Thomas Lumley (A Professor of Stats) writes at Stats Chat:

So, there is fairly good evidence that people of Chinese ethnicity are buying houses in Auckland at a higher rate than their proportion of the population.

The Labour claim extends this by saying that many of the buyers must be foreign. The data say nothing one way or the other about this, and it’s not obvious that it’s true. More precisely, since the existence of foreign investors is not really in doubt, it’s not obvious how far it’s true. The simple numbers don’t imply much, because relatively few people are housing buyers: for example, house buyers named “Wang” in the data set are less than 4% of Auckland residents named “Wang.” There are at least three other competing explanations, and probably more.

First, recent migrants are more likely to buy houses. I bought a house three years ago. I hadn’t previously bought one in Auckland. I bought it because I had moved to Auckland and I wanted somewhere to live. Consistent with this explanation, people with Korean and Indian names, while not over-represented to the same extent are also more likely to be buying than selling houses, by about the same ratio as Chinese.

Second, it could be that (some subset of) Chinese New Zealanders prefer real estate as an investment to, say, stocks (to an even greater extent than Aucklanders in general).  Third, it could easily be that (some subset of) Chinese New Zealanders have a higher savings rate than other New Zealanders, and so have more money to invest in houses.

Personally, I’d guess that all these explanations are true: that Chinese New Zealanders (on average) buy both homes and investment properties more than other New Zealanders,and that there are foreign property investors of Chinese ethnicity. But that’s a guess: these data don’t tell us — as the Herald explicitly points out.

One of the repeated points I  make on StatsChat is that you need to distinguish between what you measured and what you wanted to measure.  Using ‘Chinese’ as a surrogate for ‘foreign’ will capture many New Zealanders and miss out on many foreigners.

The misclassifications aren’t just unavoidable bad luck, either. If you have a measure of ‘foreign real estate ownership’ that includes my next-door neighbours and excludes James Cameron, you’re doing it wrong, and in a way that has a long and reprehensible political history.

Lumley also points out:

But on top of that, if there is substantial foreign investment and if it is driving up prices, that’s only because of the artificial restrictions on the supply of Auckland houses. If Auckland could get its consent and zoning right, so that more money meant more homes, foreign investment wouldn’t be a problem for people trying to find somewhere to live. That’s a real problem, and it’s one that lies within the power of governments to solve.

Making it easier for supply to meet demand is a better solution than trying to reduce the demand.

The Herald reports:

A nutritionist has dubbed a 3km stretch of road featuring more than 30 fast-food options “Heart Attack Alley”.

Lincoln Road in Henderson, West Auckland, offers an astonishing 34 fast-food options, at least 24 of which could be considered unhealthy. This does not include numerous takeaways off the main drag.

And a new development under construction near the Northwestern Motorway will soon offer even more – Texas Chicken, Miami Grill and Mexicali have moved in and developers are advertising spaces for kebab, pizza, noodle, Chinese and Italian food joints, as well as a cafe and bakery.

Nutritionist David Hill described it as a “shocking commentary on our wonderfully developed first-world country”.

“I don’t think it would be going too far to call it Heart Attack Alley – call it what it is. If it’s going to be contributing to people’s blood pres-sure, size and cholesterol going up then it’s going to cause heart attacks and strokes.”

Yes it is disgraceful that people can buy food I don’t approve of.

“If Mr or Mrs Average has spent the last eight hours at work and has had a really hard day, it becomes so much easier to go to the drive-through and wind down the window with their little finger and in comes a whole bunch of energy-dense food that’s high in fat, sugar or salt – potentially all three – and low in nutrients, fibre, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals.”

We must ban drive throughs! The workers do not have the intelligence to decide for themselves.

Henderson-Massey local board chairwoman Vanessa Neeson was stunned by the number of takeaway outlets in her neighbourhood.

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about it because anyone is able to submit a resource consent and if they tick all the boxes then they can open. But it’s a problem, that’s for sure.

Yes that is disgraceful. Unlike the beloved pioneers of Eastern Europe, anyone can set up a food shop and sell anything. This must be stopped.

Lincoln Rd kebab shop owner Etem Koksal says people make their own choices about what they eat – but even he wouldn’t recommend having too many kebabs each week.

Exactly. It is idiocy to claim any one form of food is bad and must be banned, regulated or not promoted. It is all about size and frequency. A kebab a week is great. A kebab twice a day, is not.

Rob Hosking writes at NBR:

First: yes, the economy is coming off recent highs.  But no one is seriously talking about a recession, apart from the opposition parties, who are rather keen on the idea.

