The Guardian reports:

The Green party would consider banning the Grand National and other horse and greyhound races as part of an animal protection drive should it form the next government, its leader Natalie Bennett has said.

A promise to review such events will appear in the party’s manifesto, which is due to be released on Tuesday, she said.

I think the UK Greens make the NZ Greens seem sane by comparison.

She said her party would put up the top rate of tax to 60p in the pound for people earning more than £150,000

Why stop at 60% (plus VAT at 10% 20%). Why not 100%?

The Miami Herald has details of how a poll was done in Cuba recently, despite it being illegal to do so. The methodology sounds very impressive- great effort was made for it to be accurate. The 18 surveyors were at considerable risk in conducting the poll.

The results of the poll were fascinating, as the first publication of actual opinion in Cuba. Key findings include:

• Only 19% satisfied with the joys of a socialist economic system, and 79% dissatisfied
• 44% have a positive opinion of Fidel Castro and 50% a negative opinion
• 47% have a positive opinion of Raul Castro and 48% a negative opinion
• 80% have a positive opinion of Barack Obama and 17% a negative opinion
• 32% have a positive opinion of the Cuban Communist Party and 58% a negative opinion
• 64% want to travel abroad and 37% want to open their own business
• 55% would like to live in another country
• 53% say the US is a friend of Cuba and 10% say not a friend

Shows why we should distinguish between the Cuban people, and their Government.

Throng has compiled this chart. It shows the ratings since Seven Sharp started.

When it comes to Campbell Live though, the average audience of 281,669 viewers in 2013 was the best they’ve ever been.  During that year, Campbell Live regularly beat Seven Sharp and broke a number of ratings records.  Things were looking great.  TVNZ had opened the door and Mediaworks looked set to capitalise on it.  Unfortunately for them, TVNZ made further changes in 2014 with the introduction of Mike Hosking and Toni Street and with it came the ratings growth and the upward ratings trajectory that the management team had hoped for the year earlier.

In 2014, the average audience for Campbell Live fell 22% to 219,406 viewers per night.  So far in 2015, the average audience is down a further 13% to 191,432.  Overall, this equates to a 32% drop in the average nightly audience.

It is worth pointing out that if Campbell Live does fold, I am sure the talents of John Campbell will not be wasted. He is generally an excellent broadcaster and am sure he would be picked up elsewhere.  It might not be a daily show, but we do not have a lack of current affairs shows in NZ. We have:

• Q+A
• The Nation
• Native Affairs
• Sunday
• 360
• 3rd Degree
• 60 Minutes
• 20/20
• Attitude
• Marae
• Rural Delivery
• Tagata Pasifika
• Te Karere
• Media Take
• Backbenches
• Inside NZ
• Mataora
• Te Kaea
• Te Tepu
• Focus

So if Campbell Live does end, it is not the end of current affairs in NZ. Far from it.

The Economist reports:

BUY land, advised Mark Twain; they’re not making it any more.

Heh.

In fact, land is not really scarce: the entire population of America could fit into Texas with more than an acre for each household to enjoy. What drives prices skyward is a collision between rampant demand and limited supply in the great metropolises like London, Mumbai and New York. In the past ten years real prices in Hong Kong have risen by 150%. Residential property in Mayfair, in central London, can go for as much as £55,000 ($82,000) per square metre. A square mile of Manhattan residential property costs $16.5 billion.

That’s over $6,000 a square metre.

Incidentally that suggests the value of Central Park in Manhattan is over $21 billion!

Even in these great cities the scarcity is artificial. Regulatory limits on the height and density of buildings constrain supply and inflate prices. A recent analysis by academics at the London School of Economics estimates that land-use regulations in the West End of London inflate the price of office space by about 800%; in Milan and Paris the rules push up prices by around 300%.

Let them build up and out.

Zoning codes were conceived as a way to balance the social good of a growing, productive city and the private costs that growth sometimes imposes. But land-use rules have evolved into something more pernicious: a mechanism through which landowners are handed both unwarranted windfalls and the means to prevent others from exercising control over their property. Even small steps to restore a healthier balance between private and public good would yield handsome returns.

We see this in Auckland especially.

