The Press reports:

The existing representation arrangements in Christchurch are flawed and need to be changed before the next local body elections, Mayor Lianne Dalziel says. …

Currently Christchurch is divided into six wards, each of which is represented by two elected councillors and one community board.

Banks Peninsula is represented by one councillor and two community boards.

But Dalziel is not convinced the existing ward system groups communities together appropriately.

She thinks there would be more opportunities to get communities involved in decision-making if the wards were smaller and better reflected communities of interest. 

”Maybe we could have more wards and one councillor per ward,” she said, acknowledging that such a move could lead to a slightly bigger-sized council.

I don’t think you should have a bigger Council, but I do think single member wards is better for voters. With two or three person wards you often have up to 20 candidates to choose or rank, and it becomes somewhat blind luck. A smaller single member ward will be easier for voters (like in parliamentary elections) where you only have to pick one candidate out of a relatively small number.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand’s high housing prices are “a choice”, with building affordable housing in Auckland “basically illegal” under current settings, National finance spokesman Bill English says.

Politicians from the major political parties are today wooing business groups at the Deloitte-BusinessNZ Election Conference.

At the opening session, for finance leaders, English said the audience would be familiar with the recent Economist report showing New Zealand had some of the most expensive house prices in the world.

“That’s a choice made by New Zealand,” English said. “It’s not a fact of nature.

“We’ve chosen a very expensive rapidly rising housing market”, with the price of land rising because of restrictions on new supply, and planning rules adding to costs.

“In Auckland it’s basically illegal to build a house that’s worth less than half a million,” English said.

I’m glad Bill understands this, and is saying it. Every expert body that has looked at house prices has come to basically the same conclusion.

More land had been consented for residential housing development in the last nine months than in the previous nine years, English said.

And that will make an impact as it becomes ready for developing.

Labour finance spokesman David Parker said introducing a capital gains tax which excluded the primary family home “logically must” address housing-cost pressures.

To quote Jamie Whyte, that is a fourth form economics argument.

Australia has a CGT and their house prices are rising even faster than NZ in some cities.

Also the Labour CGT is so exemption riddled, the impact would be minimal.

The Dom Post reports:

Labour candidate Anna Lorck has apologised profusely for parking her branded vehicle in a mobility car park in Hastings.

Lorck’s SUV was seen parked in the designated car park outside the Ellwood Function Centre, where she was attending a meeting of farmers.

Lorck is the Labour candidate for Tukituki, which takes in Hastings, Havelock North and Flaxmere.

She was “genuinely very sorry” and had “absolutely no intention to park there”.

“I had no idea. It was dark and I didn’t notice the signage. I was late and I arrived just before it started. The car park was full and I saw the car park and just parked,” she said.

In my experience mobility parks are extremely well signposted.

Lorck’s Green Party opponent in Tukituki, Chris Perley, who uses a wheelchair, did not wish to comment.

One of her opponents actually is disabled, and she still parked in a disabled park!

Two more polls last night and this morning are at Curiablog.

The weighted average of the polls shows a tight race. The centre right parties could just govern – 62 seats out of 123. After that you would need Maori Paty, NZ First or Conservatives if they make 5%. The centre left parties have 51 seats.

A reader asked if I could provide data on what spending increases have occurred under National and Labour, as Labour keeps blaming National for the increase in debt.

Considering that Labour have opposed basically every measure of spending restraint in the last six years, I’m amused they think attacking National for too much debt is a convincing strategy.

The reality is that Governments have relatively little control over how much revenue they’ll receive (short of major tax changes), but what they do control is spending. And the reality is once new spending is added on, it is very very difficult to get rid of.

So how much has spending increased in the last five years of National, and Labour before that.

In 2004 core crown expenses were $41.6 billion. Labour increased them by a massive 54% over just five years to $64 billion. Yes 54% increase in five years. This is from the party that claims they will keep to the same fiscal track as National!

From 2009 to 2014 (based on PREFU forecast) core crown expenses only rose a further 11.4%.

