Stuff reports:

Cannabis users looking for someone to share a joint with have a new app that lets them find like-minded smokers around the world.

The creator of the Who is Happy app, a Brazilian epilepsy sufferer who wants the drug decriminalised, says his software is a kind of “Foursquare for stoners”, comparing it to the app that allows users to rate restaurants and other places they visit.

“The app is the first global platform of its kind allowing cannabis consumers to connect and unite to promote happiness while de-stigmatizing and hopefully decriminalising cannabis use around the world,” Paulo Costa said.

Users who anonymously log their location will see a green cloud appear on the app’s map, covering a 1-km  radius. They can then check to see if others are partaking anywhere nearby, or elsewhere in the world. A greater number of users increases a location’s “happiness” quotient.

I can see this app becoming very popular with undercover police officers – a way for people to tell the Police to come and arrest them!

Back in April I blogged that I had little sympathy for Chris Roberts who was arrested after he tweeted onboard a flight:

“Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? “PASS OXYGEN ON” Anyone ? :)” his tweet read.

It turns out he did more than tweet about hacking planes – he actually did it – and often.

Stuff reports:

A security researcher hijacked an airplane’s engines after hacking its in-flight entertainment systems, according to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

Chris Roberts, a well-known US security researcher, told FBI agents in February that he’d hacked in-flight entertainment systems on over a dozen flights and on one occasion hijacked an aircraft’s thrust management computer and briefly altered its course. 

“[Roberts] stated that he thereby caused one of the airplane engines to climb resulting in a lateral or sideways movement of the plane during one of these flights,” FBI agent Mark Hurleywrote in a warrant application filed in April and obtained by technology publication Wired on Friday. 

The FBI seized Roberts’ computers and questioned him after he was escorted off a United Airlines flight last month, because he’d posted a tweet — apparently in jest — hinting he could tap into the aircraft’s crew alert system and cause passenger oxygen masks to drop. 

According to the document, during interviews in February and March, Roberts said he’d compromised in-flight entertainment systems on 15 to 20 flights between 2011 and 2014. Each time he’d pried open the cover of the electronics box located under passenger seats and would connect his laptop to the system with an ethernet cable. He’d also scan the network for security flaws and monitored communications from the cockpit. 

I have even less sympathy for him now. Taking over a plane by hacking is not a world different from taking it over with a gun.

Details of the warrant emerged as United Airlines launched a new program that will reward researchers with up to one million frequent flyer miles when they report to it new security flaws in its apps, websites and portals but not in-flight systems. 

The program takes a leaf from bug bounties run by Google and Microsoft, which collectively paid millions of dollars last year to researchers.

That’s a good idea. A true security professional would have immediately reported any vulnerability.

Stuff reports:

Car maker Ford believes that “hyper enforcement” of mobile phone laws could be contributing to more accidents.

In New Zealand, drivers drivers can not use hand-held mobile phone while driving unless it is an emergency situation, but the global leader for Ford’s infotainment interface, Jeff Greenberg, has said the onus should be on car makers to reduce mobile phone-related accidents with smarter technology.

Greenberg said the current strategy of simply banning mobile phones had encouraged motorists to be more discrete.

“You see this regularly with hyper enforcement – people who would normally hold their phone up high to text (gestures phone at eye level), which is still bad by the way, are now holding their phone down near their lap and completely taking their eyes off the road,” he said.

“There can be unintended consequences to being overly vigilant. That’s what our concern is: that whatever policies are adopted, that we really think through the unintended consequences to make sure we don’t make the problem worse.”

A valid point. A better approach would be car manufacturers making it easier for cellphones to pair with the native car systems.

Stuff reports:

Would the promise of an US$800 (NZ$1075) payout motivate you to quit smoking? And if so, what’s the most effective way to dangle that reward?

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania sought to answer those questions, with help from more than 2500 smokers who either worked for the US pharmacy chain CVS Caremark or were their family members or friends.

