Waitakere News

EXCLUSIVE: The real teapot tapes abridged and with the background noise taken out ...

2012-01-25T16:37:00.001-08:00

Ports of Auckland and Ernst and Young use the same calculator

2012-01-24T10:59:00.000-08:00

Ernst and Young have on behalf of POAL reviewed POAL's figures and have come up with the same results, barring a rounding difference in relation to the average annual wage. POAL thought it was $91,480, Ernst and Young rounded it up to $91,481. The other calculations remains the same.

Of course for some this is conclusive evidence that POAL is right and the Maritime Workers' Union is wrong but I cannot help but think that each side is talking about different things. Because it appears to me that the figures quoted do not represent the actual amount of money being paid to the POAL workers. And there is a stunning statistical anomaly that no one has addressed so far.

The Ernst and Young analysis states that it includes a range of allowances, payments and shift payments. These are not specified. POAL's 2010 accounts had a line item that referred to "employee benefits expense, including restructuring costs and termination benefits." When this figure is divided by the number of employees it comes up with a figure that is remarkably close to the average wage claimed by POAL.

So it would help if POAL detailed all of the figures it uses in the calculations. Do they include ACC payments and redundancy payments. If so they clearly do not reflect take home pay.

The real problem is that the income figure contradicts other figures in the report. The average number of hours paid per week is said to be 43. Presuming this is the average figure per week for 52 weeks the hourly rate was $40.91 per hour, way more than the stevedore rate of $27.26 per hour. Shift and other allowances are not big enough to increase this figure. An explanation and a breakdown of how this figure was achieved would be helpful.

There are two important matters to consider.

Firstly my overwhelming urge is to say "so what". The job is highly skilled, the workers are required to work all sorts of hours at short notice and I thought the idea was to increase workers' wages, not decrease them. Why should the chief executive be paid three quarters of a million dollars a year while the workers get paid a tenth that.

Secondly POAL is continuing to use right wing bloggers to get the message out. The Ernst and Young document, released on January 24, 2012 has a time stamp of 2:10 pm. Slater had it up on his site at 2:34 pm and Farrar had it up at 3:02 pm. At the time of writing POAL still does not have it up on its site. How weird is that?

One wonders if Slater et al have been enrolled in the propaganda campaign by POAL to sway public opinion. The Maritime Union could use some education about social media so it could counter the onslaught.

Finally the financial analysis that I am really interested is whether POAL or Ports of Tauranga pay more for their labour?

Which side are you on?

2012-01-18T14:28:00.000-08:00

Jenny at the Standard reminded me recently of the Pete Seeger performed song "Which side are you on?"

The song was written by Florence Reece, the wife of Sam Reece who was a union leader of the coal miners in Kentucky in 1931. The miners and management were involved at the time in a bloody, violent struggle. The song has become a working class ballad and has been performed by Pete Seeger, Natalie Merchant and Billy Bragg amongst others.

The song is very relevant for Labour's leadership. The party has been criticised for failing to take a stand on the POAL dispute. Left wing commentators such as Idiot Savant, Chris Trotter, Gordon Campbell and Bomber Bradbury have called for the Party to take a stand.

Initially it was very quiet. More recently Darien Fenton has said clearly that the party opposes the privatisation of POAL and spoke of the importance of good faith bargaining. She reiterated a statistic that should be repeated and repeated, that there have been no deaths on the Auckland Wharf for the past 18 years but there have been three at Tauranga in the past 15 months.

Phil Twyford has also publicly said that the port should not be privatised and talks about how there should be a more rationally coordinated approach. He muddied the waters by talking about possible rationalisation of New Zealand's ports. It is not helpful at this time to confuse matters more by introducing further issues into the debate. He has condemned contracting out as "a form of privatisation". He comes close to opposing the attempt to deunionise the site by his comment "I don't think that this union-busting that we are seeing in the port is an acceptable way to squeeze out a few extra points of productivity,"

But IMHO they should be braver. They need to say that the attempt to deunionise the site is unacceptable. It is bad enough when a privately owned company engages in such behaviour. But when a company fully owned by a public institution that has a statutory obligation to be a good employer engages in such behaviour there is something seriously wrong.

28 local board members have publicly said that the attempt to undermine the union is wrong. It is time for the elected parliamentary representatives of the party born of the class struggle and the aspirations of working people to do the same.

Why Len Brown should intervene in the POAL Dispute

2012-01-17T11:20:00.000-08:00

The Ports of Auckland dispute continues to attract headlines.

Twenty eight Local Board representatives including a reasonably well known left wing blogger (well two including the renowned Julie Fairley) have come out and said that Ports of Auckland should do three things:

1. Return to a good faith bargaining position,

2. Drop plans to outsource jobs,

3. Stop using the dispute as a wedge to promote privatization of the Wharf.

The usual subjects have reacted in shock. Slater thinks they are "King Idiots" and Farrar says that they are asking POAL to "surrender" to the demands of the Maritime Workers Union.

Both of these have been amongst the forefront of those pushing the fiction that the workers are on average earning $91,000 per year. The workers are on a reasonable wage, but given the very unsocial hours and the highly skilled nature of the job I think they are worth every penny. And if the aspiration is to catch up with Australia, why would you want to reduce wages and conditions?

The commentators of the right keep talking about the how overpaid and privileged these workers are, but, without any embarrassment, do not even mention chief executive Tony Gibson's is earning $750,000 per annum. His salary is worth a great deal of productivity increases.

They keep insisting on the need to improve productivity without acknowledging that over the past few years considerable productivity improvements have occurred. And they keep talking about how much better Tauranga is, without acknowledging that three Tauranga Port workers have lost their lives over the past 15 months at the same time that every Auckland Port worker has returned home after a work shift.

The CTU and Helen Kelly have become involved. In my humble opinion Helen is a superb leader of the CTU, intelligent, passionate and informed, and the attacks on her by some are a sign of her effectiveness.

Recently on Radio Live she spoke of the dispute. She said that the Maritime Workers Union had in the negotiations offered significant changes to the way they work resolved productivity problems but that POAL had effectively said that it did not want a collective agreement and wanted to contract out. It wanted cheaper casualised Labour and wanted to move the Union out.

Len Brown has been put on the spot and some o n the left have criticized his response to the dispute. He was reported in the Herald as saying that there must be more flexibility in work practices to make the port more productive and profitable for the council. He was quoted as saying that "I would encourage them to do everything they can as loyal Aucklanders to resolve this issue without any further unnecessary time wasting".

Well it looks like the Maritime Workers agree with him and according to Helen Kelly have made concessions that will reduce employment conditions but improve profitability. A deal seems to be eminently achievable. So unless Len wants to watch as the Union is dismantled he should step in.

To be honest this is a hospital pass for the Left. All but one of the current POAL Board were appointed since 2009 and obviously reflect the current political reality. But POAL has some very important obligations which to my mind mean that it is currently in breach of its obligations.

Firstly there is section 59(1)(b) of the Local Government Act 2002 which states that a principal objective of a Council Controlled Organisation is to be a "good employer".

What is a "good employer"? Presumably one which complies fully with its obligations under the Employment Relations Act 2000. One of these is contained in section 9 which says that "[a] contract, agreement, or other arrangement between persons must not confer on a person, because the person is or is not a member of a union or a particular union ... any preference in obtaining or retaining employment; or ... any preference in relation to terms or conditions of employment (including conditions relating to redundancy) or fringe benefits or opportunities for training, promotion, or transfer."

So trying to deunionise a site would appear to be a clear breach of an obligation to be a good employer.

What can Auckland Council do? Under clause 26.9 of POAL's constitution any director can be removed. This is an extreme measure but the way this dispute is heading something extreme may be required to resolve matters.

Is Auckland's Port's labour costs cheaper than Tauranga's?

2012-01-14T09:55:00.000-08:00

Industrial relations POAL style?

This post started as a rather dry legal discussion of the Ports of Auckland dispute and the need for POAL to negotiate in good faith. It seems that POAL may have problems in this regard. But after reading the latest Standard post on the subject and doing a bit of digging into the financial reports for POAL and Tauranga Port I thought I should post this instead.

Bryan Gaynor has a recent article in the Herald which concludes that POAL is performing far worse than Tauranga. He suggests that it is in part because of labour costs but to be fair he also says that POAL's Board has performed poorly.

In particular he says this:

But the poor performance of POA can also be attributed to the company's board, management and politicians.

His basic mistake is to compare POAL's labour costs with Tauranga Port's labour costs without allowing for the extra costs of Tauranga's contractors. He said this:

One of POA's biggest issues is its wage bill of $54.9 million compared with POT's total employee expenses of $25.3 million, even though the latter is now the larger port.

So I thought I should check this out. How do the respective Ports' labour costs compare?

Well knock me down with a feather but the analysis gets really interesting.

There are two basic problems with comparing the two ports’ accounts:

Each entity uses different accounting standards and it is not easy mapping expenses against each other.

POAL has not released full figures for the past financial year. I understand this is because of a question about the accounting standards to be applied but whatever the reason this does not help.

But there are some very interesting features:

Revenue is similar in the past financial year, for POAL it was $177m, for Tauranga it was $185m.

In 2010 POAL’s spend on employees (whatever this covers) was 31.4% of revenue or $51.9m. The figure for 2011 does not appear on POAL's website.

Tauranga has three figures in its 2011 accounts, employees ($25.3m), contractors ($33.9m) and transport contractors ($5.8m). If these figures are the same as POAL’s employee expense figure then Tauranga’s labour costs as a proportion of revenue was 35%, larger than POAL’s figure. Even if you take out the cost of transport it was still larger at 31.9%. To make this abundantly clear it appears that POAL spent $51.9m on employees in 2010, and Tauranga spent $59.2m on employees and contractors excluding transport contractors in 2011. To make this really, really simple it appears Tauranga spent more on its workers to get about the same revenue.

Please can someone say why this analysis is not correct. Otherwise this really looks like a manufactured crisis where the “inefficiency” is only a quirk of the accounting techniques.

POAL’s 2010 figures are here and the 2011 summary is here. Tauranga’s 2011 figures are here.

One further comment, Catherine Etheredge said that POAL’s calculations do not include redundancies. BUT the line item in POAL's 2010 accounts says that the employee benefit expense “includ[es] restructuring costs and termination benefits” which must include redundancy costs. Clarification would be good.

So if I am wrong please say where. But it does seem to me that Auckland's Port's labour costs may actually be less than Tauranga Port's.

Brian Leyland should watch "there once was an island"

2012-01-07T13:04:00.000-08:00

Brian Leyland, well known climate change sceptic and the recipient of corporate funding to advance a world view sympathetic to the power companies is at it again.

This morning in the Sunday Star Times he has had published an article suggesting with complete confidence that global warming is a myth. The concept was apparently created by Enron who wanted to use it to sell carbon credits. Why a power company that relied heavily on producers who produced CO² would promote a system where it would have to pay more for power is beyond me. Proof would be appreciated.

A couple of other claims were also unusual to say the least. Apparently world temperatures have plateaued since 1988 and not really risen since. I cannot reconcile this with the fact that the warmest 13 years have all occurred since 1997.

But his claim that ocean levels are not changing really caught my attention.

He said:

Regarding sea levels, the highly accurate sea-level gauges installed around Australia and on the Pacific Islands (including Tuvalu) in the early 1990s showed that sea level rise is small - less than 3mm a year - and that, in recent years, it has levelled off. The 3mm a year is consistent with the sea-level rise that we have experienced since the end of the Little Ice Age. So the only strange thing that is happening is that we cannot explain why the sea level is no longer rising.

Coincidentally I had the opportunity to watch the documentary “there once was an Island” last night.

It is superb. Climate change deniers like Brian ought to be strapped into chairs with their eyelids prised open and forced to watch it.

It shows a traditional Pacific island community coming to terms with the effects on climate change and the rise of ocean levels have on their homeland, a low lying Pacific Island. The evidence, like the evidence world wide, was crystal clear. Their homeland was slowly being swallowed up by the rise in the sea level.

The community response was illuminating. There was a village meeting where the proposal to settle on Papua New Guinea was discussed. Some with regret thought it was the only option. Others thought the Lord would save them. The elders could not contemplate change. There was no sign of any deniers like Brian at the meeting but the evidence of climate change was so clear that only the totally blind and insane could ignore it. The evidence came from the increase in the sea level, which was clearly rising and swallowing up their island.

The implications are huge. This was a documentary about a small village with maybe 50 inhabitants that was forced to relocate. There are billions of people who may have to move if the worst fears of climate change are realised.

The scenes of the families leaving their homeland are heartbreaking. The expert advice given to them by scientists is chilling.

Brian should watch this film and then try and persuade us why the human race should do nothing about what to me is clearly the world’s biggest threat.

Maritime Workers Union - losing the propaganda war

2012-01-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

There is nothing the right enjoys more than a good union bash. It is something they have always done and it is something of a comfort thing for them. When the world they control is imploding and feels like it is being steered over a crevasse they can always blame the Union Movement for their own inadequate leadership and the disasters they have caused.

The Auckland Waterside lockout has been receiving some attention from the right lately. They have trotted out this wonderful well publicised attack line, the pesky waterside workers are on average earning $91,000 per annum so why do they need to strike? As far as I can tell no where in the media has this figure been responded to or refuted so I thought I should check out the claims myself and try and work out what the reality is.

The first site I checked out was the Ports of Auckland website. For an unknown reason they do not have the latest financial year's results up. All they have is a very basic financial highlights sheet that discloses very little.

The 2010 financial and annual reports were up. There were 573 full time equivalent employees and to them was paid a total of $51.94 million for "employee benefits expense, including restructuring costs and termination benefits." Presumably this includes redundancy payments and the like. Neither report comments on changes in staffing levels nor does it set out bands of salaries which you see in many Government Entity financial reports. The average figure per FTE is $90,200 which is close to the publicly bandied figure.

