The NZ Initiative has released a useful report:

As the lack of affordable housing hits crisis levels in Auckland and Christchurch, increased workplace safety compliance is costing Kiwi homeowners more than $100 million a year, according to a new report released today from research institute The New Zealand Initiative.

A Matter of Balance: Regulating Safety reveals that a “falls from height” workplace safety campaign from WorkSafe New Zealand (part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE)) is adding thousands of dollars to the cost of building new homes and routine maintenance of existing homes, without proper justification.

“Workplace safety is a hugely important issue however further increasing the cost of undertaking routine maintenance and building new homes – which are already out of reach for many New Zealanders – through unnecessary regulation is a major public policy concern and should not continue,” says Dr Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director, The New Zealand Initiative.

The campaign particularly targets workplace falls of less than three metres – which potentially affects all single storey homes. Critically, no official cost-benefit analysis was carried out before the campaign was rolled out.

The new regulations also dramatically increase the cost of necessary home maintenance.

“A small-scale builder reported that the cost of complying with the WorkSafe New Zealand campaign turns a small $4,000 roof job into a $6,000 job,” says Hartwich.

“If half of New Zealand’s 1.8 million single storey dwellings need a new roof every 12 years at an additional cost of $2,000, the illustrative annual additional cost burden on householders of roofing alone is $150 million.”

These additional compliance costs may in fact induce some homeowners to further defer necessary maintenance work and take greater ‘do-it-yourself’ safety risks.

“While improving safety is an admirable goal for all of New Zealand, we need to ensure the right balance between improved safety and additional cost is maintained. The current regime is failing to ensure this. More lives could be saved elsewhere with the sums involved and the cost excesses are simply exacerbating affordability problems for new and existing homeowners,” says Hartwich.

Safety is an important goal, but if you believe in safety at all costs, then you’d advocate for a maximum speed limit of 30 kms/hr on all roads. It is about getting the balance right.

Richard Harmam writes at Politik:

The new Greens spokesperson line-up is notable for three things. First James Shaw has decided not be finance spokesman but to focus on climate change. Though he campaigned for the leadership saying the party needed to improve its economic credibility, he also said the main issue for the party was climate change.

Also a factor is that with the global Paris conference at the year end, this will be a high profile issue for the next six months, so I am sure he sees it as an opportunity to improve his profile.

And Julie Anne Genter has taken finance. Even within the Greens she is known as a policy wonk and having her in that position may further demonstrate how much out of his depth Labour’s Grant Robertson is as Labour’s finance spokesperson.

Ouch.

This is from the Herald.

I think we can find a better flag that the current design, and am pleased for the first time in our history we’ll get a vote on it. But I’ll only vote for a flag that is better – not for change for it’s own sake.

Of the 15 above, the ones I’d vote for above the current design are:

• 5 – Kyle Lockwood’s Silver Fern
• 10 – Silver Fern
• 11 – Silver Fern with Southern Cross

The Herald reports:

About 50 Chinese buyers packed a real estate agency office in Epsom, and snapped up 23 sections within minutes of release yesterday. …

Mr Law said all were either New Zealand citizens or permanent residents.

And:

Mr Law said just one of the 150 sections sold in the subdivision so far went to a foreigner – a Chinese national waiting for his permanent residence visa.

So not a foreign investor.

Five purchasers declined to be interviewed when approached by the Herald, and one said Labour’s claims and recent media reports had “turned Chinese into crooks”.

Labour’s data implied 30% of Auckland house sales are going to foreign investors from China,  because of their surname. If I were them, I’d be nervous about what the real data will show post October.

The Herald reports:

A plan to reveal the number of times agencies such as the police request and receive personal data from a range of companies has been applauded by Trade Me.

The auction website and other companies that hand over information – often without a warrant or the knowledge of the customer – could now be asked to provide a record of requests to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC), which will publish a record.

Lawyers, privacy advocates and companies have concerns about the growth in government requests for company records and personal data.

Privacy Commissioner John Edwards said businesses increasingly hold a large amount of personal information that can be useful to the government’s law enforcement and national security activities.

“Agencies such as the police, Inland Revenue, the Ministry of Social Development, and a host of others have powers to obtain information from corporations, about individuals, often without the knowledge of those involved,” Mr Edwards said in a speech to an annual gathering of New Zealand’s intelligence community.

