Stuff reports:

John Key says he would be “extremely surprised” if a far-reaching ban on alcohol sponsorship and advertising went ahead. 

A ministerial forum on alcohol advertising and sponsorship has put forward a raft of recommendations – including a ban on alcohol companies sponsoring sports teams and events.

Organisers of major Marlborough events that rely on sponsorship from the wine industry, including the Forrest GrapeRide and Saint Clair Vineyard Half Marathon, have said their future would be threatened if the recommendations were implemented. 

That would be a great outcome – a huge drop in the number of sporting events in NZ.

In response to a question by Kent Winstanley during a meeting of young professionals in Blenheim on Friday, Key said the proposal was at an early stage.

“I’d be extremely surprised if it progresses very far.

“We could turn around tomorrow and say it’s illegal for wineries to sponsor the local rugby team and things like that … .

“The problem you’ve got is, where is the money going to come from for those organisations?” 

It was “nonsense” to say that government would help to make up the shortfall, Key said. 

“The government makes that case all the time and it doesn’t happen.” 

As well as removing alcohol sponsorship from sports, the recommendations call for alcohol sponsorship to be removed from cultural and music events where at least 10 per cent of those taking part are under 18. 

Alcohol advertising would be banned, including on social media, where 10 per cent or more of the audience are aged under 18. 

Key questioned how effective the measures would be.

“Does it really impact that much at the margins in terms of people drinking responsibly?

Great to hear the PM so skeptical. We don’t want a wowser Government.

“I think there’s a strong argument for us to continue to educate youngsters about drinking responsibly, but ultimately the fact that Villa Maria might want to be getting its brand name out there, or Cloudy Bay, or whoever – well good on them.

“I’m going to be pretty opposed to dramatic changes there.” 

Again, good to hear.

A lengthy article by Hayden Donnell on the making of Kim Dotcom’s album. As you read this, recall how he bankrolled the worker’s party headed by Laila and Hone, and proudly supported by John Minto:

The young recording engineer looked in some pain. Tennis balls were being smashed into his body at full speed, in front of a crowd of people. This wasn’t what he’d signed up for. He had been hired to work on one of the most expensive albums in New Zealand music history – the debut by internet entrepreneur and fugitive from US justice, Kim Dotcom.

When the group weren’t recording, though, they indulged in hijinks and hazing. On this day witnesses describe the engineer as being dressed for tennis in a penguin costume. The hitter was an excellent tennis player. According to witnesses, Dotcom looked like he enjoyed the episode.

The young man went to work the next day covered in bruises, pulling up his shirt to show colleagues the blossoming patches of tender purple flesh. It wasn’t an isolated incident. He’d also reportedly vomited after being told to drink a cup of soy sauce during a recording session. Pranks and dares were hazards of the job. Making Dotcom’s Good Times meant enduring some pretty terrible times.

Ouch.

I was told stories about the sessions which featured dwarf strippers and golliwog dolls, uncomfortable casual racism and celebrity cameos.

This is the guy some on the left saw as a hero.

By almost any conventional measure, he failed. The New Zealand Herald called the album “a musical mess” in a one-star review, while Elsewhere.co.nz described it as “utterly sexless”. Sales weren’t helped by Dotcom giving the album away for free on his website, but remained mediocre. Good Timesdebuted at number 20 in the New Zealand album charts in late-January, peaked at 8 and dropped out of the top 40 in early-March. It sold about 1000 copies at JB Hi Fi according to an industry source, despite getting blanket advertising on stores’ front windows. The Warehouse didn’t sell many copies either.

The album cost a million or so to produce and flopped. I guess in music, like in politics, money isn’t enough.

It wasn’t for lack of promotion. Record company sources say Tucker spent at least $100,000 of Dotcom’s money on radio ads, a digital campaign and, most memorably, plastering the album’s awful cover on buses, bus stations and billboards.

That estimate may be low. A representative from iSite Media – the company that booked the bus advertising – says Dotcom took out ads on between 80 and 140 buses over a month-long campaign. Tucker may have got a better deal, but Auckland Transport says it costs about $200,000 to place ads on 80 buses for a month.

In any case, Dotcom’s promo budget was “far in excess” of what Universal spent marketing the launch of Lorde’s album Pure Heroine. Record companies rarely spend $100,000 on promotion, and if they do, it’s for a hit album and 80 percent of the bill is for TV advertising.

I recall seeing the adverts on lots of Wellington buses only.

