Patrick Gower writes in the HoS:

Labour’s campaign bus is officially called Big Red.

But this week a more appropriate moniker was surely the David Cunliffe Blunder Bus.

The signs were never really that good for the bus from the campaign’s first week, when it had a prang in Tauranga, escaping with scratched paint.

This week it was Labour’s campaign itself that veered seriously off-course when leader Cunliffe botched and bungled his way through a defence of Labour’s capital gains tax policy.

This put a serious dent in Labour’s campaign. It could turn out to be a tragedy for Labour. …

Instead, it is now a “what might have been” moment for Cunliffe, because Cunliffe somehow made it even worse when he stuffed up explaining the inheritance aspect of the capital gains tax – again, that’s something he should have known.

And we are still in the dark over whole the exemption riddled CGT would work. Cunliffe said you won’t be taxed on your parents home, so long as you sell it within a month of them dying. How he has backtracked and said they’ll fill in that detail after the election. It could be a week, a month or a year.

The Manawatu Standard reports:

Two weeks out from election day the Manawatu Standard/Versus Research poll of 401 eligible voters recorded 40 per cent support for Labour incumbent Iain Lees-Galloway and 39 per cent for his National challenger, Jono Naylor.

This is very close. The result means there is a 59% chance Lees-Galloway is ahead and a 41% chance Naylor is ahead.

Jamie Whyte’s campaign launch speech is here. It is simply superb. Some extracts:

National is well ahead of any other party in the polls. But the parties of the left, including New Zealand First, could still get enough votes to form a government.

A Frankenstein Labour-Green-Internet-Mana-New Zealand First government may be unthinkable, but it is not impossible.  

It is over to us again.

The people of Epsom are doing their bit.  David Seymour is door-knocking his way to victory.

Now we need get a number of ACT Party list MPs elected.  We need just 1.3% of the party vote – 28,000 votes – for me to join David in parliament. Another 16,000 votes will add Kenneth Wang. 

If ACT succeeds, New Zealand will have three more years of stable center-right government. If we fail, New Zealand faces the prospect of a chaotic left-wing Frankenstein government.

ACT is my preferred choice of coalition partner. I hope they get at least two MPs.

Jamie looks at the alternative:

It’s not pretty, but we should look at that monster.

Part of the monster – the crazy tangled mess of hair stitched onto the scalp – is the Internet-Mana party.

This is a party of hard-left socialists – Hone Harawera, Laila Harre, Annette Sykes and John Minto – funded by a convicted fraudster wanted for copyright violation in America.

Their lunatic policies include shutting down all the prisons (perhaps on the suggestion of their fugitive sponsor).

In a televised debate, Hone explained that prisons are unnecessary because if boys are sent on Kapa Haka courses, they commit no crimes.

If only they had Kapa Haka in Germany, Kim Dotcom would not be a wanted man!

As I said to Hone at the time, it’s a very nice idea. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Why don’t you send all the boys for Haka training and then, after the crime rate falls to zero, we will close the prisons. In the meantime, let’s keep them open – just in case you are wrong about the transformative power of Kapa Haka.

What a great expose of the lunacy on the left.

The Greens are the monster’s face, grinning inanely below its swivel-eyes.

In the nicest possible way, they intend to force everyone to live as the Greens prefer. They will tax the things they don’t like, such dairy farming, and subsidize the things they do like, such as solar panel manufacturers.

The Greens are not so much a political party as a religious movement, worshipping snails and ferns and all that makes up Gaia, except us humans of course.

For the Greens, humans fall into two categories: the helpless, who smart green politicians must save, and the wicked, who smart green politicians must stop.

In virtue, and intellect, Russel Norman and Meteria Turei are so vastly superior to everyone else that it is their moral duty to subjugate us.

I agree with the Greens in a few areas, but Jamie Whyte nails it again. Fundamentally the Greens think us human beings make very bad choices. They think they are the enlightened ones who must pass laws to stop us making such bad choices.

The big flabby torso of the monster is the Labour Party.

It was briefly a thing of beauty and strength. We have the Labour government of Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble to thank for the fact that New Zealand is not now a basket-case like Argentina.

But the Labour Party has gone horribly to seed.

Nothing reveals this more clearly than its finance spokesman, David Parker – the man who now occupies the position once held by the great Roger Douglas.

Mr Parker fancies himself the smartest boy in the fourth-form. But he has not even the weakest grip on basic economics.

