Thanks to some reverse engineering, we’ve been able to work out the relative strength of the eight voting blocs in the 2013 Labour leadership ballot. Presumably, they’ll be much the same next time.

The relative strengths are:

• 5,392 members – 1 vote each
• 497 SFWU members who voted – 1 vote each
• 23 Maritime Union delegates – 3.8 votes each
• 39 Dairy Workers Union delegates – 6.9 votes each
• 23 Rail Union delegates – 8.3 votes each
• 29 Meat Workers Union delegates – 22 votes each
• 35 EPMU delegates – 29 votes each
• 34 caucus members – 159 votes each

Some observations.

• Only 2% of the total SFWU members cared enough about the Labour leadership to vote
• Despite their significant power less than half (35/80) EPMU delegates bothered to vote
• If we assume that say two thirds of the paid up party members voted, Labour has up to 8,000 members
• The EPMU delegates and Meat Workers delegates are relatively powerful.

In the past I have not been too detailed about what is and is not an acceptable comment as defining a line can encourage people to try and go right to the boundary. But I think it would now be useful to clarify the proposed comments policy, so that people can modify their comments appropriately.

This is a draft, and feedback is welcome. Of course the final call is mine.

Worth nothing that there will be more leniency in the General Debate, than other posts.

So what is a no go.

Defamation

Do not make comments that could get myself as publisher, or you, into a defamation suit.

Trolling

Trolling I define as an attempt to deliberately disrupt a conversation by being grossly offensive or massively off topic. Examples are turning a debate into a religious flame war, or stating all Catholics are complicit in child abuse or the like.

Personal Abuse

This is the area where things are going to get tighter. I want arguments attacked, not people. As an example it will be unacceptable to call someone a moron, but it will be acceptable to say their argument is moronic. That may seem a fine distinction, but an important one. However don’t try and push the distinction to breaking point. If you say that someone’s argument has the integrity of a pus filled prostitute (for example), then that would find you with a warning or strike.

Gratitious references to attributes people have no control over

People can not choose their gender, race, skin colour or sexual orientation. There will be times when those attributes about a public figure can be a legitimate discussion in relation to an political event. For example the media have just quoted Grant Robertson on whether his sexual orientation may be a factor in the leadership election.

But slagging off an MP, or non MP, on the basis of something they can’t control will get a strike or a warning.

Likewise grossly offensive generalisations are not acceptable either. Treat people as individuals. This is not to say one can’t discuss group characteristics (such as why certain races are over-represented in crime statistics), but it should be done in a way which is not derogatory of the entire group.

In terms of humour, I have a wide tolerance for humour which makes fund of generalisations, so long as the intent is to be humourous, not to be nasty. If you are not sure of the difference, then don’t do it. And generally keep that stuff to the general debate. I do not want Kiwiblog to be a politically correct blog, but I do want it to be a place where people wouldn’t say anything in the comments, they wouldn’t say to someone’s face.

Language

I swear. Too much, according to my parents. I have a fairly wide tolerance for swearing so long as it is not directed at someone. Calling someone a c**t is almost never acceptable, but the use of the word in other contexts may be. Telling someone to f**k off is never acceptable. I’m the only one who makes that call on this blog. Sometimes swear words can be an effective way of adding emphasis. But use them too much, and they lose the impact. I’m not going to be a language nazi, but I will deal with complaints when swear words are directed at individuals, or used in a way which is trolling or disruptive.

Personal Details

Give other commenters the courtesy of referring to them by the name or alias they use on this blog. Do not reveal personal details about them such as their name, address, phone number etc. unless it is somehow connected to a public issue. If in doubt, check.

As I said, feedback is welcome on the above. Generally they are not a huge change from the status quo except in the area of personal abuse. I want more people to feel safe to post on Kiwiblog, without being abused for their views. Their views can be attacked, but not them. Obviously there is a certain amount of latitude – if someone starts trolling or says something absolutely offensive or ridiculous such as they think the US faked 9/11, then they’ll get a robust reaction. But on most topics, you should be able to reasonably and robustly disagree.

A couple of years ago Kim Dotcom was a fairly popular person in New Zealand, and many people had sympathy for what had happened to him. How did he go from being reasonably popular, to arguably the most hated person in New Zealand politics? This post seeks to explore what happened.

I joked to someone that if the day before the election, that if two US Black Hawks had landed at his mansion and US Navy Seals jumped out and bundled him into a the choppers to take him to the US, and John Key held a press conference to announce he had personally authorised it even though his chief legal adviser Steven Joyce said it was “pretty illegal”, National would have got a 10% boost and get 60%.