Do you think a party that increased spending by 54% in five years, will get NZ back into surplus? Even with all their extra taxes, I can’t see it happening.

Su’a William Sio said:

Labour is immensely concerned that members of an Auckland Pacific Pentecostal Church are being signed up as National Party members without their full understanding, Labour’s Pacific Affairs spokesperson Su’a William Sio says.

“Congregation members are being approached by a person claiming to represent National who is convincing them to sign forms they don’t fully comprehend.

So if people are joining National, he assumes they don’t comprehend what they are doing!

“They are then being sent letters addressed to them personally saying they are now members of National and must now vote for them

That would be serious and wrong, if true. Personally I doubt the claim. Perhaps Mr Sio could provide some you know proof?

From the Herald Mood of the Boardroom survey:

1. Bill English 4.75
2. John Key 4.49
3. Paula Bennett 4.21
4. Steven Joyce 4.06
5. Tim Groser 3.87
6. Chris Finlayson 3.84
7. Nikki Kaye 3.40
8. Simon Bridges 3.18
9. Jacinda Ardern 3.18
10. Grant Roberston 3.11
11. David Shearer 3.11
12. Annette King 3.08
13. David Parker 3.06
14. Phil Goff 3.04
15. Phil Twyford 2.53
16. David Cunliffe 2.45

Some stats from the Office of the Clerk about the 50th Parliament:

• 1,409 sitting hours
• 183 bills introduced
• 2,776 questions asked
• 19,839 pages of Hansard
• 2,760 hours of select committees
• 1,203 items of select committee business
• 346 bills passed into law, including 11 members’ bills
• Only 79 hours of urgency
• 146,314 expressos drunk

Anne Tolley announced:

All public prisons in New Zealand will become full working prisons by 2017, and ex-prisoners will receive post-release drug addiction treatment if National is returned to government, says Corrections Spokesperson Anne Tolley.

Excellent. A great idea.

“By expanding the working prisons model from three to 16 prisons, every eligible prisoner will have a structured 40 hour-a-week timetable to include work experience, skills training and education, alongside drug and alcohol treatment and other rehabilitation programmes.  This will give them the skills they need to live a crime-free life outside prison.

“The vast majority of prisoners don’t want to be sitting around in their cells doing nothing. The working prisons model gives them the opportunity to learn good habits and take responsibility for their lives. And after a decent day’s work they are also more manageable for prison staff.” 

The working prisons expansion will not require additional funding, and can be established through reprioritisation of resources.

Again a great move, but surprised that so few prisons up until now have been working prisons. Good to see they are doing it with no extra funding needed.

Stuff reports:

Cunliffe cited US research that shows there is no relationship between a minimum wage rise and unemployment, saying this was backed by Treasury.

This is simply not the case. David Cunliffe is entirely misrepresenting the research. There is no such research that says there is no relationship between the minimum wage and unemployment. That would be like research which says there is no relationship between gravity and apples hitting the ground.

There is research that says some increases in the minimum wage will not affect employment. That is correct. What matters is what level the minimum wage is compared to the median or average wage, and how big any particular increase is.

Only a moron for example would claim increasing the minimum wage from $14.25 to $25 an hour would not impact employment. Going from $14.25 to $14.75 an hour probably won’t. Going to $18.80 an hour almost definitely would.

Now the NZ minimum wage is already the highest in the OECD compared to the median wage. Significant increases beyond the 66% level it is currently at, are highly highly likely to have an impact on employment.

If David Cunliffe really believed there was no relationship, he would announce a $30 per hour minimum wage, and we would legislate our way to prosperity.

A group of young(er) people have put together a very good resource at Ours.co.nz.

They have done short policy comparisons for the parties in 24 policy areas.

It’s a really impressive site, well focused on younger voters.

Geordie Hooft writes in The Press:

As a tax adviser, I can tell you that CGT tends to be complex – it’s one of the reasons that the Australian Master Tax Guide weighs nearly 40 per cent more than its New Zealand counterpart. One thing is for sure – CGT will be a boon for tax advisers and valuers.