At the recent Queenstown Chamber of Commerce political debate Mr Parker explained his party’s desire to reduce immigration to New Zealand. He claimed that economic output requires increasingly little labour to produce. So immigrants cause unemployment.

This nonsense has been peddled by economic fools since the invention of the weaving loom. In fact, I imagine it got started when someone first thought of killing animals with a sharp stick instead of bare hands.

Ouch.

For the sake of Mr Parker’s education, here is what really happens when workers become more productive. People produce and consume more.

And not just more of the same, but entirely new things. Even Mr Parker has surely noticed that, over the past 30 years, as worker productivity and the population have both risen, unemployment has not increased.

Labour once used to be a pro-immigration party before they got desperate.

Finally, we come to Winton Peters and his New Zealand First, the stumpy little legs of the monster. Little legs that remain idle for 2 years and 10 months out of every three years and then spend two months running around furiously kicking everyone in sight – foreigners, journalists, bankers, you name it: everyone except pensioners.

Best line of the whole speech.

Winston’s big economic policy for this election is removing GST from food. That would reduce government revenue by 3 billion dollars.

But Winston has no plan to cut government spending by 3 billion dollars. On the contrary, he plans to increase government spending massively.

Where will he get all the money?

Winston’s answer: by cracking down on tax evasion.

Honestly. He claims that he can raise 7 billion by cracking down on tax evasion.

That’s not sense, common or otherwise. That’s bollocks.

When a politician tells you that he is going to fund his spending promises by cracking down on tax evasion, you know he is either a fool or a charlatan. And Winston ain’t no fool.

Bang.

Jamie also has swipes at National and the Conservatives.

I wish I had been there to hear the speech. People have been saying that Dr Whyte is too much a philosopher, and not enough a politician. Well I think he has caught on well. And I mean that in a good way – politicians need to be able to not only make the case for their own parties, but also forcefully point out why the other parties are wrong. His critique of the left is devastating.

I encourage people to share his speech far and wide.

I’ve got results from the buzzdial used during the Leaders’ Debate on Friday night. The buzzidal was promoted the Greens, United Future and ACT on Twitter plus on The Ruminator and Kiwiblog.

308 of the 652 users were through Kiwiblog.

First how many speaking segments (I think this is a sentence basically) did each leader get:

1. Norman 115
2. Peters 98
3. Dunne 82
4. Harawira 79
5. Flavell 75
6. Whyte 74
7. Horan 49
8. Craig 47

This isn’t a measure of time allocated, but fair to say Norman and Peters were best at breaking in.

Now the average sentiment scores:

1. Whyte +170
2. Duune +93
3. Flavell +30
4. Craig-21
5. Peters – 174
6. Norman -176
7. Harawira -198
8. Horan -224

This may to some degree reflect pre-existing views of the leaders.

Peak sentiments

1. Whyte +483
2. Dunne +407
3. Flavell +382
4. Peters +352
5. Craig +347
6. Harawira +246
7. Norman +140
8. Horan +92

This shows that every leader said something that was judged positively by the majority.

Trough sentiments

1. Peters -500
2. Horan -435
3. Harawira -431
4. Norman -414
5. Flavell -375
6. Dunne -325
7. Craig -300
8. Whyte -231

And all leaders also said something which got them panned. Good to see people didn’t just keep the dials positive or negative to a leader regardless of what they said, but did respond to their words.

I hasten to add none of the above is scientific, but it is interesting.

Today the SST breathlessly reveals:

Aroha of McGehan Close flees NZ

Note the current tense – flees.

Once she was the poster girl of John Key’s rise to power. Now, the girl from McGehan Close says she would never vote for National and has no plans to return home from Australia.

As a young woman in Auckland, she says, there were no houses, no jobs, no hope: “There was nothing left in New Zealand.”

In 2007 Aroha Ireland, then aged 12, had become the face of what John Key, leader of the Opposition at the time, called New Zealand’s underclass.

Key had labelled her community in Mt Albert’s McGehan Close a “dead end” and “the nation’s street of hopelessness” created by the Labour government.

He has now had six years to turn things around, but Aroha is not convinced. She has no plans to come back to New Zealand, where she could find only part-time work on the minimum wage in a fast-food restaurant.

In Australia, she has a full-time job working in warehousing for Coles supermarket. She married her new husband Stuart on Melbourne’s St Kilda beach, and has taken his name, Spashett. They are buying a house.