Second, governments should impose higher taxes on the value of land. In most rich countries, land-value taxes account for a small share of total revenues. Land taxes are efficient. They are difficult to dodge; you cannot stuff land into a bank-vault in Luxembourg. Whereas a high tax on property can discourage investment, a high tax on land creates an incentive to develop unused sites. Land-value taxes can also help cater for newcomers. New infrastructure raises the value of nearby land, automatically feeding through into revenues—which helps to pay for the improvements.

I’m a supporter of a land tax – so long as other taxes are reduced so that it does not increase the overall tax revenue. The best tax systems are road base and low rate.

I got this from Forest and Bird on Facebook. Originally from this site.

As someone who believes greenhouse gas emissions do cause warming and sea level rise, I find such scenarios actually counter-productive and are what lead to more and more people just thinking it is all scare-mongering (it isn’t, but stuff like this is exaggerated).

The scenarios shown are 1000 cm, 2500 cm and 8000 cm rise in sea levels. Mr Musther states ” the 10 metre rise could happen within the 21st century” and “a 25 metre sea-level rise could occur within the 21st century”.

I believe in looking at the science. First what has been the actual increases. It has been 1.7 mm a year from 1950 to 2009 and 3.3 mm a year from 1993 to 2009. The consensus scientific projection in the latest IPCC report is an increase this century of 26 to 82 cms.

So these scenarios are based on increases 1200% to 10000% greater than the IPCC projects. Not 20% greater or 50% greater but magnitudes greater.

Again this does not mean that we will not face some challenges from global warming, and that there are not long-term risks with greenhouse gas emissions. It would be an incredibly bad thing if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melts. However the notion of sea level increases this century in the range of 1000 to 8000 cms is just junk science.

Over many centuries or millenia, you could get increases of that magnitude, and again this is an undesirable thing. But trying to make decisions today on the basis of what the world will be like in say 2250 is deeply challenging – and highly likely to be wrong. Could you imagine sitting in England in 1750 trying to work out the impact of things done in 1750 on the world in 2000? We rarely get it right 10 years out, let alone 250.

Again this is not to say we should not be lowering our level of greenhouse gases. But to try and scare people into thinking we could have sea level rises of this magnitude within the next 100 years is actually counter-productive. It just pisses people off, and makes more people sceptical. The extremists make it harder for the moderates.

Nate Silver writes at 538:

It’s correct to say that few Americans identify as libertarian. Only 11 percent said the term “libertarian” describes them well, according to a 2014 Pew Research poll. …

But how people label themselves is one thing. Americans sometimes leave a different impression when polled about specific issues. Often, their views are reasonably heterodox and not well represented by a one-dimensional political spectrum.

Take two issues that are taken as emblematic of the split between liberal and conservative viewpoints: gay marriage and income inequality. If Krugman is right, you should see few Americans who are in favor of same-sex marriage but oppose government efforts to reduce income inequality, or vice versa.

As it turns out, however, there are quite a number of them; about 4 in 10 Americans have “inconsistent” views on these issues. TheGeneral Social Survey asks Americans whether they favor or oppose gay marriage. It also asks them to rate, on a 7-point scale, whether the government ought to reduce income differences through higher taxes on the rich and income assistance to the poor.¹ Here’s how Americans’ responses lined up in the poll in 2010 and 2012.

The most popular position (34 percent) is to favor both gay marriage and income redistribution. But 22 percent of Americans are in favor of gay marriage and opposed to government efforts to redistribute income. Another 20 percent are opposed to gay marriage, but favor income redistribution.

The terms libertarian and/or classical liberal don’t resonate with most people.

But as Silver explains, that doesn’t mean there are not a significant number of people who are socially liberal, yet not economic interventionists.

It might not be the biggest quadrant but one I’m happy to be in.

Stuff reports:

A Canadian mother-of-seven has been forced to rethink her anti-vaccination stance – after all her children fell sick with whooping cough.

North America has seen a growing number of families opt out of immunisation programmes, frequently because they are concerned about side-effects, despite warnings that deadly childhood diseases such as measles are on the rise.

Tara Hills and her husband decided to stop vaccinating their children six years ago after losing faith in the health care system, according to a blog post in which she described the family’s experience. …

Mrs Hills admitted she had recently begun to rethink her stance, as the number of measles outbreaks began to grow.