That is an exaggeration, but National MPs and candidates I spoke to have all said that the most common topic of conversation in the last week was Kim Dotcom, and how members of the public would come up to them unsolicited and speak of how badly they want him not just out of NZ politics, but out of New Zealand.

But it was not once like this, so let’s go back to the beginning. Up until the raid on his mansion, 99.9% of New Zealanders had probably never heard of Kim Dotcom, including the Prime Minister.

The raids were like something out of a movie, with SWAT type teams in helicopters landing. It was, in my opinion, an over-reaction by the NZ authorities to the situation. Yes Dotcom had access to weapons, but he wasn’t Al Capone. Dotcom got sympathy from a fair number of people for the nature of the raid.

It also transpired that the Police did not get the paperwork right with aspects of the raid, and even worse the GCSB did not properly understand his immigration status and the law, and should not have been assisting the Police. This increased the sympathy for Dotcom.

And it should be said that the charges against him in the US are not a clear cut case. My belief is that Dotcom designed his business model to push the law to its limits, and to make money off copyrighted works – but he may not have broken US law. He may have gone over the boundary, but he may not have. It is an arguable case either way. A case that should be heard in court.

My feelings on Dotcom a couple of years ago were relatively benign. I thought the media were overly sycophantic to him, and that he was masterful at promoting a good public image. He made himself the victim. But I have always thought the US charges may not get a conviction, and that the Police were heavy handed (and slightly incompetent) in their handling of the case. So I wasn’t a fan boy, but I said at the time that if he went to the US and won the court case, then I’d welcome him back in New Zealand.

He was a celebrity. He appeared in plays with Jacinda Ardern. He got invited to open the Frankin Road lights. He got the soft treatment in women’s magazines and Campbell Live.

So where did it go wrong? How did he go from being the plucky popular underdog to the most reviled person in NZ? There were a number of reasons.

He became a politician

If Dotcom had not invented a conspiracy theory that Barack Obama and Joe Biden got John Key to let Dotcom into NZ, so he could be arrested an extradited, he would have stayed relatively popular. Rather than merely treating the USG as the enemy, and exposing the tendency of NZ law enforcement to be overly sycophantic to them, he decided to make John Key his personal target. He wanted to destroy John Key, and set up a political party to do so. He went from being an Internet entrepreneur to a politician.

Now to be fair to Dotcom, this was a very logical thing to do. I commented that I’d do the same if I was in his shoes, awaiting an extradition hearing and decision. A country extradites wanted criminals, not politicians. Turning yourself into a politician was in theory a politically smart thing to do – but it depended on what type of politician – a principled politician wanting better policies for NZ, or one seen to be utterly self seeking?

He lost his friends and his staff

Almost everyone close to Dotcom turned on him. He spent up large on himself, and his party, while claiming poverty with his staff, suppliers and friends. New Zealanders are quite egalitarian, and don’t like a guy who flies everywhere in a helicopter leaving small NZ businesses out of pocket for tens of thousands.

The number of former friends and colleagues who now hate him is huge. He managed to burn off goodwill faster than a forest fire.

They leaked to (mainly Whale Oil) various people stories, tapes and videos of Dotcom’s various inappropriate happenings.

He spent too much money trying to destroy Key

If he had only put $500,000 or $1,000,000 into his pet party, there may not have been such a reaction. But $4.5 million looked obscene, especially as it was tied to utu – not a belief in a particular set of policies being good for NZ. Yes Colin Craig put in a lot of money also to his party, but Craig’s motives were seen as upfront – wanting to become an MP and push a particular brand of policies – not revenge.

The alliance with Mana looked unprincipled

Dotcom used to donate to John Banks, one of the most right wing politicians in New Zealand. Mana is the most left wing party in NZ. Apart from a hatred of John Key, Dotcom and Mana were seen to have almost no policy commonality. It looked to most NZers that Dotcom purchased a tame political party, and Mana sold out their principles. Harre and Harawira would once have condemned a foreign born multi-millionaire criminal, whose staff alleged paid them below the minimum wage. But they took his money, and said nothing.

Recall that the Internet Party was meant to appeal to potential National voters, who didn’t think the Government was Internet friendly enough. The alliance killed off that possibility, and in fact drove those voters back to National.