Two conclusions that can be drawn are as follows:

1. The payment per employee definitely is larger than what was paid in wages.
2. The payment per employee would also be inflated by payments to management. The chief executive for instance would probably be on a payment in the high 6 figures to low 7 figures. As has been eloquently said elsewhere averages get distorted by high earners, a much better measure is the median payment received by POAL workers.

I cannot access figures for recent change in FTEs although in 2008 the figure was described as "over 600". It may be that some redundancy payments were included in the line item mentioned.

It appears that the Maritime Workers Union represents about 150 workers on the wharf. You can be pretty sure that these would not include higher paid management sorts.

Cactus Kate has some more accurate looking figures here. The figures look superficially authentic and if so they probably were leaked by the company. The only problem is that they are not sourced and you cannot tell their veracity or if they are actually measuring wages as opposed to employee expenses. For instance a raft of redundancies could have escalated up the average payment. This did not stop the usual suspects from having a go.

The Union responded by criticizing the Company for circulating "misinformation about wages, conditions and port productivity to hostile employers organizations and political bloggers".

The major cause of the dispute as far as the union is concerned is the attempted casualisation of the entire workforce and the way the company has conducted negotiations. The wage increase of itself appears to be something that can be agreed upon.

To be frank the publicity effort by the Union has been poor. It should respond with detail to the allegations and counter Cactus Kate's figures. Failing to do so hands the publicity battle to the right on a plate.

Although if Cactus Kate is intent on hunting down and opening up for ridicule those who are overly rewarded for doing a paucity of work I know just where she should start.

The many and varied ways Waitakere electors split their votes

2011-12-30T13:19:00.000-08:00

My last post for this year is a further comment on what happened with the almost successful Waitakere campaign.

The E9 results are out now and make for interesting reading, particularly the figures relating to the way voters split their votes in the Waitakere electorate.

The first impression you get from the figures is how many Kiwis split their votes. They obviously want to share the love around, they do not want one party to have too much power and they want to be fair. They are also acting like good consumers and will try a bit of this with a bit of that. I am not surprised that they should have with such a significant margin decided to retain MMP.

In Waitakere it is very clear to see the consequence. A 9 vote loss to Carmel Sepuloni in what would have been the biggest boil over of the election if she had succeeded.

With such a close margin it is clear that the little things count. A slightly more favourable Green party vote split would have been enough to change the result.

The Greens attracted 3,308 party votes in the 2011 election. Of these voters 50.8% or 1,680 voted for Sepuloni. But 13% or 429 voted for Bennett. This is an unusual combination. National despite protestations to the contrary is not an environmental party and in fact has done its best to undermine many policy areas fundamental to Green thinking. The Emissions Trading Scheme is a pale imitation of what it used to be, our waterways are being destroyed by the unchecked behavior of dairy farmers and Bennett was a vocal opponent to the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act 2008.

Rather bizarrely 438 Labour voters also voted for Bennett. Some people took the right to vote for the candidate of their choice to unusual extremes.

The number of Green voters supporting Sepuloni is disappointingly low. In other key marginals the Labour candidate enjoyed significantly greater support from Green split voting. In Auckland Central 63% of Green party voters voted for Ardern, in the West Coast 64.2% voted for Labour's Damian O'Connor, in Wellington Central the figure was 62% for Robertson and in Christchurch Central the figure was 56.3% for Brendan Burns.

One other factor that may be relevant is that in Waitakere the Labour Party vote stayed very solid, decreasing only by 2.6 percentage points. In the other marginals the Labour party vote loss was significant. In West Coast it was 6 percentage points, in Auckland Central a jaw dropping 9.4 percentage points and in Wellington Central 8 percentage points and in Christchurch Central 10 percentage points. As I previously noted Auckland Central's result was by far the worst in the region. The lesson may be that if you go too aggressively for the electorate vote the party vote will be adversely affected. This could suggest that Waitakere's noble and correct emphasis on the Candidate vote AND the Party vote kept more Labour Party votes in the fold.

So what went wrong? Greens candidate Steve Tollestrup stood up at a meeting that I attended and said unambiguously that he endorsed Carmel Sepuloni. This was also reported in the Herald. There was then an attempt to resile from this and a suggestion that some sort of Head Office approval was required. For whatever reason it did not happen. I am sure a few people are ruing this lost opportunity.

And Sue Bradford's vote, small as it was, was important. Her 322 votes would have all been anti Bennett votes.

The job for Waitakere Labour is to regroup, get organised and do it all again. I understand that Carmel is favorably disposed to running again and this would be a good thing. She needs to keep her profile up and work to improve membership and resources.

And Bennett? She is clearly on borrowed time. The next three years will need to be spent by all good westie progressives organising to make sure that she gets a send off in 2014.

Where did all Labour's votes go?

2011-12-21T21:54:00.000-08:00

I recommend entrail gazing for all activists at the conclusion of an election campaign. There is no better way to deal with the adrenalin withdrawal after a campaign. If it was a successful one then the lessons can be repeated, if it was an unsuccessful one then the lessons learned can hopefully be remembered next time.

I blogged previously about Labour's performance in the 2011 general election. It was not good. Nationally Labour lost 6.5 percentage points on its 2008 result. In Auckland it was a more respectable 2.6%.

In fact in Auckland the forces of the left did reasonably well. The Green vote went up by 3.6 percentage points so the forces of good actually had an increase. NZ First also had an increase of 2.8 percentage points so overall the anti Government vote went well. National's vote increased by 0.8 percentage points compared to a nationwide increase of 2.4 points but ACT did badly, so essentially the forces of the right went backward in Auckland.

What is really interesting is the performance of the Green Party in the Auckland electorates. The following is a table showing the performance of the party in the Auckland General Electorate seats:

Electorate	Change in Green %
Auckland Central	7.33%
Mt Albert	6.15%
New Lynn	5.68%
Epsom	5.10%
Northcote	4.25%
North Shore	4.24%
Waitakere	4.16%
Maungakiekie	4.04%
East Coast Bays	3.99%
Helensville	3.74%
Tamaki	3.48%
Rodney	3.29%
Te Atatu	3.23%
Mt Roskill	2.99%
Pakuranga	2.61%
Papakura	2.50%
Botany	2.01%
Mangere	1.81%
Manurewa	1.69%
Manukau East	1.60%
Hunua	-0.15%

What is apparent is that the wealthier the electorate the greater the increase in the Green party vote. Despite impressions to the contrary Mount Albert and New Lynn are reasonably wealthy electorates and are Labour strongholds despite this. It is very clear that Labour shed support to the Greens in the middle classes.

What is also interesting is the Green performance in the rest of the country. The standout performance must be in Wellington Central where there were more Green party votes than Labour Party votes. I can confidently say that Labour has never lost to the greens in the party vote in an electorate before and Labour needs to have a good look at electorates where there was an undue emphasis on the electorate vote to the detriment of the party vote. In that seat the Greens gained 7.1 percentage points while Labour shed 8. In Christchurch Central the Greens gained 5 percentage points while Labour shed 10 and in both Dunedin seats the Greens gained 7.1 percentage points while Labour shed 10.3.

To summarise in Auckland again the Labour-Green vote actually increased but in the other central city electorates the opposite happened.

The NZ First increase is more difficult to describe and did not follow any readily discernible pattern. The following table sets out the change in the Auckland Urban General Electorate seats:

Electorate	Change in NZ First %
Papakura	3.40%
Hunua	3.04%
Waitakere	2.91%
Manurewa	2.83%
Manukau East	2.64%
New Lynn	2.62%
Te Atatu	2.56%
Mangere	2.55%
Northcote	2.48%
Rodney	2.44%
Botany	2.26%
Maungakiekie	2.23%
Pakuranga	2.18%
East Coast Bays	2.11%
Helensville	2.06%
North Shore	1.92%
Mt Roskill	1.88%
Mt Albert	1.85%
Auckland Central	1.81%
Tamaki	1.29%
Epsom	1.16%

The only pattern I can readily discern from this is that the greater distance the seat was away from Auckland Central the greater the swing was towards NZ first. The change could also be explained as people in the poorer areas being more inclined to give Winston Peters a go.

The Auckland overal swing of 2.3 percentage points was closely matched by Wellington (1.9), Christchurch (2.1) and Dunedin (2.4). Winston's support really seems to be amongst sectors of the population rather than from geographical areas.

So what does Labour do? The biggest threat that it faces from the Greens is amongst the more urban middle class voters who are now prepared to support the new look Green Party. It is strange really, I much preferred the Jeanette Fitzsimonds/Rod Donald earthy solid led Greens to the Metiria Turei/Russell Norman version but their positioning away from social justice issues may have made them more acceptable to the urban elite.

Herald and Farrar, say after me, there is no evidence of electoral fraud

2011-12-19T09:23:00.000-08:00

The Sunday Herald this week was disappointing. In an article headed "Questions over Waitakere Vote" the first sentence said "[e]vidence of dodgy voting has emerged in the battle for Waitakere." This proposition was based on the claim that nine people voted twice and 393 people voted despite not being on the roll. This was picked up by National blogger David Farrar who reported the article without commenting on the merits of what was said. This of course allowed the Kiwiblog regulars to spew vile and opine that this was evidence of widespread electoral fraud by the Labour Party. If only they would try to understand how the electoral system works, rather than launch into an attempt to smear.

National lawyer Peter Kiley suggested that the change may have occurred because some people may have made a mark instead of ticking the preferred candidate. With respect all votes where the intention of the voter was clear were allowed. The voting papers were peered over by a competent team of workers with the oversight of District Court Judge Adams and the process cannot be faulted.

The main problem was that 7 votes in a Fruitvale School pile of Carmel Sepuloni votes actually included three Paula Bennett votes, three Steve Tollestrup votes and one for Sue Bradford. This resulted in an immediate ten vote swing. After that there were swings of one or two votes in each pile of votes either way but unfortunately they went against Carmel.

The different categories should have been described properly. The biggest group was the 393 disallowed special votes. The Herald article breathlessly said that these were the votes of people who "voted despite not being on the electoral roll."

Some understanding of the system would help. People go to the polls without an encyclopedic knowledge of the legal requirements. They hope to be able to vote. If they front up and find they are not on the roll then they are offered a special vote. Of course many take up this opportunity. There is a good chance their vote will be accepted. For instance if they enrolled after the close of the rolls but before voting day they can vote. If they were on the roll in 2008 and certain other requirements are met they can vote. For a full description you should read section 61 of the Electoral Act 1993.

Of the special votes cast in Waitakere about 90% were allowed. The rest could not be qualified under any of the various categories despite an exhaustive search.

This is not unusual. In 2008 for instance there were 374 votes disallowed for the same reason. This is not evidence of electoral fraud.

The votes disallowed for "no witness signature" are essentially examples of sloppy paper work.

The 9 dual votes could as easily be evidence of human frailty or a mistaken desire to make sure their vote counted as they could of voter fraud. In any event there is no clue who these invalid votes were for.

This is evidence of the National Party building a meme. Paula Bennett's outburst suggesting that Labour had engaged in a "negative and vicious" campaign by enlisting union help and door knocking on election day is further evidence of this.

Making sure that people are on the roll to vote and are reminded to exercise their democratic rights is not "negative and vicious". That Paula thinks so suggests strongly that she thinks she is entitled to the seat as a matter of right.

UPDATE: For those interested the original decision can be read here and Judge Adams subsequent decision can be read here. The subsequent decision is elegantly written and shows how much care was put into the recount.

Is New Zealand Politics being taken over by the Commentariat?

2011-12-17T12:17:00.000-08:00

There was a disturbing Fran O'Sullivan column in a recent Herald.

It is worth reading in full but there are a number of matters of concern.

Firstly David Shearer says he owes no one any favors and has done no deals when it is clear that deals have been done. They are already known, David Parker will be finance spokesperson, Jacinda Ardern and Shane Jones are on the front bench, Stuart Nash will be chief of staff, and Trevor Mallard will retain a position of responsibility. It is also apparent that Robertson is the one doing the deals. This is a mistake. If there is an "A" team and a "B" team then Caucus relations will not be good.

Apparently Shearer's campaign was planned months ago and "[i]nfluential members of the "commentariat" - particularly those of the right-of-centre persuasion - were informally briefed." O'Sullivan goes on to add "Shearer was promoted as having a modern international outlook; pro-business, pro-science and innovation, and not prone to the phony cloth-cap ideology that Goff had to dip into to retain the confidence of the Labour unionists who have for too long dominated the party."

Well it is the Labour party. Members would be aghast at any attempt to turn Labour into some sort of National lite and to somehow forget the very deep and important history of the party.

O'Sullivan then says that Shearer is the person who will "drag Labour into the 21st century and out of its ideological cul-de-sac." You really have to worry when a right wing commentator is supportive of the direction that a new leader wants to take the party in.

What is really interesting is the role of bloggers in the campaign. Conor Roberts is credited with creating the line that Key may have saved 50 million dollars but Shearer saved 50 million lives. O'Sullivan noted that right wing bloggers were the first to "start spouting this rather over-drawn claim once Shearer's candidacy was declared".

She also mentions the claims that Cunliffe undermined Goff during the campaign by not briefing him. Goff was not able to recall the amount of tax income the CGT would produce in the first year that it actually did generate income. The figure had been available for months. The claim this was sabotage by Cunliffe is not only clearly wrong but so wrong it has to be malicious.

The clear impression is that the sudden publicity surge behind a Shearer leadership campaign was orchestrated across the left and right wing. This is disturbing. Has New Zealand politics been reduced to a group of powerful people holding sway over different political parties and being able to exercise significant influence over them?

But what is really disturbing is that now that the job has succeeded the right wing bloggers have obviously leaked all of this information out. It has the potential to destabilize Shearer and cause divisions in the party. Clearly the only safe course for any Labour politician is to never ever think about engaging with the right wing for political advantage.

Bugger ...

2011-12-15T23:52:00.000-08:00

Today's announcement of the Judicial Recount for the Waitakere Seat provided disappointing news. Labour Carmel Sepuloni has lost by 9 votes. A miscount in the Fruitvale School booth obliterated Carmel's advantage and recounting of other booths gave pseudo westie Paula Bennett the thinnest of margins.

