Rob Salmond wrote in the SST:

After I published Labour’s method online, Keith Ng, Tze Ming Mok, and Chuan-Zheng Lee – all skilled analysts, all otherwise critical on this topic – agreed the name-based ethnicity analysis was statistically sound, robust, and accurate.

Of course, they and others retained other criticisms of our work, relating to the steps after the main data analysis. I’ve engaged with them online through the last week, addressing their concerns and presenting additional data to support Labour’s conclusions.

To say Keith is not happy with how Rob describes his views is putting it lightly. He blogs:

Hey Rob, don’t put the words “statistically sound, robust, and accurate” into our mouths to describe your work. …

If you need clarification, let me restate it: The method is fine, the data is broken, and those problems render it unscientific and utterly useless. Not sound. Not robust. Not accurate.

Salmond also said:

Having said that, one group I think did not overreact – despite their strongly critical stance – was the New Zealand Chinese community, including Keith, Tze Ming, and Chuan-Zheng. Their criticism was less about Labour’s intentions, and more about the impact of these revelations on ethnically Chinese New Zealanders.

Ng responds:

Thanks for the flattery, but I was very critical of Labour intentions and I thought I was bloody clear about it.

I said that Phil Twyford was knowingly “straight-up scapegoating” Chinese New Zealanders and offshore Chinese alike and “fueling racial division in this country”. I said it was “cynical, reckless dogwhistling“.

What part of this was ambiguous for you??? Did you think I meant “cynical, reckless, but ultimately well-intentioned dogwhistling”?

Even after a week where Labour has been trying to take the “reverse racism” highground, trying to pretend that we didn’t blame Labour is a new delusional high, Rob.

I should point out that both Keith and Rob worked for Helen Clark. They are former colleagues. This makes his condemnation even the more remarkable.

Please do not mistake me for thinking that this is well-intentioned. This is a cynical attempt to bamboozle the media and the public by hiding your utter lack of evidence behind fancy jargon. It’s a travesty and a sad excuse for analysis. You ought to be ashamed, Rob.

Rob is so determined to defend it, I can only imagine that he actually thought up the whole idea.

Also, Sunday-Star Times: These claims Rob made about me are incorrect and defamatory. Please issue an correction in your next issue.

One former Clark staffer claiming another former (and effectively current) staffer has defamed him. Not sure I can ever recall this occuring before.

Stuff reports:

French President Francois Hollande has called for the creation of a eurozone government and for citizens to renew their faith in the European project, which has been weakened by the Greek crisis.

Reviving an idea originally put forward by former European Commission chief Jacques Delors, Mr Hollande proposed “a government of the eurozone [with] a specific budget as well as a parliament to ensure its democratic control”.

If you want to keep the monetary union of the Euro, then you need fiscal union also. Greece has shown you can’t have a country in monetary union that doesn’t follow the same basic fiscal policy as the rest of the union.

But I can’t see national governments giving up fiscal policy control.

The Australian Speaker that is.

News.com.au reports:

The hefty travel bill for the member for the Northern Beaches electorate of Mackellar does not include two extra charter flights to Young for another fundraiser — just days after her $5227 Geelong helicopter trip — and Nowra for two seniors forums.

A Daily Telegraph analysis of the speaker, who has rapidly lost the confidence of the government front bench, has revealed the enormous expenses the politician costs Australians.

It has also been revealed Mrs Bishop’s trip to Young was just five days after she racked up $5227 for an 80km luxury helicopter trip between Melbourne and Geelong for a party fundraiser.

It can be revealed that in 2014 Mrs Bishop claimed;

●$309,581.99 in overseas trips

●$47,086.14 in domestic trips

●$32,471.12 in limousine travel

●$350,909.63 in office costs

The office costs should not be included, but the total travel costs are staggering – and spending $5,000 to travel 80 kms is indefensible.

As a comparison, The NZ Speaker had just $51,160 in overseas travel costs last year.

His NZ air travel costs were $33,704 and NZ surface travel costs just $8,389. So a total of around $90,000 compared to almost $400,000 by the Australian Speaker.