Now with her six sons and a daughter, aged from 10 years to 10 months in quarantine at their home in Ottawa, she said she was doing her best to get them all up to date with their vaccinations. She added that any parents with doubts should be able to find good, reliable data about the benefits.

“I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but this isn’t a popularity contest. Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear,” she said.

Indeed. A hard lesson to learn.

Meanwhile in Australia:

Parents who are “conscientious objectors” to childhood vaccination will have their childcare and family tax payments stopped from 1 January next year as the federal government attempts to crack down on the anti-vaccination movement.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced on Sunday a loophole would be closed to stop payments to parents worth up to $15,000 per child.

“Parents who vaccinate their children should have confidence that they can take their children to childcare without the fear that their children will be at risk of contracting a serious or potentially life-threatening illness because of the conscientious objections of others,” Mr Abbott said.

Although Australia’s overall childhood vaccination rates remain high – about 97 per cent – the numbers of people who are registered conscientious objectors has risen in the past 10 years.

There are now 39,000 children aged under seven who are not vaccinated because their parents are registered, according to the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register. 

This is an increase of more than 24,000 children over the past 10 years.

“The Government is extremely concerned at the risk this poses to other young children and the broader community,” Mr Abbott said.

“The choice made by families not to immunise their children is not supported by public policy or medical research nor should such action be supported by taxpayers in the form of child care payments.”

Should NZ do the same here? You can choose not to vaccinate, but the taxpayer can choose not to give you money through Working for Families?

Opposition leader Bill Shorten backed the change.

“Labor supports promoting the safety of our children,” Mr Shorten said on Sunday.

“We believe fundamentally in the science of vaccination.”

Bipartisan support in Australia

However, not going to happen in NZ according to the PM.

I don’t support compulsion, but I do support people being responsible for consequences from their decisions. In an ideal world if someone chooses not to vaccinate their kids, and they infect other kids, then the parents should be liable for the health costs they have imposed on others.

Rob Salmond blogged a speech Michael Cullen recently gave about what Labour needs to do, to defeat John Key.

Interesting that an SOE Chair is giving a speech about how to defeat the Government. I suspect that if this had hapened under the Clark Government, the Chair would have been sacked the next day. But regardless of the propriety of it, it is an insightful analysis. Some extracts:

By the time of the fall of Ruth Richardson, after the 1993 election, centre left pragmatists had regained control of the Labour Party. Centre right pragmatists soon largely regained control of the National Party except, perhaps, for the strange interregnum of Don Brash (though he had to pretend not to be a neo-liberal while leader). Since then, in New Zealand, “neo-liberal” has degenerated into a somewhat meaningless term of abuse applied by too many on the Left to anyone on the Right.

Thank you Dr Cullen. Indeed it is. That is why Eleanor Catton is not taken seriously when she rails on about the neo-liberal NZ.

In fact the current government is far from neo-liberal – it might more accurately be seen as pragmatically populist centre right.

Not entirely inaccurate. It is not centre-left as some commenters here fervently believe, but neither it is anywhere near neo-liberal.

We need to begin by recognising some central facts relating to MMP. The first is that under MMP, working too closely in harness with another party, whether it be the Greens or any other, does not maximize the overall progressive vote but potentially reduces it. Ironically, such a strategy is more suited to a first past the post or preferential voting system.

Labour working closely with the Greens helps the Greens, but not the left.

The second is that while the Greens are, at this stage, our natural primary partner, with whom we share many broad values,their vote at elections is stuck around 10%. That will only grow if it comes off us. And while New Zealand First may seem an alternative, it is scarcely a credible long term option and has some very different positions on key issues from Labour.

Thus to form a strong, stable progressive government Labour still needs to aim to get around 40% of the vote. The missing 15% is not going to come primarily from non-voting socialist fundamentalists as some in recent times seemed to believe. We certainly need to motivate as much of the non-vote as we can to vote for us. But the bulk of the increase has got to come from recapturing votes from National, as they did from us in 2008.

And that means policies not competing with the Greens on the extreme left.

Attracting these middle ground swinging voters is our job, whether some of us like it or not. The Greens know that is our job, rely on us to do it, but can afford the luxury of criticising us for doing it.