Commiserations to Carmel and her group of activists. To almost win the seat against a senior Cabinet Minister and against the tide was a tremendous result.

Paula should think about her future though. It is apparent to me that the seat will return to Labour next time. Carmel has expressed an interest in standing again and with the local organisation solidly behind her the seat is hers for the taking.

If Carmel wants to mount an Electoral Petition she needs to file within 28 days of the announcement of the decision. She needs to decide soon.

An interesting view has been expressed. Graeme Edgeler, well know lawyer specialising in Electoral Law has suggested that if Carmel won a petition then Paula would not only not be returned to Parliament as the electorate candidate, she would not take a list seat and National in effect would lose a seat.

If this is the result there must be a big temptation for Labour to think about a petition. If they succeed and this is true then National's majority is gone ...

The Labour Party is a bit like Scotland

2011-12-12T09:55:00.000-08:00

The current leadership campaign has many similarities to the film Braveheart. Labour has its own William Wallace, someone who is on top of his game and ready to take the battle to the enemy. Already in his career he has bested in debate English lords including Blinglish and Joyce. And there is this groundswell amongst ordinary members in support of this candidate reminiscent of the way that Wallace was able to unite the Scottish Clans.

People will remember that his campaign ended in disaster. Lords such as Falkirk and Peebles succumbed to the promise of grants of land and withdrew support at the very time that the battle could have been won. They were motivated not by the interests of Scotland but by personal gain.

And Scotland eventually won its freedom but many years later than it should have.

Today I hope that Labour MPs think about the interests of the party as a whole and listen to the overwhelming voice of members. I hope they consider what skills are required to take the battle to National and in particular Key. They need someone of intellect, someone who understands economics backwards and who will skewer Key every time he tries his spin. They also need someone with passion, someone able to energise members and take the battle to National now.

Their decision today is probably the most important decision that they will make in their careers. The future of our party is at stake.

Auckland's election result was not so bad

2011-12-10T13:30:00.000-08:00

The election result figures are finally in. At 27.5% of the popular vote Labour's result is the worst since the 1930s although not that much worse than 1996's 28.2%.

National is up slightly by 2.4 percentage points but obviously at the cost of ACT who slumped 2.6 points.

Nationally Labour 's vote decreased by 6.5 percentage points. But in Auckland (urban general electorates) the party performed relatively well and the vote decreased only by 2.6 points. This was more than compensated for by the increase in the Green vote (3.6%) and the NZ First vote (2.3%). National's vote increased slightly (0.8%) but with the decimation of ACT the NACT vote actually went backwards.

There were some stunning results, particularly in South Auckland where Labour's share of the vote increased by 10.2% in Mangere, 7.3% in Manukau East and 5.2% in Manurewa. And in Phil Goff's Mount Roskill it increased by 1%. These were very good results in an election where the tide was going out.

The following table sets out the movement of Labour's party vote in the various seats and nationally:

Nationwide	-6.5%
Mangere	10.2%
Manukau East	7.4%
Manurewa	5.2%
Mt Roskill	1.0%
Botany	-0.7%
Papakura	-2.1%
Waitakere	-2.6%
Te Atatu	-2.6%
Maungakiekie	-2.7%
New Lynn	-3.3%
Tamaki	-3.6%
Hunua	-3.6%
Pakuranga	-3.7%
Helensville	-4.1%
East Coast Bays	-4.4%
Epsom	-4.5%
Northcote	-4.7%
North Shore	-5.2%
Mt Albert	-5.5%
Rodney	-7.2%
Auckland Central	-9.4%

Auckland Central's result may be a reflection of the tight candidate race that occurred there. Voters may have given Jacinda Ardern their candidate vote at the expense of the party vote.

A comparison with other urban centers provides some interesting results. In Wellington the Labour vote shed 7.3 percentage points, in Christchurch the figure was 10.2% and in Dunedin a jaw dropping 10.3%. Christchurch could be explained by the earthquakes and the displacement caused but Dunedin's result will need further analysis.

Why was the Auckland figure better? A number of reasons spring to mind. These include the disaster that is Super city, Labour's proposal to partially fund the inner city loop, and an energetic effort by activists over the past three years. Certainly the seats with the greatest activity enjoyed the best results. South Auckland clearly returned to the fold. At the last election its turnout was muted by the anti smacking legislation and a series of high profile murders in the area that caused law and order to be a major issue. The "Street Captain" scheme put in place by the Service and Food Workers Union also would have helped.

No doubt more detailed analysis of the results will occur and conclusions will be drawn. But the Auckland result is a glimmer of light for Labour and raises some possible courses of action for Labour to consider in its quest to regain the Government benches.

Waitakere - the closest of margins

2011-12-08T21:24:00.000-08:00

Waitakere has been a fascinating seat to watch. It was targeted as a "must win" seat for Labour. If they are going to regain power in the near future then seats like Waitakere need to be returned to the fold.

It was the most marginal of the Auckland seats and last time Lynne Pillay missed out by only 632 votes. The swing was one of the smaller swings in the region but could not save her. Lynne then decided that this would be her last term in Parliament.

Phil Twyford was a possible contender. But he announced that he was going to run before Lynne had the dignity of being allowed to announce her retirement and this caused considerable ill will amongst the locals. Carmel Sepuloni then came through and gained the nomination.

Since then she has run an energetic and well organised campaign. Aided by campaign manager Enzo Giordani and assisted by a number of experienced and dedicated helpers a great deal of doorknocking has occurred. Election day activity was extraordinary, thanks to a number of young Pacifica who turned up to help. All the elements of the campaign have clicked together and Carmel's presence has been very public. Most importantly she has been out and about and has been everywhere. She has been a tireless candidate and nothing more could be expected of her.

Despite all this Carmel's prospects should have been poor. Any time there is a 7 % swing against your party on the party vote the prospects of winning a seat a bleak. To add to this she was up against Paula Bennett, a senior Cabinet Minister with a tough reputation and someone who is extremely good at pushing herself into public attention.

But the Herald today suggested that the vote was extraordinarily close and less than 10 votes may separate the two. I thought that the vote could go very close. The election night majority was small and the local organisation has organised a number of special votes.

I am sure that if Carmel is ahead by a whisker then National will apply for a judicial recount. I would doubt that they would go to the expense of a full electoral petition however as these are expensive and Bennett will be back on the list in any event.

My fingers are crossed that Carmel will win. She is not in Parliament at this stage otherwise because of her list placement. She is young and talented, Pacifica, intelligent, a woman. She represents the future of the Labour Party.

I talked to two people on the day before the election who were not enrolled but who despised Bennett. I managed to get them enrolled and persuaded them to vote. One of them was in her 40s and had never voted before. If Carmel succeeds on the strength partially of these two votes I will be very pleased.

The lesson for all organisations is that you can never do enough during a campaign and every vote is vital.

UPDATE: The Electoral Commission reports that Carmel won by 11 votes. Congratulations Carmel!

Cunliffe is shot by "friendly" fire

2011-12-04T23:24:00.000-08:00

The current contest for leadership of the Labour Party is becoming very interesting. First there was three Davids, then one dropped off apparently because of fear of a public disclosure of aspects of his private life. The second David (Shearer) was initially the rank outsider but enjoyed a surge of recognition and support from various independent commentators such as David Farrar (National), Cameron Slater (National), Matthew Hooton (National), John Tamihere (National voting), Michelle Boag (National), Deborah Coddington (Act), Chris Trotter (still Alliance), Lew Stoddart (Green?). Readers could forgive me for taking their support with a grain of salt.

One Labour commentator that Farrar mentioned is John Pagani, former speech writer for Phil Goff and clearly aligned with the old guard of the party. I am pretty sure that Pagani's spontaneous enthusiasm for Shearer occurred after Parker pulled out.

Pagani today, in his capacity as an independent, unbiased commentator on matters to do with the Labour Party made some extraordinary claims. He said that David Cunliffe had advocated for the "forced renationalisation of privatised assets". This took me by surprise. I always thought that Cunliffe was part of the progressive left of the spectrum, the part that respected property rights, not the Hugo Chavez part that thought that capitalists should be bled until they are a pale shade of white.

So I went out to try and find evidence of this. All that I could find was this statement that Cunliffe made on Q&A last Sunday.

GUYON Make it brief, cos we're running out of time.
DAVID CUNLIFFE
Yeah, SOE partial privatisation, no. I don't stand for a paler shade of blue, and I wanna look down the barrel and say this - if the government is going to sell off precious state assets, then we would not rule out renationalising some of them. People need to be aware of that regulatory risk.
GUYON You'd buy them back?
DAVID CUNLIFFE
We'd look very hard at that.
GUYON Is that a smart use of money?
DAVID CUNLIFFE
I think the smart use of money is making these assets actually work for New Zealand much more. When we look at the need for alternative energies, reducing the gravitas for our power companies so that they can't move into new energy areas because they just don't have the ability to raise the capital for it is not in New Zealand's interest. I just don't see selling power companies to - largely what's going to happen Australian companies - as being in New Zealand's interest.

So Cunliffe did not say that the assets would be forcibly renationalised. What he said was that he would not rule out renationalising some of them and would look very hard at buying them back.

Spot the difference?

This morning I witnessed something I have never heard before. I heard Matthew Hooton call Pagani because he (Pagani) was putting too much spin on things. Miraculously my respect for Hooton went up at the same time as my respect for Pagani went down. I never thought this was possible.

Pagani again claimed that Cunliffe had floated the idea of forced renationalisation of assets. Hooton very rightfully said that Cunliffe said he would only think about it. Pagani nevertheless insisted that by floating the idea Cunliffe was committing to it.

He then drew links with Venezuela. From thinking about buying the assets back he converted Cunliffe's policy into the forced renationalisation of the assets.

Hooton said that he thought "that was all a bit extreme". And he was right.

Not to be outdone Pagani then talked about Cunliffe putting aside $5 billion in the first year to buy them all back whereas Cunliffe said "some" assets "may" be purchased. The timeframe was not mentioned. Also Pagani clearly has not heard about borrowing. The income stream from the power companies would justify borrowing the money to buy the shares back.

Shame on Pagani for scaremongering the way he has. He should debate what Cunliffe actually said rather than criticising Cunliffe for planning something he clearly is not.

David Parker withdraws

2011-12-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

So one of the Davids has gone.

We now have two left after yesterday's announcement by David Parker that he will not contest the leadership. David Shearer and David Cunliffe are left to battle it out for the top spot.

David Shearer has some momentum. He won the battle of the texts after the debate last night and has many independent commentators supporting him. People like David Farrar and Cameron Slater. Despite their obvious links to the National Party and a history of trying to undermine the Labour Party I am sure that their comments are motivated by the best of intentions and they want the next Labour Leader to be able to win the next election.

A number of independent commentators on the Standard have also spoken in favour of Shearer's candidacy. People like Nick C, Mr Magoo, Sanctuary, and Pete George. Although they would rather die than vote Labour they wish to give Labour the benefit of their carefully considered and totally independent thoughts. The flood of support for Shearer from the RWNJs makes me think that Shearer may not be the best choice for Labour.

What is disturbing is the shape of the possible Shearer parliamentary party. An early version of the Stuff article indicated that Shane Jones would be Finance Spokesperson. Subsequently this was changed to David Parker. There appears to be no room for David Cunliffe. As a minimum I would have thought that if Shearer wanted to build an inclusive party he should offer Cunliffe the finance spokesperson back. If he is not able to do this then it would appear that he is stretching for numbers.

And Parker's sudden disappearance will no doubt raise eyebrows. As will the sudden endorsement of Shearer by camp Parker. Slater believes that Mallard has gone from spreading muck and rumours about Shearer to being his numbers person in a matter of days.

There is to be a nationwide series of members only meetings organised by the party. I suspect that a good performance at these meetings will be vital for whoever eventually succeeds.

The Labour leader selection and the power of money

2011-11-30T00:48:00.000-08:00

TVOne ran an interesting feature on Close Up this evening. They hosted the three candidates for the Labour Leadership, all with the first name David, for a low key sort of debate. There was not a great deal of information put out, the candidates had very little time to respond and it was all a bit too blokesy. But the text poll was fascinating.

Apparently 7,500 texts were received, half in support of David Shearer, 31% in support of David Cunliffe and the balance in support of David Parker. The number of texts seems really high. I have not been able to find out how many texts were sent after the first Leaders debate but I would be surprised if it was more than this.

And Ipredict has been going ballistic today. At the time of writing Cunliffe's stock has sold 1,538 shares, Parker's stock 1,653 and Shearer's stock a stunning 3,582 shares. Of more interest is the split on the stocks. Cunliffe's stock and Parker's stock show usual 10 share blocks for sale or purchase. Shearer's current stock sale listing has 194 at .25c and 300 at .2202c. These are defensive listings and unless someone wants to spend $145 and $264 to cancel the effects of these two listings then they will stop Shearer's share price from going down. They are unusual. Someone wants to keep Shearer's price up.

Don't get me wrong. David Shearer is an utterly decent human being who has a significant role to play in the Labour Party. It is just that he does not have the experience or gravitas at this stage to do the job of leader even though he can contribute significantly to a future Labour administration. David Parker is also a talented MP who is great with policy. But we need someone who has both of these capabilities and for me this is David Cunliffe.

The Labour caucus has the job of deciding on the future leader. I can confidently predict that David Shearer will not get past the first round. MPs are supporting either Cunliffe or Parker.

What this shows to me is that there is an attempt by those with money, very probably outside the party, to influence the decision making process. The right wing is well resourced and very subtle in the way that they attempt to influence public opinion.

Who should be Labour’s next Leader?

2011-11-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

It appears that Phil Goff may stand down as Labour Party leader. This is not surprising given the weekend’s election result.