Victoria Young writes at NBR (where she was a reporter, and is now on her OE):

When I first read the article, I was enraged at the party I voted for and felt frustration toward the journalist, who is a person I respect.

So Young voted Labour in 2014.

I am a born and bred New Zealander, and for the first time in my life I doubted whether the society in which I grew up actually wanted me.  

Why? Because my last name sounds as if it could be Chinese. 

Labour’s PR stunt will have made many NZers feel this way.

But Phil Twyford, by releasing this data in this way, has made me uncertain about how welcome we almond-eyed black-haired folk are. 

Words cannot encapsulate the unsettling feeling that perhaps the country you love and adore, and is your only home, doesn’t actually want you, or at least views you as the cause of a major social problem. 

As you’re buying up 40% of the homes!

This behaviour, from a senior politician, has planted doubt in my mind. It has made me wonder how many out there agree that the Chinese are the problem but won’t say it out loud.  

I don’t own a home but my boyfriend (who just so you know was born in the US but is Taiwanese and a New Zealand citizen) put a deposit on a yet-to-be built apartment before we left for our UK OE. 

Unfortunately, the developer raised the price and so my boyfriend cancelled, ironically a victim of the rising Auckland house price inflation we people with Chinese sounding last names are said to be the cause of. 

When we do come home with our hard-earned pounds, euros and dollars, after exploring the world as Kiwis do, we will want to buy a home. 

Do we dare show our yellow faces at auctions or open homes?

No way. 

Thanks, Labour.

Well said.

Another Chinese NZer with a media background also writes in the Herald:

The Labour Party’s message to the Chinese people is clear. We are not racist. We just don’t want people with Chinese sounding names voting for Labour.

Mission accomplished.

The Labour Party has yet to provide examples of Kiwi property sellers rejecting an above market price for a house from people with Chinese sounding names in favour of a lower price made by a struggling Kiwi family.

A useful reminder, than when you restrict buyers, you reduce the value for sellers.

In the 1930s in Europe similar debate also began with a list of names. It was a list of names which did not sound like proper German names. The names on this list were also viewed as the problem in denying hard-working Germans their rightful share of business and property ownership. In the 1990s Slobadan Milosovic’s minions no doubt had a similar list of names.

The Labour Party’s targeting of people with Chinese sounding names is of course justified as being in the national interest, expressed through democratic means with the socialist agenda of indoctrinating Kiwis into believing that home ownership is their manifest destiny, an inalienable right. But Labour’s approach is clearly the continuation of nationalist socialist democratic politics by other means.

Carrying on with Little and Tywford’s logic, which seems to have adopted the xenophobic fear-mongering tactics of New Zealand First, lists of other ethnic names could also be used to generate national debates on other topics.

Lists of Muslim sounding names buying property could be used to generate debate on possible terrorist activity in specific suburbs. Lists of Maori and Pacific Island names could be used to generate debate on credit risk and propensity to commit crime. By the Labour Party’s logic, none of this would be racist. It would merely be a means to the ends of generating a national debate.

Harsh but not unfair.

We must respond to Labour’s call to arms by attacking their centre of gravity- at the polling booths at the next election. Spread this message through the bamboo networks. Vote strategically in the next election because a vote for Labour is a vote for second class status in a country we are proud to call home.

I consider myself a New Zealand patriot. I have worked for the New Zealand Army, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and the New Zealand Stock Exchange. But because I have a Chinese sounding name, Labour views me as part of a problem for which it has a solution in mind. But of course it’s still not racism.

But people with Chinese sounding names do not have to fight alone. We welcome people with Korean, Indian, Muslim, Pacific Islander, Maori sounding names to stand with us at the next election. Vote strategically against the new Labour Party- the party with nationalist, socialist democratic agendas.

I wonder at what point Labour might admit they made a mistake.

The Herald reports:

That may have changed after a New York Times report, in which Cosby’s own words – not those of his alleged victims – seem to lend even more credence to the portrait painted by dozens of women who steadfastly maintain that beneath Cosby’s charming exterior lies a devious sexual predator.

The Times reported that Cosby said he used money, multiple prescriptions for sedatives and calculated manipulation to seduce at least five women.

