The Southland Times editorial:

Trevor Mallard and Andrew Little would have us see their machinations to avoid being served court papers as indicative of their sheer scorn for the allegation that they defamed ACC Minister Judith Collins.

But they’re being unwise.

Whatever the merits of the case itself, legal process itself does require respect. And it’s not getting it from this pair.

On top of which, they don’t necessarily emerge as being on the high ground, at all.

Whatever their rhetoric, and it has been loudly and jovially dismissive, the methodology of dodging legal papers requires actions that are liable to look like skulking and hiding.

It’s hardly a good look for men proclaiming they have nothing to fear.

I don’t think they realise how bad it looks to the average member of the public.

This being the case, and given that Mr Little has plans to film any attempt to serve him and post it online, unofficial Nat advisers have already been suggesting that the best thing Ms Collins could do would be to hire the most petite and unthreatening woman available to serve the papers.

I can think of a couple of Auckland Young Nats who would be perfect!

Not that the documents really need to be thrust into the hands of the person being sued.

If the courts can be persuaded that someone is trying to avoid the process – and seldom would a more easy call be made in that regard than this case – the papers can simply be taped to their front door.

And Trevor and Andrew have guaranteed a court would agree. Another own goal.

The place to win an issue like this is in court.

They should welcome the chance to produce their proof. I mean surely they would have done a retraction, if they had no proof at all?

Tags: Andrew Little, editorials, Southland Times, Trevor Mallard

The Herald editorial yesterday:

Even the Treasury, which suggested the move this year, believes class size does matter. But it said the quality of teaching mattered more, and in a world where Governments had to make trade-offs, this was one that would have minimal effect on pupil achievement.

Using much the same language, Ms Parata announced that a standardised teacher-pupil ratio in Year 2 to 10 classes would free $43 million each year over the next four years to improve teacher quality. “We are opting for quality, not quantity, better teaching, not more teachers,” she said.

This policy is based on new research, led by an Australian think-tank, the Grattan Institute, which suggests improving teacher quality is far more cost-effective than reducing class size. To that end, the Government will invest an extra $60 million over four years to boost teacher recruitment and training. A post-graduate qualification will become the minimum requirement for all trainee teachers, and a new teacher “appraisal system” will be developed. Ms Parata said performance pay was one of “a basket of options” to recognise and reward teacher quality. It should, in fact, be at the head of any moves to encourage excellence in the classroom.

There can be few qualms about the accent on quality. The Treasury has suggested the effect on pupil learning of moving from a class with an average teacher to one with a high-performing teacher is roughly equivalent to the effect of a 10-pupil decrease in class size.

In one sense it is a classic debate about quality vs quantity when you have limited resource. Not that is not an argument to go crazy and halve the number of teachers. But it is an argument that when there is limited money to go around, the focus should be on quality over quality – especially when the research shows a high-performing teacher is equivalent to a 10-pupil decrease in class size.

Tags: class size, editorials, NZ Herald

Two editorials on the increase from $3 to $5. First the Dom Post:

With the Government promising a “zero budget”  next week the choice for him was simple: ask people to  pay slightly more for prescription medicines or tell patients needing cancer treatment and elective surgery to wait longer. He has chosen to ask families to pay up to $40 more a year for medicine. Few, apart from those who like to pretend the Government has a limitless supply of money, will disagree with that choice.

The increase, which takes effect next January, will push the price of a single item up from $3 to $5. For a family the maximum payable in a single year will increase from $60 to $100.

That is 11c a day per family maximum.

Prescriptions for children under the age of six will remain  free and families that cannot afford to pay the increase will be able to obtain assistance from Work and Income NZ and primary health organisations.

The reality is this is a very minor changes, that reduces the drugs bill to the taxpayer by just 4%.

In Australia the average fee is A$35.40 (NZ$45), although  those on low incomes pay a lesser fee. In England the average charge is NZ$16 and in Finland, Labour’s utopia,  Mr Ryall says individuals have to fork out  $1107 each before the cost of prescription medicines is limited to about NZ$2.50.

So we have a cap 10% that of Finland.

The NZ Herald:

Much angst has greeted the Government’s announcement that prescription charges are to increase from $3 to $5 next year to fund reinvestment in the health sector. Opposition parties have warned that lower-income groups, the elderly and the chronically ill will be hit hard. The Mana Party leader, Hone Harawira, has gone so far as to claim it “will lead to children dying”. Such concern is vastly overstated. This is, after all, the first increase in prescription costs in 20 years, and could be justified merely on the basis of inflation.

Vastly overstated? More like insanely hysterical. And the charge was originally $15, reduced to $3 in 2004, so at $5 is still just one third what it once was.

For many people, the rise in cost will be easily manageable. They need prescriptions relatively rarely, and their families’ requirements will get nowhere near the 20 items of medicine a year, after which prescriptions for the rest of that year are free. Such people would not have been unduly perturbed if the increase had been more than $2. Indeed, it would have made more sense for the Government to charge a larger sum for each prescription but to lower the trigger point for free prescriptions.

Not a bad idea.

At its worst, the increased prescription charge will cost a family an extra $40 a year. That sum hardly tallies with the dire consequences predicted by some Opposition politicians. Even so, the move is predicated on the universality that so marred the previous Government’s early childhood and welfare payments. A more astute targeted approach would have served those with substantial medication requirements better and left little room for criticism. Unfortunately, the Government has missed that opportunity.

Subsidies should generally be targeted at those in need, not made universal as this is economically inefficient.