I know that some in the Party see this almost as a form of treason. My answer to that is that it is treason to all our history as a party to promote political impotence in the pursuit of political chastity.

I wonder if Michael ever reads The Standard.

The four concepts which I believe we have to persuade people are ones where they feel we identify with them are choice, aspiration, responsibility, and national pride. If you think at this point I’ve gone totally doolally then my reply would be that allowing our opponents to dominate with regard to these concepts is akin to giving them a ten mile start in a marathon.

The trouble for Labour is that many people think Labour is anti-choice, anti-aspiration, doesn’t believe in consequences for bad decisions and sees national pride as racism.

If Labour can associate themselves with those concepts, they’ll get over 40%. But I doubt they can.

Let me give you an example from my role as Chairman of New Zealand Post. The exercise of choice by the majority threatens to limit the choices of some. As people abandon traditional mail, stop buying stamps, and do their banking on the internet so we are being forced to look at how we adjust our service offering in response to shrinking revenue but rising costs. The answer is not to maintain an expensive network which is increasingly drastically underused but to provide facilities and assistance to those still excluded from the new technologies so that they can also benefit.

Can we apply the same logic to Kiwirail? Stop maintaining an expensive network?

In other words, choice in a social democratic context is not enhanced by engaging in a hopeless, self-defeating, and politically suicidal attempt to level down by constraining choice.

Clap, clap.

A broad range of policies can then ensure that much of that growth improves the standard of living of those on low to middle incomes. These include such obvious candidates as regular above average increases in the minimum wage, intervening on the supply side in the housing market, boosting primary health care and lowering its cost, and so on.

I would point out National has boosted the minimum wage in real terms, has intervened on the supply side in housing, and has boosted primary health care. As Cullen says, this is not a neo-liberal government.

“One of the problems with government is that it’s always looking for new things to do: new ways of justifying its bureaucratic structures, new ways of creating programs for media-conscious politicians to announce. After 23 years of unbroken prosperity and wealth creation in Australia – the longest economic boom in our history – the public sector should be doing less, not more.” 

– Mark Latham

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.

An interesting and strong denunciation of a high profile US food blogger, by a science blogger. Some extracts:

Hari’s campaign last year against the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte drove me to launch my site (don’t fuck with a Bostonian’s Pumpkin-Spice Anything). She alleged that the PSL has a “toxic” dose of sugar and two (TWO!!) doses of caramel color level IV in carcinogen class 2b.

The word “toxic” has a meaning, and that is “having the effect of a poison.” Anything can be poisonous depending on the dose. Enough water can even be poisonous in the right quantity (and can cause a condition called hyponatremia).

We hear the same from anti fluoride people – they will always refer to something they don’t like as a toxin, relying on people to react to think that automatically means it is bad for you at any dose.

And what about that “carcinogenic” caramel color? Well, it turns out that it’s not the only thing in your PSL that’s in carcinogen class 2b.

There’s also coffee.

Another example:

Hari uses this tricky technique again and again. If I told you that a chemical that’s used as a disinfectant, used in industrial laboratory for hydrolysis reactions, and can create a nasty chemical burn is also a common ingredient in salad dressing, would you panic? Be suspicious that the industries were poisoning your children? Think it might cause cancer? Sign a petition to have it removed?

What if I told you I was talking about vinegar, otherwise known as acetic acid?

You can make almost anything sound bad.

This is Hari’s business. She takes innocuous ingredients and makes you afraid of them by pulling them out of context (Michelle Francl, in a review of Hari’s book for Slate, expertly demonstrates the shallowness of this gimmick). This is how Hari demonized the harmless yet hard-to-pronounce azodicarbonamide, or as she deemed it, the “yoga mat chemical,” which is yes, found in yoga mats and also in bread, specifically Subway sandwich bread, a discovery Hari bombastically trumpeted on her website. However, as the science-minded among us understand, a substance can be used for more than one thing perfectly safely, and it doesn’t mean that your bread is made of a yoga mat if it happens to contain azodicarbonamide, which is FDA-approved as a dough-softening agent. It simply means your bread is composed of chemicals, much like everything else you eat.

Hari’s rule? “If a third grader can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.”

My rule? Don’t base your diet on the pronunciation skills of an eight-year-old.

