Stuff reports:

NZ First leader Winston Peters wants a full ministerial inquiry into KiwiRail’s “mishandling” of the Aratere saga, after revelations the company plans to fit two new propellers to the ferry next year.

Peters said he was staggered such a scenario could even be contemplated, given that Aratere had had two prolonged visits to Singapore dockyards over the past three years, both of which included propeller fittings.

The 2011 extension of the Aratere cost taxpayers about $50 million, and this year’s refurbishment had resulted in additional across-the-board costs to KiwiRail of about $30m. “After all that money, they still have not fixed this lemon,” Peters said yesterday.

This is a classic case of why taxpayers should not own competitive companies.

If the Bluebridge makes a bad decision on a ferry, and loses money on it, and has delays – we don’t care one iota.

Likewise we should not care about the Interislander, except that we own it.

The Government’s focus should be on ensuring we have competition on the Cook Strait route, which we do. Now on owning ships, and doing a bad job of it.

Sir Bob Jones does the 12 questions in the Herald. Most answers are amusing, but especially this one:

I don’t set out to charm women, but I’ll tell you one thing they like laughter, but they don’t like pranks. I quite like women and permanent relationships but it never lasts that long. They last about seven or eight years but we all stay great friends and holiday together. I’ve never understood monogamy. It seems to be unnatural for me. Variety is the spice of life. Blondes. Brunettes. That sort of thing. I’ve had all sorts of races and that. Girlfriends everywhere. Am I good to them? Of course I am. I’m good to everyone. Absolutely, women keep you young. Having it off all the time does. It’s absolutely critical.

Bob Jones is a youthful 75!

Patrick Leyland blogged:

NZ Labour’s woes are well documented. The latest round of polls – both with Labour sub 25, are frankly, disastrous. On these numbers Labour will be lucky to get deputy leader David Parker re-elected, and the prospect of any new list MPs just looks like a fantasy.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. From my distant perspective, it looks like Labour is running some excellent on the ground campaigns. Some of the MPs look like they’re making great visits (David Shearer and Chris Hipkins seem to have had a really sucessful visit through the regional North Island). Kelvin Davis is getting good media from his work helping flood victims in his electorate.  I’ve heard that some electorates are smashing their voter contact targets. The fact that they’ve even managed to agree to targets at all amazes me (I have previously sat in a Labour meeting where the idea of targets was quite literally dismissed as “boss talk”).

And as Phil Quin pointed out on the Q+A panel the other week, Labour do have some very good policy positions. Chris Hipkins really needs to be commended for the work he continues to do with education – their school donation and class size policies are really solid vote winners.

Unfortunately, Labour seems to have since dropped them like a lead balloon.

Using Facebook as a sample of Labour’s external comms*, let’s have a look at what they’ve done with the education announcements… 

10 July – A week after the key note speech a video of it is posted online. Without any mention of the policy. You have to watch the 36 minute video to discover that Labour wants to reduce class sizes.

10 July – Chris Hipkins launches Labour’s excellent education manifesto. It’s a beautiful document that really easily sets out some great policy. Does Cunliffe or the Labour Party mention it? Nope.

Number of mentions of Labour’s education policies after they’re announced: 0. Number of times David Cunliffe has mentioned that they are reducing class sizes on Facebook: 0.

Hell, it’s even depressing to look at a Facebook feed of all Labour candidates and party pages. The last time anyone from Labour talked about education was Grant Robertson three days ago.

I think this was a useful highlight of Comms 101. A party that thinks it will win by just releasing a policy, mentioning it once, and then moving onto the next policy, will not get its message across.

A party should have three to five core messages such as “Labour will reduce class sizes” and repeat it ad nauseum for weeks and months. That is how you get it into the consciousness.

The fact that no one in Labour seems able to do even basic comms must be alarming for supporters like Patrick.

In a week where Labour committed hundreds of millions of dollars to make worthwhile and significant changes to education, candidates should not be posting videos of ice water challenges. There are enough distractions from Labour’s core messages thanks to donations scandals, Kim Dotcom etc etc, Labour shouldn’t be using Facebook to create even more diversions.

And by totally going to ground and refusing to go out and sell Labour’s policy, David Cunliffe doesn’t even look like he wants Labour to win.