“Transparency reporting, publishing reports of how often these requests or demands are made, and how many individuals are affected was initiated by Google, and others such as Facebook, Vodafone [and] Trade Me have followed suit.”

I’m a big fan of transparency reporting. Agencies generally have good reasons for their requests, but reporting on how many are made allows us to see if the numbers are growing – and if so, ask why.

StatsNZ reports:

The CPI increased 0.3 percent in the year to the June 2015 quarter, following a 0.1 percent increase in the year to the March 2015 quarter.

The prices of tradable goods and services (which face foreign competition) decreased 2.0 percent in the year, with lower prices for petrol (down 7.4 percent) and for international airfares (down 6.3 percent).

Non-tradable goods and services increased 2.0 percent, the smallest annual increase since the December 2001 quarter. The main contributor was cigarettes and tobacco prices (up 14 percent), influenced by the increase in excise duty in January 2015 – excluding cigarettes and tobacco, the CPI fell 0.1 percent in the year to the June 2015 quarter.

So if you are not a smoker, we’ve had basically no inflation at all. It means every dollar of your pay increase you get to keep, rather than have it gobbled up by increasing prices.

Of note is that seasonally adjusted electricity prices have been constant for the last 12 months.

Here’s a comparison of average annual price increases in six and a half years of National, compared to the last six and a half of Labour.

• Electricity 3.8% vs 8.6%
• Fruit & Vegetables 1.3% vs 4.6%
• Food 1.7% vs 3.6%
• Housing and Utilities 3.1% vs 6.1%
• All Goods & Services 1.8% vs 2.9%

The Herald reports:

New Zealand ranks well down on the OECD’s list of countries with the most hospital beds, but health officials say it’s nothing to be concerned about.

Meanwhile, the Health Ministry has extended its free flu immunisation programme until the end of August due to the season’s expected late peak.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures show New Zealand languishing at just 2.8 beds per 1000 people – the same as Ireland and United Kingdom – but well below leaders Japan, on 13.4, Korea, 10.3; Germany 8.3 and Australia 3.8.

But Labour’s health spokeswoman Annette King said while it could look concerning, it was also a positive. “The number of beds in hospitals has been decreasing over the years because … as technology and techniques have changed, the length of stay in hospital is reduced hugely. So the number [of beds] you need is reduced and so much more is done in the home.”

Yep. Number of beds is not a measure of healthcare.

Ministry of Health chief medical officer Don Mackie said hospital beds per capita was not a measure that by itself told people a lot about the quality of healthcare.

“Like many other comparable developed countries, New Zealand is moving to the modern trend of shorter in-patient stays and greater emphasis on care closer to home.

The number of beds is an input, not even an output let alone an outcome. We should focus on improving outcomes, not on whether we have more beds than the UK per capita.

The headline:

Govt aware it’s doing little to help child poverty: report

You’d see that and think it was referring to the recent Budget initiatives, and that they would not help.

A report has revealed the Government is aware its programmes have been doing very little to help children out of poverty.

Radio New Zealand reported the Government received advice showing its child poverty policies would do little in the short to medium term.

Now we see that it is merely saying they may not help in the short to medium term. Not totally surprising, as much poverty is generational, and it can take a generation to break certain cycles.

The advice came before a $25 increase in benefits for families was announced in this year’s budget.

The paper was written by the Ministry of Social Development in February 2013 in response to the Children Commissioner’s expert advisory group report on child poverty, Radio New Zealand reported.

It’s a paper which was written 30 or so months ago, before both the last two Budgets.

The paper stated the Government had a credible and wide-ranging programme to address poverty – but said in the short to medium term this was unlikely to result in a reduction in child deprivation.

So actually the paper said the Government is addressing poverty – the exact opposite of the headline. Just that the measures work over the long-term.

Green Party social development spokeswoman Jan Logie said the Government chose to hide the fact its policies weren’t going to solve poverty because it did not want to raise low wages or benefits.

Sigh – MPs who just spew rhetoric, and ignore reality. This Government did raise benefits – the only one to do so in 43 years. And the minimum wage has risen significantly in real after tax terms.

Stuff reports:

The real estate agency employee who leaked the “confidential” sales data behind Labour’s Chinese house buying claims has been fired.