An interesting comparison to what Universal spent on Lorde. She has tweeted:

so pretty much identical to how we made pure heroine, minus $980k or so, ‘racist days’ and forced soy sauce-drinking https://t.co/CyGAZAnnIt

— Lorde (@lordemusic) April 21, 2015

And more:

The mainstream media was an even bigger problem, Tucker says. He claims there was collusion between record companies like Sony, Universal and Warner and radio stations to keep Dotcom off the air. Record execs called radio station bosses, asking them not to playlist Dotcom’s songs and threatening retribution if they did, he says. A friend, an insider in the industry, told Tucker that radio stations caved in to pressure. Dotcom wasn’t playlisted on ZM, The Edge or any major pop station.

The blacklist is bullshit, radio executives say. Leon Wratt, the content director for MediaWorks – owner of The Edge – says the station tried to test out Dotcom’s songs with audiences and received “95 percent” negative feedback.

I think I know which story is more likely.

Christian Boston, content director for 91ZM from 2000 to 2013, says the decision not to playlist Dotcom’s singles had nothing to do with record bosses or politics. His team at ZM thought the music was terrible, he says. “It just got a unanimous ‘No, it’s a crock of shit’, so we didn’t play it.”

And more delusion:

Tucker’s noisiest complaint is reserved for the Herald, which he claims is a mouthpiece for Dotcom’s enemies – John Key and the National government.

A mouthpiece? 81% of editorials and columns (that take a position on an issue) on National have been negative and 19% positive.

He says Good Times deserved more than the one star Chris Schulz gave it in TimeOut, the paper’s entertainment magazine.

“It’s just the journalists that always take the same cheap shots to sell that shitty publication,” he says. “The album was probably a three-and-a-half out of five.”

The review was more than fair, according to TimeOut editor Russell Baillie. “I can’t think of an album in the past year or so more deserving of a few cheap shots than Good Times. It was comedically awful and TimeOut didn’t exactly go out on a limb by saying that.”

What do they think happened? John Key got Tim Murphy to instruct the reviewer to give it one star?

A nice time lapse by Sean Gillespie of the WWI remembrance light show at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park. Go check it out.

Also nice to see US Marines out collecting for Poppy Day last week. They also did it when here in WWII.

The Herald reports:

For two years, before Netflix’s New Zealand launch and Sky’s Neon streaming offering, a clutch of internet service providers, including Slingshot and Orcon, have provided Global Mode – technology allowing customers to watch programmes on overseas video streaming sites, sometimes months before they are shown by New Zealand broadcasters.

In contrast to tech-savvy youngsters’ use of torrenting sites and other shady methods to “unblock” trending programmes in the United States or Britain, Global Mode came with at least a veneer of legitimacy. While the tool is offered free, viewers still must subscribe to the overseas screening site – such as US Netflix or BBC iPlayer – satisfying customers with scruples that the content creator isn’t losing out. Nor does it require technical smarts: there’s no software to download or configurations to change.

I don’t use Global Mode, but I do use Hola to allow me to subscribe to Netflix in the US, so that I am paying someone for the content I am watching.

Now, broadcasting behemoths TVNZ, MediaWorks and Sky have joined forces with Spark (which both supplies broadband and on-demand product Lightbox) in a bid to squash the upstart. On April 2, they sent “cease and desist” legal letters to BNS and its customers giving them until Wednesday to close the service down. Some smaller internet providers folded; BNS and Call Plus (owner of Slingshot and Orcon) stared them down. Court papers are due to be served and, to no one’s surprise, Hollywood studios are joining the action.

I an understand that the broadcasters are not happy that they pay global content providers for an exclusive licence for NZ, and they find out it isn’t that exclusive.

Big Media say the technology breaches exclusive rights licensing agreements between overseas content-holders and local broadcasters. They claim this breaches copyright law; that the streaming rights of offshore providers such as Netflix US, Hulu, Amazon Prime and BBC iPlayer do not extend to New Zealand.

It is far from clear it does break copyright law. The argument is that people who use global mode are just doing the equivalent of parallel importing – something the NZ Parliament has specifically legislated to be legal.

Slingshot chief executive Taryn Hamilton says internet viewing options make the broadcasting rights model of selling the same product multiple times in different territories “completely out-of-date. The music industry were kicking and screaming about this a decade ago; they wised-up and changed their business model and now there’s a thriving economy for music.

“The broadcasters need to go back to the rights-holders and say exclusive geographic content is a failed model.”

I agree.