Rather amusingly within hours of Patrick blogging, Labour then did a flurry of educational posts and graphics to Facebook.

The Herald reports:

Former Labour minister Dover Samuels says he won’t be voting for the party at the election.

He cited the party’s opposition to the Puhoi to Wellsford extension and Leader David Cunliffe’s “prima donna grandstanding” over the issue of sexual violence.

The former Maori Affairs Minister who now serves on the Northland Regional Council confirmed the Herald this morning he did not intend giving his party vote to Labour.

“Labour’s moved away from me, I’ve never moved away from Labour. I’m as staunch of the principles of Labour as I ever was, since the days of Mickey Savage.”

They’ve lost Shane Jones also. There is a pattern here.

“Winston Peters has been somebody that certainly has been an advocate of the regions and I’m a regional councillor and I find that spokespersons for the Labour Party have really turned their backs on some of the initiatives that the Northland Council have been advocating.”

He pointed to Labour’s plan to indefinitely postpone the Puhoi to Wellsford extension which it derides as “the holiday highway”.

” I don’t know where they got that from but the Puhoi road is integral to Northland’s economic future.”

Everytime Labour calls it the holiday highway, a Grey Lynn liberal applauds, and a local in Northland gets furious.

Mr Samuels said his advice to Labour was “come back to the grass roots principles”.

“I was a minister and a Member of Parliament under Helen Clark. She recognised you never become Government if you don’t take middle New Zealand with you.

“Shane Jones saw that and unfortunately this idea of “rich prick” and this idea of “I’m ashamed to be a man” and all of this kind of prima donna grandstanding does not actually resonate well with middle New Zealand at all.”

Mr Samuels said he was hearing many Labour Party supporters of long standing asking “what is happening to our party?”.

Their support base appears to now be reduced to the unions and people who comment at The Standard.

ACT Leader Jamie Whyte blogs:

But politicians’ involvement with would-be immigrants is clearly a problem.  Maurice Williamson, Phillip Field, Shane Jones, Damien O’Connor and now Jonathan Coleman have been drawn into controversy.

Even if there has been no improper behaviour, the appearance of politicians doing favours for wealthy would-be immigrants undermines public confidence not only in our immigration system but in politics more generally. People will suspect that politicians are doing favours for these would-be immigrants in return for favours they have done the politicians.

The problem has a simple solution. The Minister of Immigration should have no involvement in the immigration application process. Nor should any other MP. Immigration applications are an operational matter. Political interference should play no role in them.

When exceptions to standard policy need to be considered, this should be done by qualified members of the Immigration and Protection Tribunal (IPT), which already exists. The IPT may need a wider remit to approve exceptional cases. That is a proper matter for politicians to decide. But once the rules and processes are established, politicians should play no further role in the matter. They should have no say in individual cases.

I think there is merit in this suggestion. Either a Judge, or members of a tribunal, should make decisions on cases that fall outside policy. You need the flexibility to make decisions on individual cases, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a Minister.

The Herald editorial:

It is only a matter of time before bad law comes back to bite those who made it. Provisions of the Electoral Act regulating independent advertising in election campaigns were passed by the previous Labour Government with the support of the Green Party, and only slightly altered by the present Government. Now, seven years after its enactment, the electoral finance law is frustrating environmental groups that want to make climate change an election issue.

Six of them, including Greenpeace, Forest and Bird, Oxfam and WWF New Zealand, started a campaign called “Climate Voter” last month, aiming to force all parties to address climate change before the election. Whatever view may be taken of their cause, no democrat would deny them the right to put it in front of voters. But if they do, the Electoral Commission has ruled, their material will be deemed election advertising and subject to a discouraging array of statutory registration and accounting requirements.

The rules are less restrictive since National rewrote them, but they remain bureaucratic, which makes them onerous and off-putting for people who are not routinely organised for the purpose. The Climate Voter campaign is aggrieved to find itself subject to the act and has decided to challenge the commission’s ruling in the High Court.

“This is about freedom of speech,” said Steve Abel of Greenpeace. “There is a very real risk that if this law goes untested, many advocacy and civil society groups in New Zealand could be gagged. Some may even be forced to take down entire websites.”