Tags: Dominion Post, editorials, NZ Herald, prescription charges

The Press editorial:

It will now be possible to consider Dalziel’s criticisms of the recovery process – and they have been many and seem to encompass just about everyone involved – the mayor, the minister, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority – without the thought they are designed to advance any designs on the mayoralty.

And the Council. Dalziel has been pretty relentlessly critical of everyone and everything.

Whether, if Labour were to win power in 2014, Dalziel would be a good choice to take Gerry Brownlee’s job as the minister for earthquake recovery is highly debatable. It is, in any case, a slightly unambitious goal. By the time it could come about, more than 2 1/2 years from now, the hard political and financial decisions on earthquake recovery will largely have been taken. By that time, it must be hoped, the recovery will be well under way and any ministerial involvement will have become peripheral.

Indeed. In fact the big decisions should all be made by mid 2013 I hope.

While Dalziel has many commendable personal qualities – and her energy as a critic of what is being done has been indefatigable – whether she would be the right person for the job is doubtful. She has been a minister before, of course, and though she was competent enough she hardly shone in the role.

That is a bit unfair. While I don’t share her policies, Dalziel was actually an  effective Commerce Minister, and one of the better performing Labour Ministers.

 In addition, her well-signalled party-political partisanship could hinder her capacity to get on with others in a job that requires party politics to be put firmly aside. Her suggestion for some new layer of bureaucracy between the minister and Cera – as if more bureaucracy is what is required – also does not augur well.

I agree. Having the Minister appoint a board who supervise the CERA CEO seems bizarre. You have boards for commercial SOEs, not for government departments.

With Dalziel out of the running, attention can now turn to other possible contenders. While it may be a thankless job in many ways, it is also one of unprecedented opportunity and the incumbent Bob Parker shows no signs of having lost his appetite for it. At this early stage, talk inevitably centres on sitting councillors, and the names of Tim Carter, Peter Beck and Glenn Livingstone have been mentioned. All are very new to the council and their only mark of distinction so far is their inexperience in all the skills that will be needed in the next phase of Christchurch’s recovery. Neither they, nor indeed anyone else on the council, inspires much confidence as a future leader of the city and voters may be forgiven for hoping some better alternatives emerge before the election.

The Council obviously has bitter divisions. A new Mayor from one of those factions, will just compound the frictions. If people want an alternative to Bob Parker, they need someone not currently on Council who has proven leadership experience.

Tags: Bob Parker, Christchurch City Council, editorials, Lianne Dalziel, The Press

The Herald editorial yesterday:

More than 40 per cent of the money that the Government puts into tertiary education goes directly to students as allowances, loans and interest subsidies. The average for such spending in OECD countries is close to 18 per cent. 

Steven Joyce said we have the most generous student support scheme in the world, except maybe Scandinavia.  We also have the most generous pension scheme in the world, as it has no income testing and no asset testing and is linked to the average wage.

The Prime Minister says the changes will be “modest”. That is as it must be. A sluggish economy would be done no favours if the repayment of loans became so onerous that graduates could not afford to take out mortgages and suchlike. Or if students denied allowances responded by taking on a great deal more debt. Modest adjustments ensure students and graduates will not be subjected to serious hardship. It says much for the scale of the spending, however, that such relatively small steps will save the Government tens of millions of dollars.

John Key says this saving will be reinvested in the research and teaching capabilities of universities to help raise their world rankings. That represents a change of tack. Previously, the Government had talked of transferring this money to universities to fund tuition for more students.

Not before time, it has recognised that something must be done about the sliding international ratings of the country’s universities, and that the throwing open of entry to them has been an important factor in this.

Also pleased to see Steven Joyce plans changes to the PBRF.

Tags: editorials, NZ Herald, student loans

The Herald editorial:

Not many professions are held in such high regard as teaching. People, by and large, recognise that few jobs are so demanding and offer so relatively little in financial reward. All the more surprise, therefore, that a Herald-Digipoll survey this week revealed that a clear majority are now happy to disregard the adamant view of the teachers’ unions and support performance pay for the profession.

Making it the rare combination of both right and popular.

Fortunately, MPs on Britain’s education select committee are less timid. In a report released this week, they said teachers’ pay should be more closely tied to the value they add to pupils’ performance, so the best were rewarded while the weakest were discouraged from staying in the profession. They urged the Cameron Government to develop proposals for a pay system that rewarded teachers who added the “greatest value” to pupil performance. Whatever the practical and political difficulties in this, they said, the value of an outstanding teacher was so great that these must be overcome.

Exactly. Of course there are practical challenges. But that is no reason not to try. The evidence is clear that the ability of a teacher to connect with their students has more influence on educational outcomes than any other factor such as class size, school, poverty etc.

There is no doubt that agreement on measures of excellence presents an obstacle to pay on merit, probably an insuperable one for national negotiations. But it would provide little difficulty if left to school principals and their boards. The boards become well acquainted with the work of individual teachers, while principals must know which of their teachers are doing the most to improve the achievements of their pupils.

This is absolutely right, and why the teacher unions are so against. To make performance pay work, you need to decentralise salaries.

Throughout its first term, the Government showed little interest in challenging teachers’ national pay negotiating system. The new minister’s statement offers little hope of change, and little encouragement to excellent teachers who continue to feel undervalued. Paradoxically, Labour Party leader David Shearer may have given a stronger signal when he talked earlier this year of acting against the “bad teachers in our classrooms”. The findings of the Herald-Digipoll survey should provide the requisite backbone for politicians of all shades. As should the way in which education will suffer until excellence in teaching is recognised.