And this is where the lawsuit may be useful. If the broadcasters lose the lawsuit, then it will have global reverberations. It will be a clear court ruling that someone with rights to one country can’t stop people dealing with people with right’s in another country. Just like Whitcoulls can’t stop you buying off Amazon.

If the broadcasters lose, then they can go back to the rights-holders and say our rights are no longer exclusive. You have no legal capacity to make them exclusive, so all we’re going to do is pay you for non-exclusive rights. And this could set off a global change in breaking down the idea of being able to make rights exclusive by country in an Internet connected world.

So the broadcasters may win, even if they lose.

What if the broadcasters win?

Probably not much. The ISPs who use global mode will stop offering it, but most of their customers will then either use individual services such as Hola, or VPNs, or just simply go from paying for content to torrenting it. The one thing they won’t do is say “Oh I’m going to wait four months to see my favourite TV show, once an exclusive holder in NZ decides I can see it”.

So I think a loss for the broadcasters will be even better for them than a win.

A win for the broadcasters will be bad for the ISPs, but not affect end users much.

The Herald reports:

Convicted sex offender Peter Ellis will consider an appeal to the Privy Council to clear his name after a request for a Commission of Inquiry into his case was today rejected by the Justice Minister.

The former Christchurch childcare worker was convicted of child sex abuse in 1993, but has always maintained his innocence.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and since then his convictions have been the subject of extensive legal battles, including two appeals, an inquiry by former Chief Justice Sir Thomas Eichelbaum and two overseas experts, and a 2003 petition to Parliament.

In 2008, a similar request for a Commission of Inquiry was rejected by former Justice Minister Simon Power.

Justice Minister Amy Adams today announced his latest bid for a Commission of Inquiry had been turned down on the basis that an inquiry could not be used to determine the liability of any person.

Mr Ellis’ lawyer Nigel Hampton QC, said his client would be “somewhat disappointed” by the decision.

“But it doesn’t shut all the avenues, he’s still got the ability to appeal to the Privy Council. And the other principal alternative is to again renew an application to the Governor-General for the exercise of the Royal Prerogative, which would lead, if successful to a further hearing in the Court of Appeal,” Mr Hampton said.

“Those are the two avenues open to him still, and they are the ones that we will be discussing with him and deciding on in the next little while as to which avenue we’ll follow.”

I hope one day there is a proper inquiry into this case. Not just to consider issues of whether there was any abuse at all and the guilt or innocence of Ellis – but also to consider the massive flaws in the investigation – so it never happens again that way.

I recommend interested people read the book by Lynley Hood on this case. The way children were questioned in this case would never be allowed today, and the evidence presented to the court was was very misleading.

For example if a kid said they went down to a graveyard and they saw someone get resurrected and Peter also touched them, then all the court was told is the testimony that Peter touched them. It was removed from all the fantastical other testimony.

The Waikato Times reports:

Coromandel group Koputauaki Combined Community Centre carried out illegal fundraising after they stopped cars on an open road and asked for gold coin donations.

People from the centre set up traffic cones on a 100kmh stretch of Colville Rd, north of Coromandel town, over the weekend and reportedly asked motorists to donate a gold coin before they were allowed through to continue their journey.

They used stop signs. This is surely illegal. If possible, Police should arrest them.

A fundraiser had stood on either side of the van, with a third person in front so it was not possible to just drive off, although no one behaved in a threatening way. 

“They were very jaunty … but they spoke as if it was their right,” the woman, who did not want to be identified, said.

The man asked her at least five times for money, even though she told him there was no cash in the vehicle.

“We had to say repeatedly we didn’t carry cash. They wouldn’t take no for an answer,” she said.

That is thuggish behaviour.

Thames Coromandel District Council said the activities breached a council bylaw, and that council had spoken to its lawyers about the breach.

Council’s Thames area manager, Greg Hampton, said the centre did not apply for a permit for the fundraising, so had breached a bylaw. A permit is required under the Public Places Bylaw, and the group also should have submitted a traffic management plan, Hampton said.

Hampton could not confirm whether council was considering legal action.

“We haven’t really discussed that yet, and we haven’t had an official complaint.”

Oh for God’s sake, don’t hide behind that. You’ll become a pariah destination if you allow this to continue. Do whatever it takes to stop this.

The centre has received $66,000 in grants in recent years from a range of funding providers, including council.

The centre was established as a community society which “promotes sociability and good fellowship” among members and provides services that benefit the community.

It’s simple. Tell the group that if they ever do this sort of thing again, they’ll never get another cent from the Council, or other funding sources.