They found that financial incentives greatly improved the odds of kicking the habit. Compared with a control group that was offered “usual care” – including smoking cessation guides from the American Cancer Society and referrals to local anti-smoking resources – those who also were offered the prospect of a payday were far more likely to be smoke-free six months after their quit dates. The researchers also discovered that the type of incentive offered could make a big difference in a smoker’s chances of success, according to their report published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

The detail being:

People who had their own skin in the game had the greatest odds of success. Among those who were willing to make a US$150 (NZ$201) deposit that they could earn back by remaining smoke-free, the quit rate at six months was 52 per cent. That blew away the 17 per cent quit rate for those didn’t put up any of their own cash. It also bested the 6 per cent quit rate for those in the control group who only got usual care.

So by far the best results come when smokers stand to both gain money if they stop smoking, but also lose their own money if they don’t.

But the researchers said it’s not clear that the skin-in-the-game approach was the best way to go. Though the results were much better, smokers were far less likely to give it a try. Only 14 per cent of the study participants assigned to a deposit-based program were willing to fork over their money. In comparison, 90 per cent of those who didn’t have to shell out agreed to participate in their part of the experiment.

When the researchers took this into account, the success rate for the simple reward systems beat out the success rate for the deposit systems by margin of 16 per cent to 10 per cent. That was a statistically significant difference, the study authors wrote.

It is logical that fewer people are willing to put up their own money. But if they are, then it is more successful. So offering both programmes would seem to be the best thing to do.

Two interesting blog posts of Lord Ashcroft – the results of his post-election poll and a speech he gave to a post-election conference.

Some data from the poll:

• Conservatives lost among under 55s, and won massively with over 65s. Labour got just 21% of over 65s.
• Conservatives won in socio-economic classes AB and C1, tied in C2 and lost only in DE.
• The most important factors in how people voted were trust of motives and values 75%, preferred promises 62%, the leader 45%
• Most important issues were the NHS 55%, economic growth 51%, immigration 41%, cutting deficit 30%, cost of living 25%, welfare reform 20%, Europe 18%, schools 13%, environment 9%, crime 6%
• 46% say austerity needs to continue, 30% say austerity was needed but no longer and 24% say austerity was never needed
• Even 60% of Labour voters say austerity and spending cuts were needed

The House remains urgency and is sitting from 9 am to 1 pm, 2 pm to 6 pm and 7 pm to midnight until the following bills are dealt with.

• KiwiSaver Budget Measures Bill (all stages)
• Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill (all stages)

The KiwiSaver Budget Measures Bill proposes to remove the $1,000 KiwiSaver kick-start contribution paid to all new enrollees in the KiwiSaver scheme, effective from 2 pm on 21 May 2015.

The Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill amends the Biosecurity Act 1993 and the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to introduce levies to fund the direct and indirect costs of activities carried out by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the New Zealand Customs Service relating to the processing of people arriving in and departing from New Zealand.

Some winners from last night’s Canon Media Awards:

• Best Blog – Jarrod Gilbert
• Best Website – nzherald.co.nz
• Newspaper of the Year – NZ Herald
• Weekly Newspaper of  the Year – Sunday Star-Times
• Reporter of the Year – Jared Savage
• Junior Reporter of the Year – Talia Shadwell
• Politics Reporter – David Fisher
• Business Reporter – Matt Nippert
• Best columnist – humour/satire – Deborah Hill Cone
• Columnist of the Year – Michelle Hewitson
• Wolfson Fellowship – Shayne Currie

Congrats to all the winners.

The Dom Post reports:

The Transmission Gully motorway could have provided a lifeline to almost 23,000 motorists stuck in gridlock during Wellington’s flooding.

Traffic modelling by the New Zealand Transport Agency suggests the planned inland motorway between Porirua and Paekakariki – scheduled to open in 2020 – would have significantly altered the civil defence emergency experienced across the region on Thursday.

With State Highway 1 closed by a landslip on the coast road between Pukerua Bay and Paekakariki, and SH2 at Petone submerged by floodwaters, about 30,000 people found themselves stranded in the capital. …

Even without natural disasters, Transmission Gully is expected to make a massive difference to traffic flows, reducing the number of vehicles using the coastal SH1 route to just 3090 – a drop of 86 per cent.