It is a battle worth fighting.

Tags: editorials, NZ Herald, performance pay

There is an episode of the West Wing called “Let Bartlett be Barlett” (S1E19).

The staff begin to realize that the Bartlet administration has been ineffective because it has been too timid to make bold decisions, focusing instead on the exigencies of politics. Finally, Leo confronts President Bartlet with his own timidity, challenging him to be himself and to take the staff “off the leash.” – in other words, he seeks to “Let Bartlet be Bartlet”. The President and his staff resolve to act boldly and “raise the level of public debate” in America.

This is what David Shearer needs to do also.

I agree with the NZ Herald editorial that says:

They say Leader of the Opposition is the worst job in politics. It requires unceasing, carping criticism of everything the Government does and a relentlessly negative outlook on the country’s condition and prospects under current policies. Somehow this hapless individual is supposed to be popular too.

David Shearer, elected leader of the Labour Party after the last election, has clearly decided this job description is not for him. Whatever he has been doing since his elevation he has not been out front on most of the issues that are making this a testing year for John Key’s Government. There is a view that he is to blame for the fact these issues have not dented National’s standing in two recent polls or lifted Labour’s support. The concern seems to have permeated his own office with the resignation of his chief of staff, Stuart Nash.

If the departure of Mr Nash signals a change of style for Mr Shearer, it would be a mistake. Mr Shearer is clearly not a tub-thumping politician. He seems a normal, thoughtful, cautious and fair-minded citizen. 

Those in Labour who are getting so worked up about the fact they have not gone up in the polls, despite National dealing with some unpopular issues, need to realise that beyond the beltway people are not talking over morning tea about how David Shearer did in the House. Yes, he has some way to go to be a confident and authoritative presence in the House. But he will not become Prime Minister purely by being a good attack dog in the House, and nor does he need to be. That is why you have a Deputy.

Where there is fair criticism of Shearer has been his inability, to date, to articulate what he stands for and how his beliefs are different to both Phil Goff’s and John Key’s. The Goff led Labour achieved a near 100 year low for their vote. David Shearer must avoid being tuned turned into Goff-lite.

The problem, as I understand it from a couple of Labour people, is that David Shearer does have some innovative and exciting ideas around policy, ones that break the stereotype of right vs left. But the problem is he has been unable to get them through his caucus, who remain largely wedded to their current policies.

As the Herald editorial says:

 People do not follow leaders who lack the confidence to be themselves.

The role of political leadership is more than being chairman of the board, or the caucus. Don Brash did not let Caucus decide his Orewa speech. John Key in Opposition did not have Caucus vote on his agreement with Helen Clark over the anti-smacking law compromise. That show of leadership won him huge acclaim at the time.

Likewise in Government, Helen Clark and John Key did not let Caucus determine key policies. In fact one could argue they wouldn’t let Caucus determine a bus timetable!

Shearer needs to start putting out policies and ideas which define him. I probably won’t like most of them, and that is not a bad thing. But neither is it a bad thing, if his caucus don’t like 100% of them also. What is important is that he likes them, and backs them. Leadership is about telling your caucus “these are the policies I want to lead on, back them or find yourself a new leader”. Decision making by committee of 34 is not a good option.

David Shearer is genuinely nice guy, who wants the best for New Zealand (as most, but not all, MPs do). It is incredible that only two and a bit months after Parliament has resumed this year, that some in Labour are already backsliding over their choice. You have to take a medium to long-term strategic view. What matters isn’t the polls at the moment, or how the House is going. What matters is whether or not there is a three year strategy designed to get Labour and its leader perceived as the Government in waiting, and that the right steps are being taken to implement that strategy.

Tags: David Shearer, editorials, Labour, Labour Leadership, NZ Herald

The Dom Post editorial:

One what would happen should a State Services Commission employee approach chief executive Iain Rennie, place his or her hands on his head, and inquire what is going on in there.

Till a few days ago conjecture would have been irrelevant. The employee would have been stood down while an inquiry was conducted, then, once the facts were confirmed, dismissed for unacceptable behaviour. The whole process would have taken a matter of days. Some things are simply unacceptable in the workplace. One of them is employees manhandling their bosses; another is bosses manhandling employees.

I’m not sure this is the case. Certainly such behaviour is unacceptable. But one can not sack without warning someone for doing something unacceptable unless it meets a threshold. I suspect an employment tribunal would find in favour of an employee sacked for the above, if it was a one off, and they were otherwise a good employee.

Hence I am not one of those saying Katrina Bach should have been sacked. She should have been disciplined, warned and (unlike most employees) is suffering a financial penalty for her misconduct.

Again I am not defending her conduct. I’m just saying that the law applies equally to all employees.

Tags: Dominion Post, editorials, Katrina Bach, SSC

The Dom Post editorial:

No application by a foreign investor looking to buy New Zealand land has attracted more attention than Chinese company Shanghai Pengxin’s bid for the Crafar farms.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that opposition to the deal, approved yesterday, is mostly driven by the nationality of the purchaser.

Of course it is. Not all of it, but much of it.

When Canadian film director James Cameron purchased more than 1000ha of Wairarapa land, including a 250ha dairy farm, the news was generally welcomed, even though the residency requirements he must meet mean he has to live in New Zealand for only 44 days in each of the final two years of a three-year investment period. The sale of the Crafar farms, on the other hand, has met howls of protest, despite Shanghai Pengxin having to satisfy 27 stringent requirements.