It is a shame really. Phil ran an energetic passionate campaign that struck a real chord with activists. He was not bested in the debates with Key and IMHO won three of them. And National’s support plunged by as much as 7 points during the campaign. In fact the National-Act vote ended up essentially at the same position it did three years ago. Given the last three years of the Key love in this country has endured this is actually a significant result and Labour can take heart that this part of their campaign bore fruit.

Goff has given the job his all. He has worked tirelessly for the past three years. The first term was always going to be difficult however and history will suggest that he is a failure although in my opinion a much more charitable ranking is warranted.

But given the scale of the defeat a new leader is appropriate. Politics is a cruel master and amongst other things does not tolerate failure.

The focus will now be on the successor. There are two main candidates, David Cunliffe and David Parker. A third mooted candidate, David Shearer, is extremely unlikely to even stand, despite media speculation to the contrary.

The Dominion this morning reported rather optimistically that the Parker camp believe they have the numbers. They should do a recount.

Andrew Little has been described as being a leadership prospect. His result in New Plymouth, where he lost heavily, should count against this and he should spend some time adapting to his new job as a list MP rather than seeking the leadership.

David Shearer has also been mentioned as a possible leader. He is a decent talented person who will contribute significantly to the party in the future but he is not leadership material at this stage.

The rumours about Shearer and Little were originally started by David Farrar and have been continuously mentioned by Cameron Slater. The media should discount anything Farrar or Slater says about the Labour Party. They are motivated by the most malign desire to hurt the progressive movement.

David Cunliffe has been the subject of an anonymous whispering campaign obviously from within the party’s ranks. It has been suggested that not only does Parker have greater support, but that many in Caucus were furious with Cunliffe’s lack of support for Goff during the campaign, and in particular it was mentioned that Cunliffe was somehow responsible for Goff’s gaffe in the second campaign debate with Key.

These are serious allegations. Regrettably they are not true and reflect the desire of someone to damage rather than address the party’s difficulties. That a member of the Labour Caucus is willing to leak these comments is unforgivable. Whoever it is they are damaging the Party for personal benefit. The only other party that has engaged in this sort of behavior recently is ACT and I am sure Labour does not want to follow ACT’s fortunes.

The reality is that the coarse budget figures had been available to Goff for some time including in particular the income to be derived from the Capital Gains Tax which is the figure that Goff in the heat of the moment may not have remembered. The revised figures were going to be ready on the Wednesday or Thursday immediately after the second debate and the full release was only going to happen on the Friday. This was all pre programmed and agreed to by everyone. Goff should have said “wait for Friday if you want the full figures”. That he did not is no fault of Cunliffe.

I watched this part of the second debate a couple of times. My inclination is that Goff became slightly flustered, was talked over by Key and was not able to respond appropriately. To ascribe the event to a conspiracy by Cunliffe is the equivalent to blaming all mental health problems on alien abductions.

It is rumoured that David Cunliffe has teamed up with Nanaia Mahuta as a leadershipticket. There is elegance in this partnership that is immediately obvious. Maori Pakeha, male female, urban rural representatives, it is a partnership that should appeal across the party.

And the question that caucus members should have at the forefront of their mind is who can counter Key and lead Labour to victory. Who can relate to ordinary people yet deal with complex policy areas? Who is the best debater and able to pin Key on the spin that he relentlessly uses? Who is the most passionate?

Parker, Shearer and Little are pleasant people and more than competent members of parliament but in my opinion the answer to this question is David Cunliffe.

The Waitakere Seat is still up for grabs

2011-11-27T00:50:00.000-08:00

So the election is over. Labour has had its worst result since the 1930s despite running a credible campaign. Winston is back. My strong impression is that he can thank otherwise loyal lefties who voted for him to make sure NZ First was over the threshold and able to oppose the sale of assets. This is one of the things that the review of MMP will have to address. The threshold should be lower so that there is a greater incentive for voters to support the party they actually prefer. Thankfully MMP will be retained.

Out west Carmel Sepuloni on election night figures has fallen just short of winning the Waitakere seat from Paula Bennett. She is 349 votes behind. This is a very credible result when the national swing of 7.1% against Labour is considered. With that sort of swing opposition parties normally do not normally pick up Government seats, particularly that of a high profile Minister.

But there is still doubt about the final result. There are up to 3,413 special votes to count as well as overseas special votes and there is still the possibility that Carmel may win.

Last election Lynne Pillay won 262 more special votes than Paula Bennett excluding overseas special votes that Lynne lost by 25. The total number of special votes cast excluding overseas votes was 2,931.

Despite a lower turnout this time the number of special votes cast excluding overseas votes was 3,413, an increase of 482. If a similar proportion of these votes compared to last time is valid then this equates to 3,388 votes. If Carmel gains a similar proportion of these votes that Lynne achieved then she will shave 303 votes off Bennett’s majority. Presuming the overseas votes are the same and presuming the special votes unfold as described then we are down to a knife edge 71 votes.

This time the local Labour organisation put a sterling effort into collecting special votes, more than last time, and it may be that Carmel will obtain a greater proportion of the special votes. If so then Paula’s proud to be a westie career may be at an end.

Paula where were you?

2011-11-23T09:09:00.000-08:00

I originally chose a pseudonym for all the normal reasons. I could maintain my anonymity, and say what I thought without fear of repercussions. I was outed a little while ago. A right winger spotted a similarity between a letter I had published in the Sunday Star Times and a comment I made on Kiwiblog and my identity was blown.

I then formally acknowledged it on the Standard after I was elected to the Waitakere Ranges Local Board. I thought it appropriate. As a sort of public figure I ought to stand up and be accountable for things that I say.

I have been the chair of the Titirangi Ratepayers Association for a while. I am trying to find a replacement but no one has put their hand up so I continue to hold this position. Part of the Association’s activities is to hold a meet the candidates meeting for local or national elections. I have organised three of them in the past. This was duly arranged and invites sent to all of the candidates for the New Lynn and Waitakere seats. Both seats were chosen because the area is primarily in the New Lynn seat but a small slither rests in the Waitakere seat. Also the extended invite allowed us to invite members of other residents and ratepayers associations and also to increase the prospects of having representatives of each party present.

I have always acknowledged that I have strongly held political views. Because of this I have arranged independent chairs to chair the debate itself. I also was exceptionally careful to make sure that my introductory and ending comments were scrupulously impartial.

This year we arranged another meeting. The invites went out. Most candidates accepted. Tim Groser apologised because of a prior commitment in Christchurch. Barbara Steinijans, the ACT candidate also apologised.

Paula Bennett also sent in an apology of sorts. She wrote:

I must admit your invitation did make me smile. I well remember 6 years ago as a very new candidate unwittingly going to this meeting that was a complete set up by the Labour Party and how appallingly it was run and how rude everyone was, fool me once and shame on me, fool me twice ...

Well it ain't going to happen. I will not be attending. Since the boundary changes around 4 years ago, none of the Waitakere electorate is in the Titirangi catchment - hence why I wasn't invited 3 years ago.

Anything involving you would be blatantly party political as you are the West Auckland Labour Party Chairman and constantly negatively blog about me under the pseudonym (sic) Mickeysavage, I could bring as many of my supporters to match the Labour stacking that will go on and everyone could have a mud slinging match, but what a waste of everyones (sic) time.

Enjoy your meeting.

Paula”

I was somewhat flummoxed by this. You see I did not chair the debate that time. I introduced the candidates and then handed over to a local Headmaster to chair the meeting. And I clearly recall her getting upset at David Cunliffe giving her a little bit of a ribbing. It was nothing really, especially compared to what happens in Parliament. I can recall thinking at the time that if she found this upsetting Parliament was going to be a shock.

I felt obliged to respond. I said:

Dear Paula

Six years ago I arranged for a local Headmaster of impeccable standing to chair the debate because I acknowledged that I have strong political views and I considered that an independent chair was appropriate. There were at least two members of the National Party on the TRRA executive at the time and I was careful to make sure that the meeting was conducted properly. I received no complaints and thought the meeting went well.

Last election we decided to have candidates from the Tamaki Makaurau seat, this time we thought that we should have Waitakere candidates again. And you are wrong, part of the Titirangi area is in the Waitakere seat. You should get out a map some time and check the boundaries.

This time Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse will chair the debate. Am I missing something?

As for blogging well using taxpayers money to advertise constituency clinics deserves criticism and your particular style of politics is appalling. Why someone who gained a degree using public funds should destroy the opportunity for others to do the same is beyond me. And your disrespect for the rights of privacy of beneficiaries while supporting a Prime Minister that tramples over the independence of the media in trying to protect rights of privacy that were surrendered as soon as he called a press conference is distressing in the extreme.

May this election return a Government that will work in the best interests of ordinary Kiwis.

By the way I am not the West Auckland Labour Party chair. There is no such position.”

I sent this email to Paula privately. Next morning when I realised that she had copied the Herald and the Western Leader into her original email I sent out a slightly more subdued email. The intention was that I would defend my position publicly rather than attack her.

Kiwiblog got hold of it. I was actually happy that Farrar printed the private email because I meant every word of my criticism of Paula.

Paula and Groser did not turn up to the meeting. It is a shame really. All the other candidates turned up and performed with passion.

David Cunliffe has not been able to debate with Groser once this campaign and given their respective standing this is astounding. David expressed his frustration very clearly last night. There were two empty seats where Paula and Groser should have been.

Not turning up seems to be a tactic by the tories. For instance Simon Bridges has refused to debate with the other candidates in Tauranga. Out west David has been unable to debate with Groser. Are they that scared?

Media bias - Who thought that Paul Henry was independent?

2011-11-21T11:04:00.000-08:00

I posted recently on Fairfax's undermining of Labour's Auckland's advertising with its Suburban Newspapers. The party spent a considerable amount of money on front page advertising. The effect was sabotaged by advertorials favourably featuring Key placed immediately above. The identical placement occurred in at least four of the suburban papers, the Papakura Courier, the East and Bays Courier, the North Shore Times and the Western Leader.

I understand that it was a decision made higher up the Fairfax management chain and that some of the editors were very upset at this order from on high. The whole incident reflects poorly on Fairfax and I am sure a complaint to the Press Council will be made.

Another incident of media bias occurred last night on TV3. Readers will be aware that TV3 is owned by Mediaworks, a company that has received the benevolence of a $43 million interest free loan from this Government.

The debate was fascinating. Phil Goff tried a slightly different approach and it worked very well. He was respectful of Key's time and was silent during it. By contrast when he spoke Key interrupted regularly. Goff looked far more like a Prime Minister than Key.

Phil also nailed the important themes of the Labour campaign. He spoke of ordinary people, the need for jobs and the need for a decent wage. He talked about our electricity assets which had been built by Kiwis over many decades and about the implications of selling them overseas.

Key by contrast looked tired and lacked the flair he has shown previously.

The worm made its return and clearly favored Goff. The debate audience controlled worm suggested that Goff won the debate decisively.

This has caused an apoplectic response from right wing attack bloggers Slater and Farrar who immediately set out on a witch hunt to name and shame people they say are Labour supporters. They obviously think that progressives' opinions should not be taken into account.

If they are looking for bias they should look no further than the choice of panelists who discussed the aftermath of the debate. Therese Arsenau is a logical choice, Duncan Garner has shown the ability to get stuck into both sides without fear, but choosing Paul Henry as the third panelist is frankly a disgraceful decision. He is as partisan as you can get, a former failed National Party candidate and someone whose rascist comments have attracted considerable attention in the past. Brian Edwards is correct in pointing out the inherent bias in having a panel with two independents and one right wing hack.

To his credit John Campbell early on questioned Henry's judgment and independence by asking after Henry had actually thought that or if he was reflecting his political beliefs. Campbell subsequently tweeted this:

CampbellLiveNZA clarification: The debate was a 3 News leaders debate. It was hosted by @JohnJCampbell but Campbell Live had no input into the panelists.

He conducted a really good debate and is obviously upset at the attempt to fix the result.

Farrar and Slater have done their job though. The lead story on TV3's nightlife news was all about supposed infiltration of the audience by Labour members. They should have looked at the management sanctioned infiltration of the "expert" panel by a rascist failed former National Party candidate. That is where the real story is.

Media Bias Fairfax style

2011-11-15T15:05:00.000-08:00

So we are well and truly into the middle of an intense Election campaign and it is less and less likely to be the cakewalk that had been predicted. Passions are rising and the only thing that can be expected is the unexpected. A simple cup of tea has suddenly attained intense significance because of discussions which if published could destroy four years of careful Crosby Texor work creating the perception that John Key is a nice person. Suggesting that a party's support will decline with the death of old people and planning a coup on the leader of your closest support party tends to have this sort of effect.

The media has a vital role to play in an election campaign. The way that issues are reported is important in allowing people to form an opinion and decide who they are going to support. More than any other time of the electoral cycle the media should be careful to ensure that perceptions of bias and preference are not created.

So I had to scratch my head at the latest Western Leader. At the bottom of the front page of the latest edition is an expensive paid advertisement for local Labour MPs. Similar ads are being rolled out throughout the region.

But immediately above is an article allegedly penned by John Key. A low res snapshot appears above. The article is here. It professes to be editorial copy. If not it breaches section 3A(2)(c) of the Electoral Act 1993 because it does not have a promoter statement.

The article is something that I would expect the media in the Soviet Union or in Communist North Korea. It reads like a tribute to "Glorious Leader". Key was directly associated with Surf Lifesaving New Zealand, one of the country's most loved organisations and after reading it you get the impression that singlehandedly he is ensuring SLNZ's survival.

The campaign involves the Mad Butcher and Suburban Newspapers Community Trust as well as Surf Lifesaving NZ and is to raise money for much needed equipment. Why it is released 10 days out from and election and why they chose to have Key front it beggars belief. Even if you get past that why it should be placed immediately above Labour's advertisement beggars belief.