Controversial blogger Cameron Slater weighed in on the debate, stating on his Whale Oil blog that the activities were “highway robbery”. 

“Imagine this sort of carry-on popping up all over the place? This needs to be stamped out, and stamped out hard.”

I agree with Cameron.

The Daily Blog has a story from an anonymous waitress who details interactions with John  Key at a cafe where he pulled on her hair as a sort of joke and caused her distress by doing it on a regular basis.

On the assumption that the story is correct, he obviously totally misread the situation, and he caused distress to someone. He eventually realised it, when he apologised with a couple of bottles of wine.

I think he would be stunned to realise how upsetting it was for the person concerned, but regardless you should be able to read a situation better than it appears he did.

This will of course get media attention. If the story is correct, then he should apologise for causing distress to her. I’m sure it was inadvertent and he thought it was a funny game between them. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.

If you speak to staff that work for him, they all say he is one of the best bosses they have ever worked for. Generally those who interact with him only have favourable things to say about him. But again in this case (assuming the story is correct) he appears to have seriously misjudged how what he saw as mucking around, was received, and he failed to pick up on the discomfort caused.

The Marlborough Express reports:

Nelson Marlborough District Health Board has denied employing workers under zero-hour contracts, despite listing close to 500 staff over four years in this category in parliamentary documents.

Labour health spokesperson Annette King says she has information that shows three New Zealand district health boards, including Nelson Marlborough, were employing workers under the controversial employment agreement.

The claims are made on the basis of documents provided to the health select committee, and viewed by theMarlborough Express. 

As part of its annual review for 2013-2014, NMDHB was asked how many staff the board employed under zero-hour contracts in the last financial year. 

The board response states that 86 workers were employed under this arrangement in 2014, with 89 staff employed under zero-hour contracts in 2013, 169 workers in 2012 and 155 workers on zero-hour contracts in 2011. 

First of all it is statistical nonsense to add up the numbers each year to get a total number. You can do that to things like funding, but not staff.

But when approached by the Marlborough Express, Nelson Marlborough District Health Board chief executive Chris Fleming backtracked from describing workers as “zero-hour” contract workers, saying the contracts were different to the zero-hour contracts that were in the media spotlight.

“The issue prevalent in the media recently has been zero-hour contracts where staff are required to be available to work at any time, and do not get annual leave, sick leave entitlements etc. 

“This in essence does not allow a person with this type of contract to plan anything or to accept any other work. 

“Nelson Marlborough District Health Board does not have any of these types of contracts, nor does it support this level of onerosity.”

The figures provided to the health select committee were the number of  “Permanent Part Time No Fixed Hour” contracts within the district health board, Fleming said.

This type of contract was different to a zero-hour contract because staff were entitled to annual leave, sick leave and any other benefits of their collective agreements, Fleming said. 

They were free to seek other employment and did not have to be available when requested to work. 

This is a key difference. I agree that contracts which give no guarantee of hours, yet require an employee to be available to work are onerous and somewhat oppressive.

But that is very different to merely having a casual employment contract where neither employer nor employee have any commitment to set hours.

King said zero-hour contracts were “unconscionable”.

“No-one should turn up to work never knowing how many hours they’re going to work next week and how they’re going to support their family.”

If Annette King is speaking on behalf of Labour, she is saying that Labour wishes to abolish casual work contracts for New Zealand. This would of course be beyond stupid. Many students have casual work contracts, and prefer it that way.

There is a genuine issue around employment contracts that require staff to be available to work, and gives no guarantee of work in return. But when you conflate them with genuinely casual employment agreements, you do a dis-service.

Labour should stop this, and clarify that they are not seeking to abolish casual work contracts for NZ.

The Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance has released:

Auckland Council has spent $8.5 million of ratepayers money on grants to business groups since November 2010 – and that doesn’t include the $20 million given to the failed Heart of the City group.

Business groups should be funded by business with an idea to keep the Council on its toes. Instead the Super City has turned them into Council cheerleaders thanks to this generous slush fund. We uncovered that a grant was even made for augmented reality wayfinding technology – whatever that is!

Ratepayers deserve answers from the Council as to why this is the best use of $8.5 million, rather than frontline services and core infrastructure. It’s little wonder that rates have increased when the Council takes over a function that has always been the role of the local Chamber of Commerce.

45 separate business groups have received $8.5 million since November 2010. They should be funded by local businesses, if they deem them of value, not by ratepayers.