Barfoot & Thompson managing director Peter Thompson said a member of staff had leaked the information to the media and political officials.

The staff member’s contract has been terminated.

This is a huge privacy breach. If I was a house buyer, I’d be appalled that details of my purchase had been given to media and politicians.

I hope someone affected complains to the Privacy Commissioner.

Marc Champion of Bloomberg writes:

What has Alexis Tsipras achieved for the Greek people?

Monday morning, after 14 hours of talks among the euro area’s finance ministers and an additional 17 hours among the group’s leaders, the Greek prime minister came away with a much worse deal than the one he just persuaded Greek voters to reject. Now he must sell it to his parliament and people.

It takes a special level of incompetence to reject a deal, urge your country to reject it, get them to reject it, and then sign up to a far worse deal. This is what happens when you elect people who are good at rhetoric, but crap at actually making difficult decisions.

Right now, however, it is Tsipras whom Greeks should blame. Consider where the country was a little more than a year ago, when his political party Syriza burst onto the scene by winning Greek elections to the European Parliament. The party argued that, were it not for the supine approach that the country’s then centre-right government was taking toward its creditors, Greece could end austerity measures, return to prosperity and keep the euro. That was not true, but it was attractive.

The equivalent of you can have your cake and eat it also.

They promised we can continue with high level of spending, not pay back our debts and stay in the Euro. They lied.

Times were still very tough for Greece in 2014. In April of that year, however, the country returned to international bond markets for the first time in four years, selling 3 billion euros worth of five-year securities at an interest rate of 4.95 percent. Unemployment, having hit a high of 27.5 percent in 2013, was falling. By April 2015, the latest available figure, the jobless rate was 25.6 percent.

Economic growth had also returned to positive territory, hitting 1.7 percent in the fourth quarter, a rate substantially higher than the 0.9 percent euro area average, according to Eurostat.

I’m not arguing here that all would have been rosy, were it not for Tsipras and Syriza. The euro area needed then, and still needs, to come to terms with writing off Greek debt. Yet it’s hard to call what has happened in Greece over the past year anything but a self-inflicted act of economic vandalism.

Yep.

Tsipras gambled with his country’s fortunes, betting that the rest of the euro area would be so fearful of creating a precedent for an exit that they would capitulate to his demands and write him a blank check. The strategy reached its apogee with his absurd July 5 referendum, in which he asked Greeks to vote against the latest bailout proposal, while again promising that this would not put Greece’s euro membership at risk. He has now capitulated, apparently aware that he has no mandate to leave the euro. And so his lie is exposed, together with its cost to the Greek people.

Greeks have ample reason to be mad at their euro area partners, but they should hold their own prime minister responsible for destroying their economy in a reckless political experiment. Regrettably, this is not over. As a result of the prime minister’s actions and Europe’s brutal response, Tsipras – – or a successor Greek government — may yet get a mandate to abandon the euro.

It is a lie that will cause immense hardship to many ordinary Greeks. I feel sorry for them.

And sadly things will now probably only get worse.

Iain Martin writes at Capx:

In exchange, for a further bailout and support of Greek banks, Greece will get some debt relief (with debt maturities being extended) once the Parliament has approved the package of tax rises and proposed privatisations.

As security, 50 billion Euros of Greek government assets will be ring fenced, with some sold off and some “reinvested”.

But are there really 50 billion Euros of proper state-owned assets in Greece, in any meaningful sense? And even if there are, who are the buyers for this stuff going to be when it comes to privatisation?

A key point – you need the assets to be there, and you need people wanting to buy them? Would you want to buy a Greek SOE?

Of course, there is almost always someone risk hungry prepared to buy, even in an emergency. That is capitalism. The seller with limited options and a poor record is not in a strong position, however, because anyone buying anything from the Greek government will only take the punt if the risk is minimised, which means them getting it very cheap. Again, that is how markets work. The smart person taking the risk seeks to insulate themselves by getting a fire sale price in the hope that their financial and management skills can unlock value, making them a profit eventually.

You don’t need to be a Marxist to work out where that leads politically in the case of the Greeks, after everything that has happened so far. It probably leads to populist anger in Greece about the country being flogged off cheap in a German-run auction. How popular is that going to be? And how easy will the other reforms be to implement against that backdrop, especially with a government dominated by the hard left, with some of its members out to smash the market system? Not easy, one suspects.