The text is perfect PR speech and includes phrases like the following:

"In my time as prime minister – and as Helensville MP – I've had the chance to visit surf clubs around the country and chat to lifeguards young and old. Their enthusiasm and community spirit is simply outstanding. They do a great job.
Lifeguards help make our beaches safer, educate Kiwis about water safety and enable thousands of people to take part in fun and exciting surf sports every year."

The North Shore Times and the East and Bays Courier have also placed this advertorial immediately above the Labour ads in their latest editions.

Either this is an astounding coincidence or a complete oversight or Fairfax is attempting to spike Labour's advertising. If the latter it has well and truly overstepped the mark in interfering in New Zealand's democratic system. National and Brand Key is getting free advertising while Labour has to pay. Rupert Murdoch should be ashamed.

No matter what Labour deserves a refund. And an apology.

Billboard Wars

2011-11-13T14:09:00.000-08:00

Out in Waitakere things are heating up. Bene basher bully Bennett’s helpers have been playing silly buggers with Labour billboards. As reported by Carmel Sepuloni Paula’s campaign manager Mark Brickell was seen taking down some labour signs from a fence. When asked what he thought he was doing he said the people who owned the Fence had said Labour was not given permission to put the signs up and that they had wanted them down.

There is a truth and reality problem with this explanation though. Carmel’s crew were told at one house that Bennett had shown up wanting to know why they had let Labour put a sign up and at at no point did they ask her or her team to take it down. The sign is back up now.

It is poor form for a Cabinet Minister to terrorise Waitakere constituents for putting up a Labour billboard. There again when you think of the appalling way she treated Natasha Fuller this behavior is not surprising.

Meanwhile a wag has designed a tweak to ensure that National's billboards accurately portray what they intend to do if reelected to Government.

UPDATE: Apparently Carmel has spoken to the owner of a second site where Labour billboards were taken down by National and the owner denies giving any such instruction ...

What decade of deficits?

2011-11-11T10:10:00.000-08:00

If there is something that drives me around the bend more than anything else about modern political discourse it is the claim that Labour left the country with a decade of deficits. This is a mantra repeated continuously. It has the benefit for the right that they do not have to debate what happened. All they have to do is shout "decade of deficits" and look smug and they think they have the argument won.

And it will not stop. If (God forbid) John Key is still in power in 2017 two things can be predicted:

1. I will be living overseas somewhere, probably Norway.

2. Key will blame the then appalling state of the Country's economy on the fifth Labour Government.

So what is the source of the "decade of deficits" claim? It is the 2008 PREFU.

What did this document actually state?

The Ministerial Statement by Michael Cullen is a great read. In typically elegant Michael Cullen prose he said:

Nine years of prudent fiscal management and sustained economic growth means that New Zealand is well placed to deal with these challenging times. Despite calls to spend the surpluses in recent years this government has adhered to our fiscal objectives and has reduced Gross Sovereign Issued Debt (GSID) so that we can meet the economic challenges ahead, while still delivering tax cuts and support for families.

While the international position has worsened over recent months New Zealand has been in what is forecast to be a short and relatively shallow recession ...

New Zealand is well placed to manage the external shock that our economy has endured. So while today’s report card highlights how critically important it was to utilise more favourable international and domestic economic times to save for a rainy day, it also tells us that the rainy day has arrived and that the Crown’s fiscal position has taken a big hit...

The New Zealand economy has come a long way since 1999:

the 1999 Pre-EFU forecast an unemployment rate of 7.0% in the March 2000 quarter compared with this Pre-EFU forecast of 4.4% unemployment in the March 2009 quarter
real gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 2.9% from 1990 to 1999 compared with 3.5% from 1999 to 2007
in 1999 net core Crown debt sat at 21.8% of GDP but this moved into a positive net financial asset position (including NZ Super Fund assets) since 2006, and
in 1999, GSID was above 35% of GDP but it has been brought down to below the government’s medium-term target.
And we have achieved all this while enhancing social equality and while delivering significant gains for New Zealanders including:
the longest period of economic expansion since WWII
strong investment in New Zealand’s infrastructure after the 1990s decade of neglect
lower primary health care costs
restoring and lifting entitlements in superannuation
tax relief for businesses, savers and families with children, and
personal tax cuts for all workers.

This Government is proud of what it has achieved during the past three terms. The New Zealand economy of 2008 is much stronger and more sustainable than that of 1999 and it is also fairer.

The document itself confirmed that the international outlook, the slowing of the domestic housing market and increasing pressure on households and businesses were significant developments. This caused Treasury to expect weaker economic growth over the next few years, resulting in slower growth in tax revenue and higher government expenditure. Combined with increases in the costs of some existing policies, these factors lead to sustained operating balance deficits and higher debt-to-GDP ratios.

So Labour is being blamed for overseas events of which it had no chance of affecting and for local land speculation. One can only imagine the fury and onslaught that would have occurred if Labour had tried to introduce a Capital Gains Tax like the one it is proposing now.

Some of the forecasts are fascinating. Growth in the GDP for the 2010/11 year was expected to be 3.3%. Under Key it was actually 1.4%. Unemployment in 2011 was predicted at 4.8%. It was 6.6%. The operating balance was predicted to be a deficit of $100 million. It was a deficit of $18.4 billion, only half of which could be blamed on the Canterbury earthquakes.

The biggest cost increase was anticipated to be the increase in benefit costs. As can be seen above the increase was much greater than anticipated. This is what happens when you elect a Government that does nothing about unemployment.

The bottom line is that the reduction of income and the increase in benefit costs were the largest contributors to the "decade of deficits". Claims that it was caused by "out of control" increases in Government spending do not stack up.

Rubbery John

2011-11-10T00:44:00.000-08:00

I went to the Whenuapai meet the candidates meeting recently. Key was there along with Labour’s Jeremy Greenbrook-Held, the Green's Jeanette Elley, some guy from ALCP who made lot of sense at times, an ACT candidate who is not going to vote for himself and an unfortunate Conservative Party candidate who promised to actually do what he promises unless a binding referendum says otherwise.

The format of the meeting was that the candidates were asked to answer four questions, three prepared and a fourth which was not told to them until the night. And there was a fifth question sprung on them as a surprise. No questions from the floor were allowed. I suspect this was a Key requirement for his attending.

The seat is a graveyard for anyone but Key. He won last time with a majority of 20,547, the highest in the country. If he loses this time then questions can rightfully be asked.

But there are party votes at stake. A vote in Helensville is worth the same as a vote in Auckland Central. Labour missed out last time on getting a further MP by 39 party votes nationwide so it is clear that every vote is precious.

Jeremy Greenbrook-Held performed really well. He started off a bit nervously and read from his notes when responding to the first question. But after this he hammered the Labour line about the stupidity of selling our assets. His response to the question about why he would be the best local MP was extraordinarily good. He emphasised how much he was a part of Helensville and how his roots were so solidly based in the area. He mentioned the MP for Parnell and said how proud he would be to be the representative for Helensville. He acknowledged how he was not going to win but said that Key was not going to get a free ride. Democracies need more people like Jeremy.

Jeanette Elley was also impressive. She also knew her stuff and spoke from the heart. The Labour people in the crowd also acknowledged her contribution.

ACT's Nick Kearney summed up what is wrong with the party. He acknowledged that he will not vote for himself but will vote for Key. And he reemphasised that ACT will not be an independent functioning political party based on fulfilling its pledges to the electorate but instead would act as a lap dog for the National Party. MMP needs less poodle parties.

Key was superficially impressive. He is like a little kid with a stick trying to upset a hive of bees. He obviously relishes any sort of argument. He is a master at spin. He will take any area of concern, for instance unemployment, and trot out a simplistic statistic that at best is not relevant and at worst is misleading. He claimed that his government had created 60,000 jobs in the past 12 months. All that I can see is that the unemployment rate has doubled and National's promise of 170,000 new jobs over 3 years looks forlorn.

But this is the essence of brand Key. You just have to have a statistic that you can quote and look confident and smile and wave and you have won the battle. Your cocky self confidence will carry the day. Who cares what the reality is?

The trouble is I kept thinking about what Key said and I have to conclude that he kept saying fibs.

Fiscal responsibility was one of his main themes. Without being embarrassed he kept saying National was responsible and Labour was irresponsible with the finances.

He promised $400 million for the Canterbury irrigation fund. Yesterday National also promised the delay in some sectors coming into the ETS at a cost I understand of $500 million. This is the thick end of a billion dollars worth of spending and it all has to be funded by borrowing.

So where is the money coming from John? And when is the MSM going to call him for what he is? Rubbery John has a certain ring to it ...

A week is a long time in politics

2011-11-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

So we are well and truly into the election campaign and it is impressive the subtle but direct way the right wing are campaigning. The left are relying on people power, billboards, pamphlets, doorknocking and face to face discussions to persuade our fellow Kiwis that there has to be a better way. The right wing appear at one level to be passive, you do not see them, they use hired help to get their billboards up and rely on Key’s charisma and the MSM to get their message across. The power of money is evident. All over Auckland giant expensive National billboards are going up and Labour activists can only watch as their efforts are dwarfed in size.

It has not been the best of weeks for Labour. Phil Goff started strongly but in a public debate his caution and cries of “show us the money” and the inability to get a word in sideways has cost him dearly. I watched this and had two thoughts, Key should stop acting like a performing seal and Goff should be given the chance to respond. Neither happened.

And now we get the MSM onslaught. The hollowing out of the MSM means that they are more and more reliant on the blogs to tell them what is happening. The right have this well organised. They have their attack dog Cameron Slater who has the illusion that Labour is a “nasty party” and will attack without conscience or understanding. They have David Farrar who has built up this exquisitely sophisticated front as an independent commentator but who appears to me to be essentially a mouthpiece for the National Party. And they have Matthew Hooton, described in the Hollow Men book as an “idiot”.

Hooton has been especially interesting lately. He alleged without evidence that Labour has engaged in attempted manipulation of Ipredict but then refused to comment on a very clear example of right wing manipulation. Yesterday on Radio New Zealand he hinted that David Cunliffe had tried to sabotage Phil Goff last week by not providing him with a briefing. Nothing could be further from the truth. The draft costings have been in existence for a while and Goff knew in general terms what the figures are. I thought Goff just struggled to get the information out because Key kept overtalking him. But Hooton’s comment was picked up by the Dominion’s Andrea Vance. And David’s Ipredict stock for becoming the future leader then suddenly plunged to as low as .20c before returning to its more normal level of .50c.

Obviously the right fear Cunliffe and so they should. He is unusual for a Labour politician. He has business experience yet is through his family and upbringing tribal labour. He has a keen intellect and is able to express very simply complex ideas. He has not been bested yet by his opponent in any debate. I am confident that he would overshadow Key if he is the Labour leader and stands out amongst the group who could be considered as potential future leaders.

The technique employed by the right is really subtle, work in the background, plant an idea, influence the media, affect measures of popularity then voila the opinion polls back you up. Progressives need to work out how to respond to this.

John Key, how about you show us the money?

2011-11-04T12:15:00.000-07:00

The past week of the campaign has been fascinating. Labour started off strongly. The policy launches were well received. Kiwis actually like being told what their prospective Government plans to do. Labour's announcements have dominated policy debates and Phil Goff performed exceptionally well in the first Leader's debate.

Then the second debate happened. The majority view appears to be that Goff was doing well but lost it when Key came out with the "show us the money" line. Interestingly the MC thought that Goff had won.

And the MSM dutifully fell behind and said that Goff lost the debate because Key said "show us the money" and Goff did not respond. They bought into the meme that Labour is not a competent financial manager. This is despite nine years of competent management which saw net debt paid off and the Government spend as a proportion of GDP decrease significantly.

Running the country is a really serious job. I just wished that the media would treat it as such and research the issues rather than buy into the political spin.

Yesterday Labour came out with its costings. Yesterday was chosen for two reasons:

1. It allowed the PREFU data to be integrated into the analysis. The party was insisting that the analysis be coherent and based on the latest data.
2. Because the costings referred to individual policy packages it was important that all of the policy announcements had been made beforehand.

The PREFU was published on October 25, 2011 some 10 days before Labour's opening of the books. It was a herculean task to have the analysis ready on time.

Key probably knew this. So by jumping up and down like a trained seal and saying "where is the money" he was bound to get a generalised response from Goff.

It is regrettable that the MSM has bought into this. They ought to realise that presentation of three years worth of financial data for the country cannot be presented in a soundbite. But they have allowed Key to say there was a $17 billion, then $14 billion, then an $11 billion gap without questioning the veracity of his analysis. Rob Salmond at Pundit has done a good job deciphering National's figures and detailing some glaringly bad suppositions.

And the media has been drowned with allegations of financial incompetence from both sides. The language has been getting tetchy.

For me the veracity of the claims is easy to resolve. National has a major credibility problem. It intends to sell $6 billion worth of Power Company shares but has not taken the dividend out of the country's accounts. It gets the benefit of the sale but does not lose the dividend stream. If Key can achieve this he is a financial genius. But I suspect that the purchasers of our country's power company shares will insist that they benefit from the income earned.

There are other patchy areas in their latest Budget, a billion dollars of savings with no idea where they are going to come from and an optimism in this figures that caused the IRD to insert a disclaimer.

The size of the dividend stream has been an issue for a while. Ever since the Budget the treatment of the power companies dividends has been an issue. That it is still not properly accounted for in the country's accounts is appalling. Let me put this simply. When you sell shares you lose the income. If your accounts still show the income then there is something really wrong. If you are a small business owner and your accountant is that incompetent they do this you should get a new accountant and sue the old one if they cause you loss. If your country does this you should vote the government out of power and never trust them with power again.

Waitakere - If you want to get rid of Paula you have to vote for Carmel

2011-11-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Act is not standing a candidate in the Waitakere seat. This appears to be a deal with National to improve Paula Bennett's chances.

Bennett's majority last election was a knife edge 632. This is the narrowest majority in the region and Labour is determined to win the seat back. Labour's candidate, Carmel Sepuloni has been an energetic and competent candidate and backed by an intense local party effort is poised to win the seat back.

But the race is tight and minor candidate votes will be important.