Taxpayers will need to consider those costs in addition to the cost of the tax itself.

Labour’s CGT is so complex that even the MPs who wrote the policy don’t understand it! It is so riddled with exemptions, that it will have massively high compliance costs as even the smallest businesses has to hire expensive tax lawyers and accountants to help them cope with it – and many individuals will find they can no longer safely do their own tax returns, but will need to have a professional do their tax for them.

Have blogged the 3 News poll at Curiablog.

Conservatives up up 0.5% to 4.7%. This isn’t a significant change (70% probability it is an increase), but it does suggest their chances of making 5% are getting better and better.

The average of all the public polls is above.

Stuff reports:

The master of Maori protest used pedal power to conquer 200 kilometres of the country’s highway from Bay of Plenty to Waikato in an effort to whip up support for the Maori Party.

Maori Party List candidate and Tuhoe champion Tame Iti, 62, cranked through the second leg of a three-day road relay from Ruatoki in Bay of Plenty to Auckland.

That took him from Rotorua, where he used his Te Arawa connections to raise votes for leader Te Ururoa Flavell, to Garden Place in Hamilton’s CBD. …

Flavell climbed in the polls this week and Cullen was working hard to garner votes in Waikato but Iti’s face and profile was a priceless commodity. “My face will shift a lot of people. They will see Tame and say, oh, Maori Party.”

He spent the night at Kirikiriroa Marae in Dey St and will continue to Auckland today to support Tamaki Makaurau candidate Rangi McClean.

He said the Maori Party was at the table with government and were making a difference for their communities.

“We need to be at the bench and making those decisions and the Maori Party have been since they have been part of the system.”

Iti for so long has the the face of violent protest in NZ. He shot the NZ flag with a shotgun. He was running around the bush with some idiots pretending they were a rebel army.

I’ve said this before, but to have him now extolling the virtues of working within the system is a great thing.

Stuff reports:

When the Christchurch earthquake left hairdresser Michele Robertson and her friends short of a workplace, she decided to open her own.

Few 23-year-olds saw opportunity in the destruction of their city. But Robertson, who has worked in salons since she was 16, had always wanted to own her own.

“I was naive enough to think it could work,” she says.

“And it did.”

But Robertson was not without her naysayers.

“The first meeting I had with the bank manager – the earthquake had just happened, he might have been having a bad day – but the way he spoke to me was so degrading,” she says. “I went home and nearly gave up.”

Even reality television show host Tabatha Coffey, of Tabatha’s Salon Takeover, said Robertson was “crazy” when she met her at a hairdressing event at the Sky Tower.

But Robertson figured, “If I failed, I had the rest of my life to fix it. If I succeeded, I’d set myself up for a really good career.”

She opened Balayage, in Addington, five months after the earthquake in July 2011, thanks to $15,000 loan from her parents via the bank.

Mentors such as former boss Sonya Mbonyinshuti and uncle Jon Weir, who owns a construction company in Christchurch, encouraged Robertson to learn from their failures, as well as their successes.

Their main advice?

“Not seeing money that comes into your bank account as yours. It’s not,” Robertson says.

Following this, she paid herself about $200 a week for the first seven months and put most of salon’s revenue into a tax and GST account. She worked six days out of seven, and lived at home.

After one year, Robertson owned Balayage freehold and had a $2000 surplus, which she gave to local charity Te Mapua Child and Youth Trust.

That’s a great story. We need more people like Michelle willing to give it a go. Her experience of very low incomes for the initial year is not unique. I know of an advertising agency where the owners were paying themselves less than the receptionist, in a bid to keep it going.

This is one of the reasons why we should be very wary of employment law changes that will impose extra costs on small businesses. Many of them start off on the verge of failure, and it would not take much to push them over the edge.