These include establishing a farm school on one of the properties, to be run by state-owned enterprise Landcorp, which will also manage the farms, and providing $5000 university scholarships to two students. It must also provide public walking access across two of the farms, protect Maori archaeological sites and undertake significant conservation requirements.

The company has also, apparently on its own initiative, undertaken to spend at least $100 million over five years promoting New Zealand dairy products in China and elsewhere in Asia, a key developing market. The increased trade that could flow from that will benefit all New Zealand dairy farmers and, with it, the wider economy.

As I have said for some time, I see this sale as having huge opportunities for New Zealand.

Tags: Crafar, Dominion Post, editorials, foreign investment

The Herald editorial:

Listening to the Greens, it could also be thought that one of China’s most senior figures has followed the Crafar farms saga in great detail, so much so that he is now prepared to place “enormous pressure” on the ministers making the final decision. This, again, seems fanciful. In pursuing the interests of a country with a fifth of the world’s humanity but only 7 per cent of its arable land, Mr Jia’s interests are surely far wider than one farm deal.

The Greens should have read his comments with a rather more open mind. Had they done so, they would have found plenty of encouragement for the future development of trade between New Zealand and China. Mr Jia refers to the “smooth implementation” of the ground-breaking free trade agreement signed in 2008 and the need for both countries to make good use of it to meet ahead of schedule a trade target of $20 billion by 2015. …

In terms of that balance, he could have been thinking of Fonterra’s plans, announced last Friday, to spend $100 million on two more farms in China’s Hebei province. This is part of the co-operative’s ambition to set up an integrated milk business in China that taps a growing middle-class demand for high-protein food. It wants its farming hubs throughout the country to be producing up to 1 billion litres of high-quality milk every year by 2020.

The Greens campaign against China is economically dumb. We even have the proof of how dumb it is. They railed against the FTA with China (as did then Foreign Minister Winston Peters).

So let us look at what these economic geniuses railed against:

The FTA was agreed in April 2008 and came into force in October 2008. Note up until then modest export growth and strong export growth with the trade deficit increasing steadily. Again remember this when Greens and NZ First complain about the trade deficit.

Then after the FTA, exports surge, and imports continue much the same growth. The result is exports break $6b for the first time ever and the trade deficit is cut by over two thirds.

This shows the annual growth. So the data for Jan 2007 is how much the value of trade was in the 12 months to Jan 2007 compared to the 12 months to Jan 2006.

So imports growing far faster than exports. Then as the FTA is signed, export growth skyrockets up to 35% and even three years on is still at over 20%. These are incredible figures. The Greens argue it is pure coincidence and would have happened regardless. I’d stick a Tui billboard around that.

Here’s another couple of stats. In the year prior to the FTA coming into force our average monthly exports were  $186m. In the last 12 months they were an average $505m a month.

The annual exports in the year before the FTA were $2.24b. If they had stayed at that level over the next three and a third years our exports would have been $7.45b. Instead they have been $15.79b. So that is an extra $8.3b of export income that the Greens and NZ First railed against, and still rail against.

God knows how many fewer jobs we would have without that FTA, let alone the greater deficit and debt.

Tags: China, editorials, free trade agreements, NZ Herald

The Herald editorial on paid parental leave:

The Government has the right to apply a veto at the third reading if it deems any piece of legislation would have more than a minor impact on its finances. This power springs, quite validly, from the necessity for the Government to be separate from Parliament because only it spends money. …

National should be prepared to allow the legislation to go through a select committee. It could then gauge public sentiment. It might also find that trade-offs and compromises produced a bill that was affordable. And it would be spared the embarrassment that would come from exercising its powers in a dubious manner to ignore the will of Parliament.

Ummm the select committee stage is before the third reading. National can not stop the legislation from going to a select committee if Parliaments votes for it at its first reading.

Tags: editorials, NZ Herald, paid parental leave

The Dom Post editorial:

Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples needs to decide whose side he is on. Is it vulnerable children, many of them Maori, or is it the providers of social services, who have failed them?

His advocacy on behalf of five Maori organisations that have had lucrative Family Start contracts terminated by the Social Development Ministry suggests it is the latter.

The five – Te Roopu Awhina Family Start in Porirua, Turuki Health Care in Mangere, Papakura Marae, the Waipareira Trust and Te Ha o Te Whanau Trust in Opotiki – have been told they will not be funded to provide intensive home-based support to vulnerable families after June 30.

According to Dr Sharples the providers are the victims of “funding cuts” that will reduce the likelihood of positive change in communities with high and complex needs.

The claim does not withstand scrutiny. The providers have not had their contracts terminated because of a funding cut but because, in the words of the ministry’s head of Family and Community Services, Murray Edridge, they provided “inconsistent and, in some cases, unsafe social work practice to families”.

Good intentions are not enough. I’m mildly surprised to see the Waipareira Trust as one of those defunded as for many years it was held up as a model for integrated services.

Terminating the contracts of the five providers will not reduce the likelihood of positive change. It will increase it if the funding is picked up by any of the other 27 Family Start providers, who are delivering useful assistance to the 15 per cent of the population at greatest risk.

Yep.

Dr Sharples has also accused the ministry of failing to communicate properly with the affected organisations. “For Maori organisations, it’s about kanohi ki te kanohi (talking face to face),” he told National Radio yesterday. That claim also appears to be of questionable merit. According to Mr Edridge and Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, the ministry has bent over backwards to try to help the affected providers to come up to standard. Ms Bennett told Parliament yesterday that the Waipareira Trust alone had received 14 visits from the ministry since July last year. Mr Edridge says the failed providers could not have been in any doubt about the ministry’s concerns. All had received regular feedback that they were not meeting the standards required.