I campaigned against the Electoral Finance Act. The most repressive portions of that were removed, but National did a deal with Labour and the Greens and agreed to keep in restrictions on third party advocacy. I believe that was wrong. I don’t think there should be any restrictions on third party advocacy during elections except to correctly identify the promoter of the advocacy.

He is echoing the warnings this newspaper and other critics expressed seven years ago. It is a pity green groups did not speak out at that time.

They went along with the Clark Government’s overreaction to pamphlets circulated before the 2005 election by a small religious sect, the Exclusive Brethren, whose material had been particularly harsh on the Green Party.

Now, the environmentalists want the courts to draw a distinction between that sort of campaign and theirs. “We think the law was clearly not intended to capture non-partisan, civil society groups,” says Mr Abel.

Typical hypocrisy. They’re saying that the restrictions that they no doubt supported, should apply to everyone but themselves.

The Greenpeace campaign is clearly aimed at influencing how people vote. There is a difference between commenting generally on issues, and running a campaign designed to change voting behaviour.

The only reason to regulate such advertising is to prevent it being used to circumvent financial restrictions on party advertising in an election period.

That purpose could be met if the law applied only to overt endorsements. In seeking to regulate all paid advertising of political issues in the three months before an election, the law remains too broad. Its registration and financial reporting requirements are too onerous for all but the most organised pressure groups, such as trade unions, and discourage others who could afford to promote their interests or concerns.

I agree. The law should be amended.

Environmental advocates seem to be under the impression the law applied only to the rich and the conservative. The courts are unlikely to see it that way.

Hoist by their own petard.

The IPCA have investigated the decision by the Police not to lay charges over the GCSB illegally spying on Kim Dotcom. Their report is here. Some extracts:

As has been noted above (para 22) the Police decision was based squarely on an opinion provided by the Solicitor-General, and it was an opinion that Police Legal Services recommended ought to be followed. As also noted above (para 26), it is not within the jurisdiction of the Authority to review the validity of that opinion or to determine whether the test used by the Police to determine legal liability was legally accurate: our task is confined to determining whether Police actions were appropriate. In our view they clearly were. The Police were entitled to rely upon advice as to the law provided by the Solicitor-General. Indeed, having received the opinion it would have been surprising if they had proceeded on any other basis.

However, even if the Police had proceeded on the basis that criminal liability did not depend upon proof of an intent by GCSB officers to act outside their statutory authority, we take the view that a decision not to prosecute would nevertheless have been warranted. There are two reasons for this.

First, the one interception of Mr Dotcom that the Police found to be unlawful in fact contained only metadata (being data embedded in a communication that relates to its form and time, date and circumstances of transmission rather than its content). As noted below (para 47), the report by the IGIS in May 2013 had expressed the view that the law was uncertain as to whether metadata fell within the scope of a private communication by a person. In the light of that uncertainty, a decision not to prosecute on that ground would not have been unreasonable.

Secondly, the Solicitor-General’s Prosecution Guidelines require not only that there be evidential sufficiency for a prosecution, but also that it be in the public interest. The evidential sufficiency threshold would have been met, but arguably the public interest threshold would not have been.

This is pretty resounding. First they say that to suggest the Police should ignore the advice of the Solicitor-General is stupid, as Dr Norman said. Then they point out that the law around meta data was unclear anyway, and thirdly there would be no public interest it is likely.

Kim Dotcom did have his rights broken by an illegal act by the GCSB. But this needs to be out in context. The Police were legally entitled to put him under surveilance and intercept his communications. The GCSB just shouldn’t have assisted them with this.

On the alleged conflict of interest:

As she interpreted her terms of reference, Ms McDonald’s role was a limited one. It did not involve the provision of advice about the law that was to be applied to the facts of the case.

Even if Ms McDonald had had a more extensive role, it is hard to see how this would have created a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest cannot arise from the mere fact that she was acting for or providing advice to the Police in two respects in relation to the same set of events. The Police investigation that she was overseeing was an independent investigation into the activities of the GCSB; the fact that she was acting for the Police in proceedings in which the GCSB was  involved as a separate party cannot preclude the ability to provide impartial advice in relation to that investigation.