Last time there were nine candidates. Four of them were competing for voters in the same part of the political spectrum as Labour. These included Sandra Ethell, the Alliance candidate (78 votes), Fia Misa Tupou, the New Zealand Pacific Party Candidate (448), Craig McNair the NZFirst Candidate (597) and Michael Kidd the Family First Candidate (358). The Alliance has now folded as has the New Zealand Pacific Party and Michael Kidd has interestingly joined the local Labour Party. None of these parties are standing candidates this time. It is likely that most of these votes will go either to Labour or the Greens although Family First votes could splinter unpredictably.

Of the others not standing this time John Riddell, the ACT candidate gained 482 votes. It is likely that many if not most of these votes will go Paula's way.

This time there are three new party candidates standing. Jeff Lye is standing for the Legalise Aotearoa Party. Overall last time they achieved 0.41 of the party vote. An equivalent result locally would mean 129 votes, mostly obtained from the Green Party. Danny Mountain is standing for the Conservative Party. I suspect that the Conservatives could do well as they are well funded and may attract support that previously went to the ACT party. Any votes he gets will probably come from the right although conservative Pacifica may think about supporting him.

The most important new candidate is Mana Party's Sue Bradford. She has a strong standing with the left and it is likely she will win some votes that may otherwise go to Carmel Sepuloni. But she will have a stronger drawing power amongst Green voters and the effect on Labour voters is not easy to anticipate. The Green's Gary Stewart last time won 1,676 votes and it may be that these votes will be shared between the Mana and the Green candidates this time.

Obviously strategic voting by third party supporters is going to be vital.

By not standing a candidate ACT have well and truly shown that it is a puppet of the National Party. Clearly it has been taken over by forces associated with National. Its only role it seems is to secure further support for National and to help Bennett get reelected.

All good progressives can counter this by endorsing Carmel Sepuloni and by asking their voters to vote strategically. Steve Tollestrup, the Green's affable and talented candidate, is understood to be supportive. If he and Sue Bradford were able to publicly support Carmel this could be decisive.

Overall I do not think that the current candidate line up necessarily hurts Carmel's chances. But it is important to emphasise that if people want to get rid of Paula they have to vote for Carmel.

The Leaders' Debate - David verses Goliath

2011-10-31T10:38:00.000-07:00

I blogged a couple of weeks ago indicating that perhaps Labour has a chance in this election after all. It still seems unlikely, although the polls are showing the margin is shrinking, it still has a long way to go before Labour has a chance.

Labour are in the position where they have to run a perfect campaign and hope that Key stumbles. They are the rank outsiders and must rely on luck and grit to get through.

In the past week they have done well. Last Thursday they neatly avoided discussion on why they did not have a campaign launch by touching the third rail of politics and announcing a gradual increase in the age of eligibility for national superannuation. The subject has dominated policy discussions ever since and has shown that Goff and the Party are brave and will without fear address the issues. On Friday they they launched the most stunning campaign film I have ever seen.

Then on Sunday they elegantly promised half the funding needed for the inner city loop by cancelling the holiday highway, funding the necessary safety enhancements for the existing highway from Puhoi to Wellsford, diverting funds into the loop and having change to spare.

The holiday highway is a weird idea. It has a benefit cost ratio of 0.8, that is for every dollar spent 80c came back in benefits. Motorways normally have a benefit cost ratio of two or more, so the holiday highway is an extravagant luxury, or to put it another way, a waste of money.

Yesterday started with Key refusing to appear on National Radio with Phil Goff. Goff had the privilege of time on radio by himself. Given the political leaning of the audience I am not sure how many votes were gained but this is not a good look for Key.

And onto the debate. I must concede that Goff initially looked more nervous than Key who looked very relaxed and polished. But Goff stuck to it. Key was superficially plausible but on watching the film for a second time I get the strong impression that he was telling fibs on a number of occasions. The impression was definitely that Goff was more direct and straightforward with his responses.

Key kept talking as if he was still in opposition. He spoke of National's goals, for instance to return to surplus without acknowledging that this year he has run an $18 billion deficit. He also accused Goff of reckless spending whereas I am pretty sure that Goff is not the Prime Minister at this time and has no control over the Government's spend.

Key trotted out the familiar slogans, "fiscally neutral tax cuts", "moving families off welfare", and "decade of deficits". No new Crosby Textor type slogans were presented however and one wonders if they are still retained.

Goff was very good on the core labour issues such as the minimum wage, tax cuts for the wealthy and the stupidity of asset sales. He kept returning to these themes. He was particularly good on tax cuts for the wealthy and acknowledged the benefit that he and Key received from National's tax cuts. He personalised the effects and acknowledged that he and Key had benefitted by far too much from the Government's decisions.

Environmental issues also showed the starkness of approaches. Goff opposes deep sea drilling without very strong safeguards and ruled out mining in National Parks, Key clearly supports the expansion of mining in New Zealand. Key thought clearly that farmers were already paying too much for Kyoto credits and wants a "massive mining centre".

Afghanistan was raised. Goff and Labour will bring our troops home. Key kept saying that the SAS would be returned at the end of this current term but refused to commit to not returning them next March.

When asked about telling the truth Key talked about a "dynamic environment" and how "circumstances change". Goff did not muck around and accused Key of lying. Goff also fronted up to criticisms of past changes and acknowledged that he was wrong to support asset sales three decades ago.

The questions from viewers were an interesting choice and favored Key. The first suggested that the public service was inefficient. I just wish that someone would question the efficiency of the world's merchant banks. The second was from a business owner who clearly does not want business costs to increase. The third was about a new flag. The fourth suggested that mining was necessary because of the economic value especially in coal. The fifth was justified and from the family representatives of the Pike River miners. The last was the only leftie type question that asked about kiwis being sent to Afghanistan to kill the locals.

If you did not know the detail Key was superficially plausible. But after three years I get the feeling that more and more people are seeing through the rhetoric and are worrying about their future. If they want to trust someone with their future then on tonight's policies Phil Goff is their man.

National's main problem is that Key is the centre and cornerstone of the National campaign. Everything depends on him. An even debate is a loss for National because they are already losing the policy debate.

The last couple of minutes were set aside for comments supplied by text. The last said

"Phil Goff has won most questions if not all. Not a Labour voter but I am impressed. Your commentators' views that Key doing better astounds me."

I could not agree with him more.

The Battle for Epsom

2011-10-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the All Blacks. Despite being overwhelming favorites and against a side that was written off by everyone they managed to just beat the gallant French. Instead of smug superiority there should be relief in the hearts and minds of Kiwis. I can think of no better metaphor for the 2011 election where a rank outsider rises to the challenge. And the funny thing about MMP is that if you just lose and your natural coalition partner does way better than theirs, chances are you are in Government.

Just as in 2008 National is high in the polls, with some suggesting that its support is in the mid 50s. But in 2008 a 20 plus point margin in the polls evaporated to an 11% gap on the official results. And if Labour can get over the 34% mark then traditional MMP dynamics will kick in and the election will be all about the minor parties.

It does appear that National has taken a major hit over the Rena shipwreck. National will pray that there is not the gradual leaking of oil onto Tauranga's pristine beaches over the next 5 weeks. There could be no more compelling reminder of National's insistence on "cutting the back office" and what this means in reality. I have heard comments that internal polling suggests National may already have taken a 6% hit in the polls primarily because of Rena. The steady drip of oil may match the steady evaporation of its poll support.

If this is the case and the polls are narrowing then National could have a problem. The focus will be on the minor parties and how they are faring.

Labour has much in common with the Greens. Despite a somewhat tense relationship their fundamental principles are broadly similar. Both believe in social justice, protection of the environment and active management of the state for the benefit of ordinary New Zealanders and both refuse to believe that leaving things to the invisible hand of the market will achieve these goals.

The Greens are doing well. The latest Roy Morgan poll using data taken up to October 9 had their support at 9.5% but I understand that recent National losses have been met by Green gains. They are on track for their best election performance.

And I cannot imagine them going into coalition with National, even though they have not explicitly ruled this out. Catherine Delahaunty for instance said she would resign if the Greens went into coalition with national. She also said:

I don't think it's going to happen so I don't think I'm going to have to ask myself that question. I don't see why the Greens would because we're not stupid."

If the Greens did go into coalition I suspect this would lead to their demise as a political entity into New Zealand.

So all eyes are on ACT. They are polling well below 5%. They have become a toxic party and the behavior of their MPs such as Rodney Hide (perk busted and misogynistic), David Garret (stole a dead baby's identity) amongst others have in my view fatally tarnished their brand. National's own image must be taking a hit from their association with ACT.

The take over of ACT by National has firmly made them into a puppet party. They were taken over by National operatives and a former National Leader and Cabinet Minister occupy their two top positions. If they do not get over the line or win Epsom then resources and right wing votes are going to be wasted.

I get the strong impression that National is backpedaling in its support for ACT in Epsom and Key is maneuvering himself into a position where he can consign ACT to political history. The publishing of poll results through Farrar's website and Key's statement that he will be voting for Goldsmith are indicators that National want to be able to move either way. Farrar's helpful reproduction of David Parker's comments on the campaign was eye opening.

And the media is starting to respond. The normally supportive TV3 has described the deal over Epsom as "filthy".

I think that National needs to be cautious. Tthe Epsom voters are intelligent and will not accept National instructions no matter what. ACT in Epsom could be too big a dead rat to take.

And Banks' performance has been poor. He is a political metronome, he latches onto one phrase and will regurgitate it continuously. He is a very poor debater, and David Parker is an excellent choice for Labour in that he will be able to highlight these weaknesses. The recent debate on Q and A was a classic example of this. Banks continuously regurgitated the line that Labour was the "tax borrow spend and hope". His statement was bizarre in that Labour had paid off pretty well all of the Crown's debt during its reign while National had borrowed $38 billion in its short time in office. He did not answer when Parker put to him that Auckland City's debt had trebled under his reign.

The ACT campaign has limped from disaster to disaster. I get the feeling that one further disaster will be the end of ACT's aspirations.

Is it Phil Goff's time?

2011-10-14T01:34:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I thought that Goff and Labour did not have a chance in this election. National's lead in the polls seemed too big, the country still seemed to be in love with John Key and Goff just was not getting the media cut through necessary to change hearts and minds.

I thought that Labour would limp through to the election, through a herculean effort get its core vote out, score in the low 30s and with the Greens being at about 8 % be well short of National. Goff would then be deposed, would probably retire and be but a footnote in New Zealand's history. The main point of interest was if National (shudder) managed to get sufficient votes to rule in its own right, or if it would need the support of the minor parties to form a Government.

Then something happened. The wheels started to fall off National's well honed machine.

There was a double credit rating downgrade. This was doubly damaging for National given Key's measuring of the success of the 2009 budget by the fact that an alleged possible downgrade was apparently avoided. The double whammy suggests that the credit rating agencies do not think highly of Key's performance.

Then Key was caught out telling a lie saying that S&P said a downgrade would be more likely under Labour. His defence was weak in the extreme and consisted of providing an anonymous email that did not back up what he alleged. The media did not believe him.

National was forced to retreat on the proposed emergency Video Surveillance legislation when its proposal that the legislation have retrospective effect was widely panned by just about everyone. Interestingly in Parliament Hone Harawira talked about a senior politician being caught out having an affair with a woman involved in the consumption of pseudoephedrine and one waits with interest to see who it is. If and when the news comes out a major scandal will no doubt ensue.

Key in Parliament bizarrely blamed the Labour Party after a person with obvious mental health problems tried to throw himself onto the floor of Parliament from the public gallery. Key then engaged in "Kapa o Pango" and on Parliament's cameras clearly made a throat cutting gesture to the Labour side.

Goff responded superbly. His speech given immediately after the incident was one of the best I have seen. He showed passion, grit and determination and the ability to react and think on his

feet even after being confronted by a potential tragedy.

And then the Rena shipwreck happened. The Government was shown to be hamfisted and slow in its response. Four days of good weather was wasted so that an environmental tragedy is inevitable. There is this feeling of unease that New Zealand's "back office" is not up to scratch because of this Government's efforts.

Over the past two years Goff has been hammered by the forces of the right, by the media and a meme has been constructed that he is not leadership material. This attack has worked well, the population at large are indifferent to him and even amongst the ranks of the left he is treated with caution. But it may be that his time has come.

And so Labour and Goff are suddenly back in the game and Key's teflon coating looks chipped. If National does not get a majority then it will have to look to Act for support.

Act look very vulnerable. Brash and Banks have had a very public disagreement about decriminalising cannabis and none of the existing MPs are standing again. The leaks that have occurred ever since Heather Roy was deposed as deputy appear to be continuing. And you can't help but think that they are one major scandal away from oblivion ...

So a resurgent Labour and a solid Green result could result in something that two weeks ago seemed almost impossible, a Phil Goff Prime Ministership. He may be one great campaign performance away from this.

The Video Surveillance Bill is much improved, but ...

2011-10-03T16:06:00.000-07:00

The Justice and Electoral Select Committee has reported back the Video Search and Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill and the bill has benefitted from the select committee process. There are a number of significant improvements. The retrospective effects of the bill with one important exception have been removed. Powers of search have been reduced. The Bill if enacted will only be in effect for 6 months.

But there is a dead rat lurking in the Bill. The power to appeal a conviction because of video surveillance evidence being improperly admitted has been removed. Previously an appeal could be lodged on the basis that the decision in Hamed represents a change in the law. Generally the chances of an appeal succeeding are poor, it has to be shown that there was a miscarriage of justice. As shown in Hamed the Court has a discretion to admit otherwise improperly acquired evidence, that the evidence would otherwise have been excluded, and that the totality of the evidence was not sufficient to maintain the conviction.

Others have commented on this. Dean Knight for instance said

I understand the concern about not wanting to open up the floodgates, to free criminals already convicted. But this caveat means the legislation would still have some retrospective effect, deeming lawful what has been found to be unlawful.