Buyers will be wary that a future Government may renationalise the assets without compensation. Also a risk that Greece may descend to mob rule, and the assets may be made inoperable.

The bottom line is they are unlikely to get the $50 billion they need from any asset sales.

What a disaster this crisis, and the Euro more broadly, has been for the Greek people from the start. There has been poor leadership by Angela Merkel and the Euro elite desperate to save their project, even if it means Greek pensioners weeping outside banks. Meanwhile, hysterical Europhiles have been so dedicated to the rackety EU that they are happy to let Greece “go” (one wonders where they want them to go?) while talking pompously about supposed solidarity. And then the Greeks were driven into the arms of the Marxist Syriza, its rise facilitated by the behaviour of the Euro elite. Now this bunch are together, going to resume a privatisation programme. Good luck. It’ll be a miracle if this deal holds more than a few months.

A year perhaps?

From Stuff.

Hard to think of a more hideous way to fly.

This seat design — called Economy Class Cabin Hexagon — can increase the number of passengers who can fit on a typical Boeing 767 by up to 80 fliers, depending on the existing layout.

That’s huge. But how many will book on such a plane? I guess some budget airlines might use it, but they already have very cheap airfares without you being crushed in like a sardine.

Stuff reports:

A worker at a food processing plant deliberately poured chemicals into his own boots, a judge has ruled.

The man’s ACC payments were halted after a ruling found the “only plausible” way the worker could have received serious chemical burns to his feet was if it was self-inflicted.

The man was a machine operator at the plant in 2012 when he suffered the burns, caused by ‘Glissen’, a commercial cleaning agent containing high levels of sodium hydroxide.

A judgment made by Judge Grant Powell last month stated it was the third time the man had suffered burns by Glissen.

The earlier incidents occurred in March and April, 2007. The second of these resulted in fifth degree burns and led to the amputation of the toes on his left foot as well as a long period off work, during which he was provided ACC cover. He returned to his job in November 2011.

So it seems he first poured chemicals onto himself in March 2007. Didn’t do enough of a job, so he did it again a month later and got ACC for four and a half years, and then did it a third time a few months after returning to work.

A long time since I’ve heard of fifth degree burns, as you often don’t survive them. The description is:

Fifth and sixth degree burns are most often diagnosed during an autopsy. The damage goes all the way to the bone and everything between the skin and the bone is destroyed. It is unlikely that a person would survive this type of injury but if a miracle occurred then amputation of the affected area would be necessary.

How could you do that, just to get off work?

Stuff reports:

Homicide detectives probing the death of baby Ihaka Stokes have interviewed at least 42 people as his aunty claims the death was a “terrible tragic accident”.

Police have spent 11 days investigating the 14-month-old’s death after he was taken to Christchurch Hospital with what they said were multiple blunt force fractures inflicted in a violent attack.

Family and friends farewelled Ihaka at an emotional funeral on Friday.

The following day, Marrisa Hunton, Ihaka’s aunty and the sister of his heavily pregnant mother Mikala Stokes, saidIhaka’s death was an accident.

“This little boy was not murdered he died in a terrible tragic accident,” Hunton wrote on Facebook.

So what was this freak accident that inflicted multiple fractures?

She went on to say the media were “out for a story” and did not care how it was portrayed “as long as it gains attention”.

“The important thing is that the family knows the truth.”

I’d say the important thing would have been keeping Ihaka alive and healthy.

UPDATE: Someone has been arrested for this “accident”. Good.

Stuff reports:

About $15,000 has been spent on swanky new digs for 56 lizards whose homes happened to be in the path of the Transmission Gully motorway.

Major earthworks are just months away from starting on the four-lane, 27-kilometre inland motorway between Porirua and Paekakariki, north of Wellington.

But before the diggers can rip in, the business consortium building the $850 million road has had to figure out what to do with the native reptiles and worms who call Transmission Gully home.

So we spent $15,000 on moving 56 geckos?

If the geckos were a unique species, and their loss would reduce our biodiversity, then moving them is desirable.

But if they were just 56 geckos out of several million we have in NZ, then isn’t this over the top?