Some on the left saw it as a great way to get the Internet Party into Parliament, and help defeat John Key. The smarter Labour MPs realised it would stink to high heaven, and we saw Chris Hipkins and Phil Goff wisely denounce it in no uncertain terms. They can hold their heads up high – their judgement was spot on. Labour members and activists who routinely denounce Hipkins, Goff and others might want to consider that if they had listened to them at the time, then Labour may not have ended up with such a disastrous level of vote. Cunliffe was far far too slow to distance himself from the Internet Mana Alliance. He should have ruled them out entirely, just as Key did with Peters in 2008.

Laila was the wrong leader

Laila would be a great Deputy Leader of the Mana Party. She is a staunch advocate for workers (except those who work for Dotcom) and unions. But she is no Internet Party Leader.

The Internet community already had mixed feelings on an Internet Party. Some were wary of Dotcom’s motivations, but still thought it was an exciting opportunity to have a party dedicated to Internet issues. If Dotcom has announced someone with real credibility on Internet issues such as ex TUANZ head Paul Brislen, then there would have been a real buzz of excitement.

The announcement of Harre as Leader created a fury with many in the Internet community. They felt that their issues were being hijacked for a cause that had nothing to do with the Internet. Some of those most vehement against the Internet Party were people who may have been potential supporters of it.

There were many good people involved in the Internet Party, such as CEO Vikram Kumar, who have a genuine passion for the Internet. But the leader is all important. Laila made a genuine effort to come up to speed on Internet issues, but the Internet community felt insulted by the use of the Internet’s name for a party led by someone who is not an Internet native and didn’t even know the name of her own ISP.

The Fuck John Key video

This was not a selfie video by someone in the audience. Dotcom, or someone working for him, thought it would be a great idea to stick a video of Dotcom leading a group of fans chanting Fuck John Key. They turned it into a party advertisement, put an authorisation statement on it, and promoted it.

This was a key point, when people really started to get determined to not let him succeed. We’re a fairly polite country. Seeing the German guy facing extradition reveling in the crowd chanting obscenities at the country’s Prime Minister offended huge numbers of New Zealanders, including many swinging voters. Even worse, Harre wouldn’t apologise for it. For National, this video was gold. For Labour, they should have denounced it more strongly and used it as an opportunity to say they would have nothing to do with the Internet Mana Alliance.

The problem Dotcom had at this point is he was purely surrounded by people who hate John Key. Everyone in his circle would have loved the video. They would have had no idea how it played out with middle NZ – who decide elections.

The hacking

Dotcom may or may not have been involved in the hacking, but he was boasting to people about it, his staff were boasting about it, he made a speech boasting of how he hacked the German PM, and of course many NZers thought he was involved. And most voters don’t like it. They think dirty politics is hacking, stealing and spying – not talking to bloggers..

The Moment of Truth

A lot has been written about this before, but there were six things which did Dotcom in.

1. His two years of assurances he had proof beyond any doubt the PM had lied. He claimed this dozens of times. He even had the privilege of appearing face to face against the PM at a committee meeting, and taunting him with it to his face. He did not just claim he has suspicions – he was adamant he had proof.
2. The timing of the event pissed people off. His brains trust thought having the week of the election would get the biggest impact. New Zealanders though have common sense and saw it as an attempt to make allegations, without the time to have them fully considered. he should have held it three months before the election – as should have Hager.
3. The farcical forged e-mail. A retarded five year old could have made a more convincing forgery.
4. The failure to talk about the e-mail at all, at an event he had spent over a year promoting as the moment when he would reveal the proof
5. His maniacal laughing throughout the meeting, as if he was Dr Evil in Austen Powers. I suggested National use the footage as their campaign closing.
6. The combination of a German and three Americans lecturing NZers on their politics in their heavy accents, shrieked foreigners trying to influence the NZ election result

This combined into the biggest farce and own goal I think I have seen in New Zealand politics.

The anger

When I wrote the next morning that it is time to get angry, I had more positive feedback on that post than any other I can recall. It got shared widely on social media, and I got scores of texts and phone calls. People were angry. Everywhere MPs went, they met angry people – angry at Dotcom. They wanted him out of politics, and were determined to vote to stop him having influence on the next Government. The CTU spent $200,000+ on trying to get union members our to vote (obviously for Labour/Greens/Mana). Dotcom’s Moment of Truth cost National not one cent and galvanised their supporters to the polling booths.

So it wasn’t one thing, but a series of bad calls that did Dotcom in. He may blame it on the last two weeks, but it was well over a year’s worth of misjudgements. If he had not invented his conspiracy theory involving John Key, and kept the focus on his ill treatment by sections of the NZ authorities – he would have maintained considerable public support and appeal. If his party had been a genuine Internet Party that sought more than the destruction of National at any cost, then it could have done quite well.