If anything, maybe the fair criticism isn’t the decision to defund, but that it has taken so long!

Rather than berating the ministry for being too tough on Maori organisations, he should be thanking it for looking out for those his party has pledged to represent – the most vulnerable members of society.

By doing so the ministry has acted not only to protect children but the reputation of the Whanau Ora scheme established at the behest of the Maori Party to promote Maori solutions to Maori problems.

Nothing will undermine public support for the scheme faster than evidence that money is being wasted or that ministers are turning a blind eye to non-performance.

Exactly. There will be providers from time to time who do not meet the standard required or are wasteful. The Government’s job is to act on those issues, not ignore them.

Tags: Dominion Post, editorials, Family Start, Pita Sharples

The NZ Herald editorial:

The inquiry into fracking being undertaken by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is extremely welcome. The technique, under which high-pressure blasts of water, sand and chemicals are used to fracture rock to release gas and oil, has generated a lot of emotion but far too little light. On one side, the Greens have called for a moratorium on fracking despite the lack of conclusive evidence about its ill-effects. On the other, there has been the usual accusation that those opposed to such new practices are Luddites, and the Energy and Resources Minister’s unhelpful statement that “the Greens want a moratorium on everything”. Both sides of the argument stand to gain much from a science-based investigation.

The statement “the Greens want a moratorium on everything” may be unhelpful but it is not without a degree of truth. I recall compiling the list of things they want banned and stopping once it made 100. That was in 2008. I suspect it has grown since then, and they never take things off the list.

Here’s the challenge for the Greens, if they want to be taken seriously on this issue. If the PCE inquiry finds no reason to ban fracking, will the Greens change their policy of wanting a moratorium?

Further can the Greens point to any data or factors which would ever cause them to change their stance on fracking?

As far as I can tell they would only stop opposing fracking if it is proven to be totally safe. Now of course it is absolutely impossible to prove something is totally safe.

Tags: editorials, fracking, NZ Herald

The Dom Post editorial:

Local authorities have only themselves to blame for the Government forcing them to live within their means.

During almost a decade in which rates rose at more than twice the level of inflation and the debt owed by New Zealand’s 78 local bodies grew fourfold, councils have shown a disturbing lack of appreciation of the circumstances faced by their communities.

Ratepayers are not a bottomless pit.

It will give control of council staff numbers and salaries to councillors, rather than chief executives, and require annual reports to include the number of staff in $10,000 salary bands, as state agencies do now.

That move follows the huge increase in council wage bills after changes to the Local Government Act in 2002, which widened the scope of local authorities.

When the changes were implemented, the total salary bill for all councils was $884 million. By 2010, it had grown to more than $1.6 billion, an increase of more than 80 per cent. In the eight years before the changes, the salary bill increased by a total of just 8.7 per cent.

That’s even faster growth than in the civil service. Labour certainly created jobs – but jobs funded by taxes and rates, rather than paying taxes and rates (in a net sense).

Tags: Dominion Post, editorials, Local Body Politics

The NZ Herald editorial:

Courage in politics too often goes unnoticed, especially when it requires silence. Auckland’s mayor has shown remarkable courage over the past week, resisting pressure to call the Auckland Council’s port company to heel in the current dispute. Some of that pressure has been exerted in public, by commentators, union leaders and a protest march in sympathy with the sacked watersiders that the Labour Party’s leader saw fit to attend. But just as much pressure will have been coming on him in private, from Labour members of the Auckland Council and party activists who helped him get elected.

The latest challenge for the Mayor is one of the Labour Councillors, Richard Northey, has moved a motion to have a Council committee declare opposition to the Ports restructuring, which would humiliate Len Brown if it passes.

The contractual stevedoring arrangements the company wants to make would match those its nearest rival, the Port of Tauranga, has enjoyed for many years.

They were introduced at Tauranga without the strife that has disrupted the Auckland port for so long now, and members of the Maritime Union are still employed on Tauranga’s wharves.

The Port of Tauranga is only part-owned by its local authority. There can be little doubt partial privatisation makes a difference. Boards of directors can more easily resist political pressure when they owe a duty to private as well as public shareholders. More important perhaps, trade unions know this. They cannot as readily bring political pressure to bear in a dispute.

This is absolutely true. The union becomes far less reasonable, because it has lackeys on the local authority who will interfere on their behalf.

The other advantage of the PoT model is that it allows the employees to become share-holders, as 90% of stevedores at Tauranga are.

The best argument for a partial sale of Ports of Auckland Ltd would be intervention by the mayor and council in this dispute.

Mr Brown knows this very well. It is he, almost alone in public now, who is doing the most to show that assets in full public ownership need not be a pushover in labour bargaining. This is the first step, and probably a necessary one, on the path to proving that assets in public ownership can be competitive with private enterprise in every way.

If Northey wins the vote, it will be a classic case of politicians interfering to benefit their donors and supporters.

All of them are at least half-owned by local councils. Had they been fully privatised there is no doubt we would have seen mergers and rationalisation that would have produced better returns for private shareholders, more efficient transport networks for the whole country and more bargaining strength for the ports in negotiations with shipping companies.

If this sort of rationalisation is possible with ports in council ownership, the largest port will need to lead the way. If Ports of Auckland Ltd can get close to the rate of return the mayor has set, it will be in a more dominant position than it has ever been.

But that all depends now on Mr Brown’s courage. Can he see it through?