And the third issue:

The other four interceptions that related to content all involved assistance to the NZSIS in the execution of a lawful issue of an intelligence warrant under the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Act. Section 4D of that Act allows the NZSIS to obtain assistance from another agency to effect the execution of an intelligence warrant. Although there was some doubt about whether the GCSB was allowed to provide such assistance within the ambit of their Act as it then stood, there was sufficient statutory ambiguity to raise doubts about whether any unlawfulness was involved.

The Police determined, on the basis of that report, that the additional intercepts were not unequivocally unlawful and would clearly not reach the threshold to justify prosecution.

The Authority agrees with this view. Dr Norman argues that, since it can be said that there was, in the words of the IGIS, “arguably no breach”, it could equally be said that arguably there was a breach, and New Zealanders who were spied upon deserve to know whether the actions were lawful and justified. That may be so, but a full Police investigation into the GCSB’s activities in those cases would have been unable to provide such clarification, since the Police would not have been in the position to reach a determinative view on the statutory ambiguity. Only the courts could have done that, and the criminal prosecution of individuals in an attempt to clarify an inherently uncertain law would have been unjustified.

It is worth noting that there have been consequences for the GCSB failure. The Deputy Director was let go. The Inspector-General’s role has been beefed up, and there has been wholesale change due to the Kitteridge Report. And these things should happen. But that is different to saying that a staff member should face criminal prosecution for an honest error over someone’s residency status.

WINZ has released the latest benefit stats, and they’re good news.

• 16,196 fewer people on a main benefit than a year ago
• A 5% decrease for all benefits from June 2013 to June 2014
• An 11% decrease for sole parent support benefits
• A drop in the proportion of working age adults on welfare from 11.2% to 10.5%
• Lowest number of people on welfare since 2008 before the Great Recession
• Welfare numbers peaked at 352,000 in 2010 and now 294,000.
• The number of teen solo parents is down 12%. On average a teenager who goes on the benefit stays there 19 years and has a lifetime cost of $246,000

It is great to see the welfare reforms working. The best way to boost incomes is for people to move from welfare into work.

The Independent (UK) reports:

Photo from Stuff ‘s Kevin Stent.

Enter your captions below. As always make them funny not nasty,

Also enjoy these photos sent in by a reader.

Top photo in the montage is (c) Felix Marwick. The other photo is (c) Lloyd Burr.

The Herald reports:

A hardline law and order policy by NZ First would offer greater protection to homeowners, farmers and shop keepers who shoot to kill intruders during home invasions or burglaries.

Along with a 40-year mandatory non-parole sentence for premeditated murder, NZ First wants the Crimes Act amended to give certainty over the use of “reasonable force” for self-defence.

Ahead of the party’s annual convention this weekend, law and order spokesman Richard Prosser said the policy was a response to a string of incidents that had seen farmers and shopkeepers in court over their use of firearms or even hockey sticks against would-be robbers.

Mr Prosser said so-called “castle doctrine” laws in some US states, which saw Texan Joe Horn acquitted after his 2007 fatal shooting of two men who had burgled his neighbour’s home, were “so over the top that it wouldn’t be something that I think anyone in New Zealand would give consideration to”.

“But what I do think people have a desire for is the ability to actually defend themselves and their families in their own homes.”

Mr Prosser wants a regime based on that introduced in Ireland in 2011 following controversy over the 2004 shooting of an Irish traveller by a farmer.

NZ First’s proposal would allow for homeowners to use “any firearm that is lawfully available to that person” to defend themselves.

It is unclear exactly what NZ First are proposing.

If they are proposing that you can legally shoot anyone illegally on your property, then I can not support that. The penalty for tresspassing and/or burglary should not be death.

If they are proposing that when a homeowner has a genuine fear for their safety, or their families, then they can use firearms for self-defence – I can back that. But shooting someone in the back, as they are leaving, is not self-defence (for example).

Former Labour Minister Dover Samuels just said on Radio Live that he would not be giving his party vote to Labour this year, because it is no longer in touch with or representing the regions. He is party voting NZ First.

Samuels was a Labour MP for 12 years, and a Minister for almost six years.

Andy Tookey filed an OIA with the Auckland District Health Board for a copy of a slide presentation by the Organ Donor Service to a taxpayer funded official meeting.

They refused the request on the grounds of privacy, even though no names were requested.

