The Northland Advocate reports:

A Northland student is struggling to become a qualified teacher after being forced out of a school placement by a teachers’ union because he works at a charter school.

This is despite the Ministry of Education saying the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) had no authority to make that decision. The student, who did not want to speak publicly, now faces an uncertain future with the possibility of not finishing his studies.

The man started at Te Kura Hourua O Whangarei Terenga Paraoa in Whangarei this year as a teacher. He had a bachelor’s degree and was employed on the proviso he would study towards a post-graduate diploma in teaching through Massey University. But just three days in to his first placement, at Tikipunga High School, he was asked to leave. …

The nation-wide ban involved PPTA members, the majority of teachers, limiting and avoiding where possible professional interactions with charter school employees. Tikipunga High School board of trustees chairwoman Veronica Turketo said the school was unaware the student worked at the charter school when it gave him the placement.

“When our members became aware of the student teacher’s employment at the charter school the PPTA position was followed,” she said.

Ministry of Education head of student achievement Graham Stoop said ultimately the board was responsible for the decision.

“It is not appropriate that a school refuses to accept a placement because staff at the school, or the union representing some of the staff, are running an industrial campaign against the student’s place of employment,” Mr Stoop said.

“The PPTA has no responsibility or authority to influence these decisions and it is disappointing if they have used their influence to stop a student-teacher receiving all of their training because they disagree with the student’s employment choices.”

The school should get some balls and tell the PPTA to go jump.

It’s disgraceful that someone aspiring to be a teacher has his employment blocked because of the political views of a union.

My view is that the Government should respond to this by announcing dozens more charter schools a year, so that after a few years there will be so many teachers working at charter schools, the boycott can’t succeed.

The Herald reports:

Former RadioLive talkback hoast John Tamihere says he is moving on after a tough 18 months for his family following the settlement of his defamation action against Mediaworks.

Mr Tamihere sued his former employer over the handling of his exit from his talkback job in the wake of fallout after a controversial interview during the Roastbusters scandal.

MR Tamihere said he was happy the matter had been resolved.

“This has been a tough 18 months on my children and family,” he said.

“But the settlement means we can move on, so I accept MediaWorks’ apology.”

Mediaworks today apologised unreservedly to Mr Tamihere, who sued the company – which operates TV3 and radio stations such as The Rock and RadioLive – in December 2013 alleging defamation and breach of contract. He said he had been made a scapegoat following a public backlash to an interview with a female caller who claimed to be friends with one of the Roastbusters’ victims.

The case had appeared destined for a lengthy period of litigation until a surprise settlement was agreed on Friday. Lawyers for Mediaworks had sought to have the case settled by private mediation. In response Mr Tamihere had lodged an appeal with the Court of Appeal arguing the case should be heard in an open court.

That action was withdrawn once the two parties a reached a confidential settlement – which includes a commitment by Mediaworks to broadcast an apology before or after a prime time news bulletin.

Maybe Mediaworks will think twice next time before sacking a host just because of a Twitter led boycott.

The Herald reports:

A man accused of assaulting Paul Henry allegedly told police the television presenter was “a racist and a bigot who should expect consequences for his views”.

Diego Leonardo Chavez, 34, of Auckland, appeared in Auckland District Court this morning facing two counts of assault against Henry during an anti-Government protest in the central city last month. …

Henry was arriving at the Federal St complex for an unrelated matter, when he was spotted by the crowd, the police summary says.

He was “jostled, jeered and sworn at”, and SkyCity security were forced to intervene in an attempt to protect Henry, the summary claims. But the protesters prevented him from entering the building, crowding and jostling him.

Police stepped in, forming a physical barrier between Henry and the crowd, but as they tried to lead him away, Chavez pushed through the barrier and rushed at Henry, the summary alleges, claiming Chavez was “deliberately jumping towards him [Henry] and colliding with the victim, while spitting on his neck”.

So Paul Henry is just heading in there for a meal, and Mr Chavez thinks he can spit on him, because he doesn’t like him. He thinks the consequences of having views that Chavez disagrees with, is to be jostled and spat on.

Mr Chavez would have been at home in the 1930s.

Chavez is due to appear in court again next month, where a Spanish language interpreter was requested to attend.