Oppositions always celebrate bad news. That is one reason being in opposition is pretty miserable.

Both the Treasury and the Reserve Bank forecast roughly 3% annual growth in GDP for each of the next three years, and are now both, no doubt, hurriedly revising that outlook.

But this is a slowdown in the pace of current growth, not negative growth – not a recession, in other words.

2.5% growth is not a recession!

Firstly, the economist who suggested the idea – ANZ Bank’s chief economist Cameron Bagrie – did not quite say what people are saying he said.

Mr Bagrie suggested the government should “get its thinking cap on” and consider bringing forward the tax cuts planned for 2017.

That’s my idea of a fiscal stimulus.

But calls for bringing forward tax cuts, and providing rates relief, are a long way from what either the Labour or Green parties mean when they talk of “fiscal stimulus.” Both those parties want a higher spending track – although Labour, inconsistently, also wants to re-start putting nearly $3 billion a year into the NZ Superannuation Fund.

This is the opposite of a stimulus – to spread its risk and get the best return to pay for future pensions, the fund invests most of its money offshore. Nor is it at all clear where the $3 billion that would have to be diverted from current spending is going to come from.

It was Labour’s high spending track that got us into deficit. In their last three years they piled on the spending, and then hit recession even in advance of the GFC.

Mr Bagrie also warns that New Zealanders should not talk themselves into a recession.

“Economic challenges for New Zealand clearly exist. But there is an inherent danger that we talk ourselves into a hole. Confidence can be fickle and small open economies can be prone to moving in a stop-start fashion. One of the challenges can be to keep ‘Chicken Little’ style analysis at bay.”

The Labour and Green parties need to contain their frivolous, irresponsible joy at the recent run of bad news and take heed of that advice.

I’m not sure anyone takes what they say on the economy very seriously anyway, so does it matter what they say?

The Herald reports:

The first picture has emerged of Chinese buying patterns in Auckland’s pressure-cooker housing market — and it suggests a powerful, big-spending influence.

Real-estate figures leaked to the Labour Party, which cover almost 4,000 house sales by one unidentified firm from February to April, indicate that people of Chinese descent accounted for 39.5 per cent of the transactions in the city in that period.

Yet Census 2013 data shows ethnic Chinese who are New Zealand residents or citizens account for just 9 per cent of Auckland’s population. …

A similar trend appears in a frequency comparison of buyers’ names — Chinese names make up about eight out of the 20 most common ones among Auckland residents but fill 19 of the top 20 places for house buyers.

It is not known if the Chinese buyers were based here or overseas.

Labour housing spokesman Phil Twyford claimed the data, which represents 45 per cent of all Auckland sales over the three months, showed for the first time the scale of an issue that was pricing first-home buyers out of the market.

“It’s staggering evidence that strongly suggests there’s a significant offshore Chinese presence in the Auckland real estate market. It could not possibly be all Chinese New Zealanders buying; that’s implausible.”

This is an analysis based on surnames. I recall when Labour were last in power they would write letters to National MP Annabel Young in Mandarin, because they assumed with her surname Young, she was Chinese. Annabel found this amusing.

Keith Ng responds on Public Address:

I don’t own a house, but if I bought one, I hope that cynical politicians wouldn’t blame people whose “last name sounds Chinese” for..

driving up house prices beyond the reach of hard-working Kiwi first home buyers

..as if people whose “last name sounds Chinese” can’t be a hard-working Kiwi, as if we are taking their houses.

That is how the story is framed – Chinese vs Kiwis, as if the two are different things.

Here’s the thing with Labour’s “analysis” of Auckland house sales, which the Herald are running with. Behind the curtain, there’s nothing more to it than going through house sale records and asking “do these names sound Chinese?”. It cannot tell you whether these people are speculators, investors or owner-occupiers, and it cannot tell you whether they are offshore, immigrants from the 90s, or if their ancestors have been here since the goldrush.

You can’t magically MATH your way from a last name to a residency status. They have one piece of real data: “39.5% of last names in a list of house sales sound Chinese”. All the assertions that Labour are making beyond this are complete bullshit.

If your name sounds Chinese, you’re Chinese!

Twyford is doing this because all he has is “39.5% of last names in a list of house sales sound Chinese”. He wants it to mean “a lot of houses are bought by overseas Chinese”. But equally, it could mean that Chinese people in Auckland:

• Are new migrants without a house
• Have more money
• Move more frequently
• More likely to be of household-forming age
• More likely to get help from their parents
• More likely to invest in real estate

There’s a long list of possibilities, but in the absence of evidence, that’s all they are: Possibilities. Wanting to believe in one doesn’t make it true.