But he surrounded himself by people who hate John Key, and cut himself off from reality. He had no idea at all how the public of New Zealand were starting to regard him as a cancer that needed chemotherapy, rather than the plucky underdog he once was.

There’s a lesson in that for more than Dotcom.

This is a graph of Labour’s general election results in every general election since 1938. I’ve added a trendline in, to reinforce the obvious point. They do go through cycles of relative highs and lows but each high is lower than the one before, and each low is lower than the one before.

Andrea Vance writes in the SST:

Who will be the next Lord of the Flies?

A great analogy. But is Cunliffe Ralph or Jack. Who is Simon? David Shearer?

Normally coups are quick and bloody.

But by his own hand, David Cunliffe’s exit was torturous. A slow-motion train-wreck that played out over a week. His caucus ignored him, defied him, humiliated and deserted him.

And now he’s coming back for some more of the same. David Cunliffe either has the resilience of a cockroach or a total lack of self-awareness. He schemed and manipulated his way into the top job – just as his caucus colleagues schemed and manipulated to keep him out of it.

Could you have imagined what the Government would be like, if they had won? It would be a more civil version of Bosnia!

Cunliffe won the power struggle. But his party lost. Lost their support base. Lost the economic argument for the third election in a row. Lost the election. Lost their third leader in three years. And lost their heart and soul.

Ouch.

David Cunliffe is not the sole reason why Labour is now on its knees. But he made things profoundly worse. He not only failed to connect with voters, he turned them off. And because he failed to inspire the loyalty of his colleagues, he is finished.

The divisions are too pronounced. It seems that there was fault on both sides of the caucus. Parts of Camp David believe the Anyone But Cunliffe faction set him up to fail by sabotaging the campaign. In turn the ABCs believe his focus was always on this post-election fight.

Either way, it now seems impossible for Cunliffe to continue as leader – he patently can’t work with the caucus. To foist him on them again is just cementing a 2017 loss. One man can leave the job – only an immediate exodus of 20 MPs from Parliament would give him a chance of uniting the caucus.

That is basically it – either Cunliffe goes, or half the caucus goes. You could argue that a Cunliffe victory might be good for Labour in the long term, but how could they win in 2017, with that sort of purge?

Cunliffe’s childhood dream to be Prime Minister has died. He’s now got the noose around Labour’s neck, and by driving it into another bitter leadership run-off, he is kicking the chair out from under it.

It will be fascinating to see how the primary election goes. What if Cunliffe wins, but only 20% of caucus has voted for him?

The SST reports:

Speculators are cheating the KiwiSaver scheme that helps first-home buyers by using it to purchase rental properties.

The rort emerges as the new Government prepares to double taxpayer subsidies under the scheme – a flagship policy in National’s election campaign. An extra $218 million will be available – money that could be diverted into speculative property investments, rather than first homes for young families.

People who use the KiwiSaver first-home deposit subsidy scheme must live in the house they buy for a minimum of six months and it cannot be used as an investment property during that time – a rule designed to dissuade speculators from taking advantage of the popular scheme.

Fairfax NZ has learned of instances where first-home buyers have moved out of their property soon after buying it – or not moved in at all – and are instead renting it out.

This is not surprising. Our lessons of history is that when there is a financial incentive to do so, people will change their behaviour in order to gain the incentive. Any government agency proposing or evaluating a policy should brain-storm all the different ways people might try and rort the system.

Housing NZ financial operations manager Matthew Smith said first-home buyers using KiwiSaver for a deposit could be made to pay back their subsidy with penalty interest if they were caught breaching the rules. They would be required to remedy the breach or pay the subsidy back with penalty interest charged at a current rate of 5.75 per cent.

Smith said applicants were required to sign a statutory declaration stating they would live in the property for at least six months. “We also contact the owner after five months to check they’re still resident in the property,” Smith said.

But Bolton said there was no follow-up system to confirm buyers had stayed in the home.

I guess one needs to know the size of the problem, to decide whether one needs to physically check up on applicants.

My preference would be that the Government doesn’t give out taxpayer subsidies to aspiring home owners, but insteads work more vigorously with local government to free up land, reducing the cost of housing for all New Zealanders.

The Herald reports:

Research funding from the dairying and soft drink industries could be declined on ethical grounds under proposals being worked through by the University of Canterbury.