This is a huge test for Len. Can he defeat Northey?

On the issue of too many ports, that is a view shared by the PM:

A concession from the Prime Minister that the country may have too many ports.

The drawn out and often acrimonious Auckland port dispute has spawned calls for the number of ports to be culled.

John Key’s giving some thought to suggestions we’re overloaded in the unloading business, and he says the Productivity Commissioner is looking at the overall structure.

“In the end the truth of it is if we have too many ports then they won’t be financially viable and some will close,” he told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking.

Mr Key says Ports of Auckland is losing business to Tauranga because Tauranga is more efficient.

And as the editorial notes, the ownership model stops there being a sensible rationalisation, where a 10% cut in transport costs would add $1.5b to the economy.

Tags: editorials, Len Brown, NZ Herald, Ports of Auckland

The Dom Post editorial:

Those pioneers of the welfare state would never have envisaged the benefit system New Zealand has today.

They would have been appalled by the thought of thousands of perfectly healthy adults spending more than a decade on the dole and thousands more 16- and 17-year-olds being paid to sit around and do nothing.

To them, figures showing one out of every seven people of working age is on a benefit, with 220,000 children living in welfare-dependent homes, would not have been a sign of the success of the system they championed, but of its abject failure.

National’s welfare reforms, due from the middle of this year, aim to address this sorry state of affairs by placing new requirements on all beneficiaries who are fit to work. The requirement on them to make honest efforts to find work is a welcome move to restore the balance in the social contract that underpins the welfare state. 

Yet sadly Labour are opposing the reforms.

Critics who have branded the reforms “nasty” or claimed they spell the end of the welfare state as we know it have either not studied the detail or are deliberately misrepresenting the facts. The reality is that the Government is not threatening to cut or stop payments for beneficiaries who fail to get work, but simply requiring them to make honest attempts to look for jobs and accept reasonable offers that come their way.

Exactly.

Tags: Dominion Post, editorials, welfare reform

The Dom Post editorial:

“Turkeys,” Richard Prebble once observed, “don’t vote for an early Christmas.” The former Labour Cabinet minister and ACT leader was commenting on the improbability of politicians voting to reduce the size of Parliament, but his words hold just as true for local body politicians contemplating a potential shakeup of local government.

Why would the plethora of mayors and councillors in the Wellington region act to do themselves out of jobs? The answer is they won’t.

Just as many Mayors in Auckland were against the Auckland reforms.

If the region is to follow Auckland’s example and amalgamate its nine councils into a single body, it will be in spite of local government politicians not because of them. With a handful of notable exceptions, Greater Wellington regional council chairwoman Fran Wilde prominent among them, the region’s local body politicians have determinedly stonewalled all attempts to initiate change.

The issue goes beyond Wellington also. I am gravitating to the view that two levels of local government is too much for a country our size.  I think unitary authorities are the way of the future, so you don’t have millions wasted in lawsuits, liaison and consultations between regional councils and territorial authorities.

Whether the region would be better served by a single council covering the whole region, or whether it would be better served by two or three unitary councils, is an open question. So is the balance of responsibilities between regionally elected councillors and local community representatives. However, the need for reform is not.

The debate should be about the nature of reform. The status quo is simply ridiculous.

Tags: Dominion Post, editorials, Local Body Politics, Wellington

The Herald on Sunday editorial:

In the big grey building on the hill in Wellington are 121 MPs – one for every 36,600 New Zealanders.

That’s almost a record (they had to redo the seating plan to fit in such numbers) and it’s a big increase on the 99 MPs who represented us in 1996, before the introduction of MMP.

The last Parliament had 122 MPs, so in fact it has dropped. And worth mentioning that the population growth since 1996 means that even without MMP, we would be up to 109 MPs. In another decade or so Parliament under MMP will be smaller than what it would have been if we had continued with FPP.

Do we need so many MPs? Well, Australia’s House of Representatives contains 150 MPS – one for every 152,300 Ockers.

The HoS is not comparing apples with apples. With no second chamber our backbench MPs on select committees do the work which upper houses often do. Also with no state governments, the national parliament and government is responsible for all laws and policies. So what is the total number of legislators in Australia.

• Federal – 150 + 76 = 226
• NSW = 93 + 42 = 135
• Victoria = 88 + 40 = 128
• Queensland = 89
• WA = 59 + 36 = 95
• SA = 47 + 22 = 69
• Tasmania = 25 + 15 = 40
• ACT = 17
• NT = 25

The total number of legislators in Australia is 824. That is one for every 27,700 Australians – a considerably higher ratio than in New Zealand.

The truth may be unpopular but for a country of its size, New Zealand has one of the smaller Parliaments in the world. I researched around 50 different countries for a submission on this a few years back.

Does MMP need so many politicians? No, it would work perfectly well if we went back to 99 MPs – 63 in general electorates, seven in Maori electorates, and 29 list MPs to bring specialist expertise and proportionality.

Another incorrect statement. In 1999 Labour would have had an overhang under a 70/29 Parliament creating a disproportional result. Again in 2002 Labour would have had an overhang.  And such overhangs would be inevitable in the future. A 70/29 split doesn’t produce proportional results when the winning party wins a lot of the electorate seats.