Stuff reports:

The national target of being smokefree by 2025 will not be met without a massive shakeup of funding for anti-tobacco groups, the Ministry of Health now concedes.

About 12,500 people successfully quit smoking each year, but this needs to more than triple to reach the 2025 target. At the 2013 census, 13.7 per cent of the adult population said they smoked.

The Government committed three years ago to stamping out smoking by 2025, but a slew of reports have warned that the target is looking shaky.

Ministry documents,  prepared for a meeting with quit smoking providers and advocacy groups last month,  said a “business as usual approach” to encouraging people to quit would no longer work. A greater focus was needed on risky groups, such as pregnant women and the mentally ill, and groups that still had stubbornly high smoking rates, such as Maori and Pacific people. 

“More needs to be done … to achieve that 2025 goal,” the documents say.

Dozens of quit smoking and anti-tobacco advocacy groups could be under threat as the ministry puts millions of dollars worth of services up for tender in the open market as part of the ministry’s  “tobacco realignment”.

Groups such as Quitline which actually provide services to help people quit should be funded.

But groups which are primarily lobby groups should not be funded. It is constitutionally repugnant to have Government departments and agencies fund lobby groups to then lobby Ministers and Parliament.

Lobby groups should be funded by members and supporters – not by taxpayers.

Ash director Stephanie Erick said it was true the shakeup could mean the end of her organisation, but it was more important that the smokefree goal was reached.

An excellent view. I agree.

The Herald reports:

Figures from the Ministry of Education show the number of enrolments in privately owned early childhood education (ECE) operations has doubled in the past decade, with 90,000 kids now in private centres. In contrast enrolments fell in kindergartens by 22 per cent to 25,000.

So the sector that parents are not choosing is lashing out at the sector that parents are choosing.

Academics, unions, teachers and opposition MPs believe there are quality issues in early childhood education which can be linked to the rise of for-profit centres.

They point to figures that show community-based kindergartens get the best ERO reviews.

I find it frustrating when an article alludes to some data, but neither gives you the data, or even better links to it.

The Herald reports:

One of those sought for extradition alongside Kim Dotcom has turned up at a key hearing without a lawyer and the court told an application for legal aid has been made.

The old I no longer have a lawyer, so the hearing must be delayed trick.

At the High Court hearing, lawyers acting for three of the men including Dotcom said more time was needed to prepare for the extradition hearing currently listed to take place in June.

Grant Illingworth, QC, told the court the complex nature of the case required the extradition hearing to be put off again.

He said another factor was the lack of legal representation of Mr. Batato.

“Mr Batato is waiting on a legal aid application. He has no lawyer and won’t have one unless legal aid is granted.”

The charges were laid 40 months ago!!

Yes, 40 months.

More than enough time to get a lawyer, and prepare your legal arguments.

Dotcom has tried everything possible to delay the extradition hearing. There are at least 33 judicial decisions involving him. 23 in the High Court, seven at the Court of Appeal and three in the Supreme Court. has anyone in our legal history even had so many opportunities to litigate their case? There will also be some District Court cases on top of the 33 in the higher courts.

Stuff reports:

Not all children will receive free GP visits as promised by the Government, according to documents revealed by the Greens.

That’s because they have never promised it. It is impossible to promise it as GPs do not work for the Government and the Government can not set their fees for them – unless you nationalise the entire primary healthcare sector.

ACC Minister Nikki Kaye has set the funding level at a rate that will only cover an estimated 90 per cent of doctors’ visits for children who are injured, Radio NZ has reported.

At last year’s election the Government campaigned on making doctors’ visits and prescriptions free for all children under 13 from July this year.

However the Green Party has called out Kaye for deciding 90 per cent coverage was close enough.

This shows a misunderstanding (either deliberate or not) of how the funding level is set.

GPs around NZ will currently charge a wide variety of fees for under 13s. For example some may charge $10 and some may charge $30. Each GP practice can be different to reflect their costs – rent, salaries etc. These are different in Epsom and in Rotorua, for example.

The Government set the funding at the level at which 90% of GPs are currently charging. Now this doesn’t mean that 10% of GPs will still charge a fee. If for example the subsidy is $30 and your charge was  $32, you may well decide that it is not worth the hassle, or the bad publicity, to charge a $2 part fee.

Over time more and more GPs will not charge a part fee, because if they do it is bad publicity, and patients may move.

Coleman and Kaye point out:

“We expect levels of uptake by general practices of the free under 13s scheme to be similar to uptake of the under 6s scheme,” says Dr Coleman.