Very glad to see Aroha is happily married, working and on her way to a house.

But two things about the story. Nowhere in the story does it mention when Aroha left NZ. The headline implies very recently.

Well the media ran exactly the same story just before the 2011 election. The Herald reported on 20 November 2011:

The poster child of National’s victorious 2008 election campaign says New Zealand has nothing to offer her and she’s moving to Australia for good.

Now I think the 2011 media stories were newsworthy. Absolutely. But the SST has repeated basically the same story from three years ago. Why did they republish a three year old story, and worse of all make it look like fresh news? And is it coincidence they published it two weeks before the election?

The second thing is the story is outright wrong.

“The last time I spoke to him was when he took me to Waitangi Day. After that I have never heard from him again. 

That is contradicted by the 2011 story which says:

Nathan said Key had checked with Aroha regularly until the start of this year.

While it was Aroha that made the incorrect claim, the SST could have fact checked her. It only took me one minute on Google. And I’m not even a paid journalist.

A bit challenging this week. Quiz is here.

I saw on One News last night that there was a march and rally in Auckland about child poverty. The purpose of the rally was stated to be seeking cross-party discussions and consensus on how to reduce levels of child poverty.

National MP Alfred Ngaro turned up and tried to speak. The fact Alfred was blocked from effectively speaking (shouted down), shows that the rally was not about child poverty, but an anti-National rally.

Has there ever been a child poverty rally when Labour has been Government? This is a serious question?

I know there are groups like CPAG that have advocated for particular policies to reduce child poverty, under both National and Labour Governments. But the public stuff such as marches, and rallies, I don’t think ever occurs when Labour is in. That implies for many (not all) of those involved this is a means to an end (get Labour into Government) rather than genuine concern for the issue.

Some may say there is no child poverty when Labour is in Government, and it gets worse when National is in. Well look at this graph below:

Graph is from Child Poverty Monitor.

Now I’m not a big fan of this measure.  I prefer the measure based on material hardship, rather than one based on relative incomes. But this is the measure the left cite most often. So what does it show (using contemporary median).

From 1998 to 2005 child poverty increased significantly under Labour. It then dropped back to 1998 levels by 2007. Since then it declined a bit further, increased in 2009/10 and had been gradually declining since. It is lower now than it was under most of Labour’s terms.

That isn’t to say it should not be lower. I doubt there is a person in NZ who thinks a child should have a materially deprived childhood. But there is a genuine difference of opinions on the best way to achieve this. Those on the right tend to think moving families off welfare into jobs, job creation, targetting the bottom 20% of educational underachievement, parenting skills and even less crime in neighbourhoods are what is best for struggling families. Plus a big belief in targeting assistance to those on lower incomes and that charities and NGOs have a role to play.

Those on the left tend to believe that higher levels of welfare payments, universal subsidies, direct state provision of services are what will help most.

One can disagree on the best policy mix, but still respect that others sincerely believe their policies are best and will do the most good.

I hate how the left try to claim that National doesn’t care for low income families.

UPDATE: Lindsay Mitchell has an excellent blog post on how relatively low income and deprivation are not the same thing, and also fisks some of the stats used by campaigners.

The Herald reports:

The latest polls give the mercurial Bainimarama a popularity rating of 60 to 86 per cent, and suggest Fiji First will win the most seats – possibly even a clear majority – in the new, 50-member Parliament.

But not everyone believes the polls, and one unknown is the scale of a possible backlash by indigenous Fijians. They comprise about 57 per cent of Fiji’s 850,000 population, and are furious about Bainimarama’s abolition of the Great Council of Chiefs, a group of revered tribal leaders, and his insistence that the formerly influential Methodist Church stay out of politics.

Another factor which might be skewing the polls, is the reluctance of some voters to divulge their true intentions.

I expect Bainimarama will win the election, and become Prime Minister. What will be more interesting is how he does as PM, without the restrictions on media and political activity that have been in place. And if he becomes unpopular and faces losing at say the election after this one, will he accept that?

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key slotted in his first campaign visit to the Epsom electorate yesterday and found not everybody was willing to go along with his instructions to vote for Act’s David Seymour.

Firstly it wasn’t an instruction. The PM said:

For the electorate vote, we will encourage National party supporters to give their electorate vote to the ACT candidate in Epsom

Secondly of course not everyone will vote for Seymour instead of Goldsmith. It isn’t an electorate of lemmings. People make up their own mind, and leaving a National candidate on the ballot paper means they have the choice.