He should pay for the interpreter if he is unable to converse in one of the three languages of NZ.

The Herald reports:

Colin Craig has admitted that some of his interactions with former press secretary Rachael MacGregor were “inappropriate”, but rejects accusations of sexual harassment.

Mr Craig also said today that he had forgiven a $20,000 loan to Ms MacGregor, but that this was unrelated to her controversial resignation from the party immediately before the election.

Mr Craig made the comments at a press conference alongside his wife Helen, who said she backed her husband.

Whenever a politician has a press conference involving himself and other women, I feel so sorry for the wife who not just has to deal with it, but then becomes a prop at a press conference.

Mr Craig said that in hindsight, some of his and Ms MacGregor’s actions may have been “inappropriate”. But he strongly rejected claims that he had sexually harassed the former staff member.

Mr Craig would not confirm whether he had penned a poem sent to Ms Macgregor, saying he would not go into any detail about his actions.

Mr Craig confirmed he had agreed to pay Ms MacGregor $16,000 for work she had done for the party, following her surprise resignation two days before the September election.

He also agreed to lend her $20,000 to cover outstanding credit card bills.

When Ms MacGregor was unable to pay this money back, he and his wife agreed to forgive the loan.

Mr Craig said this payment had nothing to do with allegations of inappropriate conduct between him and his former press secretary.

The question is would you lend $20,000 and write it off to any other former staffer?

It would be highly surprising to see Craig resume the leadership of the Conservatives after this. Also be surprising to see them remain a viable force – however they do have at least one other wealthy donor who can keep them alive. However they need a leader who can front a national campaign, and there seems no one apparent.

UPDATE: Rachel McGregor has put out a statement, which according to media on Twitter says:

• Colin Craig’s breached a confidentiality agreement reached in mediation with the Human Rights Commission.
• She’s checked with her lawyer, and is still bound by it herself. “I am therefore unable to correct the clear factual inaccuracies”.
• MacGregor says she wants to correct Craig’s “factual inaccuracies”, but wants an assurance he won’t take legal action against her.
• MacGregor says she’s also happy to brief Conservative Party board on what happened, but again, needs permission from Colin Craig
• MacGregor says until she gets confidentiality agreement lifted, she’s got no further comment.

If I were Colin Craig, I’d not try to regain the Conservative Party leadership. There is no way he will come out this well.

In Part 1 I talked about how we learnt why some parts of Antarctica are experiencing ice loss, and other parts are not. Basically the one sentence version is ice hates water – so the parts of Antarctica over water will react differently to warmer temperatures than the parts on land.

Part 2 looks at what we can and have learnt about the past from Antarctica. As the world’s only continent reserved for science, it is a unique area of knowledge.

These graphics are from Richard Levy, a paleoclimate scientist with GNS.

As you can see above there is a lot of ice down there, but also land below the ice.

One of the science projects NZ has been involved with has been a multi-million dollar drilling project where you drill through both the ice and then the ocean down into the earth below. And then a core section is extracted, so it can be studied.

This is a photo of the CIROS drilling base.

Eight countries (including NZ, US and UK) are involved in the ANDRILL (Antarctic Geological Drilling) program.

And what does it tell you? Well they drill down hundreds of metres, and it is a look back in history, as you get samples from millions of years ago – all wonderfully preserved under the Antarctic ice.

Printed copies of the core were given to us to look at. They comes from around 2.7 million years ago.

You won’t see much in this photo, but there is a huge amount of detail in these. The different colours, the presence of stones, any cracks etc. And through this scientists can work out what was happening millions of years ago – was this area under water, or above sea level. Were there glaciers there? They can also use proxies to work out how much CO2 was in the atmosphere.

What is the relevance for today? Well apart from knowledge for its own sake, the science programmes down in Antarctica allow us to better understand what the correlation in the past has been between temperature, sea level and carbon dioxide levels. No matter what your views on the strength of the relationship between carbon dioxide levels and temperature and sea levels, almost everyone should welcome getting better data and information on what has been the situation in the past. Science is not just about computer forecasts of the future, but very much about what we can learn from the history of the past.

So part of our work in Antarctica involves scientists  such as Richard learning about the past. And when I say learning, I don’t mean working at some desk in Wellington analysing data. They actually go down to Antarctica, spend weeks to months at remote stations like CIROS, living in tents, operating the drills, pulling the core up, and examining it there and then.

Antarctica is unique as a place for science such as this. The Antarctica Treaty which came into force in 1961 is one of the simplest, yet best. It sets aside Antarctica as a a scientific reserve, bans military activity, puts aside all territorial claims, and guarantees free access to all treaty state members and observers.

Liam Hehir writes:

I would unreservedly support a law change mandating stringent performance standards for rented properties provided that the following section is included in the legislation:

“Nothing in the Law of Supply and Demand nor the Law of Unintended Consequences shall apply to the provisions of this Act.”

This is really important because, unless Parliament can somehow prohibit those other laws from having an effect, extensive housing reform has the potential to make life much harder for many renters.

Sadly Parliament can legislate against unintended consequences about as sucessfully as it can legislate that PI=4.

By any historical measure, New Zealand is a prosperous country. We should aspire to be a society in which the basic comforts of human existence are universally available – particularly to children, who bear no responsibility for the circumstances in which they are raised.

Nevertheless, it does not follow that we should disregard the known risks of forceful government intervention. At some point, the imposition of requirements on landlords will result in rents being driven up. That could make it difficult for poor families to find any accommodation at all.

It will also lead to less houses being available.

Moreover, given that a survey of rental properties early this year had more than 90 per cent failing a warrant of fitness check, the minority of owners who already meet the standard will see their competition substantially lessened as thousands of houses are removed from the market. This will enable them to command premium rents – and you would have to be completely naive to assume that they would not look to do so.

So you’ll get fewer properties, and those remaining will have higher rents. That will help poor families a lot.

The Herald reports:

The Government hopes a new smartphone app for emergency services will save lives and money.

Communications Minister Amy Adams said 70 per cent of calls to 111 were made from cellphones.

But many callers could not provide accurate location information to ambulances, police or firefighters.

This could cause delays as long as 15 minutes as emergency services tracked down the exact location of a crisis.

On average every minute caused an extra $4000 in fire damage to houses, Ms Adams said.

The minister announced today the Government was making a request for proposals to build the new emergency services app.

Seems a great idea. It can send your GPS location automatically. Also a good app may allow you to indicate the urgency of the assistance needed.

Stats NZ reports:

New Zealand had a seasonally adjusted net gain (more arrivals than departures) of 5,100 migrants in May 2015. Net migration has been fluctuating around this level for the last nine months, recently peaking at 5,500 in January 2015.

This was the second month in a row that New Zealand has had a seasonally adjusted net gain of 100 migrants from Australia. Before April 2015 there had not been a net gain in migrants from Australia in over 20 years (since 1991).

It is very very unusual for there to be net migration from a larger country to a smaller country, if both are developed economies.

This shows rolling 12 month data. As you can see arrivals from Australia are very close to exceeding departures. If we have another six months of similar data, then we’ll have our first ever year of net migration from Australia.

National MP Chris Bishop writes in NBR:

Historically in New Zealand politics, the Labour Party has liked to think of itself as the party of progressive, even radical, social change.

Conversely, it is sometimes claimed National is the traditional party of conservatism – the party that manages the status quo; that builds on social changes already made.

Whatever the truth of these claims, today’s political situation differs markedly from these perceptions. National and Labour’s traditional roles have reversed.

Labour is now the real conservative party – fearful of innovative social policy, afraid of new ideas – in short, the party which says “No” to everything.

This is so true.

National has been driving a quiet revolution in the state services, getting government departments to focus on results from the better public services programme.

This is having demonstrably good outcomes, as the regular target reports show: a 38% reduction in youth crime since 2011, a 40% drop in the number of teenage solo parents on a benefit since 2011 and immunisation rates for Maori which are now as high as the rest of the population.

Between 2003 and 2008, government spending jumped 50% but there were little to no improvements in social services, as the Salvation Army noted in its State of the Nation report at the time.

Labour are good at spending, but not good in results.

The government is transforming the welfare system toward one designed around an investment and liability prism. Rather than taking a traditional year-on-year cash view, the Ministry of Social Development looks at the lifetime costs of its clients.

This creates the opportunity to spend more today to get a better long-term outcome for individuals and households. This is leading to profound changes in government policy toward people receiving welfare and other government support.

This is encouraging the government to invest in people, particularly the young, and to do it early. This social investment approach is about targeted, evidence-based investment to secure better long-term results.

So spend more in areas where it will save you more in the long-term, and spend less in areas where little is achieved.

Labour’s response to social policy
The first response is often silence. The party has nothing to say about the social investment approach to policy, nothing to say about better public services targets and little to say about Whanau Ora.

You won’t find many press releases from Labour on these important social reforms, or many Parliamentary questions. It’s almost as if it’s too difficult for its MPs to engage with the issues.

If Labour does have something to say, it often reverts to tired and trite clichés. A favourite is to call the government “neo-liberal” – the social democratic politician’s favourite term of abuse for centre-right governments.

Labour’s response to a recent Productivity Commission report about social services was to wail about the government introducing “vouchers” in social services. The party seemed blissfully unaware that “vouchers” (which simply means funding following people when choosing services) are all around us already – in early childhood education, in tertiary education and so on.

Vouchers is what the left call choice.

On the new social impact bonds, Labour wailed about people “profiting” from social services. Profit already exists throughout social services.

As Eric Crampton of The New Zealand Initiative has pointed out, private hospitals profit by providing publicly funded surgery, private pharmacies profit by filling Pharmac scripts and private medical device manufacturers profit by developing better replacement hips for publicly and privately-funded operations.

Do Labour want to nationalise all pharmacies, all GPs, all midwives?

Overall, Labour is fundamentally uninterested in new approaches to old problems. It is a party stuck in an ideological time-warp – which insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, the government has the answers to everything, can effectively address social problems and all that’s required is more government spending.

Social democratic parties around the world have moved on from this 1970s view of government – social impact bonds, for example, were originally a UK Labour government initiative – but New Zealand Labour appears determined to remain stuck in the past.

These days, National is the party of progressive, equitable, social reform. Labour is the real conservative party – saying no to everything, opposing for opposing’s sake and uninterested in new ideas.

As Chris said, NZ Labour is way out of step with other Labour parties around the world.

Labour have been alleging that Te Ururoa Flavell has been interfering with Maori TV and released some e-mails to back up their claim.

The Maori Party has now released the full e-mails, and it is quite clear there was nothing even close to inappropriate there.

It is absolutely routine for staff to give views back to media on an intended programme their MP has been invited on. In fact often there are intense negotiations around an appearance.

In this case the e-mails are very mundane. In summary they are:

1. Maori TV invites Flavell on for discussion about Whanau Ora with MPs from Labour, National, Greens and NZ First
2. Flavell staffer asks for purpose of discussion and queries NZ First being included
3. Maori TV reply explaining purpose
4. Flavell staffer explicitly says Flavell will appear, but also says that Maori TV would do better to have some whanau, providers, commissioning agencies on also, not just MPs
5. Maori TV confirms Flavell will appear, and says they are intended to talk to some of the other groups mentioned
6. Flavell staffer asks for a phone call to clarify format further
7. Maori TV tells Flavell office that there has been a scheduling change so have had to cancel and apologise to Flavell

Labour can look like the boy who cried wolf with these false allegations of improper interference.

Normally when someone writes an article on how annoying you are, it is not your boss. But when your boss is also very annoying, then it means it is high praise.

So Patrick Gower writes on why Brook Sabin is so annoying. His summary:

• Got Pam Corkery to call him a puffed up little shit
• Told Colin Craig his press secretary had quit, live
• Got Judith Collins to lose her temper
• Uses the OIA so much Tony Ryall remarked “It is nice to know you actually exist, I thought you were a robot that just spits out OIAs”

The part I want to especially praise is his OIA use. Good political journalists should be using the OIA constantly. It is a good way to dig up stories, and find news that others don’t know about.

Stuff reports:

The consistency of Civil Defence responses around the country is being questioned by Labour leader Andrew Little, who says his visit to Dunedin has highlighted more should have been done when flooding hit there.

Civil Defence had responded straight away to flooding this weekend in Whanganui, Taranaki and Wairarapa, but Little said “in Dunedin it looks like there was no response at a time a response was needed.”

Little visited the South Island city and said some properties were “pretty badly damaged, there’s still a long way to go for them to be fixed.”

It was “a misjudgment” to have not called a Civil Defence emergency in Dunedin, Little said.

“So compare that to what is happening in Whanganui, Taranaki and Wairarapa where Civil Defence reacted as soon as it became apparent that the rains were very heavy and it could be flooding, and acted to evacuate even, strictly speaking, before people needed to be evacuated.”

Little doesn’t seem to understand how civil defence in NZ works.

His comments indicate he thinks that the Ministry of Civil Defence decided whether to call a state of emergency, and that it has not been consistent.

Civil Defence at the local level is the responsibility of the respective territorial authorities, and the decision to call a state of emergency is made by the local Mayor, not by the Ministry or the Minister.

So Andrew Little is basically saying he knows better than the local Mayor.

The Herald reports:

Several Auckland councillors are expected to abstain from a budget vote this week to avoid plunging the Super City into a financial crisis.

Mayor Len Brown looks set to pass his new 10-year, $60 billion budget with less than half the votes of his council at Thursday’s governing body meeting.

He will get there after councillors were told the consequences of not passing the budget by chief executive Stephen Town and chief finance officer Sue Tindall over lunch last Thursday.

Councillors attending the lunch said the consequences were dire.

The council would not be able to strike the rates, refinance loans and meet stock exchange requirements.

Mr Town yesterday would not say what he told councillors, only that various “what if” questions had been posed by councillors and “hypothetically what sort of things might occur”.

This is scaremongering. If they don’t pass Len’s 9.9% rates increase budget, then all that happens if Len has to put forward a budget with less spending which can pass.

The mayor is believed to have the support of only seven of the 19 councillors due to attend Thursday’s meeting.

His position is weakened by the absence of two supporters – deputy mayor Penny Hulse and John Walker.

Six councillors are expected to vote against the budget – they are Cameron Brewer, Chris Fletcher, Denise Krum, Sharon Stewart, George Wood and Dick Quax.

The other five councillors – Cathy Casey, Ross Clow, Mike Lee, Wayne Walker and John Watson – have serious reservations about the budget.

They particularly object to a targeted rate for transport which takes average household rates increases to 9.9 per cent.

But instead of voting against the budget and plunging the council into crisis, most of the five are expected to abstain to allow the budget to pass.

An abstention is the same effectively as voting in favour. They are just trying to avoid responsibility. If they think this will save their jobs, they are wrong. Every Councillor who doesn’t vote against the 9.9% rates increase will be targeted for sacking at the next local body elections. And saying you didn’t vote for or against it won’t save you. This is a tactical abstention designed to allow it to pass, but with their fingerprints missing. Aucklanders are not that stupid.

Labour’s Ross Clow said the budget was too regressive and socked it to households and small businesses.

“I’m not going to vote against it but I certainly don’t support it,” he said.

Well then resign off Council. The job of the Council is to pass a budget – not to abstain. If you vote against a 9.9% increase Budget, then they have to put forward a smaller Budget.

UPDATE: Just been given an example which exposes the falsity of the Councillors claiming they have to abstain, or the Council will stop functioning. At Hamilton City the votes for the Budget were deadlocked. Rather than have Crs abstain (or use Mayor’s casting vote), the Mayor sent the budget back to the staff to redo.

Abstaining will be a mark of cowardice. You either vote for or against.

“The state may make a good or a bad use of the taxes which it levies. When it renders to the public services which are equivalent to the value it receives, it makes a good use of them. And when it dissipates its revenues without giving any service in return, it makes a bad use of them.”

– Claude Frederic Bastiat

The quote of the week is brought to you by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. To support the Union’s campaign for lower taxes and less government waste, click here.

Stuff reports:

Mobile technology is the key to boosting student performance, according to a director from what was once one of the United Kingdom’s worst schools.

When Abdul Chohan was made a director of Essa Academy in Bolton, about 30 minutes from Manchester, just a third of students were passing the UK’s national education standards.

The school was out-dated, not fit-for-purpose and students came from some of the country’s lowest socio-economic areas, with a large migrant population and 46 languages spoken at the school.

Chohan, who is visiting Auckland to talk to teachers about how he turned his school around, was appointed as one of the directors tasked with improving the school and he did so with the help of mobile devices.

The school made technology a central part of learning and all students now had iPads and used the mobile devices at home and school.

Essa Academy’s pass rate had gone from 33 per cent to between 93 and 95 per cent, Chohan said.

Superb, and that will make such a difference in the lives of those students.

Chohan said the introduction of mobile technology increased student engagement and decreased operating costs, with things like textbooks, printing and one-on-one tutoring eliminated.

On Thursday, Chohan visited Elim Christian College in Auckland to talk about how the Kiwi state-integrated school was using technology and to share his advice.

Chohan said his main advice to teachers was to make sure devices students were using were mobile.

The NZ system is heading towards a device for every student, which is good.

Stuff reports:

Government building officials say there is no widespread issue with tiled showers that leak, despite ample anecdotal evidence that the problem is rife.

There is evidence and there are anecdotes. The two words do not go together.

There is an old saying that the plural of anecdote is not data.

Stuff reports:

Radio host Duncan Garner is expected to take the job hosting TV3’s new primetime current affairs show, after John Campbell’s contentious departure.

And One News reporter Heather du Plessis-Allan is said to be in a bidding war between TVNZ and TV3, as TV3 attempts to poach her to join Garner as a co-host.

If Garner and du Plessis-Allan do become the hosts, then all the Chicken Littles out there who claimed the departure of John Campbell meant the death of current affairs broadcasting will look very stupid.

Duncan and Heather would be a very formidable team. They are both strong interviewers, and also both have a deep level of mongrel in them – will go for the jugular if they think it is warranted.

I’ve long though Heather du Plessis-Allan is a star, and remember suggesting to a TV executive some years ago that she’d be a good co-host with Paul Henry, as she could handle his shit and give it back twice in spades.

Du Plessis-Allan met with Jennings at a Wellington hotel this week to discuss the role.

In an awkward twist, her One News boss Phil O’Sullivan walked in on the discussions after accidentally being given the hotel room key.

Adding to the sensitive situation, O’Sullivan is said to have been meeting with TV3 reporter Dan Parker, in the same hotel, in a bid to poach him.

Now that is so funny. You walk in on one of your staff meeting your rival trying to steal her – but you are there to try and steal one of his staff. Good to see there is competition for good staff.

Gareth Morgan writes:

When we look at our social welfare regime it is full of inequity, so much so that it can be viewed as a tax on poverty. We maintain a mix of targeted benefits, including the dole, invalids, solo parent, Working for Families, and universal entitlement (NZ Superannuation) benefits.

This suggests that on the one hand the point of the welfare in New Zealand is to alleviate poverty and encourage people to make themselves available for paid work – while at the same time enabling one cohort (the baby boomers) to feather our own nest with the most generous of the benefits – with no questions asked.

Proponents of NZ Super insist it’s not a welfare benefit but rather an entitlement in recognition of the elderly’s contribution to the economy. …

How many times have you heard recipients of NZ Super argue that because they’ve paid taxes all their lives they “deserve” the dividend of super, our welfare regime’s highest single benefit? The claim sounds good but it is vacuous.

One way to test the veracity of that claim is to see if the Government has, over the years of tax contribution by the generation now receiving super, built up a cash surplus through budget surpluses or an asset base with all that tax revenue it received. The answer is neither.

I despise this sense of entitlement. Yes you may have paid your taxes for 40 years, but you know what. You also received 40 years of benefits from them, and your benefits were much more than the tax you paid. I know this because you’ve left us the debt.

In a later column Gareth writes:

The challenge facing our younger generations is how to stop my generation plundering the government accounts to an extent never seen before. We hold the votes – who ya gonna call?

One solution might be for a younger generation party to seize the balance of power and then introduce a maximum voting age.

Not a bad idea. I tongue in cheek suggested 61 on Twitter (Gareth is 62).

Why does an older person then get to exercise more influence on a young person’s future well-being than a young person has to influence the (shorter) future of an old person? That seems the wrong way round.

The real worry is as the elderly numbers grow, then they will demand more and more spending on them, at the expense of areas such as education.

The SMH editorial:

The position of Bill Shorten as federal Labor leader is becoming untenable. The latest revelations of his union past published by Fairfax Media on Wednesday afternoon raise further doubts and questions about his suitability as alternative prime minister.

Mr Shorten should respond to the questions immediately, in full, rather than wait until he fronts the royal commission into trade union corruption in late August.

The Opposition Leader should also reflect on the damage his continued leadership is doing to Labor, and as such to the interests of the people he claims to represent.

As long as the Australian Workers Union stain lingers and/or grows, Labor cannot hope to win an election next September, let alone a snap poll that Prime Minister Tony Abbott may well call to capitalise on the Shorten malaise.

Last week Fairfax Media identified tens of thousands of dollars of largely unexplained employer payments to the AWU’s Victorian branch from January 2004 to late 2007. Mr Shorten was state secretary from 1998 and federal secretary from 2001 to 2007.

The evidence is that the AWU made deals that were good for the AWU bank balance, rather than good for the workers it claimed to represent.

The fine print in documents lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission and AWU bank records show the giant builder Thiess John Holland paid Mr Shorten’s union nearly $300,000 after he struck a landmark workplace deal that saved the company as much as $100 million on the Melbourne Eastlink tollway project.

The deal was hugely favourable to the employer, just like other deals struck by the AWU during Mr Shorten’s reign. Some deals involved payments to the AWU, or the payment of member’s dues. The AWU struck agreements with companies when it suited the union’s political purpose, which was to bolster membership. This allowed the AWU to assert its dominance over rival unions and bolster the power of its leaders in the Labor party’s corrupted, undemocratic structure.

Neither unions nor companies should get a vote in political parties. Political parties should be for individuals. Having unions decide who your leader is, incentivises such behaviour.

Despite his claims to have zero tolerance of corruption in Labor, Mr Shorten has done too little to reform the party structure, which delivers unions like the AWU disproportionate influence and operates on dirty factional deals.

Mr Shorten could shrug some of this off if voters had warmed to him. While the Labor leader in person is a smart and charismatic man with good ideas, he remains approved by only 41 per cent of voters, the Fairfax-Ipsos poll says. The latest revelations over his AWU past also came a day after he had been caught out playing bad politics, as the Greens and the government compromised on pension reform.

The coming days will determine whether Mr Shorten, the ultimate political operative, can find the numbers to survive. The damage being done in the meantime is a big price for voters and Labor to pay.

Earlier this year Abbott looked terminal. Now Shorten is the one facing extinction.

A release from Relationships Aotearoa:

The Interim Board of Relationships Aotearoa (RA) reject claims in the media this week that client numbers were inflated.

The RA Interim Board are on record with Radio New Zealand detailing this: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201758906/relationships-aotearoa-stands-by-its-records

“At the time it became clear closing the service was inevitable, RA had 7,000 open client files, “ says Cary Hayward, RA Interim Board member.

“The media this week suggesting numbers were inflated is inaccurate,“ he says.

“These claims seem to be based on the number of MSD clients transferring to Stand Children Services.

“They do not take into account clients seen under other contracts or private clients, nor do they account for the fact that the vast majority of MSD funded clients did not want to continue with a service once they were informed RA was closing.”

ENDS

Sounds a rational explanation. I imagine the final report from the liquidators will shed more light.

The Herald reports:

Jetstar plans to start flights to regional destinations later this year in what will be a major shake-up for domestic air travel.

The low cost carrier will use a fleet of five 50-seat Bombardier Q300 turbo-prop aircraft to fly to at least four regional centres initially.

Those cities being considered include Hamilton, Rotorua, New Plymouth, Napier and Palmerston North in the North Island and Nelson and Invercargill in the South Island.

The new flights will break Air New Zealand’s stranglehold on flying large aircraft to regional centres. Air New Zealand shares plunged by close to 10 per cent this morning after the Jetstar move into the regions was tipped by the Business Herald.

A good move by Jetstar. It will be very welcome by people in regional centres.