Much better advice.

If you want proof that Hari doesn’t research anything before she puts it online, look no further than this article on airplanes, which she deleted from her site. She claimed that pilots control the air in an airplane, so you should sit near the front to breathe better air. She wrote that passengers are sometimes sprayed with pesticides before flights, and that airplane air is pumped full of nitrogen.

Please recall high school science, in which you hopefully learned that the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen.

There’s more in this vein. It is a good reminder to be wary of the anti-science fanatics.

The Food Babe has millions following her and believing her, Sadly few have seen this post she deleted:

Last by not least, Dr. Masaru Emoto, who is famous for taking pictures of various types of waters and the crystals that they formed in the book called “Hidden Messages in Water,” found water that was microwaved did not form beautiful crystals – but instead formed crystals similar to those formed when exposed to negative thoughts or beliefs. If this is happening to just water – I can only imagine what a microwave is doing to the nutrients, energy of our food and to our bodies when we consume microwaved food. For the experiment pictured above, microwaved water produced a similar physical structure to when the words “satan” and “hitler” were repeatedly exposed to the water.

Why do TV shows take her seriously and put her on?

Popped into Trowunna Wildlife Park last week. It’s near Mole Creek, up in the North Western area of Tasmania, where we were mainly staying.

A cute Tasmanian Devil having a laze.

Not so cute when they are feeding!

A quoll, sort of a cousin of the devil.

A determined bird.

These are Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles. They’re huge. They can kill prey several times their own weight.

Sorry, we had no food for him!

Or for him!

The kangaroos and wallabies are in the main park area, and you can pat them.

An Echidna. A type of an eater.

Quite a few birds there.

A wombat.

It’s a fairly small compact park, but as you can see a reasonable variety of species native to Tasmania. Well worth a visit.

I’m running for president. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion. –H https://t.co/w8Hoe1pbtC

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 12, 2015

This is the least surprising announcement in recent times. From the day she stood down as Secretary of State, this was obviously the game plan.

Her chances of getting the Democratic nomination are very high. The average of the polls has her at 60%, Joe Biden at 12%, Elizabeth Warren at 12% and then Bernie Sanders at 5%.

Warren has said she won’t stand. Sanders is more a socialist than a Democrat and unelectable. Biden is seen as too buffoonish.

So long as Clinton doesn’t appear to be taking the nomination for granted, she should win t comfortably to become the first female nominee for President from a major party.

Becoming President will be harder. However she currently polls around 10% ahead of Jeb Bush and Scott Walker in general election match ups. Her challenge will be not to be seen as an extension of the Obama presidency.

Stuff reports:

A man believed to be New Zealand’s worst recidivist drink-driver will be released from prison next month, despite describing himself as a “danger to the community”.

Raymond Charles Laing was jailed for three years in 2012 after notching up his 26th conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol. He was also convicted for the 31st time for driving while disqualified.

This would suggest he has driven drunk on several thousand occasions.

Drink Driving Interventions Trust co-director Roger Brooking said punishment for the offence in New Zealand was lenient compared to many other countries, and perhaps there was a need to keep certain people behind bars.

“In terms of dealing with the problem on a larger scale, I think there needs to be a law change so judges can impose preventive detention on them, so they can lock them up in prison for the rest of their lives.

“We do this to people who sexually offend, why can’t we do this to drunk drivers?”

That’s not a bad suggestion. Only use it for the worst of the worst, but if they fail to respond to anything else, that may be the only way to stop them killing someone while driving drunk.

The Social Progress Index for 2015 is out. It is a comprehensive assessment of a country’s social progress.

NZ has a score of 87.08 out of 100, which is 5th highest in the world. This is a small increase from 86.93 which NZ got in 2014 based on the 2015 criteria. The original 2014 index had NZ in 1st place, but they have changed their methodology and we would have been 5th last year on the revised methodology.