The university is in the midst of a wide-ranging debate about ethical research funding – who academics should and shouldn’t accept money from, and for what research purpose.

Currently, research funding from the tobacco and armaments industries could be declined.

Some academics have argued that should extend to certain industry-funded alcohol, gambling, dairying, mining and soft drink research.

How dare industries fund research that may disagree with their own research. It must be banned.

The test of research should be does it stand up to scrutiny, and can it be published in a peer reviewed publication? But instead some academics think that anything to do with industry is evil – so they are proposing to treat Fonterra the same as an munitions manufacturer.

I don’t think there should be any limitations on who can fund research – the only limitations should be on its quality and independence.

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

On Twitter: Must read: Fran O’Sullivan reports from inside John Key’s rectum and gets trashed by reader comments. EPIC FAIL 🙂

That was Dotcom at his most charming.

A day later, I was tempted to respond (also via Twitter) to Mr Kim Dotcom and point out that the less than 30 reader comments trashing my column saying that Dotcom’s “Moment of Truth” extravaganza was an ABJECT FAIL, was a mere drop in the bucket compared with the number of voters who contributed to the Internet-Mana wipeout on election night.

But Dotcom admitted he had poisoned the Internet-Mana brand himself.

What Dotcom’s little eruption did prove (like with the gratuitous “Sweet old lady, you’re cute” tweet he sent my way earlier on when I wrote a Herald column spelling out that content providers – like myself – don’t like having their copyright abused) is that this supposed two-fisted fighter for truth can’t take it if he meets up with other than journalistic adoration for his swash-buckling endeavours.

He’s been less vocal on Twitter since last weekend.

Then yesterday there was the Internet-Mana’s incontinent press officer Pam Corkery yet again bleating about the “puffed-up little shits” of telly land in a long-winded justification of her failure to exercise personal discipline at the party’s launch.

I like Pam. I cut my teeth in the private radio era of the early 1980s when the late Paul Holmes held sway on Radio Windy and Pam and a whole host of journalists who then went on to develop strong personal brands on the radio were starting off.

But instead of the inside story of what really went down in the Internet Mana soup which we all know Corkery is capable of providing, all we got was more deflection over the party’s disastrous defeat.

The upshot was that Hone Harawira failed to win Te Tai Tokerau, and Internet Mana finished on just over 1.2 per cent, well short of the 5 per cent needed to put an MP into Parliament.

The Prime Minister they tried to “take down” is back in the Beehive. Voters saw through the puppet-master and his well-paid politicians.

I have a lengthy post on Monday about what went wrong with Dotcom and Internet Mana.

Stuff reports:

Australia’s spy agency could soon have the power to monitor the entire Australian internet after new anti-terrorism laws passed the Senate on Thursday night.

Australian spies will soon have the power to monitor the entire Australian internet with just one warrant, and journalists and whistleblowers will face up to 10 years’ jail for disclosing classified information.

The government’s first tranche of tougher anti-terrorism bills, which will beef up the powers of the domestic spy agency ASIO, passed the Senate by 44 votes to 12 last night with bipartisan support from Labor. …

The new bill also allows ASIO to seek just one warrant to access a limitless number of computers on a computer network when attempting to monitor a target, which lawyers, rights groups, academics and Australian media organisations have condemned.

They said this would effectively allow the entire internet to be monitored, as it is a “network of networks” and the bill does not specifically define what a computer network is.

ASIO will also be able to copy, delete, or modify the data held on any of the computers it has a warrant to monitor.

The bill also allows ASIO to disrupt target computers, and use innocent third-party computers not targeted in order to access a target computer.

On Wednesday afternoon, Senator Brandis confirmed that, under the legislation, ASIO would be able to use just one warrant to access numerous devices on a network.

The warrant would be issued by the director-general of ASIO or his deputy.

“There is no arbitrary or artificial limit on the number of devices,” Senator Brandis told the Senate. …

A third bill enabling the collection of internet and phone metadata for a period of up to two years for warrantless access by law-enforcement and spy agencies will be introduced later this year.

These changes in Australia show how benign the law is in NZ, by comparison. Some differences:

• Mass surveillance allowed in Australia, but not in NZ (confirmed does not happen by the IGIS and Provacy Commissioner)
• Law changes rushed through Parliament in a few days, as opposed to NZ which had a public submission process
• Warrants can be issued by ASIO themselves with no need for warrant to be signed by a Minister and a judicial officer
• Metadata collection and storing to be legalised in Australia, but not legal in NZ

So the NZ law is relatively narrow, and has checks and balances built in. The Australian law is not.