Apple have announced details of their new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+. The 6 has a 4.7 inch display and the iPhone 6+ a 5.5 inch display. The iPhone 4 by comparison is 3.5″ and iPhone 5 is 4.0″

Features include:

• Thinner (6.9 mm and 7.1 mm)
• Higher Res (1920 x 1080 for the 6+)
• 64 bit A8 chip
• An M8 co-processor that can calculate elevation, number of steps climbed etc and also be a barometer
• 8 megapixel camera
• A near range wireless chip which can be used to make small purchases – very exciting
• Battery life of 11 or 14 hours
• Handoff to allow you to switch between Apple devices

I’m definitely buying one. Not just for the new features – but mainly because my 4s battery only lasts around four hours now before draining!

ACT have set up a page dedicated to fact checking the Conservatives. They highlight that the tax cuts proposed by the Conservatives would leave a $6.4 billion revenue shortfall – and that the Conservatives are promising even more spending.

Moray Macdonald writes:

I’m voting ‘yes’ because I’m a Tory, not in spite of it. …

It is time to come out of the closet. I’m voting Yes and as a result, for the first time in years, I am excited about the future of centre-right politics in Scotland.

This might seem a surprising move for a former Director of the Scottish Conservative party and Tory candidate for Westminster, but I have to be honest, it wasn’t even a difficult decision.

Devolution has highlighted just how different Scotland is. Even the Westminster establishment, ever obsessed with the needs of London and her hinterlands, has noticed that there is no longer a demos in the United Kingdom. The desperate offer of extra powers to Holyrood acknowledges how poorly our needs are served by their politics.

The Scottish Conservatives despair of the left-wing consensus in Holyrood and yet they embrace a cosy and increasingly alien political elite that guarantees its permanency. True Conservatives should embrace the opportunity to bring real political decisions closer to home. Only a Yes vote will make our politicians truly answerable to us, for it is only when Holyrood and Victoria Quay have to account for the money taken from the pockets of the Scottish people will right-of-centre politics have a chance to flourish in Scotland.

I think Moray is right. I doubt the Tories will ever be the largest party in Scotland, but part of the reason they do so badly is Scotland blames England for their lack of money. Once Scotland has to pay its own way, and starts racking up huge deficits and debt, then the Tories will do better in Scotland.

One News reports:

Labour leader David Cunliffe’s Capital Gains Tax is again under fire – this time from economists at the NZIER who say it won’t generate anywhere near enough money to cover the party’s spending promises.

Labour has over-estimated its capital gains tax numbers, according to a report by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research. The report was commissioned by Federated Farmers, which strongly opposes the proposal.

Labour predicts a capital gains tax should raise $3.7 billion by 2026. But the Institute claims it’ll actually bring in less than half of that.

So who do we believe? The NZIEr is probably the (or one of the) most respected economics firms in New Zealand.

Labour on the other hand is the first opposition party in around two decades to decline the offer by Treasury to have a secondee in their office, who could credibly cost their policies for them.

It’s not a hard call.

And in related news, the Taxpayers Union has released a paper by Dr Michael Dunn analysing the likely fiscal impact of the Green Party wages policy. Dr Dunn is the former head of forecasting at IRD, so is an expert in forecasting.

The Greens claimed their wages policy will bring in an extra $800 million a year in tax revenue to the Government. Dr Dunn has calculated that in fact it would result in around $110 million less tax revenue every year, So that is a $2.7 billion hold in the Greens costings. We have a surplus projection of $300 million, so goodbye surplus.

The Greens and Dr Dunn agree that the direct cost of their policy on the Government will be $1.1 bllion over three years. Add on the reduced tax revenue and the total impact on the Government’s books is to leave the Government’s books $1.4 billion worse off – compared to their claim that it would be $1.5 billion better off.

These are not minor differences. These are billions of dollars. And just on one policy!!

I think it is time that we have what the US have, and a NZ version of the Congressional Budget Office which can independently cost policies proposed by parliamentary parties. NZers deserve better than to be conned by political parties that grossly mislead voters over the true costs of their policies.

I thought an article in Critic provides some useful illumination into Nicky Hager’s hypocrisy.