Tookey went to the Ombudsman who said it must be released.

They then declined on the basis it would be made public in six months time.

Again the Ombudsman indicated he would rule against them.

So what did the Organ Donor Service do?

They deleted the information.

The Minister should tell the Auckland DHB Board that he will start sacking board members if this happens again. It is totally unacceptable to delete information that is the subject of an OIA request. It is in fact illegal. A prosecution could be justified.

Stuff reports:

Labour would get an immediate lift in the polls if it dumped leader David Cunliffe, a new poll suggests.

The stuff.co.nz/Ipsos poll reveals that Cunliffe may have become Labour’s biggest liability, with a significant number of voters saying they would be more likely to vote for Labour if someone else were leader.

Click here for full poll results in graphics.

The effect is sizeable, making a 13.5 percentage point difference to Labour’s vote.

Although a similar effect is seen on National when asked the same question about John Key, it is much smaller.

The finding will plunge Labour further into crisis after yesterday’s poll result cementing Labour’s support in the mid-20s.

Privately, Labour and the Greens now acknowledge that it would take an unprecedented swing against National to force a change of government on September 20.

Some Labour MPs were yesterday privately canvassing leadership options, even at this late stage.

But they believe Labour would be even more severely punished by such an outward sign of panic.

Labour’s focus now has shifted to protecting its vote from further erosion, and preserving the seats of some of its up-and-coming stars, including Andrew Little, seen as a future leadership contender, and former teacher Kelvin Davis.

I think a change of leader 64 days before the election is unlikely, but it is correct Labour MPs are talking. They had their annual conference and their big education announcement, which should have given them a boost, and they’re still polling below what they got in 2011. The problem for them is that the phone is off the hook for many voters.

The major focus of Labour MPs is in fact on the leadership after the election. As I’ve reported previously they are terrified that Cunliffe won’t resign if Labour loses. Grant Robertson has the numbers to roll Cunliffe in caucus. He has had it for some time. But if Cunliffe doesn’t resign, and contests the leadership again despite being rolled by caucus, can Robertson win the vote of activists and unions? Cunliffe could well argue that he was never loyally supported by his caucus, and ask to be re-elected to have a mandate to do a purge.

Robertson’s fear is that he would lose again to Cunliffe, and this his chances of ever becoming Leader will be extinguished. And Grant is a cautious man. So the signal he has sent out is he will not stand.

So my understanding, from highly reliable sources, is that the decision has been made that instead David Shearer will stand again. His argument will be that he was never given a fair go, and that Labour would have done better if he had stayed on as Leader, than under Cunliffe. This will be difficult to argue against. Also Shearer is the one candidate whom Cunliffe can’t campaign against and accuse of disloyalty – because of course it was in fact Cunliffe who undermined Shearer. By contrast, Shearer has been publicly loyal.

Also Shearer has gained in confidence and performance since being dumped, as many have remarked. And crucially, he does not have such a high level of dislike.

So one can’t rule out a change in the next 64 days, but the more likely option is to try and minimise the loss, and then have Shearer challenge Cunliffe for the leadership in December.

However if the polls get much worse for them, then they may move. It will depend on if List MPs such as Andrew Little and Jacindaa Ardern look likely to lose their seats in Parliament. At the moment they are just back in on the average of public polls, and Labour picks up the electorate seats iPredict says they will.

Stuff reports:

A Malaysia Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur has crashed in near Donetsk, killing 295 people, with Ukraine officials claiming it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile launched by pro-Russian separatists.

The disaster comes only four months after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished on a flight between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing on March 8 with 239 people aboard, including New Zealanders Paul Weeks, 38, and Ximin Wang, 50.

First thoughts are with the families of the 295 passengers and crew on board.

Second thoughts are with Malaysian Airlines. Unlike MH370, this doesn’t look like it has anything to do with the actions of Malaysian Airlines or their staff. However I suspect they will face a huge loss of patronage after this.

Hopefully those responsible are identified and jailed.

Labour announced:

A Labour Government will help protect animals from harm by prohibiting the sale of cosmetics that have been tested on animals. 