Rob Salmond has responded to Ng on Public Address, defending his data.

Ng continues:

The subtext of this story is that people with Chinese-sounding names are foreigners full of cash who are buying all our houses and chasing hardworking Kiwis out of their homes. This is straight-up scapegoating, placing the blame for a complex, emotive problem at the feet of an ethnic group.

Let’s be grown-ups about this. Twyford can say “we’re not criticising local Chinese” all he likes. Hell, he might as well tell us that some of his best friends are Chinese. But when his headline is screaming “the Chinese are buying all our houses”, when he says a “tsunami” of Chinesemoney is heading to our shores, it’s clear that he’s blaming Chinese people, and it’s obvious that’s the message that will be received.

Not a dog whistle, as dog whistles are subtle.

Phil Twyford, Labour, and the Herald – you are fueling racial division in this country. You are encouraging people to question whether ethnically Chinese people ought to be able to buy houses. You are saying that people with “Chinese-sounding names” are dangerous foreigners who will destroy the Kiwi way of life with real estate purchases.

You have done this, and you can’t shirk responsibility for your actions by trying to deny what you are doing, as you are doing it.

I think they call it desperation.

This is cynical, reckless dogwhistling. Like Winston Peters, just without the smirk.

Fortunately we soon won’t have to rely on dodgy data from Labour. National a few months ago announced changes which will mean we will know if buyers are residents or not. Thanks to this law change, we will be able to look at whether non-resident buyers are a major factor in Auckland house prices, and then have a sensible debate on whether law changes are needed. That’s a lot better way of doing it than scare-mongering based on surnames.

Stuff reports:

Parliament’s executive wing has been made a category 1 historic place by Heritage New Zealand.

The ranking recognises its significance as a seat of government and its “modernist architectural design”.

Blyss Wagstaff, Heritage New Zealand advisor, said the building was outstanding in “aesthetic, architectural and technical importance”.

“Its unique structure has made it one of the most recognisable buildings in the country and an extraordinary physical landmark.”

The Beehive looks great from the outside.

Inside, it is very sub-optimal work environment. Offices are weird shapes, little interaction between different offices, and lots of concrete.

When the Government looked in the late 1990s at moving the Beehive and extending Parliament House to its full original design, I proposed that instead of moving the Beehive we turn it upside down and transform it into a battleship – ie throw it into the harbour.

Inside the Beehive are ministerial offices, the Cabinet room, Bellamy’s catering facilities and state reception areas.  

Its interior is laid out hierarchically, with the prime minister’s offices and the Cabinet on the top two floors, and ministerial offices in the conical tower of discs below.

For those wondering, the Cabinet Office is Level 10, PM’s Office Level 9, DPMC Level 8, Ministers on Levels 3 to 7.

National Review reports:

A “yes means yes” advocacy group, the Affirmative Consent Project, is instructing college students to take a picture with a contract before they have sex with each other just to make absolutely sure both parties are officially consenting.

Well that would make for interesting dates. Hey, before we start getting heavy, can I just take a photo of us with this contract that says you have consented to second base.

Also as consent is ongoing, and not one off, does this mean you should also keep taking photos throughout the activity, to show consent is still being given?

Nevil Gibson at NBR writes:

The Paris conference on climate change at the end of this year is shaping up as a triumph for world diplomacy.

While expectations may not be high, the result could be surprisingly good.

For the first time we may have an accord with all the major emitters, not just a few. Any global agreement needs to include the top 10 emitters which are China, US, EU, India, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Canada and Iran. Those 10 economies represent 71% of greenhouse gases. If they can agree on a fair reduction regime, then I believe most of the world will follow.

The main reason for this is that realism and pragmatism will finally win over zealotry and ideology. For too long the climate change debate has been dominated by doomsday merchants – from scientists to environmentalists.

For a variety of reasons and motivations, they say the world is doomed from rising temperatures and want to blame western civilisation.

As recently as today, a leading New Zealand climate scientist says New Zealand’s carbon emissions target should be set according to environmental demands rather than what is practical.

At the extreme these advocates want to tax people out of most forms of transport, heating and power generation. They want the western world to retreat from its high living standards and condemn the rest of it to not rising above their current levels.

In some cases, that means abject poverty. Obviously this is a not a viable position for any country.

Exactly. Climate change is real, and greenhouse gases play a large part in the warming. However that doesn’t mean that we undo the industrial revolution and turn the clock back.

Global climate change caused by man-made greenhouse gases is not the biggest and only existential threat to the planet.