The top 10 are:

1. Nowway 88.36
2. Sweden 88.06
3. Switzerland 87.97
4. Iceland 87.62
5. New Zealand 87.08
6. Canada 86.89
7. Finland 86.75
8. Denmark 86.63
9. Netherlands 86.50
10. Australia 86.42

You can see the scores above. They also compare our relative strengths and weaknesses with 15 other countries with a similar GDP per capita (Belgium, Finland, France, Japan, Korea, Spain, UK). The relative strengths are:

• Press freedom
• Freedom of speech
• Private property rights
• Freedom over life choices
• Low corruption
• Tolerance for immigrants
• Tolerance for homosexuals
• Community safety net

The relative weaknesses are:

• Child mortality rate
• Obesity rate
• Suicide rate
• Water withdrawals
• Early marriage

The Herald reports:

But the think-tank’s director Michael Green said New Zealand still outperformed all other developed countries in its social progress relative to its economic performance. New Zealand’s economic ranking was only 23rd, with a gross domestic product of US$32,808 or barely half of Norway’s US$62,448, yet its level of social progress (87.08 on the index) was almost as high as Norway’s (88.36).

“Only Sweden, of the OECD countries, is another outperformer, and New Zealand is a much bigger outperformer than Sweden. New Zealand is a world leader in social progress outperforming,” Mr Green said.

Worth remembering this when some people try to paint NZ as a backwards hellhole, which doesn’t invest enough in supporting people.

Richard Harman writes:

Environment Minister Nick Smith is floating the idea of splitting the Resource Management in two.

One Act would deal with urban planning issues and the other with non urban resource and environmental management.

Not a bad idea. What do others say?

But the proposal actually comes from a former Massey University Professor of resource and Environmental Planning, Phil McDermott.

It is being promoted by the former ACT MP, Muriel Newman, who heads the libertarian New Zealand Centre for Political Research.

Mr McDermott proposes that the Government “separate environmental stewardship from responsibility for development” rewriting the RMA so that it focuses on protecting what is important in the natural environment. 

“At the same time, the Local Government Act can be streamlined as a better means for communities to influence development,” he says.

So have the RMA focus on the environment and the Local Government Act on urban development?

Mr Smith got some unexpected support at the Forum from Fish and Game’s Bob Johnson,  Infrastructure New Zealand’s Stephen Sellwood and veteran environmentalist  Guy Salmon who all attended the session and who complained  about the difficulty the RMA had covering urban housing issues using the same fundamental criteria as it did for non-urban environmental issues.

Mr Sellwood said it was his view that the RMA was broken  and that we needed to think of much more substantive reform.

He said that it had turned the planning process into a complex litigious process.

“Planning should be a positive thing,” he said.

“Of course we need to protect the environment.

“But why are we the only nation in the world that tries to do all of this (planning and environmental protection) in one place?”

Mr Salmon took up the theme.

“The idea that we are the only country in the OECD that has tried to combine a planning act and  environmental act together — I think Geoffrey Palmer made a mistake in doing that,” he said.

“We are now finding that it isn’t working that well/.

Good food for thought.

Harman has a link at the bottom of his piece to the proposal by McDermott and others.

Miranda Devine writes in the Daily Telegraph:

The Kiwis are killing it.

The New Zealand dollar is set to hit parity with ours, for the first time in 30 years.

Its economy is growing 20 per cent faster. Its GDP per capita is rising while ours is falling.

Its competitiveness rankings have outstripped ours. Its unemployment rate is 5.7 per cent compared with our 6.3 per cent, and that’s with a higher participation rate.

The NZ budget is heading towards a surplus while ours spirals ­further into deficit.

NZ has challenges, and the global economy is still fragile, but we are better positioned than most.

In a world lacking impressive leadership, Prime Minister John Key and his finance minister Bill English are shining lights, running the most successful and stable conservative government in the world.

Angela Merkel might disagree, but there is a reason Key was elected Chairman of the IDU.

Through lunches at the homes of mutual friends, I have come to know Key and his wife Bronagh a little and, over the years, have watched him become more energised and enthusiastic about the ­challenges of government.

Sunny-natured and refreshingly normal, he presents a new model of reassuring, ­decisive centre-right political leadership tailor-made for the 24/7 media demand for ­authenticity.

He shows that canny leaders who are trusted can get away with just about anything.

For instance, Key increased the GST in NZ to 15 per cent without a blip to his popularity. He did it by reducing the top marginal rate of tax to 33 per cent — compared with Australia’s uncompetitive 49 per cent — and he and English discussed their “tax switch” for 18 months beforehand.