After concerns were raised by Labor and Senator Leyonhjelm, the government agreed to amend the legislation to specifically rule out ASIO using torture.

Well that’s something!

“The internet poses one of the greatest threats to our existence,” Palmer United Party Senator Glen Lazarus said, speaking out against Senator Ludlam’s amendment.

Oh dear.I’m glad I am in NZ.

Stuff reports:

With one final flourish – a one fingered gesture to the sentencing judge – Allan Ivo Greer began a sentence of preventive detention for sexual offending against teenagers.

The sentencing in the High Court in Wellington today was marked by Greer, 52, interrupting, laughing at his victim’s trauma and insults to the judge.

A lovely man, who sounds like an ideal choice for pveventive detention.

The judge said Greer had 153 previous convictions, beginning when he was 14 in the Youth Court, and had been to prison for seven years for sexual violation in 2004.

Justice MacKenzie said those offences showed disturbing similarities to the current charges.

Again, he should have been locked up for good well before now.

He said there was a high risk of Greer reoffending and he had come to the belief the only sentence was preventive detention.

He also imposed a minimum non-parole period of 10 years.

A non parole period of 20 years would be better, but I suspect he will not get out at 10 years, which is good.

A hilarious account of the election by Attorney-General Chris Finlayson in the Spectator. I recommend you read the whole thing, but some extracts.

Every three years in New Zealand, incumbent politicians must hit the campaign trail. Since 2008, I have chased votes in the Rongotai electorate. My Labour opponent, Annette King, has held the seat since 1996. She is a fine parliamentarian, a thoroughly nice person, and also a distant cousin on my mother’s side. ‘Chris says if he wins Rongotai, he’ll ask for a recount,’ she delights in telling voters.

Annette tells the story, because it is true! Tim Groser is also petrified that one day he will accidentally win New Lynn off David Cunliffe!

They both get it is the party vote that counts.

The Newtown debate is usually the rowdiest of the campaign. In 2011, I was shoved by an Anglican vicar as I made my way out. This year, there are ten candidates lined up across the stage facing the audience squeezed into a wooden church hall. The crowd has a very particular strand of rule-bound, suburban radicalism: every mention of ‘revolution’ is cheered, but the audience will not allow proceedings to begin while party signs are blocking the fire exits. Along with Annette, the candidates include Russel Norman, a Tasmanian who relocated to New Zealand to work for the Green Party and now, holding the office of Male Co-leader, campaigns against foreign ownership. He finds himself fighting candidates from the populist Conservative and New Zealand First parties for the xenophobe vote. The Newtown audience thinks I am insufferably right wing but also thinks the same about the Greens and Labour.

Sounds like Aro Valley.

Puzzlingly, Mr Dotcom does not address the meeting, leaving us to wonder what in the end the moment of truth was. The abrupt termination of proceedings recalls Horace’s line parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Chris loves his classics.

The New Zealand union movement’s spiritual home is in the mining towns of the South Island, but most of its well-paid administrators choose to live in Island Bay. This pleasant seaside suburb is the scene of my final candidate’s debate. One heckler is particularly raucous. As I leave the meeting, I remind him that courtesy is contagious. He follows me down the street yelling that I work for the CIA.

Heh.

By 10pm, National appears to have won an outright majority. For the first time in my three campaigns we have taken the most party votes in Rongotai booths, although Annette retains the electorate by a comfortable margin. I tell my volunteers that, on this trend, I should be able to unseat her by 2038.

Annette may still be there then! 🙂

61 National MPs have just cheered as David Cunliffe announced he will contest the leadership of the Labour Party in the upcoming primary.

He will resign as leader at the end of caucus on Tuesday. I presume David Parker will become Acting Leader.

It is inevitable at least Grant Robertson will stand against him.

I want to try and work out what the relative voting strength of each union was in Labour’s leadership primary. My maths is too rusty to calculate it myself, but hoping some readers can help.

The voting breakdown for each union was:

• DWU – Cunliffe 33, Robertson 0, Jones 6
• EPMU – Cunliffe 25, Robertson 8, Jones 2
• Maritime – Cunliffe 18, Robertson 3, Jones 2
• MWU – Cunliffe 22, Robertson 1, Jones 6
• Rail – Cunliffe 18, Robertson 3, Jones 2
• SFWU – Cunliffe 254, Robertson 177, Jones 66

We know that the overall result was Cunliffe 70.77%, Robertson 17.3% and Jones 11.9%. So the question is what weighting is given to each union, to get that result?