Hager attacks me for having criticised the OUSA President for her support of the Tom Scott song expressing a desire to kill John Key and fuck his daughter.

So it is important to note that Hager has no problem with someone urging the assassination of the Prime Minister, and a desire to use his daughter as an act of political revenge. This behaviour doesn’t warrant any criticism by Hager.

Now imagine Helen Clark was Prime Minister, and someone on the right promoted a song which said Helen Clark should be assassinated, and that they want to fuck her niece to get revenge on Clark. Hager would be decrying this as nasty politics, and probably calling for the Police to investigate.

The OUSA President’s salary is funded by all students at Otago. I’d say a third of them at least support National. Her condoning of the Tom Scott song is deeply offensive to many people. The notion that she should not be criticised for what she said is basically the left saying that people on the right should not be allowed to criticise.

Hager has the check to say I have selective morality:

Hager considers Farrar to be operating with “selective morality,” and that the criticism is a “subcategory of attack politics … they know their commenters are mad dogs. They empower their commenters to attack people; they have enabled this.”

Hager argues the commenters, who have made thousands of contributions to the Kiwiblog website, are to be expected; and Farrar’s manipulation of Sycamore-Smith’s column does nothing but add to the “feeding frenzy” his more inflammatory posts incite.

Has Hager ever looked at the comment sections of The Standard or the Daily Blog? His selective morality means he has no problems with the hatred and bile that is often found there – because of course it is generated at people like me.

Hager notes, “they do it in quite a systematic way … basically anyone who speaks up on the side of politics that are a hassle for the National Party gets hounded. It’s a deliberate tactic, and it means over time that all kinds of people feel shocked and chilled and potentially pushed out of politics.”

Again the selective morality is massive. Let’s take criticism of journalists. Hager could go ask almost any press gallery journalist about what sites has the most abuse about them. Anonymous authors (some who now work for David Cunliffe!) at left blogs (note authors, not commenters) regularly savage press gallery journalists who write things that displease them. I have certainly critiqued stories that I don’t agree with, but I doubt anyone can find me personally attacking journalists. On the contrary, left blogs run vile stuff against many journalists and commentators. John Armstrong is savaged almost weekly by Martyn Bradbury, but hey Martin is mates with Nicky Hager so that is fine.

Laura McQuillan makes this point today:

Anonymous Twitter accounts are popping up by the day, apparently for no purpose other than to attack political journalists’ integrity and accuse them of bias.

These trolls may have mastered social media, but they get a Not Achieved for their skills in the English language. The F-word does not for an intelligent political debate make. Journos are used to accusations of being “repeaters” and “churnalists” – those words usually levelled by Slater himself. But now, it’s web-based troglodytes accusing every journalist, no matter what the story, of spinning the National Party line. I guess that’s the result of getting your news from The Daily Blog?

It’s the same intimidation tactic Slater himself has used in the past, in cahoots with Carrick Graham et al. The rabid anonymous lefties should take a moment to wipe the foam from their mouths and reflect on how they’re just like the blogger they hate so much – the only difference being people actually want to read what Whale Oil has to say.

And Cameron blogs under his own name.

This has not been the first time a student politician at Otago has been the subject of the attack blogging strategy. Critic editor Zane Pocock published an editorial in Issue 21 relating to Dirty Politics -style revelations about previous Otago student, Beau Murrah. Involved in a 2012 scandal, Pocock points to a “deep sense of political angst” about Murrah’s role as a student politician. So much so, that the leaked documents Pocock was referring to revealed Cameron Slater’s agreement that “the little cunt is a Winstonite,” and he was “going to hang him out to dry.” Importantly, Slater revealed knowledge that “Farrar is clocking [Murrah] tomorrow.”

Here again we see a partial truth. If you read this, you would think that Murrah was attacked because he was a Winstonite. He was attacked because he went on Cameron Slater’s Facebook page and asked him if he had considered pulling a Charlotte Dawson yet? So the guy who advocated a political opponent go kill himself is the good guy, and because I decided to criticise him for his comments, I am part of Nasty Politics because I was appalled Murrah had advocated Cameron go kill himself and told Cameron I would be attacking Murrah for this.