It must be put in context with other pressing problems such as life-threatening diseases, environmental degradation, poverty and much else.

Absolutely.

The main one will be an inclusive document to which all nations can subscribe, according to their ability.

But it won’t be like the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which phased out production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other substances that deplete the ozone layer.

This was a great success. CFCs were a discrete problem, had limited uses and were easily replaced. Climate pollutants – if that is the right word – are rather different.

Most are a waste product of nearly every aspect of modern life. They are also not limited to carbon; methane, soot and nitrous oxide all contribute to rising temperatures.

In New Zealand, most methane, for example, comes from livestock. Other than extinction, no single global tax or regulatory scheme will solve that.

This is a key difference. Yes greenhouse gases have a detrimental impact on the temperature, but they come from highly beneficial activities such as energy and agriculture.

The Green Party policy is to kill off 20% or so of our dairy herd. That isn’t a solution.

The Guardian reports:

George Osborne sought to outflank Labour and soften the blow from a £12bn cut to Britain’s welfare bill when he made a big rise in the minimum wage the centrepiece of the first Conservative budget in almost two decades.

In a move that went further than Labour was planning at the general election, the chancellor said employers would be forced to pay staff a minimum of £7.20 an hour from next April and raise wages by 6% a year on average to around £9 an hour by the end of the parliament.

Relishing the freedom to deliver his latest budget unfettered by coalition, the chancellor eased up on the pace of deficit reduction and reduced the size of the cuts that Whitehall departments will face in the coming years.

On the assumption that the economy grows steadily at around 2.5% a year, the Treasury is now expecting a £10bn surplus in the final year of the parliament – a sizeable war chest for the 2020 election.

So looks like it will take them five years longer than NZ to make surplus.

Declaring “Britain needs a pay rise” – once the campaign slogan of the TUC – Osborne said he was directly boosting the national minimum wage of 2.7 million workers aged over 25. The increase, accompanied by substantial welfare cuts over three years, was designed to engineer a rebalancing between the individual and the state – a political intervention to shift responsibility for low incomes from the state to employers.

“Let me be clear: Britain deserves a pay rise and Britain is getting a pay rise,” Osborne said, adding that 6 million people would see their pay increase as a result of what he dubbed the creation of a national living wage.

A fair few will lose their jobs also.

Osborne had considered a rise in the minimum wage in 2013 but could not win the support of the Liberal Democrats for the welfare cuts, or a further cut in corporation tax, an essential part of Wednesday’s package designed to ease employers’ resistance to the reforms.

But despite being given the sweetener of a cut in corporation tax from 20% to 18% by 2020, the CBI said the increases would prove “challenging” for its members working in the hospitality and retail sector.

If you’re going to have a big hike in the minimum wage, then a cut in company tax to compensate is sensible.

The big cuts to welfare come from:

• freezing working age benefits and tax credits for four years as opposed to the two set out ahead of the election.

• limiting the child element of tax credits to the first two children for new claimants. At present nearly 850,000 tax credit recipients have more than two children.

• reducing the income thresholds in tax credits from £6,420 to £3,850 and work allowances in Universal Credit

In NZ, we increased benefit levels!

I like the limit of tax credits to the first two children for new claimants. If you want more than two kids,you should be able to fund them yourselves.

NBR reports:

For the first time, it actually looks as if the 50% Spark-owned Southern Cross Cable could get some serious competition.

Hawaiki Cable founder Remi Galasso has been trying to raise $400 million for a trans-Pacific submarine cable since 2008.

Today, Hawaiki signed an equity deal with SIL Long Term Holdings, the family investment vehicle of NBR Rich Lister Sir Eion Edgar. …

Speaking to NBR shortly after the deal was made public, Sir Eion would not say how much money he would put into Hawaiki but described it as “substantial.”

He said he would also be advising the cable company and helping it bring other investors onboard.  

Asked whether his investment was contingent on more customers coming on board (at the moment Haiwaiki has one firm customer, Crown agency Reannz), Sir Eion said “No, we’re committed.”

That is promising. Pacific Fibre got lots of potential customers but never got the capital. Hawaiki looks to be achieving both.

However the history in this space is that progress is a long way removed from commitment. Until they announce the project is definite, I’m not counting on it.

He said Hawaiki would lay its 25 terabit-per-second Sydney-Whangarei-Hawaii-mainland-US cable by December 2017. He expected it to be cashflow positive in three to five years.

It will be great if they achieve this.

This is a fascinating graph from the NZ Initiative.