Tags: editorials, Herald on Sunday, Parliament

The Dom Post editorial today:

When David Shearer became Labour leader at the end of last year, he touted himself as a fresh face for the party and promised a “fresh vision for New Zealand”. So far, his face has barely been seen by most of the voting public and his vision, if there is one, remains hidden from view. …

By contrast, Mr Shearer has yet to tell voters in any great detail how, if at all, a David Shearer-led Labour Party is different to the one under Mr Goff. His stated vision of a “clean, green and clever New Zealand” is so platitudinous as to be almost meaningless. It would have some resonance if Mr Key was advocating a dirty, polluted, dumb New Zealand, but he is not, and nor is anyone else.

Mr Shearer needs more than a slogan to make a real impact in what is after all a contest of ideas. Where does he stand, for example, on Labour’s promise to extend the in-work tax credit to beneficiaries, a reckless policy that undermined the party’s claims to fiscal responsibility and which alienated many of the workers it claims to represent? Or the plans to remove GST on fresh fruit and vegetables, introduce a capital gains tax and raise the age of retirement?

I think Shearer has done the right thing by not rushing things. The election is two years and nine months away. However he does need to start laying some pegs into the ground. My suggestion would be that in the next six weeks he does a major speech where he outlines the values that will drive his policies, and announces a couple of Goff era policies he is dropping, and maybe one new policy of his own.

Tags: David Shearer, Dominion Post, editorials

The NZ Herald editorial:

Parliament and the Greens ought to have made necessary arrangements long before she came to deliver her maiden speech this week. Neither side can escape blame for the unseemly public argument it became.

Parliamentary Service had provided her with technical equipment to receive an electronic transcript of what was said in the House, but had not provided a person to write the transcript.

Speaker Lockwood Smith thought the Greens would assign someone from their support staff, the Greens thought Parliament would provide. When the Greens discovered otherwise this week they made the most of it.

It should have been sorted out earlier, and I agree neither side escapes blame.

They succeeded in embarrassing Dr Smith, who sounded heartless until he explained that additional staffing for a member was beyond his statutory power to provide. But the Greens should be embarrassed too. Having put a deaf person high on their list, they ought to have foreseen all her needs in Parliament and taken more responsibility for her assistance.

It was not unreasonable to think the party would provide her assistant. Ideally, the person would not only transcribe speeches but be alert to comments, interjections and nuances of particular interest to the MP and her party. A public servant might not be ideal. Doubtless the party does want its member to be assisted by one of their own but it wants additional funding for it.

The Greens get 56,000 hours of funding, and only 1,000 hours are needed for transcription. What would be interesting is to find out whether the Greens are using all their hours currently and really can’t manage to cover the transcriber themselves, or whether they could – but just wanted to make the Speaker look bad?

Tags: editorials, Mojo Mathers, NZ Herald

Today’s Herald editorial:

The Labour Party could bounce back quickly from its heavy election defeat if it heeds the testimony of one of its candidates in a contributed column we published on Friday. Josie Pagani wrote: “We didn’t sound aspirational, we sounded miserable. We were turning up on people’s doorsteps telling them their lives were gloomy …

“The hardest week to door- knock,” she said, “was when we were telling people who had just come home from a day’s work earning the minimum wage, that it was a great idea to extend their Working for Families tax credit to beneficiaries.” She could see them thinking, ‘so what’s the point of working my guts out all week while someone sitting at home on the dole gets the same tax credit as me?’

In a long line of bad policies (and a few good ones), this one was arguably the worst.

Labour’s new leadership will be listening to the likes of Ms Pagani. It has some highly aspirational young candidates who could have expected to come into Parliament if the party had not polled so low in November.

And if their list ranking had not protected incumbents.

If Labour can go to the next election with well-developed ideas for helping people who aspire to work hard, make sound choices, raise happy and healthy children, maybe start a business and invest their savings, it will strike a strong chord. If it can tell people only that they are poor, deprived, under-valued, and obese, it will not give the Government a run for our money.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to have Labour go into an election not vowing to punish the well off and raise taxes on them?

Tags: editorials, Josie Pagani, Labour, NZ Herald

The Dom Post editorial:

As new Labour leader David Shearer embarks on the daunting task of reconnecting his party with the people who used to vote for it, he could do worse than take note of recent developments in Britain.

There, Liam Byrne, the British Labour Party’s spokesman on work and pensions, has written an extraordinary article calling for a radical rethink of the welfare policy his party first introduced almost seven decades ago. …

Byrne lauds him for his vision, but says he would be worried by the way his system has “skewed social behaviour” by creating long-term dependency. “For him ‘idleness’ was an evil every bit as insidious as disease or squalor,” writes Byrne. “He wanted a responsible government taking determined action to create work, but a responsible workforce too.”

Michael Joseph Savage, the architect of New Zealand’s welfare state, believed everybody, as a right of citizenship, was entitled to “a reasonable standard of living in the days when they are unable to look after themselves, whether it be because of old age or physical infirmity”. However, he also believed in the dignity of the working man.

It is inconceivable that Savage and his colleagues ever viewed welfare as a valid alternative to work, as some of their successors appear to do.

Labour campaigned at the last election that working poor with children will get an extra $10/week and those not working with children will get an extra $70/week. What an awful incentive and message they were sending out.

In New Zealand, as in Britain, the challenge for Labour is to reconnect the party with the working man, and woman.

A good start would be for David Shearer to announce the scrapping of their 2011 policy to pay beneficiaries $70/week more to not be in employment.

Tags: Dominion Post, editorials, Labour, welfare

An excellent editorial in the NZ Herald:

Sir Roger Douglas has departed the political stage again but he may have left another enduring monument in Act’s agreement with National this week. A law to cap increases in government spending could prove to be as effective as one of his great legacies of the 1980s, the Reserve Bank’s inflation target.