Raewyn Bleakley, the transport agency’s central region director, said the contract for the motorway, which is being built by a private consortium, sets out high standards for resilience to earthquakes, landslips and crashes.

The four-lane Gully route would be far more likely to stay open during a landslip than the existing two-lane coastal highway, which showed its vulnerability on Thursday, she said.

And we’re actually going to get it this decade, after 70 years of waiting.

Bruce Pepperell, civil defence controller for the Wellington region, said comments on the Civil Defence Facebook page during the flooding suggested Transmission Gully had never been so popular.

“It can’t come quick enough,” he said.

“When you’ve only got two main roads out of town, and they’re both gone, then you’re not playing with many aces up your sleeve.”

The pace with which SH1 and SH2 north of Wellington were both knocked out had civil defence staff “sweating” about the prospect of trying to find space in Wellington for an extra 30,000 people overnight, he said.

A Civil Defence-led report in 2013 predicted the Gully motorway would be of even greater value after a major earthquake of magnitude 7.5 or more, which is expected to severely damage Wellington’s main transport links.

Which is why I support it – it is not just about congestion. It is about Wellington not being cut off.

Danyl McL looks at the Budget and notes:

I’ve been saying for a while that ‘neoliberalism’ – ie a belief in the efficacy of free markets, the distortionary evil of taxes and benefits and the minimalisation of the state – is dead. There are still a few adherents drifting around the fringes of politics that truly believe, but this budget seems like a good time to mark that in National the doctrine is obsolete. National believes in massive intervention in the economy, mostly in favor of their political donors but also in response to signals from their polling and market research, and English has raised or introduced so many taxes I’ve lost count. I don’t know what we’re supposed to call this mode of government, exactly, but it ain’t ‘neoliberal’.

Anyone who calls this Government neo-liberal is profoundly stupid, and thinks it is just a label to apply to anything you don’t like.

Not that I agree with Danyl that National intervenes in the economy to favour political donors. All donors over $15,000 are listed and they’re not the ones who benefit from intervention. The biggest beneficiary of corporate welfare is Kiwirail, followed by all those tech companies that the Callaghan Institute gives money to.

So, on one hand the opposition can put this budget down as a victory. They’ve made a big deal about the housing crisis and child poverty, and the government’s main policy changes have been the introduction of a capital gains tax and an increase in benefits to beneficiaries with families. Forcing your enemies to adopt your rhetoric and policies is a huge win.

Yep, it is a huge win for the left. A National Government has done what not even a Labour Government would do.

On the other hand, the opposition looked like clueless losers yesterday. What kind of left-wing politician opposes the gutting of the KiwiSaver kickstarter – pretty much the definition of middle-class welfare – to tackle child poverty?

Well both Labour and Greens do.

And Little’s speech was just awful. ‘Gene Simmons’? ‘Fiscal gender reassignment’? Why did he think it was a good idea to reference a source of internal division within his own party? What a mess.

It was the worst opposition leader’s budget speech I have seen.

The kids on the social media like to use the phrase ‘hot take’ to describe commentary that is hysterical and uninformed, and that’s what we got from the opposition parties yesterday, gouging their own eyes out with horror at a budget filled with ideas they’ve been demanding for years. Ridiculous.

When I saw the Budget in the lockup and realised how left-wing it was, the one small ray of consolation was that Labour and the Greens would probably be so shocked when they got a copy at 2 pm, they wouldn’t know what to do. Would they look ridiculous, as Danyl says, denouncing they very things they had been demanding, or would they think quickly on their feet.

If I had been the Greens I would have have claimed credit as the only party that had been advocating for an increase in benefit rates, and held the Budget up as an example of why it is important to have the Greens in Parliament – that they can make a difference – even from opposition.

Instead they all routinely denounced it. I guess it was the equivalent of National in 1986 condemning the free market reforms of the then Labour Government.