Key’s style is not to spring unpleasant surprises after an election and exude competence by ensuring he is able to implement the policies he has promised.

And while some of those policies may be controversial (such as Sky City) they were publicised and debated before the 2011 and 2014 elections. The Opposition spend much of their time demanding Key break his word and not implement his election policies.

Key’s success is even more remarkable considering he had to weather a GFC-induced ­recession, and the $40 billion cost of rebuilding Christchurch after its 2011 earthquake.

His style has been dubbed “incremental radicalism”. But he is much more than an economic rationalist appealing to base self-interest. Like a Reagan or Thatcher, he is animated by a moral vision of an egalitarian nation of stable families where poor children like him can aspire to greatness though hard work.

Welfare is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

The NZ Taxpayers’ Union has announced:

Over the last 18 months, we have received a lot of feedback from members and supporters that something needs to be done to hold the flame to Len Brown and Auckland Council’s culture of waste. We’ve been doing our best from here in Wellington, but the time has come for an Auckland-based group dedicated to holding the Super City to account.

This morning the Taxpayers’ Union’s newest initiative – the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance publicly launched. The Ratepayers’ Alliance will stand up against Auckland Council’s wasteful spending, poor financial mismanagement, the proposed rates increases and the new taxes the Council wants to introduce. The group has very similar objectives to the Taxpayers’ Union, albeit focused just at the Super City. You can read more about the group’s plans at www.ratepayers.nz.

Best of all it’s free to join the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance by clicking here.

I encourage Aucklanders who want to reduce wasteful spending by the Auckland Council to join.

The ARA says:

Our purpose is to hold Auckland Council to account. With 130 spin-doctors the Council is very good at side-lining the concerns of neighbourhood ratepayer groups. By combining forces, this new group will shine the light on those wasting ratepayers’ money.

If you’re an Aucklander who like us is sick and tired of the Council wasting ratepayer money join us by clicking here.

Traditionally it’s been the business and property groups that have stuck up for fiscal responsibility within Auckland’s local government. Unfortunately most Auckland business groups are now heavily reliant on ratepayer money and find it difficult to bite the Council hand that feeds them.

Note that the ARA is not a party or a ticket. It will never stand candidates. It’s job will be to fight wasteful spending and large rates increases, no matter who is running the Council.

This graph shows the gross and net greenhouse gas emissions for New Zealand since 1990. It is from the annual report from the MFE. We’re a long way off the 5% reduction from 1990 levels we have committed to. This is partly because the lack of an international agreement has seen the global price of carbon credits fall, which means the Emissions Trading Scheme doesn’t send much of a price signal to encourage less greenhouse gas use.

Of interest is that gross emissions are at much the same level in 2013 as 2008.

The challenge with policy around greenhouse gases is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but not reduce economic growth – ie have fewer greenhouse has emissions per unit of GDP. Simply calling for us to get rid of one fifth of our dairy herd is economically suicidal, but also would be worse for the environment as other countries would simply increase their dairy output (and generally they produce more emissions in their dairy farming).

The Dom Post reports:

One may be blue and the other red, but that’s not stopping two of Wellington’s most popular councillors from joining forces to run for mayor and deputy mayor in next year’s October election.

The match of Lambton ward councillor Nicola Young and Southern ward councillor Paul Eagle might seem unusual, but the two say they cover most bases – male and female, Maori and European, outer suburbs and inner city and left wing and right wing.

Young’s father, Bill, was a National Party Cabinet minister.

“Most of local government is not about left or right. It’s about getting stuff done,” she said.

“We’re both committed to Wellington and are looking for what’s good for all Wellingtonians.

“There is often a bit of a trade-off there, but it’s about fairness and being aspirational for the city.

The Wellingtonian’s panel rated Eagle and Young as the two best performing Councillors on the Wellington City Council. That puts them in good stead to be Mayor and Deputy Mayor.

The fact they are from different sides of the political spectrum can be a plus. Most of local government should not be about politics.

Eagle, who said his relationship with Young would not change his standing for Labour, said he had no desire to be mayor, but was happy to support Young and would be encouraging Wellington’s Labour voters to follow suit.

Only 18 months until the local elections.

