system. It’s not. Taxpayers employ teachers with an expectation that they will work in the interests of children, not union ideology.

Taxpayers through the Government are the employers of teachers in the state sector, not the PPTA.

Why stop there?  Will the PPTA also demand schools refuse to hire teachers who have ever worked at a private school?  Or an integrated school?

Stuff reports:

The Labour Party says Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Devoy is “out of line and wrong” for calling it racist.

Devoy has taken a swipe at Labour over its claims that Chinese investors are responsible for Auckland’s rising house prices.

Addressing a meeting of Auckland city councillors on Wednesday, she said debate on some issues was “deteriorating into racism”.

She made a clear reference to Labour’s release of data which purported to show that 40 per cent of property sales in Auckland in a three-month period were to buyers with Chinese-sounding names.

“It is a deeply hurtful thing to have your children hear politicians insinuating that their Chinese-sounding surname means they’re foreigners and they don’t belong here,” Devoy said.

“We need to recognise dog whistle politics when we see it and call it out.”

But Labour’s housing spokesperson Phil Twyford said Devoy was either “misunderstanding or wilfully misrepresenting” the debate.

Countries all over the world were having to come to grips with the effect of huge levels of private investment from China overheating their housing markets.

“New Zealand needs to be able to discuss this in public without these kinds of allegations of racism,” Twyford said.

“We raised the concern that the available data and all the international evidence and commentary about very high levels of investment indicates that offshore Chinese buyers are a significant presence in the housing market here.”

Twyford thinks that saying 30% (40% less 10%) of home buyers are foreigners because they have a Chinese sounding surname is not racist. Keep it up Phil.

John Armstrong writes:

John Key had a simple line and he stuck to it whatever question was asked. He laid all the blame on Labour for the failure of New Zealand to create a free-trade pact with the seriously wealthy oil-rich Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia. Labour had imposed the ban on live sheep exports which created the problems that National was left to sort out.

He didn’t mention that National could have simply overturned the ban. The official papers reveal ministers spent considerable time discussing that possibility but had been reluctant to upset the powerful animal rights lobby.

This is broadly correct. National inherited the problem, and to solve the issue they could either decide to allow live exports for slaughter to resume, or try and soothe the Saudis.  I can understand the reluctance to allow live exports for slaughter to resume.

The other reason National’s opponents failed to make an impact was that the thrust of their attack was that National’s payment of $4 million to a Saudi businessman, who had taken big losses as a result of the export ban, amounted to a bribe to make him stop using his influence to block free-trade talks.

But the notion of a bribe in most people’s minds is that the briber gets some personal benefit. In this case those offering the money – the New Zealand Cabinet – could be seen as acting in the national interest rather than personal interest.

That to me is the key. The deal may well be unorthodox and even wasteful (especially if we don’t get trade access), but there is no personal benefit involved in this. The only motivation is to help NZ exporters, and unless one can find some personal gain, I can’t see this being a scandal.

However I do think it would be desirable for the Auditor-General to investigate fully. Even if well motivated, it is far from clear that it was a prudent “investment”.

The Herald reports:

Genesis Energy announced its last two coal-burning electricity generators at Huntly Power Station will be permanently withdrawn from the market by December 2018, signalling the end of large scale coal-fired generation in New Zealand.

The decision is being hailed as another step towards having 90 per cent of New Zealand’s electricity supply generated by renewables by 2025.

A key thing to note is this is a commercial decision by Genesis, not a Government dictate. But it is very useful, as it will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

At their peak, the coal units emitted around 5000 kilotonnes of CO2 per year – amounting to around 5 per cent of New Zealand’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s significant.

“New Zealand’s share of renewable electricity generation is already the fourth largest in the world and the shift from coal will help us to achieve our ambitious goal of having 90 per cent of New Zealand’s electricity supply generated by renewables by 2025.”

MBIE data has renewables at 79.3% of all generation. If coal is excluded it goes to 83.5%. So making 90% will still be some way off.

Our current profile is:

1. Hydro 56.1%
2. Geothermal 16.7%
3. Gas 15.5%
4. Coal 5.1%
5. Wind 5.1%
6. Wood 0.9%
7. Biogas 0.5%

Possibly of interest is the renewable share over time. It has been:

• 1975 – 90.4%
• 1984 – 80.4%
• 1990 – 80.8%
• 1999 – 70.6%
• 2008 – 65.4%
• 2014 – 79.9%

The IPCA reports:

A report released today by the Independent Police Conduct Authority has found that there is no evidence to support allegations that a Police officer committed perjury when giving evidence in the judicial review proceedings brought by Mr Kim Dotcom. …

In releasing today’s report Independent Police Conduct Authority Chair, Judge Sir David Carruthers, said that, given the public interest in this matter and the conclusion reached by the Police investigation, the Authority conducted its own investigation in order to satisfy itself there had been no Police impropriety during the court proceedings.

“The Authority has found that the cross-examination of Detective Inspector Wormald was designed to discover whether Mr Dotcom had been the subject of visual surveillance, not whether his communications had been intercepted.  Mr Wormald’s interpretation of the questions being asked of him was entirely reasonable and his answers were not in any way false or misleading.

“The suggestion that he intended to mislead the Court is without foundation,” Sir David said.

It’s been a long long time since Dotcom has had a court or authority ruling go his way.

The full report is worth reading.

Our own analysis of the transcript of evidence has led us to conclude that Mr Davison’s questions were unquestionably directed at the visual surveillance of the movements of those who were the subject of the warrants (and in particular Mr Dotcom). Detective Inspector Wormald’s interpretation of the questions being asked of him was accordingly entirely reasonable and his answers were not in any way false or misleading.

No doubt some will claim a cover up, but the IPCA has shown no reluctance to criticise the Police when they have got things wrong.

Buzz Aldrin tweeted his travel claim form. The only thing cooler than writing down travel by spacecraft from Cape Kennedy to the Moon, is the return trip from Moon to “Pacific Ocean”.

And even astronauts have to go through customs, declaring moon rock and moon dust!

Phil Quin blogs:

Soon after I posted four examples (here and here) of how Labour plagiarised news articles in its Future of Work discussion document, the party reacted in three steps:

1. They pushed Clare Curran under a bus;
2. They copped to plagiarism while dismissing it as a case of omitted footnotes;
3. They appended footnotes to address the four instances I had highlighted. 

This was a profoundly inadequate response in many respects, but it worked wonders as an exercise in media management. Credit where it’s due. To be honest, it probably helped Labour that it was me who revealed the plagiarism since I am easily dismissed as embittered and angry – over the Chinese surnames affair that led to my resignation, but also the more general perception in sections of the political Twittersphere that I am a full-time malcontent. While I would dispute those characterisations, I can’t deny they diluted the impact of the revelations.  It may also be that plagiarism is just not that big a deal in New Zealand. Fair enough, I guess. 

Anyway, in Labour’s haste to cover tracks, they failed to do the most obvious imaginable thing: rule out the presence of more examples of plagiarism.

Surely Labour is not so incompetent that they didn’t have someone review the entire document for further instances?

It turns out they are exactly that incompetent.

Not only has Quin found more examples of plagiarism, an analysis tool has found one section is 47% plagiarised.

Maybe the time has come for Labour to withdraw the document, and issue a new one – one actually representing their own thoughts and words, not those of others?

Graphic from Bloomberg.

The confirmation the wreckage is MH370 will be bitter and sweet news for families. It will be good to have confirmation of what happened to it, but bitter to know the crew and passengers are definitely dead.

Looking at the area the plane flew to, I think there is little doubt this was pilot suicide/homicide. There’s nothing out there.

If correct, that makes two cases in just one year. Very sad that airline safety used to be about protecting pilots from terrorists, but now will have to be equally about protecting passengers from (some) pilots.

Stuff reports:

A former vice-president of Massey University’s Extramural Students’ Society has been ordered to pay $18,000 after he “humiliated” the society’s former president in a student magazine.

A dispute between former vice-president Dave Crampton and former president Jeannette Chapman in 2013 ended up before the Human Rights Review Tribunal after Crampton passed private details about Chapman to Massive Magazine, Massey’s student publication.

In its decision published on July 29, the tribunal sided with Chapman’s view that she had been “under siege” from Crampton, who sent her an average of 150 emails a week and “harassed” her at home in the evenings and weekends, forcing her to change her telephone numbers twice that year.

I’ve blogged on Chapman before and her behaviour as President was appalling. But two wrongs don’t make a right. 150 e-mails a week is way way over the top – that’s 30 a day. Of course that is not what the damages are for, which are around the release of personal info.

It awarded Chapman $18,000 for the humiliation she suffered, and ordered Crampton to attend an “Introduction to the Privacy Act” workshop.

Being forced to attend a Privacy Act workshop might be the greater punishment 🙂

UPDATE: Stuff has more background on Chapman here.

The Herald editorial:

It beggars belief that any nurses employed in public hospitals would be allowed to decline vaccinations against winter flu. It strains credibility further to hear these nurses complain they are obliged to wear face masks in the wards. And it is nothing short of disgraceful their national union, supported by the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, backs them up.

I agree.

The flu is not chicken pox. People die from the flu. Lots of people. Why would a hospital worker not want a free flu vaccine?

Plenty of people outside the public health services decline flu vaccines, even when provided free in workplaces. This is a free country and people are free to make unhealthy decisions for themselves, even when their decision reduces the immunity that can be provided for the community. The best health authorities can do is to promote and practise good sense, based on medical research.

Nurses and other health professionals are also free to question the wisdom of immunisation or any other medical practices if they wish, but if so they should look for a job with an alternative provider.

If you accept a job in a hsopital working with sick people who are especially vulnerable to illnesses such as influenza, then you lose discretion over whether or not to have a vaccine. Just as if you accept a job as a teacher, you may have a dress code to comply with.

And Waikato DHB hasn’t even made it compulsory. They’ve just said wear a mask, if you won’t get one – and you work in clinical areas.