If you are sedating them, then it is rape not seduction.

By John Stringer

The Herald editorial:

Teachers’ unions always insist they are professional bodies serving the interests of education, not just their members.

How disappointing, therefore, to discover the Post Primary Teachers’ Association’s secondary principals’ council has suggested schools limit the number of pupils admitted to their new “trades academies” so as not to put staffing positions at risk.

Trades academies — technical courses, as they were — have been reintroduced to schools for 15- and 16-year-old students who do not want to take academic subjects much further and can get NCEA credits in subjects of more use to their employment prospects.

The courses are funded from an account for all industry training providers and the funding of schools is reduced accordingly.

The PPTA principals have warned schools that “depending on how many you enrol (in trades academies), the changes would also be likely to reduce the number of salary units, middle management and possibly the number of senior management allowances the school would receive”.

Their concern is understandable to a degree. It seem fair that salary units would be reduced since the technical classes are being funded from another source, but with the total number of pupils in the school remaining the same, management positions should not be reduced. A professional response, though, would not make the pupils suffer.

Unfortunately, that is what will happen if principals follow the advice of the PPTA to cap admissions to trades academies. One of them in our story today admits, “It doesn’t make me feel very good at all.” Yet she is following the advice, reducing opportunities for students in her school.

The purpose of schools is to give students an education, not to ensure there is a certain level of salary units and managements jobs.

I didn’t think it would take long for Donald Trump to implode, but this was even quicker than I expected.

Trump said John McCain wasn’t really a war hero because he got captured.

There are few things that unite Americans, but those who serve in the military is one of those – and especially those wounded doing so.

Trump has never served at all. McCain was a bombing pilot in the Vietnam War and after being shot down spent five and a half years as a POW. He actually could have got released quite early on as his father was an admiral and the North Vietnamese wanted to appear merciful for propaganda. McCain refused until every POW captured before him was also released.

During his 66 months in captivity he lost 50 pounds, had his hair turn white, was beaten constantly and spent two years in solitary confinement. To this day he can’t lift his arms above his heads.

To have Trump criticise McCain as not being a hero because he got captured goes beyond offensive.

When Hillary Clinton becomes President, she should send a thank you card to Trump. Interestingly she attended one of his weddings, so maybe he is a plant from her!

Stuff reports:

Plastic shopping bags will now be recyclable under $1.2 million government project. 

Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith announced on Saturday the government is partnering with the retail sector and packaging industry to allow recycling of thousands of tonnes of plastics like shopping bags that currently cannot be recycled.

“The problem is that soft plastics like shopping bags, bread bags, frozen food bags and food wrap are not accepted by kerbside recycling services and cannot currently be recycled in New Zealand. We are investing in a new drop-off recycling service at stores and new recycling infrastructure that will enable soft plastics to be re-used,” Smith said.

That’s way preferable to banning them.

The initiative will be funded through a $700,000 grant to the Packaging Forum and a $510,000 grant to Astron Plastics Group from the Government’s Waste Minimisation Fund.

The Packaging Forum grant will part fund a trial of the new recycling service at The Warehouse, Pak ‘n’ Save, New World and Countdown stores across Auckland.

A new dry-cleaning facility in Auckland will have the capacity to recycle 2000 tonnes of soft plastics and will reduce the requirement to import new “plastic polymers,” Smith said.

“This approach has proved successful in Australia through the Coles Group and saved thousands of tonnes of plastic going to landfill. The longer-term objective of this initiative would be for 70 per cent of New Zealanders to have access to a drop-off facility for soft plastics within 20 kilometres of their home.”

“This is a more sensible approach than a ban or a compulsory levy on just plastic shopping bags. These bags make up only 0.2 per cent of waste going to landfill, and only 10 per cent of plastic waste. Nor can a ban or a compulsory levy be justified when plastic shopping bags only make up 1.5 per cent of the litter items in nationwide litter surveys,” Smith said.

New Zealanders use over 1.6 billion plastic bags in the home every year, according to Lyn Mayes, manager of the Public Place Recycling Scheme which will manage the project. 

The number of plastic bags we acquire from supermarkets tends to be exactly equal to the number we use to wrap up the trash. They’re very useful.