Among those he met on his walkabout with Epsom candidate Paul Goldsmith was Rob Hunt, who is Goldsmith’s former Japanese teacher from Auckland Grammar.

Hunt, who is former Labour MP Jonathan Hunt’s brother, said he was voting for Goldsmith. “He knows the area, he grew up here. Everyone should vote for him.” His response to the voting instruction was: “Good Lord – there’s nothing there.”

Possibly not surprising that Goldie’s former teacher (and the brother of a Labour candidate) is going to vote for him!

Many he met were willing to split their vote as ordered. Husband and wife Dennis Mahony and Diane Howe ran into Key on their way to cast an early vote. Both were splitting their vote National/Seymour.

What would have been interesting is what were the relative proportions of people splitting their vote and not splitting? Did anyone apart from Rob Hunt say they would not split their vote?

Goldsmith did have two other votes in the bag: Key, an Epsom voter, said he will vote for Goldsmith. Goldsmith was also breaking the Prime Minister’s instructions by voting for himself.

Again it was not an instruction.

The HoS reports:

Politicians could find it harder to hire relatives in taxpayer-funded jobs after changes to the way support staff are recruited.

After the General Election, Parliamentary Services will require job applicants to register on an electronic recruitment system that will favour candidates with experience.

The majority of the 730 staff have to reapply for jobs at the end of each three-year parliamentary term.

Under new guidelines issued by the Speaker, Parliamentary Services can block an MP from hiring staff if they are “clearly lacking the skills to meet the requirements of the role”.

MPs are not allowed to employ their spouse or partner, in or outside Parliament, or any dependents. But many MPs filled their offices with immediate family members.

NZ First MP Asenati Lole-Taylor employs two of her daughters, Fleur and Amy, in her Papatoetoe office.

Lole-Taylor appeared unaware of the rules around hiring family members as staff. “Is that a rule that they’re not allowed to be employed?”

My God.

I don’t think MPs should hire as staff any close relative. That is a partner, parent, sibling or child. Beyond that, it is a judgement call. I wouldn’t ban cousins, nephews nieces, but MPs should be aware that hiring any relative may prove to be a problem if it turns out they are not very good at their job. How do you sack your cousin?

The HoS editorial:

All other things being equal, an MP may have good reason to prefer a relative.

Politics is a public business and staff need to be especially loyal and alert to the publicity that can be attracted when a problem is badly handled.

But MPs are also role models in their community. If nepotism is evident in their staff appointments the practice may spread to local organisations of all sorts.

Nepotism is not good policy. It is unfair to those better qualified, it can bring family issues into the office and can be a job creation scheme for next of kin. Parliament needs to stop it.

It is basically stopped in that the rules do not allow partners or children to be hired. I would extend that to siblings and parents. What is needed though is for MPs to follow the rules.

9 Dec 2013 in Stuff:

Labour leader David Cunliffe believes the party can win the Rangitata electorate in 2014.

He said draft boundary changes, which give parts of Rakaia to Selwyn, mean the seat is “anybody’s game”. In the last election Labour polled well in Timaru but National was stronger in the Ashburton district.

Mr Cunliffe, in South Canterbury to rouse the party faithful in Temuka, believes Labour can win Ashburton this time.

“Geraldine’s coming back in, we’ll have Point, we’ll have Temuka; I think we can win this seat.”

6 Sep 2014 in NZ Herald:

Labour leader David Cunliffe has dissociated himself from his Rangitata candidate, Steve Gibson, and is not encouraging anyone to vote for him.

“We are campaigning for the party vote in that seat and I don’t expect that he is going to be a Member of Parliament.”

But I thought David said they were going to win the seat!

The Timaru Herald reports:

Labour leader David Cunliffe is refusing to say whether supporters should vote for two of his candidates, after both had unusual outbursts.

So the Labour leader is effectively saying that two of his candidates are not fit to be MPs. All parties have the odd oddball, but to get two at one time!

Cunliffe said issues with Dickson were party matters, hinting at personal issues.

“There are some issues with Mr Dickson which the party are handling. I’m not really at liberty to comment on his personal issues,” Cunliffe said.

What does personal issues mean? Is that code for mad as a snake?

Cunliffe maintained that Labour has “fantastic candidates around the country. We’ve got one of the best party lists that I’ve ever seen and I have huge confidence in our president and in our party.”