Labour’s Animal Welfare spokesperson Trevor Mallard today launched the initiative at an event organised by Labour’s Ōhariu candidate Ginny Andersen at the Wadestown Veterinary Clinic, which after boundary changes is now in the electorate.

An op ed by the Chief Legal Office for Google at the Guardian:

When you search online there’s an unwritten assumption that you’ll get an instant answer, as well as additional information if you need to dig deeper. This is all possible because of two decades’ worth of investment and innovation by many different companies. Today, however, search engines across Europe face a new challenge – one we’ve had just two months to get our heads around. That challenge is figuring out what information we must deliberately omit from our results, following a ruling from the European Union’s court of justice.

In the past we’ve restricted the removals we make from search to a very short list. It includes information deemed illegal by a court (such as defamation), pirated content (once we’re notified by the right’s holder), malware, personal information such as bank details, child sexual abuse imagery and other things prohibited by local law (such as material that glorifies Nazism in Germany).

All reasonable – stuff where a court has made a decision, or things specifically prohibited by a statute.

We’ve taken this approach because, as article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

But the European court found that people have the right to ask for information to be removed from search results that include their names if it is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive”. In deciding what to remove search engines must also have regard to the public interest. These are, of course, very vague and subjective tests.

The result being that Google has to decide what information on people we are allowed to find!

It’s for these reasons that we disagree with the ruling. That said, we obviously respect the court’s authority and are doing our very best to comply quickly and responsibly. It’s a huge task, as we’ve had over 70,000 take-down requests covering 250,000 web pages since May. So we now have a team of people reviewing each application individually, in most cases with limited information and almost no context.

The examples we’ve seen so far highlight the difficult value judgments search engines and European society now face: former politicians wanting posts removed that criticise their policies in office; serious, violent criminals asking for articles about their crimes to be deleted; bad reviews for professionals like architects and teachers; comments that people have written themselves (and now regret). In each case someone wants the information hidden, while others might argue that it should be out in the open.

None of it should be hidden. The decision to remove content should be made by the original publisher, if anyone.

The Hill reports:

Teachers unions have turned on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Obama administration, creating a major divide in the Democratic Party coalition.

The largest teachers union in the country, the National Education Association (NEA), called for Duncan to resign at its convention on July 4, arguing his policies on testing have failed the nation’s schools.

Tensions between Duncan and the unions had been building for some time.

The administration’s Race to the Top program, which has provided $4.35 billion to states, incentivized changes that unions strongly oppose. One of the most controversial policies backed by Duncan is using students’ improvement on standardized tests to help evaluate teachers and make pay and tenure decisions.

“Our members are frustrated and angry,” said NEA president Dennis Van Roekel. “Number one is the toxic testing. There is too much.”

An added spark came on June 10, when a California judge ruled the state’s teacher tenure laws are unconstitutional because they keep ineffective teachers in the classroom and deprive poor and minority students of their right to an equal education.

Teachers unions, which are strong defenders of tenure, expressed outrage when Duncan said the plaintiffs in the case were just some of millions of students disadvantaged by tenure laws. He called the decision “a mandate to fix these problems.”

Heh if Chris Christie becomes President, then they’ll really have something to complain about.

According to a report from the National Council on Teacher Quality, at the beginning of the administration, in 2009, no states had clear policies that ineffective teaching was grounds for dismissal. By 2013, 29 states did. 

You can’t sack teachers for incompetence. That’s heresy.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand is facing an explosion of rats and stoats and, as a result, an extraordinary threat to our native bird population.

“A plague of biblical proportions” is how Conservation Minister Nick Smith has colourfully put it. A million tonnes of beech seeds have fallen throughout the country in a “mast” event – a prolific seeding that last happened in 2000. All that is grist for the pests.

The rat population has ballooned from 3 million to 15m. Stoats, even worse predators, are eating the rats and multiplying exponentially too.

Both species will eventually decline, but not before gorging on native birds.

Smith is doing his best Pied Piper impression. He has announced extensive new poisoning measures, including large aerial drops of 1080, mostly in South Island forest patches.

This is timely and commendable. The problem has threatened to batter such bird populations as the mohua and orange-fronted parakeet to the brink of extinction, and savage many others.

Smith has not been swayed by anti-1080 campaigners, who refuse to bow to the evidence and accept that the poison is our best weapon for preserving New Zealand’s unique birdlife.