I’ve blogged at Curia the results of the latest One News Colmar Brunton poll.

A 1% lift for Labour is statistically insignificant, so there week of headlines on blaming the Chinese for Auckland house prices has come to nought.

Some journalists were saying this could be Labour’s Orewa. The week after Don Brash’s Orewa speech saw National go up 17% in the polls, not 1%.

Here’s a comparison of the One News poll with previous ones:

Both National and Labour are polling at much the same level as both 3 months ago and 3 years ago. If you go back to nine years ago (when Labour were in their third term), the opposition party was 2% ahead of the Government, not 15% below.

As for Preferred PM, Ket is at much the same level Clark was at nine years ago. But Little is polling worse than David Shearer three years ago and Don Brash nine years ago.

The Telegraph reports:

Lawyers at GMB and Unite are looking into whether Conservative plans to ban all strikes not backed by 40 per cent of members break European Union laws.

It comes amid fury that the Tories are using their newfound majority to launch a “perfect storm on the Left” to undermine the union movement and lock Labour out of power for a decade.

Labour’s most important source of funding will be challenged within days as the Conservatives unveil plans to reform how trade unions give money to parties.

Stuff reports:

Police are hunting a Wellington man facing drugs charges who skipped bail and fled the country ahead of trial. …

Morahan would not have been stopped at the border as travel alerts and passport confiscation orders were not automatically placed on bail applicants.

Such restrictions were considered on a case-by-case basis, taking the seriousness of their alleged crimes into account, Arnerich said.

Maybe it should be automatic?

The Herald reports:

A picture tweeted by a police helicopter team showing comedian Michael McIntyre standing in a London street is being investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office for a possible breach of data protection laws.

The photo, which was taken with a surveillance camera, was posted with the caption: “Whilst on tasking in central London this morning we spotted a certain energetic funny man… Can you guess who?”

Appalling judgment. The cameras are meant to be for detecting and even preventing crime – not posting intrusive photos of celebrities to Twitter. Very creepy.

Stuff reports:

Andrew Little has launched his first policy since becoming leader, proposing changes to the way businesses pay tax.

Flexible tax for business would introduce a pay as you earn element to company tax. Labour also wanted to double the threshold at which businesses are required to pay provisional tax to $5000 and abolish late payment penalties.

The policy is the first the party has announced since the 2014 election. The scheme is voluntary,  and Labour has presented the plan as one open for consultation.

Provisional tax is a plan and I welcome Labour looking at a PAYE scheme for businesses. My Xero accounting package gives me monthly accounts which are accurate. I could easily pay income tax on quarterly profits rather than pay based on my previous year’s profitability which can be very different.

However Labour’s idea is far from a new one. The Government announced a consultation on it four months ago!

In March, Revenue Minister Todd McClay revealed a consultation paper from Inland Revenue which raised the idea of a business PAYE.

And they’re not even 2nd with the idea!

Earlier this week, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters signalled a strikingly similar policy for business tax.

“In the interests of New Zealand we ask the Government to support a much needed change to an oppressive business tax that strangles small businesses especially,” Peters said on Wednesday.

But third is better than not supporting it at all.

Acting Finance Minister Steven Joyce said Labour had simply “cut and paste” the Government’s position.

“Labour announced today it was launching a discussion document on changes to provisional tax for businesses. However it seems to have overlooked that the Government launched its own discussion document containing almost identical proposals back in March,” Joyce said.

“These in turn were based on National Party policy at the last election.”

But again regardless of it not being a new idea, it is still good to see Labour hopefully embracing a policy which will make it easier for businesses.

The Herald reports:

Labour leader Andrew Little has indicated his party has changed its position and now backs controversial 90-day trial periods for new employees.

Great if true.

Speaking after a business breakfast this morning, Mr Little was asked about the 90-day trials, and he said Labour’s policy was to add a “fairness requirement”.

“The principle thing is, on the 90-day trial thing, every business owner I talk to about having to give feedback to someone under a trial, they all say, ‘Yeah, but I do that already’.

“So there won’t be any new onerous obligation in that regard. But it will make it fair and we want to write that into the law.”