On current polling they will get no new List MPs!

Stuff reports:

Keeping up with the kids’ school activities just got easier for some Hamilton parents thanks to a mobile phone app.

Parents can notify absences, check upcoming events and get notices and more through Southwell School’s app.

It has been up and running for around two weeks and is so far on about 500 phones.

The free app runs on iPhone and Android and was developed by Snapp Mobile in about six weeks, Helm said.

Southwell would have spent less than $5000 on the app, which came with a “back end” website so the school can make minor modifications.

Snapp Mobile director Joshua Woodham said more and more schools were choosing to communicate with parents through apps.

School parents were on the go and found it helpful to receive updates and alerts on their mobile devices wherever they were, he said.

Functions of the Southwell app include checking out upcoming events and copying them to personal calendars, linking parents to ticket purchasing, quick access to staff contact details, and alerts straight to mobile.

That’s a very worthwhile investment. Good initiative.

John Armstrong writes:

Already struggling to make any impact, Cunliffe’s campaign has taken a potentially fatal knock. With two opinion polls yesterday showing Labour marooned at around 25 per cent and National registering at 50 per cent or more, the election campaign may effectively be over.

The only question now is whether growing backing for Colin Craig’s Conservative Party will translate into actual votes on September 20 and in sufficient numbers to clear the 5 per cent threshold – and thus allow Craig to come to the negotiating table with enough seats for National not to have to deal with Winston Peters.

While it is too late to gift Craig an electorate seat, it is likely Key will make some carefully worded statement in the final week of the campaign giving licence for potential National voters to tick Conservative.

The possibility of Labour being in a position to form a government now looks to be virtually non-existent. With two weeks still go, Labour’s campaign is The March of the Living Dead.

If they can’t cobble together a six party coalition, then the focus will go on the leadership. Will Cunliffe fight to stay on? How many List MPs will Labour lose?

The Herald reports:

Fran O’Sullivan

Winner: Russel Norman
Russel Norman was ruthlessly on-message demonstrating the media-savvy skills that marked him as the de facto leader of the Opposition while Labour worked its way through three leaders in three years. Norman was frank that the Greens expect Cabinet influence proportionate with their numbers in a Labour-led Government. He saw host Mike Hosking coming and did not allow himself to be backed into a corner on coalition bottom lines – particularly on deep sea oil drilling. Norman relentlessly pumped the Greens’ mantra – “a cleaner, fairer, smarter New Zealand”. It resonates across the spectrum. He was principled but also demonstrated flexibility. The perfect junior coalition partner-in-waiting and clear winner.

John Armstrong

Winner: Winston “Biggles” Peters

We did not learn much that was new. But we did learn that Winston Peters had once harboured ambitions to be a fighter pilot. It explains a lot. The NZ First leader promptly climbed into his Sopwith Camel and began strafing anyone who flew too close to spouting the same line he was running. Less like Top Gun and more akin to Snoopy versus the Red Baron, Peters still saved enough ammunition for his main target – Colin Craig. Along with Act’s Jamie Whyte, the Maori Party’s Te Ururoa Flavell, Internet Mana’s Hone Harawira and Brendan Horan, the Conservative Party leader did not get much of a look-in during the debate. Peter Dunne and Russel Norman were solid and sensible, but not spectacular. The most impressive debater was Mike Hosking, however.

Toby Manhire

Winner: Te Ururoa Flavell

What a contrast to the convivial dinner-party debate the other night. Lined up like garish, symmetrical Kraftwerk tribute acts, the eight men – all men – growled and scowled away. Winston Peters swung his sledgehammer at a wobbly, cruelly-lit Colin Craig: don’t waste your vote on them, Peters said. But he’d left his charm in the Chinese restaurant. Russel Norman was stoic, though you know he’d rather not be mixing it with the “minors”. Jamie Whyte was as flabbergasted as ever, Hone Harawira strangely muted. And who’s that? It’s Brendan Horan! Very little to like, but Te Ururoa Flavell left some calm and dignity in the room.

I agree with the Herald team. I think those three did perform the best. Norman was relentlessly on message. Peters was cheeky and likeable, and Flavell was dignified and constructive.

And kudos to Mike Hosking who did very well keeping it all flowing.