It shows how compliant the media are with left agenda. When Labour is in office, they barely mention inequality or I am sure poverty. But the moment there is a change of government, then a ten fold increase in reporting on inequality even though it has not changed over the previous decade.

This is why trust in media is at an all time low.

The ODT editorial:

The Government’s commitment to a higher but unambitious emissions reduction target will surprise few.

Similarly, the reactions of Labour and the Greens are expected. What is being witnessed are the policies of a pragmatic Government and standard opposition positioning. …

Mr Groser says this is ”respectable” and in line with what the United States, Canada and Japan are promising. Australia is yet come out with its figure.

The US target is 26% to 28% (by 2025) below 2005 levels.  Canada’s target is 30% by 2030.

Mr Groser does say the Government will adopt an appropriate mix of policies to ensure the target is met, but at this stage that seems to involve primarily a review of the emissions trading scheme. This was weakened by National and, as acknowledged, needs toughening.

Unexpectedly, the price of carbon collapsed and the scheme failed.

National is sceptical about ”green growth”.

It argues the best advice it has received is that lowering emissions will cost the economy, at least in the short and medium term.

The cost of even its limited commitment is put at $1270 a family a year, not a massive amount for some but significant nonetheless.

In its pragmatism, National knows it will not appeal to the green vote whatever it does, so there is little to gain electorally from doing much more than the minimum.

It knows, too, despite the relatively high level of climate change scepticism in this country, the majority of voters have some concerns and it must be seen to be doing something.

Most voters, however, will reject being hit significantly in the pocket.

From that point of view, National has its policy about right. Legitimate fears, however, must arise because the climate does not play politics.

The efforts of New Zealand and the rest of the world could well be too little too late.

The ETS is having little impact on emissions as the price of carbon has declined. However if there is a binding agreement in Paris, then the price may increase, and the ETS will start to impact again.

A reader has sent in an analysis of what proportion of disclosed major donations, have come from unions for Labour. There is a real trend here.

• 1999 – 7.2%
• 2002 – 10.4%
• 2005 – 15.0%
• 2008 – 27.8%
• 2011 – 46.7%
• 2014 – 64.5%

So Labour has lost any broad appeal it once has, and in election years is dependent on unions. The unions are not a subsidiary of Labour, Labour is becoming a subsidiary of the unions!

In this article on the economy, the CTU economist says:

The Government’s unwillingness to loosen purse strings, raise more revenue, thereby holding back growth in the economy

This says a lot about the CTU view – they are against hard working NZers getting to keep more of their money. Also they go against almost every mainstream economist who will say that tax cuts increase economic growth, and tax increases dampen it.

The Guardian reports:

The Greek government capitulated on Thursday to demands from its creditors for severe austerity measures in return for a modest debt write-off, raising hopes that a rescue deal could be signed at an emergency meeting of EU leaders on Sunday.

Athens is understood to have put forward a package of reforms and public spending cuts worth €13bn (£9.3bn) to secure a third bailout from creditors that could raise $50bn and allow it to stay inside the currency union.

A cabinet meeting signed off the reform package after ministers agreed that the dire state of the economy and the debilitating closure of the country’s banks meant it had no option but to agree to almost all the creditors terms.

So the Marxist Government calls a referendum, urges people to vote No, gets a No vote, and then does the exact opposite.

Power over principles.

It will be painful in the short term, but Greece will be better with its own currency that can reflect its actual economic value.

The Herald reports:

Perceived sexual rejection and thoughts of revenge are among the reasons why a psychologist believes there is “very high risk” that Scott Watson would commit violent crimes if released from prison.

The Parole Board declined Watson’s first bid for freedom last week and today released the written reasons for the decision in which they described him as an “undue risk to the safety of the community”.

He is currently serving a life sentence for the murders of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope in the Marlborough Sounds on New Year’s Day in 1998 but maintains his innocence.

Watson was assessed by two psychologists this year and is challenging the opinions and content of both. Only the second report in April was taken into consideration by the Parole Board and parts were quoted in its ruling.

“Mr Watson is assessed to present with a very high risk of violent recidivism. His level of insight, ability and motivation to manage his risk factors remain unknown,” the psychologist is quoted as saying.

This is the highest risk factor that can be assessed. The categories are:

1. Low (under 50%)
2. Medium (50 to 64%)
3. High (65% to 90%)
4. Very High (over 90%)

So the Parole Board saying there is a greater than 90% chance that if released he will not only commit more violent crimes, but they will be serious enough to have him back in prison.

No surprise he is challenging their findings, but I don’t think they’re wrong.