Like the monetary target, the spending cap will sometimes be honoured in the breach but the target is no less effective for that. When it is breached, there needs to be a good reason, and a credible path set to bring inflation back into line. So it will be for the fiscal cap.

I think many have under-estimated the political power the cap will have.

It is too easy, as the previous government proved, to take on ever larger commitments when business is booming, the workforce is fully employed and tax revenue is providing budget surpluses. The country hardly noticed that state spending was steadily becoming a greater proportion of the economy in the years that surpluses also enabled continuing reductions of public debt.

More generous medical subsidies, paid maternity leave, early education, interest-free student loans, higher public service pay rates, a “super goldcard” are not the kind of expenses that can be wound back when the business cycle turns down and revenue drops. They instantly become entitlements that a future government fears to threaten.

Exactly. And the sad reality may be that the days of debt fuelled 3%+ growth could be in the past for-ever. In a new debt-averse world, with Europe taking a decade or more to get its debt under control, we may never get growth again like we have had in the 1990s and 2000s.  We may need to get used to 2% growth being the norm. This is why we need to stop Governments from imposing costs on New Zealand we can’t pay for.

Ultimately, of course, a parliamentary majority can do whatever it wants in this country and no Parliament can bind the next. A statutory spending restriction can be breached and even repealed as readily as the Bill of Rights Act. That act requires the Attorney-General to alert Parliament to proposed legislation that would breach the rights enshrined. The public takes note, the government needs a convincing case to proceed in political safety.

Laws of such limited power should not be under-rated. The lack of any stronger sanction is a strength, it makes it harder for a future government to repeal a statute that can do more than keep governments honest.

And hopefully it will increase the financial literacy of the public. We will know how much more a Government is planning to spend over the baseline amount per capita.

National has been not much keener than Labour on a legislated spending limit but it is already living within the limit agreed with Act. The cap is a credit not only to Sir Roger who has long argued for it, but to the recently deceased director of the Business Roundtable, Roger Kerr, who maintained a lonely watch against rising public expenditure, and Don Brash whose brief leadership of Act restored its focus on economic fundamentals.

Fiscal responsibility is a prosaic, thankless contribution to public welfare but if government spending rises no faster than population growth and low inflation from here on, we should all be better off.

Absolutely. If you look at all OECD countries over the last fifty years, those who manage to have the state consume a lower proportion of GDP have on average much much higher economic growth than those with a higher proportion.

Now it is a balancing act of course. If the state only consumed 5% of GDP, then we’d probably have no publicly funded schools or hospitals. But the current level of state spending is the highest in our history, so I don’t think drawing a line at today’s spending level and saying real spending per capita should not increase beyond today’s level is if anything a little on the generous side.

Tags: editorials, government spending, NZ Herald, spending cap

The Dom Post editorial:

Among those most depressed on election night were probably many teachers, their trade unions, and school principals.

I’m not so sure about “many” teachers. Most teachers don’t give a stuff about politics and just want to get on with teaching. It is the teacher politicians who devote most of their energy to educational politics that would have been depressed, but they are a minority of teachers.

The first John Key-led government made a priority of ensuring children can read and write – the foundation for all later learning – and parents getting school reports in plain English.

Known by its shorthand name, national standards, the policy was steadfastly adhered to by Mr Key, who consulted educational experts before the 2008 election on what would make the most difference to the one in five children who leave school illiterate and innumerate.

The policy was equally steadfastly opposed by the primary teachers’ union and the Principals’ Federation, chiefly on ideological grounds.

Their biggest fear is that once data on how schools are doing under national standards is reported to the Education Ministry, it will be available to the whole community, which will learn which of the schools they fund from their taxes perform best.

Outraegous. I’m waiting for Labour to announce a policy that they will ban league tables not only for schools, but also for hospitals. It is appalling that Tony Ryall publishes which DHBs have the quickest times for A&E waiting times and cancer radiation treatment. Not all DHBs have the same sort of patients, and Ryall’s hospital league tables should be banned as they are unfair to the hospitals not at the top.

But it is criminal that up to 20 per cent of students leave school unable to read, write and do arithmetic.

Former Labour Party president and new Howard League for Penal Reform chief executive Mike Williams gets it: he is desperate to find literacy teachers willing to help prison inmates. Why would that be necessary if current education policy works as well as teachers claim? After all, those jailbirds went to school somewhere.

The NZ educational system works very well for the average student. However it works very badly for the bottom 20% and not that great for the top 10%.

If children who are failing can be helped to succeed by a different prescription – think kura kaupapa or Rudolf Steiner, for example – the trial is worth conducting to see what can be learned from it.

Absolutely. A great win for ACT and for New Zealand.

Tags: ACT, charter schools, Dominion Post, editorials, national standards

Today’s Dom Post editorial:

Labour has abandoned all hope of taking votes from National.

It is now targeting the Green Party’s support instead. That is the only explanation for its bizarre proposal to extend the in-work tax credit to families who are not working. …

Any policy that reduces the incentives for individuals to become self-sufficient should be treated with great caution. It is neither in the interests of beneficiaries nor their children for beneficiaries to become permanently disconnected from the workforce. Adults benefit from feeling useful. Children benefit from the example of seeing their parents take responsibility for themselves.

The in-work tax credit was created for a specific purpose. It should not be used to increase benefits by stealth.

It is worth remembering. If you have kids and are in work, Labour say they will give you an extra $10/week only. But if you are on a benefit with kids, then Labour will give you an extra $70/week.

Tags: Dominion Post, editorials