Based on registered members, the DWU should be around 8%, EPMU around 40%, Maritime 3%, MWU 17%, Rail 7% and SWFU 25%. But the voting strength is based on affiliated members, not weighted members. The percentages above could vary by several per cent.

If someone can work out a formula to calculate voting strengths, that would be great. Why I want that, is to calculate the relative strength of a delegate in each union.

Stuff reports:

The number of breath-tests done by police has rocketed in the past six years.

Figures provided to The Dominion Post show that the number of breath tests increased steadily from 1,713,438 in 2008 to 3,027,347 last year.

The figures suggest that a substantial drop in the number of drink-driving convictions over the same period can be attributed to a reduction in motorists choosing to drink and drive, rather than to any drop in police resourcing.

Last week it was revealed that the number of convictions for driving with excess breath alcohol, excess blood alcohol or refusing to provide a sample had dropped from 30,976 in 2009 to 23,024 last year.

They don’t use the same base year but if we assume 2008 and 2009 are the same, then the number of tests is up 77% and the number of convictions are down 26%. The conviction rate has gone from one in 55 people tested to one in 131. That’s an excellent trend.

Perhaps it is an indication that we can shift some resources from breath tests, to other areas?

Stuff reports:

It’s beyond doubt that Labour’s caucus doesn’t like David Cunliffe.

Voters don’t either, with a woeful 24 per cent election result, the party’s second worst in history.

The voters are never wrong. Never. So Cunliffe must do the obvious and decent thing and resign before Tuesday’s caucus.

Failure to do anything less means his MPs will nail him.

My sources tell me he can count his supporters on one hand, with only four MPs left backing him. Even his most loyal and ardent supporters, such as Palmerston North’s Iain Lees-Galloway, have deserted him. Staying on is simply not an option any more.

The fact that Cunliffe can’t, or won’t, see the writing on the wall is part of his problem. He’s prolonging the agony and heaping more attention on Labour’s misery. He’s equally blind to his own failings and weaknesses. He sang the wrong tune on election night and he’s missed his notes all week.

Telling his deputy, David Parker, not to talk while Parker stood beside him was simply wrong. It was patronising and poor.

Yep his support base has gone from seven to four. Yet he could still win a wider ballot.

Robertson is the one to watch, and expect him to have Jacinda Ardern as his deputy.

She was at his side during the last primary when the party voted for a new leader. She is one of his biggest supporters.

I think it will be Robertson and Ardern. Both are talented politicians. Both worked for Helen Clark. Ther strength is their weakness – they are what you call professional politicians, who have only ever effectively worked for Government, or as political staff. Neither have ever worked post-study in the private sector.

The Manawatu Standard continues with its advocacy for NZUSA with unchallenged students starving stories. The latest:

Using fast food wrappers as toilet paper and cutting fresh food from their diets are some of the desperate measures Manawatu students facing “financial distress” have resorted to.

A meal from McDonalds costs around $10. For that you can get 24 rolls of toilet paper. Seems an obvious solution. Less fast food, and then you can afford toilet paper.

New Zealand spends one of the highest proportions of tertiary funding on student support in the OECD. Our student support scheme is arguably one of the most generous in the world, due to interest free student loans. We spend 47% of our tertiary education budget on student support, compared to an OECD average of 22% or so. This is the second highest in the OECD.

If students need a higher level of income while poor and studying – I’m for that – so long as when they are earning good incomes they pay back the cost of the student loans, which includes the interest. So if we stick interest back on student loans (which won’t cost students anything while they are studying), then we can afford to give them more support while studying.

But what NZUSA wants is truck drivers to pay more in taxes, so doctors and lawyers get more income overall from taxpayers.

The Herald talks to four Labourites on why they think Labour lost so badly. Some of their responses show how out of touch they are.

Len Richards: More than a decade of dirty politics aimed at demonising and destabilising the Labour Party by well-organised and well-funded opponents have taken their toll. The opinion polls reflect the public mood deliberately created by the spin doctors of the right, and the very poor election results for Labour over the last three elections reflect the polls.

So Len thinks Labour did nothing wrong, and Labour lost because of basically bloggers. My God.

His solution is for Labour to go more left wing. I hope they listen to him.

Brian Edwards: John Key, perhaps the most popular leader in New Zealand’s history, was deemed hugely likeable; David Cunliffe was widely disliked and mistrusted. Labour had the wrong leader.

Brian is right that leadership is important. It is only part of the challenge though.