This is the so called Auckland Action Against Poverty, in response to the first increase in real benefit rates in 43 years. Lovely people aren’t they.

Sure you may argue it should be more, but the way they are carrying on, you’d think the Government had cut benefits by $25 a week!

They’re part of the demented 1% who won’t be happy until we have the communist nirvana of surgeons being paid the same as McDonalds staff.

Spokeswoman Sue Bradford said if the government was serious about dealing with poverty, it would lift benefits now to the same levels as superannuation

Let’s look at what this would cost.

The standard benefit for a job seeker aged 25 is $210.13 a week.

The standard benefit for a someone on NZ Super living alone is $374.53

So Bradford is demanding a 78.2% increase in non NZ Super benefits. They currently cost around $7.3 billion. So the annual cost of what the AAAP are violently demanding is an extra $5.7 billion a year in welfare payments. In reality it would be far more than that, as many more people would go on welfare.

Now I doubt they want health and education cut by $5.7 billion a year, so I imagine their response would be sock it to the rich and make them pay. Stick up the top tax rate from 33%.

A 1% increase brings in around $210 million a year so they need a 27% increase, meaning the top tax rate would have to be 60 cents in the dollar. Yep anything you earn over $70,000 would go 60/40 to the Government.

And that is just to fund their one sole demand.

Of course in reality a top tax rate of 60% would not bring in even half that amount of money. People would simply leave.

Kirsten Powers at The Daily Beast writes:

The root of nearly every free-speech infringement on campuses across the country is that someone—almost always a liberal—has been offended or has sniffed out a potential offense in the making. Then, the silencing campaign begins. The offender must be punished, not just for justice’s sake, but also to send the message to anyone else on campus that should he or she stray off the leftist script, they too might find themselves investigated, harassed, ostracized, or even expelled. If the illiberal left can preemptively silence opposing speakers or opposing groups— such as getting a speech or event canceled, or denying campus recognition for a group—even better.

In a 2014 interview with New York magazine, comedian Chris Rock told journalist Frank Rich that he had stopped playing college campuses because of how easily the audiences were offended.

We live in the age of offence, where people think they have a right not to be offended.

Instead, the politically correct university is a world of land mines, where faculty and students have no idea what innocuous comment might be seen as an offense. In December 2014, the president of Smith College, Kathleen McCartney, sent an email to the student body in the wake of the outcry over two different grand juries failing to indict police officers who killed African-American men. The subject heading read “All Lives Matter” and the email opened with, “As members of the Smith community we are struggling, and we are hurting.” She wrote, “We raise our voices in protest.” She outlined campus actions that would be taken to “heal those in pain” and to “teach, learn and share what we know” and to “work for equity and justice.”

Shortly thereafter, McCartney sent another email. This one was to apologize for the first. What had she done? She explained she had been informed by students “the phrase/hashtag ‘all lives matter’ has been used by some to draw attention away from the focus on institutional violence against black people.”

Insane. She had to apologise for saying “all lives matter”.

On today’s campuses, left-leaning administrators, professors, and students are working overtime in their campaign of silencing dissent, and their unofficialtactics of ostracizing, smearing, and humiliation are highly effective. But what is even more chilling—and more far reaching—is the official power they abuse to ensure the silencing of views they don’t like. They’ve invented a labyrinth of anti-free speech tools that include “speech codes,” “free speech zones,” censorship, investigations by campus “diversity and tolerance offices,” and denial of due process.

And we saw this in Australia where some staff and student groups basically blackmailed the university into revoking the appointment of Bjørn Lomborg, as he doesn’t buy into their view that the world is doomed.

Or how about the Brandeis professor who was found guilty of racial harassment—with no formal hearing—for explaining, indeed criticizing, the word “wetbacks.” Simply saying the word was crime enough. Another professor, this time at the University of Central Florida, was suspended for making a joke in class equating his tough exam questions to a “killing spree.” A student reported the joke to the school’s administration. The professor promptly received a letter suspending him from teaching and banning him from campus. He was reinstated after the case went public.

And all this in the land of the 1st amendment.