All the species were considered “at-risk” but not endangered, he said.

What does at risk mean? The categories in NZ in order are:

1. Acutely Threatened – Nationally Critical
2. Acutely Threatened – Nationally Endangered
3. Acutely Threatened – Nationally Vulnerable
4. Chronically Threatened – Serious Decline
5. Chronically Threatened – Gradual Decline
6. At Risk – Range Restricted
7. At Risk – Sparse
8. Not Threatened

As I said it is a no brainer you move species when they are acutely threatened. Subject to cost also desirable for chronically threatened. But merely being at risk, I don’t think $15,000 on 57 geckos is a good use of money.

The Herald reports:

Principal agent James Law said Labour’s leaked figures that showed 40 per cent of homes sold at auction in Auckland over a three-month period went to people with Asian surnames was “about right”.

Mr Law said four out of 10 of the 350 who bought real estate through the company last year were of Chinese ethnicity.

“But what we found from our sales record was less than 10 per cent of them are actually overseas-based investors,” he said. “Most of them are citizens or residents who have lived here for years.”

Mr Law said it was “tradition” for Chinese people to buy real estate, and many made it their “first priority”.

Many regarded real estate as a safe investment and one that they could either make a profit on or hand down to their children.

“This explains the high number of Chinese buyers and investors, because many find their security in owning houses,” Mr Law said.

“In the same way, data on dairy business sales will show a high number of ethnic Indian buyers.”

I made this point yesterday on social media. I’d say over half of dairies are owned by people with Indian surnames, yet only 3.9% of NZers are Indian. So does that mean that our dairies are being purchased by people from Mumbai? No – it means different ethnicities have different purchasing priorities.

Now let us assume that 40% of buyers do have Chinese surnames. Of course a proportion of those will be foreign buyers. But it is 1% or 10% or 80%? There is a huge difference.

If the data is just 10%, will Labour then apologise for slurring the 90% who are Kiwis, just Kiwis with a Chinese sounding surnname?

The Herald reports:

A woman who was brutally beaten with a cricket bat and strangled while she lay unconscious has told a court her husband’s actions were her fault.

After the attack, the couple’s flatmate said he would call an ambulance but Daljit Singh told him to “let her die”.

The victim, who has name suppression, begged Justice Nicholas Davidson to release her partner of six years Singh so he could rejoin her and their two young children. …

Despite the severity of the assault, which took place nearly a year ago at their Sandringham home, the woman told the High Court at Auckland she would not have reported the incident to the police.

“The children often ask why they cannot talk to their father and I can’t bring myself to tell them he’s in prison …

for something I played a part in, at least that’s how I feel,” she said.

“I can’t throw away six years of marriage over one mistake.”

But Justice Davidson jailed Singh for three and a half years on charges of injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, assault with a weapon and threatening to kill.

So sad to see a victim blaming herself. She has no culpability at all. It sounds like she is lucky to be alive, and perhaps in time will realise a husband who will almost kill her, may also be a father who could kill hsi kids.

Defence counsel Martin Hislop accepted it was inevitable his client would be deported to India once a third of the sentence had been served.

Good – we are better off without him.

The  Guardian reports:

Labour will not vote against the government’s welfare bill and should not oppose limiting child tax credits to two children, the party’s interim leader, Harriet Harman, has said, provoking a storm of criticism including from some its leadership candidates.

She said Labour should also not oppose certain conditions in the planned cap on household welfare benefits.

The party simply could not tell the public they were wrong after two general election defeats in a row, she said, adding it had been defeated because it had not been trusted on the economy or benefits.

Will NZ Labour likewise listen to the public? They’re still vowing to repeal the three strikes law.

Stuff reports:

Greece won conditional agreement to receive a possible €86 billion (NZ$141.7 billion) over three years. As part of the deal, euro zone finance ministers will discuss on Monday (Tuesday NZT) how to keep Greece financed during the time it will need to agree a bailout, but none of the options appear easy, officials said.

Athens must meet a tight timetable for enacting unpopular reforms of value added tax, pensions, budget cuts, bankruptcy rules and an EU banking law that could be used to make big depositors take losses.

Wow that Marxist Government really cut a good deal. Six months of lecturing Europe really paid off.