“Currently 98 per cent of general practices offer free doctors’ visits for under 6s. Initial uptake was 70 per cent in January 2008, and it has steadily increased to current levels. There are only around twelve general practices in New Zealand that are not offering free under 6s doctor visits.”

So the fact the funding is set slightly below the level at which the 10% most expensive GPs charge, doesn’t mean you don’t get close to universal coverage.

But less us look at what the Greens are actually arguing for, and you will see that they are actually arguing for an incredibly appalling waste of scarce health dollars.

They are saying that the level of subsidy should be set at the level above which 100% of GPs currently charge.

Now think about that. The Greens are saying that the subsidy to GPs should be based on what the most expensive GP in NZ charges.

This would result in a massive wealth transfer to GPs. 99% of GPs would get a higher subsidy from the Government, than they were previously getting from patients. This would cost tens of millions of dollars.

And what would be the benefits to families? Well possibly it could result in no part-charges to the families who live in the areas with the most expensive GPs. These are generally the very wealthy suburbs such as Epsom, Wadestown etc. So the richest families in NZ would be the ones who benefit by not having a small part-charge.

I don’t have the exact numbers, but a ballpark estimate is that the cost per additional family subsidised to taxpayers and levypayers would be over $1,000!

You would be spending tens of millions more to eliminate part-charges for a handful of the wealthiest families.

The losers would be every family in NZ who pays tax and ACC.

The winners would be every GP in NZ, and the families who live in the wealthiest areas.

A huge transfer of wealth from middle income and low income NZ to the wealthiest. What the Greens call income inequality – and they are demanding it.

So I’m glad the Greens aren’t in Government, and that the subsidies are set at a sensible point such as the 90% level, rather than having the most expensive doctor in NZ determine the subsidies for the entire country.

David Fisher writes in the NZ Herald:

The law also says such intelligence gathering must be to support the “national security of New Zealand”, the “international relations and well-being of New Zealand” and “the economic well-being of New Zealand”.

The issue which does arise is our motivations for doing so – and whether those are purely New Zealand’s motivations.

A National Security Agency document, among other material taken by Snowden, states that the GCSB “continues to be especially helpful in its ability to provide NSA ready access to areas and countries that are difficult for the United States to access”.

In essence, our relationship with China is of use to the US and allows New Zealand to operate as a Trojan Horse – or even Trojan Kiwi – for NSA intelligence gathering efforts.

Beyond doubt the US (and UK, Australia and Canada) benefit from NZ being in Five Eyes. We get them intelligence they could not easily get elsewhere.

But by the same basis, New Zealand I am sure benefits greatly by being able to access intelligence gathered by the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

This is why countries agree to co-operate on things – when it benefits both sides. And I’d say with this agreement, we gain a hell of a lot more than we give.

We present internationally as a proud, South Pacific country which is forging its own principled path through history. In our bid for a seat on the UN Security Council, Prime Minister John Key said: “New Zealand has an independent foreign policy outlook that listens to and respects the views of other countries.” Our branding for the bid carried the words: “Integrity, independence, innovation.”

It appears, from the Snowden documents, our “independent foreign policy” is supported by a dependence on the Five Eyes intelligence network of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and United States.

This argument is made a lot, often by people from the left. But I think it is a nonsense argument to suggest being in Five Eyes is incompatible with having an independent foreign policy.

First I would note empirically that we got elected to the Security Council despite our involvement in Five Eyes known to all UN members. And I am sure those countries no exactly what that means – as they do much the same when they can.

But more to the point an intelligence sharing arrangement is a fairly minor part of overall foreign policy. People judge our foreign policy on numerous things – what conflicts we get involved in, how we vote at the UN, what we say, how we deal with their countries, who we trade with etc etc.

Being independent is not the same as being non-aligned.

Successive Prime Ministers have said New Zealand gets a great deal more our of the relationship than we contribute.

I’d say a huge amount more.

Former Prime Minister David Lange carved a path for an independent foreign policy on nuclear weapons. He said in the famous Oxford debate “we have been told by some officials in the United States administration that our decision (to be nuclear-free) is not, as they put it, to be cost-free; that we are in fact to be made to pay for our action”.

It was a threat made, said Lange, “not by our enemies, but by our friends”.

If we tap the Chinese data link ourselves – assuming we are capable and it is worth the effort – and don’t pass on information, do our Five Eyes partners refuse to tell us of terror plots in our backyard?