The Timaru Herald reports:

The Labour Party’s Rangitata candidate, Steve Gibson, said yesterday he was “a bit tired of toeing the party line” which he said was “too respectful,” making a series of strongly-worded criticisms of the National Party.

Gibson said he was concerned about the “degradation of the public’s confidence in the democratic process by Judith Collins, Cameron Slater, Jason Ede and other rotten Shylocks”.

Labour party leader David Cunliffe put Gibson “on a last chance” in August for insulting Prime Minister John Key on Facebook, where Gibson called Key “Shylock” and a “nasty little creep”.

So he is back to calling people in National Shylocks.

Gibson criticised the National Party’s planned education reforms, which include differentiating teachers’ pay levels based on their responsibilities, as “just idiocy”, and said the party looked like “a bunch of dicks” for proposing the policies despite unionised teachers’ official opposition.

Actually the unions all welcomed it, when announced. The primary principals called it a game changer. The PPTA still support it. The NZEI has backflipped, because they seem to be a branch of the Labour Party.

Gibson is to appear at a candidates’ meeting on Wednesday in Timaru. He would not be answering questions from “obsequious, sycophantic scumbags”, which he believed could be written by his opponent, National’s Jo Goodhew.

Between Steve Gibson in Rangitata and Gordon Dickson in Selwyn, there seems to be something in the water down there. Or more a reflection that Labour’s support and membership has collapsed outside the big cities.

Labour have insisted that no one from Labour or the left deal with Whale Oil, and that he is just a pawn of the 9th floor. Ironic considering Whale has more effectively attacked some National Ministers than Labour has managed!

But NewstalkZB reports:

Labour’s leader has confirmed his chief of staff has had dealings with blogger Cameron Slater but is refusing to say what they’ve involved.

David Cunliffe says Matt McCarten has had contact Mr Slater and that he has no concerns about this.

And despite saying sunlight is the best disinfectant with regard to the release of Mr Slater’s hacked computer data, Mr Cunliffe is declining to say what the dealings might have been.

“There is nothing to fear and there is nothing to hide. I don’t go around releasing peoples’ private communications.”

Labour have gone after John Key because he has had around four conversations with Cameron Slater in the last year. I wonder how many Labour’s Chief of Staff has had? Surely it is not more than four? More than 10? More than 20?

Joan Rivers has died aged 81.

She has been a regular on screen for over 50 years. A very funny woman who pushed the boundaries with some exceptionally politically incorrect humour.

First go to Radio Live and see the e-mail Labour’s official candidate for Selwyn sent a journalist.  He even signed it as a Labour candidate.

Then in case you think it is a one off, go read his blog.

How the hell did he ever get selected as a candidate? Does Labour have no sane members in South Canterbury?

Tonight on TV One at 7 pm, eight minor party leaders are in a debate moderated by Mike Hosking. You can use the buzzdial embedded above to react to what leaders are saying. Tomorrow they’ll publish the data on which leaders and moments got the most positive and negative reaction.

Of course you can also comment below.

John Sununu at the Boston Globe writes:

POLITICIANS HAVE difficulty learning from their mistakes; it’s tough enough to just acknowledge them. Admitting mistakes leaves elected officials feeling exposed and vulnerable. And why bother, when the partisan divide encourages both sides to endlessly litigate the rights and wrongs of past legislative choices?

Cash for Clunkers should be the exception. Enacted in 2009, the $3 billion program was intended to stimulate the economy by offering $4,500 credits for trading older vehicles for newer, more fuel-efficient cars. 

I recall the hoopla around that. People said it was visionary. I think some parties even pushed for such a programme in NZ. Yes, here is the Green Party pushing for it.

It was a spectacular failure, at least according to two comprehensive studies. The first was completed last year by the Brookings Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank. Another, conducted by Texas A&M researchers, was released recently by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Here’s some conclusions from Brookings:

Using Li, Linn, and Spiller’s (2012) long-term jobs estimate for the CARS program, the program created 0.7 jobs for each million dollars of program cost, resulting in a cost of $1.4 million per job created.

This is presumably what the Greens mean by Green jobs!

Li, Linn, and Spiller’s (2012) estimated reductions in carbon dioxide emissions (including the co-benefit reduction in carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, and exhaust particulates) amounts to a cost per ton of carbon dioxide of $91 to $301 stemming from
the program.

The usual cost for a ton of carbon is no more than $25. This was a huge waste of money in an environmental sense.

So why did the programme get accepted and then fail?

