NewstalkZB reports:

The Green Party is pushing for climate change to be formally acknowledged in all government legislation.

Co-leader James Shaw has unveiled the policy at an international Greens congress in Wellington today.

It would make it mandatory for new laws and law changes to include climate change impact statements.

Mr Shaw said the measure would mirror the current use of regulatory impact statements.

“So the government makes a lot of decisions all the time, and we have no idea of what the impact is on climate change, or how climate change impacts on those decisions.”

This isn’t a bad idea. Governments make better decisions if they are aware of all of the costs.

But one would have to be careful how you interpret the data. For example take the Government giving beneficiaries an extra $25 a week. That will lead to an increase in consumption and activities such as transport. That would mean that the climate change impact of such a policy is to increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Now I doubt the Greens would say beneficiaries should not have got a benefit increase, because it increases greenhouse has emissions. So it shouldn’t be seen as a binary approval mechanism.

But nevertheless,  having the impact on greenhouse gas emissions known for all legislation is not a bad policy, and worth doing. The Government should seriously consider it.

The Guardian reports:

George Osborne is to announce a return to the public finances of the Victorian age, with plans for permanent budget surpluses designed to cut the national debt and to make life uncomfortable for the Labour party.

The chancellor will use his annual Mansion House speech on Wednesday to exploit the political advantage of the Conservative victory in the general election with a “new settlement” that would allow the government to borrow only in exceptional circumstances.

Labour, still shaken by the scale of its defeat last month, will be forced to decide whether it wants to back the proposal that tax revenues should cover spending on both infrastructure and the day-to-day running of government when parliament votes on Osborne’s tougher approach to the public finances later this year.

We should do the same here.

Osborne will say that he wants “a settlement where it is accepted across the political spectrum that without sound public finances, there is no economic security for working people; that the people who suffer when governments run unsustainable deficits are not the richest but the poorest; and that therefore, in normal times, governments of the left as well as the right should run a budget surplus to bear down on debt and prepare for an uncertain future.”

Hear hear.

Osborne will drive home his desire to bring back the days of sound finance by announcing he will convene the first meeting in more than 150 years of the committee of the commissioners for the reduction of the national debt.

Set up by William Pitt the Younger to help repair the damage to the public finances caused by the Napoleonic wars, the body last met in 1860 when William Gladstone was chancellor. Commissioners include the chancellor, the governor of the Bank of England, the speaker of the House of Commons, and the lord chief justice.

Perhaps they should have meet prior to 2015!

Stuff reports:

NZTA has insisted a 45-minute clean-up was necessary after a man defecated in Wellington’s Mt Victoria tunnel.

Spokesman Anthony Frith said the agency was satisfied with the clean up time in off-peak traffic, and said the mess had to be cleaned up as it was an issue of both hygiene and road safety.

“If you think about it a little bit goes a long way – before you know it, it could be spread around the Basin Reserve,” Frith said.

Police said the man had jumped from the walkway of the central Wellington tunnel down to the road, where he attended to the call of nature at 6am.

The busy commuter tunnel, which was closed overnight for scheduled maintenance, had been scheduled to open at 6am.

But a clean-up crew was needed, delaying the time by 45 minutes.

Oh how precious. I’m pretty sure 99% of motorists would rather drive through some crap rather than have a tunnel closed for 45 minutes.

Plus why takes 45 minutes? Just knock it to the side of the road.

Will they close SH1 if someone vomits on it?

Amy Adams has announced:

Communications Minister Amy Adams has today released a raft of proposals to help speed up the installation of Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB).

The discussion document outlines four proposals for change:

• amending the way in which network operators seek permission to access private property (in situations like shared driveways and apartment buildings)

• enabling better use of existing utility infrastructure to more efficiently roll out fibre networks

• providing more certainty to network operators regarding their ability to maintain fibre infrastructure installed on private property

• establishing an expanded and accessible disputes resolution process to ensure that land access disputes can be resolved quickly and fairly.

They look like useful proposals, which should be implemented.

TUANZ have said:

TUANZ also strongly supports the proposal to investigate a new statutory right of access which would enable fibre companies to utilise existing assets, even when those existing assets traverse private land. “We see this as being key to extending fibre further especially into rural New Zealand as it significantly reduces the cost of build which is a key barrier in improving rural connectivity” said Mr Young.

One shouldn’t need permission from neighbours to install fibre, any more than to install water or electricity.

Chris Trotter writes:

Well, here’s an idea (hat-tip to Danyl McLauchlan). Why not make it a rule that a Labour MP cannot take home more than the average wage of, roughly, $55,000 per year. The balance of their income, $95,000, would go to the party. This would guarantee Labour an annual income, from its current 32-strong caucus, of at least $3,040,000 per year, or, $9,120,000 over the three year parliamentary term.

That’s not a bad war chest – and just think of the effect on Labour’s voters! Knowing that their MPs are unwilling to take home more than the average income earner. That they’re prepared to give up two-thirds of their salaries to ensure that, come election time, the party of the workers stands a fighting chance against the party of the bosses. That they’re not just in it for the money, and the perks, and the power. What do you think that would do for building trust and identification?

There’s one problem with Chris’ calculations. He’s forgotten tax.

Perhaps Chris silently yearns for a low tax economy, where high earners can donate most of their salary to good causes, rather than pay it to the IRD. But we are not there yet.

The IRD will take $40,420 in tax off each MP compared to $9,520 for someone on $55,000. So that is $30,900 less money per MP to be tithed which is $2,966,400 less money over a three year term.

Maybe that would convince Labour to champion low taxes though – so they can tithe more of their income to Labour!

The Herald reports:

The Labour Party has launched into the controversy surrounding Fonterra’s latest restructuring by saying chief executive Theo Spierings should take a voluntary pay cut “to restore credibility with farmers and staff”.

Spierings’ salary has been estimated to be worth about $4 million a year.

“The events of the last week have shaken the farming sector’s confidence in Fonterra, and the chief executive must take responsibility,” Labour’s Primary Industries spokesperson Damien O’Connor said in a statement.

“Theo Spierings should lead by example and voluntarily reduce his pay by half,” he said.

This is almost a sick joke. Is this the best Labour can do? Global dairy prices are falling, so Labour’s policy is to demand the Fonterra CEO cuts his pay in half, as if that is the problem.

Has a party even been more barren of thinking and policies? That’s the best they can do?

Hey the Green co-leaders just restructured the Green parliamentary office. So perhaps the co-leaders should cut their pay in half!

A fascinating speech on media changes at the Washington Post. An extract:

•  High-speed broadband became pervasive only in 2004, 2005, making possible the communications we take for granted today. It allowed photos to load fast and instant viewing of videos — and it allows mobile connection to the web.
• Google didn’t go public until 2004. Today, there are more than 3 billion searches a day on Google.
• Facebook was founded in 2004. Now it has more than 1.3 billion monthly active users.
• YouTube was founded in 2005. More than 1 billion people now visit YouTube each month.
• Twitter was founded in 2006. A half-billion tweets are sent every day.
• Kindle was introduced in 2007. Three in 10 Americans now read an e-book.
• Apple introduced the iPhone in June, 2007. Today 2 billion people worldwide use smartphones.
• Instagram was founded in 2009.
• Whatsapp was founded in 2009 and last year was sold for $19 billion to Facebook.
• The iPad was introduced in January, 2010.
• Snapchat wasn’t launched until 2011. It’s now valued at $10 billion or more.

Amazing how much has changed in just ten short years.

We have fostered a tight working relationship with our Engineering department, with 47 engineers working with our journalists. Four years ago, we had only four engineers in newsroom. When we move into a new office within a year, all 47 engineers will be embedded in our newsroom, working side by side with our journalists.

Interesting.

From the ACT newsletter:

Back Benchers
A fun time was had by all last week, as Parmjeet Parmar, Jacinda Ardern, James Shaw and David Seymour sparred over a few issues. Consistency was gleefully tossed out the window as Jacinda segued from complaining that the sort of high calorie food you can buy at supermarkets is too cheap, to a moment later complaining about a supermarket duopoly making food too expensive. We think her point was that that cheap food should be taxed so that low income people are….er….healthier but poorer?

That does indeed seem to be their policy!

UN Watch reports:

Despite its reputation as one the world’s worst violators of religious freedom, Saudi Arabia is now hosting in Jeddah a UN human rights conference on combating intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief, attended by the president of the UN Human Rights Council and other top international representatives. 

That’s a rather sick joke. I presume the intent of the conference is not to defend religious freedom, but to lobby to make it an offence to be critical of religions, especially Islam.

Here are the facts on religious freedom in Saudia Arabia:

• non-Muslims are not allowed to hold Saudi citizenship
• conversion from Islam to another religion is apostasy and punishable by death
• If born to a Muslim father, you are deemed Muslim and hence face the death penalty if you choose not to be
• It is illegal to publicly practice any non-Muslim religion
• Sharia law applies to all residents, regardless of religion
• The spreading of Muslim teachings not in conformity with the officially accepted interpretation of Islam is prohibited and people have been jailed for doing so
• Non-Muslims are banned from Mecca
• Non-Muslim clergy may not enter the country for the purpose of conducting religious services
• Proselytizing by non-Muslims is illegal
• Islamic religious education is mandatory in public schools at all levels
• There are no Shi’ite army officers, ministers, governors, mayors and ambassadors in this kingdom despite being 15% of the population
• Up until 2004 Jews were banned from entering Saudi Arabia

For such a country to host a UN conference on religious freedom is sickening.

The South Auckland Middle School Annual report is here. Some highlights:

• Year 7 reading is 1.4% above the performance target
• Year 7 maths is 2.1% below the performance target
• Year 7 writing is 18.3% above the performance target
• Year 8 reading is 0.94% above the performance target
• Year 8 maths is 28.4% above the performance target
• Year 8 writing is 1.9% below the performance target

I love how you can get such clear reporting against clear targets.

They also note that the current start-up cost for a single student in a State School is $46,790 (excluding establishment salaries) and the current start-up cost for a single student in a Partnership School is $5,613 (including establishment salaries).

Labour’s Christchurch Central candidate Tony Milne facebooked:

All over the world people are desperately crying out for solutions that move us away from the failed neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years. Policies such as asset sales that widened the gap between the rich and everyone else.

Post-earthquake Christchurch is an important test – can the burden as well as the opportunities be shared collectively in a fair way.

http://www.3news.co.nz/…/christchurch-mayors-budget-slammed…

Even Michael Cullen has pointed out that people who call the National Government neo-liberal are stupid and don’t know what they are talking about. By that standard, calling Lianne Dalziel neo-liberal is an even stupider thing to say. Some on the left seem to think it is just a term of insult to use against anything they don’t like.

Table 1: hypothetical 2017 National Party tax cuts, $1.5 billion

Jim Rose models a possible $1.5 billion tax cut package in 2015. This is made possible by keeping the new spending for this year and next to $1 billion instead of $1.5 billion.

He notes:

No serious participant in public policy debate could suggest that tax cuts of the size in table 1 will not have incentive effects that will lead to growth in incomes and business profits. There will be offsetting tax revenue increases that make a more ambitious tax package possible in 2017.

Using dynamic scoring, Rose calculates we could afford to do the following:

• Top tax rate down 2% to 31%
• Upper Middle tax rate down 3% to 27%
• Middle tax rate down 1% to 16.5%
• Trust tax rate down 2% to 31%
• Corporate tax rate down 1% to 27%

That would see someone earning $70,000 have their tax drop by $1,000 or $20 a week.

This is very funny. A piss take by The Katering Show.

From a recent DP editorial:

It also allows the Greens to use its natural advantage as the brainiest and most wonkish of the parties to gain clear political advantages.

You can almost smell the love. This is not a column, but the official editorial of the Dominion Post.

Eric Crampton writes at the NZ Initiative:

Growing up in Canada, I often heard that profiting from illness was just wrong. Canada’s public health system generally banned private medicine. Whenever anybody pointed to systems like New Zealand’s, which provided better services by combining public and private provision, they would be shouted down.

So private doctors were banned from providing services that were also provided by the public health system. My great-grandmother consequently waited for a very long time for a hip operation. But at least nobody profited by alleviating her needlessly lengthy pain.

This week’s critiques of the government’s social bonds trial in mental health have been disorienting. It feels like I am back in Canada. Investors might profit by helping mental health patients into employment! Never mind that 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.

Midwives are private practitioners? Would the left claim that midwives should be banned as they profit from childbirth?

It has also been disappointing to see the policy trial characterised as experimenting on the mentally ill. The government constantly tries new initiatives for helping different groups. If the policies are designed properly, they will be an experiment. But they also present the only real way of finding out what works.

Exactly.

Jenesa Jeram also writes:

Some have argued that social bonds are an internationally unproven model. It is true, social bonds are a new concept, not just in New Zealand, but around the world.
 
But it is a bit perplexing that social bonds have received such publicity when the Government is trying many different policy experiments in social development. Examples include Whanau Ora, Children’s Teams, Social Sector Trials, and Better Public Services targets. The social bonds model is just one of many.
 
Critics argue that the private sector would simply cherry-pick their clients who would most likely trigger a pay-out; that they would choose to take on the easiest cases (and reject the hardest cases) in order to make a profit.
 
Fewer people have pointed out the converse: that the government has an incentive to pass on their hardest cases to the social bonds programme, to avoid making a pay-out. Both are equally undesirable.
 
One method of dealing with this problem is to have willing participants enter a random lottery to be part of the social bonds programme. This would also mitigate the problem of self-selection bias in assessing whether the programme has worked.
 
Critics also highlight the risk of gaming: where people hit the target outcomes, but put their clients at risk. In other words, they meet the terms of the contract, but not its spirit. Again, careful contracting can target the intended outcome while monitoring for unintended consequences.
 
Both cherry-picking and gaming are concerns not just associated with social bonds, but most forms of performance-based contracting. Reassuringly, the government is already building expertise in this area.
 
The point of a pilot project, like the social bonds pilot, is to find out what works.

Unless you accept the status quo as acceptable, we want a Government that will try new approaches.

Liam Hehir writes:

TV3 political journalist Patrick Gower got his hands on a draft of Labour’s “what went wrong in 2014” report last week. This in and of itself seemed a curious happening, because I had it on good authority that all journalism in this country came to an end when John Campbell’s show was cancelled. Nevertheless, the report is a keen and penetrating insight into what Labour thinks about what is arguably its worst ever result.

It seems that one of the party’s major problems is that its internal bureaucracy is just not extensive enough. In addition to its existing deliberative and decision-making bodies, the report recommends that Labour add a campaign committee, a list vetting committee and an executive committee.

On the off chance that more meetings won’t do the trick of restoring Labour to her electoral former glory, I can suggest three other measures that can help get the party back on track for the 2017 general election.

His three measures are simpler to implement. They are:

1. Uninstall the Twitter app from all MPs’ smartphones
2. Ban all references to ‘neoliberalism’ in all verbal or written communications
3. No more personal attacks on the prime minister

Good reasoning on the Twitter issue:

Yes, I know that it is exciting for opposition MPs to have their latest ‘slam’ of the government retweeted 17 times. I’m sure it is also thrilling to be mentioned in political scientist Dr Bryce Edwards’ “top tweets”. In the last election, however, Labour trailed National by more than half a million votes. Social media isn’t going to fix that and, to the extent that it encourages Labour MPs to play to the gallery, it will make closing the gap all the harder.

The more time Labour MPs spend on Twitter, the more confused they become that people did not vote for them, as everyone likes them on Twitter when attacking the Nasty Nats.

Stuff reports on an interesting employment case:

A University of Waikato lecturer is seeking $1.8 million in compensation from his employer who he claims did nothing when he was being bullied online by students. 

$1.8 million???

Senior lecturer Simon Spacey alleges students made a derogatory webpage using an image of him, they also struck up a conversation about him on social media as well as emails he received which referred to him in derogatory terms. 

By derogatory terms, does he mean the e-mail below where he chastises a student for not calling him Dr Spacey?

His university page is interesting for two reasons. First his seven degrees or diplomas!

B. Sc. (Hons), M. Sc., D.E.A, M.B.A, J.L.P, D. CSC, D.I.U, Ph. D

I’m not even sure what a D.E.A is. J.L.P seems to be Japanese Language Programme. The D. CSC is something from the Centre for Scientific Computing I think.

But also of interest is Dr Spacey lists next to each degree a comment such as “High Honours”, “Special Mention”, “Top 5% Band” which is not something I’ve seen before on a CV for an academic.

A poet on Reddit has come up with a little poem:

My name is Doctor Spacey
Hallowed be my name
I’m not called Tim or Tracey
Not Bob and not Elaine

I’m a personage important
I’m a prodigy, a star
I’m a legend in my lunchtime
Please address me with “Hurrah!”

I have a phD in Awesome
And 48 degrees
Three knighthoods and an Emmy
A Purple Heart and a VC

I never need to purchase alcohol
Because I turn water into wine
I have no need for any vehicle
Because I slide through space and time

When I arrived in Hamilton
It was like the Second Coming
I expected bugles and parades
Marching bands and drumming

When I invented the internet
I never expected to see
Anything but tribute pages
Paying homage to me

You will all be sorry
Your lives will be misery
You would all be nothing
If it weren’t for me

For the sake of clarity I should point out that I don’t think the poet is claiming Dr Spacey has actually claimed to have a VC or invented the Internet. I think he or she is lampooning perceived self-importance.

I suspect that if one didn’t chastise students for not calling you Dr Spacey, then they might not say derogatory things about you online.

Metro Magazine has named the 50 Aucklanders it says are the most influential. The top 10 are:

1.      Stephen Tindall, business
2.      Lorde, music
3.      Nigel Morrison, business
4.      John Key, politics
5.      Steven Joyce, politics
6.      Stephen Town, council
7.      Peter Cooper, development
8.      Joan Withers, business
9.      Lynda Reid, education
10.    Al Brown, food

Looking at some of the more common categories here is how they rank people be sector:

Business

1. Stephen Tindall
2. Nigel Morrison
3. Joan Withers
4. Paul Majurey
5. Michael Stiassny

Politics

1. John Key
2. Steven Joyce
3. Len Brown
4. Jacinda Ardern
5. Phil Goff
6. Winston Peters
7. Penny Hulse

Media

1. Jane Hastings
2. Mike Hosking
3. Julie Christie
4. Shayne Currie
5. Rachel Glucina
6. Kelly Martin
7. Sido Kitchin

The Daily Telegraph has rolling coverage of the tributes to Sir Christopher Lee, died aged 93. Amazingly he was still working, preparing to shoot a film with Uma Thurman.

For today’s generation he was the malevolent Saruman, but that was a small part of his 70 year career. He was one of the early Draculas, Count Dooku in a film we won’t name and more.

Lee was fluent in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian and could also speak Russian, Greek and Swedish.

Newstalk ZB reports:

Labour wants assurances that tens of thousands of sheep and cattle being shipped to Mexico won’t be killed when they get there.

The shipment leaves Timaru today.

Leader Andrew Little told Newstalk ZB’s Rachel Smalley the regulations are clear – you can export live sheep for breeding purposes, you can’t for slaughter.

He admits 50,000 seems like a big number for breeding stock.

“We really need to know and be assured very firmly that these sheep are not going to wind up in a slaughter house somewhere in Mexico that they genuinely are for breeding stock.”

Fellow Labour MP Damien O’Connor is also concerned about the secrecy around the shipment.

He says it raises suspicions about whether it’s for animal welfare or trade related issues.

“The question is why are the animals going there, what’s the long term value for New Zealand from this shipment, and indeed what will they really be used for.”

These sheep do not belong to the NZ Government, to the public or to the Labour Party.

They are the property of a farmer, or farmers.

So long as the export is within the law (for breeding not slaughter), then it is not the business of politicians. Damien O’Connor does not own the sheep. The owner doesn’t need to satisfy Labour that the sale has long-term value to NZ, any more than any other exporter has to.