Asked if his comments meant that the trial periods – previously opposed by Labour – would remain in a Government under his leadership, he said they would.

“We wouldn’t be talking about making the 90-day trial period fairer if we were going to get rid of it…the 90-day trail thing is there, we want to make it fair.”

Now what is crucial is what will be in this fairness requirement? If it is a requirement to follow the same process as for staff outside the 90 day period, then it is effectively abolishing the 90 day period.

If it is merely a requirement to give feedback to staff during the 90 day period, then that is a genuine change of policy – and one to be welcomed.

Stuff reports:

CTU president Helen Kelly called for clarification.

“Making it fairer gets rid of it, right? He needs to clarify that,” Kelly said.

“We would expect them to effectively get rid of them by making unfair dismissals unlawful.”

Kelly said the 90-day trial periods allowed workers to be dismissed for reasons which would otherwise not be fair, without giving the worker the option of taking a personal grievance claim.

If Labour introduced “just cause” provisions to the trials to allow personal grievances, the CTU could accept that, as this returned to the earlier rules in existing laws covering probationary periods.

Helen Kelly is saying that if you make them “fair” then you are effectively getting rid of them.

So until Labour actually comes up with a explicit policy, we simply don’t know. For now it might just be trying to say one thing to employers and another to unions, and hoping no one notices they are different.

But if it is a genuine change of policy, then it is a good sign for Labour. They’re running a two year consultation on the future of work, and beyond doubt the message they will be getting back is that work in 2015 is massively changed from the 1970s and work arrangements need to be more flexible to reflect that. If they spend two years onsulting and then come up with the exact same policy as in 2011 and 2014 – well it will look like a farce.

Stuff reports:

Dr Michael Naylor, a senior lecturer in finance and insurance with Massey University’s School of Economics and Finance, said the proposals were weak and did not solve many of the problems affecting Cantabrians.

Other changes under the proposal include contents insurance being left to private insurers and earthquake land cover only applying to situations where homes could not be rebuilt on their original site and owners were forced to buy elsewhere.

“While these reforms are sensible, they are unimaginative and go nowhere near far enough,” Naylor said.

“Given the multiple problems of the dual insurer model exposed during the Christchurch rebuild, the Treasury needs to be bolder and to rethink the purpose of EQC, including the possibility of focusing on offering reinsurance cover to private insurers.”

He said EQC could be replaced if insurers were required by law to hold “excess-of-loss reinsurance”, which involved a large worldwide reinsurer agreeing to pay all losses above an agreed sum in the event of another disaster.

I agree, and have said this previously. The changes are good, but they do not go far enough. It is very clear that the huge delays in paying out claims have been because of needing both EQC and the private insurer to agree. The delays here have not happened in any other country.

Turning EQC into a reinsurer, is a model that would get rid of these delays in future.

First let’s deal with the headline of the story:

Has the leak worked? Poll boost for Labour

The headline writer should be shot.

Labour has lifted by six points to its highest level since March 2014 in the Roy Morgan Poll.

Labour is up to 32 per cent in the poll – up six points from a fortnight ago while National was down six points to 43 per cent support.

However, the impact of Labour’s analysis of leaked Auckland real estate data remains unclear.

The poll of 886 voters began on June 29 and ended the day after Labour released that data on July 11.

So 90% of the poll was before the release. So the headline is trying to manufacture a story.

Onto the rest of the story:

The Herald revealed today that former Maori members’ chairman Shane Te Pou has written to the party demanding his personal data be removed from Labour’s database of home buyers, which it claims is the same information leaked from Barfoot & Thompson.

Te Pou cited the Privacy Act in the letter after being told by the estate agency that the purchase of his family’s house was likely among those used to bolster statistics purporting to show people in China were buying up New Zealand houses.

In revealing the statistics, Labour’s housing spokesman Phil Twyford tweeted: “People of Chinese descent bought 39.5% of houses sold by major (Auckland) real estate firm. This is foreign money.”

Te Pou is married to Annie Du, who is of Chinese ethnicity. He told the Herald his wife’s name was used to buy the family home during the period covered by Barfoot & Thompson sales data, obtained by Labour.