The Herald reports:

Justice Minister Amy Adams has told police to revise their guidelines so they can secretly warn people if their partner has a history of violent abuse.

Ms Adams said she was waiting to see how well a United Kingdom law went before introducing measures that would allow people to go to the police themselves to find out whether their partner had convictions for abuse.

However, as a “sensible first step” she had asked police to review their operating guidelines so they could notify people if their partners had a record of domestic abuse.

This seems sensible, even laudable, to me.

But privacy issues were involved in allowing people to request that information themselves. Currently, someone else’s criminal record could only be shared with their consent. “So you’ve got to start thinking how you would draw that line where if someone is moving in with someone, how do you prove that’s the case, what’s the level of connection before they should be able to do it.”

Well personally I don’t think criminal records should be private. They are all handed out in open court (except where suppressed). I actually think all convictions (except minor ones the clean slate law applies to) should be listed online in a searchable database.

The Dom Post reports:

A Wellington man watched in tears as Wellington City Council demolished his historic Owhiro Bay bach on Monday morning.

Duncan Mackay’s bach is one of five that have perched on the hill at Mestanes Bay, on the wild south coast of Wellington, near Red Rocks, for as long as 100 years.

He bought his Heritage New Zealand-listed Stevenson bach for $10,000 in March 2012, lived in it for two years, and was renovating it to live in and, one day, pass on to his 13-year-old daughter.

But on Friday, the council told him it was going to demolish the bach on Monday, claiming his $40,000 of renovations meant it was no longer entitled to be considered a heritage building.

On Monday morning, Mackay drove around the coast to see his bach being torn apart, the roof gone, men in high-vis jackets breaking down the interior.

“This is crushing me,” he said as he looked on, tears in his eyes.

“I wanted  to pass it down through the family … Now I’m homeless, I’m literally sleeping on a friend’s couch.”

You read this part of the story and you think the Council has acted appallingly. But you then read on:

Not much of the original materials of Stevenson’s bach remained, but Mackay said he had been in regular contact with Heritage NZ and was replacing everything so it looked “absolutely, totally the same”, down to its pine-green corrugated-iron exterior and the angle of the roof.

“I’ve done what I was told to do. I think this is council squashing the small guy and destroying a piece of south-coast heritage.”

But the council, which owns the land, said the work bore no resemblance to the heritage bach.

“He did have possession of a heritage bach on the site, and he demolished the heritage bach and now is illegally building a new bach on the site,” council spokesman Richard MacLean said.

“We are having it demolished because it’s on public land and we are the landowner, and he’s illegally building on public land…”

Mackay would not be compensated, MacLean confirmed.

The other Mestanes Bay bach owners, who had also made significant renovations, should not be concerned because the council still considered their properties “heritage baches”.

“They are still substantially original buildings ,” MacLean said. “He [Mackay] has demolished his bach, that’s what that big pile of broken wood is.”

He said Mackay was not homeless, as he lived elsewhere in Wellington. The bach was a building site and was uninhabitable anyway.

I’m not sure the Council is in the wrong here. There is a difference between renovation and replacement.

Stuff reports:

India has blocked hundreds of adult websites to prevent pornography becoming a social nuisance, a government official said on Monday, sparking a debate about censorship and freedom in the world’s largest democracy.

In India’s first big crackdown on Internet porn, service providers have been directed to block 857 websites, N N Kaul, a spokesman at the department of telecommunications, told Reuters.

“Free and open access to porn websites has been brought under check,” Kaul said.

“We don’t want them to become a social nuisance.”

Yeah, that will work. Idiots.

Last month, the Supreme Court refused to impose an outright ban after hearing a petition that said Internet porn fuelled sex crime. The court said individuals should be free to access such websites in private.

So the Government is ignoring the court.

Stats NZ reports:

The unemployment rate increased to 5.9 percent in the June 2015 quarter (up from 5.8 percent), Statistics New Zealand said today. At the same time, there were 7,000 more people employed over the quarter (up 0.3 percent).

“Even though employment grew over the quarter, population growth was greater, which resulted in a lower overall employment rate for New Zealand,” labour market and household statistics manager Diane Ramsay said.

“Despite lower quarterly growth, this is still the 11th consecutive quarter of employment growth, making it the second-longest period of growth since the period between 1992 and 1996,” Ms Ramsay said.

That’s now bad.

Over the year to June 2015, employment growth was still fairly strong (at 3 percent) with 69,000 more people employed. The manufacturing industry showed the strongest annual employment growth.

Who remembers the claims on a manufacturing crisis?

The changes are:

• Employment up 7,000 for the quarter and 68,000 for the year
• Unemployment up 2,000 for the quarter and 10,000 for the year
• Labour force up 10,000 for the quarter and up 79,000 for the year
• Manufacturing jobs up 10,000 for the quarter and 22,000 for the year!

Despite the increase in the unemployment rate NZ has gone from 13th= to 12= in the OECD. Our rate remains lower than Australia and Canada but higher than UK and US.