Josie Pagani: Voters began to think Labour was trying to make you a better person rather than better off.

Which is what the Greens do.

John Tamihere: Under Helen Clark the party was captured by academics and tertiary-educated leaders of a union movement that never worked a shop floor. They concentrated on identity politics and controlled the party not on the great economic issues, but on whether you were gay, Maori, feminist, bisexual, etc. … hey have driven people like myself out of the conversation and out of contributing to the party. They have lost connection with middle New Zealand and, particularly, men.

It appears that 80% of men may have voted for parties other than Labour.

A true story from a female friend of mine.

Her husband was watching the election night coverage showing National well ahead. He fell asleep and woke up around 90 minutes later during David Cunliffe’s concession speech. As he listens to it, he yells out to his wife “What the hell happened, how did Labour win the election, when they were so far behind”.

She explains to him that they did lose, and the speech he is listening to is meant to be a concession speech

He remarks that it explains a lot.

Stuff reports:

The University of Canterbury has fielded 57 complaints since a student car event that campus feminists say poked fun at women, Islam, Malaysia Airlines and the Ebola crisis. 

The Engineering Society (Ensoc) encouraged members to theme their RoUndie 500 cars and costumes ”the more inappropriate the better” at the weekend, sparking complaints from the Feminists’ Society (FemSoc).

But 47 of those complaints were actually made against the feminists, a university spokesman said.

”A small number of [complaints] are from members of the public and alumni, but most are from students.”

The complaints about FemSoc related to the ”perceived approach” used to draw attention to the issue, including commenting to the media before making a formal complaint to the university, and alleged provision of information to the media without the approval of the students featured, he said.

The complaints received about Ensoc related to the perceived offensive nature of some of the vehicles published on social media.

Would be a great own goal if it is the complaints about FemSoc that are upheld. Having said that I think it is silly that the university is involved at all. Each club is entitled to their own point of view.

An Unseasonable Fall of Snow, at Circa, is one of those plays that grips you from the first minute and never lets go. It is a play full of mystery. Who is Arthur the interrogator? Is he a police officer? A lawyer? And what exactly is it that young Liam has done?

It is a who dun it, but not in the usual way. For 90 minutes you are intrigued and guessing, and then somewhat stunned and moved as it all comes together.

The play is a fest of Brophys. Well known Geraldine Brophy is the director. The other three Brophys are not related to Geraldine but are father Jed, mother Yolande and son Riley.

Jed and Riley play Arthur and Liam respectively, and both excel. They portray their characters with conviction and you the tension between them is excellent.

Yolande plays Toni, a brief but important character, and she is also the production manager.

For me to enjoy a play, I have to get an emotional connection, and this play not only made the connection but sustained it for 90 minutes. The sense of mystery, the tension between the two leads, the slow revealing of clues, and the, shall we call it,  moment of truth. A simple yet effective set supported by sympathetic lighting all contributed to a great experience.

It’s one of those rare plays I’d quite like to go back and see a second time, to see what clues I didn’t pick up early on.

The play is set in Wellington, which also adds to the enjoyment and familiarity. It is on until Saturday 4 October.

The Tax Foundation assesses the tax systems of OECD countries. They note:

Many countries have been working hard to improve their tax codes. New Zealand is a good example of one of those countries. In a 2010 presentation, the chief economist of the New Zealand Treasury stated, “Global trends in corporate and personal taxes are making New Zealand’s system less internationally competitive.”

In response to these global trends, New Zealand cut its top marginal income tax rate from 38 percent to 33 percent, shifted to a greater reliance on the goods and services tax, and cut their corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 30 percent. This followed a shift to a territorial tax system in 2009. New Zealand added these changes to a tax system that already had multiple competitive features, including no inheritance tax, no general capital gains tax, and no
payroll taxes.

In a world where businesses, people, and money can move with relative ease, having a competitive tax code has become even more important to economic success. The example set by New Zealand and other reformist countries shows the many ways countries can improve their uncompetitive tax codes.

In the digital age, capital and labour are highly mobile. Companies can choose which countries to base themselves in, to sell to the world from.

The top 10 countries are:

1. Estonia 100
2. NZ 88
3. Switzerland 82
4. Sweden 80
5. Australia 78
6. Luxembourg 77
7. Netherlands 77
8. Slovak Republic 74
9. Turkey 70

They also note:

Under this measure, no country has a perfect VAT or sales tax base. New Zealand has the broadest base with a ratio of 0.99

We have the simplest and broadest GST in the world. We should resist exemptions that complicate it.