So why did the committee do this? The National MP's report in the bill contains this interesting passage:

Prior to [the date of the Supreme Court in Hamed], covert video camera surveillance was not prohibited under common law, and convictions were lawfully obtained on the basis of its results.

This continues the National line that Hamed was a bolt out of the blue and caught everyone by surprise. As I argued previously I thought that this was a gross misrepresentation of the state of the law and, backed by some very clear comments by a number of Justices the Police's position that they were caught by surprise was clearly untenable.

The Rule of Law requires that access to the Courts is maintained for all and the effect of a law change should not be retrospective unless there are good reasons. As far as I can see no estimate of the number of cases that may have been affected was made and I suspect it would be few. The time for filing such an appeal would have expired and special leave would be required. There is the extra difficulty that Section 30 of the Evidence Act 2007 still allows the admission of improperly obtained evidence. But Parliament should not shut off chances of an appeal on the basis that it may not like the decision.

Of course only historical cases only would be affected and there would be no implications for current video surveillance operations. There could be an unknown number of appeals, probably very few but the Committee did not know. And the chances of success would be remote. But if the rule of law applies then this possibility should be preserved.

Labour went along with it, reluctantly. It is clear that this was part of a package deal. They have improved the bill greatly but I am sure the Nats put this dead rat in so that Labour would be tainted.

Not that this exonerates National. They proposed the change. They have obviously insisted that it remain despite the fact there is no evidence suggesting this change is necessary. The oft quoted statistic of there being 90 cases under threat obviously does not apply. The fact that the objections to retrospectively are now more muted does not make it right.

Keith Locke was the Green Member on the Committee and filed a minority report. He said:

The bill retrospectively denies any person already convicted the right to use the Hamed decision as part of an appeal. That is contrary to a fundamental legal principle, that people engaged in court proceed- ings have resort to the law as it applied at the time of the alleged offence …

Labour through the select committee process has improved the bill tremendously and should be complimented for this. But the ruling out of appeals is a knee jerk reaction that may have been totally unnecessary but is still a breach of long existing constitutional principles. Politics is a absolute mud pit sometimes …

Submit! But you only have today to do so ...

2011-09-28T01:20:00.000-07:00

Following is my submission to Parliament on the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill. Please submit if you have the chance, although the timeline is so truncated that you have to get them in today ...

You can submit online here:

My submission:

1. The chance to present this submission is appreciated.

2. Because of the extraordinarily short timeframes this submission is hastily drafted and the analysis less than perfect. Changes to law should always unless completely unavoidable be conducted carefully and with as great an opportunity for submissions to be presented as is possible.

3. My primary concern that will be addressed in this submission is that the proposed legislation has a retrospective effect. The constitutional convention is that legislation with retrospective effect should never occur unless there are exceptional reasons to do so. If passed the law change will affect current trials apart from the Urewera trial itself. The Government maintains that there are exceptional reasons, the Attorney General maintains that the bill is just to “preserve the common law prior to the Supreme Court decision”. If this is not the case then I submit that retrospective legislation cannot be justified.

4. So what was the “common law” before the Supreme Court decision? A distinction needs to be made between “over the fence” surveillance where the filming occurs from a place where there is authority for the camera to be, for instance in a public place or from property where the owner or occupier has given specific permission, and filming where a trespass has to occur for the camera to be put in place. There are cases suggesting the former can be acceptable but to my reading there is little if any jurisprudence concerning the latter.

5. It has been claimed that a number of Court of Appeal decisions over the past 15 years have established the right for the Police to use covert surveillance. Decisions commonly cited include Gardiner (CA239/97), Fraser (CA19/97), Hodgkinson (CA221/10) and the Court of Appeal’s consideration of Hamed itself.

6. Gardiner and Fraser both involved filming from a place where a trespass did not occur. In each case the Court took the view that unless police actions in undertaking video surveillance are prohibited by statute or otherwise constitute an actionable wrong such as trespass, they are lawful at common law. Gardiner and Fraser involved filming that was considered not to be too intrusive and in both cases the evidence obtained was admitted.

7. Hodgkinson contained obiter comments which suggest that covert video surveillance could occur pursuant to a search warrant issued under the Summary Proceedings Act 1957. It is noted that the date of this decision was September 1, 2010, well after the filming in the Urewera case commenced. Interestingly in this case the Crown conceded that a Summary Proceedings Act search warrant could not authorise unmanned video surveillance (paragraph 42).

8. The Court of Appeal when considering Hamed thought that the filming was authorised by the search warrants that were issued and that there was no difficulty in allowing the evidence to be produced. This was overruled by all of the members of the Supreme Court on appeal.

9. So none of the cases relied on ruled that evidence obtained through covert surveillance that involved a trespass was admissible or that there was a right to video covertly. In two cases no trespass occurred, in the third discretion was exercised to allow the evidence in, and in the fourth it was thought the search warrant provided authority for the filming but the decision was made on the basis that it did not.

10. When you consider the recommendations of the Law Commission in 2007 and the fact that the Search and Surveillance Bill introduced two years ago was to address the problems identified in the Commission’s report you really have to question the contention that the common law was settled.

11. What is really disturbing is that the contention runs counter to a number of clear judicial pronouncements and rulings in the Hamed case. These include the following (all taken from the Supreme Court decision in Hamed):

Chief Justice Elias	“[73] I regard it as a significantly exacerbating factor that the film surveillance was undertaken deliberately without legal authority, in the knowledge that there was no lawful investigatory technique available to be used. … [i]n circumstances where the police officer in charge of the inquiry knew that there was no authority to be obtained for such filmed surveillance, the deliberate unlawfulness of the police conduct in the covert filming, maintained over many entries and over a period of some 10 months, is destructive of an effective and credible system of justice.”
Justice Blanchard	“[175] … [e]ven taking the view most favourable to them, the police seem to have been prepared over and over to run the risk of acting in breach of the law. They did not obtain legal advice and should have done so.” “[194] … [t]he police understood that the warrants did not authorise the video surveillance and that their conduct in relation to the video surveillance might well be legally questionable.”
Justice Tipping	“[234] If the breach was not deliberate it was undoubtedly reckless because, at best, the position in law was decidedly unclear and, in the very difficult and unusual circumstances facing them, the police, extraordinary as it may seem, did not obtain any legal advice. It is difficult to resist the inference that formal legal advice was not sought because the police knew or strongly suspected what the advice would be and that it would make it more difficult for them to proceed as they intended. [235] In view of the conclusion I have reached, it is not necessary to determine whether this state of affairs amounted to bad faith. It is enough to say that I find it impossible to hold that the police honestly believed that the video surveillance was lawfully undertaken.”
Justice McGrath	“[278] … It would be unfair to the appellants to fully vindicate the police actions simply because the unlawfulness largely stemmed from a sluggish response elsewhere in government to the courts’ concerns over the absence of legislation on the subject of video surveillance.”
Justice Winkelmann (High Court)	Made a finding that the police continued to use surveillance cameras with the knowledge, at a senior level at least, that they had no lawful authority to do so.

12. The Government’s contention is clearly counter to explicit recent findings by the Judiciary. The Attorney General is saying that four Supreme Court Justices are wrong.

13. I submit that Clause 5(1)(a) should be deleted in its entirety. To legislate retrospectively is repugnant to all sorts of understandings of constitutional propriety. The purported justification is clearly not agreed to by the Judiciary and the use of this justification has the potential to adversely affect the relationship between Parliament and the Judiciary. The fact that the changes are being rushed through only makes things worse, much worse.

14. The country is in the interesting situation where the Government is prepared to advance an argument which four Supreme Court Justices have expressly ruled against to justify action that in constitutional terms is appalling. The Government’s justification, that the law was settled, was not accepted by the Supreme Court. If this legislation is passed we are in for an interesting time.

Covert surveillance should not be allowed retrospectively

2011-09-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

The urgent legislation the Government is rolling out in response to the Supreme Court decision in Hamed is looking like a well-choreographed dance. Two months before the election the Government is planning to ram through legislation that is constitutionally abhorrent and trying to put Labour in a position where it has no choice but to oppose. Labour is intending to put up an alternative bill. But I am sure that it will not succeed and I am reasonably certain that the Government will ensure that its bill has retrospective effect no matter what the damage to our constitution.

There are all sorts of constitutional principles at play here. Courts determine the law, and if Parliament does not agree with a Court’s interpretation of the law then it has the option to change the law through legislation. By convention however it does not change the law with retrospective effect. Citizens need to have the benefit of certainty of the law. Changes should be gradual and subject to intense scrutiny with the ability of citizens to comment. And once a citizen is charged it is almost unheard of for Parliament to change the rules. By doing so it may effectively be legislating to send citizens to jail without the benefit of the rule of law applying and in constitutional terms this is the sort of thing you would expect from modern day Fiji or Zimbabwe, not New Zealand.

It is accepted that where well-settled law is found to be defective or there is a mistake then retrospective legislation may be appropriate. This is why the Government has consistently said that its bill is just to “preserve the common law prior to the Supreme Court decision”. If this is not the case then retrospective legislation cannot be justified.

So what was the common law before the Supreme Court decision? A distinction needs to be made between “over the fence” surveillance where the filming occurs from a place where there is authority for the camera to be, for instance in a public place or from property where the owner or occupier has given specific permission, and filming where a trespass has to occur for the camera to be put in place.

There are three decisions, Gardiner (CA239/97), Fraser (CA19/97) and the Court of Appeal’s consideration of Hamed itself. Gardiner and Fraser both involved filming from a place where a trespass did not occur. In each case the Court took the view that unless police actions in undertaking video surveillance are prohibited by statute or otherwise constitute an actionable wrong such as trespass, they are lawful at common law. Gardiner and Fraser involved filming that was considered not to be too intrusive and in both cases the evidence obtained was admitted.
The Court of Appeal when considering Hamed thought that the filming was authorised by the search warrants that were issued and that there was no difficulty in allowing the evidence to be produced. This was overruled by all of the members of the Supreme Court on appeal.

So none of the cases relied on ruled that evidence obtained through covert surveillance that involved a trespass was admissible. In two cases no trespass occurred, in the third it was thought the search warrant provided authority for the filming.

When you add the recommendations of the Law Commission in 2007 and the fact that the Search and Surveillance Bill introduced two years ago was to address the problems identified in the Commission’s report you really have to question the contention that the law was settled.

The Supreme Court commented on this and formed a totally different view.

Chief Justice Elias said “I regard it as a significantly exacerbating factor that the film surveillance was undertaken deliberately without legal authority, in the knowledge that there was no lawful investigatory technique available to be used.” Further, “[i]n circumstances where the police officer in charge of the inquiry knew that there was no authority to be obtained for such filmed surveillance, the deliberate unlawfulness of the police conduct in the covert filming, maintained over many entries and over a period of some 10 months, is destructive of an effective and credible system of justice.”

Justice Blanchard more charitably said “[e]ven taking the view most favourable to them, the police seem to have been prepared over and over to run the risk of acting in breach of the law. They did not obtain legal advice and should have done so.” He further said, “… The police understood that the warrants did not authorise the video surveillance and that their conduct in relation to the video surveillance might well be legally questionable. Winkelmann J [in the High Court] made a finding that the police continued to use surveillance cameras with the knowledge, at a senior level at least, that they had no lawful authority to do so.”

So we seem to be heading to a constitutional crisis where the Government is prepared to advance an argument that the Supreme Court has ruled against to justify action that in constitutional terms is appalling. The Government’s justification, that the law was settled, was not accepted by the Supreme Court. If this legislation is passed we are in for an interesting time.

The Rule of Law should apply to everyone

2011-09-21T03:55:00.000-07:00

The Government's announcement that it intends to overturn the decision of the Supreme Court to exclude evidence in the Urewera 18 trial has attracted considerable recent comment.

What is proposed is legislation to overturn the decision of the Supreme Court on a temporary basis only while the law was sorted out. It has been made to sound like a small deal and since we are dealing with criminals what could possibly be wrong? Well significant constitutional principles including the rule of law and the division of responsibilities between the State and the Judiciary but apart from that nothing really.

The issue has received some heavyweight analysis from the likes of Dean Knight and Andrew Geddes.

The debate has sparked some interesting views. For instance the Herald Editorial this morning argued persuasively that the proposed law change was wrong in principle yet in the same paper John Armstrong thought that Goff would be forced to agree to it. He did not analyse what was happening but thought that there might be political damage if Phil Goff decides to act in a way which academics and others would consider to be completely justifiable in terms of constitutional principles.

And this afternoon there were some developments. ACT said they would support the introduction of the bill but wanted it to go to Select Committee, mimicking part of the the stance adopted by the Labour Party, and in what may be a first the bill was released to the parties.

Charles Chauvel took the opportunity to release the text of the Bill and crowd sourcing analysis of the bill is possible. This sort of thing should happen more often.

The bill itself is short, as are most if not all of the other bills the Government has rammed through urgency without select committee overview. The message is how could you oppose just a slight change but as shown by the introduction of National Standards little tweaks can have significant effects. And the Hobbit Worker Emasculation Bill had to be amended because it was not drafted properly. Slowing down the process and allowing institutions such as the Law Society to provide comment can have beneficial effects.

The Bill essentially says to the police that up to now and for the next 12 months use of a video camera to record evidence is and has been not of itself illegal. For the next 12 months use of video has been given carte blanche. Of course this does not otherwise affect the admissibility of evidence but if a camera is used then unless some other breach of rights has occurred all is fine.

This should be contrasted to the provisions of the Search and Surveillance Bill. That provides for the granting of Surveillance Device Warrants following application. These require an application to a Judge who must be persuaded on a variety of matters before an application is granted. For instance they should not issue a warrant that allows the police to record discussions between a citizen and their lawyer.

So for the next 12 months if the legislation is passed Police can set up cameras wherever they want, after that time there will be Judicial permission that needs to be obtained. There is a restriction, the videoing has to be associated with a search that is legal, but this means that if a warrant is issued to search for stolen items then not only can the Police enter and seize the items, but they can also set up cameras to capture evidence in the future. They cannot do this now.