The list goes on and on. The University of Wisconsin-Stout at one point had an Information Technology policy prohibiting the distribution of messages that included offensive comments about a list of attributes including hair color.

Get suspended for making a ginga joke!

One student alleged that when the professor changed her capitalization of the word “indigenous” to lowercase he was disrespecting her ideological point of view.

And he was accused of racial microaggression and suspended.

The Herald reports:

Labour leader Andrew Little says the party will consider means testing superannuation but he did not agree with increasing the age of eligibility despite concern about the rising costs.

It should be means tested. It is silly that we pay NZ Super to someone earning $500,000 a year. It is good to see Andrew Little open to means testing.

Asked about means testing, Mr Little said there were some elements of unfairness in universal superannuation.

An example was where someone over 65 was still working and receiving the pension on top of their wages.

He said Labour would look at that issue, which he considered was unfair. Such a step would break almost four decades of political consensus on universality.

The only real argument against means testing is if the cost of doing so was prohibitively high and costs almost as much as it saves.

Rather he indicated Labour’s focus was on prefunding the cost of it by contributions to the Super Fund which the current Government suspended during the Global Financial Crisis and is yet to re-commence.

Pre-funding has a minor impact at best on sustainability.

UPDATE: I was too quick with my praise. Little has done a u-turn in just six hours.

Complete u-turn from Andrew Little. This morning on means testing super: can't avoid looking at it. Now: see attached pic.twitter.com/qhRYhQa4eL

— Brook Sabin (@BrookSabin) May 22, 2015

Liam Hehir writes in the Manawatu Daily Standard:

A spectre is haunting the English-speaking world — the spectre of conservatism. All the powers of progressivism have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Labour and Green parties, television producers, comedians, musicians, actors and the halls of the academy.

So far, they have not succeeded. 

In the United Kingdom, the Conservative government has just won another five-year term. Against the odds, it was returned with an outright majority in the House of Commons. Prior to Election Day, it was thought that the best Prime Minister David Cameron could hope for was another coalition or maybe a fragile minority government. Nobody really believed the Tories would be able to govern alone. But here we are.

In Canada, that country’s Conservative Party has held power since 2006. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is facing another general election this year. It promises to be a tough campaign, but things have been looking up lately and there is as good a chance as not that the Conservatives will win a rare fourth term in office.

In Australia, the revolution has been more tenuous, where Tony Abbott’s Liberal Party came to power in 2013. Forced to make deep cuts to public spending in response to a commodities market downturn, his administration has been sternly tested. And yet despite these difficulties, which have been made worse by an overtly hostile media, Abbott’s polling has been steadily improving.

In the United States, conservative Republicans dominate the US Congress and most state governorships and legislatures. While they face structural difficulties in capturing the presidency, the once unstoppable Hilary Clinton juggernaut is at risk of being crippled by a genuine and concerning corruption scandal.

And, of course, in New Zealand, Prime Minister John Key has won three mandates as the head of a National Party that has improbably improved its share of the vote in each of the last three elections. 

Why has this happened?

A question a smart Labour Party would ask.

When you survey the current state of Anglosphere politics, certain themes emerge. These don’t apply in every instance – we are talking about geographically and economically diverse countries, after all. Nevertheless, there are certain commonalities that go some of the way to explaining the current Centre-Right ascendancy.

First of all, conservative politicians have made the best of the limited means available to them. Harper’s nine years in power have included the two longest lasting minority governments in Canada’s history. Cameron’s government has had to struggle through five years of being shackled to an unpopular coalition partner – and even now its majority is puny compared to those the party enjoyed in the Thatcher years.

Our own electoral system has meant that, despite very high approval ratings, John Key has never had much margin for error. 

This leads on to the second important factor in conservative electoral success: self-control. 

Because none of these governments have the power to impose wide-ranging reforms, conservative politicians have had to restrain their actions and rhetoric. This comes easily for some – Key and Cameron are not temperamentally conservative anyway. For others, like Harper and Abbott, there has been more of a recognition that certain battles can’t be won and therefore aren’t worth fighting.