That’s being silly, even stupid. Security agencies swap information almost daily to help prevent terror plots. Even unfriendly countries such as China, Russia and the US will share information to help prevent terror plots.

Five Eyes is a formal agreement to share all foreign (not domestic) intelligence information with each other, and (this is important) not to spy on each other. It means we don’t have to ask the US on a case by case basis to access their foreign intelligence, and vice-versa.

New Zealand has its own inquiry to come. United Future Peter Dunne voted for the new GCSB Act secure in the knowledge he had won from Mr Key a regular inquiry into the activities of the security agencies, the first due to begin prior to the end of June 2015.

Presumably the inquiry will see New Zealand talking about the activities of its security agencies.

As a forum, its a good place to answer the question about our Trojan Kiwi spying on China.

If the nation is making trade-offs, does the nation need to know?

The nation knows about Five Eyes. It will not be a bad thing to debate generally our security arrangements.

But there is a difference between publicising the agreement, and publicising details of specific interception activities. Doing the latter benefits countries other than NZ – the exact thing that it is being suggested the Five Eyes agreement does.

Tim Groser announced:

Climate Change Issues Minister Tim Groser today led a coalition of governments calling for the phase-out of subsidies to fossil fuels in the lead-up to a major climate conference in Paris.
 
New Zealand, along with Costa Rica, Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland today endorsed a statement to be delivered to the Paris conference that supports the elimination of inefficient subsidies to fossil fuels on environmental, economic and social grounds. The first countries to endorse the initiative were the United States and France which joined New Zealand in Washington to launch the statement.

This is something most people should agree on. I’m generally against most subsidies, and definitely against fossil fuel subsidies.

So how much of an impact do fossil fuel subsidies have?

“New Zealand is leading efforts to urge countries to reform, as this is the missing piece in the climate change jigsaw. More than one third of global carbon emissions between 1980 and 2010 are estimated to have been driven by subsidies for fossil fuels,” said Mr Groser.

Huge.

Many of the “solutions” for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are very unpalatable. The Greens want to shoot or get rid of one fifth of the national dairy herd, for example. But this is a solution that should have widespread support.

“Transparency is an essential first step, and that’s why New Zealand was one of the first countries to undertake APEC peer review of our policies. The international review panel has already given its preliminary conclusions, confirming it did not identify any inefficient subsidies.  

Good.

The communique notes:

The majority of fossil-fuel subsidies are also socially regressive, with benefits disproportionately skewed toward middle- and upper-middle income households.

Another reason to get rid of them.

Stuff reports:

An alternate budget that slashes the Christchurch City Council’s work programme and avoids the need for strategic asset sales is being touted as the answer to the city’s financial woes.

The Common Sense Plan for Christchurch was released at the weekend by the six Labour-aligned People’s Choice councillors and is aimed at circumventing the need for the council to sell shares in Lyttelton Port, Christchurch International Airport Ltd, Orion and Enable.

Its release comes less than 10 days out from the closure of public submissions on the Christchurch City Council’s draft Long Term Plan (LTP) which includes provision to sell up to $750 million in assets in order to plug the council’s $1.2 billion funding shortfall.

The People’s Choice councillors – Andrew Turner, Phil Clearwater, Yani Johanson, Glenn Livingstone, Pauline Cotter and Jimmy Chen – voted against including asset sales in the draft LTP and have been desperate to find another way to balance the books. 

They propose cutting $700 million, or 15 per cent, from the council’s $4.6 billion 10-year capital works programme outlined in the draft Long Term Plan (LTP) by deferring all non-urgent work, including construction of the city’s planned new rugby stadium.

They also propose asking the Government to use the $37m it has allocated for the new stadium on road repairs and propose asking for another $180m in Government funding for the horizontal infrastructure repair programme.

I’m all for cutting spending. That part of the proposal is good.

However their balanced budget is dependent on waving a magical wand and the Government handing over $217 million. That’s not common sense. That is wishful thinking. The Government has a signed and sealed agreement with the CCC as to how much it will contribute.

Alternative budgets are a good thing if they genuinely propose alternatives such as deferred spending, or different revenue streams – so long as they are revenue streams that the Council can actually use.

This is not an alternative budget. It is a plea for a Government bailout.

I don’t think many need convincing that blogs have an impact. But a good recent example.

Last Thursday the Government announced a working group to try and stop people using offshore betting websites.

It got reported at the time in uncritical terms. Then nothing for four days.

Yesterday I blogged attacking the announcement.