It seems to me that if passed the Search and Surveillance Bill will actually wind back the powers the Police will have if the proposed bill is passed under urgency.

The most upsetting aspect of the proposed bill is that it is retrospective. Most of the remaining Urewera 17 will have the benefit of their judgment preserved as it should be. But others with cases before the Courts may find that the rules have changed. Imagine if you have been charged, you engage legal assistance and prepare to fight the case but then the rules change to make your defence more difficult. This is as appalling as you can get in terms of constitutional principles. The basic idea is that Parliament makes the law, the Courts interpret the law and if Parliament does not like this it then it introduces an amending Act, this goes to a select committee so that the public and interested entities can make submissions, and then after a comprehensive debate the changes may or may not with or without changes be enacted. The constitutional convention is that any law change is not retrospective unless there are extraordinarily good reasons. This Government is proposing that these principles are not applied and that the rules are changed during the course of a number of cases.

If enacted the law change is a message to the Judiciary that if the executive does not like the decision then it will overturn it, retrospectively. This tramples all sorts of understandings and conventions. Does the Government expect the Judiciary to do what it wants, rather than do what the law requires?

For Labour the response should be easy. What is proposed is a constitutional abomination and should be opposed at all costs.

Tau and Paula have had bad weeks

2011-09-10T15:40:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed reading the Herald this week.

Firstly there was a story about Tau Henare being involved in a road rage incident where he reportedly cut a car off and then proceeded to “flip the bird” to and abuse the upset victim who had tooted him because of his driving. Tau was obviously hurting from his recent demotion down National's list.

He must have missed the Crosby Textor memo that stated that National MPs should if at all possible not act like testosterone fuelled gits.

Then there was a story about how fellow pseudo westie Paula Bennett had been accused of lying. This incident presents a classic example of “spin” over substance and highlights why many are turned off politics. Instead of there being a reasoned attempt to analyse and deal with a funding situation she chose to blame Labour for what is essentially a budgeting matter. And the shrill extreme language that she chose led Labour to claim that she was lying.

It all started with a question in the house about the measurement of child poverty. During the course of a rather heated exchange with Annette King Paula said this about the Growing Up in New Zealand multidisciplinary study:

When Labour left office it had not fully funded it through to subsequent years. It had set it up but not actually funded it going forward.”

The next day in response to a further question Bennett said:

However, it [Labour] had not funded it ongoing, so within weeks of being in this job I was informed that we had to find money to keep the study going. I had to go to my colleagues, cap in hand, and ask them to find some money out of their baseline funding. We have since put millions of dollars more into that study and do support it. But $25.9 million into the longitudinal Growing Up in New Zealand study, coming out of taxpayers’ pockets, is a lot of money and I think it is an incredibly fair investment in that programme.”

She also said later that “there were no appropriations ongoing from the previous Government for that study.”

She was asked if she would apoligise when it is shown that funding from the Ministry of Social Development stops in July 2012, as King had been advised by the University of Auckland.

She responded “I will apologise when the previous Government apologises as well for the hole in funding it left the programme with.”

That night just before the session finished she returned and asked to correct her former answer. She said that the correct amount of funding was $23.3 million, not $25.9 million.

This has left Labour MPs incredulous because the funding was there for the programme to 2012. In 2008 the Labour Government announced $7.5 million start up funding for the program and there was further funding of $6 million over future years. Quite clearly Bennett’s comment that there were no appropriations ongoing is, well, not correct.

It may be that she has had to secure extra funding and the $13.5 million pledged by Labour was not enough. But she should have said this rather than spinning her claims to the furthest possible extent. By doing so she has made herself look like she does not know what she is talking about.

Interestingly Auckland University put out a press release that day where it repeated Bennett’s original incorrect figure for funding. For some reason there is no sign of the press release on the Auckland University website. What is the bet that the press release was prepared by the Minister’s office?

The campaign for the Waitakere seat

2011-08-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

The campaign for the Waitakere seat promises to be one of the most interesting on election night.

Cabinet Minister and pseudo westie Paula Bennett is against up and coming Labour list MP Carmel Sepuloni. The Greens are standing Steve Tollestrup who stood on the Labour/Green/Community alliance Future West for the Waitakere Ranges Local Board last year and there are rumours that former Green MP Sue Bradford may be standing.

The seat has for some time been a marginal one. In 1999, despite the swing towards Labour, Brian Neeson won the seat over Jonathan Hunt with a 4,056 majority. Admittedly back then the seat was very rural and quite different to its current form.

In 2002 in a strong three way contest Lynne Pillay won over Laila Harre by 2,333 votes. National’s Marie Hasler was a distant third.

In 2005 Pillay managed to beat Paula Bennett by 4,942 votes. In 2008 the tables were turned and Bennett won against Pillay by 632 votes. The swing was relatively small (in 2008 terms) at around 7%. Many seats had much greater swings away from Labour.

The seat is the most marginal National held seat in the Auckland region. The west is traditionally a Labour stronghold and to remove a National Cabinet Minister would be a great morale boost for the local organization and the party at large.

Carmel Sepuloni won the nomination in a hotly contested selection and prevailed over other candidates.

Current polling suggests that Bennett is safe but the local Labour organisation has been campaigning strongly. A great deal of canvassing has been completed and there have been a number of public meetings. Sepuloni’s performance and visibility have been good and Bennett should be worried.

The result will probably depend however on votes for third party candidates.

In 2005 the NZ First candidate, local Police Officer Brendan Stewart, performed credibly and achieved 1,354 votes. The NZ First Party vote was 1,806 and the Labour-National party vote majority was 4,012. In 2008 the NZ First candidate Craig McNair only achieved 597 votes while the party achieved 1,117 votes.

Also relevant is the 448 votes achieved by the NZ Pacific Party candidate Fia Misa Tupou. As far as I am aware there will not be a NZ Pacific candidate this time and Carmel should pick up the bulk of these votes. Also Michael Kidd of the Family Party achieved 358 votes. Although the party could be considered conservative Michael is now a member of the Labour Party and sought the party’s nomination for the Te Atatu seat as well as the Waitakere seat.

Of further note is the fact that in 2008 there was no United Future candidate. In 2005 Hannah Baral picked up 1,035 votes. Presumably many of these votes went Paula’s way in 2008.

The votes recorded for these candidates were not huge but with in razor edge contest the redistribution of these votes will be vital.

Sue Bradford’s presence could be the most telling factor on the result. She will not win the seat and I am sure she will emphasise the campaign for the party vote. But in a close contest any electorate votes she achieves will be vital. If her goal is to take the contest to Paula Bennett then she could achieve this either by endorsing Carmel or even better by not standing in Waitakere but campaigning as a list candidate out west.

Gunning for the Lawyers

2011-08-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

Simon Power’s blitzreig on the legal profession continues. This week he introduced legislation to complete the evisceration of the legal aid system.

National have continuously used the expression “ unaffordable and unsustainable” to describe recent increases in legal aid expenditure. There was a 60% increase in the total amount spent from 2006 to 2009 but the rise was entirely predictable and due to policy changes, legislative changes and increased demand.

The policy changes increased the level of eligibility so that instead of 700,000 kiwis being eligible for legal aid that figure became 1.3 million. There was also a modest increase in the amounts paid to lawyers. Given that there had been no change in eligibility for decades and in payments for a decade these changes were long overdue.

The legislative changes include such things as changes to the sentencing laws and the bail laws in the criminal sphere and the introduction of the Care of Children Act 2004 in the family sphere. The criminal law changes meant that more people were locked up and needed representation. The introduction of COCA meant that a more intensive but more therapeutic approach to child custody cases occurred.

Increased demand occurred because more people were being charged and brought before the Court, and included a spike in long, very expensive drugs trials with multiple accused. There was also the requirement that Treaty of Waitangi claims be filed by 2008 and finalised by 2014.

All in all the increase in expenditure was utterly predictable and no one should have been surprised.

This did not stop Simon Power suggesting the system was broke. This week he repeated his previous claim that if nothing was done then costs would blow out by $400 million over the next 5 years. This is a figure that he has stated a number of times before.

I have not been able to find out how he arrived at that figure but I did some rough calculations. For there to be a total increase of $400 million there would have to be a 13% increase in payments each year for 5 years from 2009. Payments will have to increase from $172m in 2009 to $317m in 2014. Barring some decision to dramatically increase cover or to give lawyers a further increase in the hourly rate it is difficult in the extreme to see how this can occur. The recent policy decisions should not have to be reconsidered for many years to come.

Interestingly from 2005-06 to 2009-10 the average yearly increase was 13%. It seems that Power has extrapolated this figure out to achieve his $400 million figure.

But there is something really odd with this analysis. Treasury’s Regulatory Impact Statement states that current predictions suggest that by 2014-15 the increase will be $51 million over 2009-10 levels. A yearly increase of 5.4% will be required to achieve this result and the cumulative increase over the 5 year period will be $147 million. Power's figures appear to be more than twice what the Treasury thinks will happen.

For those who claim that the increase is because of lawyers’ greed the following passage from the Regulatory Impact Statement bears repeating:

In the past decade, the only increase in the hourly rate was an increase of 10% in July 2008 (reduced to 8.5% in July 2009). Therefore, the 48% increase was primarily due to increased hours and disbursements per case."

So legal aid lawyers have had one increase in their hourly rate in the last decade and even that was pared back by this Government. They may have earned more but it is because they are handling more cases and working longer hours on these cases.

The reforms also plan to manage and reduce the amounts paid to Counsel for the Child. This is a scheme where experienced lawyers are appointed to represent children in Care of Children and Care and Protection proceedings. These lawyers perform an outstanding job and are one of the major reasons so many Family Court proceedings are resolved by consent. There has been an increase in the amount spent on these lawyers, again primarily because of changes brought in by the Care of Children Act and associated procedural changes. But there has been no outcry, no attempt to analyse the quality of their representation or the implications of reducing representation for children but again there will be a decrease in their funding.

My basic concern is that Legal Aid is a service designed to ensure that poor people receive adequate legal representation to handle what are exceedingly stressful situations. These cuts are doctrinaire. They will mean that a service for the poor will be impaired.

Where have all Paula's Billboards gone?

2011-08-13T15:21:00.000-07:00

West Auckland has seen an intense billboard war for the past couple of years. Labour billboards announcing joint meetings of the Waitakere based MPs have been part of the local background. National have done the same, sort of. Their billboards advertised the holding of a constituency clinic and even a meeting about "what it means to be a westie". Pseudo westie Paula made some sort of statement by not actually turning up to that meeting.

But alas, National's billboards, with the exception of a few about Tim Groser have gone. What does this mean? Have they given up? Do they realise that campaigning against Carmel Sepuloni and Phil Twyford is futile and they may as well give up now?

Or is it that using Paula's electorate office as the address for the advertiser breaks Parliamentary Services rules against using electorate offices for campaigning activities?

Whatever the reason is someone should tell Cameron Whaleoil. I hear he is always interested in holding all politicians to account, whether they are left wing or right wing.

CGT Hell Yeah

2011-07-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

The past couple of weeks have gone into unchartered waters. Never have I seen an opposition party totally dominate the debate about our country's economic future the way that Labour has with its Capital Gains Tax proposal.

To all good lefties the only response is "hell yeah".

The release has shown a couple of interesting traits. The Labour leadership had the faith to float the idea a week before the official launch and not respond. And David Cunliffe has been given room to talk about the proposal and to present his very detailed sophisticated view of how the economy should be handled in the future. The Nats have attacked. But David has stared down Bill English and battered away Joyce's attempt at confusion.

The tax has three significant benefits:

1. Instead of borrowing more and more money from Australian banks to buy the same houses off each other Kiwis will start to think about what they should invest in. If occasionally it is in technology and not in rentals then things will improve.
2. It means that we can keep our power company shares. They return 17.5% per annum. The debt they are meant to "retire" costs 5.5% per annum. Any paid advisor who proposes their sale needs to be sacked instantly for incompetence.
3. It is fair. For the past 25 years taxes have been tilted to the right. The last Labour Government made modest corrections but overall the concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich has continued.

The response of the media has been interesting. The Herald has adopted it with open hands. But state owned TVOne put a poll in the field that ended before the official announcement and then decreed that this was evidence that the campaign failed. TVOne essentially says that the campaign did not have a chance, but why my tax dollars are paying for the evisceration of the capital gains tax campaign is beyond me.

Overall the proposal is just, the financial imperatives are crystal clear and if I am asked should we do this my response, replacing the first word with one that is slightly less passionate is "hell yeah".

The CGT policy is released - Landlords are afraid

2011-07-14T02:22:00.000-07:00

Labour's Capital Gains Tax policy has now been released.

I will not attempt to delve into the technical details. Right wing bloggers will do so and try to demonstrate how easy it is to avoid paying the tax but they miss the point. If it collects 50% of the potential tax it will be achieving something beneficial and if individuals change their behaviour to avoid paying the tax then something else beneficial will be achieved. They will pay tax one way or the other and this is good.

This morning on morning report one oppressed landlord opined that he would forthwith put up rentals on the properties that he owned so that he did not lose when he paid capital gains tax. He should get advice. His currently owned properties will be exempt. And rental levels tend to be set by the market, not by the desire of the landlord.

Obviously out of the goodness of his heart he is not charging market rentals right now but faced with the prospect he will pay more to the common good he will revert to being a rapacious selfish capitalist. He also has this world view that society owes him a living no matter what. This is interesting as it is precisely the accusation that RWNJs throw at beneficiaries.

Other poor landlords are because of the possibility of a CGT contemplating leaving NZ to go to Australia and buying rental property over there. Someone should gently tell them that Australia has a CGT and it's highest tax band is higher than Aotearoa's. They will no doubt be disappointed but the presence of greed does not indicate the presence of intelligence or understanding. Or compassion.

Overall the proposal is a just one. Capitalists should contribute to our society the way that workers always have.