This moderation is sometimes frustrating for conservative voters, but it also does a good job taking the wind out of the histrionics of Left wing commentators.

Another way to read this is that all these parties have governed as centre-right, instead of right.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the oppositions in these countries are dysfunctional and discordant.

Long may that last.

A fourth is the GFC has I think made voters prioritise parties that focus on economic management over social issues.

The NZ Herald editorial:

The speed limit on any road should be appropriate to its design and condition, not the subject of a default 100km/h setting. Therefore, a good case can be made for increasing the limit on many of the country’s motorways to 110km/h. And so, too, and even more strongly, can a case be made for lowering it on many of our two-lane rural roads. The latter are, after all, the scene of a high proportion of the fatal and serious crashes in New Zealand every year.

Such was not the case last weekend when 10 people died on the roads. But that did not diminish the good sense in the call by road policing chief Assistant Commissioner Dave Cliff for some rural roads to have lower speed limits. He was reacting not to one bad weekend but to a problem that has been apparent for years and has not been tackled effectively.

As Mr Cliff suggests, many country roads, especially those with winding stretches, are simply not designed to be travelled at 100km/h. Many drivers do not have the skills or the required concentration to traverse them with a high degree of safety.

Best international practice, said Mr Cliff, would dictate that the limit should be 70 to 80km/h. At that speed, the chances of a crash being survivable would be much increased.

Some roads such as the Rimutaka Hill Road are very dangerous to do at 100 km/hr. Same with the road to Makara. Likewise many roads are safe for modern cars at 110 or 120 km/hr. I’m all for road speed limits being set based on the characteristics of each individual road.

I don’t think it is any big thing that we use group descriptions imperfectly. For example we use the term Asian instead of specifying Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc etc. Likewise we use Pasifika rather than Tongan, Samoan, Niuean etc etc. Most people understand why group labels are convenient.

I use the term “guys” as a non gender specific term now. I often e-mail my (all bar one female) supervisors and say “Thanks guys”.

But for some reason it gets  a bit precious when it comes to the gay community. Once upon a time gay was short-hand for what is now the wider rainbow community. Then lesbians said they’re not gay, they’re lesbians. And so it was GL. Then bisexuals said we’re not gay or lesbian and it was GLB. And then transsexuals said they are none of the above. so we went to GLBT. Then inter-sexuals were not covered and it was GLBTI.

But that isn’t politically correct enough for the Greens. In a blog post Jan Logie feels the need to state at the bottom:

*The addition of an asterisk to the word trans is to indicate that the term functions as an umbrella term for an extremely varied range of identities, including culturally specific ones. I use it to include identities such as: whakawahine, tangata ira tane, FtM, MtF, transsexual, fa’afafine, transgender, transmen, transwomen, akava’ine, leiti, genderqueer and gender-neutral people.

Oh good God.

That is just too precious.

Would we do that for every time we use the term Asian*. Imagine that:

The addition of an asterisk to the word Asian is to indicate that the term functions as an umbrella term for an extremely varied range of identities, including Turkic, Mongolic, Persians, Tatars, Sarmatians, Chinese, Indian, Afghan, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Uyghur, Kazakh, Manchu, Buryats, Evenks, Yakuts, Sri Lankan etc etc

When referring to an individual, it is polite to use whatever term they identify as. But when referring to a group, there is no need to turn it into a encyclopedia entry.

Stats NZ has released projections for the change in our ethnic populations. They project for 2038:

• European 66% (-9% from 2013)
• Maori 20% (+4%)
• Asian 21% (+9%)
• Pacific 11% (+3%)

Around 2025 the number of Asian New Zealand is expected to exceed the number of Maori New Zealanders.

The Herald reports:

Panai was fined $330 and disqualified from carrying passengers for one month after he pleaded guilt to driving for three hours more than his allowed time.By law, drivers must take a 30 minute break after every 5.5 hours of work time.

Defence counsel Simon Mount said Panai took a 25-minute break instead.

That criminal. he took a 25 minute break, instead of 30 minutes.