A few hours later it was a topic on talkback radio, and ACT attacked the announcement also.

And today the Herald has a critical editorial also.

Not a big issue, but it is a good sign that if you do take a view on an issue and make a good argument, then others will see it and if they agree with it, pick it up also.

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases; If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if is stops moving, subsidize it.”

– Ronald Reagan

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:

Security will be stepped up at Anzac Day services around Australia on Saturday after security forces foiled an alleged terror plot to attack police and the public with knives and swords at a commemorative event in Melbourne.

Victorian police yesterday continued to question an 18-year-old male, one of five teenagers arrested in co-ordinated pre-dawn raids by more than 200 heavily armed state and federal officers on homes in southeastern Melbourne early on Saturday.

Sevdet Besim, 18, has already been charged with conspiring to commit Isis-inspired terrorist acts. All five men, aged 18 and 19, were associates of Abdul Numan Haider, the Melbourne teenager shot dead by police last September after he stabbed two officers outside a police station.

Security forces believe they were planning to use “edged weapons” to attack people at a Melbourne Anzac Day event. The acting Victorian Police Commissioner, Tim Cartwight, said multiple knives and swords were seized in the raids, executed across three suburbs at 3.30am.

Hopefully ANZAC Day passes without terrorism and killings.

Worth reflecting that these arrests no doubt happened because Police and/or security agencies were able to intercept their communications.

Pundit Press blogs:

Stevenson College, part of the University of California, Santa Cruz, is apologizing to its students for serving Mexican food during “Intergalactic” night.

In a letter sent out to students, the college apologized for having “a Mexican food buffet,” while also featuring spaceships and aliens. The college received complaints saying the combination was racist because of the association between Mexicans and illegal immigrants.

Oh my God.

“We would never want to make a connection between individuals of Latino heritage or undocumented students and “aliens” and I am so sorry that our College Night appeared to do exactly that,” wrote Carolyn Golz who had taken this picture of the activities before the complaints:

After receiving complaints, Dr. Golz said that the event “demonstrated a cultural insensitivity on the part of the program planners and, though it was an unintentional mistake, I recognize that this incident caused harm within our community and negatively impacted students.”

As a result, Dr. Golz “will require cultural competence training for Programs staff, in addition to implementing mechanisms for future program planning that will ensure college programs are culturally sensitive and inclusive.”

I guess this means you also can’t serve Mexican food at a Superman movie showing, as Superman is also an undocumented alien.

Stuff reports:

When Tony Abbott walked into Sydney’s Royal Oak Hotel on Saturday night and downed that beer, he didn’t just put an end to all those jokes about his shandy drinking.

He sculled himself into Australia’s national consciousness.

It took less than ten seconds, but with those gulps, Abbott has joined Bob Hawke who has been impressing Australians with his ability to scull a beer for decades. 

Hawkie famously set a world record for beer drinking at Oxford in the 50s. He has since observed that this more than anything else he did in his long career “was to endear me to some of my fellow Australians”.

The former Australian prime minister is not the only one to use a drink to connect with voters.

Last year Coalition MP Andrew Laming turned up at a constituent’s Australia Day party and sculled a beer upside down while doing a handstand. As a partygoer later posted online: “I seriously hate Liberal [sic], but … he found a loophole to my heart!”

I think that would get my vote also. Upside down is very hard.

Even away from the tricky stunts, we feel reassured when we see politicians with a beer in their hands. It’s what convinces us they’re real people, right? Hence all the concern when Abbott ordered a shandy with (oh my god) light beer on the campaign trail in 2010.

But now, Abbott has achieved the sort of publicity that you can’t plan for or buy.

Maybe Andrew Little should try one!

With two quarterly falls in prices, annual inflation is now just 0.1%. That’s great for families and consumers.

But we need to look at the difference between the various components. There are some areas with pressure on prices, and others where there is not.

• Prices in the tradables sector have fallen 2.8% while non-tradables are up 2.3%. So we still have inflation in the areas where there is no foreign competition.

The main components have different levels of annual price increases. In order they are:

1. Alcohol/Tobacco 4.2%
2. Education 4.0%
3. Housing 3.0%
4. Health 1.8%
5. Food 1.2%
6. Misc 0.8%
7. Household contents -0.9%
8. Clothing -1.1%
9. Recreation/Culture -1.2%
10. Communications -4.5%
11. Transport -6.4%

Of interest, if the tax had not gone up on tobacco, we would have had deflation of 0.2% over the year.