Personally I’m sceptical that the Greek economy can ever exist within the Euro. The corruption, entitlements and non payment of taxes seems too entrenched. I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect they will need a 4th bailout at some stage.

It would have been harsh in the short-term, but they actually need to leave the Euro, and have their own currency. This would be worth little, but would  allow the currency to reflect the economy that stands behind it.

Stuff reports:

Miles said three other journalists working for mainstream media had said they knew the identity of the source of the Slater emails.

They won’t reveal the source, because it would destroy the lie that it was someone with no political involvement. It was a criminal act, motivated by politics.

Stuff reports:

The war on plastic bags is now a global struggle, and New Zealand should join it.

This week a proposal for a compulsory levy on plastic shopping bags will be debated at the Local Government New Zealand conference. In fact, the time for debate is over. Now we need action.

Plastic bag levies, or even outright bans, are now common throughout the world, because bags are an environmental menace. They break down slowly and so they continue to blight the landscape and kill sea life and animals for many years.  

It has been estimated that the world uses about a trillion single-use plastic bags each year. Millions end up in the ocean where they kill sea life and birds, including endangered species. Cattle deaths from swallowing bags are a problem from Texas to India to Africa. The bags clog drains and cause floods. Light plastic bags can blow for hundreds of kilometres and blight the rural landscape.

Taxes on plastic bags have proved surprisingly effective, as is shown by a major 2014 report for the American Earth Policy Institute.  Denmark brought in its levy more than 20 years ago, and within a year usage had dropped 60 per cent. Ireland’s 2002 levy is  one of the most celebrated: it reduced the average use from 328 bags per consumer, the Institute reported, to 21. 

There can be a case for taxing something, if it has external effects which impose a cost of society as a whole – hence alcohol and cigarette taxes.

However my starting point is always that any new tax must not be used to increase the overall level of taxation (which is too high). So if you was a tax on plastic bags, then I want income or company tax reduced by the same amount that tax would bring in.

Plastic bags do have a negative impact on the environment, so there can be a case for a tax on them. This is preferable to a ban which is highly undesirable. How undesirable – well Eric Crampton estimates it would kill 20 New Zealanders a year.

But be careful of some studies claiming they have led to a big fall in bags used. These may be studies where people self-report use. Sales data is more accurate. The TPA at the Hill reports:

“City revenue figures, meanwhile, show no continuing decrease in the use of disposable bags. In fact, bag tax collections have proven remarkably stable since the nickel-per-bag fee debuted in January 2010,” the report added.

At the time the tax was imposed, D.C. estimated that they would collect $1.05 million in revenues in 2013. The actual haul – more than $2 million. Year-over-year, revenues even increased… by the equivalent of 200,000 bags.

But don’t expect the proponents of the tax to throw in the towel. Brian Van Wye, who works at the D.C. Environmental Department, still denies that the tax is meant to bloat the government’s balance sheet, insisting that the “objective is to change behavior.”

Using that logic, the next step may be for D.C. to double down. After all, if a $0.05 tax isn’t working, perhaps they can increase the per bag fee to $0.10 or $0.25. Since tax-and-spend liberals don’t think their logic is to blame, they have one recourse to this failing policy – more taxes.

That is my fear. That is why any new tax should be offset by tax cuts elsewhere. That reduces the incentive for people to use this as just another way to tax families and businesses more.

The Guardian also reports:

In Northern Ireland, which introduced a compulsory 5p charge on plastic bags last year, there was a 71% drop in consumption. In England, which has yet to implement such a rule, usage rose by 5%. Meanwhile, Wales, which brought in charges two years ago, saw its similarly precipitous fall go into reverse, with a rise of nearly a fifth. It seems the immediate change in behaviour reaped by the new charges is short-lived and it doesn’t take long for old habits to re-emerge.

So it is not actually clear that a tax at such a low level has a significant long-lasting behavioural change.

That said I’m not against such a tax, so long as other taxes are reduced to compensate.

Stuff reports:

Iran and six major world powers reached a nuclear deal on Tuesday, capping more than a decade of negotiations with an agreement that could transform the Middle East.

US President Barack Obama hailed a step towards a “more hopeful world” and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said it proved that “constructive engagement works”. But Israel pledged to do what it could to halt what it called an “historic surrender”.