Thank you NZ Police for keeping us safe from these criminals. And very pleased as a taxpayer to see this prosecuted in court.

Trans-Tasman reported:

Labour leader Andrew Little, who made a good start in the role, has found his poll ratings slipping in recent weeks (with Winston Peters snapping at his heels). He miscued when he contended John Key should stand down a Minister whose brother was reported as facing criminal charges. Bigger problems are to get his team functioning as a policy-making machine, and to stimulate (or discard) those who think they have only to sit it out before they are back in Govt.

Reports of sessions being held for staff to acquaint them how they would operate in Ministerial offices points to a hard-to-shake mindset which underlines the process of rejuvenation has yet to begin. Five of Labour’s MPs have 146 years of service in the House between them.

This must surely be a joke. Labour’s running sessions on preparing for Government just six months after their worst election result in 90 years.

The House is is urgency and is sitting from 9 am to 1 pm, 2 pm to 6 pm and 7 pm to midnight until the following bills are dealt with. It can sit on Saturday also.

• Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill (all stages)
• Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill (all stages)
• KiwiSaver Budget Measures Bill (all stages)
• Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill (all stages)
• Support for Children in Hardship Bill (first reading)

The Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill amends the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992 to allow the social housing agency (currently the Ministry of Social Development) to enter into more flexible and innovative purchasing arrangements for social housing.

The key purpose of Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill is to make additional funding available, through the telecommunications development levy applied to the telecommunications industry, for the Government’s policy of extending the Rural Broadband Initiative and establishing a Mobile Black Spots Fund.

The KiwiSaver Budget Measures Bill proposes to remove the $1,000 KiwiSaver kick-start contribution paid to all new enrollees in the KiwiSaver scheme, effective from 2 pm on 21 May 2015.

The Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill amends the Biosecurity Act 1993 and the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to introduce levies to fund the direct and indirect costs of activities carried out by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the New Zealand Customs Service relating to the processing of people arriving in and departing from New Zealand.

Support for Children in Hardship Bill is an omnibus Bill introduced under Standing Order 263(a). The Bill strengthens work expectations and increases assistance for parents on a benefit and who have dependent children from 1 April 2016.

To date the Support for Children in Hardship Bill has completed its first reading (109 to 12 – NZ First against) and been referred to the Social Services Committee

The Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill has had its first and second readings (both 63 to 58 with Labour, Greens, NZ First against) and is now at committee stage.

The Herald reports on the winners of the 2015 NZ Radio Awards:

• Sir Paul Holmes Broadcaster of the Year – Mike Hosking, Newstalk ZB
• Best Newsreader – Hilary Barry, RadioLIVE
• Best Talk Presenter – Mike Hosking, The Mike Hosking Breakfast, Newstalk ZB
• Best Talkback Presenter – Leighton Smith, The Leighton Smith Show, Newstalk ZB
• Best Sports Presenter/Commentator – Tony Veitch, Newstalk ZB
• Station of the Year – The Edge, MediaWorks
• Best New Broadcaster – Luke Howden, Hokonui Southland and South Otago
• Best Journalist – Jessica Williams, RadioLIVE

Congratulations to the winners.  The full list of winners is at http://radioawards.co.nz/winner/init

John Drinnan writes in the NZ Herald:

Following the announcement that John Campbell is leaving Mediaworks, the company will be tempted to place Paul Henry in to Campbell’s spot at 7pm, continuing with his morning experiment broadcasting on TV3 and RadioLive from 6 am to 9am.

On the face of it that would be a disastrous decision, turning around the target audience and abandoning a newly revived following. Their audience is diametrically opposed and Henry has had a rotten start in his morning show ratings.

But chief executive Mark Weldon and board member Julie Christie love Henry as the face of the company. MediaWorks has already made it clear the new show would not be just a tweaking of the Campbell Live format.

I think some on the left would actually explode in outrage if the 7 pm slot was a choice between Mike Hosking on TV One and Paul Henry on TV3.

That is of course an excellent reason to do it!