John Reid, a former Labour Home Secretary writes:

There are those in the party who have argued that Labour simply needs a different leader, but that the politics, plans and policies of the past five years will be enough to get us over the line in 2020 – with a little tweaking, of course.

Others have argued that moving to the left, in response to a Tory government that managed to achieve the difficult feat of gaining an overall majority, is the right response. That the “false consciousness” of modern working people will somehow disappear as the scales fall from their eyes.

Neither of these approaches will work. Neither recognises the sheer scale of the challenge Labour faces. Both have been tried, and tried, and failed and failed.

The NZ Labour caucus should be reading this.

Of course, it can be comforting for party members to wrap themselves up in platitudes, to wax lyrical about our values, to regard the electorate as mistaken. Perhaps we should face reality and accept that it was the party rather than the people who got it wrong. In a democracy, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, it is the people who choose their government, not the other way around.

Will you ever see this sentiment on some on the left blogs?

Labour’s only chance of winning in 2020 is to do what we did in 1945, 1964 and 1997 – get back in touch with the electorate, rather than simply telling them they were wrong, and change to meet the challenges of the future.

And that change has never been more crucial than it is today. The challenge Labour faces for 2020 is epic in scale. There are only 24 seats with a Tory majority of less than 3,000. The party must gain 94 seats to win a majority of one.

That’s less of a challenge than NZ Labour has of going from 25% to 40%.

Liz Kendall, by contrast, is the candidate who has best understood the scale of the challenge, and gives Labour the best possible chance of getting back into government. She has shown that deeply held Labour values need not go hand in hand with an antagonistic approach to those who didn’t vote Labour last time. She has shown she understands that only by working with businesses to create good, well-paying jobs can we build a fairer, more prosperous society. And she knows that Labour won’t be trusted by the British people if they don’t trust us to run the economy.

If the next election is on whom do you trust more to manage the economy – Bill English or Grant Robertson, I’m pretty confident of the answer.

Nick Smith announced:

The Residential Tenancies Act is to be strengthened with new requirements for insulation, smoke alarms, better enforcement and faster resolution of abandoned tenancies, Building and Housing Minister Dr Nick Smith announced today.

“This pragmatic package of tenancy law changes will make homes warmer, drier and safer for hundreds of thousands of New Zealand families without imposing excessive bureaucracy or cost,” Dr Smith says.

“The new law will require retrofitting of ceiling and underfloor insulation in rental homes over the next four years. The requirement applies from 1 July 2016 for social housing that is heavily subsidised by Government, and from 1 July 2019 for other rental housing, including boarding houses.  There will be exemptions, such as where it is physically impractical to retrofit insulation due to limited space underfloor or inaccessible raked ceilings.

“There will also be a new requirement from 1 July 2016 for all landlords to state in tenancy agreements the level of ceiling, underfloor and wall insulation to help better inform tenants. These new insulation requirements in our tenancy laws are the logical next step following our programme to retrofit insulation in 53,000 state houses and the 280,000 grants from the Warm Up New Zealand scheme.

“Smoke alarms will also be required in all tenanted properties from 1 July 2016. Regulations will make landlords responsible for ensuring an operational smoke alarm is in place, and tenants responsible for replacing batteries or notifying landlords of defects. Long life (10-year) photoelectric alarms will be required where there is no existing alarm or when replacing an existing alarm.

I think compulsory smoke alarms is okay. I also support requiring landlords to specify if the property has insulation.

I think compulsory insulation may have unexpected consequences and lead to less properties available for rental, and higher rents.

“This package is a more pragmatic and efficient way of improving housing standards than a housing warrant of fitness scheme. Such a scheme would cost $100 million per year, or $225 per house for inspections alone, and these costs would be passed on to tenants in rents.

A full WOF scheme would have been a bureaucratic nightmare.  In a pilot 90% of properties failed.

“The Government is proceeding with the insulation and smoke alarm requirements because they are practical and deliver benefits far in excess of the costs. The insulation retrofitting is expected to cost $600 million, with benefits of $2.10 for each dollar of this cost. The smoke alarms are expected to cost $7 million and provide benefits of $15.10 per dollar of cost. Officials estimate the flow-on effect on rents for a property requiring ceiling and underfloor insulation and a new smoke alarm to be $3.20 per week.

Are these the same officials who project the surplus? 🙂

ALP Leader Bill Shorten testimony to the union corruption royal commission has possibly doomed him. The corruption that has been revealed is stunning.

News.com.au reports:

Commissioner Dyson Heydon said he was concerned about Mr Shorten’s credibility as a witness and warned him to give “proper” answers as he faced questions over his deals as union boss.