Te Pou wrote: “I am Maori. My wife is of Chinese descent. My money is not foreign.”

If I had purchased a house in Auckland, I’d be appalled that a political party had got hold of the data without permission.

NZ is ranked 17th with a score of 5.2 out of 7. We’ve improved every year since 2011/12.

The top 10 are:

1. Switzerland
2. Singapore
3. US
4. Finland
5. Germany
6. Japan
7. Hong Kong
8. Netherlands
9. UK
10. Sweden

More interesting than the overall ranking, are the rankings on each component for New Zealand.

Our ranks for the 12 pillars are:

1. Institutions 1st
2. Infrastructure 29th
3. Macroeconomic environment 25th
4. Health and primary education 4th
5. Higher education and training 9th
6. Goods market efficiency 6th
7. Labour market efficiency 6th
8. Financial market development 3rd
9. Technological readiness 23rd
10. Market Size 62nd
11. Business sophistication 24th
12. Innovation 23rd

And some of the individual areas where we were ranked first (or 1st equal) in the world:

• (non) diversion of public funds
• Irregular payments and bribes
• Judicial Independence
• Ethical behaviour of firms
• Efficacy of corporate boards
• Strength of investor protection
• Inflation
• HIV prevalence
• No procedures to start a business
• No days to start a business
• Agricultural policy costs
• Redundancy costs
• Reliance on professional management
• Legal Rights Index

A reader asked what would happen if Parliament was hit by an earthquake on Opening Day when all MPs and the Governor-General were present, and died.

I know the Civil Defence plan is to move it to Devonport Naval Base. But who would be the Government?

My guess is that the unsucessful List candidates would automatically become MPs to replace the dead List MPs. They would have to form a Government until the 71 by-elections could be held. So who would form the Government if this did happen?

Greens

15 DAVIDSON, Marama Mere-Ana
16 COATES, Robert Barry Hobson
17 HART, John Stuart
18 KENNEDY, David John
19 ELLEY, Jeanette Susan
20 McDONALD, Jack Baxter
21 MOORHOUSE, David Peter
22 ROTMANN, Sea
23 LECKINGER, Richard John
24 PERINPANAYAGAM, Umesh
25 RUTHVEN, Susanne Marie
26 MOORE, Teresa Janet
27 LANGSBURY, Dora Roimata
28 WOODLEY, Tane Hohepa

Labour

15 STREET, Maryan
17 MACKEY, Moana Lynore
21 HUO, Raymond
23 RADHAKRISHNAN, Priyanca
25 JONES, Rachel Anne

Maori Party

3 McKENZIE, Christopher Owen

National

52 PUGH, Maureen Helena
53 TURNER-TUPOU, Fia Taemanu
63 WALFORD, Wayne Douglas
64 BROWN, Simeon Peter
65 WALKER, Hamish
66 HOLDEN, Lewis
67 VARLEY, Karl Daniel
68 PENK, Christopher Aidan
69 COOPER, Linda Ann
70 O’DWYER, Letitia Marie
71 BRIDGES, Mark
72 SOKRATOV, Boris
73 EVETTS, Matthew Zane
74 O’FALLON, Carolyn Elisabeth
75 LITTLEWOOD, Charlotte

NZ First

13 PARORO, Mataroa
14 RUDZKI, Romuald Edward John
15 REEVES, Jon Blaiklock
16 LOLE-TAYLOR, Asenati
17 CATCHPOLE, Brent Stanley
18 ABRAHAM, George
19 DOLMAN, Raymond
20 BARR, Hugh
21 DEGIA-PALA, Anne
22 CAMPBELL, Steven Robert
23 PERRY, Edwin Jock

So the temporary Parliament would be:

National 15
Greens 14
NZ First 11
Labour 5
Maori Party 1

You’d need 24 votes to govern, so NZ First would hold the balance of power!

David Cameron must now be seriously thinking of reneging on his vow not to seek a third term. The Telegraph reports:

Mr Corbyn, who was a last minute entry into the contest, now looks set for victory and has taken a “commanding position” ahead of his rivals Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall.