An interesting OIA release from the Cabinet Office on conflicts of interests in the last 18 months. The numbers are:

• Cabinet Office informed of a conflict – 149
• PM formally advised of a conflict – 140
• A Minister has declared an interest – 38
• A Minister has had papers withheld due to conflict of interest – 30
• A Minister has transferred responsibility – 30

It’s good to see this information coming out, albeit reluctantly. It seems to show that Ministers are regularly working with the Cabinet Office to notify them of potential conflicts, and have them managed.

Hat Tip: No Right Turn

Stuff reports:

Government spending on “corporate welfare” jumped by more than $150 million in the latest Budget, a new report claims.

On Tuesday the Taxpayers’ Union releases its report on the Budget, saying that subsidies for the private sector in the latest Budget came to $1.34 billion.

The report, Any new kids at the trough? says the spending amounts to $752 per household a year, up from $663 a year ago.

The biggest spending was on KiwiRail, the state-owned rail company, which received $239m simply to keep the network running.

Finance Minister Bill English defended the spending, which came from funds set aside from state asset sales, but admitted that the operation needed to change.

“I think we imagined three or four years ago that by now, KiwiRail wouldn’t require so much ongoing investment,” English said on Budget day, describing the level of top up required to keep the rail company going as “unsustainable”.

“KiwiRail’s made some huge strides in its efficiency and productivity but it’s still got some way to go.”

Hands up if you think KiwiRail will ever not need annual bailouts? Any hands ups? Nope.

“What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector?
The taxidermist takes only your skin.” 

– Mark Twain

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.

The Herald reports:

Prime News out-rated its TV3 competitor last night, as the MediaWorks’ channel lost nearly half its audience in two weeks.

3 News drew an audience of 166,000 viewers last night – 13,000 less than Prime News, which screens half an hour earlier at 5.30pm.

Two weeks ago, 3 News attracted nearly double that figure, with 314,000 viewers tuning in.

Media commentator Martin Gillman says the numbers are surprising and will be the cause of serious concern at MediaWorks, which is currently examining its news and current affairs programming in a bid to maximise revenue.

“News makes up a significant part of the schedule and is too important for them to lose out so badly,” he said.

The ratings slide coincides with changes to TV3’s Sunday night schedule, which saw it move to a reduced half-hour news bulletin, ahead of the weekly current affairs programme 3D.

It’s only one night, and a Sunday night, but wow ranking lower than Prime News is unheard of.

Radio Live reports:

He’s only been in the job for a little over a week, but already new Green Party co-leader James Shaw is flexing his muscles.

Mr Shaw has fired long-time chief of staff  Ken Spagnolo, replacing him with communications director Andrew Campbell.

It has not yet been announced who will take Mr Campbell’s position.

Mr Spagnolo had been chief of staff for eight years.

Metiria Turei has attacked Patrick Gower as sexist for tweeting the story:

@patrickgowernz @LloydBurr @RadioLIVENZ @3NewsEditor Such astounding sexism Paddy, you really outdid yourself today.

— Metiria Turei (@metiria) June 8, 2015

In follow up tweets, Turei says it is sexist for suggesting that she was not part of the decision. It may be wrong to suggest that she did not concur, but that is an assumption over the fact it happened as Shaw became co-leader with her, not when her and Norman were co-leaders. I’m not sure calling gallery reporters sexist is a smart thing to do – especially as Gower didn’t even write the story – it’s a Radio Live story he tweeted.

As to the substance, well it is a significant change. Spagnolo is liked and respected – including by those in other parties he has worked with. But his replacement Andrew Campbell is also a very smart operator, and also quite reasonable and personable. Id’ say Spagnolo is the better policy and relationship manager, while Campbell is the more skilled political and communications guy. Both good at their jobs, but different skill sets.

It will be interesting to see who Campbell hires to replace himself.

The Herald reports:

The asylum-seekers who were shipwrecked after attempting to reach New Zealand have apparently called on the Government to help.

The group of 65 are now in a detention centre at Kupang in West Timor, after being turned back by Australian authorities.

Now photographs and a letter have been circulated, apparently by members of the group.

Some photographs were taken on the open sea, with one apparently showing an Australian Navy vessel.

Another shows a group with a sign that reads, “Please try to understand our painful life New Zealand Government and save our life. Please”.

People scoffed at the possibility they were heading to NZ, but this indicates that is exactly where they did want to end up. Over 1,000 died trying to reach Australia by boat. Hopefully we will not end up with similar death tolls.

Labour leader Andrew Little said authorities should investigate whether the group were genuine refugees, and if so, consider processing them as part of New Zealand’s quota.

That’s a great way to encourage a huge upswing in people smuggling and people dying at sea in unsafe boats.

The Guardian reports:

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has suffered his biggest setback in 13 years of amassing power as voters denied his ruling party a parliamentary majority for the first time since 2002 and gave the country’s large Kurdish minority its biggest voice ever in national politics.

The election result on Sunday, with almost all votes counted, appeared to wreck Erdoğan’s ambition of rewriting the constitution to establish himself as an all-powerful executive president. Erdoğan’s governing Justice and Development party, or AKP, won the election comfortably for the fourth time in a row, with around 41% of the vote, but that represented a steep fall in support from 49% in 2011, throwing the government of the country into great uncertainty.

This is a good outcome. This will mean Erdoğan won’t get executive presidential powers.

The overall votes are:

• AKP 41% (-9%) – 258 seats (-53)
• CHP 25% (-1%) – 132 seats (+7)
• MHP 16% (+3%) – 81 seats (+29)
• HDP 13% (+7%) – 79 seats (+50)

The AKP is a semi-Islamist party, with conservative and authoritarian tendencies. Quite good on economic management, but less good on other issues. NZ equivalent might be Conservatives.

The CHP is a social democratic party. NZ equivalent might be Labour.

The MHP is a nationalistic party. NZ equivalent might be NZ First.

HDP is a left wing pro-Kurdish anti-capitalism environmentalist party. NZ equivalent might be the Greens.

Stuff reports:

Has a Kiwi coffee taken the froth off America’s favourite hot drink?

Cappuccinos have been dropped from Starbucks menus in New York, San Francisco and Seattle. And the prime suspect behind the drink’s demise? Flat whites.

New Zealand and Australia have long debated who first invented the coffee, but earlier this year, it won a place on American Starbucks menu boards. According to the Daily Mail, aficionados have hailed the rise of the “ultra-trendy flat white” as marking a new wave of hipster-style craft coffee. 

On Saturday, a Starbucks spokesperson said “the cappuccino has been and continues to be part of our growing espresso portfolio” – but, since the launch of the flat white, “the espresso category has delivered its fastest growth in over three years”.

Two years ago when I did a month long road trip through the US, I think only one cafe in all that time knew what a Flat White was. Now, it is listed at Starbucks. Our coffee superiority is winning out!

Patrick Gower had some harsh words for Labour in the light of the leaked review, on Radio Live.

Bryce Edwards summarised what Gower said:

“Basically this report is a vanilla description of Labour’s pathetic campaign… What it also illustrates is Labour is still leaking, Labour is still unprofessional, Labour is still engaged in bizarre ruling-by-committee. Labour wasn’t ready for Government in 2014 and I can tell you from looking at this report and the dealings I’ve had with it at the moment, Labour isn’t ready for Government any time soon”.

Gower doesn’t stop there, and argues that the Labour Party has transformed into a narrow party out of sync with ordinary people:  “Labour can’t even review their own disastrous campaign… This is a party with serious, serious problems. It’s rotten to the core. Give up, pack up the Labour tent and go home. Because it’s a shame for what was actually 100 years ago a fine movement that started. And it’s just an embarrassment today. It’s just a group of sectoral interests and chardonnay socialists that have taken it over and driven it into the ground”.

Duncan Garner also extends this point, saying, “I’ve wondered for some time whether Labour is just a special sector party for special interest groups, rather than a mainstream party”. He adds that he genuinely doesn’t know what the party stands for anymore. 

Now understandably Labour doesn’t like such harsh criticism, and they have been putting it about that Gower was so damning of them, because after he approached them over the leaked review, they released it before the 6 pm news bulletin, robbing him of his scoop.

John Drinnan buys into this narrative:

Labour Party folk were stunned when journalist Paddy Gower embarked on a radio tirade on Wednesday, saying the party was “rotten to the core” and had been run into the ground by chardonnay socialists. …

But it seems the extraordinary overreaction against Labour occurred because the report was leaked to him and Radio NZ by a Labour insider and, when the party found out, it passed the report on to other media. Gower got the TV scoop, but ironically, TVNZ screened it earlier in its bulletin. Such is the cut and thrust of media management in the public and private sector.

People brought forward an announcement to counter a leak, which they assumed would be portrayed in a more negative way, then Paddy spat the dummy, presumably to teach Labour a lesson.

With respect, this is pretty rubbish reasoning. The reason it is rubbish reasoning, is that Gower (a 10 year veteran of the gallery) would have known full well that once he approached Labour for comment, they would probably release the report. This is not an unusual thing. Almost every political party does this, and the gallery know they do this. If you hear a reporter has a leaked document and it will be on the 6 pm news, you rush to release it before 6 pm, so you can try and spin it your way.

To suggest that Labour’s releasing the report early would have so enraged Gower, that he lost his temper and went harsh on them as revenge, is just silly. This is, again, pretty normal behaviour from a political party when they hear something has been leaked.

Labour are trying to divert attention away from Gower’s actual analysis, because sadly for them it is harsh but not inaccurate.

There are several things that should be worrying Labour:

• The review is so superficial and light that it is unlikely to produce great change
• The voting power of Labour’s sector groups means that any change against their interests is unlikely to get anywhere
• Oppositions generally grow vote in opposition, not lose it
• If you do drop support while in opposition, then that is when you need to change things. National did so after the 2002 election, and Labour should have done so after 2011 but didn’t. And now looks to not do so again after the 2014 vote drop.
• The fact that the review was leaked, shows that Labour is still very divided and lacking the cohesion to be a credible alternative Government

I haven’t blogged to date on the Saudi farm deal, because frankly I haven’t seen what the fuss is about.

Don’t get me wrong – as a form of government spending, it appears to be wasteful and unjustified, but it was a decision made to further NZ’s interests and trade relations. There was no personal benefit to any Minister from it.

I don’t support it, as it is a form of corporate welfare – just like the Rio Tinto subsidy. It has been referred to the Auditor-General, and that is a good idea. But on the facts known to date, I don’t see any wrong-doing.

Audrey Young has a useful article looking at the case for and against it. The case against it (the prosecution):

It is conceded that the ban on live-sheep exports to Saudi Arabia caused losses to Hamood Al Ali Khalaf and has been an irritant in relations between New Zealand and Saudi Arabia.

But that was a consequence of a government exercising its sovereign right to impose laws, in this case in the interests of animal welfare concerns.

If the Government had not acted as it did, New Zealand’s international reputation could have been seriously damaged by continuing a trade with possible consumer backlash.

Mr Al Khalaf was not the only farmer or investor affected by the decision. He could have filed a case for damages in court and taken his chances.

Mr McCully is known as something of a cowboy who does things his way or not at all. His paper to the Cabinet was clearly written in his own office without some of the usual cautions that would accompany a paper with more rigorous input from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Most seriously, it gives no caution to the Cabinet about how the $4 million could be seen as a facilitation payment which, while legal in New Zealand, is considered bribery in many countries.

The paper says the contract for services between Mfat and the Saudi interest “includes an obligation to use their best offices to connect New Zealand Government and trade interests with key government and commercial decision-makers in Saudi Arabia … there will be strong incentives for the Saudi parties to promote the ratification of the NZ-GCC [Gulf free trade agreement] as a basis for expanding this new business.”

This is a case of Mr McCully getting approval to pay a Saudi investor to use his influence to get NZ a free trade agreement, all disguised as a deal for the promotion of NZ agriculture in the Gulf. He should be sacked.

It was a sordid, secretive deal and if it was not, why did the Government not reveal the $4 million payment until it released the Cabinet paper?

Mr McCully has taken an intemperate approach on the issue in the House and suggested the deal was the Government’s response to legal threats that had been caused by the previous Government “poisoning” NZ’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.

He misled the House and the Cabinet if he suggested there was a legal threat. There is no evidence of a legal threat ever having been made.

He was also part of a Government that extended the ban that supposedly poisoned the relationship.

Former agriculture minister David Carter also began negotiations with Saudi Arabia to resume live-sheep exports, but they failed and National followed Labour in banning them.

And the case for the deal, or the defence:

Murray McCully identified an issue that has been a major impediment to New Zealand’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, a vitally important member of the Gulf Co-operation Council.

It is the duty of the Foreign Minister to try to resolve such differences, especially when its resolution is likely to lead to tangible benefits to New Zealand.

Nothing Mr McCully has done has been motivated by anything other than New Zealand’s best interests.

The Cabinet made the decision in a proper way approved by the Cabinet office.

This is not Fifa.

Mr McCully has acted lawfully and in accordance with Cabinet process.

He is about to chair the United Nations Security Council (next month) and the Opposition’s characterisation of him is putting petty politics ahead of the national interest.

Regarding the issue of a legal threat, the prosecution is putting up a straw man.

Mr McCully at no stage said a cause of action had been filed, nor that there was a live case against the Government.

He informed the Cabinet that Mr Al Khalaf’s own legal advice was that he pursue a claim for between $20 million and $30 million.

Any thought Mr Al Khalaf may have had of pursuing legal options was likely disregarded once he was confident the Government was committed to finding a solution.

The fact is that even if there had been no suggestion of legal action, Mr McCully and the Government had an obligation to do what they could to resolve the dispute.

The way the Saudi Government operates is that a slight to one of its own is a slight to itself and that unless the dispute was resolved, there would be no progress on a free trade agreement.

There was no question of paying compensation to Mr Al Khalaf for stopping the shipment of live-sheep exports to Saudi Arabia because that would have created a precedent and opened the Government to other claims. But the commercial solution developed by Mr McCully and officials – of vide a platform to benefit funding an agri-hub in Saudi Arabia – was a win-win-win proposition.

It benefited Mr Al Khalaf, who lost millions in his investments in New Zealand after being encouraged to invest here, it will provide a platform to benefit New Zealand exporters to the region, and it will resolve a dispute that has disadvantaged New Zealand exporters.

The Government’s involvement in the agri-hub has not been a secret. Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy released a speech about it in March 2014 when he outlined the detail of it.

The $4 million was not initially disclosed because part of the payment was for settlement of the dispute and it was commercially and politically sensitive.

Audrey’s conclusion:

This deal is what is known in politics as a “McCully Special”.

It is creative, inventive, highly unorthodox and may worry sticklers for process in public service but it was done within the parameters of legitimate Cabinet decision-making processes.

It is not unlawful. It was a pragmatic solution to a bilateral problem that needed fixing.

It was the Cabinet’s decision, not Mr McCully’s.

He is not guilty but he could never be called innocent.

He should stay in his job but pledge to do better next time.

A pretty fair summary.

The Herald reports:

Gloriavale Christian Community families could be claiming many thousands of dollars a year in Working for Families subsidies.

So what? Isn’t that what WFF is for?

While Gloriavale residents do not claim the unemployment benefit, members who have left claim those in the community claimed Working for Families allowances.

Again so what? They’re making it sound sinister.

The Gloriavale website says: “We do not take welfare benefits, borrow money, or invest money on interest.”

WFF is not a benefit. It is part of the welfare system, but it is not a benefit.

The Greymouth Star used the official government on-line calculator to work out how much Gloriavale parents might be getting.

Because they work for a charity, and possibly do not get paid, we entered zero income, although Gloriavale leaders dispute that. Those with the smallest income are eligible for the greatest amount of the allowance. If the family had nine children and no income, they could receive $672 a week.

Choosing the most extreme example. Gloriavale has 164 students at their school out of a population of 500. They do have some large families but obviously on average not many.

I don’t like Gloriavale, but the media are not treating them fairly. This article makes their taking WFF as something sinister or inappropriate.

Judith Collins and Phil Goff in Stuff on euthanasia. First Collins:

I, like other Kiwis, watched as Lucretia Seales fought bravely in court for her right to die at a time of her choosing, with help from her GP.

Like many others, I wondered why it got this far.  I wonder how many other Kiwis have died of a terminal illness and been helped – a lot – with morphine on their way out of this world.

Seales fought for the right to die without fear that her GP might be hauled before the courts because of her wishes.

In the past, Parliament has voted against voluntary euthanasia.  Primarily, this is because the private member’s bills that have put it to Parliament have been full of holes and could have opened the elderly, in particular, to abuse.

Maybe it’s time for Parliament to revisit this with a carefully thought out bill that protects those doctors who carry out the well-considered wishes of their terminally ill patients.

Any such legislation should protect against any pressure brought on a terminally ill or disabled person.  Many MPs rightly worry about the ill and aged believing themselves to be a burden on their families and feeling obliged to ask their doctors for help.  Exactly who would be able to take this route or why are vexed questions.

By her sheer determination and courage, Seales showed   it was her wish to pass when and how she wanted.  It’s very clear that no one was pressuring her. She made a plea for dignity and control over her own death.

Goff agrees:

Why did Lecretia Seales have to fight in vain for the right to decide how she died?

Stricken with a terminal brain tumour, she did not want to die in pain or after having  lost control of her body. She wanted to say her farewells with human dignity.  If she felt her condition was too much to bear, she wanted the right to say enough.

There is nothing in law that says we cannot take our own lives but for a doctor to assist another to die even in these circumstances is a crime.  It shouldn’t be.

With palliative care, most of us can die without pain and with dignity, letting nature take its course.  Where this is not possible, people should have the right to choose for themselves when to bring suffering to an end.

What we need is a bill to be introduced. I believe it would have overwhelming public support, and so long as there were strong safeguards, would get a significant majority in Parliament to pass it.

Stuff reports:

The Government won’t support “extreme measures” like warrant of fitness checks for all houses because it will drive up rent and push housing stock out of the market, says Finance Minister Bill English.

Good.

Labour was calling for cross-party support for its bill that would ensure every rental property in the country – state or private – met a minimum standard of living, including heating and insulation.

Twyford said the cost of retro-fitting a standard New Zealand house with floor and ceiling insulation and a heat pump would only cost about $5000.

Only $5,000! Make it compulsory for every rental house in NZ,  and watch those costs skyrocket.

In 2014, the Government trialled a warrant of fitness on 500 state houses, which included checks on insulations, leaks, smoke alarms, toilet facilities and power points.

But Housing Minister Nick Smith was reluctant to extend the warrants to all public and private rentals because if the Government prohibited the rental of homes unless they were fully insulated it would mean taking 100,000 homes off the market.

As I blogged in May 2014, 94% of rental properties failed a WOF test devised by Councils. So this would remove 94% of rentals off the market.

A one size fits all WOF will turn into a bureaucratic nightmare. I live in a penthouse apartment that is generally very warm, as it gets all day sun. If I wanted to rent it out, Labour and Greens would make it illegal as it doesn’t have a heat pump!

Vanguard School has published its annual report.

Some highlights:

• Level 1 NCEA success rate 96% (decile average is 74%)
• Level 1 Maori NCEA success rate 92% (decile average is 70%)
• Level 1 Pasifika NCEA success rate 100% (decile average is 69%)
• Level 2 NCEA success rate 100% (decile average is 92%)
• 108 students, increasing to 144 in 2015
• 52% Maori or Pasifika
• No school fees
• School provides uniforms and pays exam fees
• Reports every quarter to Ministry of Education
• All staff are qualified teachers except three specialists in engineering and defence force studies
• No school zone – all applicants are accepted. Some travel as far as from Warkworth to attend. 74% of students are not local.
• Establishment grant was $1.6 million, compared to average cost of new state schools being $30 – $50 million
• Attendance rate is 11% above contracted, and exceeds national average

The only slight negative is they have had to suspend and stand down a few students very early on in 2014.

Overall they look like they are succeeding very very well, with a group of students who were not succeeding in other schools.  Despite this Labour and Greens want to close them down.

The Herald reports:

Some agencies are expected to close in a radical revamp of social service funding unveiled by Social Development Minister Anne Tolley.

A new “community investment strategy”, published yesterday, will focus most public funding of non-government social services on three priorities:

• Supporting vulnerable children and children in hardship and reducing maltreatment.

• Supporting vulnerable young people, including youth offenders, and reducing youth crime.

• Supporting adult victims/survivors, addressing perpetrators’ behaviour, and reducing violent crime. …

Dave Henderson of the NGO umbrella group Hui E! Community Aotearoa said there was wide agreement on the three priorities and the need to review existing programmes.

“The department’s services have grown like topsy.” He pointed to a chart in a recent Productivity Commission report which listed 45 new programmes started over the past 10 years, including seven in one year.

“Every year they are adding programmes because they are someone’s hobby horse, or because of lobbying, or because of media pressure, and they are not reviewing them.”

A tighter focus normally produces better results. We’ve seen this in the health sector where the 80 or so old targets were replaced with fewer than a dozen health goals, and the sector has largely met them.

The three priority areas look sensible to me.

A fascinating article in The Guardian which details what went wrong with UK Labour’s campaign, based on interviews with many insiders.

An extract:

The team that Miliband had assembled around him consisted of highly intelligent individuals, but the whole was less than the sum of its parts – it was, according to many of those advisers, like a court in which opposing voices cancelled one another out. Greg Beales, the campaign’s director of strategy – and the keeper of the party’s polling – was convinced that, above all, the party needed to address the distrust of Labour’s legacy on the economy and immigration. He insisted that they should confront these issues directly, or else the specific “retail” offers to the electorate that tested well in focus groups, such as the energy price freeze, would fall on deaf ears. By contrast, the more cerebral Stewart Wood, a former politics tutor at Magdalen College Oxford, pressed Miliband to make an ideological break with New Labour, and concentrate the campaign on a promise to make society more equal, through reforms to banking, markets, and post-crash capitalism.

Here we have NZ Labour focusing almost exclusively on “equality” and not confronting the elephant in the room that people don’t think Andrew Little and Grant Robertson can manage the economy as credibly as John Key and Bill English.

Axelrod was appalled by the low quality of the ideas being discussed, which he derisively characterised as “Vote Labour and win a microwave”

We may see that become policy here!

Miliband had first ruled out a coalition with the SNP on 16 March, but it was not until 26 April that he also ruled out a confidence and supply agreement between the two parties. Even then, the question refused to go away. Shadow ministers were being asked whether there would be implicit understandings between the two parties, or whether they would even speak to SNP MPs in the corridors of Westminster. The party’s focus groups also showed that voters did not believe Miliband’s denials, since they did not think he would ever spurn the chance to be prime minister.

Same here as Cunliffe ruled out coalition with Internet-Mana, and then confidence and supply but people didn’t believe him because he never ruled them out entirely, as in he would not form a Government if dependent on them for a majority.

ABC reports:

An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned.

The series of tests were conducted by Homeland Security Red Teams who pose as passengers, setting out to beat the system.

According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints.

So let’s abolish them. The security checks today are stifling and bureaucratic, and as the audits have shown won’t actually stop an actual terrorist – just passengers with water bottles!

The Press reports:

Three months ago, it seemed unlikely Christchurch City councillors would find common ground and reach agreement on how to dig the city out of its financial hole.

But some deft manoeuvring by Mayor Lianne Dalziel has the council inching closer to unity. 

The budget proposal she outlined on Friday was both clever and pragmatic. It did not shy away from an unprecedented sell-down of council-owned assets but it spread the timing out over three years, which gives the council more wriggle room and time to finalise exactly how much money it needs to finance the work it has to do. …

A $200 million-$300m reduction in the council’s capital works programme coupled with $40m in projected savings from the council’s operational budgets has also allowed Dalziel to propose a lower rate rise than originally forecast. Rates in Christchurch will still rise significantly over the next few years but the burden will be a little less onerous than originally thought.

There is a trade-off though. Having lower rate rises means we might have to wait longer for some capital projects, including road repairs. Just what projects will get pushed out or axed altogether is unclear. Some initial cuts have already been made but the bulk of the re-prioritising work will occur in the second half of this year when external advisors will be brought in to help the council separate the capital programme’s nice-to-haves from the must-haves.

A lot of work still has to be done but Dalziel deserves credit for putting forward a proposal that charts a clear course to a sustainable financial future.

Dalziel has shown commendable pragmatism in seeing the wisdom in using existing assets to help with the purchase of future assets. I wasn’t sure she could leave ideology behind, but she has.

Stuff reports:

The average Kiwi household is $250 a year worse off because the Auckland housing boom has kept interest rates high, Labour has claimed.  

With the Reserve Bank due to revise its 3.5 per cent official cash rate (OCR) on Thursday, Labour housing spokesman Phil Twyford has issued figures showing an across the board 0.5 cut would provide an immediate $725 million boost.

He says the analysis – which he admits is an assumption, given all interest rates would not immediately respond in a uniform way – reinforces his criticism of National’s “abject failure” to control soaring prices or build enough affordable housing.

“This is money that is currently going to offshore lenders. The whole country – households, consumers and businesses – are paying the price of the Government’s failure to fix the Auckland housing crisis,” Twyford said.

So Phil Twyford is complaining that under National the OCR is 3.5% and this is costing businesses and households too much money.

Let’s have a look at the history of the OCR:

Yeah that 3.5% is just killing businesses and households. Labour never had it below 4.5% and even had it above 8% until they crashed the economy into recession (before the GFC struck).

Vote Labour for lower interest rates – yeah right.

Labour’s third post-election defeat review (the 2015 edition) was leaked to Paddy Gower of TV 3 News earlier this week. As with the previous reviews in 2009 and 2012, it focused on all the wrong things and offers virtually nothing to solve Labour’s systemic problems. Paddy Gower said he could’ve taken 40 seconds to come up with what’s wrong with Labour not the eight months it took Bryan Gould and his team and spared Labour the hassle and he’s right!

Over Easter 2014, I published a lengthy essay on why Labour is in the position it is in right now. This latest review merely confirms their plight. Labour have lost the last three elections because they have moved away from being a broad church party that once was a home to centrist moderates such as small business and socially conservative people who have a social justice bent. The party is now dominated by more left leaning narrower sector groups such as feminists, trade unionists, academics, beneficiaries and rainbow groups and their sympathisers. Combined together, these groups represent maybe 20% of the voting population leaving another 5 to 10% comprising left leaning floating voters or habitual ingrained Labour supporters who will never leave them. A portion of the socialist and environmental left (the less politicised youth vote that actually votes and the Wadestown socialist set) have mostly gone over to the Greens. The left’s core vote seems to be stuck at its bedrock support of about 36% (if you add in Mana).

What is the impact of changing a party from being a broad based party to a narrower interest group driven party?

• The loss of moderating voices who are either driven out by strident leftists or leave because their voices are no longer listened to. This loss is keenly felt during the policy making, and in the candidate selection, processes.
• The party machinery, once captured by the Clark faction (sometimes dubbed the ‘sisterhood’), set about turning the party into an institution that became more controlled by the same likeminded activists who come from the same limited sector groups. This has created an echo chamber where it is difficult for dissenting views, once tolerated, to thrive and act as a moderating influence. Spend a few days at The Standard and you’ll see this tendency vividly on display.
• The left tends to favour centralised control to enforce cultural and policy purity. This has led to the narrow factional groups selecting candidates in winnable electorate seats and for the upper electable half of the List from the ranks of those who think like them.
• The party’s activist base is more ideological and this tendency favours the incubation of more left wing policies and a tendency to reward doctrinal pureness over the more appealing pragmatism more often proposed by moderate centrists.
• The smaller number of members makes it easier to impose the views of the harder left activist base onto the whole party. An example of this was the 2012 Constitutional Amendment changing the election of the party leader to a primary involving the wider party and the affiliated unions. This amendment was one of the longest suicide notes in NZ political history but the party’s base is so insulated and tone deaf to the negative electoral reality of this change that they still congratulate themselves on their democratic generosity giving little heed to the consequences that are now so readily evident in the quality of the two leaders since the change.
• A smaller membership base has enhanced the power of the unions as their privileged position has remained constitutionally enshrined leading to union favoured candidates now twice winning the leadership; both over the wishes of their caucus.
• Having purged the party of Rogernomics, the institutional instinct to never again be suckered into right leaning polices has led to party-wide resistance to moving to the centre.
• Repeated electoral failure, ossification of the caucus (the refusal to weed out the dead wood due to the need for successful leadership challengers to pay off factional support in caucus) and the failure of the extra-Parliamentary party leadership to have or retain a professional fundraiser has led to Labour’s impoverished financial state.

The review instead focuses on mostly the wrong things. It identifies the impact of the lack of fundraising without really drilling down to the nub of the problem. It obsesses over red herrings such as the so-called missing million – a canard that even their own supporters have told them to give up on. It recommends internal structural and procedural changes that will do nothing to enhance Labour’s electoral appeal and indeed some (e.g. the List Committee) will reinforce centralised control over candidate selection and ensure precisely the types of centrist candidates that would appeal more to middle NZ are NOT selected. It genuflects in the direction of PC touchstones such as recommending acknowledging the Treaty of Waitangi more on the hustings (a sure fire way to turn OFF Waitakere Man) and it reflects the flawed leftist mindset that first their left leaning policies must be hidden from view to prevent their opponents from defining them and then explained more articulately; again built around the false assumption that the problem is less the message and more the messenger. There is no mention of any of the REAL reasons for Labour’s unpopularity and utter and complete denial as to the parlous state that it finds itself in for the reasons listed above and thus no strategy to reverse course and win back the middle.

Labour’s electoral prospects have been hampered not helped by the introduction of MMP. In its early years, Labour benefited from MMP because the other party of the left was a creature that came from Labour. The Alliance was dominated by New Labour most particularly Jim Anderton. Anderton was a former Labour Party President before he became an MP and was a close colleague of Helen Clark. Once the Greens broke free from the Alliance and began to campaign as their own brand, Labour was forced to deal with an appealing and virginally new party to its left flank. When Labour could attract centrist votes off National, it could govern with the Greens numbers but keep their nutty vote killing economic policies away from the Cabinet table. I’ve said before, Labour is fighting for votes in a relatively narrow slice of electoral real estate boxed in by a very centrist (and occasionally left leaning) National Party which remains on good terms with its partner party to its right and an expansionist and aggressive Green Party to its left. The consequence of the collapse of Labour’s vote and the leakage of its left leaning supporters to the Greens and its centrist supporters to National, leaves Labour in the invidious position of relying 100% on the Greens to form a government and this time the Greens want Cabinet positions commensurate with their share of the coalition (as the Alliance, Progressives and NZ First all got from Labour at various times from 1999 to 2008). ACT is massively dwarfed by National and so realises it can only be in government with a few modest policy wins and not with any front bench Cabinet position. Labour’s demise and disproportionately greater reliance on the Greens means, no matter how much dodging, tough talking and fudging it may do in the run up to an election, that it must go to middle NZ voters as a government in waiting that will inevitably include front bench Cabinet positions from the Greens leadership and more substantial integration of the Greens’ more extremist anti-business nanny state and vote killing interventions.  Labour’s platform is effectively weighed down by the Greens’ worst publicly announced policy (and the even nuttier ones they are keeping under wraps until the day their leaders get Ministerial warrants!)

The ultimate irony is that the very people who could take Labour back to the vote rich centre are the MPs like Shane Jones who were ostracised, ignored by the bulk of the party and ultimately driven out. The centralisation of the selection process and its capture by the harder left activist base ensures that the new Shane Jones’ are ‘strangled at birth’ and never see the inside of a Labour caucus room. Labour is left to shuffle its leadership around its narrow pool of talent in the hope that someone, anyone will break through, take down John Key and ignite the missing million. Little clearly is not succeeding but what can Labour do? Bumble on to 2017 with Little’s periodic pratfalls or take a fifth punt on Robertson who offers himself as boring gay policy wonkish civil servant? Or run with a pretty new female face in the form of the vacuous Jacinda Adern? Only Nash or Davis have the centrist instincts, appeal and on-the-ground electoral chops to begin to take Labour back to its broad church days. Would the unions and the harder left base vote for either of them? Would both groups voluntarily surrender their own power to control future leadership elections? The answer to both questions is: not likely and therein lies Labour’s conundrum. It is actually trapped where it is and there is little institutional momentum on the horizon to properly change it. A fourth term in Opposition is the only thing that will see them embrace the radical surgery that this review utterly avoids recommending.

[UPDATE] I just listened to the Friday 5 June “Focus on Politics” on National Radio featuring an interview with the Greens’ new male co-leader James Shaw. It has relevance to discussion about Labour’s Review because he repeated the line about the need for pre-election coalition clarity mentioned in the review. Shaw thinks because Labour and the Greens hit polling highs just after their joint announcement of the Kiwi Power policy featuring the partial nationalisation of the power industry that this is evidence that joint campaigning is the way to get a Labour Green government elected in 2017. Both sides seem to think that the lack of clarity over how a Labour Greens coalition would work was part of the reason why both parties polled so low. Like the same comment in the Labour Review, this is delusional thinking on a grand scale. Knowing that Labour and the Greens want to have a stable coalition is not the problem. It’s WHAT that coalition would really implement as policies was the problem for voters. Even with their separate campaigning and relative coyness about what a Labour Greens government would look like was enough for middle NZ voters to conclude that National was a safer option. If Labour and the Greens think spelling out the contours of their coalition and talking about them governing together stably MORE would enhance their chances, good luck with that. Shaw, Turei and the authors of the Review don’t get that floating centrist voters see ANY government with the Greens in it as inflicting anti business nanny state environmental extremism on their wallets and they will vote for National for a fourth term to prevent that from happening.

The Conservative Tribune reports:

Uhle had already boarded a flight from Chicago to Columbus that was about to take off, when it suddenly went back to the concourse and she was told to exit the plane.

“I figured I was on the wrong plane. The gate agent told me to check in at the desk and when I did she told me to call my husband,” Uhle said.

According to Fox News, that is when Uhle learned from her husband in Colorado that her son had slipped into a coma after suffering a traumatic head injury in an accident.

Uhle also soon discovered that Southwest had already taken care of making arrangements for her to abruptly change her travel plans, rebooking her on the next non-stop flight to Denver, without any additional fees or charges.

“They offered a private waiting area, rerouted my luggage, allowed me to board first, and packed a lunch for when I got off the plane in Denver,” Uhle said. “My luggage was delivered to where I was staying, and I even received a call from Southwest asking how my son was doing.”

That is very impressive and caring.