I suspect Shorten has to do this, because to tell the truth would be damning.

Mr Shorten was being quizzed over $300,000 in “bogus” payments from building companies that secured union co-operation on the giant Melbourne EastLink project.

Shorten’s union took secret backhanders from companies they did deals with. They sold out their own members, in order to increase the union’s wealth. And they tried to keep it secret by sending fake invoices to the companies for services never needed or delivered. There should be people in jail for this.

The hearing began with Mr Shorten being quizzed over a $100,000 a year deal — over three years from 2005 to 2008 — paid by building giants Thiess John Holland when Mr Shorten was Victorian and national secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union.

The union issued a string of invoices to the engineering contractors for ads in their union magazine, training and dinner dances to make up the payments.

Senior Counsel Assisting the Commission Jeremy Stoljar said the invoices were being issued with “no regard” whether the events and services had “actually been provided.”

One invoice for $30,000 was for research done on “Back Strain in Civil Construction Industry” but no research has ever been provided.

If the payments were legitimate, then they would have not been hidden through fake invoices.

Mr Shorten revealed in the hearing on Wednesday he had failed to declare a donation from a labour-hire company ahead of the 2007 federal election.

The $40,000 donation from Unibuilt was not declared until Monday this week.

Unibuilt later donated money through the Australian Workers’ Union that was used to fund Mr Shorten’s campaign director Lance Wilson between February and November 2007.

Mr Wilson, known to Mr Shorten as a member of Young Labor, was however listed on the books of Unibuilt as a “research officer”.

The companies were not only paying secret money to the union, but also giving secret donations in terms of staff to Shorten’s personal campaign for Parliament. And Shorten never disclosed this until two days ago.

I think the man is toast. They may not like Abbott, but they simply can’t trust Shorten.  The latest Newspoll has him with only 28% satisfaction and 56% dissatisfaction – very very low ratings for an opposition leader. That is a net -28%. A year ago he was only -3%.

The Herald reports:

The Government’s latest report card for the public service shows an increase in the number of children and young people being assaulted – a trend that Labour describes as “dreadful”.

One of National’s 10 targets for the public service was to reduce the number of children being abused by 5 per cent, to approximately 3000 children, before 2017.

An update released this week showed that 3144 children were physically abused in the year to March, compared to 3111 the previous year.

When the target was set three years ago, the rate of physical assaults on young people was increasing and was projected to rise to around 4000 by 2017.

State Services Minister Paula Bennett said this increasing trend had been “successfully flattened”, though she admitted more needed to be done to hit the target.

Labour Party children’s spokeswoman Jacinda Ardern said Government’s targets had served to highlight its failure to tackle child abuse.

“Those are dreadful figures, yet police stats tell us the situation could be even worse than that, with the number of violent assaults on children up 3.5 per cent to a record 5397 offences in 2014.”

First of all any level of child abuse is too high, and everyone wants it to trend down. But before we call a 1% increase “dreadful” let’s look at what has happened here over the past decade.

Data for confirmed child abuse cases is a bit hard to find but you have it for 2004 to 2008 on Te Ara, and 2010 to 2014 on CYF.

So from 2003/04 to 2007/08, child abuse cases increased by 93%. There is a year missing in 08/09 and in 09/10 it was 21,025. In the four years since then it has reduced by 6.7%.

So my definition of dreadful is the 93% increase under the last four years of Labour. That is what failure looks like. Not a 1% increase, but a 93% increase.

Some useful data from Watt’s Up on humanity’s improvement in recent decades:

• Between 1990–92 and 2014–16, despite a global population increase of 35% (or 1.9 billion), the population suffering from chronic hunger declined by 216 million.^[1],[2] 
• Even in low-income countries, life expectancy, probably the single best indicator of human wellbeing, increased from 25–30 years in 1900 to 42 years in 1960 and 62 years today.³
• Between 1950 and 2013, the average person’s standard of living measured by GDP per capita, increased from $2100 to $8200 (in 1990 international PPP-adjusted dollars).^3,[5] This statistic understates the relative increase in the standard of living because long term changes in GDP per capita do not properly account for the fact that some goods and services available today — e.g. cell phones, the Internet, personal computers — were simply unavailable at any price a few decades ago. Nor do they account properly for improvements in the quality of others; compare the bulky, grainy black-and-white analogue TVs of yesteryear with the light, 80-inch HD 3-D colour models of today.
• More importantly, the global population in absolute poverty declined from 53% to 17% between 1981 and 2011.^[6] There were about 847 947 million fewer people living in absolute poverty in 2011 than in 1981, although the developing world’s population increased by 2.5 billion.[7] 
• Education and literacy, once the domain of the clergy and the wealthy, have advanced. Between 1980 and 2012, enrollment in secondary schools in low-income countries increased from 18% to 44%.³
• The average person has never had greater and faster access to information, knowledge and technology to help them learn, adapt and solve whatever problems they face. Mobile (cell) phone subscriptions have risen from 0% of population in 1997 to 55% in 2013 in low-income countries, while Internet users rose from virtually nil to 7% of the population over the same period.³
• Global death rates from all extreme weather events have declined by over 98% since the 1920s.^[9]
• Crop yields have improved steadily across the world. From 1961 to 2013, cereal yields increased by 85% in the least-developed countries and 185% worldwide, and show no sustained sign of decelerating, let alone reversing.[10]
• Despite population increases, which theoretically should have made clean water less accessible, the number of people with access to a safe supply has actually increased worldwide. Between 1990 and 2012, the population with such access increased from 75.9% to 89.3% 
• The global mortality rate for malaria, which accounts for about 80% of the global burden of vector-borne diseases that may pose increased risk under global warming,[11] declined from 194 per 100,000 in 1900 to 9 per 100,000 in 2012, an overall decline of 95.4%.^[12],[13]

Worth reflecting on this. Quite incredible advancements in a relatively short period of time.

Liam Hehir writes:

From time to time you happen to stumble upon a concept that so clarifies an aspect of the human condition that you can’t help seeing it everywhere afterwards. This happened earlier in the year when a podcast by pseudonymous blogger Ace of Spades introduced me to the idea of “altruistic punishment”.

The subject was raised in connection with a discussion of novelist Douglas Preston’s book Trial by Fury. The book is about Amanda Knox, the American woman wrongfully imprisoned in Italy after being accused of murdering her flatmate in 2007. Knox was exonerated in March this year, which is good given the enormous holes in the case against her (which Preston’s book documents in convincing fashion).

In many ways, however, the most interesting part of Trial by Furycomes at the end, when the author discusses the unflinching hatred of Knox evinced by many people he encountered on the internet. No matter what the evidence showed, many had an unshakeable – almost religious – belief in the need for Knox to be punished.

This is what led Preston to the phenomenon of altruistic punishment which, briefly stated, is the manner in which people will punish perceived wrongdoers despite not personally being affected by the wrongdoing. Brain scans show that when we punish somebody for violating a social norm, we are rewarded with feelings of self-satisfaction. This is what drives us to stick up for people being bullied, report shoplifters to store security and castigate people who park in disabled people’s parking spaces. 

Most of us have done that.

It goes without saying that this instinct is a good and necessary thing. It is easy to see how altruistic punishment is an essential ingredient of any justice system – and is therefore a big part what allows us to build and live together in civilisations. The desire to punish wrongdoers is therefore part of what makes us human. In fact, this is so much the case that no other animals, including chimpanzees, punish third-party offenders in this way.

What Preston was interested in was the idea that the internet can overload this sense of righteousness, leading users to take leave of their sense of proportion. There’s a lot to be said for the idea. …

An entirely foreseeable result of this is that zealous punishers have little trouble finding each other, feeding off one another and organising themselves into digital mobs to mete out digital mob justice.

And that’s how people like Sir Timothy Hunt lose their jobs.

Hunt is a Nobel Prize-winning British biochemist and cancer researcher. A few weeks ago, at a conference in Korea, he gave a talk to an audience of female scientists. An audience member tweeted parts of his talk that – as reported – included sexist observations about men and women working together in laboratories.

The rise of the virtual lynch mob.  His career was destroyed because of this.

Now that a transcript has been leaked, however, we can his remarks were made with ironic intent. Lame though the joke may have been, it was actually part of a larger observation about the importance of getting women into the sciences.  And instead of attacking women, Hunt’s poor attempt at humour was actually aimed at himself and his own supposed reputation for chauvinism.

Oh yeah – it also turns out that “after the fact” media vetting of Hunt’s principal accuser raises serious questions about her reliability.

But to update a saying of Mark Twain, outrage will go round the world while context is pulling its boots on. The man has been personally destroyed and his career is in ruins. UCL has said that reappointing Hunt now would “send entirely the wrong signal”.

Personally, I’m not convinced that bringing Hunt’s cancer research to an end will make the world a better place – however unwise his words were.

People need to start understanding that fury on Twitter, is not the same as fury in the real world. Every hour of every day there is a group of people getting outraged on Twitter. Just leave them to it.