I’m a supporter of the deal. It has teeth in it which allows sanctions to resume quickly if Iran doesn’t abide by it.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told reporters that the deal was about more than just the nuclear issue:

“The big prize here is that, as Iran comes out of the isolation of the last decades and is much more engaged with Western countries, Iranians hopefully begin to travel in larger numbers again, Western companies are able to invest and trade with Iran, there is an opportunity for an opening now.”

The Iranian Government does many bad things, especially its support of some Middle Eastern terror groups. But this gives an opportunity for Iran to rejoin the international community. The opportunity may end up being wasted, but it is worth pursuing.

The deal:

– ENRICHMENT: Iran will reduce the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges it has from almost 20,000 to 6104, and reduce the number of those in use from some 10,000 to about half that. Those limits will be in place for 10 years, then gradually relaxed over the next three. Iran also commits to using only its current models, rather than more advanced centrifuges it had wanted to install. Centrifuges spin uranium to concentrate it into levels that can range from reactor fuel to the fissile core of a nuclear weapon.

– STOCKPILE: Iran has already rid itself of stockpiled uranium that was enriched to one step from weapons-grade material. It is now committed to reducing its remaining stockpile – less-enriched uranium that is harder to use for nuclear arms – from about five tons to 300 kilograms (less than 700 pounds) for 15 years. US officials say that at this level it would take Iran at least a year to enrich enough uranium for a nuclear weapon.

– UNDERGROUND SITE: Iran committed to convert its Fordo enrichment site – dug deep into a mountainside and thought impervious to air attack – into a research center. The site will still house centrifuges but they will make medical isotopes instead of enriching uranium, and there will be less than a tenth as many of them as there originally were.

– TRANSPARENCY: Iran will give more access to its nuclear program to the UN nuclear agency. If that agency identifies a suspicious site, an arbitration panel with a Western majority will decide whether Iran has to give the agency access within 24 days. All sites, including military ones, may be inspected if the agency has solid evidence of undeclared nuclear activity.

– REACTORS AND REPROCESSING: Iran must redesign its nearly built reactor at Arak so it can’t produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

– SANCTIONS: All US and European Union nuclear-related sanctions will be suspended after experts have verified that Iran is hewing to its commitments. If at any time Iran fails to fulfill its obligations, those sanctions are supposed to snap back into place. An arms embargo will stand for five years and restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile programmes for eight. Iran will get some access to currently restricted sensitive technologies.

The transparency requirement is the key part to me, with the ability for sanctions to resume.

This is not a perfect deal, but I think it is a lot better than the alternative.

Richard Harman at Politik reports:

Labour would exempt Australians from any restrictions it might put on foreign buyers of New Zealand real estate.

In a move that raises questions about the reasons for appearing to single out Chinese residents, Housing spokesman, Phil Twyford says the Australian exemption is because of the Closer Economic Relationship with Australia. …

But back in the Labour Party Mr Twyford has been continuing to assert that Labour would ban all foreign buyers.

He repeated this claim in a piece he wrote for the Herald. 

But he told POLITIK that “sometimes simplicity is the enemy of nuance.”

“Our policy is to ban all foreign buyers with the following exceptions —“If you intend to come here and settle.”

“If you build new.

“Australians – in the spirit of CER, given that they exempt Kiwis from their restrictions on offshore speculators.”

This tells us two things. The first is you can’t trust an article written by Phil Twyford. Sure in a live interview you may need to go for simplicity, but in a written op-ed for a newspaper, it is disgraceful to lie about your own policy.

But assuming he has told the truth to Harman, he has killedhis own policy. Stephen Franks explained why in 2013:

But wait – another Article (the most favoured nation clause) commits New Zealand not to pass law that discriminates against Chinese investors in comparison with other overseas investors (such as Australians).

Article 139 requires that investors of [China] be treated no less favourably than investors of any third country [Australia] “with respect to admission, expansion, management, conduct, operation, maintenance, use, enjoyment and disposal” of investments.

So Chinese would-be  investors do not get direct rights to insist on investor equality but they can’t be treated worse than Australians.

Labour has said Australians would still be allowed to buy residential property under their policy. This would breach Article 139.

So Labour’s policy is a soundbite, not an actual policy that could be implemented.