1080 has some nasty unintended side-affects. But they are minor compared to the devastation caused by stoats, rats and possums.

He clearly cares about the issue. Earlier this year, he gave a detailed, passionate speech where he described rat and stoat breeding patterns in frightening detail and compared native bird losses to “having a Rena disaster every single hour”. (The ship’s grounding killed 2000 birds).

Yep the bird loss from the Rena was tiny compared to the loss from predators.

He also responded to 1080 critics, pointing out that the poison does not affect the water supply, has not killed kiwis, breaks down naturally and poses no real threat to human health. It has killed tiny numbers of dogs, but in sum, it is more efficient, affordable and humane than other options.

This view is backed up by two hefty official reports. First, in 2007, the Environmental Risk Management Authority undertook a major reassessment of 1080, approving the poison’s ongoing use under new rules.

Then, in 2011, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright concluded emphatically that “not only should the use of 1080 continue (including in aerial operations) to protect our forests, but that we should use more of it”.

I’d like to see a stoat and possum free New Zealand. It would take 20 years or so, but can be done.

A quite fascinating column by Duncan Garner about being approached by stalker Glenn Green:

His name is Glenn Green and police say he is the country’s most dangerous stalker.

Now it seems he’s interested in stalking me.

I had heard of Green (he also goes by other surnames: Carlionne, Goldberg, Holden and Colcord) and have read a bit about him.

He’s a nasty leach – a manipulative piece of work. So imagine my surprise when I received a hand-written letter from him in Mt Eden prison. …

Green says he wants me to tell his story. Yup, he’s another one of these wrongly maligned criminals apparently.

Green started his letter by saying: “You may recognise my name as over the years I have had some pretty bad press titled ‘STALKER’.

“I come to you as you seem to be pretty fair and not one-sided.”

He continues, “I have declined interviews but I think it is time to tell all and the truth behind the headlines.”

So he’s offering me his story but he’s in custody, so how on earth am I meant to tell it?

He wants me to make contact and suggests I come to see him in prison.

He promises me all sorts of scoops on serving police officers.

“I’ll give you the full story,” he says.

“It’s time to get the truth behind the stalker headlines out there because it’s not right.”

A female journalist would run 100 miles from this, but Garner thinks maybe he can just meet him and get a story, as Green has only stalked women:

He finishes his letter to me by saying, “I have done wrong but not what’s reported. If you want to talk, I’m . . . at Mt Eden.”

I must say when I read his letter he sounded reasonably convincing and articulate.

But as I asked a few people who had dealt with him they told me that’s exactly what he is like.

He convinces you at the start that he is normal – that everything is OK.

He even comes across as reasonably smart and credible.

I realised pretty quickly I was inside the mind of a serial stalker.

I was still fascinated. Given he has previously stalked women, perhaps I could contact him and get his story and move on.

But luckily he took advice:

No, said the experts. He won’t move on. He will think you’re his friend. He’ll never let go, they all warned.

He’ll target you and your family for as long as he can.

So I won’t be popping off to Mt Eden to make the introduction.

A very good call.

The Herald reported:

National Party MP Claudette Hauiti has given up her parliamentary charge card after she used it to pay for a personal trip to Australia.

“I went to Australia. It was travel only and way outside Parliamentary Service guidelines,” she told Fairfax Media.

She said the trip over Christmas last year and other questionable spending, including refreshments for a hui on a marae, had cost about $200, which she has since repaid.

“Of course it’s absolutely no excuse for not knowing the Speaker’s rulings. It is my responsibility and I didn’t do it.” …

Earlier this year Ms Hauiti was caught out breaking Parliament’s rules by employing her civil union spouse in her electorate office.

The rules are not obscure. Parliamentary Service provide a facility where you can check expenditure and appointments. One can forgive one transgression as a beginner’s mistake, but a second one can’t be treated so benignly.

Also just common sense should tell you that you don’t charge a trip to Australia to Parliament. You actually need the permission of the Whips to travel overseas on official business.

Inflation was 1.6% in the last year, which is less than expected. The lower inflation is, the more spending power households and businesses have.

This should mean that interest rates do not rise as much as projected, even though I still expect one more 25 basis points increase later this month.