What Hager actually believes in is that people on the right should not have a voice, and that people on the left can advocate suicide, promote songs that advocate murder and rape,and there should be no criticism of them for that – because that is bullying.

Incidentally this is not something I have revealed before, but while I did criticise Beau at the time for his advocating Cameron kill himself, I was approached by either Beau or someone on Beau’s behalf a few weeks later, and asked if I would remove my post so searches for his name would not remain high in Google Search. I did so, because I thought he had learnt from his mistake. Again in Hager world this makes me the bad guy.

Hager considers both of these responses to be problematic, because they ignore a couple of glaring issues: first, Hager does not operate under a left-wing agenda

I can’t believe she wrote that without giggling!

Hager, like many on the left, seems to resent the fact that the right now have voices, and some of us have strong voices. He demands in his book that I shouldn’t be used by media as a commentator on politics. The left have tried to organise boycotts of advertisers on right blogs, and have sent letter campaigns to media demanding that almost every voice on the right be dropped from their media spots.

There was a time a couple of weeks ago when I thought about giving this all up. But that is what Hager and many on the left want. They want a world where the right have no strong voices. Where there is no criticism of people on the left who say stupid things. Well I’m now more determined than ever to maintain and build these voices.

Sir Bob Jones writes:

Recently, a shop tenancy changed in a modern 17-storey Auckland CBD office building owned by my company. The previous tenant had blocked off some of its window which we now intended putting back to the conventional shop front.

At this stage, sit down with a stiff drink and accept my assurance I’m not making this up.

For we were then informed by a planner my Auckland office uses for council dealings (which can be laborious) that under the new council rules, changes to a building’s appearance require resource consent and we would be subject to penalty if we simply put back the window.

If that’s not outrageously absurd enough, things then became truly Kafkaesque and illustrate why the Government, against ill-considered opposition parties’ objections, wishes to tone down the Resource Management Act.

For we were then told that under the new Draft Unitary Plan, not yet enacted, our building being within 50 metres of a designated Maori heritage site, we needed RMA approval (for a new shop window, for God’s sake), this instantly forthcoming at a cost of $4500 plus the approval of 13 iwi.

$4,500 for a new window!

The council refused to advise the addresses of these iwi outfits, yet added that without their consent, we can’t put back the window.

So the planner located then wrote to the 13 iwi, ranging from Taranaki to Whangarei.

Five replied stating they had no concerns while others said they were considering the matter, presumably calling huis to weigh up this window crisis.

Unbelievable.

One respondent bearing that fine old Maori name of Jeff Lee, representing something called Ngai Tai Ki Tamaki, contacted the planner.

Look up their website if you have tolerance for Maori “sacred footstep in the earth” guff, although it’s 100 per cent on the mark with its proclamation: “Our vision is only limited by our imagination.”

I’m sceptical about Mr Lee’s vision but have no doubt about his imagination, for after advising the planners verbally that no Cultural Impact Assessment Report was required for the window, he nevertheless asked them to consider it – brace yourselves – given his ancestors, centuries ago, gathered in the vicinity.

Lee then wrote, outlining his terms for “assessing the window’s cultural impact” which, he said, would take him “a total of six to eight hours”.

For this he sought $90 per hour plus GST and “travel expenses of 0.77c p/km.”

Very reasonable!

The council has designated 61 sites across Auckland and nominated 3600 others “of interest”. Undertake earthworks (swimming pool, building foundations, a shed etc) within 50m of a scheduled site and one must engage (pay) iwi.

None are of Stonehenge moment but instead claptrap such as “our ancestors beached canoes nearby” and the “feather-gathering” ilk.

A candidate for Mayor in 2016 should pledge to get rid of this nonsense, and they’ll win in a landslide. Shane Jones attacked the policy when he was an MP as political correctness gone mad or something like it. It does nothing for actual cultural heritage – it is simply a massive compliance cost.