A pre-election interview with four political editors as done at The Pantograph Punch. All quite interesting, and one thing I wanted to highlight in the interview with Brent Edwards:

How do you rate the access to politicians in New Zealand?

In New Zealand in the main we have great access to politicians. If you think of the Prime Minister during a sitting week, he has a post-Cabinet news conference on a Monday which is for anywhere up to half an hour or more. We can then grab him on his way to his caucus meeting on Tuesday morning, on the way to Parliament on Tuesday afternoon, we can grab him again on Wednesday afternoon on the way to Parliament, and the rest of the time when he’s out around the country you probably have three or four stand-ups.

So that is a total of seven or eight media conferences or stand ups a week. And our stand ups involve questions and answers  not just photo ops.

It is a good thing our head of government is so accessible to the media, and through them the public. I doubt there are many other countries which would have the same.

In the US Barack Obama averages just 20 press conferences a year. On top of that around 26 short q+a. Compare that the NZ where it is around 46 press conferences and 300 or so media standups.

In the UK there appear to be seven to nine media conferences or standups a month.

The Herald reports:

Last August, seemingly as a matter of pride, the Internal Affairs Minister, Peter Dunne, proclaimed that this country’s passport system was “funded purely on a cost-recovery basis”.

Such a service should, indeed, be provided on that basis, with the fee collected being no more than the sum required to issue the passport. Yet despite Mr Dunne’s worthy sentiment, the Government plans to lift that fee when it extends the passport validity period from five to 10 years, even though there seems no grounds for doing so.

The Prime Minister has been coy on the likely cost. It will be higher than the present $135 but less than $270, the cost of two five-year passports, he says. His only attempted justification for the increase is that revenue from processing the documents will fall.

Mr Dunne, when announcing an independent review of passport security and a separate Internal Affairs review of passport costs, made the same point.

“Moving to a 10-year passport could lead to higher upfront passport fees as revenue could decline from processing passports on a less frequent basis,” he said.

Obviously, the longer validity dictates that revenue will fall. But having half the number of passports to deal with surely means that half the number of staff and half the time will be required to do the processing. In that regard, the cost to provide each passport will decline. This suggests the fee should drop. Perhaps the only conceivable added cost will be the under-use of technology that caters for the renewal of passports every five years.

The Herald logic here is not quite right. The passport system will include fixed costs (IT etc) and variable costs. Reducing the number of passports to be processed does not reduce the cost per passport – just the overall cost.

The Taxpayers Union suggests that even now New Zealanders are being overcharged, with the $135 fee being more expensive than nearly every other comparable country.

It also believes, contrary to Mr Dunne’s assertion, that the Government has been receiving more in passport fees than is necessary to cover its costs. The account, it says, has been in surplus since 2001 and has an excess of $20.8 million. The Government must answer such claims, and also provide a rational justification for increasing the fee.

To be fair to the government, it did recently reduce the fees to reduce the surplus. A new passport has dropped in price from $160 to $140 and an online renewal from $140 to $125.

I think there will inevitably be an increase in price due to economies of scale and the fact some costs are fixed. The key is that the Passport Memorandum Account should not build up a large surplus again. It went up to $27 million three years ago and is now down to $20 million. It really should end up close to zero.

Paul Buchanan writes in the Herald:

Revelations that the GCSB spies on Pacific island states such as Fiji, Samoa and Tonga as well as Pacific French territories, followed by news that it spied on candidates for the World Trade Organisation presidency on behalf of Trade Minister Tim Groser (himself a candidate), has been met not with street demonstrations and popular protests but by a collective yawn by the public at large.

Why is this so?

It appears that the New Zealand public is weary of the death by a thousand cuts approach used by Mr Hager and his investigative colleagues. Beyond the usual array of diversions presented by popular culture and media, the reason for this lack of interest seems to lie in the fact that the information released to date is seen as trivial, uncontroversial and never-ending.

For example, Snowden’s files reveal the British spied on Argentina after the Falklands/Malvinas War and carried on until 2011. Is that really a surprise? What is the UK expected to do when Argentina remains hostile to it and has never renounced its territorial claims over the islands?

I can’t think of a least surprising example of spying. Next will Snowden and co reveal the Allies spied on Nazi Germany!