First, get caught up in the hoopla. Clunkers produced the type of headlines that politicians dream of: helping people buy cars, better fuel efficiency, the promise of job creation, and the word “cash” in the title. (Spelled with a $, if you please.) It was full of the kind of vague simplicity that has great political appeal, but begins to disintegrate as soon as it comes into contact with the real world.

Second, ignore the reality and complexity of human behavior. Proponents never seriously considered that subsidies would appeal most to consumers who were already considering replacing their vehicles. Both studies showed conclusively that the short-term spike in sales simply represented transactions that were pulled forward in time. Legislators’ belief that a temporary $4,500 rebate would result in sustainable sales growth was wrong from the start.

Lawmakers also failed to consider that the owners of “gas guzzlers” and those able to act quickly on a new car purchase tended to be higher income families. In fact, Brookings’ analysis showed that recipients of the credit were wealthier and better educated than the population at large.

Third, set aside basic economics, including the fundamentals of supply and demand. To justify the fuel savings promised under the program, the clunkers returned to dealers were destroyed, rather than resold as used vehicles. A year later, the resulting shortage of used cars pushed prices up an average of 10 percent.

The emphasis on smaller, fuel efficient vehicles also meant that the cars sold were less expensive than would otherwise have been the case. Consequently, automobile dealers — who actively promoted the bill and lobbied for its passage — saw lower revenues, and less profit, per car. Whether out of desperation or ignorance, they failed to consider the effects of this substitution.

Finally, use the wrong measurement for success. Ironically, early assessments asserted that the program was successful because it was popular. That’s a natural way for politicians to think, but completely meaningless where economics are concerned. (Throwing money in the street might make you popular, but it’s still a terrible idea.) Brookings and the Texas A&M researchers both concluded that across meaningful measures of success — economic growth, job creation, and emissions reductions — performance was abysmal. It was a costly error: by mistaking demand for success, legislators were convinced to throw away $2 billion more on top of the initial $1 billion program.

Many many government initiatives fail, like this one, because they never predict the unforeseen consequences.

The Herald reports:

A Malaysia Airlines promotion targeted at Kiwis and titled “My Ultimate Bucket List” has been labelled atrocious by MH370 widow Danica Weeks.

How did no one in Mayalsia Airlines twig that a campaign around a bucket list was not something the airline should do!

Duncan Garner writes:

In election campaigns, many people accuse journalists of bias. I have been accused of bias for more than 15 years; I have been left wing and right wing, apparently. So, let me set the record straight.

For a start, I have never voted. I know that sounds wrong and I know voting is important; but, I worked at Parliament for 17 years, I got to know politicians so well. I didn’t want to vote for any one of them and at the same time cover all of them on a daily basis. It is my rule. I still stand by that today.

They are not my friends. Yes I have some of their cell phone numbers, but that’s for work purposes. I don’t ring them on their birthdays and they don’t call me. They don’t know where I live, they don’t know the names of my kids, they don’t know when my birthday is – they are not friends.

Duncan continues:

I have never been a member of a political party, I have never donated to any party.

I think National has some good policies, I think Labour has some good policies, I think New Zealand First has some good policies, I like some of the Greens’ ideas at times.

I have had a few nights out with Winston Peters over the years: who hasn’t?

I have had dinner twice with Gerry Brownlee. I used to meet Annette King for coffee on occasion. I have had a few beers with Ron Mark over the years. I had a night out with John Key when he was opposition leader. I have had lunch with Grant Robertson.

No politician was invited to my wedding, but a handful sent messages.

I like to see myself as an equal opportunity journalist. I like to give it to them all when they deserve it. I’ve piled into Labour Party Ministers and National Party Ministers over the years. Ask any politician if I’m biased and I bet they say I treat them all the same.

I’ve always said Duncan is an equal opportunity scandal monger 🙂

I don’t think they are all bad people; Some are, some have rampant egos. Many of them are ok.

I regard around 90% of MPs as being basically decent people – probably the same level as in many occupations.

It’s the left and right bloggers who call us names; they like to pigeon-hole us. But the reality is they are the biased ones. They have the political views, and when our stories and interviews don’t fit their biased narrative they lash out and label us.

They are biased. I am not.

They pick sides. I do not.

I don’t think Duncan is referring to me, because I very rarely say a journalist is biased. I may critique their stories, and certainly some have worldviews that colour